Part 17

At last the expected Tuesday morning came. My funds had received an unlooked-for diminution by receiving a letter from my friend whose wants had led me into difficulty. He was just embarking at Liverpool--hoped that my remittance had arrived in due season--promised to send me a draft as soon as he reached New York--envied my happiness at remaining in Paris--and left me to pay the postage on his valediction. It would be difficult for any disinterested person to conceive how dear the thoughtless writer of that letter was to me in that unfortunate hour. Then, too, I was obliged to lay out six of those cherished copper coins for a ride in an omnibus, as I was caught in a shower over in the vicinity of St. Sulpice, and could not afford to take the risk of a rheumatic attack by getting wet. I well remember the cool, business-like air with which that relentless _conducteur_ pocketed those specimens of the French currency that were so precious in my sight. Yet, in spite of these serious and unexpected drains upon my finances, I had four sous left after paying for my breakfast on that memorable morning. I felt uncommonly cheerful at the prospect of being relieved from my troubles, and stopped several minutes after finishing my coffee, and conversed with the tidy shopwoman with a fluency that astonished both of us. I really regretted for the moment that I was so soon to be placed in funds, and should no longer enjoy her kindly services. I chuckled audibly to myself as I pursued my way to the banker's, to think what an immense joke it would be for some skilful Charley Bates or Artful Dodger to try to pick my pocket just then. An ancient heathen expecting an answer from the oracle of Delphos, a modern candidate for office awaiting the count of the vote, never felt more oppressed with the importance of the result than I did when I entered the banking-house. My delight at having a letter from America put into my hands could only be equalled by my dismay when I opened it, and found, instead of the draft, a request from a casual acquaintance who had heard that I might possibly return home through England, and who, if I did, would be under great obligations if I would take the trouble to procure and carry home for him an English magpie and a genuine King Charles spaniel!

I did not stop to read the papers that morning. As I was leaving the establishment, I met its chief partner, to whom I could not help expressing my disappointment. He was one of your hard-faced, high-cheek-boned Yankees, with a great deal of speculation in his eyes. I should as soon have thought of attempting the cultivation of figs and dates at Franconia as of trying to get a small loan from _him_. So I pushed on into those busy streets whose liveliness seemed to mock my pitiable condition. I had come to it at last. I had got to borrow. A physician, who now stands high among the faculty in Boston, was then residing in Paris, and, as I had been on familiar terms with him, I determined to have recourse to him. He occupied two rooms in the fifth story of a house in the Rue St. Honore. His apartments were more remarkable for their snugness than for the extent of accommodation they afforded. A snuff-taking friend once offered to present the doctor with one of his silk handkerchiefs to carpet that parlour with. But the doctor's heart was not to be measured by the size of his rooms, and I knew that he would be a friend in need. The _concierge_ told me that the doctor had not gone out, and, in obedience to the instructions of that functionary, I mounted the long staircase and _frapped_ at the door of that estimable disciple of Galen. It was not my usual thrice-repeated stroke upon the door; it was a timid and uncertain knock--the knock of a borrower. The doctor said that he had been rather short himself for a week or two, but that he should undoubtedly find a letter in the General Post that morning that would place him in a condition to give me a lift. This was said in a manner that put me entirely at my ease, and made me feel that by accepting his loan I should be conferring an inestimable favour upon him. As we walked towards the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, I amused him with the story of the preceding week's adventures. He laughed heartily, and after a few minutes I joined with him, though I must say that the events, as they occurred, did not particularly impress me as subjects for very hilarious mirth. The doctor inquired at the _poste restante_ in vain. His friends had been as remiss as mine, and we had both got to wait another week. The doctor was not an habitually profane man, but as we came through the court-yard of the post office, he expressed his anxiety as to what the devil we should do. He examined his purse, and found that his available assets amounted to a trifle more than nineteen francs. He looked as troubled as he had before looked gay. I generously offered him my four remaining coppers, and told him that I would stand by him as long as he had a centime in his pocket. Such an exhibition of magnanimity could not be made in vain. We stopped in front of the church of Our Lady of Victories, and took the heroic resolve to club our funds and go through the week of expectation together. And we did it. I wish that space would allow of my describing the achievements of that week. Medical books were cast aside for the study of domestic economy. I do not believe that a similar sum of money ever went so far before, even in Paris. We found a place in a narrow street, near the Odeon, where fried potatoes were sold very cheap; we bought our bread by the loaf, as it was cheaper--the loaves being so long that the doctor said that he understood, when he first saw them, why bread was called the staff of life. We resorted to all sorts of expedients to make a franc buy as much as possible of the necessaries of life. We frequented with great assiduity all places of public amusement where there was no fee for admission. The public galleries, the libraries, the puppet shows in the Champs Elysees, were often honoured with our presence. We made a joke of our necessities, and carried it through to the end. The next Tuesday morning found us, after breakfasting, on our way to the post office, with a franc left in our united treasury. I had begun to give up all hopes of our ever getting a letter from home, and insisted upon the doctor's trying his luck first. He was successful, but the severest part of the joke came when he found that his letter (contrary to all precedent) was not postpaid. The polite official at the window must have thirty-two sous for it, and we had but twenty. Our laughter showed him the whole state of the case, and we left him greatly amused at our promises to return soon, and get the desirable prize. My application at the banker's was successful, too, and before noon we were both prepared to laugh a siege to scorn. I paid the rosy-cheeked washerwoman, bought Marie a neat crucifix to hang up in the place of a very rude one in her _conciergerie_, out of sheer good humour; and that evening the doctor and I laughed over the recollections of the week and a good dinner in a quiet restaurant in the Palais Royal.

