McClure’s Magazine

July, 1893.

Vol. I. No. 2

Copyright, 1893, by S. S. McClure, Limited. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Illustrations

My first recollection of
Doctor Holmes is
seeing him standing
on a bench at
a college dinner
when I was a boy,
in the year 1836.
He was full of life
and fun, and was delivering—I do not
say reading—one of his little college
poems. He always writes them with joy,
and recites them—if that is the word—with
a spirit not to be described.
For he is a born orator, with what people
call a sympathetic voice, wholly
under his own command, and entirely
free from any of the tricks of elocution.
It seems to me that no one really
knows his poems to the very best, who
has not had the good fortune to hear
him read some of them.

But I had known all about him before
that. As little boys, we had by
heart, in those days, the song which
saved “Old Ironsides” from destruction.
That was the pet name of the
frigate “Constitution,” which was a pet
Boston ship, because she had been built
at a Boston shipyard, had been sailed
with Yankee crews, and, more than
once, had brought her prizes into Boston
Harbor.

We used to spout at school:

Ah me! There had been a Phi Beta
anniversary not long before, where
Holmes had delivered a poem. You
may read “Poetry, a Metrical Essay,”
in the volumes now. But you will look
in vain for the covert allusions to Julia
and Susan and Elizabeth and the rest,
which, to those who knew, meant the
choicest belles of our little company.
Have the queens of to-day any such
honors?

Nobody is more accessible than Doctor
Holmes. I doubt if any doorbell
in Boston is more rung than his. And
nowhere is the visitor made more
kindly at home. His own work-room
takes in all the width of a large house
in Beacon Street; a wide window commands
the sweep of the mouth of
Charles River; in summer the gulls are
hovering above it, in winter you may
see them chaffing together on bits of
floating ice, which is on its way to the
sea. Across that water, by stealthy
rowing, the boats of the English squadron
carried the men who were to die
100
at Concord the next day, at Concord
Bridge. Beyond is Bunker Hill Monument;
and just this side of the monument
Paul Revere crossed the same
river to say that that English army was
coming.

For me, I had to deliver on Emerson’s
ninetieth birthday an address
on my memories of him and his life.
Holmes used to meet him, from college
days down, in a thousand ways,
and has written a charming memoir of
his life. I went round there one day,
therefore, to ask some questions, which
might put my own memories of Emerson
in better light, and afterwards I
obtained his leave to make this sketch
of the talk of half an hour. When
we think of it here, if we ever fall to
talking about such things, every one
would say that Holmes is the best
talker we have or know. But when
you are with him, you do not think
whether he is or is not. You are under
the spell of his kindness and genius.
Still no minute passes in which you do
not say to yourself: “I hope I shall
remember those very words always.”

Thinking of it after I come home, I
am reminded of the flow and fun of the
Autocrat. But you never say so to
yourself when you are sitting in his
room.

I had arranged with my friend Mr.
Sample that he should carry his camera
to the house, and it was in gaps in
this very conversation that the picture
of both of us was taken. I told Doctor
101
Holmes how pleased I was at this
chance of going to posterity under his
escort.

I told him of the paper on Emerson
which I had in hand, and thanked him,
as well as I could, in a few words, for his
really marvellous study of Emerson in
the series of American authors. I said I
really wanted to bring him my paper
to read. What I was trying to do,
was to show that the great idealist was
always in touch
with his time, and
eager to know
what, at the moment,
were the
real facts of
American life.

I. I remember
where Emerson
stopped me on
State Street once,
to cross-question
me about some
details of Irish
emigration.

Holmes. Yes, he
was eager for all
practical information.
I used to
meet him very
often on Saturday
evenings at the
Saturday Club;
and I can see him
now, as he bent
forward eagerly
at the table, if
any one were
making an interesting
observation,
with his face like a hawk as he
took in what was said. You felt how
the hawk would be flying overhead and
looking down on your thought at the
next minute. I remember that I once
spoke of “the three great prefaces,”
and quick as light Emerson said,
“What are the three great prefaces?”
and I had to tell him.

I. I am sure I do not know what
they are. What are they?

Holmes. They are Calvin’s to his
“Institutes,” Thuanus’s to his history,
and Polybius’s to his.

I. And I have never read one of
them!

Holmes. And I had then never read
but one of them. It was a mere piece
of encyclopædia learning of mine.

I. What I shall try to do in my address
is to show that Emerson would
not have touched all sorts of people
as he did, but for this matter-of-fact
interest in his daily surroundings—if
he had not gone to town-meetings, for
instance. Was it you or Lowell who
called him the Yankee Plato?

Holmes. Not I.
It was probably
Lowell, in the
“Fable for Critics.”
I called him
“a wingèd Franklin,”
and I stand
by that. Matthew
Arnold quoted
that afterwards,
and I was glad I
had said it.

I. I do not
remember where
you said it. How
was it?

Doctor Holmes
at once rose, went
to the turning
book-stand, and
took down volume
three of his
own poems, and
read me with
great spirit the
passage. I do
not know how
I had forgotten
it.

Here he said, with great fun, “One
great good of writing poetry is to furnish
you with your own quotations.”
And afterwards, when I had made him
102
read to me some other verses from his
own poems, he said, “Oh, yes, as a
reservoir of the best quotations in the
language, there is nothing like a book
of your own poems.”

I said that there was no greater nonsense
than the talk of Emerson’s time,
that he introduced German philosophy
here, and I asked Holmes if he thought
that Emerson had borrowed anything
in the philosophical
line
from the German. He
agreed with
me that his
philosophy
was thoroughly
home-bred,
and
wrought out
in the experience
of his
own home-life.
He said
that he was
disposed to
believe that
that would be
true of Emerson
which he
knew was true
of himself.
He knew Emerson
went
over a great
many books,
but he did not
really believe
that he often
really read a
book through.
I remember
one of his
phrases was, that he thought that Emerson
“tasted books;” and he cited
a bright lady from Philadelphia, whom
he had met the day before, who had
said that she thought men of genius
did not rely much upon their reading,
and had complimented him by asking
if he did so. Holmes said:

“I told her—I had to tell her—that
in reading my mind is always active.
I do not follow the author steadily or
implicitly, but my thought runs off to
right and left. It runs off in every
direction, and I find I am not so much
taking his book as I am thinking my
own thoughts upon his subject.”

I. I want to thank you for your contrast
between Emerson and Carlyle:
“The hatred of unreality was uppermost
in Carlyle; the love of what is real and
genuine, with Emerson.” Is it not
perhaps possible that Carlyle would
not have been Carlyle but for Emerson?
Emerson
found him
discouraged,
and as he supposed
alone,
and at the very
beginning led
him out of
his darkest
places.

I think it
was on this
that Doctor
Holmes spoke
with a good
deal of feeling
about the
value of appreciation.
He was ready
to go back to
tell of the
pleasure he
had received
from persons
who had written
to him,
even though
he did not
know them,
to say of how
much use
some particular
line of his
had been. Among others he said that
Lothrop Motley had told him that,
when he was all worn out in his work
in a country where he had not many
friends, and among stupid old manuscript
archives, two lines of Holmes’s
braced him up and helped him through:

He was very funny about flattery.
“That is the trouble of having so many
103
friends, everybody flatters you. I do
not mean to let them hurt me if I can
help it, and flattery is not necessarily
untrue. But you have to be on your
guard when everybody is as kind to
you as everybody is to me.”

He said, in passing, that Emerson
once quoted two lines of his, and
quoted them horribly. They are from
the poem called “The Steamboat:”

Emerson quoted them thus:

I was curious to know about Doctor
Holmes’s experience of country life, he
knows all nature’s processes so well.
So he told me how it happened that
he went to Pittsfield. It seems that, a
century and a half ago, his ancestor,
Jacob Wendell, had a royal grant for
the whole township there, with some
small exception, perhaps. The place
was at first called Pontoosoc, then
Wendelltown, and only afterward got
the name of Pittsfield from William
Pitt. One part of the Wendell property
descended to Doctor Holmes’s
mother. When he had once seen it he
was struck with its beauty and fitness
104
for a country home, and asked her that
he might have it for his own. It was
there that he built a house in which he
lived for eight or nine years. He said
that the Housatonic winds backwards
and forwards through it, so that to go
from one end of his estate to the other
in a straight line required the crossing
it seven times. Here his children grew
up, and he and they were enlivened
anew every year by
long summer days
there.

He was most interesting
and animated
as he spoke
of the vigor of life
and work and poetical
composition
which come from
being in the open
air and living in the
country. He wrote,
at the request of
the neighborhood,
his poem of “The
Ploughman,” to be read at a cattle-show
in Pittsfield. “And when I came
to read it afterwards I said, ‘Here it
is! Here is open air life, here is what
breathing the mountain air and living
in the midst of nature does for a man!’
And I want to read you now a piece
of that poem, because it contained a
prophecy.” And while he was looking
for the verses, he said, in the vein of
the Autocrat, “Nobody knows but a
man’s self how many good things he
has done.”

So we found the first volume of the
poems, and there is “The Ploughman,”
written, observe, as early as 1849.

Now, in 1849, I, who remember, can
tell you, every-day people did not
much think that Faction was going to
unbind her bandogs and set the country
at war; and it was only a prophet-poet
who saw that there was a chance
that men might forge their ploughshares
into swords again. But you see
from the poem that Holmes was such
a prophet-poet, and now, forty-four
years after, it was a pleasure to hear
him read these lines.

I asked him of his reminiscences of
Emerson’s famous Phi Beta Kappa oration
at Cambridge, which he has described,
as so many others have, as the
era of independence in American literature.
We both talked of the day,
which we remembered, and of the Phi
Beta dinner which followed it, when
Mr. Everett presided, and bore touching
tribute to Charles Emerson, who
had just died. Holmes said: “You
cannot make the people of this generation
understand the effect of Everett’s
oratory. I have never felt the fascination
of speech as I did in hearing him.
Did it ever occur to you,—did I say to
you the other day,—that when a man
has such a voice as he had, our slight
nasal resonance is an advantage and
not a disadvantage?”

I was fresher than he from his own
book on Emerson, and remembered
105
that he had said there somewhat the
same thing. His words are: “It is
with delight that one who remembers
Everett in his robes of rhetorical
splendor; who recalls his full-blown,
high-colored, double-flowered periods;
the rich, resonant, grave, far-reaching
music of his speech, with just enough
of nasal vibration to give the vocal
sounding-board its proper value in the
harmonies of utterance,—it is with delight
that such a one recalls the glowing
words of Emerson whenever he
refers to Edward Everett. It is enough
if he himself caught enthusiasm from
those eloquent lips. But many a listener
has had his youthful enthusiasm
fired by that great master of academic
oratory.” I knew, when I read this,
that Holmes referred to himself as the
“youthful listener,” and was glad that
within twenty-four hours he should say
so to me.

So we fell to talking of his own Phi
Beta poem. A good Phi Beta poem is
an impossibility; but it is the business
of genius to work the miracles, and
Holmes’s is one of the few successful
Phi Beta poems in the dreary catalogue
of more than a century. The custom of
having “the poem,” as people used to
say, as if it were always the same, is
now almost abandoned.

Fortunately for us both, a tap was
heard at the door, and Mr. John Holmes
appeared, his brother. Mr. John
Holmes has not chosen to publish the
bright things which he has undoubtedly
written, but in all circles where he
favors people with his presence he is
known as one of the most agreeable of
men. Everybody is glad to set him on
the lines of reminiscences. The two
brothers, with great good humor, began
telling of a dinner party which Doctor
Holmes had given, within a few days,
to a number of gentlemen whose average
ages, according to them, exceeded
eighty. One has to make allowance
for the exaggeration of their fun, but
I think, from the facts which they
dropped, that the average must have
been maintained. One would have
given a good deal to be old enough to
106
be permitted to be at that dinner. This
led to talk of the Harvard class of 1829,
for whose meetings Holmes has written
so many of his charming poems.
He said that they are now to have a
dinner within a few days, and named the
gentlemen who were to be there. Among
them, of course, is Doctor Samuel F.
Smith, the author of “America.” I
noticed that Doctor Holmes always
called him “My country ’tis of thee,”
and so did all of us. And then these
two critics began analyzing that magnificent
song. “It will not do to laugh
at it. People show that they do not
know what they are talking about when
they speak lightly of it. Did you ever
think how much is gained by making
the first verse begin with the singular
number? Not our country, but ‘My
country,’ ‘I sing of thee’? There is not
an American citizen but can make it his
own, and does make it his own, as
he sings it. And it rises to a Psalm-like
grandeur at the end.” “It is a
magnificent hold to have upon fame to
have sixty million people sing the verses
that you have written.” John Holmes
said: “How good ‘templed hills’ is,
and that is not alone in the poem.”
Both John Holmes and I plead to be
permitted to come to the class dinner,
but Doctor Holmes was very funny. He
pooh-poohed us both; we were only
children, and we were not to be present
at so rare a solemnity. For me, I already
felt that I had been wicked in
wasting so much of his time. But he
has the gift of making you think that
you are the only person in the world,
and that he is only living for your
pleasure. Still I knew, as a matter of
107
fact, that this was not so, and very unwillingly
I took myself away.

As I walked home I meditated on
the fate of a first-rate book in our
time. Holmes had expressed unaffected
surprise that I spoke with the gratitude
which I felt about his “Life of
Emerson.” The book must have cost
him the hard work of a year. It is as
remarkable a study as one poet ever
made of another. Yet I think he said
to me that no one had seemed to
understand the care and effort which
he had given to it.

Here is the position in the United
States now about the criticism of such
work. At about the time that the
“North American Review” ceased to
review books, there came, as if by general
consent, an end to all elaborate
criticism of new books here.

I think myself that this is a thing
very much to be regretted. In old
times, whoever wrote a good book was
tolerably sure that at least one competent
person would study it and write
down what he thought about it; and,
from at least one point of view, an
author had a prospect of knowing
how his book struck other people.
Now we have nothing but the hasty
sketches, sometimes very good, which
are written for the daily or weekly
press.

So it happens that I, for one, have
never seen any fit recognition of the
gift which Doctor Holmes made to our
time and to the next generation when
he made his study of Emerson’s life
for the “American Men of Letters”
series. Apparently he had not. Just
think of it! Here is a poet, the head
of our “Academy,” so far as there is
any such Academy, who is willing to
devote a year of his life to telling you
and me what Emerson was, from his
own personal recollections of a near
friend, whom he met as often as once
a week, and talked with perhaps for
hours at a time, and with whom he
talked on literary and philosophical
subjects. More than this, this poet
has been willing to go through Emerson’s
books again, to re-read them as
he had originally read them when they
came out, and to make for you and me
a careful analysis of all these books.
He is one of five people in the country
who are competent to tell what
effect these books produced on the
country as they appeared from time to
time. And, being competent, he makes
the time to tell us this thing. That is
a sort of good fortune which, so far as
I remember, has happened to nobody
excepting Emerson. When John Milton
died, there was nobody left who
could have done such a thing; certainly
nobody did do it, or tried to do it.
I must say, I think it is rather hard
that when such a gift as that has been
given to the people of any country,
that people, while boasting of its seventy
millions of numbers, and its thousands
of billions of acres, should not
108
have one critical journal of which it
is the business to say at length, and
in detail, whether Doctor Holmes has
done his duty well by the prophet, or
whether, indeed, he has done it at
all.

When we left Doctor Holmes, he
and his household were looking forward
to the annual escape to Beverly.
Somebody once wrote him a letter
dated from “Manchester-by-the-Sea,”
and Holmes wrote his reply under
the date “Beverly-by-the-Depot.” And
here let me stop to tell one of those
jokes for which the English language
and Doctor Holmes were made. A
few years ago, in a fit of economy, our
famous Massachusetts Historical Society
screwed up its library and other
offices by some fifteen feet, built in the
space underneath, and rented it to the
city of Boston. This was all very well
for the treasurer; but for those of us
who had passed sixty years, and had
to climb up some twenty more iron
stairs whenever we wanted to look at
an old pamphlet in the library, it was
not so great a benefaction. When
Holmes went up, for the first time, to
see the new quarters of the Society, he
left his card with the words, “O. W.
Holmes. High-story-call Society.”
We understood then why the councils
of the Society had been over-ruled by
the powers which manage this world,
to take this flight towards heaven.

I ought to have given a hint above
of his connection and mine with the
society of “People who Think we are
Going to Know More about Some
Things By and By.” This society was
really formed by my mother, who for
some time, I think, was the only member.
But one day Doctor Holmes and
I met in the “Old Corner Bookstore,”
when the Corner had been moved to
the corner of Hamilton Place, and he
was telling me one of the extraordinary
109
coincidences which he collects with
such zeal. I ventured to trump his
story with another; and, in the language
of the ungodly, I thought I
went one better than he. This led to
a talk about coincidences, and I said
that my mother had long since said
that she meant to have a society of the
people who believed that sometime we
should know more about such curious
coincidences. Doctor Holmes was
delighted with the idea, and we “organized”
the society then and there; he
was to be president, I was to be secretary,
and my mother was to be treasurer.
There were to be no other members,
no entrance fees, no constitution, and
no assessments. We seldom meet now
that we do not authorize a meeting of
this society and challenge each other
to produce the remarkable coincidences
which have passed since we met before.

There is an awful story of his about
the last time a glove was thrown down
in an English court-room. It is a story
in which Holmes is all mixed up with
a marvellous series of impossibilities,
such as would make Mr. Clemens’s
hair grow gray, and add a new chapter
to his studies of telepathy. I will not
enter on it now, with the detail of the
book that fell from the ninth shelf of
a book-case, and opened at the exact
passage where the challenge story was
to be described. No, I will not tell
another word of it; for if I am started
upon it, it will take up the whole of
this number of Mr. McClure’s Magazine.
But sometime, when Mr. McClure
wants to make the whole magazine
thrill with excitement, he will write to
Doctor Holmes, and ask him for that
story of the “challenge of battle.”

As for the story of his hearing Doctor
Phinney at Rome, and the other
story of Mr. Emerson’s hearing Doctor
Phinney at Rome, I never tell that
excepting to confidential friends who
know that I cannot tell a lie. For if I
tell it to any one else, he looks at me
with a quizzical air, as much as to say,
“This is as bad as the story of the
‘Man Without a Country;’ and I do
not know how much to believe, and
how much to disbelieve.”

On the moorland
above the old
gray village of
Carbaix, in Finistére—Finistére,
the most
westerly province
of Brittany—stands
a
cottage, built,
as all the cottages
in that
country are,
of rough-hewn
stones. It is a
poor, rude place to-day, but it wore an
aspect far more rude and primitive a
hundred years ago—say on an August
day in the year 1793, when a man issued
from the doorway, and, shading his
eyes from the noonday sun, gazed long
and fixedly in the direction of a narrow
rift which a few score paces away
breaks the monotony of the upland
level. This man was tall and thin and
unkempt, his features expressing a mixture
of cunning and simplicity. He
gazed a while in silence, but at length
uttered a grunt of satisfaction as the
figure of a woman rose gradually into
sight. She came on slowly, in a stooping
posture, dragging behind her a
great load of straw, which completely
hid the little sledge on which it rested,
and which was attached to her waist by
a rope of twisted hay.

The figure of a woman—rather of a
girl. As she drew nearer it could be
seen that her cheeks, though brown and
sunburned, were as smooth as a child’s.
She looked scarcely eighteen. Her head
was bare, and her short petticoats, of
some coarse stuff, left visible bare feet
thrust into wooden shoes. She advanced
with her head bent and her
shoulders strained forward, her face
dull and patient. Once, and once only,
when the man’s eyes left her for a
moment, she shot at him a look of scared
apprehension; and later, when she came
abreast of him, her breath coming and
going with her exertions, he might have
seen, had he looked closely, that her
strong brown limbs were trembling
under her.

But the man noticed nothing in his
impatience, and only chid her for her
slowness. “Where have you been
dawdling, lazy-bones?” he cried.

She murmured, without halting, that
the sun was hot.

“Sun hot!” he retorted. “Jeanne
is lazy, I think! Mon Dieu, that I
should have married a wife who is tired
by noon! I had better have left you
to that never-do-well Pierre Bounat.
But I have news for you, my girl.”

He lounged after her as he spoke,
his low, cunning face—the face of the
worst kind of French peasant—flickering
with cruel pleasure, as he saw how
she started at his words. She made no
answer, however. Instead, she drew her
load with increased vehemence towards
one of the two doors which led into the
building. “Well, well, I will tell you
presently,” he called after her. “Be
quick and come to dinner.”

He entered himself by the other door.
The house was divided into two chambers
by a breast-high partition of wood.
The one room served for kitchen; the
other, now half full of straw, was barn
and granary, fowl-house and dove-cote,
in one. “Be quick!” he called to her.
Standing in the house-room, he could
see her head as she stooped to unload
the straw.

In a moment she came in, her shoes
clattering on the floor. The perspiration
stood in great beads on her forehead,
and showed how little she had
deserved his reproach. She sat down
silently, avoiding his eyes; but he
thought nothing of this. It was no
new thing. It pleased him, if anything.

“Well, my Jeanne,” he said, in his
gibing tone, “are you longing for my
news?”

The hand she stretched out towards
the pitcher of cider, which, with black
bread and onions, formed their meal,
shook, but she answered simply: “If
you please, Michel.”

“Well, the Girondins have been
beaten, my girl, and are flying all over
the country.
That is the
news. Master
Pierre is among
them, I do not
doubt, if he has
not been killed
already. I wish
he would come
this way.”

“Why?” she
asked, suddenly
looking up at
last, a flash of
light in her gray
eyes.

“Why?” he
repeated, grinning
across the
table at her,
“because he
would be worth
five crowns to
me. There is
five crowns, I
am told, on the
head of every
Girondin who
has been in
arms, my girl.”

The French
Revolution, it
will be understood,
was at
its height. The
more moderate and constitutional Republicans—the
Girondins, as they were
called—worsted in Paris by the Jacobins
and the mob, had lately tried to
raise the provinces against the capital,
and to this end had drawn together at
Caen, near the border of Brittany.
They had been defeated, however, and
the Jacobins, in this month of August,
were preparing to take a fearful vengeance
at once on them and the Royalists.
The Reign of Terror had begun.
Even to such a boor as this,
sitting over his black bread, the Revolution
had come home, and, in common
with many a thousand others, he wondered
what he could make of it.

The girl did not answer, even by the
look of contempt to which he had become
accustomed, and for which he
hated her; and he repeated, “Five
crowns! Ah, it is money, that is! Mon
Dieu!” Then,
with a sudden
exclamation, he
sprang up.
“What is that?”
he cried.

He had been
sitting with his
back to the
barn, but he
turned now so
as to face it.
Something had
startled him—a
rustling in the
straw behind
him. “What is
that?” he said
again, his hand
on the table, his
face lowering
and watchful.

The girl had
risen also; and,
as the last word
passed his lips,
sprang by him
with a low cry,
and aimed a
frantic blow
with her stool
at something
he could not
see.

“What is it?” he asked, recoiling.

“A rat!” she answered, breathless.
And she aimed another blow at it.

“Where?” he asked, fretfully.
“Where is it?” He snatched his stool,
too, and at that moment a rat darted
out of the straw, ran nimbly between
his legs, and plunged into a hole by
the door. He flung the wooden stool
after it; but, of course, in vain. “It
was a rat!” he said, as if before he
had doubted it.

“Thank God!” she muttered. She
was shaking all over.

