DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 ARPER 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 

DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/dreamsmemoriesOOharprich 
 
DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE McLEAN HARPER 
 
 FBOFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN PRINCETON UNIVIRSITY 
 
 AUTHOR OF "JOHN MORIiET AND OTHER B8aA.T8," 
 
 AND "WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, HIS LIFE, 
 
 WORKS, AND INFLUENCE" 
 
 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 PRINCETON 
 
 LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFOBD 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1922 
 
Copyright 1922 
 Princeton University Press 
 
 Published 1922 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 
 
This volume of adventures 
 
 grave and gay 
 
 I dedicate to my daughter Isabel 
 
 in memory of our wanderings 
 
 in her blithe childhood. 
 
 503443 
 
Heart of Ayrshire and New Wine in an Old 
 Bottle are reprinted from Scribner's Magazine, 
 and With Eomeo and Little Nannie from the 
 Nassau Literary Magazine. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Heart of Ayrshire 1 
 
 New Wine in an Old Bottle 27 
 
 Hardart Mort 49 
 
 With Romeo and Little Nannie 67 
 
 Lost Vineta 94 
 
 Hawkshead and Dove Cottage 115 
 
 Siena : A Summer in the Middle Ages 145 
 
 vu 
 

 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 HEART OF AYRSHIRE 
 
 I remember, when I was a child, snatching a 
 fearful joy from surreptitious glimpses of a 
 wicked picture in a copy of Burns belonging to 
 my grandfather, who was a minister. I would 
 loiter in his library after reciting my Latin to 
 this grave and venerable man, and affect an in- 
 terest in other books, Rutherford's ^* Letters,'* 
 perhaps, or Turrettini's **Body of Divinity,*' 
 till I thought I might venture a glance into the 
 big * * Burns. ' ' The print, to which I then greed- 
 ily turned, raised in my breast certain delicious 
 points of casuistry. For it illustrated, with no 
 sparing of details as to horns and cloven hoofs 
 or any other requisite, the breathless jig which 
 Burns composed extempore at a meeting of 
 gangers, * * The Deil 's awa wi ' the Exciseman ' * — 
 an improper picture for me to look at, I well 
 knew, and how much worse, then, for a minister 
 to possess ! And, moreover, a Scotch minister, 
 Scotchmen being regarded in our village as 
 more pious than other people. On the other 
 hand, being a Scotchman, was it not fitting that 
 he should honour the great poet? And was it not 
 well, indeed, that a minister should have a hu- 
 
 1 
 
¥ '"'' '^'^ 'DlifilAlVtS AND MEMOEIES 
 
 man side and take his Burns straight, swallow- 
 ing the muckle devil and **The Cotter's Satur- 
 day Night'* boldly together? My opinion of 
 the gentle old man was rather elevated than de- 
 pressed by mature consideration of this subject 
 and its outlying branches. The good things of 
 life, I instinctively felt, went along with the real 
 things. The grin and fling of animal spirits, the 
 mysterious movings of Nature, the earthly 
 mould, the fleshly habitation, had claims upon 
 us, and it was to his credit that my grandfather, 
 though a minister, and Scotch, was man enough 
 to face facts. 
 
 There is a twinkle of humour, as I have since 
 learned, in the eye of every Scot, which pro- 
 claims him capable of seeing subjects in more 
 than one light. The Scotch feel the sting of the 
 senses, I am convinced, as keenly as men of any 
 other race, and are as soon set a-quiver with the 
 caresses of the Earth-Spirit. If they have got 
 a reputation for self-mastery they have fairly 
 earned it. Contrary to what is perhaps the pre- 
 valent opinion, I have found them vivacious, 
 gay, and wildly disposed, as quick-witted and 
 mobile as the French, and almost as sentimental 
 as the Germans. Their ancestors played 
 strange tricks upon themselves at the Reforma- 
 tion, and the game was kept up with a grim face 
 during the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- 
 
HEART OF AYRSHIRE 3 
 
 ries, until, by the time Burns appeared, Scot- 
 land, and almost every Scottish heart, were 
 curiously divided into two imperfectly related 
 societies. On the one hand was an ascetic dis- 
 dain of luxury, pomp, art, and even the com- 
 forts and amenities of existence; on the other 
 hand an eager joy in life. There were not a 
 few generous and ample souls in whom a love 
 of spiritual perfection mingled harmoniously 
 with a more instinctive acceptance of things 
 as they are; but the tendency was to go to ex- 
 tremes. Many of the strongest natures in Scot- 
 tish history were either fanatics or sensualists, 
 either austerely self -repressed or fiercely self- 
 willed. 
 
 The Renaissance in Scotland was rather the 
 liberation of the middle and lower classes from 
 the oppression of monks and lords than the 
 birth of humanism. It brought about the estab- 
 lishment of a popular religion and a popular 
 system of education, and made Scotland one of 
 the most democratic countries in the world, but 
 did little at first to advance the arts or refine 
 the manners of the nation. The Palace of 
 James V in Stirling Castle is as good an illus- 
 tration of this failure as one need look for. 
 Its decorations are grotesque and barbarous, a 
 travesty of art, and an index to the levity, the 
 grossness, of the Scottish court. Among the 
 
4 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 people, however, in course of time, the parish 
 schools and the universities fostered a regard 
 for learning and provided an outlook over the 
 world of history, philosophy, and literature. By 
 the middle of the eighteenth century, a large 
 part of the Lowland population, even to the 
 class of small tenant farmers and village arti- 
 sans, were free and enlightened, and were find- 
 ing scope, in the national poetry, history, and 
 theology, for the exercise of their native love of 
 romance and their skill in logical discussion. 
 This emancipation is justly accredited to the 
 Reformation, and particularly to John Knox. 
 
 No more than anjrwhere else, however, has 
 the town workingman been puritanized or 
 spiritualized in Scotland. To all appearances, 
 the man with a greasy neck-cloth wound about 
 his throat, the man with a red nose generally, 
 whom one sees at dock or factory work or dis- 
 mally looking for diversion in Scotch cities, is 
 alien to the kirk. The ideal world, whether of 
 the present or of the future, the world of ro- 
 mance and excitement, adventure, gayety, and 
 colour, for which he has a natural and lively de- 
 sire, he beholds chiefly through the bottom of a 
 whiskey glass, and from Monday to Saturday 
 his soul abhors the deception, and he is sombre 
 and looks unhappy. I am referring, with that 
 small degree of right which casual observation 
 
HEART OF AYRSHIRE 5 
 
 gives a traveller, to the foul dregs of the large 
 towns, obviously the victims of drink and ennui, 
 and apparently more sodden and more numer- 
 ous proportionally than the corresponding class 
 in Continental, English, and American cities. It 
 would seem that a Puritan civilization affords 
 too little harmless dissipation and sets its more 
 spiritual benefits beyond the reach of these 
 poor people. 
 
 There is one small district in Ayrshire where 
 the brave but narrow religious life of Puritan 
 Scotland, the belated humanism of the eight- 
 eenth century, and the comment of genius upon 
 them both are brought to mind in a half -day's 
 walk. In so short a time did I behold the grave 
 of the Prophet Peden, the ancestral home of 
 James Boswell, and the fields where Robert 
 Burns strove to accommodate in his spacious 
 sympathy the bitter and the sweet of Scottish 
 life. 
 
 I was told by the keeper of the Burns monu- 
 ment at the Brig o' Doon that more than ten 
 thousand pilgrims had visited that shrine, and 
 doubtless also the birthplace hard by, in one 
 week last summer. At that rate a large part 
 of the world needs no description of the cottage 
 where the poet was born. Neither the Shake- 
 speare house at Stratford, nor the Goethe house 
 at Frankfort, plays so affectingly upon one's 
 
6 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 emotions. This is a far humbler birthplace — a 
 closet in a kitchen — and the great son of that 
 little house died a cottager as he began. There 
 was no New Place and no Weimar mansion in 
 store for him. The sympathetic tear springs as 
 naturally there, I think, as in any other of 
 earth's memorable spots, and it swells on a 
 jflood of pride — pride that a man, and a very 
 poor man, could be so great. I thought scorn 
 of the ostentatiously rich family whom I met 
 descending from a motor-car at the door. Very 
 likely they shed tears in the cottage themselves, 
 and felt scorn for nobody. Burns is the poor 
 man's poet, and the best beloved by humble and 
 unlettered people. His fame is, in so far, more 
 general than Shakespeare 's. It goes deeper. 
 
 It is true that the poet was born near Ayr, 
 and travellers who have seen the Cottage, and 
 the Twa Brigs, and AUoway Kirk, and the Brig 
 o ' Doon have been vividly reminded of his hum- 
 ble origin and of several of his best poems. A 
 group of villages further inland was, however, 
 the scene of his fullest activity, his loves and 
 friendships, his early efforts to be a good 
 farmer, and the experiences and observations 
 from which most of his satires and epistles 
 and first songs came. We had seen Ayr and its 
 surroundings, and were glad to accept the offer 
 of a gentleman whose grandfather Burns knew 
 
HEART OF AYRSHIRE 7 
 
 and loved, to go with us to these places in the 
 heart of Ayrshire. **We will catch Hendry's 
 waggonette and go first to Old Cumnock and see 
 the grave of the Prophet Peden, and then come 
 back to Ochiltree for a quiet Sunday, and after 
 that see Auchinleck and Catrine and Mauchline 
 and Mossgiel and Tarbolton.'' 
 
 So on a bright Saturday morning in July we 
 set forth from Ayr, the American professor,* 
 our genial Ayrshire friend, and I, and in less 
 than an hour had been left at a small station 
 and were walking over the bold rolling country 
 towards a cross-roads where Mr. Hendry's con- 
 veyance was to pass at a certain hour. One 
 peculiarity of Ayrshire scenery is that a good 
 deal of it is visible from any point of consider- 
 able elevation, and this too in spite of the fact 
 that the country is well wooded. Hedges and 
 walls are low, and the face of the country is 
 openly displayed. 
 
 ** Yonder flows the Lugar," said Mr. Ten- 
 nant, with a wave of his arm, **and yon are the 
 banks of * winding Ayr,' where Burns took leave 
 of Highland Mary — 
 
 * Norman Kemp Smith, now, to the regret of his 
 American friends, reclaimed by Scotland and filling the 
 historic chair of Logic and Metaphysics in the University 
 of Edinburgh. 
 
8 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 * Still o 'er these scenes my memory wakes, 
 And fondly broods with miser care ; 
 
 Time but the impression stronger makes, 
 As streams their channels deeper wear.' 
 
 And through that wood we shall come to the 
 braes of Ballochmyle. The family at Balloch- 
 myle House were ill pleased to have a plough- 
 man sing of their young lady ; but 'tis now their 
 boast. 
 
 *But here at last for me nae mair 
 
 Shall birdie charm or floweret smile ; 
 
 Fareweel the bonnie banks of Ayr! 
 
 Fareweel, fareweel, sweet Ballochmyle.' " 
 
 **I doubt you've never heard in America of 
 the University of Ochiltree; yet if you look 
 you'll see it there, at the head of the brae, in 
 Ochiltree village. Just a plain parish school, 
 such as John Knox set up in every town in 
 Scotland; but we had an excellent teacher, a 
 college graduate, who took us through six books 
 of Homer and a good deal of Virgil, Ovid, and 
 Livy. You'll be having much better schools in 
 America, of course, scattered over the coun- 
 try?" 
 
 As Mr. Tennant is not naturally a cruel man, 
 he relieved us from the necessity of replying by 
 calling attention to the carrier 's waggonette, 
 which was approaching. The grand big horse, 
 Mr. Hendry himself, a small, white-haired, ap- 
 
HEART OF AYRSHIRE 9 
 
 pie-cheeked man, with a keen twinkling light in 
 his blue eyes, and the load of women, babies, and 
 boys which filled every part of the vehicle, made 
 a picture of rustic locomotion ; and there was a 
 fine display of courtesy when the boys jumped 
 out to walk, the mothers crowded close to- 
 gether, and the babies were allowed to sit on 
 our knees. English country boys, though I like 
 them well enough, do not particularly remind 
 me of American boys, but Scotch boys, especial- 
 ly the barefoot village boys of Ayrshire, re- 
 minded me individually of this, that, and the 
 other companion of my youth. The eye which 
 never loses sight of yours, the bare, free brow, 
 the freckles, the plucky mouth, the engaging air 
 of freedom and enterprise and humour, in more 
 than one Ayrshire face, brought up the image 
 of a little group of schoolmates, now scattered 
 from Pennsylvania to New Mexico. The Scotch 
 boys whom I've met on roads and hillsides 
 have always been about some business of their 
 own, and very much interested in its outcome — 
 evidently had something on their minds, some 
 adventure in hand. They were hurrying to 
 some rendezvous or wearily returning with jars 
 and cans full of tadpoles, or with strings of fish 
 or combs of wild honey. I remember a silent, 
 stoical file of little fellows who passed me once 
 on Arthur's Seat, returning from Duddingston 
 
10 DEEAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 or Craigmillar or the distant seashore, the fore- 
 most picking the easiest way with bleeding feet, 
 the two smallest lagging behind, their set faces 
 convulsed by sobs. It was all so natural, and 
 took me back to the afternoon when six of us 
 shut ourselves up in our barn at home and beat 
 one another's legs amicably with cornstalks till 
 the blood flowed. 
 
 Mr. Tennant is a specialist on churchyards, 
 as well as a repository of Covenanter tradi- 
 tions, and the most delightful lover of Burns I 
 have ever met. When, therefore, we had driven 
 up the long street of Old Cumnock, where mod- 
 ern two-story houses have only half supplanted 
 the old whitewashed, thatched, one-story cot- 
 tages, and had disentangled our cramped legs 
 and descended beside the parish cross, we found 
 ourselves presently at the grave of the Prophet 
 Peden, reading one of those vindictive epitaphs 
 by which the Covenanters and their children 
 unto the third and fourth generation sought to 
 keep alive the memory of the persecuting time. 
 This spot was once a place of execution, the 
 Gallows Hill. A passion of love and pride con- 
 secrated it to another use more than two hun- 
 dred years ago. The story is not without a 
 touch of weirdness. Few incidents better illus- 
 trate the national character and the strange 
 vicissitudes of Scottish history. Alexander 
 
HEART OF AYRSHIRE 11 
 
 Peden was one of the ministers who refused to 
 submit to Episcopal ** collation" when the re- 
 stored Stuart kings were trying to abash free 
 Presbyterianism. It was death to lodge or feed 
 him or to follow him to the hills and listen to 
 his words. He hid in caves along the Lugar 
 and the Ayr, baptizing children, performing 
 marriages, burying the dead, preaching on the 
 lonely moors, where the white fog fell in an- 
 swer to his prayer **Cast the lap of thy cloak 
 over auld Sandy and thir puir things, and save 
 us this ane time," heartening faint outcasts 
 with his humour, his anecdotes, his confident 
 predictions, aflame always with patriotic zeal, 
 crying **He is not worth his room in Scotland 
 the day, that prayeth not the half of his time, to 
 see if he can prevent the dreadful wrath that is 
 at your door, coming on your poor mother- 
 land." With sadness he foretold the capture of 
 this man, the treachery of that, the slaughter of 
 a bridegroom he was marrying, the rout in the 
 Pentlands and at Bothwell Brig; and these 
 things came to pass. He had but to point a 
 finger at the scoffing maid-servant on the Bass 
 Rock, and she flung herself into the sea ; at the 
 soldier who was guarding him, and he refused 
 to serve any more against the King of kings. 
 On the misty moorland simple men caught sight 
 of this portentous figure, ''in grey clothes," 
 
12 DREAMS AND MEMOEIES 
 
 wearing **a f ause-f ace, " his sword, an Andrea 
 Ferrara, clanking as he stalked away ; and they 
 readily believed him inspired. Of the faithful 
 Covenanter preachers in the West, Peden was 
 about the only one who escaped death at the 
 hands of the prelatists. But they harried him 
 to his life's end in 1686. The laird of Auchin- 
 leck offered the Boswell family tomb for the 
 repose of his body. After six weeks it was dug 
 up by spiteful adversaries, '*out of contempt,'' 
 as his old gravestone records. The winding- 
 sheet flew from their grasp and settled on an 
 oak tree, which thenceforth ceased to grow up- 
 wards, spreading out horizontally, as if in awe. 
 The body was dragged to the gallows foot in 
 Old Cumnock, two miles away. Thereupon the 
 people of that parish placed their own dead 
 near it. Peden 's dust can scarcely be said to 
 rest in peace even now, for the vengeful inscrip- 
 tions above it and on the gravestones of three 
 other martyrs of the killing time taint the air. 
 I saw the oak tree bowing still its awe-struck 
 head. 
 
 One might, at first thought, wish that the 
 numerous martyrs' monuments throughout 
 Scotland might be removed — even the bitter 
 record in Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh, 
 and even the stone among the Pentlands which 
 commemorates the charitable deed of a brave 
 
HEART OF AYRSHIRE 13 
 
 farmer to an Unknown Covenanter after the 
 slaughter on RuUion Green. Who, we ask, 
 would lay down his life now for a matter of 
 church government? What but unchristian 
 feelings can be inculcated at these places of 
 bloody execution, where one reads 
 
 **This stone shall witness be 
 'Twixt Presbyterie and Prelacie.'* 
 
 But on reflection I think we cannot spare any 
 of these truth-telling stones. Their language 
 does not exaggerate. We have it in our power 
 to fix our attention upon the courage and con- 
 stancy of the ** elect, '^ who were driven by un- 
 comprehending tyranny from their bare farms 
 to the barer moors, and overlook the lesson of 
 hatred which their followers sought to teach in 
 carven monuments. The blue banner of the 
 Covenant was borne, through apparent defeat, 
 to an ideal victory; and, to say the least, a 
 sombre gleam of romance rests upon these scat- 
 tered graves and lonely scenes of blood. 
 
 My desire to buy some kippered herring in 
 Old Cumnock occasioned a pretty exhibition of 
 Scotch thoughtfulness. ** Could we ask Mrs. 
 Probert, of the Head Inn at Ochiltree, to have 
 them cooked for us I Would it not offend her to 
 have her own larder slighted T' Thus the 
 American professor, who was born and bred in 
 
14 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 Scotland. Mr. Tennant, as a son of Ochiltree, 
 thought we might put it to Mrs. Probert in such 
 a way as to avoid offence, and so the odorous 
 parcel was pocketed. Again the carrier's 
 waggon was overcrowded, worse than before, 
 and with an equally good-natured company, en- 
 couraged by proximity to lively conversation in 
 very broad Scotch. The professor and I, and a 
 young man of the country squeezed into the 
 front seat beside Mr. Hendry. He beguiled the 
 way by questioning the professor about Amer- 
 ica. ** There will be no enclosures in America 
 like these,'' pointing to the hedges; *4t will all 
 be open, no doubt, and as soon as a man drives 
 out of one of your big cities he goes over hill 
 and vale straight before him, without a road, 
 till he comes to the place he would be at. You 
 will observe," he remarked, **that a Scotchman 
 thinks. He may be quiet, but he is aye think- 
 ing. ' ' I nudged my friend, the supposed Ameri- 
 can, and the phrase has become a by-word with 
 us. There was a fine play of shadows and wan- 
 dering lights over the dark green rolling coun- 
 try. The farmlands lay high ; the water-courses 
 were deep and richly wooded. The prospects 
 were singularly wide. The holdings appeared 
 to be of good size, averaging perhaps a hundred 
 and fifty acres, and the buildings were capacious 
 and clean, all of stone, and generally white- 
 
HEART OF AYRSHIRE 15 
 
 washed. Here and there the upper works of a 
 coal-mine led to an expectation of ugliness and 
 squalor, but coming close we found the fair face 
 of Nature very little disfigured, and among the 
 most tasteful houses were the homes of miners, 
 handsome sandstone buildings with neat grass- 
 plots in front and a glory of climbing roses. It 
 was a surprise to see the grimy faces of coal- 
 miners at the windows of such houses, and I 
 thought with discomfort of the ugly unpainted 
 wooden shanties around some of the pit mouths 
 near Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, unattractive 
 abodes of men who, as a class, deserve well of 
 the world, like sailors, trainmen, and physi- 
 cians, for the dangerous and necessary work 
 they perform. I do not believe anything in 
 Scotland has given me much greater pleasure 
 than the sight of those black miners looking out 
 between lace curtains. 
 
 At last, from Mr. Tennant's rising excite- 
 ment, it was plain that we were approaching 
 Ochiltree, where he was born, and where he and 
 his sister still own and sometimes inhabit the 
 ancestral **but and ben.'' Their grandfather 
 and great-grandfather lived on Glenconner 
 farm, visible from the village, and there Burns 
 often visited his friend James Tennant, his 
 
 **Auld comrade dear, and brither sinner,'* 
 
16 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 to whose father, bearing after Scottish fashion 
 the place-name Glenconner, he referred in the 
 famous lines, 
 
 **My heart-warm love to guid auld Glen, 
 The ace an' wale of honest men.'* 
 
 Where else in the world do farmers lend one 
 another volumes of philosophy or peruse **Bun- 
 yan. Brown, an' Boston''? 
 
 **I've sent you here, by Johnnie Simson, 
 Twa sage philosophers to glimpse on! 
 Smith, wi' his sympathetic feeling, 
 An' Reid, to common sense appealing." 
 
 Burns expected his neighbour to read the books, 
 and was in a hurry to have them back : 
 
 **But hark ye, frien'! I charge you strictly, 
 Peruse them, an' return them quickly." 
 
 I have seen a fair number of Scotch villages, 
 and Ochiltree is the most Scotch. One long 
 street, in three reaches, flows down the hill-side. 
 From the head of the brae you see about one- 
 third of its length, to the kirk; here it bends, 
 and you may go a step further and see the vil- 
 lage cross, at the end of another third; and at 
 the cross you begin the last stretch. This wind- 
 ing and sloping street is lined for the most part 
 with one-story houses, each offering a door 
 flanked by two small windows. Thatch makes 
 them look old and whitewash fresh. They stand 
 
HEART OF AYRSHIRE 17 
 
 shoulder to shoulder, and few have front yards. 
 To an extent unusual in countries north of Italy, 
 the scenes of village life are enacted in the pub- 
 lic view, on the street, and about open doors. 
 From what I saw of the play, it is no such tragic 
 stuff as an Ochiltree boy, George Douglas 
 Brown, put into his ** House with the Green 
 Shutters, ' ' one of the most vital works of fiction 
 in our time. Since Ochiltree has begun to real- 
 ize that a substantial and lasting fame was 
 achieved through that terrible novel, the house, 
 near the head of the brae, where Brown was 
 born, has been distinguished with green shut- 
 ters, almost the only shutters in the place, and 
 quite incongruous. The corner-stone of the 
 parish church was laid by James Boswell. In 
 spite of this recommendation, which I daresay 
 found no favour in their eyes, Boswell 's philos- 
 ophy of religion being considered, the disrup- 
 tionists erected a Free kirk around the corner, 
 in a cross street. It is common to deplore the 
 expense of this doubling of church buildings 
 and ministers and the halving of congregations, 
 which have taken place in so many Scottish par- 
 ishes, but I could never discover that anything 
 worse than pecuniary loss had resulted. I have 
 observed no bitterness between the two bodies. 
 Their slight differences afford persons who are 
 very particular an opportunity to gratify their 
 
18 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 tastes with some degree of nicety. One church 
 is said to be more liberal than the other in mat- 
 ters of theology. Perhaps it may go further in 
 that direction and become the home of the many 
 who will be ill at ease in orthodox societies 
 when the people follow the younger generation 
 of ministers in their changed views of the Bible. 
 In a dark grove, just beyond the lower end of 
 the village, rise the high, crow-stepped gables 
 of an ancient mansion that has given shelter to 
 two famous men upon an interesting occasion 
 in the life of each. For in Ochiltree House 
 John Knox was married, and who else but Clav- 
 erhouse! Leaning for shelter against the high 
 wall that surrounds Ochiltree House are some 
 old tombstones in a half-forgotten graveyard. 
 The gate was locked, but imitating a small boy 
 in an Eton jacket who climbed into the park 
 over the wall, we climbed over the gate into the 
 graveyard, not to look for Covenanter rhymes, 
 but for the names of James Tennant and of 
 ** winsome Willie'' Simpson, poet and school- 
 master in Ochiltree, with whom Burns once 
 made a compact to cause the rivers of Ayrshire 
 to be renowned in song : 
 
 ** Ramsay an' famous Fergusson 
 Gied Forth an' Tay a lift aboon; 
 Yarrow an' Tweed, to monie a tune, 
 Owre Scotland rings, 
 
HEART OF AYRSHIRE 19 
 
 While Irwin, Lugar, Ayr, an' Doon 
 Naebody sings. 
 
 **Th' missus, Tiber, Thames, an' Seine 
 Glide sweet in monie a tunefu' line; 
 But, Willie, set your fit to mine. 
 
 An' cock your crest. 
 We'll gar our streams an' burnies shine 
 
 Up wi' the best." 
 
 In the same epistle come the delicious lines : 
 
 **The Muse, nae poet ever fand her, 
 Till by himsel' he learned to wander 
 Adown some trotting burn's meander, 
 
 An' no think lang; 
 Oh, sweet to stray an' pensive ponder 
 
 A heartfelt sang." 
 
 The satirical postscript to this epistle gives an 
 amusing explanation of the points at issue be- 
 tween the Auld Licht and the New Licht min- 
 isters, just **a moonshine matter." As to the 
 issue between the poet on the one hand and 
 Scotch religion on the other, no traveller in 
 Ayrshire is permitted to remain indifferent. 
 The conviction grows upon one that the greatest 
 song-writer of modern times, perhaps of all 
 time, was scarcely less remarkable as a satirist. 
 These fields and clustered villages presented to 
 his penetrating gaze an abbreviated world. 
 Knowing the virtues and follies, the enthusi- 
 asms, the hypocrisies, the labours and sports. 
 
20 DEEAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 the comedies and tragedies of Kyle — this little 
 district which formed for him one community, 
 in the heart of Ayrshire — ^he was able to in- 
 struct the world. He did for Scotland what La- 
 fontaine in a more conspicuous, though really 
 narrower sphere, did for France in the seven- 
 teenth century. He drew up closer to the ob- 
 jects of his attack than even Voltaire or Swift. 
 What he ridiculed was not, generally, the per- 
 versity or the stupidity of a nation, but some 
 immediate departure from natural and humane 
 conduct, something at Tarbolton or Mauchline 
 which touched him unpleasantly. Hence his 
 passion. True, he professed a rationalistic phi- 
 losophy, derived from the dominant French 
 writers of the age and the British deists ; but in 
 large measure his views of life originated in his 
 own experience, and of course they were vital- 
 ized with personal feeling and winged with local 
 phrases. Thus he gave a humourous rather 
 than a bitter turn to his satire. He knew its ob- 
 jects, in most cases, as **brither sinners" and 
 fellow Ayrshiremen. The undeniable virtues 
 of most of them were present in his mind, along 
 with their odious orthodoxy. His own short- 
 comings, too, made it impossible for him, Rob 
 the Ranter, to set up as a quite serious judge of 
 morals. Hence his good-nature. And on the 
 whole, then, it was instinct, not theory, personal 
 
HEAET OF AYRSHIEE 21 
 
 grievance, not party prejudice, that brougM 
 him to a glow. On the unequal distribution of 
 wealth, for instance, he is excited to comment 
 by thinking how easily he, a hard-working, well- 
 meaning young man, may be reduced 
 
 * * To lie in kilns and barns at e 'en, 
 
 When banes are crazed, and bluid is thin'*; 
 
 though the reflection takes a wider sweep and 
 is tinged with the revolutionary feeling of Rous- 
 seau, when he cries : 
 
 **It's no in titles nor in rank, 
 It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank. 
 
 To purchase peace and rest; 
 It's no in making muckle mair. 
 It's no in books, it's no in lear. 
 
 To make us truly blest: 
 If happiness hae not her seat 
 
 And centre in the breast. 
 We may be wise, or rich, or great, 
 But never can be blest. 
 
 Nae treasures, nor pleasures 
 Could make us happy lang ; 
 The heart aye's the part aye 
 That makes us right or wrang." 
 
 On the harshness of church discipline and the 
 hypocrisy of some who make profession of re- 
 ligion, he is called to express himself when, 
 shamed yet defiant, he flings out of meeting af- 
 ter being disciplined for his misdeeds ; but from 
 the ** Epistle to John Rankine," full of personal 
 
22 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 bitterness and the consciousness of guilt, there 
 is a long step upward to the good sense, clear 
 rationalism, and strong public interest of * * The 
 Holy Fair.'' What **Ye Banks and Braes o' 
 Bonnie Doon" is to other songs **The Holy- 
 Fair" is to other satires. It is altogether 
 Scotch. It is provincial — nay, purely local. It 
 records a moment in the personal life of Burns. 
 Yet for all that, the wide world feels it. A fable 
 of Lafontaine, a conte of Voltaire, does not 
 blight a more universal crop of vanities. 
 
 To the uninstructed or the innocent the verses 
 of this rankling satire may have appeared a 
 lyrical outpouring, here sweet, there gay and 
 wanton. Certainly no opening could be more 
 demure than the first lines : 
 
 **Upon a simmer Sunday morn, 
 
 When Nature's face is fair, 
 I walked forth to view the corn 
 
 And snuff the caller air. 
 The rising sun o'er Galston muirs 
 
 Wi' glorious light was glintin'; 
 The hares were hirplin' down the furs; 
 The laverocks they were chantin', 
 
 Fu' sweet that day." 
 
 The frank young ploughman, thus early abroad, 
 and surveying the acres which have been the 
 scene of his week's labour, encounters ** three 
 hizzies," whom he describes in a manner that 
 
HEART OF AYRSHIEE 23 
 
 puts prose paraphrase to shame. They are 
 Superstition, Hypocrisy, and Fun. He accom- 
 panies them to the open-air service held in 
 Mauchline churchyard, and pictures with in- 
 tense animosity the ministers from that and 
 neighbouring parishes whom he finds preaching 
 there. No doubt the portraits were sufficiently 
 accurate to cause dismay, but whether they 
 were just is another question. A great literary 
 genius has an immense advantage with poster- 
 ity as against even a whole presbytery. It may 
 well be that of his originals some were bigoted, 
 some sensual, some double-faced; but it is not 
 likely that they were, as a whole, either worse 
 or better than other men of the same profes- 
 sion. Merely it was their misfortune to have 
 this young farmer for a neighbour. And so it 
 is best not to regard **The Holy Fair'' as a con- 
 tribution to the history of Scotland. Yet there 
 was no doubt a particular remoteness from re- 
 ality in the religion of that time and country. 
 Strained, abstract, unnatural, tending to create 
 a hierarchy of domineering '* divines'' and a 
 mob of **yill-caup commentators," who raised 
 a din **wi' logic an' wi' Scripture," it was 
 transparent moonshine to a man whom Nature 
 had brought up at her own knee. Between the 
 Poet and the Priest such warfare goes on for- 
 
24 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 ever. Clearly the advantage this time was with 
 the Poet. 
 
