Chapter XI: The First Plunge (1)

Frank Lavender was a good deal more concerned than he chose to show about the effect that Sheila was likely to produce on his aunt; and when at length the day arrived on which the young folks were to go down to Kensington Gore, he had inwardly to confess that Sheila seemed a great deal less perturbed than himself. Her perfect calmness and self-possession surprised him. The manner in which she had dressed herself, with certain modifications which he could not help approving, according to the fashion of the time, seemed to him a miracle of dexterity; and how had she acquired the art of looking at ease in this attire, which was much more cumbrous than that she had usually worn in Borva?

If Lavender had but known the truth, he would have begun to believe something of what Ingram had vaguely hinted. This poor girl was looking toward her visit to Kensington Gore as the most painful trial of her life. While she was outwardly calm and firm, and even cheerful, her heart sank within her as she thought of the dreaded interview. Those garments which she wore with such an appearance of ease and comfort had been the result of many an hour of anxiety, for how was she to tell, from her husband's railery, what colors the terrible old lady in Kensington would probably like? He did not know that every word he said in joke about his aunt's temper, her peevish ways, the awful consequences of offending her, and so forth, were like so many needles stuck into the girl's heart, until she was ready to cry out to be released from this fearful ordeal. Moreover, as the day came near what he could not see in her she saw in him. Was she likely to be reassured when she perceived that her husband, in spite of all his fun, was really anxious, and when she knew that some blunder on her part might ruin him? In fact, if he had suspected for a moment that she was really trembling to think of what might happen, he might have made some effort to give her courage.

But apparently Sheila was as cool and collected as if she had been going to see John the Piper. He believed she could have gone to be presented to the queen without a single tremor of the heart.

Still, he was a man, and therefore bound to assume an air of patronage. "She won't eat you, really," he said to Sheila as they were driving in a hansom down Kensington Palace Gardens. "All you have got to do is to believe in her theories of food. She won't make you a martyr to them. She measures every half ounce of what she eats, but she won't starve you; and I am glad to think, Sheila, that you have brought a remarkably good and sensible appetite with you from the Lewis. Oh, by the way, take care you say nothing against Marcus Aurelius."

"I don't know who he was, dear," observed Sheila meekly.

"He was a Roman emperor and a philosopher. I suppose it was because he was an emperor that he found it easy to be a philosopher. However, my aunt is nuts on Marcus Aurelius: I beg your pardon, you don't know the phrase. My aunt makes Marcus Aurelius her Bible, and she is sure to read you bits from him, which you must believe, you know."

"I will try," said Sheila doubtfully, "but if--"

"Oh, it has nothing to do with religion. I don't think anybody knows what Marcus Aurelius means, so you may as well believe it. Ingram swears by him, but he is always full of odd crotchets."

"Does Mr. Ingram believe in Marcus Aurelius?" said Sheila with some accession of interest.

"Why, he gave my aunt the book years ago--confound him!--and ever since she has been a nuisance to her friends. For my own part, you know, I don't believe that Marcus Aurelius was quite such an ass as Plato. He talks the same sort of perpetual common-places, but it isn't about the True and the Good and the Beautiful. Would you like me to repeat to you one of the Dialogues of Plato--about the immortality of Mr. Cole and the moral effect of the South Kensington Museum?"

"No, dear, I shouldn't," said Sheila.

"You deprive yourself of a treat, but never mind. Here we are at my aunt's house."

Sheila timidly glanced at the place while her husband paid the cabman. It was a tall, narrow, dingy-looking house of dark brick, with some black green ivy at the foot of the walls, and with crimson curtains formally arranged in every one of the windows. If Mrs. Lavender was a rich old lady, why did she live in such a gloomy building? Sheila had seen beautiful white houses in all parts of London: her own house, for example, was ever so much more cheerful than this one; and yet she had heard with awe of the value of this depressing little mansion in Kensington Gore.

The door was opened by a man, who showed them up stairs and announced their names. Sheila's heart beat quickly. She entered the drawing-room with a sort of mist before her eyes, and found herself going forward to a lady who sat at the farther end. She had a strangely vivid impression, amid all her alarm, that this old lady looked like the withered kernel of a nut. Or was she not like a cockatoo? It was through no anticipation of dislike to Mrs. Lavender that the imagination of the girl got hold of that notion. But the little old lady held her head like a cockatoo. She had the hard, staring, observant and unimpressionable eyes of a cockatoo. What was there, moreover, about the decorations of her head that reminded one of a cockatoo when it puts up its crest and causes its feathers to look like sticks of celery?

"Aunt Caroline, this is my wife."

"I am glad to see you, dear," said the old lady, giving her hand, but not rising. "Sit down. When you are a little nervous you ought to sit down. Frank, give me that ammonia from the mantelpiece."

It was a small glass phial, and labeled "Poison." She smelt the stopper, and then handed it to Sheila, telling her to do the same.

"Why did your maid do your hair in such a way?" she asked suddenly.

"I haven't got a maid," said Sheila, "and I always do my hair so."

"Don't be offended. I like it. But you must not make a fool of yourself. Your hair is too much that of a country beauty going to a ball. Paterson will show you how to do your hair."

