so they were
straight
as javelins; they could
lift their hands above their heads!
lift their hands above their heads!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v21 - Rab to Rus
It bears the mark of
being an improvisation, not a finished piece of ballad-writing, and
hardly belongs in the class of ballad masterpieces. But it is decid-
edly effective. The Closing Scene' is an example of the blending of
human interest with descriptions of nature. It is on a few of these
lyrics that Read's reputation rests; and he has had the good fortune
to strike an occasional note to which there was and is a response
from many readers.
[The following poems are reprinted with the approval of the J. B. Lippin-
cott Co. , publishers. ]
DRIFTING
Y SOUL to-day
M*
Is far away,
Sailing the Vesuvian Bay;
My winged boat,
A bird afloat,
Swims round the purple peaks remote;
Round purple peaks
It sails, and seeks
Blue inlets and their crystal creeks,
Where high rocks throw,
Through deeps below,
A duplicated golden glow.
Far, vague, and dim,
The mountains swim;
While on Vesuvius's misty brim,
With outstretched hands,
The gray smoke stands
O'erlooking the volcanic lands.
## p. 12096 (#134) ##########################################
12096
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
Here Ischia smiles
O'er liquid miles;
And yonder, bluest of the isles,
Calm Capri waits,
Her sapphire gates
Beguiling to her bright estates.
I heed not if
My rippling skiff
Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff;
With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Under the walls of Paradise.
Under the walls
Where swells and falls
The Bay's deep breast at intervals,
At peace I lie,
Blown softly by,-
A cloud upon this liquid sky.
The day, so mild,
Is heaven's own child,
With earth and ocean reconciled;
The airs I feel
Around me steal
Are murmuring to the murmuring keel.
Over the rail
My hand I trail
Within the shadow of the sail;
A joy intense,
The cooling sense
Glides down my drowsy indolence.
With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Where Summer sings and never dies;
O'erveiled with vines,
She glows and shines
Among her future oil and wines.
Her children, hid
The cliffs amid,
Are gamboling with the gamboling kid;
## p. 12097 (#135) ##########################################
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
12097
Or down the walls,
With tipsy calls,
Laugh on the rocks like waterfalls.
XXI-757
The fisher's child,
With tresses wild,
Unto the smooth, bright sand beguiled,
With glowing lips
Sings as she skips,
Or gazes at the far-off ships.
Yon deep bark goes
Where traffic blows,
From lands of sun to lands of snows;
This happier one,
Its course is run
From lands of snow to lands of sun.
O happy ship,
To rise and dip,
With the blue crystal at your lip!
O happy crew,
My heart with you
Sails, and sails, and sings anew!
No more, no more
The worldly shore
Upbraids me with its loud uproar:
With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Under the walls of Paradise!
SHERIDAN'S RIDE
U
P FROM the south at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste to the chieftain's door,
The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.
And wider still those billows of war
Thundered along the horizon's bar;
## p. 12098 (#136) ##########################################
12098
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
And louder yet into Winchester rolled
The roar of that red sea uncontrolled;
Making the blood of the listener cold,
As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.
But there is a road from Winchester town,
A good broad highway leading down:
And there, through the flush of the morning light,
A steed as black as the steeds of night
Was seen to pass, as with eagle flight,
As if he knew the terrible need;
He stretched away with his utmost speed:
Hills rose and fell; but his heart was gay,
With Sheridan fifteen miles away.
Still sprang from those swift hoofs, thundering south,
The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth,
Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.
The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;
Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
With Sheridan only ten miles away.
Under his spurning feet the road.
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
And the landscape sped away behind
Like an ocean flying before the wind;
And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire,
Swept on, with his wild eye full of fire.
But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire;
He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
With Sheridan only five miles away.
The first that the general saw were the groups
Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops:
What was done? what to do? a glance told him both.
Then striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,
He dashed down the line, 'mid a storm of huzzas,
And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;
By the flash of his eye and the red nostril's play
## p. 12099 (#137) ##########################################
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
12099
He seemed to the whole great army to say,
"I have brought you Sheridan all the way
From Winchester down, to save the day. "
Hurrah! hurrah! for Sheridan!
Hurrah! hurrah! for horse and man!
And when their statues are placed on high,
Under the dome of the Union sky,
The American soldier's Temple of Fame,
There with the glorious general's name,
Be it said, in letters both bold and bright:-
"Here is the steed that saved the day
By carrying Sheridan into the fight,
From Winchester-twenty miles away! "
WITH
THE CLOSING SCENE
ITHIN his sober realm of leafless trees
The russet year inhaled the dreamy air;
Like some tanned reaper in his hour of ease,
When all the fields are lying brown and bare.
The gray barns looking from their hazy hills
O'er the dim waters widening in the vales,
Sent down the air a greeting to the mills,
On the dull thunder of alternate flails.
All sights were mellowed and all sounds subdued;
The hills seemed farther and the streams sang low;
As in a dream, the distant woodman hewed
His winter log with many a muffled blow.
The embattled forests, erewhile armed in gold,
Their banners bright with every martial hue,
Now stood, like some sad beaten host of old,
Withdrawn afar in Time's remotest blue.
On slumberous wings the vulture held his flight;
The dove scarce heard his sighing mate's complaint;
And like a star slow drowning in the light,
The village church-vane seemed to pale and faint.
The sentinel-cock upon the hillside crew
Crew thrice, and all was stiller than before,
―――
## p. 12100 (#138) ##########################################
12100
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
Silent till some replying warder blew
His alien horn, and then was heard no more.
Where erst the jay, within the elm's tall crest,
Made garrulous trouble round her unfledged young,
And where the oriole hung her swaying nest,
By every light wind like a censer swung;
Where sang the noisy masons of the eaves,
The busy swallows, circling ever near,
Foreboding, as the rustic mind believes,
An early harvest and a plenteous year;
Where every bird which charmed the vernal feast
Shook the sweet slumber from its wings at morn,
To warn the reaper of the rosy east,-
All now was songless, empty, and forlorn.
Alone from out the stubble piped the quail,
And croaked the crow through all the dreamy gloom;
Alone the pheasant, drumming in the vale,
Made echo to the distant cottage loom.
There was no bud, no bloom upon the bowers;
The spiders wove their thin shrouds night by night;
The thistle-down, the only ghost of flowers,
Sailed slowly by, passed noiseless out of sight.
Amid all this, in this most cheerless air,
And where the woodbine shed upon the porch
Its crimson leaves, as if the Year stood there
Firing the floor with his inverted torch; -
Amid all this, the centre of the scene,
The white-haired matron, with monotonous tread,
Plied the swift wheel, and with her joyless mien
Sat like a Fate, and watched the flying thread.
She had known Sorrow,- he had walked with her,
Oft supped and broke the bitter ashen crust;
And in the dead leaves still she heard the stir
Of his black mantle trailing in the dust.
While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom,
Her country summoned and she gave her all;
And twice War bowed to her his sable plume—
Regave the swords to rust upon her wall.
## p. 12101 (#139) ##########################################
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
12101
Regave the swords,- but not the hand that drew
And struck for Liberty its dying blow;
Nor him who, to his sire and country true,
Fell 'mid the ranks of the invading foe.
Long, but not loud, the droning wheel went on,
Like the low murmur of a hive at noon;
Long, but not loud, the memory of the gone
Breathed through her lips a sad and tremulous tune.
At last the thread was snapped - her head was bowed;
Life dropped the distaff through his hands serene:
And loving neighbors smoothed her careful shroud,
While Death and Winter closed the autumn scene.
INEZ
DOWN
OWN behind the hidden village, fringed around with hazel
brake,
(Like a holy hermit dreaming, half asleep and half awake,
One who loveth the sweet quiet for the happy quiet's sake,)
Dozing, murmuring in its visions, lay the heaven-enamored lake.
And within a doll where shadows through the brightest days
abide,
Like the silvery swimming gossamer by breezes scattered wide,
Fell a shining skein of water that ran down the lakelet's side,
As within the brain by beauty lulled, a pleasant thought may
glide.
When the sinking sun of August, growing large in the decline,
Shot his arrows long and golden through the maple and the pine;
And the russet-thrush fled singing from the alder to the vine,
While the cat-bird in the hazel gave its melancholy whine;
And the little squirrel chattered, peering round the hickory bole,
And, a-sudden like a meteor, gleamed along the oriole;-
There I walked beside fair Inez, and her gentle beauty stole
Like the scene athwart my senses, like the sunshine through my
soul.