 As I stood in Mauchline graveyard, halfway 
 between the church and the tavern, the sun was 
 darkened and a sense of oppression seized me. 
 The town appeared sunken, dingy. Here, in the 
 field where they once held high jurisdiction, 
 moulder ^^Holy Willie'^ and ** Daddy'' Auld. 
 Over yonder is the one small room where the 
 great poet began housekeeping as a married 
 man. Here the battle went hard with him. It 
 could not have been cheerful to look every day 
 upon a graveyard and brood over the excessive 
 claims of an unamiable religion. The intellec- 
 tual companionship afforded by the masonic 
 lodge in Tarbolton must have been pitifully in- 
 adequate for a man of whom the wits of Edin- 
 burgh declared that his genius flamed more 
 brightly in his conversation than in his poetry. 
 Temptation to drink was strong, and opportun- 
 ity to drink abounded on every hand. We are 
 here in touch with squalor. The thought of his 
 manly heart enduring such contact and his no- 
 ble powers thus hemmed in was suffocating. 
 
 Out of Mauchline we climbed into the purer 
 air and sweeter associations of Mossgiel Farm. 
 We took shelter in the house from a shower, 
 and conversed with the farmer, whose father 
 held the lease fifty years ago and was separated 
 
HEART OF AYRSHIRE 25 
 
 by but one other tenant from Robert and Gil- 
 bert Burns. In their time the leasehold was for 
 about one hundred acres. The present two- 
 story farmhouse is built up on the walls of the 
 old one-story cottage which they occupied. 
 They were not successful farmers, but the poet 
 was happy at Mossgiel. Here flowed his most 
 spontaneous verse. From these high-lying 
 fields he swept with a glance the world which 
 was the subject of his sagacious comment. It is 
 no longer deemed sufficient to qualify Burns as 
 a sweet songwriter in the Doric. His is by far 
 the best poetry the British Isles can boast, from 
 the death of Milton till near the opening of the 
 nineteenth century. And perhaps no more dis- 
 cerning eye, no more comprehensive under- 
 standing, no more penetrating judgment ever 
 in that time surveyed the conduct of men. 
 What an amazing thought — that a few rural 
 parishes, between Ochiltree on the west and 
 Tarbolton on the east, afforded sufficient train- 
 ing and sufficient scope to this critical genius, 
 gave him knowledge and occasion! 
 
 Tarbolton and Catrine and Lochlea, we saw 
 them all, but Ochiltree was still our centre, and 
 **0h, if I could only have ye here for a fort- 
 night," sighed our genial friend, **I would 
 make ye love the place so ye couldna leave it. ' ' 
 I will not pretend that I think George Douglas 
 
26 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 Brown the most important Scottish novelist 
 since Stevenson, and perhaps to say that would 
 mean little; but his birthplace may well be 
 proud of him for a true observer and a faithful 
 artist. An old grey manor-house that witnessed 
 the nuptials of two such ** marshals of the 
 world" as Knox and Claverhouse, is something, 
 too. I may be right or I may be wrong in think- 
 ing that the man of letters who most completely 
 and entertainingly represented British life and 
 thought in the eighteenth century was James 
 Boswell; but it is not with indifference that a 
 person walking down Ochiltree street beholds 
 fronting him Auchinleck estate, of which Bozzy 
 was so proud and whither he led a greater man, 
 though less readable author, than himself. In 
 and around Ochiltree lived James Tennant and 
 Willie Simpson and other of Burns 's dearest 
 friends, and it is by far the prettiest village in 
 the heart of the Burns country. I remember 
 it best as it reposed in the faint sunshine of late 
 afternoon and on through the lingering mid- 
 summer twilight, at the home-coming of the 
 rooks and the play-hour of door-step toddlers, 
 when the blue smoke from a hundred cottages 
 proclaimed that crowdie-time had come, and 
 the croon of soft voices floated up the brae. 
 
NEW WINE IN AN OLD BOTTLE 
 
 Keith^s Diary, June 30 
 
 Barlow declared Ilfracombe was ** fly-blown," 
 meaning that it was too full of people and the 
 marks of their presence. He is over-dainty, of 
 course, but I agreed to go with him to Clovelly. 
 We came in a side-wheel steamer, sighting Ap- 
 pledore and Bideford on our left and the Welsh 
 coast far off to the right. The voyage was 
 rough, and many of our fellow-passengers laid 
 aside ^^Lorna Doone*' and ** Westward Ho!'* 
 and all other matters of romantic interest be- 
 fore it was over. We had not long rounded the 
 cruel reefs of Morte Point when a white streak 
 became visible on the face of the cliff toward 
 which we were headed. The latter grew less 
 uniform in appearance. It showed green pres- 
 ently and proved to be covered from top to bot- 
 tom with a tufted forest. The white streak re- 
 solved itself into cottages, rising one above an- 
 other from the water's edge nearly to the top 
 of the cliff. A grey-stone pier, mottled with 
 rusty brown and curved somewhat like a fish- 
 hook, hid the hulls of several sailing craft. We 
 
 27 
 
28 DREAMS AND MEMOEIES 
 
 could see their masts rocking. A life-boat sta- 
 tion flanked this little harbour on one side, and 
 on the other stood a modest inn, built of stone, 
 but comfortably softened with a cream-colour 
 wash. A long black habitation hung imminent 
 above the water beyond the life-boat station, 
 looking grim with its struggle to keep a foot- 
 hold betwixt the wooded precipice that crowded 
 down upon it and the waves that reached greed- 
 ily at its barred windows. Between the inn and 
 this group of buildings, which spoke hoarsely of 
 winter's danger, three or four balconied cot- 
 tages stood securely behind a sea-wall. They 
 were gay with creepers and flowering plants. 
 Their casements were open to receive the sun- 
 light. 
 
 A steep path, or rather stairway, wound up 
 from the quay, passing the inn door, then going 
 over a lime-kiln, which is constantly and excus- 
 ably taken for a barbican, and then rising be- 
 hind the cheerful cottages. It passed through a 
 square hole under a house, and its further 
 climbing could only be divined from the group- 
 ing of the white dwellings far up the combe, or 
 cleft, above. 
 
 We were landed in boats rowed by bearded 
 men in blue sou 'westers. As it was ebb-tide, 
 they were obliged to beach outside the harbour. 
 In spite of half a dozen sailors who tried to pull 
 
NEW WINE IN AN OLD BOTTLE 29 
 
 us up by the bow, we shipped a sea over our 
 stern and were dumped dripping on the shingle. 
 We have now been two days in Clovelly, and 
 this buffet was the only touch of roughness we 
 have received. All else has been soft and ca- 
 ressing. We sought lodgings no farther than 
 the Bed Lion, the little inn by the quay, and 
 have not regretted our choice. 
 
 I had been told that Clovelly was overrun 
 with visitors, and it would not be difficult to 
 overrun a place so tiny, but northwest winds 
 and threatening skies have kept down the num- 
 ber of excursionists by water. There are a 
 good many Americans, who come by motor-car, 
 in unconsidering and inconsiderate haste. We 
 prefer to be the only Americans in a place, but 
 it is seldom possible. Barlow, who is of pure 
 English descent and full of the English tradi- 
 tion, pretends to think we are not already a dis- 
 tinct race. To me it is plain we are. We have 
 a national physiognomy, a national gait, not to 
 mention, nor yet to deny, a national voice. 
 
 The Devonshire accent is delicious. It has 
 the softness of the west wind. It is warm and 
 open, like the sunny downs of Exmoor. Its 
 honest burr of r, not quite so strong as that in 
 Scotland and more like the best Pennsylvanian, 
 seems to me the normal English pronunciation 
 of that oft-maltreated letter. Milton, we know, 
 
30 DREAMS A^B MEMORIES 
 
 thought it should be vigourously trilled, a real 
 consonant. The common people of Devonshire 
 do not drawl. Their vowels, with a few excep- 
 tions, come out clean-cut, which gives the speak- 
 ers an air of bravery. They are not prolonged 
 into diphthongs as in the fashionable speech of 
 the midlands. I like to think that Drake man- 
 aged it thus roundly, and Raleigh and Gilbert 
 and Hawkins, and Grenville. Curiously, how- 
 ever, there is a French u on this coast. Clovelly 
 folk speak of Bude, a port farther down the 
 coast, almost precisely as a Frenchman would 
 pronounce the word. The personal pronouns 
 are used with delightful indifference to the pre- 
 rogatives of case. **Her be a-coomin' toward 
 we ' ^ is good grammer in Clovelly. 
 
 These are not the things I came to England 
 to observe. I ought to be in the big ** fly-blown'' 
 towns, studying politics and the social order, or 
 disorder. I was carrying out my plan quite 
 satisfactorily in London, sitting in the gallery 
 of the House of Commons, hearing the open-air 
 debaters in Hyde Park, and reading the news- 
 papers. As John Burns says, London is as 
 good as the country in summer, with the turf in 
 the parks free to every foot, and the quiet of its 
 asphalted streets. 
 
 It's Barlow's fault. He persuaded me that 
 I ought to study the question of public owner- 
 
NEW WINE IN AN OLD BOTTLE 31 
 
 ship in a region abounding in large estates, 
 where small farmers, tradesmen, and artisans 
 have to accommodate themselves as best they 
 can to conditions that are still virtually feudal. 
 He was mistaken. There would have been more 
 practical use in studying the problems of indus- 
 trial centres, which present a closer analogy to 
 circumstances at home. The old conditions of 
 rural and village life have passed or are rapidly 
 passing. England has adopted, very quietly but 
 thoroughly, the principle of progressive taxa- 
 tion, dropping the old individualistic theory, es- 
 pecially in her land laws. We shall come to 
 that, of course, but legislation to protect our in- 
 dustrial workers is what we need first. And 
 here am I, in the loveliest and perhaps happiest 
 village in England, where I should have been 
 perfectly happy myself three years ago, and 
 could be happy to-morrow if I allowed myself 
 to forget my duty and the wretchedness of man- 
 kind. 
 
 Barlow *s Diary, June 30 
 
 Keith is a hard fellow to please. He has ab- 
 solutely no cause for unhappiness except the 
 order of the universe. He would like to change 
 that. When he is hard at work he is gay as a 
 lark, because he fancies he is changing the order 
 of the universe. On a holiday he makes himself 
 
32 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 miserable with self-reproach. Not that he is 
 afflicted with that mania for work which so 
 many business men acquire. He is naturally 
 fond of leisure. His affliction is an extraordi- 
 nary self-esteem, or perhaps I should say crav- 
 ing for self-esteem. No, I am unjust to him. 
 He loves mankind and has a clear conception of 
 a perfect state of existence attainable in this 
 world. When he is teaching his boys at school 
 he is calm because he thinks he is helping them 
 on to that bright day. But in the vacations he 
 is consumed with the rage of achievement. He 
 wants to take God's work out of His hands. I 
 shall tell him so. 
 
 For me, Clovelly is enough. I would willing- 
 ly stay here all summer. I learned something 
 from an old sailor this afternoon. He was on 
 the pier, scanning the horizon with his glass, 
 which he politely offered to me for a look. He 
 said he lived alone in the middle compartment 
 of the long house beyond the life-saving station, 
 and invited me to see his rooms. We had a pipe 
 or two together, though he admitted he pre- 
 ferred *^ chawing.'' He is in his ninetieth year 
 and has sailed, he said, in the four quarters of 
 the globe. There is no mark of feebleness in 
 his deep-seamed face nor in the sweet accents of 
 his voice. 
 
 **I call it my cabin," he remarked, as we en- 
 
NEW WINE IN AN OLD BOTTLE 33 
 
 tered his low-ceiled kitchen. **You will notice 
 there are cupboards all round. One of them 
 goes the whole length of the house. That was 
 of use in smuggling times. I keep my nets 
 there now. ' ' He told me about the drowning of 
 thirty Clovelly men in one night, fishing for 
 herring, and of twenty men drowned another 
 night, and of his own narrow escape when 
 driven ashore in a squall, and of the starving 
 years before Free-Trade lowered the price of 
 food. **I don't really see,'' and his deep voice 
 trembled, **how any poor man that works for 
 his living can be a Tory. I know there is some, 
 but I don't understand it. They never came 
 through the hungry forties, when I declare I 
 dunno how my poor dear old father and mother 
 kept us alive." 
 
 He dwelt on the kindness of the lady who 
 owns Clovelly and to whose control we are no 
 doubt indebted for its preservation as a thing of 
 beauty. He seems content to let God govern the 
 world. I'll not stand it if Keith calls him a 
 deluded victim of feudalism. He is a happier 
 man than Keith, and a better man, I dare say, 
 than either Keith or I. One thing, however, I 
 can't comprehend: he is a dissenter and goes to 
 the little bare chapel in the village rather than 
 to the ancient church beside Clovelly Court 
 above. Think what he loses I Association, even 
 
34 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 remote and humble, with persons of culture, 
 the instruction of a rector educated at a uni- 
 versity, the privilege of worshipping in a church 
 that is nearly a thousand years old, where 
 prayer has been offered by thirty unbroken 
 generations, and where the dead lie in their 
 eternal peace. Perhaps there is something of 
 the Keith spirit in old Mr. Bate, something 
 restless, ambitious of perfection. For I am 
 sure Keith will glory in the ** spiritual recti- 
 tude, * ' the independence, of these sailor-folk, as 
 I am pleased with whatever sensible conformity 
 to good old practices lingers still in nooks like 
 this. For have not I, too, an ideal of perfec- 
 tion? Is not Clovelly, aristocratically gov- 
 erned, an earthly paradise I And a religion that 
 satisfies the heart, and trains the eye and ear, 
 and responds copiously to the demands of the 
 historic sense, and links past, present, and fu- 
 ture in one living age, a religion practical, na- 
 tional, and sufficiently broad to give scope to 
 every type and almost every mood — is not this, 
 too, better than Keith's unrealized society, with 
 its bare minimum of common logical ground? I 
 say ** almost every mood*' because I perceive at 
 times myself how preposterous are some of the 
 claims put forth in behalf of these venerable in- 
 stitutions, and feel no less keenly than Keith 
 that a great renovating change is impending. 
 
NEW WINE IN AN OLD BOTTLE 35 
 
 But I shall never move a hand to bring it about. 
 To restore an ancient edifice involves the de- 
 struction of its ivy and its crannied flowers. 
 Beauty has no place in Keith's plan, though I 
 am far from denying that he appreciates it. 
 The city park, free to all and enjoyed by all, 
 is heavenly to him because of its common util- 
 ity. The most glorious mountain-top, the love- 
 liest glen, the fairest island, if unviewed by 
 man, or indeed by whole troops of men, are 
 heart-sores to him. They exist in vain and 
 serve only to remind him of their opposites, the 
 back yards of city slums. He has persuaded 
 himself that humanity is all. Some French 
 writer has said that many a man of forty car- 
 ries a dead poet in his heart. Keith is drawing 
 near the fatal quarantaine. He tries not to be- 
 lieve in abstractions, in absolutes. Ignorant of 
 the higher mathematics, with its proud indiffer- 
 ence to man, a rebel to the faith, which sets man 
 in his true place, he is approaching a point 
 where the best poetry and art and music will 
 seem cruelly useless. Only agriculture and eco- 
 nomics will be worth while. Social utility is to 
 him all in all. And then if his belief in human 
 nature should receive a shock — ^what ruin I 
 
 Meanwhile, the sea breathes wooingly be- 
 neath her sapphire belt; long sprays of roses 
 waft their perfumes at the sun; every cottage 
 
36 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 along the stair that winds from harbour to cliff 
 top is like a lovely face, shining with inward 
 purity and peace. Beauty, an immortal god- 
 dess, vindicates her quiet claims, and all man- 
 kind are as truly strangers in the world as 
 Keith and I in Clovelly. 
 
 Keith's Diary, July 1 
 
 It is raining softly. The tide is out. The sea 
 no longer moans on the shingle, but laps it with 
 entreating hand. My little casement opens on 
 the water. A fishing fleet, eleven sail in all, 
 lies becalmed in the bay. The environing cliffs 
 have lost their colour and a certain terror they 
 possessed last night. No visitors will arrive in 
 Clovelly this morning. Even the gulls have 
 flown away, and I hear a cock crowing. I feel 
 no impulse to climb up the street. Somehow, 
 on such days as this I am less troubled by the 
 thought of **the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin.'' 
 To be a man, to have the power of thought, to 
 accept one's limitations and one's place in the 
 world, to suffer no remorse, to cherish no in- 
 ordinate ambitions, to love and be loved, to be 
 willing to work, but not to seek employment 
 over-eagerly — can this be wrong, after all? In 
 brilliant weather the nerves have a more elastic 
 impulse and give more pain. I am certainly in 
 
NEW WINE IN AN OLD BOTTLE 37 
 
 no heroic mood, but indeed my heroic moods 
 have ever been fruitless. 
 
 Barlow dropped his aggressive manner with 
 me last night, when we were walking together 
 at the pier-head and the cry of the shingle was 
 making me suffer. 
 
 ** Keith," he said in his gentlest voice, **you 
 harm yourself and do nobody any good by think- 
 ing always of the evil in the world." 
 
 * * But the evil poisons all the rest, ' ' I replied. 
 **We have memories, we have imaginations, we 
 cannot help being conscious of what is going on 
 in distant places. We are cowards and rene- 
 gades not to be at work for those who are 
 weaker, poorer, more ignorant than ourselves. ' ' 
 
 **I never thought you a pessimist," he con- 
 tinued, **and of course you are not, or you 
 would not consider it worth while to worry ; but 
 look out! for pessimism will come next. Un- 
 less you believe that God can take care of 
 the world without your aid you will fall into 
 despair, for you realize only too keenly your 
 own impotence. By constantly finding fault 
 with what exists, you are elevating criticism to 
 a place of undue importance as the chief of 
 virtues. There are only two commandments in 
 your code : ' Seek evil, ' and * rest not. ' ' ' 
 
 '*0h no. Barlow!" I laughed, **that is the 
 devil's duologue, and the difference is in the 
 
38 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 purpose. * Seek evil to destroy it, and rest not, ' 
 were indeed a divine and not a devilish cogni- 
 zance. ' ' 
 
 **No,'* said Barlow after a long pause, **I 
 think you are mistaken. There is something 
 essentially the matter with that device. * Search 
 out the good, and trust in God' is a better rub- 
 ric. It is positive; it fronts the sunlight; it is 
 humbler than yours and easier to follow, and 
 yet more exalted. In your revolt against our 
 wasteful American optimism, against the un- 
 thinking, ill-directed demand for enthusiastic 
 action, you are in danger of withholding your 
 hand from the common task and refusing the 
 common refreshment of joy and hope. You will 
 unfit yourself to be a gardener of souls, which 
 is your chosen work. If you were a gardener of 
 cabbages you would not fret overnight because 
 you were not stirring the soil. You would know 
 that the cabbages and yourself were better for 
 the respite and that darkness and rain were 
 part of the providential regimen of plants. ' ' 
 
 It was very thoughtful of Barlow to talk to 
 me thus. I suppose the peace I feel this morn- 
 ing is due in part to his influence. It was par- 
 ticularly kind in him because he is not a merely 
 passive creature. Nor does he live by the will 
 and the emotions only, as most men do who 
 speak that language. Reason too has her part 
 
NEW WINE IN AN OLD BOTTLE 39 
 
 in him. He would have no authority with me if 
 it were not so. And really Barlow, when he 
 takes pains, can make me see things as they 
 look to him. Many men glory in the fact that 
 their deepest life is instinctive. They believe, 
 so they say, because they feel. Perhaps they 
 overlook some obscure rational process that 
 goes on within them. Otherwise, it seems to 
 me, if their account of themselves be correct, 
 they are not very different from the birds, who 
 build nests and find food by inherited habits. 
 It should be the glory of a man to exceed that 
 mark. I have been disappointed to find how 
 often a rooted distrust of reason shows itself 
 in conversation among Englishmen. I had ex- 
 pected a more bracing tone from the country- 
 men of Mill and Morley. The conflict between 
 habit and sentiment on the one hand and ra- 
 tional endeavour on the other lends an almost 
 painful interest to travelling in England, for 
 in no other country are these opposites so fully 
 developed. 
 
 Barlow's Diary y July 1. 
 
 A fine race, these fishermen! IVe been talk- 
 ing with several of them. They speak famil- 
 iarly of Quebec and Norfolk, of Cape Town and 
 the Mediterranean. Some have been masters 
 of vessels, some have been mates. The main 
 
40 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 part of them are elderly. All have soft deep 
 voices, quiet manners, and a neat appearance. 
 Half a dozen of them are usually to be found 
 sitting on a bench below my window. I have 
 not heard them utter a rude word, and they are 
 always lending a hand to somebody, a child, an 
 old woman, an inquiring stranger. When the 
 tide is out they look to the moorings of their 
 boats or inspect seams and tackle, for then the 
 armful of space inside the pier is dry. A fall 
 from the pier-head would mean forty feet onto 
 hard rock. Their activities are chiefly two. 
 They row out to meet steamers, from which 
 they land passengers and baggage. In this 
 work they are a co-operative society, putting 
 their profits into a common pool. Then there is 
 the fishing. Last night when I went to bed, 
 three sloops lay high and dry just outside my 
 window, which opens on the harbour, while 
 Keith's looks out to sea. This morning they 
 were gone. It was full tide about three o'clock, 
 and water enough then, but how silently the 
 men must have worked! They catch sole and 
 plaice and conger-eels. In winter they fish for 
 herring, and Clovelly herring have a high repu- 
 tation. 
 
 **When you roast them over the fire they drip 
 oil like a rasher of fat bacon ; I wish I had a-got 
 
NEW WINE IN AN OLD BOTTLE 41 
 
 one for my supper this evening," said old Mr. 
 Bate, his face lighting up. 
 
 '*The conger is the curiousest fish," he re- 
 sumed, striking a match on the kitchen stove, 
 which is not at all like an American range, be- 
 ing built for greater economy of fuel. **I've 
 never been able to make out how her breeds. 
 Cut her open, and there's nawthing inside. 
 And her do bark like a dog, as you know. ' ' 
 
 Because of the rain, his little room looked 
 more than ever like a ship's cabin. My head 
 almost touched the ceiling, and it seemed as if 
 nearly every necessary of life was contained 
 within the four walls. The deep window, wider 
 than it was high, gave sight of heaving water 
 and no land, for the cliffs were shrouded in 
 mist. The spaces not taken up with cupboard 
 doors were mostly filled with pictures of ves- 
 sels, one a bark of which the old man's eldest 
 son is master, trading between Australia and 
 Chili. 
 
 *'I've worked hard, sir, in my time," he said, 
 as he looked at the pictures. **A sailor had 
 small wages then. What do you think of fower 
 pound a month for a master, and two pound or 
 two pound five for an able-bodied seaman? I 
 useded to wonder, I did, how the missus made 
 out. Of course I had a-got to spend a little on 
 
42 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 tobacco and washing. ' ' I had always supposed 
 sailors did their own washing. 
 
 **IVe often thought I should like to live at 
 Norfolk, in Virginia. That's the only port in 
 America I ever was in except Quebec. We went 
 ashore, some of us, at Norfolk, to seek a house 
 of worship, and found a building from which 
 there came forth a great sound. When us 
 looked into mun, what do you think we seed! 
 Black men a- singing, with teeth that white I 
 sha'n't forget 'em! And all jumping up and 
 down and shouting and the preacher not a- 
 heeding of them, not a bit, but a-preaching 
 away. ' ' 
 
 It is one of the advantages of talk with Mr. 
 Bate that it need not be consecutive. There 
 was a long pause and a relighting of pipes be- 
 fore he resumed : '*! remember the press-gang. 
 I recollect, when I was a boy, seeing a man — 
 oh, I've seed mun often — they useded to call 
 him Duckie," he chuckled, ''who hid himself 
 every time the press-gang came. That was 
 during the French war. The press-gang would 
 come and take men right on the beach there. In 
 them days the sewer flowed right open through 
 the midst of the street. And it went under his 
 house, and there he would hide him. And 
 when the women came to feed mun they called, 
 'Duckie, Duckie, Duckie,' and he always went 
 
NEW WINE IN AN OLD BOTTLE 43 
 
 by that name, and IVe seed him, many's the 
 time. * ' 
 
 He said he had come near going as a mid- 
 shipman in the Crimean War. *^And I might 
 have been a head shorter if I had,'* he re- 
 flected. And he then expressed his firm belief 
 that arbitration would henceforth take the place 
 of war. '*Let them that make wars do the 
 fighting, and not cause the community to 
 suffer. ' ' 
 
 This is a truly modern note in the country of 
 the old sea-rovers and in a village where 
 Charles Kingsley once lived. Kingsley, Tenny- 
 son, Kipling — shall we ever again hear poets 
 glorifying war? Poets or no poets. Parliament 
 has voted to build five new Dreadnoughts, 
 against the general protest of thinking men. A 
 theme for Keith! He, by the way, is plucking 
 up a little. I gave him a rating last night. It 
 is a shame to come to the fairest spot in the 
 world and turn one's eyes inward. 
 
 Keith^s Diary, July 2 
 
 I read in a London newspaper this morning 
 that Americans have the habit of making super- 
 ficial generalizations. The remark is not pro- 
 found. In fact I should have said that Ameri- 
 cans as a rule do not go so far as to generalize. 
 We rest content with facts and their more ob- 
 
44 DEEAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 vious workings. As a teacher, my greatest diffi- 
 culty has been to get my pupils to take an inter- 
 est in ideas. And how often, when one meets 
 a celebrity and hopes to hear some good con- 
 versation, one is fobbed off with stories and 
 special cases ! Anecdotes are the bane of good 
 table-talk. It would certainly be unfair to gen- 
 eralize from what I have seen of Clovelly. It 
 is clean ; but not many villages have a stair in- 
 stead of a street. It is quiet ; but that is because 
 the stair is too steep for traffic. It is charm- 
 ingly domestic ; but that is a mark of its pecul- 
 iar political status, for it is all owned by one 
 person, who tolerates the existence of only two 
 shops. It is vain to generalize, and yet I can- 
 not help drawing certain inferences from what 
 I see. Clovelly is a feudal village which has 
 come almost unscathed through the era of indi- 
 vidualism and competitive industry. It should 
 be easy for Clovelly to find itself at home in 
 the coming age as a pure socialistic community. 
 The people have been trained to mutual de- 
 pendence and respect. Their chief means of 
 livelihood is organized on a co-operative basis. 
 I see every day many proofs of their good-will 
 toward one another. Their faces, voices, and 
 manners bear marks of habitual courtesy. 
 What if there is a patroness living at Clovelly 
 Court to whom they pay rent and whose regula- 
 
NEW WINE IN AN OLD BOTTLE 45 
 
 tions help to keep the place free from ugliness 
 and internal rivalry? The essential thing is 
 that, with practically no competition among its 
 inhabitants, Clovelly appears happier and more 
 prosperous than any other place I have ever 
 seen. 
 
 And as to the effect of co-operation upon per- 
 sonality, the stale argument of individualists is 
 stunningly refuted here. Clovelly sailors, from 
 the time of Queen Bess to our own, have set 
 their mark fairly high in manly achievement. 
 The flashing eye, the ready hand, the frank 
 speech of these good fellows do not belong to 
 shirks and sluggards. Here are men who live 
 ready at any moment to launch their life-boat, 
 and women who pass anxious nights when the 
 herring-fleet is out. The coast is very danger- 
 ous, and many a vessel has been crunched by 
 the black teeth that grind and foam off Hart- 
 land Point. A curious account of the globe 
 could be compiled in Clovelly from the stories 
 of sailors who have been in all its quarters. I 
 encountered a lively old chap breaking stone on 
 the Bidef ord highroad this morning. He looked 
 more like a pirate than a road-mender, and 
 when I remarked that the sun was hot, he wiped 
 his face and said: **I've seed mun at the equa- 
 tor, and him's hotter yerr." A Clovelly lad 
 
46 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 came home not long ago after spending three 
 years on a desert island, shipwrecked with two 
 companions. 
 
 Barlow would approve of what I have writ- 
 ten this morning. 
 
 Barlow's Diary, July 2. 
 
 My plain, slow blood is all of English deriva- 
 tion, I believe. That may be one reason for my 
 immense delight in this place. Where, I ask, 
 could one find such an inn, except in England? 
 It is as neat as a model yacht; the wood- work 
 shines white and the brass knobs glitter. The 
 deft maids move without sound. Up the street, 
 in green door-ways of white cottages, canaries 
 in their cages sing no less happy than the free 
 robins hopping in the gardens. Gardens ! They 
 are often only green tubs filled with earth, but 
 their overflow of roses and fuchsia makes a 
 bower of every window. 
 
 At a certain time in the afternoon, when a 
 steamer has landed its passengers, signs are 
 shrinkingly hung out: ** Plain Tea 6d.'' or 
 *^Teas, Beds, Post-cards''; but they disappear 
 again, as if with relief, when the emergency is 
 over. From the upper turns of the stair, the 
 sea, viewed through vast embrasures of foliage, 
 already looks blue and distant, and we hear but 
 faintly the Yo-ho of our sailor friends warping 
 
NEW WINE IN AN OLD BOTTLE 47 
 
 in a trawler. The characteristic red soil of 
 Devon shows beneath the roots of elms and oaks 
 in the high banks of the sunken road that winds 
 away southward. There, in the uplands, are no 
 fences or hedges, properly speaking. The fields 
 are divided by dykes of stone filled and topped 
 with earth and overgrown with moss and fern. 
 Clovelly Court, the ancient home of the Carys, 
 played a part in sixteenth-century history, 
 American as well as English, but its aspect has 
 the uninteresting smoothness of youth com- 
 pared with the ramparts called Clovelly Dykes, 
 half a mile inland. This is a vast enclosure, of 
 prehistoric antiquity, in which a whole tribe of 
 early Britons may have sheltered themselves. 
 
