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Title: The story of my house
Author: Ellwanger, George H. (George Herman)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The story of my house" ***
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
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THE STORY
OF MY HOUSE
BY
GEORGE H. ELLWANGER
AUTHOR OF
“THE GARDEN’S STORY”
These are but my fantasies.
MONTAIGNE
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
MDCCCXCI
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1890,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
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[Illustration]
EPISTLE DEDICATORY.
A house without woman is a house without a soul.
TURKISH PROVERB.
_THERE is expressed from the grapes that ripen on the sunny slopes of Aÿ
a wine called_ Fine Fleur d’Aÿ blanc—_Fine Flower of white Aÿ—a
sparkling, golden, perfumed nectar, to sip of which is an exhilaration._
_In every ideal home there exists an essence that likewise diffuses its
fragrance—the fine flower of noble womanhood, without which the house is
a habitation, not a home._
_Alone under the ministering care of woman may the routine of daily life
be relieved and varied, and the course of the household made to flow
free from friction and asperity. Caressed by her gentle touch, order
ranges itself, beauty finds a dwelling-place, and peace enters as an
abiding guest. Pre-eminently it is woman that idealizes the home, and,
with her sweet, refining presence, mingled with the joyous laugh of
children, creates its atmosphere of serenity and content._
_To the gentler sex, therefore—to the old and to the young, to the dark
and to the fair, to all who woo for us the sunshine of the home—a health
in the Fine Flower of Aÿ!_
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
-------
PAGE
EPISTLE DEDICATORY 3
PROLOGUE 7
I. THE PERFECT HOUSE 9
II. OLD ORIENTAL MASTERS 29
III. SIGNS IN THE SKY 46
IV. THE IDEAL HAVEN 64
V. WHEN LEAVES GROW SERE 86
VI. DECORATIVE DECORATIONS 105
VII. MY STUDY WINDOWS 119
VIII. MY INDOOR GARDEN 143
IX. A BLUE-VIOLET SALAD 170
X. FOOTSTEPS OF SPRING 187
XI. MAGICIANS OF THE SHELVES—I 205
XII. MAGICIANS OF THE SHELVES—II 225
XIII. AUTHORS AND READERS 250
XIV. THE PAGEANT OF THE IMMORTALS 272
EPILOGUE 285
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[Illustration]
PROLOGUE.
Spring speaks again, and all our woods are stirred,
And all our wide glad wastes a-flower around.
SWINBURNE.
A SHADED slope bounds the homestead to the southward, and a thick copse,
descending rather abruptly to the river, flanks the grounds in the rear.
Screened from sun and glare, the grass-plot is always a favorite
lounging-place during hot weather. Across the water a west or south wind
invariably blows, freighted with coolness and charged with that
indefinable odor which the wind gathers from its passage through a wood.
From the trees and bushes and grasses along the river banks the air has
dusted a fragrance; from the leaves, the fern fronds, and the flowers it
has extracted an aroma. The scent of the swamp honeysuckle along the
hillside now forms its strongest component part. Its perfume is
tangible, fresh, and uncloying—sentient with the delicious breath of the
summer—and, I fancy, charms the wood-thrushes into sweeter song.
The west or south wind invariably blows. Even when not felt, it may be
seen in the aspen’s trembling leaves; so that, however hot the day, here
a breeze may be always felt or seen. Through the trees the river
sparkles, and through a wider opening may be traced its sinuous course
until it merges into haze and sky. My book remains unopened; it is
pleasanter to read the earth and air. The bees hum, a wood-dove calls,
the soothing roar of the rapids rises and falls. So sweet is summer air,
so caressing are summer sounds.
How the sails have multiplied on the river! Is it the haze or the sudden
sunlight that has transformed their canvas into unaccustomed color?
Yonder a larger vessel, of different mold from the pleasure-craft, is
rounding the river’s curve in her cruise up-stream. Her clean-cut prow
rises high in air, her painted canvas is spread, and the sunlight
strikes the gold of her sides. Onward she sails, graceful as a
water-bird, tacking at intervals to catch the breeze. At once it becomes
plain to me—it is no mirage, no cheat of the atmosphere, but a reality.
Up the river from the lake, through the lake from the sea; launched from
her harbor in distant lands, and laden with her precious stores, my ship
has come!
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[Illustration]
I.
THE PERFECT HOUSE.
People who know my house come to like it a little; people who merely
glance at it see nothing to call for comment, and so pass on....
My house not being a fine house, nor a costly house, nor what people
call an elegant house, what is there in it to describe?—O. B. BUNCE,
MY HOUSE.
I MAKE no claim that the house wherein I dwell is a perfect one; it is
my first house—a fledgling. One must build at least thrice, it has been
truly observed, to obtain the perfected dwelling, and still there will
remain room for improvement. So many things go to make up the ideal
house, it is beyond human possibility to combine them all; while even
during the process of construction one’s tastes are liable to change or
become subject to modification.
To the most of mankind a single venture is sufficient; only architects
build more than once for a pastime. For the sole office of the architect
is to plan; the province of the builder to delay. The asylums teem with
victims to the vexations of house-building. Having money to make and not
to disburse, with no further care than to complete the work in hand with
the utmost leisure, the architect and builder pass through the ordeal
unscathed, and remain to lure new victims. One exception I recall.
Picturesquely situated on the eastern coast, within hearing of the surge
and rising amid the forest-growth, stands an untenanted villa. The
imposing exterior is of massive stone, and all that unlimited wealth and
taste could contribute has been lavished upon the interior. The mansion
was completed within the specified time, but during its construction
architect and builder both died, the owner living only three days after
its completion. From the placing of the foundation-stone to the
prospective fire in the hearth—from commencement to completion—who may
foresee the possibilities? Ever man proposes while Fate disposes.
Plans look so feasible on paper, and building seems so delightfully
facile in theory—so much time, so much money, and your long-dreamed-of
castle in Spain is a reality. But, like the quest of a German professor
I once knew who was searching for a wife who must be rich, beautiful,
young, angelic, and not afraid of a mouse, the perfect house is
difficult to attain; while plans often resemble the summer excursions
one takes with the mind during winter, apparently so easy to carry out
and yet so unfrequently realized. We forget the toilsome climb up the
mountain where we arrive, perchance, to find the view shrouded in mist;
or a cold spell sets in when we reach the seashore; or heavy rains
render the long-contemplated angling trip a dismal failure.
If we leave the house to the architect, he builds merely for himself—he
builds _his_ house, not yours. You must be the idealist of your own
ideal. “Our so-called architects,” says Richard Jefferies, “are mere
surveyors, engineers, educated bricklayers, men of hard, straight ruler
and square, mathematically accurate, and utterly devoid of feeling. You
call in your practical architect, and he builds you a brick box. The
princes of Italy knew better; they called in the poet and the painter,
the dreamers, to dream for them.” How the penetrating insight of
Montaigne pierced the mask of the architect: “The Merchant thrives not
but by the licentiousness of youth; the Husbandman but by dearth of
corne; the Architect but by the ruine of houses!”
Perhaps the easiest way out of the difficulty is to secure a house
already constructed that will meet your requirements as nearly as may
be. But the mere building, the foundation, construction, architectural
details, and interior arrangement are only a small part of numerous
vital factors that should enter into the question of the house and home.
There are equally the considerations of situation, neighborhood,
accessibility, and a score of like important features to be seriously
meditated on. One can not afford to make mistakes in building or in
marrying. “In early manhood,” says Cato, “the master of a family must
study to plant his ground. As for building, he must think a long time
about it.” The external construction is, indeed, the least part of
building—there is still the decorating and the furnishing.
Wise is he who weighs and ponders ere he decides upon the location of
his house, especially if he would be near the town. For in the ideal
home I would unite many things, including pure air, sufficient
elevation, pleasant views, the most suitable exposure, good soil,
freedom from noise, and the natural protection from wind afforded by
trees. “Let our dwelling be lightsome, if possible; in a free air and
near a garden,” is the advice of the philosopher, Pierre du Moulin. Very
apposite are old Thomas Fuller’s directions for a site—“_Chiefly choose
a wholesome air_, for air is a dish one feeds on every minute, and
therefore it need be good.” And again: “Light (God’s eldest daughter) is
a principal beauty in a building, and a pleasant prospect is to be
respected.” In the chapter of the Essays, on Smells and Odors, the
author pertinently observes: “The principall care I take, wheresoever I
am lodged, is to avoid and be far from all manner of filthy, foggy,
ill-savouring, and unwholesome aires. These goodly Cities of strangely
seated Venice and huge-built Paris, by reason of the muddy, sharp, and
offending savours which they yield; the one by her fennie and marish
situation, the other by her durtie uncleannesse and continuall mire, doe
greatly alter and diminish the favor which I bear them.”
All these desiderata are well-nigh impossible to unite in the city.
There all manner of nuisances necessarily exist—manufactories which
discharge noxious smoke and soot, the clangor of bells and whistles, an
atmosphere more or less charged with unwholesome exhalations. This more
particularly in summer; in winter I grant the city has its charms and
advantages. Wealth may sometimes combine the delights of urban and rural
life, as when a large residence plot is retained in a pleasant
neighborhood of the town. But even unlimited means can rarely procure a
place of this description, which comes by inheritance rather than by
choosing, and in the end becomes too valuable to retain. Besides,
however fine the ancestral trees and endeared the homestead, it must
still lack the repose of the country, the free expanse of sky, the
unfettered breadth of the fields.
When I look about me I find the combination I would attain a difficult
one to secure in almost any city. If I build in the suburbs, upon the
most fashionable avenue, its approaches may be disagreeable and the
surrounding landscape flat and uninviting. The opposite quarter of the
suburbs, the main northern residence avenue, will be windy during
winter. If I locate westward there may be factories and car-shops to
constantly offend the ear; if I move eastward unsavory odors may assail,
and if I select a site in yet another neighborhood that commends itself
for its elevation and pleasant society, there may be the smoke and soot
of neighboring chimneys to defile the air and intrude themselves
unceasingly into my dwelling. The country-seat sufficiently removed from
town, and yet comparatively accessible, alone may yield, during the
greater portion of the year, all the desired qualifications of the ideal
home. Does not Béranger truly sing—
Cherchons loin du bruit de la ville
Pour le bonheur un sûr asile.
Seek we far from the city’s noise
A refuge safe for peaceful joys.
And have not all the poets before him apostrophized the delights of a
country life?
Why not the town-house, and also the country-seat—a hibernaculum for the
winter, and a _villeggiatura_ for the summer? Unfortunately, this would
involve constructing two houses, meeting a double building liability,
harboring two sets of worries; and, moreover, one’s library, however
modest, can not well be disarranged or periodically shifted from one
place to another.
The old Latins were distinguished as we well know for their love of the
country. Virgil, Ovid, Tibullus, and Terence all had their
country-seats. Horace, in addition to the Sabine farm, possessed his
cottage at Tivoli, and longed for a third resort at Sorrento. Pliny the
Younger, and Cicero rode seventeen miles from Rome to Tusculum daily to
gain repose. Pliny’s letters attest his intense fondness for rural
surroundings. The holder of numerous country-houses, he has described
two of them very minutely, his descriptions giving to posterity the most
reliable and truthful account of the old Roman villas. Of all his
villas, including those at Tusculum, Præneste, Tibur, several on Lake
Como, and his Laurentine and Tuscan resorts, the two latter were his
especial favorites, whose fascinations he never tires of recounting.
Especially attractive is his account of Laurentium: the apartments so
planned as to command the most pleasing views; the dining-room built out
into the sea, ever washed by the advancing wave; the terrace before the
gallery redolent with the scent of violets; the gallery itself so placed
that the shadow of the building was thrown on the terrace in the
forenoon; and at the end of the gallery “the little garden apartment”
looking on one side to the terrace, on the other to the sea; his
elaborate bath-rooms and dressing-rooms, his tennis-court and tower, and
his own sleeping-room carefully constructed for the exclusion of noise.
“My house is for use, and not for show,” he exclaims; “I retire to it
for a little quiet reading and writing, and for the bodily rest which
freshens the mind.” One side of the spacious sitting-room invited the
morning, the other the afternoon sun. One room focused the sunlight the
entire day. In the walls of this his study was “a book-case for such
works as can never be read too often.”
The Tuscan villa was on a still more extensive scale, the house facing
the south, and adorned with a broad, long colonnade, in front of which
reposed a terrace embellished with numerous figures and bounded with a
hedge of box from whence one descended to the lawn inclosed with
evergreens shaped into a variety of forms. This, in turn, he states, was
fenced in by a box-covered wall rising by step-like ranges to the top,
beyond which extended the green meads, fields, and thickets of the
Tuscan plain, tempered on the calmest days by the breeze from the
neighboring Apennines. The dining-room on one extremity of the terrace
commanded the magnificent prospect, and almost cooled the Falernian.
There, too, are luxurious summer and winter rooms, a tennis-court, a
hippodrome for horse exercise, shaded marble alcoves in the gardens, and
the play of fountain and ripple of running water. The long epistle to
Domitius Apollinaris, descriptive of the Tuscan retreat, he concludes by
saying: “You will hardly think it a trouble to read the description of a
place which I am persuaded would charm you were you to see it.”
It was the delightful situation and the well cared for gardens of
Pliny’s country-seats, it will be seen, no less than the refined
elegance and the conveniences of the splendid houses themselves, of
which Pliny was mainly his own architect, that rendered them so
attractive. Assuredly he must have been a most accomplished
house-builder and artist-architect; for, in addition to the many
practical and artistic features he has enumerated with such precision,
he specifies a room so contrived that when he was in it he seemed to be
at a distance from his own house. But even Pliny’s wealth and inventive
resources, much as they contributed to his comfort, could not combine
everything. He could not bring Laurentium to him; he must needs go to
her. The daily ride of seventeen miles and back to the city must have
been irksome during bad weather; and even amid all his luxury and beauty
of scenery he bewails the lack of running water at Laurentium. Luxurious
and convenient as were the old Roman villas, they were built with only
one story, in which respect at least the modern house is an improvement
upon the house of the ancients; and there yet remain other beautiful
sites than those along the Tyrrhenian sea or in the vale of Ustica.
Whether the house be situated in the country or in the town, whether it
be large or small, it is apparent that the site and the exposure are of
primary importance. So far as situation is concerned, a rise of ground
and an easterly exposure, with the living-rooms on the south side, is
undoubtedly the pleasantest. During the summer the prevailing west wind
blows the dust of the street in the opposite direction; during winter
the living-rooms are open to the light and sun. The comfort of the house
during summer, and the outer prospect from within during winter, will
depend in no small degree upon the proper planting of the grounds.
Deciduous trees, and here the variety is great, will shade and cool it
in summer, evergreens will furnish and warm its surroundings in winter;
while for a great portion of the year the hardy flower-garden, including
the shrubberies that screen the grounds from the highway, and the
climbers which disburse their bloom and fragrance over its verandas and
porches, will contribute largely to its beauty and attractiveness.
Somehow I can not look upon my house by itself, without including as
accessories, nay, as essential parts of it, its outward surroundings and
external Nature—the woods whence its joists and rafters were hewed, the
earth that supplied its mortar, brick, and stone, the coal whence it
derives its light and heat, the trees that ward off the wind in winter
and shield it from the sun in summer, the garden which contributes its
flowers, the orchards and vineyards that supply its fruits, the teeming
fields and pastures that continuously yield the largess of their corn,
and flocks, and herds. From each of these my house and I receive a
tithe.
My purpose, however, even were I able to do the subject justice, is not
to treat of the adornment of gardens, of architectural styles,
expression of purpose in building, or the proper exterior form for the
American town-house and country villa. There remain, nevertheless, some
features of the interior of the home to which I would fain call
attention, though even here, more than in the matter of the exterior,
opinions necessarily differ. Every house, methinks, should possess its
distinctive character, its individual sentiment or expression; and this
depends less upon the architect and the professional decorator than upon
the taste reflected by the occupants. And yet there is nothing so
bizarre or atrocious that it will not please some; there exists nothing
so perfect as to please all.
Shall the ideal house be large or small? Excellent results may follow in
either case in intelligent, thoughtful hands. Where money is merely a
secondary object, then the great luxuriously furnished rooms, the lofty
ceilings, the grand halls and staircases, the picture gallery, the
music, billiard, and ball rooms, the house of magnificent distances and
perspectives. Still man is not content; for such a house, to be
beautiful, calls for constant care, a retinue of servants, a blaze of
light, a round of visitors and entertainments to populate its vast
apartments and render it companionable. The house to entertain in and
the house to live in are generally two separate things; but, of the two,
you want to live in your house more than to entertain in it.
Doubtless, even to those possessed of abundant means, the medium-sized
house, sufficiently roomy for all ordinary purposes and yet cosy enough
for family comfort, is the most satisfactory. In daily domestic life you
do not become lost and absorbed in its magnitude; and for the matter of
entertainments, on a large scale, you always have the resource of a
“hall,” with no further trouble beyond that of issuing the invitations
and liquidating the bills. In the ideal dwelling-house of medium size
even this will be dispensed with, while still preserving the charm of
privacy—one has simply to add a supplementary supper-room and an ample
ball-room, to be thrown open only on special occasions for the
accommodation of the overflow. Thus it would be possible to avoid a barn
to live in, and a cote to entertain in.
The great thing in house planning is to think ahead, and still think
ahead. The hall which looks so spacious on paper is sure to contract,
and ordinary-sized rooms will shrink perceptibly when they come to be
furnished. It is important that the spaces between the doors and
windows, the proportionate height of the doors and windows, the many
little conveniences, and innumerable minor yet major details, like the
placing of mantels, registers, chandeliers and side-lights, be planned
by the occupant, and not left to the mercy of the architect. The latter
will place the mantel on the side of a long, narrow room, thereby
diminishing the width several feet, when it should go at the end. He
will hang the doors so they will bump together, or open on the side you
do not want them to open on. If he concede you a spacious hall and
library, he will clip on the vestibule, or be a miser when he doles out
the space for the stairway landing or the butler’s pantry. And what
architect will stop to think of that most important of household
institutions—a roomy, convenient, concealed catch-all, or rather a
series of catch-alls!
Even so simple a contrivance as an invisible small wardrobe in the wall
adjoining the entrance—a receptacle for hats, wraps, and waterproofs—he
has never yet devised. Every hall must of necessity be littered up with
that hideous contrivance, a hat-rack, in a more or less offensive form,
when at a touch a panel in the wainscot might fly open to joyfully
engulf the outer vesture of visitors. You must see your house planned
and furnished with the inward eye ere the foundation is laid, and
exercise the clairvoyant’s art if you would not be disappointed when it
is finally ready for habitation. The question of closet-room is best
left to the mistress of the house, otherwise it is certain to be
stinted; and it were economy in the end to secure the services of a
competent _chef_ to plan the kitchen and its accessories—that tributary
of the home through whose savory or unsavory channels so great a wave of
human enjoyment or dolor flows.
It is with houses very much as it is with gardens—no two are ever
precisely alike; so far at least as the interior of the former is
concerned. Both reflect, or should reflect, through a hundred different
ways and niceties of adjustment and arrangement, the individual tastes
of those who are instrumental in their creation. The ideal house must
first be conceived by those who are to dwell in it, modeled according to
their requirements, mirroring their ideas, their refinement, and their
conceptions of the useful and the beautiful. By different persons these
ends are approached by different ways. So long as we attain the desired
end, the route thereto is of little consequence. But in the ideal house,
it may be observed, a little money and a good deal of taste go a very
great way.
All the eyes of Argus and all the clubs of Hercules must need be yours,
would you see your house perfectly planned and perfectly constructed.
The terrible gauntlet one has to run! He who builds should have nothing
to divert his mind from the task. It is the work of a lifetime crowded
into a year.
And when all is done, and the lights are turned on and the house is
peopled with its guests, who is there that is fully content with the
result of his labor? who that finds in the fruition the full promise of
the bloom? The perfect house in itself exists no more than the perfect
man or woman. We can at best set up an exalted standard of excellence to
approximate as nearly as we may. It is very much in building as it is in
life, where content with what we have is, after all, the true source of
happiness. “I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and
am still on their trail,” is the burden of Walden. How many of us are
not likewise in quest of the something that ever eludes? When we think
we have come up with the fox, it is but his shadow we seize; he himself
has already vanished round the ravine. We follow, but may not overtake,
at will, the siren that the poet beckoned for in vain:
Ah, sweet Content! where doth thine harbor hold?
Is it in churches with religious men
Which please the gods with prayers manifold,
And in their studies meditate it then?
Whether thou dost in heaven or earth appear,
Be where thou wilt, thou wilt not harbor here.[1]
Footnote 1:
Barnabe Barnes.
What philosopher among all who have moralized and analyzed has
discovered the sought-for stone? Amiel failed in the pursuit: “I am
always waiting for the woman and the work which shall be capable of
taking entire possession of my soul, and of becoming my end and aim.” “A
man’s happiness,” says Alphonse Karr, in an apothegm worthy of La
Bruyère, “consists in that which he has not got, or that which he no
longer has.” The coveted bauble palls when it is finally ours, the
“dove” escapes, and we all grow old. Absolute happiness flees when we
enter our ’teens. Methinks the French poet Chénier has resolved the
experience of most of us with reference to a certain phase of life as
felicitously as any of those who have endured and felt:
Tout homme a ses douleurs. Mais aux yeux de ses frères
Chacun d’un front serein déguise ses misères,
Chacun ne plaint que soi. Chacun dans son ennui
Envie un autre humain qui se plaint comme lui.
Nul des autres mortels ne mesure les peines,
Qu’ils savent tous cacher comme il cache les siennes,
Et chacun, l’œil en pleurs, en son cœur douloureux
Se dit: Excepté moi, tout le monde est heureux.
Each man his sorrows hath; but, in his brothers’ eyes,
Each one with brow serene his troubles doth disguise.
Each of himself complains; each one, in weariness,
Envies a fellow-man who mourns in like distress.
None measureth the pains that all as well conceal
As he himself doth hide the griefs that he doth feel;
And each, with tearful eye, says in his sorrowing heart,
Excepting me, the world with happiness hath part.
Yet, I like to think, and cherish the thought, when the cloud reveals no
silver lining, that however disappointing some phases of life may be,
some experiences of human character, there are bright days and pleasant
places ahead in the future, somewhere and sometime. Happiness is coy at
the best, fickle in bestowing her favors; and we find her the more
delightful, possibly, in that, like the sunshine, she comes and goes. We
awaken some morning to find her present, and the next morning she has
flown. “It sometimes seemeth that when we least think on her she is
pleased to sport with us.” So many she has to minister to that she has
necessarily but a brief period to remain. Still I see her ever laughing
with the children at play, and find her lingering where industry abides.
Beside the humble board of the laborer she is often found, while
frequently passing by the homes of the rich. Over gardens and fields she
hovers on pleasant days of spring, and on blustering winter nights I
hear the rustle of her wings above the poet’s page. The sunshine that
sifts through the window, warming and gilding all my surroundings, is
mine to-day; to-morrow it may stream elsewhere. It is all the brighter
when it comes; but to possess it I must open wide the casement to let in
the beams.
Climbing with the sunny Rector of Eversley to the lonely tarn amid the
hills—you have read and admired Chalk-Stream Studies; or, if not, you
have that enjoyment in store—I recall the moral that adorns this
delightful essay. “What matter,” he happily reasons, “if, after two
hours of such enjoyment, he (the angler) goes down again into the world
of man with empty creel or with a dozen pounders or two-pounders,
shorter, gamer, and redder-fleshed than ever came out of Thames or
Kennet? What matter? If he has not caught them, he might have caught
them; he has been catching them in imagination all the way up; and if he
be a minute philosopher, he holds that there is no falser proverb than
that devil’s beatitude, ‘Blessèd is he who expecteth nothing, for he
shall not be disappointed.’ Say, rather: ‘Blessèd is he who expecteth
everything, for he enjoys everything once, at least; and, if it falls
out true, twice also.’”
And with this gentle spirit, despite his many trials, Charles Kingsley
lived on through life, shedding sunshine and cheer from the
vine-embowered rectory at Eversley. His house was large enough for his
personal comforts, for the entertainment of his chosen friends, and for
the satisfaction of his domestic requirements; and this sufficed.
Reflecting the “sweetness and light” of his own nature, it became the
perfect house to him for the reason that he was satisfied with his
surroundings. The ideal home is largely the handiwork of the contented
mind; and if before we build we learn to extract the finer essences of
things, we may then pluck the rose where others only find the thorn.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
II.
OLD ORIENTAL MASTERS.
It is certain that colors exercise an influence over us to the
extent of rendering us gay or sad, according to their shades.—VOYAGE
AUTOUR DE MA CHAMBRE.
THE floors of my house, where hard-wood floors exist, are shellacked.
This imparts an excellent finish without darkening the wood, and the
subsequent care of the floor is slight. Beneath the rugs the finish is
sand-papered to prevent them from sliding. Oiling floors is
objectionable, the wood turning dark, and necessitating almost daily
going over with a damp and a dry cloth to keep them clean. Waxing is a
labor, and renders the floors slippery. Varnishing makes a very smooth
surface, easily marred, the gloss soon wearing in the least exposed
places.
My floors must, first of all, be subservient and subordinate to my rugs.
By shifting my rugs I immediately change the color of a room, the
expression of my house; I may cool a room in summer or warm it in winter
at will. Beautiful as beautiful paintings are some of the antique
Persian and Conia prayers, and the marvelously wrought Yourdes and
ancient Coulas. I believe there is no comprehensive book on rugs. Some
enterprising publisher should send a capable artist to Asia for a year
and publish an exhaustive _édition de luxe_ to supply a long-felt want.
An artistic work of this nature would be as desirable as an edition of
King Solomon’s lost book on gems. For color and color-blending we must
go to the Orientals; they have found its soul. Who else could blend
greens and blues so felicitously, or place the different reds in riotous
juxtaposition, or combine the whole gamut of browns with the entire
octave of yellows? They play with colors as a musician plays with the
keys of an instrument. They sound no false notes, they strike no
discords. I speak of the art as exhibited by the best masters. There are
plenty of daubs and crudities, it is true, a single specimen of which
will throw a whole house into an entasia. There is poor sculpture and
there are poor paintings. The finer examples of the loom deserve to be
stamped with the artist’s name just as much as a canvas of Gérôme or a
love-song of Hafiz.
There can be nothing more artistic, there is nothing more seductive than
these old Asiatic hand-paintings. I am drawn and fascinated by their
weird beauty. What charms do they not reveal! what multiplicity yet
harmony of hue and design! Though not unfrequently repeating themselves
in the same piece, color and design never tire. They have their
recurrent beat and rhythm, like the harmonious cadence of the Pantoum.
This large Afghan rug, for instance, mellow with use and time, the
general tone of which resembles that of a zircon, is composed of
innumerable shades of red, so many shades I can scarcely count them, one
shade melting into another shade—shades of shades—till the eye renounces
the task of pursuit. When examined closely, I find even magenta has been
employed by the craftsman, to become in his hands a medium of beauty. A
European produces a stiff-set pattern, the Oriental a maze of which one
never tires. There is always an unsuspected figure or color to reveal
itself, an oddity to suddenly appear, new lights and new shadows.
In coloring, some of the Afghans touch closely upon the Bokharas, though
the former are less closely woven, but are generally less set, and more
pleasing in design. As a class, I think the Bokharas are overestimated,
their usual lack of borders or indistinct bordering giving them an
unfinished look, despite their fineness of texture and the gloss of
their terra-cotta shades. My large thick blue Bokhara, however, is a
striking departure from the type, and I never tire of admiring its
artistic frame and its kaleidoscopic tints. The larger red Bokharas,
where the pattern is fine, the texture thin and silky, and the rug
straight, are very rich and handsome used as full single _portières_.
But a rug when hung, or used as a _portière_, must be something entirely
out of the ordinary to be in keeping, rugs in all such cases virtually
competing with and taking the place of old tapestries. The substitute,
therefore, should afford equal delight to the eye. I turn this closely
woven, heavy Shiraz, with the nap running toward the light, and its
forest of fluctuant palm leaves is blue. I spread it in the reverse
direction to see its color change like a tourmaline, and the field
become resilient with soft rich greens. Dusty, soiled, and dingy when I
first saw it unrolled from the bale, it is now a gem, alive to every
change of light and shade. Time has subdued its original strong colors.
These delicate gleams of buff that dance upon the border were once a
pronounced brown-crimson, while the original yellows of some of the
figures have softened to pale primrose. Its blues and greens are alone
unfaded, though refined by age. The artist painted better than he knew;
or did he designedly leave the finishing touches to the master-hand of
Time?
How strange this patch of shadow and yonder gleam of light in this
ancient Tiflis, the shadow shifting to light and the light darkening to
shadow, as I reverse my position. The cunning designer has suddenly
reversed the nap in the center, and hence its puzzling changes. I marvel
who has knelt upon these Conia prayers, in whose glowing centers four
shades of blue and four shades of red are fused so imperceptibly you may
scarcely tell where one shade ends and another begins—
The mossy marbles rest
On the knees that they have pressed
In their bloom.
Tender tones of olive, yellow, and blue lurk in some of the old Coulas,
and suave tints of peach-blow and of rose gleam in the patterns of the
rarer Kermans. Generally speaking, the Coulas possess little claim to
distinction. But the finer old examples are a marked exception, many
resembling the Yourdes prayers, while some are as velvety and intricate
in design as the old Meccas. My most admired Coula (4 × 5) in its
pattern and coloring might have been copied from an ancient cathedral
window.
This yellow Daghestan, coined four-score years ago, is a veritable field
of the cloth of gold. There are also the precious old Persian Sennas,
with a diamond flashing in the center, and a certain weave of Anatolians
with a bloom upon them like that of a ripe plum, so velvety one wants to
stroke them just for the pleasure of the caress. When viewed against the
nap, they look almost black, the colors hidden by the heavy fleece till
revealed by another angle of view. What strange conceits, what fine-spun
webs of tracery, what fillets, tangles, and tessellations of color do
they not disclose!
The command in the Khoran prohibiting its followers from reproducing the
image of living things has not been without its pronounced advantage. It
has served to develop the infinite beauty of geometrical design.
Color-study no edict of Mohammed could banish; it is a sixth sense
reflected from the sky and atmosphere—a priceless gift of Allah! There
has long been wanting a well-defined scale to describe and place the
different shades intelligibly, just as there exists a standard of
weights and measures comprehensible by all. Artists have one set of
terms, shopmen and milliners another; the average person can not define
a shade. Who can place the hues of a sunset sky? There needs to be a
color-congress to form a closer chromatic scale, and the task belongs by
right to the Orientals.
As a class, the Kazaks are not as desirable as many other makes, design
and colorings frequently being so obtrusive, and the weave usually being
marked by coarseness. Yet some Kazaks there are of remarkable beauty. My
best examples of Kazak art are done in cardinal and old gold. The one is
an antique, 6 × 7, thin and finely woven, the ground-work in three
shades of red, with the “tree pattern” raised in black upon the field,
and a storm of white flakes scattered over it. The other is a very old
piece of nearly similar size, in perfect preservation, so heavy that to
lift it is a task. Its luster is marvelous. The pattern is one of the
most admired of all the Kazak patterns when the colors are happily
employed, consisting of squares within squares or octagons variously
dispersed upon the field, the largest figure in the center. The colors
consist simply of four shades of yellow, the exquisite play of light and
shade produced by the glossy texture of the wool employed and the
frequent shiftings of the nap heightening the effect. It is my Asian
Diaz, and my ship contained it among her precious stores.
Always among the most beautiful of Persian and Turkish rugs are those of
various makes not often met with, that, exceptionally heavy and glossy,
possess a similar tone to that of the Kazak just specified—blendings and
interblendings of russet, chestnut, fawn, and fallow. To me their sleek
and velvety pile, their striped and spotted surfaces, their turmoil of
tawny hues, possess an attraction akin to that of the wild beasts of the
remote Eastern jungle. Looking at them, I instinctively recall a
carnivorous animal—fascinating in his fulvous beauty, supreme in his
splendor and his sheen. These graceful arabesques, are they not like the
curving haunches of some huge cat of the desert? These lucent spots and
markings, do they not resemble the shimmering pelt of a couchant
carnivore? A strange fascination they possess for me; a subdued ferity,
even to the animal odor that clings about their lambent folds; and,
sometimes, the gleams as of feline eyes that peer from the dots of their
borders.
The Yourdes are among the few weaves that do not acquire an additional
value from silkiness. Time mellows their naturally soft shades, and use
imparts to them a slight luster. But their great value consists in
detail of design and contrast of a few colors—black and dark bands on a
gray-white ground for the border, the plain prayer-disks usually of
gray, blue, green, or maroon. The warp and nap being relatively thin,
and color and design not being dependent upon strong or direct light to
emphasize them, they are excellently adapted for hangings—indeed, they
are too tender and precious to be placed upon the floor. The antique
Yourdes prayers usually come in sizes about 4 × 6, and are deservedly
among the most prized among Oriental textiles. Some of the finer
Persians are equally suitable for hangings. By Persians I refer to what
is known as “Persian prayers,” the term being used to designate a
certain class of Persian fabrics with centers of self-colors, to which,
for some unexplained reason, a more definite name is not given. More
strictly speaking, with double disks, the larger one plain and the
smaller partially embroidered or figured, the arabesque “a” and typical
Shiraz figure generally present in the border. These Persians are
recognizable at a glance. Can we wonder the Moslem is so resigned to
prayer with such _prie-Dieus_ to kneel upon!
Under the term Daghestan are lumped the makes of this and numerous other
districts, the designs of which are somewhat similar. There are very
many fine true Daghestans and Kubas, as well as very many poor ones, the
old examples being relatively much handsomer than the modern. The
ordinary Daghestan border repeats itself far too often, and its
commonness mars many an otherwise valuable work of art. Next to the
Meccas, the Daghestans are probably among the most crooked of the
products of Eastern looms, and numberless specimens of extraordinary
sheen and rare design and coloring are virtually spoiled on this
account. A long strip frequently has a horse-shoe curve, and even very
small pieces are often so much broader at one end as to prove positively
distressing to the sense of proportion.
The finer Meccas, distinguished for extreme softness and silkiness,
combined with intricacy and pronounced individuality of design, are
generally not only very crooked, but gathered and puffed at the corners
as well. A straight Mecca one rarely sees except in dreams. This is to
be deplored, for their lovely arabesques and gracious fantasies are not
to be met with elsewhere. A search for absolute geometrical precision in
Oriental rugs, however, would be like Kaphira’s pursuit of the golden
ball. They are made and painted by hand, and not cut out by machine.
Therein consists their enchantment. Nevertheless, one should only look
for and secure comparatively straight specimens; the very crooked, the
very crude, and the very glaring are worthless at any price. “A cur’s
tail,” says a Turkish adage, “may be warmed and pressed and bound round
with ligatures, and after a twelve years’ labor bestowed upon it, still
it will retain its natural form.” The dog in the adage was intended, not
for a Christian, but for a rug. No wetting, stretching and tacking will
remove its aged seams and wrinkles—
What nature hath not taught, no art can frame:
Wild born be wild still, though by force you tame.[2]
Footnote 2:
Thomas Campion, Third Booke of Ayres.
Distinct from all other productions are the Kourdestans, notably the
large anchor-pattern. These are difficult to manage, however, the design
being so striking. Very large figures or very glaring colors are on this
account to be avoided. They tyrannize over their companions, or clash
with surrounding objects. The eye is perpetually directed to them and
they disturb the sense of repose. Many specimens of the Carabaghs are
remarkable for their beautiful combination of colors, especially in the
blending of reds, olives, and blues. The nap is generally very heavy,
and the wool employed not unfrequently of extreme glossiness, imparting
almost an oily look to the surface. The rather large hexagonal figures,
moreover, without being glaring are usually artistic and striking.
Handsome are many of the Persian camel’s-hair rugs, unique in design and
usually of very subdued colors.
The Cashmeres or Somaks are lacking in animation compared with many
other weaves. Individuality they possess, but neither sheen, softness of
texture, nor marked grace of design. For the dining-room, the most
serviceable rugs are the large India, and the Turkish Ouchaks, though
when obtainable some of the finer large Khorassans and Persians are
equally desirable. Both of the latter are finer than the Ouchaks, and
old pieces possess a brilliant luster which the Ouchaks lack. The fine
large thick India rugs are among the most magnificent in the world, soft
as a houri’s cheek, and diapered and jeweled with every shade of color;
yet harmonious as the play of an opal. It is impossible to conceive of
more superb color-blending.
While age is unquestionably an important factor in the beauty of a rug,
one should by no means cast aside a new rug if the example be
exceptionally fine, and its design or coloring may not be obtained in an
antique. It will require time, I admit, to develop its beauties. But by
subjecting it to light and constant use its original crudeness will
gradually depart, and each year of service will heighten its bloom.
Against the crude new fabric must be placed the far more objectionable
form of “antique,” torn and thread-bare from rough usage, or soiled and
faded beyond redemption. Neither may it be amiss to caution the novice,
and many so-styled amateurs, against the not unfrequent practice of
dealers—aye, of merchants in Constantinople, Ispahan, and even Mecca
itself—of _painting_ old rugs to mask their sordid condition, and gloze
over their hoary antiquity.
