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diff --git a/1868-h/1868-h.htm b/1868-h/1868-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1bc1cb1 --- /dev/null +++ b/1868-h/1868-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3948 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Penelope's Postscripts, by Kate Douglas Wiggin</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Penelope's Postscripts, by Kate Douglas Wiggin + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Penelope's Postscripts + + +Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin + + + +Release Date: April 11, 2015 [eBook #1868] +[This file was first posted on January 7, 1999] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1915 Hodder and Stoughton edition by +David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/coverb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Book cover" +title= +"Book cover" + src="images/covers.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1>Penelope’s Postscripts</h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br +/> +KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">AUTHOR OF</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">“PENELOPE’S EXPERIENCES: +ENGLAND, IRELAND,”</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">“TIMOTHY’S QUEST,” +“REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM,” ETC.</span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">HODDER AND STOUGHTON<br /> +LONDON NEW +YORK TORONTO<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">MCMXV</span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall"><i>Printed +in Great Britain by Hazell</i></span><span class="GutSmall">, +</span><span class="GutSmall"><i>Watson & +Viney</i></span><span class="GutSmall">, </span><span +class="GutSmall"><i>Ld.</i></span><span +class="GutSmall">,</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall"><i>London and Aylesbury</i></span><span +class="GutSmall">.</span></p> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center">I</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Penelope in Switzerland</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page3">3</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center">II</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Penelope in Venice</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page39">39</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center">III</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Penelope’s Prints of +Wales</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page105">105</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center">IV</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Penelope in Devon</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page119">119</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center">V</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Penelope at Home</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page165">165</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>I<br /> +PENELOPE IN SWITZERLAND</h2> +<p style="text-align: center">A DAY IN PESTALOZZI-TOWN</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Salemina</span> and I were in +Geneva. If you had ever travelled through Europe with a +charming spinster who never sat down at a Continental <i>table +d’hôte</i> without being asked by an American +<i>vis-à-vis</i> whether she were one of the P.’s of +Salem, Massachusetts, you would understand why I call my friend +Salemina. She doesn’t mind it. She knows that I +am simply jealous because I came from a vulgarly large tribe that +never had any coat-of-arms, and whose ancestors always sealed +their letters with their thumb nails.</p> +<p>Whenever Francesca and I call her “Salemina,” she +knows, and we know that she knows, that we are seeing a group of +noble ancestors in a sort of halo over her serene and dignified +head, so she remains unruffled under her <i>petit nom</i>, +inasmuch as the casual public comprehends nothing of its spurious +origin and thinks it was given her by her sponsors in +baptism.</p> +<p>Francesca, Salemina, and I have very different +backgrounds. The first-named is an extremely pretty person +of large income who is travelling with us simply because her +relatives think that she will “see Europe” more +advantageously under our chaperonage than if she were accompanied +by persons of her own age or “set.”</p> +<p>Salemina is a philanthropist and educator of the first rank, +and is collecting all sorts of valuable material to put at the +service of her own country when she returns to it, which will not +be a moment before her letter of credit is exhausted.</p> +<p>I, too, am quasi-educational, for I had a few years of +experience in mothering and teaching little waifs and strays of +the streets before I began to paint pictures. Never shall I +regret those nerve-racking, back-breaking, heart-warming, weary, +and beautiful years, when, all unconsciously, I was learning to +paint children by living with them. Even now the spell +still works and it is the curly head, the “shining morning +face,” the ready tear, the glancing smile of childhood that +enchains me and gives my brush whatever skill it possesses.</p> +<p>We had not been especially high-minded or educational in +Switzerland, Salemina and I. The worm will turn; and there +is a point where the improvement of one’s mind seems a +farce, and the service of humanity, for the moment, a duty only +born of a diseased imagination.</p> +<p>How can one sit on a vine-embowered balcony facing lovely Lake +Geneva and think about modern problems,—Improved Tenements, +Child Labour, Single Tax, Sweat Shops, and the Right Training of +the Rising Civilization? Blue Lake Geneva!—blue as a +woman’s eye, blue as the vault of heaven, dropped into the +lap of the green earth like a great sparkling sapphire! +Mont Blanc you know to be just behind the clouds on the other +side, and that presently, after hours or days of patient waiting, +he may condescend to unveil himself to your worshipful gaze.</p> +<p>“He is wise in his dignity and reserve,” mused +Salemina as we sat on the veranda. “He is all the +more sublime because he withdraws himself from time to +time. In fact, if he didn’t see fit to cover himself +occasionally, one could neither eat nor sleep, nor do anything +but adore and magnify.”</p> +<p>The day before this interview we had sailed to the end of the +sapphire lake and visited the “snow-white +battlements” of the Castle of Chillon; seen its +“seven pillars of Gothic mould,” and its dungeons +deep and old, where poor Bonnivard, Byron’s famous +“Prisoner of Chillon,” lay captive for so many years, +and where Rousseau fixes the catastrophe of his +Héloïse.</p> +<p>We had just been to Coppet too; Coppet where the Neckers lived +and Madame de Staël was born and lived during many years of +her life. We had wandered through the shaded walks of the +magnificent château garden, and strolled along the terrace +where the eloquent Corinne had walked with the Schlegels and +other famous <i>habitués</i> of her salon. We had +visited Calvin’s house at 11 Rue des Chanoines, +Rousseau’s at No. 40 on the Grande Rue, and +Voltaire’s at Ferney.</p> +<p>And so we had been living the past, Salemina and I. +But</p> +<blockquote><p>“Early one morning,<br /> +Just as the day was dawning.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>my slumbering conscience rose in Puritan strength and asserted +its rights to a hearing.</p> +<p>“Salemina,” said I, as I walked into her room, +“this life that we are leading will not do for me any +longer. I have been too much immersed in ruins. Last +night in writing to a friend in New York I uttered the most +disloyal and incendiary statements. I said that I would +rather die than live without ruins of some kind; that America was +so new, and crude, and spick and span, that it was obnoxious to +any æsthetic soul; that our tendency to erect hideous +public buildings and then keep them in repair afterwards would +make us the butt of ridicule among future generations. I +even proposed the founding of an American Ruin Company, +Limited,—in which the stockholders should purchase +favourably situated bits of land and erect picturesque ruins +thereon. To be sure, I said, these ruins wouldn’t +have any associations at first, but what of that? We have +plenty of poets and romancers; we could manufacture suitable +associations and fit them to the premises. At first, it is +true, they might not fire the imagination; but after a few +hundred years, in being crooned by mother to infant and handed +down by father to son, they would mellow with age, as all legends +do, and they would end by being hallowed by rising +generations. I do not say they would be absolutely +satisfactory from every standpoint, but I do say that they would +be better than nothing.</p> +<p>“However,” I continued, “all this was last +night, and I have had a change of heart this morning. Just +on the borderland between sleeping and waking, I had a +vision. I remembered that to-day would be Monday the 1st of +September; that all over our beloved land schools would be +opening and that your sister pedagogues would be doing your work +for you in your absence. Also I remembered that I am the +dishonourable but Honorary President of a Froebel Society of four +hundred members, that it meets to-morrow, and that I can’t +afford to send them a cable.”</p> +<p>“It is all true,” said Salemina. “It +might have been said more briefly, but it is quite +true.”</p> +<p>“Now, my dear, I am only a painter with an occasional +excursion into educational fields, but you ought to be gathering +stories of knowledge to lay at the feet of the masculine members +of your School Board.”</p> +<p>“I ought, indeed!” sighed Salemina.</p> +<p>“Then let us begin!” I urged. “I want +to be good to-day and you must be good with me. I never can +be good alone and neither can you, and you know it. We will +give up the lovely drive in the diligence; the luncheon at the +French restaurant and those heavenly little Swiss cakes” +(here Salemina was almost unmanned); “the concert on the +great organ and all the other frivolous things we had intended; +and we will make an educational pilgrimage to Yverdon. You +may not remember, my dear,”—this was said severely +because I saw that she meditated rebellion and was going to +refuse any programme which didn’t include the Swiss +cakes,—“you may not remember that Jean Henri +Pestalozzi lived and taught in Yverdon. Your soul is so +steeped in illusions; so submerged in the Lethean waters of the +past; so emasculated by thrilling legends, paltry titles, and +ruined castles, that you forget that Pestalozzi was the father of +popular education and the sometime teacher of Froebel, our patron +saint. When you return to your adored Boston, your faithful +constituents in that and other suburbs of Salem, Massachusetts, +will not ask you if you have seen the Castle of Chillon and the +terrace of Corinne, but whether you went to Yverdon.”</p> +<p>Salemina gave one last fond look at the lake and picked up her +Baedeker. She searched languidly in the Y’s and +presently read in a monotonous, guide-book voice. +“Um—um—um—yes, here it is, ‘Yverdon +is sixty-one miles from Geneva, three hours forty minutes, on the +way to Neuchâtel and Bâle.’ +(Neuchâtel is the cheese place; I’d rather go there +and we could take a bag of those Swiss cakes.) ‘It is +on the southern bank of Lake Neuchâtel at the influx of the +Orbe or Thiele. It occupies the site of the Roman town of +Ebrodunum. The castle dates from the twelfth century and +was occupied by Pestalozzi as a college.’”</p> +<p>This was at eight, and at nine, leaving Francesca in bed, we +were in the station at Geneva. Finding that we had time to +spare, we went across the street and bargained for an +<i>in-transit</i> luncheon with one of those dull native +shopkeepers who has no idea of American-French.</p> +<p>Your American-French, by the way, succeeds well enough so long +as you practise, in the seclusion of your apartment, certain +assorted sentences which the phrase-book tells you are likely to +be needed. But so far as my experience goes, it is always +the unexpected that happens, and one is eternally falling into +difficulties never encountered by any previous traveller.</p> +<p>For instance, after purchasing a cold chicken, some French +bread, and a bit of cheese, we added two bottles of +lemonade. We managed to ask for a glass, from which to +drink it, but the man named two francs as the price. This +was more than Salemina could bear. Her spirit was never +dismayed at any extravagance, but it reared its crested head in +the presence of extortion. She waxed wroth. The man +stood his ground. After much crimination and recrimination +I threw myself into the breach.</p> +<p>“Salemina,” said I, “I wish to remark, +first: That we have three minutes to catch the train. +Second: That, occupying the position we do in America,—you +the member of a School Board and I the Honorary President of a +Froebel Society,—we cannot be seen drinking lemonade from a +bottle, in a public railway carriage; it would be too +convivial. Third: You do not understand this +gentleman. You have studied the language longer than I, but +I have studied it more lately than you, and I am fresher, much +fresher than you.” (Here Salemina bridled +obviously.) “The man is not saying that two francs is +the price of the glass. He says that we can pay him two +francs now, and if we will return the glass to-night when we come +home he will give us back one franc fifty centimes. That is +fifty centimes for the rent of the glass, as I understand +it.”</p> +<p>Salemina’s right hand, with the glass in it, dropped +nervelessly at her side. “If he uttered one single +syllable of all that rigmarole, then Ollendorf is a myth, +that’s all I have to say.”</p> +<p>“The gift of tongues is not vouchsafed to all,” I +responded with dignity. “I happen to possess a talent +for languages, and I apprehend when I do not +comprehend.”</p> +<p>Salemina was crushed by the weight of my self-respect, and we +took the tumbler, and the train.</p> +<p>It was a cloudless day and a beautiful journey, along the side +of the sapphire lake for miles, and always in full view of the +glorious mountains. We arrived at Yverdon about noon, and +had eaten our luncheon on the train, so that we should have a +long, unbroken afternoon. We left our books and heavy wraps +in the station with the porter, with whom we had another slight +misunderstanding as to general intentions and terms; then we +started, Salemina carrying the lemonade glass in her hand, with +her guide-book, her red parasol, and her Astrakhan cape. +The tumbler was a good deal of trouble, but her heart was set on +returning it safely to the Geneva pirate; not so much to reclaim +the one franc fifty centimes as to decide conclusively whether he +had ever proposed such restitution. I knew her mental +processes, so I refused to carry any of her properties; besides, +the pirate had used a good many irregular verbs in his +conversation, and upon due reflection I was a trifle nervous +about the true nature of the bargain.</p> +<p>The Yverdon station fronted on a great open common dotted with +a few trees. There were a good many mothers and children +sitting on the benches, and a number of young lads playing +ball. The town itself is one of the quaintest, quietest, +and sleepiest in Switzerland. From 1803 to 1810 it was a +place of pilgrimage for philanthropists from all parts of Europe; +for at that time Pestalozzi was at the zenith of his fame, having +under him one hundred and sixty-five pupils from Europe and +America, and thirty-two adult teachers, who were learning his +method.</p> +<p>But Yverdon has lost its former greatness now! Scarcely +any English travellers go there and still fewer Americans. +We fancied that there was nothing extraordinary in our +appearance; nevertheless a small crowd of children followed at +our heels, and the shopkeepers stood at their open doors and +regarded us with intense interest.</p> +<p>“No English spoken here, that is evident,” said +Salemina ruefully; “but you have such a gift for languages +you can take the command to-day and make the blunders and bear +the jeers of the public. You must find out where the new +Pestalozzi Monument is,—where the Château +is,—where the schools are, and whether visitors are +admitted,—whether there is a respectable hotel where we can +get dinner,—whether we can get back to Geneva to-night, +whether it’s a fast or a slow train, and what time it gets +there,—whether the methods of Pestalozzi are still +maintained,—whether they know anything about +Froebel,—whether they know what a kindergarten is, and +whether they have one in the village. Some of these +questions will be quite difficult even for you.”</p> +<p>Well, the monument was not difficult to find, at all +events. We accosted two or three small boys and demanded +boldly of one of them, “<i>Où est le monument de +Pestalozzi</i>, <i>s’il vous plaît</i>?”</p> +<p>He shrugged his shoulders like an American small boy and said +vacantly, “<i>Je ne sais pas</i>.”</p> +<p>“Of course he does know,” said Salemina; “he +means to be disagreeable; or else ‘monument’ +isn’t monument.”</p> +<p>“Well,” I answered, “there is a monument in +the distance, and there cannot be two in this village.”</p> +<p>Sure enough it was the very one we sought. It stands in +a little open place quite “in the business heart of the +city,”—as we should say in America, and is an +exceedingly fine and impressive bit of sculpture. The group +of three figures is in bronze and was done by M. Gruet of +Paris.</p> +<p>The modelling is strong, the expression of Pestalozzi benign +and sweet, and the trusting upturned faces of the children +equally genuine and attractive.</p> +<p>One side of the pedestal bears the inscription:—</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><i>À</i><br /> +<i>Pestalozzi</i><br /> +1746–1827<br /> +<i>Monument érigé</i><br /> +<i>par souscription populaire</i><br /> +<i>MDCCCXC</i></p> +</blockquote> +<p>On a second side these words are carved in the +stone:—</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><i>Sauveur des Pauvres +à Neuhof</i><br /> +<i>Père des Orphelins à Stanz</i><br /> +<i>Fondateur de l’école</i><br /> +<i>populaire à Burgdorf</i><br /> +<i>Éducateur de l’humanité</i><br /> +<i>à Yverdon</i><br /> +<i>Tout pour les autres</i>, <i>pour +lui</i>,—<i>rien</i>!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>An older monument erected in 1846 by the Canton of Argovia +bears this same inscription, save that it adds, “Preacher +to the people in ‘Leonard and Gertrude.’ +Man. Christian. Citizen. Blessed be his +name!”</p> +<p>On the third side of the Yverdon Monument is +Pestalozzi’s noble speech, fine enough indeed, to be cut in +stone:—</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">“<i>J’ai +vécu moi-même</i><br /> +<i>comme un mendiant</i>,<br /> +<i>pour apprendre à des</i><br /> +<i>mendiants à vivre comme</i><br /> +<i>des hommes</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We sat a long time on the great marble pedestal, gazing into +the benevolent face, and reviewing the simple, self-sacrificing +life of the great educator, and then started on a tour of +inspection. After wandering through most of the shops, +buying photographs and mementoes, Salemina discovered that she +had left the expensive tumbler in one of them. After a long +discussion as to whether tumbler was masculine or feminine, and +as to whether “<i>Ai-je laissé un verre +ici</i>?” or “<i>Est-ce que j’ai laissé +un verre ici</i>?” was the proper query, we retraced our +steps, Salemina asking in one shop, “<i>Excusez-moi</i>, +<i>je vous prie</i>, <i>mais ai-je laissé un verre +ici</i>?”,—and I in the next, “<i>Je demands +pardon</i>, <i>Madame</i>, <i>est-ce que j’ai laissé +un verre dans ce magasin-ci</i>?—<i>J’en ai perdu +un</i>, somewhere.” Finally we found it, and in +response not to mine but to Salemina’s question, so that +she was superior and obnoxious for several minutes.</p> +<p>Our next point of interest was the old castle, which is still +a public school. Finding the caretaker, we visited first +the museum and library—a small collection of curiosities, +books, and mementoes, various portraits of Pestalozzi and his +wife, manuscripts and so forth. The simple-hearted woman +who did the honours was quite overcome by our knowledge of and +interest in her pedagogical hero, but she did not return the +compliment. I asked her if the townspeople knew about +Friedrich Froebel, but she looked blank.</p> +<p>“Froebel? Froebel?” she asked; “<i>qui +est-ce</i>?”</p> +<p>“<i>Mais</i>, <i>Madame</i>,” I said eloquently, +“<i>c’était un grand homme</i>! <i>Un +héros</i>! <i>Le plus grand élève de +Pestalozzi</i>! <i>Aussi grand que Pestalozzi +soi-même</i>!”</p> +<p>(“<span class="smcap">Plus</span> grand! Why +don’t you say <i>plus grand</i>?” murmured Salemina +loyally.)</p> +<p>“<i>Je ne sais</i>!” she returned, with an +indifferent shrug of the shoulders. “<i>Je ne +sais</i>! <i>Il y a des autres</i>, <i>je crois</i>; +<i>mais moi</i>, <i>je connais Pestalozzi</i>, <i>c’est +assez</i>!”</p> +<p>All the younger children had gone home, but she took us +through the empty schoolrooms, which were anything but +attractive. We found an unhappy small boy locked in one of +them. I slipped behind the concierge to chat with him, for +he was so exactly like all other small boys in disgrace that he +made me homesick.</p> +<p>“<i>Tu étais méchant</i>, <i>n’est +ce-pas</i>?” I whispered consolingly; “<i>mais tu +seras sage demain</i>, <i>j’en suis +sûre</i>!”</p> +<p>I thought this very pretty, but he wriggled from under my +benevolent hand, saying “<i>Va</i>!” (which I took to +be, “Go ’long, you!”) “<i>je +n’étais méchant aujourd’hui et je ne +serai pas sage demain</i>!”</p> +<p>I asked the concierge if the general methods of Pestalozzi +were still used in the schools of Yverdon, “<i>Mais +certainement</i>!” she replied as we went into a room where +twenty to thirty girls of ten years were studying. There +were three pleasant windows looking out into the street; the +ordinary platform and ordinary teacher’s table, with the +ordinary teacher (in an extraordinary state of coma) behind it; +and rather rude desks and seats for the children, but not a +single ornament, picture, map, or case of objects and specimens +around the room. The children were nice, clean, pleasant, +stolid little things with braided hair and pinafores. The +sole decoration of the apartment was a highly-coloured chart that +we had noticed on the walls of all the other schoolrooms. +Feeling that this must be a sacred relic, and that it probably +illustrated some of the Pestalozzian foundation principles, I +walked up to it reverently,</p> +<p>“<i>Qu’est-ce-que c’est cela</i>, +<i>Madame</i>?” I inquired, rather puzzled by its +appearance.</p> +<p>“<i>C’est la méthode de +Pestalozzi</i>,” the teacher replied absently.