 I feel perfectly justified in enjoying a place 
 like this. My conscience does not trouble me in 
 the least. I am not discouraged, but delighted, 
 to find such perfection, even if the dominant in- 
 fluence is aristocratic and I am a believer in 
 democracy. By patient attention to details we 
 may at home attain in time, in much time, to an 
 equitable and settled order and its fruits of 
 manners and beauty. * * Eipeness is all. ' ' 
 
 The contrast still troubles poor Keith, though 
 his mind is now working less feverishly. I shall 
 try to comfort him by pointing out the greater 
 contrast between the clan who built and de- 
 fended that encampment in the stone age and 
 
48 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 the splendid men, probably their descendants, 
 who live to-day in Clovelly. He will argue that 
 painfully conscious effort preceded every one 
 of the myriad imperceptible changes and that 
 often the improvement came with a bound, when 
 the sum of many efforts caused a revolution. 
 He will put himself back in imagination until 
 he shivers with the half -clad Celt and groans 
 with the oppressed Saxon. I, on the contrary, 
 am able to contemplate so remote a train of sor- 
 rows with detachment, perceiving that they 
 have, on the whole, been growing lighter, but 
 not admitting that the self-determined strug- 
 gles of any individual have made the slightest 
 difference. I see humanity as an organism, 
 flowering here and there, owing to causes so 
 hidden and so grand that I call them divine. 
 Keith feels the divinity within him, a God in 
 pain, a God coming into being through moral 
 strife. 
 
HARD ART MORT 
 
 I am safe inland at last. The cry of the sea 
 rings no longer in my ears. The good has pre- 
 vailed in my surroundings. Every time I look 
 up, I steady my heart with the sight of Wells 
 cathedral, which seven hundred years have 
 touched only to make its countenance more ven- 
 erable and human. The little city nestles close 
 to those ample flanks like a brood of chickens 
 beside their mother. The streets are neither 
 busy nor too quiet, with a leisurely domestic 
 trade. The houses doze in ruddy sunshine, 
 their blinds and awnings half lowered. A few 
 steps would bring me to level pastures and 
 amid ruminating kine. No precipices, no 
 white-fringed waste of waters, but gently 
 moulded hills, bound the horizon. I am in the 
 centre of the broad shire of Somerset, where a 
 man need never think of lying down and hold- 
 ing fast to the earth, and where the talk, in soft 
 west-country English, is of herds and corn. 
 Swans, not cormorants, glide in the stagnant 
 moat that engirdles the bishop 's palace. Rooks, 
 at sunset, fly in and out of towers tipped with 
 gold, where weary memory half expected to 
 
 49 
 
50 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 hear the scream of gulls. I am still sore from 
 resisting the tension of a physical and moral 
 vertigo, but it will soon be forgotten here. 
 
 But can I really ever forget? Shall I not 
 harken in my dreams to the man's flat voice, 
 without resonance or timhre, now listless and 
 again animated with unexpected feeling? Shall 
 I not be haunted by his face, glowing and fad- 
 ing without apparent cause, like a dying coal 
 fanned by chance draughts! And worse, far 
 worse than the trivial incidents connected with 
 him, — will Nature herself ever be the same to 
 mef Am I to go on thinking of all things as 
 either broadly good or sharply evil ; on the one 
 hand whatever is dangerous, dark, grim, bleak, 
 or solitary; on the other, the safe, the bright, 
 the open, whether in humanity or in that which 
 man has tamed and christened for companion- 
 ship? Four days ago, I felt free of the world. 
 It was my world, and not a bad one. According 
 to my view, there could scarce be anything alto- 
 gether wrong in it. There was a * * soul of good- 
 ness in things evil,'' and my optimism was al- 
 ways busy distilling it out. A man needed no 
 fellow to keep him company. He must be singu- 
 larly weak-hearted not to venture alone on cliffs 
 or desert moors. And to be dependent for 
 moral support upon the vicinity of a church was 
 to entertain a contemptible, an amazing, super- 
 
HAEDART MORT 51 
 
 stition. I rather prided myself on the univer- 
 sality of my sympathies. I was at home every- 
 where, and all men and beasts, all the powers 
 of the air, all the forces of earth and water 
 were my brothers — or so I deemed. 
 
 Nor do I yet feel sure that I was mistaken. I 
 should be only too glad to go back to my old 
 kingdom. But as I see it now perforce and 
 have seen it for three days and nights, it is 
 not a kingdom at all, but a house divided against 
 itself. 
 
 The change came upon me suddenly. Yet 
 in reviewing one by one the events of that fatal 
 morning, I can discern one or two preliminary 
 stages. It is quite possible they have no sig- 
 nificance, but I will set them down faithfully. 
 
 I had been spending several weeks at the lit- 
 tle Cornish port of Boscastle. It possesses al- 
 most the only harbour for many miles along the 
 north coast, if harbour it can be called, when 
 merely to glance at the tortuous channel, less 
 than sixty yards wide, is to shudder at the 
 hardihood of the fishermen who bring their 
 boats through such a pass. Outside, the full 
 fury of north and northwest winds lashes the 
 torn cliffs, where a cat could not find footing. 
 The entrance, which is rendered trebly difficult 
 because it can be used only at high tide, is a 
 canyon between perpendicular rocks of appall- 
 
52 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 ing height. At one point, the inner mouth of 
 a submarine cavern spouts terrific jets of water 
 and condensed air halfway across the open- 
 ing. A profound respect for the fishermen of 
 Boscastle sprang up in my mind as soon as I 
 saw their frail craft rocking behind a little 
 jetty in this so-called harbour. The feeling 
 deepened when I came to know them and ob- 
 served the cheerful courage of their lives. They 
 had apparently no more fear of the sea than I 
 had of the air I breathed. And I shared their 
 insensibility, at least in part, and as much as a 
 landsman could. Life was full of dangers, but 
 what of it! There was a Power over all, who 
 held the waters in the hollow of his hand. 
 
 I never was happier than when I set off from 
 Boscastle last Monday morning, to walk to 
 Hardart Mort, a promontory dangerous to 
 shipping, which is said to have earned its evil 
 name from the crimes of wreckers in the seven- 
 teenth century. I had attended service on Sun- 
 day evening in the Wesleyan chapel, with my 
 fisher friends, who are a very religious folk. 
 The preacher had offended, as I thought, the 
 very essence of religion, by insisting on a con- 
 trast, not plainly visible to me, between life in 
 general and what he termed The Life. 
 
 **A11 life, all real healthy life, is good!" I 
 cried aloud, as I strode along, that morning. 
 
HARDART MOET 53 
 
 The heather and the roots of furze and grass 
 were sending np, as incense to the sun, the aro- 
 matic perfume peculiar to moorlands in sum- 
 mer. Skylarks were singing matins in the blue. 
 Not a house nor a road, not even a hedge nor 
 a tree, was visible. The shore fell too close un- 
 der the cliff to be seen, but the surf made a 
 musical undertone, like an organ-swell, and far 
 below, to my right, sparkled the ocean. 
 
 **No, it cannot be true!'' I cried again; **it is 
 too exclusive. It would leave all this out!" 
 
 At nine o 'clock, an hour later, I was tramping 
 along a road, between farms, with here and 
 there a cottage. A very little boy, sitting on a 
 pile of stones, with a market-basket on his arm, 
 rose as I drew near, and after returning my 
 greeting, came trudging behind me. He was 
 evidently trying to keep up with me, and as it 
 seemed cruel to set him such a pace, I allowed 
 him to overtake me, and we went on together. 
 He had a bright, eager face and looked up con- 
 fidingly. **I suppose you are six years old," I 
 said. **No, sir, I am ten," he answered; and I 
 was sorry I had made the mistake, for a second 
 look showed that he was much undersized. He 
 kept step with me and talked freely. I was at- 
 tending but ill, when I heard him say, probably 
 in reply to a question of mine : * * Two brothers 
 and five sisters. One of the maidens is a crip- 
 
54 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 pie. She will have to have her legs broken and 
 put together again when she is twenty-one. The 
 doctor says so.'' 
 
 I note this encounter because it brought the 
 first shadow into my day. If I appear to mag- 
 nify trifles, it is because justice compels me to 
 seek in my train of thought that morning every 
 possible explanation for what followed. 
 
 The next incident that affected my mood was 
 very different. The first had awakened pathos. 
 This aroused anger. I stepped into a public- 
 house, the Malt Shovel, and sitting down at a 
 table, called for bread and cheese. A tall young 
 fellow, with a little bundle on his back, came in 
 while I was eating, followed by two heavy- 
 featured yokels, whom he treated to beer. He 
 was a quick, talkative man, and though I never 
 caught sight of his face, his back expressed a 
 shifty, devil-may-care disposition. The rustics 
 who were drinking his beer listened in silence, 
 whether admiringly or not, I could not tell, to 
 his remarks, which were extremely cynical. 
 
 * * Women is the thing ! " he declared. * ' They '11 
 stick to a man howsoever. You don't have got 
 to stick to they. I haven't seen my wife this 
 four months. She's in Bristol. I don't send 
 her no money. I need it too jolly much myself. 
 But I know she 's there all right, and when I go 
 home she'll be glad enough if I take her a few 
 
HAEDAET MORT 55 
 
 bob, and no questions asked. And she kisses 
 me, damned if she don't. She just stays there 
 and works and takes care of the children. God ! 
 I don't see how she does it." 
 
 And he rattled on for five minutes, and so I 
 left him, bragging of his vices. 
 
 A mile and a half beyond this tavern I came 
 to the village of Sunmay, and it might have 
 been ten o'clock when I entered it. The road 
 had brought me down from the moor and back 
 a little from the coast. Now it bent seaward 
 again, through a combe or wooded valley. At 
 the bottom murmured a brook. On my right 
 lay a rich estate. Fallow-deer were grazing in 
 a park, at the end of which stood a noble coun- 
 try-house, whose walls were once part of an 
 abbey. Sunmay village was a garden of roses 
 and honeysuckle. The low, thick- walled, cream- 
 coloured cottages were half hidden in bloom. 
 On rising ground behind them stood the church. 
 Its tower had been my objective for many miles, 
 and now that it was close at hand I could not 
 see it for the elms of the village. But I stepped 
 over the stile into the churchyard, and it soared 
 above me, nearly two hundred feet in air, and 
 almost unbroken by windows or tracery from 
 buttressed foot to battlemented top. Its uncom- 
 monly dark stone was damasked a delicate grey- 
 green by minute lichens, and the whole edifice 
 
56 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 had a friendly, though dignified, air. It was 
 large out of all proportion to the village, and I 
 daresay the tower was built to such a tremen- 
 dous height that it might serve as a landmark 
 for mariners. This thought came to me as I 
 heard the faint roar of surf to the north. 
 
 The churchyard was full of sunshine and the 
 hum of bees. It was screened from the village 
 by a hawthorn hedge, which met the lower 
 branches of the elms. A cluster of thick yew 
 trees bore witness to the immemorial length of 
 time that the place had been consecrated to its 
 present office. The door in the church porch 
 stood open, and entering I observed the famil- 
 iar objects to which cling the love and venera- 
 tion of centuries. There were ancient brasses 
 in the floor and quaint marble tablets on the 
 walls, one of the latter provoking, I remember, 
 a trifling irritation in me because it set forth 
 that a certain knight had fought for **King 
 Charles the Martyr, of blessed memory.*' A 
 richly carved wooden screen, probably of the 
 fourteenth century, and new altar cloths of yes- 
 terday, which were evidently the result of pa- 
 tient needlework, brought past and present to- 
 gether and showed the continuity of human 
 care. The whole church was a record of cul- 
 ture, profound, sincere, and unbroken from 
 earliest times. Except for the contentious ref- 
 
HAEDAET MOET 57 
 
 erence to King Charles, everything suggested 
 peace. 
 
 I came out through the north side, the side 
 towards the sea, and almost fell into an open 
 grave, which the sexton had just finished dig- 
 ging. He talked with me as he wiped his brow 
 and straightened his back. **A child is to be 
 buried here this afternoon, '* he said. When I 
 told him I was going to Hardart Mort, he said it 
 was less than half a mile off and advised me to 
 take a short cut over the moor. That side of 
 the churchyard presented a strange contrast to 
 the side near the village. Here were no trees, 
 and the mighty tower was the only object more 
 than three feet high that had successfully 
 braved the winter winds. A low stone wall 
 bounded the plot of sacred ground. 
 
 Stepping across, I was on the wild heath, 
 and at once the boom of breakers fell heavy on 
 my sense. Five hundred paces brought me to a 
 sharp declivity. The path zigzagged down to 
 the back of a group of stone buildings and a 
 ruined quay at the foot of the promontory on 
 which I stood. This was the only approach to 
 the sea, which was overhung everywhere else 
 with black cliffs. The tide was low, but had be- 
 gun to come in. Jagged reefs, which would be 
 covered in two hours, broke the Atlantic rollers 
 about a hundred yards out. They crunched the 
 
58 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 water like a jaw of ugly teeth, bnt owing to the 
 state of the tide there was little foam. The 
 demon was not hungry. 
 
 I went down the path. I had heard there was 
 an inn here, but nothing looked more unlikely, 
 and I doubted if it were true, till I saw a sign 
 swinging at the corner of the row of buildings. 
 My misgivings returned as I walked along their 
 front, between which and the sea, except at the 
 farther end, ran a parallel row of stone sheds. 
 AH doors and windows were shut. 
 
 I went along the passage and knocked at 
 every door. There was no response, and not a 
 creature was visible. Turning at the end, I 
 was walking back, when I felt conscious of be- 
 ing watched, and looking round saw a face at 
 an upper window. The man gazed at me a mo- 
 ment; then, raising the sash, asked, in a dull 
 tone: 
 
 **What do you want?'' 
 
 '*Is this an innT' I questioned. 
 
 '^I will come down," he replied, and disap- 
 peared. 
 
 He must have thought better of his rudeness 
 in the interval, for when he let me in he moved 
 and spoke briskly, and asked me, with an ap- 
 proach to expectancy, what I would have. I 
 ordered a bottle of beer and a dozen biscuits, 
 which he set before me on a table. The room 
 
HAEDART MORT 59 
 
 was bare and cold. The walls were hung with 
 rather less than the usual number of time- 
 tables, auction-bills, and steamship advertise- 
 ments. Pieces of harness littered the floor, and 
 there were only two chairs. Yet carelessness, 
 not poverty, appeared to be the cause of this 
 want of comfort, for the sideboard was encum- 
 bered with piles of delicate china, several 
 costly silver articles, a French clock, handsome 
 decanters and two or three folded tablecloths 
 of fine linen. 
 
 As I sat and munched my biscuits, I was 
 aware that the man was standing behind the 
 bar watching me. I was glad he had stayed, 
 for I wished to ask questions. But he got 
 ahead of me there and broke silence at once : 
 
 **You're a Devonshire man.'* 
 
 '*No,'' I replied; **try again." 
 
 I have never been met by so incredulous a 
 stare as greeted my simple answer. It was 
 quite insulting; not insolent exactly, but cun- 
 ning, as if implying that I was caught in a lie 
 and must know it. 
 
 *^You say you are not a Devonshire man?" 
 
 **No, I am not." 
 
 **You are not from these parts." 
 
 His sullen opposition roused a spirit of re- 
 sistance in me. I thought I knew my man and 
 
60 DREAMS AND MEMOEIES 
 
 would deal with him after his kind. So I an- 
 swered sharply: 
 
 **Are there no other places than Devonshire 
 and these parts I Now, I can tell by your speech 
 you are not from Devon nor yet Cornish.'' 
 
 * ^ So f he said slowly, like a German, and the 
 observant eyes were filled with interest. He 
 never took them from me, but until now his look 
 was one of watchfulness and not curiosity. 
 
 * * I 'd like you to tell me where I come from, ' ' 
 he admitted. 
 
 I felt I had a grip on him, and waiting some 
 time I said slowly : * * I think you are a Welsh- 
 man. ' ' 
 
 ** Thank you for the Welshman!" he ejacu- 
 lated, looking annoyed. **No, I am not a Welsh- 
 man. ' ' 
 
 I ate another biscuit. He stared at me still. 
 I was wondering how long I could stand it, and 
 hoping to parry rather than thrust, when he 
 said, with a flush of excitement : 
 
 * ^ I didn 't ask to come into this world. I don 't 
 know what I am. Maybe, now, I'm Scotch. 
 The Scotch are a shrewd people. But what are 
 you, if you say you are not a Devon man!" 
 
 One would have supposed, from his intense 
 interest, that it was a matter of great conse- 
 quence. I can fancy a savage thus interrogat- 
 ing a stranger to his tribe, but civilized people 
 
HARDAET MOET 61 
 
 show less concern about a man's origin. All 
 this time his basilisk eyes never turned aside. 
 I felt a deep repugnance to their owner, temp- 
 ered a little with triumph at having drawn his 
 fire. 
 
 **I am an American,'' I said. 
 
 **An American. So! You want Canada, 
 don't you?" 
 
 ** That's absurd," I answered. ** We've got 
 enough to look after. We have no ambitions in 
 that direction. ' ' 
 
 He watched me like a fencer, looking deep in- 
 to my eyes, distrusting me, and ready to smile 
 assent if I betrayed the smallest trace of cyni- 
 cism. 
 
 **What brings you to England?" 
 
 **We want to see the world. There is much 
 to learn in England. It's the home country, 
 and we like it." 
 
 **You like England," he said very slowly, as 
 if this was a degree of generosity beyond his 
 comprehension. And then, brightening, he 
 went on keenly: **0h, yes, you come here to 
 enjoy the protection of our laws and police, 
 and we pay the taxes." 
 
 **Yes, but if you came to America you would 
 be protected by our laws and police, and we pay 
 taxes too, and heavy ones, with our tariff. ' ' 
 
 **No, a man's life isn't safe in your country. 
 
62 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 You can't make me believe it is. But aren't 
 you for the tariff T' 
 
 I told him I was a free-trader, and we went 
 off into politics. When I mentioned Mr. As- 
 quith, Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. John Burns, Mr. 
 Keir Hardie and Mr. Balfour, he flashed up 
 again in his strange, fascinating way, and said : 
 
 **I know them all, — all those you name. I 
 am acquainted with them." 
 
 My impudence being less than his, I took 
 pains to conceal my incredulity, and as I was 
 now opening the bottle, I asked him to bring a 
 second one and another glass and drink with 
 me. 
 
 * ' Why should I do that ? ' ' he queried. ' ' Why 
 do you ask me 1 \ ' 
 
 /* Because it would please me,'' I answered. 
 **I enjoy your society, and wish to be polite." 
 
 **You do me great honour, and I thank you," 
 he said, but declined my invitation. I could see 
 that he was flattered every time I showed re- 
 spect for his intelligence. And it seemed to me 
 he was capable of unusual acuteness, though 
 narrow-minded, ill-informed, and altogether 
 lacking in sympathy. As I rose to go, he fol- 
 lowed me to the door, and getting in my way, 
 asked in a low voice : 
 
 **When you came into this house did you 
 know you were going to talk politics?" 
 
HAEDAET MORT 63 
 
 His attitude was threatening, though the 
 question was laughably harmless; so I bought 
 my way out with another compliment, which 
 caused him to flush with pleasure and step 
 aside : 
 
 **No, I couldn't be sure, of course, that I 
 should find anyone here who could converse so 
 intelligently on that subject/' 
 
 When I was once more in the sunshine, I felt 
 that I had escaped a wary foe. He might be 
 mad from solitude or he might be a criminal; 
 his demeanour had been that of a man with a 
 trap into which an unexpected victim had 
 stepped. In all our interview he had watched 
 me, and something had bidden me be on my 
 guard. But I had feared no physical harm. It 
 was my soul he watched, and not my body. I 
 climbed swiftly to the top of the downs, where 
 I sat a long time contemplating the scene, whose 
 sombreness even the brilliant sunshine could 
 not relieve. The abject row of bare masonry, 
 with shuttered windows ; the ruined quay, which 
 at its best could have been only a snare to any 
 sailing craft ; the jaws of rock, where the foam 
 was now dashing in agony; the grim cliffs to 
 the right and left; — here was no escape from 
 the sense of evil which oppressed me. In the 
 wild sea was naught but desolation and danger. 
 
64 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 irresistible physical force without pity, to which 
 all our human virtues would plead in vain. 
 
 **A man might be the crown and flower of his 
 kind,'' I thought; **his merits might be su- 
 preme ; the hope of the world might hang upon 
 his life ; and yet if he fell from yonder cliff or 
 were upset in yon cauldron of waters, he would 
 be lost. Things have no soul. And in that grey 
 stack of houses moves an intelligence equally 
 fatal and equally devoid of soul." 
 
 But here I checked myself for very shame. 
 This was an inference quite unwarranted by 
 facts. A mere nervous impression was tempt- 
 ing me into an absurd and unjust thought. * * No 
 man, ' ' I reflected, * * is wholly bad, and in regard 
 to this poor lonely fellow I have no reason to 
 think him bad at all. It was only my whim and 
 his unfortunate manner.'' 
 
 It would be a mistake, I thought, to go away 
 while the sunshine lasted. The prospect, if 
 awful, was worth coming far to behold. I sat 
 in the warm grass for an hour or so and took 
 a short sleep. When I awoke, it was past one 
 o'clock and the tide, now nearly full, was rag- 
 ing like a line of battle. The reefs were hidden 
 and the huge billows roUed over them unbroken, 
 to crash with thunder against the face of the 
 cliff. I was hungry and also a little remorseful. 
 ' * The poor chap stays there all the year round. 
 
HARD ART MORT 65 
 
 His winters must be dreadful. It will be only 
 fair to him and to myself if I go back to try to 
 look at him more charitably. And after all, the 
 place is an inn, and I'm hungry. I'll go down 
 and have dinner there. It may be he provides 
 meals, though I saw no women nor any other 
 creature but him. ' ' 
 
 So I went back. The passage between the inn 
 and the sheds was drenched with spray and 
 arched above with a rainbow. There was not 
 exactly a roaring all about, but rather a suc- 
 cession of crashes. The wind had freshened to 
 a gale and screamed over the comb of the stable 
 roof. Straws and pebbles eddied across the 
 ground, and a few tufts of grass were straining 
 at their roots in the less exposed crannies. The 
 place throbbed with light and sound, and even, 
 so I fancied, with motion. Unable to make my- 
 self heard by knocking, I entered the room 
 where I had been previously admitted. It was 
 empty, but the door into the next apartment on 
 the right was half open. From that end of the 
 house there was a view of the rocks and the sea, 
 beyond the row of stables. I looked into the 
 room. My host was standing at the window 
 there, holding a telescope to his eye and leaning 
 forward intently. 
 
 **Come in farther!'' he screamed, without 
 turning towards me. * * Come on to your doom ! 
 
66 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 Here is plain sailing, a safe harbour, a quiet 
 resting-place, and a warm fire! Come with 
 wind and tide. Let her run in behind the quay. 
 I'll show ye a flare." 
 
 I doubt if he would have seen me, even had he 
 turned fully round, but his face was still to- 
 wards the sea. There had been no sail in sight 
 when I came down the hill, and there could be 
 none now. 
 
 *'A flare, a flare!'' he shrieked; **a flare to 
 show ye the way — to death!" and his voice 
 dropped at the end. From a canister on the 
 deep window-ledge, he drew forth a Roman 
 candle. A lamp was burning in a bracket beside 
 him, in full sunlight. Over its flame he held the 
 end of the torch. In an instant the room was 
 ablaze with red fire and filling with smoke 
 driven back by the wind. Choking and blinded, 
 I turned and ran, but not before I caught sight 
 of his face in the glare. I fled to Sunmay 
 churchyard. They were burying the child, and 
 I stood trembling among the mourners, while 
 my heart clung to the comfortable words, 
 ** Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord." 
 
WITH EOMEO AND LITTLE NANNIE 
 
 There was a faint flush in the sky and an un- 
 real look about ordinary objects, which pro- 
 claimed the approach of dawn. We sat, two 
 boys of twelve, on a grey ridge of limestone 
 beside the Carlisle-Chambersburg turnpike, our 
 faces turned uneasily toward the east and our 
 toes poking up the dew-dampened dust. We 
 had come several miles from home, and it still 
 lacked many minutes to four in the morning. 
 The road ahead of us stretched white and silent 
 up a long hill, over whose shoulder it disap- 
 peared. We had not had the stomach to attack 
 the ascent, for a feverish and sleepless night 
 had preceded our excursion, and we had scorned 
 the thought of food. Under these circum- 
 stances daybreak proved a singularly disheart- 
 ening affair. I remember how disgustingly 
 commonplace all objects turned when at this 
 point fatigue had compelled us to rest and con- 
 sider the situation. 
 
 **Do you think they're coming T' I asked. 
 
 ** Let's sit here and wait," answered my 
 cousin Neil. 
 
 We must both have dropped asleep for an in- 
 67 
 
68 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 stant, or perhaps as much as a quarter of an 
 hour, for the next thing I remember was a sight 
 that brought us both to our feet. At the meet- 
 ing-point of road and sky, loomed a monstrous 
 moving shape surrounded with a halo — an ele- 
 phant poised for a breath of time on a heaven- 
 kissing hill, with the rising sun for a back- 
 ground ! 
 
 We did not rush forward to greet the longed- 
 for subject of our vigils. We could only stand 
 with thumping hearts and look. Romeo moved 
 majestically down the slope, swinging his trunk 
 from side to side, and Little Nannie, ponderous 
 child, ambled in her father 's wake. The rest of 
 the show followed: — gilt animal cages; long 
 trucks with canvas and tent-poles; close-shut- 
 tered sleeping-vans, from which a yawn was 
 jolted out, and a sleepy imprecation; spotted 
 ponies browsing here and there at the roadside, 
 then cantering forward to their places ; a muf- 
 fled object which could be nothing less than the 
 gorgeous band- waggon ; — ^we saw the whole glo- 
 rious company descend from unutterable 
 heights of splendour to our humble station. 
 Golden clouds of dust escorted them. The 
 silvery mists of morning lay furled along the 
 edge of the woods to make way for them, and 
 the dewy grass twinkled at their approach. 
 What wonder then if two boys, whose expecta- 
 
ROMEO AND LITTLE NANNIE 69 
 
 tions had been nourished for a month on circus 
 posters, were chained fast with awe. From the 
 day when a piratical-looking man drove a pair 
 of white-coated, pink-faced horses into Ship- 
 pensburg and set that quiet old town ablaze 
 with magnificent pictures of ladies jumping 
 through hoops, perilous feats on the flying 
 trapeze, complicated tumbling, and above all, 
 the great elephant Romeo forming a pyramid 
 with his daughter. Little Nannie, on his back, 
 Forepaugh and Robinson had robbed us of our 
 sleep. After the light-hearted manner of our 
 species when they snuff a circus afar, we began 
 immediately to ** practise tricks,'' and I still 
 think, as I look back, that we were pretty fair 
 gymnasts, though not of course real contortion- 
 ists. 
 
 Several considerations led us to a belief that 
 we ought to see that show for nothing. Our 
 careful preparation for it, both physical and 
 mental, was one reason; another, the fact that 
 the tent was to be pitched in my grandfather's 
 pasture-lot. Moreover, we meant to be useful, 
 holding horses and carrying water. 
 
 So when Romeo and Little Nannie led their 
 caravan past us in the dawn, which had ceased 
 to be flat and unromantic, we stared at every 
 detail with burning eyes, as upon our proper 
 prey. After the main procession there came 
 
70 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 half a dozen side-shows, and finally a buggy in 
 which lolled two gentlemen with their hats 
 pulled down over their eyes, — Messrs. Fore- 
 paugh and Robinson themselves, we surmised, 
 though we felt that had we owned that circus 
 we should have allowed no thought of economy 
 to prevent our riding in the band- waggon. 
 
 We were about to fall in behind, and see our 
 circus safely into town, when down the hill came 
 a jaded horse drawing a two-seated carriage 
 the top of which was covered with kettles and 
 pans, and clothes drying in the wind. The 
 driver was a man somewhat past middle age, 
 who sat in a posture of deep dejection, with his 
 elbows resting on his knees and his eyes half- 
 closed. A girl of about our own age was sit- 
 ting beside him asleep. An oilcloth curtain be- 
 hind the front seat screened from view the in- 
 terior of the carriage. We were about to let 
 this melancholy vehicle pass, when the man, 
 perceiving us, raised his head, stopped his 
 horse, and called out, 
 
 **How far is it to this blamed Shippens- 
 burg?^' 
 
 We told him, to the best of our knowledge. 
 
 *'Have they got a cheap hotel there f was 
 his next question. 
 
 We mentioned the Black Bear and the 
 Branch House. 
 
ROMEO AND LITTLE NANNIE 71 
 
 **Town with several hotels, eh?" he asked 
 with quickened interest. ^* Perhaps youVe got 
 a hospital then?" 
 
 **No," we answered, we did not know of any 
 hospital. 
 
 *' Maybe you've got a poor-house then, or 
 some place where a poor man may take his 
 crippled son?" he continued, in a sharper tone. 
 
 **No," we replied, there was no poor-house. 
 
 **What, in heaven's name, then," he burst 
 forth with sudden fury, **is a poor beaten dog 
 like me to go to ? What will become of my boy, 
 of my boy and girl?" 
 
 He was looking over our heads now, and ad- 
 dressing, not us, but some invisible adversary. 
 His vehemence woke the girl. **You want to 
 turn us off," he cried, shaking his fist at the 
 vanishing circus; *'you will kick me out, as if 
 I hadn't helped to set you up in the first place. 
 I was as rich as you, five years ago. I was the 
 best man of the three. I was the making of 
 you both, and you are for shutting us out this 
 day, because my poor boy has hurt his back; 
 and the Twining Twins will be done for ! ' ' 
 
 His speech, which began with a white rage, 
 singular to behold in one so lately nodding in 
 slumber, had declined into a weary, half-hu- 
 mourous whine, and he stopped as if ashamed 
 of his outburst. The girl, who looked brave in 
 
72 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 spite of her tears, laid her hand on her father 's 
 arm to quiet him. He turned toward us with 
 an attempt to smile, and said more cheerfully : 
 
 **It's pretty hard to have one of the Twins 
 knocked out and know we'll be dropped if he 
 can't enter the ring by three o'clock this after- 
 noon, which he can no more do with a strained 
 back, than Simple Simon there," pointing to 
 his dejected yellow horse, **can beat Dexter." 
 