Could the history of an old rug be traced, what a tale might it not
unfold!—the Adventures of a Guinea were nothing in comparison. Venerable
before it was secured by the itinerant collector in some remote
province, how many vicissitudes and changes has it not passed through!
Lashed to the backs of patient dromedaries goaded by the spears of
fierce dragomen; borne under the heat of a tropical sun amid the
toilsome march of the caravan; and escaping the rapine of plundering
tribes, it arrived at the great marts of the East. Here, unstrapped from
the bale, it passed to the bazaars, or the vast warerooms of the
merchantmen. There, perchance, its lovely sheen caught the eye of a
calculating middleman, who purchased the bale to secure the prize,
passing it in turn to a third. Or, while ransacking the treasures of a
Stamboul bazaar it was, perhaps, admired by a rich profligate—a bauble
for a new-found flame. Or, did it figure in the collection of some noted
connoisseur whose effects on his demise passed into unconversant or
indifferent hands? Youth and beauty may have reposed upon it, and old
age admired its bewitching hues. It may have overheard many a lover’s
tale; it may once have graced a pasha’s wall.
In fine Oriental rugs mere size seldom governs their value, this being
dependent upon intrinsic beauty and rarity. Of course, a splendid large
piece is more valuable than a similar example half its size, although
the fine large piece may not be worth the rarer small one of some other
make. Oddity and rarity, when combined with beauty, are the strongest
factors in the value of a rug. A sage-green or mauve centered Yourdes, 6
× 4, may be without price, as a small Rembrandt may command a hundred
times the price of a canvas double its size. It all depends upon the
artist. Neither is thickness nor silkiness a necessary factor in the
value of a rug. Depth of pile is certainly desirable in very many makes,
a heavy piece keeping its place upon the floor far better than a thin
one. Silkiness is likewise valuable in most cases; it imparts additional
life, and enhances the play of the color facets. But in rugs like the
rarer Yourdes and some of the old Persians and Coulas, neither depth of
pile nor extraordinary luster govern their value. These are
paintings—old masters—that should be hung, to be admired like a picture
or a stained-glass window, and the eye revel in their beauty.
But my rugs are more than mere foci of color and revelations of Eastern
luxury. They are, above all, examples of a rare handicraft; enduring
expressions of artistic skill of various times and various peoples. They
thus become sentient instead of simply material, their exuberance of hue
and opulence of design representing the most consummate art, and
appealing equally to me through the various motives of human industry,
human interest, and human thought. In them are incorporated the sense of
the beautiful as interpreted by the canons of Oriental art, a distinct
artistic motive and theme underlying the technical finish and manual
skill of the craftsman. Nor is spiritual quality less reflected in these
masterpieces than the fine æstheticism with which they are pervaded;
they express equally a religious symbolism of the Oriental mind, and the
mystic rites observed in the mosque of Islam. Just as painting and
sculpture are representative arts of Christian peoples, so these
marvelous blendings of form and color are typical of the individuality
of the Mohammedan alien race.
Endless is their variety. Independent of the diversity of the different
wools employed, each district has its characteristic patterns, its
peculiar weaves, and often its distinguishing colors and
color-combinations which are its individual right and inheritance, and
which other districts may not reproduce without incurring the opprobrium
attached to the plagiarist. Anatolia may not borrow from Bokhara, nor
Daghestan from Beloochistan. Nor may one rug of a district be an exact
reproduction of another rug of the same district. There may be a
resemblance, it is true; but each valuable example will be found to
possess a stamp of originality—the genius of the artist—which gives it
its value and constitutes the difference between the mere commercial
product and the enduring work of art. Thou shalt not purloin the work of
another’s brain! is a commandment embossed upon the loom of the
Oriental—a law of the Medes and Persians generally observed unto this
day.
Valuable as a well-chosen collection of porcelains is a well-chosen
collection of rugs. While neither may be dispensed with as art objects,
and both afford a constant delight to the eye and the sense of the
beautiful, it may be said that textiles have the advantage over
porcelains in that they can not break, and that they combine utility
with equal charm and more extended color. It is, withal, a satisfaction
to know that every footfall upon their luxurious pile and every beam of
sunlight that streams upon them only serve to increase their value and
heighten their beauty.
In the course of time, no doubt—aye, at no distant day, as fine old
specimens become more and more rare and occupy, as they deserve, a still
more exalted place in the domain of art—we will have exhibitions of
Oriental rugs, as we have exhibits of paintings and statuary to-day. The
appreciative and wealthy amateur who, in a single purchase, recently
expended nineteen thousand dollars for twelve specimens of the Asiatic
weaver’s art—specimens that may not now be duplicated—will then be
envied for his foresight and the cheapness of his purchase.
To form a fine, varied, and extensive collection of rugs, however, is
the work of years. As Paganini declared, after a lifetime of study, that
he had just begun to be acquainted with his violin, so the connoisseur
may say with regard to the textiles he loves so well. For every piece
should be like a painting, perfect of its kind, artistic in design,
harmonious in color; and to combine the desired qualifications without
incongruities or repetition of borders and patterns is to tread no
primrose path. Not only a concent of color and design is requisite in
each single example, but rarity, luster, age, good condition, and
individuality—a combination not easily obtainable.
But my ship contained many straight and beautiful rugs among her stores!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
III.
SIGNS IN THE SKY.
Nunquam imprudentibus imber obfuit.
VIRGIL, GEORGICS, I, v. 373.
LOOKING out through the windows of my house upon the sunset sky, I am
often enabled to frame a weather report for the morrow; for, in his
rising and his setting, the sun has a message to convey, sometimes
written in type that is legible to all, sometimes in hieroglyphics that
the ordinary observer may not decipher. Yonder blazing fire in the west
and warm orange afterglow tell me I may expect fair weather, just as the
leaden cloud which screens the sinking sun apprises me of coming storm.
But to offset one aspect of the plainly lettered sky, there are a score
more difficult to read, while, at best, we are liable to err in our
interpretations where the weather is concerned.
Yet, trying as it often is, in this latitude especially, how could we
dispense with its vagaries? Sunshine, by all means! but we would
scarcely appreciate the sun if it always shone, even could vegetation
and humanity exist under unclouded skies.
Were all the year one constant sunshine, wee
Should have no flowres;
All would be drought and leanness; not a tree
Would make us bowres.[3]
Footnote 3:
Henry Vaughn, Silex Scintillans.
It has been observed before now that we are always talking about the
weather, always interested in it, always trying to foretell it, always
grumbling at it, or delighted with it. Without the changes of the
weather the world would go all awry. There would be no more guessing or
prognosticating. Conversation must come to a standstill; if not to a
full stop, at least to an awkward pause. When there is nothing else to
talk about there is always the weather. It is the oil of conversation’s
wheel. How many a pleasant acquaintance dates from a weather remark!
Simply as a conversational factor I have no doubt it has helped on
innumerable marriages. But it is ever too hot or too cold, too damp or
too dry, too cloudy or too sunshiny. If one can not openly anathematize
his neighbor, he may damn the weather; faint, indeed, is its praise.
With a bright sun shining, a purple haze on the hills, the thermometer
at 50°, and the atmosphere exhilarating as champagne, still the lament
will arise that we are not enveloped with a blanket of snow. Just the
day for a walk, when one may start out dry-shod to inhale the
stimulating air and bask in voluptuous sunlight! But the fickle
weather-vane suddenly veers, and north wind and snow are exchanged for
south wind and balm; the croakers have their turn.
There is reason to believe that the weather repeats itself in a general
way at regular intervals of seven or ten years, more or less. Statistics
are said to confirm this statement, and it gives us reason to hope that
when our records shall cover longer periods and shall be more carefully
and fully compiled, we may obtain considerable insight into the weather
programme for the coming year. That one extreme follows another is
perhaps the surest and most valuable weather indicator we have. An
inordinate degree of warmth is generally followed by a corresponding
degree of cold; a period of extraordinary coolness by a contrasting
period of heat. The amount of water and heat in the world is always the
same, though to human observation the extremes of temperature are
capriciously distributed. If it is passing cold here, it is passing warm
somewhere else. If we get an overplus of wet this month we receive an
overplus of dry next month, or some month after. Nature will surely
balance her ledger sooner or later; the difficulty is to tell when she
will do it.
Restless and impatient, man is continually seeking change. What could
supply this inherent craving in the breast of mankind so happily as the
weather? The old adage, “’Tis an ill wind blows no man good,” is daily
verified. This change to piercing cold means one hundred thousand tons
more of coal for the furnaces of each of the great cities; this hot
wave, one hundred thousand tons more of ice to their refrigerators. The
mild winter that brings a scowl upon the dry-goods merchant’s face is a
benison to the laborer; the east wind that puts out the inland furnace
fires may blow the disabled vessel into port. Blowing where it listeth,
to some point of the compass the wind is kind.
If one could find no other occupation, one might busy himself in making
observations of the weather. In the shifting vane and the restless
clouds there is the attraction of perpetual change, elements we may not
control nor yet fully understand—an omnipresent and omnipotent force.
Their wayward moods bring plenty or pestilence, as the vane chooses to
veer, or the tangles gather in the _cirri’s_ hair. All animal and
vegetable life is dependent upon their inexorable decrees. The laws of
the weather may not be altered. We may not increase the rainfall one
inch or lower the temperature half a degree. The most we can do is to
study its warnings, and, by reading the signs of the earth and sky, be
prepared for what changes may be in store.
There is a relief from the tyranny of hard fact in endeavoring to trace
the meaning of these _nimbus_ clouds or the prophecy of this
moisture-laden breeze. What will the next change be; of what complexion
will be the weather to come? I foretell it frequently through my walls
of glass that enable me from within to read the horoscope of the sky.
The signs exist, if we may but comprehend them. They publish every event
and indicate every change. Unvarying laws that may be understood by the
intelligent observer control all atmospheric conditions, and
particularly storms. By noting existing conditions the corollary is to
be deduced. Blasius’s laws, as stated in his volume, Storms, are
comprehensive, and whoever will take the pains to study them (for many
portions of the volume call for hard study) may learn to foretell much
about the weather, at least so far as relates to larger storms. Many
immediate changes are easy to foretell—from the moon’s warning halo and
the prophesying cry of the hair-bird, to the toad’s prescient croak from
the tree. From observation the farmer and mariner generally become
weather-wise. Out in the open air continually, they learn to interpret
the signs, their vocations being more or less controlled by and
dependent upon the weather. A habit of studying the weather brings one
into closer relationship with nature. However superficial the knowledge,
one must know something of nature in order to be a weather-prophet, that
is, so far as prophesying from numerous well-known natural signs is
concerned.
There are certain indices: the clouds no bigger than a man’s hand, that
indicate what is coming in a weather way for a short time ahead. Many of
the old signs are reliable. From time out of mind a red sunset has been
viewed as a precursor of fair weather, and a red sunrise the forerunner
of storm. A bright-yellow sky at sunset uniformly denotes wind, a
coppery or pale-yellow sunset, wet; and attentive observers do not need
the testimony of Admiral Fitzroy to know that a dark, gloomy, blue sky
is windy, and a light, bright, blue sky is fair. A high dawn indicates
wind, a low dawn fine weather. A gray sky in the morning presages fine
weather. If _cumulus_ gathers in the north and rises, rain may be looked
for before night. Frequently the _cumuli_ clouds—argosies serenely
riding at anchor above the southern horizon—flash forth warnings that
are never fulfilled; the lightning of heat, and not of storm. If stripes
are seen to rise northward from the southern sky, a change may be
anticipated from their quarter. Without clouds there can be no storm.
One of the most beautiful cloud-formations, the mackerel-sky, is well
known to be usually indicative of a change. Oftentimes on the otherwise
unclouded blue of the heavens delicate volutes or scrolls may be
observed, like cobwebs spun upon the sky; these frequently portend a
decided change within two days. If this form of cloud, more familiarly
known as mares’-tails, curls down toward sunset, fair weather may be
looked for; if up, it will most probably rain before dawn. Frequently
narrow bands or stripes extend from east to west or north to south over
the entire aërial arch, the storm invariably coming from the direction
pointed out by the clouds.
Local signs go to show that in winter a dark-blue cloud over the lake
foretells a thaw; when the lower portion, however, is dark and the upper
portion gray, snow may be expected. A halo round the moon is a sure
indication of rain, snow, or wind, and the larger the circle the nearer
the storm. When the stars are more than usually bright and numerous, or
when the hills and distant objects seem unusually sharp and near, I am
certain of an approaching storm. “You all know the peculiar clearness
which precedes rain,” observes Ruskin, “when the distant hills are
looking nigh. I take it on trust from the scientific people that there
is then a quantity, almost to saturation, of aqueous vapor in the air,
but it is aqueous vapor in a state which makes the air more transparent
than it would be without it. What state of aqueous molecule is that,
absolutely unreflective of light—perfectly transmissive of light, and
showing at once the color of blue water and blue air on the distant
hills?” Distant sounds heard with unusual distinctness apprise me of
rain. The aurora borealis, when very bright, is usually followed by a
storm, and often intense cold. The rainbow after drought is a rain-sign.
Natural signs, other than the handwriting on the sky, are innumerable,
and, again, the old sign-posts point out the way. Heavy dews indicate
fair weather, while three consecutive white frosts, and often two,
invariably bring rain or snow. Before a snow-storm the weather usually
moderates, while there is always an interval between the first drops and
the downpour. If it rains before seven it will clear before eleven, is a
wise saw. Certain stones, which, when rain is in the near future, become
damp and dark-looking, are excellent barometers. We have all of us
noticed that fire frequently burns brighter and throws out more heat
just before a storm, and is hotter during its continuance—an easterly
storm, however, often being the exception.
The closing of the blossoms of numerous flowers during the day tells me
it will rain; my flowers also give out a stronger odor previous to rain.
The trefoils contract their leaves at the approach of a storm. The
convolvulus and the pimpernel also fold their petals previous to rain,
the latter flower being appropriately named the poor man’s
weather-glass. When the chickweed’s blossom expands fully, no rain will
occur for several hours; if it continue open, no rain will fall during
the day. When it half conceals its flower the day is usually showery.
When it entirely closes its white petals, steady rain will occur. “It is
manifest,” observes Bacon in Sylva Sylvarum, “that there are some
_Flowers_ that have _Respect_ to the _Sunne_ in two kindes; The one by
_Opening_ and _Shutting_; And the other by _Bowing_ and _Inclining_ the
_Head_; it is found in the great Flower of the _Sunne_; in _Marigolds_,
_Wart-Wort_, _Mallow-Flowers_; and others.”
Smoke rising straight in the air means fair weather. The odor of the
_Mephitis_ is very pronounced before rain, owing to the heaviness of the
atmosphere, which prevents odors from rising. Spiders do not spin their
webs out of doors before rain. Previous to rain flies sting sharper,
bees remain in their hives, or fly but short distances, and most animals
and birds appear uneasy. “Sheep,” the Selborne rector states, “are
observed to be very intent on grazing against stormy wet evenings.” One
of the most reliable weather-signs in Texas is said to be supplied by
the ant. The ants bring their eggs up out of their nests, exposing them
to the sun to be hatched. When they are observed carrying them in again
hastily, though there be not a cloud in the sky, a storm is near at
hand. Swallows flying low near the ground or water is a rain-sign noted
in the Georgics, the birds following the flies and gnats which delight
in a warm strata of air. Aratus, the Greek poet, in the Prognostica,
also cites the swallow’s flight low over the water as a rain-sign:
Fast skim the swallows o’er the lucid lake
And with their breasts the rippling waters break.
Previous to rain and just when it begins to rain, swallows fly swifter,
doubtless to make the most of the insects while opportunity affords.
Wheeling and diving high in the sky, the swallow flies to tell me the
day will be fair. Chickens, it may be noticed, when steady rain sets in
will continue searching for food after the rain has begun; if only a
shower they will seek shelter before the rain begins. Foxes bark, and
wolves howl more frequently when wet weather is approaching. Crows
clamor louder before a change. Frogs, geese, and crows were looked upon
as weather-prophets by the ancients, the crow especially figuring
frequently as a foreboder of storm. According to Virgil, if they croak
often, and with a hoarse voice it is a rain-sign:
Tum cornix rauca pluviam vocat improba voce.
If they croak only three or four times, and with a shrill clear voice it
is a fair weather-sign:
Tum liquidas corvi presso ter guttere voces
Aut quater ingeminant.
Lucretius likewise introduces the crow as a weather-prophet:
... om’nous crows with various noise,
Affright the farmers; and fill all the plain,
Now calling for rough winds and now for rain.[4]
Footnote 4:
Creeche’s translation.
The crow’s raucous voice also figures in Aratus’s Prognostics of a
Storm:
The aged crow on sable pinions borne,
Upon the beetling promontory stands,
And tells the advancing storm to trembling lands;
Or dips and dives within the river’s tide,
Or, croaking hoarse, wheels round in circles dark and wide.[5]
Footnote 5:
Milman’s translation.
And Chaucer, while following the majority of the poets in aspersing the
crow, still makes him serve as a barometer:
Ne nevir aftir swete noise shall ye make,
But evir crye ayenst tempest and rain....
All nature reads the coming signs. The migratory woodcock will desert
the fall covers in advance of the storm, even though the weather promise
fair. Just before a storm, like its echo in advance, I have heard the
Canadian forest resounding on every side with the cry of the great
horned owl—_oh-hoo, oh-hoo! oh-hoo, oh-hoor-r-r-r_! Wild fowl are
conscious of the change from afar. Even the domestic goose and duck are
unusually garrulous previous to a storm, voicing their pleasure at the
prospect of approaching rain. I recall a case in point while
trout-fishing, where geese proved excellent weather-prophets. The day in
question, September 14, 1875, the last day of the open season in
Ontario, like the three or four preceding days, was warm, hazy, and
delightful, with no perceptible omens to denote an approaching storm,
save the graceful mares’-tails waving from the sky. But a large flock of
geese, which appeared to dispute with the trout the possession of the
pond, and which had frequently proved a source of annoyance while
angling, were more than usually excited, screaming continually, and
flying to and from the pond with loud gaggling. The sun descended behind
the tamaracks with an angry frown, the moon became obscured by ominous
clouds, the temperature fell suddenly, and a severe equinoctial storm
set in.
Birds, however, can not be implicitly relied upon as weather-prophets,
especially as harbingers of spring. Year after year, tempted by instinct
and the tempered air, do the migratory birds take early flights to the
northward. Suddenly on some genial morning, the vanguards appear. A
blue-bird’s, or song-sparrow’s dulcet warble falls upon the ear, and we
welcome the return of spring. But season after season we have to record
the disappearance of the birds again, and the recurrence of stormy
weather. Lured by the soft spring sunshine, and eager to revisit their
northern homes, the birds, like human migrants to the south, frequently
return too soon. Not until I hear the first sweet song of the
white-throated sparrow am I convinced that spring has come to stay.
How far the weather is influenced by the changes of the moon is a
disputed question. M. de Parville, a French meteorologist of note, has
recently claimed that a long series of observations show that the moon
which passes every month from one hemisphere to the other, influences
the direction of the atmospheric currents; that the distance of the moon
from the equator, or inclination of the moon’s path to the plane of the
equator varies every year, passing from a maximum to a minimum limit,
and that the meteorological character of a series of years appears to be
mainly dependent upon the change of inclination when those extreme
limits have been touched: the rainy years, the cold winters, and hot
summers return periodically and coincide with certain declinations of
the moon. In proof of his assertion, he presents a table tracing
backward this connection between the rainy years and the moon’s
declination.
In the European Magazine, vol. 60, p. 24, a table is given which has
been ascribed to the astronomer Herschel. It is constructed upon a
philosophical consideration of the attraction of the sun and moon in
their several positions respecting the earth, suggesting to the observer
what kind of weather will most probably follow the moon’s entrance into
any of her quarters. Briefly summarized, the nearer the time of the
moon’s entrance, at full and change or quarters, is to midnight (that is
within two hours before and after midnight), the more fair the weather
is in summer, but the nearer to noon, the less fair. Also, the moon’s
entrance, at full, change, and quarters, during six of the afternoon
hours, viz.: from four to ten, may be followed by fair weather; but this
is mostly dependent on the wind. The same entrance during all the hours
after midnight, except the two first, is unfavorable to fair weather.
It may be of interest to cite Bacon’s rules for prognosticating the
weather, from the appearances of the moon:
1. If the new moon does not appear till the fourth day, it
prognosticates a troubled air for the whole month.
2. If the moon either at her first appearance or within a few days
after, has her lower horn obscured and dusky, it denotes foul weather
before the full; but, if she be discovered about the middle, storms are
to be expected about the full; and, if her _upper_ horn be affected,
about the wane.
3. When on her fourth day the moon appears pure and spotless, her horns
unblunted and neither flat nor quite erect, but between both, it
promises fair weather for the greatest part of the month.
4. An erect moon is generally threatening and unfavorable, but
particularly denotes wind; though if she appears with short and blunted
horns, rain is rather to be expected.
The influence of the moon on the weather was one of the cardinal
beliefs, not only of the ancients, but of our forefathers, and the old
gardeners and orchardists believed implicitly in its effect on most
operations connected with husbandry, regulating these operations with
the greatest exactitude, according to the various phases of the planet.
Harvard, in his treatise on the art of propagating plants, referring to
the proper time for grafting, declares, “the grafts must alwaies be
gathered in the old of the Moone.” Lawson, in his New Orchard and
Garden, advises as the best time to remove sets, “immediately after the
fall of the Leaf, in or about the change of the Moon;” and the best time
for “graffing” as “in the last part of _February_ or _March_, or
beginning with _April_, when the Sun with his heat begins to make the
sap stir more rankly about the change of the Moon, before you see any
great apparancie of leaf or flowers; but only knots and buds, and before
they be proud, though it be sooner.”
Very frequent references to the moon’s influence with respect to
forestry and its operations occur in Evelyn’s Sylva. In felling timber,
he charges the forester to “observe the _Moons_ increase” (chap. iii,
13). And again, “the fittest time of the _Moon_ for the _Pruning_ is (as
of _Graffing_) when the _sap_ is ready to stir (not proudly stirring)
and so to cover the _wound_” (chap. xxix, 6.) The old lunar rules for
felling trees are thus given by Evelyn (chap. xxx, 26): “Fell in the
_decrease_, or four days after _conjunction_ of the two great
_Luminaries_; some of the last quarter of it; or (as Pliny) in the very
article of the _change_, if possible; which hapning (saith he) in the
last day of the Winter _Solstice_, that _Timber_ will prove _immortal_:
At least should it be from the _twentieth_ to the _thirtieth_ day,
according to _Columella_: _Cato_ four dayes after the _Full_, as far
better for the growth: But all _viminious_ Trees _silente Lunâ_; such as
_Sallies_, _Birch_, _Poplar_, etc. _Vegetius_ for _ship timber_, from
the _fifteenth_ to the _twenty-fifth_, the _Moon_ as before; but never
during the _Increase_, Trees being then most abounding with moisture,
which is the only source of putrefaction: And yet ’tis affirm’d upon
unquestionable _Experience_, that _Timber_ cut at any _season_ of the
_year_, in the _Old Moon_, or last _Quarter_, when the _Wind_ blows
_Westerly_; proves as _sound_, and good as at any other period
whatsoever; nay, all the whole _Summer_ long, as in any _Month_ of the
_Year_.”
Few of our large storms are of local origin; they are hatched for the
most part on the plains east of the Rocky Mountains, and thence move
eastward, deflecting slightly to the north during winter. In Europe, the
meteorologists assert, storms are more nearly round than in America,
where they are of a more irregular oval form, varying in size from the
diameter of a few miles to those that surge from the gulf to beyond the
lakes.
But Blasius for storms! the supreme authority, the Aristotle of the
clouds and air-currents. When all our ordinary signs fail, we have only
to turn to the Hanover professor to read and learn.
Unquestionably, nevertheless, the most infallible of weather rules is
that there is no rule. So far as ordinary signs go, there is nothing
more true than that all signs may fail during a protracted drought, or
continuous rainy weather. Vainly then the peacock screams, or the sun
emerges from a dripping sky. At best the weather is a hoiden, and,
perhaps, loves a frown better than a dimple. The rain may come and the
rain may go, persistently following the course of a lake or river,
favoring this locality and slighting that; deluging one county to leave
the adjoining one parched with thirst. For it is true of the weather and
other things besides; it never smiles but it laughs, it never rains but
it pours.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
IV.
THE IDEAL HAVEN.
When my ship comes home I shall have a study of a very superior kind
built. A part of the scheme will be a garden and a greenhouse which
shall be especially adapted to the exigencies of authorcraft.—J.
ASHBY-STERRY, CUCUMBER CHRONICLES.
WHILE silence is pre-eminently golden in the study, the study,
nevertheless should be more than “a chamber deaf to noise.” Situated
away from disturbing household sounds, it should also be withdrawn from
ready access on the part of all intruders. It should be a “den” in the
literal sense of the word—a covert, a haven. Not that it should
necessarily be below ground, but the way leading to it should be
difficult to find; and, like the fox’s den, it should be provided with
two entrances or means of escape, the more readily to baffle pursuers.
In how many houses, even those which are supposed to have been most
carefully planned, are not the library and the study placed in close
proximity to the front entrance, where anything like continuous repose
is as far removed as the constellation Orion, and where the volume with
which one endeavors to be engaged is forever chafed by the friction of
passing inmates! Apart from mere noise, the discomfort of a library or
study so situated is always great from the facility it offers to the
wiles of innumerable outside forces. It is necessarily unpleasant to
have certain visitors thrust unceremoniously upon one. You can not tell
by the mere ring of the bell whether it is A, B, or C who has come to
honor you with his presence—to bore or to charm; and without at every
announcement making a sudden dive at the risk of being seen or heard,
you are liable to be chambered for an hour with the very person you may
most desire to avoid. Thoreau often waited for the Visitor who never
comes; many of us must wait for the visitor who never goes.
Not that I would limit visitors to a circumscribed few, or banish
welcome ones at an early hour. I entertain the highest regard for the
maxim of Pope respecting the coming and the parting guest; yet, in the
very nature of things, there are always some to whom one would fain send
the conventional message, “not at home.” It was to obviate such
monstrous misplacements as a library near the front door (a library
merely in name), that Naudé, years since, in his Advis pour dresser une
Bibliothèque, gave this excellent advice: “Let the library be placed in
a portion of the house most removed from noise and disturbance, not only
from without, but also from family and servants; away from the street,
the kitchen, sitting-room, and similar places; locating it, if possible,
between some spacious court and a fine garden where it may have abundant
light, pure air, and extended and agreeable views.”
In the case of all houses where rooms are thus misplaced, some means of
spiriting one’s self away through a side or rear door are absolutely
essential to even a semblance of comfort. A study amid such
surroundings, without safe and instantaneous means of flight from
unwelcome callers is a grotesque misnomer. Is not a man’s house his
castle? The term “growlery,” often applied to the study, undoubtedly
arose from an apartment so situated, referring not to a cage where the
master of the house may work off his surly moods, as some ladies
erroneously suppose, but to the anathemas bestowed by its harassed
inmate upon the architect who planned a place for retirement where
retirement is only possible after midnight. All these can the more
readily comprehend the force of a passage in Walden-“the mass of men
lead lives of quiet desperation; what is called resignation is confirmed
desperation.” A trap-door, concealed by an Oriental rug, that would
respond to a certain pressure of the foot known only to the initiated,
might be worthy of consideration by house-builders in this connection.
Or some kind of reflecting-glass might be devised that would enable
coming events of an unpleasant nature to cast their shadows before.
Even though one meet his modest accounts with all reasonable
promptitude, there are still creditors oblivious to the amenities of
life, who, instead of forwarding annual or semi-annual statements
through the certain channel of the mails, send their “cards of
compliment” for collection through the medium of middlemen or runners,
who, even yet more callous to the finer feelings of humanity, and intent
solely upon pouching their guerdon, invariably present themselves at the
front door to force a passage within. Fancy an intrusion of this kind
while you may be rereading The Eve of St. Agnes, or perusing The
Good-Natured Man! Though it occur but once a year, the shock must still
remain. At one time or another this form of visitant is bound to appear
to every one; for the species of fiend exists in common with front-door
book-agents, itinerant venders, census-takers, expressmen,
telegraph-messengers, and the rest of the customary mob that charges
upon one’s front entrance wherever and whenever it is the most
accessible means of invasion. Even the parcels’-delivery, despite
reiterated warnings, will not unfrequently persist in demanding ingress
through the forbidden portal. Indeed, the front door is a constant
factor of discord, the baiting-place of disquiet, the arch enemy of
household peace.
Many of the vexations that are ever striving to wedge their way through
the vestibule may be avoided by intelligent, well-drilled servants who
are capable of reading human nature, and at a glance can distinguish the
false from the true. A thoroughly competent house-maid should wear her
cap internally as well as externally, and, like a thrasher’s sieve, be
able to winnow the chaff from the wheat. But such discriminating Cerberi
are as rare as they are desirable, and the melancholy fact exists that
the servant is invariably ready to leave so soon as she or he has become
really valuable or thoroughly accustomed to your ways.
Lamb, in one of his essays on Popular Fallacies, has said some excellent
things about visitors. If certain visitors would only read these things,
and, reading, comprehend! And if the visitor who never knows when to
leave, as distinguished from those who, staying late, always leave too
soon, would only peruse and ponder! In his category of intruders Lamb
emphasizes “purposeless visitants and droppers-in,” and he sometimes
wonders from what sky they fall. Whittier’s Demon of the Study, too,
would indicate that the type still flourishes in New as well as Old
England. Under the inspiration of an architect who is yet to be born,
the house of the millennium will be able to avoid all unpleasant
intrusions upon a privacy that is its inherent right, but which, alas!
exists not in the home of the present.
It is apparent at once that the ideal haven can not hide itself amid the
turmoil of the first floor. To fulfill its mission it must betake itself
to surroundings more retired, and soar to a serener sphere. The true
place for the study, therefore, is on an upper floor, and in the ideal
house I would have it a spacious oriel approached by a hidden staircase.
Hawthorne’s idea was an excellent one—the study in the tower or upper
story of his residence at Concord, which he approached by a ladder and
trap-door, pulling the ladder up after him, and placing a weight over
the door for additional security. Here he could look out upon his
favorite walk amid the evergreens, almost touch the crowns of the leafy
elms, and bathe in the sunshine that illumined the fertile plain across
the roadway. His first residence at Concord—the Old Manse—was
sufficiently remote to dispense with a trap-door, unless, indeed, this
was an after-consideration owing to family reasons. At an opposite
extremity of the village, far removed from Emerson and even the fleet
feet of Thoreau, situated at a distance from the highway, the house
itself of a gray neutral tone to baffle observation, and half concealed
amid the shade of the distant suburbs, he was here free from all
external annoyances. Here in the retired three-windowed study in the
rear of the house, which overlooked the romantic Concord River below, he
could set about his chosen task with no dread of interruption from the
outside world.
Montaigne’s was a model study, a true sanctum. Without the quiet and
reclusion it afforded, the pervading charm of the Essays would never
have been ours. Instead of sauntering and loitering along with the easy
abandon they do, they would have hurried and galloped by at breakneck
speed, striding the noisy highway rather than pacing the shady lane. The
placid, thinking, receptive mind of Montaigne was obviously the direct
outcome of the calm and tranquillity exhaled by the inaccessible round
Tower of Périgord.
The enchanting landscape, too, that smiled through the spacious windows
was, no doubt, a constant inspiration, serving to rest the eye and mind
when they were wearied by the tyranny of print, or fatigued by
protracted writing. There would doubtless be more Montaignes were it
possible to reproduce the life and surroundings amid which the Essays
were inspired. Genius is capable of much; but, to be at its best, even
genius must be in the mood, and moods are largely the result of
surroundings. “No doubt,” observes Lord Lytton, “the cradle and nursery
of definite thought is in the hazy limbo of Reverie. There ideas float
before us, rapid, magical, vague, half formed; apparitions of the
thoughts that are to be born later into the light, and run their course
in the world of man.”
“Like the rain of night,” remarks Henri Amiel in the Journal Intime,
“reverie restores color and force to thoughts which have been blanched
and wearied by the heat of the day.”
The true flavor of a fine vintage may not be savored if the wine be
roiled, or served at an improper temperature; the fine effluence that
should emanate from the study—the framing of one’s mood and the molding
of one’s thoughts, is only to be obtained in its perfect measure when
the mind is freed from all disturbing influences.
Let us mount the classic staircase with Montaigne, and view the
apartment so minutely described in the third chapter of the Third Book.
The well-filled book-cases, the sunlight, the seclusion, the inviting
prospect, the fireplace, and the immunity from noise, all are there:
“At home I betake me somewhat the oftener to my library, whence all at
once I command and survey all my household; it is seated in the chiefe
entrie of my house, thence I behold under me my garden, my base court,
my yard, and looke even into most roomes of my house. There without
order, without method, and by peece-meales I turn over and ransacke, now
one booke and now another. Sometimes I muse and rave; and walking up and
downe I endight and enregister these my humours, these my conceits. It
is placed on the third storie of a tower. The lowermost is my Chapell;
the second a chamber with other lodgings, where I often lie because I
would be alone. Above it is a great wardrobe. It was in times past the
most unprofitable place of all my house. There I past the greatest part
of my lives dayes, and weare out most houres of the day. I am never
there a nights: Next unto it is a handsome neat cabinet, able and large
enough to receive fire in winter, and very pleasantly windowen. And if I
feared not care, more than cost; (care which drives and diverts me from
all businesse) I might easily joyne a convenient gallerie of a hundred
paces long, and twelve broad, on each side of it, and upon one floore;
having already for some other purpose, found all the walles raised unto
a convenient height. Each retired place requireth a walke. My thoughts
are prone to sleepe, if I sit long. My minde goes not alone as if ledges
did moove it. Those that studie without bookes, are all in the same
case. The forme of it is round, and hath no flat side, but what serveth
for my table and my chaire: In which bending or circling manner, at one
looke it offreth me the full sight of all my books, set round about upon
shelves or desks, five rancks one upon another. It hath three
bay-windowes, of a farre-extending, rich and unresisted prospect, and is
in diameter sixteen paces wide. In winter I am less continually there:
for my house (as the name of it importeth) is pearched upon an
overpearing hillocke; and hath no part more subject to all wethers than
this: which pleaseth me the more, both because the accesse unto it is
somewhat troublesome and remote, and for the benefit of the exercise
which is to be respected; and that I may the better seclude myselfe from
companie, and keepe incroachers from me: There is my seat, that is my
throne. I endeavour to make my rule therein absolute, and to sequester
that only corner from the communitie of wife, of children, and of
acquaintance. Else-where I have but a verball authoritie, of confused
essence. Miserable in my minde is he, who in his owne home, hath no
where to be to himselfe; where he may particularly court, and at his
pleasure hide or with-draw himself. Ambition paieth her followers well,
to keepe them still in open view, as a statue in some conspicuous
place.”[6]
Footnote 6:
Florio’s translation.
Aside from the quiet, sequestration, and conveniences of the
philosopher’s study, it will be observed that among its many desirable
features was that of its being “very pleasantly windowen”
(_très-plaisamment percé_), the windows commanding a “farre-extending,
rich, and unresisted prospect” (_trois veuës de riche et libre
prospect_). Assuredly the sunshine and light that warmed and brightened
the apartment, and the unlimited view of hill and plain, were a stimulus
to the writer.
Fortunate is he who has a pleasing prospect to look in upon him—it
invigorates and cheers like a cordial. Whatever the time of year, the
distant hills, visible through my windows, are a source of companionship
and charm. So constantly are they before me, I have begun to consider
them as my own, a remote part of the garden and the grounds to which
they form the frame. I love to watch their changing expression and note
their play of light and shade. Meseems they almost resemble a human
countenance in the varying sentiments they convey. Content and
malcontent are as plainly expressed by their mobile curves as they are
by the lines of the human face. Like the rest of us, in sunshine they
smile, in storm they frown. They are warm, or cool, as the mood takes
them; as they reflect or absorb the sky and atmosphere. For days they
rest in absolute calm; again they recede, and, again, they advance.
Mirroring every change of the day and of the passing seasons, they are a
dial that tells the hour, the time of year to me. The sun salutes one
side of their profile the first thing in the morning; his parting rays
illumine the other side the last thing in the evening. They hasten the
dawn, and prolong the twilight. The full moon rising from the far
horizon behind them, silvers their wooded slopes ere it gilds the
topmost gables of my house. They catch the first drops of the summer
shower, and receive the first flakes of the November snow. The loveliest
blues and purples seek them, drawing a semi-transparent veil over them.
On hot summer noontides the cloud-flocks repose upon them, and the
orange afterglow lingers long upon their tranquil heights. In spring the
earliest violets carpet their sheltered places; in autumn they yield me
the last blue gentian bloom. I see the wind lifting their green skirts,
and fancy I hear his voice murmuring through their umbrageous depths. My
hills ever catch and focus color, and toy and play with wind and sun.
