JOHN KEATS.
ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.
MADELINE.
CHARLES DICKENS.
BOB SAWYER'S BACHELOR PARTY.
After supper another jug of punch was put on the table, together with a paper of cigars and a couple of bottles of spirits. Then there was an awful pause; and this awful pause was occasioned by a very common occurrence in this sort of places, but a very embarrassing one, notwithstanding.
The fact is that the girl was washing the glasses. The establishment boasted four; we do not record this circumstance as at all derogatory to Mrs. Raddle, for there was never a lodging-house yet that was not short of glasses. The landlady's glasses were little thin blown-glass tumblers, and those which had been borrowed from the public-house were great, dropsical, bloated articles, each supported on a huge gouty leg. This would have been in itself sufficient to have possessed the company with the real state of affairs; but the young woman of all work had prevented the possibility of any misconception arising in the mind of any gentleman upon the subject, by forcibly dragging every man's glass away long before he had finished his beer, and audibly stating, despite the winks and interruptions of Mr. Bob Sawyer, that it was to be conveyed down-stairs and washed forthwith....
The sight of the tumblers restored Bob Sawyer to a degree of equanimity which he had not possessed since his interview with his landlady. His face brightened up, and he began to feel quite convivial.
"Now, Betsy," said Mr. Bob Sawyer, with great suavity, and dispersing, at the same time, the tumultuous little mob of glasses that the girl had collected in the center of the table; "Now, Betsy, the warm water; be brisk, there's a good girl."
"You can't have no warm water," replied Betsy.
"No warm water!" exclaimed Mr. Bob Sawyer.
"No," said the girl, with a shake of the head which expressed a more decided negative than the most copious language could have conveyed. "Missis Raddle said you wasn't to have none."
The surprise depicted on the countenances of his guests imparted new courage to the host.
"Bring up the warm water instantly—instantly!" said Mr. Bob Sawyer, with desperate sternness.
"No; I can't," replied the girl. "Missis Raddle raked out the kitchen fire afore she went to bed, and locked up the kettle."
"O, never mind, never mind. Pray don't disturb yourself about such a trifle," said Mr. Pickwick, observing the conflict of Bob Sawyer's passions, as depicted on his countenance, "cold water will do very well."
"O, admirably," said Mr. Benjamin Allen.
"My landlady is subject to slight attacks of mental derangement," remarked Bob Sawyer, with a ghastly smile; "I fear I must give her warning."
"No, don't," said Ben Allen.
"I fear I must," said Bob, with heroic firmness. "I'll pay her what I owe her and give her warning to-morrow morning."
Poor fellow! How devoutly he wished he could!... It was at the end of the chorus to the first verse that Mr. Pickwick held up his hand in a listening attitude, and said, as soon as silence was restored, "Hush! I beg your pardon. I thought I heard somebody calling from up-stairs."
A profound silence immediately ensued, and Mr. Bob Sawyer was observed to turn pale.
"I think I hear it now," said Mr. Pickwick. "Have the goodness to open the door."
The door was no sooner opened than all doubt on the subject was removed.
"Mr. Sawyer—Mr. Sawyer," screamed a voice from the two-pair landing.
"It's my landlady," said Bob Sawyer, looking round him with great dismay. "Yes, Mrs. Raddle."
"What do you mean by this, Mr. Sawyer?" replied the voice, with great shrillness and rapidity of utterance. "'Aint it enough to be swindled out of one's rent, and money lent out of pocket besides, and abused and insulted by your friends that dares to call themselves men, without having the house turned out of window, and noise enough made to bring the fire-engines here at two o'clock in the morning? Turn them wretches away."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves," said the voice of Mr. Raddle, which appeared to proceed from beneath some distant bed-clothes.
"Ashamed of themselves!" said Mrs. Raddle. "Why don't you go down and knock 'em every one down-stairs? You would, if you was a man."
"I should if I was a dozen men, my dear," replied Mr. Raddle, pacifically; "but they've rather the advantage of me in numbers, my dear."
"Ugh, you coward!" replied Mrs. Raddle, with supreme contempt. "Do you mean to turn them wretches out, or not, Mr. Sawyer?"