</p> +<p>I wished that we kindergarten people could get Froebel’s +educational idea in such a snug, portable shape, and drew nearer +to gaze at it. I can give you a very complete description +of the pictures from memory, as I copied the titles <i>verbatim +et literatim</i>. The whole chart was a powerful moral +object-lesson on the dangers of incendiarism and the evils of +reckless disobedience. It was printed appropriately in the +most lurid colours, and divided into nine tableaux.</p> +<p>These were named as follows:—</p> +<h3>I—<span class="smcap">La Vraie +Gaîté</span></h3> +<p>Twelve or fifteen boys and girls are playing together so +happily and innocently that their good angels sing for joy.</p> +<h3>II—<span class="smcap">Une Proposition +Fatale</span>!</h3> +<p>Suddenly “<i>le petit</i> Charles” says to his +comrades, “Come! let us build a fire!” <i>Le +petit</i> Charles is a typical infant villain and is surrounded +at once by other incendiary spirits all in accord with his +insidious plans.</p> +<h3>III—<span class="smcap">La Protestation</span></h3> +<p>The Good Little Marie, a Sunday-school heroine of the true +type, approaches the group and, gazing heavenward, remarks that +it is wicked to play with matches. The G. L. M. is of +saintly presence,—so clean and well groomed that you feel +inclined to push her into a puddle. Her hands are not full +of vulgar toys and sweetmeats, like those of the other children, +but are extended graciously as if she were in the habit of +pronouncing benedictions.</p> +<h3>IV—<span class="smcap">Insouciance</span>!</h3> +<p><i>Le petit</i> Charles puts his evil little paw in his +dangerous pockets and draws out a wicked lucifer match, saying +with abominable indifference, “Bah! what do we care? +We’re going to build a fire, whatever you say. Come +on, boys!”</p> +<h3>V—<span class="smcap">Un Plaisir Dangereux</span>!</h3> +<p>The boys “come on.” Led by “<i>le +petit vilain</i> Charles” they light a dangerous little +fire in a dangerous little spot. Their faces shine with +unbridled glee. The G. L. M. retires to a distance with a +few saintly followers, meditating whether she shall run and tell +her mother. “<i>Le petit</i> Paul,” an infant +of three summers, draws near the fire, attracted by the cheerful +blaze.</p> +<h3>VI—<span class="smcap">Malheur et +Inexpérience</span></h3> +<p><i>Le petit</i> Paul somehow or other tumbles into the +fire. Nothing but a desire to influence posterity as an +awful example could have induced him to take this unnecessary +step, but having walked in he stays in, like an infant John +Rogers. The bad boys are so horror-stricken it does not +occur to them to pull him out, and the G. L. M. is weeping over +the sin of the world.</p> +<h3>VII—<span class="smcap">Trop Tard</span>!!</h3> +<p>The male parent of <i>le petit</i> Paul is seen rushing down +an adjacent Alp. He leads a flock of frightened villagers +who have seen the smoke and heard the wails of their +offspring. As the last shred of <i>le petit</i> Paul has +vanished in said smoke, the observer notes that the poor father +is indeed “too late.”</p> +<h3>VIII—<span class="smcap">Desespoir</span>!!</h3> +<p>The despair of all concerned would draw tears from the dryest +eye. Only one person wears a serene expression, and that is +the G. L. M., who is evidently thinking: “Perhaps they will +listen to me the next time.”</p> +<h3>IX—<span class="smcap">La Fin</span>!</h3> +<p>The charred remains of <i>le petit</i> Paul are being carried +to the cemetery. The G. L. M. heads the procession in a +white veil. In a prominent place among the mourners is +“<i>le pauvre petit</i> Charles,” so bowed with grief +and remorse that he can scarcely be recognized.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>It was a telling sermon! If I had been a child I should +never have looked at a match again; and old as I was, I could +not, for days afterwards, regard a box of them without a +shudder. I thought that probably Yverdon had been visited +in the olden time by a series of disastrous holocausts, all set +by small boys, and that this was the powerful antidote presented; +so I asked the teacher whether incendiarism was a popular failing +in that vicinity and whether the chart was one of a series +inculcating various moral lessons. I don’t know +whether she understood me or not, but she said no, it was +“<i>la méthode de Pestalozzi</i>.”</p> +<p>Just at this juncture she left the room, apparently to give +the pupils a brief study-period, and simultaneously the concierge +was called downstairs by a crying baby. A bright idea +occurred to me and I went hurriedly into the corridor where my +friend was taking notes.</p> +<p>“Salemina,” said I, “here is an opportunity +of a lifetime! We ought to address these children in their +native tongue. It will be something to talk about in +educational pow-wows. They do not know that we are +distinguished visitors, but we know it. A female member of +a School Board and the Honorary President of a Froebel Society +owe a duty to their constituents. You go in and tell them +who and what I am and make a speech in French. Then +I’ll tell them who and what you are and make another +speech.”</p> +<p>Salemina assumed a modest violet attitude, declined the honour +absolutely, and intimated that there were persons who would +prefer talking in a language they didn’t know rather than +to remain sensibly silent.</p> +<p>However the plan struck me as being so fascinating that I went +back alone, looked all ways to see if any one were coming, +mounted the platform, cleared my throat, and addressed the +awe-struck youngsters in the following words. I will spare +you the French, but you will perceive by the construction of the +sentences, that I uttered only those sentiments possible in an +early stage of language-study.</p> +<p>“My dear children,” I began, “I live many +thousand miles across the ocean in America. You do not know +me and I do not know you, but I do know all about your good +Pestalozzi and I love him.”</p> +<p>“<i>Il est mort</i>!” interpolated one offensive +little girl in the front row.</p> +<p>Salemina tittered audibly in the corridor, and I crossed the +room and closed the door. I think the children expected me +to put the key in my pocket and then murder them and stuff them +into the stove.</p> +<p>“I know perfectly well that he is dead, my child,” +I replied winningly,—“it is his life, his memory that +I love.—And once upon a time, long ago, a great man named +Friedrich Froebel came here to Yverdon and studied with your +great Pestalozzi. It was he who made kindergartens for +little children, <i>jardins des enfants</i>, you know. Some +of your grand-mothers remember Froebel, I think?”</p> +<p>Hereupon two of the smaller chits shouted some sort of a +negation which I did not in the least comprehend, but which from +large American experience I took to be, “My grandmother +doesn’t!” “My grandmother +doesn’t!”</p> +<p>Seeing that the others regarded me favourably, I continued, +“It is because I love Pestalozzi and Froebel, that I came +here to day to see your beautiful new monument. I have just +bought a photograph taken on that day last year when it was first +uncovered. It shows the flags and the decorations, the +flowers and garlands, and ever so many children standing in the +sunshine, dressed in white and singing hymns of praise. You +are all in the picture, I am sure!”</p> +<p>This was a happy stroke. The children crowded about me +and showed me where they were standing in the photograph, what +they wore on the august occasion, how the bright sun made them +squint, how a certain <i>malheureuse</i> Henriette couldn’t +go to the festival because she was ill.</p> +<p>I could understand very little of their magpie chatter, but it +was a proud moment. Alone, unaided, a stranger in a strange +land, I had gained the attention of children while speaking in a +foreign tongue. Oh, if I had only left the door open that +Salemina might have witnessed this triumph! But hearing +steps in the distance, I said hastily, +“<i>Asseyez-vous</i>, <i>mes enfants</i>, +<i>tout-de-suite</i>!” My tone was so authoritative +that they obeyed instantly, and when the teacher entered it was +as calm as the millennium.</p> +<p>We rambled through the village for another hour, dined at a +quaint little inn, gave a last look at the monument, and left for +Geneva at seven o’clock in the pleasant September +twilight. Arriving a trifle after ten, somewhat weary in +body and slightly anxious in mind, I followed Salemina into the +tiny cake-shop across the street from the station. She +returned the tumbler, and the man, who seemed to consider it an +unexpected courtesy, thanked us volubly. I held out my hand +and reminded him timidly of the one franc fifty centimes.</p> +<p>He inquired what I meant. I explained. He laughed +scornfully. I remonstrated. He asked me if I thought +him an imbecile. I answered no, and wished that I knew the +French for several other terms nearer the truth, but equally +offensive. Then we retired, having done our part, as good +Americans, to swell the French revenues, and that was the end of +our day in Pestalozzi-town; not the end, however, of the lemonade +glass episode, which was always a favourite story in +Salemina’s repertory.</p> +<h2><a name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>II<br +/> +PENELOPE IN VENICE</h2> +<blockquote><p>This noble citie doth in a manner chalenge this at +my hands, that I should describe her also as well as the other +cities I saw in my journey, partly because she gave me most +louing and kinde entertainment for the sweetest time (I must +needes confesse) that euer I spent in my life; and partly for +that she ministered vnto me more variety of remarkable and +delicious objects than mine eyes euer suruayed in any citie +before, or euer shall . . . the fairest Lady, yet the richest +Paragon and Queene of Christendome.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>Coryat’s Crudities</i>: +1611</p> +</blockquote> +<h3>I</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Venice</span>, +<i>May</i> 12<br /> +<span class="smcap">Hotel Paolo Anafesto</span>.</p> +<p>I <span class="smcap">have</span> always wished that I might +have discovered Venice for myself. In the midst of our mad +acquisition and frenzied dissemination of knowledge, these latter +days, we miss how many fresh and exquisite sensations! Had +I a daughter, I should like to inform her mind on every other +possible point and keep her in absolute ignorance of +Venice. Well do I realize that it would be impracticable, +although no more so, after all, than Rousseau’s plan of +educating Émile, which certainly obtained a wide hearing +and considerable support in its time. No, tempting as it +would be, it would be difficult to carry out such a theory in +these days of logic and common sense, and in some moment of +weakness I might possibly succumb and tell her all about it, for +fear that some stranger, whom she might meet at a ball, would +have the pleasure of doing it first.</p> +<p>The next best woman-person in the world with whom to see +Venice, barring the lovely non-existent daughter, is +Salemina.</p> +<p>It is our first visit, but, alas! we are, nevertheless, much +better informed than I could wish. Salemina’s mind is +particularly well furnished, but, luckily she cannot always +remember the point wished for at the precise moment of need; so +that, taking her all in all, she is nearly as agreeable as if she +were ignorant. Her knowledge never bulks heavily and +insistently in the foreground or middle-distance, like that of +Miss Celia Van Tyck, but remains as it should, in the haze of a +melting and delicious perspective. She has plenty of +enthusiasms, too, and Miss Van Tyck has none. Imagine our +plight at being accidentally linked to that encyclopædic +lady in Italy! She is an old acquaintance of +Salemina’s and joined us in Florence, where she had been +staying for a month, waiting for her niece Kitty +Schuyler,—Kitty Copley now,—who is in Spain with her +husband.</p> +<p>Miss Van Tyck would be endurable in Sheffield, Glasgow, Lyons, +Genoa, Kansas City, Pompeii, or Pittsburg, but she should never +have blighted Venice with her presence. She insisted, +however, on accompanying us, and I can only hope that the climate +and associations will have a relaxing effect on her habits of +thought and speech. When she was in Florence, she was so +busy in “reading up” Verona and Padua that she had no +time for the Uffizi Gallery. In Verona and Padua she was +absorbed in Hare’s “Venice,” vaccinating +herself, so to speak, with information, that it might not steal +upon, and infect her, unawares. If there is anything that +Miss Van abhors, it is knowing a thing without knowing that she +knows it; while for me, the most charming knowledge is the sort +that comes by unconscious absorption, like the free grace of +God.</p> +<p>We intended to enter Venice in orthodox fashion, by moonlight, +and began to consult about trains when we were in Milan. +The porter said that there was only one train between the eight +and the twelve, and gave me a pamphlet on the subject, but +Salemina objects to an early start, and Miss Van refuses to +arrive anywhere after dusk, so it is fortunate that the distances +are not great.</p> +<p>They have a curious way of reckoning time in Italy, for I +found that the train leaving Milan at eight-thirty was scheduled +to arrive at ten minutes past eighteen.</p> +<p>“You could never sit up until then, Miss Van,” I +said; “but, on the other hand, if we leave later, to please +Salemina, say at ten in the morning, we do not arrive until eight +minutes before twenty-one! I haven’t the faintest +idea what time that will really be, but it sounds too late for +three defenceless women—all of them unmarried—to be +prowling about in a strange city.”</p> +<p>It proved on investigation, however, that twenty-one +o’clock is only nine in Christian language (that is, +one’s mother tongue), so we united in choosing that hour as +being the most romantic possible, and there was a full yellow +moon as we arrived in the railway station. My heart beat +high with joy and excitement, for I succeeded in establishing +Miss Van with Salemina in one gondola, while I took all the +luggage in another, ridding myself thus cleverly of the +disenchanting influence of Miss Van’s company.</p> +<p>“Do come with us, Penelope,” she said, as we +issued from the portico of the station and heard, instead of the +usual cab-drivers’ pandemonium, only the soft lapping of +waves against the marble steps—“Do come with us, +Penelope, and let us enter ‘dangerous and sweet-charmed +Venice’ together. It does, indeed, look a +‘veritable sea-bird’s nest.’”</p> +<p>She had informed me before, in Milan, that Cassiodorus, +Theodoric’s secretary, had thus styled Venice, but somehow +her slightest remark is out of key. I can always see it +printed in small type in a footnote at the bottom of the page, +and I always wish to skip it, as I do other footnotes, and +annotations, and marginal notes and addenda. If Miss +Van’s mother had only thought of it, Addenda would have +been a delightful Christian name for her, and much more +appropriate than Celia.</p> +<p>If I should be asked on bended knees, if I should be reminded +that every intelligent and sympathetic creature brings a pair of +fresh eyes to the study of the beautiful, if it should be +affirmed that the new note is as likely to be struck by the +’prentice as by the master hand, if I should be assured +that my diary would never be read, I should still refuse to write +my first impressions of Venice. My best successes in life +have been achieved by knowing what not to do, and I consider it +the finest common sense to step modestly along in beaten paths, +not stirring up, even there, any more dust than is +necessary. If my friends and acquaintances ever go to +Venice, let them read their Ruskin, their Goethe, their Byron, +Shelley, and Wordsworth, their Rogers, Gautier, Michelet, their +Symonds and Howells, not forgetting old “Coryat’s +Crudities,” and be thankful I spared them mine.</p> +<p>It was the eve of Ascension Day, and a yellow May moon was +hanging in the blue. I wished with all my heart that it +were a little matter of seven or eight hundred years earlier in +the world’s history, for then the people would have been +keeping vigil and making ready for that nuptial ceremony of +Ascension-tide when the Doge married Venice to the sea. Why +can we not make pictures nowadays, as well as paint them? +We are banishing colour as fast as we can, clothing our +buildings, our ships, ourselves, in black and white and sober +hues, and if it were not for dear, gaudy Mother Nature, who never +puts her palette away, but goes on painting her reds and greens +and blues and yellows with the same lavish hand, we should have a +sad and discreet universe indeed.</p> +<p>But so long as we have more or less stopped making pictures, +is it not fortunate that the great ones of the olden time have +been eternally fixed on the pages of the world’s history, +there to glow and charm and burn for ever and a day? To be +able to recall those scenes of marvellous beauty so vividly that +one lives through them again in fancy, and reflect, that since we +have stopped being picturesque and fascinating, we have learned, +on the whole, to behave much better, is as delightful a trend of +thought as I can imagine, and it was mine as I floated toward the +Piazza of San Marco in my gondola.</p> +<p>I could see the Doge descend the Giant’s Stairs, and +issue from the gate of the Ducal Palace. I could picture +the great Bucentaur as it reached the open beyond the line of the +tide. I could see the white-mitred Patriarch walking from +his convent on the now deserted isle of Sant’ Elena to the +shore where his barge lay waiting to join the glittering +procession.</p> +<p>And then there floated before my entranced vision the princely +figure of the Doge taking the Pope-blessed ring, and, advancing +to the little gallery behind his throne on the Bucentaur, raising +it high, and dropping it into the sea. I could almost hear +the faint splash as it sank in the golden waves, and hear, too, +the sonorous words of the old wedding ceremony: +“<i>Desponsamus te</i>, <i>Mare</i>, <i>in signum veri +perpetuique dominii</i>!”</p> +<p>Then when the shouts of mirth and music had died away and the +Bucentaur and its train had drifted back into the lagoon, the +blue sea, new-wedded, slept through the night with the May moon +on her breast and the silent stars for sentinels.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">La +Giudecca</span>, <i>May</i> 15,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Casa Rosa</span>.</p> +<p>Not for a moment have we regretted leaving our crowded, +conventional hotel in Venice proper, for these rooms in a house +on the Giudecca. The very vision of Miss Celia Van Tyck +sitting on a balcony surrounded by a group of friends from the +various Boston suburbs, the vision of Miss Celia Van Tyck melting +into delicious distance with every movement of our gondola, even +this was sufficient for Salemina’s happiness and mine, had +it been accompanied by no more tangible joys.</p> +<p>This island, hardly ten minutes by gondola from the Piazza of +San Marco, was the summer resort of the Doges, you will remember, +and there they built their pleasure-houses, with charming gardens +at the back—gardens the confines of which stretched to the +Laguna Viva. Our Casa Rosa is one of the few old +<i>palazzi</i> left, for many of them have been turned into +granaries.</p> +<p>We should never have found this romantic dwelling by +ourselves; the Little Genius brought us here. The Little +Genius is Miss Ecks, who draws, and paints, and carves, and +models in clay, preaching and practising the brotherhood of man +and the sisterhood of woman in the intervals; Miss Ecks, who is +the custodian of all the talents and most of the virtues, and the +invincible foe of sordid common sense and financial +prosperity. Miss Ecks met us by chance in the Piazza and +breathlessly explained that she was searching for paying guests +to be domiciled under the roof of Numero Sessanta, +Giudecca. She thought we should enjoy living there, or at +least she did very much, and she had tried it for two years; but +our enjoyment was not the special point in question. The +real reason and desire for our immediate removal was that the +padrona might pay off a vexatious and encumbering mortgage which +gave great anxiety to everybody concerned, besides interfering +seriously with her own creative work.</p> +<p>“You must come this very day,” exclaimed Miss +Ecks. “The Madonna knows that we do not desire +boarders, but you are amiable and considerate, as well as +financially sound and kind, and will do admirably. Padrona +Angela is very unhappy, and I cannot model satisfactorily until +the house is on a good paying basis and she is putting money in +the bank toward the payment of the mortgage. You can order +your own meals, entertain as you like, and live precisely as if +you were in your own home.”</p> +<p>The Little Genius is small, but powerful, with a style of +oratory somewhat illogical, but always convincing at the +moment. There were a good many trifling objections to our +leaving Miss Van Tyck and the hotel, but we scarcely remembered +them until we and our luggage were skimming across the space of +water that divides Venice from our own island.</p> +<p>We explored the cool, wide, fragrant spaces of the old +<i>casa</i>, with its outer walls of faded, broken stucco, all +harmonized to a pinkish yellow by the suns and winds of the +bygone centuries. We admired its lofty ceilings, its lovely +carvings and frescoes, its decrepit but beautiful furniture, and +then we mounted to the top, where the Little Genius has a sort of +eagle’s eyrie, a floor to herself under the eaves, from the +windows of which she sees the sunlight glimmering on the blue +water by day, and the lights of her adored Venice glittering by +night. The walls are hung with fragments of marble and wax +and stucco and clay; here a beautiful foot, or hand, or +dimple-cleft chin; there an exquisitely ornate façade, a +miniature campanile, or a model of some ancient <i>palazzo</i> or +<i>chiesa</i>.</p> +<p>The little bedroom off at one side is draped in coarse white +cotton, and is simple enough for a nun. Not a suggestion +there of the fripperies of a fine lady’s toilet, but, in +their stead, heads of cherubs, wings of angels, slender +bell-towers, friezes of acanthus leaves,—beauty of line and +form everywhere, and not a hint of colour save in the riotous +bunches of poppies and oleanders that lie on the broad +window-seats or stand upright in great blue jars.</p> +<p>Here the Little Genius lives, like the hermit crab that she +calls herself; here she dwells apart from kith and kin, her mind +and heart and miracle-working hands taken captive by the charms +of the siren city of the world.</p> +<p>When we had explored Casa Rosa from turret to foundation stone +we went into the garden at the rear of the house—a garden +of flowers and grape-vines, of vegetables and fruit-trees, of +birds and bee-hives, a full acre of sweet summer sounds and +odours, stretching to the lagoon, which sparkled and shimmered +under the blue Italian skies. The garden completed our +subjugation, and here we stay until we are removed by force, or +until the padrona’s mortgage is paid unto the last penny, +when I feel that the Little Genius will hang a banner on the +outer ramparts, a banner bearing the relentless inscription: +“No paying guests allowed on these premises until further +notice.”