Whether shimmering in midsummer glare, or standing out against the
wintry sky, or slumbering in the haze of the dreamy autumnal day, they
are my finest landscape paintings. When the snow has spread its shroud
over the silent fields they still speak to me in color—gray, bronze, and
purple—by turns during the day; a kaleidoscope of tones when the sun
sinks behind their serried ranks of trees.
Seeing them thus year after year they have come to possess a
personality; and when a rarefied atmosphere brings them unusually near,
I find myself casting an imaginary lasso at them to bring them still
closer to me that I may stroke their lovely contours. So familiar have I
become with them, I have only to look out of my windows, and I am
treading their luminous heights, and am fanned by the breeze that
perpetually blows upon their peaceful crests.
With the wind from the southeast, I hear the roar of the railroad
trains, panting and steaming, coming and going along their slopes,
leaving a trail of smoke to mark the passage of their flight. The
ceaseless tide of travel ever hurries on. How many of those seated in
the luxurious coaches note the beauty of my hills? Cloud-shadows chase
each other, and hawks wheel over their summits, while the train speeds
on, intent upon overtaking other hills and its remote destination: the
beauty of my hills remains for me.
A knock at my study-door interrupts my musings, and my hills abruptly
recede. Not that my friend Sherlock drives them away; he is so versatile
and colorful himself that the charm of his presence and conversation
takes the place of my hills. I never learned until to-day why he has
remained a bachelor. It was only when conversing about the ideal home
that the true reason occurred to me—he has failed, not in discovering
the ideal woman, but the ideal architect to carry out his admirable
conceptions of the perfect house; and rather than fall below his
artistic standard he passively submits to fate, and awaits the architect
who is to be.
“You seem to overlook the probability of my being referred to a
committee _inquirendo lunatico_, should my views ever be carried out;
and it seems dangerous to commit them to print,” was my friend’s
rejoinder to a request that he present his views in detail.
“But the simple story of my house will at most be read by a few,” I
replied; “and these few will charitably give us credit for good
intentions; moreover the critics are not nearly as black as they are
painted.”
“My ideas,” continued my friend, “fly so rudely in the face of all
convention that people would consider the order of Nature reversed. ‘A
kitchen in the front yard!’ I hear them say, ‘Away with him!’
“Nevertheless, had I the courage of my convictions, together with ten
times as much money as I shall ever possess, I would build my house all
front, and no rear!
“A capacious vestibule, say 20 × 20 feet, should be, not the entrance
exactly, but a means of exclusion for unwelcome visitors. A door on one
side should open to my lady’s reception-room where she should receive
all formal and business calls; in short, every one whom she took no
pleasure in seeing at all.
“This reception-room should be connected with the domestic end of the
house; the store-rooms, servants’ hall, kitchen, kitchen-pantries, and,
_back of these_, the dining- and breakfast-rooms.
“On the opposite side of the vestibule should be a door, similarly
accommodating all unwelcome guests of the master, being the entrance to
the office, and connected by a heavy _portière_ and door with the den
and library. From these masculine apartments a staircase, concealed in
the wall, should enable the good man of the house to disappear to his
bath- and dressing-room; and there should also be an outer side-door
from the den, through which could be ‘fired’ (and admitted also) such
tardy and bibulous friends as might meet the disapproval of madame.
“The back of the vestibule should open and expand into the hall—a great
living-room connecting the library at one end with the dining-room at
the other, and out of which should open such little parlors and
snuggeries as inventive genius might suggest.
“Into this hall, the real house, only those one wished to see should be
admitted. Here the great staircase should rest the eye, and the great
hearth should blaze. On occasions of festivity the guests, in their
wraps, should ascend by a modest staircase in the vestibule to their
disrobing rooms, and thence descend by the grand staircase.
“The kitchen being at one end of the front part of the house, and so
conveniently accessible to the butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker,
would leave all the space behind the house for piazzas, terraces, and
gardens, with such fountains, statuary, and conservatories as might be
within reach of the goodman’s purse; and all where the reporter and
unwelcome caller could not intrude; for they would be secluded alike
from the general public and the ordinary domestic offices. The principal
apartments of all Japanese houses, I may observe, are at the back of the
house, looking out upon the garden with its lilies, irises, pæonias,
azaleas, its foliage plants and flowering shrubs.
“Thus you perceive my ideal house requires four staircases: the great
one in the great hall, the modest one in the vestibule, the secret one
(to escape creditors), and the one for the servants.
“When I consider that this is only two more than all civilized houses
have, I am surprised at the moderation and restraint of the average
house-builder. But pray remember I am anxious to avoid that committee of
lunacy; and I have not yet begun to build.”
Personally, I entertain the highest regard for my versatile friend’s
ideal. Were I to suggest any change in the main points, so admirably
conceived, it would be to have the study removed to a still serener
sphere, as has already been suggested. Even with my friend’s excellent
barricade, still, on _some_ occasion when least expected—perchance a
most momentous one, just as a long-lost conceit had winged its
return—the dreaded intruder might force an entrance, and put the thought
to instantaneous and irremeable flight.
The size of the study, methinks, should be small rather than large; yet
ample enough to harbor the cheering grate-fire, the easy-chairs, the
center-table, the writing-desk, the well-filled book-cases, and the
artistic glass cabinet or cabinets, for such precious works as should be
kept under lock and key and never loaned, or even touched by
sacrilegious hands.
Let these gems be worthily set as becomes their quality and rarity, so
they may minister to the delight of the eye and the pleasure of the
touch as they contribute to the delectation of the mind. “Sashes of gold
for old saints, golden bindings for old writings,” Nodier expresses it;
and Charles Asselineau affectionately exclaims: “My Books, I love them!
I have sought them, gathered them, searched for them; I have had them
habited to the best of my ability by the best tailors of books.” My
glass cabinet is my casket, my jewel-case; and in the many-colored
morocco of the bindings that reflect the precious riches contained
within them, I see all manner of jewels flash and glow. In these, and in
some of the superb marblings employed in the finer French bindings—and
here the exquisite beauty of the perfect half-morocco binding is
apparent—I derive a satisfaction akin to that I receive from the
contemplation of any fine art object. The airy conceits and felicities
of phrase of a favorite author become yet more entrancing when held by
these colored butterfly-wings and variegated plumes dreamed out by the
artist, and stamped in permanent form by the skill of the binder.
Thought is inclined to wander amid the freedom of a large room. But
though the study should not be a vast apartment, it should be
sufficiently spacious for comfort and to avoid overcrowding.
Sufficiently large it should also be and the ceiling sufficiently high
to insure a pure atmosphere. On account of ventilation, a fire-place is
of great advantage in the room where one is engaged in sedentary
pursuits. It is the next thing to the walk and the elixir of the open
air. De Quincey worked in a room seventeen by twelve, and not more than
seven and a half feet high. The low ceilings must have oppressed him;
and the vitiated air and sense of suffocation, it is not unlikely, led
him to yield to the dangerous stimulus that inspired the Confessions.
Most wisely has Leigh Hunt discoursed upon the study and its
surroundings in that ever-pleasing essay, My Books. “I do not like this
fine large study. I like elegance. I like room to breathe in, and even
walk about, when I want to breathe and walk about. I like a great
library next my study; but for the study itself give me a small, snug
place, almost entirely walled with books. There should be only one
window in it looking on trees.... I dislike a grand library to study in.
I mean an immense apartment with books all in museum order, especially
wire-safed. I say nothing against the museum itself, or public
libraries.... A grand private library, which the master of the house
also makes his study, never looks to me like a real place of books, much
less of authorship. I can not take kindly to it. It is certainly not out
of envy; for three parts of the books are generally trash, and I can
seldom think of the rest and the proprietor together.”
To be attractive and cozy, the study need not be extravagantly
furnished. As in other apartments of the house, light is one of its
first requisites; with color, ease, quiet, and, if possible, a pleasant
prospect. In the study, above all, no discordant elements should
intrude. The general tone of the walls, decorations, and furnishings,
while rich, should yet be subdued and restful. A glaring placque, a
staring figure in the wall or carpet pattern, or any subject unpleasing
in its nature or sentiment, whether in paintings, pictures, or
ornaments, has no place in an apartment which, by its very atmosphere,
should conduce to reverie and a contemplative frame of mind. Let
dreamful landscapes, rather than figures in action, adorn and complement
the rich slate or sage of its walls and hangings; and I picture my ideal
study, when my second ship comes in, hung round about solely with
Daubigny’s tender twilights and peaceful river-reaches on his calm and
slowly gliding Oise.
For the closer concentration of thought, the working-chair would be
placed in the most attractive corner of the apartment, back of the
spacious writing-desk, with its amplitude of drawers and pigeon-holes;
its topmost shelf and other convenient places so arranged with pictures
and portraits of favorite authors and dear or absent friends as to
create and constantly diffuse an atmosphere of congenial companionship.
A carved book-rest should hold the dictionary in place close to the
working-chair, and a revolving case within arm’s reach should bring to
it desired works of reference and such especially treasured volumes from
which ideas may be collected—another name for inspiration. I would
mention some of these—each worthy of crushed levant covers, the
handicraft of a Padeloup or Payne—but for the fact that every one should
choose such inspirations for himself. One may not be guided by another’s
choice in a face or book that charms.
Once during the day, but always unperceived, save for an added freshness
pervading the apartment, my study should respond to the touch of gentle
fingers. Then, as I mount the secret staircase when I would be alone—a
lingering aroma of violets and the vanishing rustle of a silken robe.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
V.
WHEN LEAVES GROW SERE.
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
SONNET CVI.
Not all the joy, and not all the glory,
Must fade as leaves when the woods wax hoary.
SWINBURNE.
THERE is a sigh in the passing breeze as the autumn days steal on—a sigh
for the summer fled. I hear the change, the admonitory whisper of the
leaves, almost ere the transition becomes perceptible, for Nature as yet
has scarcely altered her outward garb.
Yet daily the shadows lengthen, the haze deepens, mellower grow the
evening skies, until, no longer vacillating between summer and autumn,
the first frost smites the low-lands, and the division line of the
seasons is visibly proclaimed.
“We hope in the spring, only to regret in the fall.” But shall I regret
the vanished summer? Will not yonder hillside glow as all the summer
meadows have never glowed? these yellowing woods outshine the sunshine
of spring? Suddenly, through my windows, I note where the first fires
have begun to burn. I watch the flames creep stealthily along the hills,
smoldering, perchance, in a distant hollow, anon riding the higher
crests, illuming sumac-sentineled ravines, invading the brier patches,
and lighting sproutland and swamp with living fire. High on the uplands
the splendor hangs, low in the valleys the glory falls. Steeped and
flooded with its color, the landscape gleams like an opal beneath the
autumn sun. What poet, what prose painter, what cunning artificer of
phrase can depict the tidal wave of beauty of the latter year?
Shall I regret the summer with the October carnival at hand, when the
woodcock whistles from the alder thicket and the grouse bursts through
the painted covert? It is for this the sportsman has longed and waited
during the lingering months of summer. Stanchly as he is drawn upon the
covey, I am sure The Spanish Pointer, in the old print above the
writing-desk, feels the advent of the season, and thinks, with the
latter-day philosopher, that “the preacher who declared that all is
vanity, never looked at a fall woodcock over the rib of a good gun.”
Always on his point on the knoll, the pointer’s riveted attitude now has
an added meaning. His eye still fixed upon the quarry, he nevertheless
moves unceasingly in his frame. There is no deception, no optical
illusion; he _moves_—not forward or backward, but with an oscillating,
sideward motion, as if the constant strain on his powerful tendons had
caused them to relax. Rigid as a statue has he stood throughout the
summer, the blue blood of generations of pointers holding him
unflinchingly upon the game. Perhaps now the scent has grown cold. Or
has he wearied of waiting for the volley of the barrels, and, looking up
for a moment at the crimsoning copse, bethought him that a fresh season
has dawned, and there are fresh coveys to spring? The grim lion by
Barye, in the etching that hangs above him, remains motionless. Though
you would dread to meet the beast of prey on the desert where he is
stalking, he shows no signs of animation on the wall whence he looks
down upon you. Only the old pointer moves unceasingly in his frame. Is
the movement of the picture due to the furnace heat behind the partition
wall? To you, perhaps. To me he is plainly motioning to the covers.
Methinks, also, that my good Irish terrier, who is often by my side,
looks up at the fox’s pelt more intently as autumn draws on apace. The
fox may suggest the covers and its denizens to him, as the motion of the
pointer suggests them to me—the fleet forms that haunt their mazy
fastnesses, the hares and rabbits and vanishing shadows his steel sinews
are eager to pursue. Surely his sharply pointed ears, his quivering
muscles, and his glittering hazel eyes are in sympathy with the
movements of the pointer, and second his invitation to the woods.
Musing upon the ancient print, with its rolling background of hill and
dale, I sometimes picture the scene of desolation which would ensue were
the woods and waters stripped of their native tenants—the game which is
at once their glory and their joy. Fancy the landscape denuded of the
wild life that is as indigenous as its flora, that is nurtured upon its
mast, and derives sustenance from the very twigs and leaves of its
vegetation. Conceive, if it be possible, streams with no trout to people
their pools and shallows, waters that never mirrored the wood-drake’s
mail, and lakes unruffled by the web of wild fowl.
Imagine the woodlands with no grouse to beat the reveille of spring, no
hares to thread their shaded labyrinths, no fox to prowl through their
coverts. Silence the scream of the hawk, and the voice of the owl, crow,
and jay, and instantly the landscape would be deprived of half its
beauty, its innate beauty of sound. Game is the essence of the woods and
free, uncivilized Nature—the division line that separates the wild from
the tame—and he whose nerves have never tingled at the electric whir of
a game-bird’s wing and the responsive boom of the double-barrel, has
remained insensible to one of the most inspiring exhilarations of the
senses. Just as the library refreshes and stimulates the mind, so do the
woods, the streams, and the stubbles become a field of health for the
body, and by the invigorating and elevating recreation they yield do
field sports serve to strengthen both mind and body. Enough for me that
autumn is here; I must accept the invitation of the old pointer, and
examine for myself what the woods have in store.
Brilliant as they are in the flush of their October splendor, they will
lose but little of their beauty as autumn wanes. The bare trees extend
and expand the landscape for me, contributing enchantments of distance
that only denuded vegetation may reveal. Then, with the weather in a
gracious mood, I obtain effects that the green entanglement of summer
never knew. The purple bloom upon my hills is never half so exquisite as
when a thaw has freed them temporarily from their coverlet of snow,
disclosing their russet slopes and leafless trees. A new palette of
color is presented in these subtle gradations of umber and ochre, of
drab and of bronze, that drape the withered stubbles. Sere and faded in
the latter year, the lonely marsh is yet glorious with subdued hues when
touched by the afternoon splendor. The hush which broods upon the
landscape, too, has a charm of its own, in harmony with the quiet tones
of the slumbering woods. The very lisp of the chickadee and solemn tap
of the nut-hatch only intensify the repose of Nature; and I question if
the combined glories of the midsummer twilight, when the bat and
night-hawk raced upon the evening sky, yielded anything so radiantly
beautiful as the slant November sunlight streaming through the trees of
the lowland, its vivid crimsons reflected in the pools below.
The airy spray of the beech I may admire only during winter, and only
when it stands divested of its summer garniture may I behold the
marvelous framework of the elm. Attractive as it is when robed in the
bloom and leafage of summer, the thorn develops a new beauty in its
gnarled and naked branches and the hoariness of its gray antiquity.
Loveliest, too, are the birch and hemlock in midwinter; whilst the
swamp, ablaze with the scarlet fruit of the _Prinos_ and smooth
winterberry, presents its most vivid life above the snow. From it,
likewise, I catch the gleam of the golden willow, with purple rufous
lights that smolder amid the twigs and branchlets of the shrubs which
seek its cool and solitude. Again, when the snow comes sifting down from
the pallid sky, what magical effects do I not obtain amid the dark
mysterious depths of the hemlock woods! Even then my hills and woods
offer a glorious excuse for an outing. For have I not long pictured in
imagination the shadowy vistas where I know the big white hares are in
waiting?
It is worth scaling a dozen hillsides to breathe such air and obtain
such views. No play of sunlight on an English South Down could be finer,
and no lines of beauty fairer than those revealed by distant table-land
and wide-extending vale. A silence, broken only by the roar of far-off
railroad trains or the ring of the woodsman’s axe, rests like a
benediction over all, a sleep of Nature—peaceful, deep, profound.
Within the shelter of the wood, beneath the refuge of the evergreens and
undergrowth, it is warm; without, the gale may rave, and, above, the
tree-tops wail a requiem for the departing year; but here below it is
protected as within the walls of a building. On either hand extend the
green arcades of the hemlocks, like the nave and transepts of a
cathedral. The downy woodpecker and titmouse are here, ever present as
choristers; the wild life of the woods is here, the companionship of
bird and beast and dormant vegetable life. There is life beating beneath
the mold, beneath the snowy mantle—the ermine with which Nature keeps
her treasures warm. There is life—nimble, fleet, and stirring—above the
tell-tale snow.
That is a fox’s track leading to his den on the hillside, the return
trail of Reynard whose sortie toward the barn-yards you previously
noticed. When he started on his foray his pace was a walk, as his
footsteps close together reveal. Warily he was proceeding under cover of
the darkness, planning the best means of ingress to his gallinaceous
goal. All the caution of a skilled general on the eve of a decisive
battle is apparent in his skulking foot-prints. His dreaded enemies are
well known. Only yesterday the hounds were hot in his pursuit, and the
echoes reverberated with the volley of barbarous vulpicides, which
happily fell wide of its mark. But he will outwit them all! His trained
cunning has taught him the danger of traps and gins; his fleet foot has
long borne him through many a loop-hole of escape. The stork’s
invitation to dine must needs be deftly perfumed and framed on an
unusually tempting card to induce him to take his claret out of
long-necked _carafes_ or his _pâté de foie gras_ from metal tureens.
The tracks leading back from the farmyard show him to have been jogging
along at a more rapid gait. The prints are the same, except that they
are farther apart, one following directly behind the other, Indian
filewise, in an almost straight line. His object accomplished, there was
no further need of extreme caution or dalliance. From a safe distance he
had watched the lights in the farm-house till one by one they were
extinguished, had waited until all was silent, and his keen scent
apprised him that danger was past. It was then an easy matter to pounce
upon and bear off the unsuspecting prey. Along his return trail there
are feathers strewed here and there, attesting conclusively that his
raid was successful.
Lightly he tripped along with elevated brush, the booty slung over his
shoulder, to the safeguard of his den. Obviously before reaching his
haven he has been startled by something. The tracks, still in a straight
line, become much farther apart; the trot has given place to a canter
for a few rods, when his former gait is resumed. The baying of a hound,
perchance, from his kennel on the farther hillside, or the bark of a
fellow-vulpine freebooter, has quickened his pace for the moment. Where
he struck into a gallop the prints of his nails are visible; these do
not show when he progresses on his customary trot or walk, so well are
his feet protected for extended predations by the thick fur padding
between the toes. His long sweeping brush never once touched the snow,
burdened though he was by his plunder. This he carries well up, knowing
the increased weight it would engender should he get it wet. A cat is
not more careful of her dainty feet than is sly Reynard of his precious
tail.
In general, a fox that has acquired a taste for poultry is considered
rather an undesirable subject for the chase proper. A poultry fox always
makes his headquarters near the farmsteads. His daily beat, therefore,
is limited as to distance compared with his brethren who subsist by
foraging in the woods, and whose nightly rounds embrace a very much
larger territory. Usually a poultry fox, if started, does not take a
straight line very far, but, after leading a short distance, commences
to circle, coming round to the place of starting after the manner of the
hare. A fox who subsists on game knows all the fat covers of the
neighborhood where the most game lies. His extended tramps give him
wind, fleetness, and endurance, while his familiarity with every rod of
the covers stands him in excellent stead when hotly pursued.
A round glittering eyeball, bright as a coal of fire, is scrutinizing
you from beneath a pile of brushwood at the edge of the cover. Scarcely
is the gun discharged ere a small covey of quail spring close at hand.
Investigation is needless to reveal the baffled assassin; the tell-tale
tracks upon the snow, round like those of a fox, but smaller, and the
distance between considerably less, divulge the nature of the
trespasser. It is none other than a cat, the petted tabby of the
farmstead, that spends a large portion of its time in stalking game—a
poacher scarcely less destructive than its fierce wild congener. When
once a taste for game has been formed, pursuit is thenceforward
continual and relentless, till the offender usually ends by adopting a
permanent woodland abode, where it thrives lustily, increasing in size
and acquiring a heavy coat of fur.
Look at this much-traveled esplanade, where the tracks show so thickly
upon the snow. Overnight the hares and rabbits have been browsing upon
the young beech, maple, and hemlock buds, with an occasional sally into
the brier patches. The numerous trails indicate they have availed
themselves of the bright moonlight to continue their feeding longer than
usual. On moonlight nights the _Leporidæ_ always travel most; on cold,
blustering nights they seldom leave their forms. Birds and animals
dislike to venture out during stormy weather unless impelled by hunger.
At such times a wood throbbing with animate life seems entirely deserted
by its furred and feathered population. Vainly, then, the pointer or
setter may quarter the ground; the game lies concealed and apparently
scentless beneath the brush and hiding-places, refusing to leave its
refuge unless almost stepped upon. An apparently similar disappearance
of game is often noticeable when the weather is fair immediately
preceding a storm. The squirrels are warmly housed in their nests within
the trees. Many of the grouse seek shelter amid the dense hemlocks,
sitting close to the trunks on the leeside of the storm, protected by
the thick foliage and their own matting of feathers. The closest of
beating then goes for little, so that in a wood where you know game
exists in comparative abundance it appears a mystery whither all its
wild life has fled.
The white hare and rabbit tracks—if the smaller _Lepus_ may be referred
to as a rabbit—which strew the ground are identical save in size. There
are first the marks of the hind feet, side by side, followed by those of
the fore feet, one behind the other. Thus it is seen the gait is always
a lope or bound, and that in springing the hare brings up with his hind
feet nearest the head, alighting, however, on all fours at once. His
long, powerful hind-quarters seem made of rubber sinews, the crooked
stifles and great strength of thigh acting as levers to the supple body
framed with special regard to speed—his sole protection. In reaching for
the buds and young shoots of the undergrowth during the deep snows, he
is materially aided by his long hind legs.
Under the beeches the squirrels have been busy scratching for the mast;
these appear to be the most restless foragers of the wood, their trails
being by far the most numerous. Like the hare’s and rabbit’s, their gait
is a lope. As he lands from his spring, the hind feet of the squirrel
touch the ground nearest the head, as in the case of the hare and
rabbit, but the two forward feet, instead of striking one before the
other, strike nearly side by side, like a single footfall. Occasionally,
not often, he prints similarly to the rabbit in the position of the
feet, although always smaller and somewhat less pointed. The large
blacks and grays are persecuted by the smaller pugnacious reds, which
frequently drive them entirely out of a wood, first pilfering their
nests of the shack they have stored.
Here Master Reynard has been mousing, seated on a stump intently
watching, his flowing brush clear of the snow; the air is tainted with
his strong odor. Where he made a leap his footmarks are distinctly
visible amid the numerous tracks of the field-mice—a dainty of which he
is extremely fond. Yonder is the scene of an oft-enacted woodland
tragedy, with Reynard in his great title _rôle_ of slayer. There,
beneath the shelter of an uprooted beech, a grouse had repaired for his
nightly slumber, his head screened from the moonlight under his
protecting wings. The impress of his form is clearly molded upon the
snow. But, alas! his now tattered plumage and a prowling fox’s
foot-prints attest his grim awakening when his relentless foe discovered
his retreat. For this had his wings so often rung defiance to the
double-barrel; to this ignominious end had he come at last! Were the
ghosts of murdered grouse to haunt the scenes of their earthly sojourn,
they might rattle their featherless wings in triumph to know that on
this self-same hillside, but a few rods from the scene of the tragedy,
Master Reynard met his fate, a week afterward, in the jaws of clamorous
hounds.
It requires a very warm day in winter to tempt a coon from his
hibernacle. To-day his large flat prints and zigzag course are not
observable; he is snugly clad in his fur overcoat within the fastness of
a sheltering tree. The ground-hog is sealed in his burrow outside the
wood, having “pulled his hole in after him”; this he covers up with
leaves and earth, until, after his protracted slumber, he emerges to
view his shadow in the spring.
That was an owl which skimmed the air so silently, on wings soft as
eider-down, noiseless as a butterfly, and stealthy as a fox’s tread. It
is not often one sees an owl, however; in the day-time he usually
sleeps, seldom leaving his retreat till dusk, unless during gloomy
weather. The little or screech owls are more frequently seen by day than
the larger species. With the hawk, crow, jay, skunk, and fox, the owl is
extremely destructive to eggs and young birds during the nesting season,
large owls not hesitating to pounce upon full-grown hares, and sharing
with the fox a great fondness for poultry. The skunk leaves a print
similar to that of the fox and cat, barring its reduced size. There are
invariably numbers of these threading the runways and leading to and
from the farmsteads.
There is a murmur like unto many voices in the woods’ mysterious depths,
as if Pan and his train of Oreads were holding a revel within. It is a
combination of numerous sounds that produces these ceaseless whispers of
the woods. You hear them in summer when the insect choirs are chanting
an aërial melody and the hermit-thrush sings as if he had a soul; you
hear them in winter when the wind sobs amid the needles of the pines,
and the woodpecker’s hammer resounds unceasingly from hollow trees; you
hear them now, on every hand, a chorus of voices, the forest’s
pulsations—a palpable part and portion of its solitude. How weird the
cry of the blue jay, the loon of the woods, whose startling scream
sounds like that a faun might utter in despair! His sapphire coronet is
not for you, however; he jeers at you in strident tones from his
stronghold in the tree-tops, keeping close watch of you, but taking care
to remain well out of range. Like his clamorous friend the crow, he has
scented F. F. F. powder before. At intervals the airy treble of the
tree-sparrow swells the sylvan choir—a minor but most melodious addition
to the chorus. When the powdery snow patters upon the withered leaves
and the stillness is otherwise almost unbroken, you may hear his
carillon while he feeds on the tender buds of the sweet birch. “A merry
heart goes all the day” is his motto and the tenor of his blithe
refrain.
There are grouse tracks also that have left their reflection in winter’s
mirror—the roving feet of the brown forest hermit, the daintiest print
upon the snow. Unless disturbed, the ruffed-grouse will travel a great
distance on foot through the woods in quest of food. A single bird will
leave a surprising number of tracks in the course of his protracted
wanderings, so that one is often puzzled at the comparative scarcity of
birds. But even on the snow he is extremely difficult to detect, so
closely does he blend with his surroundings. Not until he springs with
sonorous pinions close at your side are you made aware of his precise
location, when you wonder you had not observed him before. All game is
alike in this respect—difficulty of detection—even to the brilliantly
marked trout, which assume the general color of the bottom of streams in
which they lie.
Should you shoot a crow amid your rambles, a swarm of mourners will
quickly be in attendance on the remains. Within a few minutes every ebon
inhabitant of the neighborhood, apprised by the alarm of its companions,
may be seen winging its way thereto with loud cawings. It can not be the
sense of sight alone that locates the dead, for the discovery will not
unfrequently occur in thick cover or open glade.
One of the numerous runways of the hares, within gunshot of which you
have taken position, extends through a glade, affording ample
opportunity to observe the game. The eager hounds have struck the scent
leading to a form in a thicket of brier where the quarry lies concealed.
The startled hare leaps from his covert, with the hounds in full cry
coming directly toward you, until, turning into another runway, the
music recedes in the distance. Amid the frenzy of pursuit two other
hares have been started, the deep baying indicating the course of the
divided pack. Round and round the fleet hares circle, one of them after
a prolonged flight approaching your standpoint. His agile dash for
liberty has left his pursuers in the rear, and he pauses—a white
silhouette of living beauty, and the embodiment of nimble speed—for a
survey. He sits upon his great hind legs—his only safeguard—turning his
long clean-cut ears forward and backward, each one singly, to focus the
sound. The music swells into a grand _crescendo_, the twigs crackle
beneath the trampling of many feet, and the hare is off again with the
speed of the racer. The baying of the pack indicates the direction of
pursuit, whether the game is coming or going. A hare always circles,
returning sooner or later to the place he started from; he never
“holes,” like the rabbit, unless in a log when exhausted. To baffle the
dogs he will sometimes imitate his wily master, Reynard, by taking his
back track for quite a distance, and then, leaping aside, to strike out
on a fresh course; by this means he gains a breathing-spell and puzzles
his foes.
So the sport progresses, and the bag mounts with the lengthening
shadows. An owl is sounding his lone “tu-whoo!” when the hounds come in
with lolling tongues and trembling flanks from the prolonged excitement
of the chase. The last hare has carmined the snow with his life-blood,
and the heavy spoils are harled and strung. The flaming fires of sunset
are smoldering into ashen embers in the soft southwest; the tender
violets of the remote table-lands chill to colder purples with day’s
decline; the marshaled ranks of the skeleton trees stand out upon the
hills as if limned in India ink; the mellow hyemal twilight deepens over
woodland and valley, till the perfect winter day merges into the moonlit
winter night and the _vale_ of the sport.
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
VI.
DECORATIVE DECORATIONS.
All arts are one, howe’er distributed they stand;
Verse, tone, shape, color, form, are fingers on one hand.
W. W. STORY.
WHILE I make no pretense of vying with the shops of _bric-à-brac_ and
curios—it has been said the modern house has come to resemble a magazine
of _bric-à-brac_—yet, somehow, I find a great many objects which would
be classed under this definition have gradually drifted or floated in,
and have become as much of an artistic and companionable feature of the
house as the paintings on the walls. Especially since the arrival of my
ship, when several large bales with cabalistic marks and lettering
proved on opening to be a veritable repository of ancient Oriental
workmanship and design.
I can conceive of no more hideous nightmare than that which must haunt
one who is obliged to live in intimate companionship with many of the
so-called “ornaments” that dealers and the fashion of the hour force
upon one, and that, in one guise or another, must ever be snarling and
snapping at the unfortunate possessor. Littered up with all sorts of
_outré_ and unmeaning knick-knacks, the home at once becomes a place to
flee from; and instead of the spirit of quiet elegance and congruity
which should prevail, there reigns a pandemonium of disconformity. Yet a
certain amount of _bric-à-brac_ is not only admissible but requisite to
the decorative atmosphere of the interior. Its effect depends upon the
choosing. Given a correct eye for color and form and a natural feeling
for harmony, Sir William Temple’s sentence is pertinent, “The measure of
choosing well is whether a man likes what he has chosen.” Like my
paintings, rugs, and etchings, so also my porcelains, bronzes, arms, and
armor are pleasing objects for the eye to rest upon; and, ranged upon
the shelves and about the apartments, minister equally in the expression
and variety they lend to the surroundings.
I rejoice in my collection of arms and armor. Many rare antiques from
the Stamboul bazaars my ship contained—lovely inlaid Persian guns,
exquisitely mounted Albanian pistols, antique rapiers, daggers, and
swords, ancient kandjars and yataghans, with scabbards of _repoussé_
silver, of velvet, of copper, of shagreen and Ymen leather; with handles
of jade, agate, and ivory, constellated with garnets, turquoises,
corals, and girasols; long, narrow, large, curved; of all forms, of all
times, of all countries; from the Damascene blade of the Pasha,
incrusted with verses of the Koran in letters of gold, to the coarse
knife of the camel-driver. How many Zeibecs and Arnauts, how many beys
and effendis, how many omrahs and rajahs have not stripped their girdles
to form this precious arsenal which would have rendered Décamps mad with
joy![7]
Footnote 7:
Gautier. Constantinople—Les Bazars.
There are, moreover, glistening helmets and coats-of-mail, corselets,
maces, spears and hauberks, battle-axes and halberds, bucklers of
tortoise-shell and Damascene steel—all the implements of the ferocious
ingenuity of Islam. On the blue blade of this magnificent yataghan,
still keen and glittering, its ivory handle inlaid with topaz and
turquoise, is graven the number of heads it has severed. These cruel
swords, now crossed so peacefully, were once crossed in savage strife
and brandished in hate upon the battle-field amid the blare of Mussulman
trumpets and the shouts of murderous Janizaries. Often, as the sunlight
strikes the lustrous steel, do they seem to leap into life and flash
anew in remembrance of the battle-cry of Mohammed. Though mostly of
great age, my arms and armor are all in a state of perfect preservation.
For mere antiquity in art objects or curios is not desirable in itself.
Age has its charms unquestionably, but it becomes a valuable factor only
when accompanied by beauty. Where an object loses its pristine beauty
through time, age is a detriment rather than a desideratum. With many
classes of art objects time heightens their attraction, or at least does
not detract from it. In all such, age is a desirable quantity. To be old
is generally to be rare; but an object may be rare and still be
undesirable. Objects that are extremely sensitive to wear are usually
worthless when old. Others, like tapestries and Oriental textiles, are
improved by use, and gain in richness and value through age. An ancient
textile or article of _bric-à-brac_ is only desirable when, added to
intrinsic beauty of texture, color, form, or design, it preserves its
youth in its antiquity, or acquires additional attractiveness through
time.
Naturally, my ship contained many fine stuffs and hangings—old Flemish,
French, and Italian tapestries, embroideries from Broussa and Salonica,
Spanish brocades, and brocades from Borhampor and Ahmedabad, with some
priceless ancient altar cloths, chasubles, and dalmaticas I had long
desired to possess. Yet with all these and other acquisitions, now that
the bloom of first possession is brushed off, may I declare without
prevarication that I am fully satisfied? Increase of appetite but grows
on what it feeds. Collecting begets collecting, the desire for
possession constantly increasing, ever goading one on to unrest in the
quest of the unprocurable. How much one misses with a little knowledge,
and how much one gains! The love for beauty too often proves a bane.
Even a love for books is as dangerous as a love for _bric-à-brac_ or art
objects—the book in the end becoming an art object. Gradually, from the
ordinary editions one passes to the good editions, while from the good
it is but a step to the rare, and the seething maelstrom of
book-madness. My ship brought me many of my decorations; my books, with
few exceptions, I must procure myself.
But though sometimes productive of regrets, no one should be without a
hobby, or hobbies. “Have not the wisest of men in all ages, not
excepting Solomon himself—have they not had their hobby-horses?” asks
Sterne. “The man without a hobby may be a good citizen and an honest
fellow,” observes George Dawson, in his altogether lovely volume, The
Pleasures of Angling, “but he can have but few golden threads running
through the web or woof of his monotonous existence.” A hobby is the
best of preceptors, and rides straight to the mark. From a good
collection of porcelains one may study the Chinese dynasties, and
prepare himself for an Asiatic tour by a study of his rugs.
Unconsciously the collector of arms and armor becomes a student of the
history of numerous peoples and an eye-witness of many of the noted
battles of the world. Were I desirous to thoroughly familiarize myself
with the history of the American red man I should first proceed to
collect Indian implements of the chase and war, supplementing these by
close study in the fertile field of literature pertaining to the
Indians. But my bows and arrows I should shoot first; they would be the
guide to the target.
One of the essays of Elia has demonstrated the fallacy of the adage
“enough is as good as a feast.” In decorations it were a scant feast
without the endless form and color supplied by the potter’s art. Of all
art objects, a truly fine piece of old porcelain is amongst the most
beautiful. In color it may outshine a precious stone; in form, rival
that of a beautiful object of Nature herself. Its very frailty and
frangibility intensify its charm, and when possessing both grace of
contour and enchantment of color it becomes an object of beauty by the
canons of the most perfect art, exciting the profoundest and purest
pleasure—profound pleasure to all who behold it, supreme pleasure to him
who possesses it.
I speak of the finer examples of Oriental ceramics, though I grant there
is much to admire in some of the Italian soft-paste porcelains, notably
the lovely Capo di Monte productions of the first period and the
fascinating Doccia _terraglias_. Royal Worcester, despite its finish,
always looks new, and Sèvres wares I invariably associate with a gilded
French _salon_ and crimson brocatelle. These may be of excellent design
and highly wrought decoration, representing infinite labor, skill, and
minutiæ of detail; but they seldom seem effective compared with the
handiwork of the Oriental. For the most part European ceramics may not
be included under Prof. Grant Allen’s term, “decorative decoration.”
Among Oriental porcelains, it is well known that articles produced
to-day may not be compared with the same class produced in the past. The
secret of the marvelous old glazes has been lost, like the secret of the
famed old Toledo blades, and the craft of the ancient metal workers. It
is the remote Celestial we admire and revere.
Apparently, my ship must have touched some of the out-of-the-way ports
of Holland, that paradise of blue and white, for her collection of
ceramics was rich in this form of Oriental porcelains. It has been
asserted that the love for blue and white is a fashion, a craze that can
not endure. But fine blue and white from its very nature is beyond the
caprice of fashion, and must be enduring for all time. What other
blending approximates so closely to Nature? It is but a Celestial reflex
of the firmament—the most beautiful of all sky formations, the summer
_cumulus_ cloud. A coolness of color it has possessed by no other form
of porcelain unless by the incomparable old solid blue and blue-green
enamels.