And her fairy feet that pressed the leaves, a pleasant music made,
And they dimpled the sweet beds of moss with blossoms thick in-
laid:
## p. 12102 (#140) ##########################################
12102
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
There I told her old romances, and with love's sweet woe we
played,
Till fair Inez's eyes, like evening, held the dew beneath their
shade.
There I wove for her love ballads, such as lover only weaves,
Till she sighed and grieved, as only mild and loving maiden
grieves;
And to hide her tears she stooped to glean the violets from the
leaves,
As of old sweet Ruth went gleaning 'mid the Oriental sheaves.
Down we walked beside the lakelet: gazing deep into her eye,
There I told her all my passion! With a sudden blush and sigh,
Turning half away with look askant, she only made reply,
"How deep within the water glows the happy evening sky! "
Then I asked her if she loved me, and our hands met each in
each,
And the dainty, sighing ripples seemed to listen up the reach;
While thus slowly with a hazel wand she wrote along the beach,
"Love, like the sky, lies deepest ere the heart is stirred to speech. "
Thus I gained the love of Inez, thus I won her gentle hand;
And our paths now lie together, as our footprints on the strand;
We have vowed to love each other in the golden morning land,
When our names from earth have vanished like the writing from
the sand!
## p. 12103 (#141) ##########################################
12103
CHARLES READE
(1814-1884)
N THE early fifties, Mrs. Seymour, a popular actress at the
Haymarket Theatre, London, received a call one day from
a stranger, a Mr. Charles Reade. He was a tall, heavily
built man of attractive manner, and seemed younger than his age,
which was nearly forty. For some years he had been writing plays,
and trying unsuccessfully to get them accepted. He had brought
part of a manuscript drama, which he was anxious to read her. Mrs.
Seymour listened politely, was complimentary, but added, "Why don't
you write a novel? " This indirect criticism
stung the would-be dramatist, who hurried
away. Good-natured Mrs. Seymour, sorry
to have wounded her visitor, and conclud-
ing that he was pressed by poverty, wrote
him a kindly note inclosing a £5 note as
a loan. Charles Reade promptly returned
the money, but he welcomed the 'frank
sympathy. The two became friends; and
his talent thus gained a much-needed prac-
tical stimulus. Up to this time he had been
somewhat of a dilettante,- ardent, ambi-
tious, and energetic, but disseminating his
forces too widely for adequate achievement.
CHARLES READE
From his boyhood he had been strongly
attracted toward drama. Its life and action, the visual presentment
of moral problems, suited his taste. Yet all his first plays were re-
fused by the managers. To the end of his life he considered himself
primarily a playwright, in spite of the greater success of his fiction.
Some of his plots took form first as plays, and some first as stories;
but sooner or later most of them found their way to the stage.
Among his early works are many sketches and short stories, writ-
ten for cheap London journals; and it is characteristic of the man
that he did these as well as he could, and signed his own name to
them, although by so doing he led the critics to consider him beneath
their notice.
His first noteworthy original work- he had done some transla-
tion was the well known and brilliant comedy, 'Masks and Faces,'
## p. 12104 (#142) ##########################################
12104
CHARLES READE
which he wrote in collaboration with Tom Taylor. The effective plot-
development shows dramatic instinct; and the spontaneity and spark-
ling dialogue gave it great vogue. Later, acting upon Mrs. Seymour's
suggestion, he turned it into a novel, 'Peg Woffington' (1852). The
next year he published another story, 'Christie Johnstone,' which
resembles Peg Woffington' in its primarily dramatic arrangement.
In vivid characterization, descriptive charm, and emotional range, the
two are as fine and as distinctive as anything he ever wrote. During
holiday trips in Scotland he had gathered material for Christie
Johnstone'; and he was thoroughly at home in the breezy fishing
hamlet where Joan and Christie, sturdy young fishwives, teach the
blasé young viscount the true values of life. The wit though sharp
is good-natured, and mingled with deeper sentiment. Humor and
pathos, tragedy and comedy, are all blended in the one short tale.
With drawing-room life Reade was not in sympathy; nor does he
describe it successfully. But he excels in the strong presentment of
individuals, and in establishing the harmony between them and their
environment. Rugged Griffith Gaunt is an unpleasant but very real
country gentleman of a past century. Jael Dence in her reserve and
simple strength is the product of her native village.
Charles Reade was born at Ipsden in 1814, youngest of the eleven
children of John Reade, a good country squire. His father and
mother were busy, healthy people, fond of society, of religious ob-
servances, of regulating village affairs. Among their many interests
their children were decidedly in the way; and although they loved
them heartily, they gladly turned them over to tutors and governesses
as soon as possible. Charles spent much of his childhood in boarding-
school; for years with a merciless Mr. Slater, who flogged his pupils
daily, and whose only idea of teaching was memory-cramming. It
was not until he escaped from this thraldom that Reade began to
show his quickness of mind.
In 1831 he entered Magdalen College on a demyship; and three
years later, when he took his degree, he was appointed to a fellow-
ship, which he held for fifty years, until his death in 1884. In spite
of this long connection he did not love Oxford. His free-lance spirit
detested her conventions, and he preferred the freer air of London.
Nor did he love the fellowship which he could not resign. Charles
Reade never experienced acute poverty, yet for years his means
were just meagre enough to make him feel pinched and uncomforta-
ble. His fellowship with its income was necessary to him. So his
life was perforce influenced by monasticism; and he showed a deep
personal appreciation of all the commonplace happiness renounced by
the monk Gerard, the epic hero of The Cloister and the Hearth. '
After his graduation he read law; in rather desultory fashion, for his
## p. 12105 (#143) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12105
livelier interests were in general reading, in making himself an
authority upon violins ancient and modern, and in traveling when-
ever he could afford it.
It took the public some time to relish Reade's new flavor and to
recognize his merit. But with 'It's Never too Late to Mend' (1856)
he found himself a popular novelist. The book provoked wide dis-
cussion, and was read, praised, and reviled on both sides of the
Atlantic.
Charles Reade was a fighting Englishman, always ready for a fray,
always believing himself or somebody else ill-used. He was a man
of deep feeling, too alive to human suffering to take life lightly. He
was a man of intense energy which constantly sought vent.
He was
generous and warm-hearted, ready to give time, money, and influence
for the relief of others. The morbid sensitiveness to criticism which
continually embroiled him with critics and publishers, and most of
those with whom he had business dealings, made him a butt of ridi-
cule. It was not all self-love, but a stout demand for justice, which
he was as ready to make for others as for himself. No sooner was
he fairly launched as a writer of repute than he aspired to become a
social reformer. This inclination was doubtless strengthened by his
friendship with Dickens, for whose Household Words and All the
Year Round he wrote; and whom he warmly admired. The two had
been introduced by Bulwer-Lytton, and found themselves in sym-
pathy at once. Like the author of 'Nicholas Nickleby,' Reade longed
to right abuses. 'It's Never too Late to Mend' was an exposition of
the evils of the English prison system. So strong was the indignation
aroused, that when reproduced at the Princess Theatre years after
its first dramatization, there was almost a riot in the audience. What
he himself said in it might stand as a motto to most of his novels:
"I have taken a few undeniable truths out of many, and have labored to
make my readers realize those appalling facts of the day which most men
know, but not one in a thousand comprehends, and not one in a hundred
thousand realizes, until fiction—which, whatever you may have been told to
the contrary, is the highest, widest, noblest, and greatest of all the arts-
comes to his aid, studies, penetrates, digests the hard facts of chronicles and
blue-books, and makes their dry bones live. "
He took up one alleged evil after another: in 'Hard Cash,' abuses
of insane asylums, and still more the legal power of physicians to
commit for insanity, which he accused them of exercising on the
sane for bribes; in Foul Play,' those in the merchant shipping ser-
vice; in 'Put Yourself in His Place,' those resulting from trades-unions
and labor conditions. Upon these different themes he employed all
his strength of mind and imagination, and he produced novels which
## p. 12106 (#144) ##########################################
12106
CHARLES READE
were read, and are still read, for their lively romantic interest. Never
dully didactic, they fully achieved a forceful presentment of the evil.
The system upon which he worked was laborious. "I propose
never to guess what I can know," he said; and was an indefatigable
collector of newspaper clippings, institution reports, and the like.
When his statements were questioned, his facts denied, or he was
accused of exaggeration, he would turn triumphantly to his carefully
classified collections, and refute the objection with positive proof.
