Chapter I: And My Chimney (3)

The idea struck my wife not unfavourably. She insisted that both Julia and Anna should be of the party, in order that the evidence of their senses should disabuse their minds of all nursery nonsense. For that spirits should tick, and that spirits should take unto themselves the form of bugs, was, to my wife, the most foolish of all foolish imaginations. True, she could not account for the thing; but she had all confidence that it could be, and would yet be, somehow explained, and that to her entire satisfaction. Without knowing it herself, my wife was a female Democritus. For my part, my present feelings were of a mixed sort. In a strange and not unpleasing way, I gently oscillated between Democritus and Cotton Mather. But to my wife and daughters I assumed to be pure Democritus--a jeerer at all tea-table spirits whatever.

So, laying in a good supply of candles and crackers, all four of us sat up with the table, and at the same time sat round it. For a while my wife and I carried on an animated conversation. But my daughters were silent. Then my wife and I would have had a rubber of whist, but my daughters could not be prevailed upon to join. So we played whist with two dummies literally; my wife won the rubber and, fatigued with victory, put away the cards.

Half-past eleven o’clock. No sign of the bug. The candles began to burn dim. My wife was just in the act of snuffing them, when a sudden, violent, hollow, resounding, rumbling, thumping was heard.

Julia and Anna sprang to their feet.

‘All well!’ cried a voice from the street. It was the watchman, first ringing down his club on the pavement, and then following it up with this highly satisfactory verbal announcement.

‘All well! Do you hear that, my girls?’ said I, gaily.

Indeed it was astonishing how brave as Bruce I felt in company with three women, and two of them half frightened out of their wits.

I rose for my pipe, and took a philosophic smoke.

Democritus forever, thought I.

In profound silence, I sat smoking, when lo!--pop! pop! pop!--right under the table, a terrible popping.

This time we all four sprang up, and my pipe was broken.

‘Good heavens! what’s that?’

‘Spirits! spirits!’ cried Julia.

‘Oh, oh, oh!’ cried Anna.

‘Shame!’ said my wife, ‘it’s that new bottled cider, in the cellar, going off. I told Biddy to wire the bottles to-day.’

I shall here transcribe from memoranda, kept during part of the night.

‘One o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking continues. Wife getting
sleepy.

‘Two o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking intermittent. Wife fast
asleep.

‘Three o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking pretty steady. Julia
and Anna getting sleepy.

‘Four o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking regular, but not
spirited. Wife, Julia, and Anna, all fast asleep in their chairs.

‘Five o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking faint. Myself feeling
drowsy. The rest still asleep.’

So far the journal.

--Rap! rap! rap!

A terrific, portentous rapping against a door.

Startled from our dreams, we started to our feet.

Rap! rap! rap!

Julia and Anna shrieked.

I cowered in the corner.

‘You fools!’ cried my wife, ‘it’s the baker with the bread.’

Six o’clock.

She went to throw back the shutters, but ere it was done, a cry came from Julia. There, half in and half out its crack, there wriggled the bug, flashing in the room’s general dimness, like a fiery opal.

Had this bug had a tiny sword by its side--a Damascus sword--and a tiny necklace round its neck--a diamond necklace--and a tiny gun in its claw--brass gun--and a tiny manuscript in its mouth--a Chaldee manuscript--Julia and Anna could not have stood more charmed.

In truth, it was a beautiful bug--a Jew jeweller’s bug--a bug like a sparkle of a glorious sunset.

Julia and Anna had never dreamed of such a bug. To them, bug had been a word synonymous with hideousness. But this was a seraphical bug; or rather, all it had of the bug was the B, for it was beautiful as a butterfly.

Julia and Anna gazed and gazed. They were no more alarmed. They were delighted.

‘But how got this strange, pretty creature into the table?’ cried Julia.

‘Spirits can get anywhere,’ replied Anna.

‘Pshaw!’ said my wife.

‘Do you hear any more ticking?’ said I.

They all applied their ears, but heard nothing.

‘Well, then, wife and daughters, now that it is all over, this very morning I will go and make inquiries about it.’

‘Oh do, papa,’ cried Julia, ‘do go and consult Madame Pazzi, the conjuress.’

‘Better go and consult Professor Johnson, the naturalist,’ said my wife.

‘Bravo, Mrs. Democritus!’ said I. ‘Professor Johnson is the man.’

By good fortune I found the professor in. Informing him briefly of the incident, he manifested a cool, collected sort of interest, and gravely accompanied me home. The table was produced, the two openings pointed out, the bug displayed, and the details of the affair set forth; my wife and daughters being present.

‘And now, Professor,’ said I, ‘what do you think of it?’

Putting on his spectacles, the learned professor looked hard at the table, and gently scraped with his penknife into the holes, but said nothing.

‘Is it not an unusual thing, this?’ anxiously asked Anna.

‘Very unusual, Miss.’

At which Julia and Anna exchanged significant glances.

‘But is it not wonderful, very wonderful?’ demanded Julia.

‘Very wonderful, Miss.’

My daughters exchanged still more significant glances, and Julia, emboldened, again spoke.

‘And must you not admit, sir, that it is the work of--of--of sp----?’

‘Spirits? No,’ was the crusty rejoinder.

‘My daughters,’ said I, mildly, ‘you should remember that this is not Madame Pazzi, the conjuress, you put your questions to, but the eminent naturalist, Professor Johnson. And now, Professor,’ I added, ‘be pleased to explain. Enlighten our ignorance.’

Without repeating all the learned gentleman said--for, indeed, though lucid, he was a little prosy--let the following summary of his explication suffice.