Not that my ship’s stores were limited to the blue and white so lavishly
distributed among the appreciative Dutch burghers by the fleets of a
former day. There were also many _chrysanthema_ that could only have
been gathered from the classic gardens of the Celestial
himself—specimens from the periods of Wan-li, Kia-tsing, Ching-te,
Ching-hoa, Siouen-te, and yet still earlier rulers of the great dynasty
of the Mings; diaphanous egg-shells of the reign of Yong-tching;
Kien-long glazes fabricated in imitation of the color and texture of old
bronzes; delicate sea-green _céladons_; solid deep iridescent reds; and
frail translucent white pastes—marvels of the furnaces of the past. It
would require a Jacquemart or a Dana to describe them. However alien
races may regard the Mongolian and his flowing pigtail, there can be but
one opinion of the forms and colors crystallized in these his airy
inspirations. Matchless stands the ancient Chinese potter’s art. The
world might find a substitute for his tea; his finer vases, jars, and
bottles, and his fantasies in storks and dragons are unique this side of
paradise. From the ordinary blue of Nankin to the “blue of the head of
Buddha,” the “blue of heaven,” the “blue of the sky after rain,” the
“lapis lazuli,” and the priceless “turquoise,” my blue porcelains are a
study of the clouds and the sky.
Blue! “the life of heaven,” the hue of ocean, the violet’s joy; type of
faith and fidelity, it has remained for the almond-eyed molder of clay
to render thy beauty tangible. When I admire the hues of a Chinese vase
or bottle, I remember that each color is regarded as a symbol; the
fundamental colors being five, and corresponding to the elements (water,
fire, wood, metals, earth), and to the cardinal points of the compass.
Red belongs to fire, and corresponds to the south; black to water and
the north; green to wood and the east; white to metal and the west. Dark
blue corresponds to the sky, and yellow to the earth; blue belongs to
the east. Blue is combined with white, red with black, and dark blue
with yellow. The dragon, which in the Chinese zodiac corresponds to our
_Aries_, also personifies water, while a circle personifies fire.[8]
Footnote 8:
Jacquemart. Histoire de la Céramique.
Of the bloom of the peach my ship contained no example, so factitious a
value has been set upon this color by pretended connoisseurs. In place
of the peach-blow, I found gleaming among my ceramics a much more
beautiful form of opalescent porcelain—two vases of the extremely rare
“topaz,” brilliant as the gem itself, and of which these are unique
examples. Did I say my rugs supplied the rarest colors? I had forgotten
my old bottle of _bleu de ciel_ and my ancient vase of _sang de bœuf_!
The bronzes my ship contained differed essentially from the generality
of those I had previously known. Apart from a few fine specimens
enriched with gold and silver, and a superb figure of Buddha, they
consisted for the most part of a singularly beautiful collection of
ancient tripods, temple-censers and incense-burners, with dark patine
and antique-green surfaces, and engraved ornamentation and ornamentation
in relief. The largest incense urn occupies a prominent place in the
hall, and often curls its fragrant clouds through the mouth of its
dragon. I light it when I read A Kempis and the Religio Medici.
Yet the stores of my ship would have been incomplete without an old
hall-clock that marks the time for me. An old Dutch inlaid hall-clock of
all clocks for symmetry, beauty, and sonority! It measures rather than
accelerates the flight of the hours; and with its quarter chimes, its
deep hour-bells, its moons, and its calendars, it punctuates not only
the moments and the hours, but chronicles the passage of the months and
the years. I need not consult a watch for the time, or a calendar for
the day of the month and the phases of the moon—the musical voice and
the index-fingers of my clock proclaim them for me.
Among my most valued curios is a superb violoncello. A glance shows that
it has been long and tenderly caressed by the virtuoso who once
possessed it and developed its melodious voice. Even its ancient case
and the green baize of the lining attest the care it has received.
Scarcely a scratch is visible on the lustrous wood, and its curves are
as harmoniously proportioned as those of a Hebe. There is a rich, mellow
tone to the wood, and the bow draws tones no less rich and mellow from
its deep caverns of sound. Though there are no traces of the maker’s
name or the date of manufacture, the lovely glaze of the spruce top and
maple back at once proclaim its antiquity. Beneath the strings the rosin
has left a fine mahogany stain; and there are worn spots on the hoops
where it has been pressed by a loving knee. The grain of the top is as
straight as if it had been molded. At the base of the gracefully turned
scroll, in old English script, is carved an “H,” its only mark.
I find the same difference between a violin and a violoncello as there
exists between a piano and an organ. The difference of tone between
individual violoncellos is, if anything, more marked than in most other
musical instruments. There could be nothing more sonorous and more
delicately shaded than the magnificent baritone of my old violoncello as
it interprets the Cavatine by Raff, or chants the Andante by Mozart.
Sometimes, methinks, it gives forth a still richer consonance when it
renders Stradella’s grave Kirchen-Arïe; or, indeed, whenever noble
church music of any kind is drawn from its resonant depths. Then its
voice seems almost human, and the strings quiver apparently of their own
accord. Is it fancy, after all? Are not its strings sometimes swept by
unseen fingers—the tender touch of The Warden of Barchester, good old
Septimus Harding—who possessed it in years gone by; who so often found
solace in its companionship from the tyranny of the archdeacon and the
bickerings of Barchester Close! I almost find myself, like the warden,
passing an imaginary bow over an imaginary viol when annoyed or harassed
away from home, so strong is its personality and so soothing its
companionship.[9] Trollope has never been sufficiently appreciated, it
appears to me; and among his best works is his simplest one. The
character of the warden, so exemplary and yet so vacillating, the old
men of the hospital who love him so tenderly, the crafty and worldly
archdeacon, and, withal, the mellow ecclesiastical light that pervades
the churchly precincts of the Close, form a picture beautiful in its
quiet coloring and simplicity. It is far less a novel than an idyl, and
as such it should be read and must be regarded.
Footnote 9:
The Warden; Barchester Towers.—Anthony Trollope.
Music and flowers! The one suggests and complements the other. The home
should never be without either—they are its brightest sunshine, next to
lovely woman’s smile and the laughter of a child. Averaged throughout
the year, a dollar a week is a modest, reasonable outlay for a man of
limited means to expend for the luxury of flowers in the house. Every
petal holds a beautiful thought, so long as the flower is beautiful and
the petals are fresh. Even a few green leaves with a single fresh
blossom or two are a solace to the eye and a balm to the mind.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
VII.
MY STUDY WINDOWS.
How perfect an invention is glass! The sun rises with a salute, and
leaves the world with a farewell to our windows. To have instead of
opaque shutters, or dull horn or paper, a material like solidified
air, which reflects the sun thus brightly!—THOREAU.
TO-DAY a slaty sky, accompanied by vaporous clouds throughout the
afternoon, is succeeded by a pale sunset, a vivid primrose band
extending far, and lingering late along the southern horizon.
I hear an angry wind at night, first tongued by the distant trees.
Rising close to the edge of the river, the copse catches the least
breath of the west, transmitting its voice through the trees. Each tree
thus becomes a harp or viol played upon by the air in motion, producing
a varied music according to the character of its spray. How different
the sound of the summer wind! the whispering and rustling of trillions
of living leaves; one might distinguish the season by the sense of
hearing alone. Now that vegetation is devoid of foliage, there is so
much less to obstruct the current of the air brought pure and undefiled
from the Western plains. This air, additionally sifted and clarified by
its passage through countless woods and primeval forests, I inhale in
full draughts within my comfortable room. Gathered by the cold
air-boxes, this oxygen and nitrogen is tempered and warmed by a single
pound of steam below, before rising fresh and delicious through the
registers above. Thus even in midwinter do I receive the essence of the
meadows and the woods.
Not less comfort and delight do I owe to glass than to coal. It
retains the heat and excludes the frost. Scarcely the space of a foot
separates my easy chair and summer warmth from falling flakes and
wintry cold. It lets in the balm of the sky and the grace of the
leafless trees; it serves to simulate summer. Transparent to light and
to outward forms, glass is merely translucent to sounds. I look out
and see the trees rock and toss beneath the gale; I listen, and hear
the wind rejoicing in his strength. Light and sunshine stream through
my window-pane as though it were a part of the atmosphere. It is
almost like the atmosphere—transparent, invisible, inodorous. No
material used in the construction of the house imparts such an air of
richness from without as polished plate-glass. Is it not equally
desirable within, to look out through? Let the carpets, if necessary,
have less depth of pile; but let in the landscape and the light as
clearly as we may. To look at exterior objects through vitreous waves
is to cheat the sight and rob pleasant surroundings of their charm.
Again, the glass that brings the landscape into my room shuts out the
external world as readily as it lets it in—in the form of stained glass
it passes from transparent to translucent, but still retains its life
through color. I would have in my hall above the landing a wheel-window
of ancient stained glass to render daylight doubly beautiful and
refined—a flood of violet like that concentrated and diffused by the
windows of the tall clere-story of Tours. But the gorgeous stained glass
of mediæval days, such as still blazes in the old cathedrals, is an art
of the past, and my ship contained it not amid her precious stores.
Yet once more is glass transformed, and from transparent and translucent
is changed to opaque—opaque, yet not opaque. Neither clear nor colored,
it possesses still more life in this its other form. For my mirrors not
only receive light and color, but stamp them indelibly upon their
surface. Placed in certain positions, they even enable me to see through
opaque surfaces. By a glance into the hall through the door of the room
where I sit I may discern what transpires in the adjoining room, though
divided from it by a solid wall. Without my mirrors I could not even
recognize my outward self. They double the objects in my house; they
double the number of my guests; they possess a double life. They take
the place of a Daubigny, for do they not reflect the Daubigny? And
lovely woman, how could she look so sweet without her second self—her
mirror!
The primroses in my garden are harbingers of spring; the primrose band
in the south was the precursor of storm. All night the wind raved,
bringing snow and still more wind with returning day. The weather-cock
creaks ominously in its socket, pointing alternately west and northwest.
I note a drop of twenty degrees in the temperature, and hereafter I
shall distrust the primrose band.
Again the strange light in the south, shining brightly throughout the
afternoon. This band appears most vividly through a vista of the grounds
which focuses a distant slope crowned with deciduous trees and isolated
pines. I notice it, at times, during late autumn and early spring, or on
mild winter days when the moisture of the atmosphere may be perceptibly
felt. The weather-vane always points to it, though no air be
stirring—indeed, it only occurs during a calm. Glowing through the
skeleton trees, a lustrous primrose or lively crocus, it illumines and
transfigures the entire horizon of the south, as if inviting to follow
it to a blander clime. It seems almost more beautiful than sunlight; it
is colored sunlight screened from glare. When I attempt to trace it to
the range of the southern hills it keeps receding to the hills and trees
beyond—always present, ever out of reach. An observer standing there, in
turn, would see it farther on, and these farther hills and trees would
yield its luminousness to the landscape more southward still.
Is it typical of life—man grasping at an object only to see it
disappear, seizing a pleasure to find it evanescent, relinquishing a
hope for one yet more ephemeral; ever reaching for happiness to meet
with disappointment at the goal?
Whence its origin? in what distant sky does it first appear? The swift
wings of the hawk might trace it to its source; for me it is intangible.
Doubtless with a word the meteorologists would dispel the charm it
holds. I prefer to regard it as an occult force, a mysterious
weather-sign to flash upon the wintry gloom and foretell the coming
storm. In the present instance it brought yet more moisture, and was
succeeded the following day by fog and driving mist, changing in the
evening to sudden cold and wind.
A windy moonlight night, with clouds chasing each other like crests of
advancing waves. The moon rides high in the west; the strong wind sweeps
from the west. Æolus and all his retinue are abroad. The hillside trees
toss and boom like the sea—it is high tide in the air. The air becomes a
sea, the clouds its surge, the trees the shingle upon which it beats. It
fascinates like the sea! When the moon appears between the rifts it
seems stationary; when partly concealed under a white cloud, it appears
coursing rapidly westward, while the clouds seem traveling slowly
eastward. The moon then becomes the voyager, and the squadrons of the
sky the loiterers. Its luminousness is but slightly masked by the silver
clouds, their translucency making them seemingly a source of light.
Every now and then it disappears beneath a mass of inky breakers,
gilding their outer crests ere taking its sudden plunge; it looks as if
it were dropping from the sky. Almost immediately it reappears, so fast
the clouds are moving. Anon it dips beneath a snowy surge, to re-emerge
and sink below a Cimmerian roller, just as a swimmer dives into and is
lost in the surf. Meanwhile, the wind roars like an angry sea. This
glory of the wintry night my glass brings into my room. But the silver
lining and life of the moonlit clouds can not be traced in written
words, nor the varied voices of the wind be rendered into musical bars.
The moon and the sun shine so that all may see. The wind blows so that
all may hear.
I hear a new creak in my neighbor’s weather-vane amid the moaning of the
wind; or is it the repeated far-off blowing of a horn? Twice on my going
to the door the sound suddenly ceases, to continue fitfully on my
return. I discover it is produced merely by the side-light above my
writing-table. Do we not thus frequently attribute ulterior motives to
causes which exist only in imagination, or whose source originates with
ourselves? Often is the humming in our ear.
At times the small black fly upon the pane
May seem the black ox of the distant plain.
How deceptive is sound! The leaf-cricket’s chant on hot summer nights
seems to proceed from the lawn, rods away; he is singing in the
honeysuckle vine a few feet overhead. Not unfrequently, when sitting
within doors, am I obliged to consider whether the monotonous humming I
hear is the planing-mill far remote or the purring of the cat—my pet
Maltese, who looks at me with her beryl-like eyes and arches her back to
be stroked. But though she pricks up her ears when I scratch the under
surface of the table, she does not long mistake the counterfeit for the
wainscot mouse.
Little sounds, like the petty annoyances of life, are frequently the
most unpleasant. A great annoyance one meets forcibly, knowing it to be
a necessary evil that must be put out of the way. The snake is killed or
evaded; the fly remains to harass. The roaring of the gale, the downpour
from the sky—sounds loud and violent—are soothing rather than the
reverse; the rattling of a window-blind is far more annoying. Who but
the man that is filing it can hear without a shudder the filing of a
saw, and who but the katydid himself can passively endure the katydid’s
stridulation?
A monotonous sound, providing it be not a rasping sound, the ear becomes
accustomed to, and misses when it ceases. The ticking of a clock, in
itself unmusical, is, nevertheless, soothing; you awaken when it
suddenly stops. The nocturnal cricket’s reiterated cry is a somnolent
sound—a voice of the darkness and the dew. The grasshoppers’ jubilant
chorus sings away the fleeting summer hour, and by its rising and
falling pulsation marks the waxing and waning of the year. Even when
immelodious, most sounds of external Nature are not irritating. The
rattling of the window-pane exasperates—one intuitively anathematizes
the carpenter; the angry creaking of the boughs has a meaning, and one
accepts it as a fitting and necessary accompaniment of the gale. The
harsh barking of a dog rouses one from slumber; it is plainly in most
cases an annoyance which has no just reason for existence—the
neighborhood were better off without it.
The railroad whistles, scarcely farther removed and far more plainly
heard, are not annoying. At once they are accepted by the mind as
possessing a reason. For behind the whistle are the vast driving-wheels,
the passengers, the mails, and the merchandise. When I hear the
locomotive’s whistle I feel the locomotive’s power, and the significance
of its strength. It is the voice of might and speed; the exultant neigh
of the great iron charger. It sounds the hours for me. Day after
day—night, morning, and afternoon—with the same exactitude, scarcely a
minute after the engineer has opened the sounding-valve, do the cars,
arriving and departing, pass along the opposite shore of the river. Far
off among the distant valleys resounds the clatter of the oncoming
train; now lost for a moment, now more distinctly heard. A mile and a
half away on the still night air the whistle sounds, and the awakened
echoes respond. I hear the roar through the gap of the hills, the crash
across the bridge, the reverberating flight along the bank, the gradual
receding and absorption of the sound. Nightly, expectantly, I listen for
it, and miss it when the train is late.
How much does not the arrival of the night express signify! how much of
pain or pleasure to those it bears! Friends who have parted, and friends
who are waiting; news sad and joyous; regrets and hopes; hatred and
love; laughter and tears; all the emotions and passions harbored in
human hearts are present in the rapid flight of the train. The engineer
at the throttle, the fireman who supplies the fuel—calm, watchful,
serene at their posts amid the deafening roar and jar—I think of them
when the whistle sounds, plunging onward through the darkness and the
storm.
What a fascination exists in the flight of a train—an exhilaration to
those on board, an ever-recurring marvel to those who witness it pass
by! A speck in the distance, it momentarily enlarges till, thundering
past, it instantly recedes, as swiftly lost as it was swift to appear.
Onward it flies, annihilating space, outspeeding time, flinging the
mile-posts behind, bearing its burden to remote destinations. A moment
it pauses to slake its thirst, or to deposit a portion of its burden,
replacing it with fresh freight in waiting. Still onward it flies,
linking villages and towns, spanning streams, connecting valleys,
tunneling hills, joining States. Ever the crash and the roar, the great
trail of smoke and steam, the engineer at the throttle—calm, watchful,
serene—plunging through the darkness and the storm! This the whistle
means for me.
Instantly I detect the whistles of the different roads, some more
musical, some more acute, some deeper, more sonorous in tone. Varying in
resonance according to the state of the atmosphere, they apprise me of
the temperature without, like the audible vibration of the rails
themselves when passed over by the cars. Clear and musical in the early
summer mornings, during cold weather they are more sibilant and
piercing. They are a weather-vane to the ear, blown by heat or cold,
responsive to the moisture or the dryness of the air. I observe similar
acoustic effects in the tones of the distant bells. So that I may often
prognosticate the weather as surely by external sounds as by the
shifting barometer of the hills.
Even through my windows I like to analyze the sentiment of animate
sounds. “The nature of Sounds in general,” remarks the author of Sylva
Sylvarum, “hath been imperfectly observed; it is one of the subtellest
Peeces of Nature.” During a ramble through the woods and fields I am
impressed by the various emotions conveyed by bird voices alone. Through
them the woods and fields acquire an added meaning; they are the
interpreters of Nature. Thus, the voice of the jay is a signal to inform
his companions of danger; the scream of the hawk, a note of menace to
intimidate his prey and cause it to reveal its whereabouts. The
woodpecker’s tap is a sound of industry. The mourning-dove’s notes
express sorrow; the hermit-thrush’s, ecstasy; the veery’s, solitude; the
white-throated sparrow’s, content. The voices of the bluebird and
song-sparrow are sounds of welcome, an exordium of spring. The plaintive
whistle of the wood-pewee, the liquid warble of the purple finch, and
the refrain of many a companion songster, it would require the fine ear
and fancy of the poet to interpret aright. Perhaps Frederick Tennyson
well defines the sentiment they express in his melodious rendering of
the blackbird’s song:
The blackbird sings along the sunny breeze
His ancient song of leaves and summer boon;
Rich breath of hayfields streams through whispering trees;
And birds of morning trim their bustling wings,
And listen fondly, while the blackbird sings.
And how deliciously one of the sweet old Swabian singers has also voiced
the blackbird of Europe, and interpreted his rippling strain:
Vög’le im Tannenwald pfeifet so hell—
Pfeifet de Wald aus und ein, wo wird mein Schätzle sein?
Vög’le im Tannenwald pfeifet so hell.
Songster in pine-wood whistleth so clear—
Whistleth the wood out and in, where hath my sweetheart been?
Songster in pine-wood whistleth so clear.
Is it a Minnesinger? I wonder; for I can not place the poet who hymned
the feathered minstrel so sweetly. My German friend the professor, who
improvises in music as deftly as Heine improvised in verse, and to whom
I repeated the lines the other day, was struck anew by their haunting
melody. Seating himself at the piano, he immediately set them to this
exquisite accompaniment. The music has been ringing in my ears ever
since—a very echo of the songster, rising clear and jubilant from the
shade of the wood. The words have been set to music before, a version
being included in that melodious collection of national, student, and
hunting songs entitled Deutscher Liederschatz. But this is commonplace
compared to the rendition of my German friend. Try it those of you who
have a voice to try; or let your sweetheart try it for you. You will
then appreciate the consummate art of the music—the ascending scale of
the second bar felicitously phrasing the whistle of the bird, and the
falling inflection of the third happily portraying the cool, shadowy
depths of the wood. And how like a silvery bird note of June the upper
“g” in the seventh bar sounds the close of the refrain!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Music:
_Allegro mf._ —— H. GANZEL.
Vögle im Tannenwald pfeifet so hell,
Songster in pine-wood whistleth so clear,
Pfeifet de Wald aus und ein;
Whistleth the wood out and in;
Wo wird mein Schätzle sein, wo wird es sein?
Where hath my sweetheart been, where hath she been?
Wo wird mein Schätzle sein, wo wird es sein?
Where hath my sweetheart been, where hath she been?
]
No poet or prosatist, however, comes so near to the bird as the great
prose-poet of the Wiltshire Downs:
“The bird upon the tree utters the meaning of the wind—a voice of the
grass and wild flower, words of the green leaf; they speak through that
slender tone. Sweetness of dew and rifts of sunshine, the dark hawthorn
touched with breadths of open bud, the odor of the air, the color of the
daffodil—all that is delicious and beloved of spring-time are expressed
in his song. Genius is nature, and his lay, like the sap in the bough
from which he sings, rises without thought. Nor is it necessary that it
should be a song; a few short notes in the sharp spring morning are
sufficient to stir the heart. But yesterday the least of them all came
to a bough by my window, and in his call I heard the sweet-brier wind
rushing over the young grass.”[10]
Footnote 10:
Richard Jefferies. Field and Hedgerow.
Just what emotion the caw of the crow conveys I am at a loss to
determine, unless it be self-complacency—a harsh way of expressing it,
it would seem. His notes sound more like anger; and in the woods he
certainly does quarrel with the owls, the song-birds, and his own
kindred. But his apparent anger may be only feigned, and his voice belie
his real character. Assuredly, there was never a more self-complacent
tread than the crow’s on a grain field. The farmer and the scarecrow at
once become secondary to him, and pilfering becomes almost a virtue, he
pilfers with such grace. His tread is as majestic as the soaring of the
hawk, and though black as night and evil, his plumage glistens as
brightly as light and purity. He seems a true autochthon of the soil. It
is much in the way things are done, after all; boldness often passes for
innocence, and self-confidence begets security.
Gladness, serene contentment, is most strongly expressed to me by the
bobolink, the “okalee” of the starling, and the singular medley of the
catbird. To be sure, the catbird frequently justifies his name, and is
anything but an agreeable songster; but to make amends for his
introductory discords he frequently gives us a delightful palinode.
Plaintiveness, sadness over the departed summer, is conveyed by the
blackbird’s warble fluted over fields of golden-rod; it is expressed in
the trembling notes of the yellow-bird, as he scatters the thistle’s
floss to the winds.
If we would carefully analyze the speech of external Nature, I doubt not
we could trace some well-defined sentiment in nearly all animate sounds;
assuredly in very many of the voices of birds, animals, and insects. For
Nature’s moods and tenses are conveyed as strongly through the tympanum
of the ear as through the retina of the eye. Their correct
interpretation depends upon our inner sight and hearing. I am not sure
that in man’s relation to Nature the sense of hearing does not
contribute almost as much enjoyment as the sense of seeing. Certainly,
Nature would seem but half complete without her characteristic voices.
Think of her wrapped in the winding-sheet of eternal silence, a mere
mummy, with no song of bird or whisper of wind to impart animation to
her scenes. Color and form are but half the landscape; it is sound that
gives it life, and renders it companionable. What is winter, in one
sense, but absence of sound, not merely the absence of bird and insect
voices, but the rustling of leaves and grasses, the murmur of waters,
the life and movement of growing vegetation!
Are not the first signs of spring conveyed through sound? Ere yet a
song-bird can find an utterance, or grass-blade impart a sense of
resurrected life I hear the cracking of the ice and the gurgling of the
frost-freed rills. The crow announces the change before the snowdrop
comes, and the wild geese proclaim it from the sky before the sallows
invite the precocious bee. No doubt the bee is already waiting for the
flower, and winnows it into bloom; for no sooner is the corolla ready to
expand than I hear his murmurous wings. High in the willow catkins; low
down in the horn of the skunk-cabbage; bending the yellow bloom of the
first dog-tooth violet, his hum of industry is heard. The bee is perhaps
the first constant spring musician, though his is not the earliest
vernal voice. The pushing daffodils of the perennial flower-border speak
to me of spring, the choir of the toads and _hylodes_ announces it even
more emphatically.
How we should miss the voice of Chanticleer were the domestic fowl to
become silent! It never occurred to me how important a role he plays
until the author of The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter makes him serve
as a matutinal alarm to Schaunard in lieu of the time-piece he has
pawned. And Herrick, too, in His Grange, or Private Wealth, has the
domestic fowl serve a similar purpose:
Though clock
To tell how night draws hence, I’ve none,
A cock
I have to sing how day draws on.
We might rise and retire, indeed, with the clock of the cock, and at all
times of day and at all seasons we would sadly miss his voice were he
subject to laryngeal troubles. It is a cheery and companionable sound,
the absence of which would cause an appreciable void. Many sounds not
strictly belonging to outward Nature become complementary to her through
familiarity, or through the surroundings amid which they are heard. Thus
the hills and valleys speak through the roar of the railroad train, and
the harvest fields find a fitting tongue in the thrashing machine. A
domestic voice rather than a voice of Nature, the cock’s crow is,
notwithstanding this, associated with Nature and rural scenes. It is
more a voice of the country and a pulsation of the rural landscape than
an expression of urban surroundings. The city hems it in; the country
expands it. Orpheus might pause to listen to it when sounded from an
autumnal upland, it is so resonant and sonorous. So much does the scene,
or the conditions amid which sounds are uttered, affect the sounds
themselves.
As a purely wild sound of Nature—the Nature of our own woods and
fields—the cry of the owl is, perhaps, unrivaled. The bark of the fox
has some analogy to it in point of wildness, except that his voice is
always further removed. I hear it on moonlight winter nights following
the undulations of the wooded hills—a short sharp bark thrice repeated
at rather prolonged intervals. It is an eerie sound, the cry of the
vulpine freebooter, ranging his native woods through the frosty winter
nights. I never look up at the fox’s pelt slung across the
_portière_-rod in the smoking-room without a feeling of regret for the
lissom life that was slain. The grand brush that steadied him in his
flight; the sharp pointed nose, once alive to every atom of the
atmosphere; the fine soft fur, beautiful still in death, appeal mutely
to me for a life wantonly sacrificed. I care not how many grouse and
ground-birds may have fallen victims to his cunning—they were his
rightful prey, the spoil of his domain.
The drumming of the ruffed-grouse imparts a sense of life and
companionship to the woods such as few other sounds convey. _Bonasa
umbella!_ there is a whir of vigor in his very name. Every one should be
born a sportsman to appreciate his glorious _crescendo_; hunting is
given to man of the gods, Xenophon rightly said. The grouse is the
woodland guide, the alcaid who holds the keys to all its guarded
recesses, the courier who knows every lane and passage that thread the
forest depths. Accept his invitation, and you are conducted into hidden
nooks, and presented glimpses of sylvan beauty of whose existence you
would otherwise never have dreamed. His roll-call is a stimulus to
exercise, an excuse to explore the covers. Onward and onward and still
onward he leads; now amid a sun-flecked vista of tree-trunks, now
through a thicket of intertwining saplings, now to a woodland
antechamber frescoed with October colors, now up some lofty hillside
overlooking the empurpled valley. A taste of the bitter he also mixes
with the sweet, as when flushed for the third or fourth time, weary of
pursuit, he leads to an almost impenetrable thicket of bramble,
perchance to skim off unseen on hearing your approach, or to dive deep
down into a precipitous glen, only to mislead by suddenly wheeling up
the hillside in a long deceptive flight. Most noticeably in the spring,
and frequently in the autumn, and on tempered winter days do I hear the
music of his wings, far away in some sequestered glade, beating a sylvan
tattoo—most picturesque of all woodland sounds; it is as if the woods
themselves were speaking.
The squirrel’s bark is emphatically a sylvan expression. He knows its
effect upon the listener, and selects a bland, sunshiny day when he may
be distinctly heard. But only at a safe distance, for has not the fox
taught him caution, and the grouse the wile of placing a tree-trunk
between himself and the double-barrel? Were I to analyze the sentiment
of the squirrel’s bark, I should term it an utterance of derision. Not
altogether derision, however; for besides a snarling tone, it has a
perceptible sound of cracking and crunching, as of nuts and acorns being
husked and split by a rodent’s tooth.
An eery cry is the “ssh-p! ssh-p!” of the twisting snipe—two fifths a
whistle, two fifths a cry, while to the nervous sportsman the other
fifth is a jeer. A guttural cry, a strange raucous cry, a very voice of
the treacherous ooze and the rustling sedge. It can not be put into
words, and only the snipe himself can sound it. Most voices of the marsh
are characteristic; it has its distinctive gamut of sound. The cheerful
music of the woodlands is wanting; its speech is pitched in a graver
key, in keeping with its solitary haunts where Syrinx ever murmurs
through her murmuring reeds. How expressive its many-sounding
tongues—the boom of the bittern, the harsh quack of the heron, the
scream of hawk and kildeer, the multitudinous calls of water birds—
cries that might
Be echoes of a water-spirit’s song.
All through the spring and autumn nights countless wings are cleaving
the upper air, bearing the hurrying voyagers in search of distant
climes—flocks of plover and woodcock, skeins of snipe and shore-birds,
throngs of ducks and geese, voicing their way through the darkness,
league after league, hour after hour on their long journey of migration.
I look for drought and heat when the cicada shrills. The rhythm of the
cricket’s creak tells me if the night be hot or cold. I see the
gathering rain-clouds when the tree-toad croaks and the hair-bird
trills. The bluebird warbles, “it is spring”; a thousand throats
proclaim the summer. Sounds from the woods, sounds from the waters,
sounds from the fields, sounds from the air! The infinite beauty of
sound! Are not Nature’s voices one of her most endearing charms?
How the gas-burner and window-pane have led me to digress! But even from
my comfortable room it is sometimes pleasant to look out beyond the
storm and bask in the luminousness of the primrose band.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
VIII.
MY INDOOR GARDEN.
Tell, if thou canst, and truly, whence doth come
This camphire, storax, spikenard, galbanum;
These musks, these ambers, and those other smells
Sweet as the vestry of the oracles.
HESPERIDES.
CONTRASTED with the bleakness without, the greenhouses and conservatory
possess an additional charm. Within their walls of glass reigns a
luxuriance of leaf and bloom. Like the garden, however, the greenhouse
will not care for itself. Many of the requirements necessary out of
doors I find imperative within. And yet cultivation is on an entirely
different scale, a mere pot of earth taking the place of barrowsful
under out-of-door culture. In the garden I simply place a plant at the
requisite depth and in the proper exposure and soil; in the greenhouse a
finer discrimination is called for.
This small plant, bulb, or fern may not be plunged indiscriminately into
any receptacle. I must measure the size and requirements of the plant;
and not only place it in congenial soil, light or shade, but measure its
needs with regard to the size of its prospective domicile. My small
plants will fail with too much nourishment, my large plants pine with
too little. Some will not thrive in soil at all, but must be cultivated
on a block of wood, sustaining themselves merely on air and moisture. In
the garden each plant draws from the largess of the earth just what
properties it needs for growth and development, and the deeper the
surface soil the better the plant will thrive. From some standpoints my
greenhouses possess an advantage over my garden; in another sense the
garden is more satisfactory. The one is artificial, the other natural;
but the greenhouse is, possibly, more easily controlled. With proper
care and intelligence I can count upon certain fixed results. I am not
dependent upon the uncertain watering-pot of the sky, and have nothing
to fear from frost or violent winds. But I must needs exert a keener
watchfulness over my charges; Nature is no longer the warder. Just so
much heat, so much air, so much sun, so much moisture they must have.
For tender exotics, born of a milder clime, are among my nurslings.
My orchids, for instance. Some occur naturally on damp rocks in a cool
atmosphere; others on trees in dense tropical forests; still others on
high elevations where they receive much sunlight. Shade or coolness,
which certain species demand, are injurious to others which flourish in
warmth and sunshine. The different habitats of the species, therefore,
must be carefully studied, and the conditions under which they thrive in
nature imitated as far as possible under glass. “A juggler,” says the
accomplished curator of the Trinity College Botanic Gardens, “not
unfrequently keeps four balls flying over his head with one hand, and
the successful orchid-grower has to deal quite as closely with heat,
air, light, and moisture.” My greenhouse, accordingly, calls for its
parlor and bath-room, its smoking-room and refrigerator.
I miss the breadth and sunlight of the garden; I gain immunity from the
caprice of the elements. My glass house bridges over the dreary interval
between the last wind-flower of autumn and the first primrose of spring.
If I can not go to the tropics, if I can not have the summer, I can at
least recall the one and counterfeit the other. Could I control the
sunlight and inclose a sufficient space, I should scarcely miss my hardy
flower borders.
In the greenhouse I have my charges nearer my eye; I can watch their
development closer. Many of the insect pests that infest the garden come
to prey upon the plants indoors. The same warfare I wage without, I must
wage within. Care and attention are ever the price of the flower. The
insects continue to multiply. They develop new races and people new
countries. No sooner does one scourge become extinct than a dozen others
take its place. For the weevil we have the army-worm, the potato-bug,
the apple-tree borer, the codling-moth. I no sooner administer a
soporific to the red spider than the aphides are at work, and these are
scarcely subjugated ere the mealy-bug appears. Cockroaches bite the
orchid roots, mice nibble the young shoots of the carnations. Mildew and
blight likewise destroy, and snails emerge from unsuspected places to
prey upon the succulent leaves.
My greenhouse gives me a bog-garden which the altitude of the grounds
precludes without. My tank is a miniature bayou, a cage for aquatics. It
is always pleasant to watch the growth of water plants, they seem so
appreciative of their bath; the very fact of their growing from the
water gives them a distinct individuality. These clumps of Egyptian
papyrus and smaller variegated _Cyperus_, emerging from the ooze, are as
beautiful as flowers. One of the easiest of aquatics to grow, the
papyrus, or great paper-reed, throws out strong runners beneath the
water, forming dense tufts of tall culms, crowned with large handsome
umbellate panicles; indeed, it spreads so rapidly that it requires to be
kept vigorously in check. The handsome variegated _Cyperus_ has a
tendency to revert to the type, but this may be prevented by cutting out
the green shoots that appear.
The great water-lilies, too—the _Nymphæas_ and _Nelumbiums_—are among
the most accommodating plants for water culture, as they are
unquestionably among the most beautiful of flowers. Equally handsome and
fragrant, many of the species rival the terrestrial lilies, and are far
less fastidious. Few, if any, of the species are more beautiful than the
common water-lily (_Nymphæa odorata_), the white and perfumed cup that
floats upon our ponds and sluggish streams. From my tank I may pluck its
blossom without being mired, though I miss the kingfisher’s clarion and
the sheen of the dragon-fly’s wings with which I associate it in Nature.
I miss also the flapping of its pads when touched by the wind, showing
the red under sides of the shields, lovely as the flash of trout that
lurk beneath. Long must I search for a more delicious odor than that
contained within its waxen folds. Begotten of the ooze, a stem shoots
upward to the sun and air to unfold its chalice on some secluded pool.
The first white water-lily, cradled on the water’s rippling breast! it
is the floral embodiment of summer. It falls upon the sight like the
tinkle of a woodland rill upon the ear, imparting its harmony to the
mind, a thing to be carried away and perfume the memory. I would
willingly exchange the Zanzibar species for it, if thereby I might cause
the white lily to bloom in winter.
For winter blossoming the former are invaluable aquatics, with
pink-purple and blue flowers respectively, opening during daylight. The
deliciously scented pink-purple variety (_N. Zanzibarensis rosea_),
almost an evergreen aquatic, is the strongest grower, its flat leaves
also being large and of great substance. The night-blooming
_Nelumbiums_, _N. Devoniensis_, _rubra_, and _dentata_, with pink, red,
and white flowers respectively, are the best of their division. _N.
speciosum_, the sacred lotus of the Nile, is a beautiful
summer-flowering species with immense pink flowers; _N. luteum_ is the
tall-growing yellow water-lily, its blossoms seven to ten inches in
diameter. Balzac, in Le Lis dans la Vallée, associates the lotus with
the old Hellenic sentiment, except that instead of the word country he
substitutes love:
Cueillons la fleur du Nénuphar
Qui fait oublier les amours,
the _Nénuphar_ being the lotus of France, _Nymphæa alba major_. And
those of us who do not know the lotus of the classics are all familiar
with the lotus of Tennyson, “that enchanted stem” which whosoever did
receive and taste, forthwith obtained rest and dreamful ease.
