Billy Budd : $b and other prose pieces

OTHER PROSE PIECES

DANIEL ORME 117

HAWTHORNE AND HIS MOSSES, BY A VIRGINIAN SPENDING A JULY IN

VERMONT: _Literary World_, August 17, August 24, 1850 123

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO! OR THE CROWING OF THE NOBLE COCK BENEVENTANO:

_Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, November-December 1853 144

THE TWO TEMPLES 173

POOR MAN’S PUDDING AND RICH MAN’S CRUMBS: _Harper’s New Monthly

Magazine_, June 1854 192

THE HAPPY FAILURE, A STORY OF THE RIVER HUDSON: _Harper’s New

Monthly Magazine_, July 1854 210

THE FIDDLER: _Putnam’s Monthly Magazine_, September 1854 220

THE PARADISE OF BACHELORS AND THE TARTARUS OF MAIDS: _Harper’s

New Monthly Magazine_, April 1855 228

JIMMY ROSE: _Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, November 1855 255

THE ’GEES: _Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, March 1856 268

I AND MY CHIMNEY: _Putnam’s Monthly Magazine_, March 1856 276

THE APPLE-TREE TABLE, OR ORIGINAL SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS:

_Putnam’s Monthly Magazine_, May 1856 312

UNDER THE ROSE 339

THE MARQUIS DE GRANDVIN 346

PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN 353

TO MAJOR JOHN GENTIAN, DEAN OF THE BURGUNDY CLUB 358

JACK GENTIAN 369

MAYOR GENTIAN AND COLONEL J. BUNKUM 373

THE CINCINNATI 378

FRAGMENT 381

FRAGMENTS FROM A WRITING-DESK 382

------------------------------------------------------------------------

BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN

WHAT BEFELL HIM IN THE YEAR OF

THE GREAT MUTINY, ETC.

Friday, Nov. 16, 1888--begun.

Revision begun--March 2, 1889.

Finished--April 19, 1891.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

DEDICATED

TO

JACK CHASE

ENGLISHMAN

WHEREVER THAT GREAT HEART MAY NOW BE

HERE ON EARTH OR HARBOURED IN PARADISE

CAPTAIN OF THE MAIN-TOP

IN THE YEAR 1843

IN THE U.S. FRIGATE

‘UNITED STATES’

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PREFACE

The year 1797, the year of this narrative, belongs to a period which, as

every thinker now feels, involved a crisis for Christendom, not exceeded

in its undetermined momentousness at the time by any other era whereof

there is record. The opening proposition made by the Spirit of that

Age,[1] involved a rectification of the Old World’s hereditary wrongs.

In France, to some extent, this was bloodily effected. But what then?

Straightway the Revolution itself became a wrongdoer, one more

oppressive than the kings. Under Napoleon it enthroned upstart kings,

and initiated that prolonged agony of continual war whose final throe

was Waterloo. During those years not the wisest could have foreseen that

the outcome of all would be what to some thinkers apparently it has

since turned out to be, a political advance along nearly the whole line

for Europeans.

Now, as elsewhere hinted, it was something caught from the Revolutionary

Spirit that at Spithead emboldened the man-of-war’s men to rise against

real abuses, long-standing ones, and afterwards at the Nore to make

inordinate and aggressive demands, successful resistance to which was

confirmed only when the ringleaders were hung for an admonitory

spectacle to the anchored fleet. Yet in a way analogous to the operation

of the Revolution at large, the Great Mutiny, though by Englishmen

naturally deemed monstrous at the time, doubtless gave the first latent

prompting to most important reforms in the British Navy.

-----

Footnote 1:

Crossed out:

Was one hailed by the noblest men of it.

Even the dry tinder of Wordsworth took fire.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN

I

(_An inside Narrative_)

In the time before steamships, or then more frequently than now, a

stroller along the docks of any considerable seaport would occasionally

have his attention arrested by a group of bronzed marines, man-of-war’s

men or merchant sailors in holiday attire ashore on liberty. In certain

instances they would flank, or, like a bodyguard, quite surround some

superior figure of their own class, moving along with them like

Aldebaran among the lesser lights of his constellation. That signal

object was the ‘Handsome Sailor’ of the less prosaic time alike of the

military and merchant navies. With no perceptible trace of the

vainglorious about him, rather with the off-hand unaffectedness of

natural regality, he seemed to accept the spontaneous homage of his

shipmates. A somewhat remarkable instance recurs to me. In Liverpool,

now half a century ago, I saw under the shadow of the great dingy

street-wall of Prince’s Dock (an obstruction long since removed) a

common sailor, so intensely black that he must needs have been a native

African of the unadulterate blood of Ham. A symmetric figure much above

the average height. The two ends of a gay silk handkerchief thrown loose

about the neck danced upon the displayed ebony of his chest; in his ears

were big hoops of gold, and a Scotch Highland bonnet with a tartan band

set off his shapely head.

It was a hot noon in July; and his face, lustrous with perspiration,

beamed with barbaric good-humour. In jovial sallies right and left, his

white teeth flashing into view, he rollicked along, the centre of a

company of his shipmates. These were made up of such an assortment of

tribes and complexions as would have well fitted them to be marched up

by Anacharsis Cloots before the bar of the first French Assembly as

Representatives of the Human Race. At each spontaneous tribute rendered

by the wayfarers to this black pagod of a fellow--the tribute of a pause

and stare, and less frequent an exclamation--the motley retinue showed

that they took that sort of pride in the evoker of it which the Assyrian

priests doubtless showed for their grand sculptured Bull when the

faithful prostrated themselves. To return----

If in some cases a bit of a nautical Murat in setting forth his person

ashore, the Handsome Sailor of the period in question evinced nothing of

the dandified Billy-be-Dam, an amusing character all but extinct now,

but occasionally to be encountered, and in a form yet more amusing than

the original, at the tiller of the boats on the tempestuous Erie Canal

or, more likely, vapouring in the groggeries along the tow-path.

Invariably a proficient in his perilous calling, he was also more or

less of a mighty boxer or wrestler. It was strength and beauty. Tales of

his prowess were recited. Ashore he was the champion, afloat the

spokesman; on every suitable occasion always foremost. Close-reefing

topsails in a gale, there he was, astride the weather yard-arm-end, foot

in ‘stirrup,’ both hands tugging at the ‘ear-ring’ as at a bridle, in

very much the attitude of young Alexander curbing the fiery Bucephalus.

A superb figure, tossed up as by the horns of Taurus against the

thunderous sky, cheerily ballooning to the strenuous file along the

spar.

The moral nature was seldom out of keeping with the physical make.

Indeed, except as toned by the former, the comeliness and power, always

attractive in masculine conjunction, hardly could have drawn the sort of

homage the Handsome Sailor in some examples received from his less

gifted associates.

Such a cynosure, at least in aspect, and something such too in nature,

though with important variations made apparent as the story proceeds,

was welkin-eyed Billy Budd, or Baby Budd, as more familiarly, under

circumstances hereafter to be given, he at last came to be called, aged

twenty-one, a foretopman of the fleet toward the close of the last

decade of the eighteenth century. It was not very long prior to the time

of the narration that follows that he had entered the King’s Service,

having been impressed on the Narrow Seas from a homeward-bound English

merchantman into a seventy-four outward-bound, H.M.S. _Indomitable_;

which ship, as was not unusual in those hurried days, had been obliged

to put to sea short of her proper complement of men. Plump upon Billy at

first sight in the gangway the boarding-officer, Lieutenant Ratcliffe,

pounced, even before the merchantman’s crew formally was mustered on the

quarter-deck for his deliberate inspection. And him only he selected.

For whether it was because the other men when ranged before him showed

to ill advantage after Billy, or whether he had some scruples in view of

the merchantman being rather short-handed; however it might be, the

officer contented himself with his first spontaneous choice. To the

surprise of the ship’s company, though much to the Lieutenant’s

satisfaction, Billy made no demur. But indeed any demur would have been

as idle as the protest of a goldfinch popped into a cage.

Noting this uncomplaining acquiescence, all but cheerful one might say,

the shipmates turned a surprised glance of silent reproach at the

sailor. The shipmaster was one of those worthy mortals found in every

vocation, even the humbler ones--the sort of person whom everybody

agrees in calling ‘a respectable man.’ And--nor so strange to report as

it may appear to be--though a ploughman of the troubled waters,

life-long contending with the intractable elements, there was nothing

this honest soul at heart loved better than simple peace and quiet. For

the rest, he was fifty or thereabouts, a little inclined to corpulence,

a prepossessing face, unwhiskered, and of an agreeable colour, a rather

full face, humanely intelligent in expression. On a fair day with a fair

wind and all going well, a certain musical chime in his voice seemed to

be the veritable unobstructed outcome of the innermost man. He had much

prudence, much conscientiousness, and there were occasions when these

virtues were the cause of overmuch disquietude in him. On a passage, so

long as his craft was in any proximity to land, no sleep for Captain

Graveling. He took to heart those serious responsibilities not so

heavily borne by some shipmasters.

Now while Billy Budd was down in the forecastle getting his kit

together, the _Indomitable’s_ lieutenant, burly and bluff, nowise

disconcerted by Captain Graveling’s omitting to proffer the customary

hospitalities on an occasion so unwelcome to him, an omission simply

caused by preoccupation of thought, unceremoniously invited himself into

the cabin, and also to a flask from the spirit locker, a receptacle

which his experienced eye instantly discovered. In fact, he was one of

those sea-dogs in whom all the hardship and peril of naval life in the

great prolonged wars of his time never impaired the natural instinct for

sensuous enjoyment. His duty he always faithfully did; but duty is

sometimes a dry obligation, and he was for irrigating its aridity

whensoever possible with a fertilising decoction of strong waters. For

the cabin’s proprietor there was nothing left but to play the part of

the enforced host with whatever grace and alacrity were practicable. As

necessary adjuncts to the flask, he silently placed tumbler and

water-jug before the irrepressible guest. But excusing himself from

partaking just then, dismally watched the unembarrassed officer

deliberately diluting his grog a little, then tossing it off in three

swallows, pushing the empty tumbler away, yet not so far as to be beyond

easy reach, at the same time settling himself in his seat, and smacking

his lips with high satisfaction, looking straight at the host.

These proceedings over, the Master broke the silence; and there lurked a

rueful reproach in the tone of his voice: ‘Lieutenant, you are going to

take my best man from me, the jewel of ’em.’

‘Yes, I know,’ rejoined the other, immediately drawing back the tumbler,

preliminary to a replenishing; ‘yes, I know. Sorry.’

‘Beg pardon, but you don’t understand, Lieutenant. See here now. Before

I shipped that young fellow, my forecastle was a rat-pit of quarrels. It

was black times, I tell you, aboard the _Rights_ here. I was worried to

that degree my pipe had no comfort for me. But Billy came; and it was

like a Catholic priest striking peace in an Irish shindy. Not that he

preached to them or said or did anything in particular; but a virtue

went out of him, sugaring the sour ones. They took to him like hornets

to treacle; all but the bluffer of the gang, the big, shaggy chap with

the fire-red whiskers. He indeed, out of envy, perhaps, of the newcomer,

and thinking such a “sweet and pleasant fellow,” as he mockingly

designated him to the others, could hardly have the spirit of a

game-cock, must needs bestir himself in trying to get up an ugly row

with him. Billy forbore with him, and reassured with him in a pleasant

way--he is something like myself, Lieutenant, to whom aught like a

quarrel is hateful--but nothing served. So, in the second dog-watch one

day the Red Whiskers, in presence of the others, under pretence of

showing Billy just whence a sirloin steak was cut--for the fellow had

once been a butcher--insultingly gave him a dig under the ribs. Quick as

lightning Billy let fly his arm. I dare say he never meant to do quite

as much as he did, but anyhow he gave the burly fool a terrible

drubbing. It took about half a minute, I should think. And, Lord bless

you, the lubber was astonished at the celerity. And will you believe it,

Lieutenant, the Red Whiskers now really loves Billy--loves him, or is

the biggest hypocrite that ever I heard of. But they all love him. Some

of ’em do his washing, darn old trowsers for him; the carpenter is at

odd times making a pretty little chest of drawers for him. Anybody will

do anything for Billy Budd; and it’s the happy family here. Now,

Lieutenant, if that young fellow goes, I know how it will be aboard the

_Rights_. Not again very soon shall I, coming up from dinner, lean over

the capstan smoking a quiet pipe--no, not very soon again, I think. Ay,

Lieutenant, you are going to take away the jewel of ’em; you are going

to take away my peacemaker.’ And with that the good soul had really some

ado in checking a rising sob.

‘Well,’ said the Lieutenant, who had listened with amused interest to

all this, and now waxing merry with his tipple, ‘well, blessed are the

peacemakers, especially the fighting peacemakers! And such are the

seventy-four beauties, some of which you see poking their noses out of

the port-holes of yonder warship lying-to for me,’ pointing through the

cabin windows at the _Indomitable_. ‘But courage! don’t look so

downhearted, man. Why, I pledge you in advance the royal approbation.

Rest assured that His Majesty will be delighted to know that in a time

when his hard-tack is not sought for by sailors with such avidity as

should be; a time also when some shipmasters privily resent the

borrowing from them of a tar or two for the service; His Majesty, I say,

will be delighted to learn that _one_ shipmaster at least cheerfully

surrenders to the King the flower of his flock, a sailor who with equal

loyalty makes no dissent. But where’s my Beauty? Ah,’ looking through

the cabin’s open door, ‘here he comes; and, by Jove! lugging along his

chest--Apollo with his portmanteau! My man,’ stepping out to him, ‘you

can’t take that big box aboard a warship. The boxes there are mostly

shot-boxes. Put your duds in a bag, lad. Boot and saddle for the

cavalryman, bag and hammock for the man-of-war’s man.’

The transfer from chest to bag was made. And, after seeing his man into

the cutter, and then following him down, the Lieutenant pushed off from

the _Rights-of-Man_. That was the merchant ship’s name; though by her

master and crew abbreviated in sailor fashion into the _Rights_. The

hard-headed Dundee owner was a staunch admirer of Thomas Paine, whose

book in rejoinder to Burke’s arraignment of the French Revolution had

then been published for some time, and had gone everywhere. In

christening his vessel after the title of Paine’s volume, the man of

Dundee was something like his contemporary shipowner, Stephen Girard of

Philadelphia, whose sympathies alike with his native land and its

liberal philosophies he evinced by naming his ships after Voltaire,

Diderot, and so forth.

But now when the boat swept under the merchantman’s stern, and officer

and oarsmen were noting, some bitterly and others with a grin, the name

emblazoned there; just then it was that the new recruit jumped up from

the bow where the coxswain had directed him to sit, and, waving his hat

to his silent shipmates sorrowfully looking over at him from the

taffrail, bade the lads a genial good-bye. Then making a salutation as

to the ship herself, ‘And good-bye to you too, old _Rights-of-Man_!’

‘Down, sir,’ roared the Lieutenant, instantly assuming all the rigour of

his rank, though with difficulty repressing a smile.

To be sure, Billy’s action was a terrible breach of naval decorum. But

in that decorum he had never been instructed; in consideration of which

the Lieutenant would hardly have been so energetic in reproof but for

the concluding farewell to the ship. This he rather took as meant to

convey a covert sally on the new recruit’s part, a sly slur at

impressment in general, and that of himself in especial. And yet, more

likely, if satire it was in effect, it was hardly so by intention, for

Billy, though happily endowed with the gaiety of high health, youth, and

a free heart, was yet by no means of a satirical turn. The will to it

and the sinister dexterity were alike wanting. To deal in double meaning

and insinuations of any sort was quite foreign to his nature.

As to his enforced enlistment, that he seemed to take pretty much as he

was wont to take any vicissitudes of weather. Like the animals, though

no philosopher he was, without knowing it, practically a fatalist. And,

it may be, that he rather liked this adventurous turn in his affairs

which promised an opening into novel scenes and martial excitements.

Aboard the _Indomitable_ our merchant-sailor was forthwith rated as an

able seaman, and assigned to the starboard watch of the foretop. He was

soon at home in the service, not at all disliked for his unpretentious

good looks, and a sort of genial happy-go-lucky air. No merrier man in

his mess; in marked contrast to certain other individuals included like

himself among the impressed portion of the ship’s company; for these

when not actively employed were sometimes, and more particularly in the

last dog-watch when the drawing near of twilight induced revery, apt to

fall into a saddish mood which in some partook of sullenness. But they

were not so young as our foretopman, and no few of them must have known

a hearth of some sort, others may have had wives and children left, too

probably, in uncertain circumstances, and hardly any but must have

acknowledged kith and kin; while for Billy, as will shortly be seen, his

entire family was practically invested in himself.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

II

Though our new-made foretopman was well received in the top and on the

gun-decks, hardly here was he that cynosure he had previously been among

those minor ships’ companies of the merchant marine, with which

companies only had he hitherto consorted.

He was young; and despite his all but fully developed frame, in aspect

looked even younger than he really was. This was owing to a lingering

adolescent expression in the as yet smooth face, all but feminine in

purity of natural complexion, but where, thanks to his sea-going, the

lily was quite suppressed, and the rose had some ado visibly to flush

through the tan.

To one essentially such a novice in the complexities of factitious life,

the abrupt transition from his former and simpler sphere to the ampler

and more knowing world of a great warship--this might well have abashed

him had there been any conceit or vanity in his composition. Among her

miscellaneous multitude, the _Indomitable_ mustered several individuals

who, however inferior in grade, were of no common natural stamp, sailors

more signally susceptive of that air which continuous martial discipline

and repeated presence in battle can in some degree impart even to the

average man. As the _Handsome Sailor_ Billy Budd’s position aboard the

seventy-four was something analogous to that of a rustic beauty

transplanted from the provinces and brought into competition with the

high-born dames of the court. But this change of circumstances he scarce

noted. As little did he observe that something about him provoked an

ambiguous smile in one or two harder faces among the blue-jackets. Nor

less unaware was he of the peculiar favourable effect his person and

demeanour had upon the more intelligent gentlemen of the quarter-deck.

Nor could this well have been otherwise. Cast in a mould peculiar to the

finest physical examples of those Englishmen in whom the Saxon strain

would seem not at all to partake of any Norman or other admixture, he

showed in face that humane look of reposeful good-nature which the Greek

sculptor in some instances gave to his heroic strong man, Hercules. But

this again was subtly modified by another and pervasive quality. The

ear, small and shapely, the arch of the foot, the curve in mouth and

nostril, even the indurated hand dyed to the orange-tawny of the

toucan’s bill, a hand telling of the halyards and tar-buckets; but,

above all, something in the mobile expression, and every chance attitude

and movement, something suggestive of a mother eminently favoured by

Love and the Graces; all this strangely indicated a lineage in direct

contradiction to his lot. The mysteriousness here, became less

mysterious through a matter of fact elicited when Billy at the capstan

was being formally mustered into the service. Asked by the officer, a

small, brisk little gentleman as it chanced, among other questions, his

place of birth, he replied, ‘Please, sir, I don’t know.’

‘Don’t know where you were born? Who was your father?’

‘God knows, sir.’

Struck by the straightforward simplicity of these replies, the officer

next asked, ‘Do you know anything about your beginning?’

‘No, sir. But I have heard that I was found in a pretty silk-lined

basket hanging one morning from the knocker of a good man’s door in

Bristol.’

‘_Found_, say you? Well,’ throwing back his head, and looking up and

down the new recruit--‘well, it turns out to have been a pretty good

find. Hope they’ll find some more like you, my man; the fleet sadly

needs them.’

Yes, Billy Budd was a foundling, a presumable by-blow, and, evidently,

no ignoble one. Noble descent was as evident in him as in a blood horse.

For the rest, with little or no sharpness of faculty or any trace of the

wisdom of the serpent, nor yet quite a dove, he possessed a certain

degree of intelligence along with the unconventional rectitude of a

sound human creature--one to whom not yet has been proffered the

questionable apple of knowledge. He was illiterate; he could not read,

but he could sing, and like the illiterate nightingale was sometimes the

composer of his own song.

Of self-consciousness he seemed to have little or none, or about as much

as we may reasonably impute to a dog of St. Bernard’s breed.

Habitually being with the elements and knowing little more of the land

than as a beach, or, rather, that portion of the terraqueous globe

providentially set apart for dance-houses, doxies and tapsters, in

short, what sailors call a ‘fiddlers’ green,’ his simple nature remained

unsophisticated by those moral obliquities which are not in every case

incomparable with that manufacturable thing known as respectability. But

are sailor frequenters of fiddlers’ greens without vices? No; but less

often than with landsmen do their vices, so-called, partake of

crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than

exuberance of vitality after long restraint, frank manifestations in

accordance with natural law. By his original constitution, aided by the

co-operating influences of his lot, Billy in many respects was little

more than a sort of upright barbarian, much such perhaps as Adam

presumably might have been ere the urbane Serpent wriggled himself into

his company.

And here be it submitted that, apparently going to corroborate the

doctrine of man’s fall (a doctrine now popularly ignored), it is

observable that where certain virtues pristine and unadulterate

peculiarly characterise anybody in the external uniform of civilisation,

they will upon scrutiny seem not to be derived from custom or convention

but rather to be out of keeping with these, as if indeed exceptionally

transmitted from a period prior to Cain’s city and citified man. The

character marked by such qualities has to an unvitiated taste an

untampered-with flavour like that of berries, while the man thoroughly

civilised, even in a fair specimen of the breed, has to the same moral

palate a questionable smack as of a compounded wine. To any stray

inheritor of these primitive qualities found, like Caspar Hauser,

wandering dazed in any Christian capital of our time, the poet’s famous

invocation, near two thousand years ago, of the good rustic out of his

latitude in the Rome of the Cæsars, still appropriately holds:--

‘Faithful in word and thought,

What hast Thee, Fabian, to the city brought.’

Though our Handsome Sailor had as much of masculine beauty as one can

expect anywhere to see; nevertheless, like the beautiful woman in one of

Hawthorne’s minor tales, there was just one thing amiss in him. No

visible blemish, indeed, as with the lady; no, but an occasional

liability to a vocal defect. Though in the hour of elemental uproar or

peril, he was everything that a sailor should be, yet under sudden

provocation of strong heart-feeling his voice, otherwise singularly

musical, as if expressive of the harmony within, was apt to develop an

organic hesitancy,--in fact, more or less of a stutter or even worse. In

this particular Billy was a striking instance that the arch-interpreter,

the envious marplot of Eden still has more or less to do with every

human consignment to this planet of earth. In every case, one way or

another, he is sure to slip in his little card, as much as to remind

us--I too have a hand here.

The avowal of such an imperfection in the Handsome Sailor should be

evidence not alone that he is not presented as a conventional hero, but

also that the story in which he is the main figure is no romance.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

III

At the time of Billy Budd’s arbitrary enlistment into the _Indomitable_

that ship was on her way to join the Mediterranean fleet. No long time

elapsed before the junction was effected. As one of that fleet the

seventy-four participated in its movements, though at times on account

of her superior sailing qualities, in the absence of frigates,

dispatched on separate duty as a scout, and at times on less temporary

service. But with all this the story has little concernment, restricted

as it is to the inner life of one particular ship and the career of an

individual sailor.

It was the summer of 1797. In the April of that year had occurred the

commotion at Spithead, followed in May by a second and yet more serious

outbreak in the fleet at the Nore. The latter is known, and without

exaggeration in the epithet, as the Great Mutiny. It was indeed a

demonstration more menacing to England than the contemporary manifestos

and conquering and proselytising armies of the French Directory.

To the Empire, the Nore Mutiny was what a strike in the fire-brigade

would be to London threatened by general arson. In a crisis when the

Kingdom might well have anticipated the famous signal that some years

later published along the naval line of battle what it was that upon

occasion England expected of Englishmen; _that_ was the time when at the

mast-heads of the three-deckers and seventy-fours moored in her own

roadstead--a fleet, the right arm of a Power then all but the sole free

conservative one of the Old World, the blue-jackets, to be numbered by

thousands, ran up with hurrahs the British colours with the union and

cross wiped out; by that cancellation transmuting the flag of founded

law and freedom defined, into the enemy’s red meteor of unbridled and

unbounded revolt. Reasonable discontent growing out of practical

grievances in the fleet had been ignited into irrational combustion as

by live cinders blown across the Channel from France in flames.

The event converted into irony for a time those spirited strains of

Dibdin--as a song-writer no mean auxiliary to the English Government--at

this European conjuncture, strains celebrating, among other things, the

patriotic devotion of the British tar--

‘And as for my life, ’tis the King’s!’

Such an episode in the Island’s grand naval story her naval historians

naturally abridge; one of them (G. P. R. James) candidly acknowledging

that fain would he pass it over did not ‘impartiality forbid

fastidiousness.’ And yet his mention is less a narration than a

reference, having to do hardly at all with details. Nor are these

readily to be found in the libraries. Like some other events in every

age befalling states everywhere, including America, the Great Mutiny was

of such character that national pride along with views of policy would

fain shade it off into the historical background. Such events cannot be

ignored, but there is a considerate way of historically treating them.

If a well-constituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or

calamitous in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without

reproach be equally discreet.

Though after parleyings between Government and the ringleaders, and

concessions by the former as to some glaring abuses, the first

uprising--that at Spithead--with difficulty was put down, or matters for

a time pacified; yet at the Nore the unforeseen renewal of insurrection

on a yet larger scale, and emphasised in the conferences that ensued by

demands deemed by the authorities not only inadmissible but aggressively

insolent, indicated, if the red flag did not sufficiently do so, what

was the spirit animating the men. Final suppression, however, there was;

but only made possible perhaps by the unswerving loyalty of the marine

corps, and a voluntary resumption of loyalty among influential sections

of the crews. To some extent the Nore Mutiny may be regarded as

analogous to the distempering irruption of contagious fever in a frame

constitutionally sound, and which anon throws it off.

At all events, among these thousands of mutineers were some of the tars

who not so very long afterwards--whether wholly prompted thereto by

patriotism, or pugnacious instinct, or by both--helped to win a coronet

for Nelson at the Nile, and the naval crown of crowns for him at

Trafalgar. To the mutineers those battles, and especially Trafalgar,

were a plenary absolution, and a grand one; for that which goes to make

up scenic naval display is heroic magnificence in arms. Those battles,

especially Trafalgar, stand unmatched in human annals.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

IV

Concerning ‘The greatest sailor since the world began.’--

TENNYSON.

In this matter of writing, resolve as one may to keep to the main road,

some by-paths have an enticement not readily to be withstood. Beckoned

by the genius of Nelson I am going to err into such a by-path. If the

reader will keep me company I shall be glad. At the least we can promise

ourselves that pleasure which is wickedly said to be in sinning, for a

literary sin the divergence will be.

Very likely it is no new remark that the inventions of our time have at

last brought about a change in sea warfare in degree corresponding to

the revolution in all warfare effected by the original introduction from

China into Europe of gunpowder. The first European firearm, a clumsy

contrivance, was, as is well known, scouted by no few of the knights as

a base implement, good enough peradventure for weavers too craven to

stand up crossing steel with steel in frank fight. But as ashore

knightly valour, though shorn of its blazonry, did not cease with the

knights, neither on the seas, though nowadays in encounters there a

certain kind of displayed gallantry be fallen out of date as hardly

applicable under changed circumstances, did the nobler qualities of such

naval magnates as Don John of Austria, Doria, Van Tromp, Jean Bart, the

long line of British admirals and the American Decaturs of 1812 become

obsolete with their wooden walls.

Nevertheless, to anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without

being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one

the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson’s _Victory_, seems to float

there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but

also as a poetic reproach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the

_Monitors_ and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads. And this

not altogether because such craft are unsightly, unavoidably lacking the

symmetry and grand lines of the old battle-ships, but equally for other

reasons.

There are some, perhaps, who while not altogether inaccessible to that

poetic reproach just alluded to, may yet on behalf of the new order be

disposed to parry it; and this to the extent of iconoclasm, if need be.

For example, prompted by the sight of the star inserted in the

_Victory’s_ deck designating the spot where the Great Sailor fell, these

martial utilitarians may suggest considerations implying that Nelson’s

ornate publication of his person in battle was not only unnecessary, but

not military, nay, savoured of foolhardiness and vanity. They may add,

too, that at Trafalgar it was in effect nothing less than a challenge to

death; and death came; and that but for his bravado the victorious

admiral might possibly have survived the battle, and so, instead of

having his sagacious dying injunctions overruled by his immediate

successor in command, he himself when the contest was decided might have

brought his shattered fleet to anchor, a proceeding which might have

averted the deplorable loss of life by shipwreck in the elemental

tempest that followed the martial one.

Well, should we set aside the more than disputable point whether for

various reasons it was possible to anchor the fleet, then plausibly

enough the Bethamites of war may urge the above.

But he _might have been_ is but boggy ground to build on. And certainly

in foresight as to the larger issue of an encounter, and anxious

preparations for it--buoying the deadly way and mapping it out, as at

Copenhagen--few commanders have been so painstakingly circumspect as

this reckless declarer of his person in fight.

Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish

considerations, is surely no special virtue in a military man; while an

excessive love of glory, exercising to the uttermost the honest

heart-felt sense of duty, is the first. If the name _Wellington_ is not

so much of a trumpet to the blood as the simpler name _Nelson_, the

reason for this may perhaps be inferred from the above. Alfred in his

funeral ode on the victor of Waterloo ventures not to call him the

greatest soldier of all time, though in the same ode he invokes Nelson

as ‘the greatest sailor since the world began.’

At Trafalgar Nelson on the brink of opening the fight sat down and wrote

his last brief will and testament. If under the presentiment of the most

magnificent of all victories, to be crowned by his own glorious death, a

sort of priestly motive led him to dress his person in the jewelled

vouchers of his own shining deeds; if thus to have adorned himself for

the altar and the sacrifice were indeed vainglory, then affectation and

fustian is each truly heroic line in the great epics and dramas, since

in such lines the poet but embodies in verse those exaltations of

sentiment that a nature like Nelson, the opportunity being given,

vitalises into acts.

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V

The outbreak at the Nore was put down. But not every grievance was

redressed. If the contractors, for example, were no longer permitted to

ply some practices peculiar to their tribe everywhere, such as providing

shoddy cloth, rations not sound, or false in the measure; not the less

impressment, for one thing, went on. By custom sanctioned for centuries,

and judicially maintained by a Lord Chancellor as late as Mansfield,

that mode of manning the fleet, a mode now fallen into a sort of

abeyance but never formally renounced, it was not practicable to give up

in those years. Its abrogation would have crippled the indispensable

fleet, one wholly under canvas, no steam-power, its innumerable sails

and thousands of cannon, everything in short, worked by muscle alone; a

fleet the more insatiate in demand for men, because then multiplying its

ships of all grades against contingencies present and to come of the

convulsed Continent.

Discontent foreran the Two Mutinies, and more or less it lurkingly

survived them. Hence it was not unreasonable to apprehend some return of

trouble sporadic or general. One instance of such apprehensions: In the

same year with this story, Nelson, then Vice-Admiral Sir Horatio, being

with the fleet off the Spanish coast, was directed by the admiral in

command to shift his pennant from the _Captain_ to the _Theseus_; and

for this reason: that the latter ship having newly arrived in the

station from home where it had taken part in the Great Mutiny, danger

was apprehended from the temper of the men; and it was thought that an

officer like Nelson was the one, not indeed to terrorise the crew into

base subjection, but to win them by force of his mere presence back to

an allegiance, if not as enthusiastic as his own, yet as true. So it

was, that for a time on more than one quarter-deck anxiety did exist. At

sea precautionary vigilance was strained against relapse. At short

notice an engagement might come on. When it did, the lieutenants

assigned to batteries felt it incumbent on them in some instances to

stand with drawn swords behind the men working the guns.

But on board the seventy-four in which Billy now swung his hammock very

little in the manner of the men and nothing obvious in the demeanour of

the officers would have suggested to an ordinary observer that the Great

Mutiny was a recent event. In their general bearing and conduct the

commissioned officers of a warship naturally take their tone from the

commander, that is if he have that ascendency of character that ought to

be his.

Captain the Honourable Edward Fairfax Vere, to give his full title, was

a bachelor of forty or thereabouts, a sailor of distinction, even in a

time prolific of renowned seamen. Though allied to the higher nobility,

his advancement had not been altogether owing to influences connected

with that circumstance. He had seen much service, been in various

engagements, always acquitting himself as an officer mindful of the

welfare of his men, but never tolerating an infraction of discipline;

thoroughly versed in the science of his profession, and intrepid to the

verge of temerity, though never injudiciously so. For his gallantry in

the West Indian waters as flag-lieutenant under Rodney in that admiral’s

crowning victory over De Grasse, he was made a post-captain.

Ashore in the garb of a civilian, scarce anyone would have taken him for

a sailor, more especially that he never garnished unprofessional talk

with nautical terms, and grave in his bearing, evinced little

appreciation of mere humour. It was not out of keeping with these traits

that on a passage when nothing demanded his paramount action, he was the

most undemonstrative of men. Any landsman observing this gentleman, not

conspicuous by his stature and wearing no pronounced insignia, emerging

from his retreat to the open deck, and noting the silent deference of

the officers retiring to leeward, might have taken him for the King’s

guest, a civilian aboard the King’s ship, some highly honourable

discreet envoy on his way to an important post. But, in fact, this

unobtrusiveness of demeanour may have proceeded from a certain

unaffected modesty of manhood sometimes accompanying a resolute nature,

a modesty evinced at all times not calling for pronounced action, and

which shown in any rank of life suggests a virtue aristocratic in kind.

As with some others engaged in various departments of the world’s more

heroic activities, Captain Vere, though practical enough upon occasion,

would at times betray a certain dreaminess of mood. Standing alone on

the weather-side of the greater deck, one hand holding by the rigging,

he would absently gaze off at the black sea. At the presentation to him

then of some minor matter interrupting the current of his thoughts, he

would show more or less irascibility; but instantly he would control it.

In the Navy he was popularly known by the appellation--Starry Vere. How

such a designation happened to fall upon one who, whatever his sturdy

qualities, was without any brilliant ones, was in this wise: a favourite

kinsman, Lord Denton, a free-handed fellow, had been the first to meet

and congratulate him upon his return to England from the West Indian

cruise; and but the day previous turning over a copy of Andrew Marvell’s

poems had lighted, not for the first time however, upon the lines

entitled ‘Appelton House,’ the name of one of the seats of their common

ancestor, a hero in the German wars of the seventeenth century, in which

poem occur the lines,

‘This ’tis to have been from the first

In a domestic heaven nursed,

Under the discipline severe

Of Fairfax and the starry Vere.’

And so, upon embracing his cousin fresh from Rodney’s victory, wherein

he had played so gallant a part, brimming over with just family pride in

the sailor of their house, he exuberantly exclaimed, ‘Give ye joy, Ed;

give ye joy, my starry Vere!’ This got currency, and the novel prefix

serving in familiar parlance readily to distinguish the _Indomitable’s_

captain from another Vere, his senior, a distant relative, an officer of

like rank in the Navy, it remained permanently attached to the surname.

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VI

In view of the part that the commander of the _Indomitable_ plays in

scenes shortly to follow, it may be well to fill out that sketch of him

outlined in the previous chapter. Aside from his qualities as a

sea-officer Captain Vere was an exceptional character. Unlike no few of

England’s renowned sailors, long and arduous service with signal

devotion to it, had not resulted in absorbing and _salting_ the entire

man. He had a marked leaning toward everything intellectual. He loved

books, never going to sea without a newly replenished library, compact

but of the best. The isolated leisure, in some cases so wearisome,

falling at intervals to commanders even during a war-cruise, never was

tedious to Captain Vere. With nothing of that literary taste which less

heeds the thing conveyed than the vehicle, his bias was toward those

books to which every serious mind of superior order occupying any active

post of authority in the world, naturally inclines; books treating of

actual men and events, no matter of what era--history, biography, and

unconventional writers who, free from cant and convention, like

Montaigne, honestly, and in the spirit of common sense, philosophise

upon realities.

In this love of reading he found confirmation of his own more reserved

thoughts--confirmation which he had vainly sought in social converse, so

that as touching most fundamental topics, there had got to be

established in him some positive convictions which he felt would abide

in him essentially unmodified so long as his intelligent part remained

unimpaired. In view of the humbled period in which his lot was cast,

this was well for him. His settled convictions were as a dyke against

those invading waters of novel opinion, social, political, and

otherwise, which carried away as in a torrent no few minds in those

days, minds by nature not inferior to his own. While other members of

that aristocracy to which by birth he belonged were incensed at the

innovators mainly because their theories were inimical to the privileged

classes, Captain Vere disinterestedly opposed them not alone because

they seemed to him incapable of embodiment in lasting institutions, but

at war with the world and the peace of mankind.

With minds less stored than his and less earnest, some officers of his

rank, with whom at times he would necessarily consort, found him lacking

in the companionable quality, a dry and bookish gentleman as they

deemed. Upon any chance withdrawal from their company one would be apt

to say to another something like this! ‘Vere is a noble fellow, “Starry

Vere.” ’Spite the Gazettes Sir Horatio is at bottom scarce a better

seaman or fighter. But between you and me now, don’t you think there is

a queer streak of the pedantic running through him? Yes, like the King’s

yarn in a coil of navy-rope.’

Some apparent ground there was for this sort of confidential criticism,

since not only did the captain’s discourse never fall into the jocosely

familiar, but in illustrating any point touching the stirring personages

and events of the time, he would cite some historical character or

incident of antiquity with the same easy air that he would cite from the

moderns. He seemed unmindful of the circumstance that to his bluff

company such allusions, however pertinent they might really be, were

altogether alien to men whose reading was mainly confined to the

journals. But considerateness in such matters is not easy in natures

constituted like Captain Vere’s. Their honesty prescribes to them

directness, sometimes far-reaching like that of a migratory fowl that in

its flight never heeds when it crosses a frontier.

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VII

The lieutenants and other commissioned gentlemen forming Captain Vere’s

staff it is not necessary here to particularise, nor needs it to make

mention of any of the warrant-officers. But among the petty officers was

one who, having much to do with the story, may as well be forthwith

introduced. This portrait I essay, but shall never hit it.

This was John Claggart, the master-at-arms. But that sea-title may to

landsmen seem somewhat equivocal. Originally, doubtless, that petty

officer’s function was the instruction of the men in the use of arms,

sword, or cutlass. But very long ago, owing to the advance in gunnery

making hand-to-hand encounters less frequent, and giving to nitre and

sulphur the pre-eminence over steel, that function ceased; the

master-at-arms of a great warship becoming a sort of chief of police

charged among other matters with the duty of preserving order on the

populous lower gun-decks.

Claggart was a man of about five-and-thirty, somewhat spare and tall,

yet of no ill figure upon the whole. His hand was too small and shapely

to have been accustomed to hard toil. The face was a notable one; the

features, all except the chin, cleanly cut as those on a Greek

medallion; yet the chin, beardless as Tecumseh’s, had something of the

strange protuberant heaviness in its make that recalled the prints of

the Rev. Dr. Titus Oates, the historical deponent with the clerical

drawl in the time of Charles II., and the fraud of the alleged Popish

Plot. It served Claggart in his office that his eye could cast a

tutoring glance. His brow was of the sort phrenologically associated

with more than average intellect; silken jet curls partly clustering

over it, making a foil to the pallor below, a pallor tinged with a faint

shade of amber akin to the hue of time-tinted marbles of old.

This complexion singularly contrasting with the red or deeply bronzed

visages of the sailors, and in part the result of his official seclusion

from the sunlight, though it was not exactly displeasing, nevertheless

seemed to hint of something defective or abnormal in the constitution

and blood. But his general aspect and manner were so suggestive of an

education and career incongruous with his naval function, that when not

actively engaged in it he looked like a man of high quality, social and

moral, who for reasons of his own was keeping incognito. Nothing was

known of his former life. It might be that he was an Englishman; and yet

there lurked a bit of accent in his speech suggesting that possibly he

was not such by birth, but through naturalisation in early childhood.

Among certain grizzled sea-gossips of the gun-decks and forecastle went

a rumour perdue that the master-at-arms was a chevalier who had

volunteered into the King’s Navy by way of compounding for some

mysterious swindle whereof he had been arraigned at the King’s Bench.

The fact that nobody could substantiate this report was, of course,

nothing against its secret currency. Such a rumour once started on the

gun-decks in reference to almost anyone below the rank of a commissioned

officer would, during the period assigned to this narrative, have seemed

not altogether wanting in credibility to the tarry old wiseacres of a

man-of-war crew. And indeed a man of Claggart’s accomplishments, without

prior nautical experience entering the Navy at mature life, as he did,

and necessarily allotted at the start to the lowest grade in it; a man,

too, who never made allusion to his previous life ashore; these were

circumstances which in the dearth of exact knowledge as to his true

antecedents opened to the invidious a vague field for unfavourable

surmise.

But the sailors’ dog-watch gossip concerning him derived a vague

plausibility from the fact that now for some period the British Navy

could so little afford to be squeamish in the matter of keeping up the

muster-rolls, that not only were press-gangs notoriously abroad both

afloat and ashore, but there was little or no secret about another

matter, namely, that the London police were at liberty to capture any

able-bodied suspect, and any questionable fellow at large, and summarily

ship him to the dock-yard or fleet. Furthermore, even among voluntary

enlistments, there were instances where the motive thereto partook

neither of patriotic impulse nor yet of a random desire to experience a

bit of sea-life and martial adventure. Insolvent debtors of minor grade,

together with the promiscuous lame ducks of morality, found in the Navy

a convenient and secure refuge. Secure, because once enlisted aboard a

King’s ship, they were as much in sanctuary as the transgressor of the

Middle Ages harbouring himself under the shadow of the altar. Such

sanctioned irregularities, which for obvious reasons the Government

would hardly think to parade at the time, and which consequently, and as

affecting the least influential class of mankind, have all but dropped

into oblivion, lends colour to something for the truth whereof I do not

vouch, and hence have some scruple in stating; something I remember

having seen in print, though the book I cannot recall; but the same

thing was personally communicated to me now more than forty years ago by

an old pensioner in a cocked hat, with whom I had a most interesting

talk on the terrace at Greenwich, a Baltimore negro, a Trafalgar man. It

was to this effect: In the case of a warship short of hands, whose

speedy sailing was imperative, the deficient quota, in lack of any other

way of making it good, would be eked out by drafts called direct from

the jails. For reasons previously suggested it would not perhaps be easy

at the present day directly to prove or disprove the allegation. But

allowed as a verity, how significant would it be of England’s straits at

the time, confronted by these wars which like a flight of harpies rose

shrieking from the din and dust of the fallen Bastille. That era appears

measurably clear to us who look back at it, and but read of it. But to

the grandfathers of us graybeards, the thoughtful of them, the genius of

it presented an aspect like that of Camoens’ ‘Spirit of the Cape,’ an

eclipsing menace mysterious and prodigious. Not America was exempt from

apprehension. At the height of Napoleon’s unexampled conquests, there

were Americans who had fought at Bunker Hill who looked forward to the

possibility that the Atlantic might prove no barrier against the

ultimate schemes of this portentous upstart from the revolutionary

chaos, who seemed in act of fulfilling judgment prefigured in the

Apocalypse.

But the less credence was to be given to the gun-deck talk touching

Claggart, seeing that no man holding his office in a man-of-war can ever

hope to be popular with the crew. Besides, in derogatory comments upon

one against whom they have a grudge, or for any reason or no reason

mislike, sailors are much like landsmen, they are apt to exaggerate or

romance.

About as much was really known to the _Indomitable’s_ tars of the

master-at-arms’ career before entering the service as an astronomer

knows about a comet’s travels prior to its first observable appearance

in the sky. The verdict of the sea-quidnuncs has been cited only by way

of showing what sort of moral impression the man made upon rude

uncultivated natures, whose conceptions of human wickedness were

necessarily of the narrowest, limited to ideas of vulgar rascality--a

thief among the swinging hammocks during a night-watch, or the

man-brokers and land-sharks of the seaports.

It was no gossip, however, but fact, that though, as before hinted,

Claggart upon his entrance into the navy was, as a novice, assigned to

the least honourable section of a man-of-war’s crew, embracing the

drudges, he did not long remain there.

