I am
condemned
ever to
hear the boom of the bell," complained the dark person with the
rosary.
hear the boom of the bell," complained the dark person with the
rosary.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v23 - Sha to Sta
Inquiry into the cause of this anomaly leads
me unhesitatingly to ascribe it to the fact that the ministries of
the Church are regarded by the masses merely as dignities, her
offices as posts of emolument,-in short, popular religion may be
summed up as respect for ecclesiastics. The spread of this mis-
conception inflamed every worthless fellow with an intense desire
to enter holy orders, and thus the love of diffusing God's reli-
gion degenerated into sordid avarice and ambition. Every church
became a theatre, where orators instead of church teachers ha-
rangued; caring not to instruct the people, but striving to attract
admiration, to bring opponents to public scorn, and to preach
only novelties and paradoxes, such as would tickle the ears of
their congregation. This state of things necessarily stirred up
an amount of controversy, envy, and hatred, which no lapse of
time could appease; so that we can scarcely wonder that of the
old religion nothing survives but its outward forms (even these,
in the mouth of the multitude, seem rather adulation than adora-
tion of the Deity), and that faith has become a mere compound
of credulity and prejudices,—aye, prejudices too which degrade
man from rational being to beast, which completely stifle the
power of judgment between true and false, which seem in fact
carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the last spark
of reason! Piety-great God! - and religion are become a tis-
sue of ridiculous mysteries: men who flatly despise reason, who
reject and turn away from understanding as naturally corrupt,
these I say, these of all men, are thought-oh, lie most horrible!
-to possess light from on high. Verily, if they had but one spark
of light from on high, they would not insolently rave, but would
learn to worship God more wisely, and would be as marked
among their fellows for mercy as they now are for malice: if
they were concerned for their opponents' souls instead of for
their own reputations, they would no longer fiercely persecute,
but rather be filled with pity and compassion.
## p. 13805 (#639) ##########################################
13805
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
(1835-)
HE work of Harriet Prescott Spofford possesses to a high de-
gree the quality of distinction. About her prose and her
verse is the atmosphere of spiritual aristocracy, of rarity,
as of that which emanates from one elect in mind and soul; yet this
refinement of vision in no sense implies coldness. Mrs. Spofford,
like Pater, combines an almost austere spirituality with the warm
sensuousness of the artist, who lives in full and blissful consciousness
of color and light and form. These characteristics receive their
completest expression in her greatest short
story, The Amber Gods. ' Seldom or never
has the appreciation of the imperiousness of
the senses been blended so perfectly with
the recognition of the authority of the soul.
These two elements, of flesh and of spirit,
are again fused in 'In Titian's Garden,' a
poem itself like some great flower.
A New England Puritan by descent,
Harriet Prescott was born in Calais, Maine,
April 3d, 1835. During her childhood the
family removed to the quaint old coast-town
of Newburyport, Massachusetts, where her
early girlhood passed, and where she at-
tended school,-her unfolding genius attract-
ing the attention of T. W. Higginson, who, now widely known as a
distinguished man of letters, was at that time a clergyman and the
young girl's pastor. It is related that when she sent to the Atlantic
Monthly her first contribution, -a brilliant and subtle study of French
life, called 'In a Cellar,'- the editor wrote to Newburyport for an
assurance that this ingenious tale of love and diplomacy was not a
translation from some French master of the short story; and that
Mr. Higginson cheerfully gave the necessary guarantee of good faith,
adding that the young author had never been out of New England,
and that her brilliant Paris was a city of the imagination. At twenty
she had finished a romance, 'Sir Rohan's Ghost'; and she was only a
year or two older when 'The Amber Gods' appeared in the Atlantic.
The sustained strength, intense dramatic movement, psychic percep-
tion, and rich vocabulary, so prodigally displayed therein, became the
HARRIET SPOFFORD
## p. 13806 (#640) ##########################################
13806
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
obvious characteristics of her later work. If she has done many
other things as well, during a long and scarcely interrupted literary
career, she has done nothing better. Her fiction is characterized not
alone by opulent style, mastery of plot, charm of quick transition
from the gay to the sad, from the tragic to the comic, by skill in
dialogue and management of climax; but by that quality of distinc-
tion already spoken of. Moreover, in every-day themes of every-day
existence she has the happy art of transfiguring the commonplace.
Among her stories of greater length than the ordinary maga-
zine sketch are 'Sir Rohan's Ghost'; 'The Thief in the Night'; 'The
Master-Spirit,' which reveals a deep knowledge of the history of
music and comprehension of its divine language; and The Inherit-
ance,' which deals both keenly and tenderly with an appalling prob-
lem of human destiny.
In 1865 Miss Prescott married Mr. Richard Spofford; a brilliant
young lawyer of the Massachusetts bar, whose literary tastes and cul-
tivated critical judgment encouraged her gifts to a fine and constant
flowering.
Mrs. Spofford's published volumes are seventeen in all, among
them several volumes of poems and ballads; the last, 'In Titian's
Garden,' displaying the rich maturity of her powers,—for it is in
poetry that her mind finds its fullest expression. Her literary mas-
ters have been Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Browning.
As an essayist, and a writer of forcible editorials on current events,
she has great skill; having the courage of her convictions, and a
manner at once energetic, sincere, and winning. She takes first rank
among American women of letters, because she possesses the entire
range of the artist,-the domain of the seen and the domain of the
unseen.
[By permission of Mr. John Brisben Walker, editor of The Cosmopolitan. ']
THE GODMOTHERS
THE
HEY were all bidden to the christening, all the godmothers-
if by good hap none had been forgotten.
And of course they came. The christening of a L'Aigle-
noir Franche du Roy was no mean occasion, under the circum-
stances, but one to which the family must do honor, if they
hastened from the ends of the earth-and beyond.
They did not arrive with the stir befitting L'Aiglenoir
Franche du Roys. But that might be because of the inborn
gentilesse which taught them the proprieties of the sick-room.
The young mother, as she lay in the dim vast chamber of the
## p. 13807 (#641) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13807
old castle, hearing the cry of the wind over the cold Atlantic,
saw them come in singly, and in groups, and at intervals. Very
faint and weak, and with some awe in her soul before the new
being she had evoked, perhaps she dropped asleep in the space of
time between their coming; for when she opened her startled
eyes, another was appearing.
At first Rosomond did not comprehend it. She felt annoyed
at the intrusion. She turned her eyes to the place where the
bassinet swung under its laces; the pair of candles in the wall
sconce behind it making that the sole spot of light in the long
room full of shadows, where lay the little morsel of life for
which she had so nearly surrendered her own, and toward which
her heart swelled with a sense of infinite dearness.
«Do not,
do not touch him! " she murmured apprehensively to the woman
bending there with her purples sweeping about her, and the
glitter of her diamonds like dagger-points.
And then the plumed and coroneted woman had disappeared
behind a curtain into the recesses of the deep casements, perhaps;
and the young countess closed her eyes forgetfully.
"Yes," she was saying to herself, when with a little flutter
her lids opened again, some time afterwards, "that is the old
countess who brought the Franche du Roy lands to the L'Aigle-
noirs. It is her portrait that hangs high next the oriel in the
sea-gallery. I could never satisfy myself, as I walked there in
the late afternoons, if it were a shadow of the carved ceiling on
her forehead, or a stain that had come out. The stain is there
She was a king's favorite.
now.
"Do not touch my little innocent child! " she cried suddenly,
rising on one arm. Did her senses deceive her? Did she hear
the woman answer, "But it is my child too! "
And a shudder seized her as suddenly: that woman's blood ran
in her child's veins! Ah, if she knew just where, she would let
it out this minute! And then she fell back, laughing at herself.
There were others in the room when her gaze again wandered
down its length. Oh, yes, she had seen them all before. Had
they stepped from their frames in the long sea-gallery?
The beautiful young being in the white brocade sown with
violets, the band of brilliants in her red-gold hair, mother of the
count's father, she who later had rivaled Eugénie in Eugénie's
court,-Eugénie, who had the resources of an empire, and the
L'Aiglenoirs had nothing,-yet, ah no, it was empty sound, the
## p. 13808 (#642) ##########################################
13808
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
scandal that those resplendent toilets were a part of the bribes of
senators. She who was a Bourbon D'Archambeau! Nor would
Rosomond believe the rumor concerning moneys obtained by the
dexterous writing of great officials' names-forgery, counterfeit,
what you will-by that other laughing lovely thing, a wife out
of the convent, a mother at sixteen, the last countess, launched
upon life without a scruple or a sou, who loved pleasure so pas-
sionately that she came to live at last upon chloral and opium,
and died dancing.
She had often silently made friends with these captivating
young women, when unable to go out, and during her lonely
pacing up and down the length of the sea-gallery, with the low
roar of the surge in her ears; while her husband, who had
brought her down here with a loving fancy that his child might
be born in the ancestral stronghold which some of her own mil-
lions were restoring to its ancient grandeur, was away on the
water, or in the hunt, or perhaps at the races.
She would not think ill of them now: they alone of all the
women on the wall had not seemed to think ill of her, to look
at her as a parvenu and an interloper; had seemed to have about
them something of the spirit of the century, to have breathed air
she breathed herself.
It was natural that the last countess, the pretty piquant creat-
ure, should have loved splendid gowns; -kept in homespun all
the earlier days by her father's mother, the old marchioness,-
the miser whose hands grew yellow counting her gold. Tante
Alixe had told Rosomond of it. There she was now,- the old
marchioness,-gasping for more air, but just as she was painted
in her dusky robes; with the long ivory hands like the talons of
a bird of prey,—the talons of a L'Aiglenoir,- mumbling of the
revenue she had wrung from her peasants, who starved on black
bread to buy of her the privilege of living.
Perhaps it was thought she had that privilege too long her-
self. She had died suddenly-very suddenly. Her son, the
marquis, was a partisan and a man of power: a great deal of
gold was needed in the intrigues concerning the two kings.
And here was another who had died suddenly-but in the
open air.
There was a red line round her slender throat, too
dull for the ruby necklace she wore in the portrait in the panel;
the tall, fair aristocrat whose long white throat, alas! had felt
the swift kiss of the guillotine's blade. There was not the look
## p. 13809 (#643) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13809
of hate and horror in the portrait that was on her face now;
only the languor of many pleasures there, the proud and insolent
indifference to the pain, the want, the suffering, from which those
pleasures had been pressed like wine that left the must.