"They're going, Mrs. Raddle, they're going," said the miserable Bob. "I'm afraid you'd better go," said Mr. Bob Sawyer to his friends. "I thought you were making too much noise."
"It's a very unfortunate thing," said the prim man. "Just as we were getting so comfortable, too." The fact was that the prim man was just beginning to have a dawning recollection of the story he had forgotten.
"It's hardly to be borne," said the prim man, looking round; "hardly to be borne, is it?"
"Not to be endured," replied Jack Hopkins; "let's have the other verse, Bob; come, here goes."
"No, no, Jack, don't," interposed Bob Sawyer; "it's a capital song, but I am afraid we had better not have the other verse. They are very violent people, the people of the house."
"Shall I step up-stairs and pitch into the landlord?" inquired Hopkins, "or keep on ringing the bell, or go and groan on the staircase? You may command me, Bob."
"I am very much indebted to you for your friendship and good-nature, Hopkins," said the wretched Mr. Bob Sawyer, "but I am of opinion that the best plan to avoid any farther dispute is for us to break up at once."
"Now, Mr. Sawyer," screamed the shrill voice of Mrs. Raddle, "are them brutes going?"
"They're only looking for their hats, Mrs. Raddle," said Bob; "they are going directly."
"Going!" said Mrs. Raddle, thrusting her night-cap over the bannisters, just as Mr. Pickwick, followed by Mr. Tupman, emerged from the sitting-room. "Going! What did they ever come for."
"My dear ma'am," remonstrated Mr. Pickwick, looking up.
"Get along with you, you old wretch!" replied Mrs. Raddle, hastily withdrawing her night-cap. "Old enough to be his grandfather, you villain! You're worse than any of 'em."
Mr. Pickwick found it in vain to protest his innocence, so hurried down-stairs into the street, whither he was closely followed by Mr. Tupman, Mr. Winkle, and Mr. Snodgrass.
WILLIAM MAKEPIECE THACKERAY.
BECKY GOES TO COURT AND DINES AT GAUNT HOUSE.
The particulars of Becky's costume were in the newspapers—feathers, lappets, superb diamonds, and all the rest. Lady Crackenbury read the paragraph in bitterness of spirit, and discoursed to her followers about the airs which that woman was giving herself. Mrs. Bute Crawley and her young ladies in the country had a copy of the Morning Post from town, and gave a vent to their honest indignation. "If you had been sandy-haired, green-eyed, and a French rope-dancer's daughter," Mrs. Bute said to her eldest girl (who, on the contrary, was a very swarthy, short, and snub-nosed young lady), "you might have had superb diamonds, forsooth, and have been presented at court by your cousin, the Lady Jane. But you're only a gentlewoman, my poor dear child. You have only some of the best blood in England in your veins, and good principles and piety for your portion. I myself, the wife of a baronet's younger brother, too, never thought of such a thing as going to court—nor would other people if good Queen Charlotte had been alive." In this way the worthy rectoress consoled herself; and her daughters sighed, and sat over the Peerage all night....
When the ladies of Gaunt House were at breakfast that morning Lord Steyne (who took his chocolate in private, and seldom disturbed the females of his household, or saw them except upon public days, or when they crossed each other in the hall, or when from his pit-box at the opera he surveyed them in their box in the grand tier)—his lordship, we say, appeared among the ladies and the children, who were assembled over the tea and toast, and a battle royal ensued apropos of Rebecca.
"My Lady Steyne," he said, "I want to see the list for your dinner on Friday; and I want you, if you please, to write a card for Colonel and Mrs. Crawley."
"Blanche writes them," Lady Steyne said, in a flutter. "Lady Gaunt writes them."
"I will not write to that person," Lady Gaunt said, a tall and stately lady, who looked up for an instant and then down again after she had spoken. It was not good to meet Lord Steyne's eyes for those who had offended him.
"Send the children out of the room. Go!" said he, pulling at the bell-rope. The urchins, always frightened before him, retired; their mother would have followed too. "Not you." he said. "You stop."
"My Lady Steyne," he said, "once more, will you have the goodness to go to the desk and write that card for your dinner on Friday?"