There exists some doubt, however, as to which lotus the old Greeks
really referred to. The question, What was “lotus”? has been discussed
intermittently for at least two thousand years. We must bear in mind
that “lotus” was a term applied by the Greeks to several plants or
trees. The Latin poets, and Pliny very likely, used the term more
vaguely still, not being botanists as were some of the Greeks. For there
is also the date-plum (_Diospyrus lotus_), a deciduous tree native of
the coasts of the Caspian Sea, and cultivated and naturalized in
Southern Europe, the fruit of which is edible. This has been held by
some to be the lotus of the Lotophagi, or lotus-eaters. Besides, there
is the prickly lotus shrub or jujube-tree (_Zizyphus lotus_), indigenous
to the Libyan district and portions of Asia, to the sweet and odorous
fruit of which has been equally ascribed the power of causing one to
forget one’s home. It is still eaten by the natives, and a wine or mead
is extracted from its juice. The term lotus was also applied to several
species of water-lily—the Egyptian water-lily (_Nymphæa lotus_), the
blue water-lily (_N. cærulea_), and more particularly to the _Nelumbium_
of the Nile (_Nelumbium speciosum_). The _Nelumbium_ is a native both of
India and Egypt, though almost extinct in the latter country now; and in
the ancient Hindoo and Egyptian mythological representations of Nature,
as is well known, it was the emblem of the great generative and
conceptive powers of the world, serving as the head-dress of the
Sphinxes and the ornament of Isis. It was known, moreover, as the
Egyptian bean, on account of its fruit, the cells of which contained a
kind of bean employed as an article of food. Indigenous to China as
well, the roots are still served there in summer with ice, and laid up
with vinegar and salt for winter. Both the fruit and the root of
_Nymphæa lotus_ were likewise eaten by the ancient Egyptians; while
Horus, the divine child who personified the rising sun, is always
represented in hieroglyphics as emerging from a water-lotus bud.
In the East, a belief in a divinity residing in the lotus has existed
from the most ancient times, worship of this divinity of the lotus being
the dominant religion in Thibet at the present day. The daily and hourly
prayer, Wilson states in the Abode of Snow, is still, “_Om mani padme,
haun_,” or literally rendered, “O God! the jewel in the lotus. Amen.” In
Cashmere the roots of the water-lotus are pulled up from the mire and
employed as an article of diet. The root is sweet, and was formerly used
for making an intoxicating beverage, as the sap of the palm is still
employed in some localities. In like manner the roots of the yellow
lotus were used by the American aborigines as an article of diet,
Nuttall recording that, boiled when fully ripe, they become as
farinaceous, agreeable, and wholesome as the potato.
Research tends to show that it is the _Zizyphus_ rather than any of the
other species of lotus to which Homer and Theophrastus ascribed the
power of causing forgetfulness. Theophrastus and Dioscorides, Greek
botanists, both describe different kinds of lotus, but their
descriptions are not always trustworthy. Homer mentions yet another
lotus, supposed to be _Melilotus officinalis_, the yellow variety of
sweet clover common to this country where it has become naturalized from
Europe. It was this plant which he describes as nourishing the steeds of
Achilles. Authorities differ so greatly, however, that it is difficult
to decide with absolute certainty which species of lotus is really the
fabled plant of the Greeks, though the weight of opinion would point to
the _Zizyphus_ as against the _Diospyrus_ and especially the
_Nelumbium_. The poetical folk-lore of plants must not be expected to be
literally true. Even the observant Greek, Aristotle, has many
absurdities about plants. So has Theophrastus, but Pliny is full of the
most ridiculous superstitions, which he relates with all the seriousness
of a firm believer in them.
In attempting to place many plants and flowers of the ancient classic
poets there is, therefore, always more or less difficulty and
uncertainty. To identify the plants mentioned, without studying them in
the country where those who wrote about them lived, is fruitless when
there is such a great difference of opinion as to what the ancient Latin
poets mean by “violet” or “hyacinth,” or “narcissus.” Sibthorp, who was
Professor of Botany at Oxford, England, about eighty years ago and who
was a fine classical scholar, went to live three years in Greece for the
purpose of identifying the Greek flowers and plants mentioned by the
classics. He returned with the conclusion that it is impossible to do it
satisfactorily and he was quite certain, though the Greek language still
remains in Greece very slightly changed, that what the modern Greeks
call a “hellebore” or a “hyacinth” is different from the flowers that
were called by these names two thousand years ago.
Herodotus (Book iv, p. 177) places the geographical range of the
lotus-eaters from the recess of the Gulf of Cabes eastward to about
half-way along the coast of Tripoli, which would correspond with Homer’s
account. The former describes the natives as living “by eating the fruit
of the lotus—the fruit about the size of the Pistacia nut, and in
sweetness like the fruit of the date. From this fruit the lotus-eaters
made their wine.” What Homer says regarding the lotus is this (Odyssey,
Book ix, v. 82, etc.): Ulysses is recounting his adventures to the
guests of the King of Corfu after dinner. He relates how he was on his
way home from Troy, and was doubling Cape St. Angelo, when a storm from
the north met his fleet and drove it from its course. After sailing
southward for nine days, he sighted land and made for it, as the
fresh-water supply was exhausted. The crews enjoyed the luxury of a meal
on shore, and then began to wonder where they were. So Ulysses chose two
good men, adding a herald with a flag of truce, a necessary precaution
in those times when strangers were enemies, as a matter of course. These
men were to inquire who the inhabitants of the land were. “The
lotus-eaters received them kindly and gave them lotus to eat. As soon as
they eat the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus they would not come back to
bring me tidings, nor go away, but wished to remain where they were with
the lotus-eaters, gathering and eating lotus and to think no more of
going home. They shed tears when I dragged them back by force to the
ships and tied them by ropes to the benches in the hold. Then I ordered
the rest of the crews to go on board at once, for fear any of them
should eat lotus and think no more of going home.”
To believe that the Homeric legend referred to the fruit of the
jujube-tree does not necessitate our believing that the fruit had a
sedative effect upon those who eat it. Rumors of a people leading a lazy
and indolent life in a delightful climate and subsisting on the fruit of
trees, and rumors that sailors accidentally landing there had given up
the dangers and hard work of a seafaring life and deserted, would be
enough to give the foundation of the legend. There is a story entitled
The Mutiny of the Bounty, a true history, which gave the foundation of
Byron’s tale The Island; and there are many points of similarity between
this and Homer’s brief tale; but Ulysses, the man of many resources,
proved a better match for his mutinous men than did Captain Bligh.
Tennyson’s lotus “laden with flower and fruit,” which is specified as
being borne on “branches,” is evidently the _Zizyphus_ or else the
_Diospyrus_; although the line—
The lotus blows by every winding creek
might lead one to suppose he referred to the _Nelumbium_, were it not
for the former contradictory line and the fact that the water-lily grows
in the water itself. At any rate, sufficient authority exists to render
it certain that some species of lotus yielding an intoxicating product
was regarded sacred because of an indwelling god. But whatever species
was really referred to by the classics as the charmed nepenthe—whether
the fruit of the jujube-tree, or merely a fruit of the fabled garden of
Hesperides, to us the name lotus at once brings up the gorgeous
water-lily that once rocked upon the Nile, with its grand pink blossoms
and its great green leaves. The _Nelumbium_ has taken kindly to American
soil, having increased in several marshy localities in New Jersey with
astonishing rapidity, entirely crowding out the native growths of
arrowhead, pickerel weed, and horsetail, where it has been placed and
become established. With its great tendency to spread and multiply, it
will soon supply the dragon-fly a classic flower to rest upon, and the
great green frog a still more spacious paludal throne than that hitherto
supplied by the shield of the native water-lily.
Suspended above the tank are numerous large plants of _Lælia anceps_ and
_L. a. morada_, leaning their long lavender sprays over the pool, like
flocks of hovering butterflies. With them are also suspended large
specimens of the staghorn and the hare’s foot ferns. Ferns and orchids
invariably look well in combination. Palms being somewhat stiff
themselves, do not associate so well with orchids, which need the relief
of more graceful foliage. The hare’sfoot fern is appropriately named,
the innumerable twisting rhizomes being soft and woolly, like the foot
of a hare, and the fronds fine and feathery. Of all the _Lælias_, _L. a.
morada_ has the longest stems, and is among the largest and finest
flowered. I grant the exquisite beauty and fragrance of the white form.
Comparatively an inexpensive variety, the former is to be preferred to
some others quoted at from ten to twenty times its marketable value. For
in orchids, price very frequently does not represent intrinsic beauty of
bloom; and mere rareties or orchidaceous curiosities are preferable in
one’s neighbor’s collection. I am satisfied with fine specimens of a few
of the easier grown and really beautiful species and varieties. A fine
plant of _Cypripedium œnanthum_ which my neighbor values at a thousand
dollars is not worth my _Lælia_ to me. Its flower is stiff in
comparison, and its dorsal sepal, though strikingly rayed—white, striped
with pink—has not the grace and beauty of the _Lælia’s_ velvety petals
and the exquisite blossoms of many other species. After all, may it not
well be questioned whether the hardy pink lady-slipper has a rival among
the numerous species and hybrids of the big labellums and long-tailed
petals?
My orchids, like my roses, have their parasites—the green and yellow
fly, the black thrip, the mealy-bug, the lesser snail, the scale. Of
late years the yellow fly has become more numerous, though, with the
green fly, the rose is his especial prey. It is difficult to know what
plan to adopt against my insect enemies. The rule of three will not
solve the difficulty, for a mean proportional does not exist. If my
houses are too hot or the plants too dry, the red spider and black thrip
swarm; if too cold, the mildew comes; if the weather be muggy, it is a
summons for the green and yellow fly. Tobacco stems placed upon the
hot-water pipes banish the black thrip where fumigating is of no avail.
Fumigating alone will disperse the aphides. The smaller snail I must
bate with lettuce leaves; the larger one must be searched for at night
with a lantern. For mildew I must place sulphur and lime on the pipes,
and the scale and mealy-bug demand their periodical sponge-bath. The
cockroach sips treacle and is lost in the sweets. Wood-lice come from
underneath the benches, and the lesser snail, despite all precautions,
will sometimes bite off a flower-spike six times larger than himself. It
all reminds me of a passage in the Faerie Queen:
A cloud of cumbrous gnats do him molest,
All striving to infixe their feeble stinges,
That from their noyance he no where can rest;
But with his clownish hands their tender wings
He brusheth oft, and oft doth mar their murmurings.
Care and attention are ever the price of the flower.
It is hardly to be wondered at that orchids have their insects; the
wonder is they do not possess them in greater numbers, the flowers
themselves so resemble insects and strange creatures of the air. I can
scarcely define which attracts me most, the singular flowers or the
fantastic odors they exhale. Perfumes of lilacs and primroses—lilacs and
primroses thrice intensified—greet me when _Oncidium incurvum_ and
_Dendrobium heterocarpum_ are in bloom. The redolence of jasmines,
jonquils, and cyclamens is combined in many of the _Cattleyas_, while
_Odontoglossum gloriosum_ seems a whole hawthorn hedge in flower. I open
the door of the warm-house when the _Vandas_ are in bloom, and I know
not what subtle overpowering fragrance weighs down the air. What a
sachet and censer of perfume! what a spice-box of the Orient! Cleopatra
might have just passed through. Such strange odors! languorous,
sensuous, all but intoxicating! I expect to hear a tom-tom’s beat, or
the rustle of a houri’s skirt. Some of the _Stanhopeas_, how powerful
their scent—a _pot-pourri_ of all the gums of Brazil! The suave yet
pungent aroma exhaled by one of the _Oncidiums_ (_O. ornithorhynchum_),
I can never get enough of. Its insidious, delicious fragrance defies
analysis; it haunts me like an unremembered dream or a thought that has
escaped. Intensely red flowers are seldom odorous; the brilliant
_Sophronites_—some of them the purest essence of scarlet—are scentless.
The _Phalænopsis_, too, although among the most floriferous of orchids,
are likewise inodorous.
It is fascinating to attempt to trace the resemblance of some of the
odors. G. W. Septimus Piesse would be at a loss to place many of them or
to determine their combination. Some, on the contrary, are distinctly
like many well-known and grateful odors, though generally much more
pronounced. From _Dendrobium aureum_ and _Cattleya gigas_ there rises a
triple extract of violets; from _Cattleya citrina_, a strong fragrance
of limes; from _D. scabrilingue_, a delicious breath of wall-flowers;
from _D. moschatum_, a pronounced musk-like scent. Besides
_Odontoglossum gloriosum_, both _Burlingtonia fragrans_ and _Trichopilia
suavis_ emit a perfume of hawthorn. One of the _Zygopetalums_ smells
like hyacinths, one of the _Oncidiums_ like cinnamon, one of the
_Catasetums_ like anise. The straw-colored flowers of _C. scurra_ have a
pronounced perfume of lemons. _Cymbidium Mastersii_ is charged with the
odor of almonds. _Dendrobium incurvum_ is distinctly jasmine scented. A
mellifluous essence of cyclamen clusters about _D. Dominianum_. Not a
few orchids smell like honey, while in others I can plainly trace the
scent of elder flower, heliotrope, the wild grape, sweet pea, vanilla,
tuberose, honeysuckle, lily of the valley, and various tropical fruits,
like the pine-apple, banana, and _Monstera_. The majority of the
_Vandas_ and _Stanhopeas_, and not a few of the _Cattleyas_, are
puzzling to place.
Form is scarcely less strange than odor in many orchids, most of the
species bearing a pronounced or faint resemblance to some form of bird,
insect, or animal life. The _Masdevallias_ and _Maxillarias_, how like
the walking-stick and water-skaters many of them are! My
primrose-scented _Dendrobium_ looks like a flock of lovely buff-colored
moths ready to take flight from the stems. The ivory-white flowers of
_Angræcum sesquipidale_, whose perfume so strongly resembles that of the
white garden lily, look like a starfish. These _Stanhopeas_, whose
emanations are almost overpowering and whose spikes emerge from the
bottom of their suspended baskets, remind me of serpents in the form and
spots of their fleshy, purplish or orange-dyed flowers. The flowers of
the species _Anguloa_ resemble a bull’s head; those of _Cycnoches
Loddigesii_, a swan. In the white waxen flower of _Peresteria elata_ I
trace the symbol of immortality—a dove with expanded wings; in the
terrestrial _Ophrys_ I almost hear the humming of its bees. Many species
closely resemble spiders and beetles; others seem almost an exact
counterfeit of various moths and butterflies—there is no end to the
strange resemblances.
Color is scarcely less strange than odor and form. These abnormal spots
and blotches, these oddly tipped petals and painted sepals, I meet in no
other flower. The lily, _Sternbergia_, and anemone have each been
singled out as the candidate for the honor of being referred to in the
twenty-ninth verse of the sixth chapter of St. Matthew. But was any one
of these, or even Solomon himself, arrayed like _Dendrobium Wardianum_?
The most gorgeous of its gorgeous tribe, it is perhaps the most gorgeous
of flowers; and among the easiest grown species, it blossoms freely,
suspended in the library from a block of wood.
I must watch long to see a blue or purple orchid in bloom, colors common
enough among garden and other greenhouse flowers. True red and vermilion
are extremely rare, yellow in its various shades being perhaps the most
common color, green and white occupying an almost equal place.
Brown-shaded or brown-spotted flowers are common, and there exist
numerous pink-purples and crimsons. Magenta frequently creeps into the
_Cattleyas_, staining the crest of the pearl or cream-colored lobe, or
splashing the curled or fimbriated lip. But magenta lends itself better
to orchids than to other flowers; and objectionable as it generally is,
it may be pardoned in some of the _Cattleyas_. It is a tropical color
and brings perfume. Apart from the strange odors, shapes, and colors of
the flowers, the orchid still continues exceptional in the wonderful
duration of its blooms both upon the plant and in the cut stage.
Epiphytal or terrestrial, tropical or native, in all its aspects the
orchid is strange.
How few, while admiring the gorgeous beauty of an epiphytal orchid,
think of the price it has cost to transfer it from its tropical habitat!
For very many of the numerous species have been obtained at the
sacrifice of human lives—martyrs to hardship, exposure, and disease
engendered while wresting a new species from its miasma-infested home.
The accounts of many orchid collectors who have lived to relate their
experiences read like the exploits of a Stanley or a tale of Verne.
If my orchids are chary of red, many foliage plants supply this color
abundantly, and ferns the graceful leafage and lovely greens which
orchids lack. I say nothing of the palm, the tree-fern, the _Monstera_,
the _Musa_, and similar large plants that require special quarters where
they may have ample space to do them justice. But color and form are
supplied by many medium-sized foliage plants of comparatively easy
culture; and in selecting these, like orchids, it is well to choose a
few of the finest and most distinct, rather than crowd the stages with a
mass of plants of only average merit. One can never cease to admire the
brilliant mottling and veining of the Croton’s evergreen foliage, the
grand purplish green leaves of _Maranta Zebrina_, the elegant markings
of the _Calladium_, the velvety crimson-mottled leaves of the
_Gesneras_, the polished bronze shields of _Alocassia metallica_, the
bronze-green and satiny luster of the _Camphylobtrys_, the vivid
exquisite red tones of the _Dracæna’s_ younger leafage, and the
_Poinsettia’s_ fiery scarlet whorls. Perhaps no other red, even that of
the pomegranate, is quite so intense as the flaming spathe and spadix of
several of the great tropical aroids belonging to the species
_Anthurium_, valuable for their fine foliage as well as for their
startling flowers. An interesting foliage plant is the old _Strelitzia
reginæ_, producing singular brilliant orange and purple flowers, one
continually pushing up beneath the other from its magical wand. The
_Imatophyllum_, or _Clivia_, is likewise a satisfactory foliage plant,
apart from the showy florescence of its large umbel of twelve to fifteen
coppery-red blossoms.
The variegated form of the pine-apple (_Ananas bracteatus_) goes farther
than any other greenhouse plant in its combined appeal to the senses,
its rich reddish foliage pleasing the eye, and its rich red fruit
captivating the sense of sight, smell, and taste. I fancy the smaller
fruit of this variety is of more pronounced flavor than that of the
type; but this may be simply owing to its more inviting appearance. One
needs no other odor in the greenhouse when the pine-apple is in fruit.
It was a Huguenot priest who described the pine-apple, three centuries
ago, as a gift of such excellence that only the hand of Venus should
gather it. It might have fallen from the sky a larger and more delicious
strawberry. No one who has tasted it only after it has been plucked
green and subjected to a long voyage in the hold of a vessel, can
conceive its ambrosial flavor when cut ripe from the stem. It is a fresh
revelation to the taste; it almost renews one’s youth.
Some specimens of the _Sarracenias_ or pitcher-plants are interesting,
though when suspended from their baskets they lack their native grace. I
always recall the _Sarracenia_ as I first met it, its purple cups and
rufous-green leaves fringing a deep black pool. Springing from the
sphagnum, cotton-rose, and cranberry tangle of the swamp, it seemed to
possess a conscious life of freshness and of color, callous to November
frost and cold. The thick carpet of cranberry upheld the footstep on the
quaking bog, and every tread spilled the water from the _Sarracenia’s_
brimming cups and leaves. Aflame with scarlet berries, a growth of
black-alder skirted the outer edges of the pool; on the rising ground
beyond, the gray boles and gilded foliage of a beech grove were
illumined by the sinking sun. It was a study for a Ruysdael or a Diaz,
if a Diaz could reproduce the mellow grays and reds of the sphagnum and
the _Sarracenia_. Fontainebleau or the thickets of Bas-Bréau hold no
such pool; it is alone the product of a wild New World swamp.
Of flowers grown for the sake of fragrance alone, or beauty of blossom
and fragrance combined, it is difficult to specify which are the most
desirable—so many are so beautiful. Such stiff, soulless subjects as the
camellia and calla are worthless, and should be thrown out of the
greenhouse—there are too many good things to take their place. A flower
should have a meaning, or a sentiment attached to it; and the camellia
and calla have none; they are frigid even for the grave. Many of the
glaring blues, purples, crimsons, and magentas of the _Cinerarias_, and
some of the agonizing reds of the Chinese primrose are equally to be
avoided as so much rubbish for which the greenhouse has no room. The
common pink begonia, which every one grows because every one else grows
it, should likewise be left out in favor of many other better varieties
of its class. Of roses there can not well be too many; and of these a
well-grown Maréchal Niel or a Gloire de Dijon can scarcely be excelled
for luxuriance, fragrance, and beauty of bloom.
I should hesitate which to pronounce the most satisfactory—the cyclamen
or the lily of the valley, both are so sweet. The latter is much more
easily raised; the former must be sowed from seed yearly; it does not
propagate. The fragrance of the cyclamen is delicious and distinct. But
it is of a variable quantity, some kinds being delightfully scented, and
some odorless. Marie Louise violets—
The violet of March that comes with spring,
should, of course, be generously grown in frames connected with the
greenhouse, to cut from _ad libitum_; there is no other indoor or
outdoor flower to take the place of the violet. Neither can the
carnation be dispensed with, this colored clove among flowers, which
only demands a cool temperature to repay cultivation. And how could one
be without the haunting fragrance of mignonette!
Tulips, hyacinths, and crocus, methinks, should not be raised
indoors—their true place is in the April garden without, to herald the
returning spring. A few of the white, salmon, and vermilion geraniums
are showy and sometimes useful, especially the small double vermilion;
the majority do not compare with many of the fine discarded pelargoniums
which florists complain they can not sell, for the simple reason that
they do not raise them. The fuchsia has some fine and striking forms;
the majority are undesirable. The heliotrope is desirable for its
fragrance, though it withers quickly when cut. The _Freesia_ is an
easily grown and beautiful flower that should be forced as abundantly as
the _Convallaria_ for cutting. _Daphne Indica_ and _odora_ one can not
well do without, and equally valuable for fragrance are the climbing
Madagascar _Stephanotis_ and some of the jasmines.
Among other desirable climbers possessing fragrance should be included
some of the passion flowers and the showy yellow Brazilian _Allamanda_.
A few specimen plants of the fragrant Chinese azalea are always
ornamental, and useful for cutting; some of the rose-colored kinds are
among the gayest of greenhouse flowers, notably the old variety
“Rosette.” A somewhat difficult hot-house plant to grow is _Alstrœmeria
ligtu_, with white and scarlet flowers appearing during February, and
possessing a strong scent of mignonette. The pure waxy white flowers of
the _Eucharis_, or lily of the Amazon, are invaluable for cutting, the
robust bulbous plants being easily raised, and producing their
flower-trusses in great luxuriance. For cutting, the numerous species of
narcissus can scarcely be equaled; from the many beautiful
bunch-flowered varieties of the _tazetta_, and the glorious blooms of
the large trumpeters, to the smaller hoop-petticoat daffodil and golden
campernelle jonquil. A plant seldom seen under glass, but an excellent
plant, notwithstanding, is the common sweet-scented yellow day lily
(_Hemerocallis flava_), than which few flowers are more beautiful either
in the garden or greenhouse. Where one has sufficient space, the garden
lilac may be advantageously grown in the greenhouse, care being taken
not to force it too fast, or the trusses soon droop when cut.
Naturally, no greenhouse is complete without the chrysanthemum, which,
defying the first frosts without, makes us forget the approach of winter
within. I still grow the old-fashioned small-flowered white, yellow, and
maroon pompons. Of recent years hybridizing has produced an innumerable
quantity of large, loose _outré_ forms among the Chinese and Japanese
sections. In many cases this has been done at the sacrifice of bloom and
beauty of color. Dingy brown disks have crept into the flowers; and the
chrysanthemum may be said to have deteriorated rather than improved
under too much cultivation.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
IX.
A BLUE-VIOLET SALAD.
Ce fut un beau souper, ruisselant de surprises.
Les rôtis, cuits à point, n’arrivèrent pas froids:
Par ce beau soir d’hiver, on avait des cerises
Et du Johannisberg, ainsi que chez les rois.
THÉODORE DE BANVILLE, ODES FUNAMBULESQUES.
THE dining-room is large and lofty, having been planned with special
reference to ventilation, spaciousness, and the attractive views it
commands of the copse, the garden, and the rising and the setting sun.
If it is pleasant to dream in the well-furnished library, if it is a
delight to muse and study amid harmonious surroundings, how much more
important it is that the great nursery of a pleasing frame of mind, the
dining-room, should by its inviting surroundings and the care and
intelligence bestowed upon its adjuncts, the kitchen and the
wine-cellar, contribute equally to the felicity of the house and home!
With the exception of the ball-room, the dining-room should be the most
spacious apartment of the house. For is it not the most occupied and
visited? Three times daily, at least, the inmates assemble here; and in
the case of entertainments I observe it is invariably a shrine to which
the guests repair with almost one accord. To be sure, the host and
hostess are not entirely neglected, and the flow of conversation is
never wholly restrained in the drawing-room. Yet I have never failed to
notice, where a large assemblage of invited guests is present in any
house, how powerful a magnet the dining-room possesses. This not only to
the sleek and rubicund among the sterner sex—men who are known for their
fondness for good cheer; but even to the slim and ethereal among the
gentler sex, as well. Pale sylphs whom one would scarcely suspect
capable of an accomplished play of a knife and fork, staid matrons,
blooming rosebuds, and elderly dames, all seem no less fascinated with
the charms of the dining-room. It is the source and dispensator of joy
when its appointments are perfect—the one room of all rooms of the house
which may not be abolished.
How may I enjoy the other portions of my house if the dinner be poorly
served and the environments amid which it is partaken be dismal or
unattractive? The dinner should be the diapason to pitch one in the
right key for the evening, whether it be the perusal of a favorite
author, a moonlight stroll, a ball, or a symposium with one’s friends.
Carlyle’s dining-room, I venture to say, was a gloomy one; or his cook,
lacking a happy turn for an _entrée_, served him with ponderous _pièces
de résistance_, thereby the more intensifying his natural acerbity and
want of geniality. Is the German invariably happy, overflowing with
_Gemüthlichkeit_? He has three hundred and sixty-five soups, one for
every day in the year. Is the Frenchman proverbially polite and
effervescent? His delicate _ragoûts_ and fragrant Bordeaux are a
constant tonic to his spirits. “Repose is as much the result of a
well-organized digestion as of a quiet mind,” observes the axiomatic and
irrefutable author of the 366 Menus. Thrice blessèd he who has a good
conscience and a good cook. Your conscience may be as clear as a
mountain brook, however, but without a good digestion life becomes a
weariness.
A pleasant dining-room and a well-appointed kitchen, therefore, become
among the most important factors in the happiness of the household—the
best means of defeating that _ennui_ which, according to Schopenhauer,
fills the moiety of a man’s life. The Savarins, the La Reynières, and
the Baron Brisses can never be too many. “I regard the discovery of a
new dish,” said the late Henrion de Pensey, the magistrate (according to
M. Royer Collard), of whom regenerated France has most reason to be
proud, “as a far more interesting event than the discovery of a star,
for we always have stars enough, but we can never have too many dishes;
and I shall not regard the sciences as sufficiently honored or
adequately represented among us until I see a cook in the first class of
the Institute.”
They manage these things better in France, though the art of gastronomy
of late years has advanced as rapidly in this country, perhaps, as any
of its sister arts. It is no longer a burden to approach the
dinner-table; and while we may not have transposed the maxim that
Harpagon deemed so noble, nevertheless, it may be affirmed, in the
strict sense of the expression, that we no longer “eat to live.” For is
not this among the highest of arts—a sauce “that, when properly
prepared, will enable one to eat an elephant?” as Grimod de la Reynière
observes in the Almanach des Gourmands. With an abundant supply of herbs
and flavorings, a hygienic appreciation of their virtues, and a refined,
discriminating taste, all is possible. The “palate is flattered” and the
stomach is not fatigued. If the cook or the person who employs him would
only carry out the advice the Almanach prescribes, in order that the
cook’s palate may retain its exquisite sensibility, and the trained
papillæ of his tongue forever command their cunning!
These fine savors, these subtle aromas of a delicious dish, delicate as
the fragrance of a wild flower, and companions of the liquid essences of
the Gironde, the Côte d’Or, the Marne, and the Rheingau—when conceived
and executed by a true priest or priestess of the range, how they
refresh the jaded spirits and turn the lowering winter sky into _couleur
de rose_! It remained for a woman, the late Mrs. Mary Booth, to give to
posterity the most delicious epigram that has yet been uttered regarding
dinners and dinner-giving: “A successful dinner is the best thing which
the world can do in the pursuit of pleasure. It is the apotheosis of the
present, and the present moment is all we can call our own.” Neither let
us forget for a single instant, where dinner-giving is concerned, the
golden maxim of Baron Brisse: “A host whose guest has had to ask for
anything is a dishonored man!”
Let the dinner be served in a well-lighted, spacious, and pleasantly
furnished room; let the chairs be easy, the guests not less than eight
nor more than ten (_les dîners fins se font en petit comité_), the linen
spotless, the service faultless. Let the wines not exceed four—a light
hock, redolent of the fruit of the Riesling; a glass or two of
Montepulciano or of Pichon-Longueville, two _flûtes_ of half dry
champagne (cider rather than “_brût_”) or sparkling dry Saint-Péray; and
for the after-taste—the last taste of sweets—the perfumed sunshine of
Sauternes, Lafaurie, or La Tour Blanche of a well-succeeded year, iced
to snow. “A glass of wine,” Richard Sheridan used to say, “would
encourage the bright thought to come; and then it was right to take
another to reward it for coming.” Let the courses not exceed seven,
including the salad; let the room be well ventilated; the flowers mildly
stimulating rather than cloying in their fragrance; let the repast not
exceed two and a half hours in duration—and, for the present at least,
we are—
Notes in that great symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres.
The senseless practice of decanting wine can not be too strongly
condemned. A delicate wine seems never the same as when poured from the
bottle in which it has ripened and in which it has concentrated its
odors. The practice, moreover, is incongruous; for even he who decants
his “claret” would not think of needlessly dissipating the bouquet of
his hock. As for the matter of sediment being avoided by decanting,
decanted wines are invariably seen in a clouded condition, their bloom
having been brushed off by the very process of decanting. By laying all
bottles on their side, with the label uppermost, while they remain in
the repose of the cellar, and then placing them upright a day or a few
hours before they are required, the question of sediment is at once
disposed of. Then, if the wine be carefully poured, label upward, it
wells forth as limpid as a woodland spring.
Equally to be censured is the increasing custom of serving wine in
colored glasses—a fashion inaugurated by the gentler sex in order to add
a supposititious life to the table. Apart from the great mistake of thus
masking the color of the wine itself, and thereby impairing its
attractiveness to the eye, there is no color produced by the most
cunning artificer in glass which approaches the colors extracted from
the skin of the grapes themselves.
What green Bohemian glass may equal in hue this golden green of
Liebfrauenmilch that so enhances the flavor of these speckled trout
which but yesterday were swimming amid the waving water-cresses of the
stream?
Or shall I obliterate the lovely color of Bordeaux which, captivating
the sense of seeing, thus additionally heightens through the imagination
the exquisite bouquet and flavor of the grand growths of the Médoc?
Disguised in an opaque receptacle, how may I enjoy the liquid gold of
Sauternes or the deep violets and purples which dance and gleam in a
glass of Côte Rôtie? Yet more than clear crystal is required in the
ideal wine-glass. The most delicious nectar loses half its virtues if
drunk from a thick glass or a sharp, rough rim, as the foaming juice of
Champagne is deprived of its greatest charm—its bewitching, mantling
life—when served in the flat tumbler that deadens its sparkle and its
bead.
It was not without just reason that Boileau declared:
On est savant quand on boit bien;
Qui ne sait boire ne sait rien.
Who drinketh well his wisdom shows;
Who knows not drinking nothing knows.
And Jean le Houx, in the dedication of his sparkling Vaux de
Vire—anacreontics which are unique in the languages—asserts that his
best verses were produced by drinking good wine, while inferior wine was
responsible for the poorest. It would be interesting to know what
special wines inspired the incomparable tribute to his nose—
... Duquel la couleur richement particippe
Du rouge et violet,
or whether it was white or red wine that drew forth the frolicsome
stanzas addressed to Magdaleine.
Le Houx deserves to be classed among the great philosophers. It is to be
regretted, however, that his philosophy did not extend to dining as well
as wining—though, for that matter, the eight little 18mo volumes of the
Almanach des Gourmands,[11] justly classed by Monselet among the great
forgotten books, leave nothing to be desired on the subject of epicurism
in its most infinitesimal and far-extending details. The humor and
_verve_ are exquisite, while La Reynière’s style might come under the
definition of Remy Belleau-“well-coupled and properly sewn words, graces
and favors of a well-chosen subject, and I do not know what happy chance
(_et ne sçay quel heur_), which truly accompanies those who write well.”
Only, the Almanach is in prose. With all due regard for Berchoux and his
poem in four cantos, La Gastronomie, the editions of which are almost as
numerous as the stars in the Milky Way, the French genius is yet to
appear who may do full justice in verse to the pleasures of the table.
Footnote 11:
Almanach des Gourmands. Servant de Guide dans les Moyens de Faire
Excellente Chère; Par un Viel Amateur. Troisième Édition. A Paris
1804-1812.
Le Houx, how fine his touch! and how melodiously he plays upon all the
strings of the œnologistic harp!
I am brave as a Cæsar in wars where they fight
With a glass in the left hand and jug in the right.
Let me rather be riddled by drinking my fill
Than by those cruel balls that so suddenly kill!
’Tis the clashing of bottles to which I incline;
And the pipes and the rundlets, all full of red wine,
Are my cannon of siege, which are aimed without fault
At the thirst, the true fortress I mean to assault.
———————
’Tis far better in tumbler to shelter one’s nose,
Where ’tis safer than in a war-helmet from blows.
Better leader than trumpet or banner is sign
Of the ivy and yew bush that show where there’s wine.
It is better by fireside to drink muscadel
Than to go on a rampart to mount sentinel.
I would rather the tavern attend without fail
Than I’d follow my captain the breach to assail.
All excesses, however, I hate and disclaim,
Not a toper by nature, but only in name.
Jolly wine, bringing laughter and friendly carouse,
I have promised, and ever will pay you my vows.[12]
Footnote 12:
Translation of J. P. Muirhead, M. A.
And in another of his mirthful, vinous phantasies:
To flee from my sadness, yet stay in one place,
I take horn and staff, and I practice the chase.
Catch, catch!
Drink, drink!
Hip, hip!
Catch, catch!
Keep watch
Lest it slip!
My game is the thirst, which I don’t want to catch.
But only to make it decamp with dispatch.
The goblet’s my bugle, which splendidly sounds
When I lustily blow; the bottle’s my hounds.
The table’s my forest and hunting-field green
When close set with covers for friends and me seen.
I blow on my bugle, and, loud though he cry,
Thirst soon will break cover, or else he must die.
O sweet-sounding bugle, mouth-instrument dear!
This pastime is charming when bedtime is near.
Catch, catch!
Drink, drink!
Hip, hip!
Catch, catch!
Keep watch
Lest it slip![13]
Footnote 13:
Translation of J. P. Muirhead, M. A.
But Le Houx’s charming eulogies are by no means confined to wine. Cider,
among the most refreshing and prophylactic of summer beverages when well
made, evokes almost equally the playful strains of his lyre. Not less
renowned than the juice of the apple of Devonshire is the potent apple
juice of Normandy, and even in his reference to this there constantly
occurs the oft-repeated refrain:
Drinking is sweeter than a kiss to me.
The true _raison d’être_ of the Vaux de Vire, it may be stated, was a
jealous wife. Since the time of Le Houx there have been other jealous
spouses that have driven their husbands to the bottle or to something
worse; but none have done so with such smiling effect as the wife of the
wine-loving lawyer-poet of Vire.
With the wine at the proper temperature (and this point it is the
bounden duty of the host to personally superintend), a few well-prepared
courses partaken of with congenial friends amid pleasant surroundings
will prove far more agreeable and leave more grateful remembrances than
the most elaborate banquet. In dining, more than in anything else,
quality rather than quantity paves the way to happiness. The _petit_,
and not the _grand dîner_ is the grace of the table. Like many of the
accidental things of life—the chance meeting, the suddenly conceived
excursion, the unexpected visit from out-of-town friends—it is often the
impromptu repast which inspires the most delightful souvenirs.
It was years ago, though I remember it as distinctly as if it were
yesterday, when I found my friend St. Ange, after an absence of many
months, ensconced in the library, La Gastronomie in one hand and the
epicurean epigrams of Martial in the other.
A Julienne soup, some smelt with a tartare sauce, sheep’s tongues _à la
Jardinière_, quail, and an endive salad were to compose the dinner. My
guest’s rosy face took on an added luster. His eyes brightened
perceptibly at the mention of the quail.
“Let me prepare them!” he exclaimed. “I will show you how to make a
_salmis_ of quail that is not down in the cook-books; it is composed as
you would blend and form an exquisite perfume:
Thy crown of roses or of spikenard be;
A crown of thrushes is the crown for me.[14]
I term it a _salmis à la bourgeois gentilhomme_; like Molière’s
_comédie-ballet_, it is piquant and full of delightful surprises. Give
me the quail, the shallots, the truffles, the mushrooms, and you will
never forget me!”
Footnote 14:
Martial. Elphinston’s translation.
There were four larded quails, freshly roasted.
