Chapter 3

Of Sarah's youth historians tell us little. She was, apart from her beauty, a very knowing child. Often when missing from the banqueting-hall she would be discovered in the library reading and studying the political works of the period.[10] Often Lord Ffraddle was known to remark in his usual witty way, "In sooth, the child will soon have as much knowledge as her father," a sally which was invariably received with shrieks of delight by the infant Sarah, whose brilliant sense of humour was plainly apparent, even at that early age.

Her adolescence was remarkable for little save the rapid development of her supple loveliness, some idea of which can be gauged from the reproduction of Punter's famous portrait on page 74. Though painted at a somewhat later date, this masterpiece still presents us with most of the leading characteristics of its ravishing model. Note the eyes--the dreamy, cognisant expression; glance at the pretty mouth and the dainty ears. Her demeanour is obviously that of a meek and modest woman, but Punter, with his true genius, has caught that glint of inward fire, that fleeting look of shy mischief that earned for her the world-famous nickname of "Winsome Sal."

It was when she was eighteen[11] that Destiny, with inhuman cunning, caught up in his net the fragile ball of her life.

The handsome, devil-may-care Julius Fenchurch-Streete applied to Lord Ffraddle for a secretaryship, which was ultimately granted to him. Imagine the situation--this rake, this dark-eyed ne'er-do-well, notorious all down Cheapside for his relentless dalliance with the fair, placed in intimate proximity with one of England's most glorious specimens of ripening womanhood. It was, Sheepmeadow writes, like the meeting of flint and tinder--these two so widely different in the essentials and yet so akin in their physical beauty. As was inevitable, from the first they loved--he with the flaming passion of a hell-rake, she with the sweet, appealing purity of one whose whole life had been peculiarly virginal. There followed swiftly upon their ardent confessions the determination to elope together. The night they bade adieu to Ffraddle and all it held is well known to young and old of every generation. They crept from their rooms at midnight and met at the top of the grand staircase, down which they proceeded to crawl on all fours. A few moments later they were on a sturdy mare, she riding pillion, he riding anyhow. Not a sound had been heard, not a dog had barked, not a bird had called. Once, Sheepmeadow informs us, Lady Ffraddle turned over in her sleep.[12] Poor, unsuspecting mother! On and on through the snow rode the feckless couple. Once Sarah rested her hand lightly on her lover's arm. "Whither are we bound?" she inquired. "Only the mare knows that," Julius replied, and in shaken silence they rode on.

History is not very enlightening as to how long Julius Fenchurch-Streete lived with Sarah Twig--poor Sarah, the bubble of her romance soon was to be pricked. For three weeks they lived gloriously, radiantly, at the old sign of "The Cod and Haddock" in Egham. "My heart is a pool of ecstasy," she wrote in her diary. Pitiful pool, so soon to be drained of its joy!

Then the storm-clouds gathered, the sun withdrew its gold. Julius rode away--Sarah was alone, alone in Egham, her love unblessed by any sort of church, no name for the child to come--a sorry, sorry plight. The buxom proprietress of "The Cod and Haddock," little dreaming her real identity, set her to work. Work! for those fair hands, those inexpressibly filbert nails!

Was it the sudden relenting of malleable fate that caused the Merry Monarch to come riding blithely through sleepy Egham, followed by his equerry, Lord Francis Tunnell-Penge, and several of his suite? Halting outside the inn, Bloodworthy relates that his Majesty was immediately struck by a winsome face at an upper window. "Lud!" he cried laconically, and dismounted, taking several dogs from his hat as he did so, and one from his pocket; for he was devoted to animals, Bloodworthy goes on to say, and often spent days stroking their soft ears abstractedly. Then, seized by a sudden inspiration, he inquired of the landlady as to whose was the face he had seen. In a trice the story was told--the King waved his hand imperiously and took a pinch of snuff. "Send her to me," he said.

When Sarah entered, all hot from her manual labours, Charles started to his feet. Here was no scullion, no plaything of an idle hour. Here was breeding, dignity and beauty. Ah! Beauty! Probably these cold shores will never again shelter beauty like Sarah Twig's. On seeing the King she curtsied low. He bowed with the stately elegance for which he was famed.