"The canaille," she seemed to say,-"they die? so much the
less vermin. They suffer? and what of it? ""
>>>>
Her husband had told Rosomond when he first led her down
the long sea-gallery, the story of this proud lady who thought
the world made only for her class. It had passed the idle hour:
Rosomond had not thought of it again. He had told her all
their stories, that of the strangely wrinkled old baroness, with
her eyes like sparks of fire in the midst of ashes, once herself
blooming and fair to see, who had kept the keys of the king's
hunting-lodge, and provided for his pleasures there. "Well, yes,'
the young count had said, "but what will you have? She was
no worse than her time. They were infamous times. " He had
told her of that blue-eyed waxen woman painted in the Sir Peter
Lely, a beauty who had followed the fortunes of Charles Stuart
into France, very like, but who had come into the L'Aiglenoir
family later by the church door; of the Vandyke,- the blonde
devotee who went over with La Reine Henriette, and came to a
madhouse at last; of the Antonio Moro, vanishing in her golden-
brown shadows,—an attendant of the English Mary, a confidante
of Philip of Spain, who had read her missal at an auto da fé; of
the Rubens, the half-clad woman like an overblown rose, a great
red rose with the sun on its velvet and dewy petals; —if face and
frame spoke for her, a woman who was only an embodied sin;-
of the Holbein,- a creature whose appetites had devoured her
and left themselves only on the canvas; of the possible Titian—
"See the gold of her hair," said the count. "It was dyed. But
all the same, Titian-it must have been Titian-knew how to
hide the sun in every strand. What a lustre of skin! What a
bloom on the cheek. it never blushed with shame. What a lus-
cious lip-it knew forbidden kisses, it denounced a brother to
the Ten. What a glory in the eye-yet if all traditions are true,
that eye saw a lover disappear as the gondola touched the deep
water that tells no tales. See the hand: what contour, what fine-
ness, what delicacy-and the life in it! But it knew how to
play with a poniard whose tip was touched with poison. She did
her little best to betray Venice for a price; and she had to leave
with the French army, of course. "
XXIII-864
-
―――――――――
――――――
## p. 13810 (#644) ##########################################
13810
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
"I should think you would be glad it is all only tradition,"
Rosomond had said.
"I don't know. You see the king gave her a duchy, and
she brought it into the family. The title lapsed, to be sure; and
the revenues went long ago in gaming debts. Do you note that
damsel in the white satin,- the Geraart Terburg? Her face is
like a live pearl. Well, she was the stake once in some high
play. "
That would have been dreadful if it were true. "
"As you please," said the count with a shrug.
"And were there no good women, no honorable men? "
"Oh, but plenty! But, ma chérie, happiness has no history,
virtue has few adventures. Their portraits fade out on the wall
as they themselves do in the line. It is the big wills, the big
passions, that are memorable- that drown out those others, the
weak, that have made the L'Aiglenoirs what they are. Those
imbeciles, they are like René's father the day of his burial,
'as if he had never existed. " And he went on with his narrative.
-
"But it is a gallery! If we had it at home, and - pardon-
reckoned its commercial value — »
"Alas! The pictures are no more certified than the traditions!
And then, one does not willingly part with one's people. Yet -
if that were indeed a Titian- »
"You would not have gone over to America to marry me. "
"I should not perhaps have gone over to America to marry
the heiress of the New World, repeating the adventures of the
knights of long ago, but in modern dress. I should have had no
need. But I would have married you, Rosomond, had I met you
on the dark side of the moon, or else have flung myself headlong
into space! "
"You forget the attraction of gravitation. "
"Your attraction is the greater. "
"Now I do not believe you. The language of hyperbole is
not the language of truth. "
―――――――――――
"Pleasantry aside, you must always believe I speak truth, my
wife, when I say that whatever led me in the beginning, it is
love that overcame me in the end. I could not perhaps have
married, I who love pleasure too,-if you had not been the
daughter of Dives. For we were beggared-we poor L'Aiglenoir
Franche du Roys. But the thing being made possible, I simply
entered heaven, Rosomond! ”
## p. 13811 (#645) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13811
"And I," said Rosomond, as she stood in the deep window-
place, looking up at him a moment, and back again swiftly to
the sea.
"And if it were a title against a fortune, as Newport said,
and as the Faubourg held a matter of course-although Heaven
knows a title means nothing now, and will not till the King-the
good God have his Majesty in keeping! —is at home again — »
"Oh, let us forget all that, fortune or title! " Rosomond had
said.
"No; no. For if the fortune arrive to repair the fortunes of
the house of L'Aiglenoir, why not? It is your house, Rosomond.
It is the house of your child. And we will make a new house
of it. The L'Aiglenoir of the twentieth century shall again be
the prime minister of the King of France. The new blood, the
new gold, shall make new fortunes, shall bring back the old
force and will and power; and we will leave these dusty memo-
ries behind, and ask no one of them to the christening! "
«< Perhaps so," Rosomond had said, half under her breath.
"But you have been a self-indulgent, pleasure-loving people,” she
added presently. "And with rank, with wealth, with opportunity
- it does not tend to bring back the old brute strength. "
"Well, then," the count lightly answered her, "let us take
some of the pleasure! See, how purple is the water beyond the
white lip on the reefs. We will go try the outer sea, and drift
an hour or two in the soft wind. And I will tell you how beau-
tiful you are, ma belle Américaine, and you shall tell me what
a sailor I am. It is not the sailing of the old sea-robber who
came down here to assault the castle in the days of that grand-
mother of mine twenty times removed, in the days of La Dame
Blanche, to take her with her belongings and marry her by
storm - but it is pleasanter, my sweet. "
-
That had been in the bright spring months. Now autumn
winds swept the Atlantic, and cried in the tops of the ragged
pines below the castle's cliff. Many a day had Rosomond sat
there, listening for the sea measures, and fancying the beat of
the surf was the washing of the wave under the keel that car-
ried Tristan and Isolde, a thousand years ago and more, on the
waters just beyond; heard the very music of Isolde's wild lament;
watched for the white sail across the reef as if the sick knight
lay in the court-yard within under the linden-tree, in all the
## p. 13812 (#646) ##########################################
13812-
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
pathos of song and beauty and tragic fate; felt herself taken
into a world of romance, where the murmuring of the breeze
in the bough was the murmur of the skirts of the great forest of
Broceliande.
But this had nothing to do with romance now. She lay in
bed, with her little child near at hand,—the attendants just with-
out,-in the tower chamber where for generations the L'Aigle-
noirs had been born.
Through the deep windows she saw the swift-flying moon
touch the clouds sweeping in the wind, and light the swale on
the dark and lifted sea beyond; look in and now and again silver
the faces of the paladins and maidens in the pale blue-green
forest of the old tapestry, that slightly rippled and rose and fell,
as if with a consciousness of the windy gust that sung outside
the tower. It was that old paladin with the truncheon — a
paladin of Charlemagne's-from whom the Franche du Roys
counted. It was the châtelaine with the flagon that gave him his
quietus.
What did it all mean, though, at this moment? With the
heavy swaying of the tapestry, had these people by any chance.
left their silken shroud and come out into the room to look at
the child?
Not the twelve white-faced nuns; not the featureless young
squires and dames: but that old châtelaine of whose needle-
wrought semblance she had always been half afraid,-who car-
ried the golden flagon and gave the knight to drink, perhaps for
sleep, perhaps for death. Yes, that was she; but she had left
her majesty in the hangings, with her veil and horned head-
piece, her trailing samite and cloth of gold of cramoisie. Here,
with her thin gray tattered locks, pallid, pinched, and shrunken,
white as some reptile blanched beneath a stone, what was she to
be afraid of now? But this other-"Once the place was mine,
mine and my love's! " she was exclaiming. "Till the sea dark-
ened with their gilded prows, the sky darkened with their bitter
arrows! " Ah, yes, how many hundreds of years ago it was since
she defended the castle after a lance-head laid her lord low; and
the sea-rover had scaled the heights and taken her, loathing and
hating him, to wife. And from them had been born the line of
the L'Aiglenoirs!
And what was she doing here? What were they all doing
here, these women? What right had they in her room? Why
## p. 13813 (#647) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13813
were they looking with such ardent and eager eyes, murmuring
among themselves, hurrying past one another toward the child?
"Give way! " was La Dame Blanche exclaiming. "I was the
first. "
"Après moi," said the laughing lady, flittering along in her
butterfly gauzes, the diamonds in her tiara flashing out and
reluming again. "I am the last. "
"If so false a thing ever existed at all," said the woman with
the mass-book, or was it a book of jests? -the Flemish woman
who sold her daughter for a tulip.
"I give you my word I existed! " was the gay reply.
"Under your own signature? " asked the pretty patched and
powdered Watteau.
-
"Never mind whose signature. "
"Worthless," murmured a lady, lifting her black lace mask
from features sharp as a death's-head, and of a tint as wan as
the tints of a Boucher design,—“worthless in any event. "
"Ah, madame, from you to me? I was but your natural con-
sequence, you Voltairiennes, as you were all born on the night of
St. Bartholomew! "
"Its tocsin still rings in the air!
I am condemned ever to
hear the boom of the bell," complained the dark person with the
rosary.
And then the laughing lady twitched her beads; and there fell
out from her sleeve the perfumed fan whose breath was fever,
the gloves whose palms were deadly, brought with her Medicean.
mistress from Italy.
"A truce! ” cried the gay lady. "The birth of an heir to the
L'Aiglenoir Franche du Roys, with wealth to restore the ancient
splendor, is an event for due ceremony and precedence. I am
the child's grandmother, his very next of kin among us. And
you know the rights of the grandmother in France. "
«< They are our rights! " came a shrill multitudinous murmur.
"We all are grandmothers! "
"Are we all here ? " came a hollow whisper from the châte-
laine, the candlelight flickering in her flagon.
"All the fairy godmothers? " cried the gay lady.
