(URAY"\ 
 UNIVWSITYOF 
 CAUKMMA 
 SWOiEQQ j
 
 My 
 
 Of Long Ago 
 
 For Friends who Remember 
 
 KATE SANBORN 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 1898
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 BY KATE SANBORN 
 
 All rights reserved 
 Jl NE 6, 1898
 
 ACROSS THE YEARS 
 
 Sitting on my southern piazza, this perfect after 
 noon in the perfect month of June, looking out over 
 " Breezy Meadows," with their rich growth of grass, 
 fields of waving grain, and ripening crops, while my 
 cows graze in the distant pasture ; listening to the 
 raucous yet not unpleasant voices of the conceited 
 turkey-gobbler and his meek, drab-hued mates, the 
 geese, always perfectly at home on my farm, the 
 mournful " koquet, koquet " of the imprisoned 
 guineas, and the cheerful cackle of the business 
 hen, I realize that my happiest hours are now those 
 devoted to outdoor sports and agricultural enter 
 prises no longer a blue-stocking, but a full-fledged 
 farmer ! 
 
 Emerson says that " a farm is a mute gospel." 
 To me it has rather proved to be a revelation, noisy, 
 expensive, and at times depressing or exasperating. 
 Still, I love this life and shall never give it up. 
 
 Looking back to the time when, intensely ambi 
 tious, and audacious because so ambitious, so ignor 
 ant of the world, and so empty as to purse, I dared to 
 announce a course of ten lectures on literary themes 
 in New York city, a young woman, almost unknown,
 
 4 Across The Years 
 
 I am amazed at the venture, and bless, as I have 
 always done, the patrons who, believing in me, gave 
 such effective aid. Do you recall my painful timid 
 ity, my face, which turned all colors from excite 
 ment, and how every bit of that nervous fear 
 vanished under the radiant inspiration of the en 
 couraging faces before me ? Dear happy hours ! 
 Dear faces ! Dear faithful friends ! 
 
 How far away it all seems ! Since then I have 
 talked to thousands, have enjoyed the honors of 
 somewhat successful authorship, have been professor 
 of literature in a woman s college, president of a 
 woman s club, have learned to make butter, and 
 manage hens. But nothing stays so agreeably in 
 my memory as that first audience of New York 
 women. How public opinion changes as time rolls 
 on ! Twenty-five years ago there were plenty of 
 persons who considered me an oddity on account 
 of my profession ; some would not care to know 
 a woman who unsexed herself by speaking on a 
 platform. I was an unconscious pioneer : now the 
 number of women doing the same work is legion. 
 I started a class in Dr. Holland s parlor on Park 
 Avenue for his wife and a score of friends, condens 
 ing new books and speaking of current events ; now 
 every village has such a class, or else a thriving club 
 able to do its work without a guide. 
 
 Egotism (on paper) is sometimes allowable. I 
 confess without any apology that, like Montaigne, I 
 have always " hungered to make myself known,"
 
 Across The Years 5 
 
 have desired earnestly to be known especially, as 
 a thorough, well-equipped student of literature. 
 
 And now I am not willing to let these pet 
 lectures grow yellow in a desk, or, after my death, 
 be stored in an attic as food for mice, or, later, given 
 to the flames. I am not so exacting as to expect you 
 to read them : just give the book an honorable place 
 in your libraries perhaps some grandchildren of 
 yours may look them over. They represent a deal 
 of " digging," careful condensing and elimination, 
 and are still worth preserving. 
 
 The kindest of publishers fight shy of lectures ; 
 all want something light and amusing from me 
 farm bulletins and comic adventures. That is only 
 a small part of my life, so I offer some serious work 
 made easy reading by hard labor, to those who still 
 retain a kindly interest in 
 
 Farmer, Henwoman, and ex-Litterateur.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 SPINSTER AUTHORS OF ENGLAND, . .^^-. . . 9 
 
 BACHELOR AUTHORS IN TYPES 61 
 
 LADY MORGAN, 108 
 
 CHRISTOPHER NORTH AND HIS FRIENDS, . .141 
 
 THE OLD MIRACLE PLAYS, 174 
 
 OUR EARLY NEWSPAPER WITS 217 
 
 MADAME DE GENLIS, 267 
 
 ARE WOMEN WITTY ? . 309
 
 MY FAVORITE LECTURES
 
 SPINSTER AUTHORS OF ENGLAND 
 
 OLD Maids have been classified, by one who has 
 written a book about them, as Voluntary, Involun 
 tary, Inexplicable, and Literary. These various 
 modifications are honored with a chapter of com 
 ment ; each type is clearly defined except the Lit 
 erary Spinster ; she is left severely alone. Possibly, 
 the terms were thought synonymous, for in the 
 hearts of many there is still an innate shrinking 
 from a Blue Stocking, a name first applied to a man, 
 the agreeable Dr. Stillingfleet, whose blue stockings 
 were often noticed at Mrs. Montagu s Receptions. 
 
 Jeffrey hit the happy medium when speaking of 
 a literary woman : " I don t care how blue her stock 
 ings are, if her petticoats are long enough to hide 
 her hose." 
 
 An engraving in an English Annual, entitled 
 " The Husband of a Blue," illustrates the once pop 
 ular theory that a woman who writes must of neces 
 sity be a failure in home-life. The luckless man, in 
 extremely simple toilette, is walking the floor ; a 
 screaming baby in his arms, a pendulum between 
 patience and despair ; while Madam, all unconscious 
 of the situation, unless, perhaps, annoyed by the 
 cries of one and the heartfelt groans of the other, 
 is perched up in bed with tangled locks flowing
 
 10 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 and eyes wildly rolling, as she rounds some fine 
 sentence, or, with gaze uplifted, is waiting for fur 
 ther inspiration. 
 
 Both in England and our own country there are 
 many distinguished authors who are also good wives 
 and mothers, women, in happy homes, with hus 
 bands proud and fond, sure of three good meals 
 each day, and every button on. 
 
 But Literary Spinsters are to be enumerated in 
 this paper ; scarcely-more, for there are so many to 
 be mentioned that I can merely evoke, and dismiss, 
 like the showman of a panorama. 
 
 I must go back to the Fourteenth Century for 
 my first Spinster Author, to the pretty Prioress and 
 practical sportswoman Juliana Berners, a Minerva 
 in her studies, a Diana in her diversions, the high 
 born beauty, once famous, now forgotten, cotempo- 
 rary with Chaucer. Her works, printed in black 
 letter, and adorned with extraordinary wood-cuts, 
 have lately been reproduced in luxurious binding. 
 Her treatise on the Art of Fishing is the best known. 
 She is the author of the " Book of St. Albans," which 
 contains essays on Hawking, Hunting, Coat-Armor, 
 Fishing, and Bearing of Arms printed at West 
 minster by Wynkyn de Worde, a rival of Caxton, 
 in 1486.* She was practical as well as learned and 
 
 * BERNERS (Dame Juliana). A Treatyse of Fysshinge wyth an Angle. 
 A facsimile reproduction of the first book on the subject of fishing, 
 printed in England by Wynkyn de Worde at Westminster in 1496. 
 With an introduction by Rev. M. G. Watkins, M.A. 4to, printed on 
 hand made paper, rough edges, blind tooled, vellum boards. London, 
 E. Stock, n. d. (1880). $4.50.
 
 Spinster Authors of England H 
 
 enjoyed the chase as does the empress of Austria 
 to-day. It is paradoxical to imagine a holy Prioress, 
 accustomed to severe restriction and serene medita 
 tions, chasing over the woodlands with hound and 
 horn, or collecting recipes for the extinction of 
 vermin on her pet hawks, which she cared for with 
 untiring devotion. We owe to her the earliest Eng 
 lish treatise on fishing. 
 
 Her picture, as seen in Zouch s Life of Walton, 
 shows a striking face, full of decision, spirit, and 
 sweetness, a handsome figure, attractive in spite of 
 her ugly gear. On her right is seen the landing net, 
 with fish and creel, on the left, emblems of the chase, 
 and a hooded falcon at top. 
 
 Good-bye, pretty and pious Juliana of so long-ago. 
 I would like to linger with you but a brilliant crowd 
 is beckoning, led by Queen Elizabeth herself. 
 " Queen Bess " (1553-1603) was an accomplished lin 
 guist, translated from Greek and Latin and occasion 
 ally " dropped into poetry." 
 
 A sonnet on Mary, Queen of Scots, is preserved, 
 also some verses on her own feelings, at the depart 
 ure of a rejected lover. 
 
 You recall her couplet, added to Raleigh s, on a 
 window of her palace. He scratched : 
 
 " I fain would climb, 
 But that I fear to fall." 
 
 She rejoined : 
 
 " If thy heart fails thee 
 Do not climb at all.
 
 12 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 A bit of impromptu doggerel is ascribed to her 
 on entering a certain town, where the mayor, a pom 
 pous, rotund little personage, mounted on a stool, to 
 make his address of welcome more impressive. 
 
 Her reply was brief and curt : 
 
 " You great fool, 
 Get off that stool ! " 
 
 Disraeli speaks of a manuscript volume of her 
 poems still to be seen in the Hatfield collection. 
 
 She was ambitious to shine as a poet, although 
 affecting to be angry when one of the ladies of her 
 bedchamber copied some rhymes from her tablet, 
 " fearing her people should imagine she was busied 
 in such toys." 
 
 Her courtiers lavished extravagant praise on her 
 royal ditties, which any editor of to-day would con 
 sign to the waste basket, and the Latin poem of her 
 cousin will live, while the verses of Elizabeth Re- 
 gina are forgotten. 
 
 We are more interested in another Elizabeth, the 
 celebrated classical scholar, Miss Carter (1717-1806), 
 in the words of Allibone, " an ornament to her sex and 
 an honor to her race." Of her translation of Epicte- 
 tus, which brought her ^"1,000, Dr. Warton said " It 
 excels the original." 
 
 Dr. Johnson, her friend and admirer for nearly 
 half a century, composed a Greek epigram in her 
 honor. He remarked of a fine Greek scholar : " Sir, 
 he is the best Greek scholar in England, except 
 Elizabeth Carter."
 
 Spinster Authors of England 13 
 
 Upon hearing- a lady commended for her learn 
 ing, he said, 1 "A man is in general better pleased 
 when he has a good dinner upon his table than when 
 his wife talks Greek. My old friend, Miss Carter, 
 could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus, 
 and work a handkerchief as well as compose a 
 poem." 
 
 William Hayley, Cowper s biographer, wrote sev 
 eral volumes on " Old Maids, Ancient and Modern," 
 and dedicated the work to Mrs. Carter,* saying : 
 
 " Permit me to pay my devotions to you, as the 
 ancients did to their three-fold Diana, and to rever 
 ence you in three distinct characters as a poet, as a 
 philosopher, and as an old maid." 
 
 Miss Carter was a first-rate housekeeper and nee 
 dle-woman, took lessons in drawing and music, was 
 an excellent dancer, could play cards, or share in any 
 social diversion when young, even somewhat of a 
 romp. She jots in her diary, " I walked three miles 
 yesterday in a wind that I thought would have blown 
 me out of this planet, and afterwards danced nine 
 hours, and then walked back again. No girl pedant 
 was she, and they said she had many opportunities 
 of marriage. 
 
 Miss Elizabeth Carter once went to a puppet show 
 at Deal with some five friends. Punch was uncom 
 monly dull and serious, though usually more jocose 
 than delicate. " Why, Punch," says the showman, 
 " what makes you so stupid ? " "I can t talk my 
 
 * English spinsters, after arriving at the mature age of fifty, were 
 addressed as Mrs., not Miss.
 
 14 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 own talk," answers Punch, " because the famous Miss 
 Carter is here ! " 
 
 Next in order Miss Catherine Talbot (1720-1777), 
 a most worthy spinster, who can only be mentioned, 
 for several pages must be given to Hannah More 
 (1745-1832), whose talent for writing showed itself 
 early. When but a little child, if she could get hold 
 of a sheet of paper, she would scribble some essay or 
 poem, never omitting a moral, and then hide it in a 
 dark closet with the brooms and duster. When she 
 composed verses at night, her admiring sister would 
 often steal down stairs for a light and then jot them 
 down. 
 
 One of her favorite games was a prophecy, for her 
 mother proudly relates how she used to make a car 
 riage of a chair and invite her sisters to ride with her 
 to London to see bishops and booksellers Her high 
 est ambition was a whole quire of paper, all her own, 
 and when the prize was obtained she covered sheet 
 after sheet with letters to depraved characters to re 
 claim and reform them, and the replies, expressive 
 of contrition and resolutions of amendment. She 
 was as brilliant as good. When Sheridan, the elder, 
 delivered his lectures on eloquence in Bristol, she 
 sent some verses to the orator, which led to a pleas 
 ant acquaintance. As a talker she was remarkable, 
 When about sixteen, a dangerous illness brought an 
 eminent physician to her bedside. Like every one 
 else who met her he was completely charmed by her 
 conversation. On one occasion he entirely forgot
 
 Spinster Authors of England 15 
 
 the purpose of his visit in the fascination of her talk, 
 till suddenly, recollecting himself, when he was half 
 way down stairs, he cried out : " Bless me ? I forgot 
 to ask the girl how she was," and hurried back to the 
 room exclaiming, " How are you to-day, my poor 
 child ? " 
 
 In her i/th year she wrote a pastoral drama, 
 " The Search after Happiness," a success. She had 
 already a wide correspondence with distinguished 
 men. One sent her this verse on her promise to 
 visit his garden : 
 
 " Blow, blow my sweetest rose, 
 
 For Hannah More will soon be here, 
 And all that crowns the ripening year 
 Should triumph where she goes." 
 
 Her father disliked pedantic women, and having 
 taught her a little Latin and mathematics was 
 alarmed at her progress; at twenty she was an 
 uncommon linguist. But, if learned, never poky in 
 her brilliant youth ; popular in London soci 
 ety ; full of spirit and humor ; a special favorite 
 of Dr. Johnson, Garrick. Horace Walpole called 
 her his " holy Hannah." Garrick gave her the pet 
 name of " Nine," referring to the Muses. He wrote 
 prologue and epilogue for her play of " Percy," a 
 success, which gave her 750 pounds. She earned 
 more than $150,000 by her pen, one-third of which 
 she gave away, and did not begin her career until 
 after thirty. Millions of her tracts and ballads were 
 sold. It is said that her books were more numerous,
 
 16 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 passed through more editions, printed in more 
 languages, read by more people, than those of any 
 woman on record. Her popular story, " Coelebs in 
 Search of a Wife," unendurably tame now, went 
 through ten editions in one year. Of course, she 
 was severely criticised by rivals. She said she " was 
 battered, hacked, scalped, tomahawked." After 
 Garrick s death she never went to a theatre, even to 
 see her own tragedies performed, and lived more 
 quietly, but always eagerly sought for by the best 
 society. Only one love affair is spoken of in con 
 nection with this beautiful woman, so witty and 
 attractive, and that most unfortunate and mortify 
 ing. A rich widower, kept postponing their mar 
 riage until her friends interfered. He declared that 
 he had the deepest regard and respect for Miss 
 More, and at his death he bequeathed her a thousand 
 pounds. She had other offers, but avoided a second 
 entanglement. Most people think of Hannah More 
 as an aged spinster with black mits, corkscrew curls, 
 and a mob cap, always writing or presenting a 
 solemn tract, ignoring her youthful fascinations. 
 
 Her kindness to Macaulay, when a precocious 
 little lad he often visited her, is pleasant to remember. 
 
 She stimulated him to read, giving the money to 
 buy his first valuable books, laying, as she said, 
 " the tiny cornerstone of his library," and encouraged 
 without flattery. 
 
 If, after listening to this high estimate, you go 
 to your library and taking down Hannah s prosy
 
 Spinster Authors of England 17 
 
 disquisitions, rather dusty on the edges, and, turning 
 over the various volumes, look for something inter 
 esting or lively, you will be disappointed. Her 
 tracts and homely poems, written for practical effect 
 among the poor (for instance, the dialogue between 
 the two weavers over the half-made carpet), are still 
 excellent. But who reads Hannah More now ? Her 
 day has gone by. Her " Percy," like Addison s 
 " Cato," would be wretchedly dull on any stage. 
 Towards the close of her life she fell into a common 
 error, and grew narrow in her views, and unneces 
 sarily solemn. Never found time to read Scott s 
 novels, and accused him of being not immoral but 
 non-moral, which was unjust ; and said she would 
 rather present herself at Heaven s gate with her" 
 tract, "The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain," in her hand, 
 than encumbered with all the novels of the mighty 
 " Wizard of the North." 
 
 A good novel is as useful in its way as a good 
 tract, and Jeannie Dean s character and her speech 
 to the Queen in behalf of her sister, seems to me 
 more Christlike, than the stilted submission of the 
 saintly shepherd. 
 
 " And when we come to die, my Leddy, its 
 not what we hae dune for ourselves, but what we 
 hae dune for others that we think on maist pleas 
 antly." 
 
 " I wonder if you ever heard a story told to me 
 by your countryman, Mr. Northmore, a great Dev 
 onshire reformer, one of the bad epic poets and
 
 18 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 very pleasant men in which that country abounds. 
 He said that Jeremy Bentham being on a visit at a 
 show-house in those parts, at a time when he was 
 little known except as a jurist, certainly before the 
 publication of the Church of Englandism, or any 
 such enormities Mrs. Hannah More, being at a 
 watering-place in the neighborhood, was minded to 
 see him, and availed herself of the house, being one 
 which was shown on stated days, to pay a visit to 
 the philosopher. He was in the library when the 
 news arrived, and the lady being already in the 
 ante-chamber and no possible mode of escape pre 
 senting itself, he sent one servant to detain her a 
 few minutes and employed another to build him up 
 with books in a corner of the room. When the 
 folios and quartos rose above his head, the curious 
 lady was admitted. Must it not have been a droll 
 scene ? The philosopher playing at bo-peep in his 
 intrenchment and the good lady, who had previously 
 ascertained that he was iii the room, peering after 
 him in all the agony of baffled curiosity ! " 
 
 I have sketched Hannah More s picture as faith 
 fully as possible, with no idea of blaming her for 
 being too good, but it would be partial not to allude 
 to her narrowness lest a shadow might fall on the 
 picture. 
 
 She said many good things, as : "I used to 
 wonder why people should be so fond of the com 
 pany of their physician, till I recollected he is the 
 only person with whom one dares to talk continually
 
 Spinster Authors of England 19 
 
 of one s self without interruption, contradiction, or 
 censure." 
 
 "There are only two bad things in this world, 
 sin and bile." Speaking of Woman s Rights, how 
 many ways there are of being ridiculous ? I am sure 
 I have as much liberty as I can make good use of, 
 now I am an old maid, and when I was a young one 
 I had, I dare say, more than was good for me." 
 
 Anna Seward (1747-1809) was a most sentimental, 
 lackadaisical, affected creature, with a particularly 
 florid and stilted style, called by her admirers of the 
 " Delia Cruscan " school the " The Swan of Litch- 
 field," but who impresses more impartial observers 
 as a Goose. Still, at nine years old she could repeat 
 the first three books of Paradise Lost, which proves 
 her appreciation of good poetry whatever we may 
 think of her own. She wrote a succession of 
 Elegies, Monodies, and Odes ; Sonnets, Poetical 
 Epistles, and Adieus; all about Capt. Cook and Major 
 Andre, and a variety of other notables ; also a 
 metrical novel, " Louisa," and laid claim to the first 
 fifty lines of Dr. Darwin s " Botanic Garden " ; was 
 afterwards his biographer, a real misfortune for the 
 doctor s fame, though a ludicrous one. Walter Scott, 
 who was her literary executor, pronounced her two 
 volumes of poems " absolutely execrable," and her six 
 volumes of published correspondence proved an 
 utter failure. I grieve to say that this voluminous 
 publication was regarded as a display of " vanity, 
 egotism, and malignity ! "
 
 20 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 Leigh Hunt says, " Miss Seward is affected and 
 superfluous, but now and then she writes a goop 
 line, for example : 
 
 And sultry silence brooded o er the hills, 
 
 and she can paint a natural picture." Horace Walpole 
 wrote to the Countess of Ossory, " Misses Seward 
 and Williams, and half a dozen more of those har 
 monious virgins, have no imagination, no novelty. 
 Their thoughts and phrases are like their gowns, 
 old remnants cut and turned." Her style is the acme 
 of high-flownativeness and stewed prunism. She 
 says that Dr. Darwin purchased about the year 1777, 
 " a little wild umbrageous valley, a mile from Litch- 
 field, irriguous from various springs and swampy 
 from their plentitude." 
 
 When this bog was transformed into a Paradise, 
 she took her tablets and pencil and, seated on a 
 flowery bank in the midst of that luxurious retreat, 
 composed some lines, " while the sun was gilding 
 the glen, and while birds of every plume poured 
 their songs from the boughs." 
 
 Four lines from the " Botanic Garden " will 
 suffice for a specimen : 
 
 " My plumy pairs in gay embroidery dressed, 
 Form with ingenious bill the pensile nest, 
 To Love s sweet notes attune the listening dell, 
 And Echo sounds her soft symphonious shell." 
 
 Richard Lovell Edge worth, the eccentric father 
 of Maria, who liked to pose as a bachelor, met Miss 
 Seward at Litchfield, when " she was in the height of
 
 Spinster Authors of England 21 
 
 youth and beauty, of an enthusiastic temper, a 
 votary of the Muses, and of the most eloquent and 
 brilliant conversation." He adds that Mrs. Darwin 
 had a little pique against Miss Seward, who had in 
 fact been her rival with the doctor. " At Mrs. Dar 
 win s tea-table I was placed next Miss Seward, and a 
 number of lively sallies escaped her that set the 
 table in good humor. I remember she repeated 
 some of Prior s " Henry and Emma," and dwelling 
 upon Emma s tenderness she cited the care that she 
 ^proposed to take of her lover if he were wounded, 
 
 " To bind his wounds my finest lawns I d tear, 
 Wash them with tears, and wipe them with my hair." 
 
 I represented that the lady who must have had 
 by her own account a choice of lawns might have 
 employed some of the coarse sort for this operation 
 instead of having recourse to her hair. I then paid 
 Miss Seward some compliments on her own beauti 
 ful tresses, and at that moment the watchful Mrs. 
 Darwin took this opportunity of drinking Mrs. 
 EdgcwortJi s health." 
 
 As Americans, we ought to think kindly of Miss 
 Seward, as she was on our side during the War for 
 Independence. Boswell has recorded Johnson s re 
 mark, " I am willing to love all mankind except an 
 American," adding that " his inflammable corrup 
 tions bursting with horrid fire, he breathed out 
 threatenings and slaughter, calling them rascals, rob 
 bers, and pirates, and exclaiming he d burn em and 
 destroy "em." Miss Seward, looking to him with mild
 
 22 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 but steady astonishment, said : " Sir, this is an 
 instance that we are always most violent against 
 those whom we have injured." Johnson said to Miss 
 Seward, " Madam, there is not anything equal to 
 your description of the sea round the North Pole, in 
 your ode on the death of Captain Cook." 
 
 In one of her letters she exclaims : " How prone 
 are our hearts perversely to quarrel with the friendly 
 coercion of employment at the very instant in which 
 it is clearing the torpid and injurious mists of una 
 vailing melancholy.""* 
 
 We come next to Jane Austen (1755-1817), who, 
 like Mrs. Browning, has been called "a feminine 
 Shakespeare." Her life was most simple and se 
 cluded, domestic, and she really wrote for her own 
 amusement idolized by her nephews and nieces, 
 who were always pleading to go to "Auntie s Room " 
 for a frolic, a petting, or a story. It was not then 
 thought desirable for young ladies to study or write, 
 so Miss Austen compromised matters by a large piece 
 of fancy work kept on parlor table to hide her manu 
 scripts when callers appeared. Much money was 
 not necessary for the moderate expenses of her quiet 
 home, and so modestly did she estimate her work, 
 that when she received one hundred and fifty pounds 
 from the sale of " Sense and Sensibility," she consid 
 ered it a prodigious recompense. She called her ex 
 quisite word painting " little bits of ivory, two inches 
 
 *This sort of writing emigrated to America, but died with Mrs. 
 Sigourney.
 
 Spinster Authors of England 23 
 
 wide." She never posed as a literary light, had a 
 dislike of being lionized, was a little embarrassed 
 when introductions were sought, saying, " If I am a 
 wild beast I cannot help it ; it is not my fault." She 
 wrote early two of her masterpieces, published before 
 she was twenty-one. 
 
 We always like to know how such a famous 
 person looked. She was tall, slender, with clear bru 
 nette complexion, fine rich color, hazel eyes, brown 
 curling hair. 
 
 "She was lively, graceful, witty, a good dancer, 
 fond of a good play, a little satirical, full of quiet 
 humor, and very lovable. She had many admirers, 
 flirted a little, loved seriously once, another unfor 
 tunate romance which Miss Thackeray speaks of, 
 and then settled down with her beloved sister Cas 
 sandra, to a quiet old maid life, in a happ) home. 
 Miss Mitford, one of her warmest admirers, declared 
 she would almost be willing to cut off one of her 
 hands if it would enable her to write like Miss Austen 
 with the other. 
 
 Walter Scott, after reading " Pride and Preju 
 dice " for the third time, said : " That young lady 
 had a talent for describing the involvements, feel 
 ings, and characters of ordinary life, which is to me 
 the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow- 
 ivoiu I can do myself, like any one going ; but her 
 exquisite touch is denied to me. What a pity that 
 so gifted a creature died so early ! " 
 
 Coleridge would sometimes burst out into high
 
 24 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 encomiums of her novels as being in their way 
 perfectly genuine and individual productions, and 
 Archbishop Whately was an enthusiast in her 
 praise. 
 
 Macaulay, with all his love for new novels, seemed 
 never to tire of hers, and called her a prose Shakes 
 peare. He intended to write her memoir, and erect 
 a monument to her memory with the proceeds. This 
 biography, which would have been her best monu 
 ment, he never accomplished, but in his letters we 
 find constant allusions to his delight in reading her 
 stories. In our day such a woman would have had 
 her memoirs written by enthusiastic admirers before 
 the breath had left her body. But her talent, her 
 rare gift of depicting every-day types in daily life 
 with pre-Raphaelite distinctness and truth, was fully 
 appreciated by many of England s most famous men. 
 vSeven distinguished men, among them Hallam and 
 Macaulay, being asked at a dinner party to mention 
 the novel which had given them the most pleasure, 
 gave the name as Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen. 
 
 Miss Thackeray says : " The simple family annals 
 are not without their romance, but there is a cruel 
 one for poor Cassandra, whose lover dies abroad and 
 his death saddens the whole family party." 
 
 Jane, too, " receives the addresses " (do such things 
 as addresses exist nowadays ?) of a gentleman pos 
 sessed of good character and fortune and of every 
 thing in short except the subtle power of touching 
 her heart."
 
 Spinster Authors of England 25 
 
 And another sorrowful story. The sisters fate 
 (there is a sad coincidence and similarity in it) was 
 to be undivided, their life, their experience, was the 
 same. Some one without a name takes leave of 
 Jane one day, promising to come back. He never 
 comes back ; long afterwards they hear of his death. 
 The story seems even sadder than Cassandra s, in its 
 silence and uncertainty, for silence and uncertainty 
 are death in life to some people." 
 
 \^e have a picture of Lord Holland lying on his 
 bed, agonizing with an attack of gout, while his sister 
 sat beside him diverting his mind with one of Miss 
 Austen s novels, of which he never wearied. 
 
 And Sydney Smith, more than once, dwelt with 
 eloquence on her merits, and said he should have 
 enjoyed giving her the pleasure of reading her 
 praises in the " Edinburgh." George Eliot consid 
 ered her the greatest artist that has ever written ; 
 the most perfect master over the means to her end, 
 " surpassing all male novelists." Tennyson and 
 Howells are her devoted admirers. 
 
 Her novels have been translated into French, and 
 in the Atlantic Monthly of February, 1863, you will 
 find an excellent article on this charming woman. 
 To say that the Prince Regent read and liked her 
 stories and invited her to examine his library seems 
 a small honor in comparison with the appreciation 
 of the others mentioned. With all her fondness for 
 literary work she was a true woman, fond of chil 
 dren, amusing them with stories, playful doggerel,
 
 26 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 and merry games, skillful with her needle, embroid 
 ering exquisitely, "great in satin-stitch," sang sweetly, 
 and played well on piano. 
 
 She inherited her love of fun from her witty and 
 agreeable grandfather, of whom Mrs. Thrall wrote 
 to Dr. Johnson : "Are you acquainted with Dr. Leigh, 
 master of Balliol College, and are you not delighted 
 with his gaiety of manner and youthful vivacity now 
 that he is eighty-six years of age ?" When some 
 one told him how, in a dispute among the Priory 
 Counsellors, the Lord Chancellor struck the table 
 with such violence that he split it. " No, no," re 
 plied the master, " I can t persuade myself that he 
 split the table, though I believe he divided the 
 board." 
 
 He was once calling on a gentleman notorious for 
 never opening a book, who ushered him into a room 
 overlooking the Bath Road, then a great thorough 
 fare for travelers of every class, remarking, rather pom 
 pously, " This, Doctor, I call my study." Dr. Leigh, 
 glancing around the room in which not a book was 
 to be seen, replied, " And very well named too, sir, 
 for you know Pope tells us, " The proper study of 
 mankind is man." Only three days before he died, 
 being told of a man whom his friends regarded as 
 egged on to matrimony, as he married after a long 
 illness cured by eating eggs, he trumped the joke 
 saying, " Then may the YOKE sit easy on him." 
 
 Two of Miss Austen s epigrams have been pre 
 served. The first was suggested by reading in a
 
 Spinster Authors of England 27 
 
 newspaper the marriage of Mr. Gell to Miss Gill of 
 Eastborne. 
 
 " At Eastburn, Mr. Gell, from being perfectly well, 
 Became dreadfully ill for love of Miss Gill ; 
 So he said with some sighs, I m the slave of your ii s, 
 Restore if you please, by accepting my ee s. " 
 
 The second on the marriage of a middle-aged 
 flirt with a Mr. Wake, whom gossips averred she 
 wottld have scorned in her prime. 
 
 " Maira, good-humored, and handsome and tall, 
 
 For a husband was at her last stake, 
 And having in vain danced at many a ball, 
 
 Is now happy to jump at a Wake ! " 
 
 Her novels were at first published anonymously, 
 which prevented her enjoying the praise they re 
 ceived. She received seven hundred pounds for her 
 novels. The old verger in Winchester Cathedral 
 had been so often asked to point out her grave, that 
 he inquired of some traveler if " she ever did any 
 thing in particular." She had a happy, peaceful life 
 and left behind an enduring fame. 
 
 Jane Porter, another novelist, now comes upon 
 the scene (1776-1850). She began the system of his 
 torical novel-writing which attained the climax of 
 renown in the hands of Scott. Like Jane Austen, 
 she lived in a very quiet way with her mother and 
 her sister Anna, who also wrote novels. All that we 
 need to know of her is that she wrote " Thaddeus 
 of Warsaw " and the " Scottish Chiefs," both of which 
 were famous in their day.
 
 28 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 Thaddeus was translated into several of the Con 
 tinental languages. A relation of the Polish Patriot, 
 Kosciusko, sent her a gold ring containing a minia 
 ture of the hero, and Gen. Gardiner, who was then 
 British Ambassador at the Court of Stanislaus, could 
 hardly believe that some of the scenes could have 
 been described by one who was not an eye witness. 
 In 1809, appeared the Scottish Chiefs, and Scott ad 
 mitted to George IV that this was the veritable be 
 getter of the Waverly novels. 
 
 There was a touch of Old World and sentimental 
 eloquence in her manners which we shall hardly see 
 reproduced. She conversed like an accomplished 
 woman who had kept much worshipful company in 
 her time,without, however, the slightest parade or pre 
 tension. Maginn in " The Fraserians " (a delightful 
 book to own) rambles on in his own way about her, 
 saying, as he looked at her picture, "handsome the 
 face is still." " We hope Miss Porter has sufficient 
 philosophy to pardon us for that fatal adverb. Time 
 and tide wait for no man, nor woman either, and there 
 is the fact extant that she published the Spirit of the 
 Elbe in 1 800, some five-and-thirty years ago. Al 
 lowing that she was then but twenty, it brings her 
 now-a-days to the Falstaffian age of some seven-and- 
 fifty, or inclining to threescore. Many a lady of Miss 
 Porter s standing, if she had kept Miss Porter s good 
 looks, could well smuggle off ten or a dozen years 
 from the account if she had not dabbled in printer s 
 work. Joe Miller informs us that a coal porter hav-
 
 Spinster Authors of England 29 
 
 ing inquired what the crime was for which he saw a 
 man hanging at Tyburn tree, and being told it was 
 forgery, exclaimed : Ah ! that s what comes of 
 knowing how to read and write, my good fellow ! 
 
 " We are tempted to make a similar exclamation 
 when we find a lady rendering the footsteps of 
 time traceable by manifesting her powers of pen 
 manship." 
 
 " In private she is a quiet and good-humored lady, 
 rather pious and fond of going to evening parties, 
 where she generally contrives to be seen patronizing 
 some sucking lion or lioness. In which occupation 
 may she long continue, devoting her mornings to 
 the prayer-book and the evenings to the conversa 
 zione. 
 
 And may no ill event cut shorter 
 The easy course of Miss Jane Porter." 
 
 Joanna Baillie, 1762-1798, being a veritable Scotch 
 woman, can hardly be classed among the English 
 spinsters, although she spent most of her long life 
 near London, the center of a literary circle, literally 
 the friend of two generations of authors. Her ambi 
 tion was to be a dramatist, and her plan to devote a 
 play to each passion, but they were very poor imita 
 tions of Shakespeare and Beaumont and Fletcher, just 
 as her Scottish songs have the rhyme and the pro 
 nunciation of Burns without his spice and spirit and 
 soul. There was a want of business in her scenes. 
 Her stock of words was deplorably scanty, her pages 
 were marred by affectations of antiquated phrase-
 
 30 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 ology, and she unduly magnified little things, as 
 when alluding to goose flesh she says : 
 
 " When every hair-pit in my shrunken skin 
 A knotted knoll becomes." 
 
 Not a pleasing idea of the state of that young 
 woman s person. 
 
 The Edinburgh Review decided that she must 
 not write comedies and could not possibly write a 
 tragedy. 
 
 Still, her name commands attention. No woman 
 before had attempted so high a vein of poetry. 
 
 When she first appeared, the drama throughout 
 England seemed expiring, and she roused it to 
 new life. 
 
 Mrs. Siddons and Kemble, both acted in De 
 Montfort, and that would make anything a success. 
 
 She made the mistake of attempting too much. 
 Her voice was pitched for a more select audience, 
 not for the public. 
 
 Her fireside lyrics are quite charming. Very 
 appropriately (as an old maid) she wrote poetical 
 addresses to her Kitten and a Teapot, both of them 
 worth reading, and a touching tribute to her sister, 
 Agnes, a spinster, too, with whom she had lived for 
 years, and to whom she was thoroughly devoted. 
 
 Scott, who always said such kind things of 
 women, declared " that her merit as a dramatist was 
 so great to prevent all attempts at competition on 
 his part," and Lord Byron said: "Women (saving 
 Joanna Baillie) cannot write tragedy ; they have
 
 Spinster Authors of England 31 
 
 not seen enough nor felt enough of life for it." Yet 
 Byron, when invited to attend this good woman to 
 the opera, sat and made faces at her all the evening. 
 
 As Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) was proud to be 
 called an Irish woman and Irish Story Teller, she 
 will not be dwelt upon in this rapid survey. She 
 has lately had a great deal of attention, Mrs. Grace 
 Oliver having written her life and also edited some 
 of her stories, and she figures in the "Eminent 
 Women " series. This will gratify Donald Mitchell, 
 who, in a book for children, devotes a chapter to her. 
 " Those stories which were the delight of all young 
 people forty years ago, and those novels which were 
 the delight of all the grown people of her time," and 
 pleads that it is quite too soon to forget good Miss 
 Edgeworth and her books. Like Miss Baillie, she 
 aimed to make each work an elucidation of one 
 passion or one vice. Scott averred that it was her 
 tender, humorous, admirable delineations of Irish 
 character which led him to do the same thing for 
 his country, and Tourgenieff, the late Russian nov 
 elist, said he should never have written about the 
 woes of the peasanty of his land if not inspired by 
 what Miss Edgeworth had done. 
 
 The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth have 
 been edited by Augustus J. C. Hare. She said : 
 
 "As a woman, my life, wholly domestic, can offer 
 nothing of interest to the public." 
 
 Macaulay considered her "the second woman of 
 her age."
 
 32 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 Scott said of Simple Susan that when the boy 
 brings back the lamb to the little girl, there is noth 
 ing for it but to put down the book and cry. She 
 remarked of Madame Roland, "She was a great 
 woman and died heroically, but I don t think she 
 became more amiable and certainly not more happy 
 by meddling with politics ; for her head is cut off 
 and her husband has shot himself." Here is a 
 capital epigram : 
 
 " Theory was born in Brobdignag and Practice in 
 Lilliput." 
 
 Next in order, Jane Taylor, 1783-1824. The 
 " Original Poems for Infant Minds, by the Taylor 
 Family," did a great and good work in their day. 
 They sound oddly enough now, and the little folks 
 accustomed to the delicious nonsense verses of Ed 
 ward Lear, the grotesque playfulness of the rhymes 
 in Lewis Carrol s stories, and the really beautiful 
 poetry now written expressly for their delectation, 
 would hardly relish these crude efforts to instruct 
 children by means of poetry suited to their capacity. 
 
 The preface alludes to them as " that interesting 
 little race," as if they were a quite distinct species 
 from their parents like the Aztecs ! 
 
 The book opens rather dismally. First poem, 
 " The Churchyard." 
 
 " And see, from those darkly green trees 
 Of cypress and holly and yew, 
 That wave their black arms in the breeze, 
 The old village church is in view.
 
 Spinster Authors of England 33 
 
 The owl from her ivied retreat 
 Screams hoarse to the winds of the night, 
 And the clock with its solemn repeat 
 Has tolled the departure of night." 
 
 This is followed by a cheerful, alluring invitation : 
 
 " My child, let us wander alone, 
 
 When half the wide world is in bed, 
 
 And read o er the mouldering stone 
 
 That tells of the mouldering dead. 
 -And let us remember it well, 
 
 That we must as certainly die ; 
 /For us, too, may toll the sad bell, 
 
 And in the cold earth we must lie. 
 
 " You are not so healthy and gay, 
 So young, so active, and bright, 
 That death cannot snatch you away, 
 Or some dreadful accident smite. 
 Here lie both the young and the old, 
 Confined in the coffin so small, 
 And the earth closes over them cold, 
 And the grave-worm devours them all." 
 
 In a poem on "Beasts, Birds, and Fishes," 
 Adelaide Taylor managed to bring in a metrical 
 catalogue an entire menagerie, without the slightest 
 connection : 
 
 The Dog will come when he is called, 
 The Cat will walk away, 
 The Monkey s cheek is very bald, 
 The Goat is fond of play, 
 The Parrot is a prate-a-pace, 
 Yet knows not what she says, 
 The noble Horse will win the race, 
 Or draw you in a chaise. 
 The Sparrow steals the cherry ripe,
 
 34 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 The Elephant is wise, 
 
 The Blackbird charms you with his pipe, 
 
 The false Hyena cries, 
 
 The Hen guards well her little chicks, 
 
 The useful Cow is meek, 
 
 The Beaver builds with mud and sticks, 
 
 The Lapwing loves to squeak. 
 
 The spotted Tiger s fond of blood, 
 
 The Pigeon feeds on peas, 
 
 The Duck will gobble in the mud, 
 
 The Mice will eat your cheese, 
 
 A Lobster s black, when boiled he s red. 
 
 The harmless Lamb must bleed, 
 
 The Codfish has a clumsy head, 
 
 The Goose on grass will feed." 
 
 The moral, from which there is no escape, comes 
 at the close of the ninth verse : 
 
 " The child that does not these things know, 
 
 May yet be thought a dunce ; 
 
 But I will up in knowledge grow, 
 
 As youth can come but once." 
 
 Jane, tinder the nom de plume " Q. Q. " (a doubly 
 Qrious signature), published two small volumes of 
 tiresome, sermonizing essays, relieved occasionally 
 by something really bright and entertaining, like 
 the " Discontented Pendulum," an allegory so popu 
 lar with our grandmothers, found in most of the 
 reading books of the last generation, and how used 
 by elocutionists as an example of the circumflex, as 
 employed to express irony and gentle sarcasm : 
 
 " It is vastly easy for you, Mistress Dial, who 
 have always, as everybody knows, set yourself up
 
 Spinster Authors of England 35 
 
 above me it is vastly easy for you, I say, to accuse 
 other people of laziness." 
 
 And " the Weights, who had never been accused 
 of light conduct." 
 
 But there is little of that sort. The reading for 
 children was either in the form of a short sermon or a 
 prolonged conundrum, in stilted, formal language. 
 Due credit must be given to Jane Taylor and her 
 sisters, for their work was far better than any that 
 preceded it. Some of the best have lately been 
 revived and published. 
 
 And now we come to dear, rosy, sunny-faced, 
 brave-hearted Miss Mitford (1786-1855), whose life 
 was one long struggle, hidden by a patient, cheery 
 smile ; the highest type of a dutiful, loving daughter. 
 Her mother was an heiress, her father a handsome, 
 lazy, selfish spendthrift and gambler, who utterly 
 ruined their future by wasting all the money of the 
 mother. She won, at the age of ten, twenty thou 
 sand pounds in a lottery ticket, and Dr. Mitford prom 
 ised to settle this sum on her, but this was soon 
 squandered, like the wife s fortune. As Mr. Stod- 
 dard puts it : " To sum Dr. Mitford up in a word, he 
 was a beast." 
 
 So the brave little woman had to support both, 
 and did it without a murmur, for he had not even the 
 grace to die, but lived on most unconscionably until 
 his child nearly broke down under the terrible weight. 
 
 She says : " If he could tell how debt presses upon 
 the mind upon the heart, as if it were a sin, and
 
 36 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 sometimes, I do believe, makes me ill, when other 
 wise I should be well, he would be more careful. 
 But men do not change at eighty." 
 
 " I am doubly thankful to have my dear father 
 spared to me. If I could but give my whole life to 
 him, reading to him, driving out with him, playing 
 cribbage with him, never five minutes away from 
 him, except when he is asleep for this is what 
 makes him happy it would be the breath of Ijfe 
 to me ! " 
 
 After he was utterly ruined financially, she 
 writes : " Whatever your embarrassments may be, 
 of one thing I am certain, that the world does not 
 contain so proud, so happy, or so fond a daughter. 
 I would- not exchange my father, even though we 
 toiled together for our daily bread, for any man on 
 earth, though he could pour all the gold of Peru 
 into my lap." 
 
 He died at eighty-two, deep in debt. " Every 
 body shall be paid," wrote Mary, " if I sell the gown 
 off my back, or pledge my little pension." 
 
 Poetry was not her forte, but she wrote many 
 poetic dramas, some of which were quite successful 
 when put on the stage. Her most popular work was 
 a series .of sketches called " Our Village." The 
 first volume passed through fourteen editions, and 
 Stoddard declares that " never before or since has 
 the country been painted with such a loving and 
 accurate pencil as hers." She also published two 
 poor novels and several volumes of poetry, but she
 
 Spinster Authors of England 37 
 
 was neither poet nor novelist. Her " Recollections 
 of a Literary Life," and her letters will always be 
 enjoyed. 
 