The incident was not wholly without example. The wood of the table was apple-tree, a sort of tree much fancied by various insects. The bugs had come from eggs laid inside the bark of the living tree in the orchard. By careful examination of the position of the hole from which the last bug had emerged, in relation to the cortical layers of the slab, and then allowing for the inch and a half along the grain, ere the bug had eaten its way entirely out, and then computing the whole number of cortical layers in the slab, with a reasonable conjecture for the number cut off from the outside, it appeared that the egg must have been laid in the tree some ninety years, more or less, before the tree could have been felled. But between the felling of the tree and the present time, how long might that be? It was a very old-fashioned table. Allow eighty years for the age of the table, which would make one hundred and fifty years that the bug had lain in the egg. Such, at least, was Professor Johnson’s computation.

‘Now, Julia,’ said I, ‘after that scientific statement of the case (though, I confess, I don’t exactly understand it) where are your spirits? It is very wonderful as it is, but where are your spirits?’

‘Where, indeed?’ said my wife.

‘Why, now, she did not _really_ associate this purely natural phenomenon with any crude, spiritual hypothesis, did she?’ observed the learned professor, with a slight sneer.

‘Say what you will,’ said Julia, holding up, in the covered tumbler, the glorious, lustrous, flashing, live opal, ‘say what you will, if this beauteous creature be not a spirit, it yet teaches a spiritual lesson. For if, after one hundred and fifty years’ entombment, a mere insect comes forth at last into light, itself an effulgence, shall there be no glorified resurrection for the spirit of man? Spirits! spirits!’ she exclaimed, with rapture, ‘I still believe in them with delight, when before I but thought of them with terror.’

The mysterious insect did not long enjoy its radiant life; it expired the next day. But my girls have preserved it. Embalmed in a silver vinaigrette, it lies on the little apple-tree table in the pier of the cedar-parlour.

And whatever lady doubts this story, my daughters will be happy to show her both the bug and the table, and point out to her, in the repaired slab of the latter, the two sealing-wax drops designating the exact place of the two holes made by the two bugs, something in the same way in which are marked the spots where the cannon balls struck Brattle Street church.

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UNDER THE ROSE

(_Being an extract from an old MS. entitled ‘Travels in Persia (Iran)
by a servant of My Lord the Ambassador.’_)

... These roses of divers hues, red, yellow, pink, and white, the black slave, a clean-limbed adolescent, and comely for all his flat nose; he, before offering them to My Lord to refresh him with their colour and scent, did, at the Azem’s bidding, drop them into a delicate vase of amber; and so cunningly, withal, that they fell as of themselves into the attitude of young damsels leaning over the balustrade of a dome and gazing downward; so that the vase itself was all but hidden from view, at least, much of the upper part thereof, where I noted that certain _relievos_ were, though truly I could get but a peep thereof at that time.

On the next day but one repairing to the same villa where the Azem made abode for that month, and there waiting to convey a reply to a missive from My Lord; I saw by chance on a marble buffet the same vase then empty; and going up to it, curiously observed the _relievos_, before hidden by the flowers. They were of a mystical type, methought, something like certain pictures in the great Dutch Bible in a library at Oxon, setting forth the enigmas of the Song of the Wise Man, to wit, King Solomon. I hardly knew what to make of them; and so would as lief have seen the roses in their stead. Yet for the grace of it, if not the import, whatever that might be, was I pleased with a round device of sculpture on one side, about the bigness of My Lord’s seal to a parchment, showing the figure of an angel with a spade under arm like a gardener, and bearing roses in a pot; and a like angel-figure, clad like a cellarer, and with a wine-jar on his shoulder; and these two angels, side by side, pacing toward a meagre wight, very doleful and Job-like, squatted hard by a sepulchre, as meditating thereon; and all done very lively in small.

But the thing that meseems was most strange was the amber wherein this device and sundry other inventions were cut; for in parts it held marvellously congealed within its substance certain little relics of perished insects, as of the members of flies on frozen syrup or marmalade. Never had I seen the like thereof before; and My Lord, to whom that night I spoke of it, as he was drinking his posset, about the time of his retiring, he instructed me that that sort of amber was of the rarest, and esteemed exceeding precious, and spoke of a famous piece in the Great Duke’s museum at Florence; and much wished that the Azem had given him that vase in place of the jewelled scimetar you wot of. ‘And Geoffry,’ quoth My Lord somewhat eagerly, ‘didst thou note that the vessel was of one whole piece or in two parts, the bowl part and the standard?’ But verily I could not answer to purpose here, for I did in no wise handle the vase; and I doubt had the jealousy of the attendants permitted it; so that, were there any junction of two or more parts, right deftly was the same hidden by the craft of the artificer.

It befell that at the next coming together of My Lord and the Azem, which was about that stale affair of the two factors at Aleppo; My Lord after that business, and when their black drink, coffee, had been offered us in little cups of filigree, fine as My Lady’s Flanders lace, and great jasmine-stemmed pipes, two yards long, likewise, as is their ceremonious custom; My Lord, I say, holding the amber mouthpiece before him, shaped somewhat like a lemon, and of a wondrous clear tint much the same, and of a diameter not behind, for among these people the higher the rank or the longer the purse, the greater the costly mouthpiece, the same being but gently pressed against the lips at the orifice of the inhaled vapour; My Lord, I say, holding this fair oval of clear amber before him, turned, through the interpreter, the discourse to considerations of the occult nature of that substance whereof it was fashioned; declaring, among other items, his incredulity touching the strange allegement that amber was sometimes found with bees glued up therein as in their own crystallised honey, or, if not bees, then fleas and flies. With the wondrous sedate courtesy of all the grandees in these parts, the Azem with his silvery spade-beard, sitting cross-legged on the green silken cushions; he, though never understanding a word of My Lord’s English, yet very gravely and attentively, as before, heard him out; him, My Lord, first, I mean, leaning over toward him, his hand to his ear, for, certes, he was somewhat deaf, being in years; leaning over toward him, I say, and thereafter relaxing and falling back somewhat on the cushions, and so giving another sort of heed to the interpreter; who, having delivered his burden, the Azem did nothing but give a little clap with his hands, and, as it were one of the painted manikins in the great clock at Strasbourg, a pretty little page issued from a sort of draped closet near by; to whom his master made a sign; whereat the page brought to My Lord the aforesaid amber vase, empty, and put it into his two hands; who made as if surprised; and after scrutinising it, and turning it round and round, and discovering the imbedded relics, affected great admiration at being so promptly and in that tacit manner confuted in his misbelief; and much did he laud the beauty of the vase as well; insomuch that the interpreter, a precise clerk in his careful vocation, verily he seemed as sore put to it to render My Lord.