He stared at her in stupid wonder.
What did she mean? What had come
to her? “Have you had a sunstroke,
my girl?” he said, suspiciously.

Her nut-brown face was a shade less
brown than usual, but she met his
eyes boldly, and said: “No,” adding
an explanation which for the moment
satisfied him. But he did not sit down
again. When she went out he went
out also. And though, as she retired
slowly to the rye fields and work, she
repeatedly looked back at him, it was
always to find his eyes upon her.
When this had happened half a dozen
times, a thought struck him. “How
now?” he muttered. “The rat ran
out of the straw!”

Nevertheless he still stood gazing
after her, with a cunning look upon his
features, until she disappeared over the
edge of the rift, and then he crept back
to the door of the barn, and
stole in out of the sunlight into
the cool darkness of the raftered
building, across which a dozen
rays of light were shooting,
laden with dancing motes. Inside
he stood stock still until
he had regained the use of his
eyes, and then he began to peer
round him. In a moment he
found what he sought. Half
upon, and half hidden by, the
straw, lay a young man, in the
deep sleep of utter exhaustion.
His face, which bore traces of
more than common beauty, was
now white and pinched; his
hair hung dank about his forehead.
His clothes were in rags;
and his feet, bound up in pieces
torn at random from his blouse,
were raw and bleeding. For a
short while Michel Tellier bent
over him, remarking these
things with glistening eyes.
Then the peasant stole out
again. “It is five crowns!” he
muttered, blinking in the sunlight.
“Ha, ha! Five crowns!”

He looked round cautiously,
but could see no sign of
his wife; and after hesitating
and pondering a minute or two,
he took the path for Carbaix, his
native astuteness leading him to saunter
slowly along in his ordinary fashion.
After that the moorland about
the cottage lay seemingly deserted.
Thrice, at intervals, the girl dragged
home her load of straw, but each time
she seemed to linger in the barn no
longer than was necessary. Michel’s
absence, though it was unlooked-for,
raised no suspicion in her breast, for
he would frequently go down to the
village to spend the afternoon. The
sun sank lower, and the shadow of the
great monolith, which, standing on the
highest point of the moor, about a mile
away, rose gaunt and black against a
roseate sky, grew longer and longer;
and then, as twilight fell, the two coming
home met a few paces from the
cottage. He asked some questions
about the work she had been doing,
and she answered briefly. Then, silent
and uncommunicative, they went in together.
113
The girl set the bread and
cider on the table, and going to the
great black pot which had been simmering
all day upon the fire, poured
some broth into two pitchers. It did
not escape Michel’s frugal eye that
there was still a little broth left in the
bottom of the pot, and this induced a
new feeling in him—anger. When his
wife hailed him by a sign to the meal,
he went instead to the door, and fastened
it. Thence he went to the corner
and picked up the wood-chopper, and
armed with this came back to his seat.

The girl watched his movements first
with surprise, and then with secret terror.
The twilight was come, and the
cottage was almost dark, and she was
alone with him; or, if not alone, yet
with no one near who could help her.
Yet she met his grin of triumph bravely.
“What is this?” she said. “Why do
you want that?”

“For the rat,” he answered grimly,
his eyes on hers.

“Why not use your stool?” she strove
to murmur, her heart sinking.

“Not for this rat,” he answered. “It
might not do, my girl. Oh, I know
all about it,” he continued. “I have
been down to the village, and seen the
mayor, and he is coming up to fetch
him.” He nodded towards the partition,
and she knew that her secret was
known.

“It is Pierre,” she said, trembling
violently, and turning
first crimson and
then white.

“I know it, Jeanne.
It was excellent
of you! Excellent!
It is long since you
have done such a
day’s work.”

“You will not give
him up?”

“My faith, I
shall!” he answered,
affecting, and perhaps
really feeling,
wonder at her simplicity.
“He is five
crowns, girl! You
do not understand.
He is worth five
crowns, and the risk
nothing at all.”

If he had been
angry, or shown anything
of the fury of
the suspicious husband;
if he had been
about to do this out
of jealousy or revenge,
she would
have quailed before
him, though she had
done him no wrong, save the wrong
of mercy and pity. But his spirit was
too mean for the great passions; he
felt only the sordid ones, which to a
woman are the most hateful. And
instead of quailing, she looked at him
with flashing eyes. “I shall warn
him,” she said.

“It will not help him,” he answered,
sitting still, and feeling the edge of the
hatchet with his fingers.

“It will help him,” she retorted.
“He shall go. He shall escape before
they come.”

“I have locked the doors!”

“Give me the key!” she panted.
“Give me the key, I say!” She had
risen and was standing before him, her
figure drawn to its full height. He
rose hastily and retreated behind the
table, still retaining the hatchet in his
grasp.

“Stand back!” he said, sullenly.
“You may awaken him, if you please,
my girl. It will not avail him. Do
you not understand, fool, that he is
worth five crowns? And listen! It is
too late now. They are here!”

A blow fell on the door as he spoke,
and he stepped towards it. But at that
despair moved her, and she threw herself
upon him, and for a moment
wrestled with him. At last, with an
effort he flung her off, and, brandishing
his weapon in her face, kept her at
bay. “You vixen!” he cried, savagely,
retreating to the door, with a pale
cheek and his eyes still on her, for he
was an arrant coward. “You deserve
to go to prison with him, you jade! I
will have you in the stocks for this!”

She leaned against the wall where
she had fallen, her white, despairing
face seeming
almost to shine
in the darkness
of the wretched
room. Meanwhile
the continuous
murmur
of men’s
voices outside
could now be
heard, mingled
with the ring
of weapons;
and the summons
for admission
was
again and again
repeated, as if
those without
had no mind
to be kept
waiting.

“Patience! patience! I am opening!”
he cried. Still keeping his face
to her, he unlocked the door and called
on the men to enter. “He is in the
straw, M. le Mayor!” he cried in a
tone of triumph, his eyes still on his
wife. “He will give you no trouble, I
will answer for it! But first give me
my five crowns, mayor. My five
crowns!”

He still felt so much fear of his wife
that he did not turn to see the men
enter, and was taken by surprise when
a voice at his elbow—a strange voice—said,
“Five crowns, my friend? For
what, may I ask?”

In his eagerness and excitement he
suspected nothing, but thought only
that the mayor had sent a deputy.
“For what? For the Girondin!” he
answered, rapidly. Then at last he
turned and found that half-a-dozen
men had entered, and that more were
entering. To his astonishment, they
were all strangers to him—men with
stern, gloomy faces, and armed to the
teeth. There was something so formidable
in their appearance that his
voice faltered as he added: “But
where is the mayor, gentlemen? I do
not see him.”

No one answered, but in silence the
last of the men—there were eleven in
all—entered and bolted the door behind
him. Michel Tellier peered at
them in the gloom with growing alarm.
In return the tallest of the strangers,
who had entered first and seemed to be
in command, looked round keenly. At
length this man spoke. “So you have
a Girondin here, have you?” he said,
115
his voice curiously sweet and sonorous.

“I was to have five crowns for him,”
Michel muttered dubiously.

“Oh! Pétion,” continued the spokesman
to one of his companions, “can
you kindle a light? It strikes me that
we have hit upon a dark place.”

The man addressed took something
from his pouch. For a moment there
was silence, broken only by the sharp
sound of the flint striking the steel.
Then a sudden glare lit up the dark
interior, and disclosed the group of
cloaked strangers standing about the
door, the light gleaming back from
their muskets and cutlasses. Michel
trembled. He had never seen such
men as these before. True, they were
wet and travel-stained, and had the
air of those who spend their nights in
ditches and under haystacks. But their
pale, stern faces were set in indomitable
resolve. Their eyes glowed with
a steady fire, and they trod as kings
tread. Their leader was a man of majestic
height and beauty, and in his
eyes alone there seemed to lurk a spark
of some lighter fire, as if his spirit still
rose above the task which had sobered
his companions. Michel noted all this
in fear and bewilderment; noted the
white head and yet vigorous bearing
of the man who had struck the light;
noted even the manner in which the
light died away in the dim recesses of
the barn.

“And this Girondin—is he in hiding
here?” said the tall man.

“That is so,” Michel answered.
“But I had nothing to do with hiding
him, citizen. It was my wife hid
him in the straw there.”

“And you gave
notice of his presence
to the authorities?”
continued
the stranger, raising
his hand to repress
some movement
among his
followers.

“Certainly, or
you would not have
been here,” replied
Michel, better satisfied
with himself.

The answer struck him down with
an awful terror. “That does not follow,”
said the tall man, coolly, “for we
are Girondins!”

“You are?”

“Without doubt,” the other answered,
with majestic simplicity; “or
there are no such persons. This is
Pétion, and this Citizen Buzot. Have
you heard of Louvet? There he
stands. For me, I am Barbaroux.”

Michel’s tongue seemed glued to
the roof of his mouth. He could not
utter a word. But another could. On
the far side of the barrier a sudden
rustling was heard, and while all
turned to look—but with what different
feelings—the pale face of the
youth over whom Michel had bent in
the afternoon appeared above the partition.
A smile of joyful recognition
effaced for the time the lines of exhaustion.
The young man, clinging
for support to the planks, uttered a
cry of thankfulness. “It is you! It
is really you! You are safe!” he exclaimed.

“We are safe, all of us, Pierre,” Barbaroux
answered. “And now”—and
he turned to Michel Tellier with sudden
thunder in his voice—“this man
whom you would have betrayed is our
guide, let me tell you, whom we lost
last night. Speak, man, in your defence,
if you can. Say what you have
to say why justice shall not be done
upon you, miserable caitiff, who would
have sold a man’s life for a few pieces
of silver!”

The wretched peasant’s knees trembled,
and the perspiration stood upon
his brow. He heard the voice as the
voice of a judge. He looked in the
stern eyes of the
Girondins, and
read only anger
and vengeance.
Then he caught in
the silence the
sound of his wife
weeping, for at
Pierre’s appearance
she had broken
into wild sobbing,
and he spoke
out of the base instincts
of his heart.

“He was her lover,” he muttered. “I
swear it, citizens.”

“He lies!” cried the man at the barrier,
his face transfigured with rage.
“I loved her, it is true, but it was
before her old father sold her to this
Judas. For what he would have you
believe now, my friends, it is false. I,
too, swear it.”

A murmur of execration broke from
the group of Girondins. Barbaroux
repressed it by a gesture. “What do
you say of this man?” he asked, turning
to them, his voice deep and solemn.

“He is not fit to live!” they
answered in chorus.

The poor coward screamed as he
heard the words, and, flinging himself
on the ground, he embraced Barbaroux’s
knees in a paroxysm of terror.
But the judge did not look at him.
Barbaroux turned, instead, to Pierre
Bounat. “What do you say of him?”
he asked.

“He is not fit to live,” said the young
man solemnly, his breath coming quick
and fast.

“And you?” Barbaroux continued,
turning and looking with his eyes of
fire at the wife, his voice gentle, and
yet more solemn.

A moment before she had ceased to
weep, and had stood up listening and
gazing, awe and wonder in her face.
Barbaroux had to repeat his question
before she answered. Then she said,
“He is not fit to die.”

There was silence for a moment,
broken only by the entreaties of the
wretch on the floor. At last Barbaroux
spoke. “She has said rightly,” he
pronounced. “He shall live. They
have put us out of the law and set a
price on our heads; but we will keep
the law. He shall live. But, hark
you,” the great orator continued, in
tones which Michel never forgot, “if a
whisper escape you as to our presence
here, or our names, or if you wrong
your wife by word or deed, the life she
has saved shall pay for it.

“Remember!” he added, shaking
Michel to and fro with a finger, “the
arm of Barbaroux is long, and though
I be a hundred leagues away, I shall
know and I shall punish. So, beware!
Now rise, and live!”

The miserable man cowered back to
the wall, frightened to the core of his
heart. The Girondins conferred a while
in whispers, two of their number assisting
Pierre to cross the barrier. Suddenly
there came—and Michel trembled
anew as he heard it—a loud
knocking at the door. All started and
stood listening and waiting. A voice
outside cried: “Open! open! in the
name of the law!”

“We have lingered too long,” Barbaroux
muttered. “I should have
thought of this. It is the Mayor of Carbaix
come to apprehend our friend.”

Again the Girondins conferred
together. At last, seeming
to arrive at a conclusion,
they ranged themselves on
either side of the door, and
one of their number opened it.
A short, stout man, girt with
a tricolor sash, and wearing
a huge sword, entered with an
air of authority—being blinded
by the light he saw nothing
out of the common—and was
117
followed by four men armed with
muskets.

Their appearance produced an extraordinary
effect on Michel Tellier.
As they one by one crossed the threshold,
the peasant leaned forward, his
face flushed, his eyes gleaming, and
counted them. They were only five.
And the others were twelve. He fell
back, and from that moment his belief
in the Girondins’ power was clinched.

“In the name of the law!” panted
the mayor. “Why did you not—”
Then he stopped abruptly, his mouth
remaining open. He found himself
surrounded by a group of grim, silent
mutes, with arms in their hands, and
in a twinkling it flashed into his mind
that these were the eleven chiefs of
the Girondins, whom he had been
warned to keep watch for. He had
come to catch a pigeon and had caught
a crow. He turned pale and his eyes
dropped. “Who are—who are these
gentlemen?” he stammered, in a ludicrously
altered tone.

“Some volunteers of Quumpen, returning
home,” replied Barbaroux, with
ironical smoothness.

“You have your papers, citizens?”
the mayor asked, mechanically; and
he took a step back towards the door,
and looked over his shoulder.

“Here they
are!” said Pétion
rudely, thrusting
a packet into his
hands. “They
are in order.”

The mayor
took them, and
longing only to
see the outside
of the door, pretended
to look
through them,
his little heart
going pit-a-pat
within him.
“They seem to
be in order,” he
assented, feebly.
“I need not
trouble you further,
citizens. I
came here under
a misapprehension,
I find, and
I wish you a good
journey.”

He knew, as
he backed out,
that he was cutting
a poor figure.
He would
fain have made
a more dignified
retreat. But before
these men, fugitives and outlaws
as they were, he felt, though he was
Mayor of Carbaix, almost as small a
man as did Michel Tellier. These were
the men of the Revolution. They had
bearded nobles and pulled down kings.
There was Barbaroux, who had grappled
with Marat; and Pétion, the Mayor
of the Bastille. The little Mayor
of Carbaix knew greatness when he saw
it. He turned tail, and hurried back
118
to his fireside, his body-guard not a
whit behind him.

Five minutes later the men he feared
and envied came out also, and went
their way, passing in single file into the
darkness which brooded over the great
monolith; beginning, brave hearts,
another of the few stages which still
lay between them and the guillotine.
Then in the cottage there remained
only Michel and Jeanne. She sat by
the dying embers, silent, and lost in
thought. He leaned against the wall,
his eyes roving ceaselessly, but always
when his gaze met hers it fell. Barbaroux
had conquered him. It was
not until Jeanne had risen to close the
door, and he was alone, that he wrung
his hands, and muttered: “Five crowns!
Five crowns gone and wasted!”

Facing this pastel, in an opposite corner of the room, another little thing full of
sadness catches my eye, despite the deepening twilight. It is a yellow-stained photograph
hung on the wall in a simple, wooden frame. It is the young Prince Imperial,
who was killed in Africa a dozen years ago, but is shown here as a mere child in
knee breeches. An odd, but touching, fancy it was of the Empress Eugenie to place
this souvenir of her son, the last of the Napoleons, in the very room where that other
one was born, the giant who shook the earth….

How strange and startling it will be a century or two hence for our descendants
to turn over the photographs of their ancestors!… The portraits left by our
forefathers, expressive though they may be, whether painted or engraved, can never
produce in us an impression equally vivid; but photographs are the very reflections
of living beings, fixing their precise attitudes, their gestures, their most fleeting
expressions. What a curious thing it will be, what an awe-inspiring thing for
future generations to study our faces when we shall have fallen into the dead
past!…—A fragment from Loti’s “Book of Pity and of Death.”

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.

Edward Everett Hale, clergyman and
author, born in Boston in 1822, was graduated
at Harvard in 1839. While a clergyman, he
is perhaps best known to the world as a philanthropist
and an author. He has written short
stories, novels, juvenile books, works of travel,
essays, biography, and history, besides giving
much time to his pastoral duties, to preaching,
lecturing, and the organization of charities. He
founded the magazine “Old and New,” afterward
merged in “Scribner’s” (now “The Century”).
Two of his short stories, “My
Double, and How He Undid Me,” and “The
Man Without a Country,” are classics.

Henri Adolphe Stephan Opper, known to
the world as M. de Blowitz, born at Blowitz,
Bohemia, on December 28, 1825, migrated to
France in 1848, and became engaged as professor
of the German language and literature at
the Lycée of Tours. Here he remained till 1860,
when he left to fill, successively, similar posts at
Limoges, Poictiers, and Marseilles. He married
the daughter of a paymaster of the French
Marine. It was not till 1871 that he became a
naturalized Frenchman, and, after the French
defeat by the Germans, he was a confidant and
emissary of both Gambetta and Thiers. His
entrance into journalism was as the collaborateur
of Lawrence Oliphant, the special correspondent
of the “London Times” at Versailles.
On Oliphant’s retirement, M. de Blowitz was
promoted by the editor of the “Times,” to fill
his place. The subsequent career of the great
correspondent has been identified with some of
the most striking episodes in modern politics
and journalism.

Daniel Vierge Urrabieta, born in Madrid,
1852, became a student of the Fine Arts
Academy of Madrid in 1865. In 1869 he went
to Paris and began his career of illustrator. In
1881 he was stricken by an attack of paralysis,
which it was feared would be fatal. But for the
last four or five years he has been growing
steadily better in health, and has been able to
resume his brilliant work. Although but little
known to the public at large, he ranks among
the most original and striking of modern artists,
and is without doubt at the head of the illustrators.

Thomas Alva Edison, born at Alva, Ohio,
February 11, 1847, had no schooling except the
attrition of life. At the age of fifteen, having
been taught telegraphy, he graduated from the
life of a train newsboy into that of an operator,
and, during several years of wandering, acquired
extraordinary skill. The study of theory ran
æquo pede with executive work. He quickly
invented the automatic repeater to transfer messages
from one to another wire. It is needless
to touch upon his further achievements which
have made his name famous in the whole civilized
world.

EDWARD EVERETT HALE.

M. DE BLOWITZ.

DANIEL VIERGE URRABIETA.

THOMAS ALVA EDISON.

Few of those people who go to a
menagerie realize what an immense
undertaking it is to transport wild
beasts from the land of their birth and
of their freedom to the land of their
imprisonment, and, too frequently, of
their death. I will ask my readers
to picture for themselves an African
desert blazing beneath a burning sun.
Across the weary waste of sand a long
column of men and animals is wending
its slow way. As it draws nearer
we see that it is a caravan of wild
animals on their way from the interior
to the seaboard. And as it passes us,
the vast mass of living creatures, as in
a chemical process, slowly dissolves
itself into distinct particles and individualities.
Let us regard them carefully.
In the first place we notice a
procession of fourteen stately giraffes,
then come five elephants, a huge rhinoceros,
four wild buffaloes bellowing
sadly after the mates they have forever
left behind. Then there go lumbering
by a number of enormous carts
or wagons, in which are safely confined
thirty hyenas, five leopards, six
lions, two chetahs, sixteen antelopes,
two lynxes, one serval, one wardbob,
twenty smaller carnivorous animals,
four African ant-eaters, and forty-five
monkeys. And then there come slowly
prancing by, wary, restless, cunning,
twenty-six ostriches. There are twenty
boxes of birds, from which sounds of
shrill screaming are constantly proceeding.
There are upwards of a hundred
Abyssinian goats scattered here
and there in the procession. These are
to give milk for the young animals, and
to serve as food and meat for the old.
The caravan is on its way through the
desert to Suakim, which is the first
shipping place for Europe. There are
no less than a hundred and twenty
127
camels in it, which are required to
carry the food for this caravan, and
there are upwards of a hundred and
sixty drivers in the procession. It
takes the caravans upwards of thirty-six
days to cover the distance which
lies between Cassala in the interior of
Nubia and the port of Suakim, for
which they are bound. The same
journey is usually performed by quick
post camels in twelve days.

This is the exact account of a caravan
which Karl Hagenbeck told me he
brought across the desert in the year
1870. “It is tremendously anxious
work,” said he, “the
transportation of these
animals across sea and
land. The amount of
water which we have to
carry with us in goats’
hides upon camels’ backs
is prodigious, for nothing
would be more awful
than to run short of water
in the middle of the
desert, and to be surrounded
by a number of
wild beasts, maddened
with heat and unquenchable
thirst. The principal
food for the young
elephants and rhinoceroses
on the way home
is a fruit called nabeck,
that is, a kind of cherry
of which they are very
fond. Giraffes and antelopes
and ostriches are
provided with the doura
corn that grows in the interior. All
these bigger animals walk, and as they
jog along my people feed them occasionally
with hard ship biscuit, which
appears to sustain them well through
the journey. At four o’clock every
morning the caravan strikes its tents
and begins its march. They go plodding
along till ten o’clock, when the
day becomes too hot for further progress.”

“But do the animals never attempt
to escape?” said I.

“Well, not often,” replied Karl
Hagenbeck; “but,” he added, with a
hearty laugh of recollection, “I remember
that once, in that very year
1870, of which I have just been telling
you, the whole of the ostriches, twenty-six
in number, ran away just as we
were getting them into the railway
station at Suakim. Away they went,
heading straight for the desert. I
never was in such a dreadful fix in my
life. At last it struck me that it
would be a good plan to drive all the
goats and camels towards them; we
did so, and, when the ostriches saw
them advancing, they formed themselves
into a flock, and we drove the
whole lot into the station. The birds
were caught one by one and put into
the cars. That was the
last transport, by-the-by,
that poor Casanova ever
brought over. Indeed,
he died at Alexandria in
the very midst of the
whole business, and we
buried him on the evening
of his death. It was
a dreadful time, and
everything appeared to
be against us, for at the
very moment of his
death, just as we were
getting the animals on
board ship, a fearful
earthquake shook the
whole land. I thought
there was something
about to happen, for the
animals were very uneasy,
the birds were
twittering, the monkeys
were chattering and
trembling, the lions
were roaring constantly, the elephants
were deafening with their long trumpetings.
Suddenly I felt the steamer
quivering from stem to stern. The
sea was tossing, the sun was hidden
behind a thick yellow mist. I looked
toward the land where the minarets
were toppling down, and where the
greatest horror and confusion appeared
to prevail, and all the while poor Casanova
lay dead or dying below. I
shall never forget that awful morning.

“We had had the greatest possible
difficulty just before, too, for at Suakim
the railway people had told us
that we had too many wagons, and
that they would not transport us any
128
farther. However, I soon settled that
by going up to the directors of the
railway and demanding from them an
express train immediately; ‘for,’ said
I, ‘these animals are for the Emperor
of Austria,’ and to prove this I showed
them a great document sealed by the
emperor himself.”

ADVENTURES WITH ESCAPED ANIMALS.

“On another occasion I was journeying
through Suez with a giraffe which
for five months had been living in the
German Consul’s garden. I was leading
it to the station when it suddenly
took fright and ran away. For four
long, weary miles I hung on to the
wretched beast, but at last I was obliged
to drop the rope and let it go. A smart
little Nubian boy then took up the
chase; he got hold of the rope and
eventually tied it round a tree, and
after a while we led the animal quietly
back to the station.

