Part 9
The force of this passion is best illustrated by the fact that there could be no compensation but death, for the loss of its object; no compensation in all this great world, with its beauty of sunrises, woods, rivers and mountains. The flowers bloomed no longer for her. There was no soothing in the melancholy of music. The stars in Heaven went out. All sweet sounds grew strangely silent. It was a living death. She stretched out her hand for help, and it only met the cold hand of a dead love. She could only see in the darkness the ghost of a memory. There was only one escape out of this passion, and that way she fled--and it led out of life.
The great world moves on undisturbed. The great woods are not disturbed when a single leaf drops off a tree and flutters down to its death. The eagle, in his flight, does not miss a feather that drops from his plumage. Men will still buy and sell, and women will gossip and dress. We shall all walk, and talk, and sing, and dance, and flirt, and laugh, each in our own little world, happy as ever, so long as dark Care does not ride behind the horseman.
But among us there will be one who can never again go companionless. There is a ghost forever chained to him, which he cannot shake off. It will sit by him and follow him into the land of dreams. It will walk by his side. It will echo his faintest whisper and his loudest laugh. He may wander like Ahasuerus, but he cannot escape from it. He may plunge into excess, but he will see its face at the bottom of every cup. There is no place so remote, under the blessed heavens, where he can escape from it. There is no darkness so intense that he will not see its sad, reproachful eyes looking at him. It will follow him here, to meet him There. He carries his punishment with him forever. In Faustus, there is an account of a memorable banquet given by Satan, at which the viands were composed of souls cooked in divers ways, and the wines were the tears of those who had suffered on earth--a glowing story it is, told in excellent fashion, which I would commend to him. I need not urge this handsomely-named man to think sometimes of his victim. He will have no difficulty in remembering, but very much in forgetting. A man who commits murder is not very apt to forget. Society conveniently glosses over these crimes with mild names, but the crime is just the same. Society individually knows, and he knows, that he has committed murder, just as surely as if he had plunged a knife into his victim, whose only crime was love.
I think it would be an excellent practice, in these cases, to place upon the tombstone some such epitaph as this:
Sacred to the Memory
OF
AUGUSTA,
_Murdered in her 18th year by Percy_.
She was Beautiful, Intelligent and Amiable, but was guilty of
LOVE.
_IN MEMORIAM._
To-day, in this crystal atmosphere, in these glorious, invigorating breaths from the North, full of suggestions of cool pine woods--of brooks dancing over the shallows--of rivers flashing down to the great lakes--of a fisherman rocking upon the waves--of breezes which have journeyed all the way from the pole, whispering stories to the trees of the weird things done in the Northern glow--in this perfection of a new-created day, created for the first time for you and for me, thus ever renewing the wonder of the first morning, life is no longer a burden, but a blessing. Not the life social, mental or moral, but the life physical. The mere fact of living, of breathing, of feeling the blood coursing in your veins, of allying yourself with the waves of the lake, which are sparkling with smiles; with the leaves, which are dancing on the tree-tops; with the flowers bursting into richer bloom, and lifting up their drooping cups to catch the wine of the morning; with the birds, curving through the invigorating air; with the insects, no longer droning their hot, dry notes in the burnt grass, but making a Babel of little sweet sounds in every hillock; the mere fact of living in this world, when every tint, from the Iris in a foam-bell to the haze on a hill-side, is perfect; when every sound, from the buzz of a grasshopper to the diapason of the waves or the swell of the wind-smitten trees, is in unison, is a blessing. On such a day, Donatello, the Faun, would have called the animals to him with that universal language which makes us and them kin. On such a day, Memnon sings more grandly to the sun. On such a day, Heine's pine tree in the northern snows dreams of the palm in the burning sands. Such a day comes like a benediction, after the long, tedious sermon, and it brings with it benisons from the Great Father to the parched, burning leaves, to the poor sufferers tossing upon beds of pain, to tired, toiling humanity.