 Dexter was the great trotting horse in our 
 boyhood, whose name and fame were in every- 
 body's mouth. 
 
 Neil was a bold lad. He made out to address 
 the circus man and asked, **Is he in there!" 
 
 **Yes, poor boy, and what I said about a hotel 
 was all guff, for we can't afford to put up at 
 your Hotel Continental nor your Metropolitan 
 Grand, but must either enter the ring or the 
 almshouse. ' ' 
 
 The girl nodded confirmation and shut her 
 big black eyes. Then she opened them again 
 and looked at Neil and me. I think it was this 
 deep sorrowful gaze that settled the question 
 for us both. The sequel is the rest of my story. 
 
 Simple Simon was encouraged to go on, and 
 we walked beside the front wheels, talking, with 
 lumps in our throats, to these persons whom, in 
 spite of their misery, we acknowledged as su- 
 perior beings. We learned that the man's 
 
EOMEO AND LITTLE NANNIE 73 
 
 name was Donovan, and that the Twining 
 Twins, his children, were the most wonderful 
 tumblers in the profession, having tumbled be- 
 fore the crowned heads of Europe, Asia, and 
 Africa, many of whom, the fond parent re- 
 marked, had in their turn tumbled in the dust. 
 In all this conversation Mr. Donovan never 
 again attained the pitch of energy and indigna- 
 tion to which his spirits had originally flared. 
 He seemed a mild, easy-mannered fellow, with 
 a streak of humour, and, as I afterwards found, 
 was supported through life by a philosophy of 
 consistent optimism. 
 
 Presently a boy's voice was heard from the 
 back seat, ** Cicely, I want to be turned"; 
 whereupon Donovan let Simple Simon put 
 down his head to eat grass, they rolled up the 
 curtain, and the girl wheeled round to help her 
 brother. 
 
 We were to see a boy who belonged to a 
 circus, a boy of our own age, who habitually 
 and legitimately practised the most fascinating 
 art, a member of the most excellent profession, 
 one to whom the magic ''ring'* was as familiar 
 as our old barn-floor to us ! It was almost too 
 much for Neil's nerves. I could see his lips 
 tighten and his eyelids quiver. 
 
 ''Charles, you must not sit up," cried Cicely. 
 
 The boy had risen painfully from a heap of 
 
74 DEEAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 blankets and was steadying himself with both 
 hands on the framework of the carriage. 
 
 **I will sit up,'' he declared; **and I'm going 
 to act this afternoon. It's either that or die, 
 Cicely." 
 
 The girl looked as if she thought so too, but 
 tried, nevertheless, to cheer her brother by 
 hopeful predictions: the managers would let 
 them off for a few days until he should be bet- 
 ter — a suggestion which it was plain to see they 
 all took as merely humourous ; she might go in- 
 to the ring alone and perform solo parts — a 
 proposition which aroused the boy's scorn. The 
 father, who had got down and was tickling Sim- 
 ple Simon's nose with a straw, turned to us 
 with good-natured sarcasm and said : 
 
 ''If either of these young gentlemen had re- 
 ceived half as good an education as you, 
 Charles, he might do the turn for you, my boy, 
 but it's plain to see they have no joints." 
 
 We were greatly humbled by this remark, 
 which must be true, coming from so high an 
 authority; but as the girl was now facing en- 
 tirely towards her brother, whom she sought to 
 soothe and make comfortable in his blankets, 
 while we were near the horse 's head, I ventured 
 to say, very quickly: ''We can do some acts." 
 
 "What now, in heaven's name?" asked the 
 man, with deepened sarcasm. I blushed hot and 
 
ROMEO AND LITTLE NANNIE 75 
 
 was dumb. Neil spoke up: **0h, we don't 
 know the names, but we can do some double 
 tumbling. ' ' 
 
 '*Fall to now, me lads !'' cried Donovan, drop- 
 ping the straw, and laughing heartily. **Give 
 us a rehearsal ! Cicely, prop Charles up and 
 let the poor boy see the fun. It may cure his 
 back ! These little swells are going to do double 
 tumbling! Ladies and gentlemen, you are now 
 about to behold the crowning feature of the 
 performance. These pretty boys will now per- 
 FORM ! Simple Simon, do not crowd against the 
 ropes ; you can see from where you are, sir ! ' ' 
 
 This cruel speech was made with such gayety 
 that we scarcely felt its sting. What unutter- 
 able vanity possessed us? We felt ashamed to 
 the roots of our hair, but ** Fighting Blood!'' 
 whispered Neil in my ear, and * * True Blue ! " I 
 echoed back, and off went our coats. Swells 
 though we were to Mr. Donovan, we were bare- 
 foot country boys, and our costume was not 
 long a-making. I have never stripped for a 
 fight with worse trembling of the knees, nor 
 yet, after all, with a steadier heart. Was it 
 merely to prove myself no duffer and carry out 
 our boast, or was I nerved to this barefaced 
 conduct by a more secret hope! I felt the deep 
 soft blackness of those eyes behind me. I dared 
 not look around. Neil, I made sure, was wor- 
 
76 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 ried by the thought of Charles sitting up in his 
 blankets to criticise our certain failure; but to 
 me neither Charles nor his father counted more 
 than Simple Simon. 
 
 We went through our poor little repertory, 
 and I am bound to say, outdid all our previous 
 efforts, in spite of the gnawings of hunger and 
 the shakiness of limbs unaccustomed to early 
 rising. But to the born artist an audience is 
 always inspiring, and many a born artist, too, 
 has done good work on an empty stomach and 
 with unstrung nerves. 
 
 To believe Donovan, however, we performed 
 very badly. The boy was non-committal. But 
 Cicely did us the honour of coming over to the 
 patch of turf where we were, and aiding us with 
 some advice. She even went through one or two 
 figures with us. 
 
 Few persons were awake when we reached 
 town, except boys. We led our friends by a side 
 street directly to the circus-field, where the 
 poles were being hoisted and tent-pegs being 
 driven home. Fires had been lighted for break- 
 fast ; the animal waggons had been drawn up in 
 a circle, but not yet opened ; men and boys were 
 leading the horses off to an adjoining lot, and 
 the side-show people had most of their little 
 booths set up. But, as Donovan pointed out, 
 with a sigh, all the other ** artists" had retired 
 
EOMEO AND LITTLE NANNIE 77 
 
 to the best hotel in town, for breakfast, drinks, 
 and more sleep. 
 
 Neil drew me aside and said: ** Let's take 
 them to your barn, where we can get things to 
 them easily.'' 
 
 I demurred, but would not state my reason. 
 I was only too much afraid he would see it for 
 himself. For it was evident to me that my 
 family must not be allowed to connect me in 
 any way with the Donovans, in view of certain 
 plans that were forming in my head. So we 
 helped Mr. Donovan to some old rails for his 
 fire, and I brought half a ham, a loaf of bread, 
 and sundry other provisions from the house. 
 We had expected to honour ourselves by carry- 
 ing water for the wild animals and to gain fa- 
 vour in various other ways with the showmen, 
 but a higher mission had revealed itself, to me 
 at least, — because I cannot speak for Neil, — 
 and the Donovans received all our attentions. 
 
 Three huge canvas tents now loomed in the 
 middle of our familiar pasture, and three round 
 areas beneath them had become consecrated and 
 mysterious ground. One tent held the menag- 
 erie, which was all of the show that the children 
 of ministers and church elders might legiti- 
 mately expect to behold. Another covered the 
 RING. The third, which was smaller, was an 
 edifice more hallowed still, for it constituted the 
 
78 BREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 dressing-room, the arcanum of wonders, the 
 nursery of art. 
 
 The morning passed miserably. The Dono- 
 vans slept on the ground under their carriage ; 
 the show lost interest in our eyes, and I am 
 ashamed to say we went home and took break- 
 fast with our families at eight o ^clock and slept 
 afterwards till noon. No word of our hopes, 
 fears, or plans passed between Neil and me. A 
 coldness lay upon our intercourse, and only 
 great confidence in each other ^s fidelity, tested 
 in many a scrape at school and many a battle 
 with boys from the other end of town, permitted 
 us to sleep that morning in different houses. I 
 knew he would not go back to the circus-lot 
 alone, and I knew he trusted me to wait for him. 
 
 The menagerie was open at one o'clock and 
 the circus began at two. All Shippensburg and 
 the adjacent parts of our valley, and the pine- 
 covered foothills of the South Mountain had 
 sent their population into our green pasture- 
 lot and the narrow lane that led to it. Two boys 
 only were not in that crowd. For Neil and I, 
 with our new friends, were sitting around a 
 gymnasium mat in the dressing-tent. Charles 
 was reclining on a pile of blankets, looking very 
 black and disapproving. Cicely, arrayed in 
 tights, was whispering to him earnestly, with 
 frequent glances in our direction. Donovan had 
 
EOMEO AND LITTLE NANNIE 79 
 
 just come from having an interview with the 
 owners. His hands shook and his face was 
 white with anger. 
 
 **They say they will let you off for this af- 
 ternoon, but you must act to-night or give it 
 up altogether.'' 
 
 This time he did not curse and storm as he 
 had done in the morning, nor refer to his for- 
 mer prominence in the affairs of the firm and 
 his conviction that they wanted to get rid of 
 him because they owed him money. It was a 
 case of heart-break, and words were superflu- 
 ous. 
 
 Cicely ran forward to meet him, and took his 
 hand. * * Father, do not say they cannot. These 
 boys can act. Charles himself says they can. 
 And one of them will go with us and take 
 Charles 's place for a few days, till he is better. 
 They will practise with me now in this quiet 
 corner, during the performance, and by night 
 we shall have a few acts ready. ' ' 
 
 Donovan jumped at the suggestion. His face 
 flushed. Tears rose in his eyes and overflowed. 
 He seized his daughter's hand, and kissed her, 
 and pressed her to his heart. Then, in his im- 
 pulsive Irish way, he turned to us and gave us 
 each a hand, and exclaimed: **God bless you, 
 boys, you have given life to these poor children. 
 We shall bless your generous hearts. But your 
 
80 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 parents ! ' ' he cried, taking a sudden step back- 
 ward. * * They will seek you, they will find you, 
 and the name of Donovan will be disgraced. 
 And they will suffer, good souls, at the loss, 
 temporary though it may be, of two such noble 
 lads.'* And he stood off and surveyed us ad- 
 miringly. **But no,'' he resumed in his bland 
 manner, **I cannot refuse your unselfish offer. 
 I cannot throw a wet blanket upon your ardent 
 aspirations to relieve the poor and needy. I 
 will run the risk. Donovan accepts the respon- 
 sibility. And the alarm of your noble kinsfolk 
 will be but for a day, but for a day — or maybe 
 three or four,'' he added, with a wink. 
 
 Charles hung his head and looked ashamed, 
 but gave no other sign of dissent. As for Ci- 
 cely, she was radiant. Her breath came and 
 went quickly, the blood coursed in rich waves 
 over her brow, and her eyes glowed with an 
 eager appeal. Neil and I, though we knew our 
 families would be very far from taking things 
 as easily as Mr. Donovan predicted, had long 
 since — I at least in the early morning, Neil 
 perhaps as soon — ^made up our minds to sacri- 
 fice our families and everything else that stood 
 between us and the life to which we felt dedi- 
 cated by our talents, our opportunity, and our 
 secret love. 
 
EOMEO AND LITTLE NANNIE 81 
 
 ' * Then quick, boys, get to work ! * ' cried Dono- 
 van. 
 
 Cicely ran to the blankets and drew from un- 
 der them two pairs of tights which she had 
 ready. Donovan dressed us behind a canvas 
 screen, and in a few minutes we were acting 
 turn about with Cicely. Donovan was a bril- 
 liant trainer, and Cicely took great pains to in- 
 struct us. Charles never opened his mouth. We 
 worked on, oblivious of the entries land sorties 
 of cavalcades, clowns, bare-back riders, and jug- 
 glers. It is true we heard the band-music in the 
 circus tent, and it inspired us. One or two cir- 
 cus men came and looked at our operations, but 
 we heeded them not. I dared not glance at Neil. 
 Never did I love him more, yet a rage of jeal- 
 ousy burned in my brain. Whatever turn he 
 made of leg or arm, I tried to repeat and excel. 
 His best efforts, which I knew I could not equal, 
 made me grind my teeth and sneer inwardly. I 
 trust I was able to conceal my emotions from 
 the Donovans, but am not sure that Cicely did 
 not understand me thoroughly. It was a hard 
 afternoon, both for our bones and our con- 
 sciences. But how that girl could perform! 
 She was strong, she was graceful, she was 
 beautiful in every motion. Like a kitten at 
 play, she sprang from one end of the mat to the 
 other, crouching, bounding, feigning difficulty 
 
82 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 where none existed for her, and concealing ef- 
 fort where the strain was immense. Of course 
 the programme we went through was very 
 simple and elementary, and the boy Charles 
 never ceased to look as if he despised the whole 
 proceeding. 
 
 At last Donovan said, *^ Thank you, boys, 
 that's enough. You'd better go home now and 
 rest, and eat a good supper, but not too much, 
 and be here again by six. ' ' 
 
 The evening performance was billed for 
 seven o'clock. At six we were with Donovan 
 in the same corner of the dressing-tent, waiting 
 for Cicely. But as she still did not come, Dono- 
 van finally went out to his carriage to see what 
 was the matter, and returned after a long ab- 
 sence, grumbling to himself, and said with a 
 shrug: **We must await the lady's good 
 pleasure." Twice again he lost his patience 
 and went to fetch her, but returned alone each 
 time. Evidently he feared to lose sight of us, 
 lest we might run away. Evidently, too, he 
 could not hurry his accomplished daughter. At 
 last, not much before seven, she appeared, with 
 a face much discomposed. She had been crying, 
 and was very white and miserable. **Well, 
 Miss," cried her father, **have you allayed the 
 scruples of Mr. Punctilious! Is the great case 
 of conscience settled! Shall we dance with 
 
ROMEO AND LITTLE NANNIE 83 
 
 partner this or partner that? Hurry up now, 
 what's the odds?'' 
 
 Cicely gave him a reproachful glance and 
 stepped up to Neil and me, and said, with trem- 
 bling voice : **Boys, we want to thank you, my 
 brother and I, for your friendliness to us." 
 Our hearts fell — ^was she going to throw us both 
 over and give up the performance ? * * No, ' ' she 
 continued, smiling sadly into our troubled faces, 
 **I must take one of you — and — and — I choose 
 George. ' ' And with that she turned her face to 
 the tent-wall. 
 
 ** Humph," growled Donovan, ''a tragic af- 
 fair! Come now. Cicely, no more opera! Get 
 yourself ready, while I dress George." 
 
 I caught one glimpse of Neil, the light all 
 gone from his face, his head sunk visibly lower 
 between his shoulders, and his arms dangling 
 as if some one had struck him a fearful blow. 
 The next minute he had vanished. ** Could it 
 be that he too loved Cicely?" I asked myself 
 hypocritically. **Was I selfish to accept my 
 felicity?" **How could I help it if she pre- 
 ferred me?" Anyhow, I thought it was heroic 
 in him to walk away so quietly. The fear 
 flashed across my unwilling mind that perhaps 
 he had gone to betray me, to tell my friends 
 what I was doing, but I repelled it with a flush 
 of shame, for I knew him incapable of such 
 
84 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 baseness. But the ugly suspicion was there, 
 nevertheless, and returned afterwards at inter- 
 vals. 
 
 Donovan dressed me in a suit of Charles's 
 tights, and then proceeded carefully to disguise 
 me. He covered my forehead and one eye with 
 a broad band of adhesive plaster, darkened my 
 skin with a stain, extended and depressed the 
 corners of my mouth with rouge, and thickened 
 my eyebrows with burnt cork. At a distance 
 and under the vague lights of a circus tent, I 
 might pass unrecognised by my own shadow. 
 
 Our performance came a little after the mid- 
 dle of the programme. Cicely had paid no at- 
 tention to me after she came back in her ring 
 costume, and avoided my eye (literally my eye, 
 for one was bandaged). But just before going 
 on, she came up and pressed my hand. Dono- 
 van stepped out first, arrayed in Moorish dress, 
 with an absurd red turban and a pair of baggy 
 red trousers, and made a little speech: 
 
 ** Ladies and gentlemen, the performance 
 which you will now have the pleasure of behold- 
 ing consists of the most intricate, difficult, and 
 dangerous tumbling ever witnessed by the eye 
 of man. The crowned heads of Europe, Asia, 
 and Africa have been turned giddy by contem- 
 plating these prodigies. The Twining Twins, 
 ladies and gentlemen, are twelve years old, and 
 
ROMEO AND LITTLE NANNIE 85 
 
 until two nights ago they never knew a care. 
 But at an entertainment in your own beautiful 
 valley, the boy was painfully, though not seri- 
 ously, hurt. Injured in the performance of 
 duty, the little hero, despite a father's protest, 
 insists upon continuing to appear before the 
 public, whom he adores ! Ladies and gentlemen, 
 these are honourable scars. Ladies and gentle- 
 men — " 
 
 **0h, stop your whine and let 'em twine!" 
 yelled a voice from the benches, which I recog- 
 nised as the voice of Arty Speer, the town hu- 
 mourist. The town appreciated wit, for a roar 
 of laughter, dominated by the wild guffaws of 
 Tom Gough, sexton of the Presbyterian church, 
 drowned Donovan's further eloquence. 
 
 **Come," said Cicely, and we ran into the 
 ring. Our first trick or two received little no- 
 tice, for Shippensburg was enjoying the annual 
 exhibition of Tom Gough 's extravagant sense 
 of humour. This was fortunate, as we had re- 
 served our best parts for the last, and even our 
 best was barely passable. And Cicely had de- 
 vised a few little bits of solo tumbling, which 
 she did very well, while I pretended to adjust 
 my bandages. We pulled through somehow ; in 
 pretty ragged style, I have no doubt. To this 
 day, the memory of those ten minutes is like a 
 nightmare, and when I try to recall details, I 
 
86 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 hear only that horrible roar of a great crowd, 
 with Tom Gough's shrieks soaring above the 
 din, and not the lovely band-music playing 
 '*The Blue Jnniata,*' and I see only a confused 
 dancing of lights, and not the soft glow of Ci- 
 cely's black eyes. But out of this dim and pain- 
 ful confusion one point pierces sharp and un- 
 forgetable — Neil's face, suddenly perceived at 
 the last moment, as we trotted out through the 
 passage to the dressing-room. 
 
 Romeo, followed by Little Nannie and the 
 Sahara Caravan, consisting of three scrawny 
 camels, was entering the circus tent, and I al- 
 most ran between his forelegs, but he brushed 
 me away with his trunk, as if I had been a 
 troublesome puppy, and sent me rolling into a 
 corner. There I found Zazel, the human can- 
 non-ball, composing the plaits of her hair into a 
 pad for her oft-endangered head. A juggler 
 was taking his swords out of a long box. A 
 clown, Mr. James Harmony, as I afterwards 
 learned, was sticking hairpins into the head- 
 dress of the Sheik's Daughter, or the Arabian 
 Bareback Artist, who, when I was subsequent- 
 ly presented to her, was content with the less 
 romantic name of Miss Polly 'Aines, and dis- 
 tinguished in private life only by a cockney ac- 
 cent. These ladies, I found, had great trouble 
 in keeping their hair up, and one reason, no 
 
EOMEO AND LITTLE NANNIE 87 
 
 doubt, for poor James Harmony's well-known 
 popularity, both in this show and the others he 
 afterwards belonged to, was his habit of carry- 
 ing hairpins, safety-pins, and hatpins in a se- 
 cure place about his person, for the use of all 
 who required assistance in their toilets. 
 
 By the time the performance closed. Simple 
 Simon was in the shafts again, greatly re- 
 freshed by oats from my grandfather's barn, 
 and we were in the carriage threading our way 
 through the departing crowd. I could hear a 
 hoarse voice trying to persuade people to stay 
 and attend the *^ concert,'' for the small price 
 of one dime or ten cents. The red, smoky flare 
 of torches made the darkness only more intense. 
 We were choked with invisible dust. The side- 
 shows were falling like houses of cards, and the 
 vast menagerie-tent had already, to my sur- 
 prise, vanished completely, though the rank 
 savage odour of wild beasts still lay heavy 
 about the place. Romeo and Little Nannie, the 
 camels, and trained horses, and all the animal 
 cages had disappeared, and I could hardly per- 
 suade myself we should ever see them again, 
 so like magic seemed their flight. I shall not 
 trouble my readers with a statement of the hor- 
 rid condition of my conscience as I thus sneaked 
 away from my home and native town. But I 
 was desperately afraid — afraid to go, afraid of 
 
88 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 being caught and kept from going. As we 
 squeezed through the narrow alley jammed 
 with people, which led to the Chambersburg 
 road, a hand was pushed through the side of our 
 carriage, and a voice whispered: ** Fighting 
 Blood!'' *^True Blue'' I blurted, with a rush of 
 tears, and a big lump in my throat, and seized 
 the proffered hand. **01d man, you did well," 
 the voice continued. **Keep a stiff upper lip, 
 and I'll cover your tracks. I'll stop at your 
 house and say you were afraid to go home for 
 fear of being punished for going to the circus at 
 night, and that you're going to sleep with me. 
 And to-morrow morning I '11 go fishing with you 
 before breakfast and stay all day." **Good 
 bye, old Neil," I whispered, **you are Tkue 
 Blue." 
 
 The next night we performed in Chambers- 
 burg. Donovan had with difficulty persuaded 
 the owners to omit the Twining Twins perfor- 
 mance at the afternoon show. We employed 
 the time thus gained in practice. Cicely 
 frowned black upon me every time I spoke to 
 her or looked at her, except for good reason. 
 Her cond.uct, and an unspeakable weariness in 
 all my body, and the pangs of guilty conscience 
 made me wretchedly unhappy. As I had many 
 acquaintances in Chambersburg, I was obliged 
 to lie in the carriage all day except when prac- 
 
ROMEO AND LITTLE NANNIE 89 
 
 tising behind a screen in the dressing-tent. 
 Donovan was busy telling some lie to the circus 
 people, who were becoming inquisitive. Charles 
 alone was kind to me, — for him astonishingly 
 kind. He and I lay in the back of the carriage 
 conversing quite sociably. 
 
 The towns of the Cumberland Valley are dis- 
 tributed along its length at intervals of from 
 ten to tv/elve miles, on purpose to accommodate 
 circuses. Greencastle is ten miles south of 
 Chambersburg, and Hagerstown ten miles 
 south of Greencastle. We played in these three 
 towns on successive nights, Donovan with in- 
 creased difficulty obtaining permission to have 
 the afternoons for practice. He had two ob- 
 jects in this. One was to develop my talents, 
 which proved to be very limited ; the other, and 
 more important, was to conceal me from the 
 tell-tale light of day. I learned in Greencastle 
 that the owners had been closely questioned 
 about a runaway boy, and had warned Donovan 
 that he could not keep me long. It was becom- 
 ing an open secret among the circus people that 
 Donovan had picked up a substitute for his son. 
 
 We reached Martinsburg, West Virginia, late 
 on Sunday morning after crossing the Potomac 
 River in the night, and slept all that day, except 
 for the afternoon practice, which Cicely and I 
 went through as usual. She consistently avoid- 
 
90 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 ed me at other times. Once or twice, however, 
 when I was gloomiest, I felt myself mysterious- 
 ly enveloped by her soft, luminous gaze, and 
 some of the romance which was slipping away 
 so fast came floating back. Charles lay on his 
 face in the sun all day, and said the warmth was 
 doing him good. Donovan smoked his pipe, and 
 never went far from the carriage, in which I 
 was obliged to remain behind drawn curtains. 
 Cicely wandered at will. 
 
 Monday afternoon Charles donned his ring 
 costume and showed me some tricks. He tested 
 his back in various postures, and declared he 
 should be well in twenty-four hours. Unhappy 
 as I was, it did not altogether please me to 
 think my circus days might so soon be over. 
 But I had never expected to stay longer than 
 until Charles should be himself again. 
 
 That night as we trotted out of the ring, a 
 man, who sat where I must pass him, rose and 
 laid his hand on my shoulder and spoke my 
 name. It was my Uncle James. He accom- 
 panied me into the dressing tent, and with him 
 came a policeman. 
 
 ** Uncle James,'' I begged, '*do not trouble 
 the people I am with. I will go home with you, 
 and they are not to blame." 
 
 **I'm not so sure of that," he replied. But 
 when he turned to look for Cicely, she was gone. 
 
EOMEO AND LITTLE NANNIE 91 
 
 In a moment, however, she lifted a flap of the 
 tent and was back again, and I knew she had 
 been out to warn her father, and that Simple 
 Simon was already being harnessed to the car- 
 riage. Unmindful of the policeman. Cicely ad- 
 vanced to me, took my hand, kissed it, wet it 
 with her tears, and without lifting her face, 
 murmured: ** Thank you, George; you have 
 helped us out of our trouble. My brother will 
 be well tomorrow, I am sure. We shall be away 
 from this town in ten minutes, if you keep the 
 policeman here.'* Then after a pause, she con- 
 tinued: ** Forgive me for being cross to you,*' 
 and as she darted out into the black night, I 
 was caught again in that flood of soft radiance 
 which she had the power of projecting from 
 her eyes. 
 
 My uncle fortunately took time to explain to 
 me that he wanted to have Donovan arrested, 
 and not the owners of the circus, and as Cicely 
 had predicted, when we came to the spot where 
 our carriage had stood, my friends had disap- 
 peared. A telegram was sent home announcing 
 my capture, and Uncle James and I slept at a 
 hotel that night and took the earliest train 
 northward in the morning. I kept thinking of 
 Donovan and Cicely and Charles moving in the 
 opposite direction, out of my life forever, — up 
 
92 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 the Shenandoah Valley to-day, and who knows 
 where to-morrow? 
 
 I had a most uncomfortable time at home for 
 awhile. It is so unpleasant to see one's family 
 pretending to be grieved. But I had only to go 
 out of our front gate to feel myself a hero. The 
 other boys were very handsome about that. In 
 my heart, I knew Neil was the true hero, and 
 one damp spring evening, nearly a year later, 
 when the frogs were piping in a way that moved 
 the conscience, as we were standing in the old 
 pasture-lot, with our feet on last year's circus 
 ring, now covered with fresh verdure, I told 
 him how much I admired his conduct. He said 
 never a word and turned away his head. 
 
 Eight years later I was a Senior at Prince- 
 ton. Throughout my course I had attended 
 every circus that came along. There was noth- 
 ing peculiar about that, for no Princeton stu- 
 dent ever misses one. But I had gone with 
 eyes only for the tumblers, and had always 
 come away disappointed. In May of Senior 
 year, however, my expectation was rewarded. 
 I saw Cicely and Charles perform. Leaving the 
 tent at once, I met Cicely a few minutes later 
 in the field outside, and asked her if she knew 
 me. She shook my hand heartily and called 
 Charles. He looked as if he would bite my 
 
EOMEO AND LITTLE NANNIE 93 
 
 head off, till she told him, with a laugh, who I 
 was, and then he was affable enough. **Yes, 
 those were hard times," she said, after we had 
 spoken of the past; **but I hope I may never 
 forget them. You were very kind to Charles. 
 For my part — I wonder if you noticed it — I was 
 rather smitten by the good looks of your cousin 
 Neil.'' **Yes, she was,'' interrupted Charles, 
 **and I wanted her to choose him instead of you, 
 for he certainly was a better tumbler, but she 
 just got stubborn and insisted on you. I don't 
 understand it yet. I suppose it's being a wo- 
 
LOST VINETA 
 
 I have shaken hands eagerly with many a 
 young fellow about to set forth upon his first 
 visit to the old world, for travel or study, and 
 I doubt if the recipient of my farewells has 
 ever appreciated how heartfelt my congratula- 
 tions were. **I envy you this chance, young- 
 ster" or ** I wish I were but one and twenty, 
 with my steamer ticket and letter of credit in 
 my pocket and all the world before me ! ^ ' The 
 youngsters often seem troubled about little 
 things and incapable of responding to my en- 
 thusiasm. But memory has obliterated the 
 trifles for me, and I recall only the sunshine of 
 glorious days and the happiness of discovering 
 Europe, and am apt to quote to the indifferent 
 boys, with a flood of sympathy in my heart, the 
 words of the German poet which summon up 
 for me so much that deserves gratitude and 
 ceaseless memory: 
 
 ^^Wem Gott will recJite Gunst erweisen, 
 Den schickt Er in die weite Welt,'' 
 
 Yet I ought to know better than to give such 
 indiscriminate praise to the bygone times. The 
 
 94 
 
LOST VINETA 95 
 
 sunshine, it must be confessed, was not uninter- 
 rupted, and now that I stop to think, there were 
 days of uncertainty and gloom. And perhaps 
 a youth here and there, of those to whom I give 
 a parting grasp and quote my favourite lines on 
 such occasions, may discover the bitterness of 
 death beyond the smiling seas. One at least 
 there was, vir juvenis ornatissimus, as he is 
 styled in his old matriculation paper, which now 
 hangs on my library wall, and which proclaimed 
 him to be numero civium Universitatis Frideri- 
 cae Guilelmae Berolinensis, who drank deep of 
 all the delights of old romance, only to find 
 death, Alas! at the bottom of the cup. There 
 can be no harm in telling his story; it is an 
 honour to him and will, I trust, not check the 
 generous hopes or dash the pleasure of any 
 ardent young traveller. 
 
 About thirty-five years ago a group of seven 
 or eight old college acquaintances were attend- 
 ing the University of Berlin, with what small 
 degree of profit in exact scholarship and what 
 large amount of amusement to ourselves, the 
 survivors alone know, — and will never tell. At 
 the opening of the summer semester two of our 
 number, who had spent the Easter holidays in 
 Italy, were found to be suffering from malaria. 
 One of them, Clarence Walworth, had a mild 
 attack and was soon devoting himself to nurs- 
 
96 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 ing his companion, who lay in a low condition 
 all spring. With quiet pertinacity he contin- 
 ued squandering his strength, till he fell into 
 a feebler condition than his patient, and the 
 doctor ordered him to seek a change of air. It 
 was agreed at a conference of our little Prince- 
 ton colony with the landlady and the physician 
 that I was to go with Clarence, and early in 
 June we set out for the Baltic coast and the 
 Island of Riigen. 
 
