Chapter C: W. Healey

April 16, 1841.

VIII.

MERCURY AND ORPHEUS.

_April 22, 1841._

MARGARET said it surprised her that young men did not seek to be Mercuries. She said that one of the ugliest young men that she knew had become so enraptured with one of Raphael’s Mercuries, that he confessed to her that he was never alone without trying to assume its attitude before the glass. She said she could not help laughing at the image he suggested, an ugly figure in high-heeled boots and a strait-coat in the act of flying, commissioned with every grace from Heaven to men! but she respected the feeling, and thought every sensitive soul must share it.

EMERSON had sent Sophia Peabody several fine engravings. One of these, a Correggio, represented a woman of Parma as a Madonna. It might give any woman a similar desire.

William Story, Frank Shaw, Mr. Mack and his friends, Mrs. Ripley, Ida Russell, and Mrs. S. G. Ward were all missing to-night.

MARGARET said that she was sorry she had allowed our subject to embrace so much. The Grecian Mercury seemed to mean so little that she had not thought of the depth and difficulty connected with the Egyptian Hermes. Among the Greeks, Ceres, Persephone, and Juno represent the productive faculties, Jupiter and Apollo the divine, and Mercury simply the human understanding, the God of eloquence and of thieves.

MARIANNE JACKSON thought it strange that he should be at once the God of persuasion and the Deity of theft!

MARGARET said eloquence was a kind of thieving!

Did the Greeks so consider it? asked MARIANNE.

MARGARET said, Yes, more than any nation in the world, and taught their children so to do; and in fact such mental recognitions were what distinguished the nation from all other peoples.

The Egyptian Hermes represented the whole intellectual progress of man. If one made a discovery it was signed Hermes, and under that name transmitted to posterity. Hence the forty volumes of Hermetic theology, philosophy, and so on. Individuals were merged in the God. Hermes was always the mediator, the peacemaker, and it was in this relation that the beautiful story was told of the caduceus. Mercury has originally only the divining-rod which Apollo had given him, but, finding two serpents fighting one day, he pacified them, and had ever after the right to bear them embracing on his rod. There was another story, Margaret said, which she could not understand,—the story of his obtaining the head of the Ibis from Osiris. Hermes kept the _first_ or outside gates of Heaven, a significant fact typically considered.

I am sure there is something in Heeren’s researches about the Ibis story, but Caroline Sturgis said, No.

WILLIAM WHITE asked if the God gave the name to the planet?

MARGARET said, Yes; and it was given because it stood nearest the sun.

E. P. P. said Plutarch had written something about Hermes in his “Morals.”

MARGARET said, Perhaps so, but she didn’t know, as she never _could_ read them. Plutarch went round and round a story; presented all the corners of it, told all the pretty bits of gossip he could find, instead of penetrating to its secret. So she preferred his anecdotes of Heroes to his Parallels or Essays.

I said, in surprise, how much I liked the “Morals.”

“Yes,” MARGARET said, “even Emerson paid the book the high compliment of calling it his tuning-key, when he was about to write.”

E. P. P. said Coleridge was _her own_ tuning-key, and asked Margaret if she had no such friendly instigator.

MARGARET said she could keep up no intimacy with books. She loved a book dearly for a while; but as soon as she began to look out a nice Morocco cover for her favorite, she was sure to take a disgust to it, to outgrow it. She did not mean that she outgrew the author, but that, having received all from him that he could give her, he tired her. That had even been the case with Shakespeare! For several years he was her very life; then she gave him up. About two years ago she had occasion to look into “Hamlet,” and then wished to refresh her love, but found it impossible. It was the same with Ovid, whose luxuriant fancy had delighted her girlhood. She took him up, and read a little with all her youthful glow; but it would not last. Friends must part, but why need we part from our books? She regretted her oddity, for she lost a great solace by it.

She proceeded to contrast the Apollo with Mercury. In Egypt, Hermes was the experimental Deity, the Brahma.

CAROLINE STURGIS asked what the Hermes on the door-posts of the Athenian houses meant.

MARGARET thought that he posed there as a messenger, an opener of the gates merely, and then spoke of several Mercuries by Raphael. One she knew, so full of beauty and grace that it seemed a single trumpet-tone. Another all loveliness was handing the cup of life to Psyche. She wondered that such symbols as Apollo and Mercury did not inspire all young men with ardor, and make them something better than young men usually are.

WILLIAM WHITE said Apollo was too far beyond the average man to do this; but that Mercury, graceful and vivacious, would naturally attract the attention.

MARGARET asked if he would be an easier model to imitate, and then repeated her anecdote about the ugly youth who longed to be a Mercury.

