Chambers’s Journal, by Various—A Project Gutenberg eBook

By firelight, the children had heard a traveller’s tale about the mirage of the desert—the distant vision of tufted palms and green herbage, the promise of water, and shade, and rest. They had heard how the delusion flies, baffling pursuit, always seeming to stand at an attainable distance across the hot sands, always infinitely far, till it fades, because on their path it has no tangible existence. It is the delusive image of something existing elsewhere, and elsewhere perhaps unasked and uncared for by others, who reckon the oasis worth but little when their ambition is restless for the object of their journey.

‘That story won’t do!’ piped a little voice from the hearthrug, where golden hair was glistening full in the light like a heavenly aureola about an earthly dissatisfied face.

From within a cluster of boys and girls clinging to the armchair, the victim had of course to tell a fairy tale instead, down to the inevitable ending, ‘And they were happy ever after.’

(Immediate flank attack and strategic surprise:) ‘Then their seeds wouldn’t come up. How did they manage?’

‘Maybe they didn’t care much for their seeds and things,’ said the golden-haired mortal of the real world, pensively. ‘One can’t care much for one’s “Tom Thumbs,” and be perkly happy when the “Tom Thumbs” don’t come up after setting ’em.’

There was a whole philosophy in these hearthrug speeches. Six years old in the cosy homelight, and the world was already incomplete! Even fairyland did not bear close inspection. If one asked questions about it, one found out that it had its drawbacks. Of course, fairy princes and princesses were perfectly happy, but only under conditions of existence that put them out of our sympathy. Carrying one’s human heart along with one, Fairyland wouldn’t do. This, in much simpler words, and no words at all, was the course of the firelight reflections on the rug. The victim, who had succumbed, followed out in another way his own idea of the problem of happiness in this complex world.

In disguise, most of the stories told to the world’s grown-up children have the same ending as the nursery tales—happy ever after. One wonders whether the ending is imaginable, or would it fall to pieces in detail; one wonders, too, whether this is an unfair delusion, saddening real mortals, suggesting impossible hopes and contrasts that have no lawful standing, because one side is only the ‘baseless fabric of a vision.’ Lastly, one wonders if the modern stories that insinuate happiness ever after, suggest that their hero and heroine are no longer meant for human sympathy, because they belong henceforth to fairy nature—or, shall we say, to the mangold-wurzel tribe?—and are not, like us, small creatures of hope and love, who ‘care much for our seeds and things.’

If we have skimmed many times the course of love that refuses to run smooth till it has got through three volumes, we have foreseen the marriage, and pinned our faith to what would come out at the end of volume three. Our confidence was unshaken, though occasionally it suffered twinges. The future bridegroom was reported dead abroad: instinctively our hope strengthened. He was said to be drowned at sea: our mind was easy—the marriage was as good as promised. Even when the bride was engaged to somebody else, it did not make the least difference in her feelings or ours. Of course that marriage was to be; it would leave us content, and the hero and heroine happy. For Bella Millefleurs and that distinguished Italian, the Count del Cucchiajo, there was certainly a future like the melodist’s Vale of Avoca, where the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease, and their hearts, like its{162} waters, be mingled in peace. Their life before had been shifting, rugged, uncertain; they attain their life’s object early, and there they rest.

Most of the after-marriage novels are histories of lives that go down a few steps or altogether into a upas valley. In healthy air, we are given to understand that the most natural end of the story is the marriage-day. We must not ask to follow through the golden gates; beyond these is a bright level of peace—that region where, as we have been reading, the Count del Cucchiajo and Bella—who had the violet eyes, you remember—are gone. They have found the summum bonum; their marriage has made them perfectly happy; and so the story ends.

Happy ever after! As much delusion implied at the end of three volumes, as told in words at the end of a nursery tale. Given the conditions of our life, it is impossible. Not that a happy marriage is impossible—the Fates forbid we should teach such heresy! But the happiest marriage is not a rounded sphere of contentment; it is not ‘one entire and perfect chrysolite.’ Experience answers for itself that the sweetest wife and the most devoted husband are not always in the same position which—as the book and our own minds told us—the Count del Cucchiajo and his violet-eyed bride had secured, when they drove away from the imaginary St George’s, Hanover Square, a while ago; or from the country church, whose imaginary gateway we saw so plainly at the imaginary roadside, among the golden-green branches of that spring-time that never was.

‘Ah! well,’ says some one wiser than the rest, piling up the three volumes, and thinking about an afternoon reviver of tea as a stimulant to the dreary return to this unsatisfactory sort of a world, ‘you can’t expect a story to go on into all about everything. One reads for pleasure; it should end happily. We don’t want a fourth volume about lawsuits and income tax, bursting water-pipes, or kitchen chimney on fire on the day of the dinner-party. We don’t want to read on to the measles and the boy’s tin trumpet, and the lady’s first gray hairs, and perhaps the Count crusty with the gout—his family’s fault, and not his. You must flavour with all those minor matters according to taste.’

But nobody flavours, nobody mars the feast with prosaic troubles. And precisely there the mischief lies. The impression given by the climax of the story, and the idea left in the reader’s mind, is life’s object attained, and perfect happiness henceforth. The characters that point the moral and adorn the tale do not pass away from it into the married life of this commonplace world. Like the Prince and the awakened Beauty of the Laureate’s verses, they go forth independent of occupation, and where the Directory-makers cease from troubling. Their future is exquisitely beautiful, vague as a dream; we only know that

Now, what is the effect of this custom of ending the story with the old clap-trap ‘happy ever after?’ Poor Polly Brown, who has had the three soiled loose-leaved volumes from the village library, looks out at our poor familiar world in fading wintry light, and decides that the one prize worth winning is her wedding-day. The world’s winters, the wild black boughs and barren fields, will then be seen no more; it will be a romantic existence, with no dull relations to be civil to, no tiresome household work, no dusting of that shut-up drawing-room with its faint smell of carpet and fire-grate and musty roses. She has dreamed her dream; all her efforts are turned towards attaining it. In a certain sense, she is selfish already. Poor Polly, impatient to escape from the homely parlour and the sanctum of dried roses! Bella Millefleurs, who never lived, will yet cause her real pain in the days of disillusion. She will shed real tears, not as heroines do, but with the prosaic human sorrow of red eyes.

Somebody else, two seasons ago, held the same book with dainty white hand, when, from a great London lending library it came in its first freshness, with stainless cover, and pages smelling deliciously of ‘new book.’ This pretty girl had danced till three that morning, and had a new ring on her finger, which she kissed when she was sure nobody would see her. Of course she was only resting in curtained firelight in a gem of a boudoir; it would be cruel to expect so graceful and fragile a creature to do anything after such a night; and idle to expect her to do more than skim and skip the chapters, when her own real tale was so much sweeter. She had dreamed her dream from fifty other stories of the same ending. She had attained her life’s object in securing a lover with a coronet; and the happy marriage is the coming rest without sorrow or change. If poor Polly Brown could have seen her, she would have been ready to cry for envy; and yet two seasons after, when we saw the homely girl devouring that same story from the same pages, perhaps my lady with the coronet was beginning to feel the heartbreak of disillusion, the unfitness for a life that was misunderstood.

Smith, Brown, and Jones, who are good fellows in their way, and untroubled by romance, are not likely to have new opinions formed by a tired hour of fiction with an after-dinner cigar. But Mrs Smith, Mrs Brown, and Mrs Jones are not so lucky. They may yet have their moments of mental pain, their hidden anguish about imaginary contrasts, their secret storms in a teacup. Their marriage, with its thousand cares, did not raise them to transcendent bliss, as it seems other people’s marriages do. Smith, or Brown, or Jones, has not been to them what that man with a soul, the Count del Cucchiajo, was to his wife. Inferred regretful verdict on Jones who is innocently puffing, and reading through the second volume! The love and good-fortune of the violet-eyed{163} heroine would not by itself have left this sad impression; it has come from the insinuation of happy ever after, which the history of heroines with eyes of all colours has gradually completed. It has given a false impression of life, leading through the magic of the happy marriage into a state of complete contentment and rest, a satisfaction of the insatiable power of loving, a rest from the almost infinite capacity for suffering. All this the real life has not found. Nor could it have been found, for it belongs to another world. Had that felicity been reached, it would have proved, in such a world as this, a heart neither capable of much love nor of much suffering, and therefore ignoble, because unfeeling. We can fancy a mangold-wurzel with such an experience, but not a human being.

Closely associated with the false view of life is that mirage of the heart—the complete happiness that seems attainable if only life had advanced to some change of circumstance. This vision leads on many a one in the straining of hope from the cradle to the grave. We know that others have precisely what we want; it exists somewhere, and they hardly care for it. The shadow only is ours. We forget that another and a greater mirage has risen before them farther on; and that if we stood where they stand, we too would be straining onward. Only, let not the mirage of nine-tenths of the novels delude us. The hero and the heroine have reached no land of perfect happiness, if they are still in this world of patience and of effort. If we believe they have found an El Dorado, we shall follow with selfish steps, with a false ideal of the winning of the prize, and with a morrow of disillusion yet to come. By all means let them show us the bravery and the mutual faith that make at last of love the crown of life; but let them not tell us that it is ever in this world a tearless diadem. Nor can it be likened to a secure rest, an imperishable home; it is rather the tent on the battle-plain, and the dwellers there have not the prospect of court and feast, but the joy of brave natures, blithe as soldier-comrades in the strength of union.