 After a quick journey by train to Stettin and 
 thence down the Haff by boat, we found our- 
 selves ere nightfall in pleasant little Herings- 
 dorf, a fishing village near the seaport of 
 Swinemtinde. Here when my pale and tired 
 charge had laid himself to rest in Lindemann's 
 Hotel, I walked out in the late northern twi- 
 light, reflected in part from the sunset clouds 
 and in part emanating from the big soft stars 
 that were rising out of the Baltic, and crossed 
 the dunes to the seashore. Oh, that first breath 
 of salt air, that first sight of rolling billows, 
 that first sound of wet crunching sand, after 
 eight months of city pavements and stuffy lec- 
 ture-rooms! I broke into a run, like a colt 
 turned out to pasture, and leaped and sprinted 
 up the beach till my unaccustomed legs failed 
 and the night had come in earnest. 
 
 When I crept on tip-toe into our room at 
 
LOST VINETA 97 
 
 Lindemann's and held the candle for a good- 
 night look at Clarence as he slumbered like a 
 babe, with flushed face and damp curly hair, I 
 thought, **Dear boy, this kind of thing will soon 
 set you straight. ' ' On the table by his side lay 
 a little paper-bound book which he had bought 
 on the steamboat that afternoon, — a sort of po- 
 etical guide-book for the northern resorts, half 
 Baedeker, half Heine, purposely confounding 
 hotel advertisements with romantic and most 
 attractive descriptions of old towers, and leg- 
 ends of the Wends and Swedes and knights of 
 the Teutonic Order, and ballads, and snatches 
 of folk-songs. I turned over the leaves with 
 a smile and a yawn, and read a page here and 
 there till sleep overtook me. 
 
 Back to Swinemunde we drove rapidly next 
 morning, but not fast enough to meet the 
 steamer for Sassnitz, which we could just see 
 catching the outer swell with her load of sea- 
 sick Berliners bound for Copenhagen on their 
 round-trip tickets. But a bull-nosed little brig 
 lay alongside the wharf, her sides glistening in 
 the sunshine with alternate streaks of green 
 and white. She too was bound for Copenhagen, 
 but was to touch at Sassnitz, and her yellow- 
 haired captain agreed to take us. Was it young 
 eyes or that fresh northern sun that made this 
 vessel look so very green and white and the 
 
98 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 Swedish captain's curls so very yellow! The 
 toys of childhood do not stand in my memory 
 painted more vividly. I have been up and about 
 at early morn by many a wharf since then, but 
 never seen another magic-ship nor a sea-dog of 
 such Viking countenance. 
 
 I suppose Bottger's hotel at Sassnitz is no 
 more. I fear the Island of Riigen is no more, 
 at least in its old condition of perfect loveliness. 
 I am afraid sea-sick Berliners have found out 
 the charms of pretty Sassnitz and no longer 
 pass it by with their round-trip tickets for 
 Copenhagen. But we found Riigen an undis- 
 covered country, Sassnitz almost free from 
 tourists, and Bottger's a humble and unassum- 
 ing hostelry with bare floors, big rooms, and 
 complete freedom. At first we took long drives, 
 as Clarence dared not tax his strength with too 
 much walking, and visited the Stubbenkammer, 
 and Bergen, and Putbus, and even crossed, one 
 day, to the mainland again, by the ferry at 
 Stralsund, and saw with emotion the flagstone 
 in the street that marks the spot where fell the 
 gallant Schill in 1809, when he alone and the 
 brave few who flocked to his call dared rise 
 against Bonaparte. Not in vain, Schill, was 
 thy example. Even grand-ducal and royal 
 breasts were touched with manly envy at the 
 news of thy wild raid, and lo ! many years after, 
 
LOST VINETA 99 
 
 two boys from beyond seas felt a strange stir- 
 ring of the heart upon the spot that commemo- 
 rates thy death, and murmured the elegy a son 
 of Riigen wrote for thee — 
 
 ''0 Schill, ScMll, du tapferer Held!'' 
 
 Of all these places the Stubbenkammef was 
 much the nearest to our headquarters at Sass- 
 nitz, and we made frequent visits to that en- 
 chanted spot. Here immense white chalk cliffs 
 rise sheer from the blue sea and are crowned 
 with the greenest of beech-woods. There is 
 something especially attractive about beech for- 
 ests, which I suppose is due to the thinness of 
 their foliage. Rich turf will grow under 
 beeches, and at Stubbenkammer the tender 
 green of the grass vied in brightness with the 
 dark glossy green of the leaves. Here we would 
 lie, with our pipes and our poetry, and gaze 
 over the blue water toward the Arcona light- 
 house, and the Danish islands (out of sight) be- 
 yond, and all Norway and the Arctic circle ly- 
 ing next, below the horizon. From their short 
 but heavenly summers these northern peoples 
 have extracted almost as much poetry as the 
 Greeks and Italians have distilled from their 
 endless days of sunshine, and indeed I thought 
 the northern variety the more romantic, cer- 
 tainly the more tender and exquisite. We, for 
 
100 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 our part, extracted, with much self-pleasure 
 and laughter, one couplet in German which we 
 deemed equal to anything of Anacreon or Catul- 
 lus. I can still see Clarence, with half -earnest 
 face and outstretched arms, murmuring our 
 lines over the verge of the cliff, as if giving as- 
 surance of fidelity to some dripping goddess of 
 the Baltic foam; 
 
 Anddchtig still am Gestade des ewig Idchelnden 
 
 Meeres, 
 Muth und Verlangen und Liebe strecken unend- 
 
 lich dahin! 
 
 And yet one peculiarity of Clarence's conduct 
 was that he had never been in love and pro- 
 fessed to be bored by femininity. If he was 
 the only handsome man in our colony — and he 
 was not merely handsome, but beautiful — ^he 
 was our only misogynist, not in a loud and pro- 
 fessing way, but by a sort of instinctive dis- 
 taste. He was our man of distinguished ideals, 
 but turned aside with something like fear from 
 the more obvious forms of goodness and beauty 
 which other men were glad to accept. 
 
 Perhaps that only augmented his love of ro- 
 mance. We were all pretty much given to 
 Schwdrmerei. No American student could say 
 he had really lived in Germany unless he had 
 had his enthusiasms. Music generally came 
 first, and then arrived, in some instances, the 
 
LOSTVINETA " ''IM 
 
 theatre and art, and in others German history 
 and poetry, in others landscape. Clarence had 
 been open to all these attractions, especially the 
 last, and to no other man could the genius loci 
 whisper secrets more deep and true upon short 
 acquaintance. With the help of his little book, 
 he would now, as we lay on the top of the cliff, 
 impart to me the intimate history of that re- 
 gion. **The Insel Rtigen,'' he said with a wave 
 of his pale hand, **was the last stronghold of 
 paganism in this part of Europe. While the 
 Kolner Dom was rising beside the Rhine, and 
 two centuries after the Norman conquest of 
 England, a Slavonic tribe dwelt here in this 
 western outpost and defied all Germany and 
 the Christian faith. You remember yesterday 
 at the Hertha See,*' he added, more naturally 
 and a little impatiently: **you remember I 
 showed you that stone altar with its runlets for 
 human blood, in the sacrifices — 
 
 * Great God, I'd rather be 
 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn' " — 
 
 **But hold on, Clarence," I interrupted; 
 *^ how do you know those hollows in the stone 
 were made for human blood!" 
 
 **How do I know! Why, I just know it. And, 
 of course, it says so in this book. But the book 
 is no great authority," he added with a flash of 
 
m^^ "dreams AND MEMORIES 
 
 contempt. Then he took to peering over the 
 cliff into the sea, almost directly below, and left 
 me to my smoking. He was much stronger al- 
 ready, and that day we had sent the carriage 
 home and expected to walk the six miles back 
 to our hotel at Sassnitz. The moon was near 
 the full, and we started late and proceeded 
 slowly southward, at first creeping for a few 
 yards along the cliff, in the forest shadows, and 
 then descending for safety to the shining beach. 
 We had not gone many paces in the sand when 
 Clarence touched my arm gently and whispered 
 * * Stop ! ' ' He stood in a listening attitude, and 
 presently I thought he smiled, and he nodded 
 slightly. ''Well, what is itT' I asked. 
 
 ''Don't you hear anything?*' said he. 
 
 "No.'' 
 
 "Anything like a bell?" he went on. 
 
 "No, I can't say that I do." 
 
 "Well," he said coolly, after a pause, "I 
 don't suppose you do; I don't suppose you 
 can." And to my eager inquiries as to what 
 he meant, he said: "I think I'll save it for to- 
 morrow afternoon, if you don't mind. It's an 
 old legend, and we can talk it over, on the cliff, 
 to-morrow afternoon." 
 
 Herr Bottger in those primitive days was 
 very careless or confident ; the big outside door 
 of his establishment was never locked, and 
 
LOST VINETA 103 
 
 guests could come and go at all hours of the 
 night undisturbed. When we reached our room 
 and lighted our candles, Clarence's appearance 
 excited my alarm. He was paler than usual and 
 his eyes were brighter than I liked to see them. 
 I reproached myself for having allowed him to 
 walk those six miles. He slept heavily, too 
 heavily, it seemed to me, and was restless and 
 uncommunicative all next morning. The Roman 
 fever had made him actually sullen in Berlin, 
 but his depression of spirits had been giving 
 place to his old manner, which was a compound 
 of reserve and affectionate gayety, and withal 
 a certain delicate grace or sprightliness that 
 set him apart from the rest of mankind. 
 
 When afternoon came, he insisted on repeat- 
 ing the performance of the day before, and I 
 must own that curiosity helped me to consent. 
 We drove to the Stubbenkammer through the 
 silent woods and sent the carriage back. And 
 up there on the cliff, with flaming cheeks, but 
 no other sign of emotion, he at last began to 
 talk: 
 
 **You know about all those sunken cities — 
 the one off the coast of Brittany, and that other 
 off the coast of Wales or Cornwall, I forget 
 which ; and you Ve heard of others perhaps ; but 
 do you know, right down there — there, lies the 
 submerged city of Vineta?" 
 
104 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 **0h, see here, Clarry," cried I, ** don't tell 
 me that ! Your book says Vineta is off Herings- 
 dorf/' 
 
 **I know it does," he answered calmly, **but 
 that book is all wrong, and if it says Herings- 
 dorf that's mighty good proof Vineta is some- 
 where else. Besides," he continued assuredly, 
 **IVe all the proof I want, for last night I 
 heard the bell." 
 
 ' ' You heard the bell ! " I cried. ' ' What bell ? ' ' 
 
 * * That 's what I brought you here to tell you, 
 old man, ' ' he answered soothingly. * * You know 
 the Wends, or whoever they were, those Slav- 
 onic pagans, held out here longer than any- 
 where else — far into the Middle Ages, and even 
 when the church was built at Bergen they main- 
 tained their independence here, on the east 
 coast of the island. And they had a beautiful 
 white city here, called Vineta, built of huge 
 blocks of hard chalk dug out of the cliff. They 
 were a people that loved the sea. Their gods 
 were mostly sea-gods, — except Hertha," he ad- 
 ded reflectively, ** except Hertha, whose altar 
 was back there in the woods, you know. So the 
 city was built down yonder below the cliff, close 
 to the sea, — ^well, in what is now the sea, of 
 course — to be near their protecting divinities. 
 These Vinetans, as we'll call them, were a mild, 
 gentle, pious folk" — 
 
LOST VINETA 105 
 
 **How about the human sacrifices to 
 Hertha?" I here put in. 
 
 **0h, Hertha represented an older and more 
 cruel form of their religion, and that was just 
 the trouble. The Germans, who were Christian- 
 ized and spoke a different language, judged the 
 poor Vinetans by what they saw of their Her- 
 tha-worship, and failed to appreciate the beauty 
 and significance of the later ritual, which was 
 celebrated on the waterfront in the city itself, 
 and which no Christian was allowed to behold. 
 That is always the way with these bitter mis- 
 conceptions ; — they spring from ignorance. Oh, 
 the harm that has been caused by prejudice and 
 ecclesiastical rancour ! ' ' 
 
 This was so much like Clarence's old self, 
 when he was well and vigourous, that I let him 
 go on unchecked, although I could hardly fancy 
 it was good for him to get so excited. He con- 
 tinued: **Here they dwelt far down into the 
 Middle Ages, practising in peace the simple 
 rites of their nature-worship. Their white sails 
 dotted the blue sea yonder, and returned night 
 after night to the shelter of Vinetans pure white 
 walls. Every morning, to salute the rising sun, 
 her citizens assembled on the broad glistening 
 stairs that led to the water. If there had been 
 no instinct in mankind leading to progress, this 
 little city might have preserved her lingering 
 
106 DEEAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 cult even longer; but another light was break- 
 ing on Eugen, and the Vinetans could not keep 
 that light out. All the forest-dwellers went 
 over, village after village, to Christianity, and 
 at last it was unsafe for the city people to issue 
 forth to worship Hertha. Then sea-faring 
 Vinetans came home with new ideas, learned in 
 the river towns of the mainland, and by and by 
 the greater part of the population was Chris- 
 tian, and a church was built and a bell hung in 
 its tower, and everybody could foresee the end 
 of the old paganism. 
 
 ''But there was one who would foresee noth- 
 ing, admit nothing, and that was the priest of 
 the sea-gods, a white-haired old man, who still 
 continued their worship with unabated cere- 
 mony. His following dwindled away. He spent 
 all his wealth in costly sacrifices of amber and 
 other treasures of the deep. It came to pass 
 that again and again he alone, a solitary figure, 
 stood white-robed on the waterfront to wel- 
 come the rising sun. His only daughter washed 
 his sacerdotal garments and provided for his 
 bodily welfare, but he found that he was losing 
 her moral support and that even she was in- 
 clining to the new religion. But in the day of 
 severest trial she proved constant to him, for 
 although she had worshipped in the Christian 
 temple she was not taught there to dishonour 
 
LOST VINETA 107 
 
 her father or desert the poor and aged. So she 
 accompanied the old man when the Vinetans 
 turned on him and drove him from the city. 
 For several years they lived in the forest, 
 haunting the sacred hills and hiding in the caves 
 where Hertha's treasures had once been stored. 
 
 **One day a strange disaster befell Vineta. 
 From some cause unknown, perhaps a natural 
 sinking of the shore, perhaps the work of angry 
 gods, the lower portion of the city was partly 
 submerged. The people in their terror were of 
 two minds, and when the old priest, seizing this 
 opportunity, appeared among them, they flocked 
 back to paganism by thousands. The daughter, 
 however, was singularly silent. When women 
 asked her if she were not happy at seeing her 
 father raised again to more than his former 
 eminence, she shook her head sadly and con- 
 fessed she was a Christian. 
 
 * * The old priest was preaching a new doctrine 
 now. He admitted that all that lived above the 
 sea and on the land were destined to accept the 
 Christian faith. * But under the waves, ' he said, 
 *is the true kingdom of our ancient gods. At 
 my prayer they will admit us now to their 
 shadowy realm, granting us immortality. All 
 who elect the Galilean and a brief mortal exis- 
 tence may depart, but true Vinetans and true 
 
108 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 sons and daughters of the sea will remain and 
 sink with me to the peaceful depths.' 
 
 **His cry was believed. Many citizens, chief- 
 ly from among the young and middle-aged, left 
 the town and moved inland to Bergen and other 
 high-lying places, but the greater number re- 
 mained. Those who departed seemed stricken 
 with a strange dread ; those who stayed behind 
 were supported by a peculiar exaltation and 
 lived as in a dream. The priest 's daughter was 
 urged by her young companions to leave with 
 them the unhallowed place. She wavered in 
 painful suspense for a time, but decided to 
 cast in her lot with her father, although she 
 still declared she was a Christian. Many a 
 tragic farewell had been said, many a family 
 rudely divided, by the time the last of her fel- 
 low converts had climbed up the winding road 
 that led inland. From that day all communi- 
 cation ceased between Vineta and the Christian 
 world. The strange confidence which the priest 
 had inspired made traffic appear useless, and if 
 from force of habit a few fishermen put forth 
 in their boats they kept in sight of home. No 
 one from the outside ventured into the city, not 
 even her former inhabitants. It was as if she 
 lay under a ban or had ceased to exist. A sense 
 of impending doom hung like an exhalation in 
 her half-deserted streets. Her name excited 
 
LOST VINETA 109 
 
 awe throughout the island, and grew infrequent 
 on men's tongues. 
 
 **One morning an inland shepherd, breaking 
 his way through the bushes above the cliff to 
 steal a look at what men were beginning to call 
 the lost city, drew his hand across his eyes in 
 amazement when he saw no vestige of Vineta 
 on the shore below. The sunlit waves rolled 
 uninterrupted almost to the base of the Stub- 
 benkammer. Only the narrow beach was there, 
 which we walked on, last night." 
 
 ** That's quite a yarn, Clarence; I suppose 
 you found it in that book,*' I said. 
 
 **Yes,'' he answered with a peculiar smile, 
 ' * in the book. ' ' 
 
 We sat for a long time gazing down at the 
 bright mirror of the water four hundred feet 
 below, Clarence flushed and still, and I smoking 
 peacefully. He turned his head away at length 
 and said in a low voice: ** There's just one 
 thing more ; but I consider it important. ' ' His 
 manner was so singular that I glanced at him 
 sharply and asked: **Eh? What do you 
 meanf 
 
 **Why, the people about here — old Nicholas 
 the boat-maker, and the shepherd in the Stub- 
 benitz woods — say that once a year, during the 
 space of about a week, you can hear the church- 
 bell of Vineta ringing at intervals, and they say 
 
110 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 no fisherman will stop to listen, but the coward- 
 ly fellows all row to land as fast as possible, 
 and even run away from the beach.*' 
 
 **I never thought of these Riigen fishermen 
 as cowards, Clarence,'' I said, with some no- 
 tion of diverting him. 
 
 **Yes, they are cowards in this matter," he 
 replied. **That bell means something. It's an 
 appeal of some kind, and the next time I hear it 
 I intend to stay and listen." 
 
 **The next time you hear it!" I inquired. 
 
 **Yes, don't you remember, we heard it last 
 night?" he replied warmly. 
 
 **I didn't hear it," I insisted. 
 
 **But I did," was his firm response. 
 
 I had almost to drag him home that evening. 
 He said it was too early to go, for the moon 
 was not up yet. But the moon was one day 
 nearer the full, and of course later than the 
 day before, and I had been alarmed at his ex- 
 citement even then. We passed the place where 
 he had heard the bell, and although I humoured 
 him by waiting at least five minutes, he could 
 not hear it this time. We walked half a mile 
 farther, he protesting and I insisting. At 
 length he became so angry and excited that I 
 obeyed his wish, which was that I should go 
 ahead to Bottger's and let him return to the 
 spot and wait there alone for a few moments. 
 
LOST VINETA 111 
 
 Remembering that the moon would soon be up 
 to light him home, and dreading his stubborn 
 fit in its effect on his health, I unwillingly 
 promised to go straight to the hotel and wait 
 for him. Half an hour after my arrival there, 
 he came in. 
 
 I was unable to judge whether he was the 
 better or the worse for having his own way. 
 His manner was quieter than it had been. The 
 flush in his cheeks, for which I always watched 
 so attentively, was not there tonight ; indeed he 
 was very pale. He was wet to the knees, but I 
 did not venture to remark on that. When he 
 entered the room he looked at me hard for a 
 moment, as if about to speak, but turned away 
 in silence and sat down on his bed. At last he 
 said feebly: **01d fellow, I*m dead tired. 
 Won't you go down-stairs and get that Alma- 
 nac that hangs in the hallT' I obeyed, and 
 brought the little quarto that hung from a nail 
 between the barometer and the stuffed sword- 
 fish. He snatched it from me, and then looked 
 up at me with one of his winsome smiles, and 
 very softly said, * * Old man, I suppose you think 
 I'm a troublesome patient, and indeed I am — a 
 surly, ridiculous, miserable, disobedient, un- 
 grateful child." One of his kind smiles was 
 enough to bring me round at any time, and I 
 thought he was himself again, till I noticed that 
 
112 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 he was not really paying the least attention to 
 me, but was hurrying through the Almanac, 
 with trembling fingers and shining eyes. He 
 puzzled over it a long time, making calculations 
 and comparing one page with another. **This 
 is June the twenty-first, isn't itf he asked 
 abruptly. 
 
 **June the twentieth,'' I answered. 
 
 He seemed not to hear me, and went on, 
 speaking to himself ; * * Full moon — longest day 
 of the year — neap tide, lowest in the year, at 
 midnight ' ' — 
 
 I meanwhile was furtively reading the guide- 
 book from which he professed to have derived 
 so much information. Only a few points of his 
 Vineta story, not more than a hint or so, were 
 there. I made up my mind that we had re- 
 mained long enough at Sassanitz, and was on 
 the point of speaking to him about a change, 
 when he addressed me : * * I heard the bell again 
 to-night. ' ' 
 
 In my self-reproach and uneasiness, I said 
 nothing, and he continued in a low, steady voice 
 that expressed absolute conviction: '*And I 
 heard a call from the sea. They have im- 
 mortal life. The maid of Vineta is immortal, 
 but unhappy. She cannot come up to the sun- 
 light, and live, and love, and die, like other 
 women. She finds no peace beneath the sea. 
 My friend, she has but one chance in the world. 
 
LOST VINETA 113 
 
 If a Christian man for her sake will go down 
 and live with her in lost Vineta and forego the 
 light of day and all his earthly hopes, they both 
 may live in Vineta the span of common life, and 
 die and be at rest. This chance the God of 
 heaven has given her and the gods of the sea 
 cannot take away. Once in ages the chance is 
 open — when the moon is full, at midnight of the 
 longest day in the year, and the annual neap 
 tide is out. I 'm a useless fellow. I have sought 
 to devote myself to a dozen good causes and al- 
 ways failed to help anybody. I am determined 
 to save that lost soul." 
 
 I spent a weary hour trying to quiet him, and 
 by eleven o'clock he had fallen asleep, with his 
 head on my arm. After making him comfort- 
 able on his pillow, I crept into my own bed and 
 lay there a long time listening to his breathing 
 and thanking Heaven that he was under my 
 control still, and that to-morrow we could take 
 the boat for Stettin. I slept and woke alter- 
 nately, scarce daring to lose consciousness. 
 The first time I was aware of having dozed, I 
 reassured myself by his light breathing that 
 Clarence was all right, and so again a second 
 time. A third time I became conscious, and 
 barkened, but could hear nothing! Instantly I 
 was on my feet and creeping toward his bed. 
 It was empty, but still warm ! I struck a match. 
 Ten minutes past twelve! 
 
114 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 In three minutes more I was running along 
 the beach, not as I had run at Heringsdorf, re- 
 joicing in the roar of waters, but cursing the 
 sea and the night and my carelessness. A mile, 
 two miles, three I ran, ere I reached the spot 
 towards which my fears drew me, and then 
 stopped — indeed I could not have run a step 
 further — stopped and looked forward up the 
 sand, and out to sea, and listened. Hark ! can it 
 be? Do I hear a bell? Or is it only the ringing 
 of the surf? What is that, beyond the breakers, 
 in the calmer water outside? Is it not a white 
 arm waving? Or is it a crest of foam on a 
 racing billow? I saw no other signal and heard 
 no other sound, though I stumbled on, all the 
 way to the Stubbenkammer, with my gaze 
 turned seaward. Across the broad path of the 
 risen moon many a wave was tossing, and the 
 surf rang hard, and the shingle hissed, but 
 nothing spoke to me in my dear boy^s name. 
 It was all inhuman, fierce, implacable. 
 
 Then I turned wildly for home, and woke the 
 people there, and the weary search continued 
 till the early northern dawn appeared, and the 
 sun came up, and the moon, that had seen it all, 
 went down in the west. And an hour later we 
 found him, rolling in shallow water, a smile on 
 his lips, and in his clasped arms a long grey 
 seaweed. 
 
HAWKSHEAD AND DOVE COTTAGE 
 
 There is a cottage in Grasmere vale which is, 
 beyond comparison, a nest of famous poems. 
 Six miles away is a village whose figure and 
 life have been depicted with unmatched har- 
 mony of poetic glamour and fidelity to detail. 
 These holy places have changed very little in 
 more than a century, and the flutter of wings 
 can be heard in them yet, ** souls of poets dead 
 and gone ' ' ; but the enormous influx of indiff er- 
 ent travellers will soon frighten away the vis- 
 ionary habitants, already faint with their long 
 vigil. The genius of William and Dorothy 
 Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge still 
 breathes in its old haunts, for, thus far, only 
 **the unimaginable touch of time'' has been at 
 work here. A human warmth still lingers at 
 Grasmere and Hawkshead from days long past, 
 when they were the scene of youthful hope and 
 intellectual adventure. Several old people at 
 Grasmere and Rydal remember the Words- 
 worths, but the anecdotes they tell throw no 
 light upon those early years about which one 
 would wish so much to ask certain questions, 
 years when a momentous conflict was waging in 
 
 115 
 
116 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 the minds of the three friends and Words- 
 worth's poetic activity was at the full. How- 
 ever, a sense of nearness pervades the ancient 
 places, a sense of presences; and it is not the 
 aged and renowned poet of whom one thinks at 
 Dove Cottage, but the young enthusiast as 
 Shuter and Hancock painted him and as we 
 find him drawn with finer precision in Doro- 
 thy's Grasmere Journal. Facility of access will 
 scatter the perfume that has clung so long to 
 these once sequestered nooks. 
 
 To appreciate the spirit that led the feet of 
 William and Dorothy Wordsworth to Dove Cot- 
 tage in 1799, one need only recall what his 
 earlier life in the Lake Country meant to the 
 brother and how unquiet the time had been for 
 them both since he left it, twelve years before. 
 On the death of his mother, in 1778, William, 
 then in his ninth year, was sent to Hawkshead, 
 a village in Esthwaite vale, to attend the Gram- 
 mar School founded by Edwin Sandys, Arch- 
 bishop of York, in 1585. He lodged in the cot- 
 tage of Dame Anne Tyson. Hawkshead is the 
 scene of the most spontaneous books of the 
 * * Prelude. ' ' The memory of his boyhood there, 
 in glorious freedom of play and reverie, formed 
 the background of his poetic sympathies. The 
 life was wholesome and happy. The boys 
 ranged at liberty over wide stretches of moun- 
 
HAWKSHEAD 117 
 
 tain and moorland or took shelter with their 
 good ** dames*' by the peat fire for study or 
 quiet sports. They felt 
 
 **The paper kite high among fleecy clouds 
 Pull at her rein like an impetuous courser." 
 
 They rambled, with rod and line, 
 
 **By rocks and pools shut out from every star, 
 All the green summer. '* 
 
 When they skated on Esthwaite Lake, 
 
 **with the din 
 Smitten, the precipices rang aloud; 
 The leaflless trees and every icy crag 
 Tinkled like iron ; while far-distant hills 
 Into the tumult sent an alien sound 
 Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars. 
 Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west 
 The orange sky of evening died away.'' 
 
 No other record of childhood so magically re- 
 calls the sense of largeness, of the luminous 
 dark, and of tired but happy bodies, as this de- 
 scription of their sununer evenings under the 
 big tree in the village square : 
 
 **Duly were our games 
 Prolonged in summer till the daylight failed: 
 No chair remained before the doors ; the bench 
 And threshold steps were empty; fast asleep 
 The labourer, and the old man who had sate 
 A later lingerer ; yet the revelry 
 Continued and the loud uproar : at last, 
 
118 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 When all the ground was dark, and twinkling 
 
 stars 
 Edged the black clouds, home and to bed we 
 
 went 
 Feverish with weary joints and beating minds." 
 
 To the young poet came also solitary and 
 awful joys, ** Visions of the hills, and Souls of 
 lonely places. '^ Pushing out on the lake in a 
 stolen boat, one evening, he felt Nature herself 
 reach after him with a compelling hand. A 
 huge black peak rose unexpectedly above the 
 shore, 
 
 **And growing still in stature the grim shape 
 Towered up between me and the stars, and 
 
 still, 
 For so it seemed, with purpose of its own 
 And measured motion like a living thing. 
 Strode after me." 
 
 Sometimes through half the night, and feel- 
 ing himself to be a trouble to the peace that 
 dwelt among the moon and stars, he wandered 
 over the open heights with springes to catch 
 woodcocks; and when he had yielded to the 
 temptation to empty the traps of other boys, he 
 
 **I heard among the solitary hills 
 Low breathings coming after me, and sounds 
 Of undistinguishable motion, steps 
 Almost as silent as the turf they trod. ' ' 
 
HAWKSHEAD 119 
 
 A nobler fear was his when he hung alone on 
 the perilous ridge, 
 
 ** Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass 
 And half -inch fissures in the slippery rock 
 But ill sustained, and almost (so it seemed) 
 Suspended by the blast that blew amain, 
 Shouldering the naked crag.'' 
 
 These experiences, with sound schooling and 
 the kind but unobtrusive care of his **dame," 
 would make a manly boy. They ministered 
 abundantly to Wordsworth's love of Nature 
 and sturdy independence of vision. They gave 
 him that reliance upon the memories of child- 
 hood as a store of wisdom which is perhaps his 
 most singular trait. 
 
 Hawkshead is essentially unchanged. But to 
 see it as it may have looked to Wordsworth in 
 1778, one must reject all the modern * ^facili- 
 ties" of travel, which spell ruin to a deep and 
 fine impression, and enter it on foot. It is only 
 a good hour's walk from Ambleside, lying near 
 the heads of Windermere and Coniston Water 
 and just above its own small lake of Esthwaite. 
 
 It was the longest day of the year, when we 
 two devout Wordsworthians and our little ones, 
 to whom ^* William" and ** Dorothy" and **S. 
 T. C." were ** names familiar in their mouths 
 as household words," set out for Hawkshead. 
 Young sunshine was romping with silvery 
 
120 DEEAMS AJND MEMORIES 
 
 showers, which hid themselves tearfully behind 
 hill and wood only to rush laughing again across 
 the vales. The water of the Brathay was glid- 
 ing swiftly over its brown bed into the deep blue 
 of Windermere. Blackbirds were whistling 
 among the fresh leaves and thrushes warbling 
 on every green slope. We passed a gorgeous 
 gipsy van piled high with wicker-ware. Sus- 
 pended from its hind axle, two little girls were 
 rocking back and forth in swings. The van was 
 their world, and a very big and sufficient world 
 they must have thought it. Like our world, it 
 offered all the advantages of a double motion. 
 The further we got from Ambleside, the wilder 
 grew the country and the plainer the houses, 
 until at last there were no traces of villadom. 
 Over a wooded divide we go ; then down an easy 
 slope, through wheatfields, which are separated 
 from the road by thin flagstones stood on end 
 and overtopped with hawthorn hedges and the 
 climbing rose. We have passed from West- 
 morland into Lancashire, and a fine Gothic 
 window in a barn, which was once a monks' 
 court of justice or tithing-house, bears witness 
 to the fact that this region was formerly an 
 apanage of Furness Abbey. There are few ob- 
 jects more picturesque, really inviting, that is, 
 to a painter, than blacksmith-shops, and on our 
 
HAWKSHEAD 121 
 
 right we perceive a smithy which is almost too 
 much like a picture to be fit for its humble office. 
 