“But one of the most alarming adventures
that ever overtook me whilst
I was transporting animals was that
which occurred once when twelve elephants
broke away from me and
rushed through the streets of Vienna.
The whole twelve had been deposited
in a dépôt, where they had to rest for
two days. I was taking
six of the elephants to
lead them to the station,
and when my back was
turned and I was engaged
with these six elephants,
the other six
stealthily and quietly
pulled up the iron rings
by which they were fastened
to the ground,
trumpeted loudly, and,
before I knew what had
happened, the twelve
animals were rushing
through the streets of
Vienna. At last, after
a long chase, I caught
the biggest elephant, and led it to the
station, the others following quietly
enough. But my troubles were not
over yet, for I hardly got the first four
into a railway van when the others
began to howl. The four elephants in
the train plunged and kicked about,
and at last they broke their ropes and
ran out of the van, followed by all
the others, and into the open streets.
Then began another hunt up the big
fashionable streets, down little courts
and alleys, once after one which ran
into a big shop, all over a big park,
and this went on for three hours, until,
at last, greatly to my relief, I got them
safely into the station and packed into
the vans for their journey.”

WILD ANIMALS ABOARD SHIP.

“Perhaps the most difficult part of
transportation, notwithstanding all the
adventures I have had on land, is the
getting the big animals on board ship.
Take elephants for instance. They
are placed in barges and then they are
slung up in big slings on to the steamer.
This is very difficult and very anxious
work, for very often they are killed by
the breaking of their necks or their
legs. And then again, once they are
on board ship, it is very difficult to
bring elephants alive to Europe. They
suffer dreadfully from sea-sickness, and
cannot eat. Some of them are put between
decks, and some of them have
stables fitted up for them on deck.

“I remember once that Casanova left
Africa with a cargo of forty elephants,
thirteen only of which reached Trieste
alive, and only twelve came here to
me in Hamburg. On one occasion, in
1881 I think it was, I was bringing
over a large cargo of forty-two ostriches
129
from the Somali country. We
were going through the Red Sea, when
suddenly a violent storm broke upon
us. It was pitch dark on deck, but I
went below to look at my birds, and
by the dim light of the lantern, and
the flash of lightning that every now
and again lit up the whole of the ship,
I saw that the poor creatures were
swaying to and fro, and that they were
in the greatest possible discomfort.
That night more than thirty of them
broke their legs, and the next day we
had to throw their bodies into the sea,
and out of the forty-two I brought only
nine home to Europe. But perhaps
one of the most dangerous adventures
that I ever had in transporting wild
beasts was in 1871. I was taking a
rhinoceros from the East India Docks
to the Zoölogical Gardens in London.
To do this I had to take it and lead it
through the docks on a flat trolly. At
last we got the beast hoisted on a
wagon, and fastened by all four legs.
Suddenly an engine drove by. The
animal became hideously frightened,
his eyes rolled white, then red. He
then planted his horn under the seat
upon which the man who was driving
the wagon was seated. Away went
the man, away went the seat, clean
over the three horses. They in their
turn became dreadfully frightened, too,
and bolted. I hit the beast as hard as
ever I could with a rope. We managed
to tie another rope round his
neck and fastened it down, and at last
we got him safely down the Commercial
Road, and then settled in some
stables. I had a big box made for
him, and at last conveyed him safely
to his destination; but I wouldn’t go
through that experience again for a
million of money.

“I was once
bringing home a
full-grown alligator,”
continued Mr.
Hagenbeck, smiling
at the thought
of the adventure
of which he was
about to tell me,
“and I was travelling
on a passenger
ship. One morning
a most amusing
incident occurred,
but one which all
the same might
have been attended
with serious
consequences. I had paid my usual
morning visit to my travelling companion,
and had seen to his supply of food
and water, and having assured myself
that he was quite comfortable and well
looked after, I retired to my cabin to
lie down, the day being very hot. Suddenly
I heard a great tramping overhead
and the screaming of women and
children. I could not think what was
the matter, so I ran up on deck; as I
went I passed a number of people
rushing down the companion way.
The male passengers were on the captain’s
deck; the sailors were climbing
the rigging as fast as they could. The
deck was perfectly clear. In the midst
of the empty deck stood my alligator,
the innocent cause of this sudden commotion,
with gently smiling jaws, looking
wonderingly on. After a good
long time and much difficulty I got
the beast into his own habitation.”

TRAINING OF WILD BEASTS.

It is told of the mad King of Bavaria,
that he used frequently to command
great theatrical entertainments
at which he himself was the only spectator.
A similar experience befell
myself when I was visiting Hamburg.
130
For Mr. Karl Hagenbeck, at my special
request, and with great good
nature, gave two full performances
in my honor, at which, like the mad
Bavarian monarch, I was the only
spectator. In the first performance
only very young animals took part,
but as they had been working since
last January year, they were pretty
well up to all the little tricks they had
been taught. My readers will imagine
a great circle carefully railed off from
the outside world by iron bars. Round
this circle, upon a number of little
stands, sat the performing animals,
waiting to take their respective
“turns,” as they say in the music
halls; in the midst of the circle sat
myself, with a beautiful little baby
lion on my knee, which amused itself
by playing with my watch chain and
handkerchief. Two little tigers which
got tired of sitting still suddenly
jumped down from their perches and
ran up to play with me and the baby
lion. A young lion on another perch
yawned so loud that we all, animals
and men, looked up to see what was
the matter. Mr. Hagenbeck walked
round the circle, stroking the animals,
most of which affectionately kissed
him as he passed.

YOUNG ANIMALS AT SCHOOL.

At this moment Mr. Mellermann,
who is one of the finest wild beast
trainers in the world, entered the circle
with his whip in his hand, which, as he
entered, he cracked smartly, causing the
animals to spring sharply to attention
upon their little seats. Karl Hagenbeck
introduced me to Mr. Mellermann,
who is indeed his own brother-in-law as
well as being his trainer.

“What is your rule of training, Mr.
Mellermann?” said I.

“Kindness and coolness and firmness,”
he replied, “as you will see in
this performance. Come on, pussies,”
he continued, “show this gentleman
how you can run round the circle.”

The pussies, as he called them, fairly
big tigers as I should have considered
them, unwillingly crept off their seats,
growling not a little. Mr. Mellermann
cracked his whip smartly, but did not
hit them. The animals then began to
run very prettily round and round the
circle. So well did they do their little
tricks that Mr. Mellermann said: “Now
you shall have some sugar, you have
been very good.” He placed in my
hand a few lumps of sugar which I myself
gave to them, greatly to their
pleasure. Then a pyramid was formed
by some young tigers, some lions, a
couple of ponies, and four young goats.
The pyramid itself consisted of a small
double ladder upon the steps of which
the animals somewhat nervously took
their places, and upon which they stood
gazing quietly down upon us, until
they were told that they might go back
to their places. After a while, when
school was over, the goats and ponies
left the arena, and then the door of a
big cage, which gave upon the circle,
was thrown wide open. It was pretty
to see the little lions and tigers running
home, for all the world like an
infant school dismissed to play. The
pretty creatures gambolled about for a
short while in their cage, and then lay
down to rest.

A WONDERFUL PERFORMANCE.

“And now,” said Mr. Hagenbeck,
“the older animals are coming in to do
their performance.”

Several attendants entered the building
as he spoke; for to handle a large
number of fully grown wild animals is
no light matter. The first animals to
come rushing into the arena were a
number of huge German boar-hounds—great
affectionate beasts they were, too.
I patted one of them as he passed me,
and he reared himself on his hind legs,
threw his forepaws round my neck,
and delightedly covered my face with
kisses. Each boar-hound on entering
the circle went to his own allotted
place with all the sense of a human
being. A few moments afterwards a
door was thrown open, and in walked
the lions and tigers. Splendid big
beasts these last were. Some looked
very good-tempered, although it is to
be acknowledged that one tiger had
evidently got out of bed the wrong
side, whilst a lion that had arrived
comparatively recently from Nubia
132
evinced now and again a strong disposition
to rebel against the novel circumstances
in which he found himself
placed. Three bears then walked in—a
polar bear, a sloth bear, and a black
bear, the latter causing much amusement
by quietly entering on its hind
legs. Then came a couple of elephants,
a camel, four ponies, several goats, and
last of all a big, sleepy sheep, which
seemed to be on particularly intimate
terms with one of the lions.

One of the most remarkable things
that I noticed in Karl Hagenbeck’s
menagerie is the marvellous unity and
loving-kindness which is brought to
pass amongst his animals. They are
fondling and playing with each other
the whole day long. Like the younger
animals, they took their seats upon the
rickety pedestals which are provided
for them. It was a wonder to me how
such huge beasts were able to balance
themselves so easily and comfortably
as they did upon such small and slender
supports. One of them, however,
came to grief in a most amusing manner.
The human beings were standing
talking together in the middle of the
circle, when suddenly a loud crash and
an indignant howl was heard. We all
turned to see what was the matter, as
did also the wild beasts themselves;
one of the lions had suddenly tumbled
down off his perch, or rather the perch
had fallen with him, and there he lay,
more startled than hurt, wondering
what on earth had happened. It was
partly his own fault, poor dear fellow,
for he had fallen asleep whilst waiting
for the performance to begin, and so
lost his balance.
But his look of
indignant surprise
was so ludicrously
human that none
of us could help
laughing. However,
both he and
his pedestal were
speedily reinstated
in their former position, and a lump
of sugar soon restored him to his usual
tranquillity of spirit.

“And will the animals be arranged
round the Chicago circus like this,
Mr. Hagenbeck?” said I.

“Everything will be exactly as you
see it to-day,” he replied. “Perhaps,
if anything, on a bigger scale.”

At this moment the band struck up
a stirring tune, on hearing which the
animals delightedly pricked their ears,
and all became life and animation at
once!

“My animals love music,” said Mr.
Hagenbeck, “and they perform twice as
well with a band as they do without.”

The first thing that took place was
the riding round the circus on a pony
by a full-grown lion. Round and
round they went. The pony spiritedly
enough; the lion, it must be confessed,
looking, as wild beasts generally do
when engaged in such performances,
rather a fool.

“The ponies and dogs were at first
dreadfully afraid of the lions and
tigers,” explained Mr. Hagenbeck, “but
133
they soon got over it. These two animals
were the rage of all Paris when I
was performing there a year or two
ago. Four ponies refused altogether,
but at last we managed to persuade
this one to accomplish the trick.”

“Has your brother-in-law never been
hurt by any of these animals?”

“Only once,” said he, “when he
tried to separate a dog and a tiger
which were fighting, and the dog bit
him. The dogs are frequently very
plucky, and sometimes attack the lions.”

The next feature in the programme
was that a tiger should ride round the
circus on a tricycle. A man rolled in
the tricycle, the tiger was called by
name to come down from his perch,
which he did slowly and unwillingly
enough. “For,” said Mr. Hagenbeck,
“he always hates this ride of his.”
Then the tiger sullenly mounted the
tricycle exactly as is shown in the
picture, growling frequently the whole
time; two of the boar-hounds walked
behind as footmen, the band struck up
a slow tune, the tiger set the tricycle
in motion, and slowly and solemnly
enough the little procession passed
round the circus. “Now,” said the
chief trainer, “I’ll show you how a
tiger can roll a ball along, standing
upon it the whole time.” Some trestles
were brought in, placed at equal
distances from each other, and a long
plank was laid across them, and then
there was placed upon it a huge
wooden ball. “Come on, Cæsar,” cried
Mr. Mellermann, “it’s your turn now.”
To our surprise a beautiful lion
jumped down from his pedestal and
ran gayly up to Mr. Mellermann.
“No, no, no, you dear old stupid,”
said the trainer, leading him back to
his perch; “I want Cæsar, not you.”
But all our persuasion couldn’t get
Cæsar the tiger to come down, so Mr.
Mellermann went boldly up to him
and gently flicked him with his whip.
Cæsar got slowly down, snarling and
growling the whole time. “Come on,
then, there’s a good fellow,” said Mr.
Mellermann, and after a while Cæsar
was persuaded to balance himself on
the ball which he rolled slowly along
the plank. Having done it once or
twice forwards and backwards, he was
allowed to return to his seat, which he
did with great joy and satisfaction.
Mr. Mellermann then went up to him,
told him he had been a good fellow,
and gave him a special bit of meat all
to himself. “I always do that,” said
he, coming back to where I was standing,
“when an animal has shown any
unwillingness to perform his tricks, for
there is nothing that encourages them
like kindness.”

“Which animals show the most
intelligence?” said I.

“Well,” replied Mr. Mellermann, “I
don’t think there is much difference
between them. Lions and tigers, males
and females, are equally clever; and,”
continued Mr. Mellermann, “I think it
is all rubbish to say that tigers are not
as affectionate or as easily tamed as
lions. Why, look here,” he continued,
going up to a splendid Royal Bengal
tiger which greeted him with a most
extravagant affection as he threw his
arms round the creature’s neck and drew
the great head down on a level with
his own, “you couldn’t get a more affectionate
beast than this is, I am sure.”

On this particular morning the animals
134
seemed to be a little flighty,
which Karl Hagenbeck explained to
me was owing to the fact that the
young animals were so close by, and
the old ones wanted to play with them.
Next, one of the bears was led forth to
walk on the tight rope, this appliance
really being a long narrow plank. Very
cleverly he balanced himself on his
hind legs, and walked, first forwards
and then backwards, with wonderful
skill and ease. The trainer walked
beside him, encouraging him now and
again with the words, “Steady, John,
steady,” treating him, indeed, exactly
as he would treat a boy at school. In
the middle of his performance a loud
snarling and growling was suddenly
heard; a tiger and a leopard had begun
quarrelling, and, as the leopard had
been behaving very badly the whole
morning, and distracting the attention
of the school, he was sent back to his
den in disgrace. Meanwhile the bear
retired to his pedestal and sat down
upon it with a graceful and self-satisfied
air. “That bear very much
pleased the Emperor of Austria and
the King of Bavaria when they came
here some years ago,” said Mr. Hagenbeck,
and then he took a beautiful silver
cigar-case out of his pocket, from
which he offered me a very fine weed.
This cigar-case, he told me, had been
given him on that memorable occasion
by the King of Bavaria himself.

Then a see-saw was constructed in
the middle of the circus, upon one end
of which stood a lion, and upon the
other end of which stood a tiger. A
bear standing in the middle preserved
the peace between them. Two leopards
stood on guard on either side,
and then the bear set the see-saw in
motion by walking alternately from
one side to the other.

Then took place a curious and
amusing performance. Four lions and
tigers were arranged in a row at an
equal distance from one another.
Some of the German boar-hounds were
let loose, and one after another they
gayly started a game of leap-frog with
the wild beasts, who seemed to enjoy
it to the full as much as they did.
After they had finished their performance,
some enormous double ladders
were brought in. The great Polar
bear was persuaded to take his place
at the very top; next to him on either
side, on the next rung of the ladder,
was a beautiful boar-hound; then
came two royal Bengal tigers, and
then a couple of the finest lions I ever
saw. Round about the base of the
pyramid were grouped, in picturesque
profusion, lions, tigers, leopards, and
dogs. There they stood perfectly still,
and uttering not a single sound, until,
135
very suddenly, Mr. Mellermann cracked
his whip, when the animals joyfully
quitted their strained positions and
retired to their seats. “Ah!” said
Mr. Hagenbeck, as he turned to me,
“no living human being can imagine
what it means to get those animals to
do that. It makes a man old and sick
and nervous before his time. I’ll never
do it again after the Chicago Exhibition.
Life is too short for such a
strain. I wouldn’t take any money
for those animals now that they are
trained, although I was offered only
the other day upwards of sixty thousand
dollars for them.”

And now came the pièce de résistance
of the whole affair. A large Roman
chariot was rolled into the circus;
two huge tigers were led forth, and,
growling much, they were harnessed
to it; and then there was ushered into
the chariot, with no little state, a noble
and stately lion. A robe of royal crimson
was fastened round his neck, a
gleaming crown
was placed upon
his head, the reins
were thrown upon
his shoulders, two
boar-hounds took
their position as
footmen in the
rear of the chariot,
Mr. Mellermann
cracked his
whip, and the
royal chariot drawn by the tigers rolled
solemnly round the circus. After this
a curious thing occurred. The entertainment
was at an end, the band quitted
the building, and the animals were allowed
to play about, all jumbled up together.
They seemed perfectly happy,
gambolling with pure pleasure round
Mr. Mellermann and his assistants,
between whom and the animals the
strongest affection most evidently exists.
After they had played about for
a few minutes, the order was given that
they should retire to their cells, which
they did by devious ways and by-paths,
the last glimpse I caught of them being
that of a tiger playfully sparring with
a tawny African lion.

In the earliest and mustiest volume
of the Havenpool marriage registers
(said the thin-faced gentleman)
this entry may still be read
by anyone curious enough to decipher
the crabbed handwriting
of the date. I took a copy of it when
I was last there; and it runs thus (he
had opened his pocket-book, and now
read aloud the extract; afterwards
handing round the book to us, wherein
we saw transcribed the following):

Mast^r
John Horseleigh, Knyght, of the
p’ysshe of Clyffton was maryd to Edith
the wyffe late off John Stocker, m’chawnte
of Havenpool the xiiij daie of December
be p’vylegge gevyn by our sup’me hedd of
the chyrche of Ingelonde Kynge Henry the
viii^th
1539.

Now, if you turn to the long and
elaborate pedigree of the ancient family
of the Horseleighs of Clyfton
Horseleigh, you will find no mention
whatever of this alliance, notwithstanding
the privilege given by the sovereign
and head of the Church; the
said Sir John being therein chronicled
as marrying, at a date apparently
earlier than the above, the daughter
and heiress of Richard Phelipson of
Montislope, in Nether Wessex, a lady
who outlived him, of which marriage
there were issue two daughters and a
son, who succeeded him in his estates.
How are we to account for these, as it
would seem, contemporaneous wives?
A strange local tradition only can help
us, and this can be briefly told.

One evening in the autumn of the year
1540 or 1541, a young sailor, whose
Christian name was Roger, but whose
surname is not known, landed at his
native place of Havenpool, on the
South Wessex coast, after a voyage in
the Newfoundland trade, then newly
sprung into existence. He returned in
the ship “Primrose” with a cargo of
“trayne oyle brought home from the
New Founde Lande,” to quote from
the town records of the date. During
his absence of two summers and a winter,
which made up the term of a Newfoundland
“spell,” many unlooked-for
changes had occurred within the quiet
little seaport, some of which closely
affected Roger the sailor. At the time
of his departure his only sister Edith
had become the bride of one Stocker,
a respectable townsman, and part owner
of the brig in which Roger had sailed;
and it was to the house of this
couple, his only relatives, that the
young man directed his steps. On trying
the door in Quay Street he found
it locked, and then observed that the
windows were boarded up. Inquiring
of a bystander, he learned for the first
time of the death of his brother-in-law,
though that event had taken place
nearly eighteen months before.

“And my sister Edith?” asked
Roger.

“She’s married again—as they do
say, and hath been so these twelve
137
months. I don’t vouch
for the truth o’t, though
if she isn’t she ought to
be.”

Roger’s face grew dark.
He was a man with a considerable
reserve of strong
passion, and he asked his
informant what he meant
by speaking thus.

The man explained that
shortly after the young
woman’s bereavement a
stranger had come to the
port. He had seen her
moping on the quay, had
been attracted by her
youth and loneliness, and
in an extraordinarily brief
wooing had completely fascinated her—had
carried her off, and, as was reported,
had married her. Though he
had come by water, he was supposed
to live no very great distance off by
land. They were last heard of at
Oozewood, in Upper Wessex, at the
house of one Wall, a timber-merchant,
where, he believed, she still had a lodging,
though her husband, if he were
lawfully that much, was but an occasional
visitor to the place.

“The stranger?” asked Roger. “Did
you see him? What manner of man
was he?”

“I liked him not,” said the other.
“He seemed of that kind that hath
something to conceal, and as he walked
with her he ever and anon turned his
head and gazed behind him, as if he
much feared an unwelcome pursuer.
But, faith,”
continued he,
“it may have
been the man’s
anxiety only.
Yet did I not
like him.”

“Was he
older than my
sister?” Roger
asked.

“Ay, much
older;
from a
dozen to a
score of
years older. A man of some position, may be,
playing an amorous game for the pleasure
of the hour. Who knoweth but
that he have a wife already? Many
have done the thing hereabouts of late.”

Having paid a visit to the graves of
his relatives, the sailor next day went
along the straight road which, then a
138
lane, now a highway, conducted to the
curious little inland town named by the
Havenpool man. It is unnecessary to
describe Oozewood on the South-Avon.
It has a railway at the present day,
but thirty years of steam traffic past
its precincts have hardly modified its
original features. Surrounded by a
sort of fresh-water lagoon, dividing it
from meadows and coppice, its ancient
thatch and timber
houses have barely
made way even
in the front street
for the ubiquitous
modern brick and
slate. It neither
increases nor diminishes
in size;
it is difficult to say
what the inhabitants
find to do,
for, though trades
in wood-ware are
still carried on,
there cannot be
enough of this
class of work now-a-days
to maintain
all the house-holders,
the forests
around having
been so
greatly thinned
and curtailed. At
the time of this
tradition the forests
were dense,
artificers in wood
abounded, and the
timber trade was
brisk. Every
house in the town,
without exception,
was of oak framework, filled in
with plaster, and covered with thatch,
the chimney being the only brick portion
of the structure. Inquiry soon
brought Roger the sailor to the door
of Wall, the timber-dealer referred to,
but it was some time before he was
able to gain admission to the lodging
of his sister, the people having plainly
received directions not to welcome
strangers.

She was sitting in an upper room,
on one of the lath-backed, willow-bottomed
“shepherd’s” chairs, made on the
spot then as to this day, and as they
were probably made there in the days
of the Heptarchy. In her lap was an
infant, which she had been suckling,
though now it had fallen asleep; so
had the young mother herself for a few
minutes, under the drowsing effects of
solitude. Hearing footsteps on the
stairs, she awoke, started up with a
glad cry, and ran
to the door, opening
which she met
her brother on
the threshold.

“Oh, this is
merry! I didn’t
expect ’ee!” she
said. “Ah, Roger—I
thought it was
John.” Her tones
fell to disappointment.

The sailor
kissed her, looked
at her sternly for
a few moments,
and pointing to
the infant, said:
“You mean the
father of this?”

“Yes, my husband,”
said Edith.

“I hope so,” he
answered.

“Why, Roger,
I’m married—of
a truth am I!”
she cried.

“Shame upon
’ee, if true! If
not true, worse.
Master Stocker
was an honest
man, and ye should have respected
his memory longer. Where is thy husband?”

“He comes often. I thought it was
he now. Our marriage has to be kept
secret for a while; it was done privily
for certain reasons, but we were married
at church like honest folk—afore
God we were, Roger—six months after
poor Stocker’s death.”

“’Twas too soon,” said Roger.

“I was living in a house alone; I
had nowhere to go to. You were far
139
over sea in the New Found Land, and
John took me and brought me here.”

“How often doth he come?” says
Roger again.

“Once or twice weekly,” says she.

“I wish th’ ’dst waited till I returned,
dear Edy,” he said. “It mid be you
are a wife—I hope so. But, if so, why
this mystery? Why this mean and
cramped lodging in this lonely copse-circled
town? Of what standing is your
husband, and of where?”

“He is of gentle breeding; his name
is John. I am not free to tell his family
name. He is said to be of London,
for safety’ sake; but he really lives in
the county next adjoining this.”