"Oh, I say, aunt," cried Lavender with a fine show of carelessness, "you mustn't go and spoil her hair. I think it is very pretty as it is, and that woman of yours would simply go and make a mop of it. You'd think the girls now-a-days dressed their hair by shoving their head into a furze bush and giving it a couple of turns."

She paid no heed to him, but turned to Sheila and said, "You are an only child?"

"Yes."

"Why did you leave your father?"

The question was rather a cruel one, and it stung Sheila into answering bravely, "Because my husband wished me."

"Oh. You think your husband is to be the first law of your life?"

"Yes, I do."

"Even when he is only silly Frank Lavender?"

Sheila rose. There was a quivering of her lips, but no weakness in the proud, indignant look of her eyes: "What you may say of me, that I do not care. But I will not remain to hear my husband insulted."

"Sheila," said Lavender, vexed and anxious, and yet pleased at the same time by the courage of the girl--"Sheila, it is only a joke. You must not mind: it is only a bit of fun."

"I do not understand such jests," she said calmly.

"Sit down, like a good girl," said the old lady with an air of absolute indifference. "I did not mean to offend you. Sit down and be quiet. You will destroy your nervous system if you give way to such impulses. I think you are healthy. I like the look of you, but you will never reach a good age, as I hope to do, except by moderating your passions. That is well: now take the ammonia again, and give it to me. You don't wish to die young, I suppose?"

"I am not afraid of dying," said Sheila.

"Ring the bell, Frank."

He did so, and a tall, spare, grave-faced woman appeared.

"Paterson, you must put luncheon on to two-ten. I ordered it at one-fifty, did I not?"

"Yes, m'm."

"See that it is served at two-ten, and take this young lady and get her hair properly done. You understand? My nephew and I will wait luncheon for her."

"Yes, m'm."

Sheila rose with a great swelling in her throat. All her courage had ebbed away. She had reflected how pained her husband would be if she did not please this old lady; and she was now prepared to do anything she was told, to receive meekly any remarks that might be made to her, to be quite obedient and gentle and submissive. But what was this tall and terrible woman going to do to her? Did she really mean to cut away those great masses of hair to which Mrs. Lavender had objected? Sheila would have let her hair be cut willingly for her husband's sake; but as she went to the door some wild and despairing notions came into her head of what her husband might think of her when once she was shorn of this beautiful personal feature. Would he look at her with surprise--perhaps even with disappointment?

"Mind you don't keep luncheon late," he said to her as she passed him.

She but indistinctly heard him, so great was the trembling within her. Her father would scarcely know his altered Sheila when she went back to Borva; and what would Mairi say--Mairi who had many a time helped her to arrange those long tresses, and who was as proud of them as if they were her own? She followed Mrs. Lavender's tall maid up stairs. She entered a small dressing-room and glanced nervously round. Then she suddenly turned, looked for a moment at the woman, and said, with tears rushing up into her eyes, "Does Mrs. Lavender wish me to cut my hair?"

The woman regarded her with astonishment: "Cut, miss?--ma'am. I beg your pardon. No, ma'am, not at all. I suppose it is only some difference in the arrangement, ma'am. Mrs. Lavender is very particular about the hair, and she has asked me to show several ladies how to dress their hair in the way she likes. But perhaps you would prefer letting it remain as it is, ma'am?"

"Oh no, not at all!" said Sheila, "I should like to have it just as Mrs. Lavender wishes--in every way just as she wishes. Only, it will not be necessary to cut any?"

"Oh no, miss--ma'am; and it would be a great pity, if I may say so, to cut _your_ hair."

Sheila was pleased to hear that. Here was a woman who had a large experience in such matters among those very ladies of her husband's social circle whom she had been a little afraid to meet. Mrs. Paterson seemed to admire her hair as much as the simple Mairi had done; and Sheila soon began to have less fear of this terrible tiring-woman, who forthwith proceeded with her task.

The young wife went down stairs with a tower upon her head. She was very uncomfortable. She had seen, it is true, that this method of dressing the hair really became her--or rather would become her in certain circumstances. It was grand, imposing, statuesque, but then she did not feel statuesque just at this moment. She could have dressed herself to suit this style of hair; she could have worn it with confidence if she had got it up herself; but here she was the victim of an experiment. She felt like a school-girl about for the first time to appear in public in a long dress, and she was terribly afraid her husband would laugh at her. If he had any such inclination, he courteously suppressed it. He said the massive simplicity of this dressing of the hair suited her admirably. Mrs. Lavender said that Paterson was an invaluable woman; and then they went down to the dining-room on the ground floor, where luncheon had been laid.