 In a moment we are entering Hawkshead, be- 
 tween one and two story houses, brown, grey, 
 and white, which elbow into the street at all 
 sorts of angles. Little squares, or rather tri- 
 angles and rhomboids, appear unexpectedly. 
 Two minutes walk, seemingly in one direction, 
 brings the bewildered traveller back to his 
 starting-point. No inhabitants are visible. The 
 village is bewitched. Is it a village, or a cluster 
 of natural rocks? At last a suggestion of sub- 
 stantial England, in the shape of a comfortable- 
 looking inn, reassures us; and as Wordsworth 
 deigned to mention, in a notorious line, the hos- 
 telry where he alighted in Cambridge, so my 
 pen refuses not to name the Red Lion, nor to 
 record the lunch of which we there partook, so 
 English in its plain abundance and the quiet- 
 ness and privacy with which it was served. 
 
 The Grammar School was only a few steps 
 farther. Master and scholars had gone out. 
 The door stood open, and sunshine filled the 
 large square room where, next the entrance, 
 Wordsworth 's bench still does duty. His name, 
 carved deep in the wood, is protected with a 
 sheet of plate glass. The master's desk and 
 the fireplace are at one end of the room. The 
 boys' benches surround an open space in the 
 
122 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 centre, where the classes stand to recite. It 
 seems natural that little William Wordsworth's 
 place should be the one nearest the outer door. 
 The number of pupils has dwindled since the 
 days when this was one of the favourite classi- 
 cal schools in the north country. An aged man 
 told us the boys still got a good preparation for 
 the careers of clergymen, druggists, and post- 
 masters.* In old times the pupils were drawn 
 from a wide range of society, from rich families 
 in large market towns like Cockermouth and 
 Penrith, from country families of higher rank, 
 from professional circles, and chiefly from the 
 valley farms. When school hours were over 
 their work was done for the day, and they were 
 free to scamper over the blue flagstones that 
 paved and still pave the village streets, or to 
 buy cakes and root-beer from the old woman 
 who spread her little stock of tempting wares 
 on a rock that jutted up in the square, or to 
 range over the countryside. No wonder M. Le- 
 gouis in his ^'Jeunesse de William Words- 
 worth '* is impressed with the contrast between 
 this life and that of French boys in their lycees. 
 Liberty, not only to wander, but to read at will, 
 
 * This ancient school, which did such inestimable ser- 
 vice to our English race, has recently been discontinued 
 for lack of support. 
 
HAWKSHEAD 123 
 
 was one of Wordsworth's privileges, which he 
 gratefully records in the ** Prelude.'' 
 
 It was not till he returned to Hawkshead to 
 spend part of his first long vacation after his 
 freshman year at Cambridge, that Wordsworth 
 realized how much he owed to Anne Tyson, his 
 *'dame"; she had been almost as a mother to 
 him for nearly ten years : 
 
 * ' Glad welcome had I, with some tears, perhaps, 
 From my old Dame, so kind and motherly, 
 While she perused me with a parent's pride." 
 
 She guided his willing footsteps through the 
 village. The face of every neighbour whom he 
 met was like a volume to him; 
 
 "some were hailed 
 Upon the road, some busy at their work. 
 Unceremonious greetings interchanged 
 With half the length of a long field between." 
 
 He was half ashamed to salute his old school- 
 fellows, because of his new clothes. On seeing 
 the cottage where he had spent his boyhood, its 
 garden, its covered channel, whence issued the 
 voice of an imprisoned mountain brook, he felt 
 
 *^what a thousand hearts 
 Have felt, and every man alive can guess," 
 
 and with thankfulness he laid him down in his 
 accustomed bed, 
 
124 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 * ^ That lowly bed, whence I had heard the wind 
 Roar and the rain beat hard ; where I so oft 
 Had lain awake on summer nights to watch 
 The moon in splendour couched among the 
 
 leaves 
 Of a tall ash, that near our cottage stood." 
 
 We saw the cottage, a humble, whitewashed 
 building, stone of course, and therefore not 
 mean, at one end the dwelling, at the other a 
 barn. We were told that the front bedroom on 
 the right as one faces the house was Words- 
 worth's. A shop near the cottage is kept by a 
 Tyson, and the name is common in the neigh- 
 bourhood. The brook still flows under the flag- 
 stones, but of course the ash is gone, and the 
 garden too is hard to make out. 
 
 The church which rises above the village and 
 the vale looks as old as the rocks amid which it 
 grew and which it greatly resembles. It is of 
 the exact colour of the outcrop and is covered 
 in the same way with moss and lichen. It can 
 hardly have been much lighter in Wordsworth's 
 boyhood, unless it then was whitewashed, yet 
 he calls it snow-white: 
 
 **I saw the snow-white church upon her hill 
 Sit like a throned lady, sending out 
 A gracious look all over her domain." 
 
 Yew-trees, of which one is in doubt whether to 
 call them green or black, carry the mystery of 
 
HAWKSHEAD 125 
 
 Nature to meet the mystery of Faith at the 
 church door. The tombstones come up to the 
 very walls, like sheep in search of shelter. The 
 tower is low and square. The nave is not high, 
 though of a truly English length, and the two 
 side aisles are lower still. Nothing less ob- 
 trusive could be imagined, nothing less like the 
 presumptuous work of man. This is not a vin- 
 dication of spiritual claims over abject Nature, 
 but a gentle reconciling of earth and heaven. 
 The interior is of a soft warm grey, like a 
 dove's breast. A faint green radiance enters 
 through the large bays and touches into splen- 
 dour the monumental brasses of the Sandys 
 family. It is pleasant to picture the school- 
 boys in their places here, of old, a rustic row, 
 with William Wordsworth at the end, near an 
 open window. 
 
 The last glimpse of Hawkshead which 
 Wordsworth gives us is a startling admonition 
 that his happy boyhood was ended and a time 
 of heavy responsibility at hand. The summer 
 of 1788 was passing away in light-hearted 
 pleasures. There was an inner falling-off from 
 his allegiance to books and solitary meditation. 
 Feast and dance and public revelry, and even 
 the very garments that he wore, conspired to 
 depress the zeal and damp the yearnings that 
 had once been his. His existence as a poet was 
 
126 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 threatened. He had not yet acknowledged his 
 vocation, even to himself, but by all the fears 
 and joys of his old Hawkshead life he was 
 pledged to poesy. Coming home at dawn from 
 a rural dance, his head cooled by the dew, his 
 eyes purged by the memorable pomp of rising 
 morn, his ear caressed with the melody of birds, 
 he felt the full force of the contrast between the 
 life of an ordinary man and the life of a child 
 of Nature: 
 
 **My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows 
 "Were then made for me ; bond unknown to me 
 Was given, that I should be, else sinning 
 
 greatly, 
 A dedicated spirit." 
 
 Eleven years later, a young man and a young 
 woman, somewhat gaunt from excessive exer- 
 cise, walked into the vale of Grasmere. The 
 young man, tall and angular, wore his hair flat 
 over his temples, after the Jacobin fashion, and 
 was dressed partly like a north-country rustic 
 and partly like a French delegate of the left. 
 His towering brow, his long high-bridged nose, 
 his prominent cheek-bones, and the seams of 
 thought and resolution about his mouth gave 
 him the look of one who carries his world with 
 him. The young woman, quick in her motions, 
 with a shy but penetrating glance, appeared to 
 be in closer communication with her surround- 
 
HAWKSHEAD 127 
 
 ings. They stalked into the sparse settlement 
 as two young eagles, or other birds of noble 
 swiftness and strength, might wing their way 
 into a peaceful glen. 
 
 They came seeking peace indeed. Long buf- 
 feted by storms of warring empires, driven far 
 astray in their search for the rare and pure 
 atmosphere of untrammelled thought, still lured 
 from their purposes by ** chance desires,'' often 
 kept apart when they would fain have dwelt 
 together, William Wordsworth and his sister 
 Dorothy were coming home at last, to dedicate 
 their lives wholly to their high calling, and to 
 repose 
 
 ** Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse.'' 
 
 Wordsworth once or twice intimated that he 
 would have found a soldier's life congenial. 
 General or statesman, he might have been one 
 or the other, as must be evident to him who 
 will read his treatise on the Convention of Cin- 
 tra or who can discern the audacity and the 
 staunchness of his lifelong attitude and of 
 every line he wrote. His prose especially has 
 the toughness and the hidden fire of iron. 
 There was in him an aquiline quality, depth of 
 gaze, strength of wing, aloofness. But his 
 power of command had never been put to the 
 test; his endurance, either as a scholar or as a 
 
128 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 man of action had never been strained to the ut- 
 termost, as he would have gloried to have it 
 strained. Cambridge, with its then unref ormed 
 curriculum and its somnolent acquiescence in 
 idle practices, had made him feel that he 
 
 **was not for that hour 
 Nor for that place. ' ' 
 
 His life at the university seemed to him a **deep 
 vacation. '* For though he could not without 
 benefit live where generations of illustrious 
 men had moved, could not 
 
 ** range that inclosure old, 
 That garden of great intellects, undisturbed'^; 
 
 though he ** laughed with Chaucer in the haw- 
 thorn shade ' ' ; and called on the spirit of 
 
 ** Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded 
 heaven 
 With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft 
 pace"; 
 
 and seemed to see Milton bounding before him 
 in his scholar's dress, 
 
 **A boy, no better, with his rosy cheeks 
 Angelical, keen eye, courageous look. 
 And conscious step of purity and pride," 
 
 he had a vision of a sterner discipline than 
 Cambridge enforced, a life of 
 
 ** strong book-mindedness ; and over all 
 A healthy sound simplicity should reign. 
 
HAWKSHEAD 129 
 
 A seemly plainness, name it what you will, 
 Eepubliean or pious/' 
 
 He had tramped through France in the most 
 hopeful months of the Revolution, when it was 
 not yet too late to observe the misery of the 
 peasantry under the old regime, and when the 
 original glory of the people's cause had not 
 been obscured through panic fear of invasion: 
 
 ** Europe at that time was thrilled with joy, 
 France standing on the top of golden hours, 
 And human nature seeming born again.'* 
 
 Going again to France after graduation, and 
 living there for more than a year, till the end of 
 1792, he had come into closer practical contact 
 with the Revolution than was either safe for 
 him or agreeable to his family. His political 
 opinions and religious views had changed, be- 
 coming extremely radical. He returned to 
 England, disappointed, it is true, in the course 
 the Revolution was taking, but holding grimly, 
 nevertheless, to his new faiths. 
 
 He had spent the next two years precariously 
 and in a manner unsatisfactory to his family, 
 publishing two obscure little volumes of poetry, 
 wandering from place to place, living forlornly 
 in London, teaching, writing for newspapers, 
 or at least planning to set up a monthly maga- 
 zine with Mathews, a notorious free-thinker. 
 
130 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 Some of his relations meanwhile, were endeav- 
 ouring to persuade him to take orders in the 
 Church of England ! But as his nephew Chris- 
 topher, bishop of Lincoln, reluctantly admits, 
 **At this period he entertained little reverence 
 for ancient institutions as such; he felt little 
 sympathy with the higher classes of society. 
 He was deeply impressed with a sense of the 
 dignity of the lower orders, and their suffer- 
 ings; and his design was to endeavour to re- 
 cover for them the rights of the human family 
 and the franchises of human brotherhood, of 
 which, he appears to have thought, they had 
 been robbed by the wealthy, the noble, and the 
 few. He desired to impart moral grandeur to 
 poverty, and to invest the objects of irrational 
 and inanimate nature with a beauty and grace 
 of which it seemed to him they had been strip- 
 ped by a heartless and false taste, pretending 
 to the title of delicacy and refinement.'^ 
 
 Meanwhile Dorothy was living with her uncle 
 Cookson, a canon of Windsor, in high ecclesi- 
 astical and conservative circles, where Wil- 
 liam's aspirations were doubtless deplored as 
 unchristian and un-English. She was less than 
 two years younger than her brother, whom she 
 loved with an ardour which long separation 
 could not damp. A small legacy left to Wil- 
 liam by Raisley Calvert, a young gentleman 
 
HAWKSHEAD 131 
 
 whom he had nursed on his deathbed, enabled 
 the brother and sister to keep house together at 
 last, at Racedown in Dorset, for about two 
 years. Here Coleridge sought them out and 
 the friendship began which was to bring a life- 
 long train of joy and sorrow to all three and 
 bear a rich fruitage of poetry. Not since the 
 unaccountable apparition of a score of great 
 dramatic poets in the last fifteen years of the 
 sixteenth century, had there been in England 
 so remarkable an instance of genius nourishing 
 genius. The union of Dorothy's fine perceptive 
 gift, her brother's power of transmitting emo- 
 tion in musical speech, and Coleridge 's strength 
 of metaphysical flight, enhanced all three per- 
 sonalities, giving them larger volume and new 
 outlets. 
 
 But the next two years, productive though 
 they were, had proved too distracting to the 
 Wordsworths. William's play, **The Border- 
 ers," was rejected by the managers of Covent 
 Garden Theatre. There has been, ever since, a 
 facile tendency to applaud their verdict and 
 to pass judgment on **The Borderers" as an 
 unsuccessful work which proved its author's 
 lack of dramatic instinct; yet it would be diffi- 
 cult to name a stronger English tragedy in 
 verse, written since the death of Dryden, if we 
 except ** Manfred" and **The Cenci." The 
 
132 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 young enthusiasts had occupied for a year Al- 
 foxden, a country-house near Nether Stowey, in 
 Somerset, where Coleridge and his wife lived 
 in a cottage; had been touched though not 
 much moved by the waning circle of Pantisoc- 
 racy; had met Lovell, Burnett, Charles Lloyd, 
 the Southeys, Thomas Poole the liberal tanner, 
 Charles Lamb, Thelwall the persecuted radi- 
 cal, and Joseph Cottle the adventurous Bristol 
 printer. The Wordsworths and Coleridge had 
 taken the famous walk to Lynton and the Val- 
 ley of Rocks, and *^ Lyrical Ballads'' had been 
 written. William and Dorothy had visited Tin- 
 tern Abbey. The young men had been under 
 surveillance by a government spy, on suspicion 
 that they were plotting to aid the French. The 
 intellectual ferment had proved exhausting. 
 The Wordsworths were too self-contained to en- 
 joy the intoxication of perpetual talk and specu- 
 lation, even such talk as Lamb's and such 
 speculation as Coleridge's. Political events, 
 England's hostile attitude toward France, and 
 the French invasion of Switzerland, which 
 seemed to him liberty preying on herself, had 
 depressed, though not embittered, William. He 
 and his sister and Coleridge spent the autumn 
 of 1798 and the winter of 1798 and 1799 in Ger- 
 many; and after returning thence, more unset- 
 tled and disheartened than ever, William and 
 
HAWKSHEAD 133 
 
 Dorothy visited friends and relations in the 
 north of England, until they formed the happy 
 project of returning to the Lake Country, near 
 which they were born and where, in the old 
 Hawkshead days, he had felt the call to be a 
 poet. 
 
 The old road from Rydal to Grasmere runs 
 over the edge of White Moss at some distance 
 above the present highway. Just before it 
 drops to the lakeside at Town-end, Grasmere, 
 there stands a cottage, of a quakerish grey 
 colour, modestly retired behind a stone wall. 
 The mountain comes down close behind it, so 
 that one might step from the second floor into 
 the steep little garden. In ancient times this 
 house was an inn, with the sign of The Dove 
 and Olive Bough. The Wordsworths entered it 
 **on Saint Thomas's day," 1799. It has since 
 been called Dove Cottage. They came at a time 
 of hard frost and snow and with scarcely any 
 household goods. In Dorothy 's Journal we can 
 read how frugal were their meals and how rich 
 their banquets of Chaucer and Spenser. 
 
 They had few interruptions at first, for neigh- 
 bours were not many, and they were almost the 
 only educated persons within miles. For rec- 
 reation an unlimited expanse of open fields was 
 theirs. From their own back gate they could 
 step out to the mighty green shoulder of Fair- 
 
134 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 field and walk on windy ridges to Helvellyn, 
 never treading aught but the firmest and most 
 elastic turf. An endless variety of landscape, 
 from desolate tarn and perilous crag to hamlet 
 and grove and pasture, was within reach for 
 such tireless walkers. And by day and night 
 they were on foot, when the morning studies 
 were over and the simple dinner. The outlook 
 towards the lake was not intercepted by build- 
 ings and broken by the new highway, as it is 
 now. The main part of the village lay half a 
 mile further up the vale, where stood and still 
 stands, by the murmuring Rothay, the old yel- 
 low-grey church with the square tower. By a 
 rare intuition of fitness, the houses are not only 
 made of the same material as the earth that 
 bears them, but have been left untouched, for 
 the most part, by paint or whitewash, becom- 
 ing, in that soft climate, beds of moss and mi- 
 nute fern, to such an extent that one can scarce 
 believe they are the work of human hands. 
 They are part of the natural landscape, and 
 one can feel the truth of the poet's lines when, 
 in a thankful salutation to the hospitable vale, 
 he sings of its 
 
 '* church and cottages of mountain- stone 
 Clustered like stars some few, but single most, 
 And lurking dimly in their shy retreats, 
 Or glancing at each other cheerful looks. 
 Like separated stars with clouds between." 
 
HAWKSHEAD 135 
 
 Except for the very limited demands of 
 neighbourliness, the brother and sister lived at 
 first in deep seclusion. But their door was open 
 to the wide world of Nature, whose infinite de- 
 tail called them constantly forth. No two hours 
 of the day are alike in the Lake Country. The 
 showers are as genial as the sunshine, with 
 which they alternate and mingle in unending 
 play. A tree is not merely a tree in those moist 
 dales, but a world of delicate and profuse vege- 
 tation; a rock not merely a rock, but a wilder- 
 ness of minute flowering plants. Everything is 
 on a small scale, everything perfect of its kind. 
 Men's voices are low and sweet, their faces 
 peaceful, their gestures few and sedate. The 
 hills are companionable, and the lakes breathe 
 repose. There was no longer a thought of per- 
 manent change or separation for William and 
 Dorothy Wordsworth. They had found their 
 home. 
 
 The flowers Dorothy tended, or at least their 
 true descendants, bloom still in her little gar- 
 den. The orchard bower that her brother made, 
 overlooking the house from behind, still offers 
 shelter, and the stone steps his hands placed in 
 the hillside lead to it still. The spring for which 
 he scooped a basin in the rock is lisping still 
 the secrets of earth and mirroring the open joy 
 of heaven. It seems to ask, ** Where are they 
 
136 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 who understood meV^ One feels nearer to the 
 source of poetry here than under Weimar's 
 chestnut shade or by * * Parthenope 's dear 
 tomb ' ' ; so brave was Wordsworth in his deter- 
 mination to write with his eye upon the object. 
 There is a pleasing fitness in the position of this 
 little garden, with a wild mountain at its back 
 and in front a thoroughfare. It is a symbol of 
 the union between the glories of Nature and the 
 homely ways of men which Wordsworth effect- 
 ed in his poetry. Behind loom Heron Pike and 
 Rydal Fell, Seat Sandal and Hart Crag, hiding 
 the deep green coves between. Grisedale Pass 
 with its ominous tarn leads under the terrific 
 cliffs of Striding Edge into Patterdale, at the 
 head of UUswater, opening to foot-travel the 
 eastern ranges and their vales. Kirkstone 
 Pass, a road for giants, and High Street, the 
 undeviating line on which Roman legions 
 marched over mountain summits, called, not in 
 vain, to those lovers of wide spaces. And in 
 front their own lake gleamed tranquilly and the 
 soft outline of Silver How cut the evening sky. 
 Flowers were their calendar and birds their 
 clocks. They could tell the date of a summer 
 day by the length of the bracken on the fells or 
 the number of foxglove fingers on a stalk. They 
 were wakened by * * the first cuckoo 's melancholy 
 
HAWKSHEAD 137 
 
 cry*' and warned that bedtime had come by 
 blackbirds whistling from their orchard trees. 
 In this bower the brightest of Wordsworth's 
 lyrics were composed, — *^The Sparrow's Nest," 
 **To a Butterfly," '*My heart leaps up," ''To 
 the Daisy," and ''The Green Linnet." Here 
 were the "fruit-tree boughs"; this is the "or- 
 chard seat ' ' : 
 
 "Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed 
 Their snow-white blossoms on my head, 
 With brightest sunshine round me spread 
 
 Of spring's unclouded weather. 
 In this sequestered nook how sweet 
 To sit upon my orchard-seat ! 
 And birds and flowers once more to greet, 
 My last year's friends together." 
 
 At once, on coming to Dove Cottage, Words- 
 worth, with the invaluable help of Dorothy's 
 finer senses, as is modestly recorded in her 
 Journal and gratefully acknowledged by him in 
 the famous lines 
 
 ' ' She gave me eyes, she gave me ears ; 
 And humble cares, and delicate fears ; 
 A heart, the fountain of sweet tears ; 
 And love, and thought, and joy, — " 
 
 at once Wordsworth addressed himself to 
 grave tasks. He began the "Prelude," the 
 story of the growth of a poet's mind, with the 
 design of uniting the conflicting currents of his 
 
138 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 life and especially of subduing the storm raised 
 in his breast by the Revolution. He composed 
 the two poems **MichaeP' and *^The Leech- 
 Gatherer, or Resolution and Independence," 
 which are perhaps more characteristic of him in 
 subject, tone, and style than any other of his 
 works. He composed '*The Brothers, '* which 
 seems to be a foretaste of **The Excursion.'' 
 These poems demanded much patient labour. 
 They involved serious discussion of poetic prin- 
 ciples, which depended ultimately on a theory of 
 human duty and well-being. For these and 
 other toils that succeeded them, the winter 
 nights were none too long, and the entry occurs 
 often in Dorothy's Journal, ** William tired 
 himself working at his poem." Their tiny 
 rooms were the scene of long deliberations. 
 Longer and far more intense were the talks 
 when Coleridge, driven by the hunger of his 
 soul, shouted to them from the hill at midnight 
 and came in from the storm. Then tea was 
 made and bread and cheese set out, and Heli- 
 conian festival began. 
 
 Coleridge was oppressed not only by his pri- 
 vate misfortunes, but by the weight of intel- 
 lectual leadership. The opium habit was fas- 
 tening itself upon him ; his domestic life, chiefly 
 through his own lack of practical sense and the 
 commonplace character of his wife, was unsatis- 
 
HAWKSHEAD 139 
 
 factory; he was usually in need of money; but 
 nobler anxieties also were his. He hung in sus- 
 pense between patriotism and love of liberty. 
 Affairs in France were going wrong, and yet 
 he viewed with horror the hostility of England 
 to the great experiment of freedom. He had 
 been preaching in Unitarian pulpits, yet ortho- 
 doxy was reasserting its claims in his mind. He 
 stood with his hand on the flood-gate through 
 which a stream of German philosophy and criti- 
 cism was to pour into England and America, 
 and he hesitated. He and Wordsworth had 
 worked out between them a theory of poetry 
 which was destined to determine the form and 
 the substance of English literature in prose 
 and verse for at least a century and to en- 
 courage, in all the languages of Europe, what 
 we now call ** realism.'* 
 
 Those were momentous hours spent in the 
 little upper room until two and three in the 
 morning, by that sympathetic dark-eyed woman 
 and those young men, the one dreamy and ex- 
 citable, the other more self -controlled and keep- 
 ing his visions longer. The philosophy and the 
 poetics of a new age were coming to birth in 
 their minds. It was the watch-night of the 
 nineteenth century. There was also a sup- 
 pressed excitement in their personal relations. 
 Coleridge reverenced Wordsworth, who was 
 
140 DEEAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 deeply anxious about him; and Dorothy, as is 
 evident from unconscious expressions in her 
 Journal, loved Coleridge, with a love that was 
 two-thirds pain. 
 
 The pious hands of one who remembers her 
 and her brother keep the little rooms tidy still. 
 ** There will always be a fire in the kitchen,'* 
 she said to us, **as long as I live, directors or 
 no directors," referring to the trustees of the 
 association which bought the cottage some years 
 ago as a permanent memorial of its illustrious 
 occupants. **My half -kitchen and half -parlour 
 fire,'' the poet called it, and added, **our little 
 bookcase stood on one side of the fire." This, 
 however, was no doubt the upper room facing 
 the orchard, if so very small and steep a piece 
 of ground may properly be called an orchard. 
 Here they were wont to sit 
 
 **And listen to the flapping of the flame, 
 Or kettle whispering its faint undersong. ' ' 
 
 Their sailor brother John came to visit them 
 at Dove Cottage. He was a poet too, 
 
 **Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse." 
 
 After his departure they found a path he had 
 worn, pacing back and forth, sailor-fashion, in 
 the wood that overhangs the lower end of the 
 lake, half a mile from their door. They named 
 
HAWKSHEAD 141 
 
 it John's Grove, and held it as a sacred place 
 when the news came of his drowning at his post 
 when the great ship he commanded went down, 
 one February night in 1805. 
 
 All but the central mystery of poetry, the 
 elusive something, seems within our grasp when 
 we read certain lines of Dorothy's Journal in 
 the very spots they describe: 
 
 '* Friday, October 3, 1800— When William 
 and I returned from accompanying Jones, we 
 met an old man almost double. His face was 
 interesting. He was of Scotch parents, but had 
 been in the army. He had had a wife, *a good 
 woman, and it pleased God to bless us with ten 
 children'; all these were dead but one, of whom 
 he had not heard for many years, a sailor. His 
 trade was to gather leeches, but now leeches 
 were scarce, and he had not strength for it. 
 He had been hurt in driving a cart, his leg 
 broke, his body driven over, his skull fractured ; 
 he felt no pain till he recovered from his first 
 insensibility. It was then late in the evening 
 when the light was just going away." 
 
 **May 7 (1802). W. wrote the Leech-Gather- 
 er." According to his practice, he had given 
 form at last to ** emotion recollected in tran- 
 quillity." The first observation, the original 
 state of feeling, and possibly too the great leap 
 of imagination by which the old man's forti- 
 
142 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 tude was adopted and applied in one of the 
 most impressive lessons in the whole range of 
 Wordsworth's writings, were shared between 
 him and his sister. Let him who would know 
 the strengthening power of poetry study **The 
 Leech-Gatherer. ' ' 
 
 **April 15 (1802). When we were in the 
 woods below Gowbarrow Park (on Ullswater), 
 we saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. 
 ... As we went along, there were more and 
 yet more; and at last, under the boughs of the 
 trees, we saw there was a long belt of them 
 along the shore. I never saw daffodils so 
 beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones 
 about them: some rested their heads on these 
 stones as on a pillow; the rest tossed, and 
 reeled, and danced, and seemed as if they verily 
 laughed with the wind, they looked so gay and 
 glowing. ' * 
 
 It was probably not till 1804 that Words- 
 worth composed the lines beginning 
 
 **I wandered lonely as a cloud.'' 
 
 They are full of the dancing joyousness of his 
 dear sister, and of her pensive grace as well. 
 
 Some of the entries in 1801 are pregnant 
 with meaning to one who knows the country and 
 the poems and something of the story of the 
 three friends. 
 
HAWKSHEAD 143 
 
 **Oct. 24--Went to Greenhead Ghyll, and the 
 Sheepfold." 
 
 **Nov. 6 — ^Walked with Coleridge to Kes- 
 wick/' A matter of fifteen miles, over Dun- 
 mail Eaise. 
 
 **Nov. 18— William walked to Rydal. . . . 
 The lake of Grasmere beautiful. The church 
 an image of peace; he wrote some lines upon 
 it. . . . The mountains indistinct; the lake 
 calm, and partly ruffled ; a sweet sound of water 
 falling into the quiet lake. A storm gathering 
 in Easedale; so we returned; but the moon 
 came out, and opened to us the church and vil- 
 lage. Helm Crag in shade; the larger moun- 
 tains dappled like a sky.*' 
 
 As an example of exquisite style, we may 
 note this entry, on Nov. 24, 1801 : 
 
 **Read Chaucer. We walked by GelPs cot- 
 tage. As we were going along, we were stopped 
 at once, at the distance perhaps of fifty yards 
 from our favourite birch tree : it was yielding to 
 the gust of wind like a flying sunshiny shower : 
 it was a tree in shape, with stem and branches, 
 but it was like a spirit of water. . . . After our 
 return William read Spenser to us, and then 
 walked to John's grove. Went to meet W." 
 
 The witchery of this passage is hard to ac- 
 count for; we have here a fine precision of the 
 
144 DREAMS AND MEMOEIES 
 
 senses and a rigorous economy of words, which 
 can hardly escape the notice of every reader; 
 but by what visible or audible means does she 
 impart to us the wistfulness that ventures forth 
 from this and many other passages of her Jour- 
 nal? It is as if she felt that she was happier 
 than she knew: she could wish distinctly for 
 nothing more than she possessed; yet powers 
 and beauties of Nature were forever challeng- 
 ing her understanding and her gift of expres- 
 sion. 
 
 These were happy years for Wordsworth, no 
 less happy than the period of early married life 
 that followed, under the same roof. Nine years, 
 in all, he dwelt at Dove Cottage, until his grow- 
 ing family required a larger house. He was 
 not yet famous, and in comparison with the 
 later and far less interesting portion of his life, 
 few visitors came to take note of how he looked 
 and talked and lived. But the walls of Dove 
 Cottage tell the story, in their voiceless lan- 
 guage. They speak of plain dress and frugal 
 fare, of luxury scorned and light-hearted indif- 
 ference to comfort, of detachment from the 
 world and its judgments. The tell of deep con- 
 tentment and spiritual joy, of interest in little 
 unconsidered things, of high converse on 
 weighty matters. They whisper of kind self- 
 sacrificing love. They plead for constancy in 
 holding fast to the noble purposes of youth. 
 