“Where in the next county?”

“I do not know. He has preferred
not to tell me, that I may not have the
secret forced from me, to his and my
hurt, by bringing the marriage to the
ears of his kinsfolk and friends.”

Her brother’s face flushed. “Our
people have been honest townsmen,
well-reputed for long; why should you
readily take such humbling from a
sojourner of whom th’ ’st know nothing?”

They remained in constrained converse
till her quick ear caught a sound,
for which she might have been waiting—a
horse’s footfall. “It is John!”
said she. “This is his night—Saturday.”

“Don’t be frightened lest he should
find me here,” said Roger. “I am on
the point of leaving. I wish not to be
a third party. Say nothing at all about
my visit, if it will incommode you so to
do. I will see thee before I go afloat
again.”

Speaking thus he left the room, and
descending the staircase let himself out
by the front door, thinking he might
obtain a glimpse of the approaching
horseman. But that traveller had in
the meantime gone stealthily round to
the back of the homestead, and peering
along the pinion-end of the house
Roger discerned him unbridling and
haltering his horse with his own hands
in the shed there.

Roger retired to the neighboring inn
called the Black Lamb, and meditated.
This mysterious method of approach
determined him, after all, not to leave
the place till he had ascertained more
definite facts of his sister’s position—whether
she were the deluded victim of
the stranger or the wife she obviously
believed herself to be. Having eaten
some supper, he left the inn, it being
now about eleven o’clock. He first
looked into the shed, and, finding the
horse still standing there, waited irresolutely
near the door of his sister’s lodging.
Half an hour elapsed, and, while
thinking he would climb into a loft
hard by for a night’s rest, there seemed
to be a movement within the shutters
of the sitting-room that his sister occupied.
Roger hid himself behind a
fagot-stack near the back door, rightly
divining that his sister’s visitor would
emerge by the way he had entered.
The door opened, and the candle she
held in her hand lighted for a moment
the stranger’s form, showing it to be
that of a tall and handsome personage,
about forty years of age, and apparently
of a superior position in life. Edith
was assisting him to cloak himself,
which being done he took leave of her
with a kiss and left the house. From
the door she watched him bridle and
saddle his horse, and having mounted
and waved an adieu to her as she stood,
candle in hand, he turned out of the
yard and rode away.

The horse which bore him was, or
seemed to be, a little lame, and Roger
fancied from this that the rider’s journey
was not likely to be a long one.
Being light of foot he followed apace,
140
having no great difficulty on such a
still night in keeping within earshot
some few miles, the horseman pausing
more than once. In this pursuit Roger
discovered the rider to choose bridle-tracks
and open commons in preference
to any high road. The distance soon
began to prove a more trying one than
he had bargained for; and when out
of breath and in some despair of being
able to ascertain the man’s identity, he
perceived an ass standing in the star-light
under a hayrick, from which the
animal was helping itself to periodic
mouthfuls.

The story goes that Roger caught
the ass, mounted, and again resumed
the trail of the unconscious horseman,
which feat may have been possible to
a nautical young fellow, though one
can hardly understand how a sailor
would ride such an animal without
bridle or saddle, and strange to his
hands, unless the creature was extraordinarily
docile. This question, however,
is immaterial. Suffice it to say,
that at dawn the following morning
Roger beheld his sister’s lover or husband
entering the gates of a large and
well-timbered park on the south-western
141
verge of the White Hart Forest
(as it was then called), now known to
everybody as the Vale of Blackmoor.
Thereupon the sailor discarded his
steed, and finding for himself an obscurer
entrance to the same park a
little farther on, he crossed the grass
to reconnoitre.

He presently perceived amid the
trees before him a mansion which,
new to himself, was one of the best
known in the county at that time. Of
this fine manorial residence hardly a
trace now remains; but a manuscript,
dated some years later than the events
we are regarding, describes it in terms
from which the imagination may construct
a singularly clear and vivid
picture. This record presents it as
consisting of “a faire yellow freestone
building, partly two and partly three
storeys; a faire halle and parlour, both
waynscotted; a faire dyning roome and
withdrawing roome, and many good
lodgings; a kitchen adjoyninge backwarde
to one end of the dwelling-house,
with a faire passage from it
into the halle, parlour, and dyninge
roome, and sellars adjoyninge.

“In the front of the house a square
greene court, and a curious gatehouse
with lodgings in it, standing with the
front of the house to the south; in a
large outer court three stables, a coach-house,
a large barne, and a stable for
oxen and kyne, and all houses necessary.

“Without the gatehouse, paled in,
a large square greene, in which standeth
a faire chappell; of the south-east side
of the greene court, towards the river,
a large garden.

“Of the south-west side of the greene
court is a large bowling greene, with
fower mounted walks about it, all
walled about with a batteled wall, and
sett with all sorts of fruit; and out of
it into the feildes there are large walks
under many tall elmes orderly planted.”

Then follows a description of the
orchards and gardens; the servants’
offices, brewhouse, bakehouse, dairy,
pigeon-houses, and corn-mill; the
river and its abundance of fish; the
warren, the coppices, the walks; ending
thus—

“And all the country north of the
house, open champaign, sandy feildes,
very dry and pleasant for all kindes
of recreation, huntinge, and hawkinge,
and profitable for tillage…. The
house hath a large prospect east,
south, and west, over a very large and
pleasant vale … is seated from
the good markett towns of Sherton
Abbas three miles, and Ivel a mile,
that plentifully yield all manner of
provision; and within twelve miles of
the south sea.”

It was on the grass before this seductive
and picturesque structure that the
sailor stood at gaze under the elms in
the dim dawn of Sunday morning, and
saw to his surprise his sister’s lover
and horse vanish within the court of
the building.

Perplexed and weary, Roger slowly
retreated, more than ever convinced
that something was wrong in his sister’s
position. He crossed the bowling
green to the avenue of elms, and, bent
on further research, was about to climb
into one of these, when, looking below,
he saw a hole large enough to allow a
man to creep to the hollow interior.
Here Roger ensconced himself, and
having eaten a crust of bread which he
had hastily thrust into his pocket at
the inn, he fell asleep upon the stratum
of broken touchwood that formed the
floor of the hollow.

He slept soundly and long, and was
awakened by the sound of a bell. On
peering from the hole he found the
time had advanced to full day; the
sun was shining brightly. The bell
was that of the “faire chappell” on
142
the green outside the gatehouse, and
it was calling to matins. Presently
the priest crossed the green to a little
side-door in the chancel, and then from
the gateway of the mansion emerged
the household, the tall man whom
Roger had seen with his sister on the
previous night, on his arm being a
portly dame, and, running beside the
pair, two little girls and a boy. These
all entered the chapel, and the bell
having ceased and the environs become
clear, the sailor crept out from his
hiding.

He sauntered towards the chapel,
the opening words of the service being
audible within. While standing by the
porch he saw a belated servitor approaching
from the kitchen-court to
attend the service also. Roger carelessly
accosted him, and asked, as an
idle wanderer, the name of the family
he had just seen cross over from
the mansion.

“Od zounds! if ye modden be a
stranger here in very truth, goodman.
That war Sir John and his
dame, and his children Elizabeth,
Mary, and John.”

“I be from foreign parts. Sir
John what d’ye call’n?”

“Master John Horseleigh,
Knight, who had a’most as much
lond by inheritance of his mother
as a had by his father, and likewise
some by his wife. Why, baint his
arms dree goolden horses’ heads,
and idden his lady the daughter of
Master Richard Phelipson of Montislope,
in Nether Wessex, known
to us all?”

“It mid be so, and yet it mid
not. However, th’ ’lt miss thy
prayers for such an honest knight’s
welfare, and I have to traipse seaward
many miles.”

He went onward, and, as he
walked, continued saying to himself,
“Now to that poor wronged
fool Edy. The fond thing! I
thought it; ’twas too quick—she
was ever amorous. What’s to become
of her? God wot! How be I going
to face her with the news, and how be
I to hold it from her? To bring this
disgrace on my father’s honored name,
a double-tongued knave!” He turned
and shook his fist at the chapel and
all in it, and resumed his way.

Perhaps it was owing to the perplexity
of his mind that, instead of returning
by the direct road towards his
sister’s obscure lodging in the next
county, he followed the highway to
Casterbridge, some fifteen miles off,
where he remained drinking hard all
that afternoon and evening, and where
he lay that and two or three succeeding
nights, wandering thence along the
Anglebury road to some village that
way, and lying the Friday night after
at his native place of Havenpool. The
sight of the familiar objects there
seems to have stirred him anew to action,
and the next morning he was observed
pursuing the way to Oozewood
that he had followed on the Saturday
previous, reckoning, no doubt, that
Saturday night would, as before, be a
time for finding Sir John with his sister
again.

He delayed to reach the place till
just before sunset. His sister was
walking in the meadows at the foot of
the garden, with a nursemaid who carried
143
the baby, and she looked up pensively
when he approached. Anxiety
as to her position had already told
upon her once rosy cheeks and lucid
eyes. But concern for herself and
child was displaced for the moment by
her regard of Roger’s worn and
haggard face.

“Why, you are sick, Roger!
You are tired! Where have you
been these many days? Why
not keep me company a bit?
My husband is much away. And
we have hardly spoke at all of
dear father and of your voyage
to the New Land. Why did you
go away so suddenly? There is
a spare chamber at my lodging.”

“Come indoors,” he said.
“We’ll talk now—talk a good
deal. As for him (nodding to
the child), better heave him into
the river; better for him and
you!”

She forced a laugh, as if she
tried to see a good joke in the
remark, and they went silently
indoors.

“A miserable hole!” said
Roger, looking around the room.

“Nay, but ’tis very pretty!”

“Not after what I’ve seen. Did he
marry ’ee at church in orderly fashion?”

“He did sure—at our church at
Havenpool.”

“But in a privy way?”

“Ay, because of his friends—it was
at night time.”

“Ede, ye fond one, for all that he’s
not thy husband! Th’ ’rt not his wife,
and the child is a bastard. He hath a
wife and children of his own rank, and
bearing his name; and that’s Sir John
Horseleigh of Clyfton Horseleigh, and
not plain Jack, as you think him, and
your lawful husband. The sacrament
of marriage is no safeguard now-a-days.
The king’s new-made headship of the
Church hath led men to practise these
tricks lightly.”

She had turned white. “That’s not
true, Roger!” she said. “You are in
liquor, my brother, and you know not
what you say. Your seafaring years
have taught ’ee bad things.”

“Edith—I’ve seen them; wife and
family—all. How canst——”

They were sitting in the gathered
darkness, and at that moment steps
were heard without. “Go out this
way,” she said. “It is my husband.
He must not see thee in this mood.
Get away till to-morrow, Roger, as you
care for me.”

She pushed her brother through a
door leading to the back stairs, and
almost as soon as it was closed her visitor
entered. Roger, however, did not
retreat down the stairs; he stood and
looked through the bobbin-hole. If
the visitor turned out to be Sir John,
he had determined to confront him.

It was the knight. She had struck
a light on his entry, and he kissed the
child, and took Edith tenderly by the
shoulders, looking into her face.

“Something’s gone awry wi’ my
dear,” he said. “What is it? What’s
the matter?”

“Oh, Jack!” she cried. “I have
heard such a fearsome rumor—what
doth it mean? He who told me is my
best friend. He must be deceived!
But who deceived him, and why? Jack,
I was just told that you had a wife
living when you married me, and have
her still!”

“A wife? H’m.”

“Yes, and children. Say no, say
no!”

“My God! I have no lawful wife
but you; and as for children, many or
few, they are all bastards, save this one
alone!”

“And that you be Sir John Horseleigh
of Clyfton?”

“I mid be. I have never said so to
’ee.”

“But Sir John is known to have a
lady, and issue of her!”

The knight looked down. “How
did thy mind get filled with such as
this?” he asked.

“One of my kindred came.”

“A traitor! Why should he mar our
life? Ah! you said you had a brother
at sea—where is he now?”

“Here!” said a stern voice behind
him. And, flinging open the door,
Roger faced the intruder. “Liar,” he
said, “to call thyself her husband!”

Sir John fired up, and made a rush
at the sailor, who seized him by the
collar, and in the wrestle they both fell,
Roger under. But in a few seconds he
contrived to extricate his right arm,
and drawing from his belt a knife
which he wore attached to a cord
round his neck, he opened it with his
teeth, and struck it into the breast of
Sir John stretched above him. Edith
had during these moments run into
the next room to place the child in
safety, and when she came back the
knight was relaxing his hold on Roger’s
throat. He rolled over upon his
back and groaned.

The only witness of the scene, save
the three concerned, was the nursemaid,
who had brought in the child on its
father’s arrival. She stated afterwards
that nobody suspected Sir John had
received his death wound; yet it was
so, though he did not die for a
long while, meaning thereby an hour
or two; that Mistress Edith continually
endeavored to staunch the blood,
calling her brother Roger a wretch,
and ordering him to get himself gone;
on which order he acted, after a gloomy
pause, by opening the window, and letting
himself down by the sill to the
ground.

It was then that Sir John, in difficult
accents, made his dying declaration to
the nurse and Edith, and, later, the
apothecary, which was to this purport:
that the Dame Horseleigh who passed
as his wife at Clyfton, and who had
borne him three children, was in truth
and deed, though unconsciously, the
145
wife of another man. Sir John had
married her several years before, in the
face of the whole county, as the widow
of one Decimus Strong, who had disappeared
shortly after her union with
him, having adventured to the North
to join the revolt of the Nobles, and
on that revolt being quelled retreated
across the sea. Two years ago, having
discovered the man to be still living
in France, and not wishing to disturb
the mind and happiness of her who
believed herself his wife, yet wishing
for legitimate issue, Sir John had
informed the king of the facts, who
had encouraged him to wed honestly,
though secretly, the young merchant’s
widow at Havenpool; she being, therefore,
his lawful wife, and she only.
That to avoid all scandal and hubbub
he had purposed to let things remain
as they were till fair opportunity should
arise of making the true case known
with least pain to all parties concerned;
but that, having been thus suspected
and attacked by his own brother-in-law,
his zest for such schemes and for
all things had died out in him, and he
only wished to commend his soul to
God.

That night, while the owls were hooting
from the forest that encircled the
sleeping townlet, and the South-Avon
was gurgling through the wooden piles
of the bridge, Sir John died there in the
arms of his wife. She concealed nothing
of the cause of her husband’s death save
the subject of the quarrel, which she
felt it would be premature to announce
just then, and until proof of her status
should be forthcoming. But before a
month had passed, it happened, to her
inexpressible sorrow, that the child of
this clandestine union fell sick and died.
From that hour all interest in the name
and fame of the Horseleighs forsook
the younger of the twain who called
themselves wives of Sir John, and, being
careless about her own fame, she
took no steps to assert her claims, her
legal position having, indeed, grown
hateful to her in her horror at the
tragedy. And Sir William Byrt, the
curate who had married her to her husband,
being an old man and feeble, was
not disinclined to leave the embers unstirred
of such a fiery matter as this,
and to assist her in letting established
things stand. Therefore, Edith retired
with the nurse, her only companion and
146
friend, to her native town, where she
lived in absolute obscurity till her death
at no great age. Her brother was
never seen again in England.

A strangely corroborative sequel to
the story remains to be told. Shortly
after the death of Sir John Horseleigh,
a soldier of fortune returned from the
Continent, called on Dame Horseleigh
the fictitious, living in widowed state
at Clyfton Horseleigh, and, after a
singularly brief courtship, married her.
The tradition at Havenpool and elsewhere
has ever been that this man was
already her husband, Decimus Strong,
who re-married her for appearance’s
sake only.

The illegitimate son of this lady by
Sir John succeeded to the estates and
honors, and his son after him, there
being nobody alert to investigate their
pretensions. Little difference would it
have made to the present generation,
however, had there been such a one,
for the family in all its branches, lawful
and unlawful, has been extinct these
many score years, the last representative
but one being killed at the siege of
Sherton Castle, while attacking in the
service of the Parliament, and the other
being outlawed later in the same century
for a debt of ten pounds, and
dying in the county jail. The mansion
house and its appurtenances were, as I
have previously stated, destroyed, excepting
one small wing which now forms
part of a farmhouse, and is visible as
you pass along the railway from Casterbridge
to Ivel. The outline of the old
bowling-green is also distinctly to be
seen.

This, then, is the reason why the
only lawful marriage of Sir John, as
recorded in the obscure register at
Havenpool, does not appear in the
pedigree of the house of Horseleigh.

[“THE EDGE OF THE FUTURE” SERIES.]

INTRODUCTION.

Arctic enthusiasm is an intermittent
fever, returning in almost
epidemic form after intervals of normal
indifference. Twelve years ago there
was a wide-spread outbreak, but for
the last ten years the symptoms have
never been so severe as to result in
a great expedition. If all goes well
this summer there will be a renewed
paroxysm; no less than three new
ventures northward being sent out by
different routes to converge on the
pole.

It is refreshing, in this prosaic time,
to recognize the power of pure sentiment
in the quest for glory. Polar
research is a survival, or rather an
evolution, of knight-errantry, and our
Childe Rolands challenge the “Dark
Tower of the North” as dauntlessly as
ever their forbears wound slug-horn at
gate of enchanted castle. The “woe
of years” invests the quest with
elements which redeem failure from
disgrace; but whoever succeeds in
overcoming the difficulties that have
baffled all the “lost adventurers” will
make the world ring with his fame as
it never rang before. We commonplace
human beings are as quick to see
and prompt to appreciate heroic daring,
perseverance, and valor as ever were
the dames of mythic Camelot; and the
race for the pole will be watched by
the world with generous sympathy.

Incidentally the fresh Arctic journeys
must secure much scientific information,
but that aspect of them appeals
to the few. It is as a display of the
grandest powers of man in conflict
with the tyranny of his surroundings
that Arctic travel appeals directly to
the heart. Since McClure, in 1850,
forced the north-west passage from
Bering Strait to Baffin Bay, and Nordenskjold,
in 1878, squeezed the “Vega”
through, between ice and land, from the
North Cape to the Pacific, the futility
of the golden dreams of the greedy
old merchants who tried to reach the
wealth of the Orient by short cuts
through the ice has been demonstrated.
Although no money is likely to be
made out of the Arctic, we want information
thence which it is almost impossible
to get; and the almost impossible
is dear to every valiant heart.

We know a good deal about the
state of matters near the poles, but yet
not enough to let us understand all the
phenomena of our own lands. In this
respect, however, the South Pole is the
most promising field, for its surroundings
probably conceal the mainspring of
the great system of winds which do the
work of the air on every land and sea.
Dr. Nansen has promised to go there
after returning from the North, and
solving its simpler problems. The
chilly distinction of being the coldest
part of the earth is probably due to
the northern parts of Eastern Siberia,
and not to the North Pole. The
“magnetic pole,” where the needle
hangs vertically, has been found in the
Arctic archipelago north of America,
and in many ways scientific observations
there are worth more than at the
North Pole itself.

We know that, if attained, the North
Pole would probably be like any other
part of the Arctic regions, presenting
a landscape of ice and snow, perhaps
with black rock showing here and there,
containing fossils of a former age of
heat, perhaps broken by pools or lanes
of open water. The pole has no physical
mark any more than the top of a
148
spinning coin has, and the pole is not
even a fixed point; like the end of the
axis of the spinning coin, it moves a
little to and fro on the circumference.
If the geographical point were reached,
the pole-star would be seen shining
almost vertically overhead, describing
a tiny circle around the actual zenith;
and all the other stars of the northern
half of the sky would appear slowly
wheeling in horizontal circles, never
rising, never setting, and each completing
its circuit in the space of
twenty-three hours and fifty-six
minutes. In summer the sun would
appear similarly, never far above the
horizon, but circling for more than
half the year in a spiral, winding upward
until about 25° above the horizon,
and winding downward again until lost
to view. The periods of daylight and
darkness at the poles do not last
exactly six months each, as little geography
books are prone to assert. Such
little books ignore the atmosphere for
the sake of simplicity, but the air-shell
that shuts in our globe bends the rays
of light, so that the sun appears before
his theoretical rising, and remains in
sight after his theoretical setting. At
the pole, in fact, the single “half-yearly
day” is a week longer than the
one “half-yearly night.”

At the North Pole there is only one
direction—south. One could go south
in as many ways as there are points on
the compass card, but every one of
these ways is south; east and west
have vanished. The hour of the day
at the pole is a paradoxical conception,
for that point is the meeting place of
every meridian, and the time of all
holds good, so that it is always any
hour one cares to mention. Unpunctuality
is hence impossible—but the
question grows complex, and its practical
solution concerns few.

No one needs to go to the pole to
discover all that makes that point
different from any other point of
the surface. But the whole polar
regions are full of unknown things,
which every Arctic explorer of the
right stamp looks forward to finding.
And the reward he looks forward to
most is the approval of the few who
understand and love knowledge for its
own sake, rather than the noisy applause
of the crowd who would cheer
him, after all, much as they cheer a
winning prize-fighter, or race-horse, or
political candidate.

The difficulties that make the quest
of the pole so arduous have been discovered
by slow degrees. It is marvellous
how soon nearly the full limits
of northward attainment were reached.
In 1596 Barents discovered Spitzbergen
in about 78° north; in 1770 Hudson
reached 80°; in 1827 Parry, by sledging
on the ice when his ship became fast,
succeeded in touching 82° 45´. Since
then all the enormous resources of
modern science—steam, electricity, preserved
foods and the experience of
centuries—have only enabled forty
miles of additional poleward advance
to be made.

The accompanying map gives a fair
idea of the form of the Arctic regions,
and remembering that the circle marked
80° is distant seven hundred miles from
the pole, the reader can realize the
distances involved. The Arctic Basin,
occupied by the Arctic Sea, is ringed
in by land; the northern coasts of
America, Europe, and Asia, forming a
roughly circular boundary broken by
three well-marked channels communicating
with the ocean. Bering Strait
between America and Asia is the narrowest,
Baffin Bay between America
and Greenland is wider, branching into
a number of ice-blocked sounds to the
westward, and tapering off into Smith
Sound in the north-east. The widest
channel of the three lies between
Greenland and Europe, and this is bisected
just south of 80° North by the
island group of Spitzbergen.

The whole region is one of severe
cold, and the sea is frozen for the
greater part of the year, land and
water becoming almost indistinguishable,
but for the incessant movement
and drift of the sea-ice. In summer
the sea-ice breaks up into floes which
may drift away southward and melt,
or be driven by the wind against the
shores of continents or islands, leaving
lanes of open water which a shift of
wind may change and close in an hour.
Icebergs launched from the glaciers of
the land also drift with tide, current,
and wind through the more or less
open water. Possibly at some times the
pack may open and a clear waterway
run through to the pole, and old
whalers tell of many a year when they
believed that a few days’ steaming
would carry them to the end of the
world, if they could have seized the
opportunity. At other times, routes
traversed in safety time after time may
be effectively closed for years, and all
advance barred. Food in the form of
seals or walrus in the open water, reindeer,
musk ox, polar bears or birds on
the land, may often be procured, but
these sources cannot be relied upon.
Advance northward may be made by
water in a ship, or by dog-sledge, or on
foot, over the frozen snow or ice. Each
method has grave drawbacks. Advance
by sea is stopped when the young
ice forms in autumn, and land advance
is hampered by the long Arctic night
which enforces months of inaction,
more trying to health and spirits than
the severest exertion.