And now, after finding, like the child on the hearthrug, that ‘happy ever after’ is an untrue ending, what are we to do with our human thirst for rest? Where are we to look, if the vision of happiness farther on is only a mirage? And a mirage it is in many cases. There is but one true answer. This is not the world of perfect happiness.

Our plans for abiding happiness in the future must be laid, in a far different sense from the fairy poem, beyond the world’s ‘utmost purple rim, and deep into the dying day.’ Meanwhile, the best thing we can do for our contentment is to seize upon the golden Present. Oh, that golden Present! how despised it is; yet there is no El Dorado of this world’s future that can compare with it. Mingled with the wear and tear of every day, it is perhaps this day and hour the time that we shall look back to in future years as a bright vanished dream. We shall be at too great a distance then to see its small anxieties, its commonplace imperfections; why should we see them now? Again, the golden Present is the time full of the affections that may be cut off before the future has become a sadder present. Let us take the every-day love that we already have, though it be gold roughly wrought. Our treasures may pass away, while we are weaving dreams and following shadows.

CHAPTER XVII.—A TURNING-POINT.

The task which Madge had undertaken would have been simple enough, if she had not heard that sad story about the old time when her mother and Philip’s uncle stood in the same relationship to each other as she and Philip now. Then she would have had nothing to do but to write a letter according to her instructions.

Knowing, however, what painful recollections her name would suggest to Mr Shield, the task became a little complicated. Old wounds would be uncovered, old passions roused again, and who could tell what might be the consequences to Philip? She had formed her idea of Mr Shield from Aunt Hessy’s account of the manner in which he had received the tidings of her mother’s marriage, and from Philip’s account of the feud between his father and him. And the idea was that of a man who never forgot an offence, even if he forgave it. His years of exile and of silence to those friends and relatives showed how implacable his nature must be.

She had thought of this the moment Philip told her what she was to do; but in his present condition she could not venture to explain it to him. Fortunately, there was one to whom she could express her doubts, and fortunately Aunt Hessy always saw the best in everything: if she had been thrown to the bottom of a pit, she would have lifted her eyes to the disc of sky above and taken comfort. She was endowed with that boundless faith which makes one happy in one’s self and the cause of happiness in others.

‘Do not trouble thyself, child. We make more worries for ourselves than are made for us. Like enough the two great troubles of Austin’s life may be redeemed in thee and Philip. That would be great joy to me. Send thy letter as it is; and I’ll put a few words to him in the same envelope, so that he may understand thou art no stranger.’

It was only a few words Aunt Hessy wrote: ‘This is to tell thee that after many years thou art still kindly borne in mind. It is our fervent hope that time hath brought thee peace as well as riches. The letter which this short greeting goes with is from our Lucy’s child, Madge. If all go well with them, Madge and thy nephew Philip Hadleigh will one day marry. I think it well that thou shouldst know this, and trust that it may please thee. I would be glad to tell thee more if any sign be given me that thou carest to hear it.’

Madge wrote a succinct account of the accident which had befallen Philip and a clear statement of all that she had been directed to say. Before this letter was closed, Dr Joy called, and a postscript became necessary.

‘The doctor who is attending Mr Philip Hadleigh has been here. He says that it would be positively dangerous for him to move from his{164} room for two or three weeks; and that to undertake a journey to Griqualand in less than three or even four months would be “positively suicidal.” The doctor also says that Mr Hadleigh’s anxiety to keep his engagement with you is likely to retard his recovery very much. My fear is that he will attempt to travel before he is fit to do so safely. Could you not assure him that the delay will cause you no inconvenience?’

She did not hear what Dr Joy said to Aunt Hessy, or her fear that Philip in his impulsive way might act without due heed to the voice of medical wisdom would have been greatly increased.

‘The fact is, Mrs Crawshay, there is no great danger in the case itself, although two ribs are broken. The real danger lies in his impatience to be away and home again. I think your niece has something to do with that. He let it out to me to-day when he told me that he was not so impatient to go as he was impatient to be back. You must persuade Miss Heathcote to use her influence to keep him quiet.’

Madge went to the village post-office herself. Even the posting of this letter had obtained what at the moment appeared to be a somewhat undue importance. However, it was safely placed in the box by her own hand, and she experienced a sense of relief as if she had got rid of a burden. There were so many things she might have said, and had not, so many phrases she might have altered or modified to suit the peculiar associations which it revived, that so long as it remained in her possession there seemed a probability of being constrained to go back and write it all over again. If on the contents of this letter had depended the most fateful turning-point in her life, and she had been aware of it, she could not have been more exercised in mind about them, or more relieved when the die was cast into the post-box.

Now she turned with lightened steps towards Ringsford. In the fields on every side the ploughs and harrows were at work; occasionally there was the crack of a gun, and in the distance she could see the blue smoke wreathing up into the air and the sportsmen following their dogs. A soft russet tinge like a great brown cobweb lay upon the Forest, and leaves were fluttering hesitatingly to the ground, as if uncertain whether or not it was yet time to quit the branches. These were the tokens that the harvest-time was over, and the fat ricks in the farmyards told that there had been a goodly ingathering.

When she reached the Manor, the young ladies had barely finished breakfast. They had been dancing until daylight shamed the lamps in the marquee, and consequently they were still at their first meal long after the forenoon dinner had been finished at Willowmere.

‘Why did you not tell us about poor Philip last night, Madge?’ was Miss Hadleigh’s salutation, adding, with a shrug of the shoulders which might represent a shudder: ‘It is so dreadful to think of us all enjoying ourselves while our brother was lying at death’s door.’

‘Not so bad as that, unless there has been some great change since the doctor was here,’ said Madge.

‘There will be such scandal about it all over the country,’ exclaimed Caroline.

‘Everybody will know that you were purposely kept in ignorance of the accident.’

‘I am sure I wouldn’t have laughed or danced at all, if I had only known,’ half-sobbed the conscience-stricken Bertha.

‘That is exactly why he insisted you should not be told about it until after your party.’

‘But it wasn’t our party: it was his party; and everybody will think we are such unfeeling creatures,’ was the petulant comment of Caroline, who appeared to be more occupied about what ‘everybody’ would say than about her brother’s injuries.

And everybody did say a great deal, of course—particularly everybody who had not been invited to the festival. The explanation satisfied those who had shared in the night’s merriment and those who had not pretended to be satisfied. So all was well, and the Misses Hadleigh found a doleful interest in receiving the numerous callers and answering their inquiries. They felt a little chagrin at first that Madge should have the privilege of seeing their brother, whilst they were forbidden access to his room for several days. But this was speedily overcome, for none of them had a partiality for a sick-room, and their visitors kept them fully occupied.

The most regular inquirer was Wrentham, who not only presented himself daily at the Manor, but also contrived to see Dr Joy and obtain from him precise accounts of the progress of the case.

The progress was all that could be expected under the circumstances. Philip had a strong constitution; he was soothed into a degree of calmness, as soon as he learned that Madge had carried out his wishes; he ‘kept his head’ all the time; but his strength rendered his unavoidable restraint the more tantalising, and the sailing of the Hertford Castle without him the more vexatious.

‘Are you so very sorry, then, that we are together for a month or two longer than you expected?’

‘You know I am not; but then they have to be tacked on to the other end; and by so much delay my return.’

She was obliged to own that it was irksome for a man of active spirit to be bound down to his bed for weeks, when he had so much to do, and his spirit felt strong enough to do it. Besides, as he put it:

‘We had screwed our courage to the sailing-point, and now, when we have to wind ourselves up again, how do you know but I may fail? Maybe I shall give it up altogether, and take that little trip to the church we spoke about, and my father wants us to make.’

‘No, Philip, you will not fail; and in any case, we shall not take that trip until next harvest is over.’

‘Next harvest!’ ejaculated the invalid, pretending to groan. ‘How old shall we be then?—or rather, how old shall I be? for I don’t believe you will ever grow old.’

‘We shall both have added exactly one year to our experience,’ she said cheerfully, ‘and we shall begin life so much the more wisely.’

‘Shall we? Well, you can have the experience and the wisdom. I should like to have a Rip van Winkle sleep till then, and waken up just in time to give the necessary answers to the vicar. I say: have you been studying the service?’

Of course she had gone over The Service more than once, with that sweet tremulous wonder—compound of curiosity, timid, only half-acknowledged anticipation and awe—which is inspired by those mysterious words that have the power of making two lives one. Was there ever a maiden passed her teens without doing and feeling so? Was there ever a maiden who has not strained her eyes into the misty future that overhangs the altar, and speculated upon the shape in which her fate was to appear? And what maiden was ever ready to make frank confession to her lover of those vague day-dreams in which he has had no definite existence?

‘To be sure you have,’ says Philip gaily, notwithstanding the feebleness of his voice; ‘but I have not. So you will have to coach me for the exam.—I mean the occasion.’