"Your name?" he asked.

The glorious vision veiled her eyes.

"I have no name, sire--now." With these words, spoken from a heart surcharged with bitterest sorrow, the poor woman swooned away.

"Lud!" remarked the King irritably, "the girl must have a name. You must marry her, Francis--she shall be Lady Tunnell-Penge." Then the impulsive monarch stooped, and, opening a locket on the unconscious woman's breast, read the name Sarah in blue diamonds on an opaque background. "But," he added softly under his breath, "I shall know her only as 'Winsome Sal'!"

Thus Sarah Twig, so nearly an outcast through her own girlish folly, became possessor of a name honoured and even adored throughout England.

The first few years of her life at Court were more or less uneventful--she saw little of her husband and lots of the King. He and she used to wander along the river side, simply loaded with different dogs. Whenever there were theatricals given, Sheepmeadow tells us, Sarah invariably appeared as Diana or Minerva, preferring these parts on account of their suitability to her youth and figure. All these events took place long after Punter's portrait, though several others were done latterly. Her wit and gaiety were of course world-famed, and her political treatises are preserved to this day.[13]

On one dramatic occasion her brilliant political knowledge and presence of mind were the means of saving England from turmoil or worse. Hearing that the people were hungry and restless, Sarah rushed to the King. "What's to do?" she cried breathlessly.

"God knows," replied Charles, adding "Lud!" as an afterthought. Then he went on fondling the long silky ears of one of his lap-dogs with which the room was strewn.

Heartbroken, Sarah left the room and rushed out of Whitehall as fast as her legs could carry her, heeding not the jeers of the crowd. She made for Tower Hill, from the summit of which she delivered her world-famous political speech, ending with the stirring words, "Sift your corn through sieves!"

How that speech sends a throb to one's heart--the defiance of it, the subtlety of it, and yet the intense womanliness of it! The people cheered her back to the palace. She went straight to the King's room--he was feeding his dogs.

"I've saved England!" cried Sarah exultantly.

"Lud!" replied the King, and handed her some cat's-meat. No wonder women loved him!

Incidents like these went to make up the multi-coloured mosaic of Sarah, Lady Tunnell-Penge's life. Her children were many--Arthur, later on Lord Crumpingfax; Muriel, later the Duchess of Dripp; and various others.

She died at the age of seventy-nine,[14] thus outliving her Royal paramour. A beautiful life, a noble life, a gentle life--yet was there something missing? Sometimes I gaze at her portrait and wonder.

JABEZ PUFFWATER

Jabez Puffwater might have been so much physically, mentally and publicly and has been so little any way that a tattered moral must hang sadly upon the gaunt tree of his career.

He might have been many things--he might have been a successful theatrical manager, or only an artistic one--he might have been a naval commander, or a psychoanalyst, or a Christian Science healer--he might have imparted to the United States Senate that infinitesimal something which would probably have proved to be the greatest comfort, especially in the cold weather.

If Mr. Belasco had not preferred Mr. David Warfield, Jabez Puffwater might have made an enormous success in "The Return of Peter Grimm"--had he but possessed an aptitude for histrionic achievement. He might have sung at the Metropolitan year after year without ceasing if Miss Geraldine Farrar had not taken an instantaneous dislike to him at sight--and had he but possessed a flamboyant temperament and an elementary knowledge of Puccini. In fact there is almost nothing he couldn't have been if only Fate had but weaned him at the breast of opportunity instead of ordaining his life drama to be played out in lonely dignity in the drab but intensely political village of Oggsville, Ken.