SIENA: A SUMMER IN THE MIDDLE 
 AGES 
 
 It was nine o 'clock on a spring evening when 
 I was suddenly projected into the Middle Ages. 
 The train where I sat alone in a dimly lighted 
 compartment had been climbing hour after hour 
 through dark mountains. Then it stopped out- 
 side the walls of Siena, and I was whirled away 
 in a carriage up a steep road, through one of 
 the city gates, and into a life not only foreign 
 but quite unmodern. The street, with many a 
 sudden fling, writhed between sombre lines of 
 masonry, pierced at rare intervals with barred 
 windows. It was so narrow that I could almost 
 have touched the habitations on either hand. 
 The floor was paved from side to side with 
 smooth blocks of stone. In this confined space, 
 to a height of perhaps twenty feet, the cold air 
 vibrated with lamplight and with the laughter 
 and hum of a crowd of sauntering people, 
 whom the cabman, driving furiously and crack- 
 ing his whip, forced back against the houses. 
 But above this first level the walls vanished in 
 darkness, until, at an amazing distance, one 
 could see the sky like a black ribbon with silver 
 
 145 
 
146 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 points winding along between two lines of cor- 
 nice that seemed as far away as the stars them- 
 selves. 
 
 For several days after this bewildering en- 
 trance I was somewhat ill at ease and had a 
 guilty sense of intrusion, which persisted even 
 after I had found lodgings with a dignified 
 family and had begun to accommodate my life 
 to theirs. By what right had I come to disturb 
 the respectable peace of this community, re- 
 mote, self-contained, and oblivious, or perhaps 
 contemptuous, of the new civilization of which I 
 had hitherto been proud to conceive myself a 
 product! I earnestly endeavoured to interpret 
 the lessons written by the centuries upon these 
 pages of stone, and though constantly baffled, 
 constantly made aware that I had not even 
 learned the alphabet, yet I was held by the pre- 
 science of some fine discovery awaiting me, a 
 significance to be disclosed in a blessed hour of 
 luck or effort. Fortunately I kept reminding 
 myself that here was too large and solid a vol- 
 ume of art and history to be very easily under- 
 stood in all its relations, and that I must not be 
 in too great a hurry to pluck from old Siena the 
 elusive secret of her dark face. For herein lies 
 a touching fact about old-world cities, that each 
 one has its grey mystery, its meaning, valuable 
 often in inverse proportion to its modern pros- 
 
SIENA 147 
 
 perity. Before leaving Siena I acquired a very- 
 distinct idea of her character and fancied I had 
 discovered her secret. The process was simpli- 
 fied by the ruthless expedient of dismissing 
 from view most of her present inhabitants and 
 letting imagination repeople her with the great 
 dead. They it was who built her; and so little 
 of her ancient aspect has she lost that their 
 spectres look more at home in her than living 
 men and women. 
 
 The city, enjoying the distinction, happy or 
 unhappy according to one 's point of view, of not 
 having outgrown its ancient limits, contains 
 about thirty thousand inhabitants. She spreads 
 out like a triple-rayed star, on three long ridges 
 that spring from a common centre. Her 
 streets are narrow and crooked, but marvel- 
 lously well paved and clean. The broad, close- 
 jointed flagstones are carefully swept every 
 night, and the sweepings are carted off to the 
 fields. There is scarcely a rod of level ground 
 within her walls, and many of the shorter 
 streets are mere stairways. The houses are 
 very high and grand, many of them former 
 strongholds, with few or no windows on the 
 ground floor; and here and there a tower or 
 battlemented parapet still threatens grimly. 
 The habitations of the poor have generally been 
 at one time the palaces of powerful and wealthy 
 
148 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 families. I remember being stopped once and 
 held fast to the spot as I was absent-mindedly 
 climbing an alley near my* lodgings, by the 
 realization that the stone-work around a cer- 
 tain window before me was of a solidity and 
 beauty that would have made it noteworthy and 
 singular and a subject of more than local pride 
 in any American city. Though too remotely 
 islanded among the mountains to be cursed with 
 steam industry or railroad commerce, Siena en- 
 joys reasonable prosperity. She lies sprawled 
 on a mountain-top, thirteen-hundred feet above 
 sea level, and the valleys that radiate from her 
 precincts yield her an ample tribute. Her pur- 
 ple girdle of walls hangs loose about her loins 
 at an average distance of an eighth of a mile 
 from the undulating body of tenements, palaces, 
 and churches, while the space between is filled 
 with gardens and olive-groves and vineyards. 
 Every outgoing road drops away through ver- 
 durous hills to lower levels. To the west rolls 
 a wooded range of low dumpling mountains, be- 
 tween Siena and the sea, shutting off from view 
 the deadly Maremma, or fever-coast. North- 
 ward, miles on miles away, can be faintly seen 
 the snowy Apennines about Pistoia, and south- 
 ward and eastward stretches, far below our 
 feet, a brown, desolate-looking plain that 
 seems cursed with barrenness and fretted by 
 
SIENA 149 
 
 the earthquake. The most commanding feature 
 of the landscape is Monte Amiata, a seemingly- 
 bare cone of volcanic origin, that dominates this 
 southern waste. From the Porta San Marco, 
 where there is a pleasant terrace, with a para- 
 pet and stone benches, the difference of eleva- 
 tion is most apparent, and you look away to- 
 wards Monte Amiata with nothing between to 
 catch the eye, for the groves and fields and 
 roads and villages are so far below that you 
 have the impression of being quite aloof and in 
 a different world. 
 
 There is another more commodious terrace 
 and promenade on another spur, where in the 
 sixteenth century a foreign despot built a fort 
 to command the city. In Italy nobody stays in- 
 doors of a summer evening, and as I grew tired 
 of parading up and down the esplanade of this 
 fort, where every person in Siena goes to see 
 everybody, I used to stroll out through the de- 
 serted streets, past the gate at the Porta San 
 Marco or the Porta dei Tufi, to watch the sun- 
 set tints glow and fade and blend and sever on 
 far-off Monte Amiata. From the fruit trees 
 that overhung the steep path, nightingales sang 
 their antiphonies, and the only other sound was 
 the clangor of a convent bell on some dark 
 height across the valley or the voice of a peas- 
 ant child helping his father drive out the tired 
 
150 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 yoke oxen to pasture for the night. I was often 
 tired myself after my lessons with the patient 
 priest who taught me Italian, and some of my 
 weariness came from wrestling unconsciously 
 with the question : What does Siena signify 1 
 
 It was while coming home from one of these 
 walks, when I had turned my back on the soft 
 evening star and the damp meadows aglow with 
 fireflies, and the faint blue outline of Monte 
 Amiata, that I found the first clue. Far up the 
 height and beyond a short depression I had yet 
 to cross, rose Siena, her bells visibly and audi- 
 bly ringing to vespers and her lights beginning 
 to come out one by one. She looked so solitary, 
 so secure, so self-contained. She looked so old 
 and yet so strong. I reflected that she must 
 have worn much the same air of loneliness six 
 centuries ago, when she stood aloof from all 
 permanent political connections, a republic 
 complete in herself. Yes, I concluded, she is a 
 spirit from the Middle Ages, unchanged by 
 time, unspoilt by progress, thinking thoughts 
 that are not ours and that we cannot half under- 
 stand, yet holding a place in one's imagination 
 as a living presence, strange and dark and 
 fascinating. Her enchantment is not merely of 
 Italy and springtime, is not due alone to the 
 soft air or to the melody that drops from those 
 silvery olive boughs; it has a sterner quality 
 
SIENA 151 
 
 than this magic of the senses, and holds one by 
 the memory and the conscience. Siena lives 
 still in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 
 an era of long-quenched enthusiasms and long- 
 stilled pains, an era of woe and atrocious 
 crime, but of religious aspiration too and beauty 
 both inward and external, an era of eager will- 
 ingness to believe and fierce endeavour to at- 
 tain. For her the battle of Montaperti was but 
 yesterday, and Columbus is not yet born, nor 
 Luther, nor Napoleon. To know her aright, you 
 must go back six hundred years and so far as 
 possible think and feel as men did then. You 
 must realize, at least without repugnance, the 
 faith that builded her inexpressibly beautiful 
 cathedral, and possess enough historical sense 
 to be able to make allowance for the credulity 
 and the curiously inconsistent morality of its 
 devoted founders. You must feel the throb of 
 the civic ambition that suggested the construc- 
 tion of that splendid town-hall, and spared no 
 pains to make it perfect, even though you stand 
 aghast at the unscrupulous policies and the piti- 
 less measures of the men who sat in its council- 
 chambers. You must love the gentle heart and 
 great intelligence of Santa Caterina, and not 
 look with too sceptical an eye upon the legend 
 of her miracles. 
 From that hour I began to understand and 
 
152 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 love Siena. * Dolce Siena' her people call her, 
 having in mind perhaps the life of undisturbed 
 ease which many of them lead. But even in our 
 time the adjective will seem inappropriate to 
 one who compares her dark palaces and narrow 
 streets with other cities. The mere fact that 
 she is girt with walls suggests defiance. The 
 very wind that whines at all hours among her 
 chimney-tops is bitter and keen, whether laden 
 with African sand when the sirocco blows, in 
 the early afternoon, or bearing icy particles 
 from the northern Appennines. Sweet or soft 
 or, even in the Scottish sense, douce she is not 
 and never was, to an outsider, either in spirit 
 or in aspect. But no doubt the eaglet loves its 
 eery as much as the meadow-lark its nest in 
 the grass ; and the pungent odour from the tan- 
 neries of Fonte Branda that pervades Siena 
 may well be a sweet savour to her sons and 
 daughters. There are no darker lines of Dante 
 and none more compressed than the words of 
 Pia Tolomei, suggestive of slow pining away or 
 of violent murder in a lonely castle on a fever- 
 stricken plain. In Purgatory her soul craves 
 earthly remembrance, and gives two reasons 
 why she should not be forgotten : *' Siena made 
 me ; Maremma unmade me " : 
 
 Ricordati di me, che son la Pia; 
 Siena mi f e ; disf ecemi Maremma. 
 
SIENA 153 
 
 As no words were necessary to describe the 
 horrors of Maremma, so in her view Siena was 
 too fair, too sweet, to need even the one adjec- 
 tive ^dolce*; the name spoke for itself. 
 
 In so far as the face of Siena appeared to 
 me less harsh and melancholy and took on some- 
 thing of the sweetness which even a grim 
 mother shows to her children, I felt that I was 
 making progress. When I could truly and from 
 my heart call her **dolce Siena," my lesson, I 
 was persuaded, would be learned. And so I 
 somewhat consciously, though in perfect good 
 faith, subjected myself to her enchantment, to 
 the magic spell that descended from her belfries 
 at morning mass and even-song, to the charm 
 that rustled through her gardens when the 
 noonday sunshine quivered against their ter- 
 races and stirred the olive-roots in their rich 
 volcanic soil and put to sleep the lizards on 
 their walls. 
 
 The Middle Ages were a period of uncon- 
 scious and closely limited self-development, of 
 little breadth, but in some respects of great 
 height. It will help us to understand the age 
 if we study sympathetically the history of a 
 single city which also was self-contained and 
 characterized at times by very lofty aims. We 
 have extraordinary facilities for studying the 
 life of Siena in the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
 
154 DEEAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 turies. In the frowning Piccolomini palace, 
 now a public building, are stored in chronologi- 
 cal array thousands of parchments and other 
 documents relating to the history of the repub- 
 lic. Siena has been fortunate in the quality of 
 the books, particularly the English books, that 
 have been written about her ; but more impres- 
 sive than manuscript or print are her memo- 
 rials in brick and stone. From them one can 
 vividly perceive what were three chief elements 
 of her greatness: first, her civic pride, as il- 
 lustrated in the Campo or open square, with its 
 Palazzo Pubblico or town hall; secondly, her 
 artistic sense, as embodied in the cathedral; 
 thirdly, her power of faith and intellect, as per- 
 sonified in Saint Catherine, whose house may 
 still be seen. These three centres are the ob- 
 jects which focus every observer's attention. 
 
 Almost constantly, from the fall of the Ro- 
 man Empire to the sixteenth century, Siena 
 governed herself. The greater part of the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries was filled with 
 wars against neighbouring towns, especially 
 Perugia and Florence, against feudal lords in 
 the surrounding country, and against Guelph, 
 i.e.. Papal, leagues. In the intervals her mer- 
 chants travelled far, and, by enriching them- 
 selves, strengthened the middle or mercantile 
 cUss at home to moh an extent that she was 
 
SIENA 155 
 
 able to maintain at least the form of a republic 
 in an age when monarchy was gaining ground 
 elsewhere. Though not always victorious in 
 war, her internal affairs were so democratically 
 managed and her foreign policy was so constant 
 that in the main she prospered, and her borders 
 were steadily enlarged until they embraced a 
 wide circuit of dependent territory and many 
 conquered towns and villages. They brought 
 her their trade ; she paid dearly for the advan- 
 tage by defending them in war. They laid 
 tribute at her feet and sent envoys to swell her 
 processions at the local festival on Assumption 
 Day ; she shed over them the lustre of her glory. 
 Though various oligarchies, more or less dis- 
 guised, interrupted the democratic rule and 
 there was frequent tumult and bloodshed, public 
 interest, as a general thing and to a quite un- 
 common degree, was paramount to private con- 
 siderations. 
 
 Through all the strife and tumult of the 
 twelfth century there are noticeable a growing 
 sense of unity and a desire for peace in which 
 to adorn the city. Nevertheless, we must re- 
 member that art, which is so important for the 
 future, not infrequently holds a subordinate 
 place at the time it is being created. Little op- 
 portunity for artistic work was found in the 
 early years of the thirteenth century. We know, 
 
156 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 however, that in spite of much confusion and 
 barbarism a high civilization was being formed, 
 that men of learning and piety were becoming 
 more prominent in council, that private wealth 
 was contributing to the spread of good taste 
 while not yet encroaching on public rights, and 
 that a spirit of enterprise gradually pervaded 
 all ranks of society. The poor were indepen- 
 dent and quick-witted; the middle classes were 
 possessed of a love of adventure and a zeal for 
 art quite unusual in that order of society, and 
 the aristocracy were to a large extent devout, 
 generous, and public-minded. The Sienese 
 were growing in material prosperity and moral 
 dignity. They contemplated building a new ca- 
 thedral or remodelling an old structure, on the 
 site where, according to tradition, one Chris- 
 tian church had followed another since the first, 
 which superseded a temple of Minerva. The 
 work progressed slowly from about 1245, but 
 it was still undecided in 1259 to what extent it 
 should be prosecuted. The matter was placed 
 in the hands of a committee to report, but their 
 deliberations were interrupted by an event 
 which gave the scheme a great forward impul- 
 sion, causing the citizens to enlarge their views 
 and multiply expenditures. 
 
 This was the notable victory of Siena over 
 her ancient rival, Florence, at the battle of 
 
SIENA 157 
 
 Montaperti, in 1260. The field of the fight lay 
 only six miles below in the valley, and the vic- 
 tors came home after **the rout and the great 
 carnage that coloured the Arbia red" still hot 
 from sword-wielding. To go into the causes of 
 this strife would be to discuss the whole story 
 of the wars of Guelph and Ghibelline factions 
 throughout Italy and would show how desper- 
 ate were the passions engaged and how large 
 was the stake for which Siena was playing. 
 Her joy in victory was measured by the danger 
 she had escaped, danger of total extinction. 
 The army had gone out in the name of the 
 Virgin, and prayers had been offered all day 
 long and vows made in case of victory. For 
 nearly a week the city returned thanks. Two 
 captains among the honoured dead were the 
 first persons entombed in the cathedral, and the 
 tall masts which lean against its central pillars 
 are said to be the poles that bore the standards 
 of Florence and Siena in the fight. Then the 
 Sienese set to work with enlarged hope and 
 fresh consecration to build a temple worthy of 
 their greatness and expressive of their pious 
 gratitude. 
 
 Referring to the ordinances passed even be- 
 fore 1260, respecting what they simply and sig- 
 nificantly called *Hhe work," Charles Eliot 
 Norton says: ** These provisions, standing as 
 
158 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 they do at the very head of the ancient Sienese 
 code, clearly exhibit the popular and municipal 
 character of the work, and indicate the feeling 
 with which it was regarded as a sacred charge, 
 the chief of the concerns of the commune/' 
 They employed Niccola Pisano to carve the 
 marble pulpit, which is as beautiful today as 
 ever, and is perhaps ^*the supreme expression 
 of mediaeval stone-cutting, as distinct from 
 sculpture proper/' Between 1260 and 1263 
 they finished the roof and cupola. By 1284 the 
 facade was completed. They expended vast 
 stores of ingenuity and wealth in adding artis- 
 tic treasures to the great structure which now 
 crowned with glittering marble the highest 
 point in the city. 
 
 Even amid these labours of the architect, the 
 sculptor, the painter, the mosaic-maker, the 
 wood-carver, the mason, and the carpenter, it 
 was decided that the city should have a civic as 
 well as a religious centre level with her proud 
 heart. In 1194 the town-council had laid out 
 and paved the ample slope called the Campo, 
 which has ever since been the field of real or 
 mimic frays, the debating-ground of politics, 
 the hearth of popular liberty. And in 1288 this 
 busy little race commenced their public palace 
 or town-hall, which stands yet, a memorial of 
 popular dignity, both sumptuous and graceful, 
 
SIENA 159 
 
 less ornate, but perhaps even more elegant than 
 the hotels de ville of Flanders. The construc- 
 tion of this building, including the erection of 
 the belfry, known as the Mangia tower, covered 
 sixty-one years, till 1349. Few communities 
 have ever done so much excellent building in so 
 short a time in proportion to their population 
 as Siena accomplished between 1245 and 1349. 
 The town-hall is of dark red brick, the colour of 
 which has toned down into harmonious softness, 
 varying in shade from rich purple to delicate 
 pink. It is four stories high in the centre and 
 three in the wings, with battlements and a 
 slightly concave front, pierced by long pointed 
 windows. At its side soars the Mangia to an 
 amazing height, a square, slender, almost un- 
 broken brick shaft, swelling at the top into an 
 intricate structure of white stone, with project- 
 ing galleries. The spouts are made in the shape 
 of wolves, to represent the traditional animal 
 that nourished Remus, the reputed founder of 
 Siena. The tower looks like a half unfolded 
 white tulip on a very long dark stalk, and seems 
 every minute about to nod in the breeze. The 
 council-chambers in the town-hall are adorned 
 with frescoes, one series of which is remarkable 
 as setting forth and contrasting the results of 
 good and bad government. The subject being 
 secular, the details are thoroughly realistic, and 
 
160 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 we have here, no doubt, representations of ac- 
 tual scenes in the fourteenth century and con- 
 temporary portraits. Among the faces there is 
 a refreshingly wide variety and unusual free- 
 dom from conventionality, and withal a strik- 
 ing resemblance of general type to the people 
 who walk Siena's streets today. These council- 
 chambers are still in use, and the big bell in the 
 Mangia still tolls alarms and strikes the hours. 
 
 While the town-hall was rising, the builders 
 of the cathedral were engaged in adding a sec- 
 ond church to serve as a baptistery, and this 
 they were sinking into the steep hillside behind 
 and beneath the choir of the main structure. 
 The cost was enormous, but people constantly 
 made voluntary offerings, and the republic still 
 voted supplies. In 1333, for instance, Messer 
 Guccio and his wife Mina are recorded as giv- 
 ing up themselves and all their property for the 
 advancement of the work and receiving in re- 
 turn a mere annuity and the promise of burial. 
 This was the period of the city's greatest 
 wealth ; the ambition of her citizens was so far 
 from being satisfied that in 1339 it was re- 
 solved, by a vote of 212 to 132, that the cathe- 
 dral as then completed, and as it now stands es- 
 sentially, should be transformed into the mere 
 transept of a greater edifice, whose nave was to 
 run north and south along the crest of the ridge. 
 
SIENA 161 
 
 The alteration would have about trebled the 
 size of the structure. No one who has not stood 
 on the ground can have any conception of the 
 stupendousness of this new design. The Sie- 
 nese would have possessed, had it been realized, 
 the largest cathedral south of the Alps. The 
 master workman set out immediately to buy the 
 houses that occupied the ridge of land in ques- 
 tion, and a community of nuns gave up some of 
 their property that stood in the way. Shovel 
 and derrick, hammer and trowel were put in 
 action again, and by 1348 the side and end 
 walls had risen to a sublime and impressive 
 height. 
 
 They stand there still, but in sad incomplete- 
 ness. For in that year an awful calamity fell 
 upon Siena and she had passed the climax of 
 her glory. The summer before, there had been 
 unusual mortality in seaboard towns ; and sail- 
 ors arriving in Genoa and Venice from the far 
 East brought fragmentary but all too certain 
 news of an approaching doom. Many diseases 
 vaguely called the Plague had devastated Eu- 
 rope from time to time in the past, but as the 
 spring of 1348 drew towards its close, men be- 
 came aware that the scourge had fallen upon 
 them in a more appalling shape than ever be- 
 fore. It was what is known as the Black Death. 
 The population is variously estimated to have 
 
162 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 been at that time from one hundred thousand to 
 two hundred thousand. The smaller figure 
 seems more nearly correct, for it is difficult to 
 see how even so many could have been lodged 
 within the city wall, though an Italian town, 
 with streets only a few yards wide and houses 
 four and five stories high, is surprisingly capa- 
 cious. There were enough, at all events, to fur- 
 nish in one brief summer eighty thousand vic- 
 tims. Men dropped dead while talking, walk- 
 ing, eating, and there were none to bury them. 
 There came a rapid swelling and discolouration 
 at groin and shoulder, and while the sufferer 
 was wondering whether he were taken, behold 
 he was gone. 
 
 Siena never recovered from this disaster. 
 The work on the cathedral ceased. There was 
 neither strength nor wealth nor courage left 
 to trim another stone. In sunshine and dark- 
 ness, in rain and wind and snow, those gigantic 
 arches stand out far above the slumbering 
 town, as they have stood through the despotism, 
 anarchy, and apathy of five centuries, a mute 
 witness to mediaeval faith and daring. 
 
 Churches do not make saints nor cities 
 heroes. Love alone sanctifies a fane, and the 
 greatest art, whether ecclesiastic or civil, is 
 only a poor and inadequate tribute to love. It 
 is the glory of Siena not only that her laws and 
 
SIENA 163 
 
 her wars and her great buildings were the ex- 
 pression of a general civic magnanimity, but 
 that she produced several of the most eminent 
 personalities in Italian history and one who 
 ranks among the highest of those who have died 
 for love. Catherine Benincasa outshines the 
 rest of Siena *s sons and daughters, though some 
 of their names are bright enough to render the 
 little mountain town illustrious, — the Piccolo- 
 mini, one of whom filled the papal throne and 
 another was a great general in the Thirty Years 
 War; the two Sozzini, to whom Socinian the- 
 ology owes its name and some of its conquests 
 in the Reformation; Sallustio Bandini, who is 
 known as the father of free trade, a claim which 
 if just, gives him rank with the Sozzini for 
 moral courage and intellectual enterprise; the 
 mediaeval philanthropist Bernardo Tolomei; 
 the revivalist San Bernardino; Provenzano 
 Salvani, whom Dante immortalized because to 
 rescue a friend from captivity he, the leading 
 citizen of the republic, humbled himself to beg 
 alms in the Campo; the artists Beccafumi and 
 Baldassare Peruzzi. 
 
 Catherine was born in 1347, the year before 
 the great plague. The house and shop of her 
 father, a dyer and fuller, still exist, in a deep 
 ravine between two of the three spurs on which 
 the town is built. This quarter, of the Fonte 
 
164 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 Branda, has always been the most densely pop- 
 ulated. Owing to the existence there of an 
 abundant flow of water, issuing in a stone tank 
 with arcaded borders, it is the home of tanners, 
 dyers, fullers, and laundresses. Catherine was 
 one of twenty-five children born to her parents, 
 and it may well be supposed that among so 
 many, and especially in the lean years that fol- 
 lowed the plague, she grew along in unusual 
 freedom and the mental solitude which is often 
 the lot of children in large families. One day 
 when she was seven years old, as she and her 
 little brother Stephen were descending a steep 
 street that leads into their quarter from the di- 
 rection of the cathedral, she stopped at an 
 abrupt turn and fell on her knees before a blank 
 wall. The boy came back to see what had hap- 
 pened, and she said she had beheld Christ on 
 his throne, with St. Peter, St. John, and St. 
 Paul. That spot now is holy ground, and on 
 the wall is painted a time-stained fresco of her 
 vision. I remember seeing a school-girl kneel- 
 ing before it early on a spring morning and try- 
 ing to make her smaller brother say his prayers. 
 Vision followed vision. When she was eight 
 years old she already aspired to consecrate her- 
 self to Christ. Not finding in her crowded home 
 the solitude she craved and considered neces- 
 sary to holy living, she slipped away, one morn- 
 
SIENA 165 
 
 ing, through a city gate that was near the house 
 of a married sister, and found herself, perhaps 
 for the first time, alone in the country. At last 
 she had discovered the desert where a saintly 
 life might be led, and no doubt she fancied it 
 was the Thebai'd, where the hermits had dwelt 
 whose legends filled her imagination. By the 
 wayside she found a little cave, hollowed out in 
 the clay by rain, and there, having joyfully en- 
 tered, she prayed and saw visions, till hunger 
 and fear drove her home. In the fourteenth 
 century, such experiences, even when they oc- 
 curred in the delicate organizations of brood- 
 ing children, were regarded with more awe than 
 dread. Mortification of the body, fasting, 
 scourging, watching, praying, seeing visions 
 and dreaming dreams — it was in these mainly 
 that a ** religious" life consisted, and this kind 
 of religion was not rare. Catherine, when still 
 a mere child, began to practice the austerities 
 which she was to endure and increase until her 
 death. She reduced her food and sleep to a 
 dangerous and abnormal limit and forsook all 
 forms of childish amusement. 
 
 The central idea of mysticism is desire for 
 union with God, — not only in a world to come, 
 but here and now. The aspirants after perfec- 
 tion must mortify the senses and crucify earth- 
 ly affection, to the end that the soul, free and 
 
166 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 unhampered, may seek repose in God, who is 
 a spirit. Catherine of Siena is one of those in 
 whom the mystical idea in its greatest purity is 
 found in connection with a strong, generously 
 endowed intellect and a physical constitution 
 originally healthy. She was no ignorant re- 
 cluse, with wasted will and untrained powers 
 of judgment, but a great personage, with large 
 capacities, which she narrowed with cruel re- 
 straint, it is true, but which would have been of 
 extraordinary usefulness in any sphere, and 
 which indeed she did finally turn to account in 
 affairs of great political moment. 
 
 Her biographer, Fra Raimondo, who was also 
 her confessor, relates that at a very tender age 
 she had a vision of Christ, whom she ardently 
 implored to be her spouse, dedicating herself to 
 him with a vow of perpetual virginity. From 
 this time her austerities increased. Raimondo 
 says: **She granted herself but a quarter of 
 an hour of sleep daily. During her repast, if 
 the little food she took could be called by that 
 name, she prayed and meditated on what our 
 Lord had taught her. ' * Her bed was an uncov- 
 ered plank, with a stone for a pillow; and this 
 hard resting-place I have myself seen. Her 
 heaviest cross at this period — she was not yet 
 twelve — ^was the importunity of her mother, 
 who naturally endeavoured to persuade or force 
 
SIENA 167 
 
 her to follow a more healthy mode of life. On 
 discovering how the child spent her nights, her 
 mother took her into her own bed, but Cather- 
 ine, for a long time unobserved, slipped the 
 penitential plank under the sheet on her side of 
 the couch. When she reached her thirteenth 
 year, there came the hardest trial of all. Her 
 family then resolved to break what they called 
 her childish obstination, and to this end dis- 
 missed their servant and compelled Catherine 
 to perform the hardest menial tasks. But we 
 are told that **the Holy Ghost inspired Cather- 
 ine with a means of supporting affronts and of 
 maintaining in every crisis the joy and peace 
 of her soul. She imagined that her father rep- 
 resented our divine Saviour, and that her moth- 
 er represented the Blessed Virgin. Her broth- 
 ers and other relatives were the apostles and 
 disciples of our Lord to her; hence she served 
 them with a delight and ardour that astonished 
 everyone ; this means assisted her to enjoy her 
 divine spouse, whom she believed she was serv- 
 ing ; the kitchen became a sanctuary to her, and 
 when she seated herself at table she nourished 
 her soul with the presence of the Saviour.'' 
 
 One day while she was praying alone, her 
 father entered the room and perceived a snow- 
 white dove seated on her head. From this time 
 forth he favoured her designs. The chief of 
 
168 DREAMS AND MEMOEIES 
 
 these were that she might enter a religious or- 
 der and that she might be allowed to give to 
 the poor her portion of the family means. Ac- 
 cordingly she became a member of the third 
 order of St. Dominic, though she never regular- 
 ly took the three vows of chastity, poverty, and 
 obedience, which she had ever observed unbid- 
 den. She did not enter a convent; her scourg- 
 ings and fasting took place at home and did not 
 interrupt the performance of homely duties. 
 Although not permitted to inhabit a cell, as she 
 desired, she yet maintained in her heart a soli- 
 tary place where she might be alone with 
 Christ. It was characteristic of her to pray, 
 as she did, that her family might be reduced to 
 poverty; she loved her parents and her broth- 
 ers and sisters better than they loved them- 
 selves, and knew that the soul is worth more 
 than the body. Raimondo narrates her mysti- 
 cal espousal with Christ and Christ 's giving her 
 a ring containing a diamond surrounded with 
 four pearls: **The ring remained on Cather- 
 ine's finger,'' he exclaims; **she saw it, but it 
 was invisible to others" — an admission not 
 without value to criticism. Christ frequently 
 appeared to her in the guise of a beggar, and 
 the alms she gave he returned to her afterwards 
 in visions, but glorified and increased in worth. 
 Her theology appears to have been simple; 
 
SIENA 169 
 
 God, conceived as the creator and ruler of the 
 universe or as moral law, was completely 
 merged in the idea of Christ, a serene yet ten- 
 derly compassionate being, mysteriously joyful, 
 yet suffering and requiring his chosen ones to 
 suffer with him in order that he might console 
 them. Her relation to him was that of a humble 
 maid to an exalted lover, and she employs with 
 astonishing freedom the imagery of romantic 
 love in describing the stages of her approach to 
 ecstatic union with him. Of Jesus as he is his- 
 torically depicted she seems almost unaware. 
 