Smith Sound has been the channel
by which most recent Arctic explorers
have pushed north. Thus Markham
reached latitude 83° 20´ North, in 1876,
and in 1882 Lockwood got four miles
farther north, coming nearer the pole
than any other man. From his farthest
point an express train could cover the
intervening distance in ten hours, but
the best ice traveller would require
months, even if the way were smooth.
This route has been by common consent
150
abandoned, at least for advance
by water. No high latitude has been
reached from Bering Strait nor along
the east coast of Greenland. For ships
the most open way to the north lies
to the west of Spitzbergen, as Parry
found two generations ago. Neither
of the two projected expeditions from
Europe is, however, intended to take
this route. Mr. Jackson means to advance
over the ice in sledges, trusting
that Franz-Josef Land stretches northward
to the immediate neighborhood of
the pole. Doctor Nansen also founds
his plan on a theory, but his is so novel,
and involves a plan of action so different
from all previously attempted,
that it must be considered in detail.

NANSEN AND HIS PLANS.

Fridtjof Nansen, who planned and
will lead the Norwegian expedition
starting in June, is a naturalist, thirty-two
years of age. He is singularly
adapted physically for deeds of daring
and endurance, perfectly equipped intellectually
for command and research.
His lithe, erect figure testifies to athletic
training, while his expansive forehead
and firm chin equally betoken
thoughtfulness and determination. He
is a typical Norseman, fair in complexion
and hair, simple and rather reserved
in manner, and modest almost
to a fault. No one can see him without
becoming his friend. He speaks
English fluently, and a quiet, half-repressed
humor lights up his conversation.
Never overstepping the truth, he
does not seem to feel the temptation
of spinning imaginative yarns so over-powering
for the undisciplined traveller.
He knows his own strength,
and measuring himself against the difficulties
he proposes to meet, he feels
confident of victory, and inspires others
with his own faith. There is no
turning back when once his mind is
fully made up.

Nansen’s whole life has been a training
for the exploit he now engages in.
After graduating at the University of
Christiania, he was appointed curator
of the Museum at Bergen, and carried
out several important biological researches,
of which that on the anatomy
of whales is perhaps the best known.
He was a diligent student of the great
Norwegian naturalist Sars, and on his
return from Greenland he entered into
a closer relation by marrying the professor’s
daughter. Mrs. Nansen is
said to be the most accomplished lady
ski-runner in Norway, as her husband
is the champion of his sex; their portraits
in the costume of this national
sport are extremely characteristic.
She had originally planned to accompany
Doctor Nansen on the Arctic
voyage, but has reluctantly relinquished
the intention. She stays behind
with her little girl only a few
months old. For the last three years
Doctor Nansen has devoted himself entirely
to the study of various branches
of science likely to be of service to him
in the accomplishment of his great ambition,
and in organizing every detail
of his expedition.

The chief circumstance in which
Nansen differs from all his predecessors
is, that he prepares no line of retreat.
To the common question, “But
how are you to come back?” his reply
in word and deed has always been, “I
will never come back. I shall go
through to the other side.” Thus, in
crossing Greenland in 1888, he started
from the uninhabited east coast, so that
he and his companions had to go forward—retreat
meant destruction. Such
determination is only redeemed from
obstinacy by the forethought which inspires
it. Before setting out to cross
Greenland, Nansen crossed the mountains
of Norway from Bergen to Christiania
in winter, thus proving his
mastery of the ski or Norwegian snow-shoes,
and testing his power of withstanding
cold and fatigue. Just as the
crossing of the Norwegian mountains
proved his competence for the splendid
feat of crossing Greenland, that journey
by its success establishes his ability
for enduring the severest privations
which his new expedition may be called
upon to undergo.

A careful study of all the known
phenomena of the Arctic Basin, and the
records of all the exploring, whaling,
and sealing voyages in these waters
which were accessible, impressed two
facts upon him—one, that the currents
of the Polar Basin were more regular
and more powerful agents than had
been previously supposed; the other,
that the failure of the great expeditions
to the north was in most cases due to
the great number of men carried, and
the labor involved in keeping open a
line of retreat. The moral of this is
simple enough: to sail as far as possible
with the currents, to take as few
men as possible, and these in thorough
training for Arctic work, and to
make no provision for retreat. For
the valor and heroic efforts of the
earlier Arctic explorers there can never
be anything but praise; those men
fought against the most terrific odds,
and stood their ground without flinching,
and their opinion on all matters
connected with Arctic travel carries
the utmost weight. Nansen breaks
away from all tradition; he goes right
against every cherished principle of all
the older Arctic men. He will secure
no line of retreat, he will carry only
eleven men with him, every one of
whom is inured to hardship and expert
in ice-travel. He is bound by no orders,
but has perfect freedom to alter
his plans should circumstances seem to
demand it. His plan is to drift with
the currents, and the evidence for the
currents moving in the direction he
wishes to go is as follows:

The great drift of polar water southward
along the east coasts of Labrador
152
and of Greenland has been known
from the beginning of Atlantic navigation,
and the icebergs and floes carried
along are serious obstacles to the shipping
of the North Atlantic. It is estimated
that between Greenland and
Spitzbergen about eighty or ninety
cubic miles of water pour southward
every day. The current, like that
down Smith Sound, flows from the
north, but the water cannot originate
there. There is a very slight northward
extension of the Gulf Stream
drift along the west coasts of Spitzbergen
and Greenland, but the main drift
of North Atlantic water from the southward
sets round the North Cape of
Norway, keeping the sea free from ice
all the year round. It is felt in the
Kara Sea, and as a north-easterly
stream along the coast of Novaya
Zemlya. It is difficult to estimate the
volume of this drift, but from certain
observations made by the Norwegian
Government it seems to be about sixty
cubic miles per day. There is a current
running on the whole northward
from the Pacific through Bering Strait
with a volume of perhaps fifteen cubic
miles a day, and in addition there is
the volume of perhaps two cubic miles
daily poured out during summer by the
great American and Siberian rivers.
This water is fresh and warm, and
accumulating near shore in autumn it
gives rise to the ice-free border which
let the “Vega” slip round the north of
Asia. Even where the sea is covered
with floating ice, there are perceptible
currents, and the ice-pack is never at
rest.

Since the vast body of water north
of 80° between Franz-Josef Land and
Greenland is streaming from the north,
and since it must be derived somehow
from water which comes from the
south, it is evident that north-flowing
currents of considerable power must
exist in the Arctic Basin. Parry in his
splendid voyage of 1827 spent months
in sledging northward on a vast ice-floe
which all the while was drifting south
faster than the dogs could drag the
sledges northward.

This polar current is the exit by
which Doctor Nansen intends to leave
the Polar Basin. It is a current which
strews the coast of Greenland with
Siberian and North American driftwood,
all coming from the north, perhaps
across the pole itself. Mud containing
microscopic shells which only
occur in Siberia has been collected on
some of these southward-bound ice-floes.
On one occasion a throwing-stick
of a form used exclusively by the
Eskimo of Alaska to cast their harpoons
was picked up on the west coast
of Greenland, having obviously been
drifted round Cape Farewell, as the
boats of many a whaler shipwrecked in
the polar current have been drifted
before. But perhaps the most interesting
argument is that derived from the
drift of the “Jeannette.” The “Jeannette”
(once a British gunboat, and
afterward employed as the “Pandora”
in attempting to repeat the north-west
passage) was sent out by the proprietor
of the “New York Herald,” under
the command of De Long, to push north
to the pole, through Bering Strait, in
1879. In September of that year she
got fast in the ice, and drifted on the
whole north-westward for nearly two
years. At last she was crushed in the
ice on June 13, 1881, to the north of
the New Siberian Islands. The drift
of the “Jeannette” was becoming
faster as she got farther west; indeed,
it was possibly the more rapid movement
of the current that set the floes
in motion and led to the crushing of
the vessel. Three years after she sank,
an ice-floe was found on the south coast
of Greenland at Julianehaab, on which
were a number of articles, including
documents relating to the stores and
boats of the “Jeannette,” bearing De
Long’s signature. The relics had a
romantic history, and have given rise
to controversy; but before their authenticity
had been seriously questioned
they were sacrificed to the sense of
order of a Copenhagen housewife.
Nansen is certain that the relics did
come from the “Jeannette,” and he
believes they were drifted like the
wood and Siberian mud upon an ice-raft
across the pole or in its immediate
vicinity.

His resolve was made accordingly
“to take a ticket with the ice,” as he
phrases it, and so drift across. The
153
point where it would be best to join
the current, Nansen decided to be off
the New Siberian Islands, although
Captain Wiggins recommends the most
northerly point of continental land,
Cape Chelyuskin, as a more likely
starting place. At first Nansen proposed
to follow the “Jeannette”
through Bering Sea, but he has now
decided to take the nearer route round
the North Cape, through the Kara Sea,
and along the coast of Asia, as the
“Vega” went, striking northward off
the Lena Delta. It will require extremely
skilful navigation even to
reach the starting point, and it may
even be impossible to do so in one
year, but, having reached and run into
the ice, another question comes to the
front. The vessel in which the drift
of several years is to be made must
not share the fate of the “Jeannette,”
if human ingenuity can avoid it. And
ingenuity has been taxed to produce a
ship of the most perfect kind.

Nansen’s little vessel, launched at
Laurvik last October, suits his venture
and himself as well as the famous
“long serpents” of his ancestors suited
them and their voyages of conquest
and discovery a thousand years ago.
She is built of wood, but is of a
strength never hitherto aimed at.
The frame timbers, Nansen modestly
says, “may be said to be well-seasoned,”
for though cut from the gnarled oaks
of Italy they have been stored in a
Norwegian dockyard during the whole
lifetime of the explorer. These timbers—the
ribs of the ship—are a foot
thick, and are placed only two inches
apart, the intervening spaces being
filled with a special composition, so that
even the skeleton of the ship would
be water-tight should the planks be
stripped off. Inside, the walls are
lined with pitch-pine planks alternately
four inches and eight inches thick, with
cross-beams and supports to resist
pressure in every direction, as shown in
the accompanying section. Outside,
there is a three-inch skin of oak, carefully
calked and made water-tight, then
covered by another skin of oak four
inches thick, which in turn is encased
in a still thicker layer of the hard and
slippery greenheart. Bow and stern
are heavily plated with iron to cut
through thin ice. Finally, to render
her fit for living in during the coldest
weather, the water-tight compartment
set apart for this purpose (one of three)
is lined, walls and ceiling, with layers
of non-conducting material. Tarred
canvas, cork, wood, several inches of
felt enclosed by painted canvas, and
finally a wooden wainscot, promise to
effectually keep out the cold. In the
roof, a layer of two inches of reindeer’s
hair has also been introduced.

The form of the vessel is as original
as her material. She measures one
hundred and twenty-eight feet in extreme
length, thirty-six in beam, and is
seventeen feet deep. With a full cargo
she will draw fifteen feet, and have a
freeboard of little more than three feet.
She is pointed fore and aft, the stern
being so formed that the propeller and
rudder are deeply immersed to escape
floating ice, and both these vital fittings
are placed in wells, through which they
may be brought on board in case of
need, or readily replaced if damaged.
The hull is rounded so that even the
keel does not project materially. The
form is designed so that when the ice
begins to press, it will not crush but
lift the ship, as one might lift an egg
from a table by sliding two hands under
it. Her rig, as shown in the illustration,
is simply that of a three-masted
fore and aft schooner, with a very tall
mainmast, designed to carry the crow’s
nest for the look-out. This will stand
one hundred and five feet above the
water, thus affording the wide view
indispensable in ice navigation. A
captive balloon would have been used
as well, but the necessary fittings were
too heavy to carry. The engine is not
of great power, as no particular reason
exists for high speed, and with a coal
capacity of only three hundred tons
economy of fuel is of the first importance.

The ship is prophetically named the
“Fram,” or “Forward,” and for her the
viking explorer is determined there will
be no turning back.

It is possible that in spite of all precautions
the “Fram” may be nipped
in the ice-floe which will carry her
along, or stranded on some unknown
154
northern land. This contingency is
provided for by two large decked
boats, twenty-nine feet long, either of
which could accommodate the whole
crew. These would be placed on the
ice to serve as houses, and in the end
could be used for the return voyage.
Many smaller boats are carried, and
light sledges with dog teams, in case it
becomes necessary to travel over the
ice. The invaluable “ski” would of
course be used in such an emergency,
and plenty of tarred canvas would be
carried, by means of which the sledges
could be converted into boats. Provisions
for five years, at least, are
stowed away on board; also books for
study and recreation, and a complete
equipment of scientific instruments for
observations and collecting of every
kind. The ship carries no alcoholic
drink; alcohol is taken only as a fuel
for use when the coal runs out, or if
the ship has to be left. Nansen does
not smoke, and very likely he may
regulate the smoking of his followers,
for his views on hygiene are clear, and
his determination to enforce them
strong. The eleven men chosen for
the enterprise have the fullest faith in
their leader, and that respect for his
splendid qualities as a man which is
essential to good order being maintained.
For in the hardships of Arctic
travel there is no sentimental deference
to a leader unless he is the best
man of the party, and Arctic hardships
quickly reduce things and men to their
real worth. Nansen and his crew will
prove, we are confident, as firmly knit
together as the timbers of the “Fram”
herself. Captain Sverdrup, who accompanied
him across Greenland, goes
as navigating officer of the “Fram.”

Perhaps the most original of the
many original fittings of this little
polar cruiser is the dynamo which will
for the first time in the history of
exploration supply abundant light during
the whole Arctic night. When
there is wind a windmill will work it;
but in the calm weather the men, in
watches, will take their necessary exercise
in tramping round a capstan to the
strains of a musical box of long Arctic
experience—it was in the “Jeannette,”—and
thus at least eight hours of
perfect light will be secured every
day.

Everything that foresight can suggest
and money can buy has been
secured to make the voyage a success;
but even in the most sanguine mind
the risk must appear great, and the
time of suspense will be long. The
drift across the polar area cannot occupy
less than two years, and provisions
are carried for five. But we need
not dwell on dangers; the personality
of Nansen rises above them all—the
motto he carries with him in a little
volume of condensed poetry, as powerful
meat for the soul as any of his
cunningly concocted extracts are for
the body, is the wish of all his friends—

The Norwegian expedition goes out
under the command of a hero full of
experience, ripe in knowledge, certain
to do all that a strong and trained man
can accomplish, backed by large grants
of money from his own government,
and smaller gifts from people and societies
in many lands.

JACKSON’S EXPEDITION.

The British expedition which has
been projected is not a national effort.
It is purely private, planned and
equipped by private enterprise and
private money, in order to follow up
the line in which private exertions
have already done more for polar exploration
than many government expeditions
have achieved. Its leader,
Mr. Frederick G. Jackson, is a business
man, possessed of leisure and sufficient
means, and experienced in travel in all
parts of the world. Of the same age
as Doctor Nansen, and, like him, married,
he is as typical an Englishman as
the latter is a Norseman. Pluck and
“go” are his in very large measure;
experience in serious ice-work he cannot
lay claim to, but he knows more
about the Arctic regions than many
famous explorers did on their first setting
155
out. Mr. Jackson has made a
summer cruise to the far north, and,
under the tuition of a canny Peterhead
whaler, he has picked up many wrinkles
which will help him in time of need.
He is a keen sportsman rather than a
man of science, but his ten companions
will be chosen for their ability to make
all necessary scientific observations and
collections. If his plans fall out as he
hopes, Jackson will be the most eager
in the race to the pole, and it will not
be his fault if the Union Jack is not
the first flag planted on that much coveted
site. He intends to leave England
about the middle of July, or perhaps as
late as the beginning of August.

His plan of attack is that which is
most approved by the Arctic admirals
of the British navy. It is to approach
by Franz-Josef Land, which may in
favorable years be comparatively easily
reached. On landing, a depot will be
formed and stores laid up as a base for
retreat; and then, by sledging northward
along the land-ice, the coast would be
delineated and mapped as far as it
extends, other depots established, and
if the surface proves suitable, and if
Franz-Josef Land proves, as is probable,
not to have a great northerly extent,
an advance may be made on the
sea-ice, carrying boats for crossing
open water.

It seems very probable that in this
way the highest latitudes of earlier explorers
may be passed, and in Franz-Josef
Land life is more tolerable than
in perhaps any other place at the same
latitude. Mr. Leigh Smith, the most
successful Arctic yachtsman, spent the
winter of 1881-82 in a hut built on an
island in the south of Franz-Josef Land,
after his ship was wrecked, and without
winter clothing, and he found bears and
walrus plentiful enough to keep himself
and his party supplied with fresh
meat. The country however is very
desolate, in spite of its comparatively
genial conditions. Mr. Jackson intends
to hire or purchase a steam
whaler to convey him to Franz-Josef
Land, and for navigation he has secured
the services of Mr. Crowther, Leigh
Smith’s ice-master. After establishing
winter quarters, he will make some preliminary
trips to test his sledges and
complete the survey of the southern
part of the land, reserving the great
northward march for the spring of
1894. He is pushing forward his preparations
quietly and quickly, and, as
he does not ask for public money, he
does not feel it necessary to publish
any of the details of his intended mode
of life. It is difficult to forecast the
result of his expedition. From the
little we know about Franz-Josef Land,
it appears certain that with a favorable
season much good work could be done,
and there is more satisfaction in contemplating
an expedition in which
pluck and endurance count than the
mere passive submission to the laws of
physical geography, on which Nansen
depends. In two years he hopes to
prove that Franz-Josef Land is or is
not a practicable road to the pole.

We have no data to make a comparison
between the two brave men, nor
any wish to do so. But Nansen is
Nansen, and Jackson has yet to win
his spurs; to him therefore would be
the greater glory if success attend him.

For our part, we heartily desire that
Nansen, Peary, and Jackson may meet
simultaneously at the pole, and return
betimes to tell their story and share
the honors. The aggravating thing is,
that the expeditions may never reach
their proper starting point. Many a
good ship has knocked about for a
whole season in the Kara Sea without
getting a lead through the ice; the
effort to reach Franz-Josef Land has
not been often made, and it is a sinister
omen that the “Tegetthof,” which discovered
that region, arrived there after
eighteen months of drifting fast in the
floes. But we shall see.

Before the end of June, Civil Engineer
Robert E. Peary of the United
States Navy will have sailed on another
expedition for the Arctic regions.
The party will go by the way of Newfoundland,
Baffin’s Bay, and Whale
Sound, to Inglefield Gulf, which lies
just southeast of Smith Sound and
south of the promontory containing the
great Humboldt glacier. The winter
camp will be established at the head of
Bowdoin Bay, some forty miles to the
east of Redcliffe House, where Lieutenant
Peary passed the winter of ’91,
’92.

The programme of the expedition
may be briefly summarized as follows:

The party will be absent about two
years and a half, a three years’ leave of
absence having been accorded Lieutenant
Peary by the Navy Department.
They expect to be in camp, as indicated,
by the last week in July, when
the staunch “Falcon,” a sealing steamer
which carries them, will land the expedition
and return to Newfoundland.
The months of August and September,
all they will have before the Arctic
night sets in, will be utilized in three
ways: a party will be sent inland over
the ice-cap with a large store of provisions,
which will be stored as far to
the north as possible, to await the expedition
of the ensuing spring; another
party, under Lieutenant Peary himself,
will make a careful survey of Inglefield
Gulf, which is of rare scientific
interest on account of the tremendous
glaciers which discharge into it; and a
third party will busy itself hunting reindeer
and other game to supply the expedition
with fresh meat.

By November 1, 1893, they will go
into winter quarters, all occupying a
single house, which will be made as
comfortable as possible. During the
five or six months of darkness, scientific
work will be carried on, including a
thorough study of Esquimo habits and
institutions. Clothing will be made of
reindeer skins, and, in general, preparations
be completed for the advance
over the ice-cap. Lieutenant Peary
hopes to start the sledges northward
early in March, thus gaining two
months on the start made in ’92. The
season of ’94 will be spent in advancing
as rapidly as possible to the northern
extremity of Greenland, to Independence
Bay, discovered by Lieutenant
Peary in his recent expedition. At
this point the party will divide, several
men being detailed to explore the northeastern
coast of Greenland as far to
the south as Cape Bismarck, while
Lieutenant Peary with two picked men
will push across the fjord separating
Greenland from the land beyond, and
will advance thence still farther to the
north, as circumstances may direct. It
is probable that Lieutenant Peary will
spend the winter of ’94 to ’95 somewhere
in the neighborhood of northernmost
Greenland, very probably in the
most extreme northern latitude in which
any white man has wintered. In the
spring of ’95, or as soon as the season
will permit, he will make a further and
final advance, leaving time enough for
the party to return to Inglefield Gulf
before the fall. There a relief ship
will be in waiting to carry the expedition
157
back to New York with the results
of their explorations.

So much for Lieutenant Peary’s time-table;
now for what he hopes to accomplish.

To begin with, the party expect to
attain the highest north ever reached
by any Arctic expedition. The present
record is held by the Greely expedition,
two members of which reached
83° 24´ north latitude. The farthest
north reached by Lieutenant Peary in
his last expedition was 82° north latitude,
which is some eighty-four geographical
miles south of the point
reached by Lieutenant Lockwood of
the Greely party. Then, as already
mentioned, a complete survey will be
made of Inglefield Gulf, and also of
the entirely unknown stretch of land
on the northeastern coast of Greenland,
between Independence Bay and
Cape Bismarck.

In addition to this, the main object
of the expedition is to make a complete
map of the land lying to the
north of Greenland, or, rather, the Archipelago,
for it is believed that this region
is occupied by an extensive group
of islands. Unfortunately there is reason
for thinking that the lofty ice-cap
which will allow the explorers to reach
the northernmost point of Greenland
by sledging over the inland ice does
not continue in the same way over the
islands to the north of Greenland.
Both Lieutenant Peary in his observations
on the east, and Lieutenant Lockwood
on the west, remarked that the
land stretching away to the north was
in many places bare of ice and snow,
and rugged in its character. One reason
for this absence of an inland ice-cap
here is the fact that these islands
to the north lie low in the ocean compared
with mountainous Greenland.
Hence, in the summer, which is the
only season when an advance would
be possible, the ice and snow melt to
a great extent and leave the land bare.
Now in case Lieutenant Peary finds
that there is no continuous ice on this
northern land, he will skirt around the
shore on the ice of the open sea, for
this is present winter and summer
alike. It is likely that such an advance
over the ice-pack will be attended by
very serious difficulties, the ice being
heaped up in broken and uneven surfaces,
with mountains and chasms to
baffle the party. There may also be
spaces of open water where boats or
rafts will have to be used instead of
sledges. At any rate, the advance will
be made as far as possible, and the
land to the north of Greenland studied
and mapped as far as may be.

It is not the purpose of the expedition
to seek the North Pole itself.
They may and very probably will get
nearer to the Pole than anyone has
hitherto done. Lieutenant Peary is
confident that he will make the farthest
north, and General Greely is
inclined to admit this, and told me
some days ago in Washington that he
should not be surprised if Lieutenant
Peary reached 85° north latitude. In
any event, an approach to the North
Pole will be an incident in the expedition,
and not its main object.