The superior capacity he immediately evinced, his constitutional

sobriety, ingratiating deference to superiors, together with a peculiar

ferreting genius manifested on a singular occasion, all this capped by a

certain austere patriotism, abruptly advanced him to the position of

master-at-arms.

Of this maritime chief of police the ship’s corporals, so called, were

the immediate subordinates, and compliant ones; and this, as is to be

noted in some business departments ashore, almost to a degree

inconsistent with entire moral volition. His place put various

converging wires of underground influence under the chief’s control,

capable when astutely worked through his understrappers of operating to

the mysterious discomfort, if nothing worse, of any of the

sea-commonalty.

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VIII

Life in the foretop well agreed with Billy Budd. There, when not

actually engaged on the yards yet higher aloft, the topmen, who as such

had been picked out for youth and activity, constituted an aerial club,

lounging at ease against the smaller stun’-sails rolled up into

cushions, spinning yarns like the lazy gods, and frequently amused with

what was going on in the busy world of the decks below. No wonder then

that a young fellow of Billy’s disposition was well content in such

society. Giving no cause of offence to anybody, he was always alert at a

call. So in the merchant service it had been with him. But now such

punctiliousness in duty was shown that his topmates would sometimes

good-naturedly laugh at him for it. This heightened alacrity had its

cause, namely: the impression made upon him by the first formal

gangway-punishment he had ever witnessed, which befell the day following

his impressment. It had been incurred by a little fellow, young, a

novice, an afterguardsman absent from his assigned post when the ship

was being put about, a dereliction resulting in a rather serious hitch

to that manœuvre, one demanding instantaneous promptitude in letting go

and making fast. When Billy saw the culprit’s naked back under the

scourge gridironed with red welts, and worse; when he marked the dire

expression in the liberated man’s face, as with his woollen shirt flung

over him by the executioner he rushed forward from the spot to bury

himself in the crowd, Billy was horrified. He resolved that never

through remissness would he make himself liable to such a visitation, or

do or omit aught that might merit even verbal reproof. What then was his

surprise and concern when ultimately he found himself getting into petty

trouble occasionally about such matters as the stowage of his bag, or

something amiss in his hammock, matters under the police oversight of

the ship’s corporals of the lower decks, and which brought down on him a

vague threat from one of them.

So heedful in all things as he was, how could this be? He could not

understand it, and it more than vexed him. When he spoke to his young

topmates about it, they were either lightly incredulous, or found

something comical in his unconcealed anxiety. ‘Is it your bag, Billy?’

said one; ‘well, sew yourself up in it, Billy boy, and then you’ll be

sure to know if anybody meddles with it.’

Now there was a veteran aboard who, because his years began to

disqualify him for more active work, had been recently assigned duty as

mainmast-man in his watch, looking to the gear belayed at the rail round

about that great spar near the deck. At off-times the foretopman had

picked up some acquaintance with him, and now in his trouble it occurred

to him that he might be the sort of person to go to for wise counsel. He

was an old Dansker long anglicised in the service, of few words, many

wrinkles and some honourable scars. His wizened face, time-tinted and

weather-stormed to the complexion of an antique parchment, was here and

there peppered blue by the chance explosion of a gun-cartridge in

action. He was an _Agamemnon_ man; some two years prior to the time of

this story having served under Nelson, when but Sir Horatio, in that

ship immortal in naval memory, and which, dismantled and in parts broken

up to her bare ribs, is seen a grand skeleton in Haydon’s etching. As

one of a boarding-party from the _Agamemnon_ he had received a cut

slantwise along one temple and cheek, leaving a long pale scar like a

streak of dawn’s light falling athwart the dark visage. It was on

account of that scar and the affair in which it was known that he had

received it, as well as from his blue-peppered complexion, that the

Dansker went among the _Indomitable’s_ crew by the name of

‘Board-her-in-the-smoke.’

Now the first time that his small weasel eyes happened to light on Billy

Budd, a certain grim internal merriment set all his ancient wrinkles

into antic play. Was it that his eccentric unsentimental old sapience,

primitive in its kind, saw, or thought it saw, something which in

contrast with the warship’s environment looked oddly incongruous in the

Handsome Sailor? But after slyly studying him at intervals, the old

Merlin’s equivocal merriment was modified by now. For now when the twain

would meet, it would start in his face a quizzing sort of look, but it

would be but momentary and sometimes replaced by an expression of

speculative query as to what might eventually befall a nature like that,

dropped into a world not without some man-traps and against whose

subtleties simple courage lacking experience and address and without any

touch of defensive ugliness, is of little avail; and where such

innocence as man is capable of does yet in a moral emergency not always

sharpen the faculties or enlighten the will.

However it was, the Dansker in his ascetic way rather took to Billy. Nor

was this only because of a certain philosophic interest in such a

character. There was another cause. While the old man’s eccentricities,

sometimes bordering on the ursine, repelled the juniors, Billy,

undeterred thereby, would make advances, never passing the old

_Agamemnon_ man without a salutation marked by that respect which is

seldom lost on the aged, however crabbed at times, or whatever their

station in life. There was a vein of dry humour, or what not, in the

mastman; and whether in freak of patriarchal irony touching Billy’s

youth and athletic frame, or for some other and more recondite reason,

from the first in addressing him he always substituted Baby for Billy.

The Dansker, in fact, being the originator of the name by which the

foretopman eventually became known aboard ship.

Well then, in his mysterious little difficulty going in quest of the

wrinkled one; Billy found him off duty in a dog-watch ruminating by

himself, seated on a shot-box of the upper gun-deck, now and then

surveying with a somewhat cynical regard certain of the more swaggering

promenaders there. Billy recounted his trouble, again wondering how it

all happened. The salt seer attentively listened, accompanying the

foretopman’s recitals with queer twitchings of his wrinkles and

problematical little sparkles of his small ferret eyes. Making an end of

his story, the foretopman asked, ‘And now, Dansker, do tell me what you

think of it.’ The old man, shoving up the front of his tarpaulin and

deliberately rubbing the long slant scar at the point where it entered

the thin hair, laconically said, ‘Baby Budd, _Jemmy Legs_’ (meaning the

master-at-arms) ‘is down on you.’

‘_Jemmy Legs!_’ ejaculated Billy, his welkin eyes expanding; ‘what for?

Why, he calls me _the sweet and pleasant young fellow_, they tell me.’

‘Does he so?’ grinned the grizzled one; then said, ‘Ay, Baby lad, a

sweet voice has _Jemmy Legs_.’

‘No, not always. But to me he has. I seldom pass him but there comes a

pleasant word.’

‘And that’s because he’s down upon you, Baby Budd.’

Such reiteration, along with the manner of it, incomprehensible to a

novice, disturbed Billy almost as much as the mystery for which he had

sought explanation. Something less unpleasingly oracular he tried to

extract; but the old sea-Chiron, thinking perhaps that for the nonce he

had sufficiently instructed his young Achilles, pursed his lips,

gathered all his wrinkles together, and would commit himself to nothing

further.

Years, and these experiences which befall certain shrewder men

subordinated life-long to the will of superiors, all this had developed

in the Dansker the pithy guarded cynicism that was his leading

characteristic.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

IX

The next day an incident served to confirm Billy Budd in his incredulity

as to the Dansker’s strange summing-up of the case submitted.

The ship at noon going large before the wind was rolling on her course,

and he, below at dinner and engaged in some sportful talk with the

members of his mess, chanced in a sudden lurch to spill the entire

contents of his soup-pan upon the new-scrubbed deck. Claggart, the

master-at-arms, official ratan in hand, happened to be passing along the

battery in a bay of which the mess was lodged, and the greasy liquid

streamed just across his path. Stepping over it, he was proceeding on

his way without comment, since the matter was nothing to take notice of

under the circumstances, when he happened to observe who it was that had

done the spilling. His countenance changed. Pausing, he was about to

ejaculate something hasty at the sailor, but checked himself, and

pointing down to the streaming soup, playfully tapped him from behind

with his ratan, saying, in a low musical voice, peculiar to him at

times, ‘Handsomely done, my lad! And handsome is as handsome did it,

too!’ and with that passed on. Not noted by Billy as not coming within

his view was the involuntary smile, or rather grimace, that accompanied

Claggart’s equivocal words. Aridly it drew down the thin corners of his

shapely mouth. But everybody taking his remark as meant for humorous,

and at which therefore as coming from a superior they were bound to

laugh, ‘with counterfeited glee,’ acted accordingly; and Billy, tickled,

it may be, by the allusion to his being the Handsome Sailor, merrily

joined in; then addressing his messmates exclaimed, ‘There, now, who

says that Jemmy Legs is down on me!’

‘And who said he was, Beauty?’ demanded one Donald with some surprise.

Whereat the foretopman looked a little foolish, recalling that it was

only one person, Board-her-in-the-smoke, who had suggested what to him

was the smoky idea that this pleasant master-at-arms was in any peculiar

way hostile to him. Meantime that functionary resuming his path must

have momentarily worn some expression less guarded than that of the

bitter smile and, usurping the face from the heart, some distorting

expression perhaps, for a drummer-boy heedlessly frolicking along from

the opposite direction, and chancing to come into light collision with

his person, was strangely disconcerted by his aspect. Nor was the

impression lessened when the official, impulsively giving him a sharp

cut with the ratan, vehemently exclaimed, ‘Look where you go!’

------------------------------------------------------------------------

X

What was the matter with the master-at-arms? And be the matter what it

might, how could it have direct relation to Billy Budd, with whom prior

to the affair of the spilled soup he had never come into any special

contact, official or otherwise? What indeed could the trouble have to do

with one so little inclined to give offence as the merchant ship’s

_peacemaker_, even him who in Claggart’s own phrase was ‘the sweet and

pleasant young fellow’? Yes, why should _Jemmy Legs_, to borrow the

Dansker’s expression, be _down_ on the Handsome Sailor?

But, at heart and not for nothing, as the late chance encounter may

indicate to the discerning, down on him, secretly down on him, he

assuredly was.

Now to invent something touching the more private career of Claggart,

something involving Billy Budd, of which something the latter should be

wholly ignorant, some romantic incident implying that Claggart’s

knowledge of the young blue-jacket began at some period anterior to

catching sight of him on board the seventy-four--all this, not so

difficult to do, might avail in a way more or less interesting to

account for whatever enigma may appear to lurk in the case. But, in

fact, there was nothing of the sort. And yet the cause, necessarily to

be assumed as the sole one assignable, is in its very realism as much

charged with that prime element of Radcliffian romance, _the

mysterious_, as any that the ingenuity of the author of the _Mysteries

of Udolpho_ could devise. For what can more partake of the mysterious

than an antipathy spontaneous and profound such as is evoked in certain

exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other mortal, however

harmless he may be?--if not called forth by that very harmlessness

itself.

Now there can exist no irritating juxtaposition of dissimilar

personalities comparable to that which is possible aboard a great

warship fully manned and at sea. There, every day, among all ranks,

almost every man comes into more or less of contact with almost every

other man. Wholly there to avoid even the sight of an aggravating object

one must needs give it Jonah’s toss, or jump overboard himself. Imagine

how all this might eventually operate on some peculiar human creature

the direct reverse of a saint?

But for the adequate comprehending of Claggart by a normal nature these

hints are insufficient. To pass from a normal nature to him one must

cross ‘the deadly space between,’ and this is best done by indirection.

Long ago an honest scholar, my senior, said to me in reference to one

who like himself is now no more, a man so unimpeachably respectable that

against him nothing was ever openly said, though among the few something

was whispered, ‘Yes, X---- is a nut not to be cracked by the tap of a

lady’s fan. You are aware that I am the adherent of no organised

religion, much less of any philosophy built into a system. Well, for all

that, I think that to try and get into X----, enter his labyrinth, and

get out again, without a clue derived from some source other than what

is known as _knowledge of the world_, that were hardly possible, at

least for me.’

‘Why,’ said I, ‘X----, however singular a study to some, is yet human,

and knowledge of the world assuredly implies the knowledge of human

nature, and in most of its varieties.’

‘Yes, but a superficial knowledge of it, serving ordinary purposes. But

for anything deeper, I am not certain whether to know the world and to

know human nature be not two distinct branches of knowledge, which while

they may coexist in the same heart, yet either may exist with little or

nothing of the other. Nay, in an average man of the world, his constant

rubbing with it blunts that fine spiritual insight indispensable to the

understanding of the essential in certain exceptional characters,

whether evil ones or good. In a matter of some importance I have seen a

girl wind an old lawyer about her little finger. Nor was it the dotage

of senile love. Nothing of the sort. But he knew law better than he knew

the girl’s heart. Coke and Blackstone hardly shed so much light into

obscure spiritual places as the Hebrew prophets. And who were they?

Mostly recluses.’

At the time my inexperience was such that I did not quite see the drift

of all this. It may be that I see it now. And, indeed, if that lexicon

which is based on Holy Writ were any longer popular, one might with less

difficulty define and denominate certain phenomenal men. As it is, one

must turn to some authority not liable to the charge of being tinctured

with the Biblical element.

In a list of definitions included in the authentic translation of Plato,

a list attributed to him, occurs this: ‘Natural Depravity: a depravity

according to nature.’ A definition which though savouring of Calvinism,

by no means involves Calvin’s dogma as to total mankind. Evidently its

intent makes it applicable but to individuals. Not many are the examples

of this depravity which the gallows and jail supply. At any rate, for

notable instances,--since these have no vulgar alloy of the brute in

them, but invariably are dominated by intellectuality,--one must go

elsewhere. Civilisation, especially if of the austerer sort, is

auspicious to it. It folds itself in the mantle of respectability. It

has its certain negative virtues serving as silent auxiliaries. It is

not going too far to say that it is without vices or small sins. There

is a phenomenal pride in it that excludes them from anything--never

mercenary or avaricious. In short, the depravity here meant partakes

nothing of the sordid or sensual. It is serious, but free from acerbity.

Though no flatterer of mankind, it never speaks ill of it.

But the thing which in eminent instances signalises so exceptional a

nature is this: though the man’s even temper and discreet bearing would

seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the

less in his soul’s recesses he would seem to riot in complete exemption

from that law, having apparently little to do with reason further than

to employ it as an ambidexter implement for effecting the irrational.

That is to say: toward the accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness

of malignity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool

judgment sagacious and sound.

These men are true madmen, and of the most dangerous sort, for their

lunacy is not continuous, but occasional; evoked by some special object;

it is secretive and self-contained, so that when most active it is to

the average mind not distinguished from sanity, and for the reason above

suggested that whatever its aim may be, and the aim is never disclosed,

the method and the outward proceeding is always perfectly rational.

Now something such was Claggart, in whom was the mania of an evil

nature, not engendered by vicious training or corrupting books or

licentious living, but born with him and innate, in short, ‘a depravity

according to nature.’

Can it be this phenomenon, disowned or not acknowledged, that in some

criminal cases puzzles the courts? For this cause have our juries at

times not only to endure the prolonged contentions of lawyers with their

fees, but also the yet more perplexing strife of the medical experts

with theirs? But why leave it to them? Why not subpœna as well the

clerical proficients? Their vocation bringing them into peculiar contact

with so many human beings, and sometimes in their least guarded hour, in

interviews very much more confidential than those of physician and

patient; this would seem to qualify them to know something about those

intricacies involved in the question of moral responsibility; whether in

a given case, say, the crime proceeded from mania in the brain or rabies

of the heart. As to any differences among themselves these clerical

proficients might develop on the stand, these could hardly be greater

than the direct contradictions exchanged between the remunerated medical

experts.

Dark sayings are these, some will say. But why? It is because they

somewhat savour of Holy Writ in its phrase ‘mysteries of iniquity.’

The point of the story turning on the hidden nature of the

master-at-arms has necessitated this chapter. With an added hint or two

in connection with the accident of the mess, the resumed narrative must

be left to vindicate as it may its own credibility.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XI

Pale ire, envy and despair.

That Claggart’s figure was not amiss, and his face, save the chin, well

moulded, has already been said. Of these favourable points he seemed not

insensible, for he was not only neat but careful in his dress. But the

form of Billy Budd was heroic; and if his face was without the

intellectual look of the pallid Claggart’s, not the less was it lit,

like his, from within, though from a different source. The bonfire in

his heart made luminous the rose-tan in his cheek.

In view of the marked contrast between the persons of the twain, it is

more than probable that when the master-at-arms in the scene last given

applied to the sailor the proverb ‘_Handsome is as handsome does_,’ he

there let escape an ironic inkling, not caught by the young sailors who

heard it, as to what it was that had first moved him against Billy,

namely, his significant personal beauty.

Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless

in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth. Is envy

then such a monster? Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes

of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did ever

anybody seriously confess to envy? Something there is in it universally

felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime. And not only does

everybody disown it, but the better sort are inclined to incredulity

when it is in earnest imputed to an intelligent man. But since its

lodgment is in the heart, not the brain, no degree of intellect supplies

a guarantee against it. But Claggart’s was no vulgar form of the

passion. Nor, as directed toward Billy Budd, did it partake of that

streak of apprehensive jealousy that marred Saul’s visage perturbedly

brooding on the comely young David. Claggart’s envy struck deeper. If

askance he eyed the good looks, cheery health, and frank enjoyment of

young life in Billy Budd, it was because these happened to go along with

a nature that, as Claggart magnetically felt, had in its simplicity

never willed malice, or experienced the reactionary bite of that

serpent. To him, the spirit lodged within Billy and looking out from his

welkin eyes as from windows, that ineffability which made the dimple in

his dyed cheek, suppled his joints, and danced in his yellow curls, made

him pre-eminently the Handsome Sailor. One person excepted, the

master-at-arms was perhaps the only man in the ship intellectually

capable of adequately appreciating the moral phenomenon presented in

Billy Budd, and the insight but intensified his passion, which assuming

various secret forms within him, at times assumed that of cynic

disdain--disdain of innocence. To be nothing more than innocent! Yet in

an æsthetic way he saw the charm of it, the courageous free-and-easy

temper of it, and fain would have shared it, but he despaired of it.

With no power to annul the elemental evil in himself, though he could

hide it readily enough; apprehending the good, but powerless to be it;

what recourse is left to a nature like Claggart’s, surcharged with

energy as such natures almost invariably are, but to recoil upon itself,

and, like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act

out to the end its allotted part.

Passion, and passion in its profoundest, is not a thing demanding a

palatial stage whereon to play its part. Down among the groundlings,

among the beggars and rakers of the garbage, profound passion is

enacted. And the circumstances that provoke it, however trivial or mean,

are no measure of its power. In the present instance the stage is a

scrubbed gun-deck, and one of the external provocations a man-of-war’s

man’s spilled soup.

Now when the master-at-arms noticed whence came that greasy fluid

streaming before his feet, he must have taken it--to some extent

wilfully perhaps--not for the mere accident it assuredly was, but for

the sly escape of a spontaneous feeling on Billy’s part more or less

answering to the antipathy on his own. In effect a foolish demonstration

he must have thought, and very harmless, like the futile kick of a

heifer, which yet were the heifer a shod stallion, would not be so

harmless. Even so was it that into the gall of envy Claggart infused the

vitriol of his contempt. But the incident confirmed to him certain

tell-tale reports purveyed to his ear by Squeak, one of his more cunning

corporals, a grizzled little man, so nicknamed by the sailors on account

of his squeaky voice and sharp visage ferreting about the dark corners

of the lower decks after interlopers, satirically suggesting to them the

idea of a rat in a cellar.

Now his chief’s employing him as an implicit tool in laying little traps

for the worriment of the foretopman--for it was from the master-at-arms

that the petty persecutions heretofore adverted to had proceeded--the

corporal, having naturally enough concluded that his master could have

no love for the sailor, made it his business, faithful understrapper

that he was, to ferment the ill blood by perverting to his chief certain

innocent frolics of the good-natured foretopman, besides inventing for

his mouth sundry contumelious epithets he claimed to have overheard him

let fall. The master-at-arms never suspected the veracity of these

reports, more especially as to the epithets, for he well knew how

secretly unpopular may become a master-at-arms--at least, a

master-at-arms in those days, zealous in his function--and how the

blue-jackets shoot at him in private their raillery and wit; the

nickname by which he goes among them (_Jemmy Legs_) implying under the

form of merriment their cherished disrespect and dislike.

In view of the greediness of hate for provocation, it hardly needed a

purveyor to feed Claggart’s passion. An uncommon prudence is habitual

with the subtler depravity, for it has everything to hide. And in case

of any merely suspected injury, its secretiveness voluntarily cuts it

off from enlightenment or disillusion; and not unreluctantly, action is

taken upon surmise as upon certainty. And the retaliation is apt to be

in monstrous disproportion to the supposed offence; for when in anybody

was revenge in its exactions aught else but an inordinate usurer. But

how with Claggart’s conscience? For though consciences are unlike as

foreheads, every intelligence, not excluding the Scriptural devils who

‘believe and tremble,’ has one. But Claggart’s conscience being but the

lawyer to his will, made ogres of trifles, probably arguing that the

motive imputed to Billy in spilling the soup just when he did, together

with the epithets alleged, these, if nothing more, made a strong case

against him; nay, justified animosity into a sort of retributive

righteousness. The Pharisee is the Guy Fawkes prowling in the hid

chambers underlying some natures like Claggart’s. And they can really

form no conception of an unreciprocated malice. Probably, the

master-at-arms’ clandestine persecution of Billy was started to try the

temper of the man; but it had not developed any quality in him that

enmity could make official use of, or ever pervert into even plausible

self-justification; so that the occurrence at the mess, petty if it

were, was a welcome one to that peculiar conscience assigned to be the

private mentor of Claggart; and for the rest, not improbably, it put him

upon new experiments.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XII

Not many days after the last incident narrated, something befell Billy

Budd that more gravelled him than aught that had previously occurred.

It was a warm night for the latitude; and the foretopman, whose watch at

the time was properly below, was dozing on the uppermost deck whither he

had ascended from his hot hammock--one of hundreds suspended so closely

wedged together over a lower gun-deck that there was little or no swing

to them. He lay as in the shadow of a hillside stretched under the lee

of the _booms_, a piled ridge of spare spars, and among which the ship’s

largest boat, the launch, was stowed. Alongside of three other

slumberers from below, he lay near one end of the booms which approached

from the foremast; his station aloft on duty as a foretopman being just

over the deck station of the forecastleman, entitling him according to

usage to make himself more or less at home in that neighbourhood.

Presently he was stirred into semi-consciousness by somebody, who must

have previously sounded the sleep of the others, touching his shoulder,

and then, as the foretopman raised his head, breathing into his ear in a

quick whisper, ‘Slip into the lee fore-chains, Billy; there is something

in the wind. Don’t speak. Quick. I will meet you there’; and

disappeared.

Now Billy, like sundry other essentially good-natured ones, had some of

the weaknesses inseparable from essential good-nature; and among these

was a reluctance, almost an incapacity, of plumply saying _no_ to an

abrupt proposition not obviously absurd on the face of it, nor obviously

unfriendly, nor iniquitous. And being of warm blood had not the phlegm

to negate any proposition by unresponsive inaction. Like his sense of

fear, his apprehension as to aught outside of the honest and natural was

seldom very quick. Besides, upon the present occasion, the drouse from

his sleep still hung upon him.

However it was, he mechanically rose, and sleepily wondering what could

be _in the wind_, betook himself to the designated place, a narrow

platform, one of six, outside of the high bulwarks, and screened by the

great dead-eyes and multiple columned lanyards of the shrouds and

back-stays; and, in a great warship of that time, of dimensions

commensurate to the ample hull’s magnitude; a tarry balcony, in short,

overhanging the sea, and so secluded that one mariner of the

_Indomitable_, a nonconformist old tar of a serious turn, made it even

in daytime his private oratory.

In this retired nook the stranger soon joined Billy Budd. There was no

moon as yet; a haze obscured the starlight. He could not distinctly see

the stranger’s face. Yet from something in the outline and carriage,

Billy took him to be, and correctly, one of the afterguard.

‘Hist, Billy!’ said the man, in the same quick, cautionary whisper as

before; ‘you were impressed, weren’t you? Well, so was I’; and he

paused, as to mark the effect. But Billy, not knowing exactly what to

make of this, said nothing. Then the other: ‘We are not the only

impressed ones, Billy. There’s a gang of us. Couldn’t you--help--at a

pinch?’

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Billy, here shaking off his drouse.

‘Hist, hist!’ the hurried whisper now growing husky; ‘see here,’ and the

man held up two small objects faintly twinkling in the night light;

‘see, they are yours, Billy, if you’ll only----’

But Billy broke in, and in his resentful eagerness to deliver himself,

his vocal infirmity somewhat intruded. ‘D-D-Damme, I don’t know what you

are d-driving at, or what you mean, but you had better g-g-go where you

belong!’ For the moment the fellow, as confounded, did not stir; and

Billy, springing to his feet, said, ‘If you d-don’t start, I’ll

t-t-t-oss you back over the r-rail!’ There was no mistaking this, and

the mysterious emissary decamped, disappearing in the direction of the

mainmast in the shadow of the booms.

‘Hallo, what’s the matter?’ here came growling from a forecastleman

awakened from his deck-doze by Billy’s raised voice. And as the

foretopman reappeared, and was recognised by him, ‘Ah, _Beauty_,

is it you? Well, something must have been the matter, for you

st-st-stuttered.’

‘Oh,’ rejoined Billy, now mastering the impediment; ‘I found an

afterguardsman in our part of the ship here, and I bid him be off where

he belongs.’

‘And is that all you did about it, foretopman?’ gruffly demanded

another, an irascible old fellow of brick-coloured visage and hair, and

who was known to his associate forecastlemen as _Red Pepper_. ‘Such

sneaks I should like to marry to the gunner’s daughter!’ by that

expression meaning that he would like to subject them to disciplinary

castigation over a gun.

However, Billy’s rendering of the matter satisfactorily accounted to

these inquirers for the brief commotion, since of all the sections of a

ship’s company the forecastlemen, veterans for the most part, and

bigoted in their sea-prejudices, are the most jealous in resenting

territorial encroachments, especially on the part of any of the

afterguard, of whom they have but a sorry opinion, chiefly landsmen,

never going aloft except to reef or furl the mainsail, and in no wise

competent to handle a marling-spike or turn in a _dead-eye_, say.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XIII

This incident sorely puzzled Billy Budd. It was an entirely new

experience; the first time in his life that he had ever been personally

approached in underhand intriguing fashion. Prior to this encounter he

had known nothing of the afterguardsman, the two men being stationed

wide apart, one forward and aloft during his watch, the other on deck

and aft.

What could it mean? And could they really be guineas, those two

glittering objects the interloper had held up to his (Billy’s) eyes?

Where could the fellow get guineas? Why, even buttons, spare buttons,

are not so plentiful at sea. The more he turned the matter over, the

more he was nonplussed, and made uneasy and discomforted. In his

disgustful recoil from an overture which though he but ill comprehended

he instinctively knew must involve evil of some sort, Billy Budd was

like a young horse fresh from the pasture suddenly inhaling a vile whiff

from some chemical factory, and by repeated snortings tries to get it

out of his nostrils and lungs. This frame of mind barred all desire of

holding further parley with the fellow, even were it but for the purpose

of gaining some enlightenment as to his design in approaching him. And

yet he was not without natural curiosity to see how such a visitor in

the dark would look in broad day.

He espied him the following afternoon in his first dog-watch below, one

of the smokers on that forward part of the upper gun-deck allotted to

the pipe. He recognised him by his general cut and build, more than by

his round freckled face and glassy eyes of pale blue veiled with lashes

all but white. And yet Billy was a bit uncertain whether indeed it were

he--yonder chap about his own age, chatting and laughing in free-hearted

way, leaning against a gun; a genial young fellow enough to look at, and

something of a rattle-brain, to all appearance. Rather chubby, too, for

a sailor, even an afterguardsman. In short, the last man in the world,

one would think, to be overburthened with thoughts, especially those

perilous thoughts that must needs belong to a conspirator in any serious

project, or even to the underling of such a conspirator.

Although Billy was not aware of it, the fellow with a sidelong watchful

glance had perceived Billy first, and then noting that Billy was looking

at him, thereupon nodded a familiar sort of friendly recognition as to

an old acquaintance, without interrupting the talk he was engaged in

with the group of smokers. A day or two afterwards, chancing in the

evening promenade on a gun-deck to pass Billy, he offered a flying word

of good-fellowship, as it were, which by its unexpectedness, and

equivocalness under the circumstances, so embarrassed Billy, that he

knew not how to respond to it, and let it go unnoticed.

Billy was now left more at a loss than before. The ineffectual

speculations into which he was led were so disturbingly alien to him,

that he did his best to smother them. It never entered his mind that

here was a matter which, from its extreme questionableness, it was his

duty as a loyal blue-jacket to report in the proper quarter. And,

probably, had such a step been suggested to him, he would have been

deterred from taking it by the thought, one of novice-magnanimity, that

it would savour overmuch of the dirty work of a tell-tale. He kept the

thing to himself. Yet upon one occasion he could not forbear a little

disburthening himself to the old Dansker, tempted thereto perhaps by the

influence of a balmy night when the ship lay becalmed; the twain, silent

for the most part, sitting together on deck, their heads propped against

the bulwarks. But it was only a partial and anonymous account that Billy

gave, the unfounded scruples above referred to preventing full

disclosure to anybody. Upon hearing Billy’s version, the sage Dansker

seemed to divine more than he was told; and after a little meditation,

during which his wrinkles were pursed as into a point, quite effacing

for the time that quizzing expression his face sometimes wore--‘Didn’t I

say so, Baby Budd?’

‘Say what?’ demanded Billy.

‘Why, _Jemmy Legs_ is _down_ on you.’

‘And what,’ rejoined Billy in amazement, ‘has _Jemmy Legs_ to do with

that cracked afterguardsman?’

‘Ho, it was an afterguardsman, then. A cat’s-paw, a cat’s-paw!’ And with

that exclamation, which, whether it had reference to a light puff of air

just then coming over the calm sea, or subtler relation to the

afterguardsman, there is no telling. The old Merlin gave a twisting

wrench with his black teeth at his plug of tobacco, vouchsafing no reply

to Billy’s impetuous question. For it was his wont to relapse into grim

silence when interrogated in sceptical sort as to any of his sententious

oracles, not always very clear ones, rather partaking of that obscurity

which invests most Delphic deliverances from any quarter.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XIV

Long experience had very likely brought this old man to that bitter

prudence which never interferes in aught, and never gives advice.

Yet, despite the Dansker’s pithy insistence as to the master-at-arms

being at the bottom of these strange experiences of Billy on board the

_Indomitable_, the young sailor was ready to ascribe them to almost

anybody but the man who, to use Billy’s own expression, ‘always had a

pleasant word for him.’ This is to be wondered at. Yet not so much to be

wondered at. In certain matters some sailors even in mature life remain

unsophisticated enough. But a young seafarer of the disposition of our

athletic foretopman, is much of a child-man. And yet a child’s utter

innocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less

wanes as intelligence waxes. But in Billy Budd intelligence, such as it

was, had advanced, while yet his simple-mindedness remained for the most

part unaffected. Experience is a teacher indeed; yet did Billy’s years

make his experience small. Besides, he had none of that intuitive

knowledge of the bad which in natures not good or incompletely so,

foreruns experience, and therefore may pertain, as in some instances it

too clearly does pertain, even to youth.

And what could Billy know of man except of man as a mere sailor? And the

old-fashioned sailor, the veritable man-before-the-mast, the sailor from

boyhood up, he, though indeed of the same species as a landsman, is in

some respects singularly distinct from him. The sailor is frankness, the

landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the

long head; no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in

straightforwardness, but ends are attained by indirection; an oblique,

tedious, barren game, hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing

it.

Yes, as a class, sailors are in character a juvenile race. Even their

deviations are marked by juvenility. And this more especially holding

true with the sailors of Billy’s time. Then, too, certain things which

apply to all sailors do more pointedly operate here and there upon the

junior one. Every sailor, too, is accustomed to obey orders without

debating them; his life afloat is externally ruled for him; he is not

brought into that promiscuous commerce with mankind where unobstructed

free agency on equal terms--equal superficially, at least--soon teaches

one that unless upon occasion he exercises a distrust keen in proportion

to the fairness of the appearance, some foul turn may be served him. A

ruled, undemonstrative distrustfulness is so habitual, not with

business-men so much, as with men who know their kind in less shallow

relations than business, namely certain men of the world, that they come

at last to employ it all but unconsciously; and some of them would very

likely feel real surprise at being charged with it as one of their

general characteristics.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XV

But after the little matter at the mess Billy Budd no more found himself

in strange trouble at times about his hammock or his clothes-bag, or

what not. While, as to that smile that occasionally sunned him, and the

pleasant passing word, these were if not more frequent, yet if anything

more pronounced than before.

But for all that, there were certain other demonstrations now. When

Claggart’s unobserved glance happened to light on belted Billy rolling

along the upper gun-deck in the leisure of the second dog-watch,

exchanging passing broadsides of fun with other young promenaders in the

crowd, that glance would follow the cheerful sea-Hyperion with a settled

meditative and melancholy expression, his eyes strangely suffused with

incipient feverish tears. Then would Claggart look like the man of

sorrows. Yes, and sometimes the melancholy expression would have in it a

touch of soft yearning, as if Claggart could even have loved Billy but

for fate and ban. But this was an evanescence, and quickly repented of,

as it were, by an immitigable look, pinching and shrivelling the visage

into the momentary semblance of a wrinkled walnut. But sometimes

catching sight in advance of the foretopman coming in his direction, he

would, upon their nearing, step aside a little to let him pass, dwelling

upon Billy for the moment with the glittering dental satire of a guise.

But upon any abrupt unforeseen encounter a red light would flash forth

from his eye, like a spark from an anvil in a dusk smithy. That quick

fierce light was a strange one, darted from orbs which in repose were of

a colour nearest approaching a deeper violet, the softest of shades.

Though some of these caprices of the pit could not but be observed by

their object, yet were they beyond the construing of such a nature. And

the thews of Billy were hardly comparable with that sort of sensitive

spiritual organisation which in some cases instinctively conveys to

ignorant innocence an admonition of the proximity of the malign. He

thought the master-at-arms acted in a manner rather queer at times. That

was all. But the occasional frank air and pleasant word went for what

they purported to be, the young sailor never having heard as yet of the

‘too fair-spoken man.’

Had the foretopman been conscious of having done or said anything to

provoke the ill-will of the official, it would have been different with

him, and his sight might have been pursed if not sharpened.

So was it with him in yet another matter. Two minor officers, the

armourer and captain of the hold, with whom he had never exchanged a

word, his position on the ship not bringing him into contact with them;

these men now for the first time began to cast upon Billy, when they

chanced to encounter him, that peculiar glance which evidences that the

man from whom it comes has been some way tampered with, and to the

prejudice of him upon whom the glance lights. Never did it occur to

Billy as a thing to be noted, or a thing suspicious, though he well knew

the fact, that the armourer and captain of the hold, with the ship’s

yeoman, apothecary, and others of that grade, were by naval usage,

messmates of the master-at-arms, men with ears convenient to his

confidential tongue.

Our Handsome Sailor’s manly forwardness upon occasion, and irresistible

good-nature, indicating no mental superiority tending to excite an

invidious feeling, bred general popularity, and this good-will on the

part of most of his shipmates made him the less to concern himself about

such mute aspects toward him as those whereto allusion has just been

made.

As to the afterguardsman, though Billy for reasons already given

necessarily saw little of him, yet when the two did happen to meet,

invariably came the fellow’s off-hand cheerful recognition, sometimes

accompanied by a passing pleasant word or two. Whatever that equivocal

young person’s original design may really have been, or the design of

which he might have been the deputy, certain it was from his manner upon

these occasions, that he had wholly dropped it.

It was as if his precocity of crookedness (and every vulgar villain is

precocious) had for once deceived him, and the man he had sought to

entrap as a simpleton had, through his very simplicity, baffled him.

But shrewd ones may opine that it was hardly possible for Billy to

refrain from going up to the afterguardsman and bluntly demanding to

know his purpose in the initial interview, so abruptly closed in the

fore-chains. Shrewd ones may also think it but natural in Billy to set

about sounding some of the other impressed men of the ship in order to

discover what basis, if any, there was for the emissary’s obscure

suggestions as to plotting disaffection aboard. Yes, the shrewd may so

think. But something more, or rather, something else than mere

shrewdness is perhaps needful for the due understanding of such a

character as Billy Budd’s.

As to Claggart, the monomania in the man--if that indeed it were--as

involuntarily disclosed by starts in the manifestations detailed, yet in

general covered over by his self-contained and rational demeanour; this,

like a subterranean fire, was eating its way deeper and deeper in him.

Something decisive must come of it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XVI

After the mysterious interview in the fore-chains, the one so abruptly

ended there by Billy, nothing especially germane to the story occurred

until the events now about to be narrated.

Elsewhere it has been said that owing to the lack of frigates (of course

better sailers than line-of-battle ships) in the English squadron up the

Straits at that period, the _Indomitable_[2] seventy-four was

occasionally employed not only as an available substitute for a scout,

but at times on detached service of more important kind. This was not

alone because of her sailing qualities, not common in a ship of her

rate, but quite as much probably, that the character of her commander,

it was thought, specially adapted him for any duty where under

unforeseen difficulties a prompt initiative might have to be taken in

some matter demanding knowledge and ability in addition to those

qualities employed in good seamanship. It was on an expedition of the

latter sort, a somewhat distant one, and when the _Indomitable_[2] was

almost at her furthest remove from the fleet, that in the latter part of

an afternoon-watch she unexpectedly came in sight of a ship of the

enemy. It proved to be a frigate. The latter, perceiving through the

glass that the weight of men and metal would be heavily against her,

invoking her light heels, crowded sail to get away. After a chase urged

almost against hope, and lasting until about the middle of the first

dog-watch, she signally succeeded in effecting her escape.

Not long after the pursuit had been given up, and ere the excitement

incident thereto had altogether waned away, the master-at-arms,

ascending from his cavernous sphere, made his appearance cap in hand by

the mainmast, respectfully waiting the notice of Captain Vere, then

solitary walking the weather-side of the quarter-deck, doubtless

somewhat chafed at the failure of the pursuit. The spot where Claggart

stood was the place allotted to men of lesser grades seeking some more

particular interview either with the officer of the deck or the captain

himself. But from the latter it was not often that a sailor or petty

officer of those days would seek a hearing; only some exceptional cause

would, according to established custom, have warranted that.

Presently, just as the commander, absorbed in his reflections, was on

the point of turning aft in his promenade, he became sensible of

Claggart’s presence, and saw the doffed cap held in deferential

expectancy. Here be it said that Captain Vere’s personal knowledge of

this petty officer had only begun at the time of the ship’s last sailing

from home, Claggart then for the first, in transfer from a ship detained

for repairs, supplying on board the _Indomitable_[3] the place of a

previous master-at-arms disabled and ashore.

No sooner did the commander observe who it was that now so deferentially

stood awaiting his notice, than a peculiar expression came over his

face. It was not unlike that which uncontrollably will flit across the

countenance of one at unawares encountering a person who though known to

him indeed has hardly been long enough known for thorough knowledge, but

something in whose aspect nevertheless now for the first provokes a

vaguely repellent distaste. But coming to a stand, and resuming much of

his wonted official manner, save that a sort of impatience lurked in the

intonation of the opening word, he said, ‘Well, what is it,

master-at-arms?’

With the air of a subordinate grieved at the necessity of being a

messenger of ill-tidings, and while conscientiously determined to be

frank, yet equally resolved upon shunning overstatement, Claggart at

this invitation, or rather summons to disburthen, spoke up. What he

said, conveyed in the language of no uneducated man, was to the effect

following, if not altogether in these words, namely: That during the

chase and preparations for the possible encounter he had seen enough to

convince him that at least one sailor aboard was a dangerous character

in a ship mustering some who not only had taken a guilty part in the

late serious trouble, but others also who, like the man in question, had

entered His Majesty’s service under another form than enlistment.

At this point Captain Vere with some impatience interrupted him:

‘Be direct, man; say impressed men.’

Claggart made a gesture of subservience and proceeded. Quite lately he

(Claggart) had begun to suspect that some sort of movement prompted by

the sailor in question was covertly going on, but he had not thought

himself warranted in reporting the suspicion so long as it remained

indistinct. But from what he had that afternoon observed in the man

referred to, the suspicion of something clandestine going on had

advanced to a point less removed from certainty. He deeply felt, he

added, the serious responsibility assumed in making a report involving

such possible consequences to the individual mainly concerned, besides

tending to augment those natural anxieties which every naval commander

must feel in view of extraordinary outbreaks so recent as those which,

he sorrowfully said it, it needed not to name.

Now at the first broaching of the matter Captain Vere, taken by

surprise, could not wholly dissemble his disquietude, but as Claggart

went on, the former’s aspect changed into restiveness under something in

the testifier’s manner in giving his testimony. However, he refrained

from interrupting him. And Claggart, continuing, concluded with this:

‘God forbid, your honour, that the _Indomitable’s_[4] should be the

experience of the----’

‘Never mind that!’ here peremptorily broke in the superior, his face

altering with anger instantly, divining the ship that the other was

about to name, one in which the Nore Mutiny had assumed a singularly

tragical character that for a time jeopardised the life of its

commander. Under the circumstances he was indignant at the purposed

allusion. When the commissioned officers themselves were on all

occasions very heedful how they referred to the recent event, for a

petty officer unnecessarily to allude to it in the presence of his

captain, this struck him as a most immodest presumption. Besides, to his

quick sense of self-respect, it even looked under the circumstances

something like an attempt to alarm him. Nor at that was he without some

surprise that one who so far as he had hitherto come under his notice

had shown considerable tact in his function, should in this particular

evince such lack of it.

But these thoughts and kindred dubious ones flitting across his mind

were suddenly replaced by an intuitional surmise, which though as yet

obscure in form, served practically to affect his reception of the ill

tidings. Certain it is, that long versed in everything pertaining to the

complicated gun-deck life, which like every other form of life has its

secret mines and dubious side, the side popularly disclaimed, Captain

Vere did not permit himself to be unduly disturbed by the general tenor

of his subordinate’s report. Furthermore, if in view of recent events

prompt action should be taken at the first palpable sign of recurring

insubordination, for all that, not judicious would it be, he thought, to

keep the idea of lingering disaffection alive by undue forwardness in

crediting an informer, even if his own subordinate, and charged among

other honours with police surveillance of the crew. This feeling would

not perhaps have so prevailed with him were it not that upon a prior

occasion the patriotic zeal officially evinced by Claggart had somewhat

irritated him as appearing rather supersensitive and strained.

Furthermore, something even in the official’s self-possessed and

somewhat ostentatious manner in making his specifications strangely

reminded him of a bandsman, a perjured witness in a capital case before

a court-martial ashore of which when a lieutenant he, Captain Vere, had

been a member.

Now the peremptory check given to Claggart in the matter of the arrested

allusion was quickly followed up by this: ‘You say that there is at

least one dangerous man aboard. Name him.’

‘William Budd, a foretopman, your honour.’

‘William Budd!’ repeated Captain Vere with unfeigned astonishment; ‘and

mean you the man that Lieutenant Ratcliffe took from the merchantman not

very long ago--the young fellow who seems to be so popular with the

men--Billy, the Handsome Sailor, as they call him?’

‘The same, your honour; but for all his youth and good looks, a deep

one. Not for nothing does he insinuate himself into the good-will of his

shipmates, since at the least they will at a pinch say a good word for

him at all hazards. Did Lieutenant Ratcliffe happen to tell your honour

of that adroit fling of Budd’s jumping up in the cutter’s bow under the

merchantman’s stern when he was being taken off? That sort of

good-humoured air even masks that at heart he resents his impressment.

You have but noted his fair cheek. A man-trap may be under his

ruddy-tipped daisies.’

Now the _Handsome Sailor_ as a signal figure among the crew had

naturally enough attracted the captain’s attention from the first.

Though in general not very demonstrative to his officers, he had

congratulated Lieutenant Ratcliffe upon his good fortune in lighting on

such a fine specimen of the _genus homo_, who in the nude might have

passed for a statue of young Adam before the Fall.