He knew how to fuse this material into an artistic whole. "It
would require a chemical analysis to separate the fiction from the
reality," said Justin McCarthy of Reade's novels.
"I studied the great art of fiction closely for fifteen years before
I presumed to write a word of it. I was a ripe critic long before I
became an artist," wrote Reade. One result of this study was the
determination to seek personal sincerity of expression above every-
thing else. In the effort to see things for himself, not through other
people's eyes, his unusualness of phrase is sometimes startling. The
effect is often delightfully novel, occasionally harsh and jagged. Yet
there is always a charm in his trenchant wit and uncompromising
frankness. He pictured English life as he saw it, with an intuition of
what was salient in a character, a locality, or a period.
In 1859 Charles Reade published in Once a Week a short serial
called 'A Good Fight. ' While writing it he discovered other possibil-
ities in the plot, and resolved to give it a more comprehensive treat-
ment. But the publishers of the magazine took editorial liberties
with the manuscript, which Reade quickly resented. Therefore he
hurried up the tale to a happy but inartistic conclusion, and soon set
about remodeling it on a different scale, and with the new title, 'The
Cloister and the Hearth. '
"The Cloister and the Hearth' (1861), Reade's masterpiece, stands
out clearly differentiated from anything else he did. He put his best
into it, and the maturity of his mind. He was a scholar as well as
man of general reading, and for all his knowledge he found scope in
this great mediæval romance. All the minor characters as well as
the pathetic figures of Gerard and Margaret, and the gay Burgundian
Denys are drawn with an artistic insight and power of sympathy.
which make the old time live again. With rare synthetic power, his
imagination grasped the social conditions of the fifteenth century, and
recognized what the lives of men and women must have been. His
book is truer than history; for while based on historical records, it
reflects with life and color, not alone outward fact but also the work-
ings of minds and hearts.
## p. 12107 (#145) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12107
VISCOUNT AND LOWER CLASSES
From Christie Johnstone'
THE
HE air was tepid, pure and sweet as heaven. This bright
afternoon, nature had grudged nothing that could give fresh
life and hope to such dwellers in dust and smoke and vice
as were there, to look awhile on her clean face and drink her
honeyed breath.
This young gentleman was not insensible to the beauty of the
scene. He was a little lazy by nature, and made lazier by the
misfortune of wealth: but he had sensibilities. He was an artist
of great natural talent. Had he only been without a penny, how
he would have handled the brush! And then he was a mighty
sailor. If he had sailed for biscuit a few years, how he would
have handled a ship!
As he was, he had the eye of a hawk for nature's beauties;
and the sea always came back to him like a friend after an
absence.
This scene, then, curled round his heart a little; and he felt
the good physician was wiser than the tribe that go by that
name, and strive to build health on the sandy foundation of
drugs.
"Saunders, do you know what Dr. Aberford means by the
lower classes? "
"Perfectly, my lord. "
"Are there any about here? "
"I am sorry to say they are everywhere, my lord. "
"Get me some » - (cigarette).
Out went Saunders, with his usual graceful empressement, but
an internal shrug of his shoulders.
He was absent an hour and a half; he then returned with a
double expression on his face. Pride at his success in diving to
the very bottom of society, and contempt of what he had fished
up thence.
He approached his lord mysteriously, and said, sotto voce but
impressively, "This is low enough, my lord. " Then glided back,
and ushered in, with polite disdain, two lovelier women than he
had ever opened a door to in the whole course of his perfumed
existence.
On their heads they wore caps of Dutch or Flemish origin,
with a broad lace border, stiffened, and arched over the forehead
## p. 12108 (#146) ##########################################
12108
CHARLES READE
about three inches high, leaving the brow and cheeks unincum-
bered.
They had cotton jackets, bright red and yellow, mixed in pat-
terns, confined at the waist by the apron-strings, but bobtailed
below the waist; short woolen petticoats, with broad vertical
stripes, red and white, most vivid in color; white worsted stock-
ings, and neat though high-quartered shoes. Under their jackets
they wore a thick spotted cotton handkerchief, about one inch of
which was visible round the lower part of the throat.
Of their petticoats, the outer one was kilted, or gathered up
towards the front; and the second, of the same color, hung in the
usual way.
Of these young women, one had an olive complexion, with
the red blood mantling under it, and black hair, and glorious
black eyebrows.
The other was fair, with a massive but shapely throat, as
white as milk; glossy brown hair, the loose threads of which
glittered like gold, and a blue eye, which being contrasted with
dark eyebrows and lashes, took the luminous effect peculiar to
that rare beauty.
Their short petticoats revealed a neat ankle, and a leg with a
noble swell; for Nature, when she is in earnest, builds beauty on
the ideas of ancient sculptors and poets, not of modern poetasters,
who with their air-like sylphs, and their smoke-like verses, fight
for want of flesh in woman and want of fact in poetry as paral-
lel beauties.
They are, my lads. - Continues!
These women had a grand corporeal trait: they had never
known a corset!
so they were straight as javelins; they could
lift their hands above their heads! -actually! Their supple per-
sons moved as nature intended; every gesture was ease, grace,
and freedom.
What with their own radiance, and the snowy cleanliness and
brightness of their costume, they came like meteors into the
apartment.
Lord Ipsden, rising gently from his seat, with the same quiet
politeness with which he would have received two princes of the
blood, said, "How do you do? " and smiled a welcome.
་་
"Fine! hoow's yoursel'? " answered the dark lass, whose name
was Jean Carnie, and whose voice was not so sweet as her face.
"What'n lord are ye? " continued she. "Are you a juke? —I
wad like fine to hae a crack wi' a juke. "
## p. 12109 (#147) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12109
Saunders, who knew himself the cause of this question, replied
sotto voce, "His Lordship is a viscount. "
"But it has a bonny
"I dinna ken't," was Jean's remark.
soond. "
"What mair would ye hae? " said the fair beauty, whose name
was Christie Johnstone. Then appealing to his Lordship as the
likeliest to know, she added, "Nobeelity is just a soond itsel', I'm
tauld. »
The viscount, finding himself expected to say something on
a topic he had not attended much to, answered dryly, "We must
ask the republicans: they are the people that give their minds to
such subjects. "
"And yon man," asked Jean Carnie,- "is he a lord too? »
"I am his Lordship's servant," replied Saunders gravely, not
without a secret misgiving whether fate had been just.
"Na! " replied she, not to be imposed upon. "Ye are state-
lier and prooder than this ane. "
"I will explain," said his master. "Saunders knows his value:
a servant like Saunders is rarer than an idle viscount. "
"My lord, my lord! " remonstrated Saunders, with a shocked
and most disclamatory tone. "Rather! " was his inward reflection.
"Jean," said Christie, "ye hae muckle to laern. Are ye for
herrin' the day, Vile Count? "
"No: are you for this sort of thing? "
At this, Saunders, with a world of empressement, offered the
Carnie some cake that was on the table.
She took a piece, instantly spat it out into her hand, and with
more energy than delicacy flung it into the fire.
"Augh! " cried she, "just a sugar and saut butter thegither:
buy nae mair at yon shoep, Vile Count. "
"Try this, out of Nature's shop," laughed their entertainer;
and he offered them, himself, some peaches and things.
"Hech! a medi-cine! " said Christie.
"Nature, my lad," said Miss Carnie, making her ivory teeth
meet in their first nectarine, "I dinna ken whaur ye stoep, but
ye beat the other confectioners, that div ye. "
The fair lass, who had watched the viscount all this time as
demurely as a cat cream, now approached him.
This young woman was the thinker: her voice was also rich,
full, and melodious, and her manner very engaging; it was half
advancing, half retiring, not easy to resist or to describe.
## p. 12110 (#148) ##########################################
12110
CHARLES READE
"Noo," said she, with a very slight blush stealing across her
face, "ye maun let me catecheeze ye, wull ye? »
The last two words were said in a way that would have in-
duced a bear to reveal his winter residence.
He smiled assent.
Saunders retired to the door, and exclud-
ing every shade of curiosity from his face, took an attitude half
majesty, half obsequiousness.
Christie stood by Lord Ipsden, with one hand on her hip (the
knuckles downwards), but graceful as Antinoüs, and began: —
"Hoo muckle is the Queen greater than y'are? "
His Lordship was obliged to reflect.
as is the moon to a
"Let me see;
wax taper, so is her
Majesty the Queen to you and me and the rest. "
"An' whaur does the juke come in? "
"On this particular occasion, the duke makes one of us, my
pretty maid. "
"I see! Are na ye awfu' prood o' being a lorrd? "
"What an idea! "
--
"His Lordship did not go to bed a spinning-jenny, and rise up
a lord, like some of them," put in Saunders.