</p> +<p>Our domestics are unique and interesting. Rosalia, the +cook, is a graceful person with brown eyes, wavy hair, and long +lashes, and when she is coaxing her charcoal fire with a +primitive fan of cock’s feathers, her cheeks as pink as +oleanders, the Little Genius leads us to the kitchen door and +bids us gaze at her beauty. We are suitably enthralled at +the moment, but we suffer an inevitable reaction when the meal is +served, and sometimes long for a plain cook.</p> +<p>Peppina is the second maid, and as arrant a coquette as lives +in all Italy. Her picture has been painted on more than one +fisherman’s sail, for it is rumoured that she has been six +times betrothed and she is still under twenty. The +unscrupulous little flirt rids herself of her suitors, after they +become a weariness to her, by any means, fair or foul, and her +capricious affections are seldom good for more than three +months. Her own loves have no deep roots, but she seems to +have the power of arousing in others furious jealousy and rage +and a very delirium of pleasure. She remains light, gay, +joyous, unconcerned, but she shakes her lovers as the Venetian +thunderstorms shake the lagoons. Not long ago she tired of +her chosen swain, Beppo the gardener, and one morning the +padrona’s ducks were found dead. Peppina, her eyes +dewy with crocodile tears, told the padrona that although the +suspicion almost rent her faithful heart in twain, she must needs +think Beppo the culprit. The local detective, or police +officer, came and searched the unfortunate Beppo’s humble +room, and found no incriminating poison, but did discover a pound +or two of contraband tobacco, whereupon he was marched off to +court, fined eighty francs, and jilted by his perfidious +lady-love, who speedily transferred her affections. If she +had been born in the right class and the right century, Peppina +would have made an admirable and brilliant Borgia.</p> +<p>Beppo sent a stinging reproof in verse to Peppina by the new +gardener, and the Little Genius read it to us, to show the poetic +instinct of the discarded lover, and how well he had selected his +rebuke from the store of popular verses known to gondoliers and +fishermen of Venice:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“<i>No te fidar de l’ albaro che +piega</i>,<br /> + <i>Ne de la dona quando la te giura</i>.<br /> +<i>La te impromete</i>, <i>e po la te denega</i>;<br /> +<i>No te fidar de l’ albaro che piega</i>.”</p> +<p>(“Trust not the mast that bends.<br /> + Trust not a woman’s oath;<br /> +She’ll swear to you, and there it ends,<br /> +Trust not the mast that bends.”)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Beppo, Salemina, and I were talking together one +morning,—just a casual meeting in the street,—when +Peppina passed us. She had a market-basket in each hand, +and was in her gayest attire, a fresh crimson rose between her +teeth being the last and most fetching touch to her toilet. +She gave a dainty shrug of her shoulders as she glanced at +Beppo’s hanging head and hungry eye, and then with a light +laugh hummed, “Trust not the mast that bends,” the +first line of the poem that Beppo had sent her.</p> +<p>“It is better to let her go,” I said to him +consolingly.</p> +<p>“<i>Si</i>, <i>madama</i>; but”—with a +profound sigh—“she is very pretty.”</p> +<p>So she is, and although my idea of the fitness of things is +somewhat unsettled when Peppina serves our dinner wearing a yoke +and sleeves of coarse lace with her blue cotton gown, and a bunch +of scarlet poppies in her hair, I can do nothing in the way of +discipline because Salemina approves of her as part of the +picture. Instead of trying to develop some moral sense in +the little creature, Salemina asked her to alternate roses and +oleanders with poppies in her hair, and gave her a coral comb and +ear-rings on her birthday. Thus does a warm climate +undermine the strict virtue engendered by Boston east winds.</p> +<p>Francesco—Cecco for short—is general assistant in +the kitchen, and a good gondolier to boot. When our little +family is increased by more than three guests at dinner, Cecco is +pressed into dining-room service, and becomes under-butler to +Peppina. Here he is not at ease. He scrubs his tanned +face until it shines like San Domingo mahogany, brushes his black +hair until the gloss resembles a varnish, and dons coarse white +cotton gloves to conceal his work-stained hands and give an air +of fashion and elegance to the banquet. His embarrassment +is equalled only by his earnestness and devotion to the dreaded +task. Our American guests do not care what we have upon our +bill of fare when they can steal a glance at the intensely +dramatic and impassioned Cecco taking Pina into a corner of the +dining-room and, seizing her hand, despairingly endeavour to find +out his next duty. Then, with incredibly stiff back, he +extends his right hand to the guest, as if the proffered plate +held a scorpion instead of a tidbit. There is an extra +butler to be obtained when the function is a sufficiently grand +one to warrant the expense, but as he wears carpet slippers and +Pina flirts with him from soup to fruit, we find ourselves no +better served on the whole, and prefer Cecco, since he transforms +an ordinary meal into a beguiling comedy.</p> +<p>“What does it matter, after all?” asks +Salemina. “It is not life we are living, for the +moment, but an act of light opera, with the scenes all +beautifully painted, the music charming and melodious, the +costumes gay and picturesque. We are occupying +exceptionally good seats, and we have no responsibility whatever: +we left it in Boston, where it is probably rolling itself larger +and larger, like a snowball; but who cares?”</p> +<p>“Who cares, indeed?” I echo. We are here not +to form our characters or to improve our minds, but to let them +relax; and when we see anything which opposses the Byronic ideal +of Venice (the use of the concertina as the national instrument +having this tendency), we deliberately close our eyes to +it. I have a proper regard for truth in matters of fact +like statistics. I want to know the exact population of a +town, the precise total of children of school age, the number of +acres in the Yellowstone Park, and the amount of wheat exported +in 1862; but when it comes to things touching my imagination I +resent the intrusion of some laboriously excavated truth, after +my point of view is all nicely settled, and my saints, heroes, +and martyrs are all comfortably and picturesquely arranged in +their respective niches or on their proper pedestals.</p> +<p>When the Man of Fact demolishes some pretty fallacy like +William Tell and the apple, he should be required to substitute +something equally delightful and more authentic. But he +never does. He is a useful but uninteresting creature, the +Man of Fact, and for a travelling companion or a neighbour at +dinner give me the Man of Fancy, even if he has not a grain of +exact knowledge concealed about his person. It seems to me +highly important that the foundations of Glasgow, Birmingham, +Manchester, or Spokane Falls should be rooted in certainty; but +Verona, Padua, and Venice—well, in my opinion, they should +be rooted in Byron and Ruskin and Shakespeare.</p> +<h3>III</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Casa +Rosa</span>, <i>May</i> 18.</p> +<p>Such a fanfare of bells as greeted our ears on the morning of +our first awakening in Casa Rosa!</p> +<p>“Rise at once and dress quickly, Salemina!” I +said. “Either an heir has been born to the throne, or +a foreign Crown Prince has come to visit Venice, or perhaps a +Papal Bull is loose in the Piazza San Marco. Whatever it +is, we must not miss it, as I am keeping a diary.”</p> +<p>But Peppina entered with a jug of hot water, and assured us +that there were no more bells than usual; so we lay drowsily in +our comfortable little beds, gazing at the frescoes on the +ceiling.</p> +<p>One difficulty about the faithful study of Italian frescoes is +that they can never be properly viewed unless one is extended at +full-length on the flat of one’s honourable back (as they +might say in Japan), a position not suitable in a public +building.</p> +<p>The fresco on my bedroom ceiling is made mysteriously +attractive by a wilderness of mythologic animals and a crowd of +cherubic heads, wings and legs, on a background of clouds; the +mystery being that the number of cherubic heads does not +correspond with the number of extremities, one or two cherubs +being a wing or a leg short. Whatever may be their +limitations in this respect, the old painters never denied their +cherubs cheek, the amount of adipose tissue uniformly provided in +that quarter being calculated to awake envy and jealousy on the +part of the predigested-food-babies pictured in the American +magazine advertisements.</p> +<p>Padrona Angela furnishes no official key to the +ceiling-paintings of Casa Rosa; and yesterday, during the +afternoon call of four pretty American girls, they asked and +obtained our permission to lie upon the marble floor and compete +for a prize to be given to the person who should offer the +cleverest interpretation of the symbolisms in the frescoes. +It may be stated that the entire difference of opinion proved +that mythologic art is apt to be misunderstood. After +deciding in the early morning what our bedroom ceiling is +intended to represent (a decision made and unmade every day since +our arrival), Salemina and I make a leisurely toilet and then +seat ourselves at one of the open windows for breakfast.</p> +<p>The window itself looks on the Doge’s Palace and the +Campanile, St. Theodore and the Lion of St. Mark’s being +visible through a maze of fishing-boats and sails, some of these +artistically patched in white and yellow blocks, or orange and +white stripes, while others of grey have smoke-coloured figures +in the tops and corners.</p> +<p>Sometimes the broad stone-flagging pavement bordering the +canal is busy with people: gondoliers, boys with nets for +crab-catching, ’longshoremen, and <i>facchini</i>. +This is when ships are loading or unloading, but at other times +we look upon a tranquil scene.</p> +<p>Peppina brings in <i>dell’ acqua bollente</i>, and I +make the coffee in the little copper coffee-pot we bought in +Paris, while Salemina heats the milk over the alcohol-lamp, which +is the most precious treasure in her possession.</p> +<p>The butter and eggs are brought every morning before +breakfast, and nothing is more delicious than our freshly churned +pat of solidified cream, without salt, which is sweeter than +honey in the comb. The cows are milked at dawn on the +campagna, and the milk is brought into Venice in large +cans. In the early morning, when the light is beginning to +steal through the shutters, one hears the tinkling of a +mule’s bell and the rattling of the milk-cans, and, if one +runs to the window, may see the <i>contadini</i>, looking, in +their sheepskin trousers, like brethren of John the Baptist, +driving through the streets and delivering the milk at the +<i>vaccari</i>. It is then heated, the cream raised and +churned, and the pats of butter, daintily set on green leaves, +delivered for a seven-o’clock breakfast.</p> +<p>Finally <i>la colazione</i> is spread on our table by the +window. A neat white cloth covers it, and we have +gold-rimmed plates and cups of delicate china. There is a +pot of honey, an egg <i>à la coque</i> for each, a plate +of brown and white bread, on some days a dish of scarlet cherries +on a bed of green, on others a mound of luscious berries in their +frills; sometimes, too, we have a bowl of tiny wild strawberries +that seem to have grown with their faces close pressed to the +flowers, so sweet and fragrant are they.</p> +<p>This <i>al fresco</i> morning meal makes a delicious prelude +to our comfortable <i>déjeuner à la fourchette</i> +at one o’clock, when the Little Genius, if not absorbed in +some unusually exacting piece of work, joins us and gives zest to +the repast. Her own breakfast, she explains, is a +<i>déjeuner à la</i> thumb, the sort enjoyed by the +peasant who carves a bit of bread and cheese in his hand, and she +promises us a sight, some leisure day, of a certain +<i>déjeuner à la</i> toothpick celebrated for the +moment among the artists. A mysterious painter, shabby, but +of a certain elegance and distinction even in his poverty, comes +daily at noon into a well-known restaurant. He buys for +five sous a glass of chianti, a roll for one sou, and with +stately grace bestows another sou upon the waiter who serves +him. These preparations made, he breaks the roll in small +bits, and poising them delicately on the point of a wooden +toothpick, he dips them in wine before eating them.</p> +<p>“This may be a frugal repast,” he has an air of +saying, “but it is at least refined, and no man would dare +insult me by asking me whether or not I leave the table +satisfied.”</p> +<h3>IV</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Casa +Rosa</span>, <i>May</i> 20.</p> +<p>One of the pleasantest sights to be noted from our windows at +breakfast time is Angelo making ready our private gondola for the +day. Angelo himself is not attractive to the eye by reason +of the silliest possible hat for a man of forty-five whose hair +is slightly grey. It is a white straw sailor, with a +turned-up brim, a blue ribbon encircling the crown, and a white +elastic under the chin; such a hat as you would expect to see +crowning the flaxen curls of mother’s darling boy of +four.</p> +<p>I love to look at the gondola, with its solemn caracoling like +that of a possible water-horse, of which the arched neck is the +graceful <i>ferro</i>. This is a strange, weird, beautiful +thing when the black gondola sways a little from side to side in +the moonlight. Angelo keeps ours polished so that it shines +like silver in the morning sun, and he has an exquisite +conscientiousness in rubbing every trace of brass about his +precious craft. He has a little box under the prow full of +bottles and brushes and rags. The cushions are laid on the +bank of the canal; the pieces of carpet are taken out, shaken, +and brushed, and the narrow strips are laid over the curved wood +ends of the gondola to keep the sun from cracking them. The +<i>felze</i>, or cabin, is freed of all dust, the tiny +four-legged stools and the carved chair are wiped off, and +occasionally a thin coat of black paint is needed here and there, +and a touching-up of the gold lines which relieve the +sombreness. The last thing to be done is to polish the +vases and run back into the garden for nosegays, and when these +are disposed in their niches on each side of the <i>felze</i>, +Angelo waves his infantile hat gaily to us at the window, and +smiles his readiness to be off.</p> +<p>On other mornings we watch the loading and unloading of +grain. There are many small boats always in view, their +orange sails patched with all sorts of emblems and designs in a +still deeper colour, and day before yesterday a large ship +appeared at our windows and attached itself to our very +doorsteps, much to the wrath of Salemina, who finds the poetry of +existence much disturbed under the new conditions. All is +life and motion now. The men are stripped naked to the +waist, with bright handkerchiefs on their heads, and, in many +cases, others tied over their mouths. Each has a thick wisp +of short twine strings tucked into his waistband. The bags +are weighed by one, who takes out or puts in a shovelful of +grain, as the case may be. Then the carrier ties up his bag +with one of the twine strings, two other men lift it to his +shoulder, while a boy removes a pierced piece of copper from a +long wire and gives it to him, this copper being handed in turn +to still another man, who apparently keeps the account. +This not uninteresting, indeed, but sordid and monotonous +operation began before eight yesterday morning and even earlier +to-day, obliging Salemina to decline strawberries and eat her +breakfast with her back to the window.</p> +<p>This afternoon at four the injured lady departed on a tour in +Miss Palett’s gondola. Miss Palett is a +water-colourist who has lived in Venice for five years and speaks +the language “like a native.” (You are familiar +with the phrase, and perhaps familiar, too, with the native like +whom they speak.)</p> +<p>Returning after tea, Salemina was observed to radiate a kind +of subdued triumph, which proved on investigation to be due to +the fact that she had met the <i>comandante</i> of the offending +ship and that he had gallantly promised to remove it without +delay. I cannot help feeling that the proper time for +departure had come; but this destroys the story and robs the +<i>comandante</i> of his reputation for chivalry.</p> +<p>As Miss Palett’s gondola neared the grain-ship, +Salemina, it seems, spied the commanding officer pacing the +deck.</p> +<p>“See,” she said to her companion, “there is +a gang-plank from the side of the ship to that small +flat-boat. We could perfectly well step from our gondola to +the flat-boat and then go up and ask politely if we may be +allowed to examine the interesting grain-ship. While you +are interviewing the first officer about the foreign countries he +has seen, I will ask the <i>comandante</i> if he will kindly tie +his boat a little farther down on the island. No, that +won’t do, for he may not speak English; we should have an +awkward scene, and I should defeat my own purposes. You are +so fluent in Italian, suppose you call upon him with my card and +let me stay in the gondola.”</p> +<p>“What shall I say to the man?” objected Miss +Palett.</p> +<p>“Oh, there’s plenty to say,” returned +Salemina. “Tell him that Penelope and I came over +from the hotel on the Grand Canal only that we might have perfect +quiet. Tell him that if I had not unpacked my largest +trunk, I should not stay an instant longer. Tell him that +his great, bulky ship ruins the view; that it hides the most +beautiful church and part of the Doge’s Palace. Tell +him that I might as well have stayed at home and built a cottage +on the dock in Boston Harbour. Tell him that his +steam-whistles, his anchor-droppings, and his constant loadings +or unloadings give us headache. Tell him that seven or +eight of his sailormen brought clean garments and scrubbing +brushes and took their bath at our front entrance. Tell him +that one of them, almost absolutely nude, instead of running away +to put on more clothing, offered me his arm to assist me into the +gondola.”</p> +<p>Miss Palett demurred at the subject-matter of some of these +remarks, and affirmed that she could not translate others into +proper Italian. She therefore proposed that Salemina should +write a few dignified protests on her visiting-card, and her own +part would be to instruct the man in the flat-boat to deliver it +at once to his superior officer. The <i>comandante</i> +spoke no English,—of that fact the sailorman in the +flat-boat was certain,—but as the gondola moved away, the +ladies could see the great man pondering over the little piece of +pasteboard, and it was plain that he was impressed. Herein +lies perhaps a seed of truth. The really great thing +triumphs over all obstacles, and reaches the common mind and +heart in some way, delivering its message we know not how.</p> +<p>Salemina’s card teemed with interesting information, at +least to the initiated. Her surname was in itself a +passport into the best society. To be an X— was +enough of itself, but her Christian name was one peculiar to the +most aristocratic and influential branch of the X—s. +Her mother’s maiden name, engraved at full length in the +middle, established the fact that Mr. X— had not married +beneath him, but that she was the child of unblemished lineage on +both sides. Her place of residence was the only one +possible to the possessor of three such names, and as if these +advantages were not enough, the street and number proved that +Salemina’s family undoubtedly possessed wealth; for the +small numbers, and especially the odd numbers, on that particular +street, could be flaunted only by people of fortune.</p> +<p>You have now all the facts in your possession, and I can only +add that the ship weighed anchor at twilight, so Salemina again +gazed upon the Doge’s Palace and slept tranquilly.</p> +<h3>V</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Casa +Rosa</span>, <i>May</i> 22</p> +<p>I am like the schoolgirl who wrote home from Venice: “I +am sitting on the edge of the Grand Canal drinking it all in, and +life never seemed half so full before.” Was ever the +city so beautiful as last night on the arrival of foreign +royalty? It was a memorable display and unique in its +peculiar beauty. The palaces that line the canal were +bright with flags; windows and water-steps were thronged, the +broad centre of the stream was left empty. Presently, round +the bend below the Rialto, swept into view a double line of +gondolas—long, low, gleaming with every hue of brilliant +colour, most of them with ten, some with twelve, gondoliers in +resplendent liveries, red, blue, green, white, orange, all +bending over their oars with the precision of machinery and the +grace of absolute mastery of their craft. In the middle, +between two lines, came one small and beautifully modelled +gondola, rowed by four men in red and black, while on the white +silk cushions in the stern sat the Prince and Princess. +There was no splash of oar or rattle of rowlock; swiftly, +silently, with an air of stately power and pride, the lovely +pageant came, passed, and disappeared under the shining evening +sky and the gathering shadows of “the dim, rich +city.” I never saw, or expect to see, anything of its +kind so beautiful.</p> +<p>I stay for hours in the gondola, writing my letters or +watching the thousand and one sights of the streets, for I often +allow Salemina and the Little Genius to tread their way through +the highways and byways of Venice while I stay behind and observe +life from beneath the grateful shade of the black +<i>felze</i>.</p> +<p>The women crossing the many little bridges look like the +characters in light opera; the young girls, with their hair +bobbed in a round coil, are sometimes bareheaded and sometimes +have a lace scarf over their dark, curly locks. A little +fan is often in their hands, and one remarks the graceful way in +which the crepe shawl rests upon the women’s shoulders, +remembering that it is supposed to take generations to learn to +wear a shawl or wield a fan.</p> +<p>My favourite waiting-place is near the Via del Paradiso, just +where some scarlet pomegranate blossoms hang out over the old +brick walls by the canal-side, and where one splendid acanthus +reminds me that its leaves inspired some of the most beautiful +architecture in the world; where, too, the ceaseless chatter of +the small boys cleaning crabs with scrubbing-brushes gives my ear +a much-needed familiarity with the language.