As to Billy’s adieu to the ship _Rights-of-Man_, which the boarding

lieutenant, in a deferential way, had indeed reported to him, Captain

Vere, more as a good story than aught else (having mistakenly understood

it as a satiric sally), had but thought so much the better of the

impressed man for it; as a military sailor, admiring the spirit that

could take an arbitrary enlistment so merrily and sensibly. The

foretopman’s conduct, too, so far as it had fallen under the captain’s

notice, had confirmed the first happy augury, while the new recruit’s

qualities as a _sailor-man_ seemed to be such that he had thought of

recommending him to the executive officer for promotion to a place that

would more frequently bring him under his own observation, namely, the

captaincy of the mizen-top, replacing there in the starboard-watch a man

not so young whom partly for that reason he deemed less fitted for the

post. Be it parenthesised here that since the mizen-topmen have not to

handle such breadths of heavy canvas as the lower sails on the mainmast

and foremast, a young man if of the right stuff not only seems best

adapted to duty there, but, in fact, is generally selected for the

captaincy of that top, and the company under him are light hands, and

often but striplings. In sum, Captain Vere had from the beginning deemed

Billy Budd to be what in the naval parlance of the time was called a

‘_King’s bargain_,’ that is to say, for His Britannic Majesty’s Navy a

capital investment at small outlay or none at all.

After a brief pause, during which the reminiscences above mentioned

passed vividly through his mind, he weighed the import of Claggart’s

last suggestion conveyed in the phrase ‘a man-trap under his

ruddy-tipped daisies,’ and the more he weighed it the less reliance he

felt in the informer’s good faith. Suddenly he turned upon him: ‘Do you

come to me, master-at-arms, with so foggy a tale? As to Budd, cite me an

act or spoken word of his confirmatory of what you in general charge

against him. Stay,’ drawing nearer to him, ‘heed what you speak. Just

now and in a case like this, there is a yard-arm-end for the false

witness.’

‘Ah, your honour!’ sighed Claggart, mildly shaking his shapely head as

in sad deprecation of such unmerited severity of tone. Then

bridling--erecting himself as in virtuous self-assertion, he

circumstantially alleged certain words and acts which collectively, if

credited, led to presumptions mortally inculpating Budd, and for some of

these averments, he added, substantiating proof was not far.

With gray eyes impatient and distrustful, essaying to fathom to the

bottom Claggart’s calm violet ones, Captain Vere again heard him out;

then for the moment stood ruminating. The mood he evinced,

Claggart--himself for the time liberated from the other’s

scrutiny--steadily regarded with a look difficult to render--a look

curious of the operation of his tactics, a look such as might have been

that of the spokesman of the envious children of Jacob deceptively

imposing upon the troubled patriarch the blood-dyed coat of young

Joseph.

Though something exceptional in the moral quality of Captain Vere made

him, in earnest encounter with a fellow-man, a veritable touchstone of

that man’s essential nature, yet now as to Claggart and what was really

going on in him, his feeling partook less of intuitional conviction than

of strong suspicion clogged by strange dubieties. The perplexity he

evinced proceeded less from aught touching the man informed against--as

Claggart doubtless opined--than from considerations how best to act in

regard to the informer. At first, indeed, he was naturally for summoning

that substantiation of his allegations which Claggart said was at hand.

But such a proceeding would result in the matter at once getting abroad,

which in the present stage of it, he thought, might undesirably affect

the ship’s company. If Claggart was a false witness--that closed the

affair. And therefore, before trying the accusation, he would first

practically test the accuser; and he thought this could be done in a

quiet undemonstrative way.

The measure he determined upon involved a shifting of the scene, a

transfer to a place less exposed to observation than the broad

quarter-deck. For although the few gun-room officers there at the time

had, in due observance of naval etiquette, withdrawn to leeward the

moment Captain Vere had begun his promenade on the deck’s weather-side;

and though during the colloquy with Claggart they of course ventured not

to diminish the distance; and though throughout the interview Captain

Vere’s voice was far from high, and Claggart’s silvery and low; and the

wind in the cordage and the wash of the sea helped the more to put them

beyond ear-shot; nevertheless, the interview’s continuance already had

attracted observation from some topmen aloft, and other sailors in the

waist or farther forward.

Having determined upon his measures, Captain Vere forthwith took action.

Abruptly turning to Claggart he asked, ‘Master-at-arms, is it now Budd’s

watch aloft?’

‘No, your honour.’

Whereupon, ‘Mr. Wilkes,’ summoning the nearest midshipman, ‘tell Albert

to come to me.’ Albert was the captain’s hammock-boy, a sort of

sea-valet, in whose discretion and fidelity his master had much

confidence. The lad appeared. ‘You know Budd, the foretopman?’

‘I do, sir.’

‘Go find him. It is his watch off. Manage to tell him out of ear-shot

that he is wanted aft. Contrive it that he speaks to nobody. Keep him in

talk yourself. And not till you get well aft here, not till then, let

him know that the place where he is wanted is my cabin. You understand?

Go. Master-at-arms, show yourself on the decks below, and when you think

it time for Albert to be coming with his man, stand by quietly to follow

the sailor in.’

-----

Footnote 2:

In Melville’s MS. the vessel is on these occasions given the name

_Bellipotent_. See also pp. 64, 66, 109, 110.

Footnote 3:

Cf. p. 63 note.

Footnote 4:

Cf. p. 63 note.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XVII

Now when the foretopman found himself closeted, as it were, in the cabin

with the captain and Claggart, he was surprised enough. But it was a

surprise unaccompanied by apprehension or distrust. To an immature

nature, essentially honest and humane, forewarning intimations of

subtler danger from one’s kind came tardily, if at all. The only thing

that took shape in the young sailor’s mind was this: ‘Yes, the captain,

I have always thought, looks kindly upon me. Wonder if he’s going to

make me his coxswain. I should like that. And maybe now he is going to

ask the master-at-arms about me.’

‘Shut the door there, sentry,’ said the commander. ‘Stand without and

let nobody come in. Now, master-at-arms, tell this man to his face what

you told of him to me’; and stood prepared to scrutinise the mutually

confronting visages.

With the measured step and calm collected air of an asylum physician

approaching in the public hall some patient beginning to show

indications of a coming paroxysm, Claggart deliberately advanced within

short range of Billy, and mesmerically looking him in the eye, briefly

recapitulated the accusation.

Not at first did Billy take it in. When he did the rose-tan of his cheek

looked struck as by white leprosy. He stood like one impaled and gagged.

Meanwhile the accuser’s eyes, removing not as yet from the blue, dilated

ones, underwent a phenomenal change, their wonted rich violet colour

blurring into a muddy purple. Those lights of human intelligence losing

human expression, gelidly protruding like the alien eyes of certain

uncatalogued creatures of the deep.

The first mesmeric glance was one of surprised fascination; the last was

as the hungry lurch of the torpedo-fish.

‘Speak, man!’ said Captain Vere to the transfixed one, struck by his

aspect even more than by Claggart’s. ‘Speak! defend yourself.’ Which

appeal caused but a strange, dumb gesturing and gurgling in Billy;

amazement at such an accusation so suddenly sprung on inexperienced

nonage; this, and it may be horror at the accuser, serving to bring out

his lurking defect, and in this instance for the time intensifying it

into a convulsed tongue-tie; while the intent head and entire form,

straining forward in an agony of ineffectual eagerness to obey the

injunction to speak and defend himself, gave an expression to the face

like that of a condemned vestal priestess in the moment of being buried

alive, and in the first struggle against suffocation.

Though at the time Captain Vere was quite ignorant of Billy’s liability

to vocal impediment, he now immediately divined it, since vividly

Billy’s aspect recalled to him that of a bright young schoolmate of his

whom he had seen struck by much the same startling impotence in the act

of eagerly rising in the class to be foremost in response to a testing

question put to it by the master. Going close up to the young sailor,

and laying a soothing hand on his shoulder, he said, ‘There is no hurry,

my boy. Take your time, take your time.’ Contrary to the effect

intended, these words, so fatherly in tone, doubtless touching Billy’s

heart to the quick, prompted yet more violent efforts at

utterance--efforts soon ending for the time in confirming the paralysis,

and bringing to the face an expression which was as a crucifixion to

behold. The next instant, quick as the flame from a discharged cannon at

night, his right arm shot out, and Claggart dropped to the deck. Whether

intentionally, or but owing to the young athlete’s superior height, the

blow had taken effect full upon the forehead, so shapely and

intellectual-looking a feature in the master-at-arms; so that the body

fell over lengthwise, like a heavy plank tilted from erectness. A gasp

or two, and he lay motionless.

‘Fated boy,’ breathed Captain Vere, in tone so low as to be almost a

whisper, ‘what have you done! But here, help me.’

The twain raised the felled one from the loins up into a sitting

position. The spare form flexibly acquiesced, but inertly. It was like

handling a dead snake. They lowered it back. Regaining erectness,

Captain Vere with one hand covering his face stood to all appearance as

impassive as the object at his feet. Was he absorbed in taking in all

the bearings of the event, and what was best not only now at once to be

done, but also in the sequel? Slowly he uncovered his face; and the

effect was as if the moon emerging from eclipse should reappear with

quite another aspect than that which had gone into hiding. The father in

him, manifested towards Billy thus far in the scene, was replaced by the

military disciplinarian. In his official tone he bade the foretopman

retire to a state-room aft (pointing it out), and there remain till

thence summoned. This order Billy in silence mechanically obeyed. Then

going to the cabin door where it opened on the quarter-deck, Captain

Vere said to the sentry without, ‘Tell somebody to send Albert here.’

When the lad appeared his master so contrived it that he should not

catch sight of the prone one. ‘Albert,’ he said to him, ‘tell the

surgeon I wish to see him. You need not come back till called.’

When the surgeon entered--a self-poised character of that grave sense

and experience that hardly anything could take him aback--Captain Vere

advanced to meet him, thus unconsciously interrupting his view of

Claggart, and interrupting the other’s wonted ceremonious salutation

said, ‘Nay, tell me how it is with yonder man,’ directing his attention

to the prostrate one.

The surgeon looked, and for all his self-command, somewhat started at

the abrupt revelation. On Claggart’s always pallid complexion thick

black blood was now oozing from mouth and ear. To the gazer’s

professional eyes it was unmistakably no living man that he saw.

‘Is it so, then?’ said Captain Vere, intently watching him. ‘I thought

it. But verify it.’ Whereupon the customary tests confirmed the

surgeon’s first glance, who now looking up in unfeigned concern, cast a

look of intense inquisitiveness upon his superior. But Captain Vere,

with one hand to his brow, was standing motionless. Suddenly, catching

the surgeon’s arm convulsively, he exclaimed, pointing down to the body,

‘It is the divine judgment of Ananias! Look!’

Disturbed by the excited manner he had never before observed in the

_Indomitable’s_ captain, and as yet wholly ignorant of the affair, the

prudent surgeon nevertheless held his peace, only again looking an

earnest interrogation as to what it was that had resulted in such a

tragedy.

But Captain Vere was now again motionless, standing absorbed in thought.

But again starting, he vehemently exclaimed, ‘Struck dead by an angel of

God. Yet the angel must hang!’

At these interjections, incoherences to the listener as yet unapprised

of the antecedent events, the surgeon was profoundly discomforted. But

now, as recollecting himself, Captain Vere in less harsh tone briefly

related the circumstances leading up to the event.

‘But come; we must dispatch,’ he added; ‘help me to remove him (meaning

the body) to yonder compartment’--designating one opposite where the

foretopman remained immured. Anew disturbed by a request that as

implying a desire for secrecy seemed unaccountably strange to him, there

was nothing for the subordinate to do but comply.

‘Go now,’ said Captain Vere, with something of his wonted manner, ‘go

now. I shall presently call a drum-head court. Tell the lieutenants what

has happened, and tell Mr. Morton’--meaning the captain of marines. ‘And

charge them to keep the matter to themselves.’

Full of disquietude and misgivings, the surgeon left the cabin. Was

Captain Vere suddenly affected in his mind, or was it but a transient

excitement brought about by so strange and extraordinary a happening? As

to the drum-head court, it struck the surgeon as impolitic, if nothing

more. The thing to do, he thought, was to place Billy Budd in

confinement, and in a way dictated by usage, and postpone further action

in so extraordinary a case to such time as they should again join the

squadron, and then transfer it to the admiral. He recalled the unwonted

agitation of Captain Vere and his excited exclamations, so at variance

with his normal manner. Was he unhinged? But assuming that he was, it

were not so susceptible of proof. What then could he do? No more trying

situation is conceivable than that of an officer subordinated under a

captain whom he suspects to be, not mad indeed, but yet not quite

unaffected in his intellect. To argue his order to him would be

insolence. To resist him would be mutiny. In obedience to Captain Vere

he communicated to the lieutenants and captain of marines what had

happened, saying nothing as to the captain’s state. They stared at him

in surprise and concern. Like him, they seemed to think that such a

matter should be reported to the admiral.

Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the

orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colour, but

where exactly does the first one visibly enter into the other? So with

sanity and insanity. In pronounced cases there is no question about

them. But in some cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced,

to draw the line of demarcation few will undertake, though for a fee

some professional experts will. There is nothing nameable but that some

men will undertake to do for pay. In other words, there are instances

where it is next to impossible to determine whether a man is sane or

beginning to be otherwise.

Whether Captain Vere, as the surgeon professionally surmised, was really

the sudden victim of any degree of aberration, one must determine for

himself by such light as this narrative may afford.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XVIII

The unhappy event which has been narrated could not have happened at a

worse juncture. For it was close on the heel of the suppressed

insurrections, an after-time very critical to naval authority, demanding

from every English sea-commander two qualities not readily

interfusable--prudence and rigour. Moreover, there was something crucial

in the case.

In the jugglery of circumstances preceding and attending the event on

board the _Indomitable_, and in the light of that martial code whereby

it was formally to be judged, innocence and guilt, personified in

Claggart and Budd, in effect changed places.

In the legal view, the apparent victim of the tragedy was he who had

sought to victimise a man blameless; and the indisputable deed of the

latter, navally regarded, constituted the most heinous of military

crimes. Yet more. The essential right and wrong involved in the matter,

the clearer that might be, so much the worse for the responsibility of a

loyal sea-commander, inasmuch as he was authorised to determine the

matter on that primitive legal basis.

Small wonder then that the _Indomitable’s_ captain, though in general a

man of rigid decision, felt that circumspectness not less than

promptitude was necessary. Until he could decide upon his course, and in

each detail, and not only so, but until the concluding measure was upon

the point of being enacted, he deemed it advisable, in view of all the

circumstances, to guard as much as possible against publicity. Here he

may or may not have erred. Certain it is, however, that subsequently in

the confidential talk of more than one or two gun-rooms and cabins he

was not a little criticised by some officers, a fact imputed by his

friends, and vehemently by his cousin Jack Denton, to professional

jealousy of Starry Vere. Some imaginative ground for invidious comment

there was. The maintenance of secrecy in the matter, the confining all

knowledge of it for a time to the place where the homicide occurred--the

quarter-deck cabin; in these particulars lurked some resemblance to the

policy adopted in those tragedies of the palace which have occurred more

than once in the capital founded by Peter the Barbarian, great chiefly

by his crimes.

The case was such that fain would the _Indomitable’s_ captain have

deferred taking any action whatever respecting it further than to keep

the foretopman a close prisoner till the ship rejoined the squadron, and

then submitting the matter to the judgment of his admiral.

But a true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not

with more of self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic

obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty.

Feeling that unless quick action was taken on it, the deed of the

foretopman, as soon as it should be known on the gun-decks, would tend

to awaken any slumbering embers of the Nore among the crew, a sense of

the urgency of the case overruled in Captain Vere every other

consideration. But though a conscientious disciplinarian he was no lover

of authority for mere authority’s sake. Very far was he from embracing

opportunities for monopolising to himself the perils of moral

responsibility, none at least that could properly be referred to an

official superior, or shared with him by his official equals, or even

subordinates. So thinking, he was glad it would not be at variance with

usage to turn the matter over to a summary court of his own officers,

reserving to himself, as the one on whom the ultimate accountability

would rest, the right of maintaining a supervision of it, or formally or

informally interposing at need. Accordingly a drum-head court was

summarily convened, he electing the individuals composing it--the first

lieutenant, the captain of marines, and the sailing-master.

In associating an officer of marines with the sea-lieutenant in a case

having to do with a sailor, the commander perhaps deviated from general

custom. He was prompted thereto by the circumstance that he took that

soldier to be a judicious person, thoughtful and not altogether

incapable of grappling with a difficult case unprecedented in his prior

experience. Yet even as to him he was not without some latent misgiving,

for withal he was an extremely good-natured man, an enjoyer of his

dinner, a sound sleeper, and inclined to obesity. The sort of man who,

though he would always maintain his manhood in battle, might not prove

altogether reliable in a moral dilemma involving aught of the tragic. As

to the first lieutenant and the sailing-master, Captain Vere could not

but be aware that though honest natures, of approved gallantry upon

occasion, their intelligence was mostly confined to the matter of active

seamanship, and the fighting demands of their profession. The court was

held in the same cabin where the unfortunate affair had taken place.

This cabin, the commander’s, embraced the entire area under the

poop-deck. Aft, and on either side, was a small state-room--the one room

temporarily a jail, and the other a dead-house--and a yet smaller

compartment leaving a space between, expanding forward into a goodly

oblong of length coinciding with the ship’s beam. A skylight of moderate

dimensions was overhead, and at each end of the oblong space were two

sashed port-hole windows easily convertible back into embrasures for

short carronades.

All being quickly in readiness, Billy Budd was arraigned, Captain Vere

necessarily appearing as the sole witness in the case, and as such

temporarily sinking his rank, though singularly maintaining it in a

matter apparently trivial, namely, that he testified from the ship’s

weather-side, with that object having caused the court to sit on the

lee-side. Concisely he narrated all that had led up to the catastrophe,

omitting nothing in Claggart’s accusation, and deposing as to the manner

in which the prisoner had received it. At this testimony the three

officers glanced with no little surprise at Billy Budd, the last man

they would have suspected, either of mutinous design alleged by

Claggart, or of the undeniable deed he himself had done. The first

lieutenant taking judicial primary, and turning toward the prisoner,

said, ‘Captain Vere has spoken. Is it or is it not as Captain Vere

says?’ In response came syllables not so much impeded in the utterance

as might have been anticipated. They were these:--

‘Captain Vere tells the truth. It is just as Captain Vere says, but it

is not as the master-at-arms said. I have eaten the King’s bread, and I

am true to the King.’

‘I believe you, my man,’ said the witness, his voice indicating a

suppressed emotion not otherwise betrayed.

‘God will bless you for that, your honour!’ not without stammering, said

Billy, and all but broke down. But immediately was recalled to

self-control by another question, to which with the same emotional

difficulty of utterance he said, ‘No, there was no malice between us. I

never bore malice against the master-at-arms. I am sorry that he is

dead. I did not mean to kill him. Could I have used my tongue I would

not have struck him. But he foully lied to my face, and in the presence

of my captain, and I had to say something, and I could only say it with

a blow. God help me!’

In the impulsive above-board manner of the frank one the court saw

confirmed all that was implied in words that just previously had

perplexed them coming as they did from the testifier to the tragedy, and

promptly following Billy’s impassioned disclaimer of mutinous

intent--Captain Vere’s words, ‘I believe you, my man.’

Next, it was asked of him whether he knew of or suspected aught

savouring of incipient trouble (meaning mutiny, though the explicit term

was avoided) going on in any section of the ship’s company.

The reply lingered. This was naturally imputed by the court to the same

vocal embarrassment which had retarded or obstructed previous answers.

But in main it was otherwise here; the question immediately recalling to

Billy’s mind the interview with the afterguardsman in the fore-chains.

But an innate repugnance to playing a part at all approaching that of an

informer against one’s own shipmates--the same erring sense of

uninstructed honour which had stood in the way of his reporting the

matter at the time, though as a loyal man-of-war’s man it was incumbent

on him, and failure so to do it charged against him and proven, would

have subjected him to the heaviest of penalties. This, with the blind

feeling now his, that nothing really was being hatched, prevailed with

him. When the answer came it was a negative.

‘One question more,’ said the officer of marines now first speaking, and

with a troubled earnestness. ‘You tell us that what the master-at-arms

said against you was a lie. Now why should he have so lied, so

maliciously lied, since you declare there was no malice between you?’

At that question, unintentionally touching on a spiritual sphere, wholly

obscure to Billy’s thoughts, he was nonplussed, evincing a confusion

indeed that some observers, such as can be imagined, would have

construed into involuntary evidence of hidden guilt. Nevertheless he

strove some way to answer, but all at once relinquished the vain

endeavour, at the same time turning an appealing glance towards Captain

Vere, as deeming him his best helper and friend. Captain Vere, who had

been seated for a time, rose to his feet, addressing the interrogator.

‘The question you put to him comes naturally enough. But how can he

rightly answer it, or anybody else? unless indeed it be he who lies

within there,’ designating the compartment where lay the corpse. ‘But

the prone one there will not rise to our summons. In effect though, as

it seems to me, the point you make is hardly material. Quite aside from

any conceivable motive actuating the master-at-arms, and irrespective of

the provocation of the blow, a martial court must needs in the present

case confine its attention to the blow’s consequence, which consequence

is to be deemed not otherwise than as the striker’s deed!’

This utterance, the full significance of which it was not at all likely

that Billy took in, nevertheless caused him to turn a wistful,

interrogative look toward the speaker, a look in its dumb expressiveness

not unlike that which a dog of generous breed might turn upon his

master, seeking in his face some elucidation of a previous gesture

ambiguous to the canine intelligence. Nor was the same utterance without

marked effect upon the three officers, more especially the soldier.

Couched in it seemed to them a meaning unanticipated, involving a

prejudgment on the speaker’s part. It served to augment a mental

disturbance previously evident enough.

The soldier once more spoke, in a tone of suggestive dubiety addressing

at once his associates and Captain Vere: ‘Nobody is present--none of the

ship’s company, I mean, who might shed lateral light, if any is to be

had, upon what remains mysterious in this matter.’

‘That is thoughtfully put,’ said Captain Vere; ‘I see your drift. Ay,

there is a mystery; but to use a Scriptural phrase, it is “a mystery of

iniquity,” a matter for psychological theologians to discuss. But what

has a military court to do with it? Not to add that for us, any possible

investigation of it is cut off by the lasting tongue-tie of--him--in

yonder,’ again designating the mortuary state-room. ‘The prisoner’s

deed. With that alone we have to do.’

To this, and particularly the closing reiteration, the marine soldier,

knowing not how aptly to reply, sadly abstained from saying aught. The

first lieutenant, who at the outset had not unnaturally assumed primacy

in the court, now over-rulingly instructed by a glance from Captain

Vere, a glance more effective than words, resumed that primacy. Turning

to the prisoner: ‘Budd,’ he said, and scarce in equable tones, ‘Budd, if

you have aught further to say for yourself, say it now.’

Upon this the young sailor turned another quick glance toward Captain

Vere; then, as taking a hint from that aspect, a hint confirming his own

instinct that silence was now best, replied to the lieutenant, ‘I have

said all, sir.’

The marine--the same who had been the sentinel without the cabin-door at

the time that the foretopman, followed by the master-at-arms, entered

it--he, standing by the sailor throughout their judicial proceedings,

was now directed to take him back to the after-compartment originally

assigned to the prisoner and his custodian. As the twain disappeared

from view, the three officers, as partially liberated from some inward

constraint associated with Billy’s mere presence, simultaneously stirred

in their seats. They exchanged looks of troubled indecision, yet feeling

that decide they must and without long delay, for Captain Vere was for

the time sitting unconsciously with his back toward them, apparently in

one of his absent fits, gazing out from a sashed port-hole to windward

upon the monotonous blank of the twilight sea. But the court’s silence

continuing, broken only at moments by brief consultations in low,

earnest tones, this seemed to assure him and encourage him. Turning, he

to and fro paced the cabin athwart; in the returning ascent to windward,

climbing the slant deck in the ship’s lee roll; without knowing it

symbolising thus in his action a mind resolute to surmount difficulties

even if against primitive instincts strong as the wind and the sea.

Presently he came to a stand before the three. After scanning their

faces he stood less as mustering his thoughts for expression, than as

one only deliberating how best to put them to well-meaning men not

intellectually mature, men with whom it was necessary to demonstrate

certain principles that were axioms to himself. Similar impatience as to

talking is perhaps one reason that deters some minds from addressing any

popular assemblies; under which head is to be classed most legislatures

in a democracy.

When speak he did, something both in the substance of what he said and

his manner of saying it, showed the influence of unshared studies

modifying and tempering the practical training of an active career.

This, along with his phraseology now and then, was suggestive of the

grounds whereon rested that imputation of a certain pedantry socially

alleged against him by certain naval men of wholly practical cast,

captains who nevertheless would frankly concede that His Majesty’s Navy

mustered no more efficient officers of their grade than _Starry Vere_.

What he said was to this effect: ‘Hitherto I have been but the witness,

little more; and I should hardly think now to take another tone, that of

your coadjutor, for the time, did I not perceive in you--at the crisis

too--a troubled hesitancy, proceeding, I doubt not, from the clashing of

military duty with moral scruple--scruple vitalised by compassion. For

the compassion, how can I otherwise but share it. But, mindful of

paramount obligation, I strive against scruples that may tend to

enervate decision. Not, gentlemen, that I hide from myself that the case

is an exceptional one. Speculatively regarded, it well might be referred

to a jury of casuists. But for us here, acting not as casuists or

moralists, it is a case practical and under martial law practically to

be dealt with.

‘But your scruples! Do they move as in a dusk? Challenge them. Make them

advance and declare themselves. Come now: do they impart something like

this: If, mindless of palliating circumstances, we are bound to regard

the death of the master-at-arms as the prisoner’s deed, then does that

deed constitute a capital crime whereof the penalty is a mortal one. But

in natural justice is nothing but the prisoner’s overt act to be

considered? Now can we adjudge to summary and shameful death a

fellow-creature innocent before God, and whom we feel to be so?--Does

that state it aright? You sign sad assent. Well, I too feel that, the

full force of that. It is Nature. But do these buttons that we wear

attest that our allegiance is to Nature? No, to the King. Though the

ocean, which is inviolate Nature primeval, though this be the element

where we move and have our being as sailors, yet as the King’s officers

lies our duty in a sphere correspondingly natural? So little is that

true, that in receiving our commissions we in the most important regards

ceased to be natural free agents. When war is declared, are we the

commissioned fighters previously consulted? We fight at command. If our

judgments approve the war, that is but coincidence. So in other

particulars. So now, would it be so much we ourselves that would condemn

as it would be martial law operating through us? For that law and the

rigour of it, we are not responsible. Our vowed responsibility is in

this: That however pitilessly that law may operate, we nevertheless

adhere to it and administer it.

‘But the exceptional in the matter moves the heart within you. Even so,

too, is mine moved. But let not warm hearts betray heads that should be

cool. Ashore in a criminal case will an upright judge allow himself off

the bench to be waylaid by some tender kinswoman of the accused seeking

to touch him with her tearful plea? Well, the heart here is as that

piteous woman. The heart is the feminine in man, and hard though it be,

she must here be ruled out.’

He paused, earnestly studying them for a moment; then resumed.

‘But something in your aspect seems to urge that it is not solely that

heart that moves in you, but also the conscience, the private

conscience. But tell me whether or not, occupying the position we do,

private conscience should not yield to that imperial one formulated in

the code under which alone we officially proceed?’

Here the three men moved in their seats, less convinced than agitated by

the course of an argument troubling but the more the spontaneous

conflict within. Perceiving which, the speaker paused for a moment; then

abruptly changing his tone, went on.

‘To steady us a bit, let us recur to the facts. In war-time at sea a

man-of-war’s man strikes his superior in grade, and the blow kills.

Apart from its effect, the blow itself is, according to the Articles of

War, a capital crime. Furthermore----’

‘Ay, sir,’ emotionally broke in the officer of marines, ‘in one sense it

was. But surely Budd purposed neither mutiny nor homicide.’

‘Surely not, my good man. And before a court less arbitrary and more

merciful than a martial one that plea would largely extenuate. At the

Last Assizes it shall acquit. But how here? We proceed under the law of

the Mutiny Act. In feature no child can resemble his father more than

that Act resembles in spirit the thing from which it derives--War. In

His Majesty’s service--in this ship indeed--there are Englishmen forced

to fight for the King against their will. Against their conscience, for

aught we know. Though as their fellow-creatures some of us may

appreciate their position, yet as Navy officers, what reck we of it?

Still less recks the enemy. Our impressed men he would fain cut down in

the same swath with our volunteers. As regards the enemy’s naval

conscripts, some of whom may even share our own abhorrence of the

regicidal French Directory, it is the same on our side. War looks but to

the frontage, the appearance. And the Mutiny Act, War’s child, takes

after the father. Budd’s intent or non-intent is nothing to the purpose.

‘But while, put to it by those anxieties in you which I cannot but

respect, I only repeat myself--while thus strangely we prolong

proceedings that should be summary, the enemy may be sighted and an

engagement result. We must do; and one of two things must we do--condemn

or let go.’

‘Can we not convict and yet mitigate the penalty?’ asked the junior

lieutenant, here speaking, and falteringly, for the first.

‘Lieutenant, were that clearly lawful for us under the circumstances,

consider the consequences of such clemency. The people’ (meaning the

ship’s company) ‘have native sense; most of them are familiar with our

naval usage and tradition; and how would they take it? Even could you

explain to them--which our official position forbids--they, long moulded

by arbitrary discipline, have not that kind of intelligent

responsiveness that might qualify them to comprehend and discriminate.

No, to the people the foretopman’s deed, however it be worded in the

announcement, will be plain homicide committed in a flagrant act of

mutiny. What penalty for that should follow, they know. But it does not

follow. _Why?_ they will ruminate. You know what sailors are. Will they

not revert to the recent outbreak at the Nore? Ay, they know the

well-founded alarm--the panic it struck throughout England. Your clement

sentence they would account pusillanimous. They would think that we

flinch, that we are afraid of them--afraid of practising a lawful rigour

singularly demanded at this juncture lest it should provoke new

troubles. What shame to us such a conjecture on their part, and how

deadly to discipline. You see then whither, prompted by duty and the

law, I steadfastly drive. But I beseech you, my friends, do not take me

amiss. I feel as you do for this unfortunate boy. But did he know our

hearts, I take him to be of that generous nature that he would feel even

for us on whom in this military necessity so heavy a compulsion is

laid.’

With that, crossing the deck, he resumed his place by the sashed

port-hole, tacitly leaving the three to come to a decision. On the

cabin’s opposite side the troubled court sat silent. Loyal lieges, plain

and practical, though at bottom they dissented from some points Captain

Vere had put to them, they were without the faculty, hardly had the

inclination to gainsay one whom they felt to be an earnest man, one,

too, not less their superior in mind than in naval rank. But it is not

improbable that even such of his words as were not without influence

over them, came home to them less than his closing appeal to their

instinct as sea-officers. He forecasted the practical consequences to

discipline (considering the unconfirmed tone of the fleet at the time),

if violent killing at sea by a man-of-war’s man of a superior in grade

were allowed to pass for aught else than a capital crime, and one

demanding prompt infliction of the penalty.

Not unlikely they were brought to something more or less akin to that

harassed frame of mind which in the year 1842 actuated the commander of

the U.S. brig-of-war _Somers_ to resolve, under the so-called Articles

of War, Articles modelled upon the English Mutiny Act, to resolve upon

the execution at sea of a midshipman and two petty officers as mutineers

designing the seizure of the brig. Which resolution was carried out

though in a time of peace and within not many days’ sail of home. An act

vindicated by a naval court of inquiry subsequently convened ashore.

History, and here cited without comment. True, the circumstances on

board the _Somers_ were different from those on board the _Indomitable_.

But the urgency felt, well warranted or otherwise, was much the same.

Says a writer whom few know, ‘Forty years after a battle it is easy for

a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is

another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while

involved in the obscuring smoke of it. Much so with respect to other

emergencies involving considerations both practical and moral, and when

it is imperative promptly to act. The greater the fog the more it

imperils the steamer, and speed is put on though at the hazard of

running somebody down. Little ween the snug card-players in the cabin of

the responsibilities of the sleepless man on the bridge.’

In brief, Billy Budd was formally convicted and sentenced to be hung at

the yard-arm in the early morning-watch, it being now night. Otherwise,

as is customary in such cases, the sentence would forthwith have been

carried out. In war-time on the field or in the fleet, a mortal

punishment decreed by a drum-head court--on the field sometimes decreed

by but a nod from the general--follows without delay on the heel of

conviction without appeal.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XIX

It was Captain Vere himself who of his own motion communicated the

finding of the court to the prisoner; for that purpose going to the

compartment where he was in custody, and bidding the marine there to

withdraw for the time.

Beyond the communication of the sentence what took place at this

interview was never known. But, in view of the character of the twain

briefly closeted in that state-room, each radically sharing in the rarer

qualities of one nature--so rare, indeed, as to be all but incredible to

average minds, however much cultivated--some conjectures may be

ventured.

It would have been in consonance with the spirit of Captain Vere should

he on this occasion have concealed nothing from the condemned one;

should he indeed have frankly disclosed to him the part he himself had

played in bringing about the decision, at the same time revealing his

actuating motives. On Billy’s side it is not improbable that such a

confession would have been received in much the same spirit that

prompted it. Not without a sort of joy indeed he might have appreciated

the brave opinion of him implied in his captain making such a confidant

of him. Nor as to the sentence itself could he have been insensible that

it was imparted to him as to one not afraid to die. Even more may have

been. Captain Vere in the end may have developed the passion sometimes

latent under an exterior stoical or indifferent. He was old enough to

have been Billy’s father. The austere devotee of military duty, letting

himself melt back into what remains primeval in our formalised humanity,

may in the end have caught Billy to his heart, even as Abraham may have

caught young Isaac on the brink of resolutely offering him up in

obedience to the exacting behest. But there is no telling the

sacrament--seldom if in any case revealed to the gadding world wherever

under circumstances at all akin to those here attempted to be set

forth--two of great Nature’s nobler order embrace. There is privacy at

the time, inviolable to the survivor, and holy oblivion, the sequel to

each diviner magnanimity, providentially covers all at last.

The first to encounter Captain Vere in the act of leaving the

compartment was the senior lieutenant. The face he beheld, for the

moment one expressive of the agony of the strong, was to that officer,

though a man of fifty, a startling revelation. That the condemned one

suffered less than he who mainly had effected the condemnation, was

apparently indicated by the former’s exclamation in the scene soon

perforce to be touched upon.

Of a series of incidents within a brief term rapidly following each

other, the adequate narration may take up a term less brief, especially

if explanation or comment here and there seem requisite to the better

understanding of such incidents. Between the entrance into the cabin of

him who never left it alive, and him who when he did leave it left it as

one condemned to die; between this and the closeted interview just

given, less than an hour and a half had elapsed. It was an interval long

enough, however, to awaken speculations among no few of the ship’s

company as to what it was that could be detaining in the cabin the

master-at-arms and the sailor, for it was rumoured that both of them had

been seen to enter it, and neither of them had been seen to emerge. This

rumour had got abroad upon the gun-decks and in the tops; the people of

a great warship being in one respect like villagers, taking microscopic

note of every untoward movement or non-movement going on. When therefore

in weather not at all tempestuous all hands were called in the second

dog-watch, a summons under such circumstances not usual in those hours,

the crew were not wholly unprepared for some announcement extraordinary,

one having connection, too, with the continued absence of the two men

from their wonted haunts.

There was a moderate sea at the time; and the moon newly risen, and near

to being at its full, silvered the white spar-deck wherever not blotted

by the clear-cut shadows horizontally thrown of fixtures and moving men.

On either side the quarter-deck the marine guard under arms was drawn

up; and Captain Vere, standing in his place surrounded by all the

ward-room officers, addressed his men. In so doing his manner showed

neither more nor less than that properly pertaining to his supreme

position aboard his own ship. In clear terms and concise he told them

what had taken place in the cabin; that the master-at-arms was dead;

that he who had killed him had been already tried by a summary court and

condemned to death; and that the execution would take place in the early

morning watch. The word _mutiny_ was not named in what he said. He

refrained, too, from making the occasion an opportunity for any

preachment as to the maintenance of discipline, thinking, perhaps, that

under existing circumstances in the Navy the consequence of violating

discipline should be made to speak for itself.

Their captain’s announcement was listened to by the throng of standing

sailors in a dumbness like that of a seated congregation of believers in

Hell listening to their clergyman’s announcement of his Calvinistic

text.[5]

At the close, however, a confused murmur went up. It began to wax all

but instantly, then at a sign, was pierced and suppressed by shrill

whistles of the boatswain and his mates piping, ‘Down one watch.’[6]

To be prepared for burial Claggart’s body was delivered to certain petty

officers of his mess. And here, not to clog the sequel with lateral

matters, it may be added that at a suitable hour, the master-at-arms was

committed to the sea with every funeral honour properly belonging to his

naval grade.

In this proceeding, as in every public one growing out of the tragedy,

strict adherence to usage was observed. Nor in any point could it have

been at all deviated from, either with respect to Claggart or Billy

Budd, without begetting undesirable speculations in the ship’s company,

sailors, and more particularly man-of-war’s men, being of all men the

greatest sticklers for usage.

For similar cause all communication between Captain Vere and the

condemned one ended with the closeted interview already given, the

latter being now surrendered to the ordinary routine preliminary to the

end. This transfer under guard from the captain’s quarters was effected

without unusual precautions--at least no visible ones.

If possible, not to let the men so much as surmise that their officers

anticipate aught amiss from them, is the tacit rule in a military ship.

And the more that some sort of trouble should really be apprehended, the

more do the officers keep that apprehension to themselves; though not

the less unostentatious vigilance may be augmented.

In the present instance the sentry placed over the prisoner had strict

orders to let no one have communication with him but the chaplain. And

certain unobtrusive measures were taken absolutely to ensure this point.

-----

Footnote 5:

Melville’s MS. contains at this point the words ‘Jonathan Edwards’ in

brackets. Clearly Melville had in mind the great New England Calvinist

preacher and theologian when he was writing this sentence.

Footnote 6:

There is an author’s note in the margin of the MS. reading:--_Another

order to be given here in place of this one._

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XX

In a seventy-four of the old order the deck known as the upper gun-deck

was the one covered over by the spar-deck, which last, though not

without its armament, was for the most part exposed to the weather. In

general it was at all hours free from hammocks; those of the crew

swinging on the lower gun-deck and berth-deck, the latter being not only

a dormitory but also the place for the stowing of the sailors’ bags, and

on both sides lined with the large chests or movable pantries of the

many messes of the men.

On the starboard side of the _Indomitable’s_ upper gun-deck, behold

Billy Budd under sentry lying prone in irons in one of the bays formed

by the regular spacing of the guns comprising the batteries on either

side. All these pieces were of the heavier calibre of that period.

Mounted on lumbering wooden carriages, they were hampered with

cumbersome harness of breeching and strong side-tackles for running them

out. Guns and carriages, together with the long rammers and shorter

lintstocks lodged in loops overhead--all these, as customary, were

painted black; and the heavy hempen breechings tarred to the same tint,

wore the like livery of the undertaker. In contrast with the funereal

tone of these surroundings the prone sailor’s exterior apparel, white

_jumper_ and white duck trowsers, each more or less soiled, dimly

glimmered in the obscure light of the bay like a patch of discoloured

snow in early April lingering at some upland cave’s black mouth. In

effect he is already in his shroud or the garments that shall serve him

in lieu of one. Over him, but scarce illuminating him, two

battle-lanterns swing from two massive beams of the deck above. Fed with

the oil supplied by the war-contractors (whose gains, honest or

otherwise, are in every land an anticipated portion of the harvest of

death) with flickering splashes of dirty yellow light they pollute the

pale moonshine all but ineffectually struggling in obstructed flecks

through the open ports from which the tompioned cannon protrude. Other

lanterns at intervals serve but to bring out somewhat the obscurer bays

which, like small confessionals or side-chapels in a cathedral, branch

from the long, dim-vistaed, broad aisle, between the two batteries of

that covered tier.

Such was the deck where now lay the Handsome Sailor. Through the

rose-tan of his complexion, no pallor could have shown. It would have

taken days of sequestration from the winds and the sun to have brought

about the effacement of that. But the skeleton in the cheek-bone at the

point of its angle was just beginning delicately to be defined under the

warm-tinted skin. In fervid hearts self-contained some brief experiences

devour our human tissue as secret fire in a ship’s hold consumes cotton

in the bale.

But now, lying between the two guns, as nipped in the vice of fate,

Billy’s agony, mainly proceeding from a generous young heart’s virgin

experience of the diabolical incarnate and effective in some men--the

tension of that agony was over now. It survived not the something

healing in the closeted interview with Captain Vere. Without movement he

lay as in a trance, that adolescent expression, previously noted as his,

taking on something akin to the look of a slumbering child in the cradle

when the warm hearth-glow of the still chamber of night plays on the

dimples that at whiles mysteriously form in the cheek, silently coming

and going there. For now and then in the gyved one’s trance, a serene

happy light born of some wandering reminiscence or dream would diffuse

itself over his face, and then wane away only anew to return.

The chaplain coming to see him and finding him thus, and perceiving no

sign that he was conscious of his presence, attentively regarded him for

a space, then slipping aside, withdrew for the time, peradventure

feeling that even he, the minister of Christ, though receiving his

stipend from wars, had no consolation to proffer which could result in a

peace transcending that which he beheld. But in the small hours he came

again. And the prisoner, now awake to his surroundings, noticed his

approach, and civilly, all but cheerfully, welcomed him. But it was to

little purpose that in the interview following the good man sought to

bring Billy Budd to some Godly understanding that he must die, and at

dawn. True, Billy himself freely referred to his death as a thing close

at hand; but it was something in the way that children will refer to

death in general, who yet among their other sports will play a funeral

with hearse and mourners. Not that like children Billy was incapable of

conceiving what death really is. No, but he was wholly without

irrational fear of it, a fear more prevalent in highly civilised

communities than those so-called barbarous ones which in all respects

stand nearer to unadulterate Nature. And, as elsewhere said, a barbarian

Billy radically was; quite as much so (for all the costume) as his

countrymen the British captives, living trophies made to march in the

Roman triumph of Germanicus. Quite as much so as those later barbarians,

young men probably, and picked specimens among the earlier British

converts to Christianity, at least nominally such, and taken to Rome (as

to-day converts from lesser isles of the sea may be taken to London), of

whom the Pope of that time, admiring the strangeness of their personal

beauty, so unlike the Italian stamp, their clear, ruddy complexions and

curled flaxen locks, exclaimed, ‘Angles’ (meaning _English_, the modern

derivative), ‘Angles do you call them? And is it because they look so

like Angels?’ Had it been later in time one would think that the Pope

had in mind Fra Angelico’s seraphs, some of whom, plucking apples in

gardens of Hesperides, have the faint rosebud complexion of the more

beautiful English girls.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XXI

If in vain the good chaplain sought to impress the young barbarian with

ideas of death akin to those conveyed in the skull, dial, and

cross-bones on old tombstones; equally futile to all appearance were his

efforts to bring home to him the thought of salvation and a Saviour.

Billy listened, but less out of awe or reverence, perhaps, than from a

certain natural politeness; doubtless at bottom regarding all that in

much the same way that most mariners of his class take any discourse,

abstract or out of the common tone of the workaday world. And this

sailor way of taking clerical discourse is not wholly unlike the way in

which the pioneer of Christianity, full of transcendent miracles, was

received long ago on tropic isles by any superior _savage_ so called--a

Tahitian, say, of Captain Cook’s time or shortly after that time. Out of

natural courtesy he received but did not appreciate. It was like a gift

placed in the palm of an outstretched hand upon which the fingers do not

close.