"Saunders," said the peer doubtfully, "eloquence rather bores
people. "
"Then I mustn't speak again, my lord," said Saunders, respect-
fully.
"Noo," said the fair inquisitor, "ye shall tell me how ye came
to be lorrds, your faemily. "
"Saunders! "
"Na! ye mauna flee to Sandy for a thing: ye are no a bairn,
are ye? "
Here was a dilemma: the Saunders prop knocked rudely away,
and obliged to think for ourselves.
But Saunders would come to his distressed master's assist-
ance. He furtively conveyed to him a plump book,- this was
Saunders's manual of faith; the author was Mr. Burke-not
Edmund.
Lord Ipsden ran hastily over the page, closed the book, and
said, "Here is the story:-
"Five hundred years ago - >>
"Listen, Jean," said Christie: "we're gaun to get a boeny
story. 'Five hundre' years ago,'" added she, with interest and
awe.
## p. 12111 (#149) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
་་
was a great battle," resumed the narrator in cheerful tones,
as one larking with history, "between a King of England and
his rebels. He was in the thick of the fight-"
12111
"That's the King, Jean,- he was in the thick o't. "
"My ancestor killed a fellow who was sneaking behind him;
but the next moment a man-at-arms prepared a thrust at his
Majesty, who had his hands full with three assailants. "
"Eh! that's no fair," said Christie, "as sure as deeth. ”
"My ancestor dashed forward, and as the King's sword passed
through one of them, he clove another to the waist with a blow. "
"Weel done! weel done! "
Lord Ipsden looked at the speaker: her eyes were glittering
and her cheek flushing.
"Good Heavens! " thought he: "she believes it! " So he be-
gan to take more pains with his legend.
"But for the spearsman," continued he, "he had nothing but
his body: he gave it,-it was his duty,- and received the death
leveled at his sovereign. "
"Hech! puir mon. " And the glowing eyes began to glisten.
"The battle flowed another way, and God gave victory to the
right; but the King came back to look for him, for it was no
common service. "
face.
"Deed no!
Here Lord Ipsden began to turn his eye inwards, and call up
the scene. He lowered his voice.
"They found him lying on his back, looking death in the
"The nobles by the King's side uncovered as soon as he was
found, for they were brave men too. There was a moment's
silence: eyes met eyes, and said, This is a stout soldier's last
battle.
"The King could not bid him live,—”
"Na! lad, King Deeth has ower strong a grrip. "
"But he did what kings can do: he gave him two blows with
his royal sword. "
"Oh, the robber, and him a deeing mon!
"Two words from his royal mouth, and he and we were
barons of Ipsden and Hawthorn Glen from that day to this. "
"But the puir dying creature? »
"What poor dying creature — ? »
«< Your forbear, lad. "
>>>
## p. 12112 (#150) ##########################################
12112
CHARLES READE
"I don't know why you call him poor, madam: all the men
of that day are dust; they are the gold dust, who died with
honor.
――
"He looked round uneasily for his son,- for he had but one,
-and when that son knelt, unwounded, by him, he said, 'Good
night, Baron Ipsden;' and so he died, fire in his eye, a smile on
his lip, and honor on his name for ever. I meant to tell you a
lie, and I've told you the truth. "
"Laddie," said Christie, half admiringly, half reproachfully,
"ye gar the tear come in my een. Hech! look at yon lassie!
how could you think t'eat plums through siccan a boeny story? "
"Hets," answered Jean, who had in fact cleared the plate.
"I aye listen best when my ain mooth's stappit. "
"But see now," pondered Christie: "two words fra a king-
thir titles are just breeth. "
"Of course," was the answer. "All titles are.
What is popu-
larity? Ask Aristides and Lamartine: the breath of a mob,—
smells of its source,- and is gone before the sun can set on it.
Now, the royal breath does smell of the Rose and Crown, and
stays by us from age to age. "
The story had warmed our marble acquaintance. Saunders
opened his eyes, and thought, "We shall wake up the House of
Lords some evening,- we shall. "
His Lordship then added, less warmly, looking at the girls:
"I think I should like to be a fisherman. " So saying, my
lord yawned slightly.
To this aspiration the young fishwives deigned no attention,
doubting perhaps its sincerity; and Christie, with a shade of
severity, inquired of him how he came to be a Vile Count.
"A baron's no a Vile Count, I'm sure," said she; "sae tell me
how ye came to be a Vile Count. "
"Ah! " said he, "that is by no means a pretty story, like the
other: you will not like it, I am sure. "
I'm aye seeking knowledge. "
"Ay will I,-ay will I:
"Well, it is soon told.
seat, in the same house, so
"Ower muckle pay for
"Now don't say that; I wouldn't do it to be Emperor of
Russia. "
One of us sat twenty years on one
one day he got up a-Viscount. "
ower little wark.
>>
―
"Aweel, I hae gotten a heap out o' ye; sae noow I'll gang,
since ye are no for herrin': come away, Jean. ”
## p. 12113 (#151) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12113
At this their host remonstrated, and inquired why bores are
at one's service night and day, and bright people are always in
a hurry. He was informed in reply, "Labor is the lot o' man.
Div ye no ken that muckle? And abune a', o' women. ”
"Why, what can two such pretty creatures have to do, except
to be admired ? »
This question coming within the dark beauty's scope, she
hastened to reply:-
"To sell our herrin',— we hae three hundre' left in the creel. "
"What is the price?
At this question the poetry died out of Christie Johnstone's
face; she gave her companion a rapid look, indiscernible to male
eye, and answered: -
"Three a penny, sirr: they are no plenty the day," added she,
in smooth tones that carried conviction.
――――――
>>
(Little liar, they were selling six a penny everywhere. )
"Saunders, buy them all, and be ever so long about it, count
them, or some nonsense. "
"He's daft! he's daft! Oh, ye ken, Jean, an Ennglishman and
a lorrd, twa daft things thegither, he couldna' miss the road.
Coont them, lassie. "
"Come away, Sandy, till I coont them till ye," said Jean.
Saunders and Jean disappeared.
Business being out of sight, curiosity revived.
"An' what brings ye here from London, if you please? " re-
commenced the fair inquisitor.
"You have a good countenance; there is something in your
face. I could find it in my heart to tell you, but I should bore
you. "
"De'el a fear! Bore me, bore me! whaat's thaat, I wonder? »
"What is your name, madam? Mine is Ipsden. "
"They ca' me Christie Johnstone. ”
"Well, Christie Johnstone, I am under the doctor's hands. "
"Puir lad! What's the trouble? " (solemnly and tenderly).
"Ennui! " (rather piteously).
"Yawn-we? I never heerd tell o't. "
"Oh you lucky girl! " burst out he; "but the doctor has under-
taken to cure me: in one thing you could assist me, if I am not
presuming too far on our short acquaintance. I am to relieve
one poor distressed person every day, but I mustn't do two: is
not that a bore? "
XXI-758
## p. 12114 (#152) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12114
"Gie's your hand, gie's your hand. I'm vexed for ca'ing you
daft. Hech! what a saft hand ye hae. Jean, I'm saying, come
here; feel this. "
Jean, who had run in, took the viscount's hand from Christie.
"It never wroucht any," explained Jean.
"And he has boeny hair," said Christie, just touching his
locks on the other side.
"He's a boeny lad," said Jean, inspecting him scientifically
and point-blank.
"Ay is he," said the other. "Aweel, there's Jess Rutherford,
a widdy, wi' four bairns: ye meicht do waur than ware your sil-
ler on her. "
"Five pounds to begin? " inquired his Lordship.
"Five pund! Are ye made o' siller? Ten schell'n! "
Saunders was rung for, and produced a one-pound note.
"The herrin' is five and saxpence; it's four and saxpence
I'm awin' ye," said the young fishwife, "and Jess will be a glad
woman the neicht. "
The settlement was effected, and away went the two friends,
saying:-
"Good boye, Vile Count. "
Their host fell into thought.
"When have I talked so much? " asked he of himself.
"Dr. Aberford, you are a wonderful man; I like your lower
classes amazingly. "
"Méfiez-vous, Monsieur Ipsden! " should some mentor have
said.