 Thus much for her inner life, and if its ideals 
 seem inacceptable and some of its alleged 
 events impossible either to our reason or to our 
 moral sense, we must remember that union with 
 Christ has, in one form or another, always been 
 one of the noblest Christian hopes and that her 
 miraculous visions, though the fact of her hav- 
 ing them may have been due to hunger, sleep- 
 lessness, and disease, were yet in their charac- 
 ter signs of pure religious enthusiasm. The 
 world was very dark. Ignorance was an asset 
 of the Church ; cruelty her instrument. Society 
 had been brought almost to anarchy by war and 
 pestilence, and men were more earnest about 
 the need for reconstruction than scrupulous 
 about means. Believe ! Believe or perish ! was 
 the cry in pulpit and street. Can we wonder 
 
170 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 that the best people were often the most credu- 
 lous and that some of the greatest idealists of 
 the age were the most resolutely cruel in forc- 
 ing upon others what they thought would bring 
 order and peace? Credulous though Catherine 
 was, love moved her; and so in all that teneb- 
 rous world she bore aloft some light, however 
 smoky. She was busily active even from child- 
 hood in visiting and nursing the poor. She un- 
 dertook the most hopeless and repulsive cases 
 of disease. She interested herself also in crimi- 
 nals, and when we consider the utter wretched- 
 ness to which prisoners were abandoned in 
 those days and the hideous tortures inflicted 
 upon them, we realize how superhuman her con- 
 duct must have seemed. Her fame spread 
 abroad through all Tuscany, and she was called 
 to neighbouring cities to make converts and ef- 
 fect cures. 
 
 Powers like hers have in all ages been too 
 often exploited by the politicians of the Church 
 for us to be able to set aside as altogether in- 
 credible the suggestion that her public actions 
 were controlled by designing men. The thing 
 seems likely enough, though proof is wanting; 
 but in any case no one would think of casting 
 reflections on her. Whoever prompted it and 
 howsoever it was guided, the procedure was her 
 own, in motive and method. 
 
SIENA 171 
 
 Her public life began in 1375. Florence and 
 Perugia, with other towns, had formed a league 
 against the Papacy. Since 1309 the seat of the 
 Popes had not been at Rome but in Avignon, 
 and this fact was the cause of much disaffec- 
 tion, which was telling on the religious as well 
 as the political life of Italy. Catherine, by her 
 letters and exhortations, held Siena, Lucca, 
 Arezzo, and other cities in their allegiance to 
 the Papacy. Pope Gregory XI, from his palace 
 in Avignon, sent legates to Florence to recon- 
 cile that turbulent people, but, the negotiations 
 failing, the magistrates of Florence bethought 
 themselves of this holy and eloquent woman, 
 whom all Tuscany loved and revered, entreating 
 her to come and mediate between them and the 
 Papal envoys. Furthermore they made this 
 Sienese their plenipotentiary and sent her to 
 Avignon, where she was received with great 
 deference by the Pope and even by the degener- 
 ate cardinals. In the municipal library of Siena 
 there are preserved in Catherine's fine hand- 
 writing some of her letters during this period. 
 Her supreme endeavour was to bring back the 
 Pope to Rome. And in 1377, largely through 
 her instrumentality, the change was actually ef- 
 fected, and peace, for a short while, was re- 
 stored to Italy. Later she exerted herself to 
 cure a still greater evil, when two infallible 
 
172 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 Popes were ruling at the same time; and for 
 two years, by her letters and exhortations, she 
 maintained her position as one of the most in- 
 fluential persons in Europe. As a witness of 
 the authority with which she spoke, her biogra- 
 pher Raimondo says : * * I frequently served as 
 interpreter between Gregory XI and Catherine ; 
 she did not understand Latin, and the Sover- 
 eign Pontiff did not speak Italian. In one of 
 these interviews Catherine asked why she found 
 in the court of Rome, in which all the virtues 
 ought to bloom, nothing but the contagion of 
 disgraceful vices. The Sovereign Pontiff asked 
 her if it were long since she arrived at court, 
 and on being informed that it was merely a few 
 days since, he said to her : * How have you so 
 soon learned what occurs here ? ' Then Cather- 
 ine, quitting her humble posture, and assuming 
 an air of authority which astonished me, pro- 
 nounced the following words: *I must declare, 
 to the glory of Almighty God, that while yet in 
 my native city I perceived the infections of the 
 sins committed in the Court of Rome more dis- 
 tinctly than those even who committed them 
 and are still daily committing them. ' The Pope 
 remained silent, and I could not overcome my 
 surprise, and shall never forget the tone of 
 authority with which Catherine spoke to that 
 great Pontiff.'' 
 
SIENA 173 
 
 While in the full activity of her zeal for 
 purifying the Church and promoting peace, she 
 died, at Rome, in 1380, at the age of thirty- 
 three. 
 
 I have mentioned Catherine's devotion to 
 prisoners. There had already been another Sie- 
 nese who followed this * * sure and unfrequented 
 road to glory. * ' Out of the dim confused alarms 
 of the thirteenth century, that age of strife and 
 cruelty, there rises the name of an uncanonized 
 saint. Pier Pettignano, a man who had the 
 strange habit of visiting the city dungeons to 
 comfort the lost souls wasting there, forgotten 
 by the world outside. There remains the rec- 
 ord of a resolution passed in the town-council, 
 on the eleventh of August, 1282, empowering 
 Pier Pettignano, Peter the Comb-maker, to se- 
 lect a number of prisoners to be released at the 
 Feast of the Assumption of that year. And 
 Dante has transmitted his name and honour to 
 all posterity in a line of the Purgatorio, where 
 a Sienese gentlewoman, Sapia, languishing in 
 penitential sufferings, tells the poet that 
 through the charitable prayers of this good man 
 she has made progress towards Paradise. In 
 his case again the noticeable thing is the sur- 
 prise his humaneness excited. Though that is 
 supposed to have been an age of imagination 
 and spiritual vigour, it was dark with cruelty. 
 
174 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 We rejoice in these rare instances of unselfish 
 charity, but the attitude of those who witnessed 
 or recorded them compels us to cry, 
 
 Alas, the gratitude of men 
 Hath oftener left me mourning. 
 
 Another bright name which illuminates the 
 annals of the republic is that of Bernardo Tolo- 
 mei, who preceded the greater glory of Cather- 
 ine by about two generations, but whose spirit 
 was moved by the same religious impulses and 
 took the same humane direction as hers. He 
 was in his youth the pride and hope of one of 
 the great noble families of Siena. His splendid 
 faculties were disciplined by the most thorough 
 education the age afforded, and the whole city 
 was invited from time to time to celebrate his 
 attainment of the successive academic grades. 
 When only sixteen years old, he received the 
 doctorate in philosophy and in civil and canon 
 law, and on that occasion the Tolomei kept 
 open house in all their palaces. The dramatic 
 story of his conversion is thus told by J. A. 
 Symonds: **At the age of forty, supported by 
 the wealth, alliances, and reputation of his semi- 
 princely house, he had become one of the most 
 considerable party leaders in that age of fac- 
 tion. If we may trust his monkish biographer, 
 he was aiming at nothing less than the tyranny 
 
SIENA 175 
 
 of Siena. But in that year, when he was forty, 
 a change, which can only be described as con- 
 version, came over him. He had advertised a 
 public disputation, in which he proposed, before 
 all comers, to solve the most arduous problems 
 of scholastic science. The concourse was great, 
 the assembly brilliant, but the hero of the day, 
 who had designed it for his glory, was stricken 
 with sudden blindness. In one moment he com- 
 prehended the internal void he had created for 
 his soul, and the blindness of the body was il- 
 lumination for the spirit. The pride, power, 
 and splendour of this world seemed to him a 
 smoke that passes. God, penitence, eternity 
 appeared in the awful clarity of an authentic 
 vision. He fell upon his knees and prayed to 
 Mary that he might receive his sight again. 
 This boon was granted, but the revelation which 
 had come to him in blindness was not with- 
 drawn. Meanwhile the hall of disputation was 
 crowded with an expectant audience. Bernardo 
 rose from his knees, made his entry, and as- 
 cended the chair; but instead of the scholastic 
 subtleties he had designed to treat, he pro- 
 nounced the old text. Vanity of vanities, all is 
 vanity. ' ' 
 
 In that year he sold all his worldly posses- 
 sions and retired to a wild spot twenty-two 
 miles away, and there dwelt with certain com- 
 
176 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 panions whom he drew by the magnetism of his 
 example, in caves dug in the clay, worshipping 
 God and cultivating that most unpromising soil. 
 From this lowly beginning arose the famous 
 monastery of Monte Oliveto, the parent house 
 of an influential order, the Olivetans. Even in 
 its present condition of disestablishment, a 
 windworn relic of old time, harbouring a hand- 
 ful of monks where it once held hundreds, Monte 
 Oliveto, perched on its mountain, is a splendid 
 memorial of San Bernardo. The monks who, 
 with charming hospitality, allowed me to spend 
 a night there, would no doubt be at a loss to ac- 
 count for the downfall of their order and the 
 fated decay of the whole monastic system; but 
 I fancied a sufficient explanation was mutely af- 
 forded by something I saw in their library. 
 Books of devotion and orthodox theology, and 
 insignificant works of a perfectly neutral char- 
 acter, were freely exposed on the shelves, 
 while everything modern or liberal, and virtu- 
 ally all the chief masterpieces of Italian liter- 
 ature, were kept behind a locked wire frame. 
 A similar timidity or obscurantism was shown 
 by the gentle young priest who gave me lessons 
 in Siena. He had in his possession a copy of 
 an American magazine containing Mr. W. D. 
 Howells's delightful article **Pan Forte di 
 Siena," and I was puzzled to find that he hesi- 
 
SIENA 177 
 
 tated about lending it to me. When finally his 
 natural courtesy overcame his scruples, I dis- 
 covered that a pious hand, probably his own, 
 had blackened out with ink a few phrases here 
 and there in which Mr. Howells had mentioned 
 Saint Catherine's ** miracles,'' with his accus- 
 tomed tolerance, to be sure, but not without that 
 touch of rationalism which the priestly mind 
 abhors. 
 
 Let us now come downwards six centuries 
 and witness a pageant which proves how little 
 of her ancient tone and flavour Siena has lost 
 in all that time. Every year, on the second of 
 July and again on the fifteenth of August, she 
 celebrates her devotion to the Virgin and her 
 gratitude for the victory of Montaperti in a 
 peculiar contest, which can only by a narrow- 
 ing of the term be called a horse-race. The per- 
 formance, with all its accessories, is much more 
 than a horse-race. The Sienese name the whole 
 occasion * * II Palio. " It is a strictly local festi- 
 val, but transcends all others in their eyes. 
 Siena has stood so high above the rest of the 
 world, in more senses than one, that she finds 
 it hard to descend to the level of our century. 
 I have no reason to doubt her devotion to the 
 Kingdom of Italy, but nevertheless it is worthy 
 of remark that in the whole week of the July 
 festivities, amid an extravagance of banners, I 
 
178 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 saw only one national flag. Here, on these steep 
 hills, is the fatherland, and surely it is no mean 
 country. Modern as well as mediaeval Siena 
 is complete in herself. She has her peculiar in- 
 dustries and institutions, her university, her 
 own school of art, her own style of architecture, 
 and also her own ancient and unique way of en- 
 joying herself. 
 
 I came to know about the Palio on this wise. 
 There was a young Sienese, bearing the ambi- 
 tious name of Dante, who for a modest consid- 
 eration accompanied me during the month of 
 June in my evening walks. He would come with 
 his dog to fetch me after dinner and we would 
 stroll out through the Porta San Marco or the 
 Porta Romana to have a conversation in Italian 
 and to see the sunset light redden the city wall 
 and gild the face of the cathedral. A gentler 
 or more civil youth it would be hard to find, and 
 he acquiesced uncomplainingly in my desire to 
 descend into the valley and climb the high 
 places beyond, that I might gaze back upon the 
 redoubtable little city, gathering jealously 
 within her waving cincture her wealth of tow- 
 ers, palaces, and churches. Standing one eve- 
 ning on such a spot, we fell to talking of the 
 great plague of 1348, with the particulars of 
 which my Dante displayed as minute an ac- 
 quaintance as if it had occurred last year. For 
 
SIENA 179 
 
 me, on the other hand, it was not easy to look 
 so far back. The present was so beautiful that 
 I CQuld see only the silvery olive groves about 
 me, with the purpling mountains behind and 
 the pinnacled city pulsating before me in the 
 ruddy glow. I could scarcely conceive of the 
 dreadful plague, of the strife with Florence 
 and Pisa, of the civil tumults and the famines. 
 **Ah, you other forestieri/' sighed Dante, 
 stirring the dust with his foot, **you cannot be 
 expected to take an interest in our troubles. 
 But if you are here in July you will see the 
 Palio, and I think you will say it is a grand 
 sight/' And all the way down from our hill- 
 top and up the laborious steep to the Porta San 
 Marco, with only the stars and fireflies to guide 
 us, we talked about the Palio, and again for 
 many days thereafter. Dante proved to be a 
 safer authority on this subject than on the 
 plague, for he was to take part in the event, 
 was to carry a banner,' in fact. He had a 
 friend, too, who had written a little book about 
 the Palio, and we read it together as we walked 
 between the wheat-fields or hung over a low 
 wall with a view of Monte Amiata's greyish- 
 blue cone in the distance. The work was re- 
 ceived seriously by antiquaries and we may ac- 
 cept its statement of something which my own 
 observation would have led me to deny, namely 
 
180 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 that the Sienese are a fierce and warlike race. 
 * * It appears that from the memory of man they 
 have always been ready with their fists. Taci- 
 tus informs us that the commons of Siena, hav- 
 ing got tired of a certain Roman patrician 
 named Manlius, laid hold on him one day and 
 cast him out headlong, and thus they enter into 
 history with fists doubled and playing on some- 
 body's ribs, and it seems that the propensity 
 to use their hands in this way, whether in jest 
 or earnest, has never been abandoned ; in every 
 public amusement fighting has always had an 
 honoured place, down to our own time, when 
 the jockeys hammer one another with their 
 whipstocks in the races of the Palio." 
 
 In the days of the great republic of Siena, 
 the city was divided into wards (in 1328 there 
 were fifty-nine) each of which mustered and 
 equipped a contingent of fighting men, with its 
 particular banner and uniform. They were 
 led to victory or defeat by a battle-car bearing 
 the standard of the city. Siena remembers 
 only the victories, and particularly that of 
 Montaperti, over the Florentines, whereas if 
 you go to Perugia, you might suppose that the 
 only affair of arms known to history was the 
 defeat of the Sienese in 1358 ; and there, sculp- 
 tured on the town-hall, you may see, Alas, the 
 Perugian griflSn triumphing over the Sienese 
 
SIENA 181 
 
 wolf. Well, it is said that to nourish a love of 
 combat, the sports in the Campo of Siena were 
 organized, and they consisted at first in such 
 rude cudgelling and stone-throwing that in 1291 
 a maudlin sentimentality prevailed and fisti- 
 cuffs alone were permitted. It must have been 
 lively in that vast space when hundreds of hard- 
 handed tanners poured in from the ward of 
 the Goose and fell upon the supporters of the 
 Snail, the Panther, the Owl, the Dragon, and 
 the Caterpiller. There were apparently not 
 enough names from the animal kingdom to go 
 round, and three of the wards to-day are still 
 called the Wave, the Tower, and the Grove. It 
 is locally related that Dante (Alighieri this) 
 once walked across the Campo while a fight was 
 in progress, without lifting his eyes from an 
 interesting volume he had picked up at a corner 
 book-stand, but the tradition is unauthentic, and 
 I decline to believe that the author of the In- 
 ferno could prefer a book to a riot. The figure 
 of the stern-faced Tuscan poet would, however, 
 be in keeping with that noble Campo, which he 
 mentions in the Purgatorio. And since it re- 
 mains substantially as it was in his day, and 
 the same edifices that smiled upon the Palio 
 this year witnessed the tumults of the four- 
 teenth century, the Campo is itself a great his- 
 torical monument. I have seen it on cold, dark 
 
182 DEEAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 spring mornings and under the sun of summer 
 afternoons, and by moonlight beneath drifting 
 clouds, and crowded and empty, but never un- 
 imposing. It is a large open space in an angle 
 between two of the spurs on which the town is 
 built, and slopes southward in a shallow con- 
 cave, like a sea-shell, with the widest rim lying 
 to the north. The pavement adds to the impres- 
 sion of a shell, being of bright-coloured stones 
 planted in long straight streaks that converge 
 to the lower end. Where these lines meet rises 
 the town-hall or Palazzo Pubblico, light and 
 graceful for all its dignity. Around the edge of 
 the pavement runs a wide walk, above which 
 rises a semi-circle of palaces in delicately tinted 
 brick, many stories high, yet not frowning or 
 haughty like some other mediaeval palaces else- 
 where in the city, but partaking of the geniality 
 of the spot, as if feudal exclusiveness had given 
 way here to a sense of common interest and 
 universal justice. 
 
 Of the fifty-nine wards or contrade, seven- 
 teen alone remain. But the spirit of rivalry 
 seems only to have been concentrated, and the 
 Palio I witnessed probably excited as much en- 
 thusiasm as any in the past. Each contrada 
 furnishes a horse, a rider, and a small troop of 
 representatives clad in costumes of the thir- 
 teenth and fourteenth centuries, with its own 
 
SIENA 183 
 
 colours and coat of arms. The name Palio re- 
 fers to the prize, consisting of a roll of richly 
 embroidered cloth, awarded by the municipal- 
 ity. For a month the troops of the contrade 
 had been drilling in the lanes outside of town, 
 the colour-bearers learning how to toss their 
 banners in the air and catch them as they fell 
 with all their folds unfurled, and the drummers 
 and trumpeters noisily practising. The public 
 demonstrations, however, began three days be- 
 fore the great event and continued, morning 
 and evening, six times. A track of clay and 
 sand is made round the Campo, and the horses 
 and jockeys come out to try the course. These 
 tests are almost as exciting as the final race, 
 though not as picturesque. The track is ex- 
 tremely difficult, and dangerous for a new 
 horse. There is one corner especially where, 
 after a turn at an angle sharper than a right 
 angle, the ground drops away abruptly, in front 
 of the Palazzo Pubblico, and here at the first 
 trial this year, three riders lost their seats and 
 went rolling beneath the hoofs of the horses 
 that came after. The proportion of accidents 
 grew less as the trials advanced, until at last it 
 was not too much to expect that both horses 
 and jockeys might make the three timees round 
 without a tumble. Two circumstances mitigate 
 the danger: the houses at that perilous point 
 
184 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 are faced with mattresses, and the horses are 
 of a small, quick breed much favoured in this 
 mountainous district. Their agility in turn- 
 ing corners at full speed makes walking in 
 Siena a lively exercise, for there is no distinc- 
 tion between road and footway in her narrow 
 streets. The steeds are lent to the public ser- 
 vice by enthusiastic residents of the contrade, 
 and are put on a diet of wine and choice feed. 
 
 In the first trial, which took place on a Sun- 
 day evening just before sunset, in the presence 
 of an immense crowd, the Snail took a lead at 
 the start and kept it to the finish. The rider, in 
 his red and yellow costume, had a look of vic- 
 tory in his eye, and I learned to watch for his 
 face and colours in the dazzling confusion of 
 horses and jockeys at all the subsequent trials. 
 He nearly always won. On that first evening 
 there was great disappointment and indigna- 
 tion in my own contrada, the Panther, which 
 lies next to the Snail. They said the Snail was 
 sure to win the Palio now, and any other victor 
 would have been more acceptable to us. I took 
 a stroll through the Via San Marco, the prin- 
 cipal street in the Snail, to witness the joy of 
 the people, and found them proud and confi- 
 dent of final victory. Their church was hung 
 with captured banners and festooned with the 
 red and yellow. The altar was ablaze with can- 
 
SIENA 185 
 
 dies, and before it knelt a throng of happy peo- 
 ple, returning thanks for the good news, just 
 arrived, that the first auguries had been favour- 
 able. Priests and women were laughing and 
 chatting in the doorway, and in front a brass 
 band was playing and children were dancing, 
 while the rest of the population gesticulated in 
 the street or leaned from their windows with 
 faces expressive of calm content. Not having 
 been born a citizen of the Panther, I could not 
 be expected to share the gloom that prevailed 
 there, even in the house where I lived, and may 
 be excused for wishing to belong to the Snail. 
 Three days later and it is the evening of the 
 Palio. From the Campo, which has been con- 
 verted into an amphitheatre by the erection of 
 scaffoldings against the house walls, rises a 
 murmur of voices and a flutter of fans. The 
 sun streams in through the steep narrow streets 
 on the western side, and falls aslant upon the 
 mellow old walls of the Palazzo Pubblico, where 
 the clock points to six. The race-track is 
 fenced about, but the people make no account 
 of that, and swarm everywhere. All the win- 
 dows are occupied and all the roofs lined with 
 spectators, and away up in the air, so high that 
 they look like swallows, there are people on the 
 Mangia. The centre of the Campo, several 
 acres in extent, is filled with country people. 
 
186 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 The peasants in all European countries seem to 
 me more interesting and estimable than the 
 middle or mercantile class in the towns, and at 
 Siena the comparison is overwhelmingly in 
 their favour. The men are of a ruddy bronze 
 complexion, with bright eyes and active bodies, 
 showing none of the bovine heaviness common 
 in the north of Europe or of the languor that 
 characterizes many of the contadini near Rome 
 and in Calabria. The women have delicate and 
 sensitive features, — straight, fine noses, ele- 
 gantly moulded lips and chins, and, for the 
 most part, blue eyes. Their dress and deport- 
 ment, and the absence of jewellery, indicate na- 
 tive good taste. The most effective part of 
 their costume is a wide, drooping hat of fine 
 white Leghorn straw, which flaps back in the 
 wind when they walk. Some of these hats are 
 three or even four feet in diameter. The peas- 
 antry of the Sienese region can hardly be called 
 sturdy; they are distinguished, however, by 
 elegance and grace. Their presence supplied 
 vivacity and even additional colour to the mag- 
 nificent sweep before me, as I looked round the 
 Campo. White straw hats nodded everywhere, 
 especially in the centre of the amphitheatre, in- 
 side the course, where the crowd, of perhaps 
 twenty thousand persons, was broken into 
 groups of relatives and fellow-villagers. Here 
 
SIENA 187 
 
 were a half-dozen harvesters, with their sickles 
 under their arms, the blades wrapped with 
 grass for safety; there a cluster of laughing 
 girls, surrounded by three times their number 
 of admirers; here a poor family of mountain- 
 eers, father, mother, and children, a little be- 
 wildered by their surroundings; there a few 
 sallow faces from the Maremma. Siena's old- 
 est and proudest families were represented, 
 having all returned for this one day from 
 country-places and seaside resorts. Of foreign- 
 ers there appeared to be almost none, and their 
 absence was a guarantee, if any were needed, 
 of the genuineness of the pageant. 
 
 There was a warmth and geniality in the spec- 
 tacle that I suppose is to be found only in un- 
 commercial countries, and also a certain seri- 
 ousness which is peculiarly Sienese and was 
 deepened by the partisan fanaticism of the con- 
 trade. With plenty of banter, there was, how- 
 ever, no display of bad blood. The tiers of seats 
 at the base of the houses were filled long before 
 the appointed time, and a whole hour was spent 
 in noisy speculation concerning the result. The 
 shadows kept creeping round and growing 
 longer, the sunlight became fainter and ruddier, 
 and the hand of the clock stood nearer seven 
 than six, when the track was cleared and trum- 
 peters stepped in from the Middle Ages and 
 
188 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 blew a mighty blast. Behind them advanced the 
 troop of the first contrada, a captain in mediae- 
 val armour, mounted, and surrounded by pages, 
 then a standard-bearer and a drummer, all 
 wearing the colours of their ward. The man 
 with the flag performed wonders, tossing it 
 twenty feet in air, passing it under his arms 
 and his legs, and before him and behind him, 
 and waving a greeting to the throng. Next 
 came the doughty little horse that was to run 
 and the equally tough little man that was to 
 ride him. Each troop as it entered deployed 
 its magnificence for two or three minutes and 
 then passed on around the ring. Last came the 
 battle-car of the republic, the same, it is firmly 
 believed, about which eddied the bloodiest strife 
 at Montaperti, over six hundred years ago. 
 Only ten horses were to run, and the banners 
 of the seven non-participating contrade waved 
 from the battle-car, which also contained the 
 prize-cloth, the palio. There are unbelievers, 
 even in Siena, who maintain that this vehicle is 
 not the one which figured in that battle. They 
 declare that, like the ship Argo, it has been so 
 often patched up that no scrap of the original 
 can possibly be left. It is a nice question, which 
 we must turn over to the logicians. 
 
 When the procession had made the circuit of 
 the Campo, the captains, musicians, standard- 
 
SIENA 189 
 
 bearers, and pages took their places in front of 
 the Palazzo Pubblico, and the jockeys disap- 
 peared within, to exchange their gala costumes 
 for leather helmets and canvas suits. They 
 emerged presently, bareback, on their mettle- 
 some little horses, greeted by a roar from the 
 crowd, and rode to the starting-rope. There is 
 a moment of confusion, getting the horses to 
 face the course. Then the cannon thunders, the 
 rope falls, and they are off, like the waters of 
 a spring flood bursting a dam. They do not all 
 get away at once. There is a great flurry and 
 confusion and tangle. You can hear the whacks 
 of the whipstocks doing lively work over the 
 backs and heads of the jockeys. The horses are 
 frantic and their riders crazy to break away 
 from the scrimmage. But they are bound the 
 Snail shall not have a clear track. Two who 
 have no chance of winning themselves have 
 seized him by the bridle and are pounding the 
 plucky jockey over his head and arms, and 
 meanwhile the Panther and the Dragon have 
 burst off from the crowd and are down the 
 course at a dead run, with the rest following. 
 At the dangerous corner the Dragon takes a 
 wider sweep than the Panther, thus preserving 
 his speed, and at the next curve passes him, 
 with a back stroke of the club. The Snail, in 
 spite of what would be reckoned foul play in 
 
190 DREAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 any other race, runs the gauntlet of slashes and 
 whacks and pulls away from his tormentors ; it 
 is by no means certain that his brave horse and 
 good management will not bring him in first, 
 after all. Around they come again, in a whirl 
 of dust, the Dragon leading. Looking over his 
 shoulder to estimate the danger, he dashes 
 down the hill. The second and third are hav- 
 ing a lively fight with fists and whips, and, as 
 they turn the corner in a bunch, down goes a 
 horse, pitching his rider headlong against the 
 mattresses. Another jockey seems to find his 
 horse 's back too slippery and goes slowly over 
 his flank, falling on hands and knees and rolling 
 out miraculously from the hoofs of the Cater- 
 piller and the Tower. His steed, however, is an 
 old Palio racer and goes ahead all the faster 
 for being riderless, and if he comes in first he 
 will win the day. 
 
 But it is too late. The cannon thunders 
 again, and the Dragon is being lifted from his 
 horse by wild admirers, who hug both man and 
 beast and carry them down the track, regard- 
 less of the other coursers, who cannot be reined 
 in. The benches are emptying. The crowd is 
 pouring from the Campo. Before the race, 
 every horse was taken into his parish church 
 and led up to the altar to be blessed by the 
 priest, and now the multitude of Dragonites are 
 
SIENA 191 
 
 streaming away to the church of the Proven- 
 zano to return thanks for the victory. The 
 nervous little animal is pushed in through the 
 door-curtain, and stamps across the marble 
 floor to the high altar, where he droops his head 
 for a moment while the jockey kneels and the 
 congregation lift up their hearts in thanksgiv- 
 ing. 
 
 There was much murmuring about the unfair 
 treatment of the Snail, but apparently all was 
 forgotten by the next Sunday night, when the 
 entire population of the Dragon, including the 
 horse, partook of a banquet at public expense. 
 Up to within a few years ago, the table was set 
 in the street, the feast lasted all night, and all 
 comers were treated; but the uproar was so 
 terrific that the custom has been changed. For- 
 tunately this is the most extensive reform that 
 has been introduced, and Siena still enjoys her- 
 self in the lively old way she has inherited from 
 the Middle Ages. 
 
 I have dwelt on Siena's past greatness, illus- 
 trating this theme by the story of her cathedral 
 and town-hall and of the growth of a humane 
 spirit in the hearts of some of her famous citi- 
 zens, and have shown finally how she still holds 
 fast to at least one mediaeval custom, in the 
 Palio. But unless you have walked her echoing 
 streets or viewed her from some green lane in 
 
192 DEEAMS AND MEMORIES 
 
 the country outside her walls, you can hardly 
 form a conception of her beauty, gracious 
 though not gay, serious though not stern. I 
 carried away in my heart one picture of her 
 which will remain with me always. It was very 
 early in the morning, and I was returning to 
 town after a stroll in the country, for one had to 
 be up betimes to do any walking before the heat 
 of the day. I had descended a gorge into the 
 narrow valley that encompasses Siena like a 
 moat, and emerging from the wet bushes at 
 last, stood free on a level spot. In the bottom 
 of the valley still lodged the shadows and 
 damps of night. Above, on the hill, where 
 climbed and clung the town, a light and half- 
 transparent vapour rested, yet ever seemed 
 about to float away. One over another, on the 
 imminent steep, hung the black-roofed houses, 
 just visible through the scattering mist, like 
 sunken reefs that show themselves under the 
 foam of breakers. It was a desolate and for- 
 bidding scene and made me think of towns in a 
 less hospitable clime, — of Edinburgh High 
 Street or grim old Quebec. But a layer of fog 
 broke oif and floated away into the upper air, 
 and left revealed, crowning that unawakened 
 height, a structure airy as the cloud itself, and 
 seemingly about to rise in the morning breeze. 
 The fair cathedral glittered in the sun, from the 
 
SIENA 193 
 
 gilt angel on its foremost pinnacle to the bands 
 of polished marble at its base; and from the 
 half that was revealed could be surmised the 
 beauties which the fog still covered. Its huge 
 swelling dome reflected a thousand many-tinted 
 rays, like a great bubble of iridescent glass. 
 The graceful campanile pointed high in the 
 fresh heavens, fast clearing now of the veils of 
 night. Then came the flutter of the day's first 
 doves, starting forth from the slender tower 
 windows, and sweet Siena was awake again. 
 
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