But the _Indomitable’s_ chaplain was a discreet man possessing the good

sense of a good heart. So he insisted not on his vocation here. At the

instance of Captain Vere, a lieutenant had apprised him of pretty much

everything as to Billy; and since he felt that innocence was even a

better thing than religion wherewith to go to judgment, he reluctantly

withdrew; but in his emotion not without first performing an act strange

enough in an Englishman, and under the circumstances yet more so in any

regular priest. Stooping over, he kissed on the fair cheek his

fellow-man, a felon in martial law, one who, though in the confines of

death, he felt he could never convert to a dogma; nor for all that did

he fear for his future.

Marvel not that having been made acquainted with the young sailor’s

essential innocence, the worthy man lifted not a finger to avert the

doom of such a martyr to martial discipline. So to do would not only

have been as idle as invoking the desert, but would also have been an

audacious transgression of the bounds of his function, one as exactly

prescribed to him by military law as that of the boatswain or any other

naval officer. Bluntly put, a chaplain is the minister of the Prince of

Peace serving in the host of the God of War--Mars. As such, he is as

incongruous as a musket would be on the altar at Christmas. Why, then,

is he there? Because he indirectly subserves the purpose attested by the

cannon; because, too, he lends the sanction of the religion of the meek

to that which practically is the abrogation of everything but force.[7]

-----

Footnote 7:

There is an author’s note in the margin of the MS. reading:--_An

irruption of heretic thought hard to suppress._

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XXII

The night so luminous on the spar-deck (otherwise on the cavernous ones

below--levels so like the tiered galleries in a coal-mine) passed away.

Like the prophet in the chariot disappearing in heaven and dropping his

mantle to Elisha, the withdrawing night transferred its pale robe to the

peeping day. A meek, shy light appeared in the east, where stretched a

diaphanous fleece of white furrowed vapour. That light slowly waxed.

Suddenly _one[8] bells_ was struck aft, responded to by one louder

metallic stroke from forward. It was four o’clock in the morning.

Instantly the silver whistles were heard summoning all hands to witness

punishment. Up through the great hatchway, rimmed with racks of heavy

shot, the watch-below came pouring, overspreading with the watch already

on deck the space between the mainmast and foremast, including that

occupied by the capacious _launch_ and the black booms tiered on either

side of it, boat and booms making a summit of observation for the

powder-boys and younger tars. A different group comprising one watch of

topmen leaned over the side of the rail of that sea-balcony, no small

one in a seventy-four, looking down on the crowd below. Man or boy, none

spake but in whispers, and few spake at all. Captain Vere--as before,

the central figure among the assembled commissioned officers--stood nigh

the break of the poop-deck, facing forward. Just below him on the

quarter-deck the marines in full equipment were drawn up much as at the

scene of the promulgated sentence.

At sea in the old time, the execution by halter of a military sailor was

generally from the fore-yard. In the present instance, for special

reasons, the main-yard was assigned. Under an arm of that yard the

prisoner was presently brought up, the chaplain attending him. It was

noted at the time, and remarked upon afterwards, that in this final

scene the good man evinced little or nothing of the perfunctory. Brief

speech indeed he had with the condemned one, but the genuine Gospel was

less on his tongue than in his aspect and manner toward him. The final

preparations personal to the latter being speedily brought to an end by

two boatswain’s-mates, the consummation impended. Billy stood facing

aft. At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words wholly

unobstructed in the utterance, were these--‘God bless Captain Vere!’

Syllables so unanticipated coming from one with the ignominious hemp

about his neck--a conventional felon’s benediction directed aft toward

the quarters of honour; syllables, too, delivered in the clear melody of

a singing-bird on the point of launching from the twig, had a phenomenal

effect, not unenhanced by the rare personal beauty of the young sailor,

spiritualised now through late experiences so poignantly profound.

Without volition, as it were, as if indeed the ship’s populace were the

vehicles of some vocal current-electric, with one voice, from alow and

aloft, came a resonant echo--‘God bless Captain Vere!’ And yet at that

instant Billy alone must have been in their hearts, even as he was in

their eyes.

At the pronounced words and the spontaneous echo that voluminously

rebounded them, Captain Vere, either through stoic self-control or a

sort of momentary paralysis induced by emotional shock, stood erectly

rigid as a musket in the ship-armourer’s rack.

The hull, deliberately recovering from the periodic roll to leeward, was

just regaining an even keel, when the last signal, the preconcerted dumb

one, was given. At the same moment it chanced that the vapoury fleece

hanging low in the east, was shot through with a soft glory as of the

fleece of the Lamb of God seen in mystical vision, and simultaneously

therewith, watched by the wedged mass of upturned faces, Billy ascended;

and ascending, took the full rose of the dawn.

In the pinioned figure, arrived at the yard-end, to the wonder of all,

no motion was apparent save that created by the slow roll of the hull,

in moderate weather so majestic in a great ship heavy-cannoned.

A DIGRESSION

When some days afterwards in reference to the singularity just

mentioned, the purser, a rather ruddy, rotund person, more accurate as

an accountant than profound as a philosopher, said at mess to the

surgeon, ‘What testimony to the force lodged in will-power,’ the latter,

spare and tall, one in whom a discreet causticity went along with a

manner less genial than polite, replied, ‘Your pardon, Mr. Purser. In a

hanging scientifically conducted--and under special orders I myself

directed how Budd’s was to be effected--any movement following the

completed suspension and originating in the body suspended, such

movement indicates mechanical spasm in the muscular system. Hence the

absence of that is no more attributable to will-power, as you call it,

than to horse-power--begging your pardon.’

‘But this muscular spasm you speak of, is not that in a degree more or

less invariable in these cases?’

‘Assuredly so, Mr. Purser.’

‘How then, my good sir, do you account for its absence in this

instance?’

‘Mr. Purser, it is clear that your sense of the singularity in this

matter equals not mine. You account for it by what you call will-power,

a term not yet included in the lexicon of science. For me I do not with

my present knowledge pretend to account for it at all. Even should one

assume the hypothesis that at the first touch of the halyards the action

of Budd’s heart, intensified by extraordinary emotion at its climax,

abruptly stopped--much like a watch when in carelessly winding it up you

strain at the finish, thus snapping the chain--even under that

hypothesis how account for the phenomenon that followed?’

‘You admit, then, that the absence of spasmodic movement was

phenomenal?’

‘It was phenomenal, Mr. Purser, in the sense that it was an appearance,

the cause of which is not immediately to be assigned.’

‘But tell me, my dear sir,’ pertinaciously continued the other, ‘was the

man’s death effected by the halter, or was it a species of euthanasia?’

‘_Euthanasia_, Mr. Purser, is something like your will-power; I doubt

its authenticity as a scientific term--begging your pardon again. It is

at once imaginative and metaphysical--in short, Greek. But,’ abruptly

changing his tone, ‘there is a case in the sick-bay that I do not care

to leave to my assistants. Beg your pardon, but excuse me.’ And rising

from the mess he formally withdrew.

-----

Footnote 8:

Written in pencil above this ‘one,’ an ‘eight,’ allowing a choice of

readings.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XXIII

The silence at the moment of execution, and for a moment or two

continuing thereafter, but emphasised by the regular wash of the sea

against the hull, or the flutter of a sail caused by the helmsman’s eyes

being tempted astray, this emphasised silence was gradually disturbed by

a sound not easily to be verbally rendered. Whoever has heard the

freshet-wave of a torrent suddenly swelled by pouring showers in

tropical mountains, showers not shared by the plain; whoever has heard

the first muffled murmur of its sloping advance through precipitous

woods, may form some conception of the sound now heard. The seeming

remoteness of its source was because of its murmurous indistinctness,

since it came from close by, even from the men massed on the ship’s open

deck. Being inarticulate, it was dubious in significance further than it

seemed to indicate some capricious revulsion of thought or feeling such

as mobs ashore are liable to, in the present instance possibly implying

a sullen revocation on the men’s part of their involuntary echoing of

Billy’s benediction. But ere the murmur had time to wax into clamour it

was met by a strategic command, the more telling that it came with

abrupt unexpectedness.

‘Pipe down the starboard watch, boatswain, and see that they go.’

Shrill as the shriek of the sea-hawk the whistles of the boatswain and

his mates pierced that ominous low sound, dissipating it; and yielding

to the mechanism of discipline the throng was thinned by one half. For

the remainder, most of them were set to temporary employments connected

with trimming the yards and so forth, business readily to be found upon

occasion by any officer-of-the-deck.

Now each proceeding that follows a mortal sentence pronounced at sea by

a drum-head court is characterised by promptitude not perceptibly

merging into hurry, though bordering that. The hammock, the one which

had been Billy’s bed when alive, having already been ballasted with

shot, and otherwise prepared to serve for his canvas coffin, the last

office of the sea-undertakers, the sail-maker’s mates, was now speedily

completed. When everything was in readiness a second call for all hands,

made necessary by the strategic movement before mentioned, was sounded,

and now to witness burial.

The details of this closing formality it needs not to give. But when the

tilted plank let slide its freight into the sea, a second strange human

murmur was heard, blended now with another inarticulate sound proceeding

from certain larger sea-fowl, who, their attention having been attracted

by the peculiar commotion in the water resulting from the heavy sloped

dive of the shotted hammock into the sea, flew screaming to the spot. So

near the hull did they come, that the stridor or bony creak of their

gaunt double-jointed pinions was audible. As the ship under light airs

passed on, leaving the burial spot astern, they still kept circling it

low down with the moving shadow of their outstretched wings and the

croaked requiem of their cries.

Upon sailors as superstitious as those of the age preceding ours,

man-of-war’s men, too, who had just beheld the prodigy of repose in the

form suspended in air and now foundering in the deeps; to such mariners

the action of the sea-fowl, though dictated by mere animal greed for

prey, was big with no prosaic significance. An uncertain movement began

among them, in which some encroachment was made. It was tolerated but

for a moment. For suddenly the drum beat to quarters, which familiar

sound happening at least twice every day, had upon the present occasion

a signal peremptoriness in it. True martial discipline long continued

superinduces in average man a sort of impulse of docility whose

operation at the official tone of command much resembles in its

promptitude the effect of an instinct.

The drum-beat dissolved the multitude, distributing most of them along

the batteries of the two covered gun-decks. There, as wont, the gun

crews stood by their respective cannon erect and silent. In due course

the first officer, sword under arm and standing in his place on the

quarter-deck, formally received the successive reports of the sworded

lieutenants commanding the sections of batteries below; the last of

which reports being made, the summed report he delivered with the

customary salute to the commander. All this occupied time, which in the

present case was the object of beating to quarters at an hour prior to

the customary one. That such variance from usage was authorised by an

officer like Captain Vere, a martinet as some deemed him, was evidence

of the necessity for unusual action implied in what he deemed to be

temporarily the mood of his men. ‘With mankind,’ he would say, ‘forms,

measured forms, are everything; and that is the import couched in the

story of Orpheus with his lyre spell-binding the wild denizens of the

woods.’ And this he once applied to the disruption of forms going on

across the Channel and the consequences thereof.

At this unwonted muster at quarters all proceeded as at the regular

hour. The band on the quarter-deck played a sacred air. After which the

chaplain went through the customary morning service. That done, the drum

beat the retreat, and toned by music and religious rites subserving the

discipline and purpose of war, the men in their wonted orderly manner

dispersed to the places allotted them when not at the guns.

And now it was full day. The fleece of low-hanging vapour had vanished,

licked up by the sun that late had so glorified it. And the

circumambient air in the clearness of its serenity was like smooth white

marble in the polished block not yet removed from the marble-dealer’s

yard.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XXIV

The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction cannot so readily be

achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than

with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged

edges; hence the conclusion of such a narration is apt to be less

finished than an architectural finial.

How it fared with the Handsome Sailor during the year of the Great

Mutiny has been faithfully given. But though properly the story ends

with his life, something in way of sequel will not be amiss. Three brief

chapters will suffice.

In the general re-christening under the Directory of the craft

originally forming the navy of the French Monarchy, the _St. Louis_

line-of-battle ship was named the _Athéiste_. Such a name, like some

other substituted ones in the Revolutionary fleet, while proclaiming the

infidel audacity of the ruling power, was yet, though not so intended to

be, the aptest name, if one consider it, ever given to a warship; far

more so indeed than the _Devastation_, the _Erebus_ (the Hell), and

similar names bestowed upon fighting-ships.

On the return passage to the English fleet from the detached cruise

during which occurred the events already recorded, the _Indomitable_[9]

fell in with the _Athéiste_. An engagement ensued, during which Captain

Vere, in the act of putting his ship alongside the enemy with a view of

throwing his boarders across the bulwarks, was hit by a musket-ball from

a port-hole of the enemy’s main cabin. More than disabled, he dropped to

the deck and was carried below to the same cock-pit where some of his

men already lay. The senior lieutenant took command. Under him the enemy

was finally captured, and though much crippled, was by rare good fortune

successfully taken into Gibraltar, an English port not very distant from

the scene of the fight. There Captain Vere with the rest of the wounded

was put ashore. He lingered for some days, but the end came. Unhappily

he was cut off too early for the Nile and Trafalgar. The spirit that

’spite its philosophic austerity may yet have indulged in the most

secret of all passions, ambition, never attained to the fulness of fame.

Not long before death, while lying under the influence of that magical

drug which, soothing the physical frame, mysteriously operates on the

subtler element in man, he was heard to murmur words inexplicable to his

attendant--‘Billy Budd, Billy Budd.’ That these were not the accents of

remorse, would seem clear from what the attendant said to the

_Indomitable’s_[10] senior officer of marines, who, as the most

reluctant to condemn of the members of the drum-head court, too well

knew, though here he kept the knowledge to himself, who Billy Budd was.

-----

Footnote 9:

Cf. p. 63 note.

Footnote 10:

Cf. p. 63 note.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XXV

Some few weeks after the execution, among other matters under the head

of _News from the Mediterranean_, there appeared in a naval chronicle of

the time, an authorised weekly publication, an account of the affair. It

was doubtless for the most part written in good faith, though the

medium, partly rumour, through which the facts must have reached the

writer, served to deflect, and in part falsify them. Because it appeared

in a publication now long ago superannuated and forgotten, and is all

that hitherto has stood on human record to attest what manner of men

respectively were John Claggart and Billy Budd, it is here reproduced.

‘On the tenth of the last month a deplorable occurrence took place

on board H.M.S. _Indomitable_. John Claggart, the ship’s

master-at-arms, discovering that some sort of plot was incipient

among an inferior section of the ship’s company, and that the

ringleader was one William Budd, he, Claggart, in the act of

arraigning the man before the captain was vindictively stabbed to

the heart by the suddenly drawn sheath-knife of Budd.

‘The deed and the implement employed sufficiently suggest that

though mustered into the service under an English name the

assassin was no Englishman, but one of those aliens adopting an

English cognomen whom the present extraordinary necessities of the

Service have caused to be admitted into it in considerable

numbers.

‘The enormity of the crime and the extreme depravity of the

criminal, appear the greater in view of the character of the

victim, a middle-aged man, respectable and discreet, belonging to

that minor official grade, the petty officers, upon whom, as none

know better than the commissioned gentlemen, the efficiency of His

Majesty’s Navy so largely depends. His function was a responsible

one; at once onerous and thankless, and his fidelity in it the

greater because of his strong patriotic impulse. In this instance,

as in so many other instances in these days, the character of the

unfortunate man signally refutes, if refutation were needed, that

peevish saying attributed to Dr. Johnson, that patriotism is the

last refuge of a scoundrel.

‘The criminal paid the penalty of his crime. The promptitude of

the punishment has proved salutary. Nothing amiss is now

apprehended aboard H.M.S. _Indomitable_.’[11]

-----

Footnote 11:

An author’s note, crossed out, here appears in the original MS. It

reads:--Here ends a story not unwarranted by what happens in this

incongruous world of ours--innocence and infirmary, spiritual

depravity and fair respite.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XXVI

Everything is for a season remarkable in navies. Any tangible object

associated with some striking incident of the service, is converted into

a monument. The spar from which the foretopman was suspended, was for

some few years kept trace of by the blue-jackets. Then knowledge

followed it from ship to dockyard and again from dockyard to ship, still

pursuing it even when at last reduced to a mere dockyard boom. To them a

chip of it was as a piece of the Cross. Ignorant though they were of the

real facts of the happening, and not thinking but that the penalty was

unavoidably inflicted from the naval point of view, for all that they

instinctively felt that Billy was a sort of man as incapable of mutiny

as of wilful murder. They recalled the fresh young image of the Handsome

Sailor, that face never deformed by a sneer or subtler vile freak of the

heart within! This impression of him was doubtless deepened by the fact

that he was gone, and in a measure mysteriously gone. On the gun-decks

of the _Indomitable_ the general estimate of his nature and its

unconscious simplicity eventually found rude utterance from another

foretopman, one of his own watch, gifted as some sailors are, with an

artless poetic temperament. The tarry hands made some lines, which,

after circulating among the shipboard crew for a while, finally got

rudely printed at Portsmouth as a ballad. The title given to it was the

sailor’s.

BILLY IN THE DARBIES

Good of the Chaplain to enter Lone Bay

And down on his marrow-bones here and pray

For the likes just o’ me, Billy Budd.--But look:

Through the port comes the moon-shine astray!

It tips the guard’s cutlass and silvers this nook;

But ’twill die in the dawning of Billy’s last day,

A jewel-block they’ll make of me to-morrow,

Pendant pearl from the yard-arm-end

Like the ear-drop I gave to Bristol-Molly--

Oh, ’tis me, not the sentence, they’ll suspend.

Ay, ay, all is up; and I must up too

Early in the morning, aloft from alow.

On an empty stomach, now, never it would do.

They’ll give me a nibble--bit o’ biscuit ere I go.

Sure, a messmate will reach me the last parting cup;

But turning heads away from the hoist and the belay,

Heaven knows who will have the running of me up!

No pipe to those halyards--But aren’t it all sham?

A blur’s in my eyes; it is dreaming that I am.

A hatchet to my panzer? all adrift to go?

The drum roll to grog, and Billy never know?

But Donald he has promised to stand by the plank;

So I’ll shake a friendly hand ere I sink.

But--no! It is dead then I’ll be, come to think.

I remember Taff the Welshman when he sank.

And his cheek it was like the budding pink.

But me, they’ll lash me in hammock, drop me deep

Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I’ll dream fast asleep.

I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?

Just ease these darbies at the wrist,

And roll me over fair.

I am sleepy and the oozy weeds about me twist.

END OF BOOK,

April 19, 1891.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

OTHER PROSE PIECES

------------------------------------------------------------------------

DANIEL ORME

(_Omitted from ‘Billy Budd’_)

A profound portrait-painter like Titian or our famous countryman

Stewart, what such an observer sees in any face he may earnestly study,

that essentially is the man. To disentangle his true history from

contemporary report is superfluous. Not so with us who are scarce

Titians and Stewarts. Occasionally we are struck by some exceptional

aspect instantly awakening our interest. But it is an interest that in

its ignorance is full of commonplace curiosity. We try to ascertain from

somebody the career and experience of the man, or may seek to obtain the

information from himself. But what we hear from others may prove but

unreliable gossip, and he himself, if approached, prove uncommunicative.

In short, in most instances he turns out to be like a meteoric stone in

a field. There it lies. The neighbours have their say about it, and an

odd enough say it may prove. But what is it? Whence did it come? In what

unimaginable sphere did it get that strange, igneous, metallic look, the

kine now cropping the dewy grass about it?

Any attempt to depict such a character as is here suggested must be an

imperfect one. Nevertheless, it is a man of this description who is the

subject of the present essay at a sketch.

A sailor’s name as it appears on a crew-list is not always his real

name, nor in every instance does it indicate his country. This premised,

be it said that by the name at the head of this writing long went an old

man-of-war’s man of whose earlier history it may verily be said that

nobody knew anything but himself; and it was idle to seek it in that

quarter. Conscientious, constantly so, in discharging his duties, the

respect of his officers naturally followed. And for his fellow-sailors,

if none had reason to like one so unlike themselves, none dared to take

the slightest liberties with him. Any approach to it, and his eye was a

tutoring and deterring one. Getting in years at last, he was retired as

captain of a top, and assigned to a lower grade and post, namely, at the

foot of the mainmast, his business there being simply to stand by, to

let go, and make fast. But even this, with the night-watches, ere long

exacted too much from a sailor, a septuagenarian. In brief, he belays

his last halyard, and slips into obscure moorings ashore. Whatever his

disposition may originally have been, there, in his latter cruise at

least, had he been specially noted for his unsociability. Not that he

was gruff like some marine veterans with the lumbago, nor stealthily

taciturn like an Indian; but moody, frequently muttering to himself. And

from such muttered soliloquy he would sometimes start, and with a look

or gesture so uncheerfully peculiar that the Calvinistic imagination of

a certain frigate’s chaplain construed it into remorseful condemnation

of some dark deed in the past.

His features were large, strong, cast as in iron; but the effect of a

cartridge explosion had peppered all below the eyes with dense dottings

of black-blue. When according to custom he as mainmast man used to doff

his hat in less laconic speech with the officer-of-the-deck, his tanned

brow showed like October’s tawny moon revealed in crescent above an

ominous cloud. Along with his moody ways, was it this uncanny physical

aspect, the result of a mere chance, was it this, and this alone, that

had suggested the germ of the rumour among certain afterguardsmen that

in earlier life he had been a bucanier of the Keys and the Gulf, one of

Lafitte’s murderous crew? Certain it is, he had once served on a

letter-of-marque.

In stature, though bowed somewhat in the shoulders, akin to the champion

of Gath. Hands heavy and hard; short nails like withered horn. A

powerful head, and shaggy. An iron-gray beard broad as a commodore’s

pennant, and about the mouth indelibly streaked with the moodily

dribbled tobacco juice of all his cruises. In his day watch-below

silently couched by himself on the gun-deck in a bay between black

cannon, he might have suggested an image of the Great Grizzly of the

California Sierras, his coat the worse for wear, grim in his last den

awaiting the last hour.

In his shore moorings--hard by the waters, not very far from the

docks--what with his all-night-in and easier lot in every particular,

with choice of associates when he desired them, which was not always,

happily he lost most of his gruffness as the old mastiff of the mainmast

exposed to all weathers and with salt-horse for his diet. A stranger

accosting him sunning himself upon some old spar on the strand, and

kindly saluting him there, would receive no surly response, and if more

than mere salutation was exchanged, would probably go away with the

impression that he had been talking with an interesting oddity, a salt

philosopher, not lacking in a sort of grim common-sense.

After being ashore for a period, a singularity in his habits was

remarked. At times, but only when he might think himself quite alone, he

would roll aside the bosom of his darned Guernsey frock and steadfastly

contemplate something on his body. If by chance discovered in this, he

would quickly conceal all and growl his resentment.

This peculiarity awakening the curiosity of certain idle observers,

lodgers under the same roof with him, and none caring to be so bold as

to question him as to the reason of it, or to ask what it was on his

body, a drug was enlisted as a means of finding out the secret. In

prudent quantities it was slyly slipped into his huge bowl of tea at

supper. Next morning a certain old-clothes-man whispered to his gossips

the result of his sorry intrusion overnight.

Drawing them into a corner, and looking around furtively, ‘Listen,’ said

he, and told them an eerie story, following it up with shuddering

conjectures, vague enough, but dear to the superstitious and ignorant

mind. What he had really discovered was this: a crucifix in indigo and

vermilion tattooed on the chest and on the side of the heart. Slanting

across the crucifix and paling the pigment there ran a whitish scar,

long and thin, such as might ensue from the slash of a cutlass

imperfectly parried or dodged. The cross of the Passion is often

tattooed upon the sailor, upon the forearm generally, sometimes, though

but rarely, on the trunk. As for the scar, the old mastman had in

legitimate naval service known what it was to repel boarders and not

without receiving a sabre mark from them. It may be. The gossips of the

lodging, however, took another view of the discovery, and at last

reported to the landlady that the old sailor was a sort of _man forbid_,

a man branded by the Evil Spirit, and it would be well to get rid of

him, lest the charm in the horse-shoe nailed over the house-door should

be fatally counteracted and be naught. The good woman, however, was a

sensible lady with no belief in the horse-shoe, though she tolerated it,

and as the old mastman was regular in his weekly dues, and never made

noise or gave trouble, she turned a deaf ear to all solicitations

against him.

Since in his presence it was ever prudently concealed, the old mariner

was not then aware of underhand proceedings. At sea it had never come to

his ears that some of his shipmates thought him a bucanier, for there

was a quiet leonine droop about the angles of his mouth that

said--_hands off_. So now he was ignorant of the circumstances that the

same rumour had followed him ashore. Had his habits been social, he

would have socially felt the effect of this and cast about in vain for

the cause; whether having basis or not, some ill-report is in certain

instances like what sailors call a _dry tempest_, during which there is

neither rain nor lightning, though none the less the viewless and

intangible winds make a shipwreck and then ask--who did it?

So Orme pursued his solitary way with not much from without to disturb

him. But Time’s moments still keep descending upon the quietest hour,

and though it were adamant they would wear it. In his retirement the

superannuated giant begins to mellow down into a sort of animal decay.

In hard, rude natures, especially such as have passed their lives among

the elements, farmers or sailors, this animal decay mostly affects the

memory by casting a haze over it; not seldom, it softens the heart as

well, besides more or less, perhaps, drowsing the conscience, innocent

or otherwise.

But let us come to the close of a sketch necessarily imperfect. One fine

Easter Day, following a spell of rheumatic weather, Orme was discovered

alone and dead on a height overlooking the seaward sweep of the great

haven to whose shore, in his retirement from sea, he had moored. It was

an evened terrace, destined for use in war, but in peace neglected and

offering a sanctuary for anybody. Mounted on it was an obsolete battery

of rusty guns. Against one of these he was found leaning, his legs

stretched out before him; his clay pipe broken in twain, the vacant bowl

and no spillings from it, attesting that his pipe had been smoked out to

the last of its contents. He faced the outlet to the ocean. The eyes

were open, still continuing in death the vital glance fixed on the hazy

waters and the dim-seen sails coming and going or at anchor near by.

What had been his last thoughts? If aught of reality lurked in the

rumours concerning him, had remorse, had penitence any place in those

thoughts? Or was there just nothing of either? After all, were his

moodiness and mutterings, his strange freaks, starts, eccentric shrugs

and grimaces, were these but the grotesque additions like the wens and

knobs and distortions of the trunk of an old chance apple-tree in an

inclement upland, not only beaten by many storms, but also obstructed in

its natural development by the chance of its having first sprouted among

hard-packed rock? In short, that fatality, no more encrusting him, made

him what he came to be? Even admitting that there was something dark

that he chose to keep to himself, what then? Such reticence may

sometimes be more for the sake of others than one’s self. No, let us

believe that that animal decay before mentioned still befriended him to

the close, and that he fell asleep recalling through the haze of memory

many a far-off scene of the wide world’s beauty dreamily suggested by

the hazy waters before him.

He lies buried among other sailors, for whom also strangers performed

one last rite in a lonely plot overgrown with wild eglantine uncared for

by man.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

HAWTHORNE AND HIS MOSSES

BY A VIRGINIAN SPENDING JULY IN VERMONT

A papered chamber in a fine old farmhouse, a mile from any other

dwelling, and dipped to the eaves in foliage--surrounded by mountains,

old woods, and Indian pools,--this, surely, is the place to write of

Hawthorne. Some charm is in this northern air, for love and duty seem

both impelling to the task. A man of a deep and noble nature has seized

me in this seclusion. His wild, witch-voice rings through me; or, in

softer cadences, I seem to hear it in the songs of the hill-side birds

that sing in the larch-trees at my window.

Would that all excellent books were foundlings, without father or

mother, that so it might be we could glorify them, without including

their ostensible authors! Nor would any true man take exception to this;

least of all, he who writes, ‘When the artist rises high enough to

achieve the beautiful, the symbol by which he makes it perceptible to

mortal senses becomes of little value in his eyes, while his spirit

possesses itself in the enjoyment of the reality.’

But more than this. I know not what would be the right name to put on

the title-page of an excellent book; but this I feel, that the names of

all fine authors are fictitious ones, far more so than that of Junius;

simply standing, as they do, for the mystical ever-eluding spirit of all

beauty, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius. Purely imaginative

as this fancy may appear, it nevertheless seems to receive some warranty

from the fact, that on a personal interview no great author has ever

come up to the idea of his reader. But that dust of which our bodies are

composed, how can it fitly express the nobler intelligences among us?

With reverence be it spoken, that not even in the case of one deemed

more than man, not even in our Saviour, did his visible frame betoken

anything of the augustness of the nature within. Else, how could those

Jewish eyewitnesses fail to see heaven in his glance!

It is curious how a man may travel along a country road, and yet miss

the grandest or sweetest of prospects by reason of an intervening hedge,

so like all other hedges, as in no way to hint of the wide landscape

beyond. So has it been with me concerning the enchanting landscape in

the soul of this Hawthorne, this most excellent Man of Mosses. His Old

Manse has been written now four years, but I never read it till a day or

two since. I had seen it in the book-stores--heard of it often--even had

it recommended to me by a tasteful friend, as a rare, quiet book,

perhaps too deserving of popularity to be popular. But there are so many

books called ‘excellent,’ and so much unpopular merit, that amid the

thick stir of other things, the hint of my tasteful friend was

disregarded, and for four years the Mosses on the Old Manse never

refreshed me with their perennial green. It may be, however, that all

this while the book, likewise, was only improving in flavour and body.

At any rate, it so chanced that this long procrastination eventuated in

a happy result. At breakfast the other day, a mountain girl, a cousin of

mine, who for the last two weeks has every morning helped me to

strawberries and raspberries, which, like the roses and pearls in the

fairy tale, seemed to fall into the saucer from those strawberry-beds,

her cheeks--this delightful creature, this charming Cherry says to

me--‘I see you spend your mornings in the haymow; and yesterday I found

there Dwight’s _Travels in New England_. Now I have something far better

than that, something more congenial to our summer on these hills. Take

these raspberries, and then I will give you some moss.’ ‘Moss!’ said I.

‘Yes, and you must take it to the barn with you, and good-bye to

Dwight.’

With that she left me, and soon returned with a volume, verdantly bound,

and garnished with a curious frontispiece in green; nothing less than a

fragment of real moss, cunningly pressed to a fly-leaf. ‘Why, this,’

said I, spilling my raspberries, ‘this is the _Mosses from an Old

Manse_.’ ‘Yes,’ said cousin Cherry, ‘yes, it is that flowery Hawthorne.’

‘Hawthorne and Mosses,’ said I, ‘no more it is morning: it is July in

the country: and I am off for the barn.’

Stretched on that new-mown clover, the hill-side breeze blowing over me

through the wide barn door, and soothed by the hum of the bees in the

meadows around, how magically stole over me this Mossy Man! and how

amply, how bountifully, did he redeem that delicious promise to his

guests in the Old Manse, of whom it is written: ‘Others could give them

pleasure, or amusement, or instruction--these could be picked up

anywhere; but it was for me to give them rest--rest, in a life of

trouble! What better could be done for those weary and world-worn

spirits?... what better could be done for anybody who came within our

magic circle than to throw the spell of a tranquil spirit over him?’ So

all that day, half-buried in the new clover, I watched this Hawthorne’s

‘Assyrian dawn, and Paphian sunset and moonrise from the summit of our

eastern hill.’

The soft ravishments of the man spun me round about in a web of dreams,

and when the book was closed, when the spell was over, this wizard

‘dismissed me with but misty reminiscences, as if I had been dreaming of

him.’

What a wild moonlight of contemplative humour bathes that Old

Manse!--the rich and rare distilment of a spicy and slowly-oozing heart.

No rollicking rudeness, no gross fun fed on fat dinners, and bred in the

lees of wine,--but a humour so spiritually gentle, so high, so deep, and

yet so richly relishable, that it were hardly inappropriate in an angel.

It is the very religion of mirth; for nothing so human but it may be

advanced to that. The orchard of the Old Manse seems the visible type of

the fine mind that has described it--those twisted and contorted old

trees, ‘they stretch out their crooked branches, and take such hold of

the imagination that we remember them as humorists and odd-fellows.’ And

then, as surrounded by these grotesque forms, and hushed in the noonday

repose of this Hawthorne’s spell, how aptly might the still fall of his

ruddy thoughts into your soul be symbolised by: ‘In the stillest

afternoon, if I listened, the thump of a great apple was audible,

falling without a breath of wind, from the mere necessity of perfect

ripeness.’ For no less ripe than ruddy are the apples of the thoughts

and fancies in this sweet Man of Mosses.

_Buds and Bird Voices._ What a delicious thing is that! ‘Will the world

ever be so decayed, that spring may not renew its greenness?’ And the

_Fire Worship_. Was ever the hearth so glorified into an altar before?

The mere title of that piece is better than any common work in fifty

folio volumes. How exquisite is this: ‘Nor did it lessen the charm of

his soft, familiar courtesy and helpfulness that the mighty spirit, were

opportunity offered him, would run riot through the peaceful house, wrap

its inmates in his terrible embrace, and leave nothing of them save

their whitened bones. This possibility of mad destruction only made his

domestic kindness the more beautiful and touching. It was so sweet of

him, being endowed with such power, to dwell day after day, and one long

lonesome night after another, on the dusky hearth, only now and then

betraying his wild nature by thrusting his red tongue out of the

chimney-top! True, he had done much mischief in the world, and was

pretty certain to do more; but his warm heart atoned for all. He was

kindly to the race of man; and they pardoned his characteristic

imperfections.’

But he has still other apples, not quite so ruddy, though full as

ripe:--apples, that have been left to wither on the tree, after the

pleasant autumn gathering is past. The sketch of _The Old Apple Dealer_

is conceived in the subtlest spirit of sadness; he whose ‘subdued and

nerveless boyhood prefigured his abortive prime, which likewise

contained within itself the prophecy and image of his lean and torpid

age.’ Such touches as are in this piece cannot proceed from any common

heart. They argue such a depth of tenderness, such a boundless sympathy

with all forms of being, such an omnipresent love, that we must needs

say that this Hawthorne is here almost alone in his generation,--at

least, in the artistic manifestation of these things. Still more. Such

touches as these--and many, very many similar ones, all through his

chapters--furnish clues whereby we enter a little way into the

intricate, profound heart where they originated. And we see that

suffering, some time or other, and in some shape or other,--this only

can enable any man to depict it in others. All over him, Hawthorne’s

melancholy rests like an Indian summer, which, though bathing a whole

country in one softness, still reveals the distinctive hue of every

towering hill and each far-winding vale.

But it is the least part of genius that attracts admiration. Where

Hawthorne is known, he seems to be deemed a pleasant writer, with a

pleasant style,--a sequestered, harmless man, from whom any deep and

weighty thing would hardly be anticipated--a man who means no meanings.

But there is no man, in whom humour and love, like mountain peaks, soar

to such a rapt height as to receive the irradiations of the upper

skies;--there is no man in whom humour and love are developed in that

high form called genius; no such man can exist without also possessing,

as the indispensable complement of these, a great, deep intellect, which

drops down into the universe like a plummet. Or, love and humour are

only the eyes through which such an intellect views this world. The

great beauty in such a mind is but the product of its strength. What, to

all readers, can be more charming than the piece entitled _Monsieur du

Miroir_; and to a reader at all capable of fully fathoming it, what, at

the same time, can possess more mystical depth of meaning?--yes, there

he sits and looks at me,--this ‘shape of mystery,’ this ‘identical

MONSIEUR DU MIROIR!’ ‘Methinks I should tremble now were his wizard

power of gliding through all impediments in search of me to place him

suddenly before my eyes.’

How profound, nay, appalling, is the moral evolved by the _Earth’s

Holocaust_; where--beginning with the hollow follies and affectations of

the world,--all vanities and empty theories and forms are, one after

another, and by an admirably graduated, growing comprehensiveness,

thrown into the allegorical fire, till, at length, nothing is left but

the all-engendering heart of man; which remaining still unconsumed, the

great conflagration is naught.

Of a piece with this, is the _Intelligence Office_, a wondrous

symbolising of the secret workings in men’s souls. There are other

sketches still more charged with ponderous import.

_The Christmas Banquet_, and _The Bosom Serpent_, would be fine subjects

for a curious and elaborate analysis, touching the conjectural parts of

the mind that produced them. For spite of all the Indian-summer sunlight

on the hither side of Hawthorne’s soul, the other side--like the dark

half of the physical sphere--is shrouded in a blackness, ten times

black. But this darkness but gives more effect to the ever-moving dawn,

that forever advances through it, and circumnavigates his world. Whether

Hawthorne has simply availed himself of this mystical blackness as a

means to the wondrous effects he makes it to produce in his lights and

shades; or whether there really lurks in him, perhaps unknown to

himself, a touch of Puritanic gloom,--this, I cannot altogether tell.

Certain it is, however, that this great power of blackness in him

derives its force from its appeals to that Calvinistic sense of Innate

Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or

other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free. For, in

certain moods, no man can weigh this world without throwing in

something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance. At

all events, perhaps no writer has ever wielded this terrific thought

with greater terror than this same harmless Hawthorne. Still more: this

black conceit pervades him through and through. You may be witched by

his sunlight--transported by the bright gildings in the skies he builds

over you; but there is the blackness of darkness beyond; and even his

bright gildings but fringe and play upon the edges of thunder-clouds. In

one word, the world is mistaken in this Nathaniel Hawthorne. He himself

must often have smiled at its absurd misconception of him. He is

immeasurably deeper than the plummet of the mere critic. For it is not

the brain that can test such a man; it is only the heart. You cannot

come to know greatness by inspecting it; there is no glimpse to be

caught of it, except by intuition; you need not ring it, you but touch

it, and you find it is gold.

Now, it is that blackness in Hawthorne, of which I have spoken, that so

fixes and fascinates me. It may be, nevertheless, that it is too largely

developed in him. Perhaps he does not give us a ray of light for every

shade of his dark. But however this may be, this blackness it is that

furnishes the infinite obscure of his background,--that background,

against which Shakespeare plays his grandest conceits, the things that

have made for Shakespeare his loftiest but most circumscribed renown, as

the profoundest of thinkers. For by philosophers Shakespeare is not

adored, as the great man of tragedy and comedy:--‘Off with his head; so

much for Buckingham!’ This sort of rant interlined by another hand,

brings down the house,--those mistaken souls, who dream of Shakespeare

as a mere man of Richard the Third humps and Macbeth daggers. But it is

those deep far-away things in him; those occasional flashings-forth of

the intuitive Truth in him; those short, quick probings at the very axis

of reality;--these are the things that make Shakespeare, Shakespeare.

Through the mouths of the dark characters of Hamlet, Timon, Lear, and

Iago, he craftily says, or sometimes insinuates the things which we feel

to be so terrifically true, that it were all but madness for any good

man, in his own proper character, to utter, or even hint of them.

Tormented into desperation, Lear, the frantic king, tears off the mask,

and speaks the same madness of vital truth. But, as I before said, it is

the least part of genius that attracts admiration. And so, much of the

blind, unbridled admiration that has been heaped upon Shakespeare, has

been lavished upon the least part of him. And few of his endless

commentators and critics seem to have remembered, or even perceived,

that the immediate products of a great mind are not so great as that

undeveloped and sometimes undevelopable yet dimly-discernible greatness,

to which those immediate products are but the infallible indices. In

Shakespeare’s tomb lies infinitely more than Shakespeare ever wrote. And

if I magnify Shakespeare, it is not so much for what he did do as for

what he did not do, or refrained from doing. For in this world of lies,

Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and

only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and

other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth,--even though it be

covertly and by snatches.

But if this view of the all-popular Shakespeare be seldom taken by his

readers, and if very few who extol him have ever read him deeply, or

perhaps, only have seen him on the tricky stage (which alone made, and

is still making him, his mere mob renown)--if few men have time, or

patience, or palate, for the spiritual truth as it is in that great

genius--it is then no matter of surprise, that in a contemporaneous age,

Nathaniel Hawthorne is a man as yet almost utterly mistaken among men.

Here and there, in some quiet armchair in the noisy town, or some deep

nook among the noiseless mountains, he may be appreciated for something

of what he is. But unlike Shakespeare, who was forced to the contrary

course by circumstances, Hawthorne (either from simple disinclination,

or else from inaptitude) refrains from all the popularising noise and

show of broad farce and blood-besmeared tragedy; content with the still,

rich utterance of a great intellect in repose, and which sends few

thoughts into circulation, except they be arterialised at his large warm

lungs, and expanded in his honest heart.

Nor need you fix upon that blackness in him, if it suit you not. Nor,

indeed, will all readers discern it; for it is, mostly, insinuated to

those who may best understand it, and account for it; it is not obtruded

upon every one alike.

Some may start to read of Shakespeare and Hawthorne on the same page.

They may say, that if an illustration were needed, a lesser light might

have sufficed to elucidate this Hawthorne, this small man of yesterday.

But I am not willingly one of those who, as touching Shakespeare at

least, exemplify the maxim of Rochefoucauld, that ‘we exalt the

reputation of some, in order to depress that of others’;--who, to teach

all noble-souled aspirants that there is no hope for them, pronounce

Shakespeare absolutely unapproachable. But Shakespeare has been

approached. There are minds that have gone as far as Shakespeare into

the universe. And hardly a mortal man, who, at some time or other, has

not felt as great thoughts in him as any you will find in Hamlet. We

must not inferentially malign mankind for the sake of any one man,

whoever he may be. This is too cheap a purchase of contentment for

conscious mediocrity to make. Besides, this absolute and unconditional

adoration of Shakespeare has grown to be a part of our Anglo-Saxon

superstitions. The Thirty-Nine Articles are now forty. Intolerance has

come to exist in this matter. You must believe in Shakespeare’s

unapproachability, or quit the country. But what sort of a belief is

this for an American, a man who is bound to carry republican

progressiveness into Literature as well as into Life? Believe me, my

friends, that men not very much inferior to Shakespeare are this day

being born on the banks of the Ohio. And the day will come when you

shall say, Who reads a book by an Englishman that is a modern? The great

mistake seems to be, that even with those Americans who look forward to

the coming of a great literary genius among us, they somehow fancy he

will come in the costume of Queen Elizabeth’s day; be a writer of dramas

founded upon old English history or the tales of Boccaccio. Whereas,

great geniuses are parts of the times, they themselves are the times,

and possess a corresponding colouring. It is of a piece with the Jews,

who, while their Shiloh was meekly walking in their streets, were still

praying for his magnificent coming; looking for him in a chariot, who

was already among them on an ass. Nor must we forget that, in his own

lifetime, Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, but only Master William

Shakespeare of the shrewd, thriving, business firm of Condell,

Shakespeare and Co., proprietors of the Globe Theatre in London; and by

a courtly author, of the name of Chettle, was looked at as an ‘upstart

crow,’ beautified ‘with other birds’ feathers.’ For, mark it well,

imitation is often the first charge brought against originality. Why

this is so, there is not space to set forth here. You must have plenty

of sea-room to tell the Truth in; especially when it seems to have an

aspect of newness, as America did in 1492, though it was then just as

old, and perhaps older than Asia, only those sagacious philosophers, the

common sailors, had never seen it before, swearing it was all water and

moonshine there.

Now I do not say that Nathaniel of Salem is a greater man than William

of Avon, or as great. But the difference between the two men is by no

means immeasurable. Not a very great deal more, and Nathaniel were

verily William.

This, too, I mean, that if Shakespeare has not been equalled, give the

world time, and he is sure to be surpassed in one hemisphere or the

other. Nor will it at all do to say that the world is getting gray and

grizzled now, and has lost that fresh charm which she wore of old, and

by virtue of which the great poets of past times made themselves what we

esteem them to be. Not so. The world is as young to-day as when it was

created; and this Vermont morning dew is as wet to my feet, as Eden’s

dew to Adam’s. Nor has nature been all over ransacked by our

progenitors, so that no new charms and mysteries remain for this latter

generation to find. Far from it. The trillionth part has not yet been

said; and all that has been said, but multiplies the avenues to what

remains to be said. It is not so much paucity as superabundance of

material that seems to incapacitate modern authors.