 In the letters of Mrs. Browning to Richard 
 Home frequent allusions are made to her friend, 
 Miss Mitford, and visits to Three Mile Cross, the 
 original of " Our Village." 
 
 She says, " It would be impossible for any en 
 graving or photograph, however excellent as to 
 features, to convey a true likeness of Mary Russell 
 Mitford. During one of these visits Charlotte Cush- 
 man was also staying at the cottage, and exclaimed 
 the first time Miss Mitford left the room, " What a 
 bright face it is ! " This effect of summer bright 
 ness all over the countenance was quite remarkable. 
 A floral flush overspread the whole face, which 
 seemed to carry its own light with it, for it was the 
 same indoors as out. The silver hair shone, the 
 forehead shone, the cheeks shone, and above all the 
 eyes shone ; it was very like a rosy apple in the 
 sun. The forehead and chin were strong. 
 
 She was, to speak the truth, decidedly fat, 
 and always craved elegance of style and figure, dis 
 liking what she called her " rotundity and rubicund- 
 ity." 
 
 Her " Recollections " are full of agreeable anec 
 dotes ; her criticisms one-sided and worthless. 
 
 From the " Noctes Ambrosianas " : 
 
 Shepherd. "I m just verra fond o that lassie 
 Mitford. She has an ee like a hawk s that misses
 
 38 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 naething however far aff, and yet like a dove s, that 
 sees only what is nearest and dearest and round 
 about the hame circle o its central nest. I m just 
 excessive fond o Miss Mitford. I m fond o a gude 
 female writers. They re a bonnie and every passage 
 they write carries, as it ought to do, their femininity 
 alang wi it. The young gentlemen of England should 
 be ashamed o theirsells for letting her name be Mit 
 ford. They should marry her whether she will or 
 no, for she wad mak baith a useful and agreeable 
 wife. That s the best creetishism on her warks." 
 
 I find but one allusion anywhere to matrimony, 
 and this in a note to some one who congratulated 
 her on a supposed approach of that condition : 
 
 " Alas ! my dear friend, you are quite mistaken, I 
 assure you, I am not going to be married. No such 
 good luck, as papa says. I have not been courted, 
 and I am not in love. So much for this question. 
 If I ever should happen to be going to be married 
 (elegant construction this) I will then not fail to let 
 you into the secret, but alas ! alas ! alas ! ! In such 
 a then I write a never." 
 
 It is related of the dear old lady that she once 
 went to an evening party wearing a peculiarly 
 showy cap from which she had forgotten to remove 
 the price mark, and walked about in her gracious 
 way with " Cheap at one pound six," on a fluttering 
 ribbon, in benign unconsciousness of her ludicrous 
 oversight. 
 
 Miss Sedgwick s visit to Miss Mitford.
 
 Spinster Authors of England 39 
 
 " She led us directly through the house into her 
 garden, a perfect bouquet of flowers. I must show 
 you my geraniums while it is light, for I love them 
 next to my father. The garden is filled, matted 
 with flowering shrubs and vines. The trees are 
 wreathed with honeysuckles and roses, and the girls 
 have brought away the most splendid specimens of 
 heartsease to press in their journals. Oh, that I 
 could give my countrywomen a vision of this little 
 paradise of flowers that they might learn how taste 
 and industry and an earnest love and study of the 
 art of garden culture might triumph over small space 
 and humble means." 
 
 You remember Mrs. Browning s sonnet : 
 TO MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 
 
 IN HER GARDEN. 
 
 " What time I lay these rhymes anear thy feet, 
 Benignant friend, I will not proudly say, 
 As better poets use, These flowers I lay, 
 Because I would not wrong thy roses sweet, 
 Blaspheming so their name. And yet repeat, 
 Thou, overleaning them this springtime day, 
 With heart as open to love as theirs to May. 
 Low rooted verse may reach some heavenly heart, 
 Even like my blossoms, if as nature true, 
 Though not as precious. Thou art unperplext, 
 Dear friend, in whose dear writings drops the dew, 
 And blow the natural airs thou who art next 
 To nature s self in cheering the world s view 
 To preach a sermon on so known a text." 
 
 She was devotedly fond of her pets, says Mr. 
 Fields.
 
 40 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 " Her voice had a peculiar ringing sweetness in 
 it, rippling out sometimes like a beautiful chime of 
 silver bells. When she told a comic story, hitting 
 off some one of her acquaintances, she joined in with 
 the laugh at the end with great heartiness and 
 naivett" 
 
 " Her dogs and her geraniums were her great 
 glories. She used to write me long letters about 
 Fanchon, a dog whose personal acquaintance I 
 had made." 
 
 She would have agreed with Hamerton : "I 
 humbly thank Divine Providence for having invented 
 dogs." 
 
 Walter Savage Landor wrote some lines to her a 
 few months before she died : 
 
 " None hath told 
 
 More pleasing tales to young and old. 
 Fondest she was of Father Thames, 
 But rambled to Hellenic streams, 
 Nor even then could any tell 
 The country s purer charms so well 
 As Mary Mitford." 
 
 Harriet Martineau said : " Miss Mitford s descrip 
 tions of scenery, brutes, and human beings have 
 such singular merit that she may be regarded as the 
 founder of a .new style." They were devoted 
 friends. She was grateful for the kind reception 
 given to her books in America. " It takes ten years 
 to make a literary reputation in England, but Amer 
 ica is wiser and bolder and dares to say at once, 
 This is fine. ! She also dared to say : " I have seen
 
 Spinster Authors of England* 41 
 
 things of Longfellow s as fine as anything in Camp 
 bell or Coleridge or Tennyson or Hood." As an old 
 lady she was as lovely as a winter rose, retaining her 
 vivacity and enthusiasm. 
 
 " I love poetry and people as well at sixty as I 
 did at sixteen." 
 
 In summer time when she gave strawberry par 
 ties at her cottage, the road leading to it was 
 crowded with carriages of all the rank and fashion 
 in the country. 
 
 Her conversation was simply charming; con 
 sidered better than her finished compositions. 
 
 She was a successful dramatist, edited several 
 Annuals, was a frequent contributor to periodicals, 
 wrote delightful letters, but she will live through 
 the simple annals of village life, which are so natural 
 and vivid that they seem to have written themselves. 
 
 I do not believe it is generally known that in 
 1832 she made a collection of American Stories for 
 Young People. 
 
 She said : " In turning over a large mass of the 
 lighter literature of America, the little books in 
 tended for children appeared to me to possess 
 peculiar excellence, distinguished by the acute 
 observation and cheerful common sense to be ex 
 pected from the country of Franklin." 
 
 She retained the "Americanisms" and gave her 
 reason : " It seems to me no mean part of an en 
 larged and liberal education to show our English 
 children that the standard of gentility differs in dif-
 
 42 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 ferent countries, and that intelligent and cultivated 
 people may, without the slightest tincture of vul 
 garity, use words and idioms of which these little 
 exclusives never heard before. Thus, in America a 
 shop is called a store and autumn the fall, and chil 
 dren frequently address their parents with the 
 affectionate and homely appellations of father and 
 mother, instead of the colder and more infantile 
 elegancies of papa and mamma." 
 
 Miss Martineau (1802-1876), seems a sharp con 
 trast to Miss Mitford, but those who knew her best, 
 testified of sweetness as well as strength. No one 
 has an indifferent opinion about her if he studies 
 her character at all. 
 
 Miss Mitford said : " The woman I like best is 
 Harriet Martineau, who is cheerful, frank, cordial, 
 and right-minded in a very high degree." 
 
 To some she is a heroine of free thought, an 
 uncrowned queen. "A product of the higher culture 
 of the nineteenth century," or, as Mrs. Browning 
 sketched her, 
 
 " The noblest female intelligence between the seas, 
 As sweet as spring; as ocean, deep." 
 
 Others differ so positively with her decisions, that 
 they look upon her as repulsive and her influence as 
 dangerous. All must agree as to her ability. No 
 woman of modern or past time has left such a num 
 ber of solid, interesting, instructive books. She 
 wrote with unusual power and facility on Political
 
 Spinster Authors of England 43 
 
 Economy, History, Psychology, Education, the Forest 
 and Game Laws, Health, Husbandry, and Handi 
 craft, The Effect of Machinery on Wages, The 
 Relation of Wages and Population, Free Trade, Pro 
 tection, was a successful journalist, a regular writer 
 of leaders for a London daily (1642 Articles for Daily 
 News], shaping the current politics of her day, in 
 fluencing men and nations. Also published several 
 volumes of travels, books for children, was a fre 
 quent contributor to the best reviews. 
 
 She wrote a series of tales illustrating important 
 doctrines of Political Economy, saying : " I knew 
 the work wanted doing, and that I could do it." 
 These tales had a tremendous and unlooked-for suc 
 cess. 
 
 Lord Brougham declared " the whole Society for 
 the Diffusion of Knowledge had been driven out of 
 the field by a little deaf woman at Norwich." 
 
 When she visited the United States she became 
 an abolitionist. 
 
 W. E. Forster said : "It seemed as if Harriet 
 Martineau, alone, kept England straight in regard 
 to America." She was a practical philanthropist, 
 started a Mechanics Institute, a building society, 
 evening lectures for the people, and thought of 
 starting a correspondence class. 
 
 Even when kept in bed by illness, she went on 
 writing, and produced that pleasant work, " Life in a 
 Sick Room." She managed her little farm at Amble- 
 side with the skill of a practical agriculturist, and
 
 44 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 was regarded as an affectionate friend and peculiarly 
 thoughtful and generous neighbor. 
 
 Here I pause to take a long breath, and to admire 
 anew such versatility of achievement under such de 
 pressing Conditions. She said : " My life has had no 
 spring. When three senses out of five are deficient, 
 the difficulty of cheerful living is great." 
 
 Her childish days were pitiably sad : first, as a 
 half-starved body, with an undemonstrative mother, 
 sternly just, and lacking in common tenderness, then 
 afflicted with the wild vagaries of a diseased imagin 
 ation, suffering from trifling causes, deprived of the 
 sense of smell and of taste, and at twenty hopelessly 
 deaf. Try to realize her position, and always judge 
 her leniently. She determined never to inquire 
 what was said, as she dreaded becoming a burden to 
 her friends. She felt that no one cared for her, and 
 when her brother James was obliged to leave her, he 
 advised her to try to forget her loneliness by an at 
 tempt at authorship. She wrote laboriously at first, 
 "coldly correct," and without marked signs of 
 genius, choosing the Latin noin de plume " Discipu- 
 lus," a masculine name, like George Sand, George 
 Eliot, and the Bronte sisters. She became engaged, 
 and for a short time was truly happy. She poured 
 out her soul in letters and in disguised characters in 
 print. She wrote : " Do you really think there are 
 any people that have passed through life without 
 knowing what that moment was, that stir in one s 
 heart, as being first sure that one is beloved ? It is
 
 Spinster Authors of England 45 
 
 more like the soul getting free of the body and 
 rushing into Paradise, I should think." But it was, 
 after all, a sad and stormy experience. They were 
 both abnormally sensitive and over anxious. At last 
 her lover became insane, and her mother, as cruel in 
 her way as Dr. Mitford in his, refused to allow her 
 daughter to visit him. It was inexcusable prudish- 
 ness. After his death came the sudden loss of all 
 their property. One of this young clergyman s 
 causes of mental distress was the fact that Miss 
 Martineau had wealth, therefore a poor man ought 
 not to try to win her. Not a prevailing source of 
 anxiety among young men in general ! And as all 
 the money was soon to be swallowed up in a financial 
 crash, this special form of worry was quite futile, as 
 is all worry. Miss Martineau said afterwards, " If I 
 had a husband dependent on me for his happiness, 
 the responsibility would have made me wretched. If 
 he had not depended on me for his happiness, I 
 should have been jealous." It was, perhaps, best that 
 her lover went when he did ! 
 
 Her fortitude, energy, and persistence should not 
 be called masculine, but womanly, true womanly en 
 durance and heroic patience and courage. 
 
 She was left with absolutely only one shilling 
 and her dreadful mother to discourage all her efforts, 
 with a silly aunt who gave her some pieces of silk, 
 lilac, blue, and pink, to make into little bags to earn 
 a few pennies ! Imagine Harriet Martineau giving 
 herself up to making patchwork and crazy quilts !
 
 46 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 She was never impractical. She said : " I could make 
 shirts and puddings, and iron and mend, and get my 
 bread by my needle, if necessary. And at first she 
 did sew all day, and sit up most of the night to 
 write. Her articles were often refused, and the pay 
 for a long time was ridiculously small. 
 
 " It was truly life I lived in those days." 
 
 In March, 1830, she received at the age of twenty- 
 nine, the three prizes (45) offered by a Unitarian 
 Association for promoting their faith among the 
 Roman Catholics, Mohammedans, and Jews, a con 
 vincing proof of her ability. She was deeply relig 
 ious in her younger days and prepared a small vol 
 ume of devotional exercises, prayer, and meditations 
 for the use of young people. Later on she lost her 
 faith in prayer, and finally gave up all belief in a 
 future existence. " I have no wish for future expe 
 rience, nor have I any fear of it. I am frankly sat 
 isfied to have done with life. I neither wish to live 
 longer here nor to find life elsewhere. It seems to 
 me simply absurd to expect it." 
 
 Her last year was spent in her pretty country 
 home at Ambleside. She studied practical farming 
 and made it pay, her farm of two acres supporting 
 the laborer and his wife, and the home had a con 
 stant supply of vegetables, milk, eggs, etc. 
 
 Mrs. Wordsworth pronounced her a model in 
 household economy ; always careful to make her 
 servants happy. Miss Bronte spoke, after a week s 
 visit, of the combination of the highest mental cult 
 ure with the nicest discharge of feminine duties.
 
 Spinster Authors of England 47 
 
 I like to read how she set up a cross-pole fence 
 around her estate, and, like a true woman, planted 
 roses all along the line to wreathe and decorate it in 
 summer. She had a keen sense of humor, dearly 
 loved a good story, was truly affectionate in private 
 life, with a warm and sensitive heart ; never refused 
 herself to children callers. By the way, she had an 
 immense acquaintance and found her social duties 
 rather irksome. Sidney Smith advised her to hire a 
 carriage and engage an inferior authoress to go round 
 in it to drop her cards. 
 
 Her complete cure by magnetism, after years of 
 suffering, excited great comment, and, as a result, 
 her beloved brother James was hopelessly alienated 
 from her. She simply dared to tell the truth and 
 express gratitude for her wonderful recovery. 
 
 Her last fancy work was a blanket for some little 
 baby. Does not her character seem less hard and 
 unlovely to you as you study it impartially? De 
 prived of all that is best and most precious in a 
 woman s life, never knowing a mother s love, shut 
 out by her deafness from the society where she 
 would have shone so brilliantly, how much she 
 accomplished, how nobly she struggled. 
 
 As a spinster author, I will quote one of her sensi 
 ble remarks about marriage : " Women who are fur 
 nished with but one object marriage, must be as unfit 
 for anything when that aim is accomplished, as if they 
 never had any object at all." " She served the
 
 48 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 Right, that is God, all her life," said Florence Night 
 ingale. 
 
 James Payn, in his " Literary Recollections," does 
 complete justice to a great woman who has been long 
 misunderstood Harriet Martineau. "To call Miss 
 Martineau a deaf and disagreeable atheist is, in the 
 opinion of many persons, to treat her according to 
 her deserts. A great philosopher, who was. evi 
 dently, not amiable, used to pretend that Miss Mar 
 tineau could always hear when she liked, and only 
 used her trumpet when she wanted to hear ; whereas, 
 at other times, she laid it down as a protection 
 against argument. Nothing could be more untrue." 
 Mr. Payn lays stress upon the domesticity and 
 tenderness of Miss Martineau s nature. She was 
 always anxious to do good to one of her friends. 
 Mr. Payn says, for instance, " A year after my first 
 introduction to her I came to Ambleside a married 
 man, and my first child was born there in the winter. 
 Her kindness to myself aud my wife I shall never 
 forget ; I went in and out of the knoll as I pleased, 
 like a cat which had a hole cut in the door for it, 
 and her library was not only placed entirely at my 
 service while on the premises, but I was permitted 
 to take home with me whatever books I wanted." 
 When the child was born she was named after 
 Miss Martineau the latter wrote to Mr. Payn in 
 this lovable spirit : "I send to the back door (for 
 quiet s sake) for a bulletin, and shall continue to do 
 so instead of coming, so long as quiet is necessary.
 
 Spinster Authors of England 49 
 
 Oh ! your news makes me so happy. Your little 
 Christmas rose ! I am glad it was a clear bright morn 
 ing when it began to blow. How happy your dear 
 wife must be, only not too happy to sleep, I hope. 
 Come here, you know, as much as you like, and make 
 any use of me and mine." Miss Martineau appears, 
 indeed, as a sympathetic and noble personality in 
 Mr. Payn s bright pages. 
 
 " There never was such an industrious lady," said 
 the maid, who was with her the last eleven years of 
 her life. " When I caught sight of her, just once, 
 leaning back in her chair, with her arms hanging 
 down, and looking as though she wasn t even think 
 ing, it gave me quite a turn. I felt she must be ill 
 to sit like that." 
 
 Her wise brother said to her, " Now, dear, leave 
 it to other women to make shirts and darn stockings, 
 and do you devote yourself to writing." She said: 
 
 " I am, in truth, very thankful for not having 
 married at all. I am, probably, the happiest sin 
 gle woman in England, and am glad my fortune 
 went. 
 
 " Many and many a time since have I said that, 
 but for that loss of money, I might have lived on in 
 the ordinary provincial method, of ladies with small 
 means, sewing and economizing and growing nar 
 rower every year. Whereas, by being thrown on 
 my own resources, I have worked hard and usefully, 
 have friends, reputation, and independence ; seen the
 
 50 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 world abundantly abroad and at home, and, in short, 
 have truly lived instead of vegetated." 
 
 We must not forget Matilda Betham, the beloved 
 friend of Coleridge, Southey, Charles and Mary 
 Lamb, Mrs. Barbauld, and many other persons of 
 that time, who, at the age of fourteen, read Thomas 
 Paine s works, and set herself to refute his argu 
 ments. She, like so many of our spinster authors, 
 had no advantages of education beyond those 
 afforded by her father s library and his teaching. 
 In those days, women lived in terror of being thought 
 learned, but her friends encouraged her aspirations, 
 both literary and artistic. " I tell you," said one, 
 " for the thousandth time, that you are full of genius ; 
 several paths to fame lie open to you, and if you 
 don t continue to march through one of them, you 
 deserve to have your mental feet cut off." 
 
 Her portraits were charming, but there were no 
 art schools for women, no thorough teaching. Still 
 her pictures were exhibited at Somerset House. She 
 wrote poetry for the magazines and prepared a Bio 
 graphical Dictionary of Celebrated Women. 
 
 Her declining years were spent in London. At 
 certain literary receptions, the oddly-dressed old 
 lady, who entered the room leaning on a cane, her 
 face beaming with animation and intelligence, was 
 usually surrounded by a little court. " I would rather 
 talk to Matilda Betham than to the most beautiful 
 young woman in the world," said one of her many 
 admirers. She inherited her ready wit from her
 
 Spinster Authors of England 51 
 
 father, who lived to be ninety-six. Almost his last 
 words were a witticism. He was walking up and 
 down the room leaning on his daughter s arm the 
 day before he died, and said smiling, " I m walking 
 slowly but I m going fast." 
 
 There are many other literary spinsters who de 
 serve much more than honorable mention, but you 
 know we re going " cross lots," and must not tarry. 
 
 As the beautiful Mary Berry (1762-1852), who 
 shone in society for nearly seventy years, whose 
 memoirs are more interesting than the average 
 novel, the special friend of Horace Walpole and his 
 literary executor, besides publishing a History of 
 England and France and a life of Lady Rachel Rus 
 sell. 
 
 After all her social triumphs and universal popu 
 larity, Miss Berry gave her verdict in favor of " the 
 dusty highway of married life " and owned her lone 
 liness. 
 
 Caroline Herschel, the distinguished astronomer 
 (1750-1848), who discovered eight comets, and gave 
 to the world a general index of reference to every 
 observation of every star inserted in the British Cat 
 alogue. She is so associated with her brother Wil 
 liam that we cannot think of one without the other. 
 She was his constant helper for fifty years. Night 
 after night she shared his vigils, wrote down his 
 observations as he made them, . and when he was 
 sleeping in the morning reduced the rough jottings 
 to clearness and planned the labor of the next even-
 
 52 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 ing. Reversing the usual time of woman s sweeping 
 we often read, " Swept the heavens from nine to six." 
 
 Here are some of the points she wrote down to 
 ask her brother about at breakfast : 
 
 "Given the true time of the transit take a 
 transit." 
 
 " Time of a star s motion to be turned into space." 
 
 " A logarithm given to find the angle." 
 
 With all this care she kept the house with mar 
 velous economy, and in every spare moment, when 
 she should have been napping, her tireless fingers 
 were knitting, knitting for the nephews and nieces 
 in Germany. 
 
 And such lovely modesty ! She only " minded 
 the heavens" for her brother, and said sincerely: " I 
 am nothing ; I have done nothing. All I am I know 
 I owe to my brother. I am only a tool which he 
 shaped to his use ; a well-trained puppy dog would 
 have done as much." 
 
 Yet she was an original thinker. Scientific men 
 gladly gave her that praise. How often it happens 
 that great men and great causes have some helper 
 of which the outside world knows but little. 
 
 She is the devoted sister, as Miss Mitford was the 
 model daughter. She might have been successful as 
 a public singer ; all that ambition was put aside. She 
 lived most economically, rarely spending more than 
 forty dollars a year on herself. 
 
 William worked night and day ; she fed him that 
 he might lose no time.
 
 Spinster Authors of England 53 
 
 Her ink often froze as she was working ; if it 
 were not for cloudy nights she must have died of 
 overwork. 
 
 " In her latest moments her only thought for her 
 self was embodied in a request that a lock of her 
 beloved brother s hair might be laid with her in her 
 coffin." 
 
 The Astronomical Society of London rewarded 
 her work with a gold medal in 1828. She lived to 
 be almost " a centurion," as Mrs. Partington would 
 say, nearly ninety-eight years old. Side by side 
 stand the brother and sister. Without her unwavering 
 love and steadfast service he could never have, 
 achieved what he did. Give to her then, at least, a 
 third of Alison s eloquent tribute : 
 
 " Herschel, by multiplying with incredible labor 
 and skill the powers of the telescope, was enabled to 
 look further into space than man had ever done be 
 fore, discover a world hitherto unseen in the firma 
 ment, and in the Georgiurn Sidas add a new string 
 to the lyre of heaven. " 
 
 This story suggests another devoted brother and 
 sister, Charles and Mary Lamb. Every one knows 
 all about that pathetic oft-told tale. Mary (1764- 
 1847), owes her literary fame to her "Tales from 
 Shakespeare," and original " Poetry for Children." 
 
 " You must die first, Mary," he said, yet she sur 
 vived him thirteen years. When she was ill and 
 absent Charles wrote : " I am like a fool, bereft of her 
 co-operation." Again : " I expect Mary will get
 
 54 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 better before many weeks are gone ; but at present I 
 feel my daily and hourly prop has fallen from me. 
 I totter and stagger with weakness, for nobody can 
 supply her place to me." 
 
 Read this sonnet written in an asylum in " a lucid 
 interval." 
 
 TO MY SISTER. 
 " If from my lips some angry accents fell, 
 
 Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, 
 Twas but the error of a sickly mind 
 
 And troubled thoughts clouding the purer well 
 And waters clear of reason ; and for me 
 Let this my verse the poor atonement be. 
 
 My verse which thou to praise wert e er inclined 
 Too highly, and with a partial eye to see 
 No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show 
 
 Kindest affection ; and wouldst oft-times lend 
 An ear to the desponding love-sick lay, 
 Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay 
 
 But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, 
 
 Mary, to thee, my sister, and my friend." 
 
 She is the Bridget of his Elia Essays. 
 
 Next comes Miss Elizabeth Smith, the feminine 
 Mezzofanti (1716-1806), who taught herself the Latin, 
 Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Spanish, and 
 German languages, wrote well in prose and verse, 
 and published memoirs of Frederick and Margaret 
 Klopstock. 
 
 Helen Maria Williams (1762-1827), a voluminous 
 author, at first a warm supporter of the French 
 Revolution, imprisoned at Paris on that account, 
 later, a friend of the Bourbon. She wrote legend-
 
 Spinster Authors of England 55 
 
 ary tales, novels, odes, and miscellaneous poems, 
 several volumes of letters of travel, various transla 
 tions, but will be remembered by that well-known 
 hymn : 
 
 "Whilst Thee I seek, Protecting Power." 
 
 At the last she was a hypochondriac, often sum 
 moning her intimate friends to her death-bed from 
 from which she rose with rapidity and frequency. 
 One wit, after being present on several such trying 
 occasions, remarked "he could not afford to waste 
 so much time on a mortuary uncertainty." 
 
 The learned Mary Astell (1668-1731), one of the 
 first to advocate the higher education of women, and 
 proposed a college for co-education. She was a writer 
 of considerable note in her day, and published an 
 " Essay in Defense of the Female Sex," with re 
 flections on marriage, caused it is said by a disap 
 pointment of her own. Also six familiar essays on 
 Marriage, Crosses in Love, and Friendship. In these 
 she dwells on the rights and privileges of women 
 with some asperity. As she grew older and more re 
 signed to her solitary fate, she wrote on religious 
 themes. She was so devoted to her studies that 
 when she saw visitors coming whom she knew to be 
 incapable of any improving conversation, she would 
 look out of her window and jestingly tell them, as 
 Cato did Nasica, " Miss Astell is not at home," and so 
 kept gossips from making inroads on her precious 
 time ! Miss Philipps is remembered by a book, en-
 
 56 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 titled " My Life, and what shall I do with It. By an 
 old maid." 
 
 A magazine by this name was commenced in 
 London many years ago, but it did not succeed. 
 
 Agnes Strickland and Lucy Aiken were both ex 
 cellent historians. That trio of sweet singers, Ade 
 laide Procter, Jean Ingelow, and Christina Rosetti 
 can only be named. And that other remarkable trio, 
 the Bronte sisters, for Charlotte won her fame as 
 a spinster, who on the lonely Yorkshire heath, in 
 their gloomy home, wrote so wonderfully of the 
 outside world and of human nature. 
 
 Eliza Cook (1817-1889), the editor of the popular 
 journal bearing her name, has seated herself com 
 fortably on the hill of fame in her " Old Arm 
 Chair." 
 
 Miss Mulock and Miss Thackeray slipped quietly 
 out of the ranks, both married happily to men much 
 younger than themselves. Miss Mulock wrote be 
 fore she became Mrs. Craik : 
 
 " My worldly name the world speaks loud, 
 
 Thank God for well-earned fame; 
 But silence sits at my cold hearth, 
 I have no household name." 
 
 Frances Power Cobbe, a woman whose influence 
 is felt through England and in this country, an inde 
 pendent, warm-hearted, clear-headed author of a 
 score of valuable books, full of liberal, earnest, 
 original thought. She deserves a special chapter as
 
 Spinster Authors of England 57 
 
 does Jean Ingelow and Frances Ridley Havergal. 
 There are so many more that I stop, and will group 
 these latter-day spinsters in a separate essay. 
 
 The longevity of unmarried literary women is 
 remarkable. Average age, eighty-one. 
 
 Reviewing this throng renowned for their at 
 tractiveness in various ways, who can help wonder 
 ing at their unmated condition. 
 
 " Alas, nor chariot nor barouche, 
 
 Nor bandit cavalcade, 
 Tore from the trembling father s arms 
 Their all- accomplished maids." 
 
 For them how happy had it been ! 
 
 Literary woman are accused of being eccentric 
 and ugly, but the majority of these woman were 
 beautiful. Some hag once said that every woman 
 who wrote had one .eye on her paper, the other on 
 some man ; except the Baroness Hahn Hahn, and 
 she had lost one eye ! 
 
 Dorothy Pattison, " Sister Dora," the heroic 
 hospital nurse, said she believed the true sphere for 
 woman was home, after all, and toward the end of 
 her life, remarked: "If I had to begin life over 
 again, I would marry, because a woman ought to live 
 with a man, and be in subjection." 
 
 Dorothea Dix always advised young girls to 
 marry rather than seek a career. The irony of fate 
 or " Sarcasm of Destiny" or the Hand of Providence 
 sometimes directs a woman s life very differently
 
 58 Spinster Authors of England 
 
 from her own ideal. She may be lovable, affection 
 ate, fond of home, devoted to children, yet be denied 
 all. 
 
 " The needs God gave us disallowed ; 
 Our unkissed faces in a shroud 
 Tis this to be a woman." 
 
 Derision and neglect used to be added to this 
 discipline. But the world is more tolerant, en 
 lightened, and kindly, and the old maid is now al 
 lowed to do what she can to make others happy, and 
 no position of usefulness or distinction is closed to her 
 if she has the power to fill it. Gail Hamilton says 
 frankly and truly that every woman w r ould marry if 
 she got a chance, meaning thereby the right chance. 
 
 Some of these spinsters who have been so brave 
 and cheerful, and accomplished so much, have 
 doubtless felt what Mrs. Browning has expressed so 
 perfectly in Aurora Leigh : 
 
 " My father ! thou hast knowledge, only Thou, 
 How dreary tis for woman to sit still 
 On winter nights by solitary fires, 
 And hear the nations praising them far off, 
 Too far ! Ay, praising our quick sense of love, 
 Our very heart of passionate womanhood, 
 Which could not beat so in the verse without 
 Being present also in the unkissed lips 
 And eyes, undried, because there s none to ask 
 The reason they grew moist. 
 
 To have our books 
 
 Appraised by love, associated with love, 
 While we sit loveless. Is it hard, you think ? 
 At least tis mournful. 
 
 The love of all
 
 Spinster Authors of England 59 
 
 Is but a. small thing to the love of one. 
 
 You bid a hungry child be satisfied 
 
 With a heritage of many corn-fields ; nay, 
 
 He says he s hungry ; he would rather have 
 
 That little barley cake you keep from him 
 
 While reckoning up his harvests. So with us 
 
 We re hungry. 
 
 But since we needs must hunger, 
 
 Better for man s love 
 
 Than God s truth ! Better for companions sweet 
 Than great convictions. Let us bear our weights, 
 /Preferring dreary hearths to desert souls." 
 
 This quotation has roused severe criticism. One 
 spinster, whose own career has been both brilliant 
 and useful, exclaims : " It is too bad ! You depict 
 these woman as talented, attractive, admired, lovely 
 characters, and making lots of money. Then all is 
 spoiled by this doleful picture of pining and sighing 
 by a dreary hearth." 
 
 I add, in deference to such appeals, that if some 
 old maids are lonely, there are plenty of wives who 
 would like to be ! 
 
 Josiah Allen s wife has similar opinions of matri 
 mony: 
 
 " Good land ! " says I. " Is marryin the only 
 theme anybody can lay holt of ? It seems to me that 
 the best way would be to lay holt of duty now, and 
 then, if a bo comes, lay holt of him. But not get 
 married ! 
 
 " Oh dear me, suz ! " screamed Delila Ann, for 
 truly the thoughts seemed to scare her to death. 
 " O how awful ! How lonely, lonely, they must be ! "
 
 60 Spinster Authors of England. 
 
 "Who said they wasn t? " says I in pretty middlin 
 short tones, for she was a beginnin to wear me out 
 some, but I continued on in more mild accents. " I 
 have seen married folks before now that I knew was 
 in their souls as lonesome as dogs, and lonesomer " 
 says I. "A disagreeabler feeling I never had than 
 to have company that haint company stay right by 
 you for two or three days. And then what must it 
 be to have em stand by you from forty to fifty years ! 
 Qood land ! it would tucker anybody out ! "
 
 I am weary of this old bachelor life. It is a dog s life no, 
 not a dog s ; that is a reflection on canine sagacity ; it is a log s 
 life, if life that may be called, which life is none. Pres. Ray mono, 
 of Vassar College. 
 
 What do you know by any possibility about women ? You, 
 who are bachelor, bachelorum? I tell you, sir, that until you marry, 
 you are in utter darkness and desolation. Black. 
 
 BACHELOR AUTHORS IN TYPES 
 
 THIS is a hard subject to manage, as bachelors 
 usually are. 
 
 The Spinsters of literature placidly took the 
 places assigned them, their pure, unselfish lives ar 
 ranged themselves easily in accordance with my 
 plan, shedding a perfume of self-abnegation and 
 charitable deeds over the page. 
 
 But bachelors in literature, as in life, are fascinat 
 ing, evasive, and inscrutable. 
 
 Then, there is such a numerous throng, that, like 
 the Fisher in the " Arabian Nights," gazing at the 
 Genii he had released from the bottle, it seems al 
 most impossible to capture and confine so much in 
 so small compass. 
 
 Any one of these distinguished men would fur 
 nish abundant material for a volume, their combined 
 works the reading of a lifetime, and I can almost see
 
 62 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 their smiles and their sneers, at the idea of being- 
 massed together in this daring, irreverent way by a 
 woman ! 
 
 To play the critic to these mental monarchs in 
 a brief review would be an impertinence. 
 
 As the old broker remarked : " What we want is 
 pints" bits of heart history, pen photographs, and 
 now and then a quotation or anecdote that reveals 
 character. 
 
 Still: if these sketches seem odd, unconnected, 
 and a trifle bald, they will be truer to the theme. 
 Without going back to the days of Homer, Virgil, 
 Horace, and Juvenal, or dilating on the literary 
 achievements of the Roman Catholic Clergy (though 
 sorry to omit Father Prout), the mind recalls an il 
 lustrious company. 
 
 Tasso, Ariosto, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Congreve, 
 Erasmus, Scaliger, Herrick, Goldsmith, Gray, 
 Thomson, Collins, Cowley, Marlowe, Pope (the in 
 terrogation point of English literature, so called by 
 an author he had quizzed too closely, " a little 
 crooked thing that asks questions"), Pollock, his 
 friend hoped he would marry in " the course of 
 time." Cowper, Akenside (his were pleasures of 
 the imagination), Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, Gay, re 
 membered by the Beggars Opera and " Black-Eyed 
 Susan." Rich was his manager, and twas said that 
 " this opera made Rich gay, and Gay rich." Prior, 
 Shenstone, and Collins, Rogers, Crabbe Robinson, 
 that great talker of whom Rogers once said at break-
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 63 
 
 fast : " If you have anything to say, say it quickly, 
 for Crabbe Robinson is coming." Sir Isaac Newton 
 and another Isaac, the good Dr. Watts, who made the 
 longest visit on record, a forty-years visit, and was 
 so delightful a guest that Lady Abney said it was 
 the shortest visit she ever had ; yet no lady ever 
 seemed to be struck with " Watts and Select Hymn." 
 Yet he had his romance. Few who have read Dr. 
 Watts hymn beginning 
 
 "How vain are all things here below," 
 
 / 
 
 are aware that it was composed just after his suit had 
 been rejected by Miss Singer, afterwards the cele 
 brated Mrs. Rowe. The lady would have preferred 
 the Doctor, but he was so slow in declaring his 
 passion, that, tired of waiting, she had accepted Mr. 
 Rowe, when the worthy divine at last made known 
 his wishes. 
 
 Cruden, of Concordance fame, charmed with Miss 
 Abney s wealth and virtues, determined to marry 
 her. For months he annoyed her with calls, letters, 
 petitions, memorials, and remonstrances; when she 
 left home, he caused "praying-bills" to be dis 
 tributed in various places of worship requesting the 
 prayers of ministers and congregations for her 
 preservation and safe return, and afterwards further 
 bills for said congregations to return thanks. Finding 
 that these peculiar attentions did not produce the de 
 sired effect, he drew up a long paper which he called 
 a " Declaration of War," in which he announced
 
 64 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 that he should yet compass her surrender by " shoot 
 ing off great numbers of bullets from his camp, 
 namely, by earnest prayer to Heaven day and night, 
 that her mind might be enlightened and her heart 
 softened." But the young lady never relented, and 
 this grotesque courtship ended in defeat. 
 
 Herder, Hobbes (I jot down the names as they 
 come to me), Grimm, the German Philologist, to 
 whom the children are indebted for those wondrous 
 stories, known as " Grimm s Tales." Frederick 
 Grimm, the critic and diplomat; Voltaire, Alexander 
 Humboldt, Hans Andersen, Neander, the German 
 theologian, Jaffe, the Jewish historian of Popery, 
 Bishops Butler, Hammond, and Leighton, Locke, 
 Jeremy Bentham, Spinoza, Kant, Swedenborg, the 
 mystic ; Dr. Barrow, who gave the best definition of 
 wit yet known. 
 
 Beranger, the lovable French lyrist. Rabelais, 
 who, like Swift, concealed deep meaning and grave 
 rebuke under coarse satire. Boileau, the satirist, 
 whom Mad. Sevinge affirms was only cruel in his 
 writings. He may be called the French Horace. 
 
 St. Beuve, whom Matthew Arnold considered the 
 finest critical spirit of our time. Burton, the author 
 of the " Anatomy of Melancholy," and Matthew 
 Green, who wrote " The Spleen." 
 
 George Buchanan, tutor to James the VI, and 
 James Buchanan, our bachelor president and some 
 thing of an author, publishing love verses in the 
 New York Herald. His romance developed into a 
 tragedy.
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 65 
 
 Captain John Smith, a sworn champion of the 
 ladies, all of whom he admired too ardently to be 
 guilty of the invidious offense of marrying any 
 one of them. Perhaps the last professional knight 
 errant that the world ever saw. He was a prolific 
 author and his " True Relation of Virginia " was the 
 first book in American literature. 
 
 By the way, what an interesting book could be 
 written about the Smiths who have distinguished 
 themselves ! To another John Smith we owe the 
 key to Pepy s Diary. 
 
 If my subject included musicians, sculptors, 
 artists, what a famous list could be added, as 
 Raphael, Michael Angelo,* and Leonardo da Vinci, 
 dear deaf old Sir Joshua Reynolds, Landseer, who, 
 as some one well said " discovered the dog," Handel, 
 Beethoven, Schubert, Berloiz. 
 
 Handel was a hopeless bachelor. He was never 
 in love and had an aversion to marriage. In 1707 
 he went to Liibeck to compete for the place of suc 
 cessor to the famous organist Buxtehude ; but when 
 he found that one of the conditions of obtaining the 
 place was the compulsory privilege of marrying the 
 daughter of his predecessor, not noted for her 
 beauty, he fled precipitately. 
 
 Of Beethoven it is said that he found more 
 pleasure in the society of women than of men. He 
 made up his mind repeatedly to get married, and 
 
 * When Michael Angelo was asked why he did not marry, he replied, 
 " Painting is my wife and my works are my children."
 
 66 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 proposed more than once, but was refused in each 
 case. One of these women confessed that she 
 rejected him because he was "so ugly, and half- 
 cracked." 
 
 Beethoven was enamored of the Countess Guic- 
 ciardi, but she married another. He was often very 
 lonely and once exclaimed, "O Providence, vouch 
 safe me one day of pure felicity ! " 
 
 A touching romance was that of young Schubert. 
 He was the teacher of Count Esterhazy s beautiful 
 daughter and soon adored her, but the passion was 
 not returned. " You have dedicated none of your 
 works to me," she said. " What s the use," he sadly 
 replied, "you already have all." Later he wrote: 
 " Imagine a man whose health will never come 
 again, whose brilliant hopes have come to naught 
 to whom the happiness of love and friendship offers 
 nothing but sorrow. Every night when I go to 
 sleep, I hope I may never wake again." His grave 
 is near Beethoven. 
 
 A learned physician, whose heart is as large as 
 his practice, and knowledge of human nature as keen 
 as his own scalpel, tells me it would not be possible 
 to classify women. - You could not find two alike, 
 nor predicate with certainty what any one of that 
 capricious sex would do under given circumstances ; 
 but men, as regards mental peculiarities, could be 
 more easily arranged in bundles or types. 
 
 *As Heine puts it: "Do you say that woman has no character? 
 She has a new character every day."
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 67 
 
 I shall therefore try to simplify matters, by classi 
 fying this interesting crowd of bachelor authors, 
 naming a few representative men. 
 
 And first, the Lady-killer, with Congreve, the 
 dramatist, as a specimen. 
 
 It is said that Congreve had too much wit in his 
 comedies, not a prevailing fault now-a-days, and 
 Dryden pronounced his play, " The Old Bachelor," 
 the best first play he had ever seen. Macaulay 
 speaks of its dialogue as resplendent with wit and 
 eloquence in such abundance that the fools come in 
 for an ample share. He was attacked and nearly 
 demolished by Jeremy Collier in his " Short View of 
 the Stage." The poet spoke of " The Old Bachelor " 
 as a trifle to which he attached no value, and which 
 had become public by a sort of accident. " I wrote 
 it," he said, "to amuse myself in a slow recovery 
 from a fit of sickness." 
 
 " What his disease was," says Collier, " I am not 
 able to inquire, but it must be a very ill one to be 
 worse than the remedy." 
 
 Congreve was handsome, witty, and a universal 
 favorite. Ladies found him irresistible. His last 
 admirer was the Duchess of Marlborough, daughter 
 of the Dowager Duchess Sarah. 
 
 Gouty and blind, he was charming to the last, 
 and after his death her grace " had a statue of him 
 in ivory, which moved by clockwork, and was placed 
 daily at her table." She also had a large wax doll 
 made in his likeness, and its feet were regularly
 
 68 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 blistered and anointed by the doctors as poor Con- 
 greve s had been. 
 
 The inscription on his monument in Westminster 
 Abbey was written by this appreciative friend, to 
 whom he bequeathed his small fortune, which she 
 wore round her neck in superb diamonds. Thack 
 eray dwells on Congreve in his Lectures on the 
 Humorists. 
 
 Swift might be ranked as a lady-killer in a 
 serious way, but bachelors will not allow him in 
 their ranks. 
 
 As the greatest contrast, think of Cowper as a 
 sensitive plant closing its delicate, shrinking petals, 
 affected by every passing cloud, unable to endure 
 contact with the rough-handed world. 
 
 "O poets, from a maniac s tongue was poured the deathless 
 
 singing ! 
 
 O Christians ! at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging ! 
 O men ! this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling, 
 Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while you were 
 
 smiling. 
 And now, what time ye all may read, through dimming tears his 
 
 story ; 
 
 How discord on the music fell and darkness on the glory, 
 And how, when one by one sweet sounds and wandering lights 
 
 departed, 
 He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted." 
 
 Cowper, at twenty-eight, became deeply attached 
 to his cousin, Theodora, and she fully returned his 
 affection ; was perhaps controlled by it through life, 
 as she never married. But her father refused his
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 69 
 
 consent on the grounds of relationship and hered 
 itary insanity. Cowper writes to Lady Hesketh of 
 
 " Her through tedious years of doubt and pain 
 Fixed in her choice, and faithful, but in vain." 
 
 Keats belongs to this class, shy, pure, sensitive, 
 too delicately organized for health or lasting happi 
 ness. In one of his letters he hoped that after his 
 death he " would be among the English poets." With 
 one or two exceptions, no poet of the last generation 
 stands higher in the estimation of those fitted to 
 judge. 
 