But if herein, and all along, My Lord’s purpose was so to work on the Azem as that he, seeing his great pleasure in the vase, might be drawn to make a gift of it; I say, if this were My Lord’s intent, it prospered not to the fulfilment, forasmuch as it was now the Azem’s turn to say how much he likewise, he himself, esteemed the vase, declaring that at such rate did he prize it, he would not barter it, no, not for a certain villa he spake of, though mightily he coveted the same. For besides the beauty of the vessel and the rare sculpture on it, and its being incomparably the biggest piece of amber known in those parts; besides all this, it was the very vase, he avouched--and with a kind of ardour strange to note in one so much upon his turbaned dignity--the very vase, in sooth, that being on a bridal festival filled with roses in the palace of the old Shaz Gold-beak at Shiraz, had tempted their great poet, one Lugar-Lips, to a closer inspection, when tenderly dividing the flowers one from another, and noting the little anatomies congealed in the amber, he was prompted to the inditing of certain verses; for which cause the vase thenceforth forever was inestimable. To which extravagance My Lord listened with his wonted civility, nay, and with a special graciousness, but for all that a bit sadly too, meseemed, and would now again have swerved the discourse; but the Azem was beforehand, and bade the page bring him something from a silver-bound chest near by in an alcove. It was a vellum book, about the bigness of a prayer-book for church-going, but very rich with jewelled clasps, and writ by some famous scribe in the fair Persian text, and illuminated withal like unto the great Popish parchment folios I have seen. And this book, surely of great cost, the Azem with his own hands right nobly did present to My Lord, putting his finger on a certain page whereon were traced those verses aforesaid.

But, shortly after, some sherbet and sweetmeats being served, and the Azem’s own mules being at the garden gate, and, the more to honour us, with gorgeous new trappings; our train withdrew in the same state as when we entered, that is, the one great captain-soldier leading, with a mighty truncheon in his hand, and his troop making a lane through which we proceeded to the saddles, they the while salaaming and paying extreme obeisance to My Lord, which, indeed, was but their bounden duty, for he was an Englishman and my noble master.

Now a Greek renegado, one long dwelling in Persia, a scholar, and at whiles employed by My Lord, he being expert in divers tongues of both continents, and learned in the chirography of the Persian and Arabic; this polyglot infidel--the more shame to him for turning his back on his Saviour--he being at the embassy one day, which was I know not what kind of strange holiday with these folk; My Lord for his recreation, and by way of challenge, being a little merry, as was his wont sometimes for a brief space after dinner; he commanded the Greek to put those verses into English rhyme if he could, and on the instant, or as soon soever as might be. Upon which the Greek said: ‘My Lord, I will try; but I pray thee give me wine’--glancing at the table where remained certain nickel flasks of the choice vintages both of Persia and Cyprus; ‘Yes, wine, My Lord,’ he repeated. ‘Now,’ demanded my master severely. ‘Bethink thee, now, My Lord,’ quoth he, saluting; ‘this same Lugar-Lip’s verses being all grapes, or veritably saturated with the ripe juice thereof, there is no properly rendering them without a cup or two of the same; and, behold, My Lord, I am sober.’

My master, after a moment seeming to debate in his mind whether this proceeded from a strange familiar impudence in the varlet, or from an honest superstition however silly, for he delivered himself very soberly and discreetly, commanded wine to be served him; when the renegado, quaffing like a good fellow his cup or two, which were indeed five, for I took the tally; he, I say, quaffing at whiles, and all the time holding the vellum book in one hand--and, sooth, but one hand he had, the other having been smitten off by a scimetar, whether in honourable fray, or by the executioner, I know not; he, ever and anon scanning the page, humming and hooing to himself and swaying his body, like the dervishes hereabouts, at last after this mighty ado, sang--he scarce said it--the interpreted verses; which were these:--

‘Specks, tiny specks, in this translucent amber,
Your leave, bride-roses, may one pry and see?
How odd! a dainty little skeleton-chamber;
And--odder yet--sealed walls but windows be!
Death’s open secret.--Well, we are;
And here comes the jolly angel with the jar!’

Wherein, in the ultimate verse, Lugar-Lips did particularise, doubtless, one of the twain in the _relievo_ of the little medallion on one side of the vase, of which cunning piece I have in the foregoing made account.