As the devil puts into a beginner's hands ace, queen, five
trumps, to give him a taste for whist, so these lower classes have
perhaps put forward one of their best cards to lead you into a
false estimate of the strength of their hand.
being an improvisation, not a finished piece of ballad-writing, and
hardly belongs in the class of ballad masterpieces. But it is decid-
edly effective. The Closing Scene' is an example of the blending of
human interest with descriptions of nature. It is on a few of these
lyrics that Read's reputation rests; and he has had the good fortune
to strike an occasional note to which there was and is a response
from many readers.
[The following poems are reprinted with the approval of the J. B. Lippin-
cott Co. , publishers. ]
DRIFTING
Y SOUL to-day
M*
Is far away,
Sailing the Vesuvian Bay;
My winged boat,
A bird afloat,
Swims round the purple peaks remote;
Round purple peaks
It sails, and seeks
Blue inlets and their crystal creeks,
Where high rocks throw,
Through deeps below,
A duplicated golden glow.
Far, vague, and dim,
The mountains swim;
While on Vesuvius's misty brim,
With outstretched hands,
The gray smoke stands
O'erlooking the volcanic lands.
## p. 12096 (#134) ##########################################
12096
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
Here Ischia smiles
O'er liquid miles;
And yonder, bluest of the isles,
Calm Capri waits,
Her sapphire gates
Beguiling to her bright estates.
I heed not if
My rippling skiff
Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff;
With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Under the walls of Paradise.
Under the walls
Where swells and falls
The Bay's deep breast at intervals,
At peace I lie,
Blown softly by,-
A cloud upon this liquid sky.
The day, so mild,
Is heaven's own child,
With earth and ocean reconciled;
The airs I feel
Around me steal
Are murmuring to the murmuring keel.
Over the rail
My hand I trail
Within the shadow of the sail;
A joy intense,
The cooling sense
Glides down my drowsy indolence.
With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Where Summer sings and never dies;
O'erveiled with vines,
She glows and shines
Among her future oil and wines.
Her children, hid
The cliffs amid,
Are gamboling with the gamboling kid;
## p. 12097 (#135) ##########################################
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
12097
Or down the walls,
With tipsy calls,
Laugh on the rocks like waterfalls.
XXI-757
The fisher's child,
With tresses wild,
Unto the smooth, bright sand beguiled,
With glowing lips
Sings as she skips,
Or gazes at the far-off ships.
Yon deep bark goes
Where traffic blows,
From lands of sun to lands of snows;
This happier one,
Its course is run
From lands of snow to lands of sun.
O happy ship,
To rise and dip,
With the blue crystal at your lip!
O happy crew,
My heart with you
Sails, and sails, and sings anew!
No more, no more
The worldly shore
Upbraids me with its loud uproar:
With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Under the walls of Paradise!
SHERIDAN'S RIDE
U
P FROM the south at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste to the chieftain's door,
The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.
And wider still those billows of war
Thundered along the horizon's bar;
## p. 12098 (#136) ##########################################
12098
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
And louder yet into Winchester rolled
The roar of that red sea uncontrolled;
Making the blood of the listener cold,
As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.
But there is a road from Winchester town,
A good broad highway leading down:
And there, through the flush of the morning light,
A steed as black as the steeds of night
Was seen to pass, as with eagle flight,
As if he knew the terrible need;
He stretched away with his utmost speed:
Hills rose and fell; but his heart was gay,
With Sheridan fifteen miles away.
Still sprang from those swift hoofs, thundering south,
The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth,
Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.
The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;
Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
With Sheridan only ten miles away.
Under his spurning feet the road.
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
And the landscape sped away behind
Like an ocean flying before the wind;
And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire,
Swept on, with his wild eye full of fire.
But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire;
He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
With Sheridan only five miles away.
The first that the general saw were the groups
Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops:
What was done? what to do? a glance told him both.
Then striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,
He dashed down the line, 'mid a storm of huzzas,
And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;
By the flash of his eye and the red nostril's play
## p. 12099 (#137) ##########################################
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
12099
He seemed to the whole great army to say,
"I have brought you Sheridan all the way
From Winchester down, to save the day. "
Hurrah! hurrah! for Sheridan!
Hurrah! hurrah! for horse and man!
And when their statues are placed on high,
Under the dome of the Union sky,
The American soldier's Temple of Fame,
There with the glorious general's name,
Be it said, in letters both bold and bright:-
"Here is the steed that saved the day
By carrying Sheridan into the fight,
From Winchester-twenty miles away! "
WITH
THE CLOSING SCENE
ITHIN his sober realm of leafless trees
The russet year inhaled the dreamy air;
Like some tanned reaper in his hour of ease,
When all the fields are lying brown and bare.
The gray barns looking from their hazy hills
O'er the dim waters widening in the vales,
Sent down the air a greeting to the mills,
On the dull thunder of alternate flails.
All sights were mellowed and all sounds subdued;
The hills seemed farther and the streams sang low;
As in a dream, the distant woodman hewed
His winter log with many a muffled blow.
The embattled forests, erewhile armed in gold,
Their banners bright with every martial hue,
Now stood, like some sad beaten host of old,
Withdrawn afar in Time's remotest blue.
On slumberous wings the vulture held his flight;
The dove scarce heard his sighing mate's complaint;
And like a star slow drowning in the light,
The village church-vane seemed to pale and faint.
The sentinel-cock upon the hillside crew
Crew thrice, and all was stiller than before,
―――
## p. 12100 (#138) ##########################################
12100
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
Silent till some replying warder blew
His alien horn, and then was heard no more.
Where erst the jay, within the elm's tall crest,
Made garrulous trouble round her unfledged young,
And where the oriole hung her swaying nest,
By every light wind like a censer swung;
Where sang the noisy masons of the eaves,
The busy swallows, circling ever near,
Foreboding, as the rustic mind believes,
An early harvest and a plenteous year;
Where every bird which charmed the vernal feast
Shook the sweet slumber from its wings at morn,
To warn the reaper of the rosy east,-
All now was songless, empty, and forlorn.
Alone from out the stubble piped the quail,
And croaked the crow through all the dreamy gloom;
Alone the pheasant, drumming in the vale,
Made echo to the distant cottage loom.
There was no bud, no bloom upon the bowers;
The spiders wove their thin shrouds night by night;
The thistle-down, the only ghost of flowers,
Sailed slowly by, passed noiseless out of sight.
Amid all this, in this most cheerless air,
And where the woodbine shed upon the porch
Its crimson leaves, as if the Year stood there
Firing the floor with his inverted torch; -
Amid all this, the centre of the scene,
The white-haired matron, with monotonous tread,
Plied the swift wheel, and with her joyless mien
Sat like a Fate, and watched the flying thread.
She had known Sorrow,- he had walked with her,
Oft supped and broke the bitter ashen crust;
And in the dead leaves still she heard the stir
Of his black mantle trailing in the dust.
While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom,
Her country summoned and she gave her all;
And twice War bowed to her his sable plume—
Regave the swords to rust upon her wall.
## p. 12101 (#139) ##########################################
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
12101
Regave the swords,- but not the hand that drew
And struck for Liberty its dying blow;
Nor him who, to his sire and country true,
Fell 'mid the ranks of the invading foe.
Long, but not loud, the droning wheel went on,
Like the low murmur of a hive at noon;
Long, but not loud, the memory of the gone
Breathed through her lips a sad and tremulous tune.
At last the thread was snapped - her head was bowed;
Life dropped the distaff through his hands serene:
And loving neighbors smoothed her careful shroud,
While Death and Winter closed the autumn scene.
INEZ
DOWN
OWN behind the hidden village, fringed around with hazel
brake,
(Like a holy hermit dreaming, half asleep and half awake,
One who loveth the sweet quiet for the happy quiet's sake,)
Dozing, murmuring in its visions, lay the heaven-enamored lake.
And within a doll where shadows through the brightest days
abide,
Like the silvery swimming gossamer by breezes scattered wide,
Fell a shining skein of water that ran down the lakelet's side,
As within the brain by beauty lulled, a pleasant thought may
glide.
When the sinking sun of August, growing large in the decline,
Shot his arrows long and golden through the maple and the pine;
And the russet-thrush fled singing from the alder to the vine,
While the cat-bird in the hazel gave its melancholy whine;
And the little squirrel chattered, peering round the hickory bole,
And, a-sudden like a meteor, gleamed along the oriole;-
There I walked beside fair Inez, and her gentle beauty stole
Like the scene athwart my senses, like the sunshine through my
soul.