"No, no," said La Dame Blanche: "there is one who has been
forgotten. "
"The wicked fairy," said the gay lady. "The rest of us are
of such a virtue. He will value us like his other objets de vertu. »
## p. 13814 (#648) ##########################################
13814
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
A COLD shiver coursed over Rosomond, but her eyes burned
with the intensity of her gaze. She understood it now. He was
the child of their blood. That was why they were here, why
they intruded themselves into her room. They had a right. It
had been their own room. For how many generations had the
L'Aiglenoirs been born in this room! She had never thought of
this when she sailed so gayly out of harbor, a bride with her
bridegroom, wearing his title, protected by his arm, so proud,
so glad, so happy that she had the wealth he needed, all that
so trifling beside the fact that they loved each other. She had
never dreamed of the little child to come, who would be dearer
than her life to her, and in whose veins must run a black drop
of the blood of all these creatures.
-
And now-oh, was there no remedy? Was there nothing
to counteract it, nothing to dissipate that black drop, to make
it colorless, powerless, harmless, a thing of air? Were there no
sweet, good people among all those dead and gone women?
Ah, yes, indeed, there they were! Far off, by the curtain of
the doorway, huddled together like a flock of frightened doves:
gentle ladies, quiet, timid, humble before heaven; ladies of placid
lives, no opportunities, small emotions, narrow routine; praying
by form, acting by precedent, without individuality; whose good-
ness was negative, whose doings were paltry; their poor drab be-
ings swamped and drowned and extinguished in the purples and
scarlets of these women of great passions, of scope, of daring
and deed and electric force, mates of men of force, whose posi-
tion had called crime to its aid, whose very crimes had enlarged
them, whose sins were things of power, strengthening their per-
sonality if but for evil, transmitting their potentiality—oh, no,
these gentle ladies signified nothing here!
A cold dew bathed Rosomond and beaded her brow. But
were the L'Aiglenoirs and their order all there were? Where
were her own people? Had they no right in the child? Could
they not cross the seas? Was there no requiting strength
among them? None in the mother of her father,―king of rail-
roads and mines and vast southwestern territory,-that stern,
repressed woman, who had spared and starved and saved to start.
her son in life? "Come! " cried Rosomond. "Come, my own
people! Oh, I need you now, I and my child! "
But among all these splendid dames of quality, accustomed to
wide outlook on the world, and a part of the events of nations,
## p. 13815 (#649) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13815
what had these village people to do,-these with their petty con-
cerns, the hatching of chickens, the counting of eggs, the quilt-
ing of stitches; these perhaps more prosperous, with interests
never going outside the burgh, whose virtues were passive, whose
highest dream was of a heaven like their own parlors, a God in
their own image: whose lives were eventless, whose memories.
were pallid, laid aside in the sweep of the great drama and with-
out a part; whose slighter nature was swollen, and whose larger
nature was shriveled from disuse? This colonial dame,- her
father the distilled essence of old Madeira and oily Jamaica, her
heart in her lace, her china, and her sweetmeat closet, her scrofu-
lous and scorbutic son lixiviated by indulgence,- had she much
counteracting force to give? Or had this one, in whom quar-
reled forever the mingled blood of persecuted Quaker and per-
secuting Puritan? Or this pale wife of the settler, haunted by
fear of the Indian, the apparitions of the forest, and the terrors
of her faith; or this other, the red-cloaked matron, fighting fire
with fire, the familiar of witches? Was there help to be hoped
for from this bland Pilgrim woman, who, through force of cir-
cumstances, was married with her nursling in her arms while her
husband was but three months dead? And did this downcast-
eyed, white-kerchiefed mistress, whose steadfastness her hardness
countervailed,-daughter of the Mayflower, the new sea-rover
coming out of the East, whose Norse fathers had come out of the
East before, do more than carry her back to the old Danes and
Vikings ambushed in their creeks? Her people, indeed! Return-
ing on the source -oh, it was all one and the same! It was all
misery!
―――――
-
What gifts were these grandmothers going to give the child
then? she asked. Pride and lust and cruelty, mocking impiety
and falsehood, bigotry that belied heaven as bitterly as unbelief,
vanity and selfishness and hate, theft and avarice and murder?
In the wild and wicked current of their blood the tide was hope-
lessly against him- his bones would be poured out like water!
Her pulse bounded, her brain was on fire. - Oh, no, no, the lit-
tle child-the new-born
help-some one!
some one must come.
some one must
Some one was coming. There was a stir without; the wind
was singing round the buttress as if it brought on its wings the
cry of the bright sea, the murmur of the wide wood; the moon-
light streamed in full and free.
-
-
## p. 13816 (#650) ##########################################
13816
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
"It is she," said La Dame Blanche.
"The wicked fairy-the unbidden godmother," said the gay
lady with a warning gesture.
"The one whom civilization has forgotten," said the Voltairi-
enne, readjusting her mask, "and whom culture has ignored. "
How sweet were the thunders of the sea sifted through dis-
tance, the whispers of the wave creaming up the shingle, that
crept into the room like the supporting harmony of the wind's
song! There was a rustle as if of all the leaves of the forest, a
quiver of reeds over blue water reflecting blue heaven, a sighing
of long grass above the nests of wild bees in the sunshine. And
who was this swift and supple creature with her free and fear-
less foot, large-limbed and lofty as Thusnelda, clad in her white
wolfskin, with the cloud of her yellow hair fallen about her,
carrying her green bough, strong, calm, sure, but with no smile.
upon her radiant face?
"The original savage," whispered the gay lady, as sovereign
and serene the unbidden godmother moved up the room; and the
others seemed to dissolve before her coming-to waver away
and to vanish.
She parted the hangings of the bassinet, and rested her hand
upon the sleeper of his first sleep, bending and gazing long.
"Waken," she said then, as she lifted and laid him at her
breast. "Drink of thy first mother's life, a balsam for every ill;
mother's milk that shall unpoison thy blood, and bring the thick
black drops to naught. Child of the weather and all out-doors,
latest child of mine, draw from me will and might and the love
of the undefiled, acquaintance with the rune that shall destroy
the venom that taints you, shall blast the wrong done you!
Draw large, free draughts! Return to me, thou man-child! I
give thee the strength of my forest, my rivers, my sea, my sun-
shine, my starshine, my own right arm, my heart! I cleanse
thee. The slime of the long years shall not cling to thee. I
start thee afresh, new-born. By night in my star-hung tent the
gods shall visit thee, by day thou shalt walk in the way of be-
coming a god thyself. I give thee scorn for the ignoble, trust
in thy fellow, dependence on thine own lusty sinew and uncon-
querable will,-familiar friend of hardship and content, spare
and pure and strong,-joy in the earth, the sun, the wind, faith
in the unseen. This is thy birthright. Whatever else the years
may bring, see that thou do it no wrong. I, the unpolluted,
## p. 13817 (#651) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13817
strong wild strain in thy blood, the vital savage, save thee from
thyself. Sleep now, sweet hope. The winds sing to thee, the
waves lull thee, the stars affright thee not! Dear son of thy
mother, sleep. "
And then a shiver ran through the long, moon-lighted tapes-
try, as the gust rose and fell, and the sea sighed up the reef,
and there was only silence and slumber in the room.
But Rosomond's women, when they came again, wondered and
were wise concerning a green bough that lay across the child.
THE KING'S DUST
From Titian's Garden and Other Poems. Copyright 1897, by Copeland
& Day
HOU shalt die," the priest said to the King.
"Thou shalt vanish like the leaves of spring.
Like the dust of any common thing
One day thou upon the winds shalt blow! "
"Nay, not so," the King said: "I shall stay
While the great sun in the sky makes day;
Heaven and earth, when I do, pass away.
In my tomb I wait till all things go! "
"T"
Then the King died. And with myrrh and nard,
Washed with palm-wine, swathed in linen hard,
Rolled in naphtha-gum, and under guard
Of his steadfast tomb, they laid the King.
Century fled to century; still he lay
Whole as when they hid him first away.
Sooth, the priest had nothing more to say,-
He, it seemed, the King, knew everything.
One day armies, with the tramp of doom,
Overthrew the huge blocks of the tomb;
Swarming sunbeams searched its chambered gloom,
Bedouins camped about the sand-blown spot.
Little Arabs, answering to their name,
With a broken mummy fed the flame;
Then a wind among the ashes came,
Blew them lightly, and the King was not!
## p. 13818 (#652) ##########################################
13818
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
ON AN OLD WOMAN SINGING
From Titian's Garden and Other Poems. Copyright 1897, by Copeland
& Day
S™
WEET are the songs that I have heard
From green boughs and the building bird;
From children bubbling o'er with tune
While sleep still held me half in swoon,
And surly bees hummed everywhere
Their drowsy bass along the air;
From hunters and the hunting-horn
Before the day-star woke the morn;
From boatmen in ambrosial dusk,
Where, richer than a puff of musk,
The blossom breath they drifted through
Fell out of branches drenched with dew.
And sweet the strains that come to me
When in great memories I see
All that full-throated quiring throng
Go streaming on the winds of song:
Her who afar in upper sky
Sounded the wild Brunhilde's cry,
With golden clash of shield and spear,
Singing for only gods to hear;
And her who on the trumpet's blare
Sang 'Angels Ever Bright and Fair,'
Her voice, her presence, where she stood,
Already part of Angelhood.
But never have I heard in song
Sweetness and sorrow so prolong
Their life as muted music rings
Along vibrating silver strings-
As when, with all her eighty years,
With all her fires long quenched in tears,
A little woman, with a look
Like some flower folded in a bock,
Lifted a thin and piping tone,
And like the sparrow made her moan,
Forgetful that another heard,
And sang till all her soul was stirred.
And listening, oh, what joy and grief
Trembled there like a trembling leaf!
## p. 13819 (#653) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13819
The strain where first-love thrilled the bars
Beneath the priesthood of the stars;
The murmur of soft lullabies
Above dear unconsenting eyes;
The hymns where once her pure soul trod
The heights above the hills of God,-
All on the quavering note awoke,
And in a silent passion broke,
And made that tender tune and word
The sweetest song I ever heard.
AT THE POTTER'S
From Titian's Garden and Other Poems. Copyright 1897, by Copeland
& Day
THER
HERE were two vases in the sun :
A bit of common earthenware,
A rude and shapeless jar, was one;
The other- could a thing more fair
Be made of clay? Blushed not so soft
The almond blossom in the light;
A lily's stem was not so slight
With lovely lines that lift aloft
Pure grace and perfectness full-blown;
-
And not beneath the finger tip
So smooth, or pressed upon the lip,
The velvet petal . of a rose.
Less fair were some great flower that blows
In a king's garden, changed to stone!
King's gardens do not grow such flowers,—
In a dream garden was it blown!