WILLIAM said that if his faith had been strong enough, the transformation might have taken place.

Query—what is meant by strong _enough_?

MARGARET spoke of the Egyptian Osiris in his relation to Hermes, and said that she did not like _him_ to be confounded with the Apollo. He was in reality the Egyptian Jove.

This led me to speak of the Orphic Hymn in which Apollo is addressed as “immortal Jove.”

MARGARET said she had discovered very little about Orpheus. In relation to the five points of Orphic theology, she had lately read a posthumous leaf from Goethe’s Journal. The existence of a Dæmon seemed to be a favorite idea of his. He did not believe with Emerson that all things were in our own souls, but that they existed in _the original souls_, (does anybody know what that means?) and we must go out to seek them. This notion Goethe thought verified by his own experience. Goethe’s works, Margaret thought, had more variety than anybody’s except Shakespeare’s. His powers of observation seemed to condense his genius.

WILLIAM WHITE wondered why Goethe showed such tenderness for Byron.

MARGARET said that in every important sense Byron was his very opposite; but Goethe hardly looked upon him as a responsible being. He was rather the instrument of a _higher_ power. He was the exponent of his period.

SOPHIA PEABODY had been making a drawing of Crawford’s Orpheus at the Athenæum. It was here brought down for me to see.

At Sophia’s request, MARGARET repeated a sonnet she had written on it. She recited it wretchedly, but the sonnet was pleasant.

I spoke of Bode’s Essay on the Orphic Poetry, and sympathized in his view of the spuriousness of the Hymns. They might have been signed Orpheus, however, as other things were signed Hermes, simply because they were exponents of Orphic thought.

MARGARET dilated on this Orphic thought.

I quoted Proclus in his Commentary on Plato’s “Republic” as follows:—

“Mars perpetually discerns and nourishes, and constantly
excites the contrarieties of the Universe, that the world may
exist perfect and entire in all its parts; but requires the
assistance of Venus, that he may bring order and harmony into
things contrary and discordant.

“Vulcan adorns by his art the sensible universe, which he
fills with certain natural impulses, powers, and proportions;
but _he_ requires the assistance of Venus, that he may invest
material effects with beauty, and by this means secure the
comeliness of the world. Venus is the source of all the
harmony and analogy in the Universe, and of the union of form
with matter, connecting and comprehending the powers of the
elements. Although this Goddess ranks among the supermundane
divinities, yet her principal employment consists in
beautifully illuminating the order, harmony, and communion of
all mundane concerns.”

I asked MARGARET if this was not something like her own thought,—this Venus, for example, was it not better than that we got from Greek art?

She said it was the primal idea, but she did not attach much importance to chronology. Philosophy must decide the age of a thought.

I gave her as good an abstract of Bode’s theory as I could.

WILLIAM WHITE took the drawing of Orpheus from me, and, while speaking of its beauty, said it always made him angry to think of the deterioration of the human figure. He thought it ought to have been prevented, and that his ancestors had deprived him of his rights.

Upon this, MARGARET entered into a lively disquisition upon masculine beauty. She said the best specimens of it she had ever seen were a Southern oddity named Hutchinson and some Cambridge students who came from Virginia.

We lost a finer talk to-night through the inclemency of the weather. WHEELER was to have come with a great stock of information. Had he done so, I need not have quoted Bode or Proclus.

CAROLINE W. HEALEY.

April 23, 1841.

IX.

HERMES AND ORPHEUS.

_April 29, 1841._

We did not have a very bright talk. There were few present, and we had only the subject of last week. MARGARET did not speak at length. WHEELER had been ill, and his physician prescribed light diet of both body and mind.

Somebody spoke of Mercury sweeping the courts of the Gods, but that suggested nothing to Margaret.

SARAH SHAW had a pin, with a Mercury on it, represented as holding the head of a goat.

MARGARET had never seen anything that would explain it, and there was some dispute about it.

E. P. P. said that, according to the Orphic Hymn, Mercury sought the love of Dryope under the form of a goat. Pan was the fruit of that amour. In this form also he wooed Diana.

We wandered from our subject a little, to hear MR. MACK talk about the Gorgons. He thought they stood for the three sides of human nature. Medusa, the chief care-taker, the body, was the only one not immortal, and the only one beautiful. Stheno and Euryale, wide-extended force and wide-extended scope, represented spirit and intellect, essentially immortal. The changing of Medusa’s curls (or elements of strength) into serpents represented the fall. It was not the Gorgons who had but one eye and one tooth between them, but three sister guardians, whom Perseus was compelled to destroy before he could reach Medusa.