The sunshine of youth was still in their hearts, and they could talk with gay fearlessness of the responsibilities they were to take upon themselves by-and-by. That ‘By-and-by’ makes such a difference in our views of things: even the coward is brave whilst the battle is to be fought by-and-by.

In spite of broken bones and disappointment and restraint, they were pleasant days those to the lovers. Pleasanter still when Philip was declared out of danger, and was permitted to spend two of the sunny hours daily in the garden, which was still brilliant with flowers. ‘Nature and me to keep the place bonnie all the year round,’ Sam Culver used to say, and in the autumn especially, the combined forces produced marvellous effects.

Madge was with Philip in these little outings, wheeling his chair herself, in order that they might escape the tyranny of a servant’s attendance.

A dense high hedge of ancient boxwood, trimmed into the shape of a castle’s rampart, screened the kitchen-garden from the pleasure-grounds. A wide gravel-path divided this screen from a thicket of variegated evergreens. In the centre of the thicket was an open space where stood two silver beeches, and beneath them was a circular rustic seat.

This was a favourite resting-place of Philip and Madge—to read, to dream of the golden future; and it was here he first rebelled against the restraint of his wheel-chair. Autumn had faded into winter, when upon a certain day the lovers were seated together busily reading the letters which had been received that morning from Austin Shield.

The first was to her, and the coldness of its tone tended to confirm the impression she felt of the man’s nature:

‘I am obliged to you for the information contained in your letter to hand. I trust that my nephew’s accident may not entail any permanent injury. Again thanking you, &c.’

‘That’s dry enough,’ muttered Philip, annoyed by this curt acknowledgment of Madge’s service.

‘But he had nothing more to say, and he does not know me,’ was her generous comment. ‘What more could he say than thank you?’

‘I don’t know—but there are different ways of saying thank you; and Uncle Shield does not seem to understand the most gracious way. Some people never do understand it, although they may try all their lives. But he does not mean any harm. I should say the wilds of Griqualand do not afford many opportunities for the cultivation of sweetness and light. Here is what he says to me:

‘“I have received Miss Heathcote’s letter. I regret what has befallen you, and hope you will speedily recover. The attention you have given to my business is satisfactory. Meanwhile, your inability to sail on the date fixed does not cause me so much disappointment as it might have done a few days ago.

‘“It was my determination never to visit England again. Circumstances, however, have recently come to my knowledge which induce me to alter that determination. As soon as my affairs here can be put in order I shall start for London. You need not write again here. Place Mr Wrentham’s papers in the hands of my solicitors for safe custody till my arrival. I shall communicate with you when I reach London, and shall expect to see you as soon afterwards as you may be able to get about.

‘“One thing I must ask you to bear in mind—that I do not wish to meet any of the family except yourself. A meeting would not be agreeable to me, and it could not be pleasing to them. It was about you my sister wrote to me, and my pledge to her concerned you alone.”’

This was subscribed with the most formal of all subscribing phrases—‘Yours truly;’ and even that he seemed to consider of so little importance, that it was only suggested by a series of strokes, which would have been absolutely meaningless to any one not acquainted with the form. Yet those two words ought to mean a great deal.

After the message had been read twice, Madge sat thoughtfully gazing at the paper. Philip’s cheeks had flushed, and his eyes became bright with satisfaction.

‘Well!’ he exclaimed at length, ‘this disposes of the whole bother. I can do what my mother wished without having to run away from you. Are you not glad?’

‘Yes, I am glad,’ she answered slowly; ‘but, do you know, I am almost afraid of your uncle.’

‘Nonsense. He is an odd fish, and dry as a roasted coffee-bean in his letters. But he must be the right sort at bottom, or she would never have cared so much for him, or have asked him to take an interest in me.’

Philip was thinking of his mother; Madge was thinking of hers; and she also came to the conclusion that Austin Shield must be a good man at heart, or he could not have won so much affection, and he would not have been so faithful to the pledge he had given his sister years ago. The vision of the hard unforgiving man vanished from her mind, but no new conception took its place. Some instinct impels us to create a mental portrait of any person about whom we hear much or with whom we correspond. As a rule, the portrait is entirely erroneous; and we{166} are disappointed, agreeably or the reverse, as may be, when we meet the original in the flesh. Yet these portraits of the imagination often exercise a permanent influence on our conduct towards the unconscious sitters.

‘Have you ever formed any notion of what he can be like personally?’ she asked by-and-by.

‘Well, no.... I cannot say that I have—that is, any particular notion of him. There is no portrait of him anywhere about the house, and my father never spoke about him till that evening when he tried to persuade me not to go to him. I should say he is a big chap, with a thin face and a keen eye to business, but good-natured in the main. What is your idea?’

‘I cannot say now. I had my idea; but something has driven it quite out of my head within the last few minutes.’

‘Well, we shall soon see what he is like without cudgelling our brains about it. He will be here in a week or two, if he is as sharp about coming as he was about my going. Of course he will meet you, even if he persists in refusing to see anybody else; and I hope he won’t do that. Our plan must be to bring him to reason somehow; and I am ready to submit to a good deal in order to bring that about.... But I say, Madge, now that we have had just as much worry as if I had really gone away for ever so long, you are not going to stick to that stupid idea of putting off till next harvest?’

‘We are to wait till then—at least,’ she answered, shaking her head and laughing.

A short time ago, an English County Court judge made some remarks on money-lending, which apparently were listened to by those who heard him with considerable interest, and perhaps with a certain amount of surprise. The case upon which he was adjudicating was one of those money-lending bills-of-sale transactions that so frequently come before County Court judges, and with which the public are unfortunately only too familiar. The judge said that he would take that opportunity of making some observations on the general question of money-lending, suggested by the particular case before him.

There was, he said, one important matter forgotten by persons who indiscriminately denounced money-lenders, which was, that ‘poor people must have loans.’ He did not see how, in special circumstances, they could get on without loans. Nor did he believe that borrowers were the innocent, ignorant victims—the deceived, foolish, and unsuspecting ‘flies’ lured into the ‘spider’s web’—that they generally were represented to be. He would say there what he had already said to the Government. The Board of Trade had requested all County Court judges to give their experience relative to usury, loan societies, and bills of sale. The object of the President of the Board of Trade in applying to County Court judges was of course to obtain guidance in some prospective and promised legislation on the above subjects, intended more effectually to protect inoffensive and worthy men from the wolves and Shylocks of society. The judge of whom we are speaking gave as his answer, that borrowers of money were quite competent to look after their own interests. His experience had led him to the conclusion that in bills-of-sale transactions there were as many knaves among the borrowers as there were among the lenders. For if the money-lender was often unscrupulous, extortionate, and ready to take every undue advantage of his needy clientèle; the borrower was as frequently a tricky, lying rogue, who misrepresented his circumstances, who rarely intended to repay the loan, and who thought there was nothing very far wrong in cheating and defrauding the Society or the person who lent him money.

He knew that his opinion was different from that of some of his brother-judges. But his experience in a large circuit, and extending over many years, had compelled him to come to this conclusion. In these most disagreeable trials, he had generally found that it was ‘diamond cut diamond.’ Often the borrower, by various means, got the money advanced on securities of insufficient value, occasionally on goods belonging to other persons; and the usurer never saw more than a small portion of his money again.

Being asked by counsel if he would give an opinion on newspapers inserting money-lending advertisements which were calculated to entrap the unwary, the judge declined, remarking that he did not feel it to be his duty to lecture the proprietors of newspapers on commercial morality.

Coming as these remarks do from a gentleman whose official position and long experience entitle him to speak with authority on this subject, they possess considerable weight. If they do not exactly throw entirely fresh light on this social evil, yet they reveal and emphasise a deplorable state of morality, or rather immorality, among a class of persons who perhaps hitherto have been considered fitter objects for pity than for blame. Many people who are always ready to hurl the fiercest anathemas at the head of a money-lender, have only words of sympathy and commiseration for the money-borrower. We think that usurers deserve all the severe censure which they get—they are the vampires and the vultures of society; at the same time, it seems indisputable that a certain class of borrowers are men of the loosest principles. They will resort to the meanest devices—to wilful misrepresentation, to fraud, to perjury, and even to forgery, in order to obtain loans of money, which they never can, and which in many cases they never intend to repay.

One common device of borrowers is to feign ignorance. Both principals and sureties do this.{167} When pressed for payment in the court, they go into the witness-box and swear that they did not know the meaning of the document which they signed. The promissory-note or the bill of sale was not read over or explained to them. If this were true, their position would be strong; for the law directs that a bill of sale shall be explained to the person who gives it. Sometimes, of course, it is true that the holder of the bill of sale has taken a mean advantage of his client’s ignorance. But often it is untrue; for the Loan Office brings forward two or three witnesses who declare that the document was read over and explained to the defendant in their presence. The verdict in such cases is given against the borrower; and he is moreover liable to be indicted for perjury.