Fine fancies, in long sunny hours,
Brought it to beauty all its own.
With silent song its shape was wrought
From dart of wing, from droop of spray,
From colors of the breaking day,
Transfigured in a poet's thought.
At last, the finished flower of art -
The dream-flower on its slender stem
What fierce flames fused it to a gem!
A thousand times its weight in gold
A prince paid, ere its price was told;
Then set it on a shelf apart.
-
## p. 13820 (#654) ##########################################
13820
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
But through the market's gentle gloom,
Crying his ever-fragrant oil,
That should anoint the bride in bloom,
That should the passing soul assoil,
Later the man with attar came,
And tossed a penny down and poured
In the rude jar his precious hoard.
What perfume, like a subtile flame,
Sprang through its substance happy-starred!
Whole roses into blossom leapt,
Whole gardens in its warm heart slept!
Long afterwards, thrown down in haste,
The jar lay, shattered and made waste,
But sweet to its remotest shard!
EQUATIONS
From Titian's Garden and Other Poems. Copyright 1897, by Copeland
& Day
you
ou so sure the world is full of laughter,
Not a place in it for any sorrow,
Sunshine with no shadow to come after
Wait, O mad one, wait until to-morrow!
You so sure the world is full of weeping,
Only gloom in all the colors seven,
Every wind across a new grave creeping-
Think, O sad one, yesterday was heaven!
YOUNG and strong I went along the highway,
Seeking Joy from happy sky to sky;
I met Sorrow coming down a byway-
What had she to do with such as I?
Sorrow with a slow detaining gesture
Waited for me on the widening way,
Threw aside her shrouding veil and vesture —
Joy had turned to Sorrow's self that day!
*
IF SOME great giver give me life,
And give me love, and give me double,
Shall I not also at his hand
Take trouble?
*
## p. 13821 (#655) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13821
And if through awful gloom I see
The lightnings of his great will thrusting,
Shall I not, dying at his hand,
Die trusting?
"WHEN FIRST YOU WENT »
From Titian's Garden and Other Poems. Copyright 1897, by Copeland
& Day
W
HEN first you went, oh, desert was the day,
The lonely day, and desert was the night;
And alien was the power that robbed from me
The white and starlike beauty of your face,
The white and starlike splendor of your soul!
Since you were all of life, I too had died,—
Died, not as you into the larger life,
But into nothingness,― had not the thought
Of your bright being led outward, as a beam
Piercing the labyrinthine gloom shows light
Somewhere existing.
Like a golden lure
Bringing me to the open was the thought,—
For since I loved you still, you still must be,
And where you were, there I must follow you.
And follow, follow, follow, cried the winds,
And follow, follow, murmured all the tides,
And follow, sang the stars that wove the web
Of their white orbits far in shining space,
Where Sirius with his dark companion went.
Bound in the bands of Law they ranged the deep;
And Law, I said, means Will to utter Law;
And Will means One, indeed, to have the Will.
And having found that One, shall it not be
The One Supreme of all, whose power I prove,
Whose inconceivable intelligence
Faintly divine, and who perforce must dwell
Compact of love, that most supreme of all ?
Had I found God, and should I not find you?
That love supreme will never mock my search.
That thought accordant in the infinite
The great flame of your spirit will not quench.
That power embattled through the universe
## p. 13822 (#656) ##########################################
13822
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
Needs in all firmaments your panoply
Of stainless purity, of crystal truth;
Your sympathy that melts into the pang,
Your blazing wrath with wrong, your tenderness
To every small or suffering thing, as sweet
As purple twilight touching throbbing eyes:
Your answer to great music when it breathes
Silver and secret speech from sphere to sphere;
Your thrill before the beauty of the earth;
Your passion for the sorrow of the race!
You who in the gray waste of night awoke
When clashing mill-bells frolicking in air
Called up the day, and sounded in your ear
Clank of enormous fetters that have bound
Labor in all lands; you whose pity went
Out on the long swell where the fisherman
Slides with his shining boat-load in the dark;
You whom the versed in statecraft paused to hear,
The sullen prisoner blest, the old man loved,
The little children ran along beside;
You who to women were the Knight of God.
Therefore as God lives, so I know do you.
And with that knowledge comes a keener joy
Than blushing, beating, folds young love about.
Again the sky burns azure, and the stars
Lean from their depths to tell me of your state.
Again the sea-line meets the line divine,
And the surge shatters in wide melody;
The unguessed hues that the soul swells to note
Haunting the rainbow's edges lead me on;
And all the dropping dews of summer nights
Keep measure with the music in my heart.
And still I climb where you have passed before,
Unchallenged spirit who inclosed my days
As in a jewel, walled about with light!
And far, far off, I seem to see you go
Familiar of unknown immensity,
And move, enlarged to all the rosy vast,
And boon companion of the dawn beyond.
## p. 13823 (#657) ##########################################
13823
MADAME DE STAËL
(1766-1817)
N THE very interesting and admirable notice of Madame de
Staël by her cousin, Madame Necker de Saussure, it is said:
"The works of Madame de Staël seem to belong to the.
future. They indicate, as they also tend to produce, a new epoch in
society and in letters; an age of strong, generous, living thought,-of
emotions springing from the heart:" and there follows a description
of the sort of literature to which Madame de Staël's writings belong,
-a literature "more spoken than written," a literature of spontaneous,
informal expression, which appeals to us
more intimately and more powerfully than
any elaborate and studied composition. This
appeal is especially intimate and powerful
in Madame de Staël's pages, because she
may be called, perhaps, the first "modern
woman. " She had in many respects a tone
of mind resembling our Own more than
it resembled that of the greater number
of even the noteworthy men and women of
her own day. There is a much greater
moral distance between her and her imme-
diate predecessors in society and in liter-
ature, than between her and her immediate
successors-whether in France or elsewhere.
This kinship with the last half of the nineteenth century, and with
other modes of thought than those of her own country, is partly due
to her Protestant form of faith. She cared little for dogmas, but the
fibre of her being had been fed by liberal Protestant thought. From
this cause chiefly, though there were others also, arose a striking
contrast between the tone of her mind and that of her great contem-
porary Châteaubriand. Their opinions on all subjects were affected
and colored by their religious opinions. He is now remote from us,
he is read as "a classic": she comes close to us, and inspires us with
friendly emotions.
To be in advance of one's age, if one is a genius, is to tread a
sure path to immortality; but if, like Madame de Staël, one is only
the possessor of intellectual ability, it is the straight road to for-
getfulness. Those who come after us take little interest in hearing
MADAME DE STAËL
## p. 13824 (#658) ##########################################
13824
MADAME DE STAËL
their own ideas expressed less effectively than they themselves are
expressing them; and so it happens that the world of letters now
takes too little account of Madame de Staël, while her own times
were incompetent to judge her. We do not value her enough: they
did not value her rightly. The false and brilliant light thrown
upon her by the enmity of Napoleon, obscured rather than revealed
what was really interesting and noble in her; while the assumption
that because there was a masculine scope and strength in her intelli-
gence she had a masculine nature, has completely confused her image.
She was not precisely feminine, but she was essentially a woman; and
her most admirable powers, her highest successes, her real importance
to the world, lie in the fact that her thoughts passed from her brain
through a woman's heart. It must be confessed it did not always
make them wiser thoughts; but it invested them with a sincerity and
an ardor that give the force of fine passion to studies in politics and
in literature. For these studies in politics and in literature are at
bottom studies in sociology,- that science whose name was unknown,
while its foundations were being laid by the promoters, the victims,
the critics of the French Revolution; the science whose students are
lovers of humanity.
This noble title is one to which Madame de Staël has full right.
She is a leader in the great army of those who love, who honor, and
who desire to serve their kind: one of those leaders who disseminate
their principles and communicate their emotions, but who give no
positive counsels; who show their quality chiefly by their love of
liberty and their love of light. Wherever she saw the traces of lib-
erty or the track of light, she followed fearlessly. And therefore it
is, that as one of the last and one of the ablest of her critics-M. Al-
bert Sorel- has remarked (in the excellent study of her published
in the series of 'Les Grands Écrivains Français), few writers have
exercised in so many different directions, so prolonged an influence.
She had during her life, and she continues to have after her death,
an immense power of inspiring other souls with lofty aspirations and
high thoughts.
It is chiefly the qualities of her character that make her writings
now worth reading. Her character illuminates the whole mass. Many
of her pages would be dull and empty to the reader of to-day, if
it were not that every sentence-involuntarily but unrestrainedly —
reveals the writer. She recognized this herself, and said: "When
one writes for the satisfaction of the inward inspiration that takes
possession of the soul, the writings make known, even without intend-
ing it, the writer's mental conditions, of every kind and degree. ”
Between the lines of her own writings her whole life may be read;
not her life of thought only, but her life of action.
## p. 13825 (#659) ##########################################
MADAME DE STAËL
13825
This life of action, of incessant humane action on others, and with
and for others, was of too complicated a character, and involved too
many relations, to be narrated here save in the most general terms.
The supreme affections of her life were, from birth to death, for her
father, and during twenty years for her lover, Benjamin Constant.
These two passions colored her whole existence: her ardent love and
admiration for her father supplied unfailing nutriment to her heart,
and her enthusiasm for Benjamin Constant (of which he was little
worthy) stimulated her intellect to its most brilliant achievements.
Too much stress can hardly be laid on the ennobling effects on her
character of her father's influence. He can scarcely be called a great
man; but she fervently adored him with the deepest gratitude all hi
life, and after his death, in a singularly delightful intimacy of rela-
tion.
As her father's daughter, and from her own noble powers, she be-
came one of the most conspicuous figures in the party of the consti-
tutional reformers, and was more or less drawn into political affairs.
But she never threw herself into the current; she never left her
salon, whatever was going on outside; and when the earthquake of
the Revolution came and her four walls fell, she could find no refuge
in any party lines. She was from first to last a witness of political
events rather than an actor in them; a witness of most exceptional
quality, who could distinguish in the confused and troubled present
the old instincts of the past and the new beliefs of the future, and
could indicate in lasting lines the meaning of the passing day.
This is the more remarkable because, woman-like, she was always
more interested in persons than in purposes,- in the actors than in
the actions: and while her sympathies were strong for "the people,"
she hardly took count of "the State" in the abstract; the word
rarely occurs in her writings. The establishment of guarantees of
political liberty was what her political friends strove for; and as M.