Several important considerations
make it probable that Lieutenant
Peary’s present expedition will attain
a considerable measure of success. In
the first place, in starting from Bowdoin
Bay instead of from Redcliffe
House, there will be a gain of forty
miles rough hauling, which meant in
the recent expedition two weeks’ valuable
time. From Bowdoin Bay, the
party will be able to climb to the inland
ice-cap by the shortest and easiest
possible route. The fact that an
abundant supply of provisions will be
sent ahead during the present summer
will be a great advantage, and will do
away with the necessity of a supporting
party such as was employed on the
last expedition. To save the carrying
of a ton or so of provisions for even a
hundred miles is a matter of great
importance. Lieutenant Peary expects
to make a further saving in time by
choosing a course midway between the
one taken on his last journey to Independence
Bay and the one taken on
his return journey. These two courses,
it will be remembered, were unsatisfactory,
because in the advance to Independence
Bay he went too far to the
west and was caught in immense fissures
and depressions leading to the
glaciers, while on the return journey he
158
went so far to the east that the great
elevation above the sea level, often
eight thousand feet or more, made it
difficult to find the way or take observations
on account of perpetual fogs.
Now he proposes to avoid the two
extremes, and to search for an easier
course in a happy medium. A still
greater gain in time will be made by
starting the expedition early in March,
1894, instead of waiting until May, as
was the case before.

A novel feature of the expedition,
and one that will be of great service,
it is believed, in hauling the loads, will
be the use of pack horses in addition
to the dog teams. Lieutenant Peary,
during his recent western trip, secured
a number of hardy burros in Colorado,
which he believes will be able to endure
the Arctic winter. At any rate,
they will be very valuable in carrying
the advance provisions this present
season, and on a pinch they can be
turned into steaks. It has been found
possible to fit snow shoes to the hoofs
of these pack horses, so as to allow
them to advance as rapidly as the
dogs. An experiment similar to this
has been tried in Norway, where ponies
have been used successfully on snow,
and also in Alaska.

As to the size of the exploring party,
it will be small, comprising not more
than ten men in all, and several of these
will be left behind at the winter quarters.
Lieutenant Peary fully realizes
that an exploring party is no stronger
than the weakest of its members, and
will take along with him only men
whose endurance and loyalty have been
fully demonstrated. From the winter
camp the line of advance will be Independence
Bay, where the party will
divide, Lieutenant Peary pushing on
to the north, and his other men exploring
southward to Cape Bismarck.
From that point the latter party will
be instructed to return to the winter
camp directly across Greenland.
There is no human way of knowing
how Lieutenant Peary will return.

One question which will occur to
anxious friends of the explorer is, how
Lieutenant Peary and his two companions
will live during the winter of
’94 and ’95, at the northernmost point
of Greenland, where the foot of man has
never trod, and where no supplies could
reach them. The answer to this question
is, that the party will take with
them a very large supply of dried meat
and other necessaries, and that they
count on finding musk oxen in the
region where they will camp. In his
previous expedition, Lieutenant Peary
killed five of these musk oxen near
Independence Bay, and he saw many
others. With such a supply of fresh
meat, and with abundant means of
protecting themselves against the cold,
there is no reason why the party may
not live through the winter without
serious danger or even extraordinary
discomfort. Leigh Smith was able to
pass a winter on Franz-Josef Land
under much less favorable conditions.

In a general way it may be said,
in conclusion, that the present Peary
expedition starts out with bright prospects.
Advantage has been taken of
errors and oversights made by others
in the past. Dangers and difficulties
have been foreseen, and will be guarded
against. A sensible, and to a great extent
feasible, plan of advance has been
adopted. In a word, everything would
seem to have been done to prevent the
recurrence of one of those wretched
tragedies which have stained and saddened
the records of Arctic exploration.

Editor’s Note.—The expedition of Lieutenant Peary is undertaken at his own expense,
with the aid of voluntary subscriptions.

Contributions from one dollar up may be sent to Professor Angelo Heilprin, Academy of
Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

On the Fourth of July, 1879, after a
long and tedious journey over
territory never before crossed by man,
I stood with Lieutenant Schwatka on
Cape Felix, the most northern point of
King William’s Land.

Looking in the direction of the Isthmus
of Boothia, not more than twenty
miles to the eastward, across the frozen
surface of McClintock Channel, we
could see the snow-covered hills of
Cape Adelaide, radiant with all the
tints of the rainbow, in the light of the
midnight sun. It was there that, nearly
half a century before, Sir James Ross
had located the North Magnetic Pole.
The place is invested with deep interest
to all explorers, but, with us, the
pleasure was mitigated by the knowledge
that we were entirely devoid of
instruments with which to improve the
opportunity of either verifying the
work already done or continuing it
upon the same line of research.

Ever since that time I have been
strongly imbued with the desire to
return to that field of labor with a
party of observers properly equipped
to make an exhaustive search through
that storehouse of hidden knowledge.

About three years ago I brought the
subject uppermost in my mind to the
attention of Professor T. C. Mendenhall,
Superintendent of the United
States Coast and Geodetic Survey, in
Washington, and to that of his assistant,
Professor Charles A. Schott, in
charge of the computing division of
that bureau. From the first both of
these gentlemen have been strong advocates
of such an expedition.

“The importance of a redetermination
of the geographical position of
the North Magnetic Pole,” said Professor
Mendenhall, in a letter to the
Secretary of the Treasury written at
that time, “has long been recognized
by all interested in the theory of the
earth’s magnetism or its application.
The point as determined by Ross in
the early part of this century was not
located with that degree of accuracy
which modern science demands and
permits, and, besides, it is altogether
likely that its position is not a fixed
one. Our knowledge of the secular
variation of the magnetic needle would
be greatly increased by better information
concerning this Magnetic Pole,
and, in my judgment, it would be the
duty of the Government to offer all
possible encouragement to any suitably
organized exploring expedition which
might undertake to seek for this information.”

Acting upon a further recommendation
160
in this letter, the Secretary of the
Treasury requested the President of
the National Academy of Sciences to
appoint a committee of its members,
or others familiar with the difficult
problems involved, “to formulate a
plan or scheme for carrying out a
systematic search for the North Magnetic
Pole, and kindred work,” and
such a committee was subsequently appointed,
with Professor S. P. Langley,
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,
as chairman.

The work proposed by this expedition
has attracted the attention and
held the interest of scientists everywhere,
and material aid from several
scientific bodies has already been
pledged toward the securing of the
necessary funds for transporting the
party to the field of its labors, and its
maintenance while at work there.

The observers will be selected from
among the officers of the United States
Navy attached to the Coast Survey,
who have had special training in magnetic
field work. That bureau will also
provide the necessary instruments, but,
in the absence of any appropriation
that could be applied to the transportation
and maintenance of the party in
the field, the funds for that purpose
have to be obtained by the voluntary
contribution of those with means and
inclination to aid so important an enterprise.

Said the late Professor Trowbridge
of Columbia College, in a lecture upon
the data to be obtained by this expedition
for subsequent expert discussion,
“We are living in an epoch in the
world’s history when man is struggling
for a higher and more perfect life, not
only against the degrading tendencies
of his inherited nature, but to make
the forces of nature subservient to his
advancement and well being. Among
these forces there are none which seem
to affect or control the conditions of
animal life on the earth more than heat,
light, electricity, and magnetism, all,
perhaps, the manifestations of one cosmical
agent. As the variations of the
magnetic force appear to follow lesser
and greater cycles, it is not impossible
that nearly all terrestrial phenomena,
which depend on causes allied to magnetism,
follow similar cycles. We can
now predict the course of storms; may
we not hope to determine their origin
and predict their recurrence, as far as
they depend upon the forces which
have been mentioned? A knowledge
of the laws of the cycles through which
these forces pass is the first and only
step in this direction to be taken, and
this step must be made by patient, long-continued
observations.”

An immediate practical use of the
observations to be made is their application
161
to the correction of compass
errors. Every one can see that such
work as tends to render the mariner’s
compass a more reliable instrument
must be of immediate and direct benefit,
not only to the sailor, but to the
surveyor on land.

Admitting that the observations of
such an expedition as that to the North
Magnetic Pole will be of scientific and
general value, it remains to explain
something of the personnel of the party,
how the work is to be conducted, and
by what route it will reach the field of
its labor.

Besides the two observers of terrestrial
magnetism to be
supplied by the Coast
Survey, there will be a
physician fitted by education
and habits of
study to take charge
of some scientific portion
of the work, in
which he will be specially
instructed by the
Superintendent of the
Coast Survey or his assistant.
There will also
be three sailors selected
from the whaling fleet,
who will have charge of
the three whale boats
belonging to the outfit,
and act as assistants to
the several observers.
The writer of this article,
by reason of his
experience in Arctic
travel, will have charge
of the expedition in all except the scientific
work, the reports on which will
be turned over directly to the officers
of the United States Coast and Geodetic
Survey for reduction and discussion
upon the return of the party
from the field.

The scheme of work has already
been prepared by Professor Charles A.
Schott, who is looked upon as probably
the best informed on all the details
of terrestrial magnetism of all men in
this or any other country. In the
course of his exhaustive report upon
this subject he says: “The magnetic
observations proper will comprise the
measure of the three elements, the
declination, the dip, and the intensity,
which fully define the magnetic force
at a place. The measures will be
partly absolute and partly differential,
and will be considered under two
heads; those to be taken while travelling,
and those to be attended
to at winter quarters.” Detailed instructions
for this work are given
which are too technical to be interesting
except to the specialist. He recommends
that a single cocoon thread carrying
a sewing needle shall be used
to observe the declination where by
proximity to the Magnetic Pole the
horizontal force is weak. For it must
be borne in mind that the Magnetic
Pole is the point where the vertical
force, called “dip,” is greatest—represented
by 90°—while the horizontal
force, called “declination,” is 0°.

The observations for dip, naturally
the most important of the survey, will
be made with a Kew Dip Circle employing
two needles; the usual reversals
of circle, face, and polarity should
be attended to at each station, to place
the instrument in the plane of the
magnetic meridian. The usual method
of finding the plane of the meridian
will probably not answer in that part
of the world for want of sufficient
accuracy; the direction of the magnetic
162
meridian should, therefore, be taken as
indicated by the delicately suspended
needle of the declination instrument,
and, where this method fails, dip observations
should be made in any two
planes 90° apart, of which the first
plane is preferably that of the meridian
as guessed at.

It is proposed to charter a steam
whaler to take the party from St.
John’s, Newfoundland, to the northern
part of Repulse Bay, which, being
directly connected with Hudson’s Bay,
is the nearest point to the pole-containing
area that is accessible any year.
There a permanent station is to be
erected where regular observations will
be continued all the time and from
which each spring a field party (perhaps
two) will start to locate the geographical
position of the pole.

It may be well to repeat that the
Magnetic Pole is that point where the
needle of the dip circle is absolutely
vertical—where it stands at exactly
90° to the plane of the horizon.

To find this unknown spot the
observer follows as nearly as possible
the direction indicated by the delicately
poised needle of the declinometer.
The magnetic meridian is not always
a straight line, and may therefore
indicate a very circuitous route, but
by a system something like the regular
approaches to a besieged fort one may
be certain of arriving there eventually.

For instance, when the needle indicates
a dip of 89° the stations should
be nearer together—say not farther
apart than twenty miles, if possible,
and these intervals should be less as
the dip increases.

Suppose the observer to have reached
a point where the dip is found
to be 89° 30´, and at the next
station he has 89° 35´, at the
next 89° 40´. At the next he
may find only 89° 37´; he then
returns to where he found the
greatest dip and starts off at
right angles, one way or the
other, to that course. As long
as the dip continues to increase,
he knows he is travelling in the
right direction. When it again
decreases he returns to the
point of his last greatest dip
and travels at right angles to
his last course as long as the
dip increases. In this way he
will eventually see the absolute
verticity of the suspended
needle marked and know he
has reached the North Magnetic
Pole at last. Sir James
Ross did not succeed so well,
the needle marking only 89° 59´
of verticity. But as this
would indicate that he was
within one and a quarter to
two miles of the point sought,
he was justified in feeling elated at his
success.

It is believed, however, that with the
improved instruments of the present
day, and in the light of our increased
knowledge of terrestrial magnetism,
absolute accuracy is now demanded.
These observations will have to be
repeated from time to time until at
last we shall know with certainty
whether or not the North Magnetic
Pole is a fixed or movable point, and
if it is found to move, the direction
and rate of that motion shall be positively
determined.

When Taine died, people whom
his books had interested felt a
sudden longing to say all that they
had been thinking about his famous
theory of the “milieu.” Taine had
been, with Renan, the chief literary
medium of thought in France; but
while Renan was altogether useful,
caring as he did more for his method
than for its results, Taine, with his
imperative and beautiful consistency,
imposed on the younger generation a
habit of applying the principle of environment
which was somewhat lacking
in criticism. No one but an artist
of his surprising agility and perceptions
could have made such a method
so universal. The French wilfully attain
clearness by defect of vision, but
this is the same thing as saying that
they attain plausibility at the expense
of truth. Taine died, and the thing
we lacked courage to say to his face
we have all been saying now that he is
safe and irresponsible, as well as unresponsive,
in the earth.

An inevitable way, undoubtedly, to
be assured of the insufficiency of
Taine’s method is to read Taine’s
books; and the first book of all, the
“Essay on La Fontaine,” is, I may insert
the observation, as conclusive as
the last in this respect. But in order
to obtain the conviction that what the
critic can get to know of the environing
conditions of any product, human
or other, does not explain that product,
one needs not go to Taine’s
books; one has only to apply it to the
things and people one knows best.
The result will be unsatisfactory. The
critic will find a thousand elements in
that particular product’s individuality
thus left unexplained; in a word, the
theory is one natural, no doubt, to the
Olympians, who see all things; but impracticable
for men who, even at their
best, see only very little. Apply it to
yourself; apply it to your friends.
Apply it to the person of whom I am
going to speak, to M. de Blowitz, the
Paris correspondent of an English
newspaper, the “Times.” The act will
result in a failure, a scientific failure,
whatever the artistic success. Yet M.
de Blowitz is a very remarkable human
fact; and that a philosophic or critical
method cannot be applied to him with
triumph, for both him and the method—is
this not of itself a consideration
extraordinary enough to vitiate the
whole method? A much more important
thing to know than what determined
this or that product, whether it
be the Book of Judges, or the Panama
trial, or M. Taine, or M. de Blowitz, is
what they themselves determined; what
followed, because of their existence;
and though this be reasoning in a
dizzy circle, I cling to the remark as
167
a not unapt way to introduce my subject.
A chief reason why M. de Blowitz
is worth considering is, that he is
and always has been a producer himself,
a fact pregnant with a thousand
others, rather than the resultant of
many vague facts that have gone before.
Most of us must be content with
being, comparatively speaking, only
results. M. de Blowitz, prodigious
result as he is, is even more striking
as initiator, as himself the creator of
a special environment, as himself in
his own way a “final cause.”

Cosmopolite in a world becoming
rapidly no larger than the tiniest of
the asteroids, M. de Blowitz is one
of those who have most contributed to
this planetary shrinkage. His career
is a continual and entertaining illustration
of the truth that tact can render
even tolerance successful. For he is
the most amiable, the most tolerant
of men, and yet he has blazed a wide
path through the woodland of warring
interests in which every man who seeks
to succeed runs risk, not only of losing
his way, but of setting all the other
denizens of the forest against him.
Ordinarily, success implies that a man
is a man of only one idea. What
Frenchman said: “Truth is a wedge
that makes its way only by being
struck”? I have forgotten. At all
events, isn’t the remark nine times out
of ten true? But M. de Blowitz could
apply for the honor of being the proverbial
exception. His workshop is
full of wedges, and a more impatient
man would have used up all of them
long ago, after having hammered the
battered tops into a condition of splay
disfigurement. M. de Blowitz does
not do this. He knew and knows a
better way. He can afford to wait.
He likes to wait. He has the good
and amiable heart of a man who, like
Odysseus, has seen many men and
countries, and knows that all things—I
include even people who are “bores”—have
a point of view that may be
rendered interesting. Himself one of
the most individualized of contemporary
institutions, his own career is a
168
standing argument against the sacredness
of the idea of institutions. Yet,
though he has inevitably learned how
relative things in general are, he himself
appeals to his friends as unusually
self-contained and absolute. Diplomatist
among diplomatists, he is more
powerful than any of them, because he
works in the interest of the whole
rather than in that of a part. Loyal
absolutely to the “Times,” which, to its
accidental honor, has entangled him,
the “Times” is, at its best, only the
accidental projection, a kind of chronic
double, of himself. His letters are
kind attentions which have the air of
a continual favor. Though better recompensed
than favors sometimes are,
and though, whatever their contents,
they will be read by everybody, this
is not only because what the author
writes is important, but because he does
not write when he has nothing to say.

M. DE BLOWITZ AT HIS SUMMER HOME.

This reticence is superb, and one of
its practical results has been the remarkable
physical vigor of this man
who is after all no longer young. One
should see him in his country home.
M. de Blowitz went up and down the
north coast of France, hunting for an
eyry. He found it on the wooded top
of one of the side slopes of the thousand
and one ravines in which fishermen
along that coast had fixed their cabins,
at the small hamlet of Les Petites Dalles.
Like Alphonse Karr at Etretat, he
made the fame of this spot. Your
guide-book will tell you the fact. “M.
de Blowitz, correspondent of the English
newspaper the ‘Times,’ has a villa
here.” I defy you to find any other
distinction special to this place. The
high Normandy coast is always charming,
but it is equally so at a hundred
other points. And of what charm
there is here simply as village, M. Blowitz’s
presence would seem to threaten
the partial extinction. For this very
presence is rendering the spot famous
and crowded. Sit in the afternoon listening
to the three violins that provide
the music, and, taking your absinthe on
one of those hard benches within the
narrow limits of the space there called
Casino, you will run the risk of overhearing
a conversation like this:

“This is your first summer here?”

“Yes, came last night. I am tired
of Pau, and thought I could bury
myself here. But there’s too much
world.”

“Yes, but what a world it is!”

“Oh, I don’t mind that! They say
there’s enough society in the villas.
Since de Blowitz built the Lampottes
and has brought his friends down,
there are some people très bien de la
meilleure société on the cliffs. That’s
the place up there, the house with the
flag above all the others. I walked
up there this morning. He has a tennis
court. Looking up the gravel walk,
I saw him sitting on the veranda.
That’s M. Ernest Daudet’s place just
under him in the trees—mais voilà;
there he is.”

Towards three o’clock in the afternoon,
indeed, almost daily, M. de Blowitz
has an amiable habit. He walks
down with members of his family, and
the guests who are staying with him, to
the pretty bathing-cabins, in front of
which stretches an improvised awning,
and, picturesque in his colored flannels,
he sits himself down with a cigar to
watch the bathers. He, the most distinguished
of European critics, is here
and now the object of many curious
and admiring observations. He holds
here a little court on the shingle beach.
Brightly dressed women gather to him
from every point of the compass;
while he who has his emissaries in
every quarter of the world, and whose
subtle influence is felt at each episode
of the European movement, gives himself
up with pardonable indulgence—under
the ample umbrella—to the
pretty trifles of glib women’s charm
and chatter. Before he has enjoyed
enough, and obedient to one of those
harmless devices in which well-taught
men of the world often indulge, he retires
from this charmed and, as I can
affirm, charming circle, and climbs to
the great villa on the cliff. There are
letters to be written and telegrams to
be sent to Paris, and perhaps an article
meditated during the afternoon.

The doors of the Lampottes are wide
open upon the great veranda, and the
winds of the channel enter there, warmed
from blowing over the upland grass.
The life within is the ideally tranquil
existence of an English country gentleman.
Where did this cosmopolite,
who really has no English roots, learn
the system? For the hospitality of
England can scarcely be translated
with full flavor into any other idiom.
The schloss of Germany or of the Tyrol,
the chateau of France, have never, within
my experience of lazy summers,
afforded just the same delightful background
as the country house of England.
Yet to the Lampottes the peculiar
air has somehow been conjured. All
the country round about this house is
Norman, and therefore English—that
is, dense, rich, familiar—so that the
English illusion is complete. But no
reader of M. de Blowitz’s correspondence
170
in the “Times” would ever have
thought of placing the author in these
surroundings. The raconteur of the
reminiscences in “Harper’s Magazine”
must appeal to the American reader as
a sort of bustling incarnation of the
ubiquitous telegraph, unwearied, and
knowing not even in his dreams the
first soothing tremor of the sound of
the word “rest.” On the contrary, M.
de Blowitz rests frequently and smiles
quietly. Large himself, he likes large
air, large rooms, large landscapes, large
and general ideas. And what contributes
to all this more than rest, which
gives time to think? It is a generous
and natural temper, and that is why the
great doors from the veranda are open
to the channel winds.

Although M. de Blowitz wears in his
buttonhole, in bright contrast to the
famous flowing tie, the rosette of the
French Legion of Honor, he is not in
race a Frenchman; yet he is sufficiently
French in two conspicuous
characteristics. The French strike
me as being, with the Americans, the
most naturally intelligent people on
the western part of the planet. But the
Frenchman is also bon enfant, and for
the moment I do not stop to consider
that he always remains enfant. To be
intelligent and bon enfant at once is to
promise all kinds of successes in life,
and to be both is to make success
charming. M. de Blowitz is both. He
has been, therefore, a charming success.
The nature of this success defies
analysis, but as a result can be described.

THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER.

It is now more than twenty years
since a young man appeared before the
enthusiast, Laurence Oliphant, then
correspondent of the English “Times,”
and rendered himself so indispensable
to Oliphant that the latter, with the
quixotic temper peculiar to him, felt it,
I believe, a moral duty to abdicate.
This young man had already so distinguished
himself at Marseilles, during
Communal riots there, as to attract the
attention and merit the gratitude of
Thiers. Justly rating his powers as a
diplomatist, and knowing himself to be
an indefatigable worker, he conceived
the notion of becoming a sort of
general self-accredited representative
to every European Court, and of inducing
the “Times” to afford him an organ
of communication with his diplomatic
rivals everywhere. The “Times” is
the secluded pool into which England
loves to gaze when it plays the rôle
of Narcissus. And when Narcissus-England
admires itself therein, that is,
once a day the year round, it not only
sees the healthy, beaming, determined
visage of John Bull, but notes with
approval his quiet expression of
patience and caution, his willingness to
wait. The “Times” kept M. de Blowitz
waiting for some time before it found
him as relatively indispensable as he
really was, and always has been since;
but finally the moment came when M.
de Blowitz, seated before his desk,
could feel himself more than the equal
of his diplomatist confrères. Statesman
he was not, nor ambassador; for
these words imply limitations, a condition
of responsibility to this or that
state. But diplomatist he was, and in
this entire class of men he was the
most powerful of all; for he found
himself in the position of critic, unattached,
of the European movement,
owing allegiance to no country, although
sought out by the representatives
of all. What position save that
of the Pope afforded a more enviable
outlook? The chances were undoubtedly
all on the side of his playing the
great rôle which the happy coincidence
of an unusually exciting time in Europe,
and his own activity, tact and perception,
combined to create for him. He
has himself lately been telling us in an
American magazine some of the episodes
in which he played his part. I
will not dilute the flavor of the original
by any individual essence of my own.
The reminiscences are accessible and
are not to be imitated. But to the
reader of them one fact above all others
will be evident: M. de Blowitz was and
is a diplomatist of the first order. Seek
to explain the eternal hatred felt
towards him by a Prince Bismarck on
any other ground. The attempt is impossible.

IDEALS OF A GREAT JOURNALIST.