While on this point, we may express our astonishment that there are so many people foolish enough to sign documents which they do not fully understand; that there are so many persons who are constantly making themselves surety for sums of money, which, if called upon, they could not pay. Without going so far as to say that such people deserve all the punishment they get, when they have to suffer for their folly, we would earnestly warn everybody against these ruinous practices. No man should be bond for money which, if required to pay, he could not pay. Some men, acute enough on other subjects, are very simple in money matters. But simplicity and ignorance are not a sufficient excuse for acts of reckless stupidity. If persons do not know the purport of a document which they are asked to sign, they ought to know before signing it. In reference to sureties for loans of money, very often the explanation is patent enough. The pre-arrangement or stipulation between the persons is that the borrower shall give the surety a part of the money for signing the bond.

Another device of money-borrowers is to go in cliques, and for the different members of the same clique to become sureties for each other. For this scheme to be successful, of course the borrowers must apply to several Loan Societies. It does not always succeed; for money-lenders are usually very particular in making inquiries about their customers. But the probability is that if a clique of men apply for half-a-dozen loans, they will effect at least one or two. A plan almost identical with this is called ‘kite-flying.’ A few needy men, acquaintances, in position above the lowest classes, put their heads together to ‘raise the wind’ by manufacturing fictitious bills of exchange. As its name signifies, a bill of exchange represents a trade transaction. It is not a genuine bill unless there is exchange of some kind between two persons; work done, services rendered, or goods sold, by one person to another. Usually, the acceptor gives a two or three months’ bill for goods bought from the drawer. This simply means that it will be more convenient at the end of three months to pay for the articles purchased than to pay cash. But with those ‘kites’ there is no transaction of trade whatever; it is only a scheme to borrow money. The modus operandi is for one to ‘accept,’ another to ‘draw,’ and for the other members of the party to indorse the bill. They then issue, circulate, or discount this bit of blue paper, which has cost them one shilling, as a genuine trade bill, given in payment for goods bought by the acceptor from the drawer, worth, say, one hundred pounds. Of course respectable bankers will not discount these ‘kites;’ but money-lenders will, as they frequently take some collateral security.

Another very common practice among money-borrowers is for one man to be surety for a whole party. This is done in the following manner. Number one takes and furnishes a house in a respectable locality, representing himself as carrying on a thriving business in some specified trade. Number two applies for a loan, giving the name of number one for his surety. The agent of the money-lender goes to the house of number one. He sees that his house is well furnished, and that he seems to be doing a good business; so, either with, or sometimes without, a bill of sale, he advances the sum of money asked for. In large towns, this process is repeated with several Loan Societies whose offices are at a long distance from each other. If his clients come from another part of the city, the money-lender does not object; for he knows that some of his best customers do not like to borrow money in the neighbourhood of their homes. When those who got the money fail to pay one of their monthly instalments, the agent of the Loan Office goes again to number one, when he finds the house shut up, and the furniture and the surety missing. Or if any of the furniture be left, probably the landlord claims it for rent.

Borrowers of money, too, are frequently guilty of the most perverse and wilful misrepresentation. They misrepresent their circumstances, their salaries, the profits of their business, their property, their furniture, stock-in-trade, &c., in the most barefaced manner. Not unfrequently they make themselves liable to a criminal prosecution for obtaining money under false pretences. A case was recently reported of a farmer and son who got a heavy loan on the security of the live-stock on their farm. But it was proved that they had sold two fields of turnips to some neighbouring farmers, which turnips were to be eaten in the fields by the sheep belonging to the farmers who had bought the turnips. The father and son told the money-lender that the sheep were their own property. They were apprehended, convicted, and sent to jail. Sometimes, however, the Loan Office will not prosecute, so the fraudulent borrower entirely escapes. Knowing this, a few borrowers of money will even run the risk of forgery. They forge promissory-notes, trusting to make good their escape out of the country; or if caught, they conclude that the money-lender will not prosecute; for money-lenders know very well that their business is condemned by public opinion, and they avoid as much as possible the expense, the trouble, and the publicity of a criminal prosecution.

Occasionally, the members of this needy fraternity of borrowers perform some very smart tricks. We have heard of an audacious knave who went to an auctioneer, and in a few minutes succeeded in effecting a loan of thirty pounds by depositing as security a picture not worth a guinea. He represented it as a valuable work of art by a painter of repute, whose name he had painted on one corner of the picture. The{168} price of the miserable daub, he said, was fifty guineas; but he did not want to sell it—he only wanted a loan of thirty pounds for a month, when he would redeem his art treasure. By the end of the month he was in America; and the auctioneer still has the picture, unless he has thrown it on the fire through vexation of spirit.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER III.

Showle and Bynnes—dry goods and general store—were well known for a hundred miles around Cincinnati, in which city they were located, no house standing higher for solvency, promptness, and for that indefinable but yet easily understood quality, smartness. With the tenacity with which business men in the United States cling to their work, never contemplating the luxury of retirement and ease, which to them would be penance, Mr Bynnes, who was much advanced in years, would probably have continued in the store as long as he lived, but for his purchase of some land fully a thousand miles away. He had never seen this property, having bought it upon the representation of an agent in whom he had confidence; but believing that its value would be much enhanced by his personal supervision, he at once decided to go out and reside upon it. Mr Bynnes was near seventy years of age; his new acquisition was in a wild, bleak, unsettled part of the country; but such considerations did not weigh with him for a moment; the property required his presence, so he resolved to go there, ‘right away.’

This change involved the taking of a fresh partner by Mr Showle, as the business was too large for one person to manage; while, as a new warehouse, apart from the original store, was being built, it was clear that in time a third partner must be added, or a manager employed. As Mr Showle had a decided aversion to managers, or to the allowing any one to have potential authority in the business who was not vitally interested in it, there was no doubt that the addition would be in the form of a partner. For the present, however, but one was taken in, although there was a rumour that Mr Bynnes had recommended a relative of his own, who would appear shortly as a third in the firm.

The new partner, Mr Ben Creelock, was a brusque, somewhat hot-tempered man, although he must have been approaching fifty years of age; but he was well enough liked by the employees of the firm, when once they were used to him. (The reader will please to notice that in United States’ matters of business, ‘employees’ is the proper word.) The new partner was a very liberal master, considerate and kindly where he saw any anxiety to please, though apt to be passionate when he thought he detected a skulker or ‘loafer.’ He had not been used to a store, as he frankly owned; but he was naturally quick and shrewd, and devoted himself to the business with so much zeal, that in a few months Mr Showle declared himself highly satisfied with the new partner. Consequently, the business went on smoothly; and while Mr Creelock made no secret of the fact that for years past he had been a miner, he gave promise of making a first-rate storekeeper.

It would be affectation to suppose that the reader has not identified the new partner as Ben, the miner of Fandango Gulch. They were the same. The gold-hunter, carrying out an idea he had long entertained, had left his wild life, and had settled in Cincinnati, with a determination to spend the remainder of his days among peaceful, law-abiding people. His bankers had introduced him to Mr Showle; and as he was only anxious to find a permanent, respectable employment for himself and his capital, the business preliminaries did not occupy much time.

He was a bachelor; but from certain indications, which are as quickly observed in transatlantic society as they are nearer home, it seemed probable that he did not intend to remain so. The governess at the nearest school to the store—the ‘schoolmarm,’ as she would be regularly and quite respectfully called there—was a woman who when young must have been more than pretty; and although her bloom had somewhat faded now, and her eyes were more pensive than brilliant, she yet was by many persons thought to be more than pretty still. The years that had brought her to mature thirty-five, and had robbed her of her freshness, had brought also a quiet thoughtfulness which to some was not less beautiful. So, among others, thought Mr Benjamin Creelock.

He had first noticed her as she went, quiet and solitary, to and from her duties; and on inquiring who she was, heard comments in her favour, which increased the interest he had felt when he first saw her. But Ben, rough hardy miner as he had been, was timid in the presence of women, as is not uncommon with rough hardy men of any grade; and although he continued to meet Miss Ruth Alken every day, he might have gone on so long without mustering up sufficient courage or ingenuity to effect an introduction, that his old bachelorship would have become irremediable; but a happy chance befriended him.

Having no acquaintances in Cincinnati, he was glad to vary his somewhat scanty evening resources by frequent visits at Mr Showle’s house. The senior partner was a married man with a family, and kept up an old-fashioned habit of quiet social gatherings at home. Here Mr Ben was always welcome, not only as being a partner in the store, but because his tales of the mines, the mountains, the prairies—of Indians, buffaloes, and Vigilance Committees, were interesting, not only to the seniors of the party, but to the younger members also; and Ben was{169} often surrounded by a circle of bright-eyed girls and active striplings, who hung on his words as to a new series of Arabian Nights. To the dwellers in orderly cities in the States, stories which interest us in England, of life and adventure in the Far West, are positively fascinating—more so indeed than are such narratives to the residents of London.

One night, on his arrival at Mr Showle’s, his host, who was speaking to a lady as Ben entered, turned and said: ‘I don’t think, Mr Creelock, you have met Miss Alken before. She is our schoolmarm, and a very esteemed friend.’

So then, without a moment’s notice, without having a single idea prepared, he found himself face to face with, and holding the hand of the lady he had been secretly watching and admiring for months. Perhaps Ben did better by blundering into a conversation with Miss Alken, than he would have done by preparing an elaborate speech after his standard of eloquence. At all events, the lady was pleased with his narratives, and took a special interest—or so Ben thought—in the details of mining life.