Oggsville, Ken. has been for many years a hotbed of occasionally seditious, but always subtle intrigue, the constructive and progressive policy of the upper part of the town, near the railway bridge, being in direct opposition to the destructive statesmanship and constitutional conventionality of the lower residential quarter embracing the timber-yard, Elijah Square, and Aunt Martha's Soda Fountain. Naturally Jabez Puffwater, whose modest store stood figuratively and literally at the crossing of the ways, was always in a somewhat uncertain state of mind as to which side he should ultimately pin his colours. Perhaps on a Tuesday St. John Eddle, a staunch upholder of the C. and P.P., would enter Jabez's store and hit him in the face because he'd sent a tin of sardines to the Furdlehoe Mansion on the other side of the River. And maybe on a Friday Moses Whortleberry, a leading light of the D. S. and C. C. would belabour him with one of his own hams for daring to acquaint old Hiram Holdit, the station master, with the result of the cocoa coupon competition.

One thing stood out firmly amid the turmoil of Jabez's environment--and that was his idealistic and almost fanatical admiration of the exploits of Buffalo Bill as depicted on the screen and retailed in small paper-bound books. Indeed so struck was he by the verve and virility of this astounding man that he took to attiring his lower limbs--which seldom showed above the counter--in the breeches, leggings, belt and pistol so well known to all lovers of the limitless prairie. The infinite pathos of Jabez Puffwater's blind devotion to one whom he had never seen will not fail to strike home to the stoniest heart. The tragedy of this man whose dauntless spirit so far outgrew his physical appearance--being compelled to sell cheeses, hams, molasses, etc, in order to live, is far more pitiful to me than the stern virginity of Queen Elizabeth, or even the nose of Cyrano de Bergerac.

It was when Jabez Puffwater had just reached his forty-third birthday that he first became seriously implicated in that political bombshell, the Goodge-Keewee Treaty made out with masterful cunning by Albert Goodge and Nicholas Keewee, with the sole motive of undermining the transcontinental railroad system to a devastating degree. The various reasons both for and against this daring policy are so excellently and clearly put forward in Vernon Treeby's "When Southern Blood is Dripping" that I will not attempt to go into it here. Enough that it caused an unparalleled sensation in Oggsville, Ken. and was indirectly the means of introducing into the heart of Jabez Puffwater the secret fear which was destined to grow ever larger and larger until eventually its black wings beat his battered soul into eternity. "The fear of a Black Rising!" Jabez was undoubtedly a man of more than average courage but after reading the Goodge-Keewee Treaty he went back to his store a harassed man. What did it all mean? Nobody knew. Ah, God! If only Jabez Puffwater had possessed the inspiring rhetoric of a Bernard Proon, or the imposing presence of a Freddie Hooter, what a lot he could have done. As it was he just went home--aching--yet withal as yet subconsciously--for the ability to be of use in some way, the opportunity of distinguishing himself and saving his beloved home town from the awful effects of the fear that was fated from now onward to be with him always--the dreaded Black Rising.

For many years after that fateful conference Jabez was to be seen every evening seated outside his store with a horse pistol in his hand ever pointed in the direction of the wooded hills to the Southward. Little boys on their way home from school would throw mud at him, but he never heeded them; little girls would make rude noises quite near him with their rubber overshoes, but he ignored them utterly. I often wonder on looking back what Douglas Bogtoe would have been had he but possessed one half of Puffwater's concentrated repose. That celebrated appeal for the Louisiana Canal installation would have been worded very differently and as for his world-famed piscatorial argument with Olaf Campbell in the Brooke Club--that would have probably been approached from an entirely opposite angle.

To analyse and compare Bogtoe's electrical psychology with the phlegmatic determination and boyish zeal of Puffwater would take, alas, too long; so I will not seek to say more than that had the two widely differentiated spirits but been combined within the same material tissues--that a quainter nor a more peculiar juxtaposition of entities it would have been hard to find, search where you may.

I try occasionally to picture to myself the lonely horror-stricken nights Jabez Puffwater must have endured with that appalling fear always crouching within him, egging him on towards the culminating tragedy of his sad career.

There had been talk of a lynching in New Orleans and of a shooting in Old Virginia and there were even whispers of a slapping in Alabama.

Jabez was priming his pistol one morning while he hastily scanned the elevating disclosures--social and otherwise--of the New York American, when a breathless woman rode up to the store on a tricycle. She delivered a note to Jabez and waited while he read it.

