Part 3

Oh, the glory, the freedom, the passion of a letter! It is worth all the lip-talk in the world. Do you say, it is studied, made up, acted, rehearsed, contrived, artistic?

Let me see it, then; let me run it over; tell me age, sex, circumstance, and I will tell you if it be studied or real—if it be the merest lip-slang put into words, or heart-talk blazing on the paper.

I have a little packet, not very large, tied up with narrow, crimson ribbon, now soiled with frequent handling, which far into some winter’s night, I take down from its nook upon my shelf, and untie, and open, and run over, with such sorrow, and such joy—such tears and such smiles, as I am sure make me for weeks after, a kinder and holier man.

There are in this little packet, letters in the familiar hand of a mother—what gentle admonition—what tender affection!—God have mercy on him who outlives the tears that such admonitions, and such affection call up to the eye! There are others in the budget, in the delicate, and unformed hand of a loved, and lost sister—written when she, and you were full of glee, and the best mirth of youthfulness; does it harm you to recall that mirthfulness? or to trace again, for the hundredth time, that scrawling postscript at the bottom, with its _i’s_ so carefully dotted, and its gigantic _t’s_ so carefully crossed, by the childish hand of a little brother?

I have added latterly to that packet of letters; I almost need a new and longer ribbon; the old one is getting too short. Not a few of these new and cherished letters, a former reverie[1] has brought to me; not letters of cold praise, saying it was well done, artfully executed, prettily imagined—no such thing: but letters of sympathy—of sympathy which means sympathy—the παθημί and the συν.

Footnote 1:

The first reverie—_Smoke, Flame and Ashes_—was published some months previous to this, in the _Southern Literary Messenger_.

It would be cold and dastardly work to copy them; I am too selfish for that. It is enough to say that they, the kind writers, have seen a heart in the reverie—have felt that it was real, true. They know it; a secret influence has told it. What matters it, pray, if, literally, there was no wife, and no dead child, and no coffin in the house? Is not feeling, feeling; and heart, heart? Are not these fancies thronging on my brain, bringing tears to my eyes, bringing joy to my soul, as living, as anything human can be living? What if they have no material type—no objective form? All that is crude—a mere reduction of ideality to sense—a transformation of the spiritual to the earthy—a leveling of soul to matter.

Are we not creatures of thought and passion? Is anything about us more earnest than that same thought and passion? Is there anything more real—more characteristic of that great and dim destiny to which we are born, and which may be written down in that terrible word—Forever?

Let those who will then, sneer at what in their wisdom they call untruth—at what is false, because it has no material presence: this does not create falsity; would to Heaven that it did!

And yet if there was actual, material truth, superadded to reverie, would such objectors sympathize the more? No! a thousand times, no; the heart that has no sympathy with thoughts and feelings that scorch the soul, is dead also—whatever its mocking tears, and gestures may say—to a coffin or a grave!

Let them pass, and we will come back to these cherished letters.

A mother, who has lost a child, has, she says, shed a tear—not one, but many—over the dead boy’s coldness. And another, who has not lost, but who trembles lest she lose, has found the words failing as she read, and a dim, sorrow-borne mist spreading over the page.

Another, yet rejoicing in all those family ties, that make life a charm, has listened nervously to careful reading, until the husband is called home, and the coffin is in the house—“Stop!”—she says; and a gush of tears tells the rest.

Yet the cold critic will say—“It was artfully done.” A curse on him!—it was not art: it was nature.

Another, a young, fresh, healthful girl-mind, has seen something in the love-picture—albeit so weak—of truth; and has kindly believed that it must be earnest. Ay, indeed is it, fair, and generous one—earnest as life and hope! Who, indeed, with a heart at all, that has not yet slipped away irreparably and forever from the shores of youth—from that fairyland which young enthusiasm creates, and over which bright dreams hover—but knows it to be real? And so such things will be read, till hopes are dashed, and death is come.

Another, a father, has laid down the book in tears.

—God bless them all! How far better this, than the cold praise of newspaper paragraphs, or the critically contrived approval of colder friends!