She left early; and as soon as possible after her departure, Ben asked Mr Showle what he knew of her, where she was ‘raised,’ and so forth, after the style in fashion in the West. Mr Showle did not give much information in reply to these queries, merely saying that his late partner, Mr Bynnes, had taken a great interest in her, and by his influence, had procured for her the situation she now held. Her friends, he believed, had resided in one of the New England States.

This was about all Mr Creelock learned in reference to the ‘schoolmarm.’ It was quite enough, however; for in the States, people do not make needlessly minute inquiries about the relatives, and still less about the ancestors of those they come in contact or fall in love with.

Feeling that a man who is a long way on in the ‘forties’ has not much time to spare, Ben soon made his admiration of Miss Ruth known to that lady, who, timid and retiring as she was always, was even shyer—more frightened, it seemed to Ben—on the revelation being made, than he had expected. But a middle-aged man, who had served a long apprenticeship in the mines of California and Colorado, was not likely to be easily checked when once he had broken the ice; and so Ben persevered, until it became at last an understood thing that he was engaged to the schoolmarm, and that as soon as the new partner arrived, and was fairly initiated in the business, so that Mr Showle might have some assistance, the pair were to be married, and take a trip east, to see Ruth’s native village and what friends she had remaining.

Miss Alken had expressed a great wish not to live in Cincinnati after they were married; and Ben, who had been so long used to a far wilder and lonelier life than any Ohio or Kentucky village could furnish, cared not how quiet his home might be. So he entered into treaty for purchasing and enlarging a pretty little homestead at a village some eight or ten miles from the city—an hour’s drive for the fast trotter he meant to buy. He sometimes wondered at this whim on Miss Alken’s part, as not in accordance with her usual manner, so calm, and so easily pleased. There was another little odd way she had, too, which attracted his notice; for several times he fancied she was about to say something to him of special importance; but nothing had ever come of it, so he decided at last that it was only her manner.

Just now, it was announced that the new partner—the distant relation of Mr Bynnes, previously mentioned—was really coming, the delay in his joining the firm having arisen from a severe illness under which he had been labouring. In brief, he did come; and the new warehouse having just been completed, he was put in charge of it. It so happened that his arrival in Cincinnati took place during the temporary absence on business of Mr Ben Creelock. Ben returned later-on on the very day of the other’s arrival, but missed him at the time; and as he had much to do on his return, while the new-comer was immersed in his duties, they did not meet on the first day.

We need hardly stop to explain that Ben saw Miss Alken on the day of his return; but he was alarmed to see how unwell she looked. There was a dark, swollen look about her eyes, which seemed to tell of weeping or sleeplessness. But she smiled when he spoke of it, and declared she was quite well. Ben was only half satisfied, and decided that she required a change, that her duties were too heavy for her, and therefore—as the new partner had come—she had better give in her notice to the school; and he would arrange for their marriage, so that the desired change of air and the release from her duties would be at once secured. This he determined should not be delayed; he would begin the very next day by mentioning the matter to Mr Showle.

Like nearly everybody in business there, Mr Creelock dined at a hotel; it saved trouble, and saved the expense of servants; the latter being no trifling item in Cincinnati. On the day after his return, he went at mid-day to the Ocean House, his favourite hotel, to dine. He took his seat at his accustomed table. The reader probably knows that it is the usual custom in the States for the hotels to be furnished with a number of small tables, accommodating from two to four persons each; and at one particular table in the Ocean House, Mr Ben was wont to seat himself. He took his usual place and began his dinner; as he did so, a stranger seated himself in the chair opposite to him. Ben glanced involuntarily at the new-comer; but the latter’s head was turned away, while speaking to an attendant, so Ben did not see his face. Being a matter of no consequence, he went on with his dinner, and the stranger proceeded with his meal.

In a little time, Ben had occasion for a sauce cruet, and reached out his hand mechanically to where it had been a moment before. The bottle was gone; but the stranger saw his movement, and with some indistinct syllables, pushed it towards him. Ben lifted his head and parted his lips to thank him, the stranger smiling pleasantly as Ben moved. But not a sound proceeded{170} from the lips of the latter. Had he been struck suddenly dumb—had he gazed upon the head of the Gorgon, he could not have been more petrified by amazement, by terror, by a chaos of uncontrollable emotions; for the man before him, separated only by the breadth of the narrow table—the man into whose eyes he was looking straight and close—the man who was smiling pleasantly in anticipation of his thanks, was the man who had been his most implacable foe—was none other than the man whom he had last seen lying stark and apparently dead on the banks of a mining pool in Colorado—was Rube Steele!

There was no doubt about it; there was no room for speculating upon a strong accidental resemblance. The man was Rube Steele, his partner at the mine, and no one else.

‘I see you have the New York Beacon there,’ said the stranger, nodding, with another easy smile, to the journal which Ben had been reading. ‘Your own paper, I reckon, as they do not keep it on file here. I should be much obliged, stranger, by a sight of it.’

Ben stretched his hand to the journal, and passed it to the speaker without removing his eyes from his face for an instant; and with the slightest gesture or change of position on the part of the stranger, perpetually recurred the thought: ‘Now he knows me! Now for the plunge!’ But the other moved not from his seat. He took the paper with another easy smile and nod, then, first saying a few words about the great heat of the weather, at once commenced its perusal.

It was worse than any horrible dream or nightmare under which Ben had ever suffered. The certainty that this pleasant civil stranger was Rube Steele, became stronger and stronger, for not only was his whole aspect and his every feature sufficient proof of his identity, but his voice alone would have been enough to convince Ben, had his face been wholly hidden. The tone and certain little peculiarities in his speech, of which every man has some—easily to be recognised by those who know him well, although indescribable in themselves—were there, just as Ben had heard and noticed them, hundreds of times in days gone by, in the voice and manner of his former partner. And yet—and yet he sat opposite to him now, smiling amicably, and without, so far as Ben could see, the faintest recognition of the man with whom he had lived so long in close intimacy—an intimacy which had found its end in a deadly struggle.

The meal was concluded leisurely, and apparently with complete satisfaction on the part of the stranger; but Ben had been unable to swallow a mouthful from the moment he recognised him. Then Rube—if Rube it were—rose, nodded civilly, bade him ‘good-evening,’ as is the western fashion, after early morning is past, and left. By an enormous effort, Ben, on his return to the store, mastered himself sufficiently to avoid questioning on the part of Mr Showle, who nevertheless told him that he was looking somewhat scared.

Ben turned the conversation from his looks, a diversion he was able to effect the more easily as Mr Showle was particularly anxious for him to come round to his house that evening to meet Mr Morede, the new partner, who was certain to be there, and who was most desirous of seeing Mr Creelock. ‘He wants,’ concluded the old merchant, ‘to hear all about the West and the mines. I thought he had once been there himself; but seems not, and he wants to hear all about them.’

Ben returned a dubious answer. He could not pledge himself to go to the merchant’s house that night, as he really felt too unwell. His nerves—articles of which he had not previously had the slightest idea that he was the possessor—had received such a shock, that he felt he was not fit for general company—that the slightest incident would jar and upset them.

He called at the house where Miss Alken boarded, to explain that he should not be at the merchant’s that night, for he knew she was going there; and when he saw her, he was struck by the increased haggardness of her aspect.

‘Say, Ruth, what is the matter?’ began Ben. ‘If you have heard no bad news, and have nothing to upset your mind, it is time we had Doctor Burt to see you; that is so.’

Miss Alken hesitated a moment, and then said: ‘Mr Creelock—well, Ben, then!’—as the ex-miner made a gesture of impatience; ‘I have indeed something on my mind, which I ought to have told you earlier, and which I see I had better tell now.—Nay; do not look so alarmed. It is nothing which ought to give me pain, or yourself, yet it does distress me. Shall I go on?’

‘Go on!’ echoed Ben; ‘of course you must go on. And you know, Ruth, that if it is in the power of man or money to relieve you, I am the man—and ought to be the man—who will do it.’

Miss Alken smiled faintly, then proceeded: ‘I had thought to keep back the information until you had met the person most concerned in it; but as I learn now there will be another delay, and as the suspense is terrible to me, I will hesitate no longer. The new partner in Showle and Bynnes—Mr Morede—is my brother. My half-brother, I should say,’ continued Ruth. ‘I had hoped, until his arrival actually took place, that he would not come; for he has been uncertain and unreliable all his life. But he has kept to his purpose now, it seems. He has been the bane of our family. His recklessness and extravagance brought down our home, from which, eventually, his quarrelsome and revengeful spirit forced him to fly to save his life. I suffered, as did my sisters; and but for the kindness of Mr Bynnes, who was distantly akin to my mother, it would have been worse for us. Very strangely, however, Mr Bynnes never quite lost his liking for Morede, and has, I believe, supplied part of the capital necessary to make him a partner here. But stranger still, although he has reduced me, with the rest of the family, to poverty, I believe my brother, as we have always called him, is, in his way, really fond of me. Yet I dreaded his presence here, as being certain in some sort to bring evil with it I cannot tell how, but I dread it. Yet, now I have seen him, he appears changed. It may be that added years have given him reflection and steadiness; yet I do not think it is that. There is something utterly inexplicable in him, which of course no stranger could see. He is entirely silent about his life of late years, although willing enough to speak of early days at home. He has{171} heard me speak of you, and says he knows he shall like you, and is anxious to know you. And all this is so very different from what I remember of him, that I hope he is changed.’