And her fairy feet that pressed the leaves, a pleasant music made,
And they dimpled the sweet beds of moss with blossoms thick in-
laid:
## p. 12102 (#140) ##########################################
12102
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
There I told her old romances, and with love's sweet woe we
played,
Till fair Inez's eyes, like evening, held the dew beneath their
shade.
There I wove for her love ballads, such as lover only weaves,
Till she sighed and grieved, as only mild and loving maiden
grieves;
And to hide her tears she stooped to glean the violets from the
leaves,
As of old sweet Ruth went gleaning 'mid the Oriental sheaves.
Down we walked beside the lakelet: gazing deep into her eye,
There I told her all my passion! With a sudden blush and sigh,
Turning half away with look askant, she only made reply,
"How deep within the water glows the happy evening sky! "
Then I asked her if she loved me, and our hands met each in
each,
And the dainty, sighing ripples seemed to listen up the reach;
While thus slowly with a hazel wand she wrote along the beach,
"Love, like the sky, lies deepest ere the heart is stirred to speech. "
Thus I gained the love of Inez, thus I won her gentle hand;
And our paths now lie together, as our footprints on the strand;
We have vowed to love each other in the golden morning land,
When our names from earth have vanished like the writing from
the sand!
## p. 12103 (#141) ##########################################
12103
CHARLES READE
(1814-1884)
N THE early fifties, Mrs. Seymour, a popular actress at the
Haymarket Theatre, London, received a call one day from
a stranger, a Mr. Charles Reade. He was a tall, heavily
built man of attractive manner, and seemed younger than his age,
which was nearly forty. For some years he had been writing plays,
and trying unsuccessfully to get them accepted. He had brought
part of a manuscript drama, which he was anxious to read her. Mrs.
Seymour listened politely, was complimentary, but added, "Why don't
you write a novel? " This indirect criticism
stung the would-be dramatist, who hurried
away. Good-natured Mrs. Seymour, sorry
to have wounded her visitor, and conclud-
ing that he was pressed by poverty, wrote
him a kindly note inclosing a £5 note as
a loan. Charles Reade promptly returned
the money, but he welcomed the 'frank
sympathy. The two became friends; and
his talent thus gained a much-needed prac-
tical stimulus. Up to this time he had been
somewhat of a dilettante,- ardent, ambi-
tious, and energetic, but disseminating his
forces too widely for adequate achievement.
CHARLES READE
From his boyhood he had been strongly
attracted toward drama. Its life and action, the visual presentment
of moral problems, suited his taste. Yet all his first plays were re-
fused by the managers. To the end of his life he considered himself
primarily a playwright, in spite of the greater success of his fiction.
Some of his plots took form first as plays, and some first as stories;
but sooner or later most of them found their way to the stage.
Among his early works are many sketches and short stories, writ-
ten for cheap London journals; and it is characteristic of the man
that he did these as well as he could, and signed his own name to
them, although by so doing he led the critics to consider him beneath
their notice.
His first noteworthy original work- he had done some transla-
tion was the well known and brilliant comedy, 'Masks and Faces,'
## p. 12104 (#142) ##########################################
12104
CHARLES READE
which he wrote in collaboration with Tom Taylor. The effective plot-
development shows dramatic instinct; and the spontaneity and spark-
ling dialogue gave it great vogue. Later, acting upon Mrs. Seymour's
suggestion, he turned it into a novel, 'Peg Woffington' (1852). The
next year he published another story, 'Christie Johnstone,' which
resembles Peg Woffington' in its primarily dramatic arrangement.
In vivid characterization, descriptive charm, and emotional range, the
two are as fine and as distinctive as anything he ever wrote. During
holiday trips in Scotland he had gathered material for Christie
Johnstone'; and he was thoroughly at home in the breezy fishing
hamlet where Joan and Christie, sturdy young fishwives, teach the
blasé young viscount the true values of life. The wit though sharp
is good-natured, and mingled with deeper sentiment. Humor and
pathos, tragedy and comedy, are all blended in the one short tale.
With drawing-room life Reade was not in sympathy; nor does he
describe it successfully. But he excels in the strong presentment of
individuals, and in establishing the harmony between them and their
environment. Rugged Griffith Gaunt is an unpleasant but very real
country gentleman of a past century. Jael Dence in her reserve and
simple strength is the product of her native village.
Charles Reade was born at Ipsden in 1814, youngest of the eleven
children of John Reade, a good country squire. His father and
mother were busy, healthy people, fond of society, of religious ob-
servances, of regulating village affairs. Among their many interests
their children were decidedly in the way; and although they loved
them heartily, they gladly turned them over to tutors and governesses
as soon as possible. Charles spent much of his childhood in boarding-
school; for years with a merciless Mr. Slater, who flogged his pupils
daily, and whose only idea of teaching was memory-cramming. It
was not until he escaped from this thraldom that Reade began to
show his quickness of mind.
In 1831 he entered Magdalen College on a demyship; and three
years later, when he took his degree, he was appointed to a fellow-
ship, which he held for fifty years, until his death in 1884. In spite
of this long connection he did not love Oxford. His free-lance spirit
detested her conventions, and he preferred the freer air of London.
Nor did he love the fellowship which he could not resign. Charles
Reade never experienced acute poverty, yet for years his means
were just meagre enough to make him feel pinched and uncomforta-
ble. His fellowship with its income was necessary to him. So his
life was perforce influenced by monasticism; and he showed a deep
personal appreciation of all the commonplace happiness renounced by
the monk Gerard, the epic hero of The Cloister and the Hearth. '
After his graduation he read law; in rather desultory fashion, for his
## p. 12105 (#143) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12105
livelier interests were in general reading, in making himself an
authority upon violins ancient and modern, and in traveling when-
ever he could afford it.
It took the public some time to relish Reade's new flavor and to
recognize his merit. But with 'It's Never too Late to Mend' (1856)
he found himself a popular novelist. The book provoked wide dis-
cussion, and was read, praised, and reviled on both sides of the
Atlantic.
Charles Reade was a fighting Englishman, always ready for a fray,
always believing himself or somebody else ill-used. He was a man
of deep feeling, too alive to human suffering to take life lightly. He
was a man of intense energy which constantly sought vent.
He was
generous and warm-hearted, ready to give time, money, and influence
for the relief of others. The morbid sensitiveness to criticism which
continually embroiled him with critics and publishers, and most of
those with whom he had business dealings, made him a butt of ridi-
cule. It was not all self-love, but a stout demand for justice, which
he was as ready to make for others as for himself. No sooner was
he fairly launched as a writer of repute than he aspired to become a
social reformer. This inclination was doubtless strengthened by his
friendship with Dickens, for whose Household Words and All the
Year Round he wrote; and whom he warmly admired. The two had
been introduced by Bulwer-Lytton, and found themselves in sym-
pathy at once. Like the author of 'Nicholas Nickleby,' Reade longed
to right abuses. 'It's Never too Late to Mend' was an exposition of
the evils of the English prison system. So strong was the indignation
aroused, that when reproduced at the Princess Theatre years after
its first dramatization, there was almost a riot in the audience. What
he himself said in it might stand as a motto to most of his novels:
"I have taken a few undeniable truths out of many, and have labored to
make my readers realize those appalling facts of the day which most men
know, but not one in a thousand comprehends, and not one in a hundred
thousand realizes, until fiction—which, whatever you may have been told to
the contrary, is the highest, widest, noblest, and greatest of all the arts-
comes to his aid, studies, penetrates, digests the hard facts of chronicles and
blue-books, and makes their dry bones live. "
He took up one alleged evil after another: in 'Hard Cash,' abuses
of insane asylums, and still more the legal power of physicians to
commit for insanity, which he accused them of exercising on the
sane for bribes; in Foul Play,' those in the merchant shipping ser-
vice; in 'Put Yourself in His Place,' those resulting from trades-unions
and labor conditions. Upon these different themes he employed all
his strength of mind and imagination, and he produced novels which
## p. 12106 (#144) ##########################################
12106
CHARLES READE
were read, and are still read, for their lively romantic interest. Never
dully didactic, they fully achieved a forceful presentment of the evil.
The system upon which he worked was laborious. "I propose
never to guess what I can know," he said; and was an indefatigable
collector of newspaper clippings, institution reports, and the like.
When his statements were questioned, his facts denied, or he was
accused of exaggeration, he would turn triumphantly to his carefully
classified collections, and refute the objection with positive proof.
He knew how to fuse this material into an artistic whole. "It
would require a chemical analysis to separate the fiction from the
reality," said Justin McCarthy of Reade's novels.