‘And is that all?’ said My Lord, composedly, but scarce cheerfully, when the renegado had made an end; ‘and is that all? And call you that a crushing from the grape? the black grape, I wis’; there checking himself, as a wise man will do, catching himself tripping in an indiscreet sincerity; which to cover, peradventure, he, suddenly rising, retired to his chamber, and though commanding his visage somewhat, yet in pace and figure showing the spirit within sadly distraught; forsooth, the last Michaelmas, his birthday, he was threescore and three years old, and in privy fear, as I knew who long was near him, of a certain sudden malady whereof his father and grandfather before him had died about that age. But for my part I always esteemed it a mighty weakness in so great a man to let the ribald wit of a vain ballader, and he a heathen, make heavy his heart. For me who am but a small one, I was in secret pleased with the lax pleasantry of this Lugar-Lips, but in such sort as one is tickled with the profane capering of a mountebank at Bartholomew’s Fair by Thames. Howbeit, had I been, God knows, of equal reverend years with my master, and subject by probable inheritance to the like sudden malady, peradventure I myself in that case might have waxed sorrowful, doubting whether the grape was not indeed the black grape, as he phrased it, wherefrom that vain balladry had been distilled.

But now no more hereof, nor of the amber vase, which like unto some little man in great place hath been made overmuch of, as the judicious reader hereof may opine.

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THE MARQUIS DE GRANDVIN

A countryman of Lafayette and Bartholdi, this gentleman is not unknown to some Americans, more especially perhaps, to some of us New Yorkers. He is an honorary member of most of the Fifth Avenue clubs, anything but unwelcome at their chance gatherings, while at their premeditated banquets his appearance--and he always happily times it--is commonly hailed by a plausive clapping of hands simultaneous with the vocal salutation. But a person of genial temper is not only very likely to be a popular man’s man, but also, and beyond that, a favourite with the ladies. For it is something less venial than mere error in the old philosopher penally branded with a horrible name--misogynist, I think--and a soggy soul he must have been; it was something less venial than error in him to say, as he did, that women, however apt to that grand passion which makes the one divine rapture of life, have nevertheless a constitutional incapacity for good-fellowship, that is, in the masculine acceptation of the term. Assuredly, Hymen knows, too few of them practically demonstrate their capacity for it. Some musky dew-drops from the Garden expelled Eve unwillingly carried away quivering in her hair. More than man, she partakes of the paradisiac spirit. Under favourable conditions evincing a quicker aptitude to pleasure than man. How alert to twine the garland for the holiday! How instinctively prompt for that faint semblance of Eden, the picnic in the greenwood!

Now there is something in the fine, open, cheery aspect of the Marquis de Grandvin that conveys a thrill to these frames so exquisitely strung to happiness. Not invariably running the risk of incurring dark clouds from their lords, the dames and sisters of the Benedicks of the clubs, at their balls and parties, cast upon the Marquis that kindled merry glance which, according to the old French epic whose theme is Roncesvalles, the ladies bestowed upon Roland; not alone smitten by the fame and taken with the person of that noble accredited nephew of Charlemagne, but rightly inferring him to be not more a David against the Saracen than a champion against still more flagitious infidels, impugners of the sex. Yes, it is by instinct that all superior women recognise in this gentleman a cordial friend. Nor do they approve him the less for his friendly alliance with his charming sphere. This is a verity not out of keeping with another, namely, this feminine appreciation of the Marquis, gracious though it be, hardly extends to such of his qualities as partake of the Grand Style, as one may say, the highly elevated style; a style apparently demanding for its due appreciation a robust habit, in short, the masculine habit. For the most part, it is for his less exalted qualities that the ladies approve de Grandvin. They approve him for the way in which he contributes to those amenities and gaieties in which the sexes upon common ground participate, and wherein, thanks to their gallantry of good-nature, the countrymen of the Marquis de Grandvin have always excelled.

The foregoing hints as to what is the standing in America, or at least among some of us Americans, of the genial foreigner here ushered into a regard less exclusive; that, by patriotic intention goes before the recital, show that not alone in his own sweet France are the blended suavity and power of his genius estimated at their just rate, but that in the high circles of every European capital he is received with even more than good-will.

Though the subject of this theme, de Grandvin, be a patrician of hereditary mark, he was not consulted in the matter of his progenitors. At any rate, his cosmopolitan sympathies, transcending his class, go out to mankind. Under auspicious circumstances make his acquaintance, and whatever your degree in the social scale, you will find him friendly company, cordial and frank; without condescension, a solemn popery he was never guilty of.

As to his title, if here he be introduced as the Marquis, it is only because his troops of friends on both sides of the water, not excluding even the Levellers among them, insist upon retaining for him an inherited prefix which he himself long ago renounced; and doubtless for the reason that any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.

In defence of their insistent employment of the title, a caprice hardly compatible with their political principles, the Levellers of his acquaintance, candid in inconsistency, freely admit that somehow there is something in it felicitously befitting the character innately noble of de Grandvin.

But some fuller account of this genial paragon, upon whom are concentred the otherwise diverging suffrages of the divers parties in Church and State--some account less restricted by considerations of space--is in course of preparation, and if clamorously demanded, may hereafter appear. For the present purpose it will be enough, perhaps, if an outlined picture or two serve to suggest the filled portrait.

Though not so plentiful as our peaches in a good year, there are men of such noble quality that being in their company enriches and mellows one. The wisdom they by contact give out is not celibate and sterile like Solomon’s, but wedded to enjoyment, and hence productive. They would seem to be a confirmation of the otherwise disputable maxim of Spinoza, that every advance in joy implies an ascent in the scale of intelligence and capability. The influence of such a man insensibly disposes one to gentle charities, brave conceptions, heroic virtues. They have a suggestion of the potentialities in the unvitiated Adam, a creature, according to hallowed authority, originally created but a little lower than the angels. Almost invariably these men have physical beauty; and the moral charm is in keeping with that, apparently a spontaneous emanation from it. It is as golden wine down in a golden chalice, where, seen through the lustre suffusing the shadow, the delicious fluid looks to be the exuded gathered sap of the precious metal.