</p> +<p>Now a girl with a red parasol crosses the Ponte del Paradiso, +making a brilliant silhouette against the blue sky. She +stops to prattle with the man at the bell-shop just at the corner +of the little <i>calle</i>. There are beautiful bells +standing in rows in the window, one having a border of finely +traced crabs and sea-horses at the base; another has a top like a +Doge’s cap, while the body of another has a delicately +wrought tracery, as if a fish-net had been thrown over it.</p> +<p>Sometimes the children crowd about me as the pigeons in the +Piazza San Marco struggle for the corn flung to them by the +tourists. If there are only three or four, I sometimes +compromise with my conscience and give them something. If +one gets a lira put into small coppers, one can give them a +couple of <i>centesimi</i> apiece without feeling that one is +pauperizing them, but that one is fostering the begging habit in +young Italy is a more difficult sin to face.</p> +<p>To-day when the boys took off the tattered hats from their +bonny little heads, all black waves and riotous curls, and with +disarming dimples and sparkling eyes presented them to me for +alms, I looked at them with smiling admiration, thinking how like +Raphael’s cherubs they were, and then said in my best +Italian: “Oh, yes, I see them; they are indeed most +beautiful hats. I thank you for showing them to me, and I +am pleased to see you courteously take them off to a +lady.”</p> +<p>This American pleasantry was passed from mouth to mouth +gleefully, and so truly enjoyed that they seemed to forget they +had been denied. They ran, still laughing and chattering, +to the wood-carver’s shop near-by and told him the story, +or so I judged, for he came to his window and smiled benignly +upon me as I sat in the gondola with my writing-pad on my +knees. I was pleased at the friendly glance, for he is the +hero of a pretty little romance, and I long to make his +acquaintance.</p> +<p>It seems that, some years ago, the Queen, with one +lady-in-waiting in attendance, came to his shop quite early in +the morning. Both were plainly dressed in cotton gowns, and +neither made any pretensions. He was carving something that +could not be dropped, a cherub’s face that had to be +finished while his thought of it was fresh. Hurriedly +asking pardon, he continued his work, and at end of an hour +raised his eyes, breathless and apologetic, to look at his +visitors. The taller lady had a familiar appearance. +He gazed steadily, and then, to his surprise and embarrassment, +recognized the Queen. Far from being offended, she +respected his devotion to his art, and before she left the shop +she gave him a commission for a royal staircase. I am going +to ask the Little Genius to take me to see his work, but, alas! +there will be an unsurmountable barrier between us, for I cannot +utter in my new Italian anything but the most commonplace and +conventional statements.</p> +<h3>VI</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Casa +Rosa</span>, <i>May</i> 28.</p> +<p>Oh, this misery of being dumb, incoherent, unintelligible, +foolish, inarticulate in a foreign land, for lack of words! +It is unwise, I fear, to have at the outset too high an ideal +either in grammar or accent. As our gondola passed one of +the hotels this afternoon, we paused long enough to hear an +intrepid lady converse with an Italian who carried a mandolin and +had apparently come to give a music lesson to her husband. +She seemed to be from the Middle West of America, but I am not +disposed to insist upon this point, nor to make any particular +State in the Union blush for her crudities of speech. She +translated immediately everything that she said into her own +tongue, as if the hearer might, between French and English, +possibly understand something.</p> +<p>“<i>Elle nay pars easy</i>—he ain’t +here,” she remarked, oblivious of gender. +“<i>Elle retoorneray ah seas oors et +dammi</i>—he’ll be back sure by half-past six. +<i>Bone swar</i>, I should say <i>Bony +naughty</i>—Good-night to you, and I won’t let him +forget to show up to-morrer.”</p> +<p>This was neither so ingenious nor so felicitous as the +language-expedient of the man who wished to leave some luggage at +a railway station in Rome, and knowing nothing of any foreign +tongue but a few Latin phrases, mostly of an obituary character, +pointed several times to his effects, saying, +“<i>Requiescat in pace</i>,” and then, pointing again +to himself, uttered the one pregnant word +“<i>Resurgam</i>.” This at any rate had the +merit of tickling his own sense of humour, if it availed nothing +with the railway porters, and if any one remarks that he has read +the tale in some ancient “Farmers’ Almanack,” I +shall only retort that it is still worth repeating.</p> +<p>My little red book on the “Study of Italian Made Easy +for the Traveller” is always in my pocket, but it is +extraordinary how little use it is to me. The critics need +not assert that individuality is dying out in the human race and +that we are all more or less alike. If we were, we should +find our daily practical wants met by such little books. +Mine gives me a sentence requesting the laundress to return the +clothes three days hence, at midnight, at cock-crow, or at the +full of the moon, but nowhere can the new arrival find the phrase +for the next night or the day after to-morrow. The book +implores the washerwoman to use plenty of starch, but the new +arrival wishes scarcely any, or only the frills dipped.</p> +<p>Before going to the dressmaker’s yesterday, I spent five +minutes learning the Italian for the expression “This +blouse bags; it sits in wrinkles between the +shoulders.” As this was the only criticism given in +the little book, I imagined that Italian dressmakers erred in +this special direction. What was my discomfiture to find +that my blouse was much too small and refused to meet. I +could only use gestures for the dressmaker’s enlightenment, +but in order not to waste my recently gained knowledge, I tried +to tell a melodramatic tale of a friend of mine whose blouse +bagged and sat in wrinkles between the shoulders. It was +not successful, because I was obliged to substitute the past for +the present tense of the verb.</p> +<p>Somebody says that if we learn the irregular verbs of a +language first, all will be well. I think by the use of +considerable mental agility one can generally avoid them +altogether, although it materially reduces one’s +vocabulary; but at all events there is no way of learning them +thoroughly save by marrying a native. A native, +particularly after marriage, uses the irregular verbs with great +freedom, and one acquires a familiarity with them never gained in +the formal instruction of a teacher. This method of +education may be considered radical, and in cases where one is +already married, illegal and bigamous, but on the whole it is not +attended with any more difficulty than the immersing of +one’s self in a study day after day and month after month +learning the irregular verbs from a grammar.</p> +<p>My rule in studying a language is to seize upon some salient +point, or one generally overlooked by foreigners, or some very +subtle one known only to the scholar, and devote myself to its +mastery. A little knowledge here blinds the hearer to much +ignorance elsewhere. In Italian, for example, the polite +way of addressing one’s equal is to speak in the third +person singular, using <i>Ella</i> (she) as the pronoun. +“<i>Come sta Ella</i>?” (How are you? but +literally “How is she?”)</p> +<p>I pay great attention to this detail, and make opportunities +to meet our <i>padrona</i> on the staircase and say “How is +she?” to her. I can never escape the feeling that I +am inquiring for the health of an absent person; moreover, I +could not understand her symptoms if she should recount them, and +I have no language in which to describe my own symptoms, which, +so far as I have observed, is the only reason we ever ask anybody +else how he feels.</p> +<p>To remember on the instant whether one is addressing equals, +superiors, or inferiors, and to marshal hastily the proper +pronoun, adds a new terror to conversation, so that I find myself +constantly searching my memory to decide whether it shall be:</p> +<p><i>Scusate</i> or <i>Scusi</i>, <i>Avanti</i> or <i>Passi</i>, +<i>A rivederci</i> or <i>Addio</i>, <i>Che cosa dite</i>? or +<i>Che coma dice</i>? <i>Quanto domandate</i>? or <i>Quanto +domanda</i>? <i>Dove andate</i>? or <i>Dove va</i>? +<i>Come vi chiamate</i>? or <i>Come si chiama</i>? and so forth +and so forth until one’s mind seems to be arranged in +tabulated columns, with special N.B.’s to use the +infinitive in talking to the gondolier.</p> +<p>Finding the hours of time rather puzzling as recorded in the +“Study of Italian Made Easy,” I devoted twenty-four +hours to learning how to say the time from one o’clock at +noon to midnight, or thirteen to twenty-three +o’clock. My soul revolted at the task, for a foreign +tongue abounds in these malicious little refinements of speech, +invented, I suppose, to prevent strangers from making too free +with it on short acquaintance. I found later on that my +labour had been useless, and that evidently the Italians +themselves have no longer the leisure for these little +eccentricities of language and suffer them to pass from common +use. If the Latin races would only meet in convention and +agree to bestow the comfortable neuter gender on inanimate +objects and commodities, how popular they might make themselves +with the English-speaking nations; but having begun to +“enrich” their language, and make it more +“subtle” by these perplexities, centuries ago, they +will no doubt continue them until the end of time.</p> +<p>If one has been a devoted patron of the opera or student of +music, one has an Italian vocabulary to begin with. This, +if accompanied by the proper gestures (for it is vain to speak +without liberal movements, of the hands, shoulders, and +eyebrows), this, I maintain, will deceive all the +English-speaking persons who may be seated near your table in a +foreign café.</p> +<p>The very first evening after our arrival, Jack Copley asked +Salemina and me to dine with him at the best restaurant in +Venice. Jack Copley is a well of nonsense undefiled, and +he, like ourselves, had been in Italy only a few hours. He +called for us in his gondola, and in the row across from the +Giudecca we amused ourselves by calling to mind the various +Italian words or phrases with which we were familiar. They +were mostly titles of arias or songs, but Jack insisted, +notwithstanding Salemina’s protestations, that, properly +interlarded with names of famous Italians, he could maintain a +brilliant conversation with me at table, to the envy and +amazement of our neighbours. The following paragraph, then, +was our stock in trade, and Jack’s volubility and ingenuity +in its use kept Salemina quite helpless with laughter:—</p> +<p><i>Guarda che bianca luna</i>—<i>Il tempo +passato</i>—<i>Lascia ch’ io +pianga</i>—<i>Dolce far niente</i>—<i>Batti batti nel +Masetto</i>—<i>Da +capo</i>—<i>Ritardando</i>—<i>Andante</i>—<i>Piano</i>—<i>Adagio</i>—<i>Spaghetti</i>—<i>Macaroni</i>—<i>Polenta</i>—<i>Non +è ver</i>—<i>Ah, non giunge</i>—<i>Si la +stanchezza</i>—<i>Bravo</i>—<i>Lento</i>—<i>Presto</i>—<i>Scherzo</i>—<i>Dormi +pura</i>—<i>La ci darem la mano</i>—<i>Celeste +Aïda</i>—<i>Spirito gentil</i>—<i>Voi che +sapete</i>—<i>Crispino e la +Comare</i>—<i>Pietà, +Signore</i>—<i>Tintoretto</i>—<i>Boccaccio</i>—<i>Garibaldi</i>—<i>Mazzini</i>—<i>Beatrice +Cenci</i>—<i>Gordigiani</i>—<i>Santa +Lucia</i>—<i>Il mio +tesoro</i>—<i>Margherita</i>—<i>Umberto</i>—<i>Vittoria +Colonna</i>—<i>Tutti +frutti</i>—<i>Botticelli</i>—<i>Una furtiva +lagrima</i>.</p> +<p>No one who has not the privilege of Jack Copley’s +acquaintance could believe with what effect he used these +unrelated words and sentences. I could only assist, and +lead him to ever higher flights of fancy.</p> +<p>We perceive with pleasure that our mother tongue presents +equal difficulties to Italian manufacturers and men of +affairs. The so-called mineral water we use at table is +specially still and dead, and we think it may have been compared +to its disadvantage with other more sparkling beverages, since +every bottle bears a printed label announcing, “To Distrust +of the mineral waters too foaming, since that they do invariable +spread the Stomach.”</p> +<p>We learn also by studying another bottle that “The +Wermouth is a white wine slightly bitter, and parfumed with who +leso me aromatic herbs.” <i>Who leso me</i> we +printed in italics in our own minds, giving the phrase a pure +Italian accent until we discovered that it was the somewhat +familiar adjective “wholesome.”</p> +<p>In one of the smaller galleries we were given the usual +pasteboard fans bearing explanations of the frescoes:—</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Room</span> I. <i>In the +middle</i>. The sin of our fathers.</p> +<p><i>On every side</i>. The ovens of Babylony. +Möise saved from the water.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Room</span> II. <i>In the +middle</i>. Möise who sprung the water.</p> +<p><i>On every side</i>. The luminous column in the dessert +and the ardent wood.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Room</span> III. <i>In the +middle</i>. Elia transported in the heaven.</p> +<p><i>On every side</i>. Eliseus dispansing brods.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Room</span> IV. The wood carvings +are by Anonymous. The tapestry shows the multiplications of +brods and fishs.</p> +<h3>VII</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Casa +Rosa</span>, <i>May</i> 30.</p> +<p>We have had a battle royal in Casa Rosa—a battle over +the breaking of a huge blue pitcher valued at eight francs, a +pitcher belonging to the Little Genius.</p> +<p>The room that leads from the dining-room to the kitchen is +reached by the descent of two or three stone steps. It is +always full, and is like the orthodox hell in one respect, that +though myriads of people are seen to go into it, none ever seem +to come out. It is not more than twelve feet square, and +the persons most continuously in it, not counting those who are +in transit, are the Padrona Angela; the Padrona Angela’s +daughter, Signorina Rita; the Signorina Rita’s temporary +suitor; the suitor’s mother and cousin; the padrona’s +great-aunt; a few casual acquaintances of the two families, and +somebody’s baby: not always the same baby; any baby answers +the purpose and adds to the confusion and chatter of tongues.</p> +<p>This morning, the door from the dining-room being ajar, I +heard a subdued sort of Bedlam in the distance, and finally went +nearer to the scene of action, finding the cause in a heap of +broken china in the centre of the floor. I glanced at the +excited company, but there was nothing to show me who was the +criminal. There was a spry girl washing dishes; the +fritter-woman (at least we call her so, because she brings +certain goodies called, if I mistake not, <i>frittoli</i>); the +gardener’s wife; Angelo, the gondolier; Peppina, the +waiting-maid; and the men that had just brought the sausages and +sweetmeats for the gondolier’s ball, which we were giving +in the evening. There was also the contralto, with a large +soup-ladle in her hand. (We now call Rosalia, the cook, +“the contralto,” because she sings so much better +than she cooks that it seems only proper to distinguish her in +the line of her special talent.)</p> +<p>The assembled company were all talking and gesticulating at +once. There was a most delicate point of justice involved, +for, as far as I could gather, the sweetmeat-man had come in +unexpectedly and collided with the sausage-man, thereby startling +the fritter-woman, who turned suddenly and jostled the spry girl: +hence the pile of broken china.</p> +<p>The spry girl was all for justice. If she had carelessly +or wilfully dropped the pitcher, she would have been willing to +suffer the extreme penalty,—the number of saints she called +upon to witness this statement was sufficient to prove her +honesty,—but under the circumstances she would be blessed +if she suffered anything, even the abuse that filled the +air. The fritter-woman upbraided the sweetmeat-man, who in +return reviled the sausage-vender, who remarked that if Angelo or +Peppina had received the sausages at the door, as they should, he +would never have been in the house at all; adding a few +picturesque generalizations concerning the moral turpitude of +Angelo’s parents and the vicious nature of their +offspring.</p> +<p>The contralto, who was divided in her soul, being betrothed to +the sausage-vender, but aunt to the spry girl, sprang into the +arena, armed with the soup-ladle, and dispensed injustice on all +sides. The feud now reached its height. There is +nothing that the chief participants did not call one another, and +no intimation or aspersion concerning the reputation of ancestors +to the remotest generation that was not cast in the others’ +teeth. The spry girl referred to the sausage-vender as a +<i>generalissimo</i> of all the fiends, and the compliments +concerning the gentle art of cookery which flew between the +fritter-woman and the contralto will not bear repetition. I +listened breathlessly, hoping to hear one of the party refer to +somebody as the figure of a pig (strangely enough the most +unforgettable of insults), for each of the combatants held, +suspended in air, the weapon of his choice—broken crockery, +soup-ladle, rolling-pin, or sausage. Each, I say, +flourished the emblem of his craft wildly in the air—and +then, with a change of front like that of the celebrated King of +France in the Mother Goose rhyme, dropped it swiftly and +silently; for at this juncture the Little Genius flew down the +broad staircase from her eagle’s nest. Her +sculptor’s smock surmounted her blue cotton gown, and her +blond hair was flying in the breeze created by her rapid +descent. I wish I could affirm that by her gentle dignity +and serene self-control she awed the company into silence, or +that there was a holy dignity about her that held them +spellbound; but such, unhappily, is not the case. It was +her pet blue pitcher that had been broken—the pitcher that +was to serve as just the right bit of colour at the +evening’s feast. She took command of the situation in +a masterly manner—a manner that had American energy and +decision as its foundation and Italian fluency as its +superstructure. She questioned the virtue of no one’s +ancestors, cast no shadow of doubt on the legitimacy of any +one’s posterity, called no one by the name of any +four-footed beast or crawling, venomous thing, yet she somehow +brought order out of chaos. Her language (for which she +would have been fined thirty days in her native land) charmed and +enthralled the Venetians by its delicacy, reserve, and restraint, +and they dispersed pleasantly. The sausage-vender wished +good appetite to the cook,—she had need of it, Heaven +knows, and we had more,—while the spry girl embraced the +fritter-woman ardently, begging her to come in again soon and +make a longer visit.</p> +<h3>VIII</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Casa +Rosa</span>, <i>June</i> 10</p> +<p>I am saying all my good-byes—to Angelo and the gondola; +to the greedy pigeons of San Marco, so heavy in the crop that +they can scarcely waddle on their little red feet; to the bees +and birds and flowers and trees of the beautiful garden behind +the <i>casa</i>; to the Little Genius and her eagle’s nest +on the house-top; to “the city that is always just putting +out to sea.” It has been a month of enchantment, and +although rather expensive, it is pleasant to think that the +padrona’s mortgage is nearly paid.</p> +<p>It is a saint’s day, and to-night there will be a +<i>fiesta</i>. Coming home to our island, we shall hear the +laughter and the song floating out from the wine shops and the +<i>caffès</i>; we shall see the lighted barges with their +musicians; we shall thrill with the cries of “<i>Viva +Italia</i>! <i>viva el Re</i>!” The moon will rise +above the white palaces; their innumerable lights will be +reflected in the glassy surface of the Grand Canal. We +shall feel for the last time “the quick silent +passing” of the only Venetian cab.</p> +<blockquote><p>“How light we move, how softly! Ah,<br +/> +Were life but as the gondola!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To-morrow we shall be rowed against the current to +Padua. We shall see Malcontenta and its ruined villa: +Oriago and Mira and the campanile of Dolo. Venice will lie +behind us, but she will never be forgotten. Many a time on +such a night as this we shall say with other wandering +Venetians:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“O Venezia benedetta!<br /> +Non ti voglio più lasciar!”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2><a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +105</span>III<br /> +PENELOPE’S PRINTS OF WALES</h2> +<blockquote><p>And at length it chanced that I came to the +fairest Valley in the World, wherein were trees of equal growth; +and a river ran through the Valley, and a path was by the side of +the river. And I followed the path until midday, and I +continued my journey along the remainder of the Valley until the +evening: and at the extremity of a plain I came to a lone and +lustrous Castle, at the foot of which was a torrent.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">We</span> are coaching in Wales, having +journeyed by easy stages from Liverpool through Llanberis, +Penygwryd, Bettws-y-Coed, Beddgelert and Dolgelly on our way to +Bristol, where we shall make up our minds as to the next step; +deciding in solemn conclave, with floods of argument and +temperamental differences of opinion, what is best worth seeing +where all is beautiful and inspiring. If I had possessed a +little foresight I should have avoided Wales, for, having proved +apt at itinerary doggerel, I was solemnly created, immediately on +arrival, Mistress of Rhymes and Travelling Laureate to the +party—an office, however honourable, that is no sinecure +since it obliges me to write rhymed eulogies or diatribes on +Dolgelly, Tan-y-Bulch, Gyn-y-Coed, Llanrychwyn, and other Welsh +hamlets whose names offer breakneck fences to the Muse.</p> +<p>I have not wanted for training in this direction, having made +a journey (heavenly in reminiscence) along the Thames, stopping +at all the villages along its green banks. It was Kitty +Schuyler and Jack Copley who insisted that I should rhyme Henley +and Streatley and Wargrave before I should be suffered to eat +luncheon, and they who made me a crown of laurel and hung a +pasteboard medal about my blushing neck when I succeeded better +than usual with Datchett!—I well remember Datchett, where +the water-rats crept out of the reeds in the shallows to watch +our repast; and better still do I recall Medmenham Abbey, which +defied all my efforts till I found that it was pronounced +Meddenam with the accent on the first syllable. The results +of my enforced tussles with the Muse stare at me now from my +Commonplace Book.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Said a rat to a hen once, at Datchett,<br +/> +‘Throw an egg to me, dear, and I’ll catch +it!’