Sorel points out, this enlightened demand was not quite the same as
the blind demand for civil liberty and its concomitants, which inspired
the passions of the great majority of Frenchmen.
me unhesitatingly to ascribe it to the fact that the ministries of
the Church are regarded by the masses merely as dignities, her
offices as posts of emolument,-in short, popular religion may be
summed up as respect for ecclesiastics. The spread of this mis-
conception inflamed every worthless fellow with an intense desire
to enter holy orders, and thus the love of diffusing God's reli-
gion degenerated into sordid avarice and ambition. Every church
became a theatre, where orators instead of church teachers ha-
rangued; caring not to instruct the people, but striving to attract
admiration, to bring opponents to public scorn, and to preach
only novelties and paradoxes, such as would tickle the ears of
their congregation. This state of things necessarily stirred up
an amount of controversy, envy, and hatred, which no lapse of
time could appease; so that we can scarcely wonder that of the
old religion nothing survives but its outward forms (even these,
in the mouth of the multitude, seem rather adulation than adora-
tion of the Deity), and that faith has become a mere compound
of credulity and prejudices,—aye, prejudices too which degrade
man from rational being to beast, which completely stifle the
power of judgment between true and false, which seem in fact
carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the last spark
of reason! Piety-great God! - and religion are become a tis-
sue of ridiculous mysteries: men who flatly despise reason, who
reject and turn away from understanding as naturally corrupt,
these I say, these of all men, are thought-oh, lie most horrible!
-to possess light from on high. Verily, if they had but one spark
of light from on high, they would not insolently rave, but would
learn to worship God more wisely, and would be as marked
among their fellows for mercy as they now are for malice: if
they were concerned for their opponents' souls instead of for
their own reputations, they would no longer fiercely persecute,
but rather be filled with pity and compassion.
## p. 13805 (#639) ##########################################
13805
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
(1835-)
HE work of Harriet Prescott Spofford possesses to a high de-
gree the quality of distinction. About her prose and her
verse is the atmosphere of spiritual aristocracy, of rarity,
as of that which emanates from one elect in mind and soul; yet this
refinement of vision in no sense implies coldness. Mrs. Spofford,
like Pater, combines an almost austere spirituality with the warm
sensuousness of the artist, who lives in full and blissful consciousness
of color and light and form. These characteristics receive their
completest expression in her greatest short
story, The Amber Gods. ' Seldom or never
has the appreciation of the imperiousness of
the senses been blended so perfectly with
the recognition of the authority of the soul.
These two elements, of flesh and of spirit,
are again fused in 'In Titian's Garden,' a
poem itself like some great flower.
A New England Puritan by descent,
Harriet Prescott was born in Calais, Maine,
April 3d, 1835. During her childhood the
family removed to the quaint old coast-town
of Newburyport, Massachusetts, where her
early girlhood passed, and where she at-
tended school,-her unfolding genius attract-
ing the attention of T. W. Higginson, who, now widely known as a
distinguished man of letters, was at that time a clergyman and the
young girl's pastor. It is related that when she sent to the Atlantic
Monthly her first contribution, -a brilliant and subtle study of French
life, called 'In a Cellar,'- the editor wrote to Newburyport for an
assurance that this ingenious tale of love and diplomacy was not a
translation from some French master of the short story; and that
Mr. Higginson cheerfully gave the necessary guarantee of good faith,
adding that the young author had never been out of New England,
and that her brilliant Paris was a city of the imagination. At twenty
she had finished a romance, 'Sir Rohan's Ghost'; and she was only a
year or two older when 'The Amber Gods' appeared in the Atlantic.
The sustained strength, intense dramatic movement, psychic percep-
tion, and rich vocabulary, so prodigally displayed therein, became the
HARRIET SPOFFORD
## p. 13806 (#640) ##########################################
13806
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
obvious characteristics of her later work. If she has done many
other things as well, during a long and scarcely interrupted literary
career, she has done nothing better. Her fiction is characterized not
alone by opulent style, mastery of plot, charm of quick transition
from the gay to the sad, from the tragic to the comic, by skill in
dialogue and management of climax; but by that quality of distinc-
tion already spoken of. Moreover, in every-day themes of every-day
existence she has the happy art of transfiguring the commonplace.
Among her stories of greater length than the ordinary maga-
zine sketch are 'Sir Rohan's Ghost'; 'The Thief in the Night'; 'The
Master-Spirit,' which reveals a deep knowledge of the history of
music and comprehension of its divine language; and The Inherit-
ance,' which deals both keenly and tenderly with an appalling prob-
lem of human destiny.
In 1865 Miss Prescott married Mr. Richard Spofford; a brilliant
young lawyer of the Massachusetts bar, whose literary tastes and cul-
tivated critical judgment encouraged her gifts to a fine and constant
flowering.
Mrs. Spofford's published volumes are seventeen in all, among
them several volumes of poems and ballads; the last, 'In Titian's
Garden,' displaying the rich maturity of her powers,—for it is in
poetry that her mind finds its fullest expression. Her literary mas-
ters have been Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Browning.
As an essayist, and a writer of forcible editorials on current events,
she has great skill; having the courage of her convictions, and a
manner at once energetic, sincere, and winning. She takes first rank
among American women of letters, because she possesses the entire
range of the artist,-the domain of the seen and the domain of the
unseen.
[By permission of Mr. John Brisben Walker, editor of The Cosmopolitan. ']
THE GODMOTHERS
THE
HEY were all bidden to the christening, all the godmothers-
if by good hap none had been forgotten.
And of course they came. The christening of a L'Aigle-
noir Franche du Roy was no mean occasion, under the circum-
stances, but one to which the family must do honor, if they
hastened from the ends of the earth-and beyond.
They did not arrive with the stir befitting L'Aiglenoir
Franche du Roys. But that might be because of the inborn
gentilesse which taught them the proprieties of the sick-room.
The young mother, as she lay in the dim vast chamber of the
## p. 13807 (#641) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13807
old castle, hearing the cry of the wind over the cold Atlantic,
saw them come in singly, and in groups, and at intervals. Very
faint and weak, and with some awe in her soul before the new
being she had evoked, perhaps she dropped asleep in the space of
time between their coming; for when she opened her startled
eyes, another was appearing.
At first Rosomond did not comprehend it. She felt annoyed
at the intrusion. She turned her eyes to the place where the
bassinet swung under its laces; the pair of candles in the wall
sconce behind it making that the sole spot of light in the long
room full of shadows, where lay the little morsel of life for
which she had so nearly surrendered her own, and toward which
her heart swelled with a sense of infinite dearness.
«Do not,
do not touch him! " she murmured apprehensively to the woman
bending there with her purples sweeping about her, and the
glitter of her diamonds like dagger-points.
And then the plumed and coroneted woman had disappeared
behind a curtain into the recesses of the deep casements, perhaps;
and the young countess closed her eyes forgetfully.
"Yes," she was saying to herself, when with a little flutter
her lids opened again, some time afterwards, "that is the old
countess who brought the Franche du Roy lands to the L'Aigle-
noirs. It is her portrait that hangs high next the oriel in the
sea-gallery. I could never satisfy myself, as I walked there in
the late afternoons, if it were a shadow of the carved ceiling on
her forehead, or a stain that had come out. The stain is there
She was a king's favorite.
now.
"Do not touch my little innocent child! " she cried suddenly,
rising on one arm. Did her senses deceive her? Did she hear
the woman answer, "But it is my child too! "
And a shudder seized her as suddenly: that woman's blood ran
in her child's veins! Ah, if she knew just where, she would let
it out this minute! And then she fell back, laughing at herself.
There were others in the room when her gaze again wandered
down its length. Oh, yes, she had seen them all before. Had
they stepped from their frames in the long sea-gallery?
The beautiful young being in the white brocade sown with
violets, the band of brilliants in her red-gold hair, mother of the
count's father, she who later had rivaled Eugénie in Eugénie's
court,-Eugénie, who had the resources of an empire, and the
L'Aiglenoirs had nothing,-yet, ah no, it was empty sound, the
## p. 13808 (#642) ##########################################
13808
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
scandal that those resplendent toilets were a part of the bribes of
senators. She who was a Bourbon D'Archambeau! Nor would
Rosomond believe the rumor concerning moneys obtained by the
dexterous writing of great officials' names-forgery, counterfeit,
what you will-by that other laughing lovely thing, a wife out
of the convent, a mother at sixteen, the last countess, launched
upon life without a scruple or a sou, who loved pleasure so pas-
sionately that she came to live at last upon chloral and opium,
and died dancing.
She had often silently made friends with these captivating
young women, when unable to go out, and during her lonely
pacing up and down the length of the sea-gallery, with the low
roar of the surge in her ears; while her husband, who had
brought her down here with a loving fancy that his child might
be born in the ancestral stronghold which some of her own mil-
lions were restoring to its ancient grandeur, was away on the
water, or in the hunt, or perhaps at the races.
She would not think ill of them now: they alone of all the
women on the wall had not seemed to think ill of her, to look
at her as a parvenu and an interloper; had seemed to have about
them something of the spirit of the century, to have breathed air
she breathed herself.
It was natural that the last countess, the pretty piquant creat-
ure, should have loved splendid gowns; -kept in homespun all
the earlier days by her father's mother, the old marchioness,-
the miser whose hands grew yellow counting her gold. Tante
Alixe had told Rosomond of it. There she was now,- the old
marchioness,-gasping for more air, but just as she was painted
in her dusky robes; with the long ivory hands like the talons of
a bird of prey,—the talons of a L'Aiglenoir,- mumbling of the
revenue she had wrung from her peasants, who starved on black
bread to buy of her the privilege of living.
Perhaps it was thought she had that privilege too long her-
self. She had died suddenly-very suddenly. Her son, the
marquis, was a partisan and a man of power: a great deal of
gold was needed in the intrigues concerning the two kings.
And here was another who had died suddenly-but in the
open air.
There was a red line round her slender throat, too
dull for the ruby necklace she wore in the portrait in the panel;
the tall, fair aristocrat whose long white throat, alas! had felt
the swift kiss of the guillotine's blade. There was not the look
## p. 13809 (#643) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13809
of hate and horror in the portrait that was on her face now;
only the languor of many pleasures there, the proud and insolent
indifference to the pain, the want, the suffering, from which those
pleasures had been pressed like wine that left the must.