It was of the Marquis de Grandvin that the landscape painter, B. Hobbema Brown, an inoffensive sort of theoretical misanthrope, with a treacherous flow of loving-kindness in him--to borrow one of his own eccentric phrases; the same B. Hobbema who, were his significant reticence on the point, no unwise thing in him, by the way, conjecturally rendered into words, would seem in his own private judgment to have been treated illiberally enough by the art-dealers, art-critics, and academic hanging-committees, to say nothing of the art public; well, it was of some other than the Marquis that Hobbema B., returning in moonlight from a choice assemblage, where he had been introduced to him, and undergone the inevitable fascination of the contact; it was of him that Brown enthusiastically exclaimed to his companion: ‘What a godsend to meet such a man! He is a set-off against the battalions of his contraries. Between you and me, mankind taken in a lump are the gods’ job-lot; but, by heaven, the race that can produce a Marquis de Grandvin is not promiscuously to be contemned!’

See there how the talismanic something in the sort of nature here indicated can operate upon another nature though of a temper not favourably disposed to receive its benign influence.

In the casual outcome of such a character, gay fancies and suggestions without stint, sallies of wit and bonhomie, all sharing more or less in a certain lyric glow; herein the spiritual bounty to us would seem to be an unconsciousness in the almoner, involving, too, an indifference or unconcern as to who may appropriate, or as to what purpose the appropriation may be applied. In this particular, what recks the Marquis de Grandvin, for example? He is the ripe peach-tree shedding its abundance, careless of the garner; he is the Prince of Golconda at the ball, some of whose innumerable diamond buttons drop from his raiment unheeded by him in the chance fleeting rubs and collisions of the dance.

But how transitory these prodigal improvident ones can prove!--and once gone, how soon all but good as forgotten! True, were an example here demanded, one adapted for popular illustration, not readily could it be supplied. Literature will not furnish it, since these natures, never directly expressing themselves in literature, have no memorial place in its records. Neither are they Alexanders and Napoleons that the fame which is all but independent of literature should trumpet them. Nevertheless, in local tradition, and comparatively recent, I do find a citable instance which, though below the grade, say, of a de Grandvin, and but in a minor way to the purpose, may perhaps for these reasons serve the better to actualise the general truth, in a measure bring it home.

Rufus Choate, the Boston advocate, when inspired to his best before an audience, how he exhilarated and elevated and transported his hearers. But he is gone; and all those fireworks of elfish passion and wit, where are they? Vainly in the Ceramicus of the libraries will you seek any enduring monument of that oratorical pyrotechnist. As well ransack the museums of Natural History for the bottled-up tail of Encke’s comet. What shall we say, then? Are there natures strong to draw and enthrall, yet whose influence is like that of the magnet, only operative as a bodily presence? Yes, withdraw the magnet and all is over. And holds this true as to the Marquis de Grandvin? Yea, and shall he also at last vanish, sailing into the boundless Nil, leaving no phosphorescent wake or magic moon-glade behind? Shall naught remain of his cherub sparkle and spirit?--nothing of all those ineffable qualities that make him what Raphael, Milton’s affable archangel, would be seen to be were he commissioned hither to dissuade mankind from ever perpetrating an inhumanity or a pun? And, oh, thou Admirable Crichton, nay, a thousandfold more admirable than he, for art thou not kindly as wise?--of all thy more sustained sallies of bright fantasy and humour, let alone thy erratic coruscations, shall nothing be crystallised into permanence? Nothing at last remain of our Lord Bountiful but the empty larder and void dusty bin? When we laud thee departed, shall the infidel twit us with--What were his assets? If the very plenitude and variety of thy shining gifts, and the preoccupation of thy social charm, if these indispose thee to drudge it as an ‘author,’ or operate as disqualifications; will no painstaking aspirant for the literary fame essay the task of methodising thee, or some little segment of thee, into the literary form? But even thy foremost disciple, Jack Gentian, though out of humble emulation he strive to follow thy devious footing, yet thy brow is among the stars; he ventures not to lift his head to thy height.

But I--ah, brimmed with thy genial flood--I, here, in the small hour, not long returned from a richer than Plato’s ‘Banquet,’ where thou didst pour from thy cornucopia, with a hand redundant as that of Millet’s seed-sower, the profusion of thy good things; I, audacious as I am, resolved upon an emprise.

The Marquis, methought, though glorious, is not of the gods, the more reproach to their synod; but I will make them yield a place for him on their golden benches; I will make him an Immortal! How? Monumentalise him to the remotest posterity in a book fragrant as violets, yet lasting as the Pyramids!

Yes, and as the prophets of old, announcing the mind of their deity, in some instances dramatically put on his personality, even so will I assume that of de Grandvin. How otherwise, indeed? since he it is that kindles me, inspires me, usurps me. I will snatch at those themes--New Italy and the Old Masters--wherein this very night we heard him so sportively romance. I will render the fine festivity of his tone, as well as the loftier touch; catch the rhythm of the waves of his seas of invention; swim out there; in short, I did by implication say to myself an insane thing--I will imitate the inimitable!

The issue of the temerarious resolve, how humiliating! And no wonder. The inordinate aim, and the inadequate achievement! The soaring ambition of the balloon, and its abrupt drop at a fatal puncture!

You who have basked in the vital beams of the Marquis, place not in contrast his own radiant aspect side by side with the dim delineation of him in the preceding sketch. And, for the attempted rendering of his thought and style in the piece to follow, take charitable example from the Persian, who in his comment upon the Icelandic version of the fervid orientalisms of Sadi and Hafiz, made humane allowance for the inherent difficulties and presumably numb fingers of the translator in penning it.