<br /> + ‘I thank you, good sir,<br /> + But I greatly prefer<br /> +To sit on mine <i>here</i> till I hatch it.’”</p> +<p>“Few hairs had the Vicar of Medmenham,<br /> +Few hairs, and he still was a-sheddin’ ’em,<br /> + But had none remained,<br /> + He would not have complained,<br /> +Because there was <i>far</i> too much red in +’em!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It was Jack Copley, too, who incited me to play with rhymes +for Venice until I produced the following <i>tour de +force</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>“A giddy young hostess in Venice<br /> +Gave her guests hard-boiled eggs to play tennis.<br /> + She said ‘If they <i>should</i> break,<br /> + What odds would it make?<br /> +You can’t <i>think</i> how prolific my hen +is.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Reminiscences of former difficulties bravely surmounted faded +into insignificance before our first day in Wales was over.</p> +<p>Jack Copley is very autocratic, almost brutal in +discipline. It is he who leads me up to the Visitors’ +Books at the wayside inns, and putting the quill in my reluctant +fingers bids me write in cheerful hexameters my impressions of +the unpronounceable spot. My martyrdom began at Penygwryd +(Penny-goo-rid’). We might have stopped at Conway or +some other town of simple name, or we might have allowed the roof +of the Cambrian Arms or the Royal Goat or the Saracen’s +Read to shelter us comfortably, and provide me a comparatively +easy task; but no; Penygwryd it was, and the outskirts at that, +because of two inns that bore on their swinging signs the names: +<i>Ty Ucha</i> and <i>Ty Isaf</i>, both of which would make any +minor poet shudder. When I saw the sign over the door of +our chosen hostelry I was moved to disappear and avert my +fate. Hunger at length brought me out of my lair, and +promising to do my duty, I was allowed to join the irresponsible +ones at luncheon.</p> +<p>Such a toothsome feast it was! A delicious ham where +roses and lilies melted sweetly into one another; some crisp +lettuces, ale in pewter mugs, a good old cheese, and that stodgy +cannon-ball the “household loaf,” dear for old +association’s sake. We were served at table by the +granddaughter of the house, a little damsel of fifteen summers +with sleek brown hair and the eyes of a doe. The pretty +creature was all blushes and dimples and pinafores and curtsies +and eloquent goodwill. With what a sweet politeness do they +invest their service, some of these soft-voiced British +maids! Their kindness almost moves one to tears when one is +fresh from the resentful civility fostered by Democracy.</p> +<p>As we strolled out on the greensward by the hawthorn hedge we +were followed by the little waitress, whose name, however +pronounced, was written Nelw Evans. She asked us if we +would write in the “Locked Book,” whereupon she +presented us with the key. It seems that there is an +ordinary Visitors’ Book, where the common herd is invited +to scrawl its unknown name; but when persons of evident +distinction and genius patronize the inn, this “Locked +Book” is put into their hands.</p> +<p>I found that many a lord and lady had written on its pages, +and men mighty in Church and State had left their mark, with much +bad poetry commendatory of the beds, the food, the scenery, and +the fishing. Nobody, however, had given a line to pretty +Nelw Evans; so I pencilled her a rhyme, for which I was well paid +in dimples:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“At the Inn called the Penygwryd<br /> +A sweet little maiden is hid.<br /> + She’s so rosy and pretty<br /> + I write her this ditty<br /> +And leave it at Penygwryd.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Our next halt was at Bettws-y-Coed, where we passed the +week-end. It was a memorable spot, as I failed at first to +rhyme the name, and only succeeded under threats of a fate like +unto that of the immortal babes in the wood. I left the +verse to be carved on a bronze tablet in the village church, +should any one be found fitted to bear the weight of its +eulogy:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Here lies an old woman of +Bettws-y-Co<i>ed</i>;<br /> +Wherever she went, it was there that she go<i>ed</i>.<br /> +She frequently said: ‘My own row have I ho<i>ed</i>,<br /> +And likewise the church water-mark have I to<i>ed</i>.<br /> +I’m therefore expecting to reap what I’ve +sow<i>ed</i>,<br /> +And go straight to heaven from +Bettws-y-Co<i>ed</i>.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>At another stage of our journey, when the coaching tour was +nearly ended, we were stopping at the Royal Goat at +Beddgelert. We were seated about the cheerful blaze (one +and sixpence extra), portfolio in lap, making ready our letters +for the post. I announced my intention of writing to +Salemina, left behind in London with a sprained ankle, and +determined that the missive should be saturated with local +colour. None of us were able to spell the few Welsh words +we had picked up in our journeyings, but I evaded the +difficulties by writing an exciting little episode in which all +the principal substantives were names of Welsh towns, dragged in +bodily, and so used as to deceive the casual untravelled +reader.</p> +<p>I read it aloud. Jack Copley declared that it made +capital sense, and sounded as if it had happened exactly as +stated. Perhaps you will agree with him:—</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">Ddolghyhggllwn</span>, <span +class="smcap">Wales</span>.</p> +<p>. . . We left Bettws-y-Coed yesterday morning, and coached +thirty-three miles to this point. (How do you like this +point when you see it spelled?) We lunched at a wayside +inn, and as we journeyed on we began to see pposters on the +ffences announcing the ffact that there was to be a Festiniog +that day in the village of Portmadoc, through which we were to +pass.</p> +<p>I always enoyw a Festiniog yn any country, and my hheart beat +hhigh with anticipation. Yt was ffive o’clock yn the +cool of the dday, and ppresently the roadw became ggay with the +returning festinioggers. Here was a fine Llanberis, its +neck encircled with shining meddals wonw in previous festiniogs; +there, just behind, a wee shaggy Rhyl led along proudly by its +owner. Evydently the gayety was over for the day, for the +ppeople now came yn crowds, the women with gay plaid Rhuddlans +over their shoulders and straw Beddgelerts on their hheads.</p> +<p>The guardd ttooted his hhorn continuously, for we now +approached the principalw street of the village, where hhundreds +of ppeople were conggreggated. Of course there were allw +manner of Dolgelleys yn the crowd, and allw that had taken +pprizes were gayly decked with ribbons. Just at this moment +the hhorn of our gguard ffrightened a superb Llanrwst, a spirited +black creature of enormous size. It made a ddash through +the lines of tterrified mothers, who caught their innocent +Pwllhelis closer to their bbosoms. In its madd course it +bruised the side of a huge Llandudno hitched to a stout +Tyn-y-Coed by the way-side. It bbroke its Bettws and leaped +ynto the air. Ddeath stared us yn the face. David the +whip grew ppale, and signalled to Absalom the gguard to save as +many lives as he could and leave the rrest to Pprovidence. +Absalom spprang from his seat, and taking a sharp Capel Curig +from his ppocket (Hheaven knows how he chanced to have it about +his pperson), he aimed straight between the Llangollens of the +infuriated Llandudno. With a moan of baffled rrage, he sank +to earth with a hheavy thuddw. Absalom withdrew the bbloody +Capel Curig from the dying Llandudno, and wiping yt on his +Penygwryd, replaced yt yn his pocket for future possible use.</p> +<p>The local Dolwyddelan approached, and ordered a detachment of +Tan-y-Bulchs to remove the corpse of the Llandudno. With a +shudder we saw him borne to his last rrest, for we realized that +had yt not bbeen for Absalom’s Capel Curig we had bbeen +bburied yn an unpronounceable Welsh ggrave.</p> +<h2><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +119</span>IV<br /> +PENELOPE IN DEVON</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">We</span> are in Bristol after a +week’s coaching in Wales; the Jack Copleys, Tommy Schuyler, +Mrs. Jack’s younger brother, and Miss Van Tyck, Mrs. +Jack’s “Aunt Celia,” who played a grim third in +that tour of the English Cathedrals during which Jack Copley was +ostensibly studying architecture but in reality courting Kitty +Schuyler. Also there is Bertram Ferguson, whom we call +“Atlas” because he carries the world on his +shoulders, gazing more or less vaguely and absent-mindedly at all +the persons and things in the universe not in need of immediate +reformation.</p> +<p>We had journeyed by easy stages from Liverpool through +Carnarvon, Llanberis, Penygwyrd, Bettws-y-Coed, Beddgelert, and +Tan-y-Bulch. Arriving finally at Dolgelly, we sent the +coach back to Carnarvon and took the train to Ross,—the +gate of the Wye,—from whence we were to go down the river +in boats. As to that, everybody knows Symond’s Yat, +Monmouth, Raglan Castle, Tintern Abbey, Chepstow; but at Bristol +a brilliant idea took possession of Jack Copley’s +mind. Long after we were in bed o’ nights the blessed +man interviewed landlords and studied guidebooks that he might +show us something beautiful next day, and above all, something +out of the common route. Mrs. Jack didn’t like common +routes; she wanted her appetite titillated with new scenes.</p> +<p>At breakfast we saw the red-covered Baedeker beside our +host’s plate. This was his way of announcing that we +were to “move on,” like poor Jo in “Bleak +House.” He had already reached the marmalade stage, +and while we discussed our bacon and eggs and reviled our coffee, +he read us the following:—</p> +<p>“Clovelly lies in a narrow and richly-wooded combe +descending abruptly to the sea.”—</p> +<p>“Any place that descends to the sea abruptly or +otherwise has my approval in advance,” said Tommy.</p> +<p>“Be quiet, my boy.”—“It consists of +one main street, or rather a main staircase, with a few houses +climbing on each side of the combe so far as the narrow space +allows. The houses, each standing on a higher or lower +level than its neighbour, are all whitewashed, with gay green +doors and lattices.”—</p> +<p>“Heavenly!” cried Mrs. Jack. “It +sounds like an English Amalfi; let us take the first +train.”</p> +<p>—“And the general effect is curiously foreign; the +views from the quaint little pier and, better still, from the +sea, with the pier in the foreground, are also very +striking. The foundations of the cottages at the lower end +of the village are hewn out of the living rock.”</p> +<p>“How does a living rock differ from other +rocks—dead rocks?” Tommy asked facetiously. +“I have always wanted to know; however, it sounds +delightful, though I can’t remember anything about +Clovelly.”</p> +<p>“Did you never read Dickens’s ‘Message from +the Sea,’ Thomas?” asked Miss Van Tyck. Aunt +Celia always knows the number of the unemployed in New York and +Chicago, the date when North Carolina was admitted to the Union, +why black sheep eat less than white ones, the height of the +highest mountain and the length of the longest river in the +world, when the first potato was dug from American soil, when the +battle of Bull Run was fought, who invented the first +fire-escape, how woman suffrage has worked in Colorado and +California, the number of trees felled by Mr. Gladstone, the +principle of the Westinghouse brake and the Jacquard loom, the +difference between peritonitis and appendicitis, the date of the +introduction of postal-cards and oleomargarine, the price of +mileage on African railways, the influence of Christianity in the +Windward Islands, who wrote “There’s Another, not a +Sister,” “At Midnight in his Guarded Tent,” +“A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever,” and has taken +in through the pores much other information likely to be of +service on journeys where an encyclopædia is not +available.</p> +<p>If she could deliver this information without gibes at other +people’s ignorance she would, of course, be more agreeable; +but it is only justice to say that a person is rarely instructive +and agreeable at the same moment.</p> +<p>“It is settled, then, that we go to Clovelly,” +said Jack. “Bring me the A B C Guide, please” +(this to the waiter who had just brought in the post).</p> +<p>“Quite settled, and we go at once,” said Mrs. +Jack, whose joy at arriving at a place is only equalled by her +joy in leaving it. “Penelope, hand me my letters, +please; if you were not my guest I should say I had never +witnessed such an appetite. Tommy, what news from +father? Atlas, how can you drink three cups of British +coffee? Oh-h-h, how more than lucky, how heavenly, how +providential! Egeria is coming!”</p> +<p>“Egeria?” we cried with one rapturous voice.</p> +<p>“Read your letter carefully, Kitty,” said Jack; +“you will probably find that she wishes she might come, but +finds it impossible.”</p> +<p>“Or that she certainly would come if she had anything to +wear,” drawled Tommy.</p> +<p>“Or that she could come perfectly well if it were a few +days later,” quoth I.</p> +<p>Mrs. Jack stared at us superciliously, and lifting an absurd +watch from her antique chatelaine, observed calmly, “Egeria +will be at this hotel in one hour and fifteen minutes; I +telegraphed her the night before last, and this letter is her +reply.”</p> +<p>“Who is Egeria?” asked Atlas, looking up from his +own letters. “She sounds like a character in a +book.”</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Jack</i>: “You begin, Penelope.”</p> +<p><i>Penelope</i>: “No, I’d rather finish; then I +can put in everything that you omit.”</p> +<p><i>Atlas</i>: “Is there so much to tell?”</p> +<p><i>Tommy</i>: “Rather. Begin with her hair, +Penelope.”</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Jack</i>: “No; I’ll do that! +Don’t rattle your knives and forks, shut up your Baedeker, +Jackie, and listen while I quote what a certain poet wrote of +Egeria when she last visited us:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“‘She has a knot of russet hair:<br /> +It seems a simple thing to wear<br /> +Through years, despite of fashion’s check,<br /> +The same deep coil about the neck,<br /> +But there it twined<br /> +When first I knew her,<br /> +And learned with passion to pursue her,<br /> +And if she changed it, to my mind<br /> +She were a creature of new kind.</p> +<p>“‘O first of women who has laid<br /> +Magnetic glory on a braid!<br /> +In others’ tresses we may mark<br /> +If they be silken, blonde, or dark,<br /> +But thine we praise and dare not feel them,<br /> +Not Hermes, god of theft, dare steal them;<br /> +It is enough for eye to gaze<br /> +Upon their vivifying maze.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Jack</i>: “She has beautiful hair, but as an +architect I shouldn’t think of mentioning it first. +Details should follow, not precede, general +characteristics. Her hair is an exquisite detail; so, you +might say, is her nose, her foot, her voice; but viewed as a +captivating whole, Egeria might be described epigrammatically as +an animated lodestone. When a man approaches her he feels +his iron-work gently and gradually drawn out of him.”</p> +<p>Atlas looked distinctly incredulous at this statement, which +was reinforced by the affirmative nods of the whole party.</p> +<p><i>Penelope</i>: “A man cannot talk to Egeria an hour +without wishing the assistance of the Society for First Aid to +the Injured. She is a kind of feminine fly-paper; the men +are attracted by the sweetness, and in trying to absorb a little +of it, they stick fast.”</p> +<p><i>Tommy</i>: “Egeria is worth from two to two and a +half times more than any girl alive; I would as lief talk to her +as listen to myself.”</p> +<p><i>Atlas</i>: “Great Jove, what a concession! I +wish I could find a woman—an unmarried woman (with a low +bow to Mrs. Jack)—that would produce that effect upon +me. So you all like her?”</p> +<p><i>Aunt Celia</i>: “She is not what I consider a +well-informed girl.”</p> +<p><i>Penelope</i>: “Now don’t carp, Miss Van +Tyck. You love her as much as we all do. ‘Like +her,’ indeed! I detest the phrase. Werther said +when asked how he liked Charlotte, ‘What sort of creature +must he be who merely liked her; whose whole heart and senses +were not entirely absorbed by her!’ Some one asked me +lately how I ‘liked’ Ossian.”</p> +<p><i>Atlas</i>: “Don’t introduce Ossian, Werther and +Charlotte into this delightful breakfast chat, I beseech you; the +most tiresome trio that ever lived. If they were travelling +with us, how they would jar! Ossian would tear the scenery +in tatters with his apostrophes, Werther would make love to Mrs. +Jack, and Charlotte couldn’t cut an English household loaf +with a hatchet. Keep to Egeria,—though if one cannot +stop at liking her, she is a dangerous subject.”</p> +<p><i>Jack</i>: “Don’t imagine from these panegyrics +that, to the casual observer, Egeria is anything more than a nice +girl. The deadly qualities that were mentioned only appeal +to the sympathetic eye (which you have not), and the susceptible +heart (which is not yours), and after long acquaintance (which +you can’t have, for she stays only a week). Tommy, +you can meet the charmer at the station; your sister will pack +up, and I’ll pay the bills and make arrangements for the +journey.”</p> +<p><i>Jack Copley</i> (<i>when left alone with his spouse</i>): +“Kitty, I wonder, why you invited Egeria to travel in the +same party with Atlas.”</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Jack</i> (<i>fencing</i>): “Pooh! Atlas is safe +anywhere.”</p> +<p><i>Jack</i>: “He is a man.”</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Jack</i>: “No; he is a reformer.”</p> +<p><i>Jack</i>: “Even reformers fall in love.”</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Jack</i>: “Not unless they can find a woman to +reform. Egeria is too nearly perfect to attract Atlas; +besides, what does it matter, anyway?”</p> +<p><i>Jack</i>: “It matters a good deal if it makes him +unhappy; he is too good a fellow.”</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Jack</i>: “I’ve lived twenty-five years +and I have never seen a man’s unhappiness last more than +six months, and I have never seen a woman make a wound in a +man’s heart that another woman couldn’t heal. +The modern young man is as tough as—well, I can’t +think of anything tough enough to compare him to. +I’ve always thought it a pity that the material of which +men’s hearts is made couldn’t be utilized for +manufacturing purposes; think of its value for hinges, or for the +toes of little boys’ boots, or the heels of their +stockings!”</p> +<p><i>Jack</i>: “I should think you had just been jilted, +my dear; how has Atlas offended you?”</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Jack</i>: “He hasn’t offended me; I love +him, but I think he is too absent-minded lately.”</p> +<p><i>Jack</i>: “And is Egeria invited to join us in order +that she may bring his mind forcibly back to the +present?”</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Jack</i>: “Not at all; I consider Atlas as safe +as a—as a church, or a dictionary, or a guide-post, or +anything; he is too much interested in tenement-house reform to +fall in love with a woman.”</p> +<p><i>Jack</i>: “I think a sensible woman wouldn’t be +out of place in Atlas’ schemes for the regeneration of +humanity.”</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Jack</i>: “No; but Egeria isn’t +a—yes, she is, too; I can’t deny it, but I +don’t believe she knows anything about the sweating system, +and she adores Ossian and Fiona Macleod, so she probably +won’t appeal to Atlas in his present state, which, to my +mind, is unnecessarily intense. The service of humanity +renders a young man perfectly callous to feminine charms. +It’s the proverbial safety of numbers, I suppose, for +it’s always the individual that leads a man into +temptation, if you notice, never the universal;—Woman, not +women. I have studied Atlas profoundly, and he is nearly as +blind as a bat. He paid no attention to my new +travelling-dress last week, and yesterday I wore four rings on my +middle finger and two on each thumb all day long, just to see if +I could catch his eye and hold his attention. I +couldn’t.”</p> +<p><i>Jack</i>: “That may all be; a man may be blind to the +charms of all women but one (and precious lucky if he is), but he +is particularly keen where the one is concerned.”</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Jack</i>: “Atlas isn’t keen about anything +but the sweating system. You needn’t worry about him; +your favourite Stevenson says that a wet rag goes safely by the +fire, and if a man is blind, he cannot expect to be much +impressed by romantic scenery. Atlas momentarily a wet rag +and temporarily blind. He told me on Wednesday that he +intended to leave all his money to one of those long-named +regenerating societies—I can’t remember +which.”</p> +<p><i>Jack</i>: “And it was on Wednesday you sent for +Egeria. I see.”</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Jack</i> (<i>haughtily</i>): “Then you see a +figment of your own imagination; there is nothing else to +see. There! I’ve packed everything that belongs +to me, while you’ve been smoking and gazing at that railway +guide. When do we start?”</p> +<p><i>Jack</i>: “11.59. We arrive in Bideford at +4.40, and have a twelve-mile drive to Clovelly. I will +telegraph for a conveyance to the inn and for five bedrooms and a +sitting-room.”</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Jack</i>: “I hope that Egeria’s train will +be on time, and I hope that it will rain so that I can wear my +five-guinea mackintosh. It poured every day when I was +economizing and doing without it.”</p> +<p><i>Jack</i>: “I never could see the value of economy +that ended in extra extravagance.”</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Jack</i>: “Very likely; there are hosts of +things you never can see, Jackie. But there she is, +stepping out of a hansom, the darling! What a sweet +gown! She’s infinitely more interesting than the +sweating system.”</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>We thought we were a merry party before Egeria joined us, but +she certainly introduced a new element of interest. I could +not help thinking of it as we were flying about the Bristol +station, just before entering the first-class carriage engaged by +our host. Tommy had bought us rosebuds at a penny each; +Atlas had a bundle of illustrated papers under his +arm—<i>The Sketch</i>, <i>Black and White</i>, <i>The +Queen</i>, <i>The Lady’s Pictorial</i>, and half a dozen +others. The guard was pasting an “engaged” +placard on the carriage window and piling up six luncheon-baskets +in the corner on the cushions, and speedily we were off.