"The canaille," she seemed to say,-"they die? so much the
less vermin. They suffer? and what of it? ""
>>>>
Her husband had told Rosomond when he first led her down
the long sea-gallery, the story of this proud lady who thought
the world made only for her class. It had passed the idle hour:
Rosomond had not thought of it again. He had told her all
their stories, that of the strangely wrinkled old baroness, with
her eyes like sparks of fire in the midst of ashes, once herself
blooming and fair to see, who had kept the keys of the king's
hunting-lodge, and provided for his pleasures there. "Well, yes,'
the young count had said, "but what will you have? She was
no worse than her time. They were infamous times. " He had
told her of that blue-eyed waxen woman painted in the Sir Peter
Lely, a beauty who had followed the fortunes of Charles Stuart
into France, very like, but who had come into the L'Aiglenoir
family later by the church door; of the Vandyke,- the blonde
devotee who went over with La Reine Henriette, and came to a
madhouse at last; of the Antonio Moro, vanishing in her golden-
brown shadows,—an attendant of the English Mary, a confidante
of Philip of Spain, who had read her missal at an auto da fé; of
the Rubens, the half-clad woman like an overblown rose, a great
red rose with the sun on its velvet and dewy petals; —if face and
frame spoke for her, a woman who was only an embodied sin;-
of the Holbein,- a creature whose appetites had devoured her
and left themselves only on the canvas; of the possible Titian—
"See the gold of her hair," said the count. "It was dyed. But
all the same, Titian-it must have been Titian-knew how to
hide the sun in every strand. What a lustre of skin! What a
bloom on the cheek. it never blushed with shame. What a lus-
cious lip-it knew forbidden kisses, it denounced a brother to
the Ten. What a glory in the eye-yet if all traditions are true,
that eye saw a lover disappear as the gondola touched the deep
water that tells no tales. See the hand: what contour, what fine-
ness, what delicacy-and the life in it! But it knew how to
play with a poniard whose tip was touched with poison. She did
her little best to betray Venice for a price; and she had to leave
with the French army, of course. "
XXIII-864
-
―――――――――
――――――
## p. 13810 (#644) ##########################################
13810
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
"I should think you would be glad it is all only tradition,"
Rosomond had said.
"I don't know. You see the king gave her a duchy, and
she brought it into the family. The title lapsed, to be sure; and
the revenues went long ago in gaming debts. Do you note that
damsel in the white satin,- the Geraart Terburg? Her face is
like a live pearl. Well, she was the stake once in some high
play. "
That would have been dreadful if it were true. "
"As you please," said the count with a shrug.
"And were there no good women, no honorable men? "
"Oh, but plenty! But, ma chérie, happiness has no history,
virtue has few adventures. Their portraits fade out on the wall
as they themselves do in the line. It is the big wills, the big
passions, that are memorable- that drown out those others, the
weak, that have made the L'Aiglenoirs what they are. Those
imbeciles, they are like René's father the day of his burial,
'as if he had never existed. " And he went on with his narrative.
-
"But it is a gallery! If we had it at home, and - pardon-
reckoned its commercial value — »
"Alas! The pictures are no more certified than the traditions!
And then, one does not willingly part with one's people. Yet -
if that were indeed a Titian- »
"You would not have gone over to America to marry me. "
"I should not perhaps have gone over to America to marry
the heiress of the New World, repeating the adventures of the
knights of long ago, but in modern dress. I should have had no
need. But I would have married you, Rosomond, had I met you
on the dark side of the moon, or else have flung myself headlong
into space! "
"You forget the attraction of gravitation. "
"Your attraction is the greater. "
"Now I do not believe you. The language of hyperbole is
not the language of truth. "
―――――――――――
"Pleasantry aside, you must always believe I speak truth, my
wife, when I say that whatever led me in the beginning, it is
love that overcame me in the end. I could not perhaps have
married, I who love pleasure too,-if you had not been the
daughter of Dives. For we were beggared-we poor L'Aiglenoir
Franche du Roys. But the thing being made possible, I simply
entered heaven, Rosomond! ”
## p. 13811 (#645) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13811
"And I," said Rosomond, as she stood in the deep window-
place, looking up at him a moment, and back again swiftly to
the sea.
"And if it were a title against a fortune, as Newport said,
and as the Faubourg held a matter of course-although Heaven
knows a title means nothing now, and will not till the King-the
good God have his Majesty in keeping! —is at home again — »
"Oh, let us forget all that, fortune or title! " Rosomond had
said.
"No; no. For if the fortune arrive to repair the fortunes of
the house of L'Aiglenoir, why not? It is your house, Rosomond.
It is the house of your child. And we will make a new house
of it. The L'Aiglenoir of the twentieth century shall again be
the prime minister of the King of France. The new blood, the
new gold, shall make new fortunes, shall bring back the old
force and will and power; and we will leave these dusty memo-
ries behind, and ask no one of them to the christening! "
«< Perhaps so," Rosomond had said, half under her breath.
"But you have been a self-indulgent, pleasure-loving people,” she
added presently. "And with rank, with wealth, with opportunity
- it does not tend to bring back the old brute strength. "
"Well, then," the count lightly answered her, "let us take
some of the pleasure! See, how purple is the water beyond the
white lip on the reefs. We will go try the outer sea, and drift
an hour or two in the soft wind. And I will tell you how beau-
tiful you are, ma belle Américaine, and you shall tell me what
a sailor I am. It is not the sailing of the old sea-robber who
came down here to assault the castle in the days of that grand-
mother of mine twenty times removed, in the days of La Dame
Blanche, to take her with her belongings and marry her by
storm - but it is pleasanter, my sweet. "
-
That had been in the bright spring months. Now autumn
winds swept the Atlantic, and cried in the tops of the ragged
pines below the castle's cliff. Many a day had Rosomond sat
there, listening for the sea measures, and fancying the beat of
the surf was the washing of the wave under the keel that car-
ried Tristan and Isolde, a thousand years ago and more, on the
waters just beyond; heard the very music of Isolde's wild lament;
watched for the white sail across the reef as if the sick knight
lay in the court-yard within under the linden-tree, in all the
## p. 13812 (#646) ##########################################
13812-
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
pathos of song and beauty and tragic fate; felt herself taken
into a world of romance, where the murmuring of the breeze
in the bough was the murmur of the skirts of the great forest of
Broceliande.
But this had nothing to do with romance now. She lay in
bed, with her little child near at hand,—the attendants just with-
out,-in the tower chamber where for generations the L'Aigle-
noirs had been born.
Through the deep windows she saw the swift-flying moon
touch the clouds sweeping in the wind, and light the swale on
the dark and lifted sea beyond; look in and now and again silver
the faces of the paladins and maidens in the pale blue-green
forest of the old tapestry, that slightly rippled and rose and fell,
as if with a consciousness of the windy gust that sung outside
the tower. It was that old paladin with the truncheon — a
paladin of Charlemagne's-from whom the Franche du Roys
counted. It was the châtelaine with the flagon that gave him his
quietus.
What did it all mean, though, at this moment? With the
heavy swaying of the tapestry, had these people by any chance.
left their silken shroud and come out into the room to look at
the child?
Not the twelve white-faced nuns; not the featureless young
squires and dames: but that old châtelaine of whose needle-
wrought semblance she had always been half afraid,-who car-
ried the golden flagon and gave the knight to drink, perhaps for
sleep, perhaps for death. Yes, that was she; but she had left
her majesty in the hangings, with her veil and horned head-
piece, her trailing samite and cloth of gold of cramoisie. Here,
with her thin gray tattered locks, pallid, pinched, and shrunken,
white as some reptile blanched beneath a stone, what was she to
be afraid of now? But this other-"Once the place was mine,
mine and my love's! " she was exclaiming. "Till the sea dark-
ened with their gilded prows, the sky darkened with their bitter
arrows! " Ah, yes, how many hundreds of years ago it was since
she defended the castle after a lance-head laid her lord low; and
the sea-rover had scaled the heights and taken her, loathing and
hating him, to wife. And from them had been born the line of
the L'Aiglenoirs!
And what was she doing here? What were they all doing
here, these women? What right had they in her room? Why
## p. 13813 (#647) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13813
were they looking with such ardent and eager eyes, murmuring
among themselves, hurrying past one another toward the child?
"Give way! " was La Dame Blanche exclaiming. "I was the
first. "
"Après moi," said the laughing lady, flittering along in her
butterfly gauzes, the diamonds in her tiara flashing out and
reluming again. "I am the last. "
"If so false a thing ever existed at all," said the woman with
the mass-book, or was it a book of jests? -the Flemish woman
who sold her daughter for a tulip.
"I give you my word I existed! " was the gay reply.
"Under your own signature? " asked the pretty patched and
powdered Watteau.
-
"Never mind whose signature. "
"Worthless," murmured a lady, lifting her black lace mask
from features sharp as a death's-head, and of a tint as wan as
the tints of a Boucher design,—“worthless in any event. "
"Ah, madame, from you to me? I was but your natural con-
sequence, you Voltairiennes, as you were all born on the night of
St. Bartholomew! "
"Its tocsin still rings in the air!
I am condemned ever to
hear the boom of the bell," complained the dark person with the
rosary.
And then the laughing lady twitched her beads; and there fell
out from her sleeve the perfumed fan whose breath was fever,
the gloves whose palms were deadly, brought with her Medicean.
mistress from Italy.
"A truce! ” cried the gay lady. "The birth of an heir to the
L'Aiglenoir Franche du Roys, with wealth to restore the ancient
splendor, is an event for due ceremony and precedence. I am
the child's grandmother, his very next of kin among us. And
you know the rights of the grandmother in France. "
«< They are our rights! " came a shrill multitudinous murmur.
"We all are grandmothers! "
"Are we all here ? " came a hollow whisper from the châte-
laine, the candlelight flickering in her flagon.
"All the fairy godmothers? " cried the gay lady.
"No, no," said La Dame Blanche: "there is one who has been
forgotten. "
"The wicked fairy," said the gay lady. "The rest of us are
of such a virtue. He will value us like his other objets de vertu. »
## p. 13814 (#648) ##########################################
13814
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
A COLD shiver coursed over Rosomond, but her eyes burned
with the intensity of her gaze. She understood it now. He was
the child of their blood. That was why they were here, why
they intruded themselves into her room. They had a right. It
had been their own room. For how many generations had the
L'Aiglenoirs been born in this room! She had never thought of
this when she sailed so gayly out of harbor, a bride with her
bridegroom, wearing his title, protected by his arm, so proud,
so glad, so happy that she had the wealth he needed, all that
so trifling beside the fact that they loved each other. She had
never dreamed of the little child to come, who would be dearer
than her life to her, and in whose veins must run a black drop
of the blood of all these creatures.