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PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN

John Gentian, Esq., or Major Gentian, or the Dean, or the Major, or Jack--for all these styles are his according to circumstances and the person mentioning or addressing him--is one of those socially notable characters whose names for all the notability will be found rather in the trustworthy City Directory than in the not-always-reliable Biographical Dictionary. Accordingly in the former ‘John Gentian’ is set down as hailing from the ‘Burgundy Club,’ the street and number of the club-house duly and accurately given. In brief, John Gentian is a bachelor having chambers on an upper story of the club-house, a privilege which at his solicitation was cheerfully accorded him, as by seniority of membership, to say nothing of happy qualifications in his character, Dean of the Chapter of _Burgundians_, for so do they denominate themselves, the brethren of that congenial fraternity.

This captain of the good fellows belongs to a transplanted shoot of Southern stock for two generations taking root and branching out in the North, within the borders of a State which, thanks to its relative geographical position and circumstances originating in that, least partakes of a sectional spirit. For now a fair period, ever since the latter part of 1865, the Dean has gone on in what would seem to be the after-mission of his life, namely, the dispensing of those less abbreviated greetings on the Avenue and considerate old-school hospitalities of the board, hardly practicable for the ‘business-man’ of our day, or, for that matter, the man of leisure either, unless abounding in natural benevolence backed up by its desirable concomitant, a comfortable bank account. Do not infer, however, that there is aught of Count D’Orsay superannuated, or Sir Charles Grandison, become senile, in our Dean of the Burgundians. He is no prodigal in airs and graces, and, on the contrary, sometimes takes singular liberties with etiquette, not out of ignorance, to be sure, or the Leveller’s contempt; no, but from a certain impulsive straightforwardness at times, hardly compatible with the abstract theory of a formalised gentlemanhood. Furthermore, he of late has permitted himself an easy latitude in his dress, evincing a lack of proper reverence for mercers and the mode. But yet more astray, he will, upon provocation--say, at some story of perfidy or brutal behaviour--incontinently rap out an expletive, startling to the ladies as Brandt’s flourished tomahawk at the London masked ball long ago. Then again, as if there were no end to his derelictions, he, when convenient to him, thinks nothing of carrying a brown paper parcel in the street rather than trouble the shopkeeper to send some inexpensive small matter to his rooms. Notwithstanding these deviations from the conventionally correct, there is that in the look of Major Gentian, something in the ‘cut of his jib,’ as the sailors say, if not in the end of his coat, that involuntarily inspires respect, yes, even in cabby himself. Cabby, before club-house or theatre, poised on the curb, expectant of the prey, would never dream of hailing him (_the Dean_) with the ambiguous ‘_Gent._’ Should he do so, whether out of ignorance or sly impudence, the Major would have to hold his temper well in hand to obviate a violent breach of the peace. To _Boss_ he objects not, that Dutch monosyllable having an honest bovine sound to it, and being, in fact, a natural localism of a city first settled by the Hollander; and if _master_ be not the word’s exact equivalent, it would be difficult to find one.

The Major’s propensity is to occasional unlicensed emphasis in his talk, a thing assuredly not commendable in anybody, very likely contracted from certain experiences, namely, his adventures in early life among our frontiersmen. Nor could his subsequent campaignings during our Civil War have served to displace the secular expletives by Biblical ejaculations such as those attributed to Cromwell’s pious troopers, though, indeed, the historical sceptics of our time have suggested doubts as to whether even these same martial deacons for all their psalmody in the tents did not during active operations against the foe indulge more or less in that ‘horrible swearing’ wherewith ‘the army in Flanders’ stands pre-eminently charged. To terrorise, if possible, this pertains to the true function of a soldier in the field. The point is energetically put by a Roman consul, one of those schooling his infantry on the eve of an eye-to-eye and hand-to-hand encounter of ancient war. To the same purpose is a well-known passage in Shakespeare. But there are various modes of terrorising as a preliminary to closely engaging. The Chinese Achilles, for example, hurls at the foe missiles of an unmentionable name in English, and which explode an abomination of stench. The sequence is hot air, though disagreeable, and what is ‘horrible swearing’ but the same? It is perhaps equally efficacious, and, in military ethics, why may not either be used as an adjunct to the artillery? But alas for the oathing. It becomes a habit, and so in times of peace is mechanically resorted to by the retired Christian veteran when there is no military call for it. In short, a soldier’s or sailor’s oath, however shocking to ears polite, is, at least when the man is not actually engaged in tussle with the foe public or private, but an idiocratic form given to whatever meaning may lurk in such phrases as Bless my soul! Thunder! Goodness gracious!

If, however, sin be not of the heart but the tongue, a theological opinion to which some would seem to incline, then woe to no few of our warriors in the late Civil Unhappiness. For, in that case, who but an orthodox Calvinist can with any adequacy appreciate the sublime disinterestedness of their patriotism, since from his point of view, not alone did our heroes jeopardise their lives for us, but mortally endangered their souls. And for what? Oh futility! in the attempts to terrorise enemies who, being our own countrymen, of course, refused to be terrified, though in the end fate, working through force, made them succumb.

Though of all men Jack be the least exclusive as to the company he keeps, and is anything but bumptious in his manner, there have not been wanting detractors who have insinuated a charge against him rather serious in a democratic community, namely, not alone a tendency to the aristocratic in general, but a weakness for certain gewgaws, that savour of the monarchical. True, at certain grand banquets, where as an honorary guest he sits at the high table, banquets more especially of those national societies wherewith our cosmopolitan city abounds--the St. Denis, St. Nicholas, St. Patrick, St. George, St. Andrew; on these occasions the Major a little lays himself open to invidious suspicion by wearing on his left lapel the eagle wings in gold of the Cincinnati, a venerable order whereof he who still reigns ‘first in the hearts of his countrymen’ was the original head. This decoration descended to the Major from his great-grandfather, a South Carolinian, a white-haired captain of infantry at the battle of Saratoga Springs, who therefore, being eligible as a Revolutionary officer, was enrolled in the order upon its formation just after the Peace.