The last week has been a reign of terror. It is stated that the birds have never died so fast, especially the singing birds. The flowers, too, have died. And with the flowers and the birds, their companions, the little children have passed away, until it makes one sad to think into how many homes a shadow has come within the past short week. Death, like another Herod, has knocked at every door, save where some protecting angel guards the threshold. We fain would have kept him out, but our hands were powerless, and in almost every household where he entered, he smote the youngest and the fairest--little eyes, in which the light of Heaven had never faded--little hands, untaxed by any of life's burdens--little feet, unstained by any of the dust of life's highway, in which we elder ones are so sadly begrimed that we have lost much of the semblance of our former selves. And I think this morning that, if earth is sadder for the loss of the children, Heaven must be brighter and more beautiful for the troops of little ones that have passed through the Gate Beautiful, and now walk in Paradise, among the birds and flowers which died when they died. And I think that, along the invisible strings which stretch from our hearts to the little green waves of turf in the Acres of God, and thence reach heavenward, will come songs in the night-watches, and pulses of music we shall recognize, and, recognizing, become better men and better women.
I am sure that some loving angel will tenderly watch each of these new mounds of earth, and that, on each recurring spring, we shall see the blue of their eyes in the blue of the violet, and the gold of their hair in the gold of the daisies; that we shall hear their voices in the songs of the robin, and that they will live for us evermore, in all things beautiful.
And may the Great Father stretch His hands in infinite tenderness and blessing over all bowed heads and darkened homes, and in benison over all beds of suffering.
July 25, 1868.
* * * * *
Last summer, in those hot days, when the cruel weather killed the birds, and flowers, and little children, I wrote to you of the death of a little one, as fragile as the rose-bud she held in her little waxen hand, and how the sunshine was extinguished in the house when we carried her out and tenderly laid her away under the turf, on which the golden and scarlet glories of autumn have fallen, the storms of winter have beaten, and the promises of spring are now brightening. There were with us, on that sad day, those to whom Heaven had consigned a little one, and now the messenger has come for it and taken it home again. In the mysterious dispensations of the Great Father, it was ordained that the little life of the one should flash out and expire like the light of the glow-worm; that the other should wear his life slowly out through a weary year and pass away, trying to fashion the words "Papa" and "Mamma" on his thin lips. The one went when the birds went and the flowers were fading--when the reapers were among the sheaves, and the golden glow of summer was dissolving into the purple haze of autumn. She never saw the spring, except in that land where the spring is eternal; just across that River we sometimes hear in the mists of the Valley of the Shadow, and shall some day see. The other went away when the birds were coming, and the leaves were bursting into emerald bloom on the trees, and the flowers were opening their cups to catch the sunshine and the rain. And to-day, on this blessed Sabbath, the two are together again in that far-off land which is brought so near to us when the little ones go there.
May 29, 1869.
_LAKE MICHIGAN._
I need not tell you of the general appearance of Lake Michigan. I take it for granted everyone knows it, but how many have studied it in its details, watched its rare combinations with the clouds, or discovered the subtle changes and colors, all the time at work upon its surface?
How many, for instance, have seen the Lake when it was apparently all green--not its ordinary green, but a peculiar, light green which it only wears on state occasions, and especially at this season of the year? Your first glance leads you to suppose it is simply green, but look steadily at it, and you will find that the green is suffused with purple, giving a color which I do not think can be matched elsewhere in nature. You may possibly find it in some of the endless varieties of color in wild roses. This is the royal color of the Lake, because the rarest. You may look for weeks and months and not see it, for it requires a peculiar combination of cloud, and wind, and sunlight to produce it. But if you are only patient, some day it will flash upon you in all its beauty, and richly repay you for waiting.