-
And now-oh, was there no remedy? Was there nothing
to counteract it, nothing to dissipate that black drop, to make
it colorless, powerless, harmless, a thing of air? Were there no
sweet, good people among all those dead and gone women?
Ah, yes, indeed, there they were! Far off, by the curtain of
the doorway, huddled together like a flock of frightened doves:
gentle ladies, quiet, timid, humble before heaven; ladies of placid
lives, no opportunities, small emotions, narrow routine; praying
by form, acting by precedent, without individuality; whose good-
ness was negative, whose doings were paltry; their poor drab be-
ings swamped and drowned and extinguished in the purples and
scarlets of these women of great passions, of scope, of daring
and deed and electric force, mates of men of force, whose posi-
tion had called crime to its aid, whose very crimes had enlarged
them, whose sins were things of power, strengthening their per-
sonality if but for evil, transmitting their potentiality—oh, no,
these gentle ladies signified nothing here!
A cold dew bathed Rosomond and beaded her brow. But
were the L'Aiglenoirs and their order all there were? Where
were her own people? Had they no right in the child? Could
they not cross the seas? Was there no requiting strength
among them? None in the mother of her father,―king of rail-
roads and mines and vast southwestern territory,-that stern,
repressed woman, who had spared and starved and saved to start.
her son in life? "Come! " cried Rosomond. "Come, my own
people! Oh, I need you now, I and my child! "
But among all these splendid dames of quality, accustomed to
wide outlook on the world, and a part of the events of nations,
## p. 13815 (#649) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13815
what had these village people to do,-these with their petty con-
cerns, the hatching of chickens, the counting of eggs, the quilt-
ing of stitches; these perhaps more prosperous, with interests
never going outside the burgh, whose virtues were passive, whose
highest dream was of a heaven like their own parlors, a God in
their own image: whose lives were eventless, whose memories.
were pallid, laid aside in the sweep of the great drama and with-
out a part; whose slighter nature was swollen, and whose larger
nature was shriveled from disuse? This colonial dame,- her
father the distilled essence of old Madeira and oily Jamaica, her
heart in her lace, her china, and her sweetmeat closet, her scrofu-
lous and scorbutic son lixiviated by indulgence,- had she much
counteracting force to give? Or had this one, in whom quar-
reled forever the mingled blood of persecuted Quaker and per-
secuting Puritan? Or this pale wife of the settler, haunted by
fear of the Indian, the apparitions of the forest, and the terrors
of her faith; or this other, the red-cloaked matron, fighting fire
with fire, the familiar of witches? Was there help to be hoped
for from this bland Pilgrim woman, who, through force of cir-
cumstances, was married with her nursling in her arms while her
husband was but three months dead? And did this downcast-
eyed, white-kerchiefed mistress, whose steadfastness her hardness
countervailed,-daughter of the Mayflower, the new sea-rover
coming out of the East, whose Norse fathers had come out of the
East before, do more than carry her back to the old Danes and
Vikings ambushed in their creeks? Her people, indeed! Return-
ing on the source -oh, it was all one and the same! It was all
misery!
―――――
-
What gifts were these grandmothers going to give the child
then? she asked. Pride and lust and cruelty, mocking impiety
and falsehood, bigotry that belied heaven as bitterly as unbelief,
vanity and selfishness and hate, theft and avarice and murder?
In the wild and wicked current of their blood the tide was hope-
lessly against him- his bones would be poured out like water!
Her pulse bounded, her brain was on fire. - Oh, no, no, the lit-
tle child-the new-born
help-some one!
some one must come.
some one must
Some one was coming. There was a stir without; the wind
was singing round the buttress as if it brought on its wings the
cry of the bright sea, the murmur of the wide wood; the moon-
light streamed in full and free.
-
-
## p. 13816 (#650) ##########################################
13816
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
"It is she," said La Dame Blanche.
"The wicked fairy-the unbidden godmother," said the gay
lady with a warning gesture.
"The one whom civilization has forgotten," said the Voltairi-
enne, readjusting her mask, "and whom culture has ignored. "
How sweet were the thunders of the sea sifted through dis-
tance, the whispers of the wave creaming up the shingle, that
crept into the room like the supporting harmony of the wind's
song! There was a rustle as if of all the leaves of the forest, a
quiver of reeds over blue water reflecting blue heaven, a sighing
of long grass above the nests of wild bees in the sunshine. And
who was this swift and supple creature with her free and fear-
less foot, large-limbed and lofty as Thusnelda, clad in her white
wolfskin, with the cloud of her yellow hair fallen about her,
carrying her green bough, strong, calm, sure, but with no smile.
upon her radiant face?
"The original savage," whispered the gay lady, as sovereign
and serene the unbidden godmother moved up the room; and the
others seemed to dissolve before her coming-to waver away
and to vanish.
She parted the hangings of the bassinet, and rested her hand
upon the sleeper of his first sleep, bending and gazing long.
"Waken," she said then, as she lifted and laid him at her
breast. "Drink of thy first mother's life, a balsam for every ill;
mother's milk that shall unpoison thy blood, and bring the thick
black drops to naught. Child of the weather and all out-doors,
latest child of mine, draw from me will and might and the love
of the undefiled, acquaintance with the rune that shall destroy
the venom that taints you, shall blast the wrong done you!
Draw large, free draughts! Return to me, thou man-child! I
give thee the strength of my forest, my rivers, my sea, my sun-
shine, my starshine, my own right arm, my heart! I cleanse
thee. The slime of the long years shall not cling to thee. I
start thee afresh, new-born. By night in my star-hung tent the
gods shall visit thee, by day thou shalt walk in the way of be-
coming a god thyself. I give thee scorn for the ignoble, trust
in thy fellow, dependence on thine own lusty sinew and uncon-
querable will,-familiar friend of hardship and content, spare
and pure and strong,-joy in the earth, the sun, the wind, faith
in the unseen. This is thy birthright. Whatever else the years
may bring, see that thou do it no wrong. I, the unpolluted,
## p. 13817 (#651) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13817
strong wild strain in thy blood, the vital savage, save thee from
thyself. Sleep now, sweet hope. The winds sing to thee, the
waves lull thee, the stars affright thee not! Dear son of thy
mother, sleep. "
And then a shiver ran through the long, moon-lighted tapes-
try, as the gust rose and fell, and the sea sighed up the reef,
and there was only silence and slumber in the room.
But Rosomond's women, when they came again, wondered and
were wise concerning a green bough that lay across the child.
THE KING'S DUST
From Titian's Garden and Other Poems. Copyright 1897, by Copeland
& Day
HOU shalt die," the priest said to the King.
"Thou shalt vanish like the leaves of spring.
Like the dust of any common thing
One day thou upon the winds shalt blow! "
"Nay, not so," the King said: "I shall stay
While the great sun in the sky makes day;
Heaven and earth, when I do, pass away.
In my tomb I wait till all things go! "
"T"
Then the King died. And with myrrh and nard,
Washed with palm-wine, swathed in linen hard,
Rolled in naphtha-gum, and under guard
Of his steadfast tomb, they laid the King.
Century fled to century; still he lay
Whole as when they hid him first away.
Sooth, the priest had nothing more to say,-
He, it seemed, the King, knew everything.
One day armies, with the tramp of doom,
Overthrew the huge blocks of the tomb;
Swarming sunbeams searched its chambered gloom,
Bedouins camped about the sand-blown spot.
Little Arabs, answering to their name,
With a broken mummy fed the flame;
Then a wind among the ashes came,
Blew them lightly, and the King was not!
## p. 13818 (#652) ##########################################
13818
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
ON AN OLD WOMAN SINGING
From Titian's Garden and Other Poems. Copyright 1897, by Copeland
& Day
S™
WEET are the songs that I have heard
From green boughs and the building bird;
From children bubbling o'er with tune
While sleep still held me half in swoon,
And surly bees hummed everywhere
Their drowsy bass along the air;
From hunters and the hunting-horn
Before the day-star woke the morn;
From boatmen in ambrosial dusk,
Where, richer than a puff of musk,
The blossom breath they drifted through
Fell out of branches drenched with dew.
And sweet the strains that come to me
When in great memories I see
All that full-throated quiring throng
Go streaming on the winds of song:
Her who afar in upper sky
Sounded the wild Brunhilde's cry,
With golden clash of shield and spear,
Singing for only gods to hear;
And her who on the trumpet's blare
Sang 'Angels Ever Bright and Fair,'
Her voice, her presence, where she stood,
Already part of Angelhood.
But never have I heard in song
Sweetness and sorrow so prolong
Their life as muted music rings
Along vibrating silver strings-
As when, with all her eighty years,
With all her fires long quenched in tears,
A little woman, with a look
Like some flower folded in a bock,
Lifted a thin and piping tone,
And like the sparrow made her moan,
Forgetful that another heard,
And sang till all her soul was stirred.
And listening, oh, what joy and grief
Trembled there like a trembling leaf!
## p. 13819 (#653) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13819
The strain where first-love thrilled the bars
Beneath the priesthood of the stars;
The murmur of soft lullabies
Above dear unconsenting eyes;
The hymns where once her pure soul trod
The heights above the hills of God,-
All on the quavering note awoke,
And in a silent passion broke,
And made that tender tune and word
The sweetest song I ever heard.
AT THE POTTER'S
From Titian's Garden and Other Poems. Copyright 1897, by Copeland
& Day
THER
HERE were two vases in the sun :
A bit of common earthenware,
A rude and shapeless jar, was one;
The other- could a thing more fair
Be made of clay? Blushed not so soft
The almond blossom in the light;
A lily's stem was not so slight
With lovely lines that lift aloft
Pure grace and perfectness full-blown;
-
And not beneath the finger tip
So smooth, or pressed upon the lip,
The velvet petal . of a rose.
Less fair were some great flower that blows
In a king's garden, changed to stone!
King's gardens do not grow such flowers,—
In a dream garden was it blown!