Whatever M. de Blowitz’s loyalty to
the “Times,” he has been loyal above
all to his own ideal. This ideal has
always been to get at the most political
truth possible as
a condition of exerting
an individual
influence
on European
states in the interest
of European
peace. To
me, individually,
this ideal seems
rather too generous.
Everybody
now-a-days
wants to take a
part in affairs,
when only to
look on is surely
the one wise part
to take. But
generous M. de
Blowitz is, and
he is demonstrating
now, in a
series of “recollections,”
that
his ideal can be
carried out in a
striking way. I
do not deny for
a moment that
the point is proven.
I doubt very
much, however,
if any other similar
series of facts
will ever be marshalled
to the
same end. But
all the more reason
for being belongs,
just for this cause, to the “Blowitziana.”

The “Blowitziana”! This, however,
is just what some of us feel more
inspired, than at liberty, to give. I
recall here, over this paper, too many
things at once; and all the impressions,
seeing M. de Blowitz as I do continually,
fortunately lack perspective. But
to note this and that about him seems
in a way as much a duty as a pleasure,
for I remember well that my original
notion of this remarkable man was
widely different from that which began
to form in my mind once I knew him.
I don’t think that people who hear
about him, people who read his name
in the newspapers, the average citizen
of the world who doesn’t know him personally,
have quite the right idea about
him. During the last twenty years he
has obtained a reputation for being the
most persistent ferreter of news in existence;
but in many minds there is
distrust whenever, over his signature,
some unexpected revelation comes to
change the key in the European concert.
Perhaps an unlooked-for document
172
is published, interrupting the plans
of European statesmen, bringing to
nothing all their most elaborate scheming;
and on the morrow, by some official
source, comes a denial that any such
document was ever dreamed of. It is
obviously impracticable for M. de
Blowitz to give his proofs, and this or
that unthinking reader, used to a thousand
irresponsible writers who care
only for what is sensational, and who
never verify their information, hurriedly
relegates the disclosure of the
“Times” correspondent to the same
category. This is natural enough, of
course. But let there be no mistake.
The revelation was worthy of the name;
of this you may be sure. M. de
Blowitz has done all that he intended
to do. He has nipped in the bud this
or that diplomatic scheme; he has
anticipated some subsequent further
revelation; or it may be he has laid
the net for some other and less wary
diplomatist. The diplomatists themselves
are not so incredulous. They
listen to what M. de Blowitz is saying
with a more respectful attention, and,
thinking discretion the better part of
valor, they usually end in bringing their
mite to his universal diplomatic bureau.
Upon his discretion they know they can
count.

Here is a fact in point. Breakfasting
once in Paris with an amiable lady
and a very distinguished diplomatist
who was also a poet, the conversation
fell on the subject of M. de Blowitz
and Count Munster who had recently
been the object of a long-resounding
letter in the “Times.” The diplomatist
who sat opposite me spoke freely of
the Munster episode, which was then
entertaining the whole of Europe, save
the person most concerned.

“M. de Blowitz,” said he, “is our
only peer. But there should be honor
even among thieves. He has ‘cooked
Count Munster’s goose.’”

“Yes,” I replied, “but with fuel of
Count Munster’s own providing.”

“Quite so,” he continued; “but of
course we are paid to deny just such
things as this. And I have heard of
licensed jesters, but the world has
come to a pretty pass if we are to be
at the mercy of licensed truth-tellers.
What will become, this side of the Orient,
of our profession?”

“I agree with you,” interrupted our
host; “but what does it matter so only
diplomacy may be the bay-leaves of
poets, and you may have time to take
the world into your confidence in
verse?”

This estimate, implied in the ambassador’s
somewhat cynical words, has
always been shared by all M. de Blowitz’s
confrères. It would be more than
amusing, it would be curiously
instructive, to corroborate this anecdote
by comparison with the hundred
others that tremble in the ink of my
pen. But fortunately it is many years
before “Blowitziana” will be written,
while now there are Hawaii and Panama
and the Papal ambassador to the
United States to occupy our attention.
Yet because of the existence of just
this assurance in the foreign offices of
all the European powers, it seems necessary
to set the average reader on
his guard against a natural error.
What it all comes to is this—M. Jules
Simon has said it—“Newspapers are
better served than kings and peoples.”

Everybody has been recently talking
of an extraordinary scheme of M. de
Blowitz for the reformation of journalism.
That article, crackling with
anathema against the ignorance and
irresponsibility of most modern journalism,
and warm with generous and
high notions of what constitutes the
duty and privilege of the journalist,
had about it a surprising flavor of detachment
and idealism which recalled
the famous Utopian schemes familiar
in the pedantic idiom of scholars. It
was a dream, a warning—a vision of a
kind of journalistic “City of God.”
But the air of that city is, after all, the
air of the world in which M. de Blowitz,
the most surprisingly unprofessional
of men, seems eternally to live.

Not that he is always an idealist. He
was not, for instance, when, jumping
the wall at Versailles after a dinner to
the Shah of Persia, he outwitted every
journalist in the palace garden, and, as
he says, “made five enemies in a single
well-employed evening.” No, even the
most ubiquitous of American reporters
would admit that he may be practical
173
enough when need be. But after all,
and above all, he is an idealist, marked
by a distinguished imagination and an
amiable and generous sympathy. No
journalistic tag is on him. He is simply
a gentleman with the widest interests
and uncommon capacities who
succeeded in convincing the “Times”
(this, of itself, is surely by way of being
a vrai coup de maître), and then every
other intelligent observer, of his power
and usefulness. He has his own philanthropic
ends, for the propagation of
which it pleases him to have so esteemed
a medium as the “Times.”

IN HIS PARIS HOME.

The people who come to see him—the
deputies, the ministers, the ambassadors,
the writers, the artists, the simple
gens du monde—come more often not to
his office, but to his warm and hospitable
home. Here, in one of the streets
that wind about the Star Arch at the
head of the Champs Élysées, he receives
all the world, rather as the
charming gentleman than the historic
journalist de Blowitz. The centre—I
must add the admired centre—of a devoted
family circle, he discourses at his
dinner-table of the serious events of
the day, volubly, picturesquely, and
with conviction. Yet he is always ready
to listen, and even to alter his opinions
at a moment’s notice, though that notice
must be good. While he himself
makes the coffee, the talk becomes less
exacting and more general. Often he
tells you of his pictures, and points out
to you the panels set into the wall of
the room, works of his friends, great
canvases by M. Clairin or Mme. Sarah
Bernhardt; and one, a sunny view
of the Norman house on the cliff, by
M. Duphot. After dinner in the private
study, with its high walls covered
with paintings and souvenirs and autograph
photographs of the greatest
names of France, you smoke in the
arms of your easy-chair, the wood fire
burning brightly in an ample chimney;
while your host, propped by divan
cushions, and with one leg curled under
him, drops grandly into pleasant
reminiscences. One has visions of Bagdad.
After an hour like this, you wonder
when M. de Blowitz works. But
he has been working all the time. He
has been thinking in one half of a very
capacious brain and talking from another.
The chances are that he will
have planned a column article for the
“Times” newspaper, left you for a
half hour to rummage in his books
while he dictates the article, telephoned
for his carriage to await him at nine
o’clock in the court below, and asked
you to accompany him to the opera—all
before he has finished his cigar.
But then the cigar is a remarkably
good one, and knows not, as is the case
with ambassadorial nicotine, the protective
customs of France.

Life means to M. de Blowitz a mental
activity and alertness that never
sleep. Yet he is always amiable, tolerating
everything except stupidity.
He is a journalist by “natural selection.”
But that, in the Europe of his
time, and given the accidents of his fortune,
made him the diplomatist that he
has been and is. He can keep a secret
as well as tell one. I repeat, he disproves
that masterly theory of Taine,
who drove facts like wild horses into a
corral in order, having lassoed them,
to tame them to his own uses; for,
like Taine himself, he has made his
own milieu, created his own series of
facts, far more truly even than he
is himself the striking and delightful
resultant of others that have gone before.

The Brontë novels were first read
and admired in the Ballynaskeagh
manse. This statement I am able to
make with fulness of knowledge. “Jane
Eyre” was read, cried over, laughed
over, argued over, condemned, exalted,
by the Reverend David McKee, his
brilliant children and numerous pupils,
before the author was known publicly
in England, or a single review of the
work had appeared.

The Reverend W. J. McCracken, an
old pupil of the Ballynaskeagh manse,
writes me on this point:

“You have no doubt heard Mr.
McKee’s[2] opinion as to the source of
Charlotte’s genius. When Charlotte
Brontë published one of her books,
there was always an early copy sent to
the uncles and aunts in Ballynaskeagh.
As they had little taste for such literature,
the book was sent straight over
to our dear old friend Mr. McKee. If
it pleased him, the Brontës would be
in raptures with their niece, and triumphantly
say to their neighbors,
‘Mr. McKee thinks her very cliver.’

“I well remember Mr. McKee reading
one of Charlotte’s novels, and, in
his own inimitable way, making the
remark: ‘She is just her Uncle Jamie
over the world. Just Jamie’s strong,
powerful, direct way of putting a
thing.’”

Mrs. McKee, now living in New
Zealand, writes me: “My husband
had early copies of the novels from
the Brontës, and he pronounced them
to be Brontë in warp and woof, before
‘Currer Bell’ was publicly known to
be Charlotte Brontë. He held that
the stories not only showed the Brontë
genius and style, but that the facts
were largely reminiscences of the
Brontë family. He recognized many
of the characters as founded largely on
old Hugh’s yarns, polished into literature.
When ‘Jane Eyre’ came into
the hands of the uncles they were
troubled as to its character, but they
were very grateful to my husband for
his good opinion of its ability. He pronounced
it a remarkable and brilliant
work, before any of the reviews appeared.”

In addition to the five hundred
pounds that Smith, Elder & Co. paid
Charlotte Brontë for the copyright of
each of her novels, they sent half a
dozen copies direct to herself. The
book was published on October 16th,
and ten days later Charlotte thus acknowledged
receipt of the copies:

October 26, 1847.

“Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co.:

“Gentlemen: The six copies of ‘Jane
Eyre’ reached me this morning. You have
given the work every advantage which good
paper, clear type and a seemly outside can supply;
if it fails, the fault will lie with the author—you
are exempt. I now await the judgment
of the press and the public. I am, gentlemen,

“Yours respectfully,

“C. Bell.”

Charlotte Brontë’s friends were not
numerous, and she was most anxious
that none of the few should find out
that she was the author. In the distribution
of even her six copies, she
would most likely send one to her
friends in Ireland. When the volumes
175
arrived in Ireland, there was no room
for doubt as to the authorship of “Jane
Eyre.” The Brontës had no other
friend in England to send them books.
They themselves neither wrote nor
read romances. They lived them.

It was well known to the family that
the clever brother in England had very
clever daughters. Patrick was a constant
correspondent with the home
circle, and a not infrequent visitor.
Their habits of study, their wonderful
compositions, their education in
Brussels, were steps in the ascending
gradation of the girls, minutely communicated
by the vicar to his only relatives,
and fairly well understood in
Ballynaskeagh. Something was expected.

That something caused blank disappointment.
C(urrer) B(ell) was a thin
disguise for C(harlotte) B(rontë), but
it did not deceive the relatives. Why
concealment if there was nothing discreditable
to conceal? A very little
reading convinced the uncles and aunts
that concealment was necessary.

The book was not good like Willison’s
“Balm of Gilead,” or like Bunyan’s
“Pilgrim’s Progress.” It was
neither history like Goldsmith, nor
biography like Johnson, nor philosophy
like Locke, nor theology like Edwards;
but “a parcel of lies, the fruit
of living among foreigners.”

The Irish Brontës had never before
seen a book like “Jane Eyre”—three
volumes of babble that would take a
whole winter to read. They laid the
work down in despair; but after a
little, Hugh resolved to show it to Mr.
McKee, the one man in the district
whom he could trust.

The reputation of his nieces in England
was dearer to Hugh Brontë than
his own.

He tied up the three volumes in a
red handkerchief, and called with them
at the manse. Contrary to his usual
custom, he asked if he could see Mr.
McKee alone. The interview, of which
my information comes from an eye-witness,
took place in a large parlor,
which contained a bed, and a central
table on which Mr. McKee’s tea was
spread.

Hugh Brontë began in a mysterious
whisper to unfold his sad tale to Mr.
McKee, as if his niece had been guilty
of some serious indiscretion. Mr. McKee
comforted him by suggesting that
the book might not have been written
by his niece at all. At this point
Hugh Brontë was prevailed upon to
draw up to the table to partake of
the abundant tea that had been prepared
for Mr. McKee, while the latter
proceeded to examine the book.
Brontë settled down in the most self-denying
manner to dispose of the heap
of bread and butter, and the pot of
tea, while McKee went galloping over
the pages of the first volume of “Jane
Eyre,” oblivious to all but the fascinating
story.

The afternoon wore on; Brontë sat
at the table, watching the features of
the reader as they changed from somber
to gay, and from flinty fierceness
to melting pathos.

When the servant went in to remove
the tea things and light the candles,
both men were sitting silent in the
gloaming. McKee, roused from his
state of abstraction, observed Brontë
sitting at the débris and empty plates.

“Hughey,” he said, breaking the
silence, “the book bears the Brontë
stamp on every sentence and idea, and
it is the grandest novel that has been
produced in my time;” and then he
added: “The child ‘Jane Eyre’ is your
father in petticoats, and Mrs. Reed is
the wicked uncle by the Boyne.”

The cloud passed from Hugh Brontë’s
brow, and the apologetic tone from his
voice. He started up as if he had
received new life, wrung Mr. McKee’s
hand, and hurried away comforted, to
comfort others. Mr. McKee had said
the novel was “gran” and that was
enough for the Irish Brontës.

There was joy in the Brontë house
when Hugh returned and reported to
his brothers and sisters what Mr. McKee
had said. They needed no further
commendation, for they knew no higher
court on such a matter. They had all
been alarmed lest Charlotte had done
something to be ashamed of; but on
Mr. McKee’s approval, pride and elation
of spirit succeeded depression and
sinking of heart.

Mr. McKee’s opinion did not long
176
remain unconfirmed. Reviews from
the English magazines were quoted in
the Newry paper, probably by Mr. McKee,
and found their way quickly into
the uncles’ and aunts’ hands.

The publication of the book created
a profound impression generally. It
was felt in literary circles that a strong
nature had broken through conventional
restraints, that a fresh voice had
delivered a new message. Men and
women paused in the perusal of the
pretty, the artificial, the inane, to listen
to the wild story that had come to
them with the breeze of the moorland
and the bloom of the heather. And so
exquisite was the gift of thought blended
with the art of artless expression,
that only the facts appeared in the
transparent narrative.

“The Times” declared: “Freshness
and originality, truth and passion, singular
felicity in the description of natural
scenery, and in the analyzation of
human thought, enable this tale to
stand boldly out from the mass.”

“The Edinburgh Review” said:
“For many years there has been no
work of such power, piquancy, and
originality.”

“Blackwood’s Magazine” spoke
thus: “‘Jane Eyre’ is an episode in
this work-a-day world; most interesting,
and touched at once by a daring
and delicate hand.”

In “Frazer’s Magazine” Mr. G. H.
Lewes said: “Reality—deep, significant
reality—is the characteristic of the
book. It is autobiography, not perhaps
in the naked facts and circumstances,
but in the actual suffering and experience.”

“Tait’s Magazine,” “The Examiner,”
the “Athenæum,” and the “Literary
Gazette,” followed in the same strain;
while the “Daily News” spoke with
qualified praise, and only the “Spectator,”
according to Charlotte, was “flat.”

The club coteries paused, the literary
log-rollers were nonplussed, and
Thackeray sat reading instead of writing.

The interest in the story was intensified,
inasmuch as no one knew whence
had come the voice that had stirred all
hearts. Nor did the interest diminish
when the mystery was dispelled. On
the contrary, it was much increased
when it became known that the author
was a little, shy, bright-eyed Yorkshire
maiden, of Irish origin, who could
scarcely reach up to great Thackeray’s
arm, or reply unmoved to his simplest
remark.

The Irish Brontës read the reviews
of their niece’s book with intense delight.
To them the pæans of praise
were successive whiffs of pure incense.
They had never doubted that they
themselves were superior to their
neighbors, and they felt quite sure
that their niece Charlotte was superior
to every other writer.

But the Brontës were not content to
enjoy silently their niece’s triumph and
fame. Their hearts were full, and overflowed
from the lips. They had reached
the period of decadence, and were often
heard boasting of the illustrious Charlotte.
Sometimes even they would
read to uninterested and unappreciative
listeners scraps of praise cut from
the Newry papers, or supplied to them
from English sources by Mr. McKee.
The whole heaven of Brontë fame was
bright and cloudless; suddenly the
proverbial bolt fell from the blue.

“The Quarterly”[3] onslaught on
“Jane Eyre” appeared, and all the
good things that had been said were
forgotten. The news travelled fast, and
reached Ballynaskeagh. The neighbors,
who cared little for what “The
Times,” “Frazer,” “Blackwood,” and
such periodicals said, had got hold of
the “Quarterly” verdict in a very direct
and simple form. The report went
round the district like wild-fire that the
“Quarterly Review” had said Charlotte
Brontë, the vicar’s daughter, was a bad
woman, and an outcast from her kind.
The neighbors of the Brontës had very
vague ideas as to what “The Quarterly”
177
might be, but I am afraid the one bad
review gave them more piquant pleasure
than all the good ones put together.
In the changed atmosphere the uncles
and aunts assumed their old unsocial
and taciturn ways. When their acquaintances
came, with simpering
smiles, to sympathize with them, their
gossip was cut short by the Brontës,
who judged rightly that the sense of
humiliation pressed lightly on their
comforters.

In their sore distress they went to
Mr. McKee. He was able to show
them the “Review” itself. The reviewer
had been speculating on the
sex of Currer Bell, and, for effect, assumed
that the author was a man, but
he added:

“Whoever it be, it is a person who, with
great mental power, combines a total ignorance
of the habits of society, a great coarseness of
taste, a heathenish doctrine of religion. For if
we ascribe the work to a woman at all, we have
no alternative but to ascribe it to one who has,
from some sufficient reason, long forfeited the
society of her sex.”

Mr. McKee’s reading of the review
and words of comment gave no comfort
to the Brontës. I am afraid his
indignation at the cowardly attack
only served to fan the flames of their
wrath. The sun of his sympathy, however,
touched their hearts, and their
pent-up passion flowed down like a torrent
of lava.

The uncles of Charlotte Brontë always
expressed themselves, when roused, in
language which combined simplicity
of diction with depth of significance.
Hugh was the spokesman. White with
passion, the words hissing from his
lips, he vowed to take vengeance on
the traducer of his niece. The language
of malediction rushed from him,
hot and pestiferous, as if it had come
from the bottomless pit, reeking with
sulphur and brimstone.

Mr. McKee did not attempt to stem
the wrathful torrent. He hoped that
the storm would exhaust itself by its
own fury. But in the case of Hugh
Brontë the anger was not a mere thing
of the passing storm. The scoundrel
who had spoken of his niece as if she
were a strumpet must die. Hugh’s
oath was pledged, and he meant to
perform it. The brothers recognized
the work of vengeance as a family
duty. Hugh had simply taken in hand
its execution.

He set about his preparation with the
calm deliberation befitting such a tremendous
enterprise. Like Thothmes
the Great, his first concern was with
regard to his arms. Irishmen at that
time had one national weapon. What
the blood mare is to the Bedawi, or his
sling was to King David, that was the
shillelagh to Hugh Brontë as avenger.
Irishmen have proved their superiority
as marksmen, with long-range rifles;
they have always had a reputation for
expertness at “the long bow;” but the
blackthorn cudgel has always been the
beloved hereditary weapon.

The shillelagh was not a mere stick
picked up for a few pence, or cut casually
out of the common hedge. Like
the Arab mare, it grew to maturity
under the fostering care of its owner.

The shillelagh, like the poet, is born,
not made. Like the poet, too, it is a
choice plant, and its growth is slow.
Among ten thousand blackthorn shoots,
perhaps not more than one is destined
to become famous, but one of the ten
thousand appears of singular fitness.
As soon as discovered, it is marked,
and dedicated for future service.
Everything that might hinder its development
is removed, and any off-shoot
of the main stem is skilfully cut
off. With constant care it grows thick
and strong, upon a bulbous root that
can be shaped into a handle.

Hugh had for many years been
watching over the growth of a young
blackthorn sapling. It had arrived at
maturity about the time the diabolical
article appeared in “The Quarterly.”
The supreme moment of his life came
just when the weapon on which he depended
was ready.

Returning from the manse, his whole
heart and soul set on avenging his
niece, his first act was to dig up the
blackthorn so carefully that he might
have enough of the thick root to form
a lethal club. Having pruned it roughly,
he placed the butt end in warm
ashes, night after night, to season.
Then when it had become sapless and
hard, he cut it to shape, then “put it
178
to pickle,” as the saying goes. After
a sufficient time in the salt water, he
took it out and rubbed it with chamois
and train-oil for hours. Then he shot
a magpie, drained its blood into a cup,
and with it polished the blackthorn till
it became a glossy black with a mahogany
tint.

The shillelagh was then a beautiful,
tough, formidable weapon, and when
tipped with an iron ferrule was quite
ready for action. It became Hugh’s
trusty companion. No Sir Galahad
ever cherished his shield or trusted his
spear as Hugh Brontë cherished and
loved his shillelagh.

When the shillelagh was ready, other
preparations were quickly completed.
Hugh made his will by the aid of a
local school-master, leaving all he possessed
to his maligned niece, and then,
decked out in a new suit of broadcloth,
in which he felt stiff and awkward, he
departed on his mission of vengeance.

He set sail from Warrenpoint for
Liverpool by a vessel called the “Sea
Nymph,” and walked from Liverpool
to Haworth. His brother James had
been over the route a short time previously,
and from him he had received
all necessary directions as to the way.
He reached the vicarage on a Sunday,
when all, except Martha the old servant,
were at church. At first she looked
upon him as a tramp, and refused to
admit him into the house; but when he
turned to go to the church, road-stained
as he was, she saw that the honor of
the house was involved, and agreed to
let him remain till the family returned.
Under the conditions of the truce he
was able to satisfy Martha as to his
identity, and then she rated him soundly
for journeying on the Sabbath day.

Hugh’s reception at the vicarage
was at first chilling, but soon the girls
gathered round him and inquired about
the Glen, the Knock Hill, Emdale Fort,
and the Mourne Mountains, but especially
with reference to the local
ghosts and haunted houses.

Hugh was greatly disappointed to
find his niece so small and frail. His
pride in the Brontë superiority had
rested mainly on the thews and comeliness
of the family, and he found it
difficult to associate mental greatness
with physical littleness. On his return
home he spoke of the vicar’s family
to Mr. McKee as “a poor frachther”
a term applied to a brood of
young chickens. From his brother
Jamie, Hugh had heard that Branwell
had something of the spunk he had expected
from the family on English soil;
but he was too small, fantastic, and a
chatterer, and could not drink more
than two glasses of whiskey at the
Black Bull without making a fool of
himself. In fact, Jamie, during a visit,
had to carry Branwell home, more than
once, from that refuge of the thirsty,
and as he had to lie in the same bed
with his nephew he found him a most
exasperating bed-fellow. He would
toss about and rave and spout poetry
in such a way as to make sleep impossible.

The declaration of Hugh’s mission
of revenge was received by Charlotte
with incredulous astonishment, but gentle
Anne sympathized with him, and
wished him success; but for her, Hugh
would have returned straight home
from Haworth in disgust.