‘Changed! Of course he is, Ruth!’ exclaimed Ben. ‘As they say in the old country, he has sown his wild-oats. Don’t think that because a boy has once been bad, he is never to be good; or once wild, that he will never be steady. I shall like him for his own sake, and for yours too, Ruth, I am quite certain. I cannot see him to-night, for a reason I have; but to-morrow I will meet him, and reckon I shall have gained a fresh friend in Ruth’s brother.’

There is a charm in the very name of the troubadours that surrounds those wandering minstrels of old with peculiar interest. Their canzons, sirventés, and pastorelas carry us back to the picturesque ages of colour and splendour, and are almost our only source of information as to those heroes of medieval romance whose names have acquired a legendary fame. During the brilliant period in which they sang, the country of the Langue d’Oc was awake with the din of arms, the stir of thousands in the crusades against the Saracens, which had their origin in the south of France; and in the chivalrous character of the holy wars; the quarrels of rival families, the gorgeous pageantry of the tournaments, and above all, in the glorification of love and martial fame, were found inexhaustible materials for descriptive poetry.

The troubadours—harbingers of reviving culture in the middle ages—displayed in their highly finished literature a refinement and splendour of imagination, an intensity and warmth, which, with the power they wielded, gradually changed the life, the tastes, the manners, of their times; whilst the quaint imagery, with the richness of colouring of Provençal song, left traces of its ascendency in the works of more than one celebrated Italian poet, as well as in English poetry long before the Elizabethan age. It was between the tenth and thirteenth centuries that all the varied forms of Provençal poetry flourished, affording the means of livelihood—even, in some instances, the acquisition of considerable wealth—to many wandering minstrels. Thierry says: ‘In the twelfth century, the songs of the troubadours circulating rapidly from castle to castle, and from town to town, supplied the place of periodical gazettes in all the country between the rivers Isère and Vienne, the mountains of Auvergne and the two seas.’

By far the greater number of troubadours known to us were nobles of high birth, or soldiers who had won knighthood on the field, with whom poetry was a passion, and who devoted themselves with enthusiasm to the cultivation of the gay science. Such were the Barons of the March, the Dauphin of Auvergne, the Viscounts of Limoges, Ventadour, and Camborn, with many other renowned princes and knights. Who has not heard of the lays of Richard Cœur-de-Lion, and of Alfonso, king of Portugal—those paladins of old, whose heroic exploits against the Infidel were the theme of wandering minstrels in every Christian court throughout Europe? In those days, when chivalry surrounded woman with an atmosphere of sacredness, and love was looked upon as a sort of feudal service, wherein the knight played the part of vassal, and the lady that of suzerain, it was part of the code of honour to become the champion of some one mistress, whose charms were extolled in verse; and each powerful châtelain, in the intervals of war, after ruthless slaughter, battles, and treason, would indite to his lady-love pastorals full of tender sentiment, and redolent of the fragrance of fields and flowers.

The aristocracy of fair Provence, in its heyday of glory and prosperity, was, notwithstanding this addiction to verse, perhaps the most reckless and profligate the world has ever seen. One of the foremost Barons of the March was Bertrand Von Born, a typical war-like troubadour of the twelfth century. Prominent in the political quarrels of the day, a perfect firebrand of war, he was courted and dreaded by princes and kings; ever in search of new lands and new loves, wielding with equal vigour the lyre and the sword, in the science of war and the art of love he was without a rival. Sometimes fighting with Cœur-de-Lion, sometimes against him, this true child of the Langue d’Oc, after many gallant defences, was captured, but through the extraordinary influence he exerted over his captors, escaped with life and liberty. After a long and stormy career, Bertrand Von Born ended his days as a monk in the monastery of Coteaux.

In the gallery of noble and stately figures furnished by Provençal poetry, we have a picture of enduring historic interest left us by the troubadour Rambaud of Vaquieras, of the famous Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, one of an heroic family of crusaders, who was himself a troubadour and the beau-idéal of a knight-errant, comforting the afflicted, punishing the wicked, and relieving distressed damsels. When the preaching of Fulk of Neuilly roused the chivalry of France, Champagne, and Flanders to a new crusade, Rambaud followed the banner of his brother-in-arms the Marquis to Palestine, winning knighthood, singing and fighting his way through all the perils of the holy war. His songs are a record of splendidly dramatic incidents; and in the vivid sketches of his surroundings, we are enabled to trace the events in the life of the great soldier-poet, in whom all the virtues and vices of his ancestors seem to have been personified.

To Raymond de Miravals, who, Nostradamus informs us, was ‘deeply learned in the science of love,’ we are indebted for a series of life-like portraits of some of the loveliest women of the period. This fashionable poet, notorious for his misfortunes in love, died ‘poor, and worn out in body and mind,’ after spending many years of his life sighing in the train of a noted beauty. An old French chronicler writes: ‘Through the songs of Raymond, was Adelais admired and{172} sought of all the barons far and near, and she became the subject of curiosity even at the courts of Aragon and Toulouse, and the king and the count sent her messages and presents of jewels, which she willingly accepted.’

The great ambition of ladies in the days of chivalry was to be eulogised in song, and made famous by the canzons and madrigals of the troubadours; so long as they were the theme, it mattered not how gallant and equivocal was the poetry. The Countess of Tripolis was the cause of the melancholy and dramatic episode which cut short the brilliant career of Rudel, a minstrel attached to the service of Cœur-de-Lion, who ‘became beyond measure the lover’ of this lady, whom he had never seen! Having sung her praises through all Provence, he set out on a pilgrimage in search of the far-famed beauty; but after enduring many miseries on his disastrous journey, he reached the shores of Palestine only to die in the arms of his ladye-love. The Countess, who had hastened to welcome him on his arrival, placed his body, we are told, ‘in a rich and honourable tomb of porphyry, on which were inscribed some verses in the Arabic tongue.’

Another minstrel in the train of Richard was the world-renowned Peter Vidal, unrivalled as an improvisatore, and gifted with an exquisite voice. He travelled far and wide, scattering canzons and sirventés over Christendom; and his Jongleur’s Story produces perhaps a greater impression, and clings to the memory with more strange fascination, than any lyrical composition of the period. Vidal was for some time in the household of the lord of Baux, whose fame as a troubadour was also great. It was in return for the lays of this high-born minstrel that Frederick Barbarossa presented to him the ancient city of Orange. Conquered by the Saracens, re-conquered by Charlemagne, this interesting old place boasts of one of the most romantic histories in the annals of French towns, and its vicissitudes were commemorated in Provençal song. Marseilles, Toulouse, Carcassonne, were all famous cities of the Langue d’Oc; but perhaps the favourite haunt of the wandering troubadours was Aix, the ancient capital of Provence, where the richest rewards of jewels, money, arms, &c., besides unbounded hospitality, were sure to follow the exhibition of their skill. Who could imagine that this little moribund town, a few miles from Marseilles, was at one time the dwelling-place of a noble family, the centre of the most brilliant circle in Southern France? Who can realise in its picturesque decay, the pomp and pageantry of its old historic aspect in the days of chivalry, when Giovanni the troubadour Count of Provence, the last inheritor of a mighty name, sang in his court at Aix? The fondest and proudest memories have gathered round the name of Count Giovanni, his country, his people, his valour.

It is curious to note in the records of the troubadours how many successful followers of the ‘gentle craft’ were connected with the cloister. The witty and dissolute monk of Montaudon was known as a fashionable poet; whilst his superior, Folquet, afterwards Bishop of Toulouse, from a gay troubadour became a fierce religious despot. Many ecclesiastics were sent from the monasteries to preach a sort of musical crusade against the heretics in the Langue d’Oc, who also had their champions in the land of song. Some even became military chiefs of high renown. Conspicuous amongst them was the monk Louis Lascaris, a son of the Count of Ventimiglia. To quote from Nostradamus, who discourses much on this member of an ancient and noble family: ‘He was of such a happy wit, not only in the poetical Provençal, but also in the vulgar dialects, that nobody could equal his sweetness or his invention. While yet a youth, he took holy orders in a monastery; but afterwards falling in love with a lady of the neighbourhood, the sister of the great Isnard of Glanderes, he married her, and had five children. The queen Giovanna having a powerful army in Provence for the expulsion of the free-companies, gave the command thereof to Lascaris, who was valiant and skilled in war. At the end of the campaign, the envy and malice of his ill-wishers caused him to be persecuted by Pope Urban V., who desired that he should return to his convent. But he, who would rather have chosen death in preference, and who saw that the pope was every day becoming more and more exasperated against him, went with a fine equipage to the court of the queen Giovanna, whose protection he claimed.’ The queen of Naples ‘duly considered the services that the poet had rendered, and those that he might yet render her crown. Seeing, besides, that he was a gentleman of handsome person and gay and generous disposition, she wrote so earnestly in his favour to the pope at Avignon, that His Holiness consented to fix a period of twenty-five years at the end of which the poet was to return to his cell.’ Lascaris, however, did not outlive the allotted time.