THE OLD CORNER

The human heart loves corners. The very word "corner" is suggestive of snugness and cosy comfort, and he who has no liking for them is something more or less than mortal. I have seen people whose ideas of comfort were singularly crude and imperfect; who thought that it consisted in keeping a habitation painfully clean, and in having every book or paper that might give token of the place being the dwelling of a human being, carefully out of sight. We have great cause for thankfulness that such people are not common, (for a little wholesome negligence is by no means an unpleasant thing,) so that we can say that mankind generally likes to snuggify itself, and is therefore fond of a corner. This natural fondness is manifested by the child with his playthings and infantile sports, in one of which, at least, the attractions of corners for the feline race are brought strongly before his inquisitive mind. And how is this liking strengthened and built up as the child increases in secular knowledge, and learns in the course of his poetical and historical researches all about the personal history of Master John Horner, whose sedentary habits and manducation of festive pastry are famous wherever the language of Shakespeare and Milton is spoken!

This love of nooks and corners is especially observable in those who are obliged to live in style and splendour. Many a noble English family has been glad to escape from the bondage of its rank, and has found more real comfort in the confinement of a Parisian _entresol_ than amid the gloomy grandeur of its London home. Those who are condemned to dwell in palaces bear witness to this natural love of snugness, by choosing some quiet sunny corner in their marble halls, and making it as comfortable as if it were a cosy cottage. Napoleon and Eugenie delight to escape from the magnificence of the Tuileries to that quiet and homelike refuge for people who are burdened with imperial dignity, amid the thick foliage and green alleys of St. Cloud. Even in that mighty maze, the Vatican, the rooms inhabited by the Sovereign Pontiff are remarkably comfortable and unpalatial, and prove the advantages of smallness and simplicity over gilding and grandeur, for the ordinary purposes of life. An American gentleman once called on the great and good Cardinal Cheverus, and while talking with him of his old friends in America, said that the contrast between the Cardinal's position in the episcopal palace of Bordeaux and in his former humble residence when he was Bishop of Boston, was a very striking one. The humble and pious prelate smiled, and taking his visitor by the arm, led him from the stately hall in which they were conversing, into a narrow room furnished in a style of austere simplicity: "The palace," said he, "which you have seen and admired is the residence of the Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux; but this little chamber is where John Cheverus _lives_."

Literary men and statesmen have always coveted the repose of a corner where they might be undisturbed by the wranglings of the world. Twickenham, and Lausanne, and Ferney, and Rydal Mount have become as shrines to which the lover of books would fain make pilgrimages. Have we not a Sunnyside and an Idlewild even in this new land of ours! Cicero, in spite of his high opinion of Marcus Tullius, and his thirst for popular applause, often grew tired of urban life, and was glad to forsake the _Senatus populusque Romanus_ for the quiet of his snug villa in a corner of the hill country overlooking Frascati. And did not our own Tully love to fling aside the burden of his power, and find his Tusculum on the old South Shore? In the Senate Chamber or the Department of State you might see the Defender of the Constitution, but it was at Marshfield that Webster really lived. Horace loved good company and the entertainment of his wealthy patrons and friends, but he loved snugness and quiet even more. In one of his odes he apostrophizes his friend Septimius, and describes to him the delight he takes in the repose of his Tiburtine retreat from the bustle of the metropolis, saying that of all places in the world that corner is the most smiling and grateful to him:--

Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes Angulus ridet.