He took a piece of unsalted butter the size of an egg, placed it in the
porcelain sauce-pan, and allowed it to liquefy. When it began to bubble,
he put in two shallots and two sprigs of parsley finely minced, stirring
until browned, adding a teaspoonful of sifted flour. When well
incorporated, he supplemented this with two cupfuls of bouillon, a pinch
of salt, and for the _bouquet garni_ a third of a bay-leaf, two cloves,
a small piece of cinnamon, a pinch of thyme, a dash of allspice and the
merest trifle of nutmeg. Next he added two sliced truffles of Périgord,
the juice of a can of button mushrooms, a tablespoonful of cognac, a
tablespoonful of water, and a wine-glass each of Chablis and St. Julien.
His face glowed, his hazel eyes sparkled, and every little while he
tasted of the savory _liaison_.
After pouring in the wine, he allowed the sauce to boil until reduced to
the desired consistency. The can of mushrooms was then added; and about
ten minutes before serving, one of the quail was permitted to simmer in
the perfumed sauce. Immediately previous to placing the _salmis_ in the
chafing-dish, and decorating it with _croutons_, he dropped in a
pepper-corn and stirred briskly.
“_‘Voilà qui est bien;’ c’est parfait, mon cher!_” he said with a smile;
“_le salmis a bien réussi!_
“I always use a good many herbs and seasonings,” he continued, “though I
employ them only in very small quantities. By using them, infinite
variety of flavorings may be produced, and they are, moreover, a great
tonic to the stomach if dealt out by a judicious hand. Hence the
superiority of good French cooking; variety is the spice of digestion.
Indeed, pleasing savors or sapid impressions usually exert the greatest
influence upon the function of digestion. If they are good and
agreeable, the secretion of the gastric juice is abundant, mastication
is prolonged, deglutition and chylification are easy and rapid. If they
are bad or repugnant, mastication becomes a labor, deglutition
difficult, and a distressed feeling is the inevitable result.
“Perfection in cooking consists in rendering all such substances as may
be utilized for food as agreeable to the taste as they are easy to
digest. The cook, therefore, besides possessing a palate of extreme
delicacy, should be thoroughly acquainted with the hygienic properties
of all the herbs and seasonings he employs, and this equally with
reference to their effect upon the stomach as with regard to their
pleasing impression upon the organ of taste. All spices and kindred
stimulants should be used with the utmost tact and discrimination.
“But the pleasures that flit about the well-appointed table—the appetite
which is, after all, the best of sauces and that leads to good digestion
and consequent health and enjoyment of the other pleasures of
life—depend upon more than the _chef_ and the _cuisine_. Back of the
most seductive dish and piquant sauce, there remains the capacity to
enjoy them, which is alone to be attained in its fullest measure by
regular habits (habits as regular, at least, as rational pleasure and
recreation will allow); and that greatest and purest of tonics and
prophylactics—exercise in the open air.”
In due time the _entrée_ was partaken of. The impromptu _chef_ had upset
the kitchen from casserole to _pot-au-feu_, but his _salmis_ was worthy
of Carème.
There was a great bunch of double violets on the table, the lovely dark
blue variety (_Viola odoratissima fl. pl._) with the short stems,
freshly plucked from the violet frame of the garden, and the room was
scented by their delicious breath.
A bowl of broad-leaved Batavian endive blanched to a nicety and alluring
as a siren’s smile was placed upon the table. I almost fancied it was
smiling at the violets. A blue-violet salad, by all means! there are
violets, and to spare.
On a separate dish there was a little minced celery, parsley, and
chives. Four heaping salad-spoonfuls of olive oil were poured upon the
herbs, with a dessertspoonful of white-wine vinegar (the best in the
world comes from Orléans, France), the necessary salt and white pepper,
and a tablespoonful of Bordeaux. The petals of two dozen violets were
detached from the stems, and two thirds of them were incorporated with
the dressing. The dressing being thoroughly mixed with the endive, the
remaining flower petals were sprinkled over the salad and a half-dozen
whole violets placed in the center.
The lovely blue sapphires glowed upon the white bosom of the endive! It
was the true sequence of the _salmis_.
A white-labeled bottle, capsuled Yquem, and the cork branded “Lur
Saluces,” was served with the salad. You note the subtle aroma of
pine-apple and fragrance of flower ottos with the detonation of the
cork—the fine vintages of Yquem have a pronounced _Ananassa_ flavor and
bouquet that steeps the palate with its richness and scents the
surrounding atmosphere.
Now try your blue-violet salad.
Is it fragrant? is it cool? is it delicious? is it divine?
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
X.
FOOTSTEPS OF SPRING.
... The yong Sunn
Hath in the Ramm his halvè cours yrunn.
CHAUCER.
In the earlier year when the chill winds blow
The breath of buds with the breath of snow,
And the climbing sap like a spirit passes
Through trunks unscreened from the noonday glow,
O’er the wind-frayed weeds and the withered grasses
And the leaves that linger in layered masses,
March, the Master of Hounds, doth go
To hunt the hills and the wet morasses.
C. H. LÜDERS.
MY books, my flowers, and my colorful interior surroundings do much to
relieve the monotony of the long winter months. Not until _Aries_
appears for his accustomed charge upon the spring do I yearn intently
for its advent. Then the days seem the longest—the tedious days of
waiting; the longest days, which are to come, will be the shortest. For
the days may not be measured by the length, but by the flight of the
hours and the beauty they bring; the sun and the shadows shorten the
longest day.
Does not a restlessness come to man with the ascending sap in the trees,
when he likewise would cast off the inertia that has possessed him, and
respond to the magical touch of the sun? There is much that is beautiful
in the mythopœic representation of the seasons. All winter, says the
legend, the sweet sunshine is chased by the relentless storm, now hiding
beneath the clouds, now below the hills, showing herself for a moment
merely to flee again. But, finally becoming bolder, the Sunshine
advances to meet the Storm, who, captivated by her beauty, woos her as
he pursues her, and wins her for his bride. Then is there great
rejoicing upon the earth, and from their union are born plants which
spring from its surface and spangle it with flowers. But every autumn
the Storm begins to frown anew, the Sunshine flees from him, and the
pursuit begins again.
Is not the sunshine, more than anything else, the prelude to spring? How
it sifts and permeates through the windows into one’s very being, this
first March sunshine! Looked at from within it is already spring
without, so luminous the atmosphere and so soft the shadows. Perfectly
aware am I that it may not continue and that the storm will cause the
sunlight to hide itself again, just as it has done so often before when
it merely gleamed for a moment from the edge of the cloud. Even now the
fickle sun sinks behind a sharp dark band in the west. The mole must
retreat to his burrow; to-morrow the storm and the snow! At least the
flowers will be shielded from the chilling blasts, and Nature work her
own reward. Still must the north wind beat ere the south breeze may
blow. But how, while it lasts, the sunlight warms where it falls,
drawing a scarlet aureole from the maple, setting the snow-banks free,
and liberating the ice-locked streams.
Every morning now must the Sun rise earlier to fulfill his task. The
buds of a million forests long for his touch, hillsides of spring beauty
and violets are eager for his approach, the flowers in every meadow and
woodland are awaiting his alchemy. Already the willow catkins have
stirred at his caress. The shrubby dogwood has felt his force, and
kindles into flame. The wands of the golden willow are gilded anew; the
red horn of the great aroid is peering from the mold.
Think of his task! To clear the earth of its coverlet of snow and
clarify the streams; to burst the chrysalis and put forth the leaves; to
push up the grass blades and perfume the flowers; to breathe upon and
resuscitate all the dormant world of vegetable and animal life. The
leaflets upon leaflets and fern fronds upon fern fronds the sunshine
must unfold; the acres of grain and the clover fields it must fall upon;
the myriad fruits it must ripen!
Lo! how marvelous the task; a smile and a summons for all!
Down in the hollows of the wood where the wind-flowers grow, under the
meadow-grasses where the blue flag and lily bulbs wait, below the waters
to bid the marsh marigolds and arrowheads rise, into the farthest swamps
where the orchid hides, in waste places where tares and teazles crowd,
on countless hillsides and in countless valleys must the sunbeams
penetrate and quicken to awakened life. And all this gradually, little
by little, day by day, hour by hour, bringing forth each blossom at its
appointed time, giving the butterfly his wings, providing the bee his
sustenance. What is there here on earth to compare with the miracle of
returning spring, the labor and strength of the Sun? The power of
Hercules a trillion fold is concentrated in the rays that are loosing
the fetters of the streams to-day. Lo! the marvel of the renascent year,
when Earth renews her youth and Nature is born again.
The March days pass, and more and more is the Sun’s strength felt. His
vassals, the showers and the south winds, he calls to aid him in his
task; and at once the grasses and larches turn green and arbutus and
bloodroot are fanned into bloom. A mile away the sunshine lights the
hills; a league away it burnishes and warms the river. Daily the beams
stream upon the earth and reveal fresh treasures. Swiftly a shadow
steals along the hills. The tempered April rain falls from the gray
April sky. Responsive, the sward assumes a brighter green, the daffodil
a richer gold. The sap mounts to the topmost branches and penetrates the
minutest twigs. Day by day the naked sprays are feathered by the pushing
buds. A scarf of green is flung across the copse. The shadblow silvers
the woods, columbine and cranesbill throng the slopes, and hepatica and
dog-tooth violet nod to the quickening breeze of spring.
The spring days pass, but the miracle remains; hourly a new marvel is
wrought by the sunlight and the shower. The oriole appears and orchards
burst into bloom; the wood-thrush sings and the dogwood and wild thorn
join the flowering pageant. The warm perfumed breath of the new year
floats upon the air—the breath of flower and grass and expanding bud.
Nature’s color-box opens anew; her brush is laid upon each petal with
what consummate address and variety!—pink upon the petals of the peach,
a flush on the cheek of the apple bloom, a gloss of gold upon the
buttercup. The Trillium thrusts up its snowy triangles, the gold-thread
its white stars, and banks become purple with violets. Tiny polypody and
oak-fern replume the stumps and bowlders. From the frost-smitten meadows
and waste places rise fresh pennants of green. Unfurled is the flag of
spring. And the hues and odors that are still in embryo and the sunshine
is preparing—all the sweets of June and the infinite beauties of
midsummer, the wealth of the roses, the clover bloom, the labyrinthine
tangle of wild flowers, even to the asters and colored leaf of autumn.
The foam and surge of the apple bloom are but a wave of the color and
fragrance that is to be. Æons ago the March sunlight fell upon the
flowers and primeval nature. Vegetation welcomed it then as it welcomes
it now. Next year and the next year and centuries hence will it fall
upon the earth and work out the miracle of spring. Is it not new and
ever beautiful, this vernal resurrection? That we, too, possessed this
subtle alchemy and might extract this elixir from the April sun!
How the wings of the doves glisten and mirror the rays as I watch them
floating by my windows! I love my flock of doves—the dove is so
associated with the relentment of the elements and the olive leaf of
spring. A monotonous life they lead in their diurnal circlings round the
barn and their self-same route over their circumscribed domain—a
monotonous life, at least, it appears to the observer, while probably
the very reverse to them. Every load of grain which comes to the
neighboring barns they may note from their vantage-ground and meditate
upon its special virtues. The droppings of the barley now being stored
in yonder granary undoubtedly form as weighty a subject to them as the
fluctuations in the market do to the maltster himself. Then the
incertitude which must attend the obtaining of their supply of food
naturally furnishes them with a constant source of speculation; besides,
who but they themselves may know what petty bickerings and jealousies
form the daily routine of their inner life? The jaunty leader of the
flock who curves his iris neck so proudly may be the humblest of
hen-pecked fathers in the privacy of his home; and what appears to be
the approving cooings of devoted dames may be only a prosaic homily on
the part of his exacting wives.
My flock of doves seem alway idling and courting the sunbeam. Now,
apparently, they are drifting aimlessly upon the air; again they veer
suddenly, to turn a gleaming wing for me to admire. With what
indescribable grace the circling forms hover over the eaves after each
of their tours of investigation, the swiftly fanning wings seeming to
cease their motion simultaneously as the flock alights, and once more
preens its iris in the sun. Indecision is a characteristic of my flock
of doves—always uncertain of the direction they would take, and
apparently never satisfied for more than a passing moment with their
surroundings. No sooner have they flown to the meadow beyond the copse
than they are back again; and scarcely have they perched upon the roof
or discovered fresh pickings ere they take flight in another direction,
to return as quickly. Is it that they, like the rest of us, are never
content, and that much must have more? I should like to quote them a
lyric from John Wilbye’s Second Set of Madrigals, which possibly they
may not have heard:
I live, and yet methinks I do not breathe;
I thirst and drink, I drink and thirst again;
I sleep, and yet do dream I am awake;
I hope for that I have; I have and want;
I sing and sigh; I love and hate at once.
Oh tell me, restless soul, what uncouth jar
Doth cause in store such want, in peace such war?
RISPOSTA.
There is a jewel which no Indian mines
Can buy, no chymic art can counterfeit;
It makes men rich in greatest poverty,
Makes water wine, turns wooden cups to gold,
The homely whistle to sweet music’s strain:
Seldom it comes, to few from heaven sent,
That much in little, all in naught—Content.[15]
Footnote 15:
The student of French poetical literature will notice the marked
resemblance in expression of a portion of this lovely lyric of
fourteen lines and the following prettily turned _quatorzain_ by a
singer of the sixteenth century:
Ie vis, ie meurs: ie me brule & me noye,
I’ay chaut estreme en endurant froidure:
La vie m’est & trop molle & trop dure.
I’ay grans ennuis entremeslez de ioye:
Tout à un coup ie ris & ie larmoye,
Et en plaisir maint grief tourment i ’endure:
Mon bien s’en va, & à iamais il dure:
Tout en un coup ie seiche & ie verdoye.
Ainsi Amour inconstamment me meine:
Et quand ie pense auoir plus de douleur,
Sans y penser ie me treuue hors de peine.
Puis quand ie croy ma ioye estre certeine,
Et estre au haut de mon desiré heur,
Il me remet en mon premier malheur.
ŒUURES DE LOUIZE LABÉ LIONNOIZE. A Lion par Ian de Tournes, M.D.LVI.
Auec Priuilege du Roy.
The first of the migratory flocks have come. Is it the robins or the
bluebirds first, or the omnipresent song-sparrow scattering his notes
like a shower? Warm as the scarlet of his wings is the greeting of the
starling from his haven in the reeds; and ah! how sweet the carol of the
meadow-lark from the distant fields. Again I hear the warble which the
blackbird dropped when flying over the autumnal stubbles, only it has a
cheeriness that is alone brought forth by sunshine and the lengthening
days. Little flutings and grace notes rise from sheltered thickets and
sunny hollows—assemblages of snow-birds, Canada sparrows, and red-polls
practicing their _Fruehlingslied_. The white-throated sparrow’s silver
strain I hear on every side, the very beat of the spring-tide and song
of the sunshine. Even the voice of the crow has a softer tone. From my
study windows I watch the sable hosts returning to their roost in the
distant wood. I see them slowly filing by during the winter, at the
appointed hour, but less numerously, and seldom audibly. Now they voice
their passage; their shadows cast a sound. From time immemorial they
have occupied a roost in the same wood, their numbers apparently neither
increasing nor diminishing. The first squads fly over early in the
evening, re-enforcements arriving continually until dusk. They come from
all directions, the total assemblage numbering perhaps a thousand. Above
the tree-tops, for half an hour before dark, there ascends a weird
chorus of evening, composed of every shade of corvine _basso_, and
_basso profondo_. Borne from afar on the still evening air, the hoarse
notes come to me mellowed and subdued—a fitting _ave_ of the darkening
day.
Later, the first swallow races by, with the first moth in his bill,
urged on the wider wings of the south wind—the first swallows, rather;
for there is not only one but a score coursing through the ether,
exultant in the freedom of existence. Do they, indeed, drop from the sky
some bland spring morning—spirits of dead children revisiting their
homes—as the fanciful Roman legend has it? How swiftly they cleave the
air with their forked tail and sickle-shaped wings! We marvel at the
soaring of the hawk, balancing himself in an ever-widening and ascending
circle, ever tracing the curve of beauty. We wonder at the agility of
the humming-bird, and his power of suspension in mid-air over a flower.
But the hawk barely flaps a pinion, sustained through some inexplicable
agency in overcoming the natural force of gravity; and the humming-bird
every little while rests from the friction of the air. Is not the
perpetual flight of the swallow, his unceasing motion and incessant
turning upon himself a greater wonder?
I stand on the margin of the stream just before an impending shower,
when a concourse of hirundines is intent upon the capture of its prey.
The surface is dimpled by the constant rising of feeding trout, and
brushed every now and then by a bird drinking on the wing. It is a
favorite haunt of both fly-catchers and swallows, lured by the rich
insect fauna that congregate above the still expanse of water, the
ephemerina dancing their joyous dance of an hour. The stream is scarcely
a rod and a half wide. It is almost overarched with bushes and trees,
and abounds with curves. There are at least forty swallows hawking over
it, all chasing above the glassy surface, ceaselessly coming and going,
swift as missiles sprung from a sling. Yet not a catkin of the alder
tangle or blade of the rushes is so much as grazed by a wing; not a
barbule of one bird ruffled by the feather of another, amid all their
lightning turns and curvatures. It is the same in their chase over a
field when attracted close to the earth by insects. It is the same in
their coursing through the air which I see through my windows, only they
have but their fellows, and no other objects to avoid. Yet even then
their flight is a perpetual wonder.
Sacred to the _penates_ the swallow was rightly held; it were a Vandal
who would harm them. Beloved wherever they roam the sky, Procne has,
nevertheless, been comparatively neglected by the Muse, while Philomela
has received the greater homage. Is not the swallow’s warble sweet,
associated as it is not only with the swallow’s beauty, but with our
very houses and barns and the blue sky that bends above them? Best known
of all individual “pursuers of the sun” is the bird mentioned in the
fifth stanza of the Elegy:
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed;
and his companion of the Winter’s Tale, wheeling between daffodils and
violets. Keats’s line is among the most expressive that have been
written on the bird:
Swallows obeying the south summer’s call.
Hood’s simile is also fine:
Summer is gone on swallow’s wings.
Gay, in The Shepherd’s Walk, has the swallow do graceful duty as a
weather-prophet:
When swallows fleet soar high and sport in air,
He told us that the welkin would be clear.
Athenæus has referred as happily to the bird as any of the old Greek
poets in a fragment, The Song of the Swallow:
The swallow is come, she is come to bring
The laughing hours of the blithesome spring—
The youth of the year and its sunshine bright—
With her back all dark and her breast all white.
From the Fables of Lessing I learn that the swallow was originally as
harmonious and melodious a songster as the nightingale, until, becoming
wearied of dwelling in lonely thickets to be heard and admired only by
peasants and shepherds, she forsook her humble friends and took flight
to the town. But, in the mad rush of the city, men found no time to
listen to her heavenly lay, forgetting which, by and by, instead of
singing she learned to build.
I recall no reference to the swallow, however, comparable to Charles
Tennyson Turner’s, in one of his many lovely sonnets, Wind on the Corn.
Not only the swallow himself is there, wheeling and curveting in all his
buoyant grace, but the wind which accelerates his speed, and the
rippling wheat field he loves to woo. The sonnet must be read in its
entirety, and to recall it calls for no apology; it becomes the more
beautiful the more frequently it is read:
Full often as I rove by path or stile
To watch the harvest ripening in the vale,
Slowly and sweetly, like a growing smile—
A smile that ends in laughter—the quick gale
Upon the breadths of gold-green wheat descends;
While still the swallow, with unbaffled grace,
About his viewless quarry dips and bends—
And all the fine excitement of the chase
Lies in the hunter’s beauty; in the eclipse
Of that brief shadow how the barley’s beard
Tilts at the passing gloom, and wild rose dips
Among the white-tops in the ditches reared;
And hedgerow’s flowery breast of lacework stirs
Faintly in that full wind that rocks the outstanding firs.
Truly Boileau was right in his affirmation—a faultless sonnet is in
itself worth a long poem; and Asselineau—fine sonnets, like all
beautiful things in this world, are without price. No less beautiful is
Turner’s companion sonnet, A Summer Twilight—an _intaglio_ cut in green
jade—where the bat’s flitting shadow, instead of the swallow’s flashing
wing, imparts life and motion to the scene.
The first lady-bugs, called forth by the grateful warmth, have left
their hibernacle. The first wasps and blue-bottle flies are buzzing and
bumping against the south window panes. I catch the first _tremolo_ of
the toads and piercing treble of the _hylodes_.
My first green bullfrog, too, “whom the Muses have ordained to sing for
aye.” Again I hear his grand diapason, just as I heard it last year and
every year before as long as I can remember. Apparently from the same
place in the marsh, amid the pond-weeds and water-plantains, where he
suns himself and dozes by day, and launches his _maestoso_ at night. I
wonder if it is really the same frog, with his great yellow ears and
blinking eyes, and if ever he grows old? It is the old voice from the
old place, more powerful and sonorous than the voices of his fellows.
What a fine time he has of it—slumbering in the ooze throughout the
winter, while I am shaking with the cold; cool and comfortable
throughout the summer, when I am sweltering with the heat; with nothing
to do but bask and bathe, or thrust out his long tongue for the flies
that are foolish enough to think him asleep. I heard him just two days
earlier this year than last, May 14, ten days later than the first
swallow to make his presence known. It is said he must thrice put on his
spectacles ere he permanently deserts his couch in the mire—i.e., look
through the ice three times before he rises with triumphant song. He is
invariably the latest of the spring choristers, and at once his
magnificent _basso_ completes the vernal pastoral.
I wish I might obtain the recipe of his spring bitters. Is it
water-cresses or water-plantain? It is evident he grows younger with
advancing years. “The croaking of frogs,” said Martin Luther, “edifies
nothing at all; it is mere sophistry and fruitless.” But, unlike the
frog, Luther did not relish a Diet of Worms; and I am not sure that the
woodcuts of the old reformer do not resemble the head of my friend of
the swamp, whose melody floats so serenely through the summer dusks.
Horace, generally correct, was wrong with respect to the frog:
... Ranæque palustres
Avertunt somnos.
The frog’s is a somnolent voice if heard at a proper distance. One
should not expect harmony from wind instruments in the first row of the
orchestra chairs. If one’s frogs annoy one, he should remove his swamp
or his house. The orchestra of Nature calls for its bassoon and its
cymbals—the bullfrog and the cicada.
A new poet has recently appeared in the Dominion. Among his many poems
of pronounced freshness and beauty is one on the frog—more strictly
speaking, five poems, for the panegyric consists of five connected
sonnets. Not alone does this graceful lyrist and keen interpreter of
Nature place the frog as the grand diurnal musician of spring, but he
accords him a no less exalted place as a soothing minstrel of the
estival night. I should be guilty of ingratitude to my resonant friend
of the swamp did I not append the fourth sonnet of the musical quintet:
And when day passed and over heaven’s height,
Thin with the many stars and cool with dew,
The fingers of the deep hours slowly drew
The wonder of the ever-healing night,
No grief or loneliness or rapt delight
Or weight of silence ever brought to you
Slumber or rest; only your voices grew
More high and solemn; slowly, with hushed flight,
Ye saw the echoing hours go by, long-drawn,
Nor ever stirred, watching with fathomless eyes
And with your countless clear antiphonies
Filling the earth and heaven, even till dawn,
Last risen, found you with its first pale gleam,
Still with soft throats unaltered in your dream.[16]
Footnote 16:
Among the Millet, and other Poems. By Archibald Lampman. Ottawa: J.
Durie and Son. 1888. Pp. 151.
Clearly Horace was at fault. The Greeks thought better of the musical
piper of the marsh; but it has remained for the Canadian poet to chant
more sweetly of him than Theocritus and Aristophanes.
After the treble of the _hylodes_, suddenly the first bee hums by in
quest of the awaiting flower. The first butterfly flutters past, the
first night-hawk booms, the first bat hunts against the crimson
afterglow, and, behold! it is spring. “The weather of the _Renouveau_,”
old Ronsard hymned it—the miracle of the sunshine, the south wind, and
the shower.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
XI.
MAGICIANS OF THE SHELVES.
I.
Around the hardest cark and toil lies the imaginative world of the
poets and romancists, and thither we sometimes escape to snatch a
mouthful of serener air.—ALEXANDER SMITH, DREAMTHORP.
Let that which I borrow be survaied, and then tell me whether I have
made good choice of ornaments to beautify and set forth the
invention.... I number not my borrowings, but I weigh them. And if I
would have made their number to prevaile, I would have had twice as
many.—MONTAIGNE, OF BOOKES.
IF my rugs and porcelains are a study and delight in color, what shall I
say of my books, these manifold colors and hues of the mind that rejoice
the inward eye? When what François de Sales terms a “dryness of soul”
comes over me, are not the genii of the library alway ready to instruct
and charm? Not a myth, but a reality is the fabled lamp of Aladdin,
luminous still on many an immortal author’s page.
“_Un bon feu, des livres, et des plumes, que de ressources contre
l’ennui!_” exclaims De Maistre. With a well-chosen library, even
sickness loses its sting, and often a good book may prove a more
efficient remedial agent than a physician’s draught. Somewhere among the
volumes there exists a balm for nearly every ill—books to stimulate and
books to soothe, books for instruction and books for _ennui_. Every mood
of the mind should be reflected from the library shelves, just as Bacon
holds it that in the royal ordering of gardens there ought to be gardens
for every month in the year. Books there should be in abundance that may
be read again and again; books that may be taken in installments, every
page of each one of which is a golden page; books to pore over as a
miser conns his gold; books to be dipped into, or looked at “with
half-shut eyes.” From each page or each chapter of a good book there
should be extracted a beautiful thought, as the wind in passing through
a wood draws from each tree a musical note. That we possessed the memory
of Scheherazade and could remember the books we have read!
No doubt, books are the great instructors, though Gautier’s idea is an
excellent one, that each college possess a well-equipped ship to make
the voyage around the world to read the universal book, the best written
book of all. Unfortunately, every one may not sail round the world, but
very many of us must be content, like De Maistre, with a voyage around
our room. And wise, far-seeing Pascal long ago told us that nearly all
our troubles arose from our not knowing how to remain in our own room.
Perhaps, on the whole, this is among the pleasantest ways of journeying.
You have but to step on board one of the numerous crafts in waiting, and
with no further trouble than that of turning over the pages, set sail
for any port of the universe. All this with a merely nominal price for
passage, and relieved of every discomfort of travel.
May I not, with Symonds, muse upon the staircase of the Propylæa and
wander through the theatre of Dionysus? Do I not visit the most romantic
of all castles with Thomson? and what wood so cool and shadowy to stroll
in as the forest of Arden? With Jennings I ramble among the Derbyshire
hills and breast the breeze of the Sussex Downs; with Hamerton I float
down the Unknown River; and with Higginson rock in a wherry and lounge
about the Oldport wharves. Arm in arm with sweet Mariette, Murger again
leads me through the Latin Quarter and the old lilac-scented gardens of
the Luxembourg. Reposing in my easy chair, I may almost make the tour of
the world in the sprightliest, most instructive company it is possible
to imagine—Dumas _père_, in his inimitable Impressions de Voyage, is my
guide, philosopher, and friend. The delightful dinners he invites me to,
the delicious wines he sets before me, the sparkling anecdotes that are
ever bubbling from his entrancing pen! I mount his easy Pegasus with De
Amicis, and exchange the blinding snow for soft Andalusian sunshine.
What an entertaining _raconteur_ I have in Francis Francis to explain
the traditions of manor and castle, and discourse upon British scenery;
and what lovely trout I catch when, rod in hand, I follow him By Lake
and River! Hawthorne raises his wand, and I am sauntering through the
Borghese gardens. With Jefferies I accompany lovely Amaryllis at the
Fair; and with Robinson I wander through an Indian Garden and listen to
the bulbul’s song. There is no dust, the sun does not glare, I require
no waterproof or courier in these easy voyages. I turn the enchanted
pages, and the sun shines for me at just the right angle. My rambles
never fatigue, however long the lane or steep the hillside. I need not
worry over the arrival or departure of trains, dispute with landlords,
or bother with luggage. At a signal, my ship is in waiting, ready to
stop at the port I designate; in an hour a smooth roadbed carries me
across a kingdom, without a delay, without a jar. There can be nothing
more delightful than these imaginary journeys.
“The ever-widening realm of books!” Over two centuries ago, echoing the
voice of the ancients, Henry Vaughan decried against their constantly
increasing multitude:
... As great a store
Have we of books as bees of herbs, or more;
And the great task to try, then know the good,
To discern weeds and judge of wholesome food,
Is a rare scant performance.
What a sifting there must be among them some day, as the volumes
continue to accumulate—the mediocre cast aside to make room for the
meritorious! Will there not eventually be some invention to preserve old
books, an enamel for musty tomes, as wood is vulcanized or bodies are
embalmed? Or must many works now existing in numerous volumes be reduced
to extracts to find shelf-room for them all?
But to those who may be anxious regarding the accumulation of books, De
Merrier offers this consolation: “The indefatigable hand of the grocers,
the druggists, the butter merchants, etc., destroy as many books and
_brochures_ daily as are printed; the paper-gatherers come next; and all
these hands, happily destructive, preserve the equilibrium. Without them
the mass of printed paper would increase to an inconvenient degree, and
in the end chase all the proprietors and tenants out of their houses.
The same proportion is to be observed between the making of books and
their decomposition as between life and death—a balm I address to those
that the multitude of books worries or grieves.”
What works will survive, and what books shall we read? “If the writers
of the brazen age are most suggestive to thee, confine thyself to them,
and leave those of the Augustan age to dust and the bookworms,” says the
transcendentalist of Walden. “Something like the woodland sounds,” the
same author observes, “will be heard to echo through the leaves of a
good book. Sometimes I hear the fresh emphatic note of the oven-bird and
am tempted to turn many pages; sometimes the hurried chuckling sound of
the squirrel when he dives into the wall.” “In science read by
preference the newest works; in literature the oldest. The classic
literature is always modern. New books revive and redecorate old ideas;
old books suggest and invigorate new ideas,” says Bulwer. For knowledge
of the world and literature, for polished grace of diction, for elevated
and refined thought, and for the rhythm of beautiful prose, Bulwer might
have called attention to his own essays, individual in the language. The
publisher is yet to be thanked who will present Life, Literature, and
Manners in a worthy and convenient form.
We read and learn and forget from the classics and the modern novelist
as well. I sometimes wonder how posterity will regard the great writers
of the present generation—whether Holmes will hold a more exalted place
a century hence, or the Scarlet Letter fade. Will a mightier Shakespeare
rise, and a sweeter Tennyson sing? And instead of sending posterity to
Addison and Goldsmith for beautiful style, will the twenty-first century
mentor refer the reader to a Spectator of an age that is yet to dawn?
The multitude of books one should read! It takes one’s breath away to
think of the titles. They are as innumerable as the buttercups of the
meadow. Think of them! the miles and leagues of folios, quartos,
octavos, duodecimos, 16, 18, 24, and 32 mos. on every conceivable
subject that are sent out every year! The rows and rows of shelves,
fathoms deep, of old books in numberless editions, cut and uncut, in
cloth, parchment, sheep, pigskin, and calf, reposing in the book-stalls
and libraries! Books grave and gay, comic and serious, storehouses of
knowledge that are constantly shifting hands; others precious beyond
price that are buried out of sight, their beautiful thoughts unread! The
tons and tons of printed pages, in poetry and prose, awake and asleep in
the public and private libraries of the great cities! They are as
clover-tops in a field.
“The best hundred books!” Who shall single them out from the mighty
multitude? It is like attempting to name the most beautiful flower, the
most lovely woman—no one may know them all, and every one has his
preferences. In life, art, and the study of literature it is at best a
difficult question to point out the right way, as there are numerous
considerations which require to be left largely to the discrimination of
the person most concerned.
To decide on the merits of a work one may not take another’s opinion;
one must needs read, mark, and digest it for himself. The reader who
blindly submits to the dictum of another rarely does so to advantage.
Far better to please one’s self and scout the arbiters. Every person
should form his own estimate of the merits or demerits of a work. When
Robert Buchanan terms the author of such exquisite verse as Les Tâches
Jaunes, and such finished prose as La Morte Amoureuse “a hair-dresser’s
dummy of a stylist,” how is one to be governed in the choice of his
reading, save from the standpoint of his own taste! Because Sir Oracle
admires Gil Blas and the Pantagruel, is no reason why you should do so,
and because a Taine may proclaim Pope a purloiner and a mere juggler of
phrase it does not necessarily follow that the Essay on Man is not one
of the brightest jewels of the language. Wisest is he who maps out his
own course of study and reading. The predication of others can not make
that pleasing to him which is in utter variance to his tastes and
sympathies. “A literary judgment is generally supposed to be formed by
canons of criticism,” remarks Van Dyke, “but the canons are generally
individual canons, and the criticism is but the synonym of a
preference.”
Often the bell-wether leads the flock astray. Carlyle would have had A
Midsummer Night’s Dream written in prose, and declared that Tennyson
wrote in verse because the schoolmaster had taught him it was great to
do so, and had thus been turned from the true path for a man. Emerson
was always interested in Hawthorne’s fine personality, but could not
appreciate his writings, while, equally strange, the author of the
exquisite Prose Idyls extols the labored Recreations of North. Holmes
“never felt to appreciate Irving as the majority look upon him,” and
thinks the Sketch-Book “an overrated affair.” Fitzgerald did not like In
Memoriam, The Princess, or The Idyls, and wished there were nothing
after the 1842 volume. In Memoriam has the air, he says, of being
evolved by a poetical machine of the very highest order. Voltaire
thought the Æneid the most beautiful monument which remains to us of all
antiquity. Peignot, in his erudite Traité du Choix des Livres, terms the
Georgics the most perfect poem of antiquity, thereby echoing the opinion
of Montaigne, who pronounced it “the most accomplished peece of worke of
Poesie.”
Edmund Gosse finds Tristram Shandy dull; Bulwer asserts that only
writers the most practiced could safely venture an occasional restrained
imitation of its frolicsome zoneless graces. Possibly Horace Walpole
comes nearer the mark in referring to it as a very insipid and tedious
performance, though he might have defined it as a remarkable work on
obstetrics.
Skipping Don Quixote and the Vicar of Wakefield, and not having read Die
Wahlverwandtschaften, Jane Eyre, My Novel, Rob Roy, The Three
Musketeers, The Scarlet Letter, Charles O’Malley, and how many others!
La Harpe terms Tom Jones “the foremost novel of the world” (_le premier
roman du monde_). So, I believe, does Lowell. Wilkie Collins, shortly
before his death, gave the honor to The Antiquary. The same renowned
critic (La Harpe), considered the Divine Comedy “a stupidly barbarous
amplification” (_une amplification stupidement barbare_); Mézières,
another French critic, thinks it deserves to be termed “the epopee of
Christian peoples” (_elle mérite d’être appelée l’épopée des peuples
chrétiens_).
“We read the Paradise Lost as a task,” growls Dr. Johnson. “Nay, rather
as a celestial recreation,” whispers Lamb. “I would forgive a man for
not reading Milton,” Lamb naïvely adds, “but I would not call that man
my friend who should be offended with the divine chit-chat of Cowper.”
Again, though I myself may see much to praise but less to please in
Paradise Lost, infinitely preferring Lycidas, the Allegro, and the
Penseroso, I may, nevertheless, admire Lamb; and though I may recognize
the worth of Mézières, I may dislike the Divine Comedy. All of us may
not care for the Pilgrim’s Progress or Hudibras; and some may prefer
Cellini’s or Rousseau’s autobiography to Boswell’s biography,—it is not
always so easy to read and admire the books one should read and admire
from another’s standpoint.
What two persons look at things precisely the same? Human thought and
human opinion are as varied as the expression of the human face. “There
never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two
grains. The most universal quality is diversity,” observes Montaigne.
“An opinion,” says the sparkling author of Bachelor Bluff, “is simply an
angle of reflection, or the facet which one’s individuality presents to
a subject, measuring not the whole or many parts of it, but the
dimensions of the reflecting surface. It is something, perhaps, if the
reflection within its limits is a true one.” There are particular
writers that, never widely popular, will always have their particular
admirers, and we all of us have our special subjects or predilections
that we wish to know most about, or are most interested in.
“_L’histoire c’est mo gibier en matière des liures, ou la poësie que
i’ayme d’vne particulière inclinatio_” (history is my game in the chase
for books, or poetry, which I especially dote upon), again observes
Montaigne. Montaigne is so quaint he should be mused over in an old
edition; it is like gathering mushrooms from an old pasture on a hazy
autumn day. Plainly, it is out of the question to read everything even
on a single subject, and many good books are practically unattainable.
The Book-Worm, perched upon his ladder with a duodecimo in one hand, a
quarto under his arm, and a folio between his knees, has at least four
sealed volumes. Each person will read preferably such books as are in
keeping with his tastes and line of thought, though he will greatly
stimulate and enlarge his thought by also reading books diametrically
opposed to his taste. The somewhat prosy mind will be benefited by
familiarity with the poets; the super-poetic is improved by the balance
and adjustment to be found in the study of works of reason and
criticism.
But even then we may not read “the best hundred books” of some one
else’s choosing. “We are happy from possessing what we like, not from
possessing what others like,” La Rochefoucauld remarks; and his maxim is
pertinent to the library. Tastes will ever differ in books and in
bindings, in epics and in lyrics. Many nice people one knows, but one
has not the time, neither does one care to make bosom friends of them
all. Or, to cite Goldsmith, “Though fond of many acquaintances, I desire
an intimacy only with a few.” Seldom do we admire in age that which
captivates us in youth, and that which moves us in one mood may not
appeal to us in another.