</p> +<p>It is a sincere tribute to the intrinsic charm of +Egeria’s character that Mrs. Jack and I admire her so +unreservedly, for she is for ever being hurled at us as an +example in cases where men are too stupid to see that there is no +fault in us, nor any special virtue in her. For instance, +Jack tells Kitty that she could walk with less fatigue if she +wore sensible shoes like Egeria’s. Now, +Egeria’s foot is very nearly as lovely as Trilby’s in +the story, and much prettier than Trilby’s in the pictures; +consequently, she wears a hideous, broad-toed, low-heeled boot, +and looks trim and neat in it. Her hair is another +contested point: she dresses it in five minutes in the morning, +walks or drives in the rain and wind for a few hours, rides in +the afternoon, bathes in the surf, lies in a hammock, and, if +circumstances demand, the creature can smooth it with her hands +and walk in to dinner! Kitty and I, on the contrary, rise a +half-hour earlier to curl or wave; our spirit-lamps leak into our +dressing-bags, and our beauty is decidedly damaged by damp or hot +weather. Most women’s hair is a mere covering to the +scalp, growing out of the head, or pinned on, as the case may +be. Egeria’s is a glory like Eve’s; it is +expressive, breathing a hundred delicate suggestions of herself; +not tortured into frizzles, or fringes, or artificial shapes, but +winding its lustrous lengths about her head, just high enough to +show the beautiful nape of her neck, “where this way and +that the little lighter-coloured irreclaimable curls run truant +from the knot,—curls, half curls, root curls, vine +ringlets, wedding-rings, fledgling feathers, tufts of down, blown +wisps,—all these wave, or fall, or stray, loose and +downward in the form of small, silken paws, hardly any of them +thicker than a crayon shading, cunninger than long, round locks +of gold to trick the heart.”</p> +<p>At one o’clock we lifted the covers of our +luncheon-baskets.</p> +<p>“Aren’t they the tidiest, most self-respecting, +satisfying things!” exclaimed Egeria, as she took out her +plate, and knife, and fork, opened her Japanese napkin, set in +dainty order the cold fowl and ham, the pat of butter, crusty +roll, bunch of lettuce, mustard and salt, the corkscrew, and, +finally, the bottle of ale. “I cannot bear to be +unpatriotic, but compare this with the ten minutes for +refreshments at an American lunch-counter, its baked beans, and +pies, and its cream cakes and doughnuts under glass covers. +I don’t believe English people are as good as we are; they +can’t be; they’re too comfortable. I wonder if +the little discomforts of living in America, the dissatisfaction +and incompetency of servants, and all the other problems, will +work out for the nation a more exceeding weight of glory, or +whether they will simply ruin the national temper.”</p> +<p>“It’s wicked to be too luxurious, Egeria,” +said Tommy, with a sly look at Atlas. “It’s the +hair shirt, not the pearl-studded bosom, that induces +virtue.”</p> +<p>“Is it?” she asked innocently, letting her clear +gaze follow Tommy’s. “You don’t believe, +Mr. Atlas, that modest people like you, and me, and Tommy, and +the Copleys, incur danger in being too comfortable; the trouble +lies in the fact that the other half is too uncomfortable, does +it not? But I am just beginning to think of these +things,” she added soberly.</p> +<p>“Egeria,” said Mrs. Jack sternly, “you may +think about them as much as you like; I have no control over your +mental processes, but if you mention single tax, or +tenement-house reform, or Socialism, or altruism, or communism, +or the sweating system, you will be dropped at Bideford. +Atlas is only travelling with us because he needs complete moral +and intellectual rest. I hope, oh, how I hope, that there +isn’t a social problem in Clovelly! It seems as if +there couldn’t be, in a village of a single street and that +a stone staircase.”</p> +<p>“There will be,” I said, “if nothing more +than the problem of supply and demand; of catching and selling +herrings.”</p> +<p>We had time at Bideford to go into a quaint little shop for +tea before starting on our twelve-mile drive; time also to be +dragged by Tommy to Bideford Bridge, that played so important a +part in Kingsley’s “Westward Ho!” We did +not approach Clovelly finally through the beautiful Hobby Drive, +laid out in former years by one of the Hamlyn ladies of Clovelly +Court, but by the turnpike road, which, however, was not +uninteresting. It had been market-day at Bideford and there +were many market carts and “jingoes” on the road, +with perhaps a heap of yellow straw inside and a man and a rosy +boy on the seat. The roadway was prettily bordered with +broom, wild honeysuckle, fox-glove, and single roses, and there +was a certain charming post-office called the Fairy Cross, in a +garden of blooming fuchsias, where Egeria almost insisted upon +living and officiating as postmistress.</p> +<p>All at once our driver checked his horses on the brink of a +hill, apparently leading nowhere in particular.</p> +<p>“What is it?” asked Mrs. Jack, who is always +expecting accidents.</p> +<p>“Clovelly, mum.”</p> +<p>“Clovelly!” we repeated automatically, gazing +about us on every side for a roof, a chimney, or a sign of +habitation.</p> +<p>“You’ll find it, mum, as you walk +down-along.”</p> +<p>“How charming!” cried Egeria, who loves the +picturesque. “Towns are generally so obtrusive; +isn’t it nice to know that Clovelly is here and that all we +have to do is to walk ‘down-along’ and find it? +Come, Tommy. Ho, for the stone staircase!”</p> +<p>We who were left behind discovered by more questioning that +one cannot drive into Clovelly; that although an American +president or an English chancellor might, as a great favour, be +escorted down on a donkey’s back, or carried down in a +sedan chair if he chanced to have one about his person, the +ordinary mortal must walk to the door of the New Inn, his luggage +being dragged “down-along” on sledges and brought +“up-along” on donkeys. In a word, Clovelly is +not built like unto other towns; it seems to have been flung up +from the sea into a narrow rift between wooded hills, and to have +clung there these eight hundred years of its existence. It +has held fast, but it has not expanded, for the very good reason +that it completely fills the hollow in the cliffs, the houses +clinging like limpets to the rocks on either side, so that it +would be a costly and difficult piece of engineering indeed to +build any extensions or additions.</p> +<p>We picked our way “down-along” until we caught the +first glimpse of white-washed cottages covered with creepers, +their doors hospitably open, their windows filled with blooming +geraniums and fuchsias. All at once, as we began to descend +the winding, rocky pathway, we saw that it pitched headlong into +the bluest sea in the world. No wonder the painters have +loved it! Shall we ever forget that first vision! +There were a couple of donkeys coming “up-along” +laden, one with coals, the other with bread-baskets; a fisherman +was mending his nets in front of his door; others were lounging +“down to quay pool” to prepare for their evening +drift-fishing. A little further on, at a certain abrupt +turning called the “lookout,” where visitors stop to +breathe and villagers to gossip, one could catch a glimpse of the +beach and “Crazed Kate’s Cottage,” the +drying-ground for nets, the lifeboat house, the pier, and the +breakwater.</p> +<p>We were all enchanted when we arrived at the door of the +inn.</p> +<p>“Devonshire for me! I shall live here!” +cried Mrs. Jack. “I said that a few times in Wales, +but I retract it. You had better live here, too, Atlas; +there aren’t any problems in Clovelly.”</p> +<p>“I am sure of that,” he assented smilingly. +“I noticed dozens of live snails in the rocks of the street +as we came down; snails cannot live in combination with +problems.”</p> +<p>“Then I am a snail,” answered Mrs. Jack +cheerfully; “for that is exactly my temperament.”</p> +<p>We found that we could not get room enough for all at the tiny +inn, but this only exhilarated Egeria and Tommy. They +disappeared and came back triumphant ten minutes later.</p> +<p>“We got lodgings without any difficulty,” said +Egeria. “Tommy’s isn’t half bad; we saw a +small boy who had been taking a box ‘down-along’ on a +sledge, and he referred us to a nice place where they took Tommy +in; but you should see my lodging—it is ideal. I +noticed the prettiest yellow-haired girl knitting in a +doorway. ‘There isn’t room for me at the +inn,’ I said; ‘could you let me sleep +here?’ She asked her mother, and her mother said +‘Yes,’ and there was never anything so romantic as my +vine-embowered window. Juliet would have jumped at +it.”</p> +<p>“She would have jumped out of it, if Romeo had been +below,” said Mrs. Jack, “but there are no Romeos +nowadays; they are all busy settling the relations of labour and +capital.”</p> +<p>The New Inn proved some years ago to be too small for its +would-be visitors. An addition couldn’t be built +because there wasn’t any room; but the landlady succeeded +in getting a house across the way. Here there are bedrooms, +a sort of quiet tap-room of very great respectability, and the +kitchens. As the dining-room is in house number one, the +matter of serving dinner might seem to be attended with +difficulty, but it is not apparent. The maids run across +the narrow street with platters and dishes surmounted by great +Britannia covers, and in rainy weather they give the soup or +joint the additional protection of a large cotton umbrella. +The walls of every room in the inn are covered with old china, +much of it pretty, and some of it valuable, though the finest +pieces are not hung, but are placed in glass cabinets. One +cannot see an inch of wall space anywhere in bedrooms, dining- or +sitting-rooms for the huge delft platters, whole sets of the old +green dragon pattern, quaint perforated baskets, pitchers and +mugs of British lustre, with queer dogs, and cats, and peacocks, +and clocks of china. The massing of colour is picturesque +and brilliant, and the whole effect decidedly unique. The +landlady’s father and grandfather had been Bideford +sea-captains and had brought here these and other treasures from +foreign parts. As Clovelly is a village of seafolk and +fisher-folk, the houses are full of curiosities, mostly from the +Mediterranean. Egeria had no china in her room, but she had +huge branches of coral, shells of all sizes and hues, and an +immense coloured print of the bay of Naples. Tommy’s +landlady was volcanic in her tastes, and his walls were lined +with pictures of Vesuvius in all stages of eruption. My +room, a wee, triangular box of a thing, was on the first floor of +the inn. It opened hospitably on a bit of garden and street +by a large glass door that wouldn’t shut, so that a cat or +a dog spent the night by my bed-side now and then, and many a +donkey tried to do the same, but was evicted.</p> +<p>Oh, the Clovelly mornings! the sunshine, the salt air, the +savour of the boats and the nets, the limestone cliffs of +Gallantry Bower rising steep and white at the head of the village +street, with the brilliant sea at the foot; the walks down by the +quay pool (not <i>key pool</i>, you understand, but <i>quaäy +püül</i> in the vernacular), the sails in a good old +herring-boat called the <i>Lorna Doone</i>, for we are in +Blackmore’s country here.</p> +<p>We began our first day early in the morning, and met at +nine-o’clock breakfast in the coffee-room. Egeria +came in glowing. She reminds me of a phrase in a certain +novel, where the heroine is described as always dressing +(seemingly) to suit the season and the sky. Clad in +sea-green linen with a white collar, and belt, she was the very +spirit of a Clovelly morning. She had risen at six, and in +company with Phoebe, daughter of her house (the yellow-haired +lassie mentioned previously), had prowled up and down North Hill, +a transverse place or short street much celebrated by +painters. They had met a certain bold fisher-lad named Jem, +evidently Phoebe’s favourite swain, and explored the short +passage where Fish Street is built over, nicknamed Temple +Bar.</p> +<p>Atlas came in shortly after and laid a nosegay at +Egeria’s plate.</p> +<p>“My humble burnt-offering, your ladyship,” he +said.</p> +<p><i>Tommy</i>: “She has lots of offerings, but she +generally prefers to burn ’em herself. When +Egeria’s swains talk about her, it is always ‘<i>ut +vidi</i>,’ how I saw, succeeded by ‘<i>ut +perii</i>,’ how I sudden lost my brains.”</p> +<p><i>Egeria</i>: “<i>You</i> don’t indulge in +burnt-offerings” (laughing, with slightly heightened +colour); “but how you do burn incense! You speak as +if the skeletons of my rejected suitors were hanging on imaginary +lines all over the earth’s surface.”</p> +<p><i>Tommy</i>: “They are not hanging on +‘imaginary’ lines.”</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Jack</i>: “Turn your thoughts from +Egeria’s victims, you frivolous people, and let me tell you +that I’ve been ‘up-along’ this morning and +found—what do you think?—a library: a circulating +library maintained by the Clovelly Court people. It is +embowered in roses and jasmine, and there is a bird’s nest +hanging just outside one of the open windows next to a shelf of +Dickens and Scott. Never before have young families of +birds been born and brought up with similar advantages. The +snails were in the path just as we saw them yesterday evening, +Atlas; not one has moved, not one has died! Oh, I certainly +must come and live here. The librarian is a dear old lady; +if she ever dies, I am coming to take her place. You will +be postmistress at the Fairy Cross then, Egeria, and we’ll +visit each other. And I’ve brought Dickens’ +‘Message from the Sea’ for you, and Kingsley’s +‘Westward Ho!’ for Tommy, and ‘The Wages of +Sin’ for Atlas, and ‘Hypatia’ for Egeria, +‘Lorna Doone’ for Jack, and Charles Kingsley’s +sermons for myself. We will read aloud every +evening.”</p> +<p>“I won’t,” said Tommy succinctly. +“I’ve been down by the quay pool, and I’ve got +acquainted with a lot of A1 chaps that have agreed to take me +drift-fishing every night, and they are going to put out the +Clovelly lifeboat for exercise this week, and if the weather is +fine, Bill Marks is going to take Atlas and me to Lundy +Island. You don’t catch me round the evening lamp +very much in Clovelly.”</p> +<p>“Don’t be too slangy, Tommy, and who on earth is +Bill Marks?” asked Jack.</p> +<p>“He’s our particular friend, Tommy’s and +mine,” answered Atlas, seeing that Tommy was momentarily +occupied with bacon and eggs. “He told us more yarns +than we ever before heard spun in the same length of time. +He is seventy-seven, and says he was a teetotaler until he was +sixty-nine, but has been trying to make up time ever since. +From his condition last evening, I should say he was likely to do +it. He was so mellow, I asked him how he could manage to +walk down the staircase. ‘Oh, I can walk down neat +enough,’ he said, ‘when I’m in good sailing +trim, as I am now, feeling just good enough, but not too good, +your honour; but when I’m half seas over or three sheets in +the wind, I roll down, your honour!’ He spends three +shillings a week for his food and the same for his +‘rummidge.’ He was thrilling when he got on the +subject of the awful wreck just outside this harbour, ‘the +fourth of October, seventy-one years ago, two-and-thirty men +drowned, your honour, and half of ’em from Clovelly +parish. And I was one of the three men saved in another +storm twenty-four years agone, when two-and-twenty men were +drowned; that’s what it means to plough the great salt +field that is never sown, your honour.’ When he found +we’d been in Scotland, he was very anxious to know if we +could talk ‘Garlic,’ said he’d always wanted to +know what it sounded like.”</p> +<p>Somehow, in the days that followed, Tommy was always with his +particular friends, the fishermen, on the beach, at the Red Lion, +or in the shop of a certain boat-builder, learning the use of the +calking-iron. Mr. and Mrs. Jack, Aunt Celia, and I +unexpectedly found ourselves a quartette for hours together, +while Egeria and Atlas walked in the churchyard, in the beautiful +grounds of Clovelly Court, or in the deer park, where one finds +as perfect a union of marine and woodland scenery as any in +England.</p> +<p>Atlas may have taken her there because he could discuss single +tax more eloquently when he was walking over the entailed estates +of the English landed gentry, but I suspect that single tax had +taken off its hat, and bowing profoundly to Egeria, had said, +“After you, Madam!” and retired to its proper place +in the universe; for not even the most blatant economist would +affirm that any other problem can be so important as that which +confronts a man when he enters that land of Beulah, which is upon +the borders of Heaven and within sight of the City of Love.</p> +<p>Atlas was young, warm of heart, high of mind, and generous of +soul. All the necessary chords, therefore, were in him, +ready to be set in vibration. No one could do this more +cunningly than Egeria; the only question was whether love would +“run out to meet love,” as it should, “with +open arms.”</p> +<p>We simply waited to see. Mrs. Jack, with that fine lack +of logic that distinguished her, disclaimed all +responsibility. “He is awake, at least,” she +said, “and that is a great comfort; and now and then he +observes a few very plain facts, mostly relating to Egeria, it is +true. If it does come to anything, I hope he won’t +ask her to live in a college settlement the year round, though I +haven’t the slightest doubt that she would like it. +If there were ever two beings created expressly for each other, +it is these two, and for that reason I have my doubts about the +matter. Almost all marriages are made between two people +who haven’t the least thing in common, so far as outsiders +can judge. Egeria and Atlas are almost too well suited for +marriage.”</p> +<p>The progress of the affair had thus far certainly been +astonishingly rapid, but it might mean nothing. +Egeria’s mind and heart were so easy of access up to a +certain point that the traveller sometimes overestimated the +distance covered and the distance still to cover. Atlas +quoted something about her at the end of the very first day, that +described her charmingly: “Ordinarily, the sweetest ladies +will make us pass through cold mist and cross a stile or two, or +a broken bridge, before the formalities are cleared away, to +grant us rights of citizenship. She is like those frank +lands where we have not to hand out a passport at the frontier +and wait for dubious inspection.” But the description +is incomplete. Egeria, indeed, made no one wait at the +frontier for a dubious inspection of his passport; but once in +the new domain, while he would be cordially welcomed to parks, +gardens, lakes, and pleasure grounds, he would find unexpected +difficulty in entering the queen’s private apartments, a +fact that occasioned surprise to some of the travellers.</p> +<p>We all took the greatest interest, too, in the romance of +Phoebe and Jem, for the course of true love did not run at all +smooth for this young couple. Jack wrote a ballad about +her, and Egeria made a tune to it, and sang it to the tinkling, +old-fashioned piano of an evening:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Have you e’er seen the street of +Clovelly?<br /> +The quaint, rambling street of Clovelly,<br /> +With its staircase of stone leading down to the sea,<br /> +To the harbour so sleepy, so old, and so wee,<br /> +The queer, crooked street of Clovelly.</p> +<p>“Have you e’er seen the lass of Clovelly?<br /> +The sweet little lass of Clovelly,<br /> +With kirtle of grey reaching just to her knee,<br /> +And ankles as neat as ankles may be,<br /> +The yellow-haired lass of Clovelly.</p> +<p>“There’s a good honest lad in Clovelly,<br /> +A bold, fisher lad of Clovelly,<br /> +With purpose as straight and swagger as free<br /> +As the course of his boat when breasting a sea,<br /> +The brave sailor lad of Clovelly.</p> +<p>“Have you e’er seen the church at Clovelly?<br /> +Have you heard the sweet bells of Clovelly?<br /> +The lad and the lassie will hear them, maybe,<br /> +And join hand in hand to sail over life’s sea<br /> +From the little stone church at Clovelly.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>When the nights were cool or damp we crowded into Mrs. +Jack’s tiny china-laden sitting-room, and had a blaze in +the grate with a bit of driftwood burning blue and green and +violet on top of the coals. Tommy sometimes smelled of +herring to such a degree that we were obliged to keep the door +open; but his society was so precious that we endured the +odours.</p> +<p>But there were other evenings out of doors, when we sat in a +sheltered corner down on the pier, watching the line of limestone +cliffs running westward to the revolving light at Hartland Point +that sent us alternate flashes of ruby and white across the +water. Clovelly lamps made glittering disks in the quay +pool, shining there side by side with the reflected +star-beams. We could hear the regular swish-swash of the +waves on the rocks, and to the eastward the dripping of a stream +that came tumbling over the cliff.</p> +<p>Such was our last evening in Clovelly; a very quiet one, for +the charm of the place lay upon us and we were loath to leave +it. It was warm and balmy, and the moonlight lay upon the +beach. Egeria leaned against the parapet, the serge of her +dress showing white against the background of rock. The +hood of her dark blue yachting-cape was slipping off her head, +and her eyes were as deep and clear as crystal pools.</p> +<p>Presently she began to sing,—first, “The Sands +o’ Dee,” then,—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Three fishers went sailing out into the +west,<br /> +Out into the west as the sun went down;<br /> +Each thought of the woman who loved him the best,<br /> +And the children stood watching them out of the town.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Egeria is one of the few women who can sing well without an +accompaniment. She has a thrilling voice, and what with the +scene, the hour, and the pathos of Kingsley’s verses, tears +rushed into my eyes, and Bill Marks’ words came back to +me—“Two-and-twenty men drowned; that’s what it +means to plough the great salt field that is never +sown.”</p> +<p>Atlas gazed at her with eyes that no longer cared to keep +their secret. Mrs. Jack was still uncertain; for me, I was +sure. Love had rushed past him like a galloping horseman, +and shooting an arrow almost without aim, had struck him full in +the heart, that citadel that had withstood a dozen deliberate +sieges.</p> +<p>It was midnight, and our few belongings were packed. +Egeria had come to the Inn to sleep, and stole into my room to +warm her toes before the blaze in my grate, for I was chilly and +had ordered a sixpenny fire. When I say that she came in to +warm her toes, I am asking you to accept her statement, not mine; +it is my opinion that she came in for no other purpose than to +tell me something that was in her mind and heart pleading for +utterance.</p> +<p>I didn’t help her by leading up to the subject, because +I thought her fib so flagrant and unnecessary; accordingly, we +talked over a multitude of things,—Phoebe and Jem and their +hard-hearted parents, our visit to Cardiff and Ilfracombe, Bill +Marks and his wife, the service at the church, and finally her +walk with Atlas in the churchyard.