MR. MACK did not tell us why human nature so divided had a certain petrifying power!

E. P. P. thought the intellect, not the body, was the care-taker. Mr. Mack tried in vain to explain, owing, I think, to his German misconception of words. Certainly the five senses are the _providers_, which was what he must have meant.

MARGARET liked his theory, because there was a place in it for sin! She disliked failure. Perhaps we all had perceived her attachment to evil! Not that she wished men to fall into it, but it must be accepted as one means of final good.

The only copies of Bode belong to Edward Everett and Theodore Parker. Neither is at this moment to be had. The talk turned on the age of the Orphic idea.

The Orphic Hymns, WHEELER said, were merely hymns of initiation into the Orphic mysteries. They were altered by every successive priesthood, and finally by the Christian Platonists. Those now remaining were undoubtedly their work. Perhaps the ancient formulas were still hidden in them. We know the beautiful story of Orpheus. If he indeed represents many, yet all that has been said of him is also true of one.

MR. MACK declared that Eurydice represented the true faith! She was killed by an envenomed serpent, which might possibly stand for an enraged priesthood!

I got a little impatient here, and said I did not care to know about the Hymns; but the Orphic idea, which made Scaliger speak of the Hymns as the “Liturgy of Satan,”—how old was that?

MARGARET could not guess why he called them so.

CHARLES WHEELER said that, since they made a heathen worship attractive, perhaps he fancied them a device of the Evil One!

Too great a compliment to Scaliger, I thought.

MARGARET had no objection to Orpheus as crowning an age; she liked that multitudes should produce one.

CHARLES WHEELER said that Carlyle had spoken of Orpheus as standing in such a relation to the Greeks as Odin bore to the Scandinavians.

MARGARET said at this point (I don’t see with what pertinency) that Carlyle displeased her by making so much of mere men.

JAMES CLARKE quoted Milton, speaking of himself among the revellers of the Stuart Court, as like Orpheus among the Bacchanals.

I said that Bode placed Homer in the tenth century before Christ, and Orpheus in the age just preceding, say the thirteenth century before.

MR. MACK thought all that mere conjecture.

I told him it made a good deal of difference to me whether the Orphic Mythology came before or after that of Homer. Had man grown out of the noble and into the base idea? Was all our knowledge only memory? Had the Orphic fancies no beauty till the Platonic Christians shaped them?

MARGARET responded to what I said, that she did not like a mind always looking back.

E. P. P. said there was a great deal of consolation in it. Memory was prophecy. She didn’t like such a mind, but since she happened to have it she wanted support for it.

MR. MACK said all history offered such support.

CHARLES WHEELER didn’t like to believe it, but felt that he must. He spoke of the Golden Age.

MARGARET said every nation looked back to this; but, after all, it was only the ideal. The past was a curtain on which they embroidered their pictures of the present.

WILLIAM WHITE said that all great men looked to the appreciation of the future. We are too near to the present.

MARGARET agreed.

E. P. P. said, all the science of Europe could not offer anything like the old Egyptian lore.

MARGARET said the moderns needed the assistance of a despotic government.

CHARLES WHEELER spoke of the monuments in Central America; but before he could utter what was in his mind, MARGARET interrupted, saying that all the greatness of the Mexicans only sufficed to show their littleness. We might have lost in grandeur and piety, but we had gained in a thousand tag-rag ways.

MRS. FARRAR whispered to me, “Write that down!” and I have done it.

CHARLES WHEELER said that late discoveries proved that there was a complete knowledge of electricity among the ancients. There were lightning-rods on the temple at Jerusalem, and they are described by Josephus, who however does not know what they are.

MARGARET and I clung to the “tag-rag” gain.

CHARLES WHEELER agreed with me in thinking the Orphic Hymns of very late origin.

MARGARET could not see the use of creating a race of giants to prepare the earth for pygmies! If these must exist, why not in some other sphere? She referred to the beautiful Persian fable. The _first_ was God, of course; since man may always revert to Him, what matter about the giants?

I said that primitive ages were supposed to be innocent rather than great.

MARGARET said the Persian fable bore to the same point as the Vishnu and Brahma. It was antagonism that produced all things. The universe at first was one Conscious Being,—“I am;” no word, no darkness, no light. This Conscious Being needed to know itself, and it passed into darkness and light and a third being,—the Mediator between the two. This Trinity produced ideals,—men, animals, things; and after a period of twelve thousand years all return again into the One, who has gained by the phenomena only a multiplied consciousness.

“Were they _merged_?” asked CHARLES WHEELER.

MARGARET said, “No! once created, they could not lose identity.”