"I studied the great art of fiction closely for fifteen years before
I presumed to write a word of it. I was a ripe critic long before I
became an artist," wrote Reade. One result of this study was the
determination to seek personal sincerity of expression above every-
thing else. In the effort to see things for himself, not through other
people's eyes, his unusualness of phrase is sometimes startling. The
effect is often delightfully novel, occasionally harsh and jagged. Yet
there is always a charm in his trenchant wit and uncompromising
frankness. He pictured English life as he saw it, with an intuition of
what was salient in a character, a locality, or a period.
In 1859 Charles Reade published in Once a Week a short serial
called 'A Good Fight. ' While writing it he discovered other possibil-
ities in the plot, and resolved to give it a more comprehensive treat-
ment. But the publishers of the magazine took editorial liberties
with the manuscript, which Reade quickly resented. Therefore he
hurried up the tale to a happy but inartistic conclusion, and soon set
about remodeling it on a different scale, and with the new title, 'The
Cloister and the Hearth. '
"The Cloister and the Hearth' (1861), Reade's masterpiece, stands
out clearly differentiated from anything else he did. He put his best
into it, and the maturity of his mind. He was a scholar as well as
man of general reading, and for all his knowledge he found scope in
this great mediæval romance. All the minor characters as well as
the pathetic figures of Gerard and Margaret, and the gay Burgundian
Denys are drawn with an artistic insight and power of sympathy.
which make the old time live again. With rare synthetic power, his
imagination grasped the social conditions of the fifteenth century, and
recognized what the lives of men and women must have been. His
book is truer than history; for while based on historical records, it
reflects with life and color, not alone outward fact but also the work-
ings of minds and hearts.
## p. 12107 (#145) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12107
VISCOUNT AND LOWER CLASSES
From Christie Johnstone'
THE
HE air was tepid, pure and sweet as heaven. This bright
afternoon, nature had grudged nothing that could give fresh
life and hope to such dwellers in dust and smoke and vice
as were there, to look awhile on her clean face and drink her
honeyed breath.
This young gentleman was not insensible to the beauty of the
scene. He was a little lazy by nature, and made lazier by the
misfortune of wealth: but he had sensibilities. He was an artist
of great natural talent. Had he only been without a penny, how
he would have handled the brush! And then he was a mighty
sailor. If he had sailed for biscuit a few years, how he would
have handled a ship!
As he was, he had the eye of a hawk for nature's beauties;
and the sea always came back to him like a friend after an
absence.
This scene, then, curled round his heart a little; and he felt
the good physician was wiser than the tribe that go by that
name, and strive to build health on the sandy foundation of
drugs.
"Saunders, do you know what Dr. Aberford means by the
lower classes? "
"Perfectly, my lord. "
"Are there any about here? "
"I am sorry to say they are everywhere, my lord. "
"Get me some » - (cigarette).
Out went Saunders, with his usual graceful empressement, but
an internal shrug of his shoulders.
He was absent an hour and a half; he then returned with a
double expression on his face. Pride at his success in diving to
the very bottom of society, and contempt of what he had fished
up thence.
He approached his lord mysteriously, and said, sotto voce but
impressively, "This is low enough, my lord. " Then glided back,
and ushered in, with polite disdain, two lovelier women than he
had ever opened a door to in the whole course of his perfumed
existence.
On their heads they wore caps of Dutch or Flemish origin,
with a broad lace border, stiffened, and arched over the forehead
## p. 12108 (#146) ##########################################
12108
CHARLES READE
about three inches high, leaving the brow and cheeks unincum-
bered.
They had cotton jackets, bright red and yellow, mixed in pat-
terns, confined at the waist by the apron-strings, but bobtailed
below the waist; short woolen petticoats, with broad vertical
stripes, red and white, most vivid in color; white worsted stock-
ings, and neat though high-quartered shoes. Under their jackets
they wore a thick spotted cotton handkerchief, about one inch of
which was visible round the lower part of the throat.
Of their petticoats, the outer one was kilted, or gathered up
towards the front; and the second, of the same color, hung in the
usual way.
Of these young women, one had an olive complexion, with
the red blood mantling under it, and black hair, and glorious
black eyebrows.
The other was fair, with a massive but shapely throat, as
white as milk; glossy brown hair, the loose threads of which
glittered like gold, and a blue eye, which being contrasted with
dark eyebrows and lashes, took the luminous effect peculiar to
that rare beauty.
Their short petticoats revealed a neat ankle, and a leg with a
noble swell; for Nature, when she is in earnest, builds beauty on
the ideas of ancient sculptors and poets, not of modern poetasters,
who with their air-like sylphs, and their smoke-like verses, fight
for want of flesh in woman and want of fact in poetry as paral-
lel beauties.
They are, my lads. - Continues!
These women had a grand corporeal trait: they had never
known a corset!
so they were straight as javelins; they could
lift their hands above their heads! -actually! Their supple per-
sons moved as nature intended; every gesture was ease, grace,
and freedom.
What with their own radiance, and the snowy cleanliness and
brightness of their costume, they came like meteors into the
apartment.
Lord Ipsden, rising gently from his seat, with the same quiet
politeness with which he would have received two princes of the
blood, said, "How do you do? " and smiled a welcome.
་་
"Fine! hoow's yoursel'? " answered the dark lass, whose name
was Jean Carnie, and whose voice was not so sweet as her face.
"What'n lord are ye? " continued she. "Are you a juke? —I
wad like fine to hae a crack wi' a juke. "
## p. 12109 (#147) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12109
Saunders, who knew himself the cause of this question, replied
sotto voce, "His Lordship is a viscount. "
"But it has a bonny
"I dinna ken't," was Jean's remark.
soond. "
"What mair would ye hae? " said the fair beauty, whose name
was Christie Johnstone. Then appealing to his Lordship as the
likeliest to know, she added, "Nobeelity is just a soond itsel', I'm
tauld. »
The viscount, finding himself expected to say something on
a topic he had not attended much to, answered dryly, "We must
ask the republicans: they are the people that give their minds to
such subjects. "
"And yon man," asked Jean Carnie,- "is he a lord too? »
"I am his Lordship's servant," replied Saunders gravely, not
without a secret misgiving whether fate had been just.
"Na! " replied she, not to be imposed upon. "Ye are state-
lier and prooder than this ane. "
"I will explain," said his master. "Saunders knows his value:
a servant like Saunders is rarer than an idle viscount. "
"My lord, my lord! " remonstrated Saunders, with a shocked
and most disclamatory tone. "Rather! " was his inward reflection.
"Jean," said Christie, "ye hae muckle to laern. Are ye for
herrin' the day, Vile Count? "
"No: are you for this sort of thing? "
At this, Saunders, with a world of empressement, offered the
Carnie some cake that was on the table.
She took a piece, instantly spat it out into her hand, and with
more energy than delicacy flung it into the fire.
"Augh! " cried she, "just a sugar and saut butter thegither:
buy nae mair at yon shoep, Vile Count. "
"Try this, out of Nature's shop," laughed their entertainer;
and he offered them, himself, some peaches and things.
"Hech! a medi-cine! " said Christie.
"Nature, my lad," said Miss Carnie, making her ivory teeth
meet in their first nectarine, "I dinna ken whaur ye stoep, but
ye beat the other confectioners, that div ye. "
The fair lass, who had watched the viscount all this time as
demurely as a cat cream, now approached him.
This young woman was the thinker: her voice was also rich,
full, and melodious, and her manner very engaging; it was half
advancing, half retiring, not easy to resist or to describe.
## p. 12110 (#148) ##########################################
12110
CHARLES READE
"Noo," said she, with a very slight blush stealing across her
face, "ye maun let me catecheeze ye, wull ye? »
The last two words were said in a way that would have in-
duced a bear to reveal his winter residence.
He smiled assent.
Saunders retired to the door, and exclud-
ing every shade of curiosity from his face, took an attitude half
majesty, half obsequiousness.
Christie stood by Lord Ipsden, with one hand on her hip (the
knuckles downwards), but graceful as Antinoüs, and began: —
"Hoo muckle is the Queen greater than y'are? "
His Lordship was obliged to reflect.
as is the moon to a
"Let me see;
wax taper, so is her
Majesty the Queen to you and me and the rest. "
"An' whaur does the juke come in? "
"On this particular occasion, the duke makes one of us, my
pretty maid. "
"I see! Are na ye awfu' prood o' being a lorrd? "
"What an idea! "
--
"His Lordship did not go to bed a spinning-jenny, and rise up
a lord, like some of them," put in Saunders.