The man who had opened the door waited on the two strangers: the invaluable Paterson acted as a sort of hench-woman to her mistress, standing by her chair and supplying her wants. She also had the management of a small pair of silver scales, in which pretty nearly everything that Mrs. Lavender took in the way of solid food was carefully and accurately weighed. The conversation was chiefly alimentary, and Sheila listened with a growing wonder to the description of the devices by which the ladies of Mrs. Lavender's acquaintance were wont to cheat fatigue or win an appetite or preserve their color. When by accident the girl herself was appealed to, she had to confess to an astonishing ignorance of all such resources. She knew nothing of the relative strengths and effects of wines, though she was frankly ready to make any experiment her husband recommended. She knew what camphor was, but had never heard of bismuth. On cross-examination she had to admit that eau-de-cologne did not seem to her likely to be a pleasant liquor before going to a ball. Did she not know the effect on brown hair of washing it in soda-water every night? She was equably confessing her ignorance on all such points, when she was startled by a sudden question from Mrs. Lavender. Did she know what she was doing?

She looked at her plate: there was on it a piece of cheese to which she had thoughtlessly helped herself. Somebody had called it Roquefort--that was all she knew.

"You have as much there, child, as would kill a ploughman; and I suppose you would not have had the sense to leave it."

"Is it poison?" said Sheila, regarding her plate with horror.

"All cheese is. Paterson, my scales."

She had Sheila's plate brought to her, and the proper modicum of cheese cut, weighed and sent back.

"Remember, whatever house you are at, never to have more Roquefort than that."

"It would be simpler to do without it," said Sheila.

"It would be simple enough to do without a great many things," said Mrs. Lavender severely. "But the wisdom of living is to enjoy as many different things as possible, so long as you do so in moderation and preserve your health. You are young--you don't think of such things. You think, because you have good teeth and a clear complexion, you can eat anything. But that won't last. A time will come. Do you not know what the great emperor Marcus Antoninus says?--'In a little while thou wilt be nobody and nowhere, like Hadrianus and Augustus.'"

"Yes," said Sheila.

She had not enjoyed her luncheon much--she would rather have had a ham sandwich and a glass of spring water on the side of a Highland hill than this varied and fastidious repast accompanied by a good deal of physiology--but it was too bad that, having successfully got through it, she should be threatened with annihilation immediately afterward. It was no sort of consolation to her to know that she would be in the same plight with two emperors.

"Frank, you can go and smoke a cigar in the conservatory if you please. Your wife will come up stairs with me and have a talk."

Sheila would much rather have gone into the conservatory also, but she obediently followed Mrs. Lavender up stairs and into the drawing-room. It was rather a melancholy chamber, the curtains shutting out most of the daylight, and leaving you in a semi-darkness that made the place look big and vague and spectral. The little, shriveled woman, with the hard and staring eyes and silver-gray hair, bade Sheila sit down beside her. She herself sat by a small table, on which there were a tiny pair of scales, a bottle of ammonia, a fan, and a book bound in an old-fashioned binding of scarlet morocco and gold. Sheila wished this old woman would not look at her so. She wished there was a window open or a glint of sunlight coming in somewhere. But she was glad that her husband was enjoying himself in the conservatory; and that for two reasons. One of them was, that she did not like the tone of his talk while he and his aunt had been conversing together about cosmetics and such matters. Not only did he betray a marvelous acquaintance with such things, but he seemed to take an odd sort of pleasure in exhibiting his knowledge. He talked about the tricks of fashionable women in a mocking way that Sheila did not quite like; and of course she naturally threw the blame on Mrs. Lavender. It was only when this old lady exerted a godless influence over him that her good boy talked in such a fashion. There was nothing of that about him up in Lewis, nor yet at home in a certain snug little smoking-room which these two had come to consider the most comfortable corner in the house. Sheila began to hate women who used lip-salve, and silently recorded a vow that never, never, never would she wear anybody's hair but her own.

"Do you suffer from headaches?" said Mrs. Lavender abruptly.

"Sometimes," said Sheila.

"How often? What is an average? Two a week?"

"Oh, sometimes I have not a head-ache for three or four months at a time."

"No toothache?"

"No."

"What did your mother die of?"

"It was a fever," said Sheila in a low voice, "and she caught it while she was helping a family that was very bad with the fever."

"Does your father ever suffer from rheumatism?"

"No," said Sheila. "My papa is the strongest man in the Lewis--I am sure of that."

"But the strongest of us, you know," said Mrs. Lavender, looking hardly at the girl--"the strongest of us will die and go into the general order of the universe; and it is a good thing for you that, as you say, you are not afraid. Why should you be afraid? Listen to this passage." She opened the red book, and guided herself to a certain page by one of a series of colored ribbons: "'He who fears death either fears the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if thou shalt have no sensation, neither wilt thou feel any harm; and if thou shalt acquire another kind of sensation, thou wilt be a different kind of living being, and thou wilt not cease to live.' Do you perceive the wisdom of that?"

"Yes," said Sheila, and her own voice seemed hollow and strange to her in this big and dimly-lit chamber.

Mrs. Lavender turned over a few more pages, and proceeded to read again; and as she did so, in a slow, unsympathetic, monotonous voice, a spell came over the girl, the weight at her heart grew more and more intolerable, and the room seemed to grow darker: "'Short, then, is the time which every man lives, and small the nook of the earth where he lives; and short, too, the longest posthumous fame, and even this only continued by a succession of poor human beings, who will very soon die, and who know not even themselves, much less him who died long ago.' You cannot do better than ask your husband to buy you a copy of this book, and give it special study. It will comfort you in affliction, and reconcile you to whatever may happen to you. Listen: 'Soon will the earth cover us all; then the earth, too, will change, and the things also which result from change will continue to change for ever, and these again for ever. For if a man reflects on the changes and transformations which follow one another like wave after wave, and their rapidity, he will despise everything which is perishable.' Do you understand that?"