 His letters to that disagreeable young woman, 
 Fanny Brawne, must be mentioned. Another in 
 stance of " brawn and brain," where, as usual, 
 Brawn gets the better of brain. His quivering, 
 bleeding heart is laid open for inspection, a painful 
 sight. 
 
 There are the Embittered Bachelors, like Pope, 
 who av,enge their deformity and unhappiness or in- 
 validism in satire, that, when applied to women, has 
 neither delicacy nor genuine wit. Lady Montague s 
 mocking laughter after his professions of passion 
 must have hurt him. I can hear it now. 
 
 Those governed by an Early Love like Irving. 
 He was social, charming, enjoyed the society of 
 ladies, was ever complimentary and courteous, some 
 times indulging in sentiment, yet we like to believe 
 that his deepest love was buried in the grave of Ma 
 tilda Hoffman, of whom he said : " She died in the
 
 70 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 beauty of youth, and to me she will always be young 
 and beautiful." 
 
 In a letter to Paulding, Irving writes: "Your pic 
 ture of domestic enjoyment indeed raises my envy. 
 With all my wandering habits, which are the results 
 of circumstances rather than of disposition, I think 
 I was formed for an honest, domestic, uxorious man, 
 and I cannot hear of my old cronies snugly nestled 
 down with good wives and fine children round them, 
 but I feel for the moment desolate and forlorn. 
 Heavens ! what a haphazard, schemeless life mine 
 has been that here I should be at this time of life, 
 youth slipping away, and scribbling month after 
 month and year after year, far from home, without 
 any means or prospect of entering into matrimony, 
 which I absolutely believe indispensable to the 
 happiness and even comfort of the after part of 
 existence." 
 
 It was by the death-bed of his love that the well- 
 beloved Dr. Muhlenberg wrote : "I would not live 
 alway," and his devotion to her memory was unwaver 
 ing to the end. 
 
 Gilbert White, the lovable, retiring old bachelor 
 who gave us that delightful book, " The Natural 
 History of Selbourne," making his name famous by 
 an intelligent, enthusiastic, exact study of the birds 
 and animals around his own home, belongs to this 
 class. I think Miss Hetty Mulso made a mistake in 
 refusing such a lover. 
 
 In Mary Howitt s translation of the autobiog 
 raphy of Hans Andersen, we find that he had his
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 71 
 
 trials, but nothing could spoil the sunshiny, child 
 like nature of this best of story-tellers a man of 
 crystal innocence and amusing conceit. He gives 
 the romance in his own ingenuous way. 
 
 " Sentiment, which I had so often derided, would 
 now be avenged. I arrived in the course of my 
 journey at the hojttse of a rich family, in a small city, 
 and here, suddenly a new world opened before me, 
 an immense world, which yet could be contained in 
 four lines, which I wrote at that time : 
 
 A pair of dark eyes fixed my sight, 
 They were my world, my home, and my delight. 
 The soul beamed in them, and childlike peace, 
 And never on earth will their memory cease. 
 
 New plans of life occupied me. I would give up 
 writing poetry, to what would it lead ? I would 
 study theology and become a preacher. I had only 
 one thought and that was she. But it was self- 
 delusion. She loved another ; she married him. It 
 was not till several years later that I felt and acknowl 
 edged that it was best both for her and myself that 
 things had fallen out as they were. She had no idea, 
 perhaps, how deep my feeling for her had been, or 
 what an influence it produced in me. She had be 
 come the excellent wife of a good man, and a happy 
 mother. God s blessing rest on her." 
 
 It was in the company of Thorwaldsen, the sculp 
 tor (a bachelor, also) that Andersen wrote several of 
 his stories. He says, that often in the twilight, when 
 the family circle sat in the open garden parlor,
 
 72 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 Thorwaldsen would come softly behind me, and, 
 clapping me on the shoulder, would ask, " Shall we 
 little ones have any tales to-night? " Often during 
 his most glorious works would he stand with laugh 
 ing countenance and listen to the story of " The Top 
 and Ball," " The Ugly Duckling." It is sad to think 
 that one who had made Christmas merry for so 
 many little folks should ever be solitary on that day. 
 He tells the story in his artless, touching way : " And 
 yet, amid these social festivities, with all the amiable 
 zeal and interest that there was felt for me, I had one 
 disengaged evening, one evening on which I felt 
 solitude in its most oppressive form Christmas eve, 
 that very evening of all others, in which I would 
 most willingly witness something festal, willingly 
 stand beside a Christmas tree, gladdening myself 
 with the joy of children, and seeing the parents joy 
 fully become children again. Every one of the 
 many families in which I, in truth, felt that I was 
 received as a relation, had fancied, as I afterwards 
 discovered, that I must be invited out, but I sat quite 
 alone in my room at the inn, and thought on home. 
 I seated myself at the open window and gazed up to 
 the starry heavens which was the Christmas tree 
 lighted up for me. Father in Heaven, I prayed as 
 the children do, what dost Thou give to me ? It 
 was he who said, " Every man s life is a fairy tale, 
 written by God s finger." His own fairy tales have 
 been read with delight in every modern language, 
 Do you recall his epitaph ?
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 73 
 
 " Thou art not dead though thine eyes are closed ; 
 In children s hearts thou shalt live forever." 
 
 Hans Andersen is the only literary bachelor I 
 remember who received and refused an offer of mar 
 riage. You can imagine his surprise on being told 
 by a young and handsome girl, who had traveled far 
 to meet him, that she wished to marry him. " I 
 should be so very good to you," said the admiring, 
 simple-hearted maiden, " and always take good care 
 of you." " But, my dear girl, I don t wish to be mar 
 ried," answered the charming old man, and she de 
 parted as suddenly as she came. 
 
 Turner, the artist, had his life shaped and shad 
 owed by an early diappointment. " A boyish fancy 
 ripened into love, but his idol was influenced to 
 marry in his absence, and the treachery wrought 
 incalculable harm on his sensitive nature. He grad 
 ually changed into a self-concentrated, reserved 
 money-maker." The very peculiar appearance of 
 his " Slave Ship " may be due to this misfortune. 
 Emotional insanity on canvas. I have always liked 
 the story of the farmer s wife whose city cousin took 
 her to see a collection of paintings in London. She 
 looked at Turner s " The Day after the Deluge " and 
 read the title. "Well, I should think it was! " she 
 said, and passed on. Something serious also seems 
 to affect his literary work. 
 
 Turner is not generally known as an author, yet 
 he has written a good deal, so faulty in spelling,
 
 74 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 grammar, and construction, that it would serve as an 
 exercise for little boys at school to correct. 
 
 Hamerton says he never did anything worse than 
 his poetry, except his prose. You shall judge of 
 their respective merits from brief extracts. 
 
 " Where the soft river, flowing, gives renown, 
 Mid steep worn hills, and to the low sunk town ; 
 Whose trade has flourished from early time 
 Remarkable for thread called Bridport twine." 
 
 Now for the prose : 
 
 " They wrong virtue, enduring difficulties or worth, 
 in the bare imitation of nature, all offers received in 
 the same brain, but where these attempts arise above 
 mediocrity, it would surely not be a little sacrifice to 
 those who perceive the value of the success, to foster 
 it by terms so cordial that cannot look so easy a way 
 as those spoken of convey doubts to the expecting 
 individual. For as the line that unites the beautiful 
 to grace and these offering forming a new style not 
 that soul can guess as ethics. Teach them of both, 
 but many serve as the body the soul, but presume 
 more as the beacon to the headland which would be 
 a warning to the danger of mannerism and the dis 
 gustful." 
 
 (I trust this is clear to you !) 
 
 Adam Smith, the distinguished writer on Political 
 Economy, was never married. Dugald Stewart gives 
 this interesting bit of history : 
 
 " In the early part of Mr. Smith s life, it is well 
 known to his friends that he was for several vears
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 75 
 
 attached to a young lady of great beauty and accom 
 plishment. What prevented their union I am not 
 able to learn, but I believe it is pretty certain that 
 after this disappointment, he laid aside all thoughts 
 of marriage. The lady also died unmarried. At 
 eighty she still retained evident traces of her former 
 beauty. The powers of her understanding and the 
 gaiety of her temper seemed to have suffered noth 
 ing from the hands of Time." 
 
 The Hermit, as Thoreau " The Bachelor of 
 Thought and Nature." Thoreau was a recluse, a gen 
 uine apostle of solitude, standing aloof from other 
 men and scorning them. 
 
 " They do a little business each day to pay their 
 board ; then they congregate in sitting rooms and 
 feebly fabulate and paddle in the social slush. 
 
 " The whole enterprise of this nation is totally de 
 void of interest to me. Would I not rather be,a cedar 
 post than the farmer that sets it, or he that preaches 
 to that farmer ? 
 
 " I could do easily without the post-ofnce ; never 
 read any memorable news in a newspaper. Nothing 
 at the North Pole that I could not find at Concord. 
 
 " What a foul subject is this of doing good instead 
 of minding one s own life, which should be his busi 
 ness. 
 
 " The youth gets together the materials to build a 
 bridge to the moon, or a temple on the earth, and 
 the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed 
 with them."
 
 76 Bachelor Authors in Tvpes 
 
 On picking up a button from the coat of the 
 drowned Marquis of Ossoli on the seashore, Thoreau 
 reached the acme of self-aggrandizement. " Held 
 up, it intercepts the light, an actual button, and yet 
 all the life it is connected with is less substantial to 
 me and interests me less than my faintest dream." 
 
 He also said : " The stars and I belong to a mutual 
 admiration society. I would put forth sublime 
 thoughts daily. 
 
 " I love my friends very much, but I find that it is 
 of no use to go to see them. 
 
 " I hate them commonly when I am near them ; 
 they belie themselves and deny me continually. 
 vSilence alone is worthy to be heard." 
 
 " I love Henry, said a friend, but I cannot like 
 him, and as for taking his arm, I should as soon think 
 of taking the arm of an elm tree." Still Thoreau had a 
 love affair, and the heroine is now a grandmother. 
 He and his brother John made love to the same 
 nymph, and she went and married a parson. 
 
 To the average observer, a hut by a pond, and 
 intimacies with mice and woodchucks, are even less 
 desirable than " social slush." After all his outdoor 
 excursions and a life in fresh air, Thoreau died of 
 consumption like any common mortal who had been 
 of more use to mankind. 
 
 Do not say that I fail to appreciate the peculiar 
 charm of this student of nature. " No one ever came 
 nearer to the great heart of nature." What are 
 guesses with others are a revelation to him. But he
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 77 
 
 affected to despise humanity, always a mistake. Men 
 and women as a rule are more interesting than chip 
 munks. All this was caused by his intense sympa 
 thy with nature. 
 
 " It appears to me/ said this fascinating dreamer, 
 " that to one standing on the heights of philosophy 
 mankind and the works of man will have sunk out of 
 sight altogether ; that man is altogether too much 
 insisted on. Man is too much with us. It is our 
 weakness that so exaggerates the virtue of philan 
 thropy and charity, and makes it the highest human 
 attribute. The world will sooner or later tire of phi 
 lanthropy and all religion based on it mainly. In 
 order to avoid delusions, I would fain let man go by, 
 and behold a universe in which man is but a grain 
 of sand." 
 
 He may have inherited his self-consciousness from 
 his mother, who w r hen heard it she remarked that 
 Thoreau s style resembled Emerson s, replied 
 placidly: "Yes, Mr. Emerson does write like my 
 son." Lowell, who does not believe in Thoreau s 
 originality, nor his arrogant omniscience about 
 nature, says : " He turns commonplaces end for end, 
 and fancies it makes something new of them. He 
 discovered nothing, but thought everything a dis 
 covery of his own, from moonlight to the planting of 
 acorns and nuts by squirrels." 
 
 The Self-denying bachelor, like Lamb, who gave 
 up marriage for the sake of his sister. I am proud 
 to say there are many equally noble in our day.
 
 78 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 Lamb said of celibacy: "There is a quiet dignity in 
 old bachelorhood, a leisure from cares, noise, and so 
 on ; an enthronization upon the armed chair of a 
 man s feeling, that he may sit, walk, read unmo 
 lested ; to none accountable." Writing to Procter on 
 his marriage, Lamb said : " I am married myself to 
 a severe step-wife, who keeps me, not at bed and 
 board, but at desk and board, and is jealous of my 
 morning aberrations. I cannot slip out to congratu 
 late kinder unions. It is well she leaves me alone 
 o nights ; the d d Day-hag Business." 
 
 The Old-Maidish bachelor, like Gray, who always 
 had his room in the most exact order, and a fire- 
 escape at the window, who labored eight years on a 
 single poem, and made it perfect. " No man ever 
 went down to immortality with a smaller book under 
 his arm." 
 
 Erasmus was fanciful, and often old-maidish in 
 his tastes. He must have a certain kind of fire 
 place, and a particular brand of wine. He almost 
 fainted at the sight of fish, declaring that while his 
 "heart was Catholic, his stomach was Lutheran." 
 
 The late Francois Mignet, the French historian, 
 was a confirmed old bachelor. A private passage was 
 opened for him from his fourth-story lodgings into the 
 house of Mr. Thiers, with whom he was on very in 
 timate terms. He retired at ten, rose at five, did his 
 own cooking, allowed no one to touch his papers, 
 and in winter sat and wrote with a rug around his 
 legs and feet, rather than have the trouble of tend 
 ing the fire.
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 79 
 
 Walt Whitman stands by himself, " the good, gray 
 poet " he is called by his admirers. I am not one of 
 them. I do not find fault with his extraordinary 
 ideas of " true art," refusing to expurgate his Leaves 
 of Grass, although I cannot understand why we 
 should excuse, tolerate, or admire in a book what 
 would be tabooed as blasphemous or obscene in 
 pictures or conversation. Why do women write of 
 the rollicking vulgarity of Chaucer s tales as " de 
 licious naivete" and lady teachers advise the young 
 girls under their guidance to read his description of 
 intrigue, and hot, lawless, unbridled passion. It is 
 not only unwise, but positively dangerous and 
 wicked. Why not tell the truth about old Dan 
 Chaucer? He spoils his own feast with needless 
 filth. So does Rabelais. Gross indelicacy is not wit. 
 Swift enjoyed revolting subjects that give a decent 
 person a mental nausea. Many who have erred in 
 this direction have realized the harm, and repented 
 before death. But Walt Whitman sees nothing that 
 is in the least objectionable in any of his poems. 
 Let him represent the Egotist. 
 
 " Divine am I inside and out and I make holy whatever I touch or 
 am touched from. 
 
 The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer." 
 
 or 
 
 " I do not snivel that snivel the world over." 
 
 " I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones." 
 
 " I dote on myself." 
 
 " I am an acme of things accomplished." 
 
 " My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs."
 
 80 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 " My lovers suffocate me, 
 
 Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses." 
 
 " Let me have my own way; 
 After me vista ! " 
 
 " I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the 
 gifts of the universe." 
 
 "Who thinks the amplest thoughts? for I would surround 
 those thoughts." 
 
 " Who has gone farthest? for I would go further." 
 
 " To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large !" 
 
 " To be this incredible God I am." 
 
 His stringing together of nouns has been parodied 
 so often and so well, that I will only give three of 
 his own lines to prove that nothing can be more 
 ridiculous : 
 
 " Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, 
 Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable. 
 Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition, 
 house, library." 
 
 Yet, once in a while you stumble on a striking 
 and good sentence, as, " How beggarly appear argu 
 ments before a defiant deed ! " "I think heroic deeds 
 were all conceived in the open air." His warble for 
 Lilac-time I cheerfully acknowledge is exquisite, full 
 of the very soul of spring. His love of nature is the 
 redeeming quality. His Army Lyrics also have the 
 true martial ring, and a deal of tenderness and 
 pathos. 
 
 And the Happy-go-lucky type, the blundering 
 darling, whom every woman likes, but no woman
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 81 
 
 wants to marry; as poor " Goldy." He loved the 
 beautiful Miss Horneck, the beautiful "Jessamy 
 Bride," who was beautiful at seventy. After his 
 coffin had been closed, a lock of hair was requested 
 for a lady who wished to preserve it as a memento. 
 She laughed at her awkward admirer while he lived, 
 but his regard for her " has hung a poetical wreath 
 her grave." 
 
 Says Irving: "Had it been his fate to meet a 
 woman who could have loved him despite his faults 
 and respected him despite his foibles, we cannot but 
 think that his life and genius would have been made 
 more harmonious, his desultory affections would 
 have been concentrated, his craving self-love ap 
 peased, his pursuits more settled, his character more 
 solid. A nature like Goldsmith s, so affectionate, so 
 confiding, so susceptible to simple, innocent enjoy 
 ments, so dependent on others for the sunshine of 
 existence, does not flower if deprived of the atmos 
 phere of home." 
 
 Next, for contrast, a large family of CLAMS, cold, 
 encased in a hard shell. Hume takes the lead as a 
 bivalve ; apathetic and frigid. In his essays, he fre 
 quently discusses the passion of love, dividing it into 
 its elements as systematically as if he had subjected 
 it to a chemical analysis, and laying down rules re 
 garding it as distinctly and specifically as if it were 
 a system of logic. Hume s elder brother John was 
 married in 1751, and the following letter full of 
 light and elegant raillery refers to that event :
 
 82 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 DEAR MADAM : 
 
 Our friend has at last plucked up a resolution and has ventured 
 on that dangerous encounter. He went off on Monday morning, 
 and this is the first action of his life wherein he has engaged him 
 self without being able to compute exactly the consequences. But 
 what arithmetic will serve to fix the proportion between good and 
 bad wives, and rate the different classes of each. Sir Isaac New 
 ton himself, who could measure the course of the planets, and 
 weigh the earth as in a pair of scales, even he had not algebra 
 enough to reduce that amiable part of our species to a just equa 
 tion, and they are the only heavenly bodies whose orbits are as 
 yet uncertain. 
 
 It is recorded of Hume that he once made an 
 offer of marriage to a lady who refused him, but 
 whose friends afterwards told him that she had 
 changed her mind. " So have I," replied the his 
 torian. At times he seems to be depressed by his 
 self-imposed solitude, and spoke of himself as left 
 utterly abandoned and desolate. " Fain would I run 
 into the crowd for shelter and warmth, but cannot 
 prevail with myself to mix with such deformity. I 
 call upon others to join me in order to make a com 
 pany apart, but no one will hearken to me. Every 
 one keeps at a distance, and dreads that storm which 
 beats upon me from every side." 
 
 The Corpulent Bachelor Authors make a long list. 
 Hume was one of the fattest of fat bachelors, and 
 often alludes to it. In a letter he says, " Pray tell 
 his solicitorship (Alexander Home) that I have been 
 reading in an old author called Strabo, that in some 
 cities of ancient Gaul there was a fixed legal stand 
 ard established for corpulency, that the senate kept
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 83 
 
 a measure, beyond which if any form presumed to 
 increase, the proprietor was obliged to pay a fine 
 proportionable to its rotundity. Ill would it fare 
 with us if such a law should pass our parliament." 
 Unappreciated in his own country, he was the rage 
 in Paris. The incense of praise was enough to intox 
 icate even his cool head. But he could not shine in 
 the^society of ladies. In their salons he was an ex 
 quisitely comical failure. Mad. D. Epinay gives a 
 vivid scene. He is seated between the two prettiest 
 women in Paris, but could only look admiringly, then 
 blankly, from one to the other, absolutely unable to 
 think of a word to say. His French, indeed, was 
 some excuse. " The French," said Walpole with his 
 customary cynicism, " believe in Mr. Hume, the only 
 thing in the world that they believe implicitly, for I 
 defy them to understand any language which he 
 speaks."" 5 * But Gibbon s corpulency placed him in 
 an even more embarrassing position. 
 
 It is generally imagined that Gibbon was faith 
 ful to his early and romantic love for Susan Curchod, 
 afterwards Madam Necker, and the mother of Mad. 
 de Stael. To be sure he never married, but one crit 
 ic s enthusiasm over his fidelity to this disappointed 
 passion is a trifle excessive. He comments in this 
 way on some extracts from his journal during the 
 time of his courtship : " What raptures these sim 
 ple memoranda hint, and how dreary a void in his 
 life is suggested by the historian s future recurrences 
 
 *He made a similar criticism on Dante, saying, " His reputation will 
 go on increasing, because scarcely anybody reads him."
 
 84 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 to the sole passion of his life. He never loved nor 
 thought of loving any other woman ; his hurt was 
 not bravely received, but, apparently, it was incura 
 ble." When attributing to the man who grew, year 
 by year, more famous and more enormously fat, in 
 the society of Madam Necker, such constancy, this 
 writer should have mentioned, if only to refute it, a 
 malicious story told concerning an occasion, when 
 Gibbon, lured by the charms of a beautiful woman, 
 not only forgot his loyalty to what is described as 
 the sole love of his life, but, what was a matter of 
 more importance to him, forgot that his fat had kept 
 pace with his fame. It is averred that Gibbon, 
 charmed with the beautiful Lady Elizabeth Foster, 
 invited the fair one to breakfast in a bower fragrant 
 with circling acacias, and read to her several pass 
 ages from his " History of the Decline and Fall of 
 the Roman Empire," just completed. Enchanted 
 with the masterly narrative, her ladyship, wholly 
 unsuspicious of all amorous pretensions from a man 
 of his mature years, ungainly figure, and love-repel 
 ling countenance, complimented him with a charm of 
 language and warmth of address which he instantly 
 converted in effusions of tender inspiration. Falling 
 on his knees, he gave utterance to an impassioned 
 profession of love, greatly to the surprise of its ob 
 ject, who, recoiling, entreated him to rise at once 
 from this humiliating posture. Thus recalled to 
 cooler feeling, but prostrate and helpless from his 
 unwieldly form, he vainly sought to regain his feet,
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 85 
 
 and the lady, whose first astonishment soon yielded 
 to irrepressible laughter, was equally powerless in 
 affording relief, until, at length, with the aid of two 
 strong women, he was reseated in his arm-chair, from 
 which it was supposed he had accidentally slipped. 
 But this reversal of his " Decline and Fall " (I refer to 
 his fall and her decline) did not interrupt their friend- 
 ship^-which shows him in a much more amiable light 
 than Pope with Lady Montague. 
 
 This absurd tableau has also been laughed over in 
 France with Mad. de Cronza as the heroine. 
 
 Thomson, the poet of the Natural School, after 
 the brilliant finish of Pope s studied couplets was 
 also noticeably corpulent. " More fat than bard he 
 seems." Famous for his lays and his laziness, bit 
 ing mouthfuls from the luscious peaches hanging on 
 the garden wall, too lazy to take his hands out of his 
 pockets to pick them. He loved to lie in bed. He 
 refused entirely to get up one morning in 1748, and 
 after a proper period had elapsed they buried him. 
 He had at least one romance, an unfortunate affair, 
 being deeply interested in a Miss Amanda Some 
 body, whose mother did not want a poor poet for a 
 son-in-law. 
 
 He exclaimed : 
 
 " For once, O Fortune, hear my prayer, 
 And I absolve thy future care ; 
 All other blessings I resign , 
 Make but the dear Amanda mine." 
 
 Poor Jemmy ! He sung of the seasons but had 
 no summer of his own.
 
 86 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 " "Pis mine, alas ! to mourn my wretched fate, 
 
 I love a maid who all my bosom charms, 
 Yet lose my days, without this lovely mate, 
 Inhuman fortune* keeps her from my arms." 
 
 And next " The Cadaverous Skeleton," as Rogers, 
 extremely sensitive about his appearance, but his 
 friends were unmerciful. Byron wrote a scathing 
 lampoon, ending : 
 
 1 Is t a corpse stuck up for show ? 
 Galvanized at times to go ! 
 Vampire, ghost, or ghoul, what is it? 
 I would walk ten miles to miss it ! " 
 
 Sydney Smith named him " The Death Dandy," 
 and wicked Theodore Hook advised him to call his 
 hearse instead of his carriage. Even the cabby, 
 whom he hailed at midnight from St. Paul s church 
 yard, knew too much to desire a ghost as passenger, 
 and cried out, as he drove rapidly on, " Go back ! 
 go back to your grave, old man ! " 
 
 He was handsome in youth, but at ninety-four 
 one might be pardoned for looking slightly shriv 
 eled. 
 
 Jack Bannister maintained that more good things 
 had been said and written on Rogers face than on 
 that of the greatest beauty. 
 
 When Rogers repeated the couplet 
 
 " The robin with his furtive glance, 
 Comes and looks at me askance." 
 
 * In the shape of Amanda s mother.
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 87 
 
 Ward struck in with. 
 
 " If it had been a carrion crow he would have 
 looked you full in the face ! " 
 
 One wag insisted that he had been once shut up 
 in the Catacombs, mistaken for a mummy ! And 
 they said of his picture, a faithful likeness, that it 
 was " painted to the death ! " 
 
 Byroifplaced Rogers next to Scott as a poet. 
 He had a decided talent for epigrams, and his table 
 talk is delightful. A friend remarked, " If you 
 enter his house, his drawing-room, his library, you 
 of yourself say, This is not the dwelling of a com 
 mon mind. There is not a gem, a coin, a book 
 thrown aside on his chimney-piece, his sofa, his 
 table that does not bespeak an almost fastidious 
 elegance. But this very delicacy must be the mis 
 ery of his existence. He was reputed a wit, as well 
 as poet, and did say some good things and many 
 severe ones. Going to Holland House by the Ham 
 mersmith stage-coach, a lumbering old tortoise of a 
 vehicle, he asked the driver what he called it. 
 Being answered " The Regulator," he observed " it 
 was a very proper name, as all the others^ by it." 
 
 " When Croker wrote his review in the Quarterly 
 of Macaulay s History, he intended murder, but 
 committed suicide." 
 
 On somebody remarking that Payne Knight had 
 become very deaf " Tis from want of practice," 
 replied Rogers ; " he is the worst listener I know." 
 
 Rogers breakfasts were even better than his 
 poems.
 
 88 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 He might also be classed as "an opulent catch, 
 who wouldn t be caught." 
 
 His epigram on Ward, Lord Dudley, is excellent : 
 
 " Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it, 
 He has a heart and gets his speeches by it." 
 
 Byron pronounced this to be one of the best epi 
 grams in the English language, with the true Greek 
 talent of expressing by implication what is wished 
 to be conveyed. 
 
 Miss Sedgwick, who breakfasted with Rogers 
 and called him the " king of old bachelors," said 
 that he pronounced matrimony a folly at any period 
 of life, and quoted the saying of some one that, " No 
 matter whom you married, you would find after 
 wards you had married another person ! " 
 
 Yet Hayward, in a recent essay in the Edinburgh, 
 tells us that during the last four or five years of 
 Rogers life he was constantly expatiating on the 
 advantages of marriage, and regretting he had not 
 married, because then he should have had a nice 
 woman to care for him. 
 
 His own version of his nearest approximation to 
 the nuptial tie was, that when a young man, he 
 admired and sedulously sought the society of the 
 most beautiful girl he then, and still thought, he had 
 ever seen. At the end of the London season, at a 
 ball, she said : " I am going to-morrow to Worthing. 
 Are you coming there ? " He did not go. Some 
 months afterwards, being at Ranelagh, he saw the
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 89 
 
 attention of everyone drawn towards a large party, 
 in the center of which was a lady on the arm of her 
 husband. Stepping- forward to see this wonderful 
 beauty, he found it was his love. 
 
 She merely said : 
 
 " You never came to Worthing." 
 
 Voltaire was remarkable for his attenuated figure 
 and thin face. "Wicked Mummy" was one of his 
 nicknames. He makes merry in his letters over the 
 meagerness of his countenance, speaking of himself 
 as " a dried herring," and once when he had said " I 
 hope soon to see you face to face," he added, " that is 
 if I may apply the word face to such a phiz as mine ? " 
 
 He was once completely discomfitted by Young, 
 author of the " Night Thoughts." Voltaire was de 
 preciating Paradise Lost, particularly disposed to 
 ridicule Milton s celebrated personifications of death, 
 sin, and the devil. Young, who had a happy talent 
 for impromptu wit, retorted : 
 
 " Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin, 
 Thou art at once, the devil, death, and sin." 
 
 Many famous metaphysicians, philosophers, and 
 scientists have been bachelors. Jeremy Bentham, 
 Kant, Locke, Butler, Spinoza, Hobbes, Newton, Rob 
 ert Boyle, Humboldt, Buckle, Spencer, etc. In look 
 ing over the life of Isaac Newton to find some ro 
 mance, I only encountered such headings as " His 
 tory of Fluxions," " Lunar Theory," " Achromatic 
 Telescopes," and lose courage to seek further. It is
 
 90 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 reported that his friends, fearing he would be insane 
 from such constant mental exertion, induced a beau 
 tiful lady to enter his study and sit beside him, hop 
 ing her presence might divert him from his labors. 
 He had his pipe in his mouth as usual, and the only 
 notice taken of the fair invader was to borrow her 
 dainty finger to punch his pipe bowl. She declared 
 she would not be used as a tobacco stopper, and so 
 the affair ended, in smoke ! 
 
 Bunsen, the celebrated German chemist, became 
 so engrossed in an experiment on his w^edding day 
 as to entirely forget his waiting bride, who was car 
 ried off by another. 
 
 Humboldt was described by a woman who knew 
 him well, as an amiable, good-looking man ; a grace 
 ful dancer, devoted to the ladies ; a wit, a diplomat, 
 and a philosopher, a great favorite in society. As he 
 entered a drawing-room, a joyous exclamation was 
 heard from all present, and as soon as the company 
 were again seated, the hostess would exercise her 
 privilege of starting conversation, by suggesting some 
 topic to her distinguished guest. The theme need 
 not be scientific ; it served the purpose equally well, 
 if it were a bit of general news or town gossip. This 
 intellectual giant could play with it as he pleased, 
 and could turn and twist it in such a manner as to 
 make it an opportunity for the display of wit, irony, 
 wordly wisdom, memory, and versatile genius. He 
 was a little feared for his witticisms. One young 
 matron lingered at a reception until he departed,
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 91 
 
 saying, " I will never leave so long as that gentleman 
 remains. I should not like to be the subject of his 
 remarks ! " (not so courageous as a friend of mine 
 who was obliged to hurry away from a dinner for 
 the opera, who said with a smiling bow to a witty 
 French woman among the guests, who would always 
 sacrifice a friend for an epigram : " Madam, I leave 
 my reputation in your hands ! ") But there was no 
 malevolence in Humboldt s character-sketches. Bis 
 marck, who disliked him, is reported as saying that 
 he was a conceited, insupportable chatterer, and a 
 disgusting glutton ! To offset this harsh estimate is 
 Ingersoll s eloquent tribute : " We associate the name 
 of Humboldt with oceans, continents, mountains, 
 and volcanoes ; with the great palms, the wide des 
 erts, the snow-tipped craters of the Andes ; with pri 
 meval forests, and European capitals ; with wilder 
 nesses and universities ; with savages and savans ; 
 with the lovely views of unpeopled wastes ; with 
 peaks and pampas, and steppes, and cliffs, and crags. 
 With the progress of the world ; with every science 
 known to man ; with every star glittering in the 
 immensity of space the world is his monument ! " 
 Here are a few unique statements from this 
 inveterate bachelor: "I regard marriage as a sin. 
 It is my conviction also that he is a fool, and still 
 more a sinner, who takes upon himself the yoke of 
 marriage ; a fool, because he thereby throws away 
 his freedom, without gaining a corresponding recom 
 pense ; a sinner, because he gives life to children
 
 92 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 without being able to give them the certainty of hap 
 piness. The whole of life is the greatest insanity." 
 
 Buckle, who was always an invalid, declared that 
 he owed everything to his mother, with whom he lived. 
 After her death he said : " For the opinion of the 
 world I care nothing, because, now at least, there is 
 no one whose censure I fear, or whose praise I covet." 
 In her society he found all the aid and sympathy he 
 needed, and through her influence he was led to 
 value the mental sympathy and companionship of 
 women, with whom he was a great favorite. One of 
 his finest discourses was on " The influence of woman 
 on the progress of knowledge." 
 
 A bachelor is apt to have his hobbies, his were 
 books, chess, cigars, and " averages ". He also de 
 clared he would not marry until he had $5,000 a year, 
 and never attained that comfortable income. 
 
 The Pessimist, as " Schopenhauer, who did not 
 wish to be loved by his fellow-men, for, in order to 
 be loved by them, one must be like them, which, 
 God forbid ! When the cat is a kitten, she plays 
 with little paper balls; she imagines that they are 
 alive and like herself. When she is old, she knows 
 better, and lets them lie." 
 
 Such had been his experience with the bipeds. 
 He was a woman-hater, and gloried in his celibacy. 
 " The so-called career of most young men," he said, 
 "ends in their becoming beasts of burden to women. 
 The married man bears the full burden of life ; the 
 unmarried but half. All genuine philosophers have
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 93 
 
 been celibates Descartes, Leibnitz, Malebranche, 
 Spinoza, Kant. The ancients are not to be taken 
 into account, because woman with them occupied a 
 subordinate position. Moreover, Socrates matri 
 monial experience did not recommend the nuptial 
 state to scholars." 
 
 Josiah Royce tells us of insanity in his family, 
 and says, " the man, unquestionably, was incapable 
 of a permanently cheerful view of life a born out 
 cast, doomed to hide and be lonely." His mother 
 did not enjoy his "rhetorically gloomy" letters. 
 " Everything," he writes to her, " is washed away in 
 time s stream. The minutes, the numberless atoms 
 of pettiness into which every deed is dissolved, are 
 the worms that gnaw at everything great and noble 
 to destroy it." His mother found this sort of thing 
 rather tedious. A most brilliant company often 
 gathered at her house in Weimar, with Goethe at 
 the head, and her son, a youth of twenty, could not 
 add grace to such a scene so long as he could talk of 
 nothing but time and worms. 
 
 She wrote him plainly, being a woman as clear 
 headed as she was charming : " When you get older, 
 dear Arthur, and see things more clearly, perhaps 
 we shall agree better. Till then let us see that our 
 thousand little quarrels do not hunt love out of our 
 hearts. To that end we must keep well apart. You 
 have your lodgings. As for my house, whenever 
 you come you are a guest, and are welcome, of course, 
 only you mustn t interfere. I can t bear objections.
 
 94 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 Days when I receive, you may take supper with me 
 if you ll only be so good as to refrain from your pain 
 ful disputations which make me angry, too, and from 
 all your lamentations over the stupid world and the 
 sorrows of mankind, for all that always gives me a 
 bad night and horrid dreams, and I do so like sound 
 sleep." 
 
 How short-sighted are the students who insist 
 that it is not necessary to know an author s history to 
 understand his work. Schopenhauer, the morbid 
 mystic, was simply a result of an unfortunate com 
 bination of inherited mental qualities. He could 
 not help it ; he lived alone, he died alone. " His 
 name is everywhere a symbol for all that is most 
 dark and deep and sad and dangerous about the phi 
 losophy of our time." We pity him, and if we are 
 wise, avoid his unhealthy influence. 
 
 Cowley was spoken of in youth as the most ami 
 able of mankind, but, being ill-treated in a love affair 
 in his latter days, could not afterwards endure the 
 sight of a woman, and would leave the room if one 
 came into it. 
 
 James Smith of the famous " Rejected Addresses," 
 was a bachelor. " I have had a horrid dream," he 
 wrote in his diary, " namely, that I was engaged to 
 be married ; introduced to my bride, a simpering, 
 young woman, with flaxen hair, in white gloves, just 
 going to declare off cotite que cotite when, to my 
 inexpressible relief, I awoke. 
 
 It is noticeable that the best Letter-writers have
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 95 
 
 been bachelors Erasmus, Walpole, Gray, Pope, 
 Cowper, and Macaulay. They were not subjected to 
 the domestic interruptions so comically described by 
 Hood in his " Parental Ode," ending 
 
 " I ll tell you what, my love, 
 I cannot write unless HE S sent above." 
 
 Erasmus was the most facetious man and the 
 greatest critic of his age a moderate reformer who 
 satisfied neither side. He exposed with great free 
 dom the vices and corruptions of his own church, yet 
 never would be persuaded to leave the communion. 
 In his most remarkable work, "The Praise of Folly," 
 he laughs at the faults and foibles of all classes and 
 professions in a good-humored way. Open the book 
 at random, you will find something to entertain you. 
 
 In a gossipy letter to Faustus Andrelinus, poet- 
 laureate of France, another bachelor author, Erasmus 
 dwells with delight on a custom never to be suffi 
 ciently commended (saluting ladies with a kiss on 
 meeting or leaving), saying : " Faustus, if you well 
 knew the advantages of Britain, you would hasten 
 hither with wings to your feet, and if your gout 
 would not permit, you would wish you possessed the 
 art of Dardalus." 
 
 Erasmus left the bulk of his fortune as dowries 
 for young maidens. 
 
 Horace Walpole, who satirized for sixty years 
 the men and women, manners and morals of his 
 times in letters to friends, " loved letter writing and 
 studied it as an art." Macaulay thinks " his letters
 
 96 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 his best performances." Macaulay s " Essay on 
 Walpole " is so brilliant, critical, and complete that 
 all who are not familiar with it should enjoy it at 
 once. 
 
 Such racy, natural, spiteful pictures of life as 
 Walpole loves to give are invaluable, and when 
 mixed with brains they embody history. 
 
 The letters were carefully prepared for publica 
 tion. Nothing else that he has written will live. 
 
 In his old age he was devoted to the beautiful 
 and talented Mary Berry, but, from fear of being 
 laughed at by the world he had so mercilessly ridi 
 culed, assumed an equal interest in her sister, 
 Agnes, who was comparatively commonplace, and 
 did not dare to own himself a more than septua 
 genarian lover. His letters prove his deep and 
 ardent attachment, and his fascinating friend de 
 served the title of Lady Orford. How much happier 
 the rheumatic, lonely old fellow might have been ! 
 
 Miss Martineau, who knew the Berrys, asserts in 
 her positive way that he did offer himself to both. 
 Impartial, certainly, but as there is no other refer 
 ence to this, it is safe to presume that her trumpet 
 reported inaccurately, as was frequently the case. 
 Irving compares such an elderly bachelor to an old 
 moth, attempting to fly through a pane of glass 
 towards a light, without ever approaching near 
 enough to warm itself or scorch its wings ! 
 
 Pope took great pains with his letters, and was so 
 proud of them as to send duplicate copies to differ 
 ent ladies.
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 97 
 
 When women feel inclined to dislike " the Wasp 
 of Twickenham " they should remember his fond 
 reverential devotion to his mother. Dean Swift 
 declared that he had not only never witnessed, but 
 had never heard of anything like it. She lived to 
 be ninety-three, and had been for some time in her 
 dotage, but to him her death was a deadly wound. 
 
 Pope was often atrociously abused before he 
 stung his enemies, and is represented as warm 
 hearted and self-sacrificing by those who knew him 
 best. 
 
 The epigrammatic, quotable couplet was Pope s 
 best mode of expression. Regarding marriage he 
 wrote : 
 
 " Who would bear the dull unsocial hours, 
 Spent by unmarried men, cheered by no smile. 
 To sit like hermit at a lonely board, 
 In silence." 
 
 We think of Macaulay as a learned historian, a 
 brilliant essayist, an extraordinary talker. " Poor 
 Macaulay," said the roguish Sydney Smith, when 
 both had been talking at the same time, " will be 
 very sorry some day to have missed all this." He 
 also alluded most wittily to Macaulay s " flashes of 
 silence," and some one accounts for his never mar 
 rying, on account of his passionate love for clever 
 talk of his own. Brougham wrote of Macaulay as 
 the greatest of bores in society. He said : " I have 
 seen people come in from Holland house breathless 
 and able to say nothing but Oh dear, Oh mercy !
 
 98 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 What s the matter ? Oh Macaulay ! Then every 
 one said, That accounts for it. You re lucky to be 
 alive. " But read his life, more interesting than 
 any novel, and see how his loving nature shines out 
 in home life and in his letters to his idolized sisters. 
 
 Macaulay, as a bachelor, is a mystery. When he 
 loved, he loved more entirely and more exclusively 
 than was well for himself. 
 
 " It was improvident in him to concentrate such 
 intensity of feeling upon relations, who, however 
 deeply they were attached to him, could not always 
 be in a position to requite him with the whole of 
 their time and the whole of their heart. He suf 
 fered much for that improvidence. After the mar 
 riage of his sister Margaret, he never again recov 
 ered his tone of thorough boyishness," and he wrote : 
 
 " I have still one more stake to lose. There 
 remains one event for which, when it arrives, I shall, 
 I hope, be prepared. From that moment, with a 
 heart formed, if ever any man s heart was formed 
 for domestic happiness, I shall have nothing left in 
 this world but ambition. 
 
 "After all, what am I more than my fathers? 
 Than the millions and tens of millions who have 
 been weak enough to. pay double price for some 
 favorite number in the lottery of life, and who have 
 suffered double disappointment when their ticket 
 came up a blank. 
 
 "I am sitting in the midst of two hundred friends, 
 all mad with exultation and party spirit, all glorying
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 99 
 
 over the Tories, and thinking me the happiest man 
 in the world. And it is all I can do to hide my tears 
 and to command my voice when it is necessary for 
 me to reply to their congratulations. Dearest, 
 dearest sister, you alone are now left to me. Whom 
 have I on earth but thee ? But for you, in the midst 
 of all these successes, I should wish that I were lying 
 by poor Hyde Villiers. But I cannot go on." 
 
 At the close of his life, the prospect of a separa 
 tion from his sister Hannah, with whom he had 
 lived in close and uninterrupted companionship 
 since her childhood and his own early manhood, 
 darkened his last hours. He endured it manfully, 
 but his spirits never recovered the blow. 
 
 "This prolonged parting this slow sipping of 
 the vinegar and the gall is terrible. A month 
 more of such days as I have been passing of late 
 would make me impatient to get to my little nar 
 row crib, like a weary factory child." 
 
 You see that now and then a literary bachelor s 
 own confession proves his solitude and forlornity. 
 
 Thomas Hollis, a devotee to literature and repub 
 licanism, who would not marry lest marriage should 
 interrupt his labors, writes in his autobiography of 
 his deep dejection, and cries out wearily that he has 
 no one to advise, assist, or cherish him, that he 
 goes nowhere for the pleasure of it, but as a used 
 man, always laboring for others, with no sunshine or 
 comfort for himself. 
 
 Mark Akenside, who, " when he walked the
 
 1OO Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 streets, looked for all the world like one of his own 
 Alexandrines set upright," was an irritable, cross- 
 grained bachelor, but this infirmity was excused as 
 caused by two disappointments in love. He sighed 
 for domestic comfort in this fashion : 
 
 " Though the day have smoothly gone, 
 Or to lettered leisure known, 
 Or in social duty spent, 
 Yet at eve, my lonely breast 
 Seeks in vain for perfect rest, 
 Languishes for true content." 
 
 It is said that he neglected the sick women in his 
 visits to the hospital, so great was his antipathy to 
 the sex ! 
 
 One of our modern literary bachelors (James 
 Whitcomb Riley) writes thus : 
 
 BEREAVED. 
 
 " Let me come in where you sit weeping Aye, 
 Let me, who have not any child to die, 
 Weep with you for the little one whose love 
 I have known nothing of. 
 