Patrick, as befitted a clergyman, condemned
the undertaking, and did what
he could to amuse Hughy. Careful
that Hugh’s entertainments should be
to his taste, he took him to see a prize
fight. His object was to show him “a
battle that would take the conceit out
of him.” It had the contrary effect.
Hugh thought that the combatants
were too fat and lazy to fight, and he
always asserted that he could have
“licked them both.”

The vicar also took him to Sir John
Armitage’s, where he saw a collection of
arms, some of which were exceedingly
unwieldy. Hugh was greatly impressed
with the heaviness of the armor, and
especially with Robin Hood’s helmet,
which he was allowed to place on his
head. Hugh admitted that he could
not have worn the helmet or wielded
the sword, but he maintained at the
same time that he “could have eaten
half a dozen of the men he saw in England”—in
fact, taken them like a dish
of whitebait.

When Hugh Brontë had exhausted
the wonders of Yorkshire, to which
the vicar looked for moral effect, he
179
started on his mission to London. A
full and complete account of his
search for the reviewer would be most
interesting, though somewhat ludicrous,
but the reader must be content
with the scrappy information at my
disposal.

Through an introduction from a
friend of Branwell’s he found cheap
lodgings with a working family from
Haworth. As soon as Hugh had got
fairly settled, he went direct to John
Murray’s publishing house and asked
to see the reviewer. He declared himself
an uncle of Currer Bell, and said
he wished to give the reviewer some
specific information.

He had a short interview at Murray’s
with a man who said he was the editor
of “The Quarterly,” and who may have
been Lockhart, but Hugh told him that
he could only communicate to the reviewer
his secret message.

He continued to visit Murray’s under
a promise of seeing the reviewer, but
he always saw the same man who at
first had said that he was editor, but
afterwards assured him he was the reviewer,
and pressed him greatly to say
who Currer Bell was.

Hugh declined to make any statement
except into the ear of the reviewer;
but as the truculent character
of the avenger was probably very apparent,
his direct and bold move did
not succeed, and at last they ceased to
admit him at Murray’s.

Having failed there, he went to the
publishers of “Jane Eyre,” and told
them plainly he was the author’s uncle,
and that he had come to London to
chastise the “Quarterly Review” critic.
They treated him civilly without furthering
his quest, but he got from
them, I believe, an introduction to the
reading-room of the British Museum,
and to some other reading-rooms.

In the reading-room he was greatly
disgusted to find how little interest was
taken in the matter that absorbed his
whole attention. He met, however,
one kind old gentleman in the British
Museum who thoroughly sympathized
with him, and took him home with him
several times. On one occasion he invited
a number of people to meet him
at dinner. The house had signs of
wealth such as he had never before
seen or dreamt of. Everybody was
kind to him. After dinner he was
called on for a speech, and when he sat
down they cheered him and drank his
health.

They all examined his shillelagh, and,
before parting, promised to do their
best to aid him in discovering the reviewer;
but his friend afterwards told
him, at the Museum, that all had failed,
and considered Hugh’s undertaking
hopeless.

He tried other plans of getting on
the reviewer’s track. He would step
into a book-shop, and buy a sheet of
paper on which to write home, or some
other trifling object. While paying for
his small purchase he would lift “The
Quarterly Review,” and casually ask
the book-seller who wrote the attack
on “Jane Eyre.”

He always found the book-sellers
communicative, if not well informed.
Many told him that “Jane Eyre” was
a well-known mistress of Thackeray’s.
None of them seemed able to bear the
thought of appearing ignorant of anything.
It was quite well known, others
assured him, that Thackeray had written
the review—“in fact, he admitted
that he was the author of the review.”
Some declared that Mr. George Henry
Lewes was the author, others said it
was Harriet Martineau, and some ventured
to say that Bulwer Lytton or
Dickens was the critic. These names
were given with confidence, and with
details of circumstances which seemed
to create a probability; but his friend,
whom he met daily at the Museum, assured
him that they were only wild and
absurd guesses. Thus ended one of
the strangest adventures within the
whole range of literary adventure.

Hugh Brontë failed to find the reviewer
of his niece’s novel, but explored
London thoroughly. He saw
the queen, but was better pleased to see
her horses and talk with her grooms.

He saw reviews of troops, and public
demonstrations, and cattle shows,
and the Houses of Parliament, and
ships of many nations that lay near his
lodging; and he visited the Crystal
Palace and the Tower, and other objects
of interest; and when his patience
180
was exhausted and his money spent,
he returned to Haworth on his homeward
journey.

His stay at the vicarage was brief.
During his absence, consumption had
been rapidly sapping the life of the
youngest girl, yet the gentle Anne received
him with the warmest welcome,
and talked of accompanying him to
Ireland, which she spoke of as “home.”
At parting she threw her long, slender
arms round his neck, and called him her
noble uncle. Charlotte took him for a
walk on the moor, asked a thousand
questions, told him about Emily and
Branwell, and, slipping a few sovereigns
into his hand, advised him to hasten
home. On the following day he parted
forever from the family that he would
have given his life to befriend.

No welcome awaited him at home,
because he had failed in his mission.
He gave to Mr. McKee a detailed account
of his adventures in England,
but I do not think anyone else ever
heard from him a single word regarding
the sad home at Haworth. But as
long as he lived he regretted his helplessness
to avenge the slight put upon
his niece, and seemed to look on the
miscarriage of his plans as the great
failure of his life.

Since the foregoing article was put
in type Doctor Wright has written to
the editor of this magazine announcing
that he has discovered the author of
the “Quarterly” review. He says:

“Assuming the editor’s responsibility for the
incriminated interpolations, who wrote the article
itself? Secrets have a bad time of it in our
day, and the authorship of the article is no
longer a secret. As has been generally suspected,
the writer was a woman, and that woman
was Miss Rigby, the daughter of a Norwich
doctor, and was better known as Lady Eastlake.

“The well-kept secret has been brought to
light by Doctor Robertson Nicoll in the ‘Bookman’
of September, 1892. Doctor Nicoll found
the key to the mystery in a letter written on
March 31, 1849, by Sara Coleridge to Edward
Quillman, and published in the ‘Memoirs and
Letters of Sara Coleridge.’ The following is
the passage referred to:

“‘Miss Rigby’s article on “Vanity Fair”
was brilliant, as all her productions are. But I
could not agree to the concluding remark about
governesses. How could it benefit that uneasy
class to reduce the number of their employers,
which, if high salaries were considered in all
cases indispensable, must necessarily be the
result of such a state of opinion?’

“The ‘Quarterly’ article on ‘Vanity Fair’
dealt also with ‘Jane Eyre,’ and with the ‘Report
of the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution
for 1847,’ and it is without doubt the article referred
to by Sara Coleridge.

“On this matter Sara Coleridge was not
likely to be under any mistake. Miss Rigby
was her intimate friend, and not likely to conceal
from her so important a literary event as
the production of a ‘Quarterly’ review.

“I am also informed that Mr. George Smith,
the publisher of ‘Jane Eyre,’ declares without
hesitation or doubt that he had always known
that Lady Eastlake was the author of the ‘Quarterly’
article, and that he had declined to meet
her at dinner on account of it.

“The fact that the brilliant Miss Rigby was
the writer of the review greatly strengthens my
interpolation theory. To me it seems beyond
the range of things probable, that the pharisaic
part of the article could have come from the
same source as ‘Livonian Tales’ and the ‘Letters
from the Shores of the Baltic.’

“The article is therefore of a composite character.
It was written by Miss Rigby the year
before her marriage with Sir Charles Lock Eastlake,
and heavily edited during the reign of
Lockhart. I know it will be said that the
genial Lockhart would not have added the objectionable
fustian to the superior material supplied
by Miss Rigby; but I must repeat that it
was his duty, as a mere matter of business, and
a purely editorial affair, to maintain the traditional
tone of the ‘Review.’”

The August and succeeding issues
of
McClure’s Magazine
will contain
a series of papers giving the dramatic
and hitherto unknown history of the
Brontës in Ireland. They will throw
a vivid light upon the origin of the
Brontë novels, and upon the ancestors of
the Brontës. As Doctor Wright says:

“Hugh Brontë, the father of Patrick, and
grandfather of the famous novelists, first makes
his appearance as if he had stepped out of a
Brontë novel. His early experiences qualified
him to take a permanent place beside the child
‘Jane Eyre’ at Mrs. Reed’s. The treatment
that embittered his childhood is never referred
to by the grand-daughters in their correspondence,
but it is quite evident that the knowledge
of his hardships dominated their minds, and
gave a bent to their imaginations, when depicting
the misery of young lives dependent on
charity.”

All the existing biographies of the
Brontë sisters are confined to the
Brontës in England. There were but
two people competent to give the story
of the Brontë ancestors: one, Captain
Mayne Reid; and the other, Doctor
William Wright, who has spent many
years preparing this history.

Doctor Wright had exceptional advantages
for his labor of love. In
his childhood his nurse told him the
traditions of the Brontës; his tutor
was full of recollections of the father,
uncles, and grandfather of the novelists.
As a student he wrote screeds of
the Brontë novels in place of essays,
having first been told the incidents and
events by his tutor. His recollections,
extending back to the early part of this
century, have been strengthened by
years of patient investigation. During
different years Doctor Wright has spent
several months at a time in Ireland, following
up obscure traces of the family,
hunting down traditions connected
with the Brontës, or carefully verifying
minute points derived from his own
recollections or the reports of others.
The result of these painstaking researches,
which have extended over a
lifetime, is an authentic narrative of
great human interest.

The unadorned history of the family
reads like a Brontë novel. The adventures,
the hairbreadth escapes, the struggles,
the kidnapping, the abuse, which
figure in these chapters are stranger
than fiction. The courtship, elopement,
and marriage of Hugh Brontë with Alice
McGlory form one of the most extraordinary
narratives of love and adventure
that has ever been penned.

The half-humorous, half-pathetic, but
always intensely interesting, descriptions
of the ancestors of the Brontë
sisters, their peculiarities, the superstition
with which some of them were regarded
as masters of the black art, the
respect that they commanded as fighters
and singers and workmen, the side-lights
thrown upon the early and bitter
contest over tenant rights, the exposition
of strange religious beliefs—all of
this, and more that cannot here even be
hinted at, serve to present a curious and
vivid picture of everyday life in a corner
of Ireland one hundred years ago.

These articles bring out the hereditary
and surrounding influences which
helped to shape the genius of Charlotte
Brontë. Aside from the value which
they have because they furnish a remarkable
commentary on the work of
the great novelist, they are pages of
real life of fascination and remarkable
interest.

The first article will give a glimpse
of the early Brontës and the singular
weird story of that dark foundling who
brought ruin to his benefactors, and
whose machinations resulted in the absolute
separation of Hugh Brontë, the
grandfather of the novelists, from his
parents—a separation so complete that
he was never able to learn in what
part of Ireland his father’s family lived.
Hugh Brontë was kidnapped when he
was six years old. The strange narrative
of his abduction will be given
in the August number of
McClure’s Magazine.

I.

Whether or not to
relate the history
that I now commence
has been to
me a seriously debated
question.

But after due reflection I
decide that, being the only
witness to the events that have lately
been so startling to at least one community,
it is my duty to state as clearly
and exactly as possible, while yet fresh
in my memory, the occurrences that
came under my observation. I am satisfied
in so doing that the contingencies
which might arise from my silence
would be much more serious in their
effect upon my friends than their
aversion to the publicity to
which they may be subjected;
but, of course, when completed,
my statement will be
subject to their wish in its disposal.

Regarding myself, it is only
necessary to state that last
winter—I think it was the
last week of January—my
health became so alarming as
to induce me to accept my
son’s urgent invitation to visit
him in a far Western territory,
hoping that the brighter sky
and milder air would more than
compensate for the long and
lonely journey to one who is
neither young nor adventurous.

And the effect of the change
was almost magical. My son
is a civil and mining engineer,
and, being unmarried,
boards at the largest of the
three hotels in the busy mining
town upon the Southern
Pacific road, which I shall call Brownville.

I reached the place on the afternoon
of a bright, balmy day—a May day it
seemed to me—but being an unaccustomed
traveller, the motion of the cars
and the strangeness of the transition
gave everything such a dreamlike unreality
that I cannot recall the impressions
of the first few days with as much
distinctness as later ones. I was continually
expecting my son to vanish,
and myself to wake up in my room at
home. This soon wore off, however.
I think it was on the second day after
my arrival, as we were starting down
stairs to dinner, my son suddenly drew
me back into my room as if to avoid
some one who was passing.

“I was afraid you might be startled,”
he exclaimed. “I was at first, and I am
neither sick nor a lady. Mother, there
is a young man here who will seem like
one risen from the dead to you at first
sight. He looks enough like Chester
Mansfield to be his twin brother. I
think I never saw so striking a resemblance
before, but after you are acquainted
with him the impression will
wear away, because he is so different
in every other way.” Then we went
down stairs, and meeting the young
man at the dining-room door, my son
introduced him as “Mr. Reynolds;”
and thus began my acquaintance with
him. Of course, after my son’s cautionary
remark, I noticed him closely,
but I should have done so anyhow, I
am sure, for the resemblance to the
dead was so strong as to give me a
very strange feeling, for Chester Mansfield
had been only less dear to me
than my own son. But as Howard
had said, the resemblance seemed to
wear away somewhat as I talked with
him, and I began to wonder that I had
felt it so much. This young man was
older, stouter—and many shades darker
in complexion than my friend. His
manner, speech, and style of dress were
wholly unlike those of the dead Chester,
although his voice, while deeper,
was very similar. He was attached to
the hotel in some capacity, and went
out with us to dinner after a moment’s
talk, and I found him to be a pleasant
talker, with a ready fund of the slang
which seems to be the evolving language
of the Far West, and a very
witty use of it; but he did not seem
to be well informed on any subject
that I could mention, a strong contrast
to the scholarship of the dead man
whose face he bore.

Yet he had an unmistakable air of
good breeding, and even of intelligence,
although it was impossible to draw him
into a connected conversation. He
seemed to be very popular in the
house.

Howard was closely engaged in his
work, which sometimes kept him away
for a week at a time, and I had neither
the strength nor courage to go very
far from the house alone, through that
odd, rushing, foreign-looking town, so
I had much time to myself. I was
the only woman at the house except
the proprietor’s wife and one Irish
chambermaid. This, perhaps, would
account for my interest in the young
man, for I must confess that he occupied
my thoughts a good deal during
those first weeks. One Sabbath afternoon
I saw him going away with a
party of friends—stylishly dressed,
hard-looking men, and I turned and
spoke to Howard of the idea that I
had formed of him.

“I have thought of the same thing
myself, mother,” he replied. “That
fellow is of Eastern origin, and he is
well brought up, in spite of his efforts
to conceal it. And you can’t get a
word out of him about his past. I’ve
tried a dozen times. I’m positive that
he puts on ignorance a good many
times, just as a blind. There’s a good
deal of that here—men who have forgotten
all about the East, you understand,
and who have new names, and
who don’t write home by every mail.
Now, weren’t there other Mansfield
boys besides Chester? His mother was
a second wife, wasn’t she, and there
was another family who lived with
their grandmother?”

“Why, certainly there was!” I exclaimed,
catching at the idea. “Three
boys, and two of them went out to
Denver, or somewhere in that region.
Now I have it—that’s just who he is.
I wonder what crime he has committed—robbery,
or perhaps murder—who
knows?”

“Oh, no! Take care, not quite so
fast, mother. But I have a little clue
that nobody else has had the interest
to notice. It is more than mere coincidence.
Of course Doctor Mansfield’s
sons would be brought up in the deepest
piety, and when this fellow gets
drunk—you’ll hear him some night—he’s
terribly pious; prays and sings
half the night to himself—old church
hymns that were never heard in this
place. And the thing that I notice is
this: he prays like one who was brought
up to it; not like some reprobate who
has been scared into piety. I’ve heard
them a few times, too, and I know the
difference.

“Now, that means a little, and when
184
you put it with the company he keeps,
especially Crouch, his chum, that black-looking
fellow who was shooting at the
target out there this morning, don’t you
see it grows quite interesting?”

“I should think it does. Why, it is
perfectly certain that he is a desperate
sort of person. I wonder what he has
done? It couldn’t be the Cleveland
fur robbery, I suppose,” I said.

Howard got up and shook himself
and then laughed uproariously.

“No, but he might be the Rahway
murderer. You’d better lock the door
fast and tight at night.” (This was a
stab at my well-known cowardice.)

“And, little mother, if you think you
have got hold of a delightful, bloody
mystery, for the love of heaven keep
still about it. A little talk will set a
cyclone going if you’re not particular.”

I resented this caution as quite unnecessary,
but Howard laughed and
shook his finger at me. I think he is
at the age when a young man feels
his physical and political superiority
over his mother very fully. After he
had gone out I sat thinking over his
new idea. I had a faint suspicion that
Howard was amusing himself at my
interest in the matter, and was starting
me in pursuit of something that he
knew perfectly well beforehand; yet
every word that he had said was fastened
in my memory, and many little
unnoticed things now came up to
strengthen my suspicions.

In Crouch, the evil-looking fellow, I
had no interest, for he was not mysterious.
He was a rascal at the first
glance, and could not be anything else.
And he was the sort of rascal that one
is content not to investigate, but observe
at the greatest possible distance.

What, then, was young Reynolds’
interest in him? I intended to write
home the next day to ask about the
Mansfield brothers, but Howard carried
me off to the mines to camp for a
few days, and my thoughts were turned
in a new direction.

The day after my return I went out
for a walk through the town. I crossed
the plaza and started down one of the
diverging streets, when I suddenly
found myself in a most unsavory
neighborhood, and suspected that I
must have crossed the “dead line,”
beyond which I had been told no white
woman ever ventured. I turned to
beat a hasty retreat, when I heard my
name, and looking up saw Charlie
Reynolds, apparently very drunk, issuing
from the door of a dance saloon.
One or two of his friends were smoking
in the doorway. “Good evening,
Mish Spencer,” he said, with an aggravated
bow. “Thish bad place for
lady. See you home, Mish Spencer?”

“No,” I said, “you can’t see me
home, but I will see you home. You
walk on before me, and I will follow.”

To my surprise he obeyed, and across
the plaza and down the street of adobe
houses I steered my drunken companion,
until I saw him safe within the
doors of the Eldorado House, where I
was assured that he would be put to
bed.

That night my son was detained at
the mines, and I sat at my window
alone in the marvellous moonlight so
clear, so brilliant in that rarefied atmosphere,
that I could see the round blue
lines of the mountains in Mexico, sixty
miles away. Sounds from different
parts of the town came up with startling
distinctness. I could distinguish
every word of sentences spoken two
185
squares away, and the barking of coyotes
out in the mesquit brush that surrounded
the town seemed to come from
under my window. I seemed to be far
from the rest of the earth, on some desolate
peak that stood in vast solitude,
for the stars were so large and bright,
and the great glowing moon seemed to
hang just overhead.

There were no trees on the great
blue mountains, no grass in the stony
valleys, and I realized in their absence
how much we owe to the mission of
the green and growing. There was no
sense of companionship in the babel of
sounds and languages
that
came up from
the wicked little
town. I am
afraid that a few
homesick tears
came to my eyes.

Suddenly one
of the grand old
hymns of my
church struck
the intense air.
A clear, strong,
manly voice.
How familiar it
sounded, ringing
out alone! I sat
spellbound, for it was, as my
son had said, not the effort of
a tyro, but the cultivated voice
of a cultivated man. Coming
just at this moment in the
grandly solemn night, its effect
upon me was indescribable, and
a new thought flashed into my mind, which I
am ashamed to confess was not there before.
Why cannot this young man, whatever he
may have done, be saved through this early
training? I could not sleep for this thought,
and waited impatiently for the morning, resolved
to undertake some missionary work
in behalf of Charlie Reynolds.

II.

The Chester Mansfield to whom I have referred
was the young minister of my church,
and also the son of my dearest friend. Mrs.
Mansfield had been my playmate and schoolmate
in childhood, my confidante in girlhood,
and when we were matrons and neighbors
our early affection had settled
into the deep, enduring friendship of
later life. She had married our minister
and was an exemplary wife and
mother. Our children were schoolmates
also, and her only son Chester
was a boy of unusual promise. He
distinguished himself in school and
college, and, finishing his course just
before his father’s death, was unanimously
called to fill the vacant pulpit.
Here his eloquence and spirituality fully
justified the promise of his youth, and
he became almost the idol of his congregation.
He married a lovely girl,
and life seemed to hold for
him the highest blessings that
man can dream of.

The sorrow, then, of his sudden
and peculiarly sad death
cannot be described. Not only
his family and church, but the
whole town, mourned as if for
a brother, and the church
could not hold the concourse
that followed his body to the
grave.

The mothers and sisters and
the frail young wife were almost
crushed by the blow, and
even after the
lapse of nearly five
years it was fresh
enough in my heart
to make Charlie
186
Reynolds’ face bring back those days of
mourning with sad reality. I formed
then the hope, foolish, perhaps, that if
this young man should be found to be a
relative of the dead man and reclaimed,
he might in some measure atone to
those bereaved ones for their loss.
With this idea, I improved every opportunity
to cultivate Charlie Reynolds’
acquaintance and win his good
opinion, although I was much embarrassed
by the laughing eyes that
Howard never failed to turn upon me
in my efforts at conversation.

They were efforts, indeed; for if I
had come from a foreign land, and
spoken an unknown language, I could
hardly have had more difficulty in finding
a topic of common interest or in
making myself intelligible, for old-fashioned
English seemed to be less
understood than any others of the
numerous tongues I heard.

I could hear from my window, Mexicans,
Chinamen, Indians, Frenchmen,
and Spaniards chatting in the plaza,
until I could almost guess what they
said, but the vernacular of the American
miner and rancher is beyond comprehension.

There are about four topics discussed
at the Eldorado tables, chief of
all, the mines, and to this day I cannot
talk coherently about drifts and
leads and dumps, and the
like.

Then there were the
games, the most absorbing
of all, who had lost and
won, and as I don’t know
one card nor one game
from another, I am not
interested in that subject.
There was, it seemed to
me, a fresh murder or
robbery or Indian fight to
discuss every morning at
breakfast; and the ranch
talk, in which my most intelligent
questions always
provoked a shout of laughter.
When I quoted Talmage
one morning, a
young man looked at me
pityingly, and said, “Oh,
he’s dead a year ago! He
had one of the finest saloons
in Las Vegas; he
was a smart man, poor fellow!”
My attempts to
interest my table companions
in a description of
the Chautauqua and its
purpose, and the mission of the W. C.
T. U., and their painful efforts to be
politely interested, almost sent my son
into convulsions in consequence of
laughing into his coffee-cup; and the
intense earnestness with which the man
they called Bunco Brown asked, “And
didn’t they sell no booze there?” and
then, “Well, then, how in thunder do
they get it if they’re too pious to
steal?” might have seemed amusing to
one who was not struck by the horror
of the fact that the man could not conceive
of life for any person without
drink.

So, owing to the missionary’s usual
difficulty in making himself understood,
I had to wait to learn a means of communication
with my subject. I even
ventured to the door of the billiard
room and tried to manifest an interest
in the science of the game, but here,
187
also, I was too hopelessly old-fashioned
to be able to comprehend the beauty of
the angles, and beat an ignominious
retreat. I heard Charlie remark as I
went up-stairs: “Game, for such a
pious old lady, isn’t she?” I took it as
a compliment.