Let America, then, prize and cherish her writers; yea, let her glorify

them. They are not so many in number as to exhaust her goodwill. And

while she has good kith and kin of her own to take to her bosom, let her

not lavish her embraces upon the household of an alien. For believe it

or not, England after all, is in many things an alien to us. China has

more bonds of real love for us than she. But even were there no strong

literary individualities among us, as there are some dozens at least,

nevertheless, let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children,

before she praises (for everywhere, merit demands acknowledgment from

every one) the best excellence in the children of any other land. Let

her own authors, I say, have the priority of appreciation. I was much

pleased with a hot-headed Carolina cousin of mine, who once said,--‘If

there were no other American to stand by, in literature, why, then, I

would stand by Pop Emmons and his _Fredoniad_, and till a better epic

came along, swear it was not very far behind the _Iliad_.’ Take away the

words, and in spirit he was sound.

Not that American genius needs patronage in order to expand. For that

explosive sort of stuff will expand though screwed up in a vice, and

burst it, though it were triple steel. It is for the nation’s sake, and

not for her authors’ sake, that I would have America be heedful of the

increasing greatness among her writers. For how great the shame, if

other nations should be before her, in crowning her heroes of the pen!

But this is almost the case now. American authors have received more

just and discriminating praise (however loftily and ridiculously given,

in certain cases) even from some Englishmen, than from their own

countrymen. There are hardly five critics in America; and several of

them are asleep. As for patronage, it is the American author who now

patronises his country, and not his country him. And if at times some

among them appeal to the people for more recognition, it is not always

with selfish motives, but patriotic ones.

It is true, that but few of them as yet have evinced that decided

originality which merits great praise. But that graceful writer, who

perhaps of all Americans has received the most plaudits from his own

country for his productions,--that very popular and amiable writer,

however good and self-reliant in many things, perhaps owes his chief

reputation to the self-acknowledged imitation of a foreign model, and to

the studied avoidance of all topics but smooth ones. But it is better to

fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never

failed somewhere, that man cannot be great. Failure is the true test of

greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a

man wisely knows his powers,--it is only to be added, that, in that

case, he knows them to be small. Let us believe it, then, once for all,

that there is no hope for us in these smooth, pleasing writers that know

their powers. Without malice, but to speak the plain fact, they but

furnish an appendix to Goldsmith, and other English authors. And we want

no American Goldsmiths, nay, we want no American Miltons. It were the

vilest thing you could say of a true American author, that he were an

American Tompkins. Call him an American and have done, for you cannot

say a nobler thing of him. But it is not meant that all American writers

should studiously cleave to nationality in their writings; only this, no

American writer should write like an Englishman or a Frenchman; let him

write like a man, for then he will be sure to write like an American.

Let us away with this leaven of literary flunkeyism toward England. If

either must play the flunkey in this thing, let England do it, not us.

While we are rapidly preparing for that political supremacy among the

nations which prophetically awaits us at the close of the present

century, in a literary point of view, we are deplorably unprepared for

it; and we seem studious to remain so. Hitherto, reasons might have

existed why this should be; but no good reason exists now. And all that

is requisite to amendment in this matter, is simply this: that while

fully acknowledging all excellence everywhere, we should refrain from

unduly lauding foreign writers, and, at the same time, duly recognise

the meritorious writers that are our own; those writers who breathe that

unshackled, democratic spirit of Christianity in all things, which now

takes the practical lead in this world, though at the same time led by

ourselves--us Americans. Let us boldly condemn all imitation, though it

comes to us graceful and fragrant as the morning; and foster all

originality, though at first it be crabbed and ugly as our own pine

knots. And if any of our authors fail, or seem to fail, then, in the

words of my Carolina cousin, let us clap him on the shoulder and back

him against all Europe for his second round. The truth is, that in one

point of view this matter of a national literature has come to such a

pass with us, that in some sense we must turn bullies, else the day is

lost, or superiority so far beyond us, that we can hardly say it will

ever be ours.

And now, my countrymen, as an excellent author of your own flesh and

blood--an unimitating, and, perhaps, in his way, an inimitable man--whom

better can I commend to you, in the first place, than Nathaniel

Hawthorne. He is one of the new, and far better generation of your

writers. The smell of young beeches and hemlocks is upon him; your own

broad prairies are in his soul; and if you travel away inland into his

deep and noble nature, you will hear the far roar of his Niagara. Give

not over to future generations the glad duty of acknowledging him for

what he is. Take that joy to yourself, in your own generation; and so

shall he feel those grateful impulses on him, that may possibly prompt

him to the full flower of some still greater achievement in your eyes.

And by confessing him you thereby confess others; you brace the whole

brotherhood. For genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and

one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.

In treating of Hawthorne, or rather of Hawthorne in his writings (for I

never saw the man; and in the chances of a quiet plantation life, remote

from his haunts, perhaps never shall); in treating of his works, I say,

I have thus far omitted all mention of his _Twice Told Tales_, and

_Scarlet Letter_. Both are excellent, but full of such manifold,

strange, and diffusive beauties, that time would all but fail me to

point the half of them out. But there are things in those two books,

which, had they been written in England a century ago, Nathaniel

Hawthorne had utterly displaced many of the bright names we now revere

on authority. But I am content to leave Hawthorne to himself, and to the

infallible finding of posterity; and however great may be the praise I

have bestowed upon him, I feel that in so doing I have served and

honoured myself, rather than him. For, at bottom, great excellence is

praise enough to itself; but the feeling of a sincere and appreciative

love and admiration toward it, this is relieved by utterance, and warm,

honest praise ever leaves a pleasant flavour in the mouth; and it is an

honourable thing to confess to what is honourable in others.

But I cannot leave my subject yet. No man can read a fine author, and

relish him to his very bones while he reads, without subsequently

fancying to himself some ideal image of the man and his mind. And if you

rightly look for it, you will almost always find that the author himself

has somewhere furnished you with his own picture. For poets (whether in

prose or verse), being painters by nature, are like their brethren of

the pencil, the true portrait-painters, who, in the multitude of

likenesses to be sketched, do not invariably omit their own; and in all

high instances, they paint them without any vanity, though at times with

a lurking something that would take several pages to properly define.

I submit it, then, to those best acquainted with the man personally,

whether the following is not Nathaniel Hawthorne;--and to himself,

whether something involved in it does not express the temper of his

mind,--that lasting temper of all true, candid men--a seeker, not a

finder yet:--

‘A man now entered, in neglected attire, with the aspect of a

thinker, but somewhat too roughhewn and brawny for a scholar. His

face was full of sturdy vigour, with some finer and keener

attribute beneath; though harsh at first, it was tempered with the

glow of a large, warm heart, which had force enough to heat his

powerful intellect through and through. He advanced to the

Intelligencer, and looked at him with a glance of such stern

sincerity, that perhaps few secrets were beyond its scope.

‘“I seek for Truth,” said he.’

Twenty-four hours have elapsed since writing the foregoing. I have just

returned from the haymow, charged more and more with love and admiration

of Hawthorne. For I have just been gleaning through the Mosses, picking

up many things here and there that had previously escaped me. And I

found that but to glean after this man, is better than to be in at the

harvest of others. To be frank (though, perhaps, rather foolish),

notwithstanding what I wrote yesterday of these Mosses, I had not then

culled them all; but had, nevertheless, been sufficiently sensible of

the subtle essence in them, as to write as I did. To what infinite

height of loving wonder and admiration I may yet be borne, when by

repeatedly banqueting on these Mosses I shall have thoroughly

incorporated their whole stuff into my being--that, I cannot tell. But

already I feel that this Hawthorne has dropped germinous seeds into my

soul. He expands and deepens down, the more I contemplate him; and

further and further, shoots his strong New England roots into the hot

soil in my Southern soul.

By careful reference to the table of contents, I now find that I have

gone through all the sketches; but that when I yesterday wrote, I had

not at all read two particular pieces, to which I now desire to call

special attention--_A Select Party_ and _Young Goodman Brown_. Here, be

it said to all those whom this poor fugitive scrawl of mine may tempt to

the perusal of the Mosses, that they must on no account suffer

themselves to be trifled with, disappointed, or deceived by the

triviality of many of the titles to these sketches. For in more than one

instance, the title utterly belies the piece. It is as if rustic

demijohns containing the very best and costliest of Falernian and Tokay,

were labelled ‘Cider,’ ‘Perry,’ and ‘Elderberry wine.’ The truth seems

to be, that like many other geniuses, this Man of Mosses takes great

delight in hoodwinking the world,--at least, with respect to himself.

Personally, I doubt not that he rather prefers to be generally esteemed

but a so-so sort of author; being willing to reserve the thorough and

acute appreciation of what he is, to that party most qualified to

judge--that is, to himself. Besides, at the bottom of their natures, men

like Hawthorne, in many things, deem the plaudits of the public such

strong presumptive evidence of mediocrity in the object of them, that it

would in some degree render them doubtful of their own powers, did they

hear much and vociferous braying concerning them in the public pastures.

True, I have been braying myself (if you please to be witty enough to

have it so), but then I claim to be the first that has so brayed in this

particular matter; and, therefore, while pleading guilty to the charge,

still claim all the merit due to originality.

But with whatever motive, playful or profound, Nathaniel Hawthorne has

chosen to entitle his pieces in the manner he has, it is certain that

some of them are directly calculated to deceive--egregiously deceive,

the superficial skimmer of pages. To be downright and candid once more,

let me cheerfully say, that two of these titles did dolefully dupe no

less an eager-eyed reader than myself; and that, too, after I had been

impressed with a sense of the great depth and breadth of this American

man. ‘Who in the name of thunder’ (as the country people say in this

neighbourhood), ‘who in the name of thunder, would anticipate any marvel

in a piece entitled _Young Goodman Brown_?’ You would of course suppose

that it was a simple little tale, intended as a supplement to _Goody Two

Shoes_. Whereas, it is deep as Dante; nor can you finish it, without

addressing the author in his own words--‘It shall be yours to penetrate,

in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin.’... And with Young Goodman,

too, in allegorical pursuit of his Puritan wife, you cry out in your

anguish:--

‘“Faith!” shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and

desperation; and the echoes of the forest mocked him, crying,

“Faith! Faith!” as if bewildered wretches were seeking her all

through the wilderness.’

Now this same piece entitled _Young Goodman Brown_, is one of the two

that I had not all read yesterday; and I allude to it now, because it

is, in itself, such a strong positive illustration of the blackness in

Hawthorne, which I had assumed from the mere occasional shadows of it,

as revealed in several of the other sketches. But had I previously

perused _Young Goodman Brown_, I should have been at no pains to draw

the conclusion, which I came to at a time when I was ignorant that the

book contained one such direct and unqualified manifestation of it.

The other piece of the two referred to, is entitled _A Select Party_,

which, in my first simplicity upon originally taking hold of the book, I

fancied must treat of some pumpkin-pie party in old Salem; or some

chowder party on Cape Cod. Whereas, by all the gods of Peedee, it is the

sweetest and sublimest thing that has been written since Spenser wrote.

Nay, there is nothing in Spenser that surpasses it, perhaps nothing that

equals it. And the test is this. Read any canto in _The Faerie Queene_

and then read _A Select Party_, and decide which pleases you most, that

is, if you are qualified to judge. Do not be frightened at this; for

when Spenser was alive, he was thought of very much as Hawthorne is

now,--was generally accounted just such a ‘gentle’ harmless man. It may

be, that to common eyes, the sublimity of Hawthorne seems lost in his

sweetness,--as perhaps in that same _Select Party_ of his; for whom he

has builded so august a dome of sunset clouds, and served them on richer

plate than Belshazzar when he banqueted his lords in Babylon.

But my chief business now, is to point out a particular page in this

piece, having reference to an honoured guest, who under the name of the

Master Genius, but in the guise ‘of a young man of poor attire, with no

insignia of rank or acknowledged eminence,’ is introduced to the Man of

Fancy, who is the giver of the feast. Now, the page having reference to

this Master Genius, so happily expresses much of what I yesterday wrote,

touching the coming of the literary Shiloh of America, that I cannot but

be charmed by the coincidence; especially, when it shows such a parity

of ideas, at least in this one point, between a man like Hawthorne and a

man like me.

And here, let me throw out another conceit of mine touching this

American Shiloh, or Master Genius, as Hawthorne calls him. May it not

be, that this commanding mind has not been, is not, and never will be,

individually developed in any one man? And would it, indeed, appear so

unreasonable to suppose, that this great fulness and overflowing may be,

or may be destined to be, shared by a plurality of men of genius?

Surely, to take the very greatest example on record, Shakespeare cannot

be regarded as in himself the concretion of all the genius of his time;

nor as so immeasurably beyond Marlowe, Webster, Ford, Beaumont, Jonson,

that these great men can be said to share none of his power? For one, I

conceive that there were dramatists in Elizabeth’s day, between whom and

Shakespeare the distance was by no means great. Let any one, hitherto

little acquainted with those neglected old authors, for the first time

read them thoroughly, or even read Charles Lamb’s _Specimens_ of them,

and he will be amazed at the wondrous ability of those Anaks of men, and

shocked at this renewed example of the fact, that Fortune has more to do

with fame than merit,--though without merit, lasting fame there can be

none.

Nevertheless, it would argue too ill of my country were this maxim to

hold good concerning Nathaniel Hawthorne, a man who already in some few

minds has shed ‘such a light as never illuminates the earth save when a

great heart burns as the household fire of a grand intellect.’

The words are his,--in the _Select Party_; and they are a magnificent

setting to a coincident sentiment of my own, but ramblingly expressed

yesterday, in reference to himself. Gainsay it who will; as I now write,

I am Posterity speaking by proxy--and after-times will make it more than

good, when I declare, that the American who up to the present day has

evinced, in literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that

man is Nathaniel Hawthorne. Moreover, that whatever Nathaniel Hawthorne

may hereafter write, _Mosses from an Old Manse_ will be ultimately

accounted his masterpiece. For there is a sure, though secret sign in

some works which proves the culmination of the powers (only the

developable ones, however) that produced them. But I am by no means

desirous of the glory of a prophet. I pray Heaven that Hawthorne may yet

prove me an impostor in this prediction. Especially, as I somehow cling

to the strange fancy, that, in all men, hiddenly reside certain

wondrous, occult properties--as in some plants and minerals--which by

some happy but very rare accident (as bronze was discovered by the

melting of the iron and brass at the burning of Corinth) may chance to

be called forth here on earth; not entirely waiting for their better

discovery in the more congenial, blessed atmosphere of heaven.

Once more--for it is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all

subjects are infinite. By some people this entire scrawl of mine may be

esteemed altogether unnecessary, inasmuch ‘as years ago’ (they may say)

‘we found out the rich and rare stuff in this Hawthorne, who you now

parade forth, as if only you _yourself_ were the discoverer of this

Portuguese diamond in your literature.’ But even granting all this--and

adding to it, the assumption that the books of Hawthorne have sold by

the five thousand--what does that signify? They should be sold by the

hundred thousand; and read by the million; and admired by every one who

is capable of admiration.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

OR THE CROWING OF THE NOBLE COCK BENEVENTANO

In all parts of the world many high-spirited revolts from rascally

despotisms had of late been knocked on the head; many dreadful

casualties, by locomotive and steamer, had likewise knocked hundreds of

high-spirited travellers on the head (I lost a dear friend in one of

them); my own private affairs were also full of despotisms, casualties,

and knockings on the head, when early one morning in Spring, being too

full of hypos to sleep, I sallied out to walk on my hill-side pasture.

It was a cool and misty, damp, disagreeable air. The country looked

underdone, its raw juices squirting out all round. I buttoned out this

squitchy air as well as I could with my lean, double-breasted

dress-coat--my overcoat being so long-skirted I only used it in my

wagon--and spitefully thrusting my crab-stick into the oozy sod, bent my

blue form to the steep ascent of the hill. This toiling posture brought

my head pretty well earthward, as if I were in the act of butting it

against the world. I marked the fact, but only grinned at it with a

ghastly grin.

All round me were tokens of a divided empire. The old grass and the new

grass were striving together. In the low wet swales the verdure peeped

out in vivid green; beyond, on the mountains, lay light patches of snow,

strangely relieved against their russet sides; all the humped hills

looked like brindled kine in the shivers. The woods were strewn with dry

dead boughs, snapped off by the riotous winds of March, while the young

trees skirting the woods were just beginning to show the first yellowish

tinge of the nascent spray.

I sat down for a moment on a great rotting log nigh the top of the hill,

my back to a heavy grove, my face presented toward a wide, sweeping

circuit of mountains enclosing a rolling, diversified country. Along the

base of one long range of heights ran a lagging, fever-and-agueish

river, over which was a duplicate stream of dripping mist, exactly

corresponding in every meander with its parent water below. Low down,

here and there, shreds of vapour listlessly wandered in the air, like

abandoned or helmless nations or ships--or very soaky towels hung on

criss-cross clothes-lines to dry. Afar, over a distant village lying in

a bay of the plain formed by the mountains, there rested a great flat

canopy of haze, like a pall. It was the condensed smoke of the chimneys,

with the condensed, exhaled breath of the villagers, prevented from

dispersion by the imprisoning hills. It was too heavy and lifeless to

mount of itself; so there it lay, between the village and the sky,

doubtless hiding many a man with the mumps, and many a queasy child.

My eye ranged over the capacious rolling country, and over the

mountains, and over the village, and over a farmhouse here and there,

and over woods, groves, streams, rocks, fells--and I thought to myself,

what a slight mark, after all, does man make on this huge great earth.

Yet the earth makes a mark on him. What a horrid accident was that on

the Ohio, where my good friend and thirty other good fellows were sloped

into eternity at the bidding of a thick-headed engineer, who knew not a

valve from a flue. And that crash on the railroad just over yon

mountains there, where two infatuate trains ran pell-mell into each

other, and climbed and clawed each other’s backs; and one locomotive was

found fairly shelled, like a chick, inside of a passenger car in the

antagonist train; and near a score of noble hearts, a bride and her

groom, and an innocent little infant, were all disembarked into the grim

hulk of Charon, who ferried them over, all baggageless, to some

clinkered iron-foundry country or other. Yet what’s the use of

complaining? What justice of the peace will right this matter? Yea,

what’s the use of bothering the very heavens about it? Don’t the heavens

themselves ordain these things--else they could not happen?

A miserable world! Who would take the trouble to make a fortune in it,

when he knows not how long he can keep it, for the thousand villains and

asses who have the management of railroads and steamboats, and

innumerable other vital things in the world. If they would make me

Dictator in North America a while, I’d string them up, and hang, draw,

and quarter; fry, roast, and boil; stew, grill, and devil them, like so

many turkey-legs--the rascally numskulls of stokers; I’d set them to

stokering in Tartarus--I would!

Great improvements of the age! What! to call the facilitation of death

and murder an improvement! Who wants to travel so fast? My grandfather

did not, and he was no fool. Hark! here comes that old dragon

again--that gigantic gad-fly of a Moloch--snort! puff! scream!--here he

comes straight-bent through these vernal woods, like the Asiatic cholera

cantering on a camel. Stand aside! here he comes, the chartered

murderer! the death monopoliser! judge, jury, and hangman all together,

whose victims die always without benefit of clergy. For two hundred and

fifty miles that iron fiend goes yelling through the land, crying ‘More!

more! more!’ Would that fifty conspiring mountains would fall atop of

him! And, while they were about it, would they also fall atop of that

smaller dunning fiend, my creditor, who frightens the life out of me

more than any locomotive--a lantern-jawed rascal, who seems to run on a

railroad track, too, and duns me even on Sunday, all the way to church

and back, and comes and sits in the same pew with me, and pretending to

be polite and hand me the prayer-book opened at the proper place, pokes

his pesky bill under my nose in the very midst of my devotions, and so

shoves himself between me and salvation; for how can one keep his temper

on such occasions?

I can’t pay this horrid man; and yet they say money was never so

plentiful--a drug in the market; but blame me if I can get any of the

drug, though there never was a sick man more in need of that particular

sort of medicine. It’s a lie; money ain’t plenty--feel of my pocket. Ha!

here’s a powder I was going to send to the sick baby in yonder hovel,

where the Irish ditcher lives. That baby has the scarlet fever. They say

the measles are rife in the country, too, and the varioloid, and the

chicken-pox, and it’s bad for teething children. And after all, I

suppose many of the poor little ones, after going through all this

trouble, snap off short; and so they had the measles, mumps, croup,

scarlet fever, chicken-pox, cholera-morbus, summer-complaint, and all

else, in vain! Ah! there’s that twinge of the rheumatics in my right

shoulder. I got it one night on the North River, when, in a crowded

boat, I gave up my berth to a sick lady, and stayed on deck till morning

in drizzling weather. There’s the thanks one gets for charity! Twinge!

Shoot away, ye rheumatics! Ye couldn’t lay on worse if I were some

villain who had murdered the lady instead of befriending her. Dyspepsia,

too--I am troubled with that.

Hallo! here come the calves, the two-year-olds, just turned out of the

barn into the pasture, after six months of cold victuals. What a

miserable-looking set, to be sure! A breaking up of a hard winter,

that’s certain: sharp bones sticking out like elbows; all quilted with a

strange stuff dried on their flanks like layers of pancakes. Hair worn

quite off too, here and there; and where it ain’t pancaked, or worn off,

looks like the rubbed sides of mangy old hair-trunks. In fact, they are

not six two-year-olds, but six abominable old hair-trunks wandering

about here in this pasture.

Hark! By Jove, what’s that? See! the very hair-trunks prick their ears

at it, and stand and gaze away down into the rolling country yonder.

Hark again! How clear! how musical! how prolonged! What a triumphant

thanksgiving of a cock-crow! ‘_Glory be to God in the highest!_’ It says

those very words as plain as ever cock did in this world. Why, why, I

begin to feel a little in sorts again. It ain’t so very misty, after

all. The sun yonder is beginning to show himself: I feel warmer.

Hark! There again! Did ever such a blessed cock-crow so ring out over

the earth before! Clear, shrill, full of pluck, full of fire, full of

fun, full of glee. It plainly says--‘_Never say die!_’ My friends, it is

extraordinary, is it not?

Unwittingly, I found that I had been addressing the two-year-olds--the

calves--in my enthusiasm; which shows how one’s true nature will betray

itself at times in the most unconscious way. For what a very

two-year-old, and calf, I had been to fall into the sulks, on a hill-top

too, when a cock down in the lowlands there, without discourse of

reason, and quite penniless in the world, and with death hanging over

him at any moment from his hungry master, sends up a cry like a very

laureate celebrating the glorious victory of New Orleans.

Hark! there it goes again! My friends, that must be a Shanghai; no

domestic-born cock could crow in such prodigious exulting strains.

Plainly, my friends, a Shanghai of the Emperor of China’s breed.

But my friends the hair-trunks, fairly alarmed at last by such

clamorously-victorious tones, were now scampering off, with their tails

flirting in the air, and capering with their legs in clumsy enough sort

of style, sufficiently evincing that they had not freely flourished them

for the six months last past.

Hark! there again! Whose cock is that? Who in this region can afford to

buy such an extraordinary Shanghai? Bless me--it makes my blood bound--I

feel wild. What? jumping on this rotten old log here, to flap my elbows

and crow too? And just now in the doleful dumps. And all this from the

simple crow of a cock. Marvellous cock! But soft--this fellow now crows

most lustily; but it’s only morning; let’s see how he’ll crow about

noon, and toward nightfall. Come to think of it, cocks crow mostly in

the beginning of the day. Their pluck ain’t lasting, after all. Yes,

yes; even cocks have to succumb to the universal spell of tribulation:

jubilant in the beginning, but down in the mouth at the end.

... ‘Of fine mornings,

We fine lusty cocks begin our crows in gladness;

But when eve does come we don’t crow quite so much,

For then cometh despondency and madness.’

The poet had this very Shanghai in his mind when he wrote that. But

stop. There he rings out again, ten times richer, fuller, longer, more

obstreperously exulting than before! Why, this is equal to hearing the

great bell of St. Paul’s rung at a coronation! In fact, that bell ought

to be taken down, and this Shanghai put in its place. Such a crow would

jollify all London, from Mile-End (which is no end) to Primrose Hill

(where there ain’t any primroses), and scatter the fog.

Well, I have an appetite for my breakfast this morning, if I have not

had it for a week before. I meant to have only tea and toast; but I’ll

have coffee and eggs--no, brown stout and a beefsteak, I want something

hearty. Ah, here comes the down-train: white cars, flashing through the

trees like a vein of silver. How cheerfully the steam-pipe chirps! Gay

are the passengers. There waves a handkerchief--going down to the city

to eat oysters, and see their friends, and drop in at the circus. Look

at the mist yonder; what soft curls and undulations round the hills, and

the sun weaving his rays among them. See the azure smoke of the village,

like the azure tester over a bridal-bed. How bright the country looks

there where the river overflowed the meadows. The old grass has to knock

under to the new. Well, I feel the better for this walk. Home now, and

walk into that steak, and crack that bottle of brown stout; and by the

time that’s drunk--a quart of stout--by that time, I shall feel about as

stout as Samson. Come to think of it, that dun may call, though. I’ll

just visit the woods and cut a club. I’ll club him, by Jove, if he duns

me this day.

Hark! there goes Shanghai again. Shanghai says, ‘Bravo!’ Shanghai says,

‘Club him!’

Oh, brave cock!

I felt in rare spirits the whole morning. The dun called about eleven. I

had the boy Jake send the dun up. I was reading _Tristram Shandy_, and

could not go down under the circumstances. The lean rascal (a lean

farmer, too--think of that!) entered, and found me seated in an

armchair, with my feet on the table, and the second bottle of brown

stout handy, and the book under eye.

‘Sit down,’ said I; ‘I’ll finish this chapter, and then attend to you.

Fine morning. Ha! ha!--this is a fine joke about my Uncle Toby and the

Widow Wadman! Ha! ha! ha! let me read this to you.’

‘I have no time; I’ve got my noon _chores_ to do.’

‘To the deuce with your _chores_!’ said I. ‘Don’t drop your old tobacco

about here, or I’ll turn you out.’

‘Sir!’

‘Let me read you this about the Widow Wadman. Said the Widow Wadman----’

‘There’s my bill, sir.’

‘Very good. Just twist it up, will you; it’s about my smoking-time; and

hand a coal, will you, from the hearth yonder!’

‘My bill, sir!’ said the rascal, turning pale with rage and amazement at

my unwonted air (formerly I had always dodged him with a pale face), but

too prudent as yet to betray the extremity of his astonishment. ‘My

bill, sir!’--and he stiffly poked it at me.

‘My friend,’ said I, ‘what a charming morning! How sweet the country

looks! Pray, did you hear that extraordinary cock-crow this morning?

Take a glass of my stout!’

‘_Yours?_ First pay your debts before you offer folks your stout!’

‘You think, then, that, properly speaking, I have no _stout_,’ said I,

deliberately rising. ‘I’ll undeceive you. I’ll show you stout of a

superior brand to Barclay and Perkins.’

Without more ado, I seized that insolent dun by the slack of his

coat--(and, being a lean, shad-bellied wretch, there was plenty of slack

to it)--I seized him that way, tied him with a sailor-knot, and

thrusting his bill between his teeth, introduced him to the open country

lying round about my place of abode.

‘Jake,’ said I, ‘you’ll find a sack of blue-nosed potatoes lying under

the shed. Drag it here, and pelt this pauper away; he’s been begging

pence of me, and I know he can work, but he’s lazy. Pelt him away,

Jake!’

Bless my stars, what a crow! Shanghai sent up such a perfect pæan and

_laudamus_--such a trumpet-blast of triumph, that my soul fairly snorted

in me. Duns!--I could have fought an army of them! Plainly, Shanghai was

of the opinion that duns only came into the world to be kicked, hanged,

bruised, battered, choked, walloped, hammered, drowned, clubbed!

Returning indoors, when the exultation of my victory over the dun had a

little subsided, I fell to musing over the mysterious Shanghai. I had no

idea I would hear him so nigh my house. I wondered from what rich

gentleman’s yard he crowed. Nor had he cut short his crows so easily as

I had supposed he would. This Shanghai crowed till midday, at least.

Would he keep a-crowing all day? I resolved to learn. Again I ascended

the hill. The whole country was now bathed in a rejoicing sunlight. The

warm verdure was bursting all round me. Teams were afield. Birds, newly

arrived from the south, were blithely singing in the air. Even the crows

cawed with a certain unction, and seemed a shade or two less black than

usual.

Hark! there goes the cock! How shall I describe the crow of the Shanghai

at noontide? His sunrise crow was a whisper to it. It was the loudest,

longest, and most strangely musical crow that ever amazed mortal man. I

had heard plenty of cock-crows before, and many fine ones; but this one!

so smooth and flute-like in its very clamour; so self-possessed in its

very rapture of exultation; so vast, mounting, swelling, soaring, as if

spurted out from a golden throat, thrown far back. Nor did it sound like

the foolish, vain-glorious crow of some young sophomorean cock, who knew

not the world, and was beginning life in audacious gay spirits, because

in wretched ignorance of what might be to come. It was the crow of a

cock who crowed not without advice; the crow of a cock who knew a thing

or two; the crow of a cock who had fought the world and got the better

of it, and was now resolved to crow, though the earth should heave and

the heavens should fall. It was a wise crow; an invincible crow; a

philosophic crow; a crow of all crows.

I returned home once more full of reinvigorated spirits, with a

dauntless sort of feeling. I thought over my debts and other troubles,

and over the unlucky risings of the poor oppressed _peoples_ abroad, and

over the railroad and steamboat accidents, and over even the loss of my

dear friend, with a calm, good-natured rapture of defiance, which

astounded myself. I felt as though I could meet Death, and invite him to

dinner, and toast the Catacombs with him, in pure overflow of

self-reliance and a sense of universal security.

Toward evening I went up to the hill once more to find whether, indeed,

the glorious cock would prove game even from the rising of the sun unto

the going down thereof. Talk of Vespers or Curfew!--the evening crow of

the cock went out of his mighty throat all over the land and inhabited

it, like Xerxes from the East with his double-winged host. It was

miraculous. Bless me, what a crow! The cock went game to roost that

night, depend upon it, victorious over the entire day, and bequeathing

the echoes of his thousand crows to night.

After an unwontedly sound, refreshing sleep I rose early, feeling like a

carriage-spring--light, elliptical, airy, buoyant as sturgeon-nose--and,

like a football, bounded up the hill. Hark! Shanghai was up before me.

The early bird that caught the worm--crowing like a bugle worked by an

engine--lusty, loud, all jubilation. From the scattered farm-houses a

multitude of other cocks were crowing, and replying to each other’s

crows. But they were as flageolets to a trombone. Shanghai would

suddenly break in, and overwhelm all their crows with his one

domineering blast. He seemed to have nothing to do with any other

concern. He replied to no other crow, but crowed solely by himself, on

his own account, in solitary scorn and independence.

Oh, brave cock!--oh, noble Shanghai!--oh, bird rightly offered up by the

invincible Socrates, in testimony of his final victory over life.

As I live, thought I, this blessed day will I go and seek out the

Shanghai, and buy him, if I have to clap another mortgage on my land.

I listened attentively now, striving to mark from what direction the

crow came. But it so charged and replenished, and made bountiful and

overflowing all the air, that it was impossible to say from what precise

point the exultation came. All that I could decide upon was this: the

crow came from out of the east, and not from out of the west. I then

considered with myself how far a cock-crow might be heard. In this still

country, shut in, too, by mountains, sounds were audible at great

distances. Besides, the undulations of the land, the abuttings of the

mountains into the rolling hill and valley below, produced strange

echoes, and reverberations, and multiplications, and accumulations of

resonance, very remarkable to hear, and very puzzling to think of. Where

lurked this valiant Shanghai--this bird of cheerful Socrates--the

game-fowl Greek who died unappalled? Where lurked he? Oh, noble cock,

where are you? Crow once more, my Bantam! my princely, my imperial

Shanghai! my bird of the Emperor of China! Brother of the Sun! Cousin of

great Jove! where are you?--one crow more, and tell me your number!

Hark! like a full orchestra of the cocks of all nations, forth burst the

crow. But where from? There it is; but where? There was no telling,

further than it came from out the east.

After breakfast I took my stick and sallied down the road. There were

many gentlemen’s seats dotting the neighbouring country, and I made no

doubt that some of these opulent gentlemen had invested a hundred-dollar

bill in some royal Shanghai recently imported in the ship Trade Wind, or

the ship White Squall, or the ship Sovereign of the Seas; for it must

needs have been a brave ship with a brave name which bore the fortunes

of so brave a cock. I resolved to walk the entire country, and find this

noble foreigner out; but thought it would not be amiss to inquire on the

way at the humblest homesteads, whether, peradventure, they had heard of

a lately-imported Shanghai belonging to any of the gentlemen settlers

from the city; for it was plain that no poor farmer, no poor man of any

sort, could own such an oriental trophy, such a Great Bell of St. Paul’s

swung in a cock’s throat.

I met an old man, ploughing, in a field nigh the road-side fence.

‘My friend, have you heard an extraordinary cock-crow of late?’

‘Well, well,’ he drawled, ‘I don’t know--the Widow Crowfoot has a

cock--and Squire Squaretoes has a cock--and I have a cock, and they all

crow. But I don’t know of any on ’em with ’strordinary crows.’

‘Good morning to you,’ said I, shortly; ‘it’s plain that you have not

heard the crow of the Emperor of China’s chanticleer.’

Presently I met another old man mending a tumble-down old rail-fence.

The rails were rotten, and at every move of the old man’s hand they

crumbled into yellow ochre. He had much better let the fence alone, or

else get him new rails. And here I must say, that one cause of the sad

fact why idiocy more prevails among farmers than any other class of

people, is owing to their undertaking the mending of rotten rail-fences

in warm, relaxing spring weather. The enterprise is a hopeless one. It

is a laborious one; it is a bootless one. It is an enterprise to make

the heart break. Vast pains squandered upon a vanity. For how can one

make rotten rail-fences stand up on their rotten pins? By what magic put

pith into sticks which have lain freezing and baking through sixty

consecutive winters and summers? This it is, this wretched endeavour to

mend rotten rail-fences with their own rotten rails, which drives many

farmers into the asylum.

On the face of the old man in question incipient idiocy was plainly

marked. For, about sixty rods before him extended one of the most

unhappy and desponding broken-hearted Virginia rail-fences I ever saw in

my life. While in a field behind, were a set of young steers, possessed

as by devils, continually butting at this forlorn old fence, and

breaking through it here and there, causing the old man to drop his work

and chase them back within bounds. He would chase them with a piece of

rail huge as Goliath’s beam, but as light as cork. At the first

flourish, it crumbled into powder.

‘My friend,’ said I, addressing this woeful mortal, ‘have you heard an

extraordinary cock-crow of late?’

I might as well have asked him if he had heard the death-tick. He stared

at me with a long, bewildered, doleful, and unutterable stare, and

without reply resumed his unhappy labours.

What a fool, thought I, to have asked such an uncheerful and uncheerable

creature about a cheerful cock!

I walked on. I had now descended the high land where my house stood, and

being in a low tract could not hear the crow of the Shanghai, which

doubtless overshot me there. Besides, the Shanghai might be at lunch of

corn and oats, or taking a nap, and so interrupted his jubilations for a

while.

At length I encountered riding along the road, a portly gentleman--nay,

a _pursy_ one--of great wealth, who had recently purchased him some

noble acres, and built him a noble mansion, with a goodly fowl-house

attached, the fame whereof spread through all that country. Thought I,

Here now is the owner of the Shanghai.

‘Sir,’ said I, ‘excuse me, but I am a countryman of yours, and would

ask, if so be you own any Shanghais?’

‘Oh, yes; I have ten Shanghais.’

‘Ten!’ exclaimed I in wonder; ‘and do they all crow?’

‘Most lustily; every soul of them; I wouldn’t own a cock that wouldn’t

crow.’

‘Will you turn back, and show me those Shanghais?’

‘With pleasure: I am proud of them. They cost me, in the lump, six

hundred dollars.’

As I walked by the side of his horse, I was thinking to myself whether

possibly I had not mistaken the harmoniously combined crowings of ten

Shanghais in a squad, for the supernatural crow of a single Shanghai by

himself.

‘Sir,’ said I, ‘is there one of your Shanghais which far exceeds all the

others in the lustiness, musicalness, and inspiring effects of his

crow?’

‘They crow pretty much alike, I believe,’ he courteously replied; ‘I

really don’t know that I could tell their crow apart.’

I began to think that after all my noble chanticleer might not be in the

possession of this wealthy gentleman. However, we went into his

fowl-yard, and I saw his Shanghais. Let me say that hitherto I had never

clapped eye on this species of imported fowl. I had heard what enormous

prices were paid for them, and also that they were of an enormous size,

and had somehow fancied they must be of a beauty and brilliancy

proportioned both to size and price. What was my surprise, then, to see

ten carrot-coloured monsters, without the smallest pretension to

effulgence of plumage. Immediately I determined that my royal cock was

neither among these, nor could possibly be a Shanghai at all; if these

gigantic gallows-bird fowl were fair specimens of the true Shanghai.

I walked all day, dining and resting at a farm-house, inspecting various

fowl-yards, interrogating various owners of fowls, hearkening to various

crows, but discovered not the mysterious chanticleer. Indeed, I had

wandered so far and deviously, that I could not hear his crow. I began

to suspect that this cock was a mere visitor in the country, who had

taken his departure by the eleven o’clock train from the south, and was

now crowing and jubilating somewhere on the verdant banks of Long Island

Sound.

But next morning, again I heard the inspiring blast, again felt my blood

bound in me, again felt superior to all the ills of life, again felt

like turning my dun out of doors. But displeased with the reception

given him at his last visit, the dun stayed away, doubtless being in a

huff. Silly fellow that he was, to take a harmless joke in earnest.

Several days passed, during which I made sundry excursions in the

regions round about, but in vain sought the cock. Still, I heard him

from the hill, and sometimes from the house, and sometimes in the

stillness of the night. If at times I would relapse into my doleful

dumps, straightway at the sound of the exultant and defiant crow, my

soul, too, would turn chanticleer, and clap her wings, and throw back

her throat, and breathe forth a cheerful challenge to all the world of

woes.

At last, after some weeks I was necessitated to clap another mortgage on

my estate in order to pay certain debts, and among others the one I owed

the dun, who of late had commenced a civil-process against me. The way

the process was served was a most insulting one. In a private room I had

been enjoying myself in the village tavern over a bottle of Philadelphia

porter, and some Herkimer cheese, and a roll, and having apprised the

landlord, who was a friend of mine, that I would settle with him when I

received my next remittances, stepped to the peg where I had hung my hat

in the bar-room, to get a choice cigar I had left in the hall, when lo!

I found the civil-process enveloping the cigar. When I unrolled the

cigar, I unrolled the civil-process, and the constable standing by

rolled out, with a thick tongue, ‘Take notice!’ and added, in a whisper,

‘Put that in your pipe and smoke it!’

I turned short round upon the gentlemen then and there present in that

bar-room. Said I, ‘Gentlemen, is this an honourable--nay, is this a

lawful way of serving a civil-process? Behold!’

One and all they were of opinion that it was a highly inelegant act in

the constable to take advantage of a gentleman’s lunching on cheese and

porter, to be so uncivil as to slip a civil-process into his hat. It was

ungenerous; it was cruel; for the sudden shock of the thing coming

instanter upon the lunch would impair the proper digestion of the

cheese, which is proverbially not so easy of digestion as blanc-mange.

Arrived home, I read the process, and felt a twinge of melancholy.

Hard world! hard world! Here I am, as good a fellow as ever

lived--hospitable--open-hearted--generous to a fault: and the Fates

forbid that I should possess the fortune to bless the country

with my bounteousness. Nay, while many a stingy curmudgeon rolls in

idle gold, I, heart of nobleness as I am, I have civil-processes

served on me! I bowed my head, and felt forlorn--unjustly

used--abused--unappreciated--in short, miserable.

Hark! like a clarion! yea, like a jolly bolt of thunder with bells to

it--came the all-glorious and defiant crow! Ye gods, how it set me up

again! Right on my pins! Yea, verily on stilts!

Oh, noble cock!

Plain as cock could speak, it said: ‘Let the world and all aboard of it

go to pot. Do you be jolly, and never say die. What’s the world compared

to you? What is it anyhow but a lump of loam? Do you be jolly!’

Oh, noble cock!

‘But my dear and glorious cock,’ mused I, upon second thought, ‘one

can’t so easily send this world to pot; one can’t so easily be jolly

with civil-processes in his hat or hand.’

Hark! the crow again. Plain as cock could speak, it said: ‘Hang the

process, and hang the fellow that sent it! If you have not land or cash,

go and thrash the fellow, and tell him you never mean to pay him. Be

jolly!’

Now this was the way--through the imperative intimations of the

cock--that I came to clap the added mortgage on my estate; paid all my

debts by fusing them into this one added bond and mortgage. Thus made at

ease again, I renewed my search for the noble cock. But in vain, though

I heard him every day. I began to think there was some sort of deception

in this mysterious thing: some wonderful ventriloquist prowled around my

barns, or in my cellar, or on my roof, and was minded to be gaily

mischievous. But no--what ventriloquist could so crow with such an

heroic and celestial crow?

At last, one morning there came to me a certain singular man, who had

sawed and split my wood in March--some five-and-thirty cords of it--and

now he came for his pay. He was a singular man, I say. He was tall and

spare, with a long, saddish face, yet somehow a latently joyous eye,

which offered the strangest contrast. His air seemed staid, but

undepressed. He wore a long, gray, shabby coat, and a big battered hat.

This man had sawed my wood at so much a cord. He would stand and saw all

day long in a driving snowstorm, and never wink at it. He never spoke

unless spoken to. He only sawed. Saw, saw, saw--snow, snow, snow. The

saw and the snow went together like two natural things. The first day

this man came, he brought his dinner with him, and volunteered to eat it

sitting on his buck in the snowstorm. From my window, where I was

reading Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_, I saw him in the act. I burst

out of doors bare-headed. ‘Good heavens!’ cried I; ‘what are you doing?

Come in. _This_ your dinner!’

He had a hunk of stale bread and another hunk of salt beef, wrapped in a

wet newspaper, and washed his morsels down by melting a handful of fresh

snow in his mouth. I took this rash man indoors, planted him by the

fire, gave him a dish of hot pork and beans, and a mug of cider.

‘Now,’ said I, ‘don’t you bring any of your damp dinners here. You work

by the job, to be sure, but I’ll dine you for all that.’

He expressed his acknowledgments in a calm, proud, but not ungrateful

way, and dispatched his meal with satisfaction to himself, and me also.

It afforded me pleasure to perceive that he quaffed down his mug of

cider like a man. I honoured him. When I addressed him in the way of

business at his buck, I did so in a guardedly respectful and deferential

manner. Interested in his singular aspect, struck by his wondrous

intensity of application at his saw--a most wearisome and disgustful

occupation to most people--I often sought to gather from him who he was,

what sort of a life he led, where he was born, and so on. But he was

mum. He came to saw my wood, and eat my dinners--if I chose to offer

them--but not to gabble. At first I somewhat resented his sullen silence

under the circumstances. But better considering it, I honoured him the

more. I increased the respectfulness and deferentialness of my address

toward him. I concluded within myself that this man had experienced hard

times; that he had had many sore rubs in the world; that he was of a

solemn disposition; that he was of the mind of Solomon; that he lived

calmly, decorously, temperately; and though a very poor man, was,

nevertheless, a highly respectable one. At times I imagined that he

might even be an elder or deacon of some small country church. I thought

it would not be a bad plan to run this excellent man for President of

the United States. He would prove a great reformer of abuses.

His name was Merrymusk. I had often thought how jolly a name for so

unjolly a wight. I inquired of people whether they knew Merrymusk. But

it was some time before I learned much about him. He was by birth a

Marylander, it appeared, who had long lived in the country round about;

a wandering man; until within some ten years ago, a thriftless man,

though perfectly innocent of crime; a man who would work hard a month

with surprising soberness, and then spend all his wages in one riotous

night. In youth he had been a sailor, and run away from his ship at

Batavia, where he caught the fever, and came nigh dying. But he rallied,

reshipped, landed home, found all his friends dead, and struck for the

Northern interior, where he had since tarried. Nine years back he had

married a wife, and now had four children. His wife was become a perfect

invalid; one child had the white-swelling, and the rest were rickety. He

and his family lived in a shanty on a lonely barren patch nigh the

railroad-track, where it passed close to the base of a mountain. He had

bought a fine cow to have plenty of wholesome milk for his children; but

the cow died during an accouchement, and he could not afford to buy

another. Still, his family never suffered for lack of food. He worked

hard and brought it to them.