 The little arms that slowly, slowly loosed 
 Their pressure round your neck ; the hands you used 
 To kiss. Such arms such hands I never knew. 
 May I not weep with you ? 
 
 Fain would I be of service say some thing, 
 Between the tears, that would be comforting, 
 But ah ! so sadder than yourselves am I, 
 
 Who have no child to die." 
 
 The Bachelor Wit and Diner-out is another type,
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 101 
 
 like Theodore Hook, whom Coleridge pronounced to 
 have had a genius equal to Dante, but sadly misused, 
 and his life a miserable failure. Theodore, with his 
 improvisations and practical jokes, deserves more 
 space. 
 
 Many bachelors might be mentioned of this type, 
 their morals in an inverse ratio to their ability. Her- 
 rick, Hook, Shenstone, and others, preferred the com 
 panionship of their servants to orthodox home life. 
 
 Halleck, " the first poet-laureate of New York 
 city," who modestly alluded to himself as but an 
 amateur in the literary orchestra, posed as a bachelor, 
 but was privately married and had two lovely daugh 
 ters said to have inherited much of their father s 
 ability. He must have been extremely attractive, 
 for a lady of position and culture said of him : " If I 
 were on my way to church to be married yes, even 
 if I was walking up the aisle, and Halleck were to offer 
 himself, I d leave the man I had promised to marry 
 and take him." 
 
 His " Marco Bozarris " ran like wild-fire through 
 the country. Rogers, who was fond of reading it to 
 his guests, said : " It is better than anything we can 
 do on this side of the Atlantic." " Fanny," his long 
 est poem, a pleasant satire on follies in fashions and 
 politics, was immensely liked in its day. 
 
 Bryant said of his poem on Burns, " I am not sure 
 that these verses are not the finest in which one poet 
 ever celebrated another. The lines 
 
 " None knew thee but to love thee, 
 None named thee but to praise,"
 
 102 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 which he wrote on the death of his literary partner, 
 Drake, could well be used for himself. Here is an 
 amusing letter he wrote to a friend on hearing of 
 the approaching marriage of an old man : 
 / 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR: 
 
 " I am very glad, indeed, to learn from your kind letter of re 
 membrance, that there are sensible young women besides Mrs. 
 Enoch (see Genesis v, 21) and the late Lady Leicester, who believe 
 it takes sixty-five years to make a good husband. Mrs. Enoch 
 became the mother of Methusalem, a millionaire in years, and 
 Lady Leicester, the mother of five sons, each a multi-millionaire in 
 money. May your marriage destiny be the long life of the one 
 and the long purses of the other. For my own part, I still continue 
 to fancy that Methusalem s resolution, not to marry until he was 
 one hundred and eighty-one, was wise and prudent as a general 
 rule. I am fast approaching that interesting period ; and, unless 
 Mrs. Hackett, when I have the pleasure of conversing with her, 
 shall by reference to her own pleasant example persuade me into 
 an early marriage, I shall wait patiently another century for the 
 happy day." 
 
 The Jilted literary bachelors are numerous, from 
 Jeremy Bentham to Chorley, but I regard them too 
 highly to recall their lack of reciprocated affection. 
 
 The Timid bachelor. I make this division, be 
 cause a bachelor assures me there are many unhappy 
 men, who actually have not the courage to undertake 
 the solemn responsibilities of matrimony, but that, if 
 a lady would only take such a specimen kindly but 
 firmly by the ear and lead him to the altar, he would 
 go and be grateful. 
 
 The Ideal bachelor. No need to give the name. 
 Every heart prompts, every mouth utters the same
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 103 
 
 simple-hearted, kindly, shy ; a " friend " in the truest 
 sense, not only to the slave and the suffering, but to 
 children, to the homely country life, and the simple 
 wayside flowers of New England, to humanity ; whose 
 breadth is seen in his creed rather than his hat-brim 
 the revered, beloved Whittier. Yet he often 
 speaks regretfully of what he has lost in his single 
 life. Here is a bit from a letter addressed to an old- 
 time friend. 
 
 " The years, that since we met have flown, 
 Leave, as they found me, still alone. 
 Nor wife, nor child, nor grandchild dear, 
 Are mine, the heart to cheer. 
 More favored thou; with hair less gray 
 Than mine, can let thy fancy stray 
 To where thy little Constance sees 
 The prairie ripple in the breeze. 
 For one like her to lisp thy name, 
 Is better than the voice of fame. " 
 
 Reference is made to his friend s grandchild, 
 Constance. 
 
 Lastly, the Irresistibles. I hear a wild commotion 
 round me at this announcement, and find that almost 
 every man I had otherwise placed is pushing into 
 this division as his proper sphere. You see how tis. 
 I can do nothing with them, after all. But there is 
 woman s last refuge I can still talk about them. 
 
 To the conundrum, " Why are men of genius 
 so often bachelors ? " it may be answered that 
 such instances are not owing to anything like a 
 want of appreciation of woman s worth or charms,
 
 104 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 but to unfavorable circumstances. Most of these 
 celebrated celibates have been deep in love. " I 
 have seldom met with an old bachelor," said Irving, 
 " who had not, at some time or other, some trait of 
 romance in his life to which he looks back with 
 fondness, and about which he is apt to grow garru 
 lous occasionally." 
 
 It is self-evident that all bachelors remain unmar 
 ried from preference. They may not be able to win 
 the one woman of their choice but there are always 
 plenty more from which to make a selection. 
 
 Dr. Holmes observes that even Lazarus could 
 have married if he could have picked up crumbs 
 enough to support a wife ! 
 
 You remember that when a lady suggested a tax 
 on bachelors, one of them promptly acquiesced, 
 saying : " They ought to be taxed for freedom, as it 
 was certainly a luxury. In the Annual Register of 
 London, a serious proposition from the House of 
 Commons is recorded, that all unmarried men over 
 thirty-five should pay a special tax, and it has been 
 proposed by Robert Dale Owen for our country. 
 This law was carried into execution in Sparta, and in 
 Athens there were persons whose business was 
 matchmaking. In Prof. Felton s Greece, Ancient 
 and Modern, a detailed account is given of this. 
 
 I fear it would be difficult to collect a tax of 
 this sort from bachelors of the present day, even 
 a small yearly stipendum for the oakless vines, 
 hanging in limp profusion all about them. The
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 105 
 
 Roman Censor, Metellus, appeals to bachelors in this 
 way : " Fellow citizens, if we could live without 
 wives, we should be free of this burden, but 
 since nature has willed that it is as impossible to 
 live without them as it is unpleasant to live with 
 them, let us lay these disagreeablenesses of this 
 short life as offerings on the altar of the state." 
 
 I wonder that Cato s sentiments have not been 
 blazoned on the banners of the agitators for 
 Women s Rights. " Recall," he says, " all the ordi- 
 ances of our forefathers, designed to keep women in 
 subjection, and yet, ye could hardly keep them 
 bridled. What shall be the result if ye give them 
 freedom and the same rights which ye have your 
 selves. At the moment when they became your 
 equals, they will become your superiors ! " 
 
 Lord Bacon s dicta are familiar to all : 
 
 li Certainly the best works and of greatest merit 
 for the public have proceeded from the unmarried 
 or childless men, who, both in affection and means, 
 have married and endowed the public." 
 
 The conjugal troubles of Shakespeare and Dry- 
 den, Milton, Addison, Shelley, Bulwer, Byron, Dick 
 ens, with a score of lesser lights, may have alarmed 
 some bachelor authors. As women are supposed to 
 have personal reasons for disapproving of bachelors, 
 please notice that I only quote the severe criticisms 
 of other men. 
 
 Dickens says of them : " Old bachelors are like 
 those strange, wandering fires that seem to have no
 
 106 Bachelor Authors in Types 
 
 fixed spheres, serve no known law in the moral uni 
 verse, the purpose of whose existence being a 
 mystery to themselves and all about them. These 
 singular specimens of humanity are in an anomalous 
 condition, for they are not only isolated in their self 
 ishness, but they have also outlawed themselves 
 from the rights and privileges of domestic life." 
 
 In Thackeray s Pendennis you will find a touch 
 ing description of a bachelor s forlorn apartments, 
 ending " To be well in chambers is melancholy and 
 lonely and selfish enough, but to be ill in chambers, 
 to pass nights of pain and watchfulness, and long for 
 the morning and the laundress, to have no other 
 companion for long hours but your own sickening 
 fancies and fevered thoughts, no kind hand to give 
 you drink if you are thirsty, or to smooth the hot 
 pillow that crumples under you, this indeed is a 
 fate so desolate and tragic that we shall not enlarge 
 upon its horror." 
 
 Franklin compares a bachelor to a half-pair of 
 scissors, and Beecher says : "A bachelor is like an 
 old hemlock tree, dead at top, and ragged all the 
 way down." 
 
 For a farewell picture let me give from Praed, an 
 old bachelor s violent protest against matrimony : 
 
 " When the dim eyes shall gaze and fear 
 To close the glance that lingers here , 
 Watching the faint, departing light, 
 That seems to nicker in its flight ; 
 When the lone heart in that long strife 
 Shall cling unconsciously to life;
 
 Bachelor Authors in Types 107 
 
 I ll have no shrieking female by 
 
 To shed her drops of sympathy, 
 
 To listen to each smothered throe, 
 
 To feel or feign officious woe, 
 
 To bring me every useless cup, 
 
 And beg, dear Tom, to drink it up ! 
 
 To turn my oldest servants off, 
 
 E en as she hears my gurgling cough, 
 
 And then expectingly to stand, 
 
 And chafe my temples with her hand ; 
 
 And pull a cleaner nightcap o er em, 
 
 That I may die with due decorum; 
 
 And watch the while my ebbing breath, 
 
 And count the tardy steps of death ; 
 
 Grudging the Leech his growing skill, 
 
 And wrapped in dreams about the will ; 
 
 I ll have no furies round my bed, 
 
 They shall not plague me till I m dead. 
 
 Believe me, ill my dust would rest, 
 If the plain marble on my breast, 
 That tells in letters large and clear, 
 The bones of Thomas Quince lies here, 
 Should add a talisman of strife 
 Also, the bones of Jane, his wife ! "
 
 LADY MORGAN. 
 
 IF the veritable Lady Morgan, with her wit and 
 vanity, poor French and fine clothes, good common 
 sense and warm Irish heart, could be with you this 
 moment, she would be a most entertaining compan 
 ion. A spirited, versatile, spunky little woman, her 
 whole life a grand social success, one of the most 
 popular and voluminous writers of her day; but, 
 with all her sparkle and dash, ambition and industry, 
 destined in a few generations more to be almost un 
 known, vanishing down that doleful " back entry " 
 where Time sends so many bright men and women. 
 As the founder of Irish fiction for the national, 
 tales of Ireland begin with her and the patron of 
 Irish song (she stimulated Lover to write " Rory 
 O More," and " Kate Kearney " is her own), always 
 laboring for liberty and the interests of her oppressed 
 countrymen, and preserving her name absolutely 
 untouched by scandal through a long and brilliant 
 career, she deserves a place among distinguished 
 women. She evidently had no idea of being forgot 
 ten, and completed twenty chapters of autobiography 
 its florid egotism at once its fault and its charm 
 besides keeping a diary in later years, and preserv 
 ing nearly all the letters written to her, from tributes 
 of poets and exiles to the petitions of weavers and
 
 Lady Morgan 109 
 
 chimney sweeps, and even cards left at her door. 
 But on those cards were the names of Humboldt, 
 Cuvier, Talma, and the most celebrated men of that 
 epoch, down to Macaulay, Douglas Jerrold, and Ed 
 ward Everett, while she could count among her cor 
 respondents the noted men and women of three 
 countries. La Fayette declared he was proud to be 
 her friend; Byron praised her writings, and always 
 expressed regret that he had not made her acqaint- 
 ance in Italy ; Sydney Smith coupled her name with 
 his own as "the two Sydneys " ; Leigh Hunt cele 
 brated her in verse ; Sir Thomas Lawrence, Ary 
 Scheffer, and other famous artists begged for the 
 honor of painting her portrait. Was it strange after 
 all this, and being told for half a century that she 
 was an extraordinarily gifted and fascinating wo 
 man, that (being a woman) she should believe it ? 
 
 She was extremely sensitive in regard to her age, 
 and if forced to state it on the witness-stand would 
 doubtless have whispered it to the judge in a be 
 witching way, as did a pretty but slightly passe 
 French actress under similar embarrassing circum 
 stances. She pleads : " What has a woman to do 
 with dates cold, false, erroneous, chronological 
 dates new style, old style, precession of the equi 
 nox, ill-timed calculation of comets long since due at 
 their station and never come ? Her poetical idiosyn 
 crasy, calculated by epochs, would make the most 
 natural points of reference in woman s autobiogra 
 phy. Plutarch sets the example of dropping dates in
 
 1 10 Lady Morgan 
 
 favor of incidents ; and an authority more appropri 
 ate, Madame de Genlis, who began her own memoirs 
 at eighty, swept through nearly an age of incident 
 and revolution without any reference to vulgar eras 
 signifying nothing (the times themselves out of 
 joint), testifying to the pleasant incidents she re 
 counts and the changes she witnessed. / mean to 
 have none of them ! " 
 
 Sydney Owenson was born in " ancient ould Dub 
 lin " at Christmas : the year is a little uncertain. 
 The encyclopaedias say about 1780; 1776 has been 
 suggested as more correct, but we will not pry into 
 so delicate a matter. A charming woman never loses 
 her youth. Doctor Holmes tells us that in traveling 
 over the isthmus of life we do not ride in a private 
 carriage, but in an omnibus meaning that our an 
 cestors or their traits take the trip with us ; and in 
 studying a character it is interesting to note the com 
 binations that from generations back make up the 
 individual. Sydney s father was the child of an ill- 
 assorted marriage. " At a hurling-match long ago, 
 the Queen of Beauty, Sydney, granddaughter of Sir 
 Maltby Crofton, lost her heart, like Rosalind, to the 
 victor of the day, Walter McOwen (anglicised Owen- 
 son;, a young farmer, tall and handsome, graceful 
 and daring, and allowed him to discover that he had 
 wrestled well and overthrown more than his ene 
 mies. Result, an elopement and mesalliance never 
 to be forgiven the husband a jolly, racketing Irish 
 lad, unable to appreciate his refined, accomplished
 
 Lady Morgan 111 
 
 wife, a skillful performer on the Irish, harp, a poet, 
 and a genius, called by the admiring neighbors the 
 Harp of the Valley. " Their only child, the father 
 of Lady Morgan, was a tolerable actor, of loose mor- 
 -als and tight purse, who could sing a good song or 
 tell a good story, and who was always in debt. 
 
 Sydney was a winsome little rogue, quite too much 
 for her precise and stately mother, who was ever 
 holding up as a model a child, in her grave fifty 
 years agone, who had read the Bible through twice 
 before she was five years old, and knitted all the 
 stockings worn by the coachmen ! All in vain ; 
 Sydney was not fated to die early or figure as a 
 young saint in a Sunday-school memoir. She took a 
 deep interest in chimney-sweeps from observing a 
 den of little imps who swarmed in a cellar near her 
 home, and on one occasion actually scrambled up a 
 burning chimney, followed by this sooty troop. Her 
 pets were numerous, the prime favorite being a cat 
 named Ginger, from her yellow coat. Her mother, 
 who was shocked by Sydney adding to her nightly 
 petition, " God bless Ginger the cat ! "* did not share 
 this partiality, as is seen in the young lady s first 
 attempt at authorship : 
 
 * Puzzling Theological Questions : 
 
 " Why may I not say, bless Ginger ? " 
 
 " Because Ginger is not a Christian." 
 
 " Why isn t Ginger a Christian ? " 
 
 " Because Ginger is only an animal." 
 
 " Am I a Christian, mamma, or an animal? "
 
 112 Lady Morgan 
 
 " My dear pussy cat, 
 Were I a mouse or a rat, 
 
 Sure I never would run off from you, 
 You re so funny and gay 
 With your tail when you play, 
 
 And no song is so sweet as your mew. 
 But pray keep in your press, 
 And don t make a mess, 
 
 When you share with your kittens our posset, 
 For mamma can t abide you. 
 And I cannot hide you 
 
 Unless you keep close in your closet." 
 
 Her voice was remarkable, but her father, know 
 ing too well the temptations that beset a public 
 singer, refused to cultivate her talent for music, say 
 ing, " If I were to do this, it might induce her some 
 day to go on the stage, and I would prefer to buy her 
 a sieve of black cockles from Ring s End, to cry 
 about the streets of Dublin, to seeing her the first 
 prima donna of Europe." A genuine talent for 
 music will assert itself in spite of neglect, and one 
 evening at the house of Moore, where, with her sister 
 Olivia, she listened in tearful enthusiasm to some of 
 his melodies, sung as only the poet could sing them, 
 was an important event in her life. She tells us that 
 after this treat they went home in almost delirious 
 ecstacy, actually forgetting to undress themselves 
 before going to bed. This experience developed a 
 longing to know more of the early Irish ballads, and 
 roused a literary ambition. If the grocer s son could 
 so distinguish himself, she could surely relieve her 
 dear father from his embarrassments ; and she began
 
 Lady Morgan 113 
 
 at once to write with this noble object. Her unself 
 ish and unwavering- devotion to her rather worthless 
 father is the most attractive and touching- point in 
 her character. His watchful care was certainly cred 
 itable. Living in a town where soldiers were sta 
 tioned, he allowed them no acquaintance with his 
 daughters. One of them said : "Owenson looks at us 
 as if he d like to pitch our entire mess-room of En 
 signs out of the window in an armfull." After her 
 mother s death she was sent to boarding-school, 
 where she studied well, scribbled verses, accom 
 plished herself in dancing, and furnished bright 
 home-letters for her less brilliant mates. 
 
 She next figures as a governess in the family of a 
 Mrs. Featherstone of Bracklin Castle. There w r as a 
 merry dance for adieu the night she was to leave, but, 
 like Cinderella, she danced too long ; the hour 
 sounded, and Sydney was hurried into the coach in a 
 white muslin dress, pink silk stockings, and slippers 
 of the same hue, while Molly, the faithful old ser 
 vant, insisted on wrapping her darling in her own 
 warm cloak and ungainly headgear. Being ushered 
 in this plight into a handsome drawing-room, there 
 was a general titter at her grotesque appearance, but 
 she told her story in her own captivating way until 
 they screamed with laughter not at her now, but 
 with her and she was carried off to an exquisite 
 suite of rooms a study, bedroom and bathroom, 
 with a roaring turf fire, open piano, and lots of books, 
 and after dinner, when she was toasted, she sang sev-
 
 114 Lady Morgan 
 
 eral songs, which she said had an immense effect, 
 and the evening ended with a jig, the host regretting 
 they had no spectators besides the servants. This, 
 her first jig out of the schoolroom, she contrasts 
 with her last one in public, when invited by the 
 Duchess of Northumberland to dance with Lord 
 George Hill. She accepted the challenge from the 
 two best jig dancers in the country, Lord George 
 nd Sir Philip Crampton, and had the pleasure of 
 flooring them both. Apropos of her fondness for 
 jigs, in Fanny Kemble s Old Woman s Gossip, you 
 will find an amusing reminiscence. 
 
 She was a successful teacher, although she could 
 not restrain her love of fun. Once, indeed, they 
 threatened to write to her father, but were conquered 
 by an evening of song. 
 
 Her father s pride rose in revolt against her posi 
 tion. He wished to place her under the protection 
 of some purse-proud cousins, but Sydney rebelled. 
 She writes to dear papa : "A humble companion I 
 will not be to any one. I could never walk out with 
 little dogs or run little messages. What objections 
 can you have to my occupying the position of a 
 teacher, a calling which enrolls the names of Madame 
 de Maintenonand Madame de Genlis." And she kept 
 her place and her self-respect. 
 
 " St. Clair" was the name of her first novel. She 
 had kept her work a profoun dsecret, and one morn 
 ing, full of ambitious dreams, she borrowed the cook s 
 market bonnet and cloak and sallied out to seek her
 
 Lady Morgan 115 
 
 fortune. Before going far she saw over a shop door 
 " T. Smith, Printer and Bookseller/ and ventured in. 
 It was some minutes before T. Smith made his ap 
 pearance, and when he did come he had a razor in 
 one hand, a towel in the other, and only one side of 
 his face shaved. After hearing her errand, he told 
 he did not publish novels, and sent her to Brown. 
 Brown wanted his breakfast and was not anxious for 
 a girl s manuscript, but his wife persuaded him to 
 look it over, and, elated with success, Sydney ran 
 home, forgetting to leave any address, and never 
 heard of her first venture until, taking up a book in a 
 friend s parlor, it proved to be her own ! It had a 
 good sale and was translated into German, with a 
 biographical notice, which stated that the young 
 author had strangled herself with an embroidered 
 handkerchief in an agony of despair and unrequited 
 love. The " Sorrows of Werther " was her model, but 
 with a deal of stuff and sentimentality there was the 
 promise of better things. In all her early works her 
 characters indulge in wonderful digressions ; histor 
 ical, astronomical, and metaphysical, in the midst of 
 terrible emergencies where danger, despair, and un 
 speakable catastrophes are imminent and impending. 
 No matter what laceration of their finest feelings they 
 may be suffering, they always have their learning at 
 command and never fail to make quotations from 
 favorite authors appropriate to the occasion. ("St. 
 Elmo" resembles this.) 
 
 The "Novice of St. Dominick " was Miss Owenson s
 
 116 Lady Morgan 
 
 second novel, she going alone to London to arrange 
 for its publication. It was no small undertaking, 
 and when the coach drove into the yard of the Swan 
 with Two Necks, the young lady was utterly ex 
 hausted, and, seating herself on her little trunk in the 
 inn yard, fell fast asleep. But, as usual, she found 
 friends and luck was on her side. The novel was 
 cut from six volumes to four, and with her first liter 
 ary earnings, after assisting her father, she bought 
 an Irish harp and a black mode cloak, always devoted 
 to music and dress. 
 
 Next came " The Wild Irish Girl," her first na 
 tional story, which gave her more than a national 
 fame and 300 from her fascinated publisher. It 
 contains much curious .information about the antiqui 
 ties and social condition of Ireland, and a passionate 
 pleading against the wrongs of its people. It made 
 the piquant little governess all the rage in fash 
 ionable society, and until her marriage she was 
 known by the name of her heroine Glorvina. As 
 a story it is not worth reading to-day. In the " Book 
 of the Boudoir," a sort of literary rag-bag, she gives 
 under the heading " My First Rout in London," a 
 graphic picture of an evening at Lady Cork s. She 
 says : " A few days after my arrival in London and 
 while my little book was running rapidly through 
 successive editions, I was presented to the Countess- 
 dowager of Cork, and invited to a reception at her 
 fantastic and pretty mansion in New Burlington 
 street. Oh, how her Irish historical name tingled in
 
 Lady Morgan 117 
 
 my ears and seized on my imagination, reminding 
 me of her great ancestor, the father of chemistry 
 and uncle to the earl of Cork ! I stepped into my 
 job carriage at the hour of ten, and, all alone by my 
 self, as the song says, to Eden took my solitary 
 way. What added to my fears and doubts and hopes 
 and embarrassments was a note from my noble 
 hostess received at the moment of departure : 
 Everybody has been invited expressly to meet the 
 Wild Irish Girl ; so she must bring her Irish harp. 
 M. C. O. I arrived at New Burlington street with 
 out my harp and with a beating heart, and I heard 
 the high-s&unding titles of princes and ambassadors 
 and dukes and duchesses announced, long before my 
 poor plebeian name puzz 1 ed the porter and was ban 
 died from footman to footman. As I ascended the 
 marble stairs with their gilt balustrade, I was agitated 
 by emotions similar to those which drew from a 
 frightened countryman his frank exclamation in the 
 heat of the battle of Vittoria: Oh, jabbers! I wish 
 some of my greatest enemies was kicking me down 
 Dame street. Lady Cork met me at the door: 
 What ! no harp, Glorvina? Oh, Lady Cork! - 
 Oh, Lady Fiddlestick ! You are a fool, child : you 
 don t know your own interests. Here, James, Wil 
 liam, Thomas ! send one of the chairmen to Stan 
 hope street for Miss Owenson s harp. 
 
 After a stand and a stare of some seconds at a 
 strikingly sullen-looking, handsome creature who 
 stood alone, and whom she heard addressed by a
 
 118 Lady Morgan 
 
 pretty sprite of fashion with a " How-do, Lord 
 Byron ? " she says : " I was pushed on, and on reach 
 ing the centre of the conservatory, I found myself 
 suddenly bounced upon a sort of rustic seat, a very 
 uneasy pre-eminence, and there I sat, the lioness of 
 the night, shown off like the hyena of Exeter 
 Change, looking almost as wild and feeling quite as 
 savage. Presenting me to each and all of the splen 
 did crowd which an idle curiosity, easily excited and 
 as soon satisfied, had gathered round us, she prefaced 
 every introduction with a little exordium which 
 seemed to amuse every one but its object : Lord 
 Erskine, this is the Wild Irish Girl whom you are 
 so anxious to know. I assure you she talks quite as 
 well as she writes. Now, my dear, do tell my Lord 
 Erskine some of those Irish stories you told us the 
 other evening. Fancy yourself among your own set, 
 and take off the brogue. Mrs. Abingdon says you 
 would make a famous actress ; she does indeed. You 
 must play the short-armed orator with her ; she will 
 be here by and by. This is the duchess of St. 
 Albans : she has your novel by heart. Where is 
 Sheridan ? Do, my dear Mr. T- - (This is Mr. 
 
 T , my dear : geniuses should know each other) 
 
 - do, my dear Mr. T- , find me Mr. Sheridan. Oh ! 
 here he is ! What ! you know each other already ? 
 So much the better. This is Lord Carysford. Mr. 
 Lewis, do come forward. That is Monk Lewis, my 
 dear, of whom you have heard so much, but you 
 must not read his works; they are very naughty.
 
 Lady Morgan 119 
 
 Lewis, who stood staring at me through his eye 
 glasses, backed out after this remark, and disap 
 peared. You know Mr. Gell, her ladyship contin 
 ued, so I need not introduce you ; he calls you the 
 Irish Corinne. Your friend Mr. Moore will be here 
 by and by ; I have collected all the talent for you. 
 Do see, somebody, if Mr. Kemble and Mrs. Siddons 
 are come yet, and find me Lady Hamilton. Now, 
 pray tell us the scene at the Irish baronet s in the 
 rebellion, and then give us your blue-stocking dinner 
 at Sir Richard Phillips. Here is Lord L. he will 
 be your bottle holder. 
 
 "Lord L volunteered his services. The circle 
 now began to widen wits, warriors, peers, and min 
 isters of state. The harp was brought forward, and 
 I tried to sing, but my howl was funereal. I was 
 ready to cry, but endeavored to laugh, and to cover 
 my real timidity by an affected ease which was both 
 awkward and impolitic. At last Mr. Kemble was 
 announced. Lady Corft reproached him as the late 
 Mr. Kemble, and then, looking significantly at me, 
 told him who I was. Kemble acknowledged me by 
 a kindly nod, but the stare which succeeded was not 
 one of mere recognition ; it was the glazed, fixed 
 look so common to those who have been making liba 
 tions to altars which rarely qualify them for ladies 
 society. Mr. Kemble was evidently much preoccu 
 pied and a little exalted. He was seated my vis-a-vis 
 at supper, and repeatedly raised his arm and stretched 
 it across the table for the purpose, as I supposed, of
 
 120 Lady Morgan 
 
 helping himself to some boar s head in jelly. Alas ! 
 no ! The bore was that my head happened to be the 
 object which fixed his tenacious attention, which, 
 dark, cropped and curly, struck him as a particularly 
 well-organized Brutus, and better than any in his 
 repertoire of theatrical perukes. Succeeding at last 
 in his feline and fixed purpose, he actually stuck 
 his claws in my locks, and, addressing me in the 
 deepest sepulchral tones, asked, Little girl, where 
 did you get your wig ? Lord Erskine came to the 
 rescue and liberated my head, and all tried to re 
 trieve the awkwardness of the scene. Meanwhile, 
 Kemble, peevish, as half-tipsy people generally are, 
 drew back muttering and fumbling in his pocket, 
 evidently with some dire intent lowering in his eyes. 
 To the amusement of all, and to my increased con 
 sternation, he drew forth a volume of the Wild Irish 
 Girl, and reading with his deep, emphatic voice one 
 of the most high-flown of its passages, he paused, 
 and patting the page with his forefinger, with the 
 look of Hamlet addressing Polonius, he said, Little 
 girl, why did you write such nonsense ? and where 
 did you get all those damned hard words ? Thus 
 taken by surprise, and smarting with my wounds of 
 mortified authorship, I answered, unwittingly and 
 witlessly, the truth : Sir, I wrote as well as I could, 
 and I got the hard words from Johnson s Diction 
 ary. He was soon carried off to prevent any more 
 attacks on my head, inside or out." 
 
 Lady Cork was a unique character, and her name
 
 Lady Morgan 121 
 
 suggests several anecdotes. She entertained fre 
 quently, giving parties of various colors : pink for 
 the exclusives, blue for the literary, gray for the 
 religious, and her pet and protege suggested dun- 
 duketfry mud color as a good name for a mixed 
 crowd. 
 
 On a pink evening, she wore such an enormous 
 plume, that one of the wits present compared her to 
 a shuttle-cock all Cork and feathers. 
 
 At a dinner where this eccentric dowager was 
 the only lady present, she said to Colman, " You are 
 so agreeable that you shall drink a glass of cham 
 pagne with me." 
 
 " Your ladyship s wishes are law to me," said 
 Colman, " but really, champagne does not agree with 
 me : " upon which, Jekyll called out, " Faith, Colman, 
 you seem more attached to the cork than the bottle." 
 
 She was a person of extraordinary power for 
 making herself comfortable, and did anything that 
 it pleased her to do would invite a number of 
 guests to dinner at a friend s house before telling 
 said friend of the pleasure in store for him, and 
 would make use of a friend s carriage without asking 
 permission. Once, on leaving a breakfast party, she 
 claimed a carriage in this way ; told the footman 
 that she took it by his mistress s orders ; kept it out 
 the whole afternoon, and on meeting the owner ex 
 claimed, " I wish you would have the steps of your 
 carriage lowered before I use it again." 
 
 Sydney Smith said that she was once so much
 
 122 Lady Morgan 
 
 affected by one of his charity sermons, that she bor 
 rowed a guinea from a friend to put in the plate. 
 
 Darwin tells us how once, when dining at Dean 
 Milman s, Sydney said, " It is generally believed that 
 my dear old friend, Lady Cork, has been overlooked," 
 and he said this in such a manner that no one could, 
 for a moment, doubt that his dear old friend had 
 been overlooked by the Devil. 
 
 Glorvina was now very much the fashion, visit 
 ing in the best Dublin society and making many 
 friends, whom she had the tact to retain through life. 
 When articles of dress or ornament are named for 
 one, it is an unfailing sign that they have attained 
 notoriety, if not fame, and the bodkin used for fas 
 tening the "back hair " was called " Glorvina" in her 
 honor. Like many attractive women of decided 
 character, she had her full share of faults and foibles. 
 Superficial, conceited, sadly lacking in spirituality 
 and refinement, a cruel enemy, a toady to titles, a 
 blind partisan of the Liberal party, that is her pic 
 ture in shadow. Her style was open to severe criti 
 cism, and Richard Lovell Edgeworth suggests mildly 
 that Maria, in reading her novel aloud in the family 
 circle, was obliged to omit some superfluous epithets. 
 
 In this first flush of celebrity she never gave up 
 work, holding fast to industry as her sheet-anchor. 
 Soon appeared two volumes of patriotic tales. " Ida 
 of Athens" was Novel No. 3, but written in confident 
 haste, and not well received. The names of her 
 books would make a list rivaling that of the loves of
 
 Lady Morgan 123 
 
 Don Giovanni (nearly seventy volumes), and any ex 
 tended analysis or criticism would be impossible in 
 this rapid sketch. " Every day in my life is a leaf in 
 my book," was a motto literally carried out, and she 
 tried almost every department of literature, succeed 
 ing best in describing the broad characteristics of her 
 own nation. " Her lovers, like her books, were too 
 numerous to mention," yet her own heart seemed 
 untouched. She coquetted gayly, but her adorers 
 were always the sufferers. 
 
 Sir Jonah Harrington wrote her at this time a 
 complimentary and witty letter, in which he says of 
 her heroine Glorvina, " I believe you stole a spark 
 from heaven to give animation to your idol." He 
 thought the inferiority of " Ida" was owing to its au 
 thor s luxurious surroundings. " I cannot conceive 
 why the brain should not get fat and unwieldy, as 
 well as any other part of the human frame. Some 
 of our best poets have written in paroxysms of hun 
 ger, and I really believe that Addison would have 
 had more point if he had had less victuals ; and if 
 you do not restrict yourself to a sheep s trotter and 
 spruce beer, your style will betray your luxury." 
 But soon came an increase of the very thing feared 
 for her fame, in the form of an invitation from 
 Lady Abercorn and the marquis to pass the chief 
 part of every year with them. This was accepted, 
 and thus she met her fate. Lord Abercorn kept a 
 physician in his house, Doctor Morgan, a handsome, 
 accomplished widower, whom the marchioness was
 
 124 Lady Morgan 
 
 anxious to provide with a second wife. She had 
 fixed upon Sydney as a suitable person, but the re 
 tiring and reticent doctor had heard so much of her 
 wit, talents, and general fascination, that he disliked 
 the idea of meeting her. He was sitting one morn 
 ing with the marchioness when a servant threw open 
 the door, announcing " Miss Owenson," who had 
 just arrived. Dr. Morgan sprang to his feet, and, 
 there being no other way of escape, leaped through 
 the open window into the garden below. This was 
 too fair a challenge for a girl of spirit to refuse, and 
 she set to work to captivate him, succeeding more 
 effectually than she desired, for she had dreamed of 
 making a brilliant match. Soon a letter was written 
 to her father asking his leave to marry the conquered 
 doctor, yet she does not seem to have been one bit 
 in love. He was too grave and good, though as de 
 voted a lover as could be asked for. It was a queer 
 match and a dangerous experiment, but after a while, 
 their mutual qualities adjusted themselves. He 
 kept her steady, and she roused him from indolent 
 repose. As a critic of that time says : " She was as 
 bustling, restless, energetic, and pushing as he was 
 modest, retiring, and unaffected." Lover gives this 
 picture of them : "There was Lady Morgan, with her 
 irrepressible vivacity, her humor that indulged in 
 the most audacious illustrations, and her candor 
 which had small respect for time or place in its ex 
 pression, and who, by the side of her tranquil, steady, 
 contemplative husband, suggested the notion of a
 
 Lady Morgan 125 
 
 Barbary colt harnessed to a patient English draught- 
 horse." 
 
 She had a certain light, jaunty air peculiarly 
 Irish, celebrated by Leigh Hunt in verses which em 
 body a faithful portrait : 
 
 "And dear Lady Morgan, see, see where she comes, 
 With her pulses all beating for freedom like drums, 
 So Irish, so modish, so mixtish, so wild, 
 So committing herself , as she talks, like a child ; 
 So trim, yet so easy, polite, yet high-hearted, 
 That Truth and she, try all she can, won t be parted. 
 She ll put on your fashions, your latest new air, 
 Aud then talk so frankly, she ll make you all stare. 
 Mrs. Hall may say " Oh ! " and Miss Edgeworth say " Fie ! " 
 But my lady will know the what and the why. 
 Her books, a like mixture, are so very clever 
 That Jove himself swore he could read them forever. 
 Plot, character, freakishness, all are so good, 
 And the heroine herself playing tricks in a hood." 
 
 After a happy year with her patrons, Glorvina 
 married and moved to a home of her own in Kildare 
 street, Dublin, whence she writes to Lady Stanley : 
 " With respect to authorship, I fear it is over. I 
 have been making chair-covers instead of periods, 
 hanging curtains instead of raising systems, and 
 cheapening pots and pans instead of selling senti 
 ment and philosophy." But even during this first 
 busy year of housekeeping she was working upon 
 " O Donnel," another national tale, for which she was 
 paid five hundred and fifty pounds. It was highly 
 praised by Sir Walter Scott, and sold with rapidity, 
 but her liberal politics made her unpopular with the
 
 126 Lady Morgan 
 
 leading Tory journalism of England. In point of 
 pitiless invective the criticism of the Quarterly and 
 Blackwood has, perhaps, never been exceeded. Her 
 books were denounced as pestilent, and the public 
 advised against maintaining her acquaintance. Miss 
 Martineau, an impartial critic, if impartiality con 
 sists in punching almost every one she passed, did 
 not fail to give our heroine a black eye, speaking of 
 her as " in that set to which Mrs. Jameson belonged, 
 who make women blush and men grow insolent." 
 
 Sir Charles and his wife next visited Paris with 
 the intention of writing a book. Their letters car 
 ried them into every circle of Parisian society, " in 
 the course of one evening, assisting at a Royalist 
 dinner, drinking ultra tea, and supping en rcpubli- 
 cainc." And in each the popularity of Lady Morgan 
 was unbounded. Madame Jerome Bonaparte wrote 
 to her : " The French admire you more than anyone 
 who has appeared here since the battle of Waterloo 
 in the form of an Englishwoman." When " France" 
 appeared the clamor of abuse in England was 
 enough to appall a very stout heart. John Wilson 
 Croker was one of her most bitter assailants, and 
 attempted to annihilate her in the Quarterly. She 
 balanced matters by caricaturing him as " Counsellor 
 Crawley " in her next novel, in a way that hit and 
 hurt, and by a witticism which lives, while his en 
 venomed sentences are forgotten. Some one was 
 telling her that Croker was among the crowd who 
 thought they could have managed the battle of
 
 Lady Morgan 127 
 
 Waterloo much better than Wellington, whose suc 
 cess, in their estimation, was only a fortunate mis 
 take. She exclaimed, " Oh, I can believe it. He had 
 his secret for winning the battle ; he had only to put 
 his " Notes on Boswell s Johnson " in front of the 
 British lines, and all the Bonapartes that ever existed 
 could never have got through tliem ! " Maginn in Black- 
 wood gave unmerciful cuts at her superficial opinions, 
 ultra sentiments, and chambermaid French. Frasers 
 Magazine complimented her sardonically on her sim 
 ple style, being happy to observe that she had re 
 duced the number of languages used, as the Sibyl 
 did her books, to three, wisely discarding German, 
 Spanish, the dead and Oriental languages. But she 
 received the cannonade, which would have crushed 
 some women, with perfect equanimity. As a com 
 pensation, she was the toast of the day, and at some 
 grand reception had a raised dais only a little lower 
 than that provided for the duchess de Berri. At a 
 dinner at Baron Rothschild s, Careme, the Delmon- 
 ico of those times, surprised her with a column of 
 ingenious confectionery architecture on which was 
 inscribed her name spun in sugar. It was a more 
 equivocal compliment when Walter Scott christened 
 two pet donkeys, Hannah More and Lady Morgan. 
 The chapters on society are extremely readable. 
 She tells us how Robespierre, during the most san 
 guinary period of his career, wore a muslin waist 
 coat lined with rose-colored silk, and a coat of the 
 most tender blue. Josephine she represents as ab-
 
 128 Lady Morgan 
 
 surdly whimsical about her toilettes. " I am very ill 
 to-day," she said one morning. " Give me a cap 
 which suggests delicate health." This style was 
 presented. " But this is too sick, they will believe 
 now I am about to die." A more healthy head-dress 
 was presented for inspection. " And now," said the 
 Empress, with a languid yawn, " And now, you make 
 me too robust." 
 
 "Florence Macarthy" another novel, attacking 
 the social and political abuses in Irish government, 
 was her next work. Colburn, her publisher, who had 
 just presented her with a beautiful parure of ame 
 thysts, now proposed that she and her husband 
 should go to Italy. " Do it, and get up another book 
 the lively lady to sketch men and manners, the 
 metaphysical balance wheel contributing the solid 
 chapters on laws, politics, science, and education." 
 They accepted the offer, and received the same extra 
 ordinary attention as in their former tour, arid her 
 picture was displayed in shop windows. This may 
 be accounted for by the fact that it was well known 
 that they were to prepare a book on Italy. It was 
 equally well known that Lady Morgan had a sharp 
 tongue and still sharper pen ; so that people who 
 lived in glass houses, as did many of the magnates, 
 were remarkably civil to " Miladi," even those who 
 regarded her tour among them as an unjustifiable 
 invasion. " Byron pronounced this book an excellent 
 and fearless work. During her sojourn in Italy, 
 Lady Morgan became enthusiastic about Salvator
 
 Lady Morgan 129 
 
 Rosa, and began to collect material for writing the 
 history of his life and times, which was her own fa 
 vorite of all her writings." 
 
 In 1825 the "Dairy" is started, chatty, full of 
 gossip and incident. She writes, October 3Oth : " A 
 ballad-singer was this morning singing beneath my 
 window, in a strain most unmusical and melancholy. 
 My own name caught my ear, and I sent Thomas 
 out to buy the song. Here is a stanza: 
 
 " Och, Dublin City, there s no doubting, 
 
 Bates every city upon the say ; 
 Tis there you ll hear O Connell spouting, 
 
 And Lady Morgan making tay ; 
 For tis the capital of the foinest nation, 
 
 Wid charming pisantry on a fruitful sod, 
 Fighting like divils for conciliation, 
 An hating one another for the love o God. " 
 
 "The O Briens and O Flaherty s " was published 
 in 1827, and proved more popular than any of her 
 previous novels. There is an allusion to it in the 
 interesting account which Lord Albemarle gives us 
 of his acquaintance with Lady Morgan : " A number 
 of pleasant people used to assemble of an evening in 
 Lady Morgan s nut-shell in Kildare street. When 
 I first met her she was in the height of her popularity. 
 In her new novel she tells me I am to figure as a 
 certain count, a great traveler who made a trip to 
 Jerusalem for the sole object of eating artichokes in 
 their native country. The chief attraction in the 
 Kildare street at homes was her sister Olivia (Lady 
 Clark), who used to compose and sing charming
 
 130 Lady Morgan 
 
 Irish songs, for the most part squibs on the Dublin 
 society of the day. One of the verses ran thus : 
 
 " We re swarming alive, 
 Like bees in a hive, 
 
 With talent and janius and beautiful ladies ; 
 We ve a duke in Kildare, 
 And a Donnybrook Fair ; 
 
 And if that wouldn t plaze, why nothing would plaze yez. 
 We ve poets in plenty. 
 But not one in twenty 
 
 Will stay in ould Ireland to keep her from sinking. 
 They say they can t live 
 Where there s nothing to giv. 
 
 Och, what business have poets with ating or dhrinking ! " 
 
 Justly proud of her sister, Lady Morgan was in 
 the habit of addressing every new comer with, " I 
 must make you acquainted with my -Livy." She 
 once used this form of words to a gentleman who 
 had just been worsted in a fierce encounter of wit 
 with the fascinating lady. " Yes, madam," he replied, 
 " I happen to know your Livy, and I only wish your 
 Livy was Tacitus." 
 
 Few of Lady Morgan s bon-mots have been pre 
 served, but one is given which shows that she occa 
 sionally indulged in a pun. Some one, speaking of 
 a certain bishop who was rather lax in his observance 
 of Lent, said he believed he would eat a horse on 
 Ash Wednesday. " Very suitable diet," remarked 
 her ladyship, " if it were a. fast horse." 
 