Let me gather up these letters, carefully—to be read when the heart is faint, and sick of all that there is unreal, and selfish in the world. Let me tie them together, with a new and longer bit of ribbon—not by a love-knot, that is too hard—but by an easy-slipping knot, that so I may get at them the better. And now, they are all together, a snug packet, and we will label them, not sentimentally (I pity the one who thinks it!), but earnestly, and in the best meaning of the term—SOUVENIRS DU COEUR.

Thanks to my first reverie, which has added to such a treasure!

And now to my SECOND REVERIE.

I am no longer in the country. The fields, the trees, the brooks are far away from me, and yet they are very present. A letter from my tenant—how different from those other letters!—lies upon my table, telling me what fields he has broken up for the autumn grain, and how many beeves he is fattening, and how the potatoes are turning out.

But I am in a garret of the city. From my window I look over a mass of crowded house-tops—moralizing often upon the scene, but in a strain too long and somber to be set down here. In place of the wide country chimney, with its iron fire-dogs, is a snug grate, where the maid makes me a fire in the morning, and rekindles it in the afternoon.

I am usually fairly seated in my chair—a cozily stuffed office chair—by five or six o’clock of the evening. The fire has been newly made, perhaps an hour before: first, the maid drops a withe of paper in the bottom of the grate, then a stick or two of pine-wood, and after it a hod of Liverpool coal; so that by the time I am seated for the evening, the sea-coal is fairly in a blaze.

When this has sunk to a level with the second bar of the grate, the maid replenishes it with a hod of anthracite; and I sit musing and reading, while the new coal warms and kindles—not leaving my place, until it has sunk to the third bar of the grate, which marks my bedtime.

I love these accidental measures of the hours, which belong to you, and your life, and not to the world. A watch is no more the measure of your time, than of the time of your neighbors; a church clock is as public and vulgar as a church-warden. I would as soon think of hiring the parish sexton to make my bed, as to regulate my time by the parish clock.

A shadow that the sun casts upon your carpet, or a streak of light on the slated roof yonder, or the burning of your fire, are pleasant time-keepers full of presence, full of companionship, and full of the warning—time is passing!

In the summer season I have even measured my reading, and my night-watch, by the burning of a taper; and I have scratched upon the handle to the little bronze taper-holder, that meaning passage of the New Testament—Νυξ γαρ ερχεται—the night cometh!

But I must get upon my reverie; it was a drizzly evening; I had worked hard during the day, and had drawn my boots—thrust my feet into slippers—thrown on a Turkish loose dress, and Greek cap—souvenirs to me of other times, and other places, and sat watching the lively, uncertain yellow play of the bituminous flame.

I SEA-COAL

IT is like a flirt—mused I; lively, uncertain, bright-colored, waving here and there, melting the coal into black shapeless mass, making foul, sooty smoke, and pasty, trashy residuum! Yet withal—pleasantly sparkling, dancing, prettily waving, and leaping like a roebuck from point to point.

How like a flirt! And yet is not this tossing caprice of girlhood, to which I liken my sea-coal flame, a native play of life, and belonging by nature to the playtime of life? Is it not a sort of essential fire-kindling to the weightier and truer passions—even as Jenny puts the soft coal first, the better to kindle the anthracite? Is it not a sort of necessary consumption of young vapors, which float in the soul, and which is left thereafter the purer? Is there not a stage somewhere in every man’s youth, for just such waving, idle, heart-blaze, which means nothing, yet which must be got over?

Lamartine says, somewhere, very prettily, that there is more of quick running sap, and floating shade in a young tree; but more of fire in the heart of a sturdy oak—_Il y a plus de sève folle et d’ombre flottante dans les jeunes plants de la forêt; il y a plus de feu dans le vieux cœur du chêne_.

Is Lamartine playing off his prettiness of expression, dressing up with his poetry—making a good conscience against the ghost of some accusing Graziella, or is there truth in the matter?