"Yes," said Sheila, and it seemed to her that she was being suffocated. Would not the gray walls burst asunder and show her one glimpse of the blue sky before she sank into unconsciousness? The monotonous tones of this old woman's voice sounded like the repetition of a psalm over a coffin. It was as if she was already shut out from life, and could only hear in a vague way the dismal words being chanted over her by the people in the other world. She rose, steadied herself for a moment by placing her hand on the back of the chair, and managed to say, "Mrs. Lavender, forgive me for one moment: I wish to speak to my husband." She went to the door--Mrs. Lavender being too surprised to follow her--and made her way down stairs. She had seen the conservatory at the end of a certain passage. She reached it, and then she scarcely knew any more, except that her husband caught her in his arms as she cried, "Oh, Frank, Frank, take me away from this house! I am afraid: it terrifies me!"

"Sheila, what on earth is the matter? Here, come out into the fresh air. By Jove, how pale you are! Will you have some water?"

He could not get to understand thoroughly what had occurred. What he clearly did learn from Sheila's disjointed and timid explanations was that there had been another "scene," and he knew that of all things in the world his aunt hated "scenes" the worst. As soon as he saw that there was little the matter with Sheila beyond considerable mental perturbation, he could not help addressing some little remonstrance to her, and reminding her how necessary it was that she should not offend the old lady up stairs.

"You should not be so excitable, Sheila," he said. "You take such exaggerated notions about things. I am sure my aunt meant nothing unkind. And what did you say when you came away?"

"I said I wanted to see you. Are you angry with me?"

"No, of course not. But then, you see, it is a little vexing just at this moment. Well, let us go up stairs at once, and try and make up some excuse, like a good girl. Say you felt faint--anything."

"And you will come with me?"

"Yes. Now do try, Sheila, to make friends with my aunt. She's not such a bad sort of creature as you seem to think. She's been very kind to me--she'll be very kind to you when she knows you more."

Fortunately, no excuse was necessary, for Mrs. Lavender, in Sheila's absence, had arrived at the conclusion that the girl's temporary faintness was due to that piece of Roquefort.

"You see you must be careful," she said when they entered the room. "You are unaccustomed to a great many things you will like afterward."

"And the room is a little close," said Lavender.

"I don't think so," said his aunt, sharply: "look at the barometer."

"I didn't mean for you and me, Aunt Caroline," he said, "but for her. Sheila has been accustomed to live almost wholly in the open air."

"The open air in moderation is an excellent thing. I go out myself every afternoon, wet or dry. And I was going to propose, Frank, that you should leave her here with me for the afternoon, and come back and dine with us at seven. I am going out at four-thirty, and she could go with me."

"It's very kind of you, Aunt Caroline, but we have promised to call on some people close by here at four."

Sheila looked up frightened. The statement was an audacious perversion of the truth. But then Frank Lavender knew very well what his aunt meant by going into the open air every afternoon, wet or dry. At one certain hour her brougham was brought round: she got into it, and had both doors and windows hermetically sealed, and then, in a semi-somnolent state, she was driven slowly and monotonously round the Park. How would Sheila fare if she were shut up in this box? He told a lie with great equanimity, and saved her.

Then Sheila was taken away to get on her things, and her husband waited, with some little trepidation, to hear what his aunt would say about her. He had not long to wait.

"She's got a bad temper, Frank."

"Oh, I don't think so, Aunt Caroline," he said, considerably startled.

"Mark my words, she's got a bad temper, and she is not nearly so soft as she tries to make out. That girl has a great deal of firmness, Frank."

"I find her as gentle and submissive as a girl could be--a little too gentle, perhaps, and anxious to study the wishes of other folks."

"That is all very well with you. You are her master. She is not likely to quarrel with her bread and butter. But you'll see if she does not hold her own when she gets among your friends."

"I hope she will hold her own."

The old lady only shook her head.

"I am sorry you should have taken a prejudice against her, Aunt Caroline," said the young man humbly.

"I take a prejudice! Don't let me hear the word again, Frank. You know I have no prejudices. If I cannot give you a reason for anything I believe, then I cease to believe it."

"You have not heard her sing," he said, suddenly remembering that this means of conquering the old lady had been neglected.

"I have no doubt she has many accomplishments," said Aunt Caroline coldly. "In time, I suppose, she will get over that extraordinary accent she has."

"Many people like it."

"I dare say you do--at present. But you may tire of it. You married her in a hurry, and you have not got rid of your romance yet. At the same time, I dare say she is a very good sort of girl, and will not disgrace you if you instruct her and manage her properly. But remember my words--she has a temper, and you will find it out if you thwart her."