</p> +<p>“We went inside,” said Egeria, “and I copied +the inscription on the bronze tablet that Atlas liked so much on +Sunday: ‘Her grateful and affectionate husband’s last +and proudest wish will be that whenever Divine Providence shall +call him hence, his name may be engraved on the same tablet that +is sacred in perpetuating as much virtue and goodness as could +adorn human nature.’” Then she went on, with +apparent lack of sequence: “Penelope, don’t you think +it is always perfectly safe to obey a Scriptural command, because +I have done it?”</p> +<p>“Did you find it in the Old or the New +Testament?”</p> +<p>“The Old.”</p> +<p>“I should say that if you found some remarks about +breaking the bones of your enemy, and have twisted it out of its +connection, it would be particularly bad advice to +follow.”</p> +<p>“It is nothing of that sort.”</p> +<p>“What is it, then?”</p> +<p>She took out a tortoise-shell dagger just here, and gave her +head an absent-minded shake so that her lustrous coil of hair +uncoiled itself and fell on her shoulders in a ruddy +spiral. It was a sight to induce covetousness, but one +couldn’t be envious of Egeria. She charmed one by her +lack of consciousness.</p> +<blockquote><p>“The happy lot<br /> +Be his to follow<br /> +Those threads through lovely curve and hollow,<br /> +And muse a lifetime how they got<br /> +Into that wild, mysterious knot,”—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>quoted I, as I gave her head an insinuating pat. +“Come, Egeria, stand and deliver! What is the +Scriptural command, that having first obeyed, you ask my advice +about afterwards?”</p> +<p>“Have you a Bible?”</p> +<p>“You might not think it, but I have, and it is here on +my table.”</p> +<p>“Then I am going into my room, to lock the door, and +call the verse through the keyhole. But you must promise +not to say a word to me till to-morrow morning.”</p> +<p>I was not in a position to dictate terms, so I promised. +The door closed, the bolt shot into the socket, and +Egeria’s voice came so faintly through the keyhole that I +had to stoop to catch the words:—</p> +<p>“Deuteronomy, 10:19.”</p> +<p>I flew to my Bible. +Genesis—Exodus—Leviticus—Numbers—Deuteronomy—Deut-er-on-omy—Ten—Nineteen—</p> +<p>“<i>Love ye therefore the stranger</i>—”</p> +<h2><a name="page165"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 165</span>V<br +/> +PENELOPE AT HOME</h2> +<blockquote><p>“’Tis good when you have crossed the +sea and back<br /> +To find the sit-fast acres where you left them.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">Emerson</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Beresford +Broadacres</span>,<br /> +<i>April</i> 15, 19–.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Penelope</span>, in the old sense, is no +more! No mound of grass and daisies covers her; no shaft of +granite or marble marks the place where she rests;—as a +matter of fact she never does rest; she walks and runs and sits +and stands, but her travelling days are over. For the +present, in a word, the reason that she is no longer +“Penelope,” with dozens of portraits and three +volumes of “Experiences” to her credit, is, that she +is Mrs. William Hunt Beresford.</p> +<p>As for Himself, he is just as much William Hunt Beresford as +ever he was, for marriage has not staled, nor fatherhood +withered, his infinite variety. There may be, indeed, a +difference, ever so slight; a new dignity, and an air of +responsibility that harmonizes well with the inch of added girth +at his waist-line and the grey thread or two that becomingly +sprinkle his dark hair.</p> +<p>And where is Herself, the vanished Penelope, you ask; the +companion of Salemina and Francesca; the traveller in England, +Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; the wanderer in Switzerland and +Italy? Well, if she is a thought less irresponsible, merry, +and loquacious, she is happier and wiser. If her easel and +her palette are not in daily evidence, neither are they +altogether banished from the scene; and whatever measure of +cunning Penelope’s hand possessed in other days, Mrs. +Beresford has contrived to preserve.</p> +<p>If she wields the duster occasionally, in alternation with the +paint-brush and the pen, she has now a new choice of weapons; and +as for models,—her friends, her neighbours, even her +enemies and rivals, might admire her ingenuity, her thrift, and +her positive genius in selecting types to paint! She never +did paint anything beautifully but children, though her +backgrounds have been praised, also the various young things that +were a vital part of every composition. She could never +draw a horse or a cow or an ox to her satisfaction, but a +long-legged colt, or a newborn Bossy-calf were well within her +powers. Her puppies and kittens and chickens and goslings +were always admired by the public, and the fact that the mothers +and fathers in the respective groups were never quite as +convincing as their offspring,—this somehow escaped the +notice of the critics.</p> +<p>Very well, then, what was Penelope inspired to do when she +became Mrs. Beresford and left the Atlantic rolling between the +beloved Salemina, Francesca, and herself? Why, having +“crossed the sea and back” repeatedly, she found +“the sit-fast acres” of the house of Beresford where +she “left them” and where they had been sitting fast +for more than a hundred years.</p> +<p>“Here is the proper place for us to live,” she +said to Himself, when they first viewed the dear delightful New +England landscape over together. “Here is where your +long roots are, and as my roots have been in half a hundred +places they can be easily transplanted. You have a decent +income to begin on; why not eke it out with apples and hay and +corn and Jersey cows and Plymouth Rock cocks and hens, while I +use the scenery for my pictures? There are backgrounds here +for a thousand canvases, all within a mile of your ancestral +doorstep.”</p> +<p>“I don’t know what you will do for models in this +remote place,” said Himself, putting his hands in his +pockets and gazing dubiously at the abandoned farm-houses on the +hillsides; the still green dooryards on the village street where +no children were playing, and the quiet little brick school-house +at the turn of the road, from which a dozen half-grown boys and +girls issued decorously, looking at us like scared rabbits.</p> +<p>“I have an idea about models,” said Mrs. +Beresford.</p> +<p>And it turned out that she had, for all that was ten years +ago, and Penelope the Painter, merged in Mrs. Beresford the +mother, has the three loveliest models in all the +countryside!</p> +<p>Children, of course, are common enough everywhere; not, +perhaps, as common as they should be, but there are a good many +clean, well-behaved, truthful, decently-featured little boys and +girls who will, in course of time, become the bulwarks of the +Republic, who are of no use as models. The public is not +interested in, and will neither purchase nor hang on its walls +anything but a winsome child, a beautiful child, a pathetic +child, or a picturesquely ragged and dirty child. (The +latter type is preferably a foreigner, as dirty American children +are for some reason or other quite unsalable.)</p> +<p>All this is in explanation of the foregoing remarks about Mrs. +Beresford’s ingenuity, thrift, and genius in selecting +types to paint. The ingenuity lay in the idea itself; the +thrift, in securing models that should belong to the Beresford +“sit-fast acres” and not have to be searched for and +“hired in” by the day; and the genius, in producing +nothing but enchanting, engrossing, adorable, eminently +“paintable” children. They are just as +obedient, interesting, grammatical, and virtuous as other +people’s offspring, yet they are so beautiful that it would +be the height of selfishness not to let the world see them and +turn green with envy.</p> +<p>When viewed by the casual public in a gallery, nobody of +course believes that they are real until some kind friend says: +“No, oh, no! not ideal heads at all; perfect likenesses; +the children of Mr. and Mrs. Beresford; Penelope Hamilton, whose +signature you see in the corner, <i>is</i> Mrs. +Beresford.”</p> +<p>When they are exhibited in the guise of, and under such titles +as: “Young April,” “In May Time,” +“Girl with Chickens,” “Three of a Kind” +(Billy with a kitten and a puppy tumbling over him), +“Little Mothers” (Frances and Sally with their +dolls), “When all the World is Young” (Billy, +Frances, and Sally under the trees surrounded by a riot of young +feathered things, with a lamb and a Jersey calf peeping over a +fence in the background), then Himself stealthily visits the +gallery. He stands somewhere near the pictures pulling his +moustache nervously and listening to the comments of the +bystanders. Not a word of his identity or paternity does he +vouchsafe, but occasionally some acquaintance happens to draw +near, perhaps to compliment or congratulate him. Then he +has been heard to say vaingloriously: “Oh, no! they are not +flattered; rather the reverse. My wife has an extraordinary +faculty of catching likenesses, and of course she has a wonderful +talent, but she agrees with me that she never quite succeeds in +doing the children justice!”</p> +<p>Here we are, then, Himself and I, growing old with the country +that gave us birth (God bless it!) and our children growing up +with it, as they always should; for it must have occurred to the +reader that I am Penelope, Hamilton that was, and also, and above +all, that I am Mrs. William Hunt Beresford.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>April</i> 20, 19–.</p> +<p>Himself and I have gone through the inevitable changes that +life and love, marriage and parenthood, bring to all human +creatures; but no one of the dear old group of friends has so +developed as Francesca. Her last letter, posted in Scotland +and delivered here seven days later, is like a breath of the +purple heather and brings her vividly to mind.</p> +<p>In the old days when we first met she was gay, irresponsible, +vivacious, and a decided flirt,—with symptoms of becoming a +coquette. She was capricious and exacting; she had far too +large an income for a young girl accountable to nobody; she was +lovely to look upon, a product of cities and a trifle +spoiled.</p> +<p>She danced through Europe with Salemina and me, taking in no +more information than she could help, but charming everybody that +she met. She was only fairly well educated, and such +knowledge as she possessed was vague, uncertain, and never ready +for instant use. In literature she knew Shakespeare, +Balzac, Thackeray, Hawthorne, and Longfellow, but if you had +asked her to place Homer, Schiller, Dante, Victor Hugo, James +Fenimore Cooper, or Thoreau she couldn’t have done it +within a hundred years.</p> +<p>In history she had a bowing acquaintance with Napoleon, +Washington, Wellington, Prince Charlie, Henry of Navarre, Paul +Revere, and Stonewall Jackson, but as these gallant gentlemen +stand on the printed page, so they stood shoulder to shoulder, +elbowing one another in her pretty head, made prettier by a +wealth of hair, Marcel-waved twice a week.</p> +<p>These facts were brought out once in examination, by one of +Francesca’s earliest lovers, who, at Salemina’s +request and my own, acted as her tutor during the spring before +our first trip abroad, the general idea being to prepare her mind +for foreign travel.</p> +<p>I suppose we were older and should have known better than to +allow any man under sixty to tutor Francesca in the spring. +Anyhow, the season worked its maddest pranks on the +pedagogue. He fell in love with his pupil within a few +days,—they were warm, delicious, budding days, for it was a +very early, verdant, intoxicating spring that produced an unusual +crop of romances in our vicinity. Unfortunately the tutor +was a scholar at heart, as well as a potential lover, and he +interested himself in making psychological investigations of +Francesca’s mind. She was perfectly willing, for she +always regarded her ignorance as a huge joke, instead of viewing +it with shame and embarrassment. What was more natural, +when she drove, rode, walked, sailed, danced, and “sat +out” to her heart’s content, while more learned young +ladies stayed within doors and went to bed at nine o’clock +with no vanity-provoking memories to lull them to sleep? +The fact that she might not be positive as to whether Dante or +Milton wrote “Paradise Lost,” or Palestrina antedated +Berlioz, or the Mississippi River ran north and south or east and +west,—these trifling uncertainties had never cost her an +offer of marriage or the love of a girl friend; so she was +perfectly frank and offered no opposition to the investigations +of the unhappy but conscientious tutor, meeting his questions +with the frankness of a child. Her attitude of mind was the +more candid because she suspected the passion of the teacher and +knew of no surer way to cure him than to let him know her mind +for what it was.</p> +<p>When the staggering record of her ignorance on seven subjects +was set down in a green-covered blank book, she awaited the +result not only with resignation, but with positive hope; a hope +that proved to be ill-founded, for curiously enough the tutor was +still in love with her. Salemina was surprised, but I was +not. Of course I had to know anatomy in order to paint, but +there is more in it than that. In painting the outsides of +people I assure you that I learned to guess more of what was +inside them than their bony structures! I sketched the +tutor while he was examining Francesca and I knew that there were +no abysmal depths of ignorance that could appall him where she +was concerned. He couldn’t explain the situation at +all, himself. If there was anything that he admired and +respected in woman, it was a well-stored, logical mind, and three +months’ tutoring of Francesca had shown him that her mental +machinery was of an obsolete pattern and that it was not even in +good working order. He could not believe himself influenced +(so he confessed to me) by such trivial things as curling lashes, +pink ears, waving hair (he had never heard of Marcel), or mere +beauties of colour and line and form. He said he was not so +sure about Francesca’s eyes. Eyes like hers, he +remarked in confidence, were not beneath the notice of any man, +be he President of Harvard University or Master of Balliol +College, for they seemed to promise something never once revealed +in the green examination book.</p> +<p>“You are quite right,” I answered him; “the +green book is not all there is of Miss Monroe, but whatever there +is is plainly not for you”; and he humbly agreed with my +dictum.</p> +<p>Is it not strange that a man will talk to one woman about the +charms of another for days upon days without ever realizing that +she may possibly be born for some other purpose than listening to +him? For an hour or two, of course, any sympathetic or +generous-minded person can be interested in the confidences of a +lover; but at the end of weeks or months, during which time he +has never once regarded his listener as a human being of the +feminine gender, with eyes, nose, and hair in no way inferior to +those of his beloved,—at the end of that time he should be +shaken, smitten, waked from his dreams, and told in ringing tones +that in a tolerably large universe there are probably two women +worth looking at, the one about whom he is talking, and the one +to whom he is talking!</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>May</i> 12, 19–.</p> +<p>To go on about Francesca, she always had a quick intelligence, +a sense of humour, a heart, and a conscience; four things not to +be despised in the equipment of a woman. The wit she used +lavishly for the delight of the world at large; the heart had not +(in the tutor’s time) found anything or anybody on which to +spend itself; the conscience certainly was not working overtime +at the same period, but I always knew that it was there and would +be an excellent reliable organ when once aroused.</p> +<p>Of course there is no reason why the Reverend Ronald +MacDonald, of the Established Church of Scotland, should have +been the instrument chosen to set all the wheels of +Francesca’s being in motion, but so it was; and a great +clatter and confusion they made in our Edinburgh household when +the machinery started! If Ronald was handsome he was also a +splendid fellow; if he was a preacher he was also a man; and no +member of the laity could have been more ardently and +satisfactorily in love than he. It was the ardour that +worked the miracle; and when Francesca was once warmed through to +the core, she began to grow. Her modest fortune helped +things a little at the beginning of their married life, for it +not only made existence easier, but enabled them to be of more +service in the straggling, struggling country parishes where they +found themselves at first.</p> +<p>Francesca’s beautiful American clothes shocked +Ronald’s congregations now and then, and it was felt that, +though possible, it was not very probable, that the grace of God +could live with such hats and shoes, such gloves and jewels as +hers. But by the time Ronald was called from his +Argyllshire church to St. Giles’s Cathedral in Edinburgh +there was a better understanding of young Mrs. MacDonald’s +raiment and its relation to natural and revealed religion. +It appeared now that a clergyman’s wife, by strict +attention to parochial duties; by being the mother of three +children all perfectly well behaved in church; by subscribing +generously to all worthy charities; by never conducting herself +as light-mindedly as her eyes and conversation seemed to +portend,—it appeared that a woman <i>could</i> live down +her clothes! It was a Bishop, I think, who argued in +Francesca’s behalf that godliness did not necessarily dwell +in frieze and stout leather and that it might flourish in lace +and chiffon. Salemina and I used to call Ronald and +Francesca the antinomic pair. Antinomics, one finds by +consulting the authorities, are apparently contradictory poles, +which, however, do not really contradict, but are only +correlatives, the existence of one making the existence of the +other necessary, explaining each other and giving each other a +real standing and equilibrium.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>May</i> 7, 19–.</p> +<p>What immeasurable leagues of distance lie between Salemina, +Francesca, and me! Not only leagues of space divide us, but +the difference in environment, circumstances, and +responsibilities that give reality to space; yet we have bridged +the gulf successfully by a particular sort of three-sided +correspondence, almost impersonal enough to be published, yet +revealing all the little details of daily life one to the +other.</p> +<p>When we three found that we should be inevitably separated for +some years, we adopted the habit of a “loose-leaf +diary.” The pages are perforated with large circular +holes and put together in such a way that one can remove any leaf +without injuring the book. We write down, as the spirit +moves us, the more interesting happenings of the day, and once in +a fortnight, perhaps, we slip a half-dozen selected pages into an +envelope and the packet starts on its round between America, +Scotland, and Ireland. In this way we have kept up with +each other without any apparent severing of intimate friendship, +and a farmhouse in New England, a manse in Scotland, and the +Irish home of a Trinity College professor and his lady are +brought into frequent contact.</p> +<p>Inspired by Francesca’s last budget, full of all sorts +of revealing details of her daily life, I said to Himself at +breakfast: “I am not going to paint this morning, nor am I +going to ‘keep house’; I propose to write in my +loose-leaf diary, and what is more I propose to write about +marriage!”</p> +<p>When I mentioned to Himself the subject I intended to treat, +he looked up in alarm.</p> +<p>“Don’t, I beg of you, Penelope,” he +said. “If you do it the other two will follow +suit. Women cannot discuss marriage without dragging in +husbands, and MacDonald, La Touche, and I won’t have a leg +to stand upon. The trouble with these ‘loose +leaves’ that you three keep for ever in circulation is, +that the cleverer they are the more publicity they get. +Francesca probably reads your screeds at her Christian Endeavour +meetings just as you cull extracts from Salemina’s for your +Current Events Club. In a word, the loosened leaf leads to +the loosened tongue, and that’s rather epigrammatic for a +farmer at breakfast time.”</p> +<p>“I am not going to write about husbands,” I said, +“least of all my own, but about marriage as an institution; +the part it plays in the evolution of human beings.”</p> +<p>“Nevertheless, everything you say about it will reflect +upon me,” argued Himself. “The only husband a +woman knows is her own husband, and everything she thinks about +marriage is gathered from her own experience.”</p> +<p>“Your attitude is not only timid, it is positively +cowardly!” I exclaimed. “You are an excellent +husband as husbands go, and I don’t consider that I have +retrograded mentally or spiritually during our ten years of life +together. It is true nothing has been said in private or +public about any improvement in me due to your influence, but +perhaps that is because the idea has got about that your head is +easily turned by flattery.—Anyway, I shall be entirely +impersonal in what I write. I shall say I believe in +marriage because I cannot think of any better arrangement; also +that I believe in marrying men because there is nothing else +<i>to</i> marry. I shall also quote that feminist lecturer +who said that the bitter business of every woman in the world is +to convert a trap into a home. Of course I laughed +inwardly, but my shoulders didn’t shake for two minutes as +yours did. They were far more eloquent than any loose leaf +from a diary; for they showed every other man in the audience +that you didn’t consider that <i>you</i> had to set any +‘traps’ for <i>me</i>!”</p> +<p>Himself leaned back in his chair and gave way to unbridled +mirth. When he could control his speech, he wiped the tears +from his eyes and said offensively:—</p> +<p>“Well, I didn’t; did I?”</p> +<p>“No,” I replied, flinging the tea-cosy at his +head, missing it, and breaking the oleander on the plant-shelf +ten feet distant.</p> +<p>“You wouldn’t be unmarried for the world!” +said Himself. “You couldn’t paint every day, +you know you couldn’t; and where could you find anything so +beautiful to paint as your own children unless you painted me; +and it just occurs to me that you never paid me the compliment of +asking me to sit for you.”</p> +<p>“I can’t paint men,” I objected. +“They are too massive and rugged and ugly. Their +noses are big and hard and their bones show through everywhere +excepting when they are fat and then they are disgusting. +Their eyes don’t shine, their hair is never beautiful, they +have no dimples in their hands and elbows; you can’t see +their mouths because of their moustaches, and generally +it’s no loss; and their clothes are stiff and conventional +with no colour, nor any flowing lines to paint.”