 The " Diary " progresses slowly by fitful jerks. 
 Here is a characteristic entry : " April j, 1834.. My 
 journal has gone to the dogs. I am so fussed and
 
 Lady Morgan 131 
 
 fidgeted with my dear charming world, that I can 
 not write ; I forget days and dates. Ouf ! last night, 
 at Lady Stepney s, met the Milmans, Mrs. Norton, 
 Rogers, Sydney Smith, and others ; among them, 
 poor, dear Jane Porter. She told me she was taken 
 for me the other night, and talked to as such by a 
 party of Americans. She is tall, lank, and lean, and 
 lackadaisical, dressed in the deepest black, with 
 rather a battered black gauze hat and the air of a 
 regular Melpomene. / am the reverse of all this, 
 and, without vanity, the best-dressed woman wher 
 ever I go. Last night, I wore a blue satin trimmed 
 fully with magnificent point lace light blue velvet 
 hat and feather, with an aigrette of sapphires and 
 diamonds. Voila ! Lord Jeffrey came up to me, and 
 we had sucJi a flirtation ! When he comes to Ireland 
 we are to go to Donnybrook Fair together ; in short, 
 having cut me down with his tomahawk as a reviewer, 
 he smothers me with roses as a man. I always say 
 of my enemies before we meet, Let me at them ! 
 Of the same soiree she writes again : " There was 
 Miss Jane Porter, looking like a shabby canoness. 
 There was Mrs. Somerville in an astronomical cap. 
 I dashed in in my blue satin and point lace, and 
 showed them how an authoress should dress." 
 
 Her conceit was fairly colossal. The reforms in 
 legislation for Ireland were, in her estimation, owing 
 to her novel of " Florence Macarthy." She professed 
 to have taught Taglicgii the Irish jig. Of her toilette, 
 made largely by her own hands, she was comically
 
 132 Lady Morgan 
 
 vain. In " The Fraserians," a charming off-hand de 
 scription of the contributors to that magazine, Lady 
 Morgan is depicted trying on a big, showy bonnet 
 before a mirror with a funny mixture of satisfaction 
 and anxiety as to the effect. 
 
 Chorley, the feared and fearless critic of the 
 Athetuzum, speaks of Lady Morgan as one of the 
 most peculiar and original literary characters he 
 ever met. After a long and searching analysis he 
 adds : " However free in speech, she never shocked 
 decorum never had to be appealed or apologized 
 for as a forlorn woman of genius under difficulties." 
 " A compound of the most startling contradictions, 
 impossible to be overlooked or forgotten, though 
 possible to be described in two ways, both true, yet 
 the one diametrically opposed to the other. Her 
 life, were it truly told, would be one of the most sin 
 gular contributions to the history of gifted woman 
 that the world has ever seen." 
 
 An American paper, the Boston Literary Gazette, 
 gave a personal description which was not sufficiently 
 flattering, and roused the lady s indignant comments. 
 It dared to state that she was " short, with a broad 
 face, blue, inexpressive eyes, and seemed, if such a 
 thing may be named, about forty years of age." 
 Imagine the sensations this paragraph produced ! 
 She at once retorted, exclaiming in mock earnest, " I 
 appeal ! I appeal to the Titian of his age and coun 
 try I appeal to you, Sir Thomas Lawrence. Would 
 you have painted a short, squat, broad-faced, inex-
 
 Lady Morgan 133 
 
 pressive, affected, Frenchified, Greenland-seal-like 
 lady of any age? Would any money have tempted 
 you to profane your immortal pencil, consecrated by 
 nature to the Graces, by devoting its magic to such 
 a model as this described by the Yankee artist of the 
 Boston Literary? And yet, you did paint the picture 
 of this Lapland Venus this impersonation of a 
 Dublin Bay Codfish ! . . . Alas ! no one could 
 have said that I was forty then ; and this is the cruel- 
 est cut of all ! Had it been thirty-nine or fifty ! 
 Thirty-nine is still under the mark, and fifty so far 
 beyond it, so hopeless ; but forty the critical age, 
 the Rubicon I cannot, will not, dwell on it. But, 
 O America ! land of my devotion and my idolatry ! 
 is it from you the blow has come ? Let Quarterly 
 and Blackivoods libel, but the Boston Literary ! Et tu 
 Brute! " 
 
 In 1837 she received a pension of three hundred 
 pounds a year, a handsome recognition of her liter 
 ary merits, and entirely unsolicited. 
 
 And in 39 she published a book entitled, " Woman 
 and Her Master," solid and dull. She endeavored to 
 prove that woman is composed of finer clay than 
 man, or is rather a bit of precious porcelain. And a 
 masculine critic says : " The lady, having all the talk 
 to herself, rides to the end upon a gently undulating 
 wave of triumph." 
 
 One more peep into her diary : 
 
 " Moore looked very old and bald, but still retains 
 his cock-sparrow air. He was very pleasant but
 
 134 Lady Morgan 
 
 rather egotistical and shallow. He exclaimed bit 
 terly against writing-women, even against the beau 
 tiful Mrs. Norton. 
 
 " In short, said he, a writing-woman is one 
 unsexed, but suddenly recollecting himself, and 
 pointing at me, said to my sister, except her " 
 
 August i gth. 
 
 " My soiree very fine. Learned, scientific, and 
 tiresome. Fifty philosophers passed through my 
 little salon last night. My sister, Lady Clark, made 
 a song about them, which she sang to the amuse 
 ment of all." 
 
 In December, 1846, she writes: I dare not trust 
 myself to chronicle my feelings as to passing years. 
 To forget is my philosophy ; to hope would be my 
 insanity ; to endure, and that I can, is my system. 
 I am grateful for the good I yet enjoy ; to be so, is 
 my religion." 
 
 In 1850, she thoroughly enjoyed a sharp pen-to- 
 pen encounter with Cardinal Wiseman on a state 
 ment made in her Italy. She writes : " Lots of 
 notices and notes of my letter to Cardinal Wiseman. 
 It has had the run of all the newspapers. The little 
 old woman lives still." 
 
 Lady Morgan had vanity, but it was a vanity so 
 quaint and sparkling, so unlike in its frank honesty 
 to all other vanities that it became absolutely a 
 charm. 
 
 " I am vain," she once said to Mrs. Hall, " but I 
 have a right to be so. Look at the number of books
 
 Lady Morgan 135 
 
 I have written (over 70). Have I not been ordered 
 to leave a kingdom and refused to obey ? Did ever 
 woman move in a brighter sphere than I do ? My 
 dear, I have three invitations to dinner to-day. One 
 from a duchess, another from a countess, a third 
 from a diplomatist. What am I ? A pensioned 
 scribbler ! Yet I am given gifts that queens might 
 covet." 
 
 Horace Smith, the wit and poet, was a frequent 
 and delighted as well as delightful guest of Lady 
 Morgan s. 
 
 Once when invited to visit her he was suffering 
 from an acute attack of bronchitis, and sent with his 
 regrets the following doggerel : 
 
 " O dear Lady Morgan, this pain in the organ 
 Of sound, that the doctors call larynx, 
 Is a terrible baulk to my walk and my talk, 
 While my pen its extremity ne er inks. 
 Tho I know its not sage, I m transported with rage, 
 Cause I can t be transported to Sydney. 
 
 " When my daughters come back from your dwelling, alack ! 
 What lots of facetiae they can tell us ! 
 While /within clutch of a feast I can t touch, 
 Am condemned to the tortures of Tantalus ! 
 When last you came here, you had illness severe, 
 Now / must call in the physician-. 
 
 We would meet, but the more we re disposed (what a bore) 
 The greater our indisposition ! 
 
 " O Morgans and Fate, do not bother my pate, 
 With this Fata Morgt.na probations ; 
 If ye can t make me well, rob Sir Charles of his spell, 
 And his wife of her rare fascinations."
 
 136 Lady Morgan 
 
 In Ireland, at the vice- regal drawing-rooms of the 
 Marchioness Wellesley, Lady Morgan frequently 
 figured. "Here," writes one, "here it was that I 
 saw Lady Morgan for the first time, and as I had 
 long pictured her to my imagination as a sylph-like 
 person, nothing could equal my astonishment when 
 the celebrated authoress stood before me. She cer 
 tainly formed a strange figure in the midst of that 
 dazzling scene of beauty and splendor. Every lady 
 present wore feathers and trains, but Lady Morgan 
 scorned both appendages. Hardly more than four 
 feet high, with a slightly curved spine, uneven 
 shoulders and eyes, she glided about in a close- 
 cropped wig bound by fillet or solid band of gold, 
 her face all animation and with a witty word for 
 everybody." 
 
 Mrs. Kemble thought her a clever, vain, lively, 
 good-natured woman. She says, " My relations with 
 the lively, amusing authoress consisted merely in an 
 exchange of morning visits, during one of which she 
 plied me with a breathless series of pressing invita 
 tions to breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, evening 
 parties, to meet everybody that I did not know, and 
 upon my declining all these offers of hospitable 
 entertainment, for I had at that time withdrawn 
 myself entirely from society, and went nowhere, she 
 exclaimed, " But what in the world do you do with 
 yourself in the evening? " 
 
 " Sit with my father, or remain alone." 
 
 " Ah ! " said the society-loving little lady, with an
 
 Lady Morgan 137 
 
 exasperated Irish accent, " Come out of that sphare 
 of solitary self-sufficiency ye live in, do ! " which ob- 
 iurgation certainly presented in a most ludicrous 
 light my life of very sad seclusion, and sent us 
 both into fits of laughter. 
 
 In 1828, O Connell paid a graceful tribute to the 
 achievements of Lady Morgan. " To Irish female 
 talent and patriotism we owe much. There is one 
 name consecrated by a generous devotion to the 
 best interests of Ireland a name sacred to the 
 cause of liberty and of everything great, virtuous, 
 or patriotic ; the name of an illustrious woman, who 
 has suffered unmanly persecution for her talented 
 and chivalrous adherence to her native land." 
 
 " It is to me delightful," writes Sir Jonah Bar- 
 rington, " to see a woman solely by the force of her 
 own natural talent, succeed triumphantly in the line 
 of letters she has adopted, and in despite of the most 
 virulent, illiberal, and unjust attacks ever yet made 
 on any author by mercenary reviewers." 
 
 Chorley, the feared and fearless critic of the 
 Athenaeum, speaks of Lady Morgan as one of the 
 most peculiar and original literary characters he ever 
 met. 
 
 " A composition of natural genius, acquired 
 accomplishments, audacity, that flew at the highest 
 game, shrewd thought ; and research at once intel 
 ligent and superficial ; personal coquetries and 
 affectations balanced by sincere and strenuous fam 
 ily affection ; extreme liberality of opinions, relig-
 
 138 Lady Morgan 
 
 ious and political; extremely narrow literary sym 
 pathies, united with a delight in all the most tinsel 
 pleasures, and indulgent of the most inane aristo 
 cratic society ; a genial love for art, limited by the 
 most inconceivable prejudices of ignorance ; in 
 brief, a compound of the most startling contradic 
 tions impossible to be overlooked or forgotten, 
 though possible to be described in two ways, both 
 true, yet the one diametrically opposed to the other." 
 
 Her life, were it truly told, would be one of the 
 most singular contributions to the history of gifted 
 woman that the world has ever seen. 
 
 However free in speech she never shocked 
 decorum never had to be appealed or apologized 
 for as a forlorn woman of genius under difficulties. 
 
 The closing chapters of any biography must of 
 necessity be sad ; friends falling to the grave like 
 autumn leaves. 
 
 First her beloved husband, then her darling sis 
 ter Olivia, and her journal she now calls her " Dooms 
 day Book." 
 
 December 25, 1858, was Lady Morgan s last birth 
 day. " She assembled a few old friends at dinner 
 and did the honor, with all the brilliancy of her best 
 days. She told stories with infinite finesse and droll 
 ery, and after dinner sang a broadly comic song, 
 which she said must be good, as it was written 
 by a church dignitary, so she gave from Father 
 Prout The Night before Larry was Stretched. It 
 was a custom of those days to wake a man, who was
 
 Lady Morgan 139 
 
 to be {hung, the night before his execution, so the 
 poor lad might enjoy the whisky drank in his 
 honor." 
 
 There was one book more, positively the last, 
 "The Odd Volume," but she never gave up her pen, 
 that "worn-out stump of a goose-quill" until her 
 physician literally took it from her fingers. 
 
 She grew old gracefully, showing great kindness 
 to young authors, enduring partial blindness and 
 comparative neglect with dignity and cheerfulness. 
 Her heart was always young. 
 
 Some one writes : " The last time we saw the 
 Wild Irish Girl she was seated on a couch in her 
 bedroom as pretty and picturesque a ruin of old-lady 
 womankind as ever we looked upon ; her black silk 
 dressing-gown fell round her petite form, which 
 seemed so fragile that we feared to see her move. 
 We recalled to memory Maria Edgeworth, having 
 believed her to be the smallest great woman in the 
 world, but Lady Morgan seemed not half her size." 
 
 Another says : " Everything in her room was 
 artistic, and you might have imagined yourself in 
 the presence of Mad. de Genlis, feeling that after the 
 passing away of that small form, which enshrined 
 so much vitality and so large and expansive a mind, 
 the last link between us and the Atkins, the Bar- 
 baulds, the D Arblays would be gone." 
 
 She met death patiently and with unfailing cour 
 age rather than religious resignation on the evening 
 of the 1 6th of April, 1859.
 
 140 Lady Morgan 
 
 Deference to her sensitiveness prevents any allu 
 sion to her age. 
 
 " She lived through the love, admiration, and ma 
 lignity of three generations of men and was, in short, 
 a literary Ninon, as brisk and captivating in 1859 as 
 when George was Prince and the author of Kate 
 Kearney divided the laureateship of society and 
 song with Tom Moore," one of the most popular and 
 best abused writers of her time. No one reads her 
 now. Why do I resurrect her ? Because she was 
 such a charming personality, industrious, cheerful, 
 lovable, womanly ; making the most and the best of 
 her life according to her convictions. And because, 
 as I read her life, and moralized over the hosts of 
 ambitious men and women who wrote so much and 
 so well, and are almost unknown, she seemed to 
 stand at my elbow, merry, but eager, and shaking 
 her fan, she whispered, " Tell your friends all about 
 me, that s a darling. Give me one more chance to 
 be heard of in your beautiful broad America." So I 
 offer this pen photograph of Sydney, Lady Morgan.
 
 CHRISTOPHER NORTH AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 I devote this hour with special pleasure to John 
 Wilson grand old lion of the North ; with the 
 body of an athlete, the brain of a genius, the heart of 
 a woman ; as remarkable as a pugilist, pedestrian, 
 sportsman as for his literary criticisms, sketches of 
 Scottish life, and logical eloquent lectures on moral 
 philosophy. 
 
 Oh for the power to bring the man before you as 
 he was, of commanding stature, with the brow and 
 features of a god, clear blue eyes, a wonderfully mo 
 bile face, locks of the true keltic yellow floating over 
 his broad shoulders, the embodiment and ideal of 
 vigorous manhood. 
 
 " You are a man ! " said Napoleon, when he first 
 saw Goethe. So exclaimed strangers as they passed 
 Wilson on the street. Walter Scott is supposed to 
 have depicted him in his sketch of Richard the Lion- 
 hearted. He certainly fulfilled Emerson s idea that 
 it is the first duty of every man to be a splendid ani 
 mal, anticipating Gail Hamilton s flattering state 
 ment : " There is nothing so splendid as a splendid 
 man." He has always been one of my heroes, and 
 although the rose-color and glamor which surrounded 
 him in childish days is dimmed, so that I can see his 
 faults, there is still a wondrous charm connected 
 with his name.
 
 142 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 Such enthusiasm, such strong personal magnet 
 ism, is incapable of oblivion. I know that at the 
 last, his mind and body failed that like other men, 
 he died and was buried ; but, to me, he is still in the 
 prime of life, never old, never changed. 
 
 I think about him, read about him, picture him, 
 till he glows a living being beside me. Up to his 
 neck in water, fishing ; or running, leaping, wrest 
 ling, rowing, and excelling in all ; delighting the 
 students in Edinburgh University ; an odd successor 
 to Dugald Stewart and Dr. Brown, a victorious rival 
 of Sir William Hamilton ; walking with his wife over 
 the hills of Scotland, chatting and chaffing with the 
 Ettrick Shepherd at Ambrose Tavern ; boating on 
 the Windemere ; " laboring in his study when the 
 fever of composition was upon him, upon poem, 
 essay, or story, his eyes gleaming like a panther s, his 
 unkempt beard adding a grim wild force to his ex 
 pression, the whole effect that of an inspired 
 buffalo ; spending several weeks with a camp of 
 Gypsies ; riding in mad chase after a neighbor s bull, 
 at half-past two on a summer s morning, with a 
 couple of jolly friends, all armed with immense 
 spears fourteen feet long ; leaping in rivalry with 
 some tinkers who had pitched their tents by the 
 roadside ; playing the waiter at an inn table at mid 
 night, half for the frolic, half to study character ; 
 holding the hand and closing the eyes of his faithful 
 old servant, Billy Balmer, who had come from far to 
 die near him, or sitting by the bedside of an old
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 143 
 
 woman, long an inmate of his home, arranging her 
 pillows with awkward but gentle hand or reading 
 her favorite verses in the Bible ; petting a hapless 
 sparrow ; pampering and feeding no less than sixty- 
 two game cocks in his back yard, with a hospital for 
 the invalids in an attic. 
 
 Twisting a whip from the fist of a brutal carter, 
 who was cruelly beating his horse, and placing the 
 wretched animal in better control than that of its 
 owner, leading the venerable, raw-boned quadruped 
 through the fashionable streets of Edinburgh, an 
 act which required moral courage. And courage he 
 never lacked in things great or small. A passionate 
 lover of nature, a despiser of shams. " Intolerant to 
 no one but quacks and cockneys," erratic, preju 
 diced, intense, affectionate, truthful, do you not see 
 him? The brawny-chested, broad-shouldered, fire- 
 eyed, lofty-browed, sunny-faced, sunny-hearted, Kit 
 North ! His name scarcely appears in our text 
 books on English literature. His works are not 
 generally known in this country, but the few who 
 do appreciate his power and versatility, his humor, 
 pathos, satire, wit and tenderness, wisdom and elo 
 quence, value him as a tried and intimate friend, and 
 find in the " Noctes " an unfailing fountain of delight. 
 
 The Shepherd knew what he was talking about 
 when he said to Christopher " Listenin to you, sir, 
 is like lookin into a well ; at first ye think it clear, but 
 no verra deep, but ye let drop in a peeble and what 
 a length o time ere the air-bells come up to the sur 
 face frae the profoond."
 
 144 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 In Scotland he is remembered and read, not as 
 Scott and Burns, but first in the rank just after 
 them remembered with affection, enthusiasm, and 
 respect. 
 
 Look first at John Wilson as a beautiful child, 
 full of life and fun, fond of angling when but a 
 baby. He was only three years old when he ram 
 bled off one day, armed with a willow wand duly 
 furnished with a thread line and crooked pin, to fish 
 in a " wee burnie " of which he had taken note, 
 away a good mile from home. Unknown to anyone, 
 the adventurer sallied forth for a " solitary cast " to 
 spend a day of delight by the rippling stream, with 
 what success we find recorded in Fytte First of 
 Christopher in his sporting jacket. 
 
 "A tug a tug! With face ten times flushed 
 and pale by turns ere you could count ten, he has at 
 last strength in the agitation of his fear and joy to 
 pull away at the monster, and there he lies in his 
 beauty among the gowans and the greensward, for 
 he has whapped him right over his head and far 
 away a fish a quarter of an ounce in weight, and, at 
 the very least, two inches long ! Off he flies on 
 wings of wind to his father, mother, and sisters and 
 brothers and cousins, and all the neighborhood, 
 holding the fish aloft in both hands, still fearful of 
 its escape, and like a genuine child of corruption, his 
 eyes brighten at the first blush of cold blood on his 
 small puny fingers. He carries about with him, 
 upstairs and downstairs, his prey upon a plate, and
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 145 
 
 will not wash his hands, for he exults in the silver 
 scales adhering to the thumb-nail that scooped out 
 the pin." 
 
 While the future Christopher was asserting him 
 self out of doors, the " professor " was displaying his 
 capacity in the nursery. 
 
 His sisters looked up to him, and admired and 
 wondered, as standing upon a chair he would address 
 them and the servants. One sermon he was often 
 called on to repeat, with this text : " There was a 
 fish, and it was a de il o a fish, and it was ill to its 
 young anes." In this allegory he displayed pathos, 
 humor, and oratorical power. He was also remark 
 able for his drawings, especially of animals. 
 
 A tiger, full of crouching life, just ready to 
 spring, was exhibited by his mother to admiring 
 guests. 
 
 This precocious boy, unlike many geniuses, was 
 foremost in the playground, king of all sports, 
 throwing his whole energy into either study or play, 
 a favorite with everyone. 
 
 Always intensely susceptible to grief or gladness, 
 his first real sorrow was the death of his sister. He 
 was borne from her grave death-like, and wishing to 
 die. And in his twelfth year he lost his father. 
 " As he stood at the head of the grave and heard the 
 dull earth rattling over the coffin, his emotions so 
 overcame him that he fainted. His daughter re 
 marks that this union of strength and sensitiveness 
 suggests those blue-eyed arid long-haired Norsemen,
 
 146 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 who made their songs amid the smiting of swords, 
 swift of foot, strong of arm, skilled in love, ready in 
 counsel, fierce to their enemies, tender and true to 
 their friends. 
 
 At Glasgow University he showed the same pas 
 sionate vehemence and tendency to extremes, in 
 study, social life, poetry, music, wild escapade yet 
 never immoral nor dissipated. Such superabundant 
 vitality is apt to be misunderstood by the common 
 place majority to whom such ebullitions savor of 
 intoxication or insanity or a lamentable eccentricity, 
 but more of such individuality, independence, en 
 thusiasm, and outdoor life would be an improve 
 ment to our race. 
 
 He kept a diary in college days, like himself, 
 odd and queerly mixed. In one line, " Gave Archy 
 my buckskins to clean " ; in next, " Prize for the 
 best specimen of the Socratic mode of reasoning 
 given out in Logic " ; again, " Called on my grand 
 mother ; went -to a sale of books; had a boxing- 
 match of three rounds with Lloyd beat him " ; or, 
 " ran three miles on the Paisley road for a wager 
 against a chaise with Andrew Napier beat them 
 both!" In vacation, "Finished my poem on 
 Slavery. Began an essay on the Faculty of Imagin 
 ation. vStayed at home all day. Wrote on the Phil 
 osophy of the Stoics. 
 
 "For barley sugar, 6 pence. 
 
 " Began to learn the flute by myself. 
 
 " Prizes distributed, got three of them."
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 147 
 
 Sotheby said it was worth a journey from Lon 
 don to hear him translate a Greek chorus, and at a 
 later day, the brawny Cumberland men called him 
 " a verra bad un to lick." 
 
 " I trust I make myself understood," he once said 
 to such a man, after knocking him down. 
 
 When a boy he won a bet by walking six miles 
 in two minutes less than an hour. He was equally 
 remarkable as a leaper, surpassing all competitors. 
 He once jumped across the Cheswell, twenty-three 
 feet clear, with a run of only a few yards, the great 
 est feat of this kind on record. Gen. Washington s 
 greatest leap was but twenty-one feet. It is curious 
 that Wilson s learned rival, Sir W. Hamilton, was 
 also a noted leaper. 
 
 At Oxford he was the first boxer, leaper, cock- 
 fighter, and runner among the students, but gained 
 the Newdigate prize for poetry, and became so 
 flaming a Radical that he would not allow a servant 
 to black his shoes, but might be seen, the yellow- 
 haired glorious savage, performing that interesting 
 operation himself. 
 
 At that early period he strongly admired Words 
 worth and wrote him a letter of extraordinary length, 
 which the contemplative bard kindly answered. In 
 after years he lost all patience with the diffuse dreary 
 wastes that marred his longer poems. The bald sim 
 plicity of his childish doggerel when he was true to 
 his own theories about poetry was too much for Wil 
 son s sense of the ludicrous, and his over-mastering
 
 148 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 conceit caused this former favorite to dwindle to the 
 proportions of a good and great old man, who, when 
 he forget his creed, rose to sublimity. If all dared 
 to express their honest opinions as did Wilson, we 
 should find there had been a good deal of sham ad 
 miration about many of our beacon lights in litera 
 ture, from Chaucer to Browning. 
 
 At college, too, there was an unfortunate love 
 affair, a tangled net of adoration, hope, perplexity, 
 mystification, and despair, a necessary experience 
 apparently in a poet s career, from Spenser s Rosa 
 lind to Tennyson s Lillian. 
 
 After graduation in 1807, he built, all on the 
 ground floor, a beautiful home in Westmoreland, 
 which De Quincey describes in his glowing way. It 
 was Wilson, by the way, who gave the name to the 
 " Lake School." De Quincey was impressed by the 
 humility and gravity with which Wilson spoke of 
 himself, no tinge of arrogance in his manner, a 
 refreshing contrast to the colossal conceit of his 
 neighbors. 
 
 There were merry regattas on the Lake and mer 
 rier dances on shore. De Quincey says that Wilson 
 was the best male dancer, not professional, he had 
 ever seen, although he had never taken a lesson ; and 
 it was at a ball that he met his fate, Miss Jane Penny, 
 a leading belle of the Lake country, rich, accom 
 plished, and beautiful. And when he danced with 
 her, which he did often, they attracted all eyes, and 
 many stopped to watch them. They were often
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 149 
 
 cheered as they entered a room, in mere admiration 
 of their appearance. 
 
 " So stately his form and so lovely her face, 
 That never a hall such a galliard did grace." 
 
 Pretty Miss Jane seems for a time quite jealous of 
 a bewitching widow to whom Wilson was attentive. 
 She writes : " Mr. Wilson is flirting- with a pretty 
 little widow. She is generally admired by the male 
 part of creation, but not by our sex. I don t know 
 whether Mr. Wilson s attentions to her will end in a 
 marriage, but I hope not for his sake. I think he 
 is deserving a very superior woman." 
 
 Most truly did he win one, secured in Miss Penny. 
 It was an ideal companionship ; one of unbroken 
 happiness. He was married on the nth of May, 
 1 8 1 1 , and wrote that morning to his most intimate 
 friends of his wife, with these words : 
 
 " She is, in gentleness, innocence, sense, and feel 
 ing, surpassed by no woman, and has remained pure 
 as from her Maker s hands. Surely, if I know myself 
 I am not deficient in kindness and gentleness of na 
 ture. I will to my dying day love, honor, and worship 
 her." This determination was most fully kept, for 
 Wilson was a model of a lover and husband in one. 
 
 Thenceforth his life had a deeper purpose, and 
 his home was a place of pure sunshine. There was 
 no wedding tour, but they went at once to his cottage 
 home. 
 
 During the first year of married life he published 
 "The Isle of Palms." The sale was not gratifying. Of
 
 150 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 the four happy years that were passed in the cottage 
 at Elleray, from 1811 to 1815, there is little to be told. 
 The happiest families, like the happiest nations, 
 have no history. Then came unlooked-for trouble. 
 An uncle proved dishonest and treacherous, squander 
 ing Wilson s entire fortune, and ruined himself also. 
 Wilson bore the blow bravely, and generously assisted 
 to support this disgraced relative. He now had to 
 leave his beloved sycamore-sheltered Elleray, going 
 to Edinburgh to live with his mother, a stately, hand 
 some old lady, who welcomed him and his family to 
 her pleasant house in Queen street. In 1815, he was 
 called to the bar, but that routine was impossible for 
 him. He did sometimes get cases, but said laugh 
 ingly afterward, " I did not know what the devil to 
 do with them." 
 
 About the beginning of July, 1815, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Wilson set out for a pedestrian tour through the 
 Highlands, which was successfully accomplished, 
 astonishing the villagers wherever they stopped by 
 their striking appearance. One day she walked 
 twenty-five miles. On their return they were quite 
 the lions of Edinburgh. It was predicted that Mrs. 
 Wilson would come back sunburnt, weather-beaten, 
 and freckled. But such expectations were agreeably 
 disappointed. One old lady who called immediately 
 exclaimed : " Weel, I declare, she s come back bon 
 nier than ever." 
 
 De Quincey often accompanied Wilson on these 
 tramps. Their friendship was lifelong. Sheltered at
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 151 
 
 the house one stormy night, the marvelous little 
 man remained a year. He gave his daily instructions 
 to the cook in his own peculiar phraseology and with 
 the minuteness and prolixity which never left him. 
 The good soul listened in silent awe, entirely over 
 powered, as he requested that his slice of rare mutton 
 be cut in a " diagonal rather than a longitudinal 
 form," but gave as her private opinion, " That bodie 
 has an aufu sicht o words. My ain master would 
 ha ordered a hale table fu in a little more than a 
 haff o his haun and here s a this claver about a bit 
 mutton, nae bigger than a peni. Mr. De Quinshey 
 would mak a gran preacher though I m thinkin 
 that a hantle o the folk would na ken what he was 
 drivin at. " A sensible criticism on the convolu 
 tions and intricacies of the Opium Eater s arabesque 
 style, certainly as valuable as the comments of Grant 
 White s washerwoman on puzzling passages in 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 The " City of the Plague," published next year 
 (1816) was favorably criticised by Jeffrey, and Byron 
 placed it among the great works of the age. But as 
 a poet, Wilson will not live strange to say ; he was 
 too soft and feminine in style ; while as a word pain 
 ter he is almost unequaled. 
 
 His novels, though exquisite specimens of poetic 
 prose, are overloaded with sentiment and emotion, 
 and the characters far above the average of Scot 
 tish rural life, yet they were hailed with delight when 
 they appeared, producing the same sensation as
 
 152 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 George McDonald s first and best story, " The Annals 
 of a Quiet Neighborhood." 
 
 With the year 1817, begins Wilson s connection 
 with BlackwoocTs Magazine. 
 
 At that time Edinburgh was crowded with clever 
 men, most of them young, who felt that the Tory party, 
 to which they belonged, had been too loudly crowed 
 over by the Edinburgh Review, the oldest of the great 
 British quarterlies, originated by such men as Sydney 
 Smith, Francis Jeffrey, Henry Brougham, and Francis 
 Horner. It was a tremendous power, with its light 
 flying artillery of wit, personality, and sarcasm. 
 Jeffrey was a critic to be feared and hated. Words 
 worth used to class Robespierre, Bonaparte, and 
 Jeffrey together as the three most formidable ene 
 mies of the human race who had appeared within his 
 remembrance. Jeffrey had dared to say of his 
 " Excursion," " This will never do." 
 
 A rival magazine was needed, and Blackwood, the 
 bookseller, started one. The first numbers were de 
 scribed as " dull and decent." This was not what was 
 wanted. Blackwood dismissed his editors and ob 
 tained the services of James Hogg, who by his 
 " Queen s Wake " had just taken rank among the 
 first poets of Scotland, of Lockhart, Scott s son-in- 
 law, who for caustic criticism almost equaled Jeffrey, 
 Dr. Magrim, a witty and learned Irishman, John 
 Gait, the novelist, Robert Sym, the Timothy Tickler 
 of the " Noctes," and John Wilson. 
 
 Hogg contributed the famous Chaldee Manu-
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 153 
 
 script, a literary rocket, a sharp satire upon the Whig 
 party in biblical language. Grant White s " New 
 Gospel of Peace" is closely like this. This was received 
 with dismay, astonishment, wrath, there was a wild 
 outcry through the city, and it was threatened to 
 prosecute Mr. Blackwood " for a profane parody of 
 the Bible," though we imagine the personalities dis 
 tressed the accusers more than the profanity. He 
 paid ,1,000 in costs and damages, but Blackwood 
 was looked for eagerly afterwards ; and it was never 
 deficient in spicy comments, audacious, lively, unjus 
 tified, unscrupulous, and witty. 
 
 At one time it was a habit to review in Black- 
 wood books which had never been published, such 
 as " Peter s Letters to his Kinsfolks." A Dr. Peter 
 Morris was invented as the letter- writer. Lockhart, 
 who had originated the joke, was forced to complete 
 the letters as a third edition of the book. The 
 author s name became well known, and the magazine 
 gained much credit for having introduced Dr. Morris 
 to the world. 
 
 In this new magazine the genius of Wilson found 
 free scope. Like an athlete who never before 
 had had room or occasion to display his powers, he 
 now reveled in their exercise in an arena where the 
 competitors were abundant and the onlookers 
 eagerly interested. Month after month he poured 
 fourth the exuberant current of his ideas on politics, 
 poetry, philosophy, religion, art, books, men, and 
 nature, with a freshness and force that seemed
 
 154 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 incapable of exhaustion and regardless of obstacles, 
 dealing at first many a blow, which later he saw 
 reason to repent. But the malignant attacks came 
 from others, and he was never the editor, although 
 the leading spirit. 
 
 Wilson and Lockhart were the most versatile of 
 all the band, between them capable at any time of 
 providing the whole contents of a number. There 
 was a striking contrast in the outward aspect of 
 these men. Wilson, so ruddy, off-hand, and cheery, 
 Lockhart, with pale olive complexion, thin lips, 
 expression sombre and severe, and haughty, super 
 cilious manner, a man who could give you a chill, 
 or, as someone said after a dinner in Boston, " I sat 
 next Edward Everett yesterday, and caught a severe 
 cold." He was well depicted by Wilson through the 
 mouth of the Shepherd (who was made to say so much 
 he never thought of), as " the Oxford collegian wi a 
 pale face and a black toozy head, but an ei like an 
 eagle s." The black-haired, Spanish-looking Oxonian, 
 with that uncanny laugh of his, was a dangerous 
 person to encounter in the field of letters. " I ve 
 sometimes thocht, Mr. North," says the Shepherd, 
 " that ye were a wee feared for him yoursel, and 
 used rather without kenning it to draw in your 
 horns." In the Chaldee he was called " The Scor 
 pion." Wilson impaled a victim as he did a fish, as 
 if he loved him ; the other, cool, crafty, and lacking 
 in compassion. 
 
 Wilson said of himself :
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 155 
 
 " We love to do our work by fits and starts. We 
 hate to keep fiddling away, an hour or two at a time 
 at one article for weeks. So off with our coat, and 
 at it like a blacksmith. When we once get the way 
 of it, hand over hip, we laugh at Vulcan and all his 
 Cyclops. From nine of the morning till nine at 
 night, we keep hammering away at the metal, iron 
 or gold, till we produce a most beautiful article. A 
 biscuit and a glass of Madeira, twice or thrice at the 
 most, and then to a well-won dinner. In three days, 
 gentle reader, have We, Christopher North, often 
 produced a whole magazine a most splendid num 
 ber. For the next three weeks we were as idle as a 
 desert, and as vast as an antre, and thus we go, 
 alternately laboring like an ant, and relaxing in the 
 sunny air, like a dragon-fly, enamored of extremes." 
 
 In its palmy days, Blackwood s Magazine realized 
 an ideal which has never been surpassed. Credit 
 should be given to Wilson who invited Bulwer to 
 contribute, which invitation stimulated the creation 
 of " The Caxtons and My Novel," Bulwer s best 
 prose production. Wilson was the first of his party 
 to appreciate Shelley, and to do justice to Byron ; 
 paid the most eloquent tributes to Burns and to 
 Dickens. Seldom have discrimination and imagina 
 tive luxuriance been so combined. The names of 
 the contributors secured by him furnish a brilliant 
 array. No periodical was ever more indebted to the 
 efforts of one individual. 
 
 Let me give a few extracts to show his originality,
 
 156 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 insight, and power. Some wise heads insist that 
 literature should be studied, enjoyed, or reviewed 
 without any connection with the life and habits of 
 the author, but I agree fully with Wilson when he 
 says: 
 
 "In reviewing, in particular what can be done 
 without personality ? Nothing, nothing. What are 
 books that don t express the personal characters of 
 their authors ; and who can review books without 
 reviewing those that wrote them. 
 
 " Can a man read La Fontaine without perceiv 
 ing his personal good nature ? Swift s personal ill- 
 nature is quite as visible. Can a man read Burns 
 without having the idea of a great and a bold man, 
 or Barry Cornwall without the very uncomfortable 
 feeling of a little man and a timid one ? The whole 
 of the talk about personality is cant. 
 
 " Look at our literature now, and it is all periodical 
 together. A thousand daily, thrice a week, twice a 
 week, weekly newspapers, a hundred monthlies, 
 fifty quarterlies, and twenty-five annuals. No mouth 
 looks up now and is not fed ! On the contrary, we 
 are in danger of being crammed ; an empty head is 
 as rare as an empty stomach ; the whole day is one 
 meal, one physical, moral, and intellectual feast; 
 the public goes to bed with a periodical in her hand 
 and falls asleep with it beneath her pillow. 
 
 " What blockhead thinks now of reading Milton or 
 Pope or Gray ? Paradise Lost is lost ; it has gone to 
 the devil. Pope s Epistles are returned to the dead-
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 157 
 
 letter office ; the age is too loyal for Ruin seize thee, 
 ruthless king, and the oldest inhabitant has forgot 
 ten the curfew tolls. >: 
 
 " The great charm o conversation is being aff on 
 ony wind that blaws. Pleasant conversation between 
 friends is just like walking through a mountainous 
 kintra, at every glen-mouth the winn blaws frae a 
 different airt." 
 
 "North. I believe country congregations are, in 
 general, very attentive. 
 
 "Shepherd. Ay, ay, Sir! If twa are sleepin ten 
 are wauken, and I seriously think that mair than ae 
 half o them thats sleepin enter into the spirit o the 
 sermon. You see they a hear the text and the intro 
 ductory remarks and the heads, and fa in asleep in a 
 serious and solemn mood, they carry the sense alang 
 in them ; neither can they be said no to hear an 
 accompanyin soun , so that it wadna be just fair 
 to assert that they lose the sermon they dinna listen 
 to, for thochts and ideas and feelings keep floatin 
 down alang the streams o silent thocht, and when 
 they awaken at the " Amen," their minds, if no 
 greatly instructed, hae been tranquilleezed ; they 
 join loudly in the ensuing psalm, and without remem 
 bering mony o the words, carry hame the feek o the 
 discoorse an.d a the peculiarities of the doctrine." 
 
 This is like the story of the dominie who, hearing 
 from Sandy that he liked the Sabba day best of all, 
 endeavored to draw him out, hoping for a compli 
 ment for his sermons. " Oh, yes. Sunday s the day
 
 158 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 for me, for then , you see, I gets into my clean claes, 
 and goes to the kirk, and sits down in my pew, and 
 shuts the door, and lays up my legs, and thinks o 
 nothin ." 
 
 " The human heart is shaped like this table a 
 sort o oval, and thus friends can be accommodated 
 in the ane and at the ither without ony body pre- 
 tendin to ony precedence, and to the prevention o 
 a quarrel on that pint, atween love and pride." 
 
 " The joy of grief. That is a joy known but to 
 the happy." 
 
 "James. The soul that can dream of past sorrows 
 till they touch it with a pensive delight, can be 
 suffering under no severe trouble." 
 
 " We idolize Genius to the neglect of the worship 
 of Virtue. One truly good action performed is 
 worth all that Shakespeare ever wrote." 
 
 " That which in real life would be fulsome cannot 
 breathe sweetly in fiction, for fiction is still a reflec 
 tion of truth, and truth is sacred." 
 
 On Wordsworth. 
 North. 
 
 "Why, Tickler, many of the poets of our days 
 are, with all their genius, a set of enormous spoons. 
 Wordsworth walks about the woods like a great satyr, 
 or rather, like the god Pan, and piping away upon 
 his reed, sometimes most infernally out of tune. He 
 thinks he is listening, at the very least, to music equal 
 to that of the spheres, and that nobody can blow a 
 note but himself." He pronounced the " Excur-
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 159 
 
 sion " the worst poem of any character in the English 
 language, and, in a rollicking series of rhymes on 
 various authors, exclaimed : 
 
 Now here s to Will Wordsworth, so wise and so wordy, 
 And the sweet, simple hymns of his own hurdy-gurdy. 
 Who in vain blows the bellows of Milton s old organ, 
 While he thinks he could lull all the snakes on the Gorgon. 
 
 And, after a gallant and protracted rhapsody over 
 the lady poets of the land, Mrs. Hemans, L. E., etc., 
 he closes with : 
 
 "And what the devil, then, would you be at, with 
 your great bawling He-Poets from the Lakes, who 
 go round and round about, strutting upon nothing, 
 like so many turkey-cocks gobbling, with a long, red 
 pendant at their noses, and frightening away the 
 fair and lovely swans as they glide down the waters 
 of immortality?" 
 
 " The Noctes Ambrosianse, so unlike anything 
 else that had appeared, delighted the reading world; 
 and Wilson seemed a diffused Shakespeare, or 
 Shakespeare in a hurry, with a printer s devil wait 
 ing at the door. Falstaff was, for a season, eclipsed 
 by the Shepherd, and Mercutio and Hamlet to 
 gether had their glories darkened by the blended 
 wit and wisdom, pathos and fancy, of Christopher 
 North. " 
 
 Stevenson said in an early essay, of the more per 
 ennial part of the " Noctes," " We have here, what 
 is perhaps the most durable monument to Wilson s 
 fame. We might class him as a Presbyterian Fawn.
 
 160 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 It is a thousand pities that the Noctes Ambrosi- 
 anae are now so little appreciated. Fashion is incal 
 culable, but I cannot think they will be permanently 
 forgotten." 
 
 These papers breathe the very essence of the 
 Bacchanalian revel of clever men, yet a too literal 
 interpretation must not be given to their festivities. 
 There was a small and crushed-up-in-a-corner hostel- 
 rie by the name of " Ambrose s Inn," where the 
 friends occasionally met, but these dialogues were 
 written with prolonged toil in a rapid manner, and 
 upon no stronger inspiration than a chicken for din 
 ner and a cup of tea. 
 
 This glorification of the delights of drinking 
 belongs to a Scotsman s patriotism, and a man should 
 no more be considered to endorse all that he writes 
 in that convivial strain than a poet when he sings of 
 love, wheret he Clorindas and Delias, from Horace 
 to Swinburne, are two-thirds of them ideal creations. 
 
 This is not an apology for what seems and is a 
 blot, but simply a statement of facts. " The Paradoxes 
 of Literature " is a fertile and startling theme. 
 Wilson s characters in the " Noctes " are equally 
 idealized. 
 
 Hogg was an interesting man and a rustic phe 
 nomenon, but Christopher made Jamie his mouth 
 piece, and the Ettrick Shepherd of the " Noctes " is 
 one of the most finished creations which dramatic 
 genius ever evoked. Some of Wilson s thoughts on 
 Life, Faith, Death, Immortality, given as the off-hand
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 161 
 
 talk of the Shepherd, are perfect sermons without 
 any effect of preaching, impressive, helpful, elevating 
 too long, unfortunately, for quotation. 
 
 Hogg s prose writings were inferior to his poetry. 
 He seemed unconscious of the beauty of his pastoral 
 description and imagery. When Jordan praised his 
 verses highly, the honest Shepherd rejoined: " Surely 
 ye re daft ; its only joost true about the wee burdies 
 and the cows at e en, and the wild flowers, and the 
 sunset, and clouds, and things, and the feelings they 
 creat. A canna fathom what ye re making a this 
 fuss about. Its joost a plain description of what every 
 body can see ; there s nae grand poetry in it." The 
 intimacy between these men was delightful. Wilson 
 once walked fifty miles in one day to be present at a 
 Burns dinner, to pay a glowing tribute to Hogg. 
 The simple-hearted old fellow, who had not expected 
 it in the least, could only stammer out a few broken 
 words of thanks, his face flushed scarlet with feeling, 
 his eyes brimful of tears. 
 