How sweet and fresh the air was, even in Kensington, when Sheila, having dressed and come down stairs, and after having dutifully kissed Mrs. Lavender and bade her good-bye, went outside with her husband! It was like coming back to the light of day from inside the imaginary coffin in which she had fancied herself placed. A soft west wind was blowing over the Park, and a fairly clear sunlight shining on the May green of the trees. And then she hung on her husband's arm, and she had him to speak to instead of the terrible old woman who talked about dying.

And yet she hoped she had not offended Mrs. Lavender, for Frank's sake. What he thought about the matter he prudently resolved to conceal.

"Do you know that you have greatly pleased my aunt?" he said, without the least compunction. He knew that if he breathed the least hint about what had actually been said, any possible amity between the two women would be rendered impossible for ever.

"Have I, really?" said Sheila, very much astonished, but never thinking for a moment of doubting anything said by her husband.

"Oh, she likes you awfully," he said with an infinite coolness.

"I am so glad!" said Sheila, with her face brightening. "I was so afraid, dear, I had offended her. She did not look pleased with me."

By this time they had got into a hansom, and were driving down to the South Kensington Museum. Lavender would have preferred going into the Park, but what if his aunt, in driving by, were to see them? He explained to Sheila the absolute necessity of his having to tell that fib about the four-o'clock engagement; and when she heard described the drive in the closed brougham which she had escaped, perhaps she was not so greatly inclined as she ought to have been to protest against that piece of wickedness.

"Oh yes, she likes you awfully," he repeated, "and you must get to like her. Don't be frightened by her harsh way of saying things: it is only a mannerism. She is really a kind-hearted woman, and would do anything for me. That's her best feature, looking at her character from my point of view."

"How often must we go to see her?" asked Sheila.

"Oh, not very often. But she will get up dinner-parties, at which you will be introduced to batches of her friends. And then the best thing you can do is to put yourself under her instructions, and take her advice about your dress and such matters, just as you did about your hair. That was very good of you."

"I am glad you were pleased with me," said Sheila. "I will do what I can to like her. But she must talk more respectfully of you."

Lavender laughed that little matter off as a joke, but it was no joke to Sheila. She would try to like that old woman--yes: her duty to her husband demanded that she should. But there are some things that a wife--especially a girl who has been newly made a wife--will never forget; which, on the contrary, she will remember with burning cheeks and anger and indignation.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

SOME PASSAGES IN SHELLEY'S EARLY HISTORY.

Shelley's connection with Stockdale is one of the curiosities of literary history. It is as if Miranda had attached herself to the fortunes of Caliban. An inexplicable thing, except upon the assumption of the young poet's inexperience of men and his ignorance of affairs. It is, moreover, a new passage in his life which has hitherto eluded the most sagacious of his biographers. Who was Stockdale, and what was the relationship between these two personages, so opposite in character, intellect and pursuits? Stockdale's name was altogether unknown to honest folks before Shelley gave it currency and introduced the owner of it to polite society--at all events on paper. He owes his notoriety, therefore, entirely to the boy-poet, into whose way the good man was thrown by one of those inexplicable freaks of chance which often bring about such strange results both to subject and object.

John Joseph Stockdale was, like his father, a bookseller, who did a low sort of business in Pall Mall. For some forty years the Stockdales, father and son, were jointly or separately the John Murrays of the London Bohemians. Their house was the resort of novelists, poets, and especially dramatic writers, for twenty years before and twenty years after the close of the eighteenth century, and they were purveyors-general of circulating libraries, tempting the ambition of young authors with rosy promises of success and alluring baits of immortality, if they could only find the base metals _in quantum stiff_, to pay the cold-blooded paper-merchant and the vulgar type-setter. Many a poetic pigeon did the Stockdales pluck, no doubt, by these expedients. For in those days, as in these present, a young suckling full of innocence and his mother's nourishment deemed it the highest earthly honor to be admitted to the society of Bohemian bulls and fire-breathing poets; and to be further allowed the privilege of paying for dinner and wine, with dramatists and men of the Bohemian kidney as guests, was a distinction for which no amount of pecuniary disbursement could by any possibility be regarded as an equivalent.

It is hardly to be supposed, however, that Shelley--even if it could be shown that he actually joined the mob of Stockdale's wits as hale-fellow-well-met--ever participated in this loyalty to their sovran virtues and superiorities. He was the god, not they; and although he hid his divinity under a mask and knew the value of silence in a court of fools, yet he could not fail to be conscious that small and unimportant as he was held to be among those Titans of imagination and song, yet it would be found upon trial that he alone could bend the mighty bow of Ulysses, and had the right to wear the garland and singing-robes of the poet.

But the prior question remains, how Shelley, of all men then living, came to have any knowledge of such a person as Stockdale--still more, any dealings with him.

And it is remarkable that the answer to this question comes from one and the same source; and that is the private journal of Stockdale himself, who, like the petty Boswells of the serial literature of the present day, cozened, by flattery and other arts best known to that class, a considerable number of scholars and authors into a correspondence with him, and carefully preserving these their private letters until time should have enhanced the value of the autographs, and he could glorify himself in the fame of the writers, deliberately ransacked his old archives for this purpose; and finding a number of the boy Shelley's business-letters to him--curious, to be sure, and interesting enough to a hero-worshiper--he audaciously published them in an unclean magazine called _Stockdale's Budget_.