If we look into our hearts, I think we shall most of us find that we have a clinging attachment to some favourite corner, as well as Mr. Horatius Flaccus. There is at least one corner in the city of Boston, which has many pleasant associations for the lover of literature. Allusion was made a few days since, in an evening paper, to the well-known fact that the old building at the corner of Washington and School Streets was built in 1713, and is therefore older by seventeen years than the Old South Church. That little paragraph reminded me of some passages in the history of that ancient edifice related to me by an ancestor of mine, for whom the place had an almost romantic charm.

The old building (my grandfather used to tell me) was originally a dwelling-house. It had the high wainscots, the broad staircases, the carved cornices, and all the other blessed old peculiarities of the age in which it was built, which we irreverently have improved away. One hundred years ago the old corner was considered rather an aristocratic place of residence. It was slightly suburban in its position, for the town of Boston had an affection for Copp's Hill, and the inhabitants clustered about that sacred eminence as if the southern parts of their territory were a quicksand. Trees were not uncommon in the vicinity of the foot of School Street in those days, and no innovating Hathorne had disturbed the quiet of the place with countless omnibuses. The old corner was then occupied by an English gentleman named Barmesyde, who gave good dinners, and was on intimate terms with the colonial governor. My venerated relative, to whom I have already alluded, enjoyed his friendship, and in his latter days delighted to talk of him, and tell his story to those who had heard it so often, that Hugh Greville Barmesyde, Esquire, seemed like a companion of their own young days.

Old Barmesyde sprang from an ancient Somersetshire family, from which he inherited a considerable property, and a remarkable energy of character. He increased his wealth during a residence of many years in Antigua, at the close of which he relinquished his business, and returned to England to marry a beautiful English lady to whom he had engaged himself in the West Indies. He arrived in England the day after the funeral of his betrothed, who had fallen a victim to intermittent fever. Many of his relations had died in his absence, and he found himself like a stranger in the very place where he had hoped to taste again the joys of home. The death of the lady he loved so dearly, and the changes in his circle of friends, were so depressing to him, that he resolved to return to the West Indies. He thought it would be easier for him to continue in the associations he had formed there than to recover from the shock his visit to England had given him. So he took passage in a brig from Bristol to Antigua, and said farewell forever, as he supposed, to his native land. Before half the voyage was accomplished, the vessel was disabled: as Mr. Choate would express it, a north-west gale inflicted upon her a serious, an immedicable injury; and she floated a wreck upon the foamy and uneven surface of the Atlantic. She was fallen in with by another British vessel, bound for Boston, which took off her company, and with the renewal of the storm she foundered before the eyes of those who had so lately risked their lives upon her seaworthiness. When Mr. Barmesyde arrived in Boston, he found an old friend in the governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Governor Pownall had but lately received his appointment from the Crown, and being a comparative stranger in Boston, he was as glad to see Mr. Barmesyde as the latter was to see him. It was several months before an opportunity to reach the West Indies offered itself, and when one did occur, Mr. Barmesyde only used it to communicate with his agent at Antigua. He had given up all ideas of returning thither, and had settled down, with his negro servant Cato, to housekeeping at the corner of School Street, within a few doors of his gubernatorial friend.

Governor Pownall's term of office was not a long one, but even when he was removed, Mr. Barmesyde stuck faithfully to the old corner. He had found many warm friends here, and could no longer consider himself alone in the world. He was a man of good natural powers, and of thorough education. He was one of those who seem never to lose any thing that they have once acquired. In person he was tall and comely, and my grandfather said that he somewhat resembled General Washington as he appeared twenty-five years later, excepting that Mr. Barmesyde's countenance was more jolly and port-winy. From all I can learn, his face, surmounted by that carefully-powdered head of hair, must have resembled a red brick house after a heavy fall of snow. If Hugh Barmesyde had a fault, I am afraid it was a fondness for good living. He attended to his marketing in person, assisted by his faithful Cato, who was as good a judge in such matters as his master, and who used to vindicate the excellence of his master's fare by eating until he was black in the face. For years there were few vessels arrived from England without bringing choice wines to moisten the alimentary canal of Mr. Barmesyde. The Windward Isles contributed bountifully to keep alight the festive flame that blazed in his cheery countenance, and to make his flip and punch the very best that the province could produce. Every Sunday morning Mr. Barmesyde's best buckles sparkled in the sunbeams as he walked up School Street to the King's Chapel. Not that he was an eminently religious man, but he regarded religion as an institution that deserved encouragement for the sake of maintaining a proper balance in society. The quiet order and dignity of public worship pleased him, the liturgy gratified his taste, and so Sunday after Sunday his big manly voice headed the responses, and told that its possessor had done many things that he ought not to have done, and had left undone a great many that he ought to have done.