 A guest at the Burns dinner in 1816 recollects 
 that, somewhat late in the evening, Wilson mounted 
 on one of the tables, danced a pas-seul among the 
 wine glasses and decanters without any fracture of 
 the crystal, aud then descending, resumed his seat, 
 with a ludicrous air of intense and philosophic grav 
 ity, as if, in fact, he had done nothing worthy of con 
 sideration or gratitude. He longed for the power to 
 write a popular song, saying, " I know what it should 
 be, but I cannot do it. If I could write one that
 
 162 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 would be sung in valley, hill, and plain, I should die 
 happy. There is not a peasant in Scotland who does 
 not know Burns Songs." 
 
 We now come to an important event. In April, 
 1820, the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University 
 of Edinburgh became vacant by the 4eath of Dr. 
 Brown. Sir William Hamilton, a whig, who was 
 well fitted for the place, and John Wilson, a tory, 
 offered themselves as candidates, and after a severe 
 contest, Wilson was triumphantly elected. Appar 
 ently, a most unfit and incongruous appointment, if 
 moral philosophy is the gate to theology, as Chalmers 
 insisted, and his opponents represented him as a 
 reveler and blasphemer, even attacking his private 
 character, which was absolutely unassailable. " No 
 doubt he was a humorist, and there was so little dis 
 tinctively " moral " in the rollicking wit of Black- 
 wood that the majority stood aghast at the fact of 
 this magnificent mad-cap, this reckless, half-savage 
 Titan of Literature, spirited into the throne of 
 Philosophy ! Scott was Wilson s firm supporter in 
 this trying time, indignantly denying the charges 
 brought. 
 
 The faithful Billy Balmer was the first to bring 
 the news home. Mrs. Wilson writes : " He went 
 yesterday morning and stayed near the scene of 
 action till it was all over, and then came puffing 
 down with a face of delight, to tell me that Master 
 was ahead a good deal ! " 
 
 Then came the tremendous tug of preparation.
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 163 
 
 It was the last of July. The class was to meet the 
 beginning of November, and 120 lectures must be 
 prepared. The loving wife writes : " Mr. W. is very 
 well, but as thin as a rat, and no wonder, he says it 
 will take him one month at least to make out a cata 
 logue of the books he has to read through and con 
 sult. I am perfectly appalled -when I go into the 
 dining-room and see all the folios, quartos, and duo 
 decimos with which it is literally filled, and the poor 
 culprit himself sitting in the midst, with a beard as 
 long and red as an adult carrot, for he has not shaved 
 for a fortnight." The opening of the session, Chris 
 topher s first appearance as a professor, was an 
 interesting occasion. 
 
 " The lecture-room was crowded to the ceiling," 
 says an eye-witness. Such a collection o hard- 
 browed, scowling Scotsmen muttering over their 
 knot-sticks, I never saw. The professor entered 
 with a bold step and in profound silence. Every 
 one expected some propitious introduction of him 
 self, but he began in a voice of thunder right into 
 the matter of his lecture, and kept up unflinchingly 
 and unhesitatingly without a pause a flow of rhetoric 
 such as his predecessors never delivered in the same 
 place. Those who came to scoff remained to praise. 
 
 There were always some people who believed 
 that he was nothing more than a splendid declaimer 
 and that his lectures contained more poetry than 
 philosophy. But those who studied with him knew 
 how false was this estimate. One of his class, speak-
 
 164 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 ing of his thorough work, " There was a notion that 
 he was there Christopher North and nothing else ; 
 that you could get scraps of poetry, bits of sentiment, 
 flights of fancy, flashes of genius, and anything but 
 moral philosophy. Nothing was further from the 
 truth. In the very first lecture he cut into the core 
 of the subject, raised the question which has always 
 in this country been held to be the hardest and 
 deepest in science (the origin of the moral faculty), 
 and hammered at it through the greater part of the 
 session. Even those who had a morbid appetite for 
 swallowing hard and angular masses of logic found 
 that the work here was quite stiff enough for any of 
 us. It was not till his lectures on the Affections 
 and the Imagination that he wandered freely over a 
 more inviting field. 
 
 Yes, " Wilson imported into the old university a 
 prodigious accession of vital force. No academical 
 automaton was he with pedantic tones grinding out 
 the same dry formulae year by year. No round- 
 shouldered, abstracted, bloodless recluse, utterly 
 ignorant of life outside a library, and with about as 
 much influence on his young audience as a mummy 
 in a museum, or a last year s fly pressed in some 
 musty encyclopedia you have seen metaphysicians 
 who had scarcely more life. Wilson was intensely 
 human, and to young men whose hatred is hum 
 drum, whose delight is truth, courage, mastery, he 
 was a daily inspiration. So profuse was the imagery, 
 so brilliant the diction, so exciting the passion that
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 165 
 
 very dull must have been the clod that did not catch 
 fire. Under the spell many found themselves think 
 ers, poets, and workers. It is matter for lasting 
 regret that these lectures written on bits of papers 
 and the backs of envelopes were not preserved to 
 give solidity to his reputation. 
 
 " His appearance in the class-room is far easier to 
 remember than to forget. He strode into it with the 
 professor s gown hanging loosely on his arms, took a 
 comprehensive look over the mob of young faces, 
 laid down his watch, so as to be out of the reach of 
 his sledge-hammer fist, glanced at his notes, and 
 then, to the bewilderment of those who had never 
 heard him before, looked long and earnestly out of 
 the north window towards the spire of the old Tron 
 Kirk, until, having at last got his idea, he faced 
 round and uttered it, with eye and hand and voice 
 and soul and spirit, and bore the class along with 
 him. . . 
 
 "And occasionally in the finer frenzy of his more 
 imaginative passages, as when he spoke of Alexan 
 der, clay-cold at Babylon, with the world lying con 
 quered round his tomb or of the Highland hills 
 that pour the rage of cataracts adown their riven 
 cliffs or of the human mind with its primeval 
 granitic truths, the grand old face flushed with the 
 proud thought, and the eyes grew dim with tears, 
 and the magnificent frame quivered with a universal 
 emotion." 
 
 You see how his undying enthusiasm permeated
 
 166 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 the minds of his audience. Tis a living power 
 to-day. It was heart to heart as well as head to 
 head, and his power was always the side of good 
 in the lecture-room. But we must return to his 
 literary life. In 1820, this announcement appeared 
 in the book-lists : " In the Press Lays from Fairy 
 Land, by John Wilson, author of The Isle of 
 Palms." This was never published. 
 
 " Doth grief e er sleep in a Fairy s breast? 
 Are dirges sung in the land of Rest? 
 Tell us, when a fairy dies 
 Hath she funeral obsequies ? 
 Are all dreams there of woe and mirth 
 That trouble and delight on earth ? " 
 
 Lord Jeffrey said he was never tired of reading 
 his description of a "Fairy s Funeral," which I will 
 read: 
 
 " There it was, on a little river island, that once, 
 whether sleeping or waking, we know not, we saw 
 celebrated a fairy s funeral. First we heard small 
 pipes playing, as if no bigger than hollow rushes 
 that whisper to the night winds, and more piteous 
 than aught that trills from earthly instrument was 
 the scarcely audible dirge. It seemed to float over 
 the stream, every foam-bell emitting a plaintive 
 note, till the fairy anthem came floating over our 
 couch, and then alighting without footsteps on the 
 heather. The pattering of little feet was then heard, 
 as if living creatures were arranging themselves in 
 order, and then there was nothing but a more
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 167 
 
 ordered hymn. The harmony was like the melting 
 of musical dewdrops, and sung without words of sor 
 row and death. 
 
 " We opened our eyes, or rather sight came to 
 them when closed, and dream was vision. 
 
 " Hundreds of creatures, no taller than the crest 
 of tha^ lapwing, and all hanging down their veiled 
 heads, stood in a circle on a green plat among the 
 rocks ; and in the midst was a bier, framed, as it 
 seemed, of flowers unknown to the Highland hills, 
 and on the bier a fairy lying with uncovered face, 
 pale as a lily and motionless as the snow. The dirge 
 grew fainter and fainter, and then quite died away, 
 when two of the creatures came from the circle and 
 took their station, one at the head, the other at the 
 foot of the bier. They sang alternate measures, not 
 louder than the twittering of the awakened wood- 
 lark before it goes up the dewy air, but dolorous 
 and full of the desolation of death. The flower-bier 
 stirred, for the spot on which it lay sank slowly 
 down, and in a few moments the greensward was as 
 smooth as ever, the very dews glittering above the 
 buried fairy. A cloud passed over the moon, and 
 with a choral lament the funeral troops sailed duskily 
 away, heard afar off, so still was the midnight soli 
 tude of the glen. Then the disenthralled river 
 began to rejoice as before, through all her streams 
 and falls, and at the sudden leaping of the waters 
 and outbursting of the moon we awoke." 
 
 The home life ,of Wilson combined all that is best 
 expressed in those words.
 
 168 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 Wife, children, pets, play through many of his 
 essays. His wife s favorite plant was the myrtle ; 
 we find it peeping out here and there in his writings. 
 There, as everywhere, he was like no one else. On 
 his library table, fishing rods found company with 
 Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Jeremy Taylor reposed 
 near a tin box of barley sugar, bank notes were 
 stuffed between books (he never could keep a purse), 
 peeping out from the Fairy Queen were no end of 
 delicately-dressed flies, and the sparrow hopping 
 about, master of the situation. This little pet imag 
 ined itself the most important occupant of the room. 
 It would nestle in his waistcoat, hop upon his shoulder, 
 and seemed influenced by a constant association, 
 for it grew in stature until it was alleged that the 
 sparrow was gradually becoming an eagle. 
 
 His love for animals was intense, and his favorites 
 were, occasionally, a trial to the rest of the family, as, 
 when his daughter found he had made a nest for 
 some young game-cocks in her trunk of party dresses 
 which was stored in the attic. 
 
 He was unique in everything. When Professor 
 Aytoun went to him to ask the hand of his daugh 
 ter, Wilson scribbled on a bit of paper, " With com 
 pliments of the author," and, pinning this to the 
 sleeve of the blushing girl, led her to her happy 
 lover. 
 
 But death, relentless, inevitable, took the idolized 
 wife suddenly, and the blow almost deprived Wil 
 son of reason for a time, and his sorrow was life-
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 169 
 
 long. When he first met his class after her loss, he 
 was to decide on the merits of various essays which 
 had been sent in on competition for a prize. He 
 bowed low, and, in as firm voice as he could com 
 mand, apologized for not having examined the essays. 
 ^~Por," said he, "gentlemen, I could not see to read 
 them in the darkness of the shadow of the valley of 
 death." As he spoke, the tears rolled down his 
 cheeks. He said no more, but waved his hand to his 
 class, who stood up as he concluded and hurried out 
 of the lecture room. 
 
 Years after, when lecturing on Memory, he de 
 scribed the way in which a long- widowed husband 
 would look back on happier days. His warm elo 
 quence held his audience enchained. At last, over 
 powered by his emotions, the old man stopped in 
 mid career, and buried his head in his arms on the 
 desk before him. For a minute, there was perfect 
 stillness, but when Wilson again raised his head, and 
 two big tears were seen rolling down his cheeks as 
 he tried to go on, his voice was drowned in the loud 
 cheers of the students. 
 
 And if ever there was a woman worthy to be sor 
 rowed for through a lonely life, it was she. So 
 opposite to the dazzling, impetuous spirit of her 
 mate, in her beautiful gentleness and equanimity, 
 and adapting herself so entirely to his tastes. 
 
 This trial brought his spiritual nature into fuller 
 action, and the tone of his writings was noticeably 
 higher, his rough ways softened to a marked degree.
 
 170 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 His kindness to his grandchildren was beautiful. 
 The very strength of his hand softened to gently 
 caress the little child on his knee or clinging to his 
 feet. A party in grandpa s room was such a treat. 
 He would set the table with all sorts of goodies, then 
 act as waiter and be ordered about in the most irrev 
 erent fashion. The greatest men have ever been the 
 most simple in their home life, and Wilson did not 
 think it beneath his dignity to play with Noah s 
 ark, dolls, trumpets, and puzzles, to amuse the little 
 folks, even going up stairs to the nursery for a for 
 gotten toy, or coming down stairs with his daughter s 
 baby clutched by the back of her long robe, very 
 much as a cat carries a kitten. 
 
 Many daughters, from Fanny Burney, Lady Hol 
 land, Mary Dewey, Mrs. Lloyd, to Miss Bushnell, have 
 been their father s biographers, a difficult task. 
 Although we may not gain so just an idea of the 
 character, who else could give the charming home 
 pictures, the inner life, the little ways and daily hab 
 its that make one acquainted with the man. Mrs. 
 Gordon says : "I would not, as a matter of taste, 
 introduce an ordinary toilette to the attention of the 
 reader, but with the professor this business was so 
 like himself, so original, that it will amuse rather 
 than offend. By fits and starts, the process of shav 
 ing was carried on walking out of his dressing- 
 room into the study, lathering his chin one moment, 
 then standing the next to take a look at some frag 
 ment of a lecture, which would absorb his attention,
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 171 
 
 until the fact of being without a coat and having his 
 face covered with soap was entirely forgotten, then 
 his waistcoat was put on ; after that, perhaps, he had 
 a hunt among old letters and papers for the lecture 
 now lost which a minute before he had in his hand. 
 His watch was a great joke. In the first place he 
 seldom wore his own, which never by any chance 
 was right, or treated according to the natural proper 
 ties of a watch. Many wonderful escapes this orna 
 ment had from fire, water, and sudden death. He 
 says : " We wound up our chronometer irregularly, 
 by fits and starts, thrice a day, perhaps, or once a 
 week, till it fell into an intermittent fever, grew 
 delirious, and gave up the ghost." He had a curious 
 way of mislaying things, even that broad-brimmed 
 hat of his sometimes went a missing, his snuff-box, 
 his gloves, his pocket-handkerchief, everything, 
 just at the moment he wished to be off to his class, 
 became invisible." 
 
 It is pleasant to record a pension of 300 pounds 
 from the Queen and a reconciliation with Jeffrey. 
 Wilson was quick-tempered, but never malignant, 
 and his character was beautifully softened by the 
 hand of time. The last years I do not like to dwell 
 upon when the massive frame drooped sadly, and 
 the magnificent mind was clouded, and books were 
 opened only to be closed, their meaning gone for 
 him. The yellow locks were tinged with gray ; 
 " the old man of the lion heart and scepter crutch " 
 was fast passing away. In second childhood he went
 
 172 Christopher North and his Friends 
 
 back with the old delight of angling. For my last 
 picture see him propped up in bed absorbed with 
 the relics of a youthful passion. Taking out each 
 elegantly dressed fly from its little bunch, drawing 
 it with trembling hand along the white coverlet, 
 then replacing it in his pocketbook, he would tell of 
 the streams he used to haunt. 
 
 Paraylsis came in the spring of 1853, a blessed 
 release, and on Sunday, at midnight, his heart was 
 still. Writing of his dying hour years before, he said: 
 " May that hour find me in my weeping home, mid 
 the blest stillness of a Sabbath day ; may none I 
 deeply love be then away." 
 
 An answered prayer. And if our dear ones can 
 return to guide us to the new life, his wife, I am 
 sure, was very near him, though unseen. Wilson 
 loved America, and wanted to visit us. After our 
 famous men, he desired to see Niagara ; not unlike 
 Niagara himself. And how he could have described 
 it. 
 
 Some wise heads mourn that Wilson did not con 
 centrate his genius, distinguish himself in one direc 
 tion. He might have been the greatest preacher of 
 the age, or the greatest actor of the day, or a power 
 ful parliamentary orator, or a marvelous dramatist. 
 He had powers that might make him in literature 
 the very first man of his generation. Masson com 
 pares him to a Goth, much of whose powers went to 
 waste, for want of stringent self-regulation. 
 
 Yes ; but can you harness the lightning that
 
 Christopher North and his Friends 173 
 
 flashes in zigzag splendor on a summer night ? Bril 
 liant, fitful, fascinating, Wilson had to be himself, 
 and those who know him best find no cause to grieve. 
 
 It is noticeable that in estimating or describing 
 Wilson, there is a natural cumulation of epithets, 
 and more compound words and compound adjectives 
 coined for the occasion have been applied to him 
 than any other character in literature. 
 
 Maginn, a witty but dissipated Irish genius of 
 that time, gives this off-hand picture : " A corker, a 
 racer, a six-bottler, a twenty-four tumblerer, an out- 
 and-outer, a true, upright, knocking-down, poetical, 
 prosaic, moral, professional, good-looking, honorable, 
 straight-forward tory ; a gipsy, a magician, a wit, a 
 six-foot club man, an unflinching ultra in the worst 
 of times. In what was he not great " ? And irresist 
 ibly carried along, I exclaim : " Dreamer, doer, poet, 
 philosopher, simple child, wisest patriarch," hospita 
 ble friend, husband-lover, doting father, boisterous 
 wit, rollicking humorist, master of pathos, practical 
 joker, sincere mourner, such was the man Christo 
 pher North. A Hercules Apollo, strong and immor 
 tally beautiful, whom, with all his faults and foibles, 
 we stop to admire and stay to love.
 
 THE OLD MIRACLE PLAYS. 
 
 This essay on the " Old Miracle Plays " was pre 
 pared for my New York friends when Salmi Morse 
 was threatening to bring out a " Passion Play " in 
 that city. As few have the time to look up the his 
 tory of these plays from the beginning, the result of 
 my researches may still be interesting. Remember 
 that what seems to us irreverent was once true wor 
 ship. 
 
 In the year 1633, when the village of Oberam- 
 mergau was visited by a devastating plague, the 
 Monks of Ettal induced the parish to make a vow 
 " That in thankful devotion and for edifying con 
 templation, they would every ten years publicly rep 
 resent the Passion of Jesus the Saviour of the World." 
 Whereupon the parish was immediately freed from 
 the pestilence. 
 
 We are all familiar with the " Passion Play," as 
 represented with simplicity and reverence by these 
 Bavarian peasants. We have had lectures and let 
 ters, stereopticon views, vivid word pictures from 
 friends who have witnessed it, and books giving the 
 entire performance, enriched with photographs of 
 the actors, are familiar to many. 
 
 It is an entirely different matter to propose to 
 reproduce with an entirely different motive this
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 175 
 
 remnant of the middle ages in a modern theater. It 
 would then become a blasphemous mummery a 
 spectacular sacrilege a sin akin to that of Judas, 
 and the clergy, the press, and the voice of the people 
 forbade it. Studying the subject, I found an immense 
 amount of material. In the Boston public library 
 alone, there are 132 volumes on the " Miracle Plays" 
 in various languages. 
 
 We might start with Thespis and his portable 
 stage, 535 B. C. or at a still earlier date, but I do not 
 intend to ransack Greece and Rome for a history of 
 the drama, or discuss the vexed questions of the 
 necessity for scenic representations in every age and 
 race. We see children perpetually acting in their 
 plays and the childhood of nations is like that of 
 individuals. There always has been and always will 
 be a longing for theatrical excitement ; we may say 
 it is dangerous, wicked, must be put down ! People 
 will still flock to a good comedy, will still take real 
 pleasure in most heart-rending tragedies. 
 
 In country villages and hamlets, the good wives 
 find food for this natural appetite in the woes of 
 their neighbors. Romance and tragedy are as busy in 
 the farmhouse as the palace, and these stories of sen 
 timent and sorrow are made common property and 
 satisfy the eager craving for excitement. Now and 
 then a hopeful clergyman, or an enthusiastic but in 
 experienced playwright, or a woman ignorant of 
 what she is talking about, and (for that reason talk 
 ing all the louder) will say that the pulpit and theater
 
 176 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 must go hand in hand, and dream of not exactly 
 combining, but running them on a double track. You 
 can easily see how it uiiglit be done, if ministers 
 would only study the actor s art of impressing and 
 holding an audience (throwing in a few timely 
 lessons in elocution), and the actors etc., etc., but it 
 will never be done. 
 
 Curious fact, that the drama started in the church, 
 religion, in all countries, first excited dramatic repre 
 sentations ; the acts are closely connected ; all blood 
 relations they began in worship. Family quarrels 
 are invariably the most violent, which perhaps ac 
 counts for a part of the hostility between priests and 
 actors. 
 
 Let me give here a bit from Monsieur Coguelius 
 book on " Actors and their Art." 
 
 " In the church the theater was born with myste 
 ries and miracle plays, and our brothers of the Pas 
 sion Play are the direct ancestors of the Theatre 
 Francais. 
 
 "In those days, church and theater fraternized. 
 The scenic directions >rove it, heaven above with its 
 different divisions parted off in true hierarchic order, 
 and the awful gulf of hell yawning below. 
 
 " How does it happen that the church, so mater 
 nally inclined towards mysteries and miracle plays, 
 has picked so bitter a quarrel with us since ? 
 
 " Actors have been canonized by the church ; the 
 church refused to bury Moliere in consecrated ground. 
 Now the church consents to bury us, perhaps with 
 pleasure"
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 177 
 
 Lecky, in his History of Rationalism, says that 
 " Every one who considers the world as it really 
 exists and not as it appears in the writings of ascetics 
 or sentimentalists, must have convinced himself that 
 in great towns where multitudes of men of all classes 
 and characters are massed together, and where there 
 are innumerable strangers separated from all domes 
 tic ties and occupations, public amusements of an 
 exciting order are absolutely necessary," and refers 
 to the drama as of immense importance in the intel 
 lectual history of mankind, one of the most conspic 
 uous signs of a rising civilization, combining the 
 three great influences of eloquence, poetry, and of 
 painting, the seed-plot of poetry and romance. 
 
 " The church adopted the drama as her hand 
 maid. Demanding that men should dispense with 
 and despise the pleasures of the world, she must her 
 self minister to the natural demands of humanity 
 and provide attractions in her own domain." 
 
 The church (says Van Laun in his " History of 
 French Literature ") was, in fact, the club of the 
 middle ages, always open, peaceful, cheerful, and 
 usually entertaining. 
 
 The majority of the people did not understand 
 the language of prayer and hymn, their hearts must 
 be reached through the bodily senses. 
 
 The first Christian drama was a gesture. It was 
 by a succession of gestures that the priests illus 
 trated and interpreted their dead-letter of devotion. 
 On Ascension days a priest stood in his surplice
 
 178 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 on the outer gallery of the Notre Dame, and with 
 outstretched arms represented the assumption of 
 Christ into Heaven. On the feast of Pentecost a 
 dove figured the presence of the Holy Ghost, whilst 
 tongues of fire descended from the roof of the 
 church. At Easter, three men dressed in white 
 robes, with hoods on their heads, a silver flask of 
 consecrated oil in their hands, interpreted the story 
 of the three Marys proceeding to the sepulchre, 
 whilst a fourth, in the form of an angel, announced 
 to them the resurrection of the Lord. At Christmas, 
 the infant Jesus was shown in his manger, the 
 youngest choristers playing the parts of angels 
 from the galleries. 
 
 Little by little, by gradual growth, came rich 
 costumes, stage properties, till we see the full- 
 fledged ecclesiastical drama, acted in church and at 
 the church doors. 
 
 " The Mystery of Adam," the work of a priest in 
 the 1 2th century, was one of the first to be played at 
 the church porch. The scene opens showing the 
 Saviour in an embroidered dalmatic ; Adam, standing 
 before him dressed in a red tunic, attentive to his 
 commands ; Eve, with bowed head, dressed in a 
 long white robe, with a veil of spotless silk ; Satan, 
 in serpent s garb, crawled about the stage, and up 
 the trunk of the forbidden tree. After our first 
 parents had been expelled from Paradise, Satan 
 busies himself with sowing thistles and briers. 
 When the dejected couple return and see the teasing
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 179 
 
 work of their enemy they express their despair by 
 rolling on the ground. 
 
 In another play, a German mystery, Cain and 
 Abel are brought before the Lord by Adam to be 
 examined as to their proficiency in the Lord s 
 prayer. Abel, prompted by the Saviour, gets 
 through respectably, but Cain, instigated by the 
 devil, says the prayer backwards, and is flogged, 
 after having received a severe cuff from his father, 
 for not taking his hat off ! 
 
 From the earliest times men have been accus 
 tomed to throw into dramatic forms the objects 
 of their belief, and the pagan mysteries, which were 
 essentially dramatic, retained their authority over 
 the popular mind long after every other portion of 
 the ancient worship was despised. 
 
 The first Biblical play on record is on Moses, 
 and is the composition of a Jew named Ezekiel, who 
 lived in the 2d century. They were written in 
 Latin until the latter part of the I3th century, and 
 were usually acted by priests in the churches. As 
 they grew more popular they brought religion into 
 disrepute by their indecency and irreverence. But 
 in this form they prepared the way for the Reforma 
 tion. 
 
 The first recorded development of the Miracle 
 play was in France in the i ith century, but soon all 
 German and Latin nations shared the same impulse. 
 
 At first, undertaken by the priests to instruct the 
 people, but afterwards the people themselves took all 
 but the most important parts.
 
 180 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 Called " miracle " plays because they represented 
 the miracles or narrated some wonder of the Chris 
 tian faith, or iany story in Scripture or the Apoc 
 rypha. Sometimes a whole town undertook a play, 
 then a solemn trumpet-call summoned those who 
 wished to join for the honor of Christ or the good of 
 their souls. Each swore on pain of death to care 
 fully study their role and not fail to appear. No 
 entrance money was paid, but expenses made up by 
 voluntary gifts. 
 
 Sometimes the performance was carried on from 
 Creation to the Judgment and lasted for several 
 days, one even twenty-five days, in the open air and 
 fair weather. 
 
 But the miracle plays required a stage of three 
 stories. The topmost Paradise, of course. In that 
 were the Trinity, the saints, and angels. 
 
 It was carefully adorned with tapestry and 
 shaded by green trees, which appeared to blossom 
 and emit sweet odors. 
 
 Below was Hell. The opening and shutting of 
 the mouth of an enormous dragon represented the 
 jaws of Hell, or the dragon was painted on linen, 
 with great open jaws, opened and shut by men, and 
 a light behind to give the effect of flames, and one 
 of the stage directors of long ago remarked that 
 when the devil has carried off a soul, there shall be 
 a great noise made with pans and kettles, so that it 
 shall be heard without, also a great smoke shall be 
 made.
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 181 
 
 In Germany, Paradise was generally at one end 
 of the stage, slightly raised, while the devil had only 
 a large cask, in and out of which he could spring, 
 while another served as the mountain of the Temp 
 tation. 
 
 All the players came on the stage at once ; even 
 the ass and the cock which crowed for Peter had 
 their places. Each actor was supposed to be invisible 
 till he received his cue and stood forth. Each when 
 he first appeared must state what he represented, 
 and as the art of shifting scenes was unknown, a 
 notice in large letters indicated here a hill and there 
 a grove, etc. 
 
 The dress, at first the ordinary priest s gown, 
 became fantastic to suit the people. The condemned 
 souls were supposed to wear no clothes, but some 
 times compromised or indicated the fact by wearing 
 tight-fitting shirts. 
 
 The stage tricks were of the simplest order. In 
 one play Judas was to be hanged in due form by 
 Beelzebub. 
 
 " The devil must take care of the fastening and 
 sit behind on the bar of the gallows. Judas was to 
 carry concealed in his coat a blackbird and the 
 entrails of some animal, so that when his coat was 
 torn the effect should be impressive. Then both 
 slid down to the lower regions on a slanted rope." 
 
 The miracle play was very seriously regarded by 
 the actors as well as by the spectators. It was the 
 custom before commencing that the whole troupe
 
 182 The Old Miracle Plays . 
 
 kneeling on the stage should sing the hymn, " Veni 
 Creator Spiritus," either in Latin/ or their own lan 
 guage, and close with a Te Deunt. 
 
 In France, as well as in Italy, it was on the 
 boards of private theatres that the first glimmering 
 of the drama appears. Voltaire, with an unusual fit 
 of charity, vindicated the scriptural dramas of this 
 early period from the charges of absurdity brought 
 against them, assuring us they were performed with 
 a solemnity not unworthy of their sacred subjects. 
 
 The priests became jealous of their showy com 
 petitors. Many of these miracle plays perished with 
 their age, many were burned in the monasteries 
 destroyed by Henry VIII, some remain amid the 
 dust of old libraries. Horace Walpole had a rare 
 collection at Strawberry Hill. 
 
 In Longland s Piers Ploughman s Crede, about 
 the middle of I4th century, we find two lines from a 
 friar : 
 
 " We haunt no taverns, nor hobble about, 
 At markets and miracles \ve meddle us never." 
 
 Chaucer has many allusions to these religious 
 dramas, and he speaks of the wife of Bath amusing 
 herself with these fashionable diversions while her 
 husband is absent in London during Lent. 
 
 " Therefore made I my visitations 
 To vigils and to processions, 
 To preachings eke, and to these pilgrimages, 
 To plays of miracles and to marriages, 
 And wore my gay scarlet giles."
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 183 
 
 As in Greek worship, we find mysterious awe and 
 daring jest closely connected. Sharply defined con 
 trasts were enjoyed by the people and the comic by 
 play, absolutely necessary during several days of 
 solemn representation, took nothing from their 
 devout spirit. 
 
 Much that we find objectionable is only a mode 
 of expression to which we are not accustomed. A 
 mediaeval uaivettt or uncouthness which meant noth 
 ing wrong. So the devil at first a frightful being 
 became at length a comic personage in satyr-like 
 masquerade, and his associate, Vice, was a witty fool, 
 behaving almost exactly like our clown of the 
 modern circus. 
 
 As the excruciating hand-organ is all that is left 
 as a type of minstrelsy, Harlequin and Punch and 
 Judy are supposed to have had this origin. 
 
 The devil was usually represented with horns, a 
 very wide mouth (by means of a mask), staring eyes, 
 a large nose, a red beard, cloven feet, a tail, and 
 furnished with a stout club. His appearance and 
 manner excited both awe and mirth, which Hudson 
 gives as the germs of tragedy and comedy. Some 
 times he had a protean versatility of mind and per 
 son, so that he could walk abroad as " plain devil," 
 scaring all he met, or steal into society as a prudent 
 counselor, an lago-like friend, a dashing beau, or 
 whatever was best for his purpose. 
 
 No play now is complete unless the devil makes 
 his entree in the guise of a rough or a gentlemanly
 
 184 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 villain, or a snaky, seductive woman. Vice was a 
 comic fool, full of mad pranks and saucy jokes. 
 And we are all pretty much like Gossip Tattle s 
 spouse in Ben Jonson s " Staple of News," who says, 
 " My husband, Timothy Tattle, rest his poor soul, 
 was wont to say there was no play without a fool 
 and a devil in t ; he was for the devil still, bless 
 him ! The devil for his money, he would say ; I 
 would fain see the devil." 
 
 Vice was a droll character accoutered with a long 
 coat, a cap, a pair of ass s ears, and a dagger of lath. 
 This buffoon used to make fun with the devil, and 
 he had several trite expressions as, " I ll be with you 
 in a trice," " Ah hah, boy, are you there ? " And 
 this was a great entertainment to the audience to see 
 their old enemy so belabored in effigy. He was the 
 devil s " vice " or prime minister, and this is what 
 made him so saucy. 
 
 Of all the persons who figured in the miracle 
 plays, Herod, the Slayer of the Innocents, was the 
 greatest favorite. We hear of him from Chaucer, 
 who says of the Parish clerk, Absalom : 
 
 " Sometime, to show his lightness and maistrie, 
 He plaieth Herode on a scaffold hie." 
 
 He was always represented as an immense 
 swearer and braggart and swaggerer, ranting and 
 raving up and down the stage, with furious bombast 
 and profanity. In one of the Chester series he says : 
 
 " For I am king of all mankind: 
 I bid, I beat, I loose, I bind :
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 185 
 
 I master the moon ! Take this in mind, 
 
 That I am most of might, 
 
 I am the greatest above degree, 
 
 That is, that was, or ever shall be ; 
 
 The sun it dare not shine on me, 
 
 An I bid him go down." 
 
 And in one of the Coventry series : 
 
 " Of beauty and of boldness I bear evermore the bell ; 
 
 Of main and of might, I master every man ; 
 I ding with my doughtiness the devil down to Hell ; 
 For both of heaven and of earth, I am king, certain." 
 
 Termagant, the supposed god of the Saracens, 
 was another staple character in the miracle plays, 
 also a great boaster, quarreller, killer, tamer of the 
 universe, child of the earthquake, and the brother of 
 death. That Shakespeare had suffered, as Hudson 
 says, " under the monstrous din of these strutting 
 and bellowing stage-thumpers is shown by Hamlet s 
 remonstrance with the players : 
 
 " O it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious, periwig- 
 pated fellow tear a passion to rags, to very tatters, to split the 
 ears of the groundlings : I would have such a fellow whipped for 
 o erdoing Termagant ; it out-Herods Herod : pray you avoid it." 
 
 We also find material for the rest of his speech, 
 as the players were instructed to speak with dignity 
 and appropriate gestures neither to cut off or add 
 a syllable, and to pronounce in a distinct manner. 
 
 Regarded from an artistic point of view, the Eng 
 lish Miracle plays are the best, have greater anima-
 
 186 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 tion and skill in action, essentially epic, and they 
 give a good idea of the manners, customs, and degree 
 of progress of the English at that time. And, 
 as prayers were in an unknown tongue, sermons 
 few, and printing uninvented, they furnished almost 
 all the religious knowledge. They are divided into 
 the Chester, Coventry, York, and Townely series, 
 named from the towns where they originated. The 
 mayor of York decreed that the solemn play of 
 Corpus Christi should be played every year, that the 
 procession should appear on the day of said feast, so 
 that people being in the said city might have leisure 
 to attend devoutly the matins, vespers, and other 
 hours of the said feast. And that men of crafts and 
 all other men that find torches come forth in array. 
 This festival of Corpus. Christi was instituted by 
 Pope Urban IV, to support the doctrine of transub- 
 stantiation. Here is a portion of the order of the 
 pageants of the play of Corpus Christi : 
 
 Tanners. God the Father Almighty creating and 
 forming the heavens, angels, and archangels, Lucifer, 
 and the angels that fell with him into Hell. 
 
 Carde Makers. God the Father creating Adam of 
 the slime of the earth, and making Eve of the rib, 
 and inspiring them with the spirit of life. 
 
 Shipwrights. God foretelling Noah to make an 
 ark of light wood. 
 
 The Chester plays consist of twenty-four dramas, 
 and annually performed till 1577, each trade taking 
 one theme, as,
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 187 
 
 The Deluge, by the Dyers. 
 
 Shepherds feeding their flocks by night. 
 
 Painters and Glaciers. 
 
 The Temptation, by the Butchers. 
 
 The Last Supper, by the Bakers. 
 
 The Descent into Hell, by the Cooks. 
 
 The Resurrection, by the Skinners. 
 
 The Ascension, by the Tailors. 
 
 Ezekiel, by the Clothiers. 
 
 Henry V was seen there with his retinue. Queen 
 Margaret came from Kilyngworth. 
 
 Fishmongers and Mariners. Noah in the ark with 
 his wife and three children, and divers animals. 
 
 Bukbynders. Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac, 
 a ram, bush, and angel 
 
 Lance Makers. Judas hanging himself. 
 
 Weavers of Woolen. Mary ascending with a mul 
 titude of angels. Eight Apostles with Thomas 
 preaching in the desert. 
 
 The accounts of the various guilds contain entries 
 of sums paid for machinery, dresses, etc., throwing 
 light on the way in which these pageants were rep 
 resented : " Herod s crest of iron, faulchion for 
 Herod, 2 spears ; a staff for the demon, God s coat of 
 white leather, 6 skins ; 2 mitres for Cayphas and 
 Annas ; 4 gowns and 4 swords for the tormentors ; 
 poleage for Pilate s son." 
 
 In the expenses for 1490, verbatim, we find that 
 even the spirit of God was sometimes represented on
 
 188 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 the stage in human figure, although usually depicted 
 as a dove : 
 
 Item paide to the sprytt of God, xvi d. 
 " " " angelles, viii d. 
 
 " demon, xvi d. 
 
 pd to Fawston for hanging Judas, iiizd. 
 coc. croyng, iiizd. 
 
 Item for mendynge the develles cote. 
 
 To a peynter for peyntyng Herod s face. 
 
 New coats for the souls. 
 
 To black souls and white souls. 
 
 These pure and sinful souls were distinguished 
 by black and white coats. How the " womes of con 
 science " played their parts I have failed to discover. 
 Hell s mouth needed frequent repairs, and, on one 
 occasion, mention is made of expenses consequent on 
 the conflagration of hell itself. Some of the entries 
 are droll enough, as 
 
 "Paid for mending the wind, ix d." The winds 
 appear to have been worked by ropes. 
 
 " Paid for a new rope for the wind, 16 d." 
 
 We see again 
 
 "Paid for 15 pairs of angels wings." 
 
 And 
 
 " Item paid for mending hell-mouth, and for 
 keeping of fire at hell-mouth." 
 
 And in 1558 
 
 " Payd for setting the world of fire, v d. 
 
 " Item, a hat for Pilate." 
 
 " For mending the devil s head."
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 189 
 
 Suits were occasionally borrowed, as we learn : 
 
 " Item to reward Mistress Grymesby for lending 
 of her gear for Pilates wife, 12 d." 
 
 From a few stage directions scattered here and 
 there through the manuscripts of the mysteries now 
 extant, it would appear that the stage machinery 
 by which a part of the effect was produced, must 
 have been elaborate, both ingenious and expensive. 
 The collective paraphernalia of acting, the stage, 
 actors, and stage machinery were called a pageant. 
 The players received liberal wages ; handsome young 
 men took the part of women. Independent of a 
 liberal allowance of food they consumed almost in 
 credible quantities of beer at rehearsals, at intervals 
 in performances, and every corner on the street 
 where the pageant happened to stop. 
 
 Each guild had its own pageant, and performed 
 its own play at its own expense. For instance, " The 
 Hall of Lucifer," was always performed by tanners. 
 Their stage, on a large wagon, was drawn early in 
 the morning in front of the gates of the Abbey, then 
 wheeled to the High Cross in front of the mayor s 
 house, and so through the different streets. The 
 wagons of the various guilds separated at the ap 
 pointed places of exhibition, and every company or 
 trade repeated its own play at all the important sta 
 tions, so that the populace could see the grand dis 
 play. These were performed at Easter, Whitsuntide, 
 or Christmas.
 
 190 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 These plays sometimes lasted eight days, and 
 were announced some time before by a herald in 
 what was called " The Proemium " or prologue, giv 
 ing to each guild their task with earnest appeals to 
 each to do their best, with " good speech, fine play 
 ers, and apparel comely," ending: 
 
 " A Sunday next, if that we may, 
 At VI of the belle, we gynne our play 
 In Noman town wherefore we pray 
 That God now be your spede. AMEN." 
 
 THE PROEMIUM. 
 
 Reverende lordes and ladyes all, 
 
 That at this tyme here assembled bee, 
 
 By this messeinge understande you shall, 
 
 That some tymes there was mayor of this citie 
 
 Sir John Amvay, Knighte, who moste worthelye 
 
 Contented hymselfe to sett out in playe 
 
 The devise of one Dove Rondall, moonke of Chester Abbey. 
 
 This moonke, moonke-like in Scriptures well seen, 
 
 In storyes travelled with the beste sorte, 
 
 In pagentes set fourth apparently to all eyne, 
 
 The olde andnewe Testament, with livelye comforth, 
 
 Interminglinge therewith, onely to make sporte, 
 
 Some thinges, not warranted by any weilt, 
 
 Which to gladd the hearers he woulde me n to take yt. 
 
 This matter he abbrevited with playes twenty-four, 
 
 And every playe of the matter gave but a taste, 
 
 Leavinge for better learninge the scircumstance to accomplishe. 
 
 For all his proceedings maye appear to be in hasti, 
 
 Yet altogether unprofitable his labor he did not wasti, 
 
 For at this daye and ever he deserveth the fame 
 
 Which all monkes deserves, professinge that name.
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 191 
 
 This worthy Knighti Amvay, then mayor of this citie, 
 
 This order toke, as declare to you I shall, 
 
 That by twentye-four occupations, artes, craftes, or misterie 
 
 These pagentes shoulde be played, after breef rehearsall. 
 
 For every pagente, a cariage to be provyded withall ; 
 
 In which sorte, we porpose, this Whitsontyde, 
 
 Our pageantes into three partes to divide. 
 
 Nowe, you worshippfull tanners that of custome olde 
 The fall of Lucifer did set out, 
 
 Some writers awarrante your matter theirfore be boulde, 
 Ersletye to play the same to all the vorowtte. 
 
 Your shew-let-bee 
 Good speech, fyne players, with appariellcomelye, 
 
 Of the drapers you the wealthy companye 
 
 The creation of the worlde. Adam and Eve, 
 
 According to your wealth, set out wealthilye 
 
 And howe Cayne his brother Abell, his life did bereave. 
 
 The good, symple water leaders and drawers of Dee 
 
 See that your ark in all poyntes be prepared ; 
 
 Of Noe and his children the wholl storye 
 
 And of the universall floude, by you shall be played. 
 
 Cappers and lynnen drapers, see that you forth bring, 
 In well decked order, that worthy storie, 
 Of Balaam and his asse, and of Balaak the king 
 Make the asse to speak and sett yt out livelye. 
 
 The sacred dramas at Coventry drew immense 
 multitudes, and the exhibitions were patronized by 
 royalty. 
 
 Henry V was seen there with his retinue. 
 Queen Margaret came from Killingworth, having
 
 192 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 with her lords and ladies. Richard III honored the 
 Corpus Christi plays, also Henry VII. Before the 
 suppression of the monasteries, the Grey Friars of 
 Coventry were celebrated for their exhibitions on 
 Corpus Christi day, their pageants being acted with 
 mighty state and reverence in theaters placed on 
 wheels and drawn to all the important streets of the 
 city. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth was particularly fond of pa 
 geants of all kinds and ~ was often entertained by 
 miracle plays. 
 
 Carew, a writer of her time, said that for repre 
 senting the Scripture history they raised an amphi 
 theater in some open field, with a diameter of 50 
 feet. The country people flock from all sides many 
 miles off, to see and hear it ; for they have therein 
 devils and devices to delight the eye as the ear. 
 
 Yet all was not splendor and amusement in the 
 lives of the mystery-players. The profession of an 
 actor, even in those days, was a laborious one. The 
 great parts, those that were the most ardently 
 sought after, imposed a degree of toil and fatigue on 
 those who accepted them whereof few men would 
 be capable to-day. For instance, Christ, in certain 
 of the passion plays had over 4,000 lines to recite, 
 and the crucifixion on the stage, as was remarked, 
 lasted as long as in the reality. The actor, sus 
 pended to the cross in a state of almost total nudity, 
 recited in that situation some 300 or 400 lines. In 
 1437 the cure, Nicolle, while impersonating the
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 193 
 
 Saviour in a passion play, came near dying on the 
 cross in good earnest, from sheer fatigue and ex 
 haustion. In the same play the representative of 
 Judas hung himself in such a realistic fashion that 
 he became insensible, and was nearly dead when 
 taken down, so that his fellow-actors were forced to 
 " carry him into a neighboring spot, there to rub 
 him with vinegar and other restoratives." Some 
 times the parts, when of great length, were played 
 by three or four actors each, and this was especially 
 the case when the personage to be represented was 
 shown at different stages of his or her career. 
 Thus, three actors were often charged with the role 
 of the Holy Virgin, one impersonating her as a 
 child, another as a young girl, and the third as a 
 woman of mature age. 
 