"Come at once--am exceedingly ill--Aunt Topsy."

Jabez thought for a moment--then crushing down his rising apprehensions he mounted his mare Buffalo Babs and made for the hills.

Ten miles there and ten miles back, and the fear always with him--the fear of the Black Rising.

Many psychoanalysts have endeavoured to discover the exact motive for Jabez Puffwater's sudden and unexpected slaying of his old Aunt Topsy--whose coal-black arms had fondled him as a baby. Many theories have been put forward, but none of them--with the exception, perhaps, of Herman Pipper--possess the ring of truth. Pipper's deduction of the circumstantial evidence is that it was all the outcome of a naughty practical joke played by little Michael Drisher who appeared suddenly during Jabez's interview with his Aunt and burst the awful news upon them that there had been a fearful Black Rising in Oggsville, Ken. and that debauch--murder--and worse were going on all over the globe.

"With a great cry," Pipper tells us, "Jabez smote his brow. 'At last!' he moaned in deep anguish. 'At last it has come!' Then he turned, and seizing a large milk bottle he battered the head of Aunt Topsy, crying the while in the voice of a fanatic, 'For my home town! For my home town! This is a just reprisal!!!' Then with a last look at the havoc he had wrought he went out of the house and into the wilderness--"

Pipper's imaginative description ends too abruptly to be really satisfactory; but one fact about the life of Jabez Puffwater will remain emblazoned on America's history for time immemorial--that if he had only possessed the rhetoric of a Proon--the presence of a Hooter--the education of a Floop--the racial understanding of a Bogtoe and the mentality of a Snurge--he would not only have proved himself invaluable to the home constituency of Oggsville, Ken. but have been an entirely different man altogether.

FURSTIN LIEBERWURST ZU SCHWEINEN-KALBER

How strange it seems that she of whom we write is dust and less than dust below the fertile soil of her so beloved Prussia--Furstin Lieberwurst zu Schweinen-Kalber! Can you not rise from the grave once more to charm us with the magic of your voice? Are those deep, mellowed tones, so sonorous and appealing, never to be heard again? Ah, me! Why, indeed, should such divinity be so short lived? Who could play Juliet as she could? Nobody! Her enemies laughed and said that her chronic adenoids utterly destroyed all the beauty of the part. Jealousy! Vile jealousy! Genius always has that to contend with. Every one has failings. Gretchen Lieberwurst zu Schweinen-Kalber made of Juliet a woman--a pulsating, human woman, with failings like the rest of us, the chief of which happened to be adenoids.[15]

To trace this soul-stirring actress to her obscure birth has indeed been a labour--but withal, a labour of love! For who could help experiencing exquisite joy at unearthing trinkets and miniatures and broken memories of such a radiant being?

Nuremburg, red-roofed and gleaming in the sunlight, was the place wherein she first saw the light of day. Her father, Peter Schmidt, was by trade a sausage-moulder, for in those far-off days there was not the vast machinery of civilisation to wield the good meat into the requisite shape. Gretchen, when a girl, often used to watch her father as he plied his trade and recite to him verses she had learnt at her dame school--fragments from the Teutonic masterpieces of the time--"Kruschen Kruschen," and--

"Baby white and baby red, Like a moon convulsive Rolling up and down the bed, Utterly repulsive!"--

a beautiful little lullaby of Herman Veigel's. Gretchen used to recite it with the tears pouring down her cheeks, so poignantly affected was she by the sensitive beauty of it. Her father also used to weep hopelessly--also her mother, if she happened to be near; and Heinrich, the cat, invariably retreated under the sofa, unutterably moved.