The most omnivorous book-worm can read comparatively little. Those who
read slowly and digest what they read—if there is time in life to read
slowly—may read still less. There is much in Bulwer’s sentence: “Reading
without purpose is sauntering, not exercise. More is got from one book
on which the thought settles for a definite end than from libraries
skimmed over by a wandering eye. A cottage garden gives honey to the
bee, a king’s garden none to the butterfly.”
A happy remark with reference to the best-hundred-books controversy is
that credited to Herman Merivale-“those books which everybody says
everybody else must read, but never reads himself.” “We praise that
which is praised much more than that which is praisable,” is a pithy
saying of La Bruyère. Charles Lamb included in his catalogue of “_books
which are no books_ generally all those volumes which ‘no gentleman’s
library should be without.’” The author of that delicious anonymity, A
Club of One (A. P. Russell), the failure to read which should send the
delinquent to Coventry, is more of a philosopher than many of the
professed literary law-givers. It is true he presents a list of his
favorite books, but the list numbers considerably over two hundred, and
these are delicately suggested, and not dictated in a perfunctory way; I
have no doubt he has since added two hundred more. He must have read and
remembered ten times a hundred to write the volume in question, and
ransacked whole libraries to compose the companion volumes, Library
Notes and In a Club Corner, veritable mines of sparkling sayings,
sententious precepts, and literary anecdote.
Dana and Johnson have selected Fifty Perfect Poems with excellent
judgment, no doubt, though who was responsible for the insertion of
numbers forty-three and fifty is not stated in the preface. The Elegy,
the Ode on a Grecian Urn, The Lotus Eaters, and a half-dozen other
selections every one must have included in a similar collection. But
beyond this dozen or so of immortal poems that by no possibility might
be omitted, it is safe to say that almost any other anthologist would
have gathered _Chrysanthema_ totally different—so varied are individual
tastes both in poetry and prose. The fifty best poems and the hundred
best books to Dobson may not be the hundred best books and the fifty
best poems to Gosse or Lang. The marvel is how Johnson and Dana could
agree.
The scholar and the student who live for their books, the author, the
man of elegant leisure, or the bibliophile may be benefited by a very
large library, and share their benefits with the world; though there is
often no little truth in what Gérard de Nerval said of the latter in a
perverted sense of the term: “A serious bibliophile does not share his
books; he does not even read them himself for fear of fatiguing them.”
“The amateur is born,” Derome goes on to say in Le Luxe des Livres; “he
holds the Muses captive. If books could speak they would pronounce him a
hard jailer. The bibliophiles ruin themselves in their calling,
neglecting their duties to their families. Such are not men of letters,
they are _bibliotaphes_. They bury their books, they do not possess
them.... The luxury of bindings is extended to profusion. It is the
_fête_ of red morocco and tawny calf.” La Rousse thus defines the term
bibliotaphe: “From the Greek _biblion_, book; _taphô_, I inter, I hide.
1. He who lends his books to no one, who buries them, inters them in his
library. 2. A reserved portion of a library where precious works or
works that one does not wish to communicate are locked up.” Nodier made
still another discrimination, that of the _bibliophobe_ whom he thus
describes: “The _bibliophobe_ would see nothing out of the way in
burning libraries. He sells the copies that are dedicated to him, and
_does not return the service_.”
Between the _bibliophile_ and the _bibliomane_ Nodier draws this
distinction: “The bibliophile chooses his books, the bibliomane entombs
them; the bibliophile appreciates, the other weighs; the bibliophile has
a magnifying glass, the other a fathom measure.” But the close
consanguinity which exists between the book-lover and the
book-collector; the narrow strip dividing _terra firma_ from the
dangerous marsh ever lighted by _ignes-fatui_ that lure the pursuer on
and on, is well defined by Burton in the introduction to The Book
Hunter, where, referring to the class for whom the volume was written,
he finds it difficult to say whether he should give them a good name or
a bad, whether he should characterize them by a predicate eulogistic or
a predicate dyslogistic.
We all know of the man who paid a fabulous sum for a copy of a very rare
work, only to consign it to the flames on receiving it, in order that
his own copy might have no duplicate. This is an exceptional form of the
bibliolythist, or book-burner. Among this class are included authors
ashamed of their first writings, authors who have changed their
political or religious views, or who have eulogized a friend who has
become a bitter enemy. There exists another form of the bibliolythist
which Fitzgerald has omitted from his Romance of Book-Collecting—the
“burking” of a work by one who has been assailed. I know of a standing
offer from a gentleman of three dollars apiece for every copy that
booksellers send him of a certain volume which retails for a fifth of
the price. The work contains a reflection on one of his ancestors, and
as soon as the volumes are received they are burned. But the book-burner
is by no means a modern institution, Nero and Caliph Omar still
remaining the greatest of bibliolythists.
I would suggest as another desirable term to add to the lexicon of the
bibliopholist the term _bibliodæmon_, or book-fiend—a designation
expressive of something more than the ordinary significance of
“book-borrower,” innocent enough, no doubt, in some of his milder forms,
but exasperating to the last degree in his most depraved phases. The
borrowing of a reference book or a volume, a chapter or a page of which
may touch upon a subject that one desires to consult merely for the time
being, is a matter apart. So also is the exchange of books between
friends, or the borrowing of a work not readily procurable, the
recipient on his part standing ready to return the courtesy, and
forthwith restoring the volume unsullied.
Promptness in returning and scrupulous care of a volume are the tests
which distinguish the comparatively harmless form of the borrower from
the aggravated and exasperating one. The miserly practice of borrowing
books, books from which the well-to-do borrower seeks to derive pleasure
or benefit without returning a just equivalent, simply to shirk the
trifling cost of the volume he covets, deserves the severest stricture.
Such are library dead-heads and defaulters to publishers and authors. It
is this form of the bibliodæmon who retains desumed copies for an
indefinite period, trusting the loan may be forgotten; and who, deaf to
all ordinary appeals and reminders, only relinquishes the
volume—frequently maltreated—when virtually wrested from him at his
home. The celebrated French bibliophile Pixérécourt had inserted on the
frontal of his library-case these pertinent lines:
Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prêté:
Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gâté.
Each book that’s loaned the same sad fate o’ertakes—
’Tis either lost or sent back with the shakes.
There really exists no reason why books should be loaned—there are
always the public libraries in which the borrower may ply his trade.
A former shepherd of the printed flocks in the library of a neighboring
town relates an incident illustrating a singular form of book borrowing,
the offender being a divine. Passionately fond of books, he would take
them home, forgetting to return them, and when interrogated would always
find a happy excuse, the store of borrowed books meanwhile accumulating.
“A scholar and a man of exemplary character and fine sensibilities, I
did not wish to wound his feelings by an imperative demand, being
convinced from what I knew of him, that it was a slight lesion rather
than a fracture of the mind which caused the delinquency. I therefore
awaited his departure, and one morning, driving to his home with a buggy
and a basket, I took possession of the borrowed volumes. He never
referred to it. I do not think he even missed them. His passion was the
joy of first readings, and he was proverbially forgetful.”
My scintillant and learned friend the Doctor, who for years graced the
Greek chair at the University, and whose name is a household word among
scholars, as his presence is a ray of sunlight wherever he appears,
contributes this supplement to the lexicon of the book-lover. The
general reader will skip this passage; the bibliophile will thank him:
_Bibliodæmon_: a book-fiend or demon.
_Bibliophage_ }
_Bibliocataphage_ } a book-eater or devourer.
_Biblioleter_ }
_Bibliopollyon_ } a book-destroyer, ravager, or waster.
_Bibliophthor_ }
_Biblioloigos_: a book-pest or plague.
_Bibliolestes_ }
_Biblioklept_ } a book-plunderer or robber.
_Bibliocharybdis_: a Charybdis of books.
_Biblioriptos_: one who throws books around.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
XII.
MAGICIANS OF THE SHELVES.
II.
As wine and oil are imported to us from abroad, so must ripe
understanding and many civil virtues be imported into our minds from
foreign writings.—MILTON.
It is pleasant to take down one of the magicians of the shelf, to
annihilate my neighbor and his evening parties, and to wander off
through quiet country lanes into some sleepy hollow of the
past.—CORNHILL MAGAZINE, RAMBLES AMONG BOOKS.
IT was held by Disraeli that literature is in no wise injured by the
bibliophile, since though the worthless may be preserved, the good is
necessarily protected, he no doubt having in mind the death of the
collector and subsequent sale of his library. For though the bibliophile
may stint his family and hoard his golden leaves and tooling, at least
he abhors dog’s-ears and keeps his treasures clean. La Bruyère, who gave
us the delightful maxim, “We only write in order to be heard, but in
writing we should only let beautiful things be heard,” referred to these
accumulations as “tanneries,” condemning fine bindings, one of the few
false dogmas uttered by the sprightly, entertaining author of Les
Caractères. Fine bindings not only preserve but beautify fine books; and
to the sentiment of La Bruyère I prefer that of Jules Janin: “_Il faut à
l’homme sage et studieux un tome honorable et digne de sa louange._”
(“The wise and studious man should have a volume worthy of his praise.”)
In Edouard Rouveyre’s instructive and beautifully-printed manual on
bibliography, the question of bindings is summed up in a sentence, fine
bindings naturally referring to books that are worthy of beautiful and
permanent coverings: “Binding is to typography what this is to the other
arts; the one transmits to posterity the works of the scholar, the other
preserves the typographical production for him.... The binding of the
amateur,” he continues, “should be rich without ostentation, solid
without heaviness, always in harmony with the work that it adorns, of
great finish in its workmanship, of exact execution in the smallest
details, with neat lines, and a strongly conceived design.”[17]
Footnote 17:
Connaissances Nécessaires à un Bibliophile, par Edouard Rouveyre,
Troisième Edition. Paris, Ed. Rouveyre et G. Blond, 1883, 2 vols.
“The binding of a book,” the Right Honorable W. E. Gladstone succinctly
observes, “is the dress with which it walks out into the world. The
paper, type, and ink are the body in which its soul is domiciled. And
these three, soul, body, and habiliment, are a triad which ought to be
adjusted to one another by the laws of harmony and good sense.” Nor
should the book-lover neglect to carry out the rules relative to binding
laid down by Octave Uzanne in his Caprices d’un Bibliophile: “A book
should be bound according to its spirit, according to the epoch in which
it was published, according to the value you attach to it and the use
you expect to make of it; it should announce itself by its exterior, by
the gay, striking, lively, dull, somber, or variegated tone of its
accoutrement.”
With regard to the book-cases themselves, their height should depend
upon that of the ceilings, and on the number of one’s volumes. For
classification and reference, it is more convenient to have numerous
small cases of similar or nearly similar size and the same general style
of construction than a few large cases in which everything is engulfed.
With small or medium-sized receptacles, each one may contain volumes
relating to certain departments or different languages, as the case may
be; by this means a volume and its kindred may be readily found. Thus
one, or a portion of one, may be devoted to bibliography, another to the
philosophers, another to poetical works, another to foreign literature,
another to reference works, another to books relating to nature, art,
etc.
The style and color of the bindings, also, may subserve a similar
purpose; as, for instance, the poets in yellow or orange, books on
nature in olive, the philosophers in blue, the French classics in red,
etc. Unless methodically arranged, even with a very small library, a
volume is often difficult to turn to when desired for immediate
consultation, requiring tedious search, especially if the volumes are
arranged upon the shelves with respect to size and outward symmetry.
This may be avoided by the use of small book-cases and a defined style
of binding. I refer to the general style of binding; variety in bindings
is always pleasing, and very many books one procures already bound and
wishes to retain in the original covers. Books, moreover, which are in
constant or frequent use should not be placed in too tender colors.
Volumes become virtually lost and inaccessible in the vast walnut
sarcophagi in which they are frequently entombed, and lose the
attractive look they possess when more compactly enshrined. Above all
things, the book-case should be artistic, artistically plain, except for
the richness of the carving. Black walnut I should banish, unless
employed exclusively for somber old folios, to accentuate their
antiquity. Neither the library nor the study should appear morose or
exhale an atmosphere of gloom.
In a room ten and a half to eleven feet high, five feet is a desirable
height for the book-cases. Besides the drawers at the base, this will
afford space for four rows of books, to include octavos, duodecimos, and
smaller volumes. In some of the cases three shelves may be placed—the
shelves, of course, should be shifting—to include folios, large quartos,
and octavos. Where the ceilings are twelve feet high, six feet is a
better proportion, this height affording five or four shelves, according
to the size of the volumes. By leaving the top of the book-case twelve
to thirteen inches wide, ample space will be allowed for additional
small books, porcelains, and _bric-à-brac_. It must be borne in mind
that tall book-cases, in addition to the inaccessibility of the volumes
on the upper shelves, leave little if any space for pictures on the
walls above them; and that, though books assuredly furnish and lend an
air of refinement to an apartment, they still require the relief and
complement of other decorative objects.
The cultured business man who may have the taste but lacks the time for
extensive reading, the average man or woman who reads for recreation,
may derive more benefit from a small library comprised of the best books
carefully chosen than from the average large library. “_Quid prosunt
innumerabiles libri quorum dominus vix totâ vitâ suâ indices perlegit?_”
(“Of what use is an innumerable quantity of volumes whose owner may
scarcely read the titles during his lifetime?”) Seneca justly reasoned.
It is not so much the dinner of innumerable courses as a few dishes well
prepared. Except to those who read quickly and assimilate readily, the
large library is apt to consist for the most part of “uncut edges” in
the layman’s sense of the term.
A good library is rarely suddenly formed. Moreover, if it could be, it
were not half as satisfactory as a library added to by degrees, the
growth and gradual increase of years. Again, some of the works that were
considered a rare treat half a century since are no longer a treat
to-day. They have become old-fashioned in the same sense as a garment.
The critical eighteenth-century essay in its entirety, the old style
metaphysical airing of some pet hobby, or didactic wool-drawing now seem
rather ponderous productions. At present one does not even care to read
all of the joint productions of Addison and Steele (particularly the
latter’s essays), an averment that would have placed one under a ban
twenty years ago. Yet even in Johnson’s day the Rambler was more
extolled than perused, the publisher complaining that the encouragement
as to sale was not in proportion to the raptures expressed by those who
read it.
With the increasing pyramids of books, selection must become
proportionately more and more restricted. Equally is this the case with
poetry. Many of the ancient bards still figure in the editions of the
English poets—only to sun their gilded backs on the library shelves and
seldom have their pages turned. It were absurd to assert that the
Spectator and numerous other productions of a former day will ever
become closed volumes. Curiosity, and their fame also, would always
cause them to be read by futurity did not their merit preclude the
possibility of their ever sinking into oblivion. It is very probable,
however, that at no distant day many of the immortals will exist in
abridged editions. Some authors, like Montaigne, on the other hand, can
never be cut down; their redundancies and embroideries are their charm.
To our forefathers time was more lenient than it is to us. Somehow the
days and the nights were longer, and the old-time reader appeared to
find more leisure and a brighter oil with which to pursue his literary
browsings and point his antitheses. “There is a certain want of ease
about the old writers,” Alexander Smith remarks (and I recall no one who
has expressed it so musically before), “which has an irresistible charm.
The language flows like a stream over a pebbled bed, with propulsion,
eddy, and sweet recoil—the pebbles, if retarding movement, giving ring
and dimple to the surface and breaking the whole into babbling music.”
“When I looked into one of these old volumes,” Thoreau
characteristically says, “it affected me like looking into an
inaccessible swamp, ten feet deep with sphagnum, where the monarchs of
the forest, covered with mosses and stretched along the ground, were
making haste to become peat. Those old books suggested a certain
fertility, an Ohio soil, as if they were making a _humus_ for new
literatures to spring in. I heard the bellowing of bull-frogs and the
hum of mosquitoes reverberating through the thick embossed covers when I
had closed the book. Decayed literature makes the richest of all soils.”
In this age of hurry and concentration who has the time to wade through
the hundred volumes of Voltaire? It is even a task to go through his
anthology, Élite de Poésies Fugitives, in the pretty little two-volume
Cazin edition, there are so many more shells than pearls. But one’s time
is well repaid after all, if only for the sake of finding and holding
one such exquisite bit of airy verse as M. Bernard’s Le Hameau. Is it
original, or a translation? The German poet Gottfried Bürger’s Das
Doerfchen and this are one and the same, except that the latter is
somewhat condensed, though equally beautiful. Following M. Bernard’s
idyl is a panegyric in verse by Voltaire addressed to M. Berger, “who
sent him the preceding stanzas,” Voltaire’s tribute beginning:
De ton Bernard
J’aime l’esprit.
C’est la peinture
De la nature.
Bernard, Berger, and Bürger; or Bürger, Berger, and Bernard would at
first sight seem to be in a tangle. But in rendering to Cæsar the things
that are Cæsar’s,
I praise my dear
Sweet village here,
undoubtedly should be returned to the German poet.
In the case of nearly every prolific author some few volumes represent
his finest thought. I grant every one has or should have a favorite
author, one who stands to him on a higher pedestal than all others,—an
author whom he reveres and loves, and who must be read in every line
that was the emanation of his brain. But for one to read every page of
Thackeray, Bulwer, Goethe, Dumas, and the host of celebrated romancists,
poets, essayists, and philosophers, delightful and instructive though
they be, is a simple impossibility.
To return to the change in literary taste, and to instance a marked
example, consider Wilson, or Christopher North. “Fusty Christopher,”
Tennyson termed this pompous _arbiter elegantiarum_. The tables have
been turned since the editor of Blackwood reviled the poet-laureate, and
the animus of the criticism on Tennyson might now be applied to its
stultified author. What magazine of the present could be induced to
publish North’s rhapsodies? An installment would seriously damage The
Atlantic, Scribner’s, or even Maga itself. How tiresome his ceaseless
alliteration, his deluge of adjectives, his stream of similes, his
invective, his bathos!
Many portions of the Noctes, it is true, are marvels of imagination and
erudition, and some of his angling conceits are worthy of Norman
MacLeod. Others, especially his selections as collected and published by
himself under the title of The Recreations, are crusted over with algæ
of self-conceit. It is the peacock who consciously struts. Pepys’s
reiterated “I” and quaint egotism are never tiresome; Wilson’s pompous
first person plural becomes a weariness. They used to give us Baxter’s
Saints’ Rest to parse, in the olden school days, and I could not help
but think that if the saints had such a horrible time, how fortunate it
was we lived in a more advanced period. No doubt the schoolmaster might
have given us worse books to parse; and, unquestionably, we should be
duly grateful that The Recreations were not included. From the _a
priori_ to the _a posteriori_ would have been so much harder sailing!
Has not even the long-spun panorama of The Seasons lost something of its
charm? Or, rather, should it not be read in an old edition?
Good editions of good books, though they may often be expensive, can not
be too highly commended. One can turn to a page in inviting letterpress
so much easier than to a page of an unattractive volume. The fine shades
of meaning stand out more clearly, and the thought is revealed more
intelligibly when clothed in fitting typographical garb. Often it
becomes a positive labor to follow many a pleasing author in the small
or worn types and poor paper with which the publisher mercilessly
thrusts him into the world. The reader has virtually to work his passage
through the pages and take frequent rests by the way.
Poor illustrating is even worse. Who may appreciate the beauties of The
Talking Oak in the edition where Olivia is portrayed in the act of
kissing a giant bole whose girth scarcely equals her own? One must ever
afterward associate an oak with a fat Olivia. Apparently the artist
never read Sir Thomas Wyatt:
A face that should content me wondrous well
Should not be fair, but lovely to behold,
or William Browne:
What best I lov’de was beauty of the mind,
And that lodgd in a Temple truely faire.
How dreadful, too, are many of the works illustrated by Cruikshank and
Crowquill, which some profess to set such store by because they are held
at such a premium by the book dealers!
Nearly as reprehensible as poor illustrating is pilloring the
unfortunate author in the stocks of some atrocious color that must
develop a cataract if gazed at long and fixedly. “I have been well-nigh
ruined by the binder!” exclaimed one of the bright writers and
literarians of the day; and before attempting to read one of his most
entertaining volumes I stripped it of its frightful garb and clothed it
in becoming attire. Otherwise one might not follow the ideas, the
glaring blue and hideous figure of the original cover asserted
themselves so strongly.
One should always endeavor to procure a good edition to start with; it
is inconvenient to change editions. You come to associate certain
favorite passages of a well-conned author with their place upon certain
pages, so that you may instantly turn to them. The passages look strange
to you in strange types, and you almost require to be introduced anew.
With a change of page the mere thought itself remains the same, only it
seems to have altered its expression. Let those who will, prate about a
thought being a thought wherever it may exist. Some thoughts there are
so airy and delicate they require to be read by one’s self—they lose a
portion of their fragrance if repeated or obtained second hand. They
should be savored by the eye and heard only by the inner ear. “The dark
line” of the sun-dial “stealing imperceptibly on—for sweet plants and
flowers to spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings
by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by”—is more sharply defined
upon the page of The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple, the page where I
first saw it, than it can ever appear to me upon any other page. Again,
many flowers one enjoys most upon the uncut stalk. They may not be
plucked and retain the full aroma they distill amid their natural
surroundings. So that a quoted sentence from want of connection often
loses much of the charm it presents upon the author’s page. And yet, on
the other hand, quotation, when judiciously employed, not unfrequently
places the author quoted in his most favorable light, while forming
equally a pleasing complement to the page of the writer himself.
Montaigne’s _fleurons_ of citation, woven from his scholastic and
inexhaustible loom, what were the Essays without them?—limpid brooks and
springs ever pouring their sparkling waters into the meandering,
smooth-flowing river of the text. Merely by the change of type,
quotation relieves the monotony of the page, while, with great writers,
apt citation lends added emphasis and beauty to the thought, just as the
art of damascening enriches a fine blade.
Good editions are everything in reading. Even the fragrant mint of Lamb
possesses a heightened pungency to me when gathered along the cool,
broad margins of a London imprint. Not only the mind through the
personality or charm of the thought expressed, and the ear through the
harmony and lucidness of the style with which it is uttered; but equally
the eye, in the outward garb with which the thought is clothed, should
be gratified in reading a beautiful book. The printer it is who
contributes the finishing touches and heightens the reflective surface.
Elia’s buoyant, playful graces have, perhaps, received their most
exquisite and appropriate setting in the two little volumes of the
Temple Library, printed by the Chiswick press, the smaller being
preferable to the large-paper edition.
It is pleasant to have some authors both in an early and a late edition.
If I desire the notes, the full-page illustrations, and an amplified
text, I choose the edition of The Complete Angler illustrated by
Stothard and Inskipp and annotated by Sir Harris Nicholas. If I wish to
get still nearer Walton—to hear more plainly his birds contending with
the echo, to pluck his culverkees and ladysmocks, to smell his
primroses, and admire the very “shape and enameled color of the trout it
joyed him so to look upon,” I read him in the old spelling and old font
of the fac-simile reprint of the first edition. Moreover, for the sake
of making comparisons, it is often desirable to have an early as well as
a late edition of a favorite author. So subtle, indeed, are the niceties
of reading they may scarcely be defined. How delightful the mere cutting
of the edges of the book one longs to read, and the occasional dip into
the pages as you turn the leaves!
Of a few favorite authors it is desirable to possess two copies, one in
an inexpensive form to take when traveling. A trunk-maker is yet to
appear who will contrive an apartment that will enable one to pack books
so they may receive no possible injury—the one thing Addison’s
Trunk-maker of the Upper Gallery neglected. Besides, apart from the
friction in its receptacle, a valuable book is liable to other injuries,
or loss while traveling. The traveling volume should be small, securely
bound, light in the hand, and not too bulky for the pocket.
But an old book of all books for true delight! The pleasure of reading
Chaucer or Spenser is doubled by the types and the associations of the
past. The foxed and faded pages are like the rust on antique bronzes,
the lichens on an old wall.
In the preface to Wheatley’s The Dedication of Books reference is made
to this fascination which is conferred by an ancient font upon an
ancient page. “There is,” remarks the author, “a delicate flavor of
antiquity and a certain quaint charm in the old print of the books from
which many of the dedications have been drawn that seems to depart when
the same sentences are printed in modern type, and we are apt sometimes
to wonder what it was that we originally admired. The bouquet has fled
while we were in the act of removing the cork from the bottle.” Present,
too, with the charm of the olden page itself is the thought of who may
have first turned the pages when the book you are reading was in its
fresh and spotless leaf, and whose hand it was that traced the
annotations which embroider its margins.
To revert in parentheses to the sun-dial, Mrs. Gatty’s monograph,
recently republished and extended,[18] contains thousands of mottoes and
references to the clock of nature taken from numerous languages, but
none equal to Lamb’s apostrophe. So far as references to the passage of
time are concerned, there can be none more expressive than Ronsard’s
lines:
Footnote 18:
The Book of Sun-Dials. Collected by Mrs. Alfred Gatty. New and
enlarged edition. London: George Bell and Sons, 1889. Pp. viii, 502.
Le temps s’en va, le temps s’en va, madame!
Las! le temps non: mais _nous_ nous en allons.[19]
Footnote 19:
Time goes, you say? Ah, no!
Alas, Time stays, _we_ go!
(Austin Dobson’s translation.)
Singularly, the beautiful sonnet in which these lines occur was one
which had been cast aside by Ronsard from the later editions of his
works, and was only reprinted in Buon’s edition of 1609. Still more
singular it seems that the “Prince of Poets” should have remained
comparatively unappreciated for two centuries until reintroduced by St.
Beuve. Am I mistaken in thinking there is a pronounced resemblance
between this sonnet and Shakespeare’s “When I do count the clock that
tells the time”?
Chaucer’s—
For tho’ we sleep, or wake, or rome, or ride,
Ay fleeth the time, it will no man abide,
and Spenser’s—
Make hast, therefore, sweet Love, whilst it is prime,
For none can call again the passèd time,
are as fine as any of the allusions by the classic poets who have
festooned and intertwined the passing hour with rosebuds and asphodels.
I find the Book of Sun-Dials a delightful volume to take up when in a
meditative mood. It needs, withal, a still room and a still hour to be
read in, an environing quietness like the whisper of the gnomon itself.
Then rambling through the pages, the present becomes absorbed by the
past as you muse over the icons of the dials and moralize upon the
quaint inscriptions. Transcribed in large Italic type, the mottoes stand
out with the vividness of an epitaph graven upon a tomb, voices from
posterity preaching from the perennial text:
As Time And Houres Passeth Awaye
So Doeth The Life Of Man Decaye.
Often as you contemplate the time-posts and their _intaglios_ do they
absorb the attention afresh, casting new shades of meaning from the
sentient styles. They transport you into gardens where old-fashioned
flowers and historic yew-trees grow, they conduct you through old
churchyards among neglected graves, they deliver their homilies from
weather-beaten walls, and their pathos appeals from many an ancient
sanctuary and moss-grown lintel. How noiselessly, how serenely they mark
the flight of time! It is Time itself inaudibly counting the hours; the
day suavely balancing its silent periods. They mirror primitive time,
removed from the present turmoil, when the sun was the pendulum and the
shadow the index-hand. Associated with Nature by ties the most
endearing, by the golden sunshine, the murmuring breeze, and the songs
of birds, the dial becomes, as it were, a reflective facet of external
Nature in her gracious moods, its very shadow representing sunlight, the
sunlight absent where the shadow is not. The sun-dial has molded itself
to grace, and with rare exceptions its mottoes are happily chosen,
attesting hours of meditation in forming an epigram or shaping a poetic
fancy to blend with the shifting shadow. Certainly many of the
sentiments collated in the monograph referred to are of more than
passing interest. Their pathos and their quaintness set one dreaming.
Among the many inscriptions which arrested me while first turning the
leaves, a few may be appended without, I trust, fatiguing the reader.
Let her or him moralize a moment, and consider life from the standpoint
of the dial, now grave, now gay; now lively, now severe. Though Time
hurries mankind it has apparently not hurried the dials in choosing
their inscriptions. It is rather a case of _festina lente_ than _hora
fugit_. Some are as terse as an epigram of Martial or a proverb from
Job; others sweet as a hymn of Watts or a stanza from The Temple. Thus,
light and shadow are felicitously blended in the tale a dial tells on a
house at Wadsley, near Sheffield, the moralist preaching from a niche in
the wall:
Of Shade And Sunshine For Each Hour
See Here A Measure Made:
Then Wonder Not If Life Consist
Of Sunshine And Of Shade.
I Mark The Moments Trod For
Good Or Ill
has been the burden of the vertical dial at the priory, Warwick, since
1556.
Lifes But A Shadow
Mans But Dust
This Dyall Sayes
Dy All We Must
says the dial on the Church of All Saints, Winkleigh, Devon.
I Am A Shadow, So Art Thou
I Mark Time, Dost Thou?
is inscribed on an old horologium in the Grey Friars’ churchyard,
Sterling.
Sweetly fragrant are the lines incised on the four sides of a stone dial
in a flower-garden at South Windleham:
I Stand Amid Ye Summere Flowers
To Tell Ye Passage Of Ye Houres.
When Winter Steals Ye Flowers Awaye
I Tell Ye Passinge Of Their Daye.
O Man Whose Flesh Is But As Grasse
Like Summere Floweres Thy Life Shall Passe.
Whiles Tyme Is Thine Laye Up In Store
And Thou Shalt Live For Ever More.
Pretty, also, are the lines by James Montgomery beneath a vertical dial
in Burneston, Yorkshire:
Time From The Church Tower Cries To You And Me,
Upon This Moment Hangs Eternity:
The Dial’s Index And The Belfry’s Chime
To Eye And Ear Confirm This Truth Of Time.
Prepare To Meet It; Death Will Not Delay;
Take Then Thy Saviour’s Warning—Watch And Pray!
One of the mottoes has an echo of Sidney:
Time As He Passes Us Has A Dove’s Wing
Unsoiled And Swift, And Of A Silken Sound.
“The Night Cometh” is neatly amplified upon a plate that supports a
cross sun-dial on a stone pedestal upon the terrace of the hospital of
St. Cross, Rugby:
The Passing Shadows Which The Sunbeams Throw
Athwart This Cross, Time’s Hastening Foot-Steps Show;
Warned By Their Teaching Work Ere Day Be O’er,
Soon Comes The Night When Man Can Work No More.
One motto reads Unam Time (Fear one hour); another, Unam Timeo (One hour
I fear). Two others read, Heu Quærimus Umbram, Heu Patimus Umbram (Alas!
we pursue a shadow), (Alas! we endure the shadow). Eheu Fugaces is
marked upon a Yorkshire plate, and Labuntur Anni on Burnham Church,
Somerset. The shortest mottoes are Redeme, J’avance, Remember,
Irrevocabile. A beautiful stone sun-dial still casts its shadow in the
old garden of Gilbert White, and is figured in Macmillan’s edition of
the Natural History of Selborne. This is not mentioned in Mrs. Gatty’s
comprehensive work, and I can not determine from the illustration
whether it bears a motto. Each To His Task, taken from White’s
Invitation would be an appropriate inscription.
One of the quaintest inscriptions mentioned in the Book of Sun-Dials is
that which looks from the wall of a church at Argentière, near Vallouse.
It was scarcely composed in an hour, and loses much in the translation:
Cette Montre Par Son Ombre Montre
Que Comme L’Ombre Passent Nos Jours.
(This marker marks by its shadow that our days pass away like a shadow).
There is much of moral coloring in these two lines:
Haste Traveller, The Sun Is Sinking Low
He Shall Return Again, But Never Thou.
And is this not altogether lovely?
Give God Thy Heart, Thy Hopes, Thy Gifts, Thy Gold,
The Day Wears On, The Times Are Waxing Old.
And so one might go on quoting the old moral, shadowed by different
texts. Perhaps Sterne expresses it as pithily as any epigrammatist,
“life” being but another term for time: “What is the life of man! Is it
not to shift from side to side? from sorrow to sorrow? to button up one
cause of vexation, and unbutton another?” But Sterne deals with the
shadow only, while the gnomon of the dial presents its side of sunshine
equally with its side of shade, however somber the tone of the
inscription. Doubtless Nature preaches more truly than man. Life is not
all composed of shadow, nor all of sunshine; and if we but cultivate the
spirit of contentment, possibly we have solved its sternest problem.
But may contentment, after all, be had for the striving? “Whatever it be
that falleth into our knowledge and jouissance,” reasons Montaigne in
the fifty-third chapter of the First Book, “we finde it doth not
satisfie us, and we still follow and gape after future, uncertaine, and
unknowne things, because the present and knowne please us not, and doe
not satisfie us. Not (as I thinke) because they have not sufficiently
wherewith to satiate and please us, but the reason is, that we apprehend
and seize on them with an unruly, disordered, and a diseased taste and
hold-fast.” And, again, in the twelfth chapter of the Second Book: “All
of the Philosophers of all the sects that ever were doe generally agree
on this point, that the chiefest felicitie, or _summum bonum_,
consisteth in the peace and tranquillitie of the soul and bodie:—but
where shall we find it?”
Somewhere, slumbering upon the shelves, there exists a golden book of a
former century, written by a learned French philosopher-pantologist,
entitled L’Art de se rendre heureux par les Songes (The Art of rendering
one’s self happy by Dreams). A unique volume and the labor of a
lifetime, its present owner and the fortunate possessor of the secret
has never been discovered; and, alas! a reprint does not exist.
Contentment—is this but another name for Illusion?—is a bird of passage
who, soaring high in the empyrean, must be secured on the wing.
Numberless those who would ensnare him, and innumerable the lures set to
turn his evasive pinion. But he flies not in flocks; and, dimly outlined
against the distant sky, he is ever flitting onward, far out of range.
Some one, farther on, who seeks him not, perchance looks serenely
upward, and unconsciously charms him down....
My fair and gracious reader, is it you?
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
XIII.
AUTHORS AND READERS.
There must be both a judgment and a fervor; a discrimination and a
boyish eagerness; and (with all due humility) something of a point
of contact between authors worth reading and the reader.—LEIGH HUNT,
MY BOOKS.
A truly good book is something as natural and as unexpectedly and
unaccountably fair and perfect as a wild flower discovered on the
prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East.—THOREAU.
A CERTAIN selfish satisfaction I enjoy in reading a fine limited edition
of a classic, or a choice work that is difficult to procure. It is like
possessing a gem of an uncommon color, a piece of old Chinese glaze, or
any rare art object. If the work itself possess intrinsic value I am
sure of my investment, while I rejoice in its attractive guise. Reading
thus becomes more than a pleasure; it is an exquisite luxury. I marvel
who secures all the “number 1’s” of the large-paper editions. Some
bibliotaphe must have a monumental collection, for nobody ever sees one.
“The passion for first editions, the purest of all passions,” some one
remarks. I confess I do not share this passion in its intensity, in all
cases, unless the first edition be superior in letterpress or form, or a
later edition has been altered, condensed, or enlarged to its
disadvantage. The classics in first editions, and the “old melodious
lays” in first folios by all means, if you can afford and procure them;
Gibbon, Macaulay, Scott, Dickens, and the rest of the historians and
novelists in the easiest, most attractive page to read and hold in the
hand, whatever the edition. This with reference to literature proper,
and not to scientific works, of which latter the latest edition is
naturally to be preferred.
I sometimes find myself picturing the author behind the page. Lang and
Dobson, are they as merry as the songs they sing? Phil Robinson, is he
half so pleasant a companion in the flesh as on the printed page?
Bullen, who edits the old poets with such consummate taste, is he as
jolly as the Elizabethan lyrics ever swarming on the tip of his tongue?
Higginson, so tender and musical in his polished prose, I wonder does he
lose his temper when the _sauce piquante_ proves a failure? The
brilliant, entertaining philosopher of A Club of One, is he
philosophical enough to eschew colchicum for his gout; and, I marvel, is
he enrolled among the Brotherhood of the Merry Eye?
Perhaps the author is most charming, for the most part, between the
covers. On paper he is always on his good behavior, his personal facets
shaped so as to catch the most favorable light. Knowing him and meeting
him in every-day life you might find him cold, arrogant, opinionated—an
altogether disagreeable companion. Forgetful of the flight of time, he
might be prone to argument or backbiting. He might be deaf or
color-blind, and always late at his engagements. He might be constantly
straddling a hobby-horse. He might be an incorrigible whistler, or
possess an ungovernable temper. All his petty weaknesses and foibles he
conceals, or tries to conceal, on the printed page.
Thus, Joseph Boulmier:
Oui, les hommes sont laids, mais leurs œuvres sont belles;
Les hommes sont méchants, mais leurs livres sont bons.
Men are unlovely, but their works are fair—
Ay, men are evil, but their books are good.
If, as has been asserted, he is the best author who gives the reader the
most knowledge and takes from him the least time, surely the olive crown
should be awarded the composers of the compilations, the digests, and
the anthologies, often the fruit of decades spent in poring over
manuscripts and print. Little do we consider the pains they have cost.