A man who has seen sixty years, whether widower or bachelor, may well put such sentiment into words: it feeds his wasted heart with hope; it renews the exultation of youth by the pleasantest of equivocation, and the most charming of self-confidence. But after all, is it not true? Is not the heart like new blossoming field-plants, whose first flowers are half-formed, one-sided perhaps, but by and by, in maturity of season, putting out wholesome, well-formed blossoms that will hold their leaves long and bravely?

Bulwer in his story of _The Caxtons_, has counted first heart-flights mere fancy-passages—a dalliance with the breezes of love, which pass, and leave healthful heart appetite. Half the reading world has read the story of Trevanion and Pisistratus. But Bulwer is—past; his heart-life is used up—_épuisé_. Such a man can very safely rant about the cool judgment of after years.

Where does Shakespeare put the unripe heart-age? All of it before the ambition, that alone makes the hero-soul. The Shakespeare man “sighs like a furnace,” before he stretches his arm to achieve the “bauble, reputation.”

Yet Shakespeare has meted a soul-love, mature and ripe, without any young furnace sighs to Desdemona and Othello. Cordelia, the sweetest of his play creations, loves without any of the mawkish matter, which makes the whining love of a Juliet. And Florizel in the _Winter’s Tale_, says to Perdita in the true spirit of a most sound heart:

My desires Run not before mine honor, nor my wishes Burn hotter than my faith.

How is it with Hector and Andromache? no sea-coal blaze, but one that is constant, enduring, pervading: a pair of hearts full of esteem, and best love—good, honest, and sound.

Look now at Adam and Eve, in God’s presence, with Milton for showman. Shall we quote by this sparkling blaze, a gem from the _Paradise Lost_? We will hum it to ourselves—what Raphael sings to Adam—a classic song.

——Him, serve and fear! Of other creatures, as Him pleases best Wherever placed, let Him dispose; joy thou In what he gives to thee, this Paradise And thy fair Eve!

And again:

——Love refines The thoughts, and heart enlarges; hath his seat In reason, and is judicious: is the scale By which to Heavenly love thou may’st ascend!

None of the playing sparkle in this love, which belongs to the flame of my sea-coal fire that is now dancing, lively as a cricket. But on looking about my garret chamber, I can see nothing that resembles the archangel Raphael, or “thy fair Eve.”

There is a degree of moisture about the sea-coal flame, which with the most earnest of my musing, I find it impossible to attach to that idea of a waving sparkling heart which my fire suggests. A damp heart must be a foul thing to be sure. But whoever heard of one?

Wordsworth somewhere in the _Excursion_ says:

The good die first, And they whose hearts are _dry_ as summer dust Burn to the socket!

What, in the name of Rydal Mount, is a dry heart? A dusty one, I can conceive of: a bachelor’s heart must be somewhat dusty, as he nears the sixtieth summer of his pilgrimage—and hung over with cobwebs, in which sit such watchful gray old spiders as avarice, and selfishness, forever on the lookout for such bottle-green flies as lust.

“I will never”—said I—gripping at the elbows of my chair—“live a bachelor till sixty—never, so surely as there is hope in man, or charity in woman, or faith in both!”

And with that thought my heart leaped about in playful coruscations, even like the flame of the sea-coal—rising, and wrapping round old and tender memories and images that were present to me—trying to cling, and yet no sooner fastened than off—dancing again, riotous in its exultation—a succession of heart-sparkles, blazing, and going out!

—And is there not—mused I—a portion of this world forever blazing in just such lively sparkles, waving here and there as the air-currents fan them?

Take, for instance, your heart of sentiment, and quick sensibility, a weak, warm-working heart, flying off in tangents of unhappy influence, unguided by prudence, and perhaps virtue. There is a paper by Mackenzie, in the _Mirror_ for April, 1780, which sets this untoward sensibility in a strong light.

And the more it is indulged, the more strong and binding such a habit of sensibility becomes. Poor Mackenzie himself must have suffered thus; you can not read his books without feeling it; your eye, in spite of you, runs over with his sensitive griefs, while you are half-ashamed of his success at picture-making. It is a terrible inheritance; and one that a strong man or woman will study to subdue: it is a vain sea-coal sparkling, which will count no good. The world is made of much hard, flinty substance, against which your better and holier thoughts will be striking fire—see to it that the sparks do not burn you!