Fine fancies, in long sunny hours,
Brought it to beauty all its own.
With silent song its shape was wrought
From dart of wing, from droop of spray,
From colors of the breaking day,
Transfigured in a poet's thought.
At last, the finished flower of art -
The dream-flower on its slender stem
What fierce flames fused it to a gem!
A thousand times its weight in gold
A prince paid, ere its price was told;
Then set it on a shelf apart.
-
## p. 13820 (#654) ##########################################
13820
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
But through the market's gentle gloom,
Crying his ever-fragrant oil,
That should anoint the bride in bloom,
That should the passing soul assoil,
Later the man with attar came,
And tossed a penny down and poured
In the rude jar his precious hoard.
What perfume, like a subtile flame,
Sprang through its substance happy-starred!
Whole roses into blossom leapt,
Whole gardens in its warm heart slept!
Long afterwards, thrown down in haste,
The jar lay, shattered and made waste,
But sweet to its remotest shard!
EQUATIONS
From Titian's Garden and Other Poems. Copyright 1897, by Copeland
& Day
you
ou so sure the world is full of laughter,
Not a place in it for any sorrow,
Sunshine with no shadow to come after
Wait, O mad one, wait until to-morrow!
You so sure the world is full of weeping,
Only gloom in all the colors seven,
Every wind across a new grave creeping-
Think, O sad one, yesterday was heaven!
YOUNG and strong I went along the highway,
Seeking Joy from happy sky to sky;
I met Sorrow coming down a byway-
What had she to do with such as I?
Sorrow with a slow detaining gesture
Waited for me on the widening way,
Threw aside her shrouding veil and vesture —
Joy had turned to Sorrow's self that day!
*
IF SOME great giver give me life,
And give me love, and give me double,
Shall I not also at his hand
Take trouble?
*
## p. 13821 (#655) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13821
And if through awful gloom I see
The lightnings of his great will thrusting,
Shall I not, dying at his hand,
Die trusting?
"WHEN FIRST YOU WENT »
From Titian's Garden and Other Poems. Copyright 1897, by Copeland
& Day
W
HEN first you went, oh, desert was the day,
The lonely day, and desert was the night;
And alien was the power that robbed from me
The white and starlike beauty of your face,
The white and starlike splendor of your soul!
Since you were all of life, I too had died,—
Died, not as you into the larger life,
But into nothingness,― had not the thought
Of your bright being led outward, as a beam
Piercing the labyrinthine gloom shows light
Somewhere existing.
Like a golden lure
Bringing me to the open was the thought,—
For since I loved you still, you still must be,
And where you were, there I must follow you.
And follow, follow, follow, cried the winds,
And follow, follow, murmured all the tides,
And follow, sang the stars that wove the web
Of their white orbits far in shining space,
Where Sirius with his dark companion went.
Bound in the bands of Law they ranged the deep;
And Law, I said, means Will to utter Law;
And Will means One, indeed, to have the Will.
And having found that One, shall it not be
The One Supreme of all, whose power I prove,
Whose inconceivable intelligence
Faintly divine, and who perforce must dwell
Compact of love, that most supreme of all ?
Had I found God, and should I not find you?
That love supreme will never mock my search.
That thought accordant in the infinite
The great flame of your spirit will not quench.
That power embattled through the universe
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13822
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
Needs in all firmaments your panoply
Of stainless purity, of crystal truth;
Your sympathy that melts into the pang,
Your blazing wrath with wrong, your tenderness
To every small or suffering thing, as sweet
As purple twilight touching throbbing eyes:
Your answer to great music when it breathes
Silver and secret speech from sphere to sphere;
Your thrill before the beauty of the earth;
Your passion for the sorrow of the race!
You who in the gray waste of night awoke
When clashing mill-bells frolicking in air
Called up the day, and sounded in your ear
Clank of enormous fetters that have bound
Labor in all lands; you whose pity went
Out on the long swell where the fisherman
Slides with his shining boat-load in the dark;
You whom the versed in statecraft paused to hear,
The sullen prisoner blest, the old man loved,
The little children ran along beside;
You who to women were the Knight of God.
Therefore as God lives, so I know do you.
And with that knowledge comes a keener joy
Than blushing, beating, folds young love about.
Again the sky burns azure, and the stars
Lean from their depths to tell me of your state.
Again the sea-line meets the line divine,
And the surge shatters in wide melody;
The unguessed hues that the soul swells to note
Haunting the rainbow's edges lead me on;
And all the dropping dews of summer nights
Keep measure with the music in my heart.
And still I climb where you have passed before,
Unchallenged spirit who inclosed my days
As in a jewel, walled about with light!
And far, far off, I seem to see you go
Familiar of unknown immensity,
And move, enlarged to all the rosy vast,
And boon companion of the dawn beyond.
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13823
MADAME DE STAËL
(1766-1817)
N THE very interesting and admirable notice of Madame de
Staël by her cousin, Madame Necker de Saussure, it is said:
"The works of Madame de Staël seem to belong to the.
future. They indicate, as they also tend to produce, a new epoch in
society and in letters; an age of strong, generous, living thought,-of
emotions springing from the heart:" and there follows a description
of the sort of literature to which Madame de Staël's writings belong,
-a literature "more spoken than written," a literature of spontaneous,
informal expression, which appeals to us
more intimately and more powerfully than
any elaborate and studied composition. This
appeal is especially intimate and powerful
in Madame de Staël's pages, because she
may be called, perhaps, the first "modern
woman. " She had in many respects a tone
of mind resembling our Own more than
it resembled that of the greater number
of even the noteworthy men and women of
her own day. There is a much greater
moral distance between her and her imme-
diate predecessors in society and in liter-
ature, than between her and her immediate
successors-whether in France or elsewhere.
This kinship with the last half of the nineteenth century, and with
other modes of thought than those of her own country, is partly due
to her Protestant form of faith. She cared little for dogmas, but the
fibre of her being had been fed by liberal Protestant thought. From
this cause chiefly, though there were others also, arose a striking
contrast between the tone of her mind and that of her great contem-
porary Châteaubriand. Their opinions on all subjects were affected
and colored by their religious opinions. He is now remote from us,
he is read as "a classic": she comes close to us, and inspires us with
friendly emotions.
To be in advance of one's age, if one is a genius, is to tread a
sure path to immortality; but if, like Madame de Staël, one is only
the possessor of intellectual ability, it is the straight road to for-
getfulness. Those who come after us take little interest in hearing
MADAME DE STAËL
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13824
MADAME DE STAËL
their own ideas expressed less effectively than they themselves are
expressing them; and so it happens that the world of letters now
takes too little account of Madame de Staël, while her own times
were incompetent to judge her. We do not value her enough: they
did not value her rightly. The false and brilliant light thrown
upon her by the enmity of Napoleon, obscured rather than revealed
what was really interesting and noble in her; while the assumption
that because there was a masculine scope and strength in her intelli-
gence she had a masculine nature, has completely confused her image.
She was not precisely feminine, but she was essentially a woman; and
her most admirable powers, her highest successes, her real importance
to the world, lie in the fact that her thoughts passed from her brain
through a woman's heart. It must be confessed it did not always
make them wiser thoughts; but it invested them with a sincerity and
an ardor that give the force of fine passion to studies in politics and
in literature. For these studies in politics and in literature are at
bottom studies in sociology,- that science whose name was unknown,
while its foundations were being laid by the promoters, the victims,
the critics of the French Revolution; the science whose students are
lovers of humanity.
This noble title is one to which Madame de Staël has full right.
She is a leader in the great army of those who love, who honor, and
who desire to serve their kind: one of those leaders who disseminate
their principles and communicate their emotions, but who give no
positive counsels; who show their quality chiefly by their love of
liberty and their love of light. Wherever she saw the traces of lib-
erty or the track of light, she followed fearlessly. And therefore it
is, that as one of the last and one of the ablest of her critics-M. Al-
bert Sorel- has remarked (in the excellent study of her published
in the series of 'Les Grands Écrivains Français), few writers have
exercised in so many different directions, so prolonged an influence.
She had during her life, and she continues to have after her death,
an immense power of inspiring other souls with lofty aspirations and
high thoughts.
It is chiefly the qualities of her character that make her writings
now worth reading. Her character illuminates the whole mass. Many
of her pages would be dull and empty to the reader of to-day, if
it were not that every sentence-involuntarily but unrestrainedly —
reveals the writer. She recognized this herself, and said: "When
one writes for the satisfaction of the inward inspiration that takes
possession of the soul, the writings make known, even without intend-
ing it, the writer's mental conditions, of every kind and degree. ”
Between the lines of her own writings her whole life may be read;
not her life of thought only, but her life of action.
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MADAME DE STAËL
13825
This life of action, of incessant humane action on others, and with
and for others, was of too complicated a character, and involved too
many relations, to be narrated here save in the most general terms.
The supreme affections of her life were, from birth to death, for her
father, and during twenty years for her lover, Benjamin Constant.
These two passions colored her whole existence: her ardent love and
admiration for her father supplied unfailing nutriment to her heart,
and her enthusiasm for Benjamin Constant (of which he was little
worthy) stimulated her intellect to its most brilliant achievements.
Too much stress can hardly be laid on the ennobling effects on her
character of her father's influence. He can scarcely be called a great
man; but she fervently adored him with the deepest gratitude all hi
life, and after his death, in a singularly delightful intimacy of rela-
tion.
As her father's daughter, and from her own noble powers, she be-
came one of the most conspicuous figures in the party of the consti-
tutional reformers, and was more or less drawn into political affairs.
But she never threw herself into the current; she never left her
salon, whatever was going on outside; and when the earthquake of
the Revolution came and her four walls fell, she could find no refuge
in any party lines. She was from first to last a witness of political
events rather than an actor in them; a witness of most exceptional
quality, who could distinguish in the confused and troubled present
the old instincts of the past and the new beliefs of the future, and
could indicate in lasting lines the meaning of the passing day.
This is the more remarkable because, woman-like, she was always
more interested in persons than in purposes,- in the actors than in
the actions: and while her sympathies were strong for "the people,"
she hardly took count of "the State" in the abstract; the word
rarely occurs in her writings. The establishment of guarantees of
political liberty was what her political friends strove for; and as M.
Sorel points out, this enlightened demand was not quite the same as
the blind demand for civil liberty and its concomitants, which inspired
the passions of the great majority of Frenchmen.