Now, as I said before, having long previously sawed my wood, this

Merrymusk came for his pay.

‘My friend,’ said I, ‘do you know of any gentleman hereabouts who owns

an extraordinary cock?’

The twinkle glittered quite plain in the wood-sawyer’s eye.

‘I know of no _gentleman_,’ he replied, ‘who has what might well be

called an extraordinary cock.’

Oh, thought I, this Merrymusk is not the man to enlighten me. I am

afraid I shall never discover this extraordinary cock.

Not having the full change to pay Merrymusk, I gave him his due, as nigh

as I could make it, and told him that in a day or two I would take a

walk and visit his place, and hand him the remainder. Accordingly one

fine morning I sallied forth upon the errand. I had much ado finding the

best road to the shanty. No one seemed to know where it was exactly. It

lay in a very lonely part of the country, a densely-wooded mountain on

one side (which I call October Mountain, on account of its bannered

aspect in that month), and a thicketed swamp on the other, the railroad

cutting the swamp. Straight as a die the railroad cut it; many times a

day tantalising the wretched shanty with the sight of all the beauty,

rank, fashion, health, trunks, silver and gold, dry-goods and groceries,

brides and grooms, happy wives and husbands, flying by the lonely

door--no time to stop--flash! here they are--and there they go!--out of

sight at both ends--as if that part of the world were only made to fly

over, and not to settle upon. And this was about all the shanty saw of

what people call ‘life.’

Though puzzled somewhat, yet I knew the general direction where the

shanty lay, and on I trudged. As I advanced, I was surprised to hear the

mysterious cock crow with more and more distinctness. Is it possible,

thought I, that any gentleman owning a Shanghai can dwell in such a

lonesome, dreary region? Louder and louder, nigher and nigher, sounded

the glorious and defiant clarion. Though somehow I may be out of the

track to my wood-sawyer’s, I said to myself, yet, thank Heaven, I seem

to be on the way toward that extraordinary cock. I was delighted with

this auspicious accident. On I journeyed; while at intervals the crow

sounded most invitingly, and jocundly, and superbly; and the last crow

was ever nigher than the former one. At last, emerging from a thicket of

elders, straight before me I saw the most resplendent creature that ever

blessed the sight of man.

A cock, more like a golden eagle than a cock. A cock, more like a

field-marshal than a cock. A cock, more like Lord Nelson with all his

glittering arms on, standing on the _Vanguard’s_ quarter-deck going into

battle, than a cock. A cock, more like the Emperor Charlemagne in his

robes at Aix-la-Chapelle, than a cock.

Such a cock!

He was of a haughty size, stood haughtily on his haughty legs. His

colours were red, gold, and white. The red was on his crest alone, which

was a mighty and symmetric crest, like unto Hector’s helmet, as

delineated on antique shields. His plumage was snowy, traced with gold.

He walked in front of the shanty, like a peer of the realm; his crest

lifted, his chest heaved out, his embroidered trappings flashing in the

light. His pace was wonderful. He looked like some noble foreigner. He

looked like some Oriental king in some magnificent Italian opera.

Merrymusk advanced from the door.

‘Pray, is not that the Signor Beneventano?’

‘Sir!’

‘That’s the cock,’ said I, a little embarrassed. The truth was, my

enthusiasm had betrayed me into a rather silly inadvertence. I had made

a somewhat learned sort of allusion in the presence of an unlearned man.

Consequently, upon discovering it by his honest stare, I felt foolish;

but carried it off by declaring that _this was the cock_.

Now, during the preceding autumn I had been to the city, and had chanced

to be present at a performance of the Italian Opera. In that opera

figured in some royal character a certain Signor Beneventano--a man of a

tall, imposing person, clad in rich raiment, like to plumage, and with a

most remarkable, majestic, scornful stride. The Signor Beneventano

seemed on the point of tumbling over backward with exceeding

haughtiness. And, for all the world, the proud pace of the cock seemed

the very stage-pace of the Signor Beneventano.

Hark! Suddenly the cock paused, lifted his head still higher, ruffled

his plumes, seemed inspired, and sent forth a lusty crow. October

Mountain echoed it; other mountains sent it back; still others rebounded

it; it overran the country round. Now I plainly perceived how it was I

had chanced to hear the gladdening sound on my distant hill.

‘Good heavens! do you own the cock? Is that cock yours?’

‘Is it my cock!’ said Merrymusk, looking slyly gleeful out of the corner

of his long, solemn face.

‘Where did you get it?’

‘It chipped the shell here. I raised it.’

‘You?’

Hark! Another crow. It might have raised the ghosts of all the pines and

hemlocks ever cut down in that country. Marvellous cock! Having crowed,

he strode on again, surrounded by a bevy of admiring hens.

‘What will you take for Signor Beneventano?’

‘Sir?’

‘That magic cock!--what will you take for him?’

‘I won’t sell him.’

‘I will give you fifty dollars.’

‘Pooh!’

‘One hundred!’

‘Pish!’

‘Five hundred!’

‘Bah!’

‘And you a poor man?’

‘No; don’t I own that cock, and haven’t I refused five hundred dollars

for him?’

‘True,’ said I, in profound thought; ‘that’s a fact. You won’t sell him,

then?’

‘No.’

‘Will you give him?’

‘No.’

‘Will you _keep_ him, then!’ I shouted, in a rage.

‘Yes.’

I stood a while admiring the cock, and wondering at the man. At last I

felt a redoubled admiration of the one, and a redoubled deference for

the other.

‘Won’t you step in?’ said Merrymusk.

‘But won’t the cock be prevailed upon to join us?’ said I.

‘Yes. Trumpet! hither, boy! hither!’

The cock turned round, and strode up to Merrymusk.

‘Come!’

The cock followed us into the shanty.

‘Crow!’

The roof jarred.

Oh, noble cock!

I turned in silence upon my entertainer. There he sat on an old battered

chest, in his old tattered gray coat, with patches at his knees and

elbows, and a deplorably bunged hat. I glanced round the room. Bare

rafters overhead, but solid junks of jerked beef hanging from them.

Earth floor, but a heap of potatoes in one corner, and a sack of Indian

meal in another. A blanket was strung across the apartment at the

farther end, from which came a woman’s ailing voice and the voices of

ailing children. But somehow in the ailing of these voices there seemed

no complaint.

‘Mrs. Merrymusk and children?’

‘Yes.’

I looked at the cock. There he stood majestically in the middle of the

room. He looked like a Spanish grandee caught in a shower, and standing

under some peasant’s shed. There was a strange supernatural look of

contrast about him. He irradiated the shanty; he glorified its meanness.

He glorified the battered chest, and tattered gray coat, and the bunged

hat. He glorified the very voices which came in ailing tones from behind

the screen.

‘Oh, father,’ cried a little sickly voice, ‘let Trumpet sound again.’

‘Crow,’ cried Merrymusk.

The cock threw himself into a posture.

The roof jarred.

‘Does not this disturb Mrs. Merrymusk and the sick children?’

‘Crow again, Trumpet.’

The roof jarred.

‘It does not disturb them, then?’

‘Didn’t you hear ’em _ask_ for it?’

‘How is it, that your sick family like this crowing?’ said I. ‘The cock

is a glorious cock, with a glorious voice, but not exactly the sort of

thing for a sick-chamber, one would suppose. Do they really like it?’

‘Don’t _you_ like it? Don’t it do _you_ good? Ain’t it inspiring? Don’t

it impart pluck? give stuff against despair?’

‘All true,’ said I, removing my hat with profound humility before the

brave spirit disguised in the base coat.

‘But then,’ said I, still with some misgivings, ‘so loud, so wonderfully

clamorous a crow, methinks might be amiss to invalids, and retard their

convalescence.’

‘Crow your best now, Trumpet!’

I leaped from my chair. The cock frightened me, like some overpowering

angel in the Apocalypse. He seemed crowing over the fall of wicked

Babylon, or crowing over the triumph of righteous Joshua in the vale of

Askalon. When I regained my composure somewhat, an inquisitive thought

occurred to me. I resolved to gratify it.

‘Merrymusk, will you present me to your wife and children?’

‘Yes. Wife, the gentleman wants to step in.’

‘He is very welcome,’ replied a weak voice.

Going behind the curtain, there lay a wasted, but strangely cheerful

human face; and that was pretty much all; the body, hid by the

counterpane and an old coat, seemed too shrunken to reveal itself

through such impediments. At the bedside sat a pale girl, ministering.

In another bed lay three children, side by side: three more pale faces.

‘Oh, father, we don’t mislike the gentleman, but let us see Trumpet

too.’

At a word, the cock strode behind the screen, and perched himself on the

children’s bed. All their wasted eyes gazed at him with a wild and

spiritual delight. They seemed to sun themselves in the radiant plumage

of the cock.

‘Better than a ’pothecary, eh?’ said Merrymusk. ‘This is Dr. Cock

himself.’

We retired from the sick ones, and I reseated myself again, lost in

thought over this strange household.

‘You seem a glorious independent fellow!’ said I.

‘And I don’t think you a fool, and never did. Sir, you are a trump.’

‘Is there any hope of your wife’s recovery?’ said I, modestly seeking to

turn the conversation.

‘Not the least.’

‘The children?’

‘Very little.’

‘It must be a doleful life, then, for all concerned. This lonely

solitude--this shanty--hard work--hard times.’

‘Haven’t I Trumpet? He’s the cheerer. He crows through all; crows at the

darkest: Glory to God in the highest! Continually he crows it.’

‘Just the import I first ascribed to his crow, Merrymusk, when first I

heard it from my hill. I thought some rich nabob owned some costly

Shanghai; little weening any such poor man as you owned this lusty cock

of a domestic breed.’

‘_Poor_ man like _me_? Why call _me_ poor? Don’t the cock _I_ own

glorify this otherwise inglorious, lean, lantern-jawed land? Didn’t _my_

cock encourage _you_? And _I_ give you all this glorification away

gratis. I am a great philanthropist. I am a rich man--a very rich man,

and a very happy one. Crow, Trumpet.’

The roof jarred.

I returned home in a deep mood. I was not wholly at rest concerning the

soundness of Merrymusk’s views of things, though full of admiration for

him. I was thinking on the matter before my door, when I heard the cock

crow again. Enough. Merrymusk is right.

Oh, noble cock! oh, noble man!

I did not see Merrymusk for some weeks after this; but hearing the

glorious and rejoicing crow, I supposed that all went as usual with him.

My own frame of mind remained a rejoicing one. The cock still inspired

me. I saw another mortgage piled on my plantation; but only bought

another dozen of stout, and a dozen-dozen of Philadelphia porter. Some

of my relatives died; I wore no mourning, but for three days drank stout

in preference to porter, stout being of the darker colour. I heard the

cock crow the instant I received the unwelcome tidings.

‘Your health in this stout, oh, noble cock!’

I thought I would call on Merrymusk again, not having seen or heard of

him for some time now. Approaching the place, there were no signs of

motion about the shanty. I felt a strange misgiving. But the cock crew

from within doors, and the boding vanished. I knocked at the door. A

feeble voice bade me enter. The curtain was no longer drawn; the whole

house was a hospital now. Merrymusk lay on a heap of old clothes; wife

and children were all in their beds. The cock was perched on an old

hogshead hoop, swung from the ridge-pole in the middle of the shanty.

‘You are sick, Merrymusk,’ said I, mournfully.

‘No, I am well,’ he feebly answered. ‘Crow, Trumpet.’

I shrunk. The strong soul in the feeble body appalled me.

But the cock crew.

The roof jarred.

‘How is Mrs. Merrymusk?’

‘Well.’

‘And the children?’

‘Well. All well.’

The last two words he shouted forth in a kind of wild ecstasy of triumph

over ill. It was too much. His head fell back. A white napkin seemed

dropped upon his face. Merrymusk was dead.

An awful fear seized me.

But the cock crew.

The cock shook his plumage as if each feather were a banner. The cock

hung from the shanty roof as erewhile the trophied flags from the dome

of St. Paul’s. The cock terrified me with exceeding wonder.

I drew nigh the bedsides of the woman and children. They marked my look

of strange affright; they knew what had happened.

‘My good man is just dead,’ breathed the woman lowly. ‘Tell me true?’

‘Dead,’ said I.

The cock crew.

She fell back, without a sigh, and through long-loving sympathy was

dead.

The cock crew.

The cock shook sparkles from his golden plumage. The cock seemed in a

rapture of benevolent delight. Leaping from the hoop, he strode up

majestically to the pile of old clothes, where the wood-sawyer lay, and

planted himself, like an armorial supporter, at his side. Then raised

one long, musical, triumphant, and final sort of crow, with throat

heaved far back, as if he meant the blast to waft the wood-sawyer’s soul

sheer up to the seventh heaven. Then he strode, king-like, to the

woman’s bed. Another upturned and exultant crow, mated to the former.

The pallor of the children was changed to radiance. Their faces shone

celestially through grime and dirt. They seemed children of emperors and

kings, disguised. The cock sprang upon their bed, shook himself, and

crowed, and crowed again, and still and still again. He seemed bent upon

crowing the souls of the children out of their wasted bodies. He seemed

bent upon rejoining instanter this whole family in the upper air. The

children seemed to second his endeavours. Far, deep, intense longings

for release transfigured them into spirits before my eyes. I saw angels

where they lay.

They were dead.

The cock shook his plumage over them. The cock crew. It was now like a

Bravo! like a Hurrah! like a Three-times-three! hip! hip! He strode out

of the shanty. I followed. He flew upon the apex of the dwelling, spread

wide his wings, sounded one supernatural note, and dropped at my feet.

The cock was dead.

If now you visit that hilly region, you will see, nigh the railroad

track, just beneath October Mountain, on the other side of the

swamp--there you will see a gravestone, not with skull and cross-bones,

but with a lusty cock in act of crowing, chiselled on it, with the words

beneath:--

‘O death, where is thy sting?

O grave, where is thy victory?’

The wood-sawyer and his family, with the Signor Beneventano, lie in that

spot; and I buried them, and planted the stone, which was a stone made

to order; and never since then have I felt the doleful dumps, but under

all circumstances crow late and early with a continual crow.

Cock-a-doodle-doo!--oo!--oo!--oo!--oo!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE TWO TEMPLES

(_Dedicated to Sheridan Knowles_)

[The following letter from the Editor of _Putnam’s Monthly_ was

kept by Melville with the rejected MS. of the ‘Two Temples.’

It is now published together with the Essay to which it refers,

both for its intrinsic interest and as evidence of the date at

which the ‘Two Temples’ was written.]

OFFICE OF ‘PUTNAM’S MONTHLY,’

10 PARK PLACE, NEW YORK,

_May 12, 1854_.

DEAR SIR,--I am very loth to reject the ‘Two Temples’ as the

article contains some exquisitely fine description, and some

pungent satire, but my editorial experience compels me to be very

careful in offending the religious sensibilities of the public,

and the moral of the ‘Two Temples’ would sway against us the whole

power of the pulpit, to say nothing of Brown, and the congregation

of Grace Church.

I will take this opportunity to apologise to you for making a

slight alteration in the ‘Encantadas,’ in the last paragraph of

the ‘Chola Widow,’ which I thought would be improved by the

omission of a few words. That I did not injure the idea, or

mutilate the touching figure you introduced, by the slight

excision I made, I received good evidence of, in a letter from

James R. Lowell, who said that the figure of the cross in the

ass’s neck, brought tears into his eyes, and he thought it the

finest touch of genius he had seen in prose. The only complaint

that I have heard about the ‘Encantadas’ was that it might have

been longer.--Very truly, Your obedient,

CHAS. F. BRIGGS.

H. MELVILLE, Esq.

TEMPLE FIRST

‘This is too bad,’ said I, ‘here have I tramped this blessed Sunday

morning, all the way from the Battery, three long miles, for this

express purpose, prayer-book under arm; here I am, I say, and, after

all, I can’t get in.

‘Too bad. And how disdainful the great, fat-paunched, beadle-faced man

looked, when in answer to my humble petition, he said they had no

galleries. Just the same as if he’d said, they didn’t entertain poor

folks. But I’ll wager something that had my new coat been done last

night, as the false tailor promised, and had I, arrayed therein this

bright morning, tickled the fat-paunched, beadle-faced man’s palm with a

bank-note, then, gallery or no gallery, I would have had a fine seat in

this marble-buttressed, stained-glass, spick-and-span new temple.

‘Well, here I am in the porch, very politely bowed out of the nave. I

suppose I’m excommunicated; excluded, anyway. That’s a noble string of

flashing carriages drawn up along the curb; those champing horses, too,

have a haughty curve to their floam-flecked necks. Property of those

“miserable sinners” inside, I presume. I don’t a bit wonder they

unreservedly confess to such misery as _that_. See the gold hat-bands

too, and other gorgeous trimmings, on those glossy groups of low-voiced

gossipers near by. If I were in England now, I should think those chaps

a company of royal dukes, right honourable barons, etc. As it is,

though, I guess they are only lackeys. By the way, here I dodge about,

as if I wanted to get into their aristocratic circle. In fact, it looks

a sort of lackeyish to be idly standing outside a fine temple, cooling

your heels, during service. I had best move back to the Battery again,

peeping into my prayer-book as I go. But hold; don’t I see a small door?

Just in there, to one side, if I don’t mistake, is a very low and very

narrow vaulted door. None seem to go that way. Ten to one, that

identical door leads up into the tower. And now that I think of it,

there is usually in these splendid, new-fashioned Gothic temples, a

curious little window high over the orchestra and everything else, away

up among the gilded clouds of the ceiling’s frescoes; and that little

window, seems to me, if one could but get there, ought to command a

glorious bird’s-eye view of the entire field of operations below. I

guess I’ll try it. No one in the porch now. The beadle-faced man is

smoothing down some ladies’ cushions, far up the broad aisle, I dare

say. Softly now. If the small door ain’t locked, I shall have stolen a

march upon the beadle-faced man, and secured a humble seat in the

sanctuary, in spite of him. Good! Thanks for this! The door is not

locked. Bell-ringer forgot to lock it, no doubt. Now, like any

felt-footed grimalkin, up I steal among the leads.’

Ascending some fifty stone steps along a very narrow curving stairway, I

found myself on a blank platform forming the second story of the huge

square tower. I seemed inside some magic-lantern. On three sides, three

gigantic Gothic windows of richly dyed glass, filled the otherwise

meagre place with all sorts of sunrises and sunsets, lunar and solar

rainbows, falling stars, and other flaming fireworks and pyrotechnics.

But after all, it was but a gorgeous dungeon; for I couldn’t look out,

any more than if I had been the occupant of a basement cell in ‘the

Tombs.’ With some pains, and care not to do any serious harm, I

contrived to scratch a minute opening in a great purple star forming the

centre of the chief compartment of the middle window; when peeping

through, as through goggles, I ducked my head in dismay. The

beadle-faced man, with no hat on his head, was just in the act of

driving three ragged little boys into the middle of the street; and how

could I help trembling at the apprehension of his discovering a

rebellious caitiff like me peering down on him from the tower? For, in

stealing up here, I had set at naught his high authority. He whom he

thought effectually ejected, had burglariously returned. For a moment I

was almost ready to bide my chance, and get to the side-walk again with

all dispatch. But another Jacob’s ladder of lofty steps--wooden ones,

this time--allured me to another and still higher flight--in sole hopes

of gaining that one secret window where I might, at distance, take part

in the proceedings.

Presently I noticed something which, owing to the first marvellous

effulgence of the place, had remained unseen till now. Two strong ropes,

dropping through holes in the rude ceiling high overhead, fell a sheer

length of sixty feet, right through the centre of the space, and dropped

in coils upon the floor of the huge magic-lantern. Bell-ropes these,

thought I, and quaked. For if the beadle-faced man should learn that a

grimalkin was somewhere prowling about the edifice, how easy for him to

ring the alarm. Hark!--ah, that’s only the organ--yes--it’s the ‘Venite,

exultemus Domino.’ Though an insider in one respect, yet am I but an

outsider in another. But for all that, I will not be defrauded of my

natural rights. Uncovering my head, and taking out my book, I stood

erect, midway up the tall Jacob’s ladder, as if standing among the

congregation; and in spirit, if not in place, participated in those

devout exultings. That over, I continued my upward path; and after

crossing sundry minor platforms and irregular landings all the while on

a general ascent, at last I was delighted by catching sight of a small

round window in the otherwise dead-wall side of the tower, where the

tower attached itself to the main building. In front of the window was a

rude narrow gallery, used as a bridge to cross from the lower stairs on

one side to the upper stairs on the opposite.

As I drew nigh the spot, I well knew from the added clearness with which

the sound of worship came to me, that the window did indeed look down

upon the entire interior. But I was hardly prepared to find that no pane

of glass, stained or unstained, was to stand between me and the

far-under aisles and altar. For the purpose of ventilation, doubtless,

the opening has been left unsupplied with sash of any sort. But a sheet

of fine-woven, gauzy wire-work was in place of that. When, all

eagerness, and open book in hand, I first advanced to stand before the

window, I involuntarily shrank, as from before the mouth of a furnace,

upon suddenly feeling a forceful puff of strange, heated air, blown, as

by a blacksmith’s bellows, full into my face and lungs. Yes, thought I,

this window is doubtless for ventilation. Nor is it quite so comfortable

as I fancied it might be. But beggars must not be choosers. The furnace

which makes the people below there feel so snug and cosy in their padded

pews, is to me, who stand here upon the naked gallery, cause of grievous

trouble. Besides, though my face is scorched, my back is frozen. But I

won’t complain. Thanks for this much, anyway, that by hollowing one hand

to my ear, and standing a little sideways out of the more violent rush

of the torrid current, I can at least hear the priest sufficiently to

make my responses in the proper place. Little dream the good

congregation away down there, that they have a faithful clerk away up

here. Here, too, is a fitter place for sincere devotions, where, though

I see, I remain unseen. Depend upon it, no Pharisee would have my pew. I

like it, and admire it too, because it is so very high. Height, somehow,

hath devotion in it. The arch-angelic anthems are raised in a lofty

place. All the good shall go to such an one. Yes, heaven is high.

As thus I mused, the glorious organ burst, like an earthquake, almost

beneath my feet; and I heard the invoking cry--‘Govern them and _lift_

them up forever!’ Then down I gazed upon the standing human mass, far,

far below, whose heads, gleaming in the many-coloured window-stains,

showed like beds of spangled pebbles flashing in a Cuban sun. So, at

least, I knew they needs would look, if but the wire-woven screen were

drawn aside. That wire-woven screen had the effect of casting crape upon

all I saw. Only by making allowances for the crape, could I gain a right

idea of the scene disclosed.

Surprising, most surprising, too, it was. As said before, the window was

a circular one; the part of the tower where I stood was dusky-dark; its

height above the congregation-floor could not have been less than ninety

or a hundred feet; the whole interior temple was lit by naught but glass

dimmed, yet glorified with all imaginable rich and russet hues; the

approach to my strange look-out, through perfect solitude, and along

rude and dusty ways, enhanced the theatric wonder of the populous

spectacle of this sumptuous sanctuary. Book in hand, responses on my

tongue, standing in the very posture of devotion, I could not rid my

soul of the intrusive thought, that, through some necromancer’s glass, I

looked down upon some sly enchanter’s show.

At length the lessons being read, the chants chanted, the white-robed

priest, a noble-looking man, with a form like the incomparable Talma’s,

gave out from the reading-desk the hymn before the sermon, and then

through a side-door vanished from the scene. In good time I saw the same

Talma-like and noble-looking man reappear through the same side-door,

his white apparel wholly changed for black.

By the melodious tone and persuasive gesture of the speaker, and the

all-approving attention of the throng, I knew the sermon must be

eloquent and well adapted to an opulent auditory; but owing to the

priest’s changed position from the reading-desk to the pulpit, I could

not so distinctly hear him now as in the previous rites. The text,

however, repeated at the outset, and often after quoted, I could not but

plainly catch: ‘Ye are the salt of the earth.’

At length the benediction was pronounced over the mass of low-inclining

foreheads; hushed silence, intense motionlessness followed for a moment,

as if the congregation were one of buried, not of living men; when,

suddenly, miraculously, like the general rising at the Resurrection, the

whole host came to their feet, amid a simultaneous roll, like a great

drum-beat, from the enrapturing, overpowering organ. Then, in three

freshets--all gay, sprightly nods and becks--the gilded brooks poured

down the gilded aisles.

Time for me, too, to go, thought I, as snatching one last look upon the

imposing scene, I clasped my book and put it in my pocket. The best

thing I can do just now is to slide out unperceived amid the general

crowd. Hurrying down the great length of ladder, I soon found myself at

the base of the last stone step of the final flight; but started

aghast--the door was locked! The bell-ringer, or more probably that for

ever prying, suspicious-looking, beadle-faced man has done this. He

would not let me in at all at first, and now, with the greatest

inconsistency, he will not let me out. But what is to be done? Shall I

knock on the door? That will never do. It will only frighten the crowd

streaming by, and no one can adequately respond to my summons, except

the beadle-faced man; and if he sees me, he will recognise me, and

perhaps roundly rate me--poor, humble worshipper--before the entire

public. No, I won’t knock. But what then?

For a long time I thought and thought, till at last all was hushed

again. Presently a clicking sound admonished me that the church was

being closed. In sudden desperation, I gave a rap on the door. But too

late. It was not heard. I was left alone and solitary in a temple which

but a moment before was more populous than many villages.

A strange trepidation of gloom and loneliness gradually stole over me.

Hardly conscious of what I did, I reascended the stone steps; higher and

higher still, and only paused when once more I felt the hot-air blast

from the wire-woven screen. Snatching another peep down into the vast

arena, I started at its hushed desertness. The long ranges of grouped

columns down the nave, the clusterings of them into copses about the

corners of the transept; together with the subdued, dim-streaming light

from the autumnal glasses; all assumed a secluded and deep-wooded air. I

seemed gazing from Pisgah into the forests of old Canaan. A Puseyitish

painting of a Madonna and Child, adorning a lower window, seemed showing

to me the sole tenants of this painted wilderness--the true Hagar and

her Ishmael.

With added trepidation I stole softly back to the magic-lantern

platform; and revived myself a little by peeping through the scratch,

upon the unstained light of open day. But what is to be done, thought I

again.

I descended to the door; listened there; heard nothing. A third time

climbing the stone steps, once more I stood in the magic-lantern, while

the full nature of the more than awkwardness of my position came over

me.

The first persons who will re-enter the temple, mused I, will doubtless

be the beadle-faced man and the bell-ringer. And the first man to come

up here, where I am, will be the latter. Now what will be his natural

impressions upon first descrying an unknown prowler here? Rather

disadvantageous to said prowler’s moral character. Explanations will be

vain. Circumstances are against me. True, I may hide, till he retires

again. But how do I know that he will then leave the door unlocked?

Besides, in a position of affairs like this, it is generally best, I

think, to anticipate discovery, and by magnanimously announcing

yourself, forestall an inglorious detection. But how announce myself?

Already have I knocked, and no response. That moment my eye, impatiently

ranging round about, fell upon the bell-ropes. They suggested the usual

signal made at dwelling-houses to convey tidings of a stranger’s

presence. But I was not an outside caller; alas, I was an inside

prowler. But one little touch of that bell-rope would be sure to bring

relief. I have an appointment at three o’clock. The beadle-faced man

must naturally reside very close by the church. He well knows the

peculiar ring of his own bell. The slightest possible hum would bring

him flying to the rescue. Shall I, or shall I not? But I may alarm the

neighbourhood. Ah, no; the merest tingle, not by any means a loud,

vociferous peal. Shall I? Better voluntarily bring the beadle-faced man

to me, than be involuntarily dragged out from this most suspicious

hiding-place. I have to face him, first or last. Better now than later.

Shall I?

No more. Creeping to the rope, I gave it a cautious twitch. No sound. A

little less warily. All was dumb. Still more strongly. Horrors! My

hands, instinctively clapped to my ears, only served to condense the

appalling din. Some undreamed-of mechanism seemed to have been touched.

The bell must have thrice revolved on its thunderous axis, multiplying

the astounding reverberation.

My business is effectually done this time, thought I, all in a tremble.

Nothing will serve me now but the reckless confidence of innocence

reduced to desperation.

In less than five minutes I heard a running noise beneath me; the lock

of the door clicked, and up rushed the beadle-faced man, the

perspiration starting from his cheeks.

‘You! Is it _you_? The man I turned away this very morning, skulking

here? You dare to touch that bell? Scoundrel!’

And ere I could defend myself, seizing me irresistibly in his powerful

grasp, he tore me along by the collar, and dragging me down the stairs,

thrust me into the arms of three policemen, who, attracted by the sudden

toll of the bell, had gathered curiously about the porch.

All remonstrances were vain. The beadle-faced man was bigoted against

me. Represented as a lawless violator, and a remorseless disturber of

the Sunday peace, I was conducted to the Halls of Justice. Next morning,

my rather gentlemanly appearance procured me a private hearing from the

judge. But the beadle-faced man must have made a Sunday night call on

him. In spite of my coolest explanations, the circumstances of the case

were deemed so exceedingly suspicious, that only after paying a round

fine, and receiving a stinging reprimand, was I permitted to go at

large, and pardoned for having humbly indulged myself in the luxury of

public worship.

TEMPLE SECOND

A stranger in London on Saturday night and without a copper! What

hospitalities may such an one expect? What shall I do with myself this

weary night? My landlady won’t receive me in her parlour. I owe her

money. She looks like flint on me. So in this monstrous rabblement must

I crawl about till, say, ten o’clock, and then slink home to my

unlighted bed.

The case was this: The week following my inglorious expulsion from the

transatlantic temple, I had packed up my trunks and damaged character,

and repaired to the paternal, loving town of Philadelphia. There chance

threw into my way an interesting young orphan lady and her aunt-duenna;

the lady rich as Cleopatra, but not as beautiful; the duenna lovely as

Charmian, but not so young. For the lady’s health, prolonged travel had

been prescribed. Maternally connected in old England, the lady chose

London for her primal port. But ere securing their passage, the two were

looking around for some young physician, whose disengagement from

pressing business might induce him to accept, on a moderate salary, the

post of private Esculapius and knightly companion to the otherwise

unprotected pair. The more necessary was this, as not only the voyage to

England was intended, but an extensive European tour to follow.

Enough. I came; I saw; I was made the happy man. We sailed. We landed on

the other side; when, after two weeks of agonised attendance on the

vacillations of the lady, I was very cavalierly dismissed, on the score

that the lady’s maternal relations had persuaded her to try, through the

winter, the salubrious climate of the foggy Isle of Wight, in preference

to the fabulous blue atmosphere of the Ionian Isles. So much for

national prejudice. _Nota Bene._--The lady was in a sad decline.

Having ere sailing been obliged to anticipate nearly a quarter’s pay to

foot my outfit bills, I was dismally cut adrift in Fleet Street without

a solitary shilling. By disposing, at certain pawnbrokers, of some of my

less indispensable apparel, I had managed to stave off the more

slaughterous onsets of my landlady, while diligently looking about for

any business that might providentially appear.

So on I drifted amid those indescribable crowds which every seventh

night pour and roar through each main artery, and block the by-veins of

great London, the Leviathan. Saturday night it was; and the markets and

the shops, and every stall and counter were crushed with the one

unceasing tide. A whole Sunday’s victualling for three millions of human

bodies, was going on. Few of them equally hungry with my own, as through

my spent lassitude, the unscrupulous human whirlpools eddied me aside at

corners, as any straw is eddied in the Norway Maelstrom. What dire

suckings into oblivion must such swirling billows know! Better perish

’mid myriad sharks in mid Atlantic, than die a penniless stranger in

Babylonian London. Forlorn, outcast, without a friend, I staggered on

through three millions of my own human kind. The fiendish gas-lights

shooting their Tartarean rays across the muddy, sticky streets, lit up

the pitiless and pitiable scene.

Well, well, if this were but Sunday now, I might conciliate some kind

female pew-opener, and rest me in some inn-like chapel upon some

stranger’s outside bench. But it is Saturday night. The end of the weary

week, and all but the end of weary me.

Disentangling myself at last from those skeins of Pandemonian lanes

which snarl one part of the metropolis between Fleet Street and Holborn,

I found myself at last in a wide and far less noisy street, a short and

shopless one, leading up from the Strand, and terminating at its

junction with a crosswise avenue. The comparative quietude of the place

was inexpressively soothing. It was like emerging upon the green

enclosure surrounding some cathedral church, where sanctity makes all

things still. Two lofty brilliant lights attracted me in this tranquil

street. Thinking it might prove some moral or religious meeting, I

hurried toward the spot; but was surprised to see two tall placards

announcing the appearance that night, of the stately Macready in the

part of Cardinal Richelieu. Very few loiterers hung about the place, the

hour being rather late, and the play-bill hawkers mostly departed, or

keeping entirely quiet. This theatre indeed, as I afterwards discovered,

was not only one of the best in point of acting, but likewise one of the

most decorous in its general management, inside and out. In truth, the

whole neighbourhood, as it seemed to me--issuing from the jam and uproar

of those turbulent tides against which, or borne on irresistibly by

which, I had so long been swimming--the whole neighbourhood, I say, of

this pleasing street seemed in good keeping with the character imputed

to its theatre.

Glad to find one blessed oasis of tranquillity, I stood leaning against

a column of the porch, and striving to lose my sadness in running over

one of the huge placards. No one molested me. A tattered little girl, to

be sure, approached with a hand-bill extended, but marking me more

narrowly, retreated; her strange skill in physiognomy at once enabling

her to determine that I was penniless. As I read, and read--for the

placard, of enormous dimensions, contained minute particulars of each

successive scene in the enacted play--gradually a strong desire to

witness this celebrated Macready in this his celebrated part stole over

me. By one act, I might rest my jaded limbs, and more than jaded

spirits. Where else could I go for rest, unless I crawled into my cold

and lonely bed far up in an attic of Craven Street, looking down upon

the muddy Phlegethon of the Thames. Besides, what I wanted was not

merely rest, but cheer; the making one of many pleased and pleasing

human faces; the getting into a genial humane assembly of my kind; such

as, at its best and highest, is to be found in the unified multitude of

a devout congregation. But no such assemblies were accessible that

night, even if my unbefriended and rather shabby air would overcome the

scruples of those fastidious gentry with red gowns and long gilded

staves, who guard the portals of the first-class London tabernacles from

all profanation of a poor, forlorn, and fainting wanderer like me. Not

inns, but ecclesiastical hotels, where the pews are the rented chambers.

No use to ponder, thought I, at last; it is Saturday night, not Sunday;

and so, a theatre only can receive me. So powerfully in the end did the

longing to get into the edifice come over me, that I almost began to

think of pawning my overcoat for admittance. But from this last

infatuation I was providentially withheld by a sudden cheery summons, in

a voice unmistakably benevolent. I turned, and saw a man who seemed to

be some sort of a working man.

‘Take it,’ said he, holding a plain red ticket toward me, full in the

gas-light. ‘You want to go in; I know you do. Take it. I am suddenly

called home. There--hope you’ll enjoy yourself. Good-bye.’

Blankly and mechanically I had suffered the ticket to be thrust into my

hand, and now stood quite astonished, bewildered, and for the time,

ashamed. The plain fact was, I had received charity; and for the first

time in my life. Often in the course of my strange wanderings I had

needed charity, but never had asked it, and certainly never, ere this

blessed night, had been offered it. And a stranger, and in the very maw

of the roaring London, too! Next moment my sense of foolish shame

departed, and I felt a queer feeling in my left eye, which, as sometimes

is the case with people, was the weaker one; probably from being on the

same side with the heart.

I glanced round eagerly. But the kind giver was no longer in sight. I

looked upon the ticket. I understood. It was one of those checks given

to persons inside a theatre when for any cause they desire to step out a

moment. Its presentation ensures unquestioned readmittance.

‘Shall I use it?’ mused I--‘what? It’s charity. But if it be gloriously

right to do a charitable deed, can it be ingloriously wrong to receive

its benefit? No one knows you; go boldly in. Charity. Why these

unvanquishable scruples? All your life, naught but charity sustains you,

and all others in the world. Maternal charity nursed you as a babe;

paternal charity fed you as a child; friendly charity got you your

profession; and to the charity of every man you meet this night in

London, are you indebted for your unattempted life. Any knife, any hand

of all the millions of knives and hands in London, has you this night at

its mercy. You, and all mortals, live but by sufferance of your

charitable kind; charitable by omission, not performance. Slush for your

self-upbraidings, and pitiful, poor, shabby pride, you friendless man

without a purse. Go in.’

Debate was over. Marking the direction from which the stranger had

accosted me, I stepped that way; and soon saw a low-vaulted,

inferior-looking door on one side of the edifice. Entering, I wandered

on and up, and up and on again, through various doubling stairs and

wedge-like, ill-lit passages, whose bare boards much reminded me of my

ascent of the Gothic tower on the ocean’s far other side. At last I

gained a lofty platform, and saw a fixed human countenance facing me

from a mysterious window of a sort of sentry-box or closet. Like some

saint in a shrine, the countenance was illuminated by two smoky candles.

I divined the man. I exhibited my diploma, and he nodded me to a little

door beyond; while a sudden burst of orchestral music admonished me. I

was now very near my destination, and also revived the memory of the

organ anthems I had heard while on the ladder of the tower at home.

Next moment, the wire-woven gauzy screen of the ventilating window in

that same tower seemed enchantedly reproduced before me. The same hot

blast of stifling air once more rushed into my lungs. From the same

dizzy altitude, through the same fine-spun, vapoury, crapey air; far,

far down upon just such a packed mass of silent human beings; listening

to just such grand harmonies; I stood within the topmost gallery of the

temple. But hardly alone and silently as before. This time I had

company. Not of the first circles, and certainly not of the

dress-circle; but most acceptable, right welcome, cheery company, to

otherwise uncompanioned me. Quiet, well-pleased working men, and their

glad wives and sisters, with here and there an aproned urchin, with

all-absorbed, bright face, vermilioned by the excitement and the heated

air, hovering like a painted cherub over the vast human firmament below.

The height of the gallery was in truth appalling. The rail was low. I

thought of deep-sea-leads, and the mariner in the vessel’s chains,

drawing up the line, with his long-drawn musical accompaniment. And like

beds of glittering coral, through the deep sea of azure smoke, there,

far down, I saw the jewelled necks and white sparkling arms of crowds of

ladies in the semicirque. But, in the interval of two acts, again the

orchestra was heard; some inspiring anthem now was played. As the

volumed sound came undulating up, and broke in showery spray and foam of

melody against our gallery rail, my head involuntarily was bowed, my

hand instinctively sought my pocket. Only by a second thought did I

check my momentary lunacy, and remind myself that this time I had no

small morocco book with me, and that this was not the house of prayer.

Quickly was my wandering mind--preternaturally affected by the sudden

translation from the desolate street to this bewildering and blazing

spectacle--arrested in its wanderings, by feeling at my elbow a meaning

nudge; when turning suddenly, I saw a sort of coffee-pot and pewter mug

hospitably presented to me by a ragged, but good-natured-looking boy.

‘Thank you,’ said I, ‘I won’t take any coffee, I guess.’

‘Coffee?--I guess?--ain’t you a Yankee?’

‘Ay, boy; true blue.’

‘Well, dad’s gone to Yankee-land, a-seekin’ of his fortin; so take a

penny mug of ale, do, Yankee, for poor dad’s sake.’

Out from the tilted coffee-pot-looking can came a coffee-coloured

stream, and a small mug of humming ale was in my hand.

‘I don’t want it, boy. The fact is, my boy, I have no penny by me. I

happened to leave my purse at my lodgings.’

‘Never do you mind, Yankee; drink to honest dad.’

‘With all my heart, you generous boy; here’s immortal life to him!’

He stared at my strange burst, smiled merrily, and left me, offering his

coffee-pot in all directions, and not in vain.

’Tis not always poverty to be poor, mused I; one may fare well without a

penny. A ragged boy may be a prince-like benefactor.

That unpurchased pennyworth of ale revived my drooping spirits

strangely. Stuff was in that barley malt; a most sweet bitterness in

those blessed hops. God bless the glorious boy!

The more I looked about me in this lofty gallery, the more was I

delighted with its occupants. It was not spacious. It was, if anything,

rather contracted, being the very cheapest portion of the house, where

very limited attendance was expected; embracing merely the very crown of

the topmost semicircle; and so commanding, with a sovereign outlook, and

imperial downlook, the whole theatre, with the expanded stage directly

opposite, though some hundred feet below. As at the tower, peeping into

the transatlantic temple, so stood I here, at the very mainmast-head of

all the interior edifice.

Such was the decorum of this special theatre, that nothing objectionable

was admitted within its walls. With an unhurt eye of perfect love, I sat

serenely in the gallery, gazing upon the pleasing scene, around me and

below. Neither did it abate from my satisfaction to remember that Mr.

Macready, the chief actor of the night, was an amiable gentleman,

combining the finest qualities of social and Christian respectability

with the highest excellence in his particular profession; for which last

he had conscientiously done much, in many ways, to refine, elevate, and

chasten.

But now the curtain rises, and the robed Cardinal advances. How

marvellous this personal resemblance! He looks every inch to be the

self-same stately priest I saw irradiated by the glow-worm dyes of the

pictured windows from my high tower-pew. And shining as he does, in the

rosy reflexes of these stained walls and gorgeous galleries, the mimic

priest down there; he, too, seems lit by Gothic blazonings.--Hark! The

same measured, courtly, noble tone. See! the same imposing attitude.

Excellent actor is this Richelieu!

He disappears behind the scenes. He slips, no doubt, into the Green

Room. He reappears somewhat changed in his habiliments. Do I dream, or

is it genuine memory that recalls some similar thing seen through the

woven wires?

The curtain falls. Starting to their feet, the enraptured thousands

sound their responses deafeningly, unmistakably sincere. Right from the

undoubted heart. I have no duplicate in my memory of this. In

earnestness of response, this second temple stands unmatched. And hath

mere mimicry done this? What is it then to act a part?

But now the music surges up again, and borne by that rolling billow, I,

and all the gladdened crowd, are harmoniously attended to the street.

I went home to my lonely lodging and slept not much that night, for

thinking of the First Temple and the Second Temple; and how that, at

home in my own land, I was thrust out from the one, and, a stranger in a

strange land, found sterling charity in the other.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

POOR MAN’S PUDDING AND RICH MAN’S CRUMBS

PICTURE FIRST

POOR MAN’S PUDDING

‘You see,’ said poet Blandmour enthusiastically--as some forty years ago

we walked along the road in a soft, moist snowfall toward the end of

March--‘you see, my friend, that the blessed almoner, Nature, is in all

things beneficent; and not only so, but considerate in her charities, as

any discreet human philanthropist might be. This snow, now, which seems

so unseasonable, is in fact just what a poor husbandman needs. Rightly

is this soft March snow, falling just before seed-time, rightly is it

called “Poor Man’s Manure.” Distilling from kind heaven upon the soil,

by a gentle penetration it nourishes every clod, ridge, and furrow. To

the poor farmer it is as good as the rich farmer’s farm-yard

enrichments. And the poor man has no trouble to spread it, while the

rich man has to spread his.’

‘Perhaps so,’ said I, without equal enthusiasm, brushing some of the

damp flakes from my chest. ‘It may be as you say, dear Blandmour. But

tell me, how is it that the wind drives yonder drifts of “Poor Man’s

Manure” off poor Coulter’s two-acre patch here, and piles it up yonder

on rich Squire Teamster’s twenty-acre field?’

‘Ah! to be sure--yes--well; Coulter’s field, I suppose, is sufficiently

moist without further moistenings. Enough is as good as a feast, you

know.’

‘Yes,’ replied I, ‘of this sort of damp fare,’ shaking another shower of

the damp flakes from my person. ‘But tell me, this warm spring snow may

answer very well, as you say; but how is it with the cold snows of the

long, long winters here?’