But what a happy, careless life belongs to this bachelorhood in which you may strike out boldly right and left! Your heart is not bound to another which may be full of only sickly vapors of feeling; nor is it frozen to a cold, man’s heart under a silk bodice—knowing nothing of tenderness but the name, to prate of; and nothing of soul-confidence but clumsy confession. And if in your careless outgoings of feeling you get here only a little lip vapidity in return, be sure that you will find, elsewhere, a true heart utterance. This last you will cherish in your inner soul—a nucleus for a new group of affections; and the other will pass with a whiff of your cigar.

Or if your feelings are touched, struck, hurt, who is the wiser, or the worse, but you only? And have you not the whole skein of your heart-life in your own fingers to wind, or unwind, in what shape you please? Shake it, or twine it, or tangle it, by the light of your fire, as you fancy best. He is a weak man who can not twist and weave the threads of his feeling—however fine, however tangled, however strained, or however strong—into the great cable of purpose, by which he lies moored to his life of action.

Reading is a great and happy disentangler of all those knotted snarls—those extravagant vagaries, which belong to a heart sparkling with sensibility; but the reading must be cautiously directed. There is old, placid Burton, when your soul is weak, and its digestion of life’s humors is bad; there is Cowper, when your spirit runs into kindly, half-sad, religious musing; there is Crabbe, when you would shake off vagary, by a little handling of sharp actualities. There is Voltaire, a homeopathic doctor, whom you can read when you want to make a play of life, and crack jokes at nature, and be witty with destiny; there is Rousseau, when you want to lose yourself in a mental dreamland, and be beguiled by the harmony of soul-music and soul-culture.

And when you would shake off this, and be sturdiest among the battlers for hard, world-success, and be forewarned of rocks against which you must surely smite—read Bolingbroke—run over the letters of Lyttleton; read, and think of what you read, in the cracking lines of Rochefoucauld. How he sums us up in his stinging words!—how he puts the scalpel between the nerves—yet he never hurts; for he is dissecting dead matter.

If you are in a genial, careless mood, who is better than such extemporizers of feeling and nature—good-hearted fellows—as Sterne and Fielding?

And then, again, there are Milton and Isaiah, to lift up one’s soul until it touches cloud-land, and you wander with their guidance, on swift feet, to the very gates of heaven.

But this sparkling sensibility to one struggling under infirmity, or with grief or poverty, is very dreadful. The soul is too nicely and keenly hinged to be wrenched without mischief. How it shrinks, like a hurt child, from all that is vulgar, harsh and crude! Alas, for such a man!—he will be buffeted, from beginning to end; his life will be a sea of troubles. The poor victim of his own quick spirit he wanders with a great shield of doubt hung before him, so that none, not even friends, can see the goodness of such kindly qualities as belong to him. Poverty, if it comes upon him, he wrestles with in secret, with strong, frenzied struggles. He wraps his scant clothes about him to keep him from the cold; and eyes the world, as if every creature in it was breathing chill blasts at him, from every opened mouth. He threads the crowded ways of the city, proud in his griefs, vain in his weakness, not stopping to do good. Bulwer, in the _New Timon_, has painted in a pair of stinging Pope-like lines, this feeling in a woman:

Her vengeful pride, a kind of madness grown, She hugged her wrongs, her sorrow was her throne!

Cold picture! yet the heart was sparkling under it, like my sea-coal fire; lifting and blazing, and lighting and falling—but with no object; and only such little heat as begins and ends within.

Those fine sensibilities, ever active, are chasing and observing all; they catch a hue from what the dull and callous pass by unnoticed—because unknown. They blunder at the great variety of the world’s opinions; they see tokens of belief where others see none. That delicate organization is a curse to a man: and yet, poor fool, he does not see where his cure lies; he wonders at his griefs, and has never reckoned with himself their source. He studies others, without studying himself. He eats the leaves that sicken, and never plucks up the root that will cure.