Mr. Barmesyde was not a mere feeder on good things, however; he had a cultivated taste for literature, and his invoices of wine were frequently accompanied by parcels of new books. The old gentleman took a great delight in the English literature of that day. Fielding and Smollett were writing then, and no one took a keener pleasure in their novels than he. He imported, as he used to boast, the first copy of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary that ever came to America, and was never tired of reading that stately and pathetic preface, or of searching for the touches of satire and individual prejudice that abound in that entertaining work. His well-worn copy of the Spectator, in eight duodecimo volumes, presented by him to my grandfather, now graces one of my book shelves. His books were always at the service of his friends, who availed themselves of the old gentleman's kindness to such an extent that his collection might have been called a circulating library. But it was not merely for the frequent "feast of reason and flow of soul" that his friends were indebted to him. He was the very incarnation of hospitality. I am afraid that my excellent grandparent had an uncommon admiration for this trait in the old fellow's character, for a frequent burning twinge in one of the toes of my right foot, and occasionally in the knuckles of my left hand, reminds me of his fondness for keeping his legs under Mr. Barmesyde's festive mahogany. A few years ago, when a new floor was laid in the cellar at the old corner, a large number of empty bottles was discovered, whose appearance bore witness to the previous good character of the place as a cellar. Some labels were also found bearing dates like 1697, 1708, 1721, &c. To this day the occupants of the premises take pleasure in showing the dark wine stains on the old stairs leading to the cellar.

But Mr. Barmesyde's happiness, like the _gioia de profani_, which we have all heard the chorus in the last scene of Lucrezia Borgia discordantly allude to, was but transient. The dispute which had been brewing for years between the colonies and the mother country, began to grow unpleasantly warm. Mr. B. was a stanch loyalist. He allowed that injustice had been done to the colonies, but still he could not throw off his allegiance to his most religious and gracious king, George III., Defender of the Faith. He was ready to do and to suffer as much for his principles as the most ardent of the revolutionists. And he was not alone in his loyalty. There were many old-fashioned conservative people in this revolutionary and ismatic city in those days as well as now. The publication in this city of a translation of De Maistre's great defence of the monarchical principle of government, (the Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions,) and of the late Mr. Oliver's "Puritan Commonwealth," proves that the surrender of Cornwallis and the formation of the Federal Constitution did not destroy the confidence of a good many persons in the truth of the principles on which the loyalists took their stand. The unfortunate occurrence in State Street, March 5, 1770, gave Mr. B. great pain. He regretted the bloodshed, but he regretted more deeply to see many persons so blinded by their hatred of the king's most excellent majesty, as to defend and praise the action of a lawless mob just punished for their riotous conduct. The throwing overboard of the tea excited his indignation. He stigmatized it (and not without some reason on his side) as a wanton and cowardly act,--a destruction of the property of parties against whom the town of Boston had no cause of complaint,--a deed which proved how little real regard for justice and honour there might be among those who were the loudest in their shrieks for freedom. Of course he could not give utterance to these sentiments without exciting the ire of many people; and feeling that he could no longer safely remain in this country, he concluded to return to England. In the spring of 1774, Hugh Greville Barmesyde gave his last dinner to a few of the faithful at the old corner, and sailed the next day with a sorrowing heart and his trusty Cato for the land of his birth. He spent the remainder of his days in London, where he died in 1795. He was interred in the vault belonging to his family, in the north transept of the Parish Church of Shepton Mallet, in Somersetshire, where there is still a handsome tablet commemorating his many virtues and the inconsolable grief of the nephews and nieces whom his decease enriched.

Some of the less orderly "liberty boys" bore witness to the imperfect sympathy that existed between them and the late occupant of the old corner, by breaking sundry panes of glass in the parlour windows the night after his departure. The old house, during the revolutionary struggle, followed the common prosaic course of ordinary occupancy. There was "marrying and giving in marriage" under that steep and ancient roof in those days, and troops of clamorous children used to play upon the broad stone steps, and tarnish the brasses that Cato was wont to keep so clean and bright. In the latter part of the last century the old house underwent a painful transformation. An enterprising apothecary perverted it to the uses of trade, and decorated its new windows with the legitimate jars of various coloured fluids. It is now nearly half a century since it became a bookstore. Far be it from me to offer any disturbance to the modesty of my excellent friends, Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, by enlarging upon the old corner in its present estate. It were useless to write about any thing so familiar. They are young men yet, and must pardon me if I have used the prerogative of age and spoken too freely about their old establishment and its reminiscences. I love the old corner, and should not hesitate to apply to it the words of Horace which I have quoted above. I love its freedom from pretence and ostentation. New books seem more grateful to me there than elsewhere; for the dinginess of Paternoster Row harmonizes better with literature than the plate glass and gairish glitter of Piccadilly or Regent Street.