‘Why, do you not remember the words of the Psalmist?--“The Lord giveth

snow like wool”; meaning not only that snow is white as wool, but warm,

too, as wool. For the only reason, as I take it, that wool is

comfortable, is because air is entangled, and therefore warmed among its

fibres. Just so, then, take the temperature of a December field when

covered with this snow-fleece, and you will no doubt find it several

degrees above that of the air. So, you see, the winter’s snow _itself_

is beneficent; under the pretence of frost--a sort of gruff

philanthropist--actually warming the earth, which afterward is to be

fertilisingly moistened by these gentle flakes of March.’

‘I like to hear you talk, dear Blandmour; and, guided by your benevolent

heart, can only wish to poor Coulter plenty of this “Poor Man’s

Manure.”’

‘But that is not all,’ said Blandmour eagerly. ‘Did you never hear of

the “Poor Man’s Eye-water”?’

‘Never.’

‘Take this soft March snow, melt it, and bottle it. It keeps pure as

alcohol. The very best thing in the world for weak eyes. I have a whole

demijohn of it myself. But the poorest man, afflicted in his eyes, can

freely help himself to this same all-bountiful remedy. Now, what a kind

provision is that!’

‘Then “Poor Man’s Manure” is “Poor Man’s Eye-water” too?’

‘Exactly. And what could be more economically contrived? One thing

answering two ends--ends so very distinct.’

‘Very distinct, indeed.’

‘Ah! that is your way. Making sport of earnest. But never mind. We have

been talking of snow; but common rain-water--such as falls all the year

round--is still more kindly. Not to speak of its known fertilising

quality as to fields, consider it in one of its minor lights. Pray, did

you ever hear of a “Poor Man’s Egg”?’

‘Never. What is that, now?’

‘Why, in making some culinary preparations of meal and flour, where eggs

are recommended in the receipt-book, a substitute for the eggs may be

had in a cup of cold rain-water, which acts as leaven. And so a cup of

cold rain-water thus used is called by housewives a “Poor Man’s Egg.”

And many rich men’s housekeepers sometimes use it.’

‘But only when they are out of hen’s eggs, I presume, dear Blandmour.

But your talk is--I sincerely say it--most agreeable to me. Talk on.’

‘Then there’s “Poor Man’s Plaster” for wounds and other bodily harms; an

alleviative and curative, compounded of simple, natural things; and so,

being very cheap, is accessible to the poorest of sufferers. Rich men

often use “Poor Man’s Plaster.”’

‘But not without the judicious advice of a fee’d physician, dear

Blandmour.’

‘Doubtless, they first consult the physician; but that may be an

unnecessary precaution.’

‘Perhaps so. I do not gainsay it. Go on.’

‘Well, then, did you ever eat of a “Poor Man’s Pudding”?’

‘I never so much as heard of it before.’

‘Indeed! Well, now you shall eat of one; and you shall eat it, too, as

made, unprompted, by a poor man’s wife, and you shall eat it at a poor

man’s table, and in a poor man’s house. Come now, and if after this

eating, you do not say that a “Poor Man’s Pudding” is as relishable as a

rich man’s, I will give up the point altogether; which briefly is: that,

through kind Nature, the poor, out of their very poverty, extract

comfort.’

Not to narrate any more of our conversations upon this subject (for we

had several--I being at that time the guest of Blandmour in the country,

for the benefit of my health), suffice it that, acting upon Blandmour’s

hint, I introduced myself into Coulter’s house on a wet Monday noon (for

the snow had thawed), under the innocent pretence of craving a

pedestrian’s rest and refreshment for an hour or two.

I was greeted, not without much embarrassment--owing, I suppose, to my

dress--but still with unaffected and honest kindness. Dame Coulter was

just leaving the wash-tub to get ready her one o’clock meal against her

good man’s return from a deep wood about a mile distant among the hills,

where he was chopping by day’s-work--seventy-five cents per day and

found himself. The washing being done outside the main building, under

an infirm-looking old shed, the dame stood upon a half-rotten, soaked

board to protect her feet, as well as might be, from the penetrating

damp of the bare ground; hence she looked pale and chill. But her

paleness had still another and more secret cause--the paleness of a

mother-to-be. A quiet, fathomless heart-trouble, too, couched beneath

the mild, resigned blue of her soft and wife-like eye. But she smiled

upon me, as apologising for the unavoidable disorder of a Monday and a

washing-day, and, conducting me into the kitchen, set me down in the

best seat it had--an old-fashioned chair of an enfeebled constitution.

I thanked her; and sat rubbing my hands before the ineffectual low fire,

and--unobservantly as I could--glancing now and then about the room,

while the good woman, throwing on more sticks, said she was sorry the

room was no warmer. Something more she said, too--not repiningly,

however--of the fuel, as old and damp; picked-up sticks in Squire

Teamster’s forest, where her husband was chopping the sappy logs of the

living tree for the Squire’s fires. It needed not her remark, whatever

it was, to convince me of the inferior quality of the sticks; some being

quite mossy and toad-stooled with long lying bedded among the

accumulated dead leaves of many autumns. They made a sad hissing, and

vain spluttering enough.

‘You must rest yourself here till dinner-time, at least,’ said the dame;

‘what I have you are heartily welcome to.’

I thanked her again, and begged her not to heed my presence in the

least, but go on with her usual affairs.

I was struck by the aspect of the room. The house was old, and

constitutionally damp. The window-sills had beads of exuded dampness

upon them. The shrivelled sashes shook in their frames, and the green

panes of glass were clouded with the long thaw. On some little errand

the dame passed into an adjoining chamber, leaving the door partly open.

The floor of that room was carpetless, as the kitchen was. Nothing but

bare necessaries were about me; and those not of the best sort. Not a

print on the wall; but an old volume of Doddridge lay on the smoked

chimney-shelf.

‘You must have walked a long way, sir; you sigh so with weariness.’

‘No, I am not nigh so weary as yourself, I dare say.’

‘Oh, but _I_ am accustomed to that; _you_ are not, I should think,’ and

her soft, sad, blue eye ran over my dress. ‘But I must sweep these

shavings away; husband made him a new ax-helve this morning before

sunrise, and I have been so busy washing, that I have had no time to

clear up. But now they are just the thing I want for the fire. They’d be

much better, though, were they not so green.’

Now if Blandmour were here, thought I to myself, he would call those

green shavings ‘Poor Man’s Matches,’ or ‘Poor Man’s Tinder,’ or some

pleasant name of that sort.

‘I do not know,’ said the good woman, turning round to me again, as she

stirred among her pots on the smoky fire--‘I do not know how you will

like our pudding. It is only rice, milk, and salt boiled together.’

‘Ah, what they call “Poor Man’s Pudding,” I suppose you mean.’

A quick flush, half resentful, passed over her face.

‘_We_ do not call it so, sir,’ she said, and was silent.

Upbraiding myself for my inadvertence, I could not but again think to

myself what Blandmour would have said, had he heard those words and seen

that flush.

At last a slow, heavy footfall was heard; then a scraping at the door,

and another voice said, ‘Come, wife; come, come--I must be back again in

a jiff--if you say I _must_ take all my meals at home, you must be

speedy; because the Squire---- Good-day, sir,’ he exclaimed, now first

catching sight of me as he entered the room. He turned toward his wife,

inquiringly, and stood stock-still, while the moisture oozed from his

patched boots to the floor.

‘This gentleman stops here a while to rest and refresh: he will take

dinner with us, too. All will be ready now in a trice: so sit down on

the bench, husband, and be patient, I pray. You see, sir,’ she

continued, turning to me, ‘William there wants, of mornings, to carry a

cold meal into the woods with him, to save the long one-o’clock walk

across the fields to and fro. But I won’t let him. A warm dinner is more

than pay for the long walk.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said William, shaking his head. ‘I have often

debated in my mind whether it really paid. There’s not much odds, either

way, between a wet walk after hard work, and a wet dinner before it. But

I like to oblige a good wife like Martha. And you know, sir, that women

will have their whimseys.’

‘I wish they all had as kind whimseys as your wife has,’ said I.

‘Well, I’ve heard that some women ain’t all maple-sugar; but, content

with dear Martha, I don’t know much about others.’

‘You find rare wisdom in the woods,’ mused I.

‘Now, husband, if you ain’t too tired, just lend a hand to draw the

table out.’

‘Nay,’ said I; ‘let him rest, and let me help.’

‘No,’ said William, rising.

‘Sit still,’ said his wife to me.

The table set, in due time we all found ourselves with plates before us.

‘You see what we have,’ said Coulter--‘salt pork, rye-bread, and

pudding. Let me help you. I got this pork of the Squire; some of his

last year’s pork, which he let me have on account. It isn’t quite so

sweet as this year’s would be; but I find it hearty enough to work on,

and that’s all I eat for. Only let the rheumatiz and other sicknesses

keep clear of me, and I ask no flavours or favours from any. But you

don’t eat of the pork!’

‘I see,’ said the wife, gently and gravely, ‘that the gentleman knows

the difference between this year’s and last year’s pork. But perhaps he

will like the pudding.’

I summoned up all my self-control, and smilingly assented to the

proposition of the pudding, without by my looks casting any reflections

upon the pork. But, to tell the truth, it was quite impossible for me

(not being ravenous, but only a little hungry at the time) to eat of the

latter. It had a yellowish crust all round it, and was rather rankish, I

thought, to the taste. I observed, too, that the dame did not eat of it,

though she suffered some to be put on her plate, and pretended to be

busy with it when Coulter looked that way. But she ate of the rye-bread,

and so did I.

‘Now, then, for the pudding,’ said Coulter. ‘Quick, wife; the Squire

sits in his sitting-room window, looking far out across the fields. His

timepiece is true.’

‘He don’t play the spy on you, does he?’ said I.

‘Oh, no!--I don’t say that. He’s a good enough man. He gives me work.

But he’s particular. Wife, help the gentleman. You see, sir, if I lose

the Squire’s work, what will become of----’ and, with a look for which I

honoured humanity, with sly significance he glanced toward his wife;

then, a little changing his voice, instantly continued--‘that fine horse

I am going to buy.’

‘I guess,’ said the dame, with a strange, subdued sort of inefficient

pleasantry--‘I guess that fine horse you sometimes so merrily dream of

will long stay in the Squire’s stall. But sometimes his man gives me a

Sunday ride.’

‘A Sunday ride!’ said I.

‘You see,’ resumed Coulter, ‘wife loves to go to church; but the nighest

is four miles off, over yon snowy hills. So she can’t walk it; and I

can’t carry her in my arms, though I have carried her upstairs before

now. But, as she says, the Squire’s man sometimes gives her a lift on

the road; and for this cause it is that I speak of a horse I am going to

have one of these fine sunny days. And already, before having it, I have

christened it “Martha.” But what am I about? Come, come, wife! the

pudding! Help the gentleman, do! The Squire! the Squire!--think of the

Squire! and help round the pudding. There, one--two--three mouthfuls

must do me. Good-bye, wife. Good-bye, sir. I’m off.’

And, snatching his soaked hat, the noble Poor Man hurriedly went out

into the soak and the mire.

I suppose now, thinks I to myself, that Blandmour would poetically say,

He goes to take a Poor Man’s saunter.

‘You have a fine husband,’ said I to the woman, as we were now left

together.

‘William loves me this day as on the wedding-day, sir. Some hasty words,

but never a harsh one. I wish I were better and stronger for his sake.

And, oh! sir, both for his sake and mine’ (and the soft blue beautiful

eyes turned into two well-springs), ‘how I wish little William and

Martha lived--it is so lonely-like now. William named after him, and

Martha for me.’

When a companion’s heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to

do nothing. I sat looking down on my as yet untasted pudding.

‘You should have seen little William, sir. Such a bright, manly boy,

only six years old--cold, cold now!’

Plunging my spoon into the pudding, I forced some into my mouth to stop

it.

‘And little Martha--Oh! sir, she was the beauty! Bitter, bitter! but

needs must be borne.’

The mouthful of pudding now touched my palate, and touched it with a

mouldy, briny taste. The rice, I knew, was of that damaged sort sold

cheap; and the salt from the last year’s pork barrel.

‘Ah, sir, if those little ones yet to enter the world were the same

little ones which so sadly have left it; returning friends, not

strangers, strangers, always strangers! Yet does a mother soon learn to

love them; for certain, sir, they come from where the others have gone.

Don’t you believe that, sir? Yes, I know all good people must. But

still, still--and I fear it is wicked, and very black-hearted,

too--still, strive how I may to cheer me with thinking of little William

and Martha in heaven, and with reading Dr. Doddridge there--still, still

does dark grief leak in, just like the rain through our roof. I am left

so lonesome now; day after day, all the day long, dear William is gone;

and all the damp day long grief drizzles and drizzles down on my soul.

But I pray to God to forgive me for this; and for the rest, manage it as

well as I may.’

Bitter and mouldy is the ‘Poor Man’s Pudding,’ groaned I to myself, half

choked with but one little mouthful of it, which would hardly go down.

I could stay no longer to hear of sorrows for which the sincerest

sympathies could give no adequate relief; of a fond persuasion, to which

there could be furnished no further proof than already was had--a

persuasion, too, of that sort which much speaking is sure more or less

to mar; of causeless self-upbraidings, which no expostulations could

have dispelled. I offered no pay for hospitalities gratuitous and

honourable as those of a prince. I knew that such offerings would have

been more than declined; charity resented.

The native American poor never lose their delicacy or pride; hence,

though unreduced to the physical degradation of the European pauper,

they yet suffer more in mind than the poor of any other people in the

world. Those peculiar social sensibilities nourished by our own peculiar

political principles, while they enhance the true dignity of a

prosperous American, do but minister to the added wretchedness of the

unfortunate; first, by prohibiting their acceptance of what little

random relief charity may offer; and, second, by furnishing them with

the keenest appreciation of the smarting distinction between their ideal

of universal equality and their grindstone experience of the practical

misery and infamy of poverty--a misery and infamy which is, ever has

been, and ever will be, precisely the same in India, England, and

America.

Under pretence that my journey called me forthwith, I bade the dame

good-bye; shook her cold hand; looked my last into her blue, resigned

eye, and went out into the wet. But cheerless as it was, and damp, damp,

damp--the heavy atmosphere charged with all sorts of incipiencies--I yet

became conscious, by the suddenness of the contrast, that the house air

I had quitted was laden down with that peculiar deleterious quality, the

height of which--insufferable to some visitants--will be found in a

poor-house ward.

This ill-ventilation in winter of the rooms of the poor--a thing, too,

so stubbornly persisted in--is usually charged upon them as their

disgraceful neglect of the most simple means to health. But the instinct

of the poor is wiser than we think. The air which ventilates, likewise

_cools_. And to any shiverer, ill-ventilated warmth is better than

well-ventilated cold. Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity

over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits

of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.

• • • • • •

‘Blandmour,’ said I that evening, as after tea I sat on his comfortable

sofa, before a blazing fire, with one of his two ruddy little children

on my knee, ‘you are not what may rightly be called a rich man; you have

a fair competence; no more. Is it not so? Well, then, I do not include

_you_, when I say, that if ever a Rich Man speaks prosperously to me of

a Poor Man, I shall set it down as----I won’t mention the word.’

PICTURE SECOND

RICH MAN’S CRUMBS

In the year 1814, during the summer following my first taste of the

‘Poor Man’s Pudding,’ a sea voyage was recommended to me by my

physician. The battle of Waterloo having closed the long drama of

Napoleon’s wars, many strangers were visiting Europe. I arrived in

London at the time the victorious princes were there assembled enjoying

the Arabian Nights’ hospitalities of a grateful and gorgeous

aristocracy, and the courtliest of gentlemen and kings--George the

Prince Regent.

I had declined all letters but one to my banker. I wandered about for

the best reception an adventurous traveller can have--the reception, I

mean, which unsolicited chance and accident throw in his venturous way.

But I omit all else to recount one hour’s hap under the lead of a very

friendly man, whose acquaintance I made in the open street of Cheapside.

He wore a uniform, and was some sort of a civic subordinate; I forget

exactly what. He was off duty that day. His discourse was chiefly of the

noble charities of London. He took me to two or three, and made admiring

mention of many more.

‘But,’ said he, as we turned into Cheapside again, ‘if you are at all

curious about such things, let me take you--if it be not too late--to

one of the most interesting of all--our Lord Mayor’s Charities, sir;

nay, the charities not only of a Lord Mayor, but, I may truly say, in

this one instance, of emperors, regents, and kings. You remember the

event of yesterday?’

‘That sad fire on the river-side, you mean, unhousing so many of the

poor?’

‘No. The grand Guildhall Banquet to the princes. Who can forget it? Sir,

the dinner was served on nothing but solid silver and gold plate, worth

at the least £200,000--that is, 1,000,000 of your dollars; while the

mere expenditure of meats, wines, attendance, and upholstery, etc.,

cannot be footed under £25,000--125,000 dollars of your hard cash.’

‘But, surely, my friend, you do not call that charity--feeding kings at

that rate?’

‘No. The feast came first--yesterday; and the charity after--to-day. How

else would you have it, where princes are concerned? But I think we

shall be quite in time--come; here we are at King Street, and down there

is Guildhall. Will you go?’

‘Gladly, my good friend. Take me where you will. I come but to roam and

see.’

Avoiding the main entrance of the hall, which was barred, he took me

through some private way, and we found ourselves in a rear blind-walled

place in the open air. I looked round amazed. The spot was grimy as a

backyard in the Five Points. It was packed with a mass of lean,

famished, ferocious creatures, struggling and fighting for some

mysterious precedency, and all holding soiled blue tickets in their

hands.

‘There is no other way,’ said my guide; ‘we can only get in with the

crowd. Will you try it? I hope you have not on your drawing-room suit?

What do you say? It will be well worth your sight. So noble a charity

does not often offer. The one following the annual banquet of Lord

Mayor’s day--fine a charity as that certainly is--is not to be mentioned

with what will be seen to-day. Is it, ay?’

As he spoke, a basement door in the distance was thrown open, and the

squalid mass made a rush for the dark vault beyond.

I nodded to my guide, and sideways we joined in with the rest. Ere long

we found our retreat cut off by the yelping crowd behind, and I could

not but congratulate myself on having a civic, as well as civil guide;

one, too, whose uniform made evident his authority.

It was just the same as if I were pressed by a mob of cannibals on some

pagan beach. The beings round me roared with famine. For in this mighty

London misery but maddens. In the country it softens. As I gazed on the

meagre, murderous pack, I thought of the blue eye of the gentle wife of

poor Coulter. Some sort of curved, glittering steel thing (not a sword;

I know not what it was), before worn in his belt, was now flourished

overhead by my guide, menacing the creatures to forbear offering the

stranger violence.

As we drove, slow and wedge-like, into the gloomy vault, the howls of

the mass reverberated. I seemed seething in the Pit with the Lost. On

and on, through the dark and the damp, and then up a stone stairway to a

wide portal; when, diffusing, the pestiferous mob poured in bright day

between painted walls and beneath a painted dome. I thought of the

anarchic sack of Versailles.

A few moments more and I stood bewildered among the beggars in the

famous Guildhall.

Where I stood--where the thronged rabble stood, less than twelve hours

before sat His Imperial Majesty, Alexander of Russia; His Royal Majesty,

Frederick William, King of Prussia; His Royal Highness, George, Prince

Regent of England; His world-renowned Grace, the Duke of Wellington;

with a mob of magnificoes made up of conquering field-marshals, earls,

counts, and innumerable other nobles of mark.

The walls swept to and fro, like the foliage of a forest with blazonings

of conquerors’ flags. Naught outside the hall was visible. No windows

were within four-and-twenty feet of the floor. Cut off from all other

sights, I was hemmed in by one splendid spectacle--splendid, I mean,

everywhere, but as the eye fell toward the floor. _That_ was foul as a

hovel’s--as a kennel’s; the naked boards being strewed with the smaller

and more wasteful fragments of the feast, while the two long parallel

lines, up and down the hall, of now unrobed, shabby, dirty pine-tables

were piled with less trampled wrecks. The dyed banners were in keeping

with the last night’s kings; the floor suited the beggars of to-day. The

banners looked down upon the floor as from his balcony Dives upon

Lazarus. A line of liveried men kept back with their staves the

impatient jamb of the mob, who, otherwise, might have instantaneously

converted the Charity into a Pillage. Another body of gowned and gilded

officials distributed the broken meats--the cold victuals and crumbs of

kings. One after another the beggars held up their dirty blue tickets,

and were served with the plundered wreck of a pheasant, or the rim of a

pasty--like the detached crown of an old hat--the solids and meats

stolen out.

‘What a noble charity!’ whispered my guide. ‘See that pasty now,

snatched by that pale girl; I dare say the Emperor of Russia ate of that

last night.’

‘Very probably,’ murmured I; ‘it looks as though some omnivorous emperor

or other had had a finger in that pie.’

‘And see yon pheasant too--there--_that_ one--the boy in the torn shirt

has it now--look! The Prince Regent might have dined off that.’

The two breasts were gouged ruthlessly out, exposing the bare bones,

embellished with the untouched pinions and legs.

‘Yes, who knows!’ said my guide, ‘His Royal Highness the Prince Regent

might have eaten of that identical pheasant.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ murmured I, ‘he is said to be uncommonly fond of the

breast. But where is Napoleon’s head in a charger? I should fancy _that_

ought to have been the principal dish.’

‘You are merry. Sir, even Cossacks are charitable here in Guildhall.

Look! the famous Platoff, the Hetman himself--(he was here last night

with the rest)--no doubt he thrust a lance into yon fat pork-pie there.

Look! the old shirtless man has it now. How he licks his chops over it,

little thinking of or thanking the good, kind Cossack that left it him!

Ah! another--a stouter has grabbed it. It falls; bless my soul!--the

dish is quite empty--only a bit of the hacked crust.’

‘The Cossacks, my friend, are said to be immoderately fond of fat,’

observed I. ‘The Hetman was hardly so charitable as you thought.’

‘A noble charity, upon the whole, for all that. See, even Gog and Magog

yonder, at the other end of the hall, fairly laugh out their delight at

the scene.’

‘But don’t you think, though,’ hinted I, ‘that the sculptor, whoever he

was, carved the laugh too much into a grin--a sort of sardonical grin?’

‘Well, that’s as you take it, sir. But see--now I’d wager a guinea the

Lord Mayor’s lady dipped her golden spoon into yonder golden-hued jelly.

See, the jelly-eyed old body has slipped it, in one broad gulp, down his

throat.’

‘Peace to that jelly!’ breathed I.

‘What a generous, noble, magnanimous charity this is! unheard of in any

country but England, which feeds her very beggars with golden-hued

jellies.’

‘But not three times every day, my friend. And do you really think that

jellies are the best sort of relief you can furnish to beggars? Would

not plain beef and bread, with something to do, and be paid for, be

better?’

‘But plain beef and bread were not eaten here. Emperors, and prince

regents, and kings, and field-marshals don’t often dine on plain beef

and bread. So the leavings are according. Tell me, can you expect that

the crumbs of kings can be like the crumbs of squirrels?’

‘_You!_ I mean _you!_ stand aside, or else be served and away! Here,

take this pasty, and be thankful that you taste of the same dish with

Her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire. Graceless ragamuffin, do you hear?’

These words were bellowed at me through the din by a red-gowned official

nigh the board.

‘Surely he does not mean _me_,’ said I to my guide; ‘he has not

confounded _me_ with the rest.’

‘One is known by the company he keeps,’ smiled my guide. ‘See! not only

stands your hat awry and bunged on your head, but your coat is fouled

and torn. Nay,’ he cried to the red-gown, ‘this is an unfortunate

friend; a simple spectator, I assure you.’

‘Ah! is that you, old lad!’ responded the red-gown, in familiar

recognition of my guide--a personal friend as it seemed; ‘well, convey

your friend out forthwith. Mind the grand crash; it will soon be coming;

hark! now! away with him!’

Too late. The last dish had been seized. The yet unglutted mob raised a

fierce yell, which wafted the banners like a strong gust, and filled the

air with a reek as from sewers. They surged against the tables, broke

through all barriers, and billowed over the hall--their bare tossed arms

like the dashed ribs of a wreck. It seemed to me as if a sudden impotent

fury of fell envy possessed them. That one half-hour’s peep at the mere

remnants of the glories of the Banquets of Kings; the unsatisfying

mouthfuls of disembowelled pasties, plundered pheasants, and half-sacked

jellies, served to remind them of the intrinsic contempt of the alms. In

this sudden mood, or whatever mysterious thing it was that now seized

them, these Lazaruses seemed ready to spew up in repentant scorn the

contumelious crumbs of Dives.

‘This way, this way! stick like a bee to my back,’ intensely whispered

my guide. ‘My friend there has answered my beck, and thrown open yon

private door for us two. Wedge--wedge in--quick--there goes your bunged

hat--never stop for your coat-tail--hit that man--strike him down! hold!

jam! now! now! wrench along for your life! ha! here we breathe freely;

thank God! You faint. Ho!’

‘Never mind. This fresh air revives me.’

I inhaled a few more breaths of it, and felt ready to proceed.

‘And now conduct me, my good friend, by some front passage into

Cheapside, forthwith. I must home.’

‘Not by the side-walk, though. Look at your dress. I must get a hack for

you.’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said I, ruefully eyeing my tatters, and then

glancing in envy at the close-bodied coat and flat cap of my guide,

which defied all tumblings and tearings.

‘There, now, sir,’ said the honest fellow, as he put me into the hack,

and tucked in me and my rags, ‘when you get back to your own country,

you can say you have witnessed the greatest of all England’s noble

charities. Of course, you will make reasonable allowances for the

unavoidable jam. Good-bye. Mind, Jehu’--addressing the driver on the

box--‘this is a _gentleman_ you carry. He is just from the Guildhall

Charity, which accounts for his appearance. Go on now. London Tavern,

Fleet Street, remember, is the place.’

• • • • • •

‘Now, Heaven in its kind mercy save me from the noble charities of

London,’ sighed I, as that night I lay bruised and battered on my bed;

‘and Heaven save me equally from the “Poor Man’s Pudding” and the “Rich

Man’s Crumbs.”’

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE HAPPY FAILURE

A STORY OF THE RIVER HUDSON

The appointment was that I should meet my elderly uncle at the

river-side, precisely at nine in the morning. The skiff was to be ready,

and the apparatus to be brought down by his grizzled old black man. As

yet, the nature of the wonderful experiment remained a mystery to all

but the projector.

I was first on the spot. The village was high up the river, and the

inland summer sun was already oppressively warm. Presently, I saw my

uncle advancing beneath the trees, hat off, and wiping his brow; while

far behind staggered poor old Yorpy, with what seemed one of the gates

of Gaza on his back.

‘Come, hurry, stump along, Yorpy!’ cried my uncle, impatiently turning

round every now and then.

Upon the black’s staggering up to the skiff, I perceived that the great

gate of Gaza was transformed into a huge, shabby, oblong box,

hermetically sealed. The sphinx-like blankness of the box quadrupled the

mystery in my mind.

‘Is _this_ the wonderful apparatus?’ said I, in amazement. ‘Why, it’s

nothing but a battered old dry-goods box, nailed up. And is _this_ the

thing, uncle, that is to make you a million of dollars ere the year be

out? What a forlorn-looking, lack-lustre, old ash-box it is.’

‘Put it into the skiff!’ roared my uncle to Yorpy, without heeding my

boyish disdain. ‘Put it in, you grizzled-headed cherub--put it in

carefully, carefully! If that box bursts, my everlasting fortune

collapses.’

‘Bursts?--collapses?’ cried I, in alarm. ‘It ain’t full of combustibles?

Quick! let me go to the farther end of the boat!’

‘Sit still, you simpleton!’ cried my uncle again. ‘Jump in, Yorpy, and

hold on to the box like grim death while I shove off. Carefully!

carefully! you dunder-headed black! Mind t’other side of the box, I say!

Do you mean to destroy the box?’

‘Duyvel take te pox!’ muttered old Yorpy, who was a sort of Dutch

African. ‘De pox has been my cuss for de ten long ’ear.’

‘Now, then, we’re off--take an oar, youngster; you, Yorpy, clinch the

box fast. Here we go now. Carefully! carefully! You, Yorpy, stop shaking

the box! Easy! easy! there’s a big snag. Pull now. Hurrah! deep water at

last! Now give way, youngster, and away to the island.’

‘The island!’ said I. ‘There’s no island hereabouts.’

‘There is ten miles above the bridge, though,’ said my uncle,

determinately.

‘Ten miles off! Pull that old dry-goods box ten miles up the river in

this blazing sun!’

‘All that I have to say,’ said my uncle, firmly, ‘is that we are bound

to Quash Island.’

‘Mercy, uncle! if I had known of this great long pull of ten mortal

miles in this fiery sun, you wouldn’t have juggled _me_ into the skiff

so easy. What’s _in_ that box?--paving-stones? See how the skiff settles

down under it. I won’t help pull a box of paving-stones ten miles.

What’s the use of pulling ’em?’

‘Look you, simpleton,’ quoth my uncle, pausing upon his suspended oar.

‘Stop rowing, will ye! Now then, if you don’t want to share in the glory

of my experiment; if you are wholly indifferent to halving its immortal

renown; I say, sir, if you care not to be present at the first trial of

my Great Hydraulic-Hydrostatic Apparatus for draining swamps and

marshes, and converting them, at the rate of one acre the hour, into

fields more fertile than those of the Genesee; if you care not, I

repeat, to have this proud thing to tell--in far future days, when poor

old I shall have been long dead and gone, boy--to your children, and

your children’s children; in that case, sir, you are free to land

forthwith.’

‘Oh, uncle! I did not mean----’

‘No words, sir! Yorpy, take this oar, and help pull him ashore.’

‘But, my dear uncle; I declare to you that----’

‘Not a syllable, sir: you have cast open scorn upon the Great

Hydraulic-Hydrostatic Apparatus. Yorpy, put him ashore, Yorpy. It’s

shallow here again. Jump out, Yorpy, and wade with him ashore.’

‘Now, my dear, good, kind uncle, do but pardon me this one time, and I

will say just nothing about the apparatus.’

‘Say nothing about it! when it is my express end and aim it shall be

famous! Put him ashore, Yorpy.’

‘Nay, uncle, I _will_ not give up my oar. I have an oar in this matter,

and I mean to keep it. You shall not cheat me out of my share of your

glory.’

‘Ah, now there--that’s sensible. You may stay, youngster. Pull again

now.’

We were all silent for a time, steadily plying our way. At last I

ventured to break water once more.

‘I am glad, dear uncle, you have revealed to me at last the nature and

end of your great experiment. It is the effectual draining of swamps; an

attempt, dear uncle, in which, if you do but succeed (as I know you

will), you will earn the glory denied to a Roman emperor. He tried to

drain the Pontine marsh, but failed.’

‘The world has shot ahead the length of its own diameter since then,’

quoth my uncle, proudly. ‘If that Roman emperor were here, _I_’d show

him what can be done in the present enlightened age.’

Seeing my good uncle so far mollified now as to be quite

self-complacent, I ventured another remark.

‘This is a rather severe, hot pull, dear uncle.’

‘Glory is not to be gained, youngster, without pulling hard for

it--against the stream, too, as we do now. The natural tendency of man,

in the mass, is to go down with the universal current into oblivion.’

‘But why pull so far, dear uncle, upon the present occasion? Why pull

ten miles for it? You do but propose, as I understand it, to put to the

actual test this admirable invention of yours. And could it not be

tested almost anywhere?’

‘Simple boy,’ quoth my uncle, ‘would you have some malignant spy steal

from me the fruits of ten long years of high-hearted, persevering

endeavour? Solitary in my scheme, I go to a solitary place to test it.

If I fail--for all things are possible--no one out of the family will

know it. If I succeed, secure in the secrecy of my invention, I can

boldly demand any price for its publication.’

‘Pardon me, dear uncle; you are wiser than I.’

‘One would think years and gray hairs should bring wisdom, boy.’

‘Yorpy there, dear uncle; think you his grizzled locks thatch a brain

improved by long life?’

‘Am I Yorpy, boy? Keep to your oar!’

Thus padlocked again, I said no further word till the skiff grounded on

the shallows, some twenty yards from the deep-wooded isle.

‘Hush!’ whispered my uncle, intensely; ‘not a word now!’ and he sat

perfectly still, slowly sweeping with his glance the whole country

around, even to both banks of the here wide-expanded stream.

‘Wait till that horseman yonder passes!’ he whispered again, pointing to

a speck moving along a lofty, river-side road, which perilously wound on

midway up a long line of broken bluffs and cliffs. ‘There--he’s out of

sight now, behind the copse. Quick! Yorpy! Carefully, though! Jump

overboard, and shoulder the box, and--Hold!’

We were all mute and motionless again.

‘Ain’t that a boy, sitting like Zaccheus in yonder tree of the orchard

on the other bank? Look, youngster--young eyes are better than

old--don’t you see him?’

‘Dear uncle, I see the orchard, but I can’t see any boy.’

‘He’s a spy--I know he is,’ suddenly said my uncle, disregardful of my

answer, and intently gazing, shading his eyes with his flattened hand.

‘Don’t touch the box, Yorpy. Crouch! crouch down, all of ye!’

‘Why, uncle--there--see--the boy is only a withered white bough. I see

it very plainly now.’

‘You don’t see the tree I mean,’ quoth my uncle, with a decided air of

relief, ‘but never mind; I defy the boy. Yorpy, jump out, and shoulder

the box. And now then, youngster, off with your shoes and stockings,

roll up your trowser-legs, and follow me. Carefully, Yorpy, carefully.

That’s more precious than a box of gold, mind.’

‘Heavy as de gelt, anyhow,’ growled Yorpy, staggering and splashing in

the shallows beneath it.

‘There, stop under the bushes there--in among the flags--so--gently,

gently--there, put it down just there. Now, youngster, are you ready?

Follow--tiptoes, tiptoes!’

‘I can’t wade in this mud and water on my tiptoes, uncle; and I don’t

see the need of it either.’

‘Go ashore, sir--instantly!’

‘Why, uncle, I _am_ ashore.’

‘Peace! follow me, and no more.’

Crouching in the water in complete secrecy, beneath the bushes and among

the tall flags, my uncle now stealthily produced a hammer and wrench

from one of his enormous pockets, and presently tapped the box. But the

sound alarmed him.

‘Yorpy,’ he whispered, ‘go you off to the right, behind the bushes, and

keep watch. If you see anyone coming, whistle softly. Youngster, you do

the same to the left.’

We obeyed; and presently, after considerable hammering and supplemental

tinkering, my uncle’s voice was heard in the utter solitude, loudly

commanding our return.

Again we obeyed, and now found the cover of the box removed. All

eagerness, I peeped in, and saw a surprising multiplicity of convoluted

metal pipes and syringes of all sorts and varieties, all sizes and

calibres, inextricably interwreathed together in one gigantic coil. It

looked like a huge nest of anacondas and adders.

‘Now then, Yorpy,’ said my uncle, all animation, and flushed with the

foretaste of glory, ‘do you stand this side, and be ready to tip when I

give the word. And do you, youngster, stand ready to do as much for the

other side. Mind, don’t budge it the fraction of a barley-corn till I

say the word. All depends on a proper adjustment.’

‘No fear, uncle. I will be careful as a lady’s tweezers.’

‘I s’ant lift de heavy pox,’ growled old Yorpy, ‘till de wort pe given;

no fear o’ dat.’

‘Oh, boy,’ said my uncle now, upturning his face devotionally, while a

really noble gleam irradiated his gray eyes, locks, and wrinkles! ‘oh,

boy! this, _this_ is the hour which for ten long years has, in the

prospect, sustained me through all my painstaking obscurity. Fame will

be the sweeter because it comes at the last; the truer, because it comes

to an old man like me, not to a boy like you. Sustainer! I glorify

Thee.’

He bowed over his venerable head, and--as I live--something like a

shower-drop somehow fell from my face into the shallows.

‘Tip!’

We tipped.

‘A little more!’

We tipped a little more.

‘A _leetle_ more!’

We tipped a _leetle_ more.

‘Just a _leetle_, very _leetle_ bit more.’

With great difficulty we tipped just a _leetle_, very _leetle_ more.

All this time my uncle was diligently stooping over, and striving to

peep in, up, and under the box where the coiled anacondas and adders

lay; but the machine being now fairly immersed, the attempt was wholly

vain.

He rose erect, and waded slowly all round the box; his countenance firm

and reliant, but not a little troubled and vexed.

It was plain something or other was going wrong. But as I was left in

utter ignorance as to the mystery of the contrivance, I could not tell

where the difficulty lay, or what was the proper remedy.

Once more, still more slowly, still more vexedly, my uncle waded round

the box, the dissatisfaction gradually deepening, but still controlled,

and still with hope at the bottom of it.

Nothing could be more sure than that some anticipated effect had, as

yet, failed to develop itself. Certain I was, too, that the water-line

did not lower about my legs.

‘Tip it a _leetle_ bit--very _leetle_ now.’

‘Dear uncle, it is tipped already as far as it can be. Don’t you see it

rests now square on its bottom?’

‘You, Yorpy, take your black hoof from under the box!’

This gust of passion on the part of my uncle made the matter seem still

more dubious and dark. It was a bad symptom, I thought.

‘Surely you _can_ tip it just a _leetle_ more!’

‘Not a hair, uncle.’

‘Blast and blister the cursed box, then!’ roared my uncle, in a terrific

voice, sudden as a squall. Running at the box he dashed his bare foot

into it, and with astonishing power all but crushed in the side. Then

seizing the whole box, he disembowelled it of all its anacondas and

adders, and, tearing and wrenching them, flung them right and left over

the water.

‘Hold, hold, my dear, dear uncle!--do for Heaven’s sake desist. Don’t

destroy so, in one frantic moment, all your long, calm years of devotion

to one darling scheme. Hold, I conjure!’

Moved by my vehement voice and uncontrollable tears, he paused in his

work of destruction, and stood steadfastly eyeing me, or rather blankly

staring at me, like one demented.

‘It is not yet wholly ruined, dear uncle; come put it together now. You

have hammer and wrench; put it together again, and try it once more.

While there is life there is hope.’

‘While there is life hereafter there is _despair_,’ he howled.

‘Do, do now, dear uncle--here, here, put these pieces together; or, if

that can’t be done without more tools, try a _section_ of it--that will

do just as well. Try it once; try, uncle.’

My persistent persuasiveness told upon him. The stubborn stump of hope,

ploughed at and uprooted in vain, put forth one last miraculous green

sprout.

Steadily and carefully culling out of the wreck some of the more

curious-looking fragments, he mysteriously involved them together, and

then, clearing out the box, slowly inserted them there, and ranging

Yorpy and me as before, bade us tip the box once again.

We did so; and as no perceptible effect yet followed, I was each moment

looking for the previous command to tip the box over yet more, when,

glancing into my uncle’s face, I started aghast. It seemed pinched,

shrivelled into mouldy whiteness, like a mildewed grape. I dropped the

box, and sprang toward him just in time to prevent his fall.

Leaving the woeful box where we had dropped it, Yorpy and I helped the

old man into the skiff, and silently pulled from Quash Isle.

How swiftly the current now swept us down! How hardly before had we

striven to stem it! I thought of my poor uncle’s saying, not an hour

gone by, about the universal drift of the mass of humanity toward utter

oblivion.

‘Boy!’ said my uncle at last, lifting his head.

I looked at him earnestly, and was gladdened to see that the terrible

blight of his face had almost departed.

‘Boy, there’s not much left in an old world for an old man to invent.’

I said nothing.

‘Boy, take my advice, and never try to invent anything but--happiness.’

I said nothing.

‘Boy, about ship, and pull back for the box.’

‘Dear uncle!’

‘It will make a good wood-box, boy. And faithful old Yorpy can sell the

old iron for tobacco-money.’

‘Dear massa! dear old massa! dat be very fust time in de ten long ’ear

yoo hab mention kindly old Yorpy. I tank yoo, dear old massa; I tank yoo

so kindly. Yoo is yourself agin in de ten long ’ear.’

‘Ay, long ears enough,’ sighed my uncle; ‘Esopian ears. But it’s all

over now. Boy, I’m glad I’ve failed. I say, boy, failure has made a good

old man of me. It was horrible at first, but I’m glad I’ve failed.

Praise be to God for the failure!’

His face kindled with a strange, rapt earnestness. I have never

forgotten that look. If the event made my uncle a good old man, as he

called it, it made me a wise young one. Example did for me the work of

experience.

When some years had gone by, and my dear old uncle began to fail, and,

after peaceful days of autumnal content, was gathered gently to his

fathers--faithful old Yorpy closing his eyes--as I took my last look at

his venerable face, the pale resigned lips seemed to move. I seemed to

hear again his deep, fervent cry--‘Praise be to God for the failure!’

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE FIDDLER

So my poem is damned, and immortal fame is not for me! I am nobody

forever and ever. Intolerable fate!

Snatching my hat, I dashed down the criticism, and rushed out into

Broadway, where enthusiastic throngs were crowding to a circus in a

side-street near by, very recently started, and famous for a capital

clown.

Presently my old friend Standard rather boisterously accosted me.

‘Well met, Helmstone, my boy! Ah! what’s the matter? Haven’t been

committing murder? Ain’t flying justice? You look wild!’

‘You have seen it, then?’ said I, of course referring to the criticism.

‘Oh yes, I was there at the morning performance. Great clown, I assure

you. But here comes Hautboy. Hautboy--Helmstone.’

Without having time or inclination to resent so mortifying a mistake, I

was instantly soothed as I gazed on the face of the new acquaintance so

unceremoniously introduced. His person was short and full, with a

juvenile, animated cast to it. His complexion rurally ruddy; his eye

sincere, cheery, and gray. His hair alone betrayed that he was not an

overgrown boy. From his hair I set him down as forty or more.

‘Come, Standard,’ he gleefully cried to my friend, ‘are you not going to

the circus? The clown is inimitable, they say. Come; Mr. Helmstone,

too--come both; and circus over, we’ll take a nice stew and punch at

Taylor’s.’

The sterling content, good-humour, and extraordinary ruddy, sincere

expression of this most singular new acquaintance acted upon me like

magic. It seemed mere loyalty to human nature to accept an invitation

from so unmistakably kind and honest a heart.

During the circus performance I kept my eye more on Hautboy than on the

celebrated clown. Hautboy was the sight for me. Such genuine enjoyment

as his struck me to the soul with a sense of the reality of the thing

called happiness. The jokes of the clown he seemed to roll under his

tongue as ripe magnum-bonums. Now the foot, now the hand, was employed

to attest his grateful applause. At any hit more than ordinary, he

turned upon Standard and me to see if his rare pleasure was shared. In a

man of forty I saw a boy of twelve; and this, too, without the slightest

abatement of my respect. Because all was so honest and natural, every

expression and attitude so graceful with genuine good-nature, that the

marvellous juvenility of Hautboy assumed a sort of divine and immortal

air, like that of some forever youthful god of Greece.

But much as I gazed upon Hautboy, and much as I admired his air, yet

that desperate mood in which I had first rushed from the house had not

so entirely departed as not to molest me with momentary returns. But

from these relapses I would rouse myself, and swiftly glance round the

broad amphitheatre of eagerly interested and all-applauding human faces.

Hark! claps, thumps, deafening huzzas; the vast assembly seemed frantic

with acclamation; and what, mused I, has caused all this? Why, the clown

only comically grinned with one of his extra grins.

Then I repeated in my mind that sublime passage in my poem, in which

Cleothemes the Argive vindicates the justice of the war. Ay, ay, thought

I to myself, did I now leap into the ring there and repeat that

identical passage, nay, enact the whole tragic poem before them, would

they applaud the poet as they applaud the clown? No! They would hoot me,

and call me doting or mad. Then what does this prove? Your infatuation

or their insensibility? Perhaps both; but indubitably the first. But why

wail? Do you seek admiration from the admirers of a buffoon? Call to

mind the saying of the Athenian, who, when the people vociferously

applauded in the forum, asked his friend in a whisper, what foolish

thing had he said?