What an amount of rummaging through faded manuscripts, what ransacking
of musty folios and plodding through by-ways of the past has it not
required to produce Bullen’s smiling volumes from the song-books,
masques, and pageants of the Elizabethan Age, and his other rarer
anthologies, Speculum Amantis and Musa Proterva. The works themselves of
very many of the authors quoted would be a veritable labor to wade
through, with few fragrant flowers of poesy to perfume the way. All this
the compiler spares us, and with catholic taste gathers a blossom here
and a blossom there from the vast fields of little-known song. Equally
does Mr. Bullen deserve the thanks of every lover of lyric poetry for
his collection of Campion’s works, and the Chiswick press the tribute of
all admirers of beautiful printing for the frame in which Campion’s
“golden cadence” has been set.
By reading Hazlitt’s Gleanings in Old Garden Literature I am saved the
fatigue of perusing countless uninteresting tomes on the subject. He has
extracted the honey for me from innumerable flowers. Yet my Parkinson,
my Gerarde, my Evelyn, my Bacon I must read between the lines myself; it
is to the dull books he has been the bee for me. To gather the sweets is
often a difficult and always a laborious task. Not these plodding
compilers, the class who are referred to in the wise old precept, the
source of which I have never been able to trace: “Those who do not
practice what they preach resemble those sign-posts in the country which
point out the weary way to the traveler without taking the trouble of
traversing it themselves.”
Without doubt, among the most beloved of books are those written for
pure love of the beautiful, distinct from literary ambition or
posthumous fame, especially when to this is added a sympathetic, lucid,
and unconscious style, such as we love to linger over in The Complete
Angler or White’s Selborne. Walton himself has epitomized this charm in
a line introductory to his angling idyl: “I wish the reader also to take
notice that in the writing of it I have made myself a recreation of a
recreation.”
Johnson has said books that you may carry to the fire and hold readily
in your hand are the most useful, after all. Before Johnson, and long
before printing was dreamed of, an old Greek proverb held that a great
book was a great evil, and Martial wrote:
Buy books that but one hand engage,
In parchment bound, with tiny page.
Assuredly, the little book is a delight. It is a joy in the hand when
well bound, and may serve to take the place of fire-arms in a public
conveyance where one otherwise might find himself at the mercy of an
uncongenial or too loquacious passenger. But the life of the library
were dull were it confined to the 18 and 24 mos. Let each book and each
subject have its appropriate setting, and let there be variety of sizes.
The majesty of the shelves were fled without the thick quarto and tall
old folio.
Apart from De Bury, Dibdin, Disraeli, Burton, Didot, Janin, the
bibliophile Jacob, and other universally known bibliographical writers,
there are innumerable pleasant books on books. Of such, in addition to
those previously alluded to, may be specified Lang’s Books and Bookmen
and The Library; The Pleasures of a Bookworm and The Diversions of a
Bookworm, by J. Rogers Rees, delightfully written volumes attractively
printed by Elliott Stock; Alexander Ireland’s Book-Lover’s Enchiridion;
Saunder’s The Story of Some Famous Books; Wheatley’s The Dedication of
Books, and How to form a Library, the latter three volumes likewise
daintily printed by Elliott Stock in the series of The Book-Lovers’
Library.
In A Club Corner, by A. P. Russell, a volume previously mentioned, is
largely devoted to books and authors. A store-house of literary and
bibliographical information exists between the covers of Library Notes,
and Characteristics, by the same author. Books and how to use Them is
the title of an instructive and entertaining small duodecimo by J. C.
Van Dyke, librarian of the Sage Library, New Brunswick, N. J., a writer
deep versed in books, but not shallow in himself. Brander Mathews’s
Ballads of Books, or Lang’s recast of this volume, is a most excellently
chosen collection of poems relating to books. Every one will read with
pleasure Percy Fitzgerald’s The Book Fancier, or the Romance of
Book-Collecting, a work replete with curious information. The French
scholar has a host of kindred works to choose from, all written _de
cœur_; for in France the passion for books, book-collecting, fine
letterpress, and fine bindings exists to a greater degree than anywhere
else. It was a Frenchman, the famed _bouquineur_ Nodier, who worried
through life without a copy of Virgil “because he could not succeed in
finding the ideal Virgil of his dreams.”
What instructive, sparkling volumes are these: L’Enfer du Bibliophile,
Mes Livres, Connaissances Nécessaires à un Bibliophile, Derome’s Le Luxe
des Livres and the two beautifully-printed and entertaining volumes,
Causeries d’un Ami des Livres, Le Petit’s L’Art d’Aimer les Livres,
Peignot’s Manuel du Bibliophile, Octave Uzanne’s Caprices d’un
Bibliophile, Mouravit’s Petite Bibliothèque d’Amateur, Jacob’s Les
Amateurs de Vieux Livres, and how many more!
I know of no more fascinating volume of its class, however, than De
Resbecq’s Voyages Littéraires sur les Quais de Paris, Paris, A. Durand,
1857. The contents are in the form of letters from an indefatigable
hunter of the book-stalls along the Seine to a fellow-bibliophile in the
provinces. Daily, through summer’s sun and winter’s cold, he continues
the chase, scenting the spoils of the stalls like a harrier beating the
ground for game, chatting with the book dealers, and philosophizing as
he scans the volumes. Among the many prizes which persistent foragings
secured was a copy of that rarest of the Elzevirs, the Pastissier
François. The volume had been denuded of its covers, but had the
engraved title-page, the celebrated _scène de cuisine_ with the range,
the tables, the cooks, and the fowls entirely intact. “The box in which
this jewel reposed, its interior in perfect preservation, contained no
price-mark.
“‘How much?’ said I to the merchant.
“‘Well, for you, six sous; is it too dear?’”
I recall few more delightful books for the bibliophile than Jules
Richard’s beautifully-printed small volume L’Art de Former une
Bibliothèque, published by Edouard Rouveyre, Paris, 1883. His advice to
the collector, which terminates the preface, is well worth transcribing:
“Always distrust your enthusiasm.
“Distrust the enormous prices at which certain original editions of
secondary authors are quoted. For acknowledged genius one can afford to
pay generously, but for the others, how many disappointments the future
has in store!
“Never pay a high price for a book you do not know.
“Verify the titles, the pagination, the tables, and count the plates, if
it is an illustrated book.
“The same observation holds good for editions on extraordinary paper of
books absolutely ordinary. Whatman and vellum require to be well placed
in order to sustain their value.
“One knows when he begins to collect, one never knows when he will
cease; therein consists the pleasure.”
A work of much interest is that of Philomeste Junior (Gustave Brunet),
published in four small _brochure_ volumes severally entitled La
Bibliomanie en 1878, 1880, 1881, 1883, ou Bibliographie Rétrospective
des Adjudications les Plus Remarquables faites cette Année, et de la
Valeur primitive de ces Ouvrages. It is in France that bibliomania seems
to have reached its apotheosis. La Bibliomanie furnishes some
interesting facts with regard to the steady advance in the prices of
certain classes of French books. “Fashion dictates her laws for the
choice of books as for the toilet of fashionable ladies; they are
without appeal.” To be the happy possessor of a cabinet in which are
enshrined a dozen tomes of unexceptional condition, illustrated by
celebrated eighteenth-century artists like Eisen, Gravelot, Moreau,
Marillier, and bound by Du Seuil, Padeloup, Derome, or Trautz, calls for
an elastic portemonnaie.
To cite a few examples of the advance in French books, paralleled also
in English books, a copy of Manon Lescaut (1753) sold in 1839 for 109
frs., in 1870 for 355 frs., in 1875 for 1,335 frs. The edition of
Montaigne’s Essays: Bourdens, S. Millanges, 1580, two parts in one
octavo vol., sold for 24 frs., in 1784. The same copy recently sold for
2,060 frs. Another edition of the Essays, 1725, 3 vols. 4to, with the
arms of the Maréchal de Luxembourg, brought 2,900 frs. for the “arms.”
Still another edition, Paris, 1669, 3 vols., 12mo, a poor edition,
brought 1,960 frs. at the Cormon sale, Paris, 1883. It had the stamp of
the golden fleece, the insignia of Longpierre, a mediocre poet, and the
purchaser paid for the fleece. The edition of 1595, Paris, chez A.
l’Angelier, 1 vol., infol. veau, brought 1,100 frs., in 1881. A “clean
and sound copy” of this edition in the original calf was quoted in a
recent London catalogue at £12 12_s._, another London dealer pricing a
copy of the same edition soon afterward at £60.
The edition of 1588, Paris, Abel l’Angelier, in 4, mar., Du Seuil, was
recently quoted by Morgand who is termed _la bourse des livres_, at
4,000 frs. This was the last edition published during the author’s
lifetime, and the first to contain the third book. It was marked on the
frontispiece “fifth edition,” though only three are known to have
preceded it. The library of Bordeaux possesses an example of this
edition filled with annotations and corrections by the hand of
Montaigne. Up to the present time, no editor of the Essais has availed
himself of these resources, of inestimable value from the point of view
of the study of the text of Montaigne. It would be of more than passing
interest to know whether in these corrections the author mitigated his
observation with regard to authors correcting their work.
A copy of the Pastissier François, bound by Trautz, was purchased not
long since by a French amateur for 4,100 frs. In 1883 a copy sold for
3,100 frs., at the sale of M. Delestre-Cormon, Paris. “This _broché_
copy, uncut (extremely rare in this condition), cost its owner 10,000
frs.; it has suffered a justifiable reduction. Despite the entire
absence of interest it presents, this volume being the least known of
the Elzevir collection, it has often obtained enormous prices, but they
are not sustained; it has been recognized that its rarity has been
exaggerated.”
Among the numerous causes, especially in France, which operate in the
value of a volume are previous distinguished ownership, and the garb of
an illustrious binder. In books the habit frequently makes the “monk.”
It is sufficient for a mediocre work to be emblazoned with the crest of
Pompadour or to have been fingered by Du Barry to make it worth its
weight in gold. All their _légèretés_ are freely forgiven by the
bibliophile in view of the lovely bindings with which they clothed their
books. Of recent years, as is well known, the Greek and Latin classics
have found far less favor than they did a few years since. In France,
and equally in England, the craze is for first editions of standard
works, for rare works, for works formerly belonging to some
distinguished personage, for rare or beautiful bindings, and for special
beauty of letterpress or illustration.
A late illustrated catalogue, issued by Bouton, the New York bookseller,
furnishes some interesting facts with regard to the increase in the
price of books in this country. If we consider the rapidly advancing
taste for literature in America, it is safe to predict that it will not
be long before rare and valuable books will be as generally sought for
here as they are in France and England, and become as well distributed
as are the choice treasures of the world of art which find the highest
competition in the metropolis of the New World.
Reviewing the book trade of the past thirty years, a retrospect shows
that year by year the competition for rare and standard books has become
more keen and the older ones necessarily more and more difficult to
procure. “In the English book-centers,” says the reviewer, “besides a
large home demand, the purchases for the United States and the English
colonies keep up a steady stream outward, and first editions must sooner
or later become unattainable, as they will ultimately find a place in
public institutions.” Comparing the prices quoted in early catalogues
with those of to-day, for instance, a copy of the Abbotsford edition of
Scott’s works, 17 vols., handsomely whole-bound, priced twenty-five
years since at $125, is now priced at $225. The Pickering Chaucer, then
priced at $10, is now held at $30. Major Walpole’s Anecdotes, priced
$22.50, is in the present catalogue at $75. Rowlandson’s Dance of Death
at $6.50 and the Dance of Life at $1.75 have advanced to $75, for the
three volumes. In catalogue No. 2 a fine copy of Purchas’s Pilgrims is
quoted at $175. A similar copy would now command $500. In Catalogue No.
3 a fine copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle is priced at $35; in the
present catalogue a copy is priced $150. Based upon an experience of
over thirty years, the reviewer asserts that, however fashion may change
and this or that class of books come into or pass out of vogue, good
sterling books of real merit will always be in demand, while the first
editions of the works of great writers will continue to rise steadily in
value, and will be prized as long as the English language is spoken.
_La chasse aux bouquins_ is not without its disappointments and
surprises. Time and again one misses the mark, finally to secure a rare
prize. A captivating title is not always a safe target. Appearances are
deceitful in book-titles, and the old book catalogues have very winning
ways. The two bound volumes of Les Trois Mousquetaires, which I picked
up in a book-stall along the quay at Paris years ago, contained a pencil
drawing of Porthos inserted between the fly-leaf and title-page of
Volume I, worth a hundred times their cost. Fortunately, they had
escaped De Resbecq. Whether Edouard Olin, the artist whose name figures
below, ever exhibited a picture in the _Salon_ subsequently, I do not
know. But his Porthos is a marvel of conception and execution that would
have delighted Dumas and that would honor Détaille.
A German catalogue was the means of procuring me, at half the original
cost of the volume, a clean and perfect copy of Joseph Boulmier’s Rimes
Loyales. Paris: Poulet-Malassis et De Brosse, 1857. The copy contains on
the false title the author’s _ex dono_ to Mademoiselle Andréa Bourgeois,
and on the reverse of the title-page, in the same singularly neat
handwriting, signed “J. B.,” is a poem of six stanzas, scarcely exceeded
in beauty and finish by any from the pen of the author of Rimes Loyales
or Les Villanelles. The lines are entitled Du Haut de Montmartre, the
first and sixth stanzas being identical, and reading as follows:
L’aigle n’habite pas au fond de la vallée
Il choisit pour son aire une cime isolée,
Et c’est de là qu’il part, libre et capricieux.
Le poète est semblable à l’aigle magnanime:
Il aime les hauteurs où l’air vif le ranime,
Où, plus loin de la terre, il est plus près des cieux.
A friend and Tom Folio, who devours the old book catalogues, saw this
advertisement a short time since in an English pamphlet: “Machiavelli
(Nicolo). Opere, 11 vols., 4to, whole-bound russia extra, gilt edges,
with portrait, _printed throughout on blue paper_ (only eight copies so
made), a most superb set. Milan, 1810.... £4.” He cabled for it and
secured it. It proved a blue diamond. Within a week after receiving it
he was offered two hundred dollars for the work. Within a fortnight he
disposed of it for three hundred dollars, a sufficient advance to make a
large addition to his library.
Many tempting and deceptive titles occur under the heading of “Curious”
and “Facetiæ,” but experience will cause one to fight shy of catching
titles and annotations unless one knows the work to be meritorious.
Frequently the gold is in the tooling, and the pure ore concealed
beneath an unattractive cover. Perhaps the windfalls are more than
offset by the disappointments. Inviting volume after inviting volume
will present itself when one is not in the humor, thrusting itself
before you in the book-stalls and auction sales, mutely appealing to you
to become its possessor, only to elude you when you earnestly desire it.
But auction sales are dangerous, and are apt to lead to lapses and
excesses that one would not commit in calmer moments. There it is
difficult to decide dispassionately, while the lots invariably bring far
higher prices than if obtained in the ordinary way. Even those of stern
judgment are led into purchases they afterward regret, carried away by
the excitement of the moment. The seductive voice of the auctioneer, the
passion for possession, the rivalry of the bidders, and the excitement
of the hour, all exert their influence and combine to weaken even the
most stoical and wary. The fly is placed temptingly upon the current,
and instantly it is seized.
Again, you dive into the foreign book pamphlets, where a coveted
treasure is catalogued, almost inevitably upon application to find it
“sold,” the prize is so far out of reach. But how elated you are when
you do secure a long-sought prize, and after repeated attempts a tall
old copy in perfect condition and in lovely first letterpress rewards
your endeavors!
Sainte-Beuve speaks of “the smiling and sensible grace of Charles Lamb.”
I am inclined to think the latter’s characteristic good humor was in
part due to the facility with which he procured the rare old editions he
loved. They were easier to lift from the shelves in Lamb’s days than
now, and the old book-dealer possessed far less “Imperfect Sympathies”
than the hardened modern Autolycus.
My interpretation of Montaigne by Florio, “thick folio, large copy, old
calf, neat, scarce, 1632,” and its predecessor of 1613 that lend such
dignity to their companions in old calf, were not obtained without
persistent efforts. Sometimes I think many of my old books are not
unlike Sir Roger de Coverley’s fox, whose brush cost him fifteen hours’
riding, carried him through half a dozen counties, killed him a brace of
geldings, and lost above half his dogs. But one’s rare editions need no
brass nails to record their bewitching title-pages or mark their place
amid the vistas of the shelves.
Preferable to the editions of 1613 and 1603 is the later edition, the
former lacking the index, though containing the fine portrait of the
translator by Hole. Florio’s strong and masterly English has well
reflected the original. I regard his translation as far superior to the
more generally accepted version by Cotton. Cotton is frequently more
literal; but Florio, despite not unfrequent interpolations and slight
departures, comes nearer to the coloring and picturesqueness of the
text. Take the spirited passage of the hare and the harrier, for
instance:
Ce liéure qu’ vn leurier imagine en songe: apres lequel nous le
voyons haleter en dormant, allonger la queuë, secoüer les
jarrets, & representer parfaitement les mouuemens de sa course:
c’est vn liéure sans poil & sans os.—Book II, chap. xii.
* * * * *
The _Hare_ that a _Grey-Hound_ imagines in his sleep, after
which we see him pant so whilst he sleeps, stretch out his Tail,
shake his Legs, and perfectly represent all the motions of a
Course, is a _Hare_ without Furr and without Bones.—Cotton’s
translation.
* * * * *
That Hare, which a grey-hound imagineth in his dreame, after
whom as he sleepeth we see him bay, quest, yelp, and snort,
stretch out his taile, shake his legs, and perfectly represent
the motions of his course; the same is a Hare without bones,
without haire.—Florio’s translation.
Equally well rendered, and an excellent specimen of the translator’s
style, is the passage of Volumnius referring to the election of certain
Roman citizens as consuls: “They are men borne unto warre, of high
spirits, of great performance, and able to effect anything; but rude,
simple, and unarted in the combat of talking; minds truly consulare.
They only are good Pretors, to do justice in the Citie that are subtile,
cautelous, well-spoken, wily, and lip-wise.” Florid and redundant,
Florio nevertheless employed his words as Walton did his frog; and in
numerous passages he out-Montaignes Montaigne, his vocabulary, as
Montaigne says of the Italian cook’s, being “stuffed with rich,
magnificent words and well-couched phrases; yea, such as learned men use
and employ in speaking of the Government of an Empire.”
Speaking of Florio’s rendition, the sonnet Concerning the Honour of
Bookes—
Since honour from the honorer proceeds,
etc.—is well known. Not so familiar, however, the preceding lines,
likewise prefixed to the editions of 1613 and 1632, and relating equally
to books. The sonnet, which has no name attached and which was naturally
attributed to the translator, is now generally thought by critics to be
by his friend Daniel, “of whom it is abundantly worthy, and, indeed,
most characteristic in sentiment and diction,” observes David Main. The
somewhat extended eulogium of author and translator is worth
transcribing for those who may not be familiar with it. It corroborates,
withal, a view regarding the increasing multitude of books, a multitude
increased a thousand-fold since Daniel’s time, that I have previously
touched upon. Relating as it does to the French philosopher, it may well
be diffusive.
But no extended transcription of an old author can stand out upon a
modern page with the vividness it does in a well-preserved old edition.
Apart from the charm of antiquity, the old edition has an added virtue
which the new edition lacks—the odor that clings to a venerable tome, a
fragrance as of the everlasting or _immortelle_ of the autumn fields,
lingering amid its ancient leaves. Nor is this altogether fancy; the
faded pages recall the ashen hue of the flower, and like it they survive
to preach the sermon of immortality.
Daniel’s lines are thus inscribed: “To my deare brother and friend M.
John Florio, one of the Gentlemen of her Majesties most Royall Privie
Chamber”:
Books, like superfluous humors bred with ease,
So stuffe the world, as it becomes opprest
With taking more than it can well digest;
And now are turnd to be a great disease.
For by this overcharging we confound
The appetite of skill they had before:
There be’ng no end of words, nor any bound
Set to conceit the Ocean without shore.
As if man laboured with himselfe to be
As infinite in writing, as intents;
And draw his manifold uncertaintie
In any shape that passion represents:
That these innumerable images
And figures of opinion and discourse
Draw’n out in leaves, may be the witnesses
Of our defects much rather than our force.
———————
But yet although wee labour with this store
And with the presse of writings seeme opprest,
And have too many bookes, yet want wee more,
Feeling great dearth and scarcenesse of the best;
Which cast in choicer shapes have been produc’d,
To give the best proportions to the minde
Of our confusion, and have introduc’d
The likeliest images frailtie can finde,
And wherein most the skill-desiring soule
Takes her delight, the best of all delight,
And where her motions evenest come to rowle
About this doubtful _center of the right_.
———————
Wrap _Excellencie_ up never so much
In Hierogliphicques, Ciphers, Caracters,
And let her speake never so strange a speech,
Her _Genius_ yet findes apt discipherers:
And never was she borne to dye obscure,
But guided by the Starres of her owne grace,
Makes her owne fortune, and is ever sure
In mans best hold to hold the strongest place.
And let the _Critick_ say the worst he can,
He cannot say but that _Montaigne_ yet
Yeelds most rich peeces and extracts of man;
Though in a troubled frame confus’dly set,
Which yet h’is blest that he hath ever seene,
And therefore as a guest in gratefulnesse,
For the great good the house yeelds him within
Might spare to tax th’ unapt convoyances.
But this breath hurts not, for both work and frame,
Whilst England English speakes, is of that store
And that choice stuffe as that without the same
The richest librarie can be but poore
And they unblest who letters doe professe
And have him not: whose owne fate beats their want
With more sound blowes than _Alcibiades_
Did his Pedante that did _Homer_ want.
My 1603 folio Florio bound by Roger Payne, my Foppens’s Elzevir with
autograph and annotations of Molière, my 1580 Bourdens edition placed in
its robe of honor by Derome—all these my ship contained among her
precious stores.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
XIV.
THE PAGEANT OF THE IMMORTALS.
Hi sunt Magistri qui nos instruunt, sine virgis et ferulis, sine
cholorâ, sine pecuniâ. Si accedis, non dormiunt; si inquiris, non se
abscondunt; non obmurmurant, si oberres; cachinos nesciunt, si
ignores.—RICHARD DE BURY.
Pour peu qu’il soit tenu loin du chaud et du frais,
Qu’on y porte une main blanche et respectueuse,
Que le lecteur soit calme et la lectrice heureuse ...
Un livre est un ami qui ne change jamais.
JULES JANIN.
I HAVE two chairs for my reading—a stiff one for books I _have_ to read;
a luxurious one for books I like to read. My luxurious chair is of
dark-green leather, a seat to sink into, modeled after the easy
arm-chair of the Eversley Rectory, known from its seductive properties
as “Sleepy Hollow.” When I find a volume more than usually delightsome,
I call in an extra chair for a foot-rest, so the body may possess the
same ease as the mind. And yet the delight a volume affords depends
largely upon the mood in which the leaves are turned, and the printer
who has turned the leaves.
A fondness for reading the old book catalogues is apt to prove not only
an expensive luxury, but consumes a great deal of time. For no catalogue
may be hastily skimmed through. The least attractive list, composed
largely, it may be, of works on theology, mineralogy, theosophy, or
jurisprudence, may contain the precise book you are searching for. The
most attractive lists must naturally be perused carefully. In fact,
reading catalogues is like reading books—even with attentive reading one
is liable to skip a title, or, at least, overlook its real significance,
just as one may not always grasp the true meanings of an author upon
first perusal. Then, one subject or one title leads to another, and the
catalogue must be reread. Even when you have made out your list, it
occurs to you that half or three quarters of the lot you have selected
will undoubtedly be “sold”; and having left out a number you really
desire, you go over the catalogue still more carefully a third time for
“substitutes.” Not only this, but the catalogue differs from a book in
that it can not wait or be put off. It must be studied immediately it is
received; or some one else gets the advantage, as some one else living
nearer by generally does.
If the business you have on hand prevents your devoting the necessary
time to the catalogue or catalogues, you are haunted with the feeling
that it contains a prize, and that you may not catch the first mail.
Indeed, should any of the lists contain, at anything like a reasonable
figure, that scarce old Herbal, an ancient angling tome, or a certain
edition of Les Caractères, which you have long been searching for, you
ought to telegraph for it without a moment’s delay. You know Smith will
read his list the minute he receives it. He is already far richer in La
Bruyères than you are, and never ceases collecting them. And although he
already has the edition you desire, it is ten to one if he sees it
offered at a bargain in fine antique binding he will duplicate it. There
is no such contingency as his skipping it. He never skips—he secures and
exults. His library shelves groan with La Bruyères. Were he rich he
might be forgiven; but all his prizes have been hooked by careful
angling, and are a triumph to his skill and monumental industry.
Charles Asselineau, in the unique little volume L’Enfer du Bibliophile,
draws a sharp line between the true book-hunter, who makes use of his
own knowledge, patience, and industry, and the hunter by proxy, who bags
his spoils through cunning other than his own-“the rich and lazy amateur
who only hunts by procuration and trusts to the care of an accomplished
professional to whom he gives _carte blanche_, and who despises him—ay,
who despises him, as the game-keeper and poacher always despise the
indolent and unskillful master who triumphs through their skill.” The
opening sentence of the volume is worthy of Sterne: “_Oui ... l’enfer!_
is it not there that one must arrive sooner or later, in this life or in
the other; oh all of you who have placed your joys in voluptuousness
unknown to the vulgar?”
On the other hand, you have the alternative of neglecting your business
and attending to the catalogues. In any case, the book catalogue is an
attraction and a bane. If you are niggardly and only order a volume or
two, you are generally disappointed; if you are in a liberal mood, and
order a number, thinking you will only obtain a few, you are likely to
get a lot of books that will deprive you of getting others you really
require. Then the works one continually sees that one can not afford,
the columns of temptations all crying, “Farewell! thou art too dear for
my possessing”—the Paris catalogues in particular, so rich in their
_embarras de richesses_. There is a stanza of Clough’s that may be cited
as pertinent to book-hunting:
They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,
And how one ought never to think of one’s self,
How pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking,
My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho!
How pleasant it is to have money!
Possibly the old book catalogues are sent as a lesson in self-control,
and to teach one to endure disappointment as patiently as human nature
will allow.
Not the least interesting volume of my library is my herbarium. Still
every pressed flower retains much of its original color, reviving the
scene of many a pleasant ramble. Commencing with the first cluster of
spring beauty and white shad-blow spray, and ending with the last purple
aster and blue gentian of autumn, it is thus a sentient floral
calendar—a fragrant anthology of the seasons. It is one of my
pleasantest volumes for winter reading, every flower of which is a
chapter written by Nature herself. This involucre of white dogwood, for
instance, becomes a vernal landscape riotous with bloom, while these
feathery mespilus blossoms bring up the April hillsides sprinkled with
hepaticas and violets. This bunch of trilliums recalls a distant
beechwood in early May carpeted with the snowy triangular flowers and
misty with the beech’s unfurling leaves.
And this pink lady’s-slipper!
Once more I trace the sinuous curves of the Wiscoy and am lulled by the
drowsy murmur of the stream. How cool the water swirls beneath the
overarching hemlocks, and how it is churned into foam in the deep, dark
pool at the tail of the rapid, where I know the big trout I hooked and
lost the previous year is waiting for another taste of my “cochybondu”!
It is just at the base of the steep shaded hillside where the sun never
penetrates. If my trout chooses to display his rubies and chrysoberyls
he must thread his way up the current or float down to the meadow far
below. When I have hooked and basketed him, another big fellow will
occupy his place in the same deep, dark pool.
It is the choice spot of the stream within a reach of half a mile, and
invariably holds the strongest fish and most accomplished taker of
_ephemeræ_. His pannier must needs be large, so many flies and midges
and worms and bugs and beetles drift past his lair, and are sucked in by
the eddy into his awaiting maw. The sudden dive of a water-rat proclaims
a rival angler, who may also have his eye on my trout, and bring him to
bag, perchance, if I miss him to-day.
An aroma of mint, mingled with the fragrance of wild flowers and ferns,
follows me along the banks; and there, in the swamp where the partridge
drums, my pink lady’s-slipper gleams. The twisting roots of the hemlock
plunge deep into the pool; and with a slap of his red tail the big trout
rises just beyond them in the foam-flecks of the eddy, precisely where
he rose the previous year. How the water growls round the bank it has
mined, and chafes and scolds at the obtruding prongs! And how
picturesquely, too, the old hemlock leans over the stream, shading the
trout for the last time! Another athlete and trained fly-catcher must
lead the somersault acts hereafter; for a day at least the small fry may
rest secure. But, alas! with a sudden rush, my trout has wound the
leader fast around the hemlock’s roots, as he has wound so many leaders
before; and, with a farewell flash of his encarmined sides, I seem to
hear his parting message: “_Multæ lapsæ inter truttam et bascaudem
sunt!_” The pressed flower remains to remind me of the struggle and my
June holiday.
Looking now at the pink lady’s-slipper from the Wiscoy woods, I am glad,
after all, I did not take my trout, however great a triumph his capture
might have afforded me at the time. For, if the water-rat has not caught
him meanwhile—and the maxim the trout flung at me virtually precludes
this possibility—he is undoubtedly still swimming in his favorite pool.
Granting I had caught him and that a fish of equal size had taken his
place, it would yet be another trout, not _my_ trout which I hooked and
lost. The stream flows more musically and more limpid to me knowing he
is still stemming the current, and that he regained his freedom.
This spike of cardinal flowers carries me a hundred miles away; and once
more am I drifting down the Oswego River on a hazy autumnal afternoon,
indifferent whether the great green bass rise or not, so golden is the
September day. It is enough to be idling beneath the roar of the rapid,
to mark the different hues of the water, the play of the slanting
sunbeams, the undulations of the wooded shores. Surely the landscape
needs no more. Ah, yes! just that bit of color skirting a still bayou,
the flame of cardinal flowers and their reflected images below. What an
illustrated volume! the imperial folio of the seasons! And what a
succession of illuminated pages it discloses from the rubric and the
preface until the last leaf is turned! every subject indexed and paged
by the grand author, Nature; its types as fresh as if they had only run
through one, instead of thousands of editions.
In dreams do I behold in all the great libraries the procession of the
books that nightly emerge from the seclusion of their shelves—countless
flowers from the Muse’s hill and garlands from the meadows of the
classics. At a signal from the most antiquated tome, I see a sudden
movement among their ranks, and hear a rustling of innumerable leaves,
as the souls of the immortals are quickened into life, and the spirits
of old authors assemble for converse. Platoons of majestic folios, some
in calf, some in sheep, and some in stamped pigskin appear, columns of
venerable and vellumed quartos, tiers of tall octavos, troops of lovely
Elzevirs, Aldines, and sedate black-letter editions file by with
measured tread. Volumes black with age move with step as elastic as
those clothed in more modern garb. Indeed, old and young seem to be
indiscriminately mingled, without regard to costume or richness of
attire. Only, I observe that the procession is composed solely of the
dead.
I notice, moreover, that it is only the books of real merit or great
renown that are called to take part in the pageant; and that the
participants vary with each succeeding night, appearing entirely without
regard to chronological order, though all the beautiful world of
_belles-lettres_, philosophy, and science that has charmed and
instructed mankind throughout the ages, forms the processional. Thus a
copy of Plato and a first folio of Shakespeare pass by, side by side,
followed by The Canterbury Tales and the Faerie Queen, hand in hand. Or
is it Goethe’s Faust and Plutarch’s Lives? It is sometimes difficult to
catch the titles, so numerous are the volumes that take part. As the eye
becomes accustomed to the dimness, the titles are more easily traced,
and I distinctly recognize Horace and Virgil, Milton and Keats, Herrick
and Hood, Montaigne and Pascal, Lamb, Thackeray, Cervantes, Molière,
Theocritus, Dante, Schiller, Balzac, Dumas the Elder, Pope, Burns,
Goldsmith, Addison, Hawthorne, Bulwer, Dickens, Irving—until the eye is
dazed at the multitudinous names. Night after night the procession forms
and the participants vary—there are so many volumes to take part, so
many that may not be overlooked. Richard Jefferies, his beautiful
thoughts scarcely dry on the page, I note has just been called forth
from the shelves, and Thoreau has already marched with Walton and
Gilbert White.
Although not assisting in the pageant itself, there are, I perceive,
numerous volumes that, nevertheless, appear to be in communication with
such of their companions as have responded to the signal. Beckoning
glances from those below are answered every now and then by faint
responses from the volumes above, their leaves as yet unfoxed by Time.
Of these latter there are many, and I soon perceive that they bear the
names of living authors of note who must wait until their earthly life
is spent ere they too may answer the roll-call and take rank with the
immortals. How, apparently without volition of their own, as if touched
by an unseen hand, the leaves of In Memoriam rustle and the pages of The
Autocrat flutter!
The only participants I see that seem to be out of place assemble once a
year in solemn conclave, conversing, it is true, but wearing a dejected
look. Countless volumes, these, principally first and rare editions,
many bound in lovely leathers, exquisitely gilded, lettered, and tooled,
bearing innumerable stamps and monograms, coats-of-arms, and ancient
book-plates. Many of them I recognize as having seen before in high
spirits, discoursing with their companions during the hour of the
nightly pageants. This yearly and unusually large gathering,
characterized by its extreme gravity, puzzled me at first, until I
discovered it was composed of the ghosts of borrowed books, unhappy in
their covers, lamenting the loss of their former possessors who had once
cherished them so fondly. I see, too, Boccaccio’s Il Decamerone,
Brantôme’s Dames Galantes, Balzac’s Physiologie du Mariage, La
Fontaine’s Contes with the Eisen, De Hooge, and Fragonard plates, and in
yonder soiled, foul-smelling tome I perceive the smutty old satirist and
Doctor-Franciscan Rabelais. Why he should be called out at all, seems a
mystery, his pitch is so defiling, and his boluses are so nauseating.
Some participants there are which at first baffled my comprehension.
These, though perfectly composed themselves and mingling freely with
their fellows, nevertheless appear to excite an inordinate curiosity
among their companions which is never gratified. The titles they bear
are plainly discernible; but only when the march becomes sufficiently
animated to cause a violent fluttering of the leaves can I catch a
glimpse of the author’s name on the title-page. Then I discover these
numerous tomes invariably reveal the name of a most voluminous and
versatile author, whose personality it is impossible to fathom, an
author writing with equal facility in all languages and on all topics,
in poetry and in prose, persistently preserving his _incognito_ under
the name of “Anon.”
I see, also, participating in the pageant semi-annually, and on these
occasions directing, as it were, the imposing march of the volumes,
numerous men of middle and advanced age that seem to exhale an odor of
musty tomes. Occasionally these pause in their march before some one of
the shelves to take down a volume which I have not before seen in the
procession, handling it with reverential care, as if conscious of the
gems it enshrined. Sometimes it is a volume by a living author of note;
again it is an encyclopædia or concordance, or a special number of some
dusty periodical that has long lain unopened. On inquiry of my
informant, I learned that this human element consists of the painstaking
custodians who had the volumes in keeping, the scholarly and
unappreciated librarians who devoted so much labor to the cataloguing
and classification of their charges.
Abruptly close the clasps of the most venerable tome. Again I hear the
rustling of pages and folding of covers, as each volume returns to its
accustomed place and once more sinks into hallowed slumber. The
librarian of one of the great libraries where the nightly pageant forms
scouted the idea of his charges leaving their retreats. “Would I not
hear them?—besides the dust remains undisturbed!” he replied. But a dead
author makes no noise and leaves no tell-tale traces when he quits his
tenement of print. Books, so eminently human, in the natural course of
things must have their ghosts. Of course, the librarian’s candle would
dissipate them, as mists are dispersed by the sun.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
EPILOGUE.
Was ich besitze, seh’ ich wie im Weiten,
Und was verschwand, wird mir zu Wirklichkeiten.
What I possess, I see far distant lying,
And what I lost, grows real and undying.
GOETHE, FAUST.
In the hearts of most of us there is always a desire for
something beyond experience. Hardly any of us but have
thought, Some day I will go on a long voyage; but the years
go by and still we have not sailed.
—RICHARD JEFFERIES, THE OPEN AIR.
ONCE more the spring, the sunshine, and the youth of the year. As much
of contentment, perhaps, as the majority may find within the confines of
brick and stone my house has yielded me throughout the long months of
winter. Grateful I am for the comfort it has afforded—its warmth, its
luxury, its cheer. Yet ever with the return of spring and the song of
birds, the house becomes merely secondary to the grounds, the garden,
and the charms of external nature.
Again I lounge on the grass-plot overlooking the river. Once more I
watch the sparkle of the water and inhale the scent of the wild
honeysuckle, sentient with the sweet breath of the summer. The bees hum,
the wood-dove calls, the soothing roar of the rapids rises and falls.
Again, through the morning haze, I note the pleasure craft idling on the
breast of the river; while yonder, her painted canvas unfurled, a
strange craft is slowly rounding a curve of the shore.
Did I say my ship had come? Alas! the wood-dove only murmured in his
dream, and my ship sailed past to deposit her precious stores at the
harbor of my more fortunate neighbor.
My ship was, after all, only one of the castles in Spain that we are
always building—and “these are but my fantasies.”
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
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