With a woman it is worse; with her, this delicate susceptibility is like a frail flower, that quivers at every rough blast of heaven; her own delicacy wounds her; her highest charm is perverted to a curse.

She listens with fear; she reads with trembling; she looks with dread. Her sympathies give a tone, like the harp of Æolus, to the slightest breath. Her sensibility lights up, and quivers and falls like the flame of a sea-coal fire.

If she loves (and may not a bachelor reason on this daintiest of topics), her love is a gushing, wavy flame, lit up with hope that has only a little kindling matter to light it; and this soon burns out. Yet intense sensibility will persuade her that the flame still scorches. She will mistake the annoyance of affection unrequited for the sting of a passion that she fancies still burns. She does not look deep enough to see that the passion is gone, and the shocked sensitiveness emits only faint, yellowish sparkles in its place; her high-wrought organization makes those sparks seem a veritable flame.

With her, judgment, prudence and discretion are cold measured terms, which have no meaning, except as they attach to the actions of others. Of her own acts she never predicates them; feeling is much too high to allow her to submit to any such obtrusive guides of conduct. She needs disappointment to teach her truth; to teach that all is not gold that glitters—to teach that all warmth does not blaze. But let her beware how she sinks under any fancied disappointments: she who sinks under real disappointment, lacks philosophy; but she who sinks under a fancied one, lacks purpose. Let her flee as the plague such brooding thoughts as she will love to cherish; let her spurn dark fancies as visitants of hell; let the soul rise with the blaze of new-kindled, active and world-wide emotions, and so brighten into steady and constant flame. Let her abjure such poets as Cowper, or Byron, or even Wordsworth; and if she must poetize, let her lay her mind to such manly verse as Pope’s, or to such sound and ringing organry as _Comus_.

My fire was getting dull, and I thrust in the poker: it started up on the instant into a hundred little angry tongues of flame.

—Just so—thought I—the oversensitive heart once cruelly disturbed, will fling out a score of flaming passions, darting here and darting there—half-smoke, half-flame—love and hate—canker and joy—wild in its madness, not knowing whither its sparks are flying. Once break roughly upon the affections, or even the fancied affections of such a soul, and you breed a tornado of maddened action—a whirlwind of fire that hisses and sends out jets of wild, impulsive combustion that make the bystanders—even those most friendly—stand aloof until the storm is past.

But this is not all the dashing flame of my sea-coal suggests.

—How like a flirt! mused I again, recurring to my first thought—so lively, yet uncertain; so bright yet so flickering! Your true flirt plays with sparkles; her heart, much as there is of it, spends itself in sparkles; she measures it to sparkle, and habit grows into nature, so that anon, it can only sparkle. How carefully she cramps it, if the flames show too great a heat; how dexterously she flings its blaze here and there; how coyly she subdues it; how winningly she lights it!

All this is the entire reverse of the unpremeditated dartings of the soul at which I have been looking; sensibility scorns heart-curbings and heart-teachings; sensibility inquires not—how much! but only—where?

Your true flirt has a coarse-grained soul; well modulated and well tutored, but there is no fineness in it. All its native fineness is made coarse by coarse efforts of the will. True feeling is a rustic vulgarity, the flirt does not tolerate; she counts its healthiest and most honest manifestation, all sentiment. Yet she will play you off a pretty string of sentiment, which she has gathered from the poets; she adjusts it prettily as a Gobelin weaver adjusts the colors in his _tapis_. She shades it off delightfully; there are no bold contrasts, but a most artistic mellowing of _nuances_.

She smiles like a wizard, and jingles it with a laugh, such as tolled the poor home-bound Ulysses to the Circean bower. She has a cast of the head, apt and artful as the most dexterous cast of the best trout-killing rod. Her words sparkle and flow hurriedly, and with the prettiest doubleness of meaning. Naturalness she copies and she scorns. She accuses herself of a single expression or regard, which nature prompts. She prides herself on her schooling. She measures her wit by the triumphs of her art; she chuckles over her own falsity to herself. And if by chance her soul—such germ as is left of it—betrays her into untoward confidence, she condemns herself, as if she had committed crime.