Again my eye swept the circus, and fell on the ruddy radiance of the

countenance of Hautboy. But its clear honest cheeriness disdained my

disdain. My intolerant pride was rebuked. And yet Hautboy dreamed not

what magic reproof to a soul like mine sat on his laughing brow. At the

very instant I felt the dart of the censure, his eye twinkled, his hand

waved, his voice was lifted in jubilant delight at another joke of the

inexhaustible clown.

Circus over, we went to Taylor’s. Among crowds of others, we sat down to

our stews and punches at one of the small marble tables. Hautboy sat

opposite to me. Though greatly subdued from its former hilarity, his

face still shone with gladness. But added to this was a quality not so

prominent before; a certain serene expression of leisurely, deep good

sense. Good sense and good humour in him joined hands. As the

conversation proceeded between the brisk Standard and him--for I said

little or nothing--I was more and more struck with the excellent

judgment he evinced. In most of his remarks upon a variety of topics

Hautboy seemed intuitively to hit the exact line between enthusiasm and

apathy. It was plain that while Hautboy saw the world pretty much as it

was, yet he did not theoretically espouse its bright side nor its dark

side. Rejecting all solutions, he but acknowledged facts. What was sad

in the world he did not superficially gainsay; what was glad in it he

did not cynically slur; and all which was to him personally enjoyable,

he gratefully took to his heart. It was plain, then--so it seemed at

that moment, at least--that his extraordinary cheerfulness did not arise

either from deficiency of feeling or thought.

Suddenly remembering an engagement, he took up his hat, bowed

pleasantly, and left us.

‘Well, Helmstone,’ said Standard, inaudibly drumming on the slab, ‘what

do you think of your new acquaintance?’

The two last words tingled with a peculiar and novel significance.

‘New acquaintance indeed,’ echoed I. ‘Standard, I owe you a thousand

thanks for introducing me to one of the most singular men I have ever

seen. It needed the optical sight of such a man to believe in the

possibility of his existence.’

‘You rather like him, then,’ said Standard, with ironical dryness.

‘I hugely love and admire him, Standard. I wish I were Hautboy.’

‘Ah? That’s a pity now. There’s only one Hautboy in the world.’

This last remark set me to pondering again, and somehow it revived my

dark mood.

‘His wonderful cheerfulness, I suppose,’ said I, sneering with spleen,

‘originates not less in a felicitous fortune than in a felicitous

temper. His great good sense is apparent; but great good sense may exist

without sublime endowments. Nay, I take it, in certain cases, that good

sense is simply owing to the absence of those. Much more, cheerfulness.

Unpossessed of genius, Hautboy is eternally blessed.’

‘Ah? You would not think him an extraordinary genius, then?’

‘Genius? What! such a short, fat fellow a genius! Genius, like Cassius,

is lank.’

‘Ah? But could you not fancy that Hautboy might formerly have had

genius, but luckily getting rid of it, at last fatted up?’

‘For a genius to get rid of his genius is as impossible as for a man in

the galloping consumption to get rid of that.’

‘Ah? You speak very decidedly.’

‘Yes, Standard,’ cried I, increasing in spleen, ‘your cheery Hautboy,

after all, is no pattern, no lesson for you and me. With average

abilities; opinions clear, because circumscribed; passions docile,

because they are feeble; a temper hilarious, because he was born to

it--how can your Hautboy be made a reasonable example to a heady fellow

like you, or an ambitious dreamer like me? Nothing tempts him beyond

common limit; in himself he has nothing to restrain. By constitution he

is exempted from all moral harm. Could ambition but prick him; had he

but once heard applause, or endured contempt, a very different man would

your Hautboy be. Acquiescent and calm from the cradle to the grave, he

obviously slides through the crowd.’

‘Ah?’

‘Why do you say _ah_ to me so strangely whenever I speak?’

‘Did you ever hear of Master Betty?’

‘The great English prodigy, who long ago ousted the Siddons and the

Kembles from Drury Lane, and made the whole town run mad with

acclamation?’

‘The same,’ said Standard, once more inaudibly drumming on the slab.

I looked at him perplexed. He seemed to be holding the master-key of our

theme in mysterious reserve; seemed to be throwing out his Master Betty,

too, to puzzle me only the more.

‘What under heaven can Master Betty, the great genius and prodigy, an

English boy twelve years old, have to do with the poor, commonplace

plodder Hautboy, an American of forty?’

‘Oh, nothing in the least. I don’t imagine that they ever saw each

other. Besides, Master Betty must be dead and buried long ere this.’

‘Then why cross the ocean, and rifle the grave to drag his remains into

this living discussion?’

‘Absent-mindedness, I suppose. I humbly beg pardon. Proceed with your

observations on Hautboy. You think he never had genius, quite too

contented and happy, and fat for that--ah? You think him no pattern for

men in general? affording no lesson of value to neglected merit, genius

ignored, or impotent presumption rebuked?--all of which three amount to

much the same thing. You admire his cheerfulness, while scorning his

commonplace soul. Poor Hautboy, how sad that your very cheerfulness

should, by a by-blow, bring you despite!’

‘I don’t say I scorn him; you are unjust. I simply declare that he is no

pattern for me.’

A sudden noise at my side attracted my ear. Turning, I saw Hautboy

again, who very blithely reseated himself on the chair he had left.

‘I was behind time with my engagement,’ said Hautboy, ‘so thought I

would run back and rejoin you. But come, you have sat long enough here.

Let us go to my rooms. It is only a five-minutes’ walk.’

‘If you will promise to fiddle for us, we will,’ said Standard.

Fiddle! thought I--he’s a jigembob _fiddler_, then? No wonder genius

declines to measure its pace to a fiddler’s bow. My spleen was very

strong on me now.

‘I will gladly fiddle you your fill,’ replied Hautboy to Standard. ‘Come

on.’

In a few minutes we found ourselves in the fifth story of a sort of

storehouse, in a lateral street to Broadway. It was curiously furnished

with all sorts of odd furniture which seemed to have been obtained,

piece by piece, at auctions of old-fashioned household stuff. But all

was charmingly clean and cosy.

Pressed by Standard, Hautboy forthwith got out his dented old fiddle,

and sitting down on a tall, rickety stool, played away right merrily at

‘Yankee Doodle’ and other off-handed, dashing, and disdainfully

care-free airs. But common as were the tunes, I was transfixed by

something miraculously superior in the style. Sitting there on the old

stool, his rusty hat sideways cocked on his head, one foot dangling

adrift, he plied the bow of an enchanter. All my moody discontent, every

vestige of peevishness fled. My whole splenetic soul capitulated to the

magical fiddle.

‘Something of an Orpheus, ah?’ said Standard, archly nudging me beneath

the left rib.

‘And I, the charmed Bruin,’ murmured I.

The fiddle ceased. Once more, with redoubled curiosity, I gazed upon the

easy, indifferent Hautboy. But he entirely baffled inquisition.

When, leaving him, Standard and I were in the street once more, I

earnestly conjured him to tell me who, in sober truth, this marvellous

Hautboy was.

‘Why, haven’t you seen him? And didn’t you yourself lay his whole

anatomy open on the marble slab at Taylor’s. What more can you possibly

learn? Doubtless your own masterly insight has already put you in

possession of all.’

‘You mock me, Standard. There is some mystery here. Tell me, I entreat

you, who is Hautboy?’

‘An extraordinary genius, Helmstone,’ said Standard, with sudden ardour,

‘who in boyhood drained the whole flagon of glory; whose going from city

to city was a going from triumph to triumph. One who has been an object

of wonder to the wisest, been caressed by the loveliest, received the

open homage of thousands on thousands of the rabble. But to-day he walks

Broadway and no man knows him. With you and me, the elbow of the

hurrying clerk, and the pole of the remorseless omnibus, shove him. He

who has a hundred times been crowned with laurels, now wears, as you

see, a bunged beaver. Once fortune poured showers of gold into his lap,

as showers of laurel leaves upon his brow. To-day, from house to house

he hies, teaching fiddling for a living. Crammed once with fame, he is

now hilarious without it. _With_ genius and _without_ fame, he is

happier than a king. More a prodigy now than ever.’

‘His true name?’

‘Let me whisper it in your ear.’

‘What! Oh, Standard, myself, as a child, have shouted myself hoarse

applauding that very name in the theatre.’

‘I have heard your poem was not very handsomely received,’ said

Standard, now suddenly shifting the subject.

‘Not a word of that, for Heaven’s sake!’ cried I. ‘If Cicero, travelling

in the East, found sympathetic solace for his grief in beholding the

arid overthrow of a once gorgeous city, shall not my petty affair be as

nothing, when I behold in Hautboy the vine and the rose climbing the

shattered shafts of his tumbled temple of Fame?’

Next day I tore all my manuscripts, bought me a fiddle, and went to take

regular lessons of Hautboy.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE PARADISE OF BACHELORS AND THE TARTARUS OF MAIDS

I. THE PARADISE OF BACHELORS

It lies not far from Temple Bar.

Going to it, by the usual way, is like stealing from a heated plain into

some cool, deep glen, shady among harbouring hills.

Sick with the din and soiled with the mud of Fleet Street--where the

Benedick tradesmen are hurrying by, with ledger-lines ruled along their

brows, thinking upon rise of bread and fall of babies--you adroitly turn

a mystic corner--not a street--glide down a dim, monastic way, flanked

by dark, sedate, and solemn piles, and still wending on, give the whole

careworn world the slip, and, disentangled, stand beneath the quiet

cloisters of the Paradise of Bachelors.

Sweet are the oases in Sahara; charming the isle-groves of August

prairies; delectable pure faith amidst a thousand perfidies: but

sweeter, still more charming, most delectable, the dreamy Paradise of

Bachelors, found in the stony heart of stunning London.

In mild meditation pace the cloisters; take your pleasure, sip your

leisure, in the garden waterward; go linger in the ancient library; go

worship in the sculptured chapel: but little have you seen, just nothing

do you know, not the sweet kernel have you tasted, till you dine among

the banded Bachelors, and see their convivial eyes and glasses sparkle.

Not dine in bustling commons, during term-time, in the hall; but

tranquilly, by private hint, at a private table; some fine Templar’s

hospitably invited guest.

Templar? That’s a romantic name. Let me see. Brian de Bois Gilbert was a

Templar, I believe. Do we understand you to insinuate that those famous

Templars still survive in modern London? May the ring of their armed

heels be heard, and the rattle of their shields, as in mailed prayer the

monk-knights kneel before the consecrated Host? Surely a monk-knight

were a curious sight picking his way along the Strand, his gleaming

corselet and snowy surcoat spattered by an omnibus. Long-bearded, too,

according to his order’s rule; his face fuzzy as a pard’s; how would the

grim ghost look among the crop-haired, close-shaven citizens? We know

indeed--sad history recounts it--that a moral blight tainted at last

this sacred Brotherhood. Though no sworded foe might out-skill them in

the fence, yet the worm of luxury crawled beneath their guard, gnawing

the core of knightly troth, nibbling the monastic vow, till at last the

monk’s austerity relaxed to wassailing, and the sworn knights-bachelors

grew to be but hypocrites and rakes.

But for all this, quite unprepared were we to learn that

Knights-Templars (if at all in being) were so entirely secularised as to

be reduced from carving out immortal fame in glorious battling for the

Holy Land, to the carving of roast mutton at a dinner-board. Like

Anacreon, do these degenerate Templars now think it sweeter far to fall

in banquet than in war? Or, indeed, how can there be any survival of

that famous order? Templars in modern London! Templars in their

red-cross mantles smoking cigars at the Divan! Templars crowded in a

railway train, till, stacked with steel helmet, spear, and shield, the

whole train looks like one elongated locomotive!

No. The genuine Templar is long since departed. Go view the wondrous

tombs in the Temple Church; see there the rigidly-haughty forms

stretched out, with crossed arms upon their stilly hearts, in

everlasting and undreaming rest. Like the years before the flood, the

bold Knights-Templars are no more. Nevertheless, the name remains, and

the nominal society, and the ancient grounds, and some of the ancient

edifices. But the iron heel is changed to a boot of patent leather; the

long two-handed sword to a one-handed quill; the monk-giver of

gratuitous ghostly counsel now counsels for a fee; the defender of the

sarcophagus (if in good practice with his weapon) now has more than one

case to defend; the vowed opener and clearer of all highways leading to

the Holy Sepulchre, now has it in particular charge to check, to clog,

to hinder, and embarrass all the courts and avenues of Law; the

knight-combatant of the Saracen, breasting spear-points at Acre, now

fights law-points in Westminster Hall. The helmet is a wig. Struck by

Time’s enchanter’s wand, the Templar is to-day a Lawyer.

But, like many others tumbled from proud glory’s height--like the apple,

hard on the bough but mellow on the ground--the Templar’s fall has but

made him all the finer fellow.

I dare say those old warrior-priests were but gruff and grouty at the

best; cased in Birmingham hardware, how could their crimped arms give

yours or mine a hearty shake? Their proud, ambitious, monkish souls

clasped shut, like horn-book missals; their very faces clapped in

bombshells; what sort of genial men were these? But best of comrades,

most affable of hosts, capital diner is the modern Templar. His wit and

wine are both of sparkling brands.

The church and cloisters, courts and vaults, lanes and passages,

banquet-halls, refectories, libraries, terraces, gardens, broad walks,

domicils, and dessert-rooms, covering a very large space of ground, and

all grouped in central neighbourhood, and quite sequestered from the old

city’s surrounding din; and everything about the place being kept in

most bachelor-like particularity, no part of London offers to a quiet

wight so agreeable a refuge.

The Temple is indeed a city by itself. A city with all the best

appurtenances, as the above enumeration shows. A city with a park to it,

and flower-beds, and a river-side--the Thames flowing by as openly, in

one part, as by Eden’s primal garden flowed the mild Euphrates. In what

is now the Temple Garden the old Crusaders used to exercise their steeds

and lances; the modern Templars now lounge on the benches beneath the

trees, and, switching their patent-leather boots, in gay discourse

exercise at repartee.

Long lines of stately portraits in the banquet-halls, show what great

men of mark--famous nobles, judges, and Lord Chancellors--have in their

time been Templars. But all Templars are not known to universal fame;

though, if the having warm hearts and warmer welcomes, full minds and

fuller cellars, and giving good advice and glorious dinners, spiced with

rare divertisements of fun and fancy, merit immortal mention, set down,

ye muses, the names of R. F. C. and his imperial brother.

Though to be a Templar, in the one true sense, you must needs be a

lawyer, or a student at the law, and be ceremoniously enrolled as member

of the order, yet as many such, though Templars, do not reside within

the Temple’s precincts, though they may have their offices there, just

so, on the other hand, there are many residents of the hoary old

domicils who are not admitted Templars. If being, say, a lounging

gentleman and bachelor, or a quiet, unmarried, literary man, charmed

with the soft seclusion of the spot, you much desire to pitch your shady

tent among the rest in this serene encampment, then you must make some

special friend among the order, and procure him to rent, in his name,

but at your charge, whatever vacant chamber you may find to suit.

Thus, I suppose, did Dr. Johnson, that nominal Benedick and widower but

virtual bachelor, when for a space he resided here. So, too, did that

undoubted bachelor and rare good soul, Charles Lamb. And hundreds more,

of sterling spirits, Brethren of the Order of Celibacy, from time to

time have dined, and slept, and tabernacled here. Indeed, the place is

all a honeycomb of offices and domicils. Like any cheese, it is quite

perforated through and through in all directions with the snug cells of

bachelors. Dear, delightful spot! Ah! when I bethink me of the sweet

hours there passed, enjoying such genial hospitalities beneath those

time-honoured roofs, my heart only finds due utterance through poetry;

and, with a sigh, I softly sing, ‘Carry me back to old Virginny!’

Such then, at large, is the Paradise of Bachelors. And such I found it

one pleasant afternoon in the smiling month of May, when, sallying from

my hotel in Trafalgar Square, I went to keep my dinner appointment with

that fine Barrister, Bachelor, and Bencher, R. F. C. (he _is_ the first

and second, and _should_ be the third; I hereby nominate him), whose

card I kept fast pinched between my gloved forefinger and thumb, and

every now and then snatched still another look at the pleasant address

inscribed beneath the name, ‘No. --, Elm Court, Temple.’

At the core he was a right bluff, care-free, right comfortable, and most

companionable Englishman. If on a first acquaintance he seemed reserved,

quite icy in his air--patience; this champagne will thaw. And if it

never do, better frozen champagne than liquid vinegar.

There were nine gentlemen, all bachelors, at the dinner. One was from

‘No. --, King’s Bench Walk, Temple’; a second, third, and fourth, and

fifth, from various courts or passages christened with some similarly

rich resounding syllables. It was indeed a sort of Senate of the

Bachelors, sent to this dinner from widely-scattered districts, to

represent the general celibacy of the Temple. Nay it was, by

representation, a Grand Parliament of the best Bachelors in universal

London; several of those present being from distant quarters of the

town, noted immemorial seats of lawyers and unmarried men--Lincoln’s

Inn, Furnival’s Inn; and one gentleman, upon whom I looked with a sort

of collateral awe, hailed from the spot where Lord Verulam once abode a

bachelor--Gray’s Inn.

The apartment was well up toward heaven. I know not how many strange old

stairs I climbed to get to it. But a good dinner, with famous company,

should be well earned. No doubt our host had his dining-room so high

with a view to secure the prior exercise necessary to the due relishing

and digesting of it.

The furniture was wonderfully unpretending, old, and snug. No new

shining mahogany, sticky with undried varnish; no uncomfortably

luxurious ottomans, and sofas too fine to use, vexed you in this sedate

apartment. It is a thing which every sensible American should learn from

every sensible Englishman, that glare and glitter, gimcracks and

gewgaws, are not indispensable to domestic solacement. The American

Benedick snatches, down-town, a tough chop in a gilded show-box; the

English bachelor leisurely dines at home on that incomparable South Down

of his, off a plain deal board.

The ceiling of the room was low. Who wants to dine under the dome of St.

Peter’s? High ceilings! If that is your demand, and the higher the

better, and you be so very tall, then go dine out with the topping

giraffe in the open air.

In good time the nine gentlemen sat down to nine covers, and soon were

fairly under way.

If I remember right, ox-tail soup inaugurated the affair. Of a rich

russet hue, its agreeable flavour dissipated my first confounding of its

main ingredient with teamsters’ gads and the raw-hides of ushers. (By

way of interlude, we here drank a little claret.) Neptune’s was the next

tribute rendered--turbot coming second; snow-white, flaky, and just

gelatinous enough, not too turtleish in its unctuousness.

(At this point we refreshed ourselves with a glass of sherry.) After

these light skirmishers had vanished, the heavy artillery of the feast

marched in, led by that well-known English generalissimo, roast beef.

For aides-de-camp we had a saddle of mutton, a fat turkey, a

chicken-pie, and endless other savoury things; while for

_avant-couriers_ came nine silver flagons of humming ale. This heavy

ordnance having departed on the track of the light skirmishers, a picked

brigade of game-fowl encamped upon the board, their camp-fires lit by

the ruddiest of decanters.

Tarts and puddings followed, with innumerable niceties; then cheese and

crackers. (By way of ceremony, simply, only to keep up good old

fashions, we here each drank a glass of good old port.)

The cloth was now removed; and like Blucher’s army coming in at the

death on the field of Waterloo, in marched a fresh detachment of

bottles, dusty with their hurried march.

All these manœuvrings of the forces were superintended by a surprising

old field-marshal (I cannot school myself to call him by the inglorious

name of waiter), with snowy hair and napkin, and a head like Socrates.

Amidst all the hilarity of the feast, intent on important business, he

disdained to smile. Venerable man!

I have above endeavoured to give some slight schedule of the general

plan of operations. But anyone knows that a good genial dinner is a sort

of pell-mell, indiscriminate affair, quite baffling to detail in all

particulars. Thus, I spoke of taking a glass of claret, and a glass of

sherry, and a glass of port, and a mug of ale--all at certain specific

periods and times. But those were merely the state bumpers, so to speak.

Innumerable impromptu glasses were drained between the periods of those

grand imposing ones.

The nine bachelors seemed to have the most tender concern for each

other’s health. All the time, in flowing wine, they most earnestly

expressed their sincerest wishes for the entire well-being and lasting

hygiene of the gentlemen on the right and on the left. I noticed that

when one of these kind bachelors desired a little more wine (just for

his stomach’s sake, like Timothy), he would not help himself to it

unless some other bachelor would join him. It seemed held something

indelicate, selfish, and unfraternal, to be seen taking a lonely,

unparticipated glass. Meantime, as the wine ran apace, the spirits of

the company grew more and more to perfect genialness and unconstraint.

They related all sorts of pleasant stories. Choice experiences in their

private lives were now brought out, like choice brands of Moselle or

Rhenish, only kept for particular company. One told us how mellowly he

lived when a student at Oxford; with various spicy anecdotes of most

frank-hearted noble lords, his liberal companions. Another bachelor, a

gray-headed man, with a sunny face, who, by his own account, embraced

every opportunity of leisure to cross over into the Low Countries, on

sudden tours of inspection of the fine old Flemish architecture

there--this learned, white-haired, sunny-faced old bachelor excelled in

his descriptions of the elaborate splendours of those old guild-halls,

town-halls, and stadthold-houses to be seen in the land of the ancient

Flemings. A third was a great frequenter of the British Museum, and knew

all about scores of wonderful antiquities, of Oriental manuscripts, and

costly books without a duplicate. A fourth had lately returned from a

trip to Old Granada, and, of course, was full of Saracenic scenery. A

fifth had a funny case in law to tell. A sixth was erudite in wines. A

seventh had a strange characteristic anecdote of the private life of the

Iron Duke, never printed, and never before announced in any public or

private company. An eighth had lately been amusing his evenings, now and

then, with translating a comic poem of Pulci’s. He quoted for us the

more amusing passages.

And so the evening slipped along, the hours told, not by a water-clock,

like King Alfred’s, but a wine-chronometer. Meantime the table seemed a

sort of Epsom Heath; a regular ring, where the decanters galloped round.

For fear one decanter should not with sufficient speed reach his

destination, another was sent express after him to hurry him; and then a

third to hurry the second; and so on with a fourth and fifth. And

throughout all this nothing loud, nothing unmannerly, nothing turbulent.

I am quite sure, from the scrupulous gravity and austerity of his air,

that had Socrates, the field-marshal, perceived aught of indecorum in

the company he served, he would have forthwith departed without giving

warning. I afterward learned that, during the repast, an invalid

bachelor in an adjoining chamber enjoyed his first sound refreshing

slumber in three long, weary weeks.

It was the very perfection of quiet absorption of good living, good

drinking, good feeling, and good talk. We were a band of brothers.

Comfort--fraternal, household comfort, was the grand trait of the

affair. Also, you could plainly see that these easy-hearted men had no

wives or children to give an anxious thought. Almost all of them were

travellers, too; for bachelors alone can travel freely, and without any

twinges of their consciences touching desertion of the fireside.

The thing called pain, the bugbear styled trouble--those two legends

seemed preposterous to their bachelor imaginations. How could men of

liberal sense, ripe scholarship in the world, and capacious

philosophical and convivial understandings--how could they suffer

themselves to be imposed upon by such monkish fables? Pain! Trouble! As

well talk of Catholic miracles. No such thing.--Pass the sherry,

sir.--Pooh, pooh! Can’t be!--The port, sir, if you please. Nonsense;

don’t tell me so.--The decanter stops with you, sir, I believe.

And so it went.

Not long after the cloth was drawn our host glanced significantly upon

Socrates, who, solemnly stepping to a stand, returned with an immense

convolved horn, a regular Jericho horn, mounted with polished silver,

and otherwise chased and curiously enriched; not omitting two lifelike

goats’ heads, with four more horns of solid silver, projecting from

opposite sides of the mouth of the noble main horn.

Not having heard that our host was a performer on the bugle, I was

surprised to see him lift this horn from the table, as if he were about

to blow an inspiring blast. But I was relieved from this, and set quite

right as touching the purposes of the horn, by his now inserting his

thumb and forefinger into its mouth; whereupon a slight aroma was

stirred up, and my nostrils were greeted with the smell of some choice

Rappee. It was a mull of snuff. It went the rounds. Capital idea this,

thought I, of taking snuff about this juncture. This goodly fashion must

be introduced among my countrymen at home, further ruminated I.

The remarkable decorum of the nine bachelors--a decorum not to be

affected by any quantity of wine--a decorum unassailable by any degree

of mirthfulness--this was again set in a forcible light to me, by now

observing that, though they took snuff very freely, yet not a man so far

violated the proprieties, or so far molested the invalid bachelor in the

adjoining room, as to indulge himself in a sneeze. The snuff was snuffed

silently, as if it had been some fine innoxious powder brushed off the

wings of butterflies.

But fine though they be, bachelors’ dinners, like bachelors’ lives,

cannot endure forever. The time came for breaking up. One by one the

bachelors took their hats, and two by two and arm-in-arm they descended,

still conversing, to the flagging of the court; some going to their

neighbouring chambers to turn over the _Decameron_ ere retiring for the

night; some to smoke a cigar, promenading in the garden on the cool

river-side; some to make for the street, call a hack, and be driven

snugly to their distant lodgings.

I was the last lingerer.

‘Well,’ said my smiling host, ‘what do you think of the Temple here, and

the sort of life we bachelors make out to live in it?’

‘Sir,’ said I, with a burst of admiring candour--‘Sir, this is the very

Paradise of Bachelors!’

II. THE TARTARUS OF MAIDS

It lies not far from Woedolor Mountain in New England. Turning to the

east, right out from among bright farms and sunny meadows, nodding in

early June with odorous grasses, you enter ascendingly among bleak

hills. These gradually close in upon a dusky pass, which, from the

violent Gulf Stream of air unceasingly driving between its cloven walls

of haggard rock, as well as from the tradition of a crazy spinster’s hut

having long ago stood somewhere hereabouts, is called the Mad Maid’s

Bellows’-pipe.

Winding along at the bottom of the gorge is a dangerously narrow

wheel-road, occupying the bed of a former torrent. Following this road

to its highest point, you stand as within a Dantean gateway. From the

steepness of the walls here, their strangely ebon hue, and the sudden

contraction of the gorge, this particular point is called the Black

Notch. The ravine now expandingly descends into a great, purple,

hopper-shaped hollow, far sunk among many Plutonian, shaggy-wooded

mountains. By the country people this hollow is called the Devil’s

Dungeon. Sounds of torrents fall on all sides upon the ear. These rapid

waters unite at last in one turbid brick-coloured stream, boiling

through a flume among enormous boulders. They call this strange-coloured

torrent Blood River. Gaining a dark precipice it wheels suddenly to the

west, and makes one maniac spring of sixty feet into the arms of a

stunted wood of gray-haired pines, between which it thence eddies on its

further way down to the invisible lowlands.

Conspicuously crowning a rocky bluff high to one side, at the cataract’s

verge, is the ruin of an old saw-mill, built in those primitive times

when vast pines and hemlocks superabounded throughout the neighbouring

region. The black-mossed bulk of those immense, rough-hewn, and

spike-knotted logs, here and there tumbled all together, in long

abandonment and decay, or left in solitary, perilous projection over the

cataract’s gloomy brink, impart to this rude wooden ruin not only much

of the aspect of one of rough-quarried stone, but also a sort of feudal,

Rhineland and Thurmberg look, derived from the pinnacled wildness of the

neighbouring scenery.

Not far from the bottom of the Dungeon stands a large whitewashed

building, relieved, like some great whited sepulchre, against the sullen

background of mountain-side firs, and other hardy evergreens,

inaccessibly rising in grim terraces for some two thousand feet.

The building is a paper-mill.

Having embarked on a large scale in the seedsman’s business (so

extensively and broadcast, indeed, that at length my seeds were

distributed through all the Eastern and Northern States, and even fell

into the far soil of Missouri and the Carolinas), the demand for paper

at my place became so great, that the expenditure soon amounted to a

most important item in the general account. It need hardly be hinted how

paper comes into use with seedsmen, as envelopes. These are mostly made

of yellowish paper, folded square; and when filled, are all but flat,

and being stamped, and superscribed with the nature of the seeds

contained, assume not a little the appearance of business letters ready

for the mail. Of these small envelopes I used an incredible

quantity--several hundreds of thousands in a year. For a time I had

purchased my paper from the wholesale dealers in a neighbouring town.

For economy’s sake, and partly for the adventure of the trip, I now

resolved to cross the mountains, some sixty miles, and order my future

paper at the Devil’s Dungeon paper-mill.

The sleighing being uncommonly fine toward the end of January, and

promising to hold so for no small period, in spite of the bitter cold I

started one gray Friday noon in my pung, well fitted with buffalo and

wolf robes; and, spending one night on the road, next noon came in sight

of Woedolor Mountain.

The far summit fairly smoked with frost; white vapours curled up from

its white-wooded top, as from a chimney. The intense congelation made

the whole country look like one petrifaction. The steel shoes of my pung

craunched and gritted over the vitreous, chippy snow, as if it had been

broken glass. The forests here and there skirting the route, feeling the

same all-stiffening influence, their inmost fibres penetrated with the

cold, strangely groaned--not in the swaying branches merely, but

likewise in the vertical trunk--as the fitful gusts remorselessly swept

through them. Brittle with excessive frost, many colossal tough-grained

maples, snapped in twain like pipe-stems, cumbered the unfeeling earth.

Flaked all over with frozen sweat, white as a milky ram, his nostrils at

each breath sending forth two horn-shaped shoots of heated respiration,

Black, my good horse, but six years old, started at a sudden turn,

where, right across the track--not ten minutes fallen--an old distorted

hemlock lay, darkly undulatory as an anaconda.

Gaining the Bellows’-pipe, the violent blast, dead from behind, all but

shoved my high-backed pung uphill. The gust shrieked through the

shivered pass, as if laden with lost spirits bound to the unhappy world.

Ere gaining the summit, Black, my horse, as if exasperated by the

cutting wind, slung out with his strong hind-legs, tore the light pung

straight uphill, and sweeping grazingly through the narrow notch, sped

downward madly past the ruined saw-mill. Into the Devil’s Dungeon horse

and cataract rushed together.

With might and main, quitting my seat and robes, and standing backward,

with one foot braced against the dash-board, I rasped and churned the

bit, and stopped him just in time to avoid collision, at a turn, with

the bleak nozzle of a rock, couchant like a lion in the way--a roadside

rock.

At first I could not discover the paper-mill.

The whole hollow gleamed with the white, except, here and there, where a

pinnacle of granite showed one wind-swept angle bare. The mountains

stood pinned in shrouds--a pass of Alpine corpses. Where stands the

mill? Suddenly a whirling, humming sound broke upon my ear. I looked,

and there, like an arrested avalanche, lay the large whitewashed

factory. It was subordinately surrounded by a cluster of other and

smaller buildings, some of which, from their cheap, blank air, great

length, gregarious windows, and comfortless expression, no doubt were

boarding-houses of the operatives. A snow-white hamlet amidst the snows.

Various rude, irregular squares and courts resulted from the somewhat

picturesque clusterings of these buildings, owing to the broken, rocky

nature of the ground, which forbade all method in their relative

arrangement. Several narrow lanes and alleys, too, partly blocked with

snow fallen from the roof, cut up the hamlet in all directions.

When, turning from the travelled highway, jingling with bells of

numerous farmers--who, availing themselves of the fine sleighing, were

dragging their wood to market--and frequently diversified with swift

cutters dashing from inn to inn of the scattered villages--when, I say,

turning from that bustling main-road, I by degrees wound into the Mad

Maid’s Bellows’-pipe, and saw the grim Black Notch beyond, then

something latent, as well as something obvious in the time and scene,

strangely brought back to my mind my first sight of dark and grimy

Temple Bar. And when Black, my horse, went darting through the Notch,

perilously grazing its rocky wall, I remembered being in a runaway

London omnibus, which in much the same sort of style, though by no means

at an equal rate, dashed through the ancient arch of Wren. Though the

two objects did by no means completely correspond, yet this partial

inadequacy but served to tinge the similitude not less with the

vividness than the disorder of a dream. So that, when upon reining up at

the protruding rock I at last caught sight of the quaint groupings of

the factory-buildings, and with the travelled highway and the Notch

behind, found myself all alone, silently and privily stealing through

deep-cloven passages into this sequestered spot, and saw the long,

high-gabled main factory edifice, with a rude tower--for hoisting heavy

boxes--at one end, standing among its crowded outbuildings and

boarding-houses, as the Temple Church amidst the surrounding offices and

dormitories, and when the marvellous retirement of this mysterious

mountain nook fastened its whole spell upon me, then, what memory

lacked, all tributary imagination furnished, and I said to myself, ‘This

is the very counterpart of the Paradise of Bachelors, but snowed upon,

and frost-painted to a sepulchre.’

Dismounting, and warily picking my way down the dangerous

declivity--horse and man both sliding now and then upon the icy

ledges--at length I drove, or the blast drove me, into the largest

square, before one side of the main edifice. Piercingly and shrilly the

shotted blast blew by the corner; and redly and demoniacally boiled

Blood River at one side. A long wood-pile, of many scores of cords, all

glittering in mail of crusted ice, stood crosswise in the square. A row

of horse-posts, their north sides plastered with adhesive snow, flanked

the factory wall. The bleak frost packed and paved the square as with

some ringing metal.

The inverted similitude recurred--‘The sweet, tranquil Temple garden,

with the Thames bordering its green beds,’ strangely meditated I.

But where are the gay bachelors?

Then, as I and my horse stood shivering in the wind-spray, a girl ran

from a neighbouring dormitory door, and throwing her thin apron over her

bare head, made for the opposite building.

‘One moment, my girl; is there no shed hereabouts which I may drive

into?’

Pausing, she turned upon me a face pale with work, and blue with cold;

an eye supernatural with unrelated misery.

‘Nay,’ faltered I, ‘I mistook you. Go on; I want nothing.’

Leading my horse close to the door from which she had come, I knocked.

Another pale, blue girl appeared, shivering in the doorway as, to

prevent the blast, she jealously held the door ajar.

‘Nay, I mistake again. In God’s name shut the door. But hold, is there

no man about?’

That moment a dark-complexioned, well-wrapped personage passed, making

for the factory door, and spying him coming, the girl rapidly closed the

other one.

‘Is there no horse-shed here, sir?’

‘Yonder, the wood-shed,’ he replied, and disappeared inside the factory.

With much ado I managed to wedge in horse and pung between the scattered

piles of wood all sawn and split. Then, blanketing my horse, and piling

my buffalo on the blanket’s top, and tucking in its edges well around

the breast-band and breeching, so that the wind might not strip him

bare, I tied him fast, and ran lamely for the factory door, stiff with

frost, and cumbered with my driver’s dreadnaught.

Immediately I found myself standing in a spacious place, intolerably

lighted by long rows of windows, focusing inward the snowy scene

without.

At rows of blank-looking counters sat rows of blank-looking girls, with

blank, white folders in their blank hands, all blankly folding blank

paper.

In one corner stood some huge frame of ponderous iron, with a vertical

thing like a piston periodically rising and falling upon a heavy wooden

block. Before it--its tame minister--stood a tall girl, feeding the iron

animal with half-quires of rose-hued note-paper, which, at every

downward dab of the piston-like machine, received in the corner the

impress of a wreath of roses. I looked from the rosy paper to the pallid

cheek, but said nothing.

Seated before a long apparatus, strung with long, slender strings like

any harp, another girl was feeding it with foolscap sheets, which, so

soon as they curiously travelled from her on the cords, were withdrawn

at the opposite end of the machine by a second girl. They came to the

first girl blank; they went to the second girl ruled.

I looked upon the first girl’s brow, and saw it was young and fair; I

looked upon the second girl’s brow, and saw it was ruled and wrinkled.

Then, as I still looked, the two--for some small variety to the

monotony--changed places; and where had stood the young, fair brow, now

stood the ruled and wrinkled one.

Perched high upon a narrow platform, and still higher upon a high stool

crowning it, sat another figure serving some other iron animal; while

below the platform sat her mate in some sort of reciprocal attendance.

Not a syllable was breathed. Nothing was heard but the low, steady,

overruling hum of the iron animals. The human voice was banished from

the spot. Machinery--that vaunted slave of humanity--here stood menially

served by human beings, who served mutely and cringingly as the slave

serves the Sultan. The girls did not so much seem accessory wheels to

the general machinery as mere cogs to the wheels.

All this scene around me was instantaneously taken in at one sweeping

glance--even before I had proceeded to unwind the heavy fur tippet from

around my neck. But as soon as this fell from me the dark-complexioned

man, standing close by, raised a sudden cry, and seizing my arm, dragged

me out into the open air, and without pausing for a word instantly

caught up some congealed snow and began rubbing both my cheeks.

‘Two white spots like the whites of your eyes,’ he said; ‘man, your

cheeks are frozen.’

‘That may well be,’ muttered I; ‘’tis some wonder the frost of the

Devil’s Dungeon strikes in no deeper. Rub away.’

Soon a horrible, tearing pain caught at my reviving cheeks. Two gaunt

blood-hounds, one on each side, seemed mumbling them. I seemed Actaeon.

Presently, when all was over, I re-entered the factory, made known my

business, concluded it satisfactorily, and then begged to be conducted

throughout the place to view it.

‘Cupid is the boy for that,’ said the dark-complexioned man. ‘Cupid!’

and by this odd fancy-name calling a dimpled, red-cheeked,

spirited-looking, forward little fellow, who was rather impudently, I

thought, gliding about among the passive-looking girls--like a gold-fish

through hueless waves--yet doing nothing in particular that I could see,

the man bade him lead the stranger through the edifice.

‘Come first and see the water-wheel,’ said this lively lad, with the air

of boyishly-brisk importance.

Quitting the folding-room, we crossed some damp, cold boards, and stood

beneath a great wet shed, incessantly showering with foam, like the

green barnacled bow of some East Indiaman in a gale. Round and round

here went the enormous revolutions of the dark colossal water-wheel,

grim with its one immutable purpose.

‘This sets our whole machinery a-going, sir; in every part of all these

buildings; where the girls work and all.’

I looked, and saw that the turbid waters of Blood River had not changed

their hue by coming under the use of man.

‘You make only blank paper; no printing of any sort, I suppose? All

blank paper, don’t you?’

‘Certainly; what else should a paper-factory make?’

The lad here looked at me as if suspicious of my common-sense.

‘Oh, to be sure!’ said I, confused and stammering; ‘it only struck me as

so strange that red waters should turn out pale chee--paper, I mean.’

He took me up a wet and rickety stair to a great light room, furnished

with no visible thing but rude, manger-like receptacles running all

round its sides; and up to these mangers, like so many mares haltered to

the rack, stood rows of girls. Before each was vertically thrust up a

long, glittering scythe, immovably fixed at bottom to the manger-edge.

The curve of the scythe, and its having no snath to it, made it look

exactly like a sword. To and fro, across the sharp edge, the girls

forever dragged long strips of rags, washed white, picked from baskets

at one side; thus ripping asunder every seam, and converting the tatters

almost into lint. The air swam with the fine, poisonous particles, which

from all sides darted, subtilely, as motes in sunbeams, into the lungs.

‘This is the rag-room,’ coughed the boy.

‘You find it rather stifling here,’ coughed I, in answer; ‘but the girls

don’t cough.’

‘Oh, they are used to it.’

‘Where do you get such hosts of rags?’ picking up a handful from a

basket.

‘Some from the country round about; some from far over sea--Leghorn and

London.’

‘’Tis not unlikely, then,’ murmured I, ‘that among these heaps of rags

there may be some old shirts, gathered from the dormitories of the

Paradise of Bachelors. But the buttons are all dropped off. Pray, my

lad, do you ever find any bachelor’s buttons hereabouts?’

‘None grow in this part of the country. The Devil’s Dungeon is no place

for flowers.’

‘Oh! you mean the _flowers_ so called--the Bachelor’s Buttons?’

‘And was not that what you asked about? Or did you mean the gold

bosom-buttons of our boss, Old Bach, as our whispering girls all call

him?’

‘The man, then, I saw below is a bachelor, is he?’

‘Oh yes, he’s a Bach.’

‘The edges of those swords, they are turned outward from the girls, if I

see right; but their rags and fingers fly so, I cannot distinctly see.’

‘Turned outward.’

Yes, murmured I to myself; I see it now; turned outward; and each

erected sword is so borne, edge outward, before each girl. If my reading

fails me not, just so, of old, condemned state-prisoners went from the

hall of judgment to their doom: an officer before, bearing a sword, its

edge turned outward, in significance of their fatal sentence. So,

through consumptive pallors of this blank, raggy life, go these white

girls to death.

‘Those scythes look very sharp,’ again turning toward the boy.

‘Yes; they have to keep them so. Look!’

That moment two of the girls, dropping their rags, plied each a

whetstone up and down the sword-blade. My unaccustomed blood curdled at

the sharp shriek of the tormented steel.

Their own executioners; themselves whetting the very swords that slay

them, meditated I.

‘What makes those girls so sheet-white, my lad?’

‘Why’--with a roguish twinkle, pure ignorant drollery, not-knowing

heartlessness--‘I suppose the handling of such white bits of sheets all

the time makes them so sheety.’

‘Let us leave the rag-room now, my lad.’

More tragical and more inscrutably mysterious than any mystic sight,

human or machine, throughout the factory, was the strange innocence of

cruel-heartedness in this usage-hardened boy.

‘And now,’ said he, cheerily, ‘I suppose you want to see our great

machine, which cost us twelve thousand dollars only last autumn. That’s

the machine that makes the paper, too. This way, sir.’

Following him, I crossed a large, bespattered place, with two great

round vats in it, full of a white, wet, woolly-looking stuff, not unlike

the albuminous part of an egg, soft-boiled.

‘There,’ said Cupid, tapping the vats carelessly, ‘these are the first

beginnings of the paper; this white pulp you see. Look how it swims

bubbling round and round, moved by the paddle here. From hence it pours

from both vats into that one common channel yonder; and so goes, mixed

up and leisurely, to the great machine. And now for that.’

He led me into a room, stifling with a strange, blood-like, abdominal

heat, as if here, true enough, were being finally developed the

germinous particles lately seen.

Before me, rolled out like some long Eastern manuscript, lay stretched

one continuous length of iron framework--multitudinous and mystical,

with all sorts of rollers, wheels, and cylinders, in slowly-measured and

unceasing motion.

‘Here first comes the pulp now,’ said Cupid, pointing to the nighest end

of the machine. ‘See; first it pours out and spreads itself upon this

wide, sloping board; and then--look--slides, thin and quivering, beneath

the first roller there. Follow on now, and see it as it slides from

under that to the next cylinder. There; see how it has become just a

very little less pulpy now. One step more, and it grows still more to

some slight consistence. Still another cylinder, and it is so

knitted--though as yet mere dragon-fly wing--that it forms an air-bridge

here, like a suspended cobweb, between two more separated rollers; and

flowing over the last one, and under again, and doubling about there out

of sight for a minute among all those mixed cylinders you indistinctly

see, it reappears here, looking now at last a little less like pulp and

more like paper, but still quite delicate and defective yet awhile.

But--a little further onward, sir, if you please--here now, at this

further point, it puts on something of a real look, as if it might turn

out to be something you might possibly handle in the end. But it’s not

yet done, sir. Good way to travel yet, and plenty more of cylinders must

roll it.’

‘Bless my soul!’ said I, amazed at the elongation, interminable

convolutions, and deliberate slowness of the machine; ‘it must take a

long time for the pulp to pass from end to end, and come out paper.’

‘Oh! not so long,’ smiled the precocious lad, with a superior and

patronising air; ‘only nine minutes. But look; you may try it for

yourself. Have you a bit of paper? Ah! here’s a bit on the floor. Now

mark that with any word you please, and let me dab it on here, and we’ll

see how long before it comes out at the other end.’

‘Well, let me see,’ said I, taking out my pencil; ‘come, I’ll mark it

with your name.’

Bidding me take out my watch, Cupid adroitly dropped the inscribed slip

on an exposed part of the incipient mass.

Instantly my eye marked the second-hand on my dial-plate.

Slowly I followed the slip, inch by inch; sometimes pausing for full