"My Lord, I will not be present at it," Lady Gaunt said; "I will go home."
"I wish you would, and stay there. You will find the bailiffs at Bare-acres very pleasant company; and I shall be freed from lending money to your relations, and from your own damned tragedy airs. Who are you, to give orders here? You have no money. You've got no brains. You were here to have children, and you have not had any. Gaunt's tired of you; and George's wife is the only person in the family who doesn't wish you were dead. Gaunt would marry again if you were."
"I wish I were," her ladyship answered, with tears and rage in her eyes.
"You, forsooth, must give yourself airs of virtue; while my wife, who is an immaculate saint, as every body knows, and never did wrong in her life, has no objection to meet my young friend, Mrs. Crawley. My Lady Steyne knows that appearances are sometimes against the best of women; that lies are often told about the most innocent of them. Pray, madam, shall I tell you some little anecdotes about my Lady Bareacres, your mamma?"
"You may strike me if you like, sir, or hit any cruel blow," Lady Gaunt said. To see his wife and daughter suffering always put his lordship into a good humor.
"My sweet Blanche," he said, "I am a gentleman, and never lay my hand upon a woman, save in the way of kindnesss. I only wish to correct little faults in your character. You women are too proud, and sadly lack humility, as Father Mole, I'm sure, would tell my Lady Steyne if he were here. You musn't give yourselves airs: you must be meek and humble, my blessings. For all Lady Steyne knows, this calumniated, simple, good-humored Mrs. Crawley is quite innocent—even more innocent than herself. Her husband's character is not good, but it is as good as Bareacres's, who has played a little and not payed a great deal, who cheated you out of the only legacy you ever had, and left you a pauper on my hands. And Mrs. Crawley is not very well born; but she is not worse than Fanny's illustrious ancestor, the first de la Jones."
"The money which I brought into the family, sir," Lady George cried out—
"You purchased a contingent reversion with it," the marquis said, darkly. "If Gaunt dies, your husband may come to his honors; your little boys may inherit them, and who knows what besides? In the meanwhile, ladies, be as proud and virtuous as you like abroad, but don't give me any airs. As for Mrs. Crawley's character, I sha'n't demean myself or that most spotless and perfectly irreproachable lady, by even hinting that it even requires a defense. You will be pleased to receive her with the utmost cordiality, as you will receive all persons whom I present in this house. This house?" He broke out with a laugh. "Who is the master of it, and what is it? This temple of virtue belongs to me. And if I invite all Newgate or all Bedlam here, by----they shall be welcome."
After this vigorous allocution, to one of which sort Lord Steyne treated his "Hareem" whenever symptoms of insubordination appeared in his household, the crestfallen women had nothing for it but to obey. Lady Gaunt wrote the invitation which his lordship required, and she and her mother-in-law drove in person, and with bitter and humiliated hearts, to leave the cards on Mrs. Rawdon, the reception of which caused that innocent woman so much pleasure.
GEORGE ELIOT.
PASSAGES FROM ADAM BEDE.
It was a wood of beeches and limes, with here and there a light, silver-stemmed birch—just the sort of wood most haunted by the nymphs; you see their white sun-lit limbs gleaming athwart the boughs or peeping from behind the smooth-sweeping outline of a tall lime; you hear their soft liquid laughter—but if you look with a too curious sacrilegious eye they vanish behind the silvery beeches, they make you believe that their voice was only a running brooklet, perhaps they metamorphose themselves into a tawny squirrel that scampers away and mocks you from the topmost bough. Not a grove with measured grass or rolled gravel for you to tread upon, but with narrow, hollow-shaped earthy paths, edged with faint dashes of delicate moss—paths which look as if they were made by the free will of the trees and underwood, moving reverently aside to look at the tall queen of the white-footed nymphs.