Personally, we know nothing of the _Budget_, but an English bookworm sets it down as "a sort of appendix to the more celebrated _Memoirs of Harriet Wilson"_, which Stockdale had himself published a few years before. This was so boldly licentious, and so reckless in its attacks upon the private characters of the Upper Ten, that the publisher was prosecuted with merciless persistency until his business gave up the ghost. To convince the public that he was a martyr he started the _Budget_ in 1827, and still appears to have kept his poets and dramatic satellites around him, and to have been a man of some repute for good-nature to young authors. Indeed, it is but fair to say that from the first moment of Shelley's introduction to him until we find him betraying Shelley's confidence in him to his father, to save him, if possible, from the publication of an atheistic theorem, he seems to have been fascinated by the young poet's character, and has testified under his own name that he had the highest confidence in his integrity, although it seems he lost a round sum by him in the end; and he adds that, in his belief, Shelley would "vegetate rather than live, in order to pay any honest debt."

It was in 1810 that Shelley, impressed somehow or other with the belief that Stockdale was the poet's friend, rushed pell-mell into the publisher's _Pall Mall_ shop, and besought him to do the friendly thing by him, and help him out of a scrape he had got into with his printer by ordering him to print fourteen hundred and eighty copies of a volume of poems, without having the money at hand to pay him. "Aldus of Horsham, the mute and the inglorious," was finally, appeased, although not by Stockdale's money, and the edition of the poems passed into Stockdale's hands for sale. The book was entitled _Original Poetry, by Victor and Cazire_, and we are informed that an advertisement of the same appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_, September 18, 1810.

Shelley had previously published a romance called _Zastrozzi_, and his first kitten-love, Harriet Grove, is said to have helped both in this performance and the poems. But Harriet was not mindful of the commandment against stealing, and when Stockdale came to examine the poems he found that she had taken one entire poem by Monk Lewis and put it in among the "original" poetry. Shelley ordered the edition to be "squelched," but nearly a hundred copies had already been issued; and this fact, so maddening to the poet, may yet rejoice the collector of rare books.

These poems, the _Wandering Jew_, an epic, the joint production of himself and Captain Medwin, a school-boy production, _St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian_, and his first story, _Zastrozzi_, are the first books of the poet; and their history is detailed with more or less interest in the letters which passed between Shelley and Stockdale respecting them. The poet tells Stockdale, in offering him the manuscript of the _Jew_ for publication, that he had previously to knowing him sent it to John Ballantyne & Co., and encloses their letter setting forth the reason that they did not publish it--namely, that it contained "atheistical opinions." The canny Scots are sorry to return it, and do so only "after the most mature deliberation." They think that it is better suited, "perhaps," to the "character and liberal feelings of the English than the bigoted spirit which yet pervades many cultivated minds in this country;" adding, "Even Walter Scott is assailed on all hands at present by our Scotch spiritual and evangelical magazines and instructors for having promulgated atheistical doctrines in the _Lady of the Lake_."

Shelley assures Stockdale he is unconscious of atheism in the _Few_, and asks him "upon his honor as a gentleman to pay a fair price for the copy-right."

Stockdale never received the manuscript of the _Jew_, and Shelley, having submitted a copy in manuscript to Campbell and received an adverse judgment, does not seem to have troubled himself further about it. So it remained in must and dust until 1831, when somebody of the Stockdale ilk discovered it, and printed parts of it in _Frazer's Magazine_. Judging from these excerpts, the book was entirely worthless, and as for the stories, they were neither better nor worse than other school-boy pieces of those days.

The betrayal of confidence of which Shelley complained as proceeding from Stockdale arose from a letter of the poet's, in which (November 12, 1810) he asks his friend the publisher to send him a "Hebrew essay demonstrating the falsehood of the Christian religion," and which the _Christian Observer_, he says, calls "an unanswerable but sophistical argument." Have it he must, be it translated into "Greek, Latin or any of the European languages."

Pendulous Stockdale--"long and lank and brown"--comes from the reek and sin and filth of _Harriet Wilson's Memoirs_, his pet publication, and actually trembles with godly fear for the safety of a human soul, and that soul the interior, eternal esse of the son of a baronet; which baronet he hopes to make a good money-friend of by betraying his son's secrets to him. Love, of a sort, for Shelley may also have been a constituent of his motive to this treachery, as the poet called it, for there can be no doubt that he did love him in his way, as all the rough fellows--his Comus crew of the _Budget_ office--loved him.

Old Sir Timothy is grateful to the bookseller for abusing the trust put in him by his son, and he thanks him for what he calls the "liberal and handsome manner" in which Stockdale has imparted to him his sentiments toward Shelley, and says he shall ever esteem it and hold it in remembrance.