There are days, when the hour is about sunset, and a gentle north-east wind is blowing, that the Lake is of a light green, except a blue strip in the far north. The eastern horizon joins the water by an almost indefinable white line, as if they had been welded together, but all is vague and indistinct and vailed in a haze into which a vessel here and there melts like a phantom. There is hardly wind enough to form waves, but there is regular motion of the water--as regular as the rhythm of music--and in the distance you will see, now and then, a wave breaking white upon the shore, like the white hand of some spent swimmer, clutching at the sand in mortal agony. In the eastern sky, the lower strata of clouds are ragged and angular in shape, and dark gray in color, and only afford you glimpses, here and there, of the clouds above them, which are round and billowy, and would be white but for the roseate glow with which they are suffused by the sun, which is sinking into an angry bank of clouds, such as Dore loves to paint, like a great crimson stain upon the sky. Wherever the tips of these upper clouds appear, they cast a faint reflection upon the green of the water, not producing a duplicate of color, but bronzing the water in spots, which are continually changing. Sometimes, for a moment, the lower clouds part, and reveal a golden glory behind them, which, for only an instant, illumines the water beneath. This is peculiarly the dreamy feeling of the Lake. There is a dreamy tone in the wash of the waves. The rhythm is perfectly uniform, and the key is in accord with melancholy and tenderness. The flow is peaceful, only now and then you may hear a tone in the hazy distance, a little louder than the rest, like a drum-beat in a far-off orchestra. You may be so near the Lake that the foam of the spent waves will crawl over your feet, and their sound will still be dreamy, and apparently in the distance. It is like nothing so much as the voices and the faces which come to you in the night out of the Past. Its cadence is mournful and yet beautiful. It is then the time to be alone, to cast yourself upon the sand and listen to the stories of these waves--stories of the sailors who sailed the Spanish main, and never came home again--of vessels which went down, and left no one to tell the tale--of phantom ships, which suddenly loom up before affrighted sailors in the darkness--of storms, driving their black chariots over the deep--of Mermaids, and Sirens, and Undines, luring on their victims to destruction, with their white bosoms and voluptuous melodies--of the beautiful fabrics you reared years ago--all gone, as the wave washes out the print of your feet in the sands. And, as you lie there and dream, the moon, yet silvery-gray in the early evening, passes behind a cloud. The distant city is hidden by a curtain of gray mist--hidden, with all its men and women, toiling, struggling, loving, cursing and praying--hidden, with all its squat misery in the alleys and by-ways, and with all its splendid wretchedness in the high places. All sounds die away. The cruel mist creeps over the water, and you are alone upon the sand, with only the melancholy moaning of the immemorial waves, which will moan thus when you and I are gone--which have moaned thus since the youth of the years.
Have you seen the Lake when thunder-storms are brooding all around the horizon, and the wrath of the tempest is sweeping up from the west, where, in thundering caverns, the Titans are forging the bolts? You may, now and then, hear the clang of their hammers, and see the fire from their anvils, what time gigantic masses of clouds, assuming fantastic shapes and dark forms of demons, come tearing their way to the zenith. In the east all is quiet, and the fleecy, cumulous clouds, towering up like peaks of snow, and illuminated by the waning sun, send straight pink shafts of light across the dull, blue surface of the Lake. In the distance, this blue is changed to the most delicate green. Watch it, and in a moment it will change to blue again, and then again to green; and the shafts of pink light on its surface will come and go like the blushes upon a girl's cheek. Never mind the near approach of the storm. You cannot afford to lose the Lake yet. As the black clouds gather in the east, the blues and the greens disappear, and the Lake turns to black, reflecting the wrath of the clouds above. The darts of the lightning descend into it, and the crash of the thunder borne over its surface is almost deafening. The sound of the waves dies away. Long, smooth, irregular patches appear, looking as if the air had died above them. A few heavy spats of rain strike here and there. A dense mist begins to settle down. Faster and faster the rain-drops fall, and now the mad gods are all abroad; and in the mists there, the lightnings are rending the bosom of the Lake. But, in the midst of all the din, if you only listen acutely, you will hear the steady patter of the rain in the water--a soothing, tranquilizing sound; and in some dense forest, if you were lying upon the needle-covered ground, you would hear exactly the same sound made by the wind in the tree-tops. And now, if you could sleep in some old-fashioned attic, without a care or a trouble in your breast, where you could hear the rain playing its merry fantasie on the shingles, you would sleep the most refreshing of all sleeps.