There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish; but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief—a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.... It is of little use for me to tell you that Hetty's cheek was like a rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that her large dark eyes hid a soft roguishness under their long lashes, and that her curly hair, though all pushed back under her round cap while she was at work, stole back in dark delicate rings on her forehead, and about her white shell-like ears; it is of little use for me to say how lovely was the contour of her pink-and-white neckerchief, tucked into her low plum-colored stuff bodice, or how the linen butter-making apron, with its bib, seemed a thing to be imitated in silk by duchesses, since it fell in such charming lines, or how her brown stockings and thick-soled buckled shoes lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have had when empty of her foot and ankle—of little use unless you have seen a woman who affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely woman, she would not in the least resemble that distracting kitten-like maiden. I might mention all the divine charms of a bright spring day, but if you had never in your life utterly forgotten yourself in straining your eyes after the mounting lark, or in wandering through the still lanes when the fresh-opened blossoms fill them with a sacred, silent beauty like that of fretted aisles, where would be the use of my descriptive catalogue? I could never make you know what I meant by a bright spring day. Hetty's was a spring-tide beauty; it was the beauty of young frisking things, round-limbed, gambolling, circumventing you by a false air of innocence—the innocence of a young star-browed calf, for example, that, being inclined for a promenade out of bounds, leads you a severe steeple-chase over hedge and ditch, and only comes to a stand in the middle of a bog.
Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion, and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the thoughts we despise; we see eyes—ah! so like our mother's—averted from us in cold alienation; and our last darling child startles us with the air and gestures of the sister we parted from in bitterness long years ago. The father to whom we owe our best heritage—the mechanical instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the modeling hand—galls us, and puts us to shame by his daily errors. The long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humors and irrational persistence.
It was to Adam the time that a man can least forget in after life—the time when he believes that the first woman he has ever loved betrays by a slight something—a word, a tone, a glance, the quivering of a lip or an eyelid—that she is at least beginning to love him in return.... So unless our early gladness vanishes utterly from our memory, we can never recall the joy with which we laid our heads on our mother's bosom or rode on our father's back in childhood; doubtless that joy is wrought up into our nature, or as the sunlight of long-past mornings is wrought up into the soft mellowness of the apricot; but it is gone forever from our imagination as we can only believe in the joy of childhood. But the first glad moment in our first love is a vision which returns to us to the last, and brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as the recurrent sensation of a sweet odor breathed in a far-off hour of happiness. It is a memory that gives a more exquisite touch to tenderness, that feeds the madness of jealousy, and adds the last keenness to the agony of despair.
THOMAS CARLYLE.
MIDNIGHT IN THE CITY.
"Ach, mein Lieber!" said he once, at midnight, when we had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of lamp-light, struggling up through smoke and thousand-fold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of night, what thinks Boötes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed-in and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like night-birds, are abroad: that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven! O, under that hideous coverlet of vapours and putrefactions and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are dying there, men are being born: men are praying,—on the other side of a brick partition men are cursing; and around them all is the vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw: in obscure cellars, Rouge-et-Noir languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard, hungry Villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and playing their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and fear, glides down to fly with him over the borders: the Thief, still more silently, sets-to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; but, in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and blood-shot eyes look out through the darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow: comes no hammering from the Rabenstein?—their gallows must even now be o' building. Upward of five hundred thousand two-legged animals without feathers lie round us in horizontal positions; their heads all in night-caps and full of the foolishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his rank dens of shame; and the Mother, with streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten.—All these heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry between them;—crammed in, like salted fish in their barrel;—or weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed Vipers, each struggling to get its head above the other: such work goes on under that smoke-counterpane!--But I, mein Werther, sit above it all; I am alone with the Stars."
GHOSTS.
[From the Same.]
Again, could any thing be more miraculous than an actual authentic Ghost? The English Johnson longed, all his life to see one; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look around him into that full tide of human Life he so loved; did he never so much as look into himself? The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress the threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air, and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact: we start out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years and æons. Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of beatified souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful and feeble and fearful; or uproar (poltern), and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead,—till the scent of the morning-air summons us to our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and Day? Where now is Alexander of Macedon: does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce battle-shouts, at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon too, and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it all other than the veriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made Night hideous, flitted away?—Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million walking the Earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once....
Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious Mankind thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality and are alive? On the hardest adamant some foot-print of us is stamped in; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But whence?—O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God.