The publication of the letters before us sets at rest the disputed point as to the date of Shelley's first acquaintance with Harriet Westbrook, whom he subsequently married. Writing to Stockdale December 18, 1810, he requests him to send copies of the new romance to Miss Marshall, Horsham, Sussex, T. Medwin, Esq., Horsham, Sussex, T.J. Hogg, Esq., Rev. Dayrells Lynnington, Dayrell, Bucks; and Jan. 11, 1811, writing to the same person, he asks him to send a copy of _St. Irvyne_ to Miss Harriet Westbrook, 10 Chapel street, Grosvenor Square. It is pretty certain, therefore, that the acquaintance began between the dates of these two letters, for if he had known Harriet when he ordered his book to be sent to Miss Marshall, he would certainly have coupled the two names together and added them to the little list of his friends already given. Our English friend suggests here that Shelley may not have known Harriet personally at this time, but merely through the reports of his sisters, who were always talking about her, as reported in the _Shelley Memorials_. We think this is likely to be the case, as during that period Shelley does not seem to have journeyed to London. The aforesaid friend says also that he possessed a manuscript (unpublished) in which somebody who knows states that Shelley first saw her in January, 1811, and that whenever this manuscript is published it will be seen how very slight was Shelley's acquaintance with Harriet before their marriage, and "what advantage was taken of his chivalry of sentiment and her complacent disposition, and the inexperience of both, and how little entitled or disposed she felt herself to complain of his behavior." "Shelley and his girl-wife visited Windermere," we think are the words of De Quincey in alluding to their sudden apparition in the Lake district just after their union. And two more discordant natures could hardly have been bound together till death.

The last friendly communication which passed between Shelley and his publisher was dated January 11, 1811, as we have seen; and he must immediately afterward have discovered the treachery of Stockdale, for only three days later he writes a vituperative letter against him to Hogg, in that he had been traducing Hogg's character; and informs him that he will, while on his way to Oxford, compel the publisher to explain not only why he "dared to make so free with the character of a gentleman about whom he knew nothing," but why he had been treacherous enough to inform Sir Timothy that he (Shelley) had sent him "a work" which had been submitted to him in the strictest confidence and honor.

This performance was probably the pamphlet which caused Shelley's expulsion from Oxford; and Stockdale hoped to be regarded as a friend of the family by telling Sir T. all about it, and thus preventing a young aristocrat of such high birth and pretensions from falling into the slough of the blackguard Free-thinkers. No doubt he was influenced to do this good turn to the family by the fact that the bill for the last romance was unpaid, and he knew that if Sir Timothy would not, and Shelley, being a minor, could not, liquidate it, he would, between the two unreliable stools, come to the ground. In order to apologize for Shelley, and make it appear to his father that he was not to blame for writing such wickedness, but that another had indoctrinated him with all bad notions, he pitched upon Hogg as the scapegoat. This is, at all events, the English writer's explanation; but it was a futile as well as a foolish thing for the cunning publisher to do, for he made them all his enemies, and Sir Timothy refused to pay a farthing of the printing account. So the publisher lost it. Shelley, it is true, in a cool, polite business letter (April 11, 1811), asks for his account, which is delayed, and does not reach the poet until some time after it is sent, when it finds him in Radnorshire, Wales, too poor to pay it. With an innocency worthy of the days of Adam and Eve, he, after promising to pay as soon as he can, offers Stockdale the manuscript of some metaphysical and moral essays--the result of "some serious studies"--"in part payment of his debt."

JANUARY SEARLE.

* * * * *

CHANGES.

All things resume their wonted look and place,
Day unto day shows beauty, night to night:
No whit less fresh and fugitive a grace
Marks the transitions of the swift year's flight;
But, gradual, sure and strange,
Throughout our being hath been wrought a change.

Brief while ago the first soft day of spring
A personal, fair fortune seemed to be;
The soul awoke with earth's awakening,
With Nature bound in closest sympathy;
Sunshine or quiet rain
Could soothe life's pulse or make it leap again.

Now, stripped of all illusive veil or haze,
Each object looms remote, distinct, apart:
We know its worth, its limits, weight and ways;
It is no longer one with our own heart;
No answering ecstasy
Is roused in us by earth or sea or sky.

Who will affirm this brave display is real,
When on a radiant morn the doom is sent
That rends our world asunder, and we feel
The dear, familiar earth, the firmament,
All forms that meet the eye,
An insubstantial, vacant mockery?

A cobweb world of thin, transparent shapes,
Though limp as silk, the magic woof proves wrought
Stronger than steel: no outlets, no escapes
Ope to the struggling spirit, trapped and caught.
Prisoned in walls of glass,
She sees beyond them, but she may not pass.

Though comfort grows thereafter, nevermore
The bond then snapped, the passionate young faith,
Can healing years with all their gifts restore.
From Psyche's wings life's rude and careless breath
Hath dashed the purple dust,
And with it died the rapture and the trust.

EMMA LAZARUS.

* * * * *

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A SLEEPING-CAR SERENADE.

Not long ago I had to travel by the night-express from Montreal to New York, and feeling drowsy about eleven o'clock, presented my claim for a lower berth in the car paradoxically designated "sleeping," and tantalizingly named "palace," with sanguine hopes of obtaining a refreshing snooze. Knowing from experience the aberrations of mind peculiar to travelers roused from sleep, by which they are impelled to get off at way-stations, I secured my traps against the contingencies liable to unchecked baggage, and creeping into the back of the sepulchral shelf called a bed, I enveloped myself after the fashion of Indian squaws and Egyptian mummies, and fell asleep.