 The last miracle play represented in England 
 was that of (< Christ s Passion," in the reign of James 
 ist, on Good Friday, at night, at which there were 
 thousands present. 
 
 The people of the Middle Ages from the very 
 fact that their existence was more monotonous than 
 that of the people of the present day, were all the 
 more ready to seize an opportunity for amusement, 
 and the solemn representations of the mysteries 
 were among their most cherished enjoyments. The 
 entrance of the king or queen into a town, the birth 
 of a prince or princess, the court festivals, as well as 
 the ecclesiastical solemnities, and the feasts of the 
 church, were an excuse for these popular spectacles.
 
 194 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 The representations, prepared a long time before 
 hand, were announced by the public crier, like the 
 royal and municipal decrees, at the most frequented 
 places of the town. The spectators, who did not 
 have to pay anything for witnessing the play, did 
 not seat themselves promiscuously, but each person 
 according to his rank and station. The nobles or 
 dignitaries occupied platforms, upon which, as the 
 representations lasted a long time, they sometimes 
 had their meals served, like the old Romans, upon 
 the balconies of the amphitheater or circus. The 
 lower classes occupied places, either seated or stand 
 ing, upon the bare earth or the pavement, as the 
 case might be, the men being to the right and the 
 women to the left, the same as in church. The 
 locaj clergy, in order to let their congregations have 
 an opportunity of witnessing the whole spectacle, 
 advanced or put back the hour of service. In fact, 
 the fondness of the public for these spectacles was so 
 great that the houses were left almost deserted, and 
 armed watchmen paced the silent streets to protect 
 the property of the inhabitants, while the represent 
 ation was taking place. No permanent theaters at 
 that time. 
 
 Geo. McDonald finds a good deal of poetic worth 
 scattered through these plays, and quotes a scene 
 from the " Fall of Man." 
 
 Here are parts of Eve s lamentation when con 
 scious of the death that has laid hold upon her :
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 195 
 
 1 Alas that ever that speech was spoken 
 
 That the false angel said unto me ! 
 Alas ! our maker s bidding is broken, 
 
 For I have touched his own dear tree. 
 Our fleshly eyes are all unlokyn, 
 
 Naked for sin ourself we see ; 
 That sorry apple that we have tokyn, 
 
 To death hath brought my spouse and me." 
 
 When the voice of God is heard saying : 
 
 " Adam, that with my hands I made, 
 Where art thou now ? What hast thou wrought ?" 
 
 Adam replies in two lines, containing the whole 
 truth of man s spiritual condition ever since : 
 
 Ah Lord ! for sin our flowers do fade ; 
 I hear thy voice, but I see thee nought." 
 
 Notice the quaint simplicity of the words of God 
 to the woman : , 
 
 " Unwise woman, say me why 
 That thou hast done this foul folly, 
 And I made thee a great lady 
 In Paradise for to play ? " 
 
 Eve laments bitterly, and at length offers her 
 throat to her husband, praying him to strangle her : 
 
 Now stumble we on stalk and stone ; 
 My wit away from me has gone ; 
 Writhe on to my neck-bone 
 With hardness of thine hand." 
 
 Adam replies : 
 
 Wife, thy wit is not worth a rush ! "
 
 196 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 The scene ends with these words from Eve : 
 
 "Alas that ever we wrought this sin ! 
 Our bodily sustenance for to win, 
 Ye must delve and I shall spin, 
 In care to lead our life." 
 
 In the " Woman Taken in Sin " there is a 
 remarkable tradition that each of the woman s 
 accusers, Scribes and Pharisees, thought Jesus was 
 writing his individual sins on the ground. 
 
 The Accuser 
 
 " Alas for sorrow mine heart doth bleed, 
 All my sins yon man did write ; 
 If that my fellows to them took heed, 
 I cannot me from death acquite, 
 I would I were hid somewhere out of sight, 
 That men I should me nowhere see nor know, 
 If I be taken I am aflyght, 
 In mekyl shame I shall be throne." 
 
 Two volumes of the ancient Cornish drama 
 exist, in Celtic dialect, once spoken in Cornwall, and 
 of greater merit than all the other remains of the 
 language taken together; its antiquity is its chief 
 value. 
 
 Subjects, as usual : 
 
 The Beginning of the World. 
 
 Passion of Our Lord. 
 
 Resurrection. 
 
 Then God the Father shall go to heaven, and 
 afterwards the devil, like a serpent, speaks to Eve in 
 the tree of knowledge, and he says wickedly to Eve :
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 197 
 
 Eve, why dost thou not come near? 
 
 To speak with me and talk ? 
 
 One thing which I know if thou knewest it, 
 
 It would amuse thee, 
 
 Forever thou wouldst laugh 
 
 For joy and for mirth. 
 As thou earnest into the world, 
 To heaven thou wouldst ascend. 
 
 Eve. 
 
 What thing can that be 
 Tell me directly. 
 
 Devi . 
 
 From heaven I come now, 
 Sweet Eve, to better thy condition. 
 The fruit of the tree of knowledge, 
 Eat, never make a difficulty. 
 
 Eve. 
 
 I am outside (puzzled) thinking 
 
 What I may do 
 
 As to plucking the apple 
 
 For fear of being deceived by thee. 
 
 At last she gathers the apple and carries it to 
 Adam, saying : 
 
 Adam, reach me thy hand : 
 Take that from me, 
 Quietly without blowing thy horn, 
 Eat it immediately. 
 
 Adam. 
 
 Speak to me, thou woman, 
 Where didst thou gather the fruit ? 
 Was it of that same sort 
 Which was forbidden to us ?
 
 198 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 Eve. 
 
 When I was walking about 
 
 I heard on one side 
 
 An angel beginning to sing 
 
 Above me on the tree, 
 
 He did advise me 
 
 That I should gather fruit from it ; 
 
 Greater than God we should be, 
 
 Nor be troubled forever. 
 
 A dam. 
 
 Oh ! out upon thee, wicked woman. 
 That thou listenedst to him, 
 For he was an evil bird 
 Whom thou didst hear singing. 
 And will bring us to sorrow 
 Unless we do refrain. 
 Let every one think on the end of it 
 How it can end. 
 
 Eve. 
 
 Since thou wilt not believe, 
 
 Thou shalt lose my love 
 
 Ever whilst thou livest, 
 
 Here thou shalt not see^-me again. 
 
 Eve, rather than thou be angry, 
 I will do all as thou wishest, 
 Bring it to me immediately 
 And I will eat it. 
 
 Madam D. Arblay has an interesting account of 
 an interview with an entertaining Mr. Bryant, who, 
 after giving two or three amusing anecdotes such as 
 the comic slip-slops of the first Lord Baltimore who
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 199 
 
 said, " I have been upon a little excoriation to see a 
 ship lanced, and there is not a finer going- vessel 
 upon the face of God s y earth ; you ve no idiom how 
 well it sailed," spoke next of the mysteries or origin 
 of our theatrical entertainments, and repeated the 
 plan and conduct of several of those strange compo 
 sitions, in particular one he remembered which was 
 called " Noah s Ark," and in which that patriarch 
 and his sons, just previous to the deluge, made it all 
 their delight to speed themselves into the ark with 
 out Mrs. Noah, whom they wished to escape ; but 
 she surprised them just as they had embarked, and 
 made so prodigious a racket against the door that 
 after a long and violent contention she forced them 
 to open it, and gained admission, having first con 
 tented them by being kept out till she was thor 
 oughly wet to the skin. These most eccentric and 
 unaccountable dramas filled up the chief of our 
 conversation, and whether to consider them most 
 with laughter, as ridiculous, or with horror, as blas 
 phemous, remains a doubt I cannot well solve. 
 
 Noah is the type of a henpecked husband, and his 
 wife of a loud-voiced shrew, in all the plays I have 
 seen. 
 
 A CHESTER PLAY. 
 
 THE DELUGE. 
 
 Manne that I made, I will destroy ; 
 
 Beast, worme, andfoule to flie, 
 For on earth they doe me noye 
 
 The folke yt is thereon.
 
 200 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 For it harmes me so hartfullie 
 The malyce now that can multiply, 
 
 That sore me greves, inwardlie, 
 That ever I made manne. 
 
 Therefore, Noe, my servant free, 
 That righteous man art, as I see, 
 
 A shipp sone thou shalt make the 
 Of trees drye and light. 
 
 Destroyed all the world shall be 
 Save thou, thy wife, thy sonnes three 
 
 And all their wives, also with the, 
 Shall saved be for thy sake. 
 
 Noe. 
 
 Ah, Lord ! I thank the lowd and still, 
 
 That to me art in such will ; 
 
 And spares me and my house to spill, 
 
 As now I and othlie find. 
 Thy bydding, Lord, I shall fulfill, 
 And never more the greeve, ne grill, 
 That suche grace has sent me till 
 
 Among all mankinde. 
 
 Have done you men and women all ; 
 Helpe, for ought that may befall, 
 To worke this shipp, chamber and hall, 
 As God hath bydden us doe. 
 
 Sent. 
 
 Father, I am already bowne, 
 Anne axe I have, by my crowne, 
 As sharpe as any in all this towne, 
 For to goe thereto.
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 201 
 
 Ham. 
 
 I have a hatchet wonder kene, 
 To byte well, as may be scene 
 A better grounder, as I wene, 
 Is not in all this towne. 
 
 Japhet. 
 
 And I can well make a pyn, 
 And with this hammer knocke it in ; 
 Goe and worche, without more dyme, 
 And I am ready bowne. 
 
 Wife of Noah. 
 
 And we shall bring timber, too, 
 For women nothing els doe ; 
 Women be weak to undergoe, 
 Any great travayle. 
 
 Each of the wives offered to assist ; Japhet s most 
 practical of the four, cried : 
 
 " And I will gather shippes here, 
 To make a fire for you in feere, 
 And for to dight your dynner, 
 Against you come in." 
 
 Noe. 
 
 Now, in the name of God, I will begin 
 To make the shippe that we shall in, 
 That we be ready for to swym 
 At the coming of the floode. 
 These boards I joyne together, 
 To keep us safe from the wedder, 
 That we may rome both hither and thider, 
 And safe be from this floode. 
 Of this tree will I have the mast, 
 Tyde with gables that will last ; 
 With a sayle yarde for each blaste, 
 And each thing in the kinde.
 
 202 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 But now comes trouble, for Noah s wife is disin 
 clined to enter. Noah says : 
 
 " Wife, in this castle we shall be keped, 
 My childer and thou would in leaped." 
 
 She answers : 
 
 " In faith, Noah, I had as lief thou had slipped for all thy frankish 
 
 fare. 
 For I will not doe after thy red." 
 
 Noe. 
 
 Good wife, doe as I the bydd. 
 
 Noah s Wife. 
 
 By Christ, not ; or I see more neede, 
 Though thou stand all the day and rave. 
 
 Noe. 
 
 Lord, that women be crabbed, aye ! 
 And never are meke, that dare I saye. 
 This is well sene by me to daye, 
 In witness of you each one. 
 Good wife, let be all this beere 
 That thou makes in this place here 
 For all they wene thou art master ; 
 And so thou art, by St. John. 
 
 Then God gives His commands for filling the 
 ark, and adds : 
 
 Forty days and forty nightes, 
 Rayne shall fall for their unrightes, 
 And that I have made through my mighte, 
 Now thinke I to destroy.
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 203 
 
 Noah. 
 
 Lord, at youre byddinge I am bayne 
 
 Sith none other grace will gayne. 
 
 Hel will I fulfil fayne, 
 
 For gracious I the fynde. 
 
 A hundred wynters and twenty 
 
 This shipp making tarried have I. 
 
 If, through amendment, any mercye 
 
 Wolde fall unto mankinde. 
 
 Have done, you men and women all ; 
 
 Hye you, lest this water fall, 
 
 That each beast were in his stall, 
 
 And into ship broughte. 
 
 Of clean beasts seaven shall be, 
 
 Of unclean, two, this God bade me. 
 
 This flood is nye well may we see, 
 
 Therefore tarry you nought. 
 
 Shem. 
 
 Sir, here are lions, leopards in, 
 Horses, mares, oxen, and swyne, 
 Goates, calves, sheepe, and kine, 
 Here sitten thou may see. 
 
 Ham. 
 
 Camels, asses, men may find, 
 Buck, doe, harte, and hind, 
 And beastes of all manner kinde, 
 Here been, as thinks me. 
 
 Japhet. 
 
 Take here cats and dogs, too, 
 Otter, fox, fulmart, also ; 
 Hares, hopping gaylie, can yee 
 Have cowle hae for to eate.
 
 204 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 Noah s Wife. 
 And here are beares, wolfes sett, 
 Apes, owles, marmoset ; 
 Weesells, squirrels, and ferret, 
 Here they eaten .fcheir meate. 
 
 Wife of Shem. 
 
 Yet more beasts are in this house, 
 Here catles maken in full crowse ; 
 Here a ratten, here a mouse, 
 They stand nye together. 
 
 Wife of Ham. 
 
 And here are f owles less and more, 
 Hearns, cranes, and bittour, 
 Swans, peacocks, have them before 
 Meate for this wedder. 
 
 Wife ofjaphet. 
 Here are cocks, kites, crowes, 
 Rookes, ravens, many rowes, 
 Cuckoos, curlews, whoso knows 
 Each one in his kinde. 
 And here are doves, diggs, drakes, 
 Redshankes, running through the lakes ; 
 And each fowle that ledden makes, 
 In this ship men may find. 
 
 In the stage directions, the sons of Noah are en 
 joined to mention aloud the names of the animals 
 which enter, a representation of which, painted on 
 parchment, is to be carried by the actors. 
 
 Noah then speaks : 
 
 " Wife, come in, why standes thou there ? 
 Thou art ever forward that dare, I swear ; 
 Come on God s half, tyme that were, 
 For feare lest that we drown."
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 205 
 
 NoaKs Wife. 
 
 Yea, Sir, set up your sail, 
 
 And row forth with evil heale, 
 
 For, without any fayle, 
 
 I will not out of this towne. 
 
 But I have my gossips every one. 
 
 One foot further I will not gone. 
 
 They shall not drown, by St. John ! 
 
 And I may save their life. 
 
 They loved me full well, by Christ ! 
 
 But thou will let them in thy chist ; 
 
 Else row forth, Noah, whither thou list, 
 
 And get thee a new wife. 
 
 Noah. 
 
 Shem, some loe thy mother is wraw ; 
 Forsooth, such another I do not know ! 
 
 Shem. 
 
 Father, I shall set her in, I trow, 
 
 Without any fayle. 
 
 Mother, my father after thee send, 
 
 And bids thee into yonder ship wend. 
 
 Look up and see the wind, 
 
 For we be ready to sail. 
 
 Noah s Wife. 
 
 Son, go again to him and say, 
 I will not come therein to-day. 
 
 Noah. 
 
 Come in, wife, in twenty devill s way, 
 Or else stand without. 
 
 Ham. 
 Shall we all fetch her in ?
 
 206 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 Noah. 
 
 Yea, sons, in Christ s blessings and mine, 
 I would you hied you betime, 
 For of this flood I am in doubt. 
 
 Japhet. 
 
 Mother, we pray you altogether, 
 For we are here, your childer, 
 Come into the ship for feare of the wedder, 
 For his love that you bought. 
 
 Noah s Wife. 
 
 That will I not for your call, 
 But if I have my gossips all. 
 
 Gossip. 
 
 The flood comes in full fleeting fast, 
 On every side it breadeth in hast, 
 For fear of drowning I am agast. 
 Good gossip, let me come in ! 
 Or let us drink, or we depart, 
 For often times we have done soe ; 
 For at a time thou drinke a quart, 
 And so will I or that I go. 
 
 Shem. 
 
 In faith, mother, yet you shall, 
 Whether you will or not ! (Then he carries her in.) 
 
 Noah. 
 Welcome, wife, into this boat. 
 
 ^ 
 
 Noah s Wife. 
 
 And have thou that for thy note ? 
 
 (And gives him a slap in the face.) 
 
 Noah. 
 
 Ah, marry ! this is hot.
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 207 
 
 A modern writer gives the following account of 
 a performance, called " The Creation of the World," 
 at a theater in Lisbon. On our entrance we found 
 the theater nearly filled with well-dressed people, 
 the front row of boxes full of ladies most superbly 
 and tastefully dressed, their hair in braids and orna 
 mented with a profusion of diamonds and artificial 
 flowers, without caps, and, upon the whole, making a 
 very brilliant appearance. . . . When the curtain 
 drew up we saw the Eternal Father descend in a 
 cloud with a long, white beard, with a great number 
 of lights and angels around him. He then gave 
 orders for the creation of the world. Over his head 
 was drawn an equilateral-triangle as an emblem of 
 the Trinity. The next scene presented us with the 
 serpent tempting Eve to eat the apple and his in 
 fernal majesty (the prince of darkness) paid the 
 most exaggerated enconiums to her beauty, in order 
 to engage her to eat, which as soon as he had done 
 and persuaded Adam to do the same, there came a 
 most terrible storm of thunder and lightning with a 
 dance of infernal spirits with the devil in the midst, 
 dressed in black with scarlet stockings, and a gold- 
 laced hat on his head. While the dance was per 
 forming, a voice frorh behind the scenes pronounced 
 in a hoarse and solemn manner, the word " Jesus," 
 on which the devils immediately vanished in a cloud 
 of smoke. 
 
 After this, the Eternal Father descended in 
 great wrath, without any attendant, and called for
 
 208 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 Noah (who, bye the bye, we were much surprised to 
 see as we did not know before that he was at that 
 time in existence ; however, appear he did), who, 
 when he appeared, the Eternal Father told him he 
 was sorry he had created such a set of ungrateful 
 scoundrels, and that, for their wickedness, he intended 
 to drown them altogether. Here, Noah interceded for 
 them, and at last, it was agreed that he should build 
 an ark, and he was ordered to go to the king s dock 
 yard in Lisbon, and there he would see John Gon- 
 zalvez, the master builder, for he preferred him to 
 either the French or English builders (this produced 
 great applause). The Eternal Father then went up 
 to Heaven, and Noah to build his ark. 
 
 It was from such a play as this (called Adam and 
 Eve) that Milton, when he was in Italy, is said to 
 have taken the first hint for his " Paradise Lost." 
 
 In the play of " The Creation," as seen in Ger 
 many about 1783, light was produced by a stupid 
 looking Capuchin in full bottomed wig, and a brocade 
 morning gown worn over his own rusty dress, who, 
 groping peevishly about in the dark, pushed the tap 
 estry right and left, disclosing a glimmer through 
 linen cloths from candles placed behind them. The 
 sea was created by pouring water on the stage, and 
 the land by mould thrown on. Angels were per 
 sonated by girls and young priests in masquerade 
 costumes, with the wings of geese clumsily fastened 
 to their shoulders. These nondescript angels (celes 
 tial poultry), as Coleridge would call them, actively
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 209 
 
 assisted the character in the flowered dressing gown 
 in producing the sun, moon, and stars. 
 
 To represent the brute creation, cattle were driven 
 on the stage, with a horse (well shod), and two pigs, 
 with rings in their noses. Adam and Eve were even 
 more grotesque, and an ill-trained mastiff with a big 
 brass collar, regaled himself upon the beef bone 
 which had done duty as the extracted rib. And the 
 narrator of all this says that there was no laughter 
 among the audience, but it was entered into most 
 seriously, with credulity and reverence. 
 
 As a marked improvement on these ancient per 
 formances, the theater of Strasburg in 1816 exhib 
 ited scenes from the life of Christ from the best pic 
 tures of the great masters. Not a word was spoken, 
 but music of the highest order, instrumental and 
 vocal, added greatly to the impressiveness of the 
 representation. Dr. Burney says, it is certain that 
 the modern tragedy is taken from the mysteries, 
 and that the Oratorio is only a mystery or morality 
 in music. The Oratorio commenced with the priests 
 of the Oratory, a brotherhood at Rome in 1 540, who 
 set sacred stories to music to draw young people to 
 church, and shrewdly left one-half to be performed 
 after the sermon, so that they gained many listeners. 
 
 Collier tells us that a miracle play is still ex 
 hibited at Gloucestershire at Christmas, with the char 
 acters of Herod, Beelzebub, etc. Victor Hugo, in 
 the " Hunchback of Notre Dame," furnishes a vivid 
 study of the performance of a miracle play in the
 
 210 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 middle ages, when they had lost their hold on the 
 people. It was an utter failure. Madame Calderon 
 De La Barca, wife of the Mexican consul, gives in 
 the second volume of her interesting story of " Two 
 Years in Mexico " an account of a religious drama 
 performed on Good Friday at Coyohnacan (Cuyacan), 
 evidently an imitation of the old miracle plays. She 
 says at the close there was no drunkenness or quar 
 relling or confusion of any sort. An occasional 
 hymn rising in the silence of the air, or the distant 
 flashing of a hundred lights, alone gave notice that 
 the funeral procession of the Saviour had not yet 
 halted for the night ; but there was no noise, not 
 even mirth. Everything was conducted with a 
 sobriety befitting the event that was celebrated. 
 
 We were told an anecdote concerning Simon, 
 the Cyrenian, which is not bad. A man was taken 
 up in one of the villages as a vagrant and desired 
 by the justices to give an account of himself to 
 explain why he was always wandering about, and 
 had no employment. The man, with the greatest 
 indignation replied, " No employment. I am sub 
 stitute Cyrenian at Cuyacan in the Holy Week ! " 
 
 Her husband prepared a series of critical treatises 
 on the religious dramas of Spain. 
 
 The Tyrolese entertain a passionate love for the 
 mimic art. In that chatty book, " Gadding with a 
 Primitive People," I find that they still have a 
 yearly " Passion Play," on a small scale and in a way
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 211 
 
 that seems horridly irreverent to us. A large store 
 was made Jehovah s throne, a few years since, and 
 some boys kindled a fire and drove the actor down. 
 In South Germany, Tyrol was undoubtedly the 
 cradle of the mystery and miracle plays. 
 
 One of the most telling traits illustrating the age 
 of these plays, and which it is difficult to rhyme 
 with the strict religious sense peculiar to these 
 people, is the seemingly irreligious intermingling of 
 the most commonplace events of every-day life with 
 sacred episodes and saintly personages. Ere we 
 harshly criticise this feature, we must remember 
 that the native looks upon it in quite a different 
 light than we should as a part of his belief. 
 
 The people, simple-hearted and full of reverent 
 faith in the Bible, delighted in seeing the person 
 ages they had heard about in the churches, whose 
 words they had so often heard, whose images they 
 had devoutly contemplated. 
 
 Protestantism wrested from Faith a large share 
 of her working material, and had little favor for a 
 light treatment of solemn subjects. 
 
 And in the i$th century the miracles and mys 
 teries were condemned and left behind by the new 
 secular culture, which only smiled at the artless 
 effort to portray supernatural events. Thencefor 
 ward the stage, which has for its office to typify the 
 world, has been erected far apart from the church. 
 
 Says Hudson, " We can hardly do justice either 
 to the authors or to the audiences of these religious
 
 212 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 comedies, there being an almost impassable gulf 
 fixed between their thoughts and ours. They were 
 really quite innocent of the evils which we see and 
 feel in what was so entertaining to them." 
 
 John Stuart Mill speaks of " the childlike char 
 acter of the religious sentiment of a rude people, 
 who know terror, but not awe, and are often on the 
 most intimate terms of familiarity with the objects 
 of their adoration." 
 
 Those exhibitions, so rude and revolting to mod 
 ern taste and decorum, were full of religion and 
 honest delectation to the simple minds who wit 
 nessed them, and without doubt they contained the 
 germ of that splendid dramatic growth with which 
 the literature and life of England are now adorned. 
 
 Yet some deny any connection between the mod 
 ern drama and miracle plays. 
 
 There is a close similarity between the Persian 
 and the mediseval miracle play. It is the same thing 
 sprung in the same soil, for the Parsees are true 
 Aryan builders, and a real drama always sprouts 
 where you find indigenous, unconscious building of 
 the first order, which the Persian buildings from 
 Persepolis to Hatra are. 
 
 Matthew Arnold has written of tl:e " Persian 
 Passion Play, 7 enacted annually even now, " far 
 away in that wonderful East, from which whatever 
 airs of superiority Europe may justly give itself, all 
 our religion has come, and where religion of some 
 sort or other has still an empire over men s feelings 
 such as it has nowhere else."
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 213 
 
 All, the Lion of God, Mahomet s young cousin, 
 the first person who, after his wife, believed in him 
 was assassinated. His two sons, Hassan and 
 Hussein, also suffered in the same way at Kerbela, a 
 tragedy so familiar to every Mahomedan, and to us 
 so little known. 
 
 " O death! " cries the minstrel of Persia, " whom 
 didst thou spare ? Were even Hassan and Hussein, 
 those footstools of the throne of God on the seventh 
 heaven, spared by thee ? No, thou madest them 
 martyrs at Kerbela." 
 
 Gibbon tells us that the tombs of Ali and his sons 
 have their yearly pilgrims and their tribute of 
 enthusiastic mourning, and they have been made the 
 subject of a national drama. The first ten days of 
 the month of Mohassen, the anniversary of the mar 
 tyrdom at Keebela, are given up to this excitement. 
 Kings and people, everyone, is in mourning, and at 
 night when the plays are not going on, processions 
 keep passing, the air resounds with the beating of 
 breasts and of litanies of O Hassan, Hussein, the 
 most devoted mourners slashing their faces and 
 bodies with knives, staining their white garments 
 with blood. 
 
 It seems as if no one went to bed, and certainly 
 no one who went to bed could sleep. Confrater 
 nities go in procession, with a black flag and torches, 
 every man with his shirt torn open, and beating 
 himself with the right hand on left shoulder in 
 measured cadence to a canticle in honor of the 
 martys.
 
 214 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 Noisiest of all are the Berbers. One of their race 
 having derided the family of Hassan in their afflic 
 tion, they now expiate their crime by beating 
 themselves with chains and pricking their arms 
 and cheeks with needles. So we are carried back, on 
 this old Asiatic soil, where beliefs and usages are 
 heaped layer upon layer and ruin upon ruin, far past 
 these martyrs, past Mahomedanism, past Christianity, 
 to the priests of Baal, gashing themselves with 
 knives, and to the worship of Adonis. The theaters 
 for this sacred drama are numerous and multiplying. 
 Some hold 300, some several thousand persons. At 
 Ispahan the representations bring together more 
 than 20,000 people. A vast walled parallelogram 
 with brick platform or stage in center, and this sur 
 rounded by black poles, joined at top by horizontal 
 rods from which hang colored lamps. An immense 
 awning protects the audience. Upon rows of 
 gigantic masts are hung tiger and panther skins to 
 indicate the violent character of the scenes to be 
 represented, also shields of steel and of hippopota 
 mus skin, and flags and naked swords. A sea of 
 color and splendor meets the eye all round. Wood 
 work and brickwork disappear under cushions, rich 
 carpets, silk hangings, India muslin embroidered 
 with silver and gold, shawls from Kerman and from 
 Cashmere ; there are lamps, lusters of colored 
 crystal, mirrors, Bohemian and Venetian glass, por 
 celain vases of all degrees of magnitude, from China 
 and from Europe, paintings in profusion every 
 where, an Arabian night scene.
 
 The Old Miracle Plays 215 
 
 But there is a marked contrast in the poverty of 
 scenic contrivance and stage illusion. A copper 
 basin of water represents the Euphrates ; a heap of 
 chopped straw in a corner is the sand of the desert 
 of Kerbela. No attempt at proper costume. The 
 power of the actors is in their genuine sense of the 
 seriousness of the business they are engaged in, 
 nothing stilted, false, or conventional. The children 
 who appear are from the principal families of their 
 city. 
 
 " It is touching to see," says Count Gobineau, 
 " these little things of three or four years old, dressed 
 in black gauze frocks with large sleeves, and on their 
 heads small round black caps, embroidered with 
 silver and gold, kneeling beside the body of the 
 actor, who represents the martyr, embracing him 
 and with their little hands covering themselves with 
 chopped straw, for sand, in sign of grief." 
 
 In the travels " Through Persia by Caravan " the 
 author says : " Once I showed a sketch of Kerbela to 
 our servants and to a knot of bystanders, telling 
 them what it represented. Immediately the picture 
 was in danger. All wished to kiss it, to press it to 
 their foreheads, and cried, Ah Hassan ! with an 
 expression of deep regret, more true and tender in 
 the ardor of sincerity than one expects to find 
 uttered over a grave which has been closed for 
 twelve centuries." 
 
 Matthew Arnold gives an interesting explana 
 tion of this lasting enthusiasm for these saintly,
 
 216 The Old Miracle Plays 
 
 gentle, self-denying sufferers, which puts into the 
 arid religion of Mahomet something of the tender 
 ness, emotion, and sympathy which the formal Old 
 Testament conception of righteousness received 
 from the life and deeds of Christ and his followers. 
 Could he wish for any sign more convincing that 
 Christ was indeed the desire of all nations? So nee- 
 essary is what Christianity contains, that a powerful 
 successful religion arises without, and the missing 
 virtue forces its way in. The martyrs of Kerbela 
 held aloft to the eyes of millions of our race the 
 lesson so loved by the sufferer of Calvary.
 
 OUR EARLY NEWSPAPER WITS. 
 
 Just sixty minutes for a review of the clever men 
 who have made newspaper wit a thing to be grate 
 ful for. No time will be wasted in quoting the 
 hackneyed definitions of wit and humor that usually 
 preface or rather make two-thirds of articles on this 
 subject. James Parton says, that a lecture differs 
 from every other form of composition in this, that 
 so many points, distinctly stated and emphatically 
 made, must be given in an exceedingly limited time. 
 This will be my aim in bringing before you the 
 humorists of the press, selecting their best sayings 
 for your amusement. Seba Smith originated this 
 style of writing during the administration of Andrew 
 Jackson, assuming to be his special confidant, right- 
 hand man and occasional bedfellow, with an ill- 
 concealed envy of all other political favorites, and an 
 honest hankering after the presidential chair for 
 himself. His letters under the nom de phunc of 
 Major Jack Downing, were declared by Lord 
 Brougham to be not merely humorous, but states 
 manlike, and for quaintness and humor, originality, 
 and genius, unequalled since the writing of Hudibras. 
 They were published in book form in 1834, and are
 
 218 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 now almost forgotten, but are still entertaining. In 
 the introduction he says : " I only wish I had gone 
 to school a little more when I was a boy, if I had my 
 letters now would make folks crawl all over ; but if 
 I had been to school all my lifetime I know I never 
 could be able to write more honestly than I have. I 
 am sometimes puzzled most plaguidly to git words 
 to tell jest exactly what I think and what I know, 
 and when I git em, I don t know exactly how to 
 spell em, but so long as I git the sound I ll let other 
 folks git the sense out, pretty much as our old friend 
 down to Salem, who bilt a big ship to go to China, 
 he called her the Asha. Now there is sich a thing 
 as folks knowin too much. All the larned ones was 
 puzzled to know who Asha \vas, and they never 
 would-a-known to this day what it ment if the owner 
 of the ship hadn t tell d em that China was in Asha. 
 Oh ! ah ! says the larned folks, we see now, but 
 that aint the way to spell it. What ! says he, if 
 A-s-h-a don t spell Asha, what on earth does it spell ? 
 and that stumped em." 
 
 Here is a fair specimen of his style : " I and the 
 gineral have got things now pretty considerable 
 snug, and it is raly curious to see how much more 
 easy and simple all the public affairs go on, than they 
 did a spell ago when Mr. Adams was president. If 
 it wasn t for Congress meetin , we could jest go about 
 pretty much where we please*d, and keep things 
 strait too ; and I begin to think now with the gineral, 
 that arter all, there is no great shakes in managin
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 219 
 
 the affairs of the nation. We have, pretty much all 
 on us, ben joggin about now since last grass, and 
 things are jest as strait and clear now as they was 
 then. The gineral has nigh upon made up his mind 
 that there is no use to have any more Congress. 
 They only bother us ; they wou d do more good to 
 stay at home and write letters to us, tellin us what 
 is goin on among em at home. It would save a 
 considerable sum of money, too ; and I m alsosartain 
 that there is a plaguy raft of fellows on wages that 
 don t earn nothin . We keep all the secretaries and 
 the vice-president and some district attorneys and a 
 good many more of our folks and Amos Kindle 
 moving about, and they tell us jest how the cat 
 jumps. And, as I said afore, if it wasn t for Con 
 gress meetin once a year, we d put the government 
 in a one-horse wagon and go jest where we liked." 
 
 Mr. Van Buren, whose political nickname was 
 " The Fox," a shrewd and politic, wily and wire 
 pulling man, is most admirably caricatured by the 
 jolly major. 
 
 In a discussion of the lucky vice-president, the 
 general says : " Well, Major, he is a plaguey curious 
 critter, arter all ; he ll make wheels turn sometimes 
 right agin one another, yit he gits along, and when 
 he lets his slice fall, or some one nocks it out of his 
 hand, it always, somehow, falls butter side up." 
 
 " Well," says I, " Gineral, don t you know why ? " 
 
 " Not exactly," says he, " Major."
 
 220 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 "Well, "says I, "I ll tell you, he butters both 
 sides to once," says I. 
 
 On shaking hands with a crowd at Philadelphia : 
 " There was such a stream of em coming in that 
 the hall was full in a few minutes, and it was so 
 jammed up around the door that they couldn t get 
 out again if they were to die. So they had to knock 
 out some of the windows and go out t other way. 
 The president shook hands with all his might an 
 hour or two, till he got so tired he couldn t hardly 
 stand it. I took hold and shook for him once in a 
 while to help him along, but at last he got so tired 
 he had to lay down on a soft bench, covered with 
 cloth, and shake as well as he could ; and when he 
 couldn t shake, he d nod to em as they come along. 
 And at last, he got so beat out, he couldn t only 
 wrinkle his forehead and wink. Then I kind of 
 stood behind him, and reached my arm round under 
 his, and shook for him for about half an hour as tight 
 as I could spring. Then we concluded it \vas best 
 to adjourn for that day." 
 
 Orpheus C. Kerr (Robt. H. Newell) and Petroleum 
 Nasby (D. R. Locke) both followed in Jack s foot 
 steps, with humorous letters full of hard hits at the 
 weak places in political and army life, and Judge 
 Haliburton, an English writer, better known as Sam 
 vSlick, contributed, in 1835, to a weekly newspaper 
 in Nova Scotia, a series of articles satirizing the 
 Yankee character that became extremely popular,
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 221 
 
 but for originality and genuine fun, the palm must 
 be given to the major. 
 
 Orpheus C. Kerr published three volumes of his 
 letters from the army, rather tedious with the con 
 stant repetition of his pet phrase, " my boy." And 
 tis hard to find anything that is not a trifle coarse. 
 WASHINGTON, D. C., June 15, 1861. 
 
 " The members of the Mackerel Brigade, now 
 stationed on Arlington Heights to watch the move 
 ments of the Potomac, which is expected to rise 
 shortly, desire me to thank the women of America 
 for supplies of havelocks and other delicacies of the 
 season just received. The havelocks, my boy, are 
 rather roomy, and we took them for shirts at first ; 
 and the shirts are so narrow-minded that we took 
 them for havelocks. If the women of America 
 would manage to get a little less linen in the collars 
 of the latter article, and a little more into the other 
 departments of the graceful garments, there would 
 be fewer colds in this division of the Grand Army. 
 
 The havelocks, as I have said before, are roomy, 
 very roomy, my boy. William Brown of Company 
 B, regiment 5, put on one last night, when he went 
 on sentry duty, and looked like a broomstick in a 
 pillow-case for all the world. When the officer of 
 the night came round and caught sight of William in 
 his havelock, he was struck dumb with admiration 
 for a moment ; then he ejaculated : What a splendid 
 moonbeam ! William made a movement and the 
 sergeant came up. What t s that white object ? says
 
 222 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 the officer to the sergeant. The young" man which 
 is William Brown, says the sergeant. Thunder ! 
 roars the officer, tell him to go to his tent and take 
 off that night-gown. You re mistaken, says the 
 sergeant, the sentry is William Brown in his have- 
 lock, which was made by the wimmen of America. 
 
 " The shirts, too, are noble articles as far down as 
 the collar. Captain Mortimer de Montague, one of 
 the skirmish squad, put one on when he went to the 
 President s reception, and the collar stood up so high 
 that he couldn t put his cap on. His appearance at 
 the White House was picturesque and interesting, 
 and, as he entered the drawing room, General Scott 
 remarked very feelingly, Ah ! here comes one of 
 our wounded heroes. He s not wounded, General, 
 remarked an officer standing by. Then why is his 
 head bandaged up so? asked the venerable veteran. 
 Oh, says the officer, that s only one of the shirts 
 made by the patriotic women of America. " 
 
 And one more bit : 
 
 " I asked the general of the Mackerel Brigade the 
 other day, what kind of a flower he thought would 
 spring above my head when I rested in a soldier s 
 sepulchre, and he said : A cabbage, my boy, he said 
 a cabbage." 
 
 We will now turn to Xasby, who was so popular 
 during the war, and let him tell you of his ingenious 
 scheme for inexpensive living : 
 
 " I hev invented a new carpit-bag for the 
 espeshal yoose uv patriots and agitaters. It is made
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 223 
 
 uv thin Injy rubber, with a frame that folds up into 
 a small compass. Yoo take that carpit-bag and blow 
 it up till it bulges out at the sides ez tho it wuz full 
 of cloze and things, and walk into a lodging house 
 and demand rooms with confidence. That carpit- 
 bag bustin with valyooables settles it. It looks sol 
 vent, and everything is in looks. Yoo stay on the 
 strength uv that bag, and hev yoor meals sent to 
 yoor room, and live fat. Presently, your landlady 
 wants money, and commences to watch that carpit- 
 bag. Yoo can t get out of the house with it, for that 
 is her anker and her hope. Very good. Some even 
 ing yoo go to yoor room, let the wind out uv it, fold 
 it up and put it in yoor coat pocket, and bid her 
 good evening, telling her yoo shel be home early, 
 and she may light the fire at ten, and the place that 
 knowd yoo wunst knows yoo no more furever. The 
 first dark place yoo come to yoo blow it up again, 
 and go boldly into another house and establish yoor- 
 self in comfort ef not in luxury." 
 
 Abraham Lincoln used to find relief from the 
 presence of the responsibilities which weighed upon 
 his mind, in reading the droll witticisms of Nasby 
 and Artemus Ward. When the great question of 
 emancipation was under consideration, he once came 
 into a cabinet meeting, chuckling over one of Nasby s 
 letters from " Confederate Cross Roads," and insisted 
 upon reading it before any business was done. Men 
 of formal dignity like Salmon P. Chase and Edward 
 M. Stanton were shocked at Lincoln s apparent lev-
 
 224 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 ity at such a crisis ; but he was, really, a sadder as 
 well as a wiser man than they. 
 
 Artemus Ward (Charles F. Browne), who gained 
 his first honors as a newspaper wit in the Cleveland 
 Plaindealcr, never sacrificed his friends for an epi 
 gram; he made you laugh and love him too. He 
 seldom smiled in his lectures, no matter how absurd 
 his statements. Many good people failed to see the 
 comical in his performances. One old lady, accom 
 panied by her serious-minded daughters, left the hall 
 in the midst of his lecture saying : " It is too bad to 
 laugh at that poor young man. He doesn t know 
 what he is saying and ought to be sent to a lunatic 
 asylum." 
 
 Others would survey this driest of droll men with 
 looks of benevolent pity. It was his delight to puz 
 zle. In the middle of his lecture he would hesitate, 
 stop , and say solemnly, " Owing to a slight indispo 
 sition, we will now have an intermission of fifteen 
 minutes." The audience were properly amazed, at 
 the prospect of staring at vacancy for a quarter of an 
 hour, when, rubbing his hands the lecturer would 
 add, " but ah during the intermission I will go 
 on with my lecture." 
 
 He once stated that the same lecture would be 
 repeated in Constantinople one week from date 
 and tickets for the round trip would be given to 
 audience as they passed out ! He observed that 
 what he said had given pain to several, and he would 
 then endeavor to explain his jokes.
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 225 
 
 Sometimes he would seem to forget his audience, 
 and stand for several seconds gazing intently at his 
 panorama. Then he would recover from this fit of 
 abstraction and remark apologetically, " I am very 
 fond of looking at my pictures." Imagine the effect, 
 when, after such an interruption, he would point with 
 his little riding whip to some nondescript quadru 
 peds which he had all along characterized as cows 
 and remark, " Those animals are horses I know they 
 are because my artist says so. I had the picture two 
 years before I discovered the fact. The artist came 
 to me about six months ago and said, " It is useless 
 to disguise it from you any longer, they are horses." 
 
 " The most celebrated artists of London are so 
 delighted with this picture that they come every day 
 to gaze at it. I wish you were nearer to it so you 
 could see it better. I wish I could take it to your 
 residences and let you see it by daylight. Some of 
 the greatest artists in London come here every morn 
 ing before daylight with lanterns to look at it. They 
 say they never saw anything like it before and 
 they hope they never shall again." 
 
 He insisted that one of his earliest literary efforts 
 was an essay sent to the Smithsonian Institute, but, 
 strange to say, rejected on the theme, " Is cats to be 
 trusted." 
 
 Some one speaking of Artemus called him a per 
 fect steam factory of puns and a museum of Ameri 
 can humor. His first lecture he called " The Babes 
 in the Woods ; " he had thought of naming it " My
 
 226 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 Seven Grandmothers." It consisted of a wandering 
 batch of comicalities, touching upon everything but 
 the babes. 
 
 The next was entitled " Sixty Minutes in Africa." 
 Behind him hung a large map of Africa, which re 
 gion he said " abounded in various natural produc 
 tions, such as reptiles and flowers. It produces the 
 red rose, the white rose, and the neg roes. Apro 
 pos of negroes, let me tell you a little story," and no 
 further reference to Africa until the very close of 
 the entertainment. 
 
 His experience as a showman is familiar, yet I 
 never tire of his business letters, for instance 
 
 "I m moving slowly down to rds your place. How 
 is the show bizness in your place. My show at pres 
 ent consists of three moral bares, a kangeroo (an 
 amoosin little raskal, twould make you laf yourself 
 to deth to see the little cuss jump up and squeal), 
 wax riggers of Genl. Washington, Genl. Taylor, John 
 Bunyan, Captain Kidd, Dr. Webster, in the act of 
 killing Parkman, beside several miscellayous moral 
 wax statoos of celebrated pirates," etc. (after hinting 
 strongly for a puff). And again : " If you say any 
 thing about my show say my snaiks is as harmliss 
 as a new born Babe. What an interestin study it is 
 to see a zewological animal, like a snaik, under per- 
 fec subjecshun ! I am anxious to skewer your influ 
 ence. I repeat in regard to them handbills that I 
 shall get em struck off to your printin offis. My 
 perlitical sentiments agree with yourn exactly. I
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 227 
 
 know they dew, because I never saw a man whose 
 didn t." 
 