Life dragged on with some monotony for Gretchen. She often used to help her mother in the kitchen--and occasionally in the sitting-room. One day she became a woman! Every one noticed it. Neighbours used to meet her mother in the _strasse_ and say, "Frau Schmidt, your Gretchen is a woman." Frau Schmidt would nod proudly and reply, "Yes, we have seen that; my Peter and I--we are very happy." Thus Gretchen left her girlhood behind her. It was her habit, so Grundelheim tells us, to walk out in the forest with one Hans Breitel, an actor at the municipal theatre. He used to teach her to talk to the birds, and when she besought him ardently to tell her stories of the theatre, he would relate to her the parts he had nearly played. Gretchen's heart thrilled--oh to be an actress, an actress! On her twenty-fourth birthday von Bottiburgen[16] tells us, Gretchen left home, and went to Berlin. She wanted to get an interview with Goethe. One day, after she had been in Berlin a little while, she found him. Brampenrich describes the scene for us, so beautifully and with such truly exquisite rotundity of style:--

"The Great Goethe ate at his lunch. What was that noise? He swiftly put down his knife: the door bursts open; Gretchen Schmidt enters, her lovely hair awry, her cheeks flushed. 'I will act!' she cries in bell-like tones. '_Ach, ach!_' cries Goethe. Then Gretchen, with a superb gesture, hangs her hat on the door handle, and recites to the amazed man his beloved 'Faust,' word for word, syllable for syllable!"

Thus Brampenrich shows us, with his supreme word imagery, what really happened.

Gretchen never saw Goethe again; he left Berlin almost immediately for the Black Forest. Gretchen, alone in the great capital, alone and a woman, what could she do? Grundelheim, in his celebrated "Toilers who have Toiled," relates how desperately hard she worked with her mangle in the Konigstrasse. Then one day, when things seemed at their blackest, Romance, with its multi-coloured finger, poked a hole in the bubble of her existence. The King of Prussia drove along the Konigstrasse, bowing to right and left. Gretchen stepped lightly over her mangle and dropped a curtsey. The King was immediately captivated, and a few hours later the happy girl found herself in the Royal Palace. After that events moved rapidly. At the lax German Court Gretchen soon forgot her austere upbringing, and entered into the round games and charades with untold abandon! Alas! the fickle heart of the King was soon turned from her. Realising this Gretchen seized upon a noble much enamoured of her, Furst Lieberwurst zu Schweinen-Kalber, and married him one spring morning in the Chapel Royal. For three months they lived together in the Austrian Tyrol; then Gretchen, heeding at last the persistent call of her art, left him, and fled back to Berlin, where she obtained an engagement to play Juliet. It was from that moment that her real passion for her part developed. It grew to be an obsession--she was feted, lauded, mentioned in several public speeches. For sixty-five years she played it all over Germany, never tiring, never weakening. People gibbered over her; then came her tragic death at the age of ninety-two in the balcony scene. She stumbled forward, Grundelheim says, then backward, then forward, then backward again, and then forward for the last time. The balcony gave way, and she fell at Romeo's feet (it was the great Fritz Schnotter, with whom she had been playing for two years: in private life he was, of course, her lover--she always insisted on that).

History tells us that he caught her in his arms--Bottiburgen contests that he caught her in the middle of his chest; anyhow, the house is said to have risen and cheered, thinking it was a new scene suddenly interpolated. Then the curtain slowly fell, and they realised the truth--they would never see their idolised Gretchen again.

In passing, it would perhaps be as well to mention some of the famous Romeos who played opposite this bewitcher of all sexes. There was Reginald Bug, a young Englishman, who loved her passionately for a few years; then the renowned Pierre Dentifrice from the Comedie Francaise; then Angelo Carlini, and Basto Caballero (founder of the Shakespearean Theatre in Barcelona); then Dimitri Chuggski, a very temperamental, highly strung Russian (it is in Volume VIII. of Edgar Sheepmeadow's "Beds and their Inmates" that he relates the story of Chuggski's desertion of Gretchen; he contends that he left her because she always slept with her mouth open).

Her last and most famous lover on and off the stage was the aforementioned Fritz Schnotter; he is treated lavishly in three volumes of Bottiburgen.

Her portrait on page 100 is a reproduction of Grobmeyer's etching. The original could formerly be viewed, I believe, by applying to the Kaiser for permission and paying 18,000 marks.

JAKE D'ANNUNZIO SPOUT

Why is it that to some are vouchsafed such supreme gifts while other have perforce to drag out their lives in the hideous monotony of offices and banks and the like?