Now, an inherited badge of the Cincinnati, every American, however ultra in his democracy, must allow to be something of which no other American need be ashamed. As the Major himself once demanded, and with some animation--‘Compared with this bit of old gold,’ tapping it with his hand, ‘what is the insignia of the Knights of the Golden Fleece or the Knights of the Spanish Order of the Holy Ghost? Gimcracks, sir! and the last, in fact as in name, but a ghostly sort of vanity.’

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TO MAJOR JOHN GENTIAN, DEAN OF THE BURGUNDY CLUB

With thy rare single-mindedness, so resented by the ambidextrous double-dealers, a virtue putting thee in a worldly sense almost as much at disadvantage with them as thy single arm (the other lost in the Wilderness under Grant) assuredly would in a personal encounter; the genial humour of thy club-chat, garnished, as not unfrequently it is, even like to a holiday barn, with sprigs of classic parsley set about it or inserted cloves of old English proverbs, or yet older Latin ones equally commonplace, yet never losing the verity in them, their preservative spice; thy yellow, wrinkled parchment from Harvard hung up framed in thy bachelor quarters (so convenient to the Club); thy cherished eagle of the Society of the Cincinnati, a golden insignia thou polishest up and sportest on occasion; and--be it never omitted--thy high relish for the qualities of M. de Grandvin, through frequent communion with whom thou hast caught much of his generous spirit enhancing what is naturally thine own, yes, and something of his beaming aspect as well; insomuch that unto thee--after him--belong all the titles of good fellowship. Dean of the Burgundians, but I love thee! Though some of the points just cited might of themselves avail to denote thee, Dean, two other characteristics there are which peradventure may serve to signalise. Though a soldier of the Civil War, and a gazetted one, thou at all times, even upon that legal holiday which has undesignedly become the annual commemoration of that war, refrainest from wearing on thy person any memorial thereof. And, ever since the Peace, even as during the entire military contest, no superfluous syllable ever fell from thy lips touching the Southern half of thy country.

Now, as to the personal memorial, honourably worn by so many, if thou declined to wear it, was this because thou wert in sympathy with the spirit of thy deplored New England friend, Charles Sumner--whom, for what was sterling in him, thou didst so sincerely honour, though far from sharing in all his advocated measures? Years ago Grant and Lee joined hands at Appomattox. Art thou such an old-fashioned Roman in thy patriotism that thou wouldst consign to oblivion the fact that thy countrymen, claiming the van of Adam’s alleged advance, were but yesterday plunged in patricidal strife? And, for thy never being a partisan animadverter, is that because for all the free thought that beats in thy brain, at heart thou art the captive of Christ, yea, even something of a Christian, and though but dimly conscious of it, perhaps, art not unmindful of the divine text which implies that if sinners abound they are not in vain demarked from the saints by any parallel of latitude. Or, rather, that there are no saints, but that all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.

However this be, both the omission and the abstention referred to are in significant contrast with thy words relative to that elder war wherein thy grandfather was one of the ‘rebels,’ a contrast emphasised though involuntarily in thy social utterances upon every recurrence of our one national holiday.

On the fourth morning of each July, about the tenth hour by the club clock, spruced up in thy goodly person and decked at lapel with the golden eagle suspended by the white-bordered blue ribbon, an order which Washington and Lafayette and thy grandfather and father wore before thee, thou takest thy customary place at the club’s bay-window. There thou comfortably settlest thyself till lunch-time, discoursing at whiles with whomsoever may, fortunately for himself, happen to be at hand.

Now thy Fourth-of-July outgivings, though indeed yearly varying in expression, yet in spirit are much the same. Dost thou remember all that thou saidest on the last Fourth, Major? Hardly. But I do; and will try to refresh thy memory by reproducing it, with some accompanying circumstances, and as if all were of to-day.

After gazing out of the open window for a time, noting the strange Sabbatarian quiet of the Avenue, on other week-days so abounding with diversified life, thou mutterest to thyself a strange litany of lamentations touching the general falling-off in the old-time celebration. ‘Well, well,’ thou mutterest, ‘it is getting along now in its second century, this anniversary, and nearly everything falls off with years. In Victoria’s reign is Guy Fawkes’ Day what it was in Elizabeth’s? I trow not. _Sic transit, Sic transit!_’

Here some swift return of thought to its everyday channel causes thee suddenly to wheel in thy revolving chair and face inward. Thou remarkest the vacant lounges and sofas, thou absorbest the drear silence. Is it the tabernacle on a week-day? Evidently, thou bethinkest thee of the many absentees. Anon, with thy ample white handkerchief mopping the beads from thy brow, thou exclaimest, ‘Shame upon them! Why, even the thermometer, though a creature metallic, is more sensitive than these renegades to the momentous occasion. Sure, the mercury rises to it! But they--they run from it. Now degenerate, not only from their sires, but their own boyhood. Ah, my good sir,’ giving another impulsive turn to the revolving chair so as directly to face the one person present, a somewhat reserved gentleman of mature years engaged in methodically refolding a letter just perused, ‘Ah, my good sir, it is your boy who is your true patriot. _He_ made on the _Third_ for Long Branch or elsewhere? Nay, sir, on the Third, if not before, he lays in his ammunition, his powder-crackers; at early dawn on the blessed Fourth he crams his breeches-pockets with them, and though in his heedless enthusiasm, mixing them up there with his matches, they get ignited and suddenly begin going off like minute-guns hurried up, making him a spluttering blunderbuss to himself and the crowd, what recks he if but luckily he come out of it unharmed? Another boy, a yet more devoted young acolyte of the Salii, should repeated discharges at last burst his toy-cannon, and he go to Hades for it, what then? _Ducit amor patriae!_ That’s the inscription, sir, on General Worth’s monument you and I pass every day. Ten to one you never noticed it--the inscription, I mean. Ah, but he was a paladin, a homespun paladin, General Worth. And happy in his surname, though indeed his _worth_ was of another sort than that of the purse.’