In this cursory sketch of the troubadours, it would be impossible to enumerate each of the fifty-seven poets whose names are associated with Provençal literature; but we must not forget two or three of those best remembered of their age and country. The unfortunate Luc de la Barre, whose songs reflecting on Henry II., roused the vengeance of that monarch, was hunted from place to place and blinded, when he refused all sustenance, and died of famine and despair. The love-affair of Bertrand of Pezers, a professor of Provençal poetry, with a young and lovely girl in his school, whom he married in spite of all opposition, excited great sympathy and interest. The adventurous couple commenced a life of wandering minstrelsy; and the ‘Monk of the Golden Isle’ informs us that before entering a château, they would make inquiries as to the occupants; and ‘then, with wonderful quickness, they would compose a song ornamented with the memorable deeds in love, war, and the chase, of the châtelain and his progenitors.’

Another wandering couple were the celebrated Raymond Ferrand and the lady of Courbon, who retired from the world, after some years of joyous minstrelsy, to convents within sight of each other. This lady of Courbon was notorious as one of the presidents of the ‘Court of Love,’ held in the castle of Romanini. Queen Eleanor, wife of Henry II., the Countess of Champagne, the Countess of Narbonne, and many noted beauties, gave sentences in these courts, which Hallam speaks of as ‘fantastical solemnities where ridiculous questions of gallantry were debated.’ To borrow the language of Sismondi—the{173} noble ladies of that period ‘instituted courts of love, in which questions of gallantry were gravely discussed and determined by their suffrages; in a word, they had brought the whole of the south of France into a state of carnival, which forms a singular contrast to the ideas of reserve, virtue, and modesty which we ascribe to the good old times.’

In Provence, during the middle ages, the serenade was a custom, with the charming alba and serena—morning and evening songs. Many chivalrous singers were adepts in this light and characteristic form of Provençal poetry.

An old proverb says, ‘The Arabs’ registers are the verses of their bards;’ and so these medieval canzons and madrigals—which are inseparably connected with a most romantic era—present the old life with all its grand ideas and great actions; bringing many illustrious names out of the dim mists of fable into the clear daylight of history.

The hearts of thousands have thrilled at these words, so pregnant with home-love—words that have made home dearer and more precious than it was before—words expressing the tenderest feelings of thousands, to whom expression had previously been denied. Many a sweet singer, as she warbles the familiar song, knows not who was its author; therefore, it may be well to give a slight sketch of his character and somewhat sad career.

John Howard Payne was born in 33 Broad Street, New York, on the 9th of June 1791; and a large portion of his childhood was passed amidst the peaceful verdant scenery of East Hampton, in that State, where his father was principal of a small academy. When John was five years old, his father moved to Boston in a similar scholastic capacity, and there remained eight years; after which, the subject of this memoir returned to New York, and entered the counting-house of a firm in which an elder brother had been partner. But he never took to the dull drudgery of a mercantile life. When only thirteen years old, he contributed a dramatic criticism to a juvenile paper of which he was editor, and it was republished in the columns of the New York Evening Post. Soon after this he entered Union College, but only remained a year; after which, owing to the pecuniary difficulties of his father, he found himself under the necessity of pushing his fortune in the world alone and unaided.

Payne now devoted his time to studying for the stage, for which he displayed considerable aptitude; and made his first public appearance at the Park Theatre, New York, as Young Norval in the tragedy of Douglas. This début was a complete success. From New York he went to Boston, where he again appeared as Young Norval, and also as Romeo, Rolla, and other characters. In cultured Boston, he became even more the rage than in the great emporium of commerce. After a time he returned to New York, thence he visited Baltimore—where he was enthusiastically received; subsequently proceeding to South Carolina and other Southern States. He came to Washington in 1809, and attracted great attention, one admiring critic declaring that ‘a more extraordinary mixture of softness and intelligence was never associated in a human countenance; and his face was an index of his heart—he was a perfect Cupid in beauty.’ In January 1813, Payne sailed for England, and in Liverpool was welcomed by William Roscoe, who presented him to John Kemble, Coleridge, Campbell, Southey, Byron, and others; and got for him an engagement at Drury Lane Theatre, in the character of Young Norval. Great applause greeted the youthful American actor, particularly in the death-scene at the end of the play.

Payne performed for a month in London, and then went the round of several of the principal English cities, after which he proceeded to Dublin, where, in conjunction with the celebrated Miss O’Neil, he played in various well-known dramas. He now visited Paris, where he met and became intimate with his distinguished countryman, Washington Irving; and formed a friendship with Talma, the French tragedian. Once more he returned to England; but on this occasion he was less of a novelty, and did not retain his former success.

About this time he commenced his career as a dramatic author, one of his first efforts in this line being the tragedy of Brutus, produced at Drury Lane Theatre in 1818, the famous Edmund Kean taking the principal part. The play was a success, being performed to crowded houses for seventy-five nights. Upwards of fifty plays of various descriptions were written by Payne, and their pecuniary returns enabled him to live comfortably during his nineteen years’ residence in Europe. But the production which has achieved such a world-wide fame, and rendered its author an honoured name in many a household, was his Home! Sweet Home! This beautiful song was composed in Paris one dull October day when Payne was living in humble lodgings near the Palais-Royal. The depressing influences of his surroundings, something in the atmosphere which seemed to harmonise with his own feelings, and his solitary lot in life, were instrumental in drawing forth the simple pathos and tender yearnings of the song. As originally composed, it ran, according to some accounts, as follows:

The Boston Congregationalist, however, has given the following as the authentic form in which the author sent out his immortal song—the original manuscript being in the possession of an old lady in America, to whom at one time John Howard Payne was greatly attached:

The song was afterwards rewritten by its author, and introduced into an opera called Clari, the Maid of Milan, a play sold by him, in 1823, to Charles Kemble, of Covent Garden Theatre, for two hundred and fifty pounds; the music being composed by Sir Henry Bishop. In the opera, the song ran as we now know it:

Clari had a great run, the chief rôle being taken by Miss Maria Tree, whose singing of the simple song caused a wonderful sensation, gifted as she was not only with a beautiful and expressive face, but with a fine voice which thrilled her hearers. More than one hundred thousand copies of the song as set to music were sold by the publishers within a year of its publication; but poor Payne reaped no pecuniary benefit from this source, nor did even his name appear as the author.

A story is told by the American newspapers that the power of the song once liberated its author from captivity. John Howard Payne was a warm personal friend of John Ross, the famous Cherokee Indian chief, and they were together when the Cherokees were ordered to remove from their home in Georgia to the prairie-lands west of the Mississippi River. Many refused to go; so the militia were ordered to scour the country and arrest all who stayed behind. Payne and Ross were seated before the fire in a miserable log-cabin, when seven or eight militiamen burst in, secured their prisoners, mounted them on horses, and led them away. As they left the hovel, rain began to fall, and continued all night, so that every man was thoroughly drenched. Towards midnight, one of Payne’s escort, to keep himself awake, began humming ‘Home! home! sweet, sweet home!’ and Payne said: ‘I never expected to hear that song under such circumstances and at such a time. Do you know the author?’—‘No!’ said the soldier. ‘Do you?’—‘Yes,’ answered Payne; ‘I am.’—‘Ho! ho!’ laughed the soldier. ‘You composed it, did you? Oh! tell the horse that! Look here. If you composed it—but I know you didn’t—you can say it all without stopping. It says something about pleasures and palaces, and cottages and birds. Now, pitch into it, and reel it off; and if you can’t, you’ll have to walk.’ Payne ‘pitched’ into it, and ‘reeled it off’ greatly to the satisfaction of his guardian, who vowed the composer of such a song should never go to prison if he could help it. When the party reached Milledgeville, the headquarters, they were, after a preliminary examination, and much to their agreeable surprise, discharged.

In the summer of 1832, Mr Payne returned to New York at a time when cholera was desolating the city, and was joyfully received by his many friends, a complimentary benefit being arranged for him at the Park Theatre, where he first made his bow as an actor. For the next ten years he resided in America, during which he engaged in a considerable amount of literary work, and travelled extensively both in the North and South, until in 1842 he was appointed to the post of American consul at Tunis. However, he was not permitted very long to enjoy his new post, for in less than three years he was recalled by President Polk, who, to gratify a political associate, gave the appointment to another.

This was a great disappointment to Payne, who had ably fulfilled his duties, and was engaged in writing a history of Tunis, which he had now to abandon; but to console himself, he made a tour in the continent, visiting Italy, France, and other places, returning to Washington in 1847. During this, his last sojourn in the capital, he gathered around him an extensive circle of friends, and kept up a correspondence with many of those eminent in literature and art, whose acquaintance he had formed both in his own country and in Europe. The exertions of those who knew his worth, and the claims he had upon his country, were at last successful, and Mr Payne was again appointed to the post he had before filled, being re-installed as consul at Tunis.