And then there are days when the heavens are cloudless, the temperature cool, and the breeze blowing briskly and steadily from the north, that the Lake is a very kaleidoscope of colors, and puts on a habit it has borrowed from fairy-land. Start with the extreme eastern limit, and you may trace nearly all the primitive colors of the prism, with their variations at intervals--blue, light green, grass-green, and the green of the waters in which the icebergs float, light and dark bronze, silvery gray, pink and purple, and a dull, dead gray color, close by you. Let but the breeze be strong enough to comb the crest of the waves into foam, and a more beautiful sight it would be impossible to conceive. These colors are not fixed. The smallest cloud which passes over the sky will agitate and intermingle them in a very chaos of beauty, but as the cloud disappears they will return to their original order. Sometimes a larger cloud will hurry across the sky, fleeing from its shadow, which skims over the lake, as you have seen the same shadows skim over a meadow, and this shadow will absorb color after color and leave a new one in its place, so that the whole of them will often be reversed. In such seasons, the lake is a perfect picture of life, with its phases of trouble, of mirth, of youthful vivacity, of ambition, of hope, and of despair. Your life and my life are there, with all the dreams we have dreamed and the loves we have loved--with the bubbles which fancy has blown, and the castles we have built in the air--with the ties which have been formed and been broken--with the fates which have brought you and me together, like ships upon the ocean, to meet for a minute and hold converse, and then sail again and apart into the opposite horizons; and yet always teaching the lesson that, in the darkest moments, there is compensation in the great beauty and blessing of nature, and that the Great Mother, who always clothes every material wreck with loveliness, and makes it beautiful and sacred to the eye, can also bring balm to every wrecked life, if we only approach her with loving hearts and outstretched arms.
There is another aspect of the Lake, which I hope you will never see. It is when the air is sultry and heavy with moisture; when a chill, penetrating wind has settled down upon it, as in the late falls; when you can see only a stone's throw from the shore; when the water is of a dull, milky color, and its wash against the sand is sullen and despondent, and there is not a pleasant sound or sight. The Lake then is suicidal in its tendencies, and is deliberately inviting you or Atropos to sever the thread in your web of life. Keep away from the Lake at such times, for it is a very monster, and you can have no good thoughts in its presence.
August 1, 1868.
_RIP VAN WINKLE._
In this world of amusement in which we dwell, palpably the finest piece of dramatic art is the "Rip Van Winkle" of Mr. Joseph Jefferson. We are accustomed to compare the personations of other actors. We establish degrees of merit in the efforts of Booth, Adams, Couldock, and Forrest, in tragedy, and Warren, Hackett, Owens, and Brougham in comedy. But when we come to Mr. Jefferson's "Rip," comparisons cease. It stands by itself, as sharply defined, as superbly drawn, as the Venus di Medici in statuary, one of Raphael's cartoons in painting, or Jenny Lind's Bird Song in music; and, if we ransack the records of the stage, we find nothing to which we can compare it.
For the reason that his personation belongs to an entirely new school. It is the commencement of that dramatic era which Shakspeare foreshadowed in his advice to the players. It is the dissolution of that system against which Charles Lamb and Addison wrote so powerfully in "Elia" and the "Spectator." I verily believe if Charles Lamb had seen Jefferson's "Rip Van Winkle," although he was denouncing such great artists as Garrick and Mrs. Siddons, he would never have written that essay on the plays of Shakspeare; and that, if Addison had seen it, the "Spectator" would have been minus some of those sketchy papers on the playhouses. I believe that gentle soul, Charles Lamb, would have taken his sister to see "Rip," and that they would have talked to each other as no two ever talked before; that great-hearted Addison would have taken off his hat and made his best bow to him; that watery Sterne would have shed a Niagara of tears over the simple narrative, and Steele would have gone and got drunk, out of sheer inability to do justice to the subject in any other way.