I do not know whether the noise and concussion of the cars excite the same sort of dreams in every one's cranium as they do in mine, but they almost invariably produce in my brain mental phenomena of a pugnacious character, which are nothing modified by palace cars and steel rails. This particular night there was a perfect revelry of dreams in my brain. I was on the frontier with our corps, engaged in a glorious hand-to-hand conflict with men our equals in number and valor. We were having the best of it, giving it to them hot and heavy, crash! through the beggars' skulls, and plunge! into their abominable abdominal regions. "No quarter!" It was a pity, but it seemed splendid.

Bang! roared an Armstrong gun, as I thought, close to my ear: down went a whole column of the enemy like a flash, as I awoke to find it a dream, alas! and the supposed artillery nothing more or less than one of those sharp, gurgling snorts produced during inspiration in the larynx of a stout Jewish gentleman, who had in some mysterious way got on the outer half of my shelf during my sleep, and whose ancient descent was clearly defined in the side view I immediately obtained of the contour and size of his nose. I had got one of my arms out from under the covering, and found I had "cut left" directly upon the prominent proboscis of my friend--a passage of arms that materially accelerated his breathing, and awoke him to the fact that though he had a nose sufficiently large to have entitled him to Napoleon's consideration for a generalship had he lived in the days of that potentate, yet there was something unusual on the end of it, which was far too large for a pimple and rather heavy for a fly. Perhaps it induced a nightmare, and deluded him into the belief that he had been metamorphosed into an elephant, and hadn't become accustomed to his trunk. It puzzled me to know how or why he had been billeted on my palatial shelf, for the whole of which I had paid; but as it was rather a cold night, and there was something respectable in the outline of that Roman nose, I turned my back on him and determined to accept the situation, soothing myself with the reflection that if I repeated the assault upon his nose, such an accident must be excused as a fortuitous result of his unauthorized intrusion.

I had just got freshly enveloped in the "honey-dew of slumber" when my _compagnon de voyage_ began to snore, and in the most unendurable manner, the effect of which was nothing improved by his proximity. It seemed to penetrate every sense and sensation of my body, and to intensify the extreme of misery which I had begun to endure in the hard effort to sleep. His snore was a medley of snuffing and snorting, with an abortive demi-semi aristocratic sort of a sneeze; while to add to the effect of this three-stringed inspiration there was in each aspiration a tremulous and swooning neigh. I had been reading _The Origin of Species_ and _The Descent of Man_ for several previous days, and began to think I had discovered some wandering Jewish lost link between man and the monkey, and that I actually had him or it for a bedfellow; but by the dim light of the car-lamps I managed to see his hands, which had orthodox nails. I was now thoroughly awake, and found myself the victim of a perfect bedlam of snorers from one end of the car to the other, making a concatenation of hideous noises only to be equaled by a menagerie; though, to give the devil his due, a earful of wild animals would never make such an uproar when fast asleep.

It is a well-known fact that when one's ears prick up at night and find the slightest noise an obstacle to slumber, after much tossing and turning, and some imprecating, tired Nature will finally succumb from sheer exhaustion: she even conquers the howling of dogs holding converse with the moon and the cater-wauling of enamored cats. Cats, and even cataracts, I have defied, but of all noises to keep a sober man awake I know of none to take the palm from the snoring in that car. There seemed to be a bond of sympathy, too, among the snorers, for those who did not snore were the only ones who did not sleep.

The varieties of sound were so intensely ridiculous that at first I found it amusing to listen to the performance. A musical ear might have had novel practice by classifying the intonations. The war-whooping snore of my bedfellow changed at times into a deep and mellow bass. To the right of us, on the lower shelf, was a happy individual indulging in all the variations of a nervous treble of every possible pitch: his was an inconstant _falsetto_ in sound and cadence. Above him snored one as if he had a metallic reed in his larynx that opened with each inhalation: his snore struck me as a brassy _alto_. The tenors were distributed at such distances as to convey to my ears all the discord of an inebriated band of cracked fifes and split bagpipes playing snatches of different tunes. There were snores that beggar description, that seemed to express every temperament and every passion of the human soul. I cannot forget one a couple of berths off, which seemed to rise above the mediocrity of snores, mellowing into a tenderness like the dying strains of an echo, and renewing its regular periods with a highbred dignity which Nature had clearly not assumed. Another broke away from the harsh notes around in soft diapasons, and with a mellifluous _soprano_ which I instinctively knew must belong to a throat that could sing. Was it Nilsson? Just over my head was a jerky croak of a snore, sounding at intervals of half a minute, as if it had retired on half-pay and longed to get back into active service.

It occurred to me, when amid these paroxysms of turmoil I heard a very fair harmony between the bass of my bedfellow and the tenor of a sleeper in the next berth, that if a Gilmore could take snores, into training, and by animal magnetism or mesmerism manage to make them snore in concert and by note--

In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders--

we should have a diverting performance in sleeping-cars, and one objection to their use would be actually utilized as an extra inducement to patronize them.