"Saunders," said the peer doubtfully, "eloquence rather bores
people. "
"Then I mustn't speak again, my lord," said Saunders, respect-
fully.
"Noo," said the fair inquisitor, "ye shall tell me how ye came
to be lorrds, your faemily. "
"Saunders! "
"Na! ye mauna flee to Sandy for a thing: ye are no a bairn,
are ye? "
Here was a dilemma: the Saunders prop knocked rudely away,
and obliged to think for ourselves.
But Saunders would come to his distressed master's assist-
ance. He furtively conveyed to him a plump book,- this was
Saunders's manual of faith; the author was Mr. Burke-not
Edmund.
Lord Ipsden ran hastily over the page, closed the book, and
said, "Here is the story:-
"Five hundred years ago - >>
"Listen, Jean," said Christie: "we're gaun to get a boeny
story. 'Five hundre' years ago,'" added she, with interest and
awe.
## p. 12111 (#149) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
་་
was a great battle," resumed the narrator in cheerful tones,
as one larking with history, "between a King of England and
his rebels. He was in the thick of the fight-"
12111
"That's the King, Jean,- he was in the thick o't. "
"My ancestor killed a fellow who was sneaking behind him;
but the next moment a man-at-arms prepared a thrust at his
Majesty, who had his hands full with three assailants. "
"Eh! that's no fair," said Christie, "as sure as deeth. ”
"My ancestor dashed forward, and as the King's sword passed
through one of them, he clove another to the waist with a blow. "
"Weel done! weel done! "
Lord Ipsden looked at the speaker: her eyes were glittering
and her cheek flushing.
"Good Heavens! " thought he: "she believes it! " So he be-
gan to take more pains with his legend.
"But for the spearsman," continued he, "he had nothing but
his body: he gave it,-it was his duty,- and received the death
leveled at his sovereign. "
"Hech! puir mon. " And the glowing eyes began to glisten.
"The battle flowed another way, and God gave victory to the
right; but the King came back to look for him, for it was no
common service. "
face.
"Deed no!
Here Lord Ipsden began to turn his eye inwards, and call up
the scene. He lowered his voice.
"They found him lying on his back, looking death in the
"The nobles by the King's side uncovered as soon as he was
found, for they were brave men too. There was a moment's
silence: eyes met eyes, and said, This is a stout soldier's last
battle.
"The King could not bid him live,—”
"Na! lad, King Deeth has ower strong a grrip. "
"But he did what kings can do: he gave him two blows with
his royal sword. "
"Oh, the robber, and him a deeing mon!
"Two words from his royal mouth, and he and we were
barons of Ipsden and Hawthorn Glen from that day to this. "
"But the puir dying creature? »
"What poor dying creature — ? »
«< Your forbear, lad. "
>>>
## p. 12112 (#150) ##########################################
12112
CHARLES READE
"I don't know why you call him poor, madam: all the men
of that day are dust; they are the gold dust, who died with
honor.
――
"He looked round uneasily for his son,- for he had but one,
-and when that son knelt, unwounded, by him, he said, 'Good
night, Baron Ipsden;' and so he died, fire in his eye, a smile on
his lip, and honor on his name for ever. I meant to tell you a
lie, and I've told you the truth. "
"Laddie," said Christie, half admiringly, half reproachfully,
"ye gar the tear come in my een. Hech! look at yon lassie!
how could you think t'eat plums through siccan a boeny story? "
"Hets," answered Jean, who had in fact cleared the plate.
"I aye listen best when my ain mooth's stappit. "
"But see now," pondered Christie: "two words fra a king-
thir titles are just breeth. "
"Of course," was the answer. "All titles are.
What is popu-
larity? Ask Aristides and Lamartine: the breath of a mob,—
smells of its source,- and is gone before the sun can set on it.
Now, the royal breath does smell of the Rose and Crown, and
stays by us from age to age. "
The story had warmed our marble acquaintance. Saunders
opened his eyes, and thought, "We shall wake up the House of
Lords some evening,- we shall. "
His Lordship then added, less warmly, looking at the girls:
"I think I should like to be a fisherman. " So saying, my
lord yawned slightly.
To this aspiration the young fishwives deigned no attention,
doubting perhaps its sincerity; and Christie, with a shade of
severity, inquired of him how he came to be a Vile Count.
"A baron's no a Vile Count, I'm sure," said she; "sae tell me
how ye came to be a Vile Count. "
"Ah! " said he, "that is by no means a pretty story, like the
other: you will not like it, I am sure. "
I'm aye seeking knowledge. "
"Ay will I,-ay will I:
"Well, it is soon told.
seat, in the same house, so
"Ower muckle pay for
"Now don't say that; I wouldn't do it to be Emperor of
Russia. "
One of us sat twenty years on one
one day he got up a-Viscount. "
ower little wark.
>>
―
"Aweel, I hae gotten a heap out o' ye; sae noow I'll gang,
since ye are no for herrin': come away, Jean. ”
## p. 12113 (#151) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12113
At this their host remonstrated, and inquired why bores are
at one's service night and day, and bright people are always in
a hurry. He was informed in reply, "Labor is the lot o' man.
Div ye no ken that muckle? And abune a', o' women. ”
"Why, what can two such pretty creatures have to do, except
to be admired ? »
This question coming within the dark beauty's scope, she
hastened to reply:-
"To sell our herrin',— we hae three hundre' left in the creel. "
"What is the price?
At this question the poetry died out of Christie Johnstone's
face; she gave her companion a rapid look, indiscernible to male
eye, and answered: -
"Three a penny, sirr: they are no plenty the day," added she,
in smooth tones that carried conviction.
――――――
>>
(Little liar, they were selling six a penny everywhere. )
"Saunders, buy them all, and be ever so long about it, count
them, or some nonsense. "
"He's daft! he's daft! Oh, ye ken, Jean, an Ennglishman and
a lorrd, twa daft things thegither, he couldna' miss the road.
Coont them, lassie. "
"Come away, Sandy, till I coont them till ye," said Jean.
Saunders and Jean disappeared.
Business being out of sight, curiosity revived.
"An' what brings ye here from London, if you please? " re-
commenced the fair inquisitor.
"You have a good countenance; there is something in your
face. I could find it in my heart to tell you, but I should bore
you. "
"De'el a fear! Bore me, bore me! whaat's thaat, I wonder? »
"What is your name, madam? Mine is Ipsden. "
"They ca' me Christie Johnstone. ”
"Well, Christie Johnstone, I am under the doctor's hands. "
"Puir lad! What's the trouble? " (solemnly and tenderly).
"Ennui! " (rather piteously).
"Yawn-we? I never heerd tell o't. "
"Oh you lucky girl! " burst out he; "but the doctor has under-
taken to cure me: in one thing you could assist me, if I am not
presuming too far on our short acquaintance. I am to relieve
one poor distressed person every day, but I mustn't do two: is
not that a bore? "
XXI-758
## p. 12114 (#152) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12114
"Gie's your hand, gie's your hand. I'm vexed for ca'ing you
daft. Hech! what a saft hand ye hae. Jean, I'm saying, come
here; feel this. "
Jean, who had run in, took the viscount's hand from Christie.
"It never wroucht any," explained Jean.
"And he has boeny hair," said Christie, just touching his
locks on the other side.
"He's a boeny lad," said Jean, inspecting him scientifically
and point-blank.
"Ay is he," said the other. "Aweel, there's Jess Rutherford,
a widdy, wi' four bairns: ye meicht do waur than ware your sil-
ler on her. "
"Five pounds to begin? " inquired his Lordship.
"Five pund! Are ye made o' siller? Ten schell'n! "
Saunders was rung for, and produced a one-pound note.
"The herrin' is five and saxpence; it's four and saxpence
I'm awin' ye," said the young fishwife, "and Jess will be a glad
woman the neicht. "
The settlement was effected, and away went the two friends,
saying:-
"Good boye, Vile Count. "
Their host fell into thought.
"When have I talked so much? " asked he of himself.
"Dr. Aberford, you are a wonderful man; I like your lower
classes amazingly. "
"Méfiez-vous, Monsieur Ipsden! " should some mentor have
said.
As the devil puts into a beginner's hands ace, queen, five
trumps, to give him a taste for whist, so these lower classes have
perhaps put forward one of their best cards to lead you into a
false estimate of the strength of their hand.