Mr. Jefferson's personation is totally unlike anything on the modern stage. Matilda Heron's "Camille," in her younger days, approximated to it somewhat, but at present there is nothing that resembles it on the stage. Mr. Jefferson has quietly ignored all the rules, regulations and precedents of the stage. The stereotyped stage-walk--a sort of comico-heroic strut, which has been pressed into service for all sorts of characters, from "Harlequin" to "Hamlet;" the stage gestures; the stage attitudes, which "Mrs. Toodles," curtain-lecturing her intoxicated spouse, and "Lucrezia Borgia," shielding "Genarro" from the "Duke," both assume; the rolling of the eyes in a fine frenzy; the mouthing of phrases in a set manner, to catch the praise of the groundlings; the hackneyed entrances and exits; the rant, and the making of points, are all foreign to Mr. Jefferson. With him, the stage is merely an accident and no more essential to his personation than it was to Irving's conception.
This school of acting which Mr. Jefferson has adopted is the very highest form of dramatic art. In it, he realizes the truth of the old adage, that it is the province of art to conceal art. _He completely identifies himself with the character._ That is the secret of his success--of his potent sway over the emotions of his auditors. It is this faculty which enables him so to blend humor with pathos that smiles follow tears in as quick succession as light follows shadow over a field on a summer afternoon. It is, perhaps, impossible for any person who has seen Booth to form any original conception of Hamlet. He invariably connects Hamlet with Booth, and the result is a theatrical Hamlet; and the poor Ghost always walks into our memories with a theatrical stride, and smells of the calcium. So with Couldock's "Luke Fielding," Charlotte Cushman's "Meg Merrilies," Forrest's "Coriolanus," or Burton's "Toodles." All these personations were unusually fine, but the actors could not always merge themselves in the characters, because there was always the partition of theatrical necessities and precedents in the way. This is not the case with Mr. Jefferson. We do not connect "Rip Van Winkle" with Jefferson, but Jefferson with "Rip Van Winkle." The transformation is complete. He acts, talks, walks, laughs, rejoices and mourns just as "Rip Van Winkle" would have done--just as any human being would have done in "Rip Van Winkle's" place. In looking at this personation--and I own to having laughed and cried over it many times--I never think of Jefferson. I never think of his art. I never get "enthused" enough even to applaud, for I should never think of applauding "Rip," were he alive and walking to-day the streets of the village of Falling Waters. To me, there is no Jefferson on the stage, but the magnificent creation of Irving, moving before me. And all this is done without the show of art. Mr. Jefferson never talks above the ordinary conversational tone of voice, uses only a few gestures, and those of the simplest description, attempts no tricks of facial expression, and makes less fuss than the veriest supernumerary on the stage; and yet I question whether any living artist has such an instantaneous command of the smiles and tears of an audience as he.
In fact, I confess I should be afraid of that man or woman who was not affected by this personation. It has been my good or bad luck, as the case may be, for many years past to have written on every actor and actress who have come to this city, and to have witnessed thousands of dramatic performances. Constant dropping of water wears away the rock, and I confess until I saw Mr. Jefferson, I have looked upon stage murders and all sorts of villainies with a large degree of composure; have even smiled at the lachrymose Mrs. Haller, beloved of young women, and have studied with all my might to discover the fun in the stage situation at which the audience was laughing; and instances are on record where I have slept the sleep of the just all through a five-act tragedy, overrunning with murders, suicides, rapes, burglaries, divorces and _crim. con._ enough to have started a second Boston in business. And when I first went to see Mr. Jefferson, I went all calloused with dramatic labor. But if that man didn't have me laughing and crying alternately the whole evening, then I'm a sinner.