‘And did you personally know the General, Dean?’ inquires the solitary auditor, his curiosity here doing away with a taciturnity seldom yielding but through the persuasive mediation of wine. ‘Did you, personally, know the General, sir?’ ‘Ay, indeed!’ And, after losing thee in revery awhile, and reminiscently ejaculating something to thyself, ‘The last time I saw Will Worth was on the night-boat coming down from Albany--by Jove, it seems but a week or two ago--he then being bound for Mexico to pay his military respects to General Santa Anna in the field. But he came back horizontal who went forth so erect! Ay, but like the great Gustavus, sir, from Lützen field, if dirged yet laurelled. Pray, sir, can you repeat the battle-names on the monumental shaft? Chermbusco, Buena Vista, Resaca de la Palma, San Antonio, Cerro Gordo. There’s a valley for you of vowels and victory! Ay, and Monterey, too, that superb dash of arms, one inspiring my chivalric friend, Charlie Fenno Hoffman--remember Charlie, sir? No, no; you don’t go back so far--inspired his fine lyric.’ Now, after a moment’s pause, to rally the memory belike, thou didst kindle, and springing from thy seat, leaving it spinning on its pivot, thy adorned chest expanded, thou didst sonorously declaim this stanza:--

‘The foe himself recoiled aghast,
When striking where he strongest lay,
We swoopt his flanking batteries past,
And braving full their murderous blast
Stormed home the towers of Monterey!’

Then reseating thee, a little panting, and pressing one hand to thy side: ‘Ay, stirring deeds beget stirring rhymes. But stirring rhymes bestir overmuch the cardiac arteries in an old fellow like me. Well, well,’ in reaction lapsing into a muffled mutter, a sort of audible musing, ‘Well, well--they are gone, both gone, hero and bard--long ago. _Sic transit._--They sleep, sleep.--_In pace, in pace--Requiescant!_’

And slowly removing thy gold-rimmed glasses and assiduously rubbing them with thy ample handkerchief, in tone a bit tremulous, thou addressest the mild gentleman thy hearer. ‘The heat of this unwonted season, sir, would not be so inconvenient but for the confounded humidity dampening one’s spectacles so. But where, where now was I? Astraying I’ve been: Let me see----’ shutting thine eyes and clapping a hand to brow, ‘ah, yes, yes--patriotism of boyhood. Well, such a spluttering blunderbuss as I was speaking of a while ago, or rather such a _feu de joie in persona_ our venerable friend, Judge van Groot, inadvertently made himself as a boy, recruiting his fagged patriotism on doughnuts and cider in one of those booths which in _auld lang syne_ belted about our City Hall Park every Fourth. I hear the sharp, quick percussion even now--see the lad starting up, clapping his hands to his exploding powder-houses, and yet more rapidly withdrawing them, till the booth-keeper put him out by dashing a handy bucket of cider on his trowsers. That was--bless my soul--nigh threescore years ago!--And now? Yesterday with one foot in prunella, his Honour limped off to Saratoga, and, I dare say, sir, without so much as a single powder-cracker in his vest pocket; nay, and very likely never once recalling the circumstances that Saratoga as a great Revolutionary battlefield, or giving name to one, is signally associated with this blessed day.’ Then after a few moments of meditative silence, ‘Myndert van Groot is--let me see--yes, about mine own age. His bay-tree, though planted by the rivers of Burgundy, won’t flourish more than a hundred years longer.--Well, well--_tempus_ does _fugit_--_Memento mori!_--die we must--consign to dust--leave all!’ Here, settling back in thy chair, thine eyes fixed upon vacancy, thou murmurest from thy Horace in quite other tones than those which late rolled forth the Monterey stanza:--

‘The purple vineyard’s luscious stores,
Secured by trebly bolted doors,
Excite in vain your care;
Soon shall the rich and sparkling hoard
Flow largely o’er the festive board
Of your unsparing heir.’

Silence again. Then, suddenly brisking up, ‘But _à propos_, as the Marquis says’; and, pulling out thy big watch, ‘ay, the lunch hour is at hand. Tobias, hither, thou Rose of Sharon,’ summoning a ruddy-cheeked young servitor, ‘go, see if the steward has ordered it as I directed, kept that _Chambertin_ three leagues from his refrigerator and the bottles in readiness to be gently immersed up to the neck--mind, up to the neck in a water-cooler, the water of its natural temperature at this season. Go, lad, it is important.’ Then turning to the quiet listener, ‘Sir, for myself I am not so particular about these matters, but the two friends I expect to dine with me--Jerry Bland and Captain Don Tempest of the Navy--well, you know them--are; and one must humour the peculiar tastes of one’s friends, you know.’ Here, suddenly reminded that an immediate courtesy was due. ‘Of course, my good sir, you will join us. Nay, I insist upon it. Not good for a man to be alone, especially on the immortal Fourth. Tobias, come back. Tut, he’s gone. William! Go, say we will dine at the round table in the south-west corner, and let there be four covers--four, mind.’