In May 1851, the author of Home! Sweet Home! bade farewell to his country for the last time, and in a few weeks afterwards entered upon the duties of his office at Tunis, with high hopes of continuing his former career of usefulness. But it had been otherwise decreed, for ere another year had passed, John Howard Payne had ceased from his wanderings, while his country had to lament the loss of one of her gifted sons. He died on the 9th of April 1852, and his body was laid in the Protestant cemetery of St George at Tunis, the grave being covered by a white{175} marble slab, with a simple epitaph, and on the four edges of the marble the four lines—a line to each:

After lying more than thirty years in a foreign tomb, the last remains of John Howard Payne have now been transferred to a grave in his native land. To Mr W. Corcoran, a well-known and philanthropical citizen of Washington, is due the initiation of the scheme and the credit of defraying all the expenses connected with the bringing home of the remains of his countryman from Tunis, after the necessary permission had been obtained from the Secretary of State. Payne’s grave in the cemetery at Tunis had been well kept, and, besides the marble slab above mentioned, was indicated by a large pepper-tree which had been planted by one of his friends who was present at his death and burial. Two of the small company who witnessed the interment of the poet, M. Pisani and an old Arab dragoman who was deeply attached to Mr Payne, were present at the exhumation of his body. The coffin was found to be much decayed, and little more than the skeleton, and some portions of the uniform in which the lonely exile had been buried, rewarded the reverential care with which the sad duty was performed. After being inclosed in a leaden and two outer wooden coffins, the honoured remains were deposited in the small Protestant church until the vessel which was to transport them to Marseilles was ready to sail. As the body was being carried into the church, the poet’s own immortal song was sweetly sung by an American lady who was present, with a pathos which deeply affected the little gathering of friends and mourners—an appropriate requiem to the kindly and gentle spirit whose cherished dust was once more to be borne back to his native land. On the 9th of June 1883, the remains were laid in their last resting-place in the Oak Hill Cemetery, Washington; and of all the monuments to distinguished men in that distinguished city, none surely will attract more visitors than that erected to the memory of the author of Home! Sweet Home!

It is impossible, with the prevalence of damp, fogs, and frost, to keep entirely free from colds. It is easy to say: Avoid all exposure to their causes; don’t go out in wet weather; don’t sleep in damp bedclothes; and don’t get overheated by exercise. The majority of people, both old and young, are obliged to go out, and occasionally to do risky things, however much they may wish to avoid the unpleasantness of a cold. So colds are ‘caught,’ as the saying goes, and people find a difficulty in getting rid of them. Those who have coddled themselves before its arrival, do not derive much benefit from an extra coddling; and those who do not care to take precautions, allow the cold to run its course, rather than make a fuss over it.

To both, perhaps, an explanation of what a cold really is may be useful, not only for prevention, but for cure. The cause is simply this: The skin, with its myriads of perspiration pores, becomes contracted by long exposure to damp or cold, and thereby prevents the secretion which is necessary to health being carried off in the natural manner. The amount of insensible perspiration in a healthy person daily is about two pints. Thus, when it cannot pass off through the outer skin, it is diverted inwardly upon the mucous surfaces of the body, and the first symptoms of a cold in the head set in. There is a tightness in the nose and forehead, sneezing, and watering at the eyes, and a redness in the interior of the nose, from excess of blood. After a day or two, a thin running from the nose sets in, and the salts in it, which should pass off by the skin, make the upper lip red and sore. The question is, therefore, knowing the nature of a cold, what is the best way to restore the natural action of the skin, and get rid of its substitute as soon as possible? Many ways are recommended. A Dover’s powder—which consists of ipecacuanha and opium—is without doubt one of the best remedies at the commencement, for if taken at night with a good basin of gruel or tumbler of negus, it sets up a strong perspiration, and the skin, forced into action, may thus regain its tone. However, this is not always successful, unless the sufferer can remain indoors for a few days, and keep a room at an equable temperature of about sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Another good remedy—if the patient’s constitution admits of it—is a Turkish bath, where, after an hour in a heat of one hundred and thirty to one hundred and fifty degrees, the tepid douche should be used instead of the cold, because the object in view is not only to open the sweat-pores for a time, but to keep them properly relaxed. Cold water would of course cause them to contract. Perhaps the best, and one of the easiest, is to abstain as much as possible from liquids. By this means the supply of fluid which goes to keep up the running cold is cut off, and with it the discharge. If persevered in for a day, this remedy may completely cure a slight cold, and keep a bad one very much under.

Colds are either pooh-poohed or made much of. Too much care, however, cannot be taken to prevent a cold getting worse and gaining a hold. People of the most robust constitutions have succumbed to them; and apart from the inconvenience and waste of time which they entail, there is always the probability of more serious symptoms manifesting themselves. The air-tubes may become congested, and a bad cough result before they are relieved; or the person may have become debilitated by the head-cold, and, unable to resist the further progress of its effect, may be victimised by inflammation of the lungs, bronchitis, or serious congestion of the lungs. The most sensible plan, in so variable a climate as ours, is in the first place to harden one’s self as much as possible by not being too much afraid of cold when one is perfectly well; and next, when a cold, however slight, has been caught, to do one’s hardest to get rid of it by one of the above-mentioned remedies.

Damp as a cause of cold is very hard to avoid. We all know that wet feet or damp clothes are injurious; but we cannot always provide for emergencies. A traveller may suddenly find that{176} he is put into a damp bed, and has no alternative but to sleep there. Now, hydropathy has taught us that people do not necessarily catch cold from sleeping in wet or damp things, provided a sufficient amount of dry clothing is put over that which is wet, to prevent any chilliness being felt. This, then, is a safe principle to act upon; and a traveller thrown into such awkward circumstances, may make the best of a bad job, and sleep with impunity in his damp bed, provided he puts all available coverings on the outside, and so insures a tolerable amount of warmth and comfort; at the same time he ought to lay aside the sheets and sleep in the blankets. It is easier to guard against damp feet; for with woollen socks—which are the best non-conductors of heat, and the least liable to retain perspiration—and a pair of cork soles placed in good strong boots, no fear need be entertained of moisture affecting the skin. In rain or snow, no doubt the moisture may penetrate through the upper leather. The best precaution against this is to rub them with vaseline, or oil, or melted fat, before setting out. Damp feet are the most prominent causes of colds and chilblains amongst children. Those, therefore, who have to go to and from school in all weathers, should not only have cork soles inside their boots and the outer surface well greased, but should take warm slippers to school with them to change. If every schoolmistress could only be induced to make this change a rule with every pupil, there would be far fewer absentees with bad colds. A good plan, when a child has chilblains or a cold, is to make a little flannel over-dress, which draws over the feet, and buttons at the neck; no kicking off of the bedclothes will then be very serious; whilst a cup of warm milk or arrowroot or gruel, drunk when the little one is put to bed, is the best thing for keeping up the circulation in the feet and hands and preventing the discomforts of broken chilblains.

These remarks of course apply principally to healthy children and people. The delicate of all ages must obey their medical advisers, and not risk a wet walk, however well secured against it, if they have been forbidden to go out.

With all people, food is at the same time one of the principal aids in combating colds and coughs. More heat-giving foods are required in winter, to keep up sufficient warmth, and many people suffer simply because they do not look upon the matter in this light. Parents will tell you that their boys and girls will not eat fat meat or fat bacon, or take salad dressed with oil, or take their porridge. Variety might perhaps tempt them. They might be induced to eat bread crisply fried in dripping either for breakfast or supper; or they might have gruel or arrowroot just before going to bed, which would both warm and sustain them; or, supposing they turn from all with dislike, a very good investment would be to buy two or three dozen cheap boxes of chocolate, and then dole out the boxes one by one, for the children to take to school or eat with their lunch. Chocolate is both nutritious and heat-giving, and nearly every child likes it. Care, however, should be taken that pure chocolate is eaten. Thick soups, such as pea, lentil, or potato soup, are very wholesome, and contain plenty of heat-giving materials, whilst they are perhaps cheaper than chocolate. Many children, indeed, might be saved from the doctor’s hands, if their tastes were more consulted as to food, and they were given heat-giving foods, which they liked, and would eat, instead of suet puddings or fats, which they disliked.

Printed and Published by W. & R. Chambers, 47 Paternoster Row, London, and 339 High Street, Edinburgh.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 11, VOL. I, MARCH 15, 1884 ***

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 11, Vol. I, March 15, 1884

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

CONTENTS

‘HAPPY EVER AFTER.’

BY MEAD AND STREAM.

CHAPTER XVII.—A TURNING-POINT.

THE SHADY SIDE OF MONEY-BORROWING.

THE MINER’S PARTNER.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER III.

THE TROUBADOURS.

‘HOME! SWEET HOME!’

COMMON COLDS.

‘NOT BEAUTIFUL!’

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 11, Vol. I, March 15, 1884

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

CONTENTS

‘HAPPY EVER AFTER.’

BY MEAD AND STREAM.

CHAPTER XVII.—A TURNING-POINT.

THE SHADY SIDE OF MONEY-BORROWING.

THE MINER’S PARTNER.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER III.

THE TROUBADOURS.

‘HOME! SWEET HOME!’

COMMON COLDS.

‘NOT BEAUTIFUL!’

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.