</p> +<p>“I know where you keep your ‘properties,’ +and I’ll make myself a mass of colour and flowing lines if +you’ll try me,” Himself said meekly.</p> +<p>“No, dear,” I responded amiably. “You +are very nice, but you are not a costume man, and I shudder to +think what you would make of yourself if I allowed you to visit +my property-room. If I ever have to paint you (not for +pleasure, but as a punishment), you shall wear your everyday +corduroys and I’ll surround you with the children; then you +know perfectly well that the public will never notice you at +all.” Whereupon I went to my studio built on the top +of the long rambling New England shed and loved what I painted +yesterday so much that I went on with it, finding that I had said +to Himself almost all that I had in mind to say, about marriage +as an institution.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>June</i> 15, 19–.</p> +<p>We were finishing luncheon on the veranda with all out of +doors to give us appetite. It was Buttercup Sunday, a +yellow June one that had been preceded by Pussy Willow Sunday, +Dandelion Sunday, Apple Blossom, Wild Iris, and Lilac Sunday, to +be followed by Daisy and Black-Eyed Susan and White Clematis and +Goldenrod and Wild Aster and Autumn Leaf Sundays.</p> +<p>Francie was walking over the green-sward with a bowl and +spoon, just as our Scottish men friends used to do with oat-meal +at breakfast time. The Sally-baby was blowing bubbles in +her milk, and Himself and I were discussing a book lately +received from London.</p> +<p>Suddenly I saw Billy, who had wandered from the table, sitting +on the steps bending over a tiny bird’s egg in his open +hand. I knew that he must have taken it from some low-hung +nest, but taken it in innocence, for he looked at it with +solicitude as an object of tender and fragile beauty. He +had never given a thought to the mother’s days of patient +brooding, nor that he was robbing the summer world of one +bird’s flight and one bird’s song.</p> +<p>“Did you hear the whippoorwills singing last night, +Daddy?” I asked.</p> +<p>“I did, indeed, and long before sunrise this +morning. There must be a new family in our orchard, I +think; but then we have coaxed hundreds of birds our way this +spring by our little houses, our crumbs, and our drinking +dishes.”</p> +<p>“Yes, we have never had so many since we came here to +live. Look at that little brown bird flying about in the +tall apple-tree, Francie; she seems to be in trouble.”</p> +<p>“P’r’haps it’s Mrs. Smiff’s +wenomous cat,” exclaimed Francie, running to look for a +particularly voracious animal that lived across the fields, but +had been known to enter our bird-Eden.</p> +<p>“Hear this, Daddy; isn’t it pretty?” I said, +taking up the “Life of Dorothy Grey.”</p> +<p>Billy pricked up his ears, for he can never see a book opened +without running to join the circle, so eager he is not to lose a +precious word.</p> +<p>“The wren sang early this morning” (I read +slowly). “We talked about it at breakfast and how +many people there were who would not be aware of it; and E. said, +‘Fancy, if God came in and said: “Did you notice my +wren?” and they were obliged to say they had not known it +was there!’”</p> +<p>Billy rose quietly and stole away behind the trees, returning +in a few moments, empty-handed, to stand by my side.</p> +<p>“Does God know how many eggs there are in a bird’s +nest, mother?” he asked.</p> +<p>“People have so many different ideas about what God sees +and takes note of, that it’s hard to say, sonny. Of +course you remember that the Bible says not one sparrow falls to +the ground but He knows it.”</p> +<p>“The mother bird can’t count her eggs, can she, +mother?”</p> +<p>“Oh! Billy, you do ask the hardest questions; ones that +I can never answer by Yes and No! She broods her eggs all +day and all night and never lets them get cold, so she must know, +at any rate, that they are going to <i>be</i> birds, don’t +you think? And of course she wouldn’t want to lose +one; that’s the reason she’s so faithful!”</p> +<p>“Well!” said Billy, after a long pause, “I +don’t care quite so much about the mother, because +sometimes there are five eggs in a weeny, weeny nest that never +could hold five little ones without their scrunching each other +and being uncomfortable. But if God should come in and say: +‘Did you take my egg, that was going to be a bird?’ I +just couldn’t bear it!”</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>June</i> 15, 19–.</p> +<p>Another foreign mail is in and the village postmistress has +sent an impassioned request that I steam off the stamps for her +boy’s album, enriched during my residence here by specimens +from eleven different countries. (“Mis’ Beresford +beats the Wanderin’ Jew all holler if so be she’s +be’n to all them places, an’ come back +alive!”—so she says to Himself.) Among the +letters there is a budget of loose leaves from Salemina’s +diary, Salemina, who is now Mrs. Gerald La Touche, wife of +Professor La Touche, of Trinity College, Dublin, and stepmother +to Jackeen and Broona La Touche.</p> +<p>It is midsummer, College is not in session, and they are at +Rosnaree House, their place in County Meath.</p> +<p>Salemina is the one of our trio who continues to move in grand +society. She it is who dines at the Viceregal Lodge and +Dublin Castle. She it is who goes with her distinguished +husband for week-ends with the Master of the Horse, the Lord +Chancellor, and the Dean of the Chapel Royal. Francesca, it +is true, makes her annual bow to the Lord High Commissioner at +Holyrood Palace and dines there frequently during Assembly Week; +and as Ronald numbers one Duke, two Earls, and several Countesses +and Dowager Countesses in his parish, there are awe-inspiring +visiting cards to be found in the silver salver on her hall +table,—but Salemina in Ireland literally lives with the +great, of all classes and conditions! She is in the heart +of the Irish Theatre and the Modern Poetry movements,—and +when she is not hobnobbing with playwrights and poets she is +consorting with the Irish nobility and gentry.</p> +<p>I cannot help thinking that she would still be Miss Peabody, +of Salem, Massachusetts, had it not been for my generous and +helpful offices, and those of Francesca! Never were two +lovers, parted in youth in America and miraculously reunited in +middle age in Ireland, more recalcitrant in declaring their +mutual affection than Dr. La Touche and Salemina! Nothing +in the world divided them but imaginary barriers. He was +not rich, but he had a comfortable salary and a dignified and +honourable position among men. He had two children, but +they were charming, and therefore so much to the good. +Salemina was absolutely “foot loose” and tied down to +no duties in America, so no one could blame her for marrying an +Irishman. She had never loved any one else, and Dr. La +Touche might have had that information for the asking; but he was +such a bat for blindness, adder for deafness, and lamb for +meekness that because she refused him once, when she was the only +comfort of an aged mother and father, he concluded that she would +refuse him again, though she was now alone in the world. +His late wife, a poor, flighty, frivolous invalid, the kind of +woman who always entangles a sad, vague, absent-minded scholar, +had died six years before, and never were there two children so +in need of a mother as Jackeen and Broona, a couple of +affectionate, hot-headed, bewitching, ragged, tousled Irish +darlings. I would cheerfully have married Dr. Gerald +myself, just for the sake of his neglected babies, but I dislike +changes and I had already espoused Himself.</p> +<p>However, a summer in Ireland, undertaken with no such great +stakes in mind as Salemina’s marriage, made possible a +chance meeting of the two old friends. This was followed by +several others, devised by us with incendiary motives, and +without Salemina’s knowledge. There was also the +unconscious plea of the children working a daily spell; there was +the past, with its memories, tugging at both their hearts; and +above all there was a steady, dogged, copious stream of mental +suggestion emanating from Francesca and me, so that, in course of +time, our middle-aged couple did succeed in confessing to each +other that a separate future was impossible for them.</p> +<p>They never would have encountered each other had it not been +for us; never, never would have become engaged; and as for the +wedding, we forcibly led them to the altar, saying that we must +leave Ireland and the ceremony could not be delayed.</p> +<p>Not that we are the recipients of any gratitude for all +this! Rather the reverse! They constantly allude to +their marriage as made in Heaven, although there probably never +was another union where creatures of earth so toiled and slaved +to assist the celestial powers.</p> +<p>I wonder why middle-aged and elderly lovers make such an +appeal to me! Is it because I have lived much in New +England, where “ladies-in-waiting” are all too +common,—where the wistful bride-groom has an invalid mother +to support, or a barren farm out of which he cannot wring a +living, or a malignant father who cherishes a bitter grudge +against his son’s chosen bride and all her +kindred,—where the woman herself is compassed about with +obstacles, dragging out a pinched and colourless existence year +after year?</p> +<p>And when at length the two waiting ones succeed in triumphing +over circumstances, they often come together wearily, soberly, +with half the joy pressed out of life. Young lovers have no +fears! That the future holds any terrors, difficulties, +bugbears of any sort they never seem to imagine, and so they are +delightful and amusing to watch in their gay and sometimes +irresponsible and selfish courtships; but they never tug at my +heart-strings as their elders do, when the great, the +long-delayed moment comes.</p> +<p>Francesca and I, in common with Salemina’s other +friends, thought that she would never marry. She had been +asked often enough in her youth, but she was not the sort of +woman who falls in love at forty. What we did not know was +that she had fallen in love with Gerald La Touche at +five-and-twenty and had never fallen out,—keeping her +feelings to herself during the years that he was espoused to +another, very unsuitable lady. Our own sentimental +experiences, however, had sharpened our eyes, and we divined at +once that Dr. La Touche, a scholar of fifty, shy, reserved, +self-distrustful, and oh! so in need of anchor and +harbour,—that he was the only husband in the world for +Salemina; and that he, after giving all that he had and was to an +unappreciative woman, would be unspeakably blessed in the wife of +our choosing.</p> +<p>I remember so well something that he said to me once as we sat +at twilight on the bank of the lake near Devorgilla. The +others were rowing toward us bringing the baskets for a tea +picnic, and we, who had come in the first boat, were talking +quietly together about intimate things. He told me that a +frail old scholar, a brother professor, used to go back from the +college to his house every night bowed down with weariness and +pain and care, and that he used to say to his wife as he sank +into his seat by the fire: “Oh! praise me, my wife, praise +me!”</p> +<p>My eyes filled and I turned away to hide the tears when Dr. +Gerald continued absently: “As for me, Mistress Beresford, +when I go home at night I take my only companion from the +mantelshelf and leaning back in my old armchair say, +‘Praise me, my pipe, praise me!’”</p> +<p>And Salemina Peabody was in the boat coming toward us, looking +as serenely lovely in a grey tweed and broad white hat as any +good sweet woman of forty could look, while he gazed at her +“through a glass darkly” as if she were practically +non-existent, or had nothing whatever to do with the case.</p> +<p>I concealed rebellious opinions of blind bats, deaf adders, +meek lambs, and obstinate pigs, but said very gently and +impersonally: “I hope you won’t always allow your +pipe to be your only companion;—you, with your children, +your name and position, your home and yourself to give—to +somebody!”</p> +<p>But he only answered: “You exaggerate, my dear madam; +there is not enough left in me or of me to offer to any +woman!”</p> +<p>And I could do nothing but make his tea graciously and hand it +to him, wondering that he was able to see the cup or the +bread-and-butter sandwich that I put into his modest, ungrateful +hand.</p> +<p>However, it is all a thing of the past, that dim, sweet, grey +romance that had its rightful background in a country of subdued +colourings, of pensive sweetness, of gentle greenery, where there +is an eternal wistfulness in the face of the natural world, +speaking of the springs of hidden tears.</p> +<p>Their union is a perfect success, and I echo the Boots of the +inn at Devorgilla when he said: “An’ sure it’s +the doctor that’s the satisfied man an’ the luck is +on him as well as on e’er a man alive! As for her +ladyship, she’s one o’ the blessings o’ the +wurruld an’ ’t would be an o’jus pity to spile +two houses wid ’em.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>July</i> 12, 19–.</p> +<p>We were all out in the orchard sunning ourselves on the little +haycocks that the “hired man” had piled up here and +there under the trees.</p> +<p>“It is not really so beautiful as Italy,” I said +to Himself, gazing up at the newly set fruit on the apple boughs +and then across the close-cut hay field to the level pasture, +with its rocks and cow paths, its blueberry bushes and sweet +fern, its clumps of young sumachs, till my eyes fell upon the +deep green of the distant pines. “I can’t bear +to say it, because it seems disloyal, but I almost believe I +think so.”</p> +<p>“It is not as picturesque,” Himself agreed +grudgingly, his eye following mine from point to point; +“and why do we love it so?”</p> +<p>“There is nothing delicious and luxuriant about +it,” I went on critically, “yet it has a delicate, +ethereal, austere, straight-forward Puritanical loveliness of its +own; but, no, it is not as beautiful as Italy or Ireland, and it +isn’t as tidy as England. If you keep away from the +big manufacturing towns and their outskirts you may go by motor +or railway through shire after shire in England and never see +anything unkempt, down-at-the-heel, out-at-elbows, or +ill-cared-for; no broken-down fences or stone walls; no heaps of +rubbish or felled trees by the wayside; no unpainted or tottering +buildings—”</p> +<p>“You see plenty of ruins,” interrupted Himself in +a tone that promised argument.</p> +<p>“Yes, but ruins are different; they are finished; they +are not tottering, they <i>have</i> tottered! Our country +is too big, I suppose, to be ‘tidy,’ but how I should +like to take just one of the United States and clear it up, back +yards and all, from border line to border line!”</p> +<p>“You are talking like a housewife now, not like an +artist,” said Himself reprovingly.</p> +<p>“Well, I am both, I hope, and I don’t intend that +any one shall know where the one begins or the other leaves off, +either! And if any foreigner should remark that America is +unfinished or untidy I shall deny it!”</p> +<p>“Fie! Penelope! You who used to be a citizen +of the world!”</p> +<p>“So I am still, so far as a roving foot and a knowledge +of three languages can make me; but you remember that the soul +‘retains the characteristic of its race and the heart is +true to its own country, even to its own +parish.’”</p> +<p>“When shall we be going to the other countries, +mother?” asked Billy. “When shall we see our +aunt in Scotland and our aunt in Ireland?” (Poor +lambs! Since the death of their Grandmother Beresford they +do not possess a real relation in the world!)</p> +<p>“It will not be very long, Billy,” I said. +“We don’t want to go until we can leave the +perambulator behind. The Sally-baby toddles now, but she +must be able to walk on the English downs and the Highland +heather.”</p> +<p>“And the Irish bogs,” interpolated Billy, who has +a fancy for detail.</p> +<p>“Well, the Irish bogs are not always easy +travelling,” I answered, “but the Sally-baby will +soon be old enough to feel the spring of the Irish turf under her +feet.”</p> +<p>“What will the chickens and ducklings and pigeons do +while we are gone?” asked Francie.</p> +<p>“An’ the lammies?” piped the Sally-baby, who +has all the qualities of Mary in the immortal lyric.</p> +<p>“Oh! we won’t leave home until the spring has come +and all the young things are born. The grass will be green, +the dandelions will have their puff-balls on, the apple blossoms +will be over, and Daddy will get a kind man to take care of +everything for us. It will be May time and we will sail in +a big ship over to the aunts and uncles in Scotland and Ireland +and I shall show them my children—”</p> +<p>“And we shall play ‘hide-and-go-coop’ with +their children,” interrupted Francie joyously.</p> +<p>“They will never have heard of that game, but you will +all play together!” And here I leaned back on the +warm haycock and blinked my eyes a bit in moist anticipation of +happiness to come. “There will be eight-year-old +Ronald MacDonald to climb and ride and sail with our Billy; and +there will be little Penelope who is named for me, and will be +Francie’s playmate; and the new little boy +baby—”</p> +<p>“Proba’ly Aunt Francie’s new boy baby will +grow up and marry our girl one,” suggested Billy.</p> +<p>“He has my consent to the alliance in advance,” +said Himself, “but I dare say your mother has arranged it +all in her own mind and my advice will not be needed.”</p> +<p>“I have not arranged anything,” I retorted; +“or if I have it was nothing more than a thought of young +Ronald or Jack La Touche in—another +quarter,”—this with discreetly veiled emphasis.</p> +<p>“What is another quarter, mother?” inquired +Francie, whose mental agility is somewhat embarrassing.</p> +<p>“Oh, why,—well,—it is any other place than +the one you are talking about. Do you see?”</p> +<p>“Not so very well, but p’r’aps I will in a +minute.”</p> +<p>“Hope springs eternal!” quoted Francie’s +father.</p> +<p>“And then, as I was saying before being interrupted by +the entire family, we will go and visit the Irish cousins, +Jackeen and Broona, who belong to Aunt Salemina and Uncle Gerald, +and the Sally-baby will be the centre of attraction because she +is her Aunt Salemina’s godchild—”</p> +<p>“But we are all God’s children,” insisted +Billy.</p> +<p>“Of course we are.”</p> +<p>“What’s the difference between a god-child and a +God’s child?”</p> +<p>“The bottle of chloroform is in the medicine closet, my +poor dear; shall I run and get it?” murmured Himself +<i>sotto voce</i>.</p> +<p>“Every child is a child of God,” I began +helplessly, “and when she is somebody’s godchild +she—oh! lend me your handkerchief, Billy!”</p> +<p>“Is it the nose-bleed, mother?” he asked, bending +over me solicitously.</p> +<p>“No, oh, no! it’s nothing at all, dear. +Perhaps the hay was going to make me sneeze. What was I +saying?”</p> +<p>“About the god—”</p> +<p>“Oh, yes! I remember! +(<i>Ka-choo</i>!) We will take the Irish cousins and the +Scotch cousins and go all together to see the Tower of London and +Westminster Abbey. We’ll go to Bushey Park and see +the chestnuts in bloom, and will dine at Number 10, Dovermarle +Street—”</p> +<p>“I shall not go there, Billy,” said Himself. +“It was at Number 10, Dovermarle Street that your mother +told me she wouldn’t marry me; or at least that she’d +have to do a lot of thinking before she’d say Yes; so she +left London and went to North Malvern.”</p> +<p>“Couldn’t she think in London?” (This +was Billy.)</p> +<p>“Didn’t she always want to be married to +you?” (This was Francie.)</p> +<p>“Not always.”</p> +<p>“Didn’t she like <i>us</i>?” (Still +Francie.)</p> +<p>“You were never mentioned,—not one of +you!”</p> +<p>“That seems rather queer!” remarked Billy, giving +me a reproachful look.</p> +<p>“So we’ll leave the Irish and Scotch uncles and +aunts behind and go to North Malvern just by ourselves. It +was there that your mother concluded that she <i>would</i> marry +me, and I rather like the place.”</p> +<p>“Mother loves it, too; she talks to me about it when she +puts me to bed.” (Francie again.)</p> +<p>“No doubt; but you’ll find your mother’s +heart scattered all over the Continent of Europe. One bit +will be clinging to a pink thorn in England; another will be in +the Highlands somewhere,—wherever the heather’s in +bloom; another will be hanging on the Irish gorse bushes where +they are yellowest; and another will be hidden under the seat of +a Venetian gondola.”</p> +<p>“Don’t listen to Daddy’s nonsense, +children! He thinks mother throws her heart about +recklessly while he loves only one thing at a time.”</p> +<p>“Four things!” expostulated Himself, gallantly +viewing our little group at large.</p> +<p>“Strictly speaking, we are not four things, we are only +four parts of one thing;—counting you in, and I really +suppose you ought to be counted in, we are five parts of one +thing.”</p> +<p>“Shall we come home again from the other +countries?” asked Billy.</p> +<p>“Of course, sonny! The little Beresfords must come +back and grow up with their own country.”</p> +<p>“Am I a little Beresford, mother?” asked Francie, +looking wistfully at her brother as belonging to the superior sex +and the eldest besides.</p> +<p>“Certainly.”</p> +<p>“And is the Sally-baby one too?”</p> +<p>Himself laughed unrestrainedly at this.</p> +<p>“She is,” he said, “but you are more than +half mother, with your unexpectednesses.”</p> +<p>“I love to be more than half mother!” cried +Francie, casting herself violently about my neck and imbedding me +in the haycock.</p> +<p>“Thank you, dear, but pull me up now. It’s +supper-time.”</p> +<p>Billy picked up the books and the rug and made preparations +for the brief journey to the house. I put my hair in order +and smoothed my skirts.</p> +<p>“Will there be supper like ours in the other countries, +mother?” he asked. “And if we go in May time, +when do we come back again?”</p> +<p>Himself rose from the ground with a luxurious stretch of his +arms, looking with joy and pride at our home fields bathed in the +afternoon midsummer sun. He took the Sally-baby’s +outstretched hands and lifted her, crowing, to his shoulder.</p> +<p>“Help sister over the stubble, my son.—We’ll +come away from the other countries whenever mother says: +‘Come, children, it’s time for +supper.’”</p> +<p>“We’ll be back for Thanksgiving,” I assured +Billy, holding him by one hand and Francie by the other, as we +walked toward the farmhouse. “We won’t live in +the other countries, because Daddy’s ‘sit-fast +acres’ are here in New England.”</p> +<p>“But whenever and wherever we five are together, +especially wherever mother is, it will always be home,” +said Himself thankfully, under his breath.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1868-h.htm or 1868-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/6/1868 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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