 It was Artemus who preferred bald-headed butter 
 and considered absence of body a better thing than 
 presence of mind in case of an accident. 
 
 Here is a characteristic story of the thin man en 
 gaged for a living skeleton, for a tour through Aus 
 tralia : 
 
 " He was the thinnest man I ever saw. He was 
 a splendid skeleton. He didn t weigh anything 
 scarcely, and I said to myself, the people of Austra 
 lia will flock to see this tremendous curiosity. It is 
 a long voyage, as you know, from New York to Mel 
 bourne, and, to my utter surprise, the skeleton had 
 no sooner got out to sea than he commenced eating 
 in the most horrible manner. He had never been on 
 the ocean before, and he said it agreed with him. I 
 thought so ! I never saw a man eat so much in my 
 life. Beef, mutton, pork, he swallowed them all like a 
 shark, and between meals he was often discovered 
 behind barrels eating hard-boiled eggs ! The result 
 was that when we reached Melbourne, this infamous 
 skeleton weighed sixty-four pounds more than I 
 did. I thought I was ruined but I wasn t. I took 
 him on to California another very long voyage 
 and when I got to San Francisco I exhibited him as 
 a fat man ! " 
 
 " People laugh at me," said Browne, "because of 
 my eccentric sentences. There is no wit in the form of 
 a well-rounded sentence. If I say Alexander con-
 
 228 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 quered the world and sighed because he couldn t do 
 so some more, there is a funny mixture." You 
 notice that a majority of his jokes depend upon a 
 sudden change from a serious beginning to an absurd 
 ending. 
 
 The character he created represents humor of an 
 original type, yet he is said to have copied it from a 
 living oddity ; as Denman Thompson gives a faith 
 ful imitation of a resident of "Swanzey" as Josh 
 Whitcomb. His success in England was largely due 
 to the impression that he gave a clever caricature 
 of an American backwoodsman or "showman. The 
 celebrated wits on the staff of PuncJi used to frequent 
 Egyptian Hall and roar at his solemn fun, vacant 
 face, and inimitable drawl. Mark Twain says " Arte- 
 mus looked like a glove stretcher ; his hair red and 
 brushed well forward at the sides reminded one of a 
 divided flame. His nose rambled on aggressively 
 before him with all the strength and determination 
 of a cow-catcher, while his red moustache, to follow 
 out the simile, seemed not unlike the unfortunate 
 cow." 
 
 Lieut. Derby, known as "John Phoenix" and 
 " Squibob," was often deliciously droll. 
 
 His lectures on Astronomy, he frankly tells us, 
 were originally prepared to be delivered before the 
 Lowell Institute of Boston, Mass., but owing to the 
 unexpected circumstance of the author s receiving 
 no invitation to lecture before that institution, they 
 were laid aside shortly after their completion.
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 229 
 
 He some time after did receive an invitation to 
 lecture before the Vallecetos Literary and Scientific 
 Institute, but on arriving at that place, he learned 
 with deep regret that the only inhabitant had left a 
 few days previous/ having availed himself of the op 
 portunity presented by a passing emigrant s horse, 
 and that, in consequence, the opening of the Insti 
 tute was indefinitely postponed. 
 
 But the lectures are full of original ideas. He 
 says: 
 
 " Up to the time of a gentleman named Coperni 
 cus, who flourished about the middle of the fifteenth 
 century, it was supposed by our stupid ancestors that 
 the earth was the center of all creation, being a large, 
 flat body, resting on a rock, which rested on another 
 rock, and so on all the way down, and that the sun, 
 planets, and immovable stars all revolved about it 
 once in twenty-four hours. 
 
 But Co-Pernicus (who was a son of Daniel Perni- 
 cus, of the firm of Pernicus & Co., wool dealers, and 
 who was named Co-Pernicus out of respect to his 
 father s partners, soon set this matter to rights and 
 started the idea of the present solar system. 
 
 The demonstration of this system in all its per 
 fection was left to Isaac Newton (an English philos 
 opher), who seeing an apple tumble down from a 
 tree, was led to think thereon with such gravity that 
 he finally discovered the attraction of gravitation, 
 which proved to be the great law of nature that keeps 
 everything in its place. Thus we see that as an
 
 230 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 apple originally brought sin and ignorance into the 
 world, the same fruit proved thereafter the cause of 
 vast knowledge and enlightenment, and indeed we 
 may doubt whether any other fruit but an apple and 
 a sour one at that, would have produced these grand 
 results ; for had the fallen fruit been a pear, an 
 orange, or a peach tree, there is little doubt that 
 Xewton would have eaten it up and thought no more 
 on the subject." 
 
 When the bill for a new chimney came in he ex 
 claims : " Bills, bills, bills ! How can a man name 
 his child William ? The horrid idea of the partner 
 of his joys and sorrows presenting him with a Bill ! 
 and to have that Bill continually in the house, 
 constantly running up and down stairs always unset 
 tled ! " 
 
 " Leaving San Francisco as the last line fell from 
 the dock, and our noble steamer with a mighty throb 
 and deep sigh, at bidding adieu to San Francisco, 
 swung slowly round, the passengers crowded to the 
 side to exchange a farewell salutation with their 
 friends and acquaintances. Good-bye, Jones, Good 
 bye, Brown, God bless you old fellow, take care of 
 yourself ! they shouted. Not seeing any one that I 
 knew, and fearing the passengers might think I had 
 no friends, I shouted Good-bye, Muggins, and had 
 the satisfaction of having a shabby man, much inebri 
 ated, reply as he swung his rimless hat, Good-bye, 
 my brother. Not particularly elated at this recog 
 nition, I tried it again, with, Good-bye, Colonel,
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits ~ 23 1 
 
 whereat thirty-four respectable gentlemen took off 
 their hats, and I got down from the position that I 
 had occupied on a camp stool, with much dignity. 
 
 " Away we sped down the bay, the captain stand 
 ing on the wheel-house directing our course. Port, 
 Port a little, Port, he shouted. What s he a calling 
 for ? inquired a youth of good-natured but unmis 
 takable verdancy of appearance, of me. Port 
 wine, said I, and the storekeeper don t hear him, 
 you d better take him up some. I will, said In 
 nocence ; Pve got a bottle of first-rate in my state 
 room. And he did, but soon returned with a par 
 ticularly crest-fallen and sheepish appearance. Well, 
 what did he say to you, inquired I. Pointed at 
 the notice on that tin, said the poor fello\v. Pas 
 sengers not allowed on the wheel-house. He is, 
 though, ain t he ? added my friend with a faint 
 attempt at a smile, as the captain in an awful voice 
 shouted, Starboard ! Is what ? said I, Loud on 
 the wheel-house ! " 
 
 Receiving a formal letter from the Secretary of 
 War, inquiring " How far does the Tombigby run 
 up?" he came near being cashiered for replying. 
 " Dear sir, after a careful examination we find the 
 Tombigby never did run up." They inquired if the 
 Santa Clara could be dammed, and he replied he was 
 certain it could, for he had been damning it ever 
 since he came. 
 
 " The Squibob Papers," a second volume from 
 Lieut. Derby, is enriched by comic illustrations from
 
 232 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 his own pen, which would convulse the most serious- 
 minded audience, if they could only be enlarged and 
 displayed. 
 
 " A Side Elevation of G. Washington not by Gil 
 bert Stuart," adorns the first page. It was taken when 
 the general was in the act of chewing tobacco, the 
 left cheek is distended most absurdly, -and the left 
 eye is closed in a very wise wink. 
 
 In his famous " Fourth of July Oration," he fol 
 lows the universal custom of inserting a full and 
 complete biography of the immortal Washington 
 and pays the following beautiful tribute to the 
 memory of this greatest of men : 
 
 " George Washington was one of the most dis 
 tinguished movers in the American Revolution. 
 He was born of poor but honest parents at Genoa, in 
 the year 1492. His mother was called the mother 
 of Washington. He married, early in life, a widow 
 lady, Mrs. Martha Custis, whom Prescott describes 
 as the cussidest pretty woman south of Mason and 
 Dixon s line. 
 
 " Young Washington commenced business as a 
 county surveyor and was present in that character at 
 a sham-fight, under General Braddock, when so 
 many guns were fired that the whole body of militia 
 were stunned by the explosion, and sate down to sup 
 per unable to hear a word that was said. This 
 supper was afterwards alluded to as Braddock s deaf 
 eat, and the simile, deaf as a Braddock, subse-
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 233 
 
 quently vulgarized into deaf as a haddock/ had. its 
 rise from that circumstance. 
 
 " Washington commanded several troops during 
 the Revolutionary War, and distinguished himself 
 by fearlessly crossing the Delaware river, on ice of 
 very inadequate thickness, to visit a family of Hes 
 sians of his acquaintance. He was passionately fond 
 of green peas and string beans, and his favorite 
 motto was : In time of peace prepare for war. 
 
 " Washington died from exposure on the summit 
 of Mount Vernon, in the year 1786, leaving behind 
 him a name that will endure forever if posterity 
 persist in calling their children after him to the 
 same extent that has been fashionable." 
 
 Derby s skill as a philologist is again seen in his 
 explanation of the word oration, which he declared 
 had a military origin in a custom once prevalent 
 among commanding officers and chaplains of making 
 long and verbose addresses to the troops, which 
 were stigmatized as "all talk and no rations," 
 whence the word " noration " was modernized into 
 oration. 
 
 In his own " noration " in his frantic rhapsody on 
 the 4th of July he exclaims, " For on this day the 
 great American eagle flaps her wings and soars aloft, 
 until it makes your eyes sore to look at her, and 
 looking down upon her myriads of free and enlight 
 ened children she screams, E Pluribus Unum ! 
 which may be freely interpreted, Ain t I some ?
 
 234 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 and myriads of freemen answer back with joyous 
 shout : 
 
 " You are Punkins ! 
 
 His account of the meeting of the Massachusetts 
 Dental Association or " three hundred tewth car 
 penters," with the motto on their banner, " A long 
 pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether," is pecu 
 liarly rich. 
 
 " There was the elegant city practitioner, with 
 shiny hat and straw-colored gloves, side by side with 
 the gentleman from the country who hauls a man 
 all over the floor for two hours, and gives him the 
 worth of his money." 
 
 One of the many toasts was, " The Woodcock, 
 emblem of dentistry, he picks up his living from the 
 holes, and passes in a precious long bill." 
 
 Other interesting exercises were gone through 
 with. 
 
 A hackman passing by on his carriage was placed 
 under the influence of chloroform, all his teeth 
 extracted without pain, and an entire new and ele 
 gant set put in their place, all in forty-two seconds. 
 His appearance was wonderfully improved. " I have 
 never seen 300 dentists together before, and I don t 
 believe anybody else ever did, but I consider it a 
 pleasing and an imposing spectacle, and would sug 
 gest that the next time they meet they shall make 
 an excursion which shall combine business with 
 pleasure, and all go down together and remove the 
 snags from the mouth of the Mississippi."
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 235 
 
 Derby at thirty years old shared with Artemus 
 Ward the fame of being the greatest American 
 humorist. One of his pranks sent him to San Diego. 
 Jefferson Davis had asked the army officers who had 
 served in Mexico to submit designs for a new service 
 uniform. Derby responded with a series of clever 
 drawings, one of which represented a cavalry man 
 with an orange stuck on his cap as a pompon, 
 explaining that it looked as well as the ordinary 
 pompon, and in case the wearer grew tired or 
 thirsty he could take it off and suck it. 
 
 Another device was an iron hook on the seat of 
 the trousers. It could be put through a saddle ring 
 so that no amount of hard riding could dislodge a 
 horseman. In the infantry service these hooks 
 might be used to carry camp kettles on a march and 
 in battle, the file closers could use a ringed pole to 
 advantage in catching men who had started to run 
 away. Davis was so angry at this irreverence that 
 he ordered the young officer to a hot and dusty place 
 of exile. Seeing the sign while in Washington, 
 " Ladies Depository," he made a futile effort to 
 deposit his wife while he went around the corner to 
 see a man. 
 
 We come next to Mortimer Thompson, famous 
 twenty years ago, the author of " Doesticks," " What 
 He Says," "The Elephant Club," " Pluribustah," 
 etc. He wrote a capital take-off on the successful 
 vendors of quack medicines, at the time when
 
 236 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 Townsend s Sarsaparilla was the favorite beverage 
 for bilious invalids. 
 
 " As I, too, desire to have a mansion on Fifth 
 Avenue, like the Medical Worthy of Sarsaparilla 
 memory, and wished like him to be able to build a 
 patent medicine palace, with a private chapel under 
 the back stairs, and conservatory down cellar, I cast 
 about me for some means whereby the requisite cash 
 might be reputably accumulated. 
 
 " Emulous of the deathly notoriety which has 
 been acquired by the medicinal worthies just men 
 tioned, I also resolved to achieve a name and a 
 fortune in the same reputable and honest manner. 
 Bought a gallon of tar, a cake of beeswax, and a 
 firkin of lard, and in twenty-one hours I presented 
 to the world the first batch of Doestick s Patent, 
 Self- Acting, Four-Horse Power Balsam, designed 
 to cure all diseases of mind, body, or estate, to give 
 strength to the weak, money to the poor, bread and 
 butter to the hungry, boots to the barefoot, decency 
 to blackguards, and common sense to the Know- 
 Nothings. It acts physically, morally, mentally, 
 psychologically, physiologically, and geologically, 
 and it is intended to make our sublunary sphere a 
 blissful paradise, to which Heaven itself shall be 
 but a side-show." 
 
 TESTIMONIALS. 
 
 "DEAR SIR The land composing my farm has 
 hitherto been so poor that a Scotchman couldn t get 
 his living off it, and so stony that we had to slice-
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 237 
 
 our potatoes and plant them edgeways ; but hearing 
 of your balsam, I put some on the corner of a ten- 
 acre lot, surrounded by a rail fence, and in the 
 morning I found the rocks had entirely disappeared, 
 a neat stone wall encircled the field, and the rails 
 were split into ovenwood and piled up symmetrically 
 in my back yard. 
 
 " Put half an ounce into the middle of a huckle 
 berry swamp. In two days it was cleared off, planted 
 with corn and pumpkins, and had a row of peach 
 tress in full bloom through the middle." 
 
 I give one more from a member of the senior 
 class in a Western college : 
 
 "Mv DEAR DOCTOR [You know I attended 
 medical lectures half a winter, and once assisted in 
 getting a crooked needle out of a baby s leg, so I 
 understand perfectly well the theory and practice of 
 medicine, and the Doctor is perfectly legitimate under 
 the Prussian system.] By the incessant study 
 required in this establishment I had become worn 
 down so thin that I was obliged to put on an over 
 coat to cast a shadow, but accidentally hearing of 
 your Balsam, I obtained a quantity, and, in obedi 
 ence to the homeopathic principles of this institu 
 tion, took an infinitesimal dose only; in four days I 
 measured one hundred and eighty-two inches round 
 the waist ; could chop eleven cords of hickory wood 
 in two hours and a half, and, on a bet, carried a yoke 
 of oxen two miles and a quarter in my left hand, my
 
 238 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 right being tied behind me, and if anyone doubts 
 the fact, the oxen are still to be seen. 
 
 " About two weeks after this I had the pleasure 
 of participating in a gunpowder explosion, on which 
 occasion my arms and legs were scattered over the 
 village, and my mangled remains pretty equally dis 
 tributed throughout the entire country. 
 
 " Under these circumstances my life was de 
 spaired of, and my classmates had bought a pine 
 coffin, and borrowed whole shirts to attend the 
 funeral in, when the invincible power of your four- 
 horse power balsam (which I happened to have in 
 my vest pocket) suddenly brought together the scat 
 tered pieces of my body collected my limbs from 
 the rural districts, put new life into my shattered 
 frame, and I was restored, uninjured, to my friends, 
 with a new set of double teeth." 
 
 The Boston Post originated the " Funny Column," 
 in which every local sheet now indulges. It was 
 there that Saxe published his famous epigrams and 
 B. P. Shillaber made himself famous by quotations 
 from Mrs. Partington. One or two " oracular pearls " 
 from the lips of this popular old lady must be given. 
 Taken together they lose their lustre and she 
 becomes a tedious old party, with the effort for the 
 wrong word disagreeably obvious. Even Ike, forever 
 plaguing he cat and doing some absurd thing to 
 neatly end the paragraph, never seems like a real 
 boy. 
 
 "Widow Bedott " and " Josiah Allen s wife" are
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 239 
 
 actual persons. You laugh at them and with them, 
 while this blundering dame seems simply a mouth 
 piece for Shillaber. But let us listen to her verbal 
 contortions for a moment : 
 
 " Entered at the Custom House," said Mrs. Part 
 ington, pondering on the expression, " I don t see 
 how the vessels ever got in ; but I am glad that the 
 collector cleared em right out again. It will learn 
 them better manners next time, I think." 
 
 " Now go to meeting, dear," said Mrs. P., as 
 Isaac stood smoothing his hair, preparatory to going 
 out on Sunday. He looked down at his new shoes 
 and a thought of the green fields made him sigh. 
 A fishing-line hung out of one pocket, which Mrs. 
 Partington didn t see. 
 
 "Where shall I go to?" asked Ike. Since the 
 old lady had given up her seat in the Old North 
 Church she had no stated place of worship. " Go," 
 replied she sublimely, as she pulled down his jacket 
 behind, " Go anywheres, where the gospel is dis 
 pensed with." 
 
 "Ah, yes," said Mrs. Partington, some years ago, 
 as she watched the military pass by on the 22d of 
 February, " Ah, yes, Washington is dead, and the 
 worst of it is his mantel-piece hasn t fallen upon any 
 living man ! " 
 
 There are women in real life who say better 
 things of this sort. I remember an old lady who at 
 an evening party said of a passing belle, " Why, 
 she s a perfect paragram of a young lady!" "I
 
 240 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 think you mean parallelogram," suggested a friend. 
 Upon which she replied with a look of withering- 
 superiority, " I said parallelogram, Mr. Tenney." 
 
 Occasionally, there is more of Shillaber than 
 Partington, as in this remark : " There must be some 
 sort of kin between poets and pullets, for they both 
 are always chanting their lays." Shillaber has 
 written good poetry, but will always be thought of 
 as a blundering, kind-hearted old dame, with large 
 spectacles on her beaming face and a small rogue at 
 her side. He felt this himself and said he made a 
 mistake in appearing as a lecturer, because the pub 
 lic wanted only Mrs. Partington. He says pathetic 
 ally, " George William Curtis said long ago, that 
 when one has managed to stand on his head success 
 fully, the public wishes to see how he did it, but he 
 must continue to stand on his head or they will be 
 disappointed. I found this to be true. Partington 
 was the cry. Partington was on the big posters at 
 the corners of the streets. Partington was the theme 
 of the lyceum presidents in introduction. I had 
 stood on my head for fun, but here, in sober earnest, 
 I could not make a mountebank of myself. 
 
 " Artemus Ward wrote me from Cleveland : 
 Come out here like an old woman and sing a comic 
 song, and you will carry the town. The best I 
 could give them were a few pleasant and mild lec 
 tures of excellent morals and of unexceptionable 
 tone, but they desired Partington, and I confess to 
 the folly, now, when I need it, of abandoning a for-
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 241 
 
 tune, right within my very grasp, because I would 
 not yield and leaving the field at its very threshold." 
 
 Mrs. Partington is not an original creation, but 
 is a reproduction of Smollett s Tabitha Bramble, 
 Sheridan s Mrs. Malaprop, and Theodore Hook s 
 Mrs. Ramsbottom, all of them much better, however. 
 
 The name was suggested by an anecdote related 
 by Sydney Smith in a speech at Taunton in 1831. 
 He said : " I do not mean to be disrespectful, but 
 the attempt of the lords to stop the progress of re 
 form reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of 
 Sidmouth, and the conduct of the excellent Mrs. 
 Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824, 
 there set in a great flood upon that town ; the tide 
 rose to an incredible height ; the waves rushed in 
 upon the houses and everything was threatened 
 with destruction. In the midst of this sublime storm 
 Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was 
 seen at the door of her house, with mop and pattens, 
 trundling her mop and squeezing out the salt water 
 and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic ocean. 
 The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington s spirit 
 was up, but I need not tell you that the contest was 
 unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. 
 She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she 
 should not have meddled with a tempest." 
 
 As a brilliant journalist and versatile genius none 
 can rank higher than George D. Prentice a poli 
 tician and poet, an able lawyer, author, statesman, 
 editor, wit, and a success in all. Bryant said : " I
 
 242 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 have never known anyone in editorial life who 
 equaled him in the energetic and industrious use of 
 his powers. Of the vastness of those powers, very 
 few are able to take the measure." 
 
 In that just, discriminating, and worthy memorial 
 of George D. Prentice, delivered before the General 
 Assembly of Kentucky by Mr. Henry Watterson, 
 and for which every friend and admirer of George 
 D. Prentice is his debtor, Mr. Watterson says : " I 
 found in London that his fame is exceeded by that 
 of no newspaper writer ; but the journalists of Paris, 
 where there is still nothing but personal journalism, 
 considered him a few years ago as the solitary jour 
 nalist of genius among us. His sarcasms have often 
 got into Charivari." He was, without question, the 
 most popular and influential newspaper writer of 
 whom we have any record. The author of the letters 
 of Junius was popular and potent, but his reign, com 
 pared with that of Mr. Prentice, was very brief. 
 His career was that of a shooting meteor which van 
 ished rapidly. The career of Mr. Prentice was that 
 of a fixed luminary, steadily and serenely shedding 
 its light through a long series of years. His style, 
 for success in his objects, was preeminently supe 
 rior to that of any other newspaper writer. There 
 are qualities of newspaper literature in which he 
 was surpassed, but I have never known his equal 
 in the power to seize the public mind and to 
 imbue it with his own convictions. The secret of 
 his success was his gleaming, penetrating style ; his
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 243 
 
 brief, concentrated humor or pungent wit and sar 
 casm, which was easily understood and housed in the 
 memory. His versatility was as wonderful as any 
 other element of his perfections as a paragraphist. 
 He never repeated himself, nor did he need to bor 
 row from others. In these gifts, for such they seemed 
 to be, in his long career as a journalist, he had no 
 equal, even among the strong and able men who 
 measured weapons with him." 
 
 He could strike with a rapier or a bludgeon, and 
 there was little mercy for editors who attacked him. 
 One opposed a pet plan of his in a long and labored 
 leader headed " More Villainy Afoot." The only 
 notice taken by Prentice of this was a brief item. 
 " We regret to see that Mr. So-and-so has lost his 
 horse." 
 
 When another grandly remarked of a certain 
 question, ".Let others take the responsibility, we 
 wash our hands of it," he responded, " Washing 
 your hands is an operation that will do you no man 
 ner of harm. Please think of your face at the same 
 time." 
 
 And here are some of his lighter sallies : 
 
 An English writer says, in his advice to young 
 married women, " that their mother Eve married a 
 gardener." It might be added "that the gardener 
 in consequence of the match lost his situation." 
 
 " About the only person that we ever heard of 
 that wasn t spoiled by being lionised was a Jew 
 named Daniel."
 
 244 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 " We suppose there can be no disputing that the 
 first Arfc-tic expedition was got up by Noah." 
 
 "An author, ridiculing the idea of ghosts, asks how 
 a dead man can get into a locked room. Probably, 
 with a skeleton key/ " 
 
 " My dear wife, I wish you would try to keep 
 your temper. My dear husband, I wish you would 
 try to get rid of yours. " 
 
 " I ll bet my ears, said an angry husband. In 
 deed, dear, you shouldn t carry betting to such 
 lengt/is. 1 " 
 
 "The Cincinnati representative in Congress boasts 
 that he can bring an argument to a pint as quick as 
 any other man. He can bring a quart to a pint a 
 good deal quicker." 
 
 " A female correspondent suggests a condition on 
 which she will give us a kiss. We feel in duty bound 
 to say, that kissing is a thing that at every proper 
 opportunity, we set our face against." 
 
 His ready wit never failed him. Bill Nye gives 
 this illustration : 
 
 The old Journal office used to be the stamping 
 ground of many southern men more or less known, 
 who liked to hear the veteran journalist tell a story 
 or warm up a presumptuous young man for lunch. 
 Among those who frequented the Journal office was 
 Will S. Hays, the song writer. 
 
 Coming into Mr. Prentice s office one day in that 
 free and easy way of his, he sat down on one chair, 
 with his feet in another, and jamming his hat on the
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 245 
 
 back of his head, said, without consulting Mr. Pren 
 tice s leisure : 
 
 " Seen my last song, George ? " 
 
 Mr. Prentice ceased writing, sighed heavily, and, 
 looking up sadly and reproachfully at the young 
 man, said : 
 
 " I hope so, Billy." 
 
 His common sense was as remarkable as his 
 brilliancy. 
 
 " Men and women who read a great many light 
 and superficial works will have a mere mass of crude 
 and worthless knowledge, unless they also read books 
 filled with stern, strong, hard thought. The birds 
 have to pick up pebble stones to aid the digestion of 
 the softer contents of their caws." 
 
 We are indebted to the friendly biographer and 
 editor of Mr. Prentice s poems, John J. Piatt, for this 
 extract from a letter written by Mr. Prentice : 
 
 " I rejoice, my little friend, that you are a believer. 
 For my own part, I have no doubt either of the 
 truths of Christianity or of the momentous and infi 
 nite importance of those truths. I hear a thousand 
 things from the pulpit that make me smile, yet I 
 would rather be a Christian of the very humblest 
 order of intellect than the most gloriously-gifted infi 
 del that ever blazed like a comet through the atmos 
 phere of earth." 
 
 Henry R. Shaw, Josh Billings, who as Eli 
 Perkins expressed it, wore his hair in a court train 
 over his collar, gained a wide notoriety as writer and
 
 246 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 lecturer. He failed several times in business, turned 
 harlequin at forty-five, took the public by storm and 
 made a large fortune as a comic paragraphist, lect 
 urer, and maker of Alminax and apothegms. How 
 quaint and irresistible is his Essay on Rats : 
 
 " Rats originally cum from Norway, and I wish 
 they had originally stayed there. They are about as 
 uncalled for as a pain in the small of the back. 
 They can be domesticated dredful eazy, that is, as 
 far as gittin in cupboards and eatin cheese and 
 knawing pie is concerned. The best way to domes 
 ticate them that I ever saw, is tew surround them 
 gently with a steel trap ; you can reason with them 
 then to great advantage. I serpose there is between 
 50 and 60 millions of rats in Ameriky (I quote now 
 entirely from memory), and I don t suppose there is 
 a single necessary rat in the whole lot. This shows 
 at a glance how many waste rats there is." 
 
 A few of his terse sayings will show the wisdom 
 of the joker : " When a feller gets a goin down hill, 
 it dus seem as tho everything had been greased for 
 the okashun." 
 
 " I don t insist upon pedigree for a man or horse. 
 If a horse kan trot fast the pedigree is all right ; if 
 he kan t, I wouldn t give a shilling a yard for his 
 pedigree." 
 
 " It is dredful easy to be a phool. A man kan be 
 one and not know it. Fust appearances are ced to be 
 everything. I don t put all my faith into this say in.
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 247 
 
 I think oysters and klams, for instance, will bear 
 looking into." 
 
 This union of strong common sense, keen wit, 
 outrageous orthography is seldom tiresome. The 
 success of his writings has brought numerous com 
 petitors into the field who seem to imagine that, if 
 the spelling is only bad enough, the absence of wit 
 and sense will not be noticed, not understanding 
 that the peculiar spelling is an ingenious method of 
 evading either pretension or an assumption of intel 
 lectual acuteness. 
 
 Horace Greeley denounced the modern humorist 
 who thrives on bad spelling. 
 
 Samuel L. Clemens, the irrepressible Mark Twain, 
 is best in long narratives. The tidal wave of laughter 
 that rose from the reading of " Innocents Abroad," 
 spread over two continents. 
 
 The London World, in publishing a series of pen- 
 portraits of " Celebrities at Home," devoted one 
 paper to " Mark Twain at Hartford," describing him 
 as surrounded by every object which wealth and 
 taste can procure, the prince of entertainers, the cen 
 ter of a delightful circle of friends. 
 
 It would be easy to resolve Mr. Clemens methods 
 of rousing a laugh into a few general formulas such 
 as solemn misstatement and specific exaggeration. 
 For instance, speaking of New England weather, he 
 said : " In the spring I ve counted 136 different kinds 
 of weather inside of 24 hours." If he had said, " I 
 have counted a great many different kinds of weather,
 
 248 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 no one would have smiled. The wit lies in the defi- 
 niteness of the exaggeration. Alas ! after an analy 
 sis of the method, the wit eludes us. Wit can never 
 be captured nor defined. Mr. Clemens named one 
 of his dogs " Joseph Cook," because, as he said, 
 there are some things about that dog he can t under 
 stand, depths in that dog s nature which he fails to 
 fathom. He says of a cat s midnight serenade that 
 he doesn t mind the noise, it s their sickening gram 
 mar that distresses him. Mark Twain has a natural 
 drawl. Artemus Ward assumed his to surprise and 
 hold his audience. 
 
 Mark Twain tells us in his valuable appendix to 
 " A Tramp Abroad," all about the German journals 
 which have neither " editorials," " personals," nor 
 " funny paragraphs ; " no " rumors," no abuse of pub 
 lic officials, no rehash of cold sermons, no weather 
 items. 
 
 Once a week the German daily of the highest class 
 lightens up its heavy columns with a profound an 
 abysmal book criticism ; a criticism which carries 
 you down, down, down, into the scientific bowels of 
 the subject ; sometimes it gives you a gay and chip 
 per essay about ancient Grecian funeral customs, or 
 the ancient Egyptian methods of tarring a mummy, 
 or the reasons for believing that some of the peoples 
 who existed before the flood did not approve of cats. 
 
 These matters can be handled in such a way as 
 to make a person lowspirited. 
 
 The German humorous papers are beautifully
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 249 
 
 printed, and the illustrations finely drawn and deli- 
 ciously funny. So generally are the two or three 
 terse sentences which accompany the picture. I 
 remember one where a most dilapidated tramp is 
 ruefully contemplating some coins which lie in his 
 open palm. He says : " Well, begging is getting 
 played out. Only about 5 marks, $1.25, for the whole 
 day, many an official who makes more." And a pic 
 ture of a commercial traveler who is about to unroll 
 his samples. 
 
 Merchant (pettishly) " No, dont. I don t want 
 to buy anything." 
 
 Drummer " If you please, I was only going to 
 show you 
 
 Merchant " But I don t wish to see them." 
 
 Drummer (after a pause, pleadingly) " But do 
 you mind letting me look at them ? I havn t seen 
 them for three weeks ! ! " 
 
 Brander Matthews considers Mr. Clemens our 
 greatest humorist, also one of the masters of Eng 
 lish prose, one of the foremost story-tellers of the 
 world, with the gift of swift narrative, with the cer 
 tain grasp of human nature, with a rare power of 
 presenting character at a passionate crisis, yet usu 
 ally set down as only a funny man or a newspaper 
 humorist. He has more humor than any one else of 
 his generation. 
 
 Charles H. Webb, known as "John Paul," has 
 written much in the way of newspaper wit, exceed 
 ingly droll and dry, quite unlike his predecessors,
 
 250 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 and is, besides, a writer of pleasant verses and bur 
 lesques on several novels. These were tremen 
 dously funny, seizing on the weak points of each and 
 making them doubly ridiculous. He is a quiet, 
 homely man, with red hair and a stutter as delicious 
 as was Lamb s hesitancy in getting off a joke, his 
 blue eyes often saying more than his tongue. His 
 letters from Saratoga, the South, abroad, are capital 
 and unique. He says, " I did not take after my 
 father, but it was an ecstatic satisfaction to reflect 
 how often that worthy gentleman took after me ! 
 
 " Never shall it be said by me that I put my 
 hand to the plough and turned back ; never shall it 
 be said that I put hand to a plough at all, unless 
 a plough should chase me upstairs into the privacy 
 of my bedroom, and then I should only put hand to 
 it for the purpose of throwing it out of the window. 
 The beauty of the farmer s life was never very clear 
 to me." 
 
 Autograph albums are sufficiently trying when 
 you are urged to record some sweet sentiment and 
 display your bad penmanship on poor paper, but 
 "mental photographs" are an added agony. The 
 truth is tame in answering these conundrums and 
 your struggle to be witty and original is depressing 
 in the extreme. Even Mr. Webb made some stupid 
 efforts, but one or two answers are comical, for 
 instance : 
 
 " What is your favorite object in Nature ? Two 
 Bowers."
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 251 
 
 " Hour in the day? Bedtime." 
 
 " Gem ? Jemima." 
 
 " Style of beauty ? A round figure." 
 
 " What book (not religious) would you part with 
 last? My pocket-book." 
 
 " Where would you live ? In clover." 
 
 " What is your aim in life ? Amiability." 
 
 " What is your motto ? When you must you d 
 better." 
 
 " Max Adeler," Charles H. Clark of the Philadel 
 phia Bulletin, objected to being ranked among the 
 professional humorists, as his life is earnest and full 
 of serious work, but as his humor is among the most 
 rollicking and grotesque that has ever appeared in 
 this country, we cannot afford to leave him out. 
 Both his books, " Out of the Hurry-Burly," and 
 " Elbow Room " are extremely popular, 5,000 copies 
 of the latter selling in London within a month after 
 its appearance. 
 
 He is not a paragraphist, but prefers to throw his 
 droll fun into the form of sustained narrative. 
 
 He dedicates " Elbow Room " to that delicious 
 yet unconscious humorist, " The Intelligent Com 
 positor," who transformed " Filtration is sometimes 
 accomplished with the assistance of albumen," into 
 " Flirtation is sometimes accomplished with the 
 resistance of aldermen " ; made me inquire, " Where 
 are the dead, the varnished dead " ; also for this sen 
 tence, "A comet swept o er the heavens with its
 
 252 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 trailing skirt," substituted, " A count slept in the 
 hay-mow in a traveling shirt." 
 
 Such talent is wonderful and awful. His obituary 
 notices in " Hurly-Burly," in that chapter entitled, 
 "Trouble in the Sanctum," have been quoted all 
 over the land. Imagine the surprise of a bereaved 
 mother on finding this tribute to her darling : 
 
 " O bury Bartholomew out in the woods, 
 
 In a beautiful hole in the ground, 
 Where the bumble-bees buzz and the woodpeckers sing, 
 
 And the straddle-bugs tumble around, 
 So that in winter when the snow and the slush, 
 
 Have covered his last little bed, 
 His brother Artemas can go out with Sam, 
 
 And visit the place, with his sled." 
 
 Or picture the feelings of the estimable family of 
 Mr. McGlue as they read : 
 
 " The death angel smote Alexander McGlue, 
 
 And gave him protracted repose, 
 He wore a checked shirt and a No. 9 shoe, 
 
 And he had a pink wart on his nose. 
 No doubt he is happier dwelling in space, 
 
 Over there on the evergreen shore. 
 His friends are informed that his funeral takes place 
 
 Precisely at quarter past four." 
 
 The brother s indignant protestations as to the 
 absolute freedom of Alexander s face from warts of 
 any sort, particularly the pink variety, must be read 
 to be appreciated. 
 
 There is a wide difference of opinion as to the 
 merits of Eli Perkins (Melville D. Landon). Some 
 pronounce him incomparably funny, others make all
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 253 
 
 manner of fun of him and his writings, others think 
 him a disagreeable Paul Pry at Saratoga, where no 
 one is safe from his pen. 
 
 At any rate he has the art of making money, 
 knows nothing of the sorrow of "broad grins under 
 narrow circumstances," and draws large crowds to 
 his lectures. 
 
 He states that the first composition he ever wrote 
 ran about thus : " A eel is a fish with its tail all the 
 way up to his ears. Never fool with powder. Eli 
 Perkins." 
 
 This, he says, was the only original poetry he 
 ever wrote, and it was composed by another feller. 
 
 His "Saratoga in 1901," published first in Com 
 mercial Advertiser" and is full of facts and gossip 
 and lively description chronicling the anecdotes and 
 bon mots of others in a generous way. He asks 
 them why a table is in the subjunctive mood and 
 answers : " Because it s would (wood) or should be," 
 and affirms that Saratoga reminds him constantly of 
 home, " because its the dearest spot on earth." 
 
 On one of his big posters the other day was seen, 
 after the subject and testimonials from the press, 
 the comfortable assurance that Eli would surely be 
 there at such a date, and underneath his telegram : 
 
 " I shall be on hand. I invariably attend my 
 own lectures." 
 
 Every once in a while a new " funny man " 
 appears. It is not so long ago since people were 
 inquiring " Who s that fellow on the Danbury
 
 254 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 News ? " His descriptions of the absurd complica 
 tions connected with such household afflictions as 
 cleaning house, and putting up stoves, and hanging 
 out clothes in winter time, in a sleety rain, or a 
 man s delirious attempts to sew on a button when 
 his wife s hand is disabled, or to drive a refractory 
 hen into a coop, or a cow out of the garden, are 
 side-splitting ; fine illustrations of the " total de 
 pravity of inanimate objects " and " the perversity of 
 things in general." His special peculiarity is the 
 effective use of the word "that;" "that horse" or 
 " that boy " sounding much more comical than " the 
 boy " or " the horse." His news items are capital in 
 their way, such as "A King St. man s name is so 
 long he can knock down apples with it," or, "A 
 Danbury agriculturist has put a bundle of straw 
 upon his barn because straws show which way the 
 wind blows." 
 
 He is good in such a paragraph as this : 
 
 " We can never tell exactly where we lose our 
 umbrellas. It is singular how gently an umbrella 
 unclasps itself from the tendrils of our mind and 
 floats out into the filmy distance of nothingness." 
 
 Mr. Bailey is, however, at his very best in detail 
 ing a family squabble over some ludicrous trouble, 
 as a bureau drawer that won t be managed. 
 
 "The man who will invent a bureau drawer which 
 will move out and in without a hitch, will not only 
 secure a fortune, but will attain to an eminence in 
 history not second, perhaps, to the greatest warriors.
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 255 
 
 There is nothing, perhaps (always excepting a stove 
 pipe), that will so exasperate a man as a bureau 
 drawer which will not shut. It is a deceptive arti 
 cle. It will start off all right, then it pauses at one 
 end, while the other swings in as far as it can. It is 
 the custom to throw the whole weight of the person 
 against the end which sticks. If any one has suc 
 ceeded in closing a drawer by so doing, he will con 
 fer a favor by sending his address to this office. 
 
 "Mrs. Holcomb was trying to shut a bureau drawer 
 Saturday morning ; but it was an abortive effort. 
 Finally she burst into tears. Then Mr. Holcomb 
 told her to stand aside and see him do it. You see, 
 observed Mr. Holcomb, with quiet dignity, that the 
 drawer is all awry. Now, anybody but a woman 
 would see at once, that to move a drawer standing in 
 that position would be impossible. I now bring this 
 other end even with the other, so, then I take hold of 
 both knobs and with an equal pressure from each 
 hand, the drawer moves easily in. See ? The 
 dreadful thing moved readily forward for a distance 
 of nearly two inches, then it stopped abruptly ! " 
 
 " Ah ! observed Mrs. Holcomb, beginning to 
 look happy again. Mr. Holcomb very properly made 
 no response to this ungenerous expression ; but he 
 gently worked each end of the drawer to and fro, 
 but without success. 
 
 " Then he pulled the drawer all out, adjusted it 
 properly, and started it carefully back ; it moved as 
 if it were on oiled wheels.
 
 256 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 " Mr. Holcomb smiled. 
 
 " Then it stopped. 
 
 " Mr. Holcomb looked solemn. 
 
 " Perhaps you haven t got the ends adjusted, sug 
 gested the happy Mrs. Holcomb. 
 
 " Mr. Holcomb made no reply, were it not for an 
 increased flush in his face it might have been doubted 
 if he heard the remark at all. He pushed harder at 
 the drawer than was apparent to her, but it didn t 
 move. He tried to bring it back again ; but it would 
 not come. 
 
 " What dumb fool put this drawer together, I d 
 like to know ? he snapped out. 
 
 " She made no reply, but she felt that she had not 
 known such happiness since the day she stood before 
 the altar with him, with orange blossoms in her hair. 
 
 " I d like to know what in thunder you ve been 
 doing to this drawer, Jane Holcomb, he jerked out. 
 
 " I haven t done anything to it, she replied. 
 
 " I know better, he asserted. 
 
 " Well, know what you please, for all I care, she 
 sympathizingly retorted. The cords swelled up on 
 his neck and the corners of his mouth grew white. 
 
 " Are you sure you have got everything out of 
 here you want, he finally asked, with a desperate 
 effort to appear composed. 
 
 " O ! that s what you are stopping for, is it ? But 
 you needn t ; I have got what I wanted ; you can 
 shut it right up. 
 
 " He grew redder in the face and set his teeth
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 257 
 
 firmly together, and put all his strength to the obdu 
 rate drawer, while a hard look gleamed in his eye. 
 
 " But it did not move. 
 
 " He pushed harder and groaned. 
 
 " I m afraid you havn t got the ends adjusted, 
 she maliciously suggested. 
 
 " I ll shut that drawer or I ll know the reason of 
 it/ he shouted, and he jumped up and gave it a pas 
 sionate kick. 
 
 " O, my ! she exclaimed. 
 
 " He dropped on his knees again, and grabbed 
 hold of the knobs, and pushed at them with all his 
 might. But it didn t move. 
 
 " Why in heaven s name don t you open the 
 window ? Do you want to smother me, he cried. 
 
 " It was warm, dreadfully warm. The perspira 
 tion stood in great drops on his face or ra"n down into 
 his neck. The birds sang merrily outside the door, 
 and the glad sunshine lay in golden sheets on the 
 earth ; but he didn t notice them. He would have 
 given five dollars if he had not touched the accursed 
 bureau ; he would have given ten if he had never 
 been born. He threw all his weight on both knobs, 
 it moved, then it went to its place with a suddenness 
 that threw him from his balance and brought his 
 burning face against the bureau with force enough 
 to skin his nose and fill his eyes with water to a de 
 gree that was blinding. Then he went out on the 
 back stoop and sat there for an hour scowling at the 
 scenery."
 
 258 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 Mr. Bailey described constitutional irritability in 
 a peculiar manner. His only object was to cause 
 laughter, but the utility of his work was presently 
 seen to be outrunning his intentions. With the ex 
 ception of some fine descriptive writing in his letters 
 from England, he seems to have shown little earnest 
 ness of purpose. But he has admirably ridiculed a 
 serious defect of human nature. Undoubtedly, many 
 a passionate man who has been ready to shriek with 
 rage at some small pin-point of a circumstance, has 
 suddenly caught the ridiculous impression of the 
 affair, and subsided from his high-strung condition 
 into one of laughter. This is absolute gain. Spinoza 
 has demonstrated that in the condition of cheerful 
 ness we are nearer real existence live more than 
 in a condition of pain, which causes a lessening of 
 our existence through reason. 
 
 Mr. Lanigan of the New York World has pub 
 lished there a series of inimitable fables, quite eclips 
 ing ^Esop with his cynical moral, and these unique 
 fables are illustrated by Church, so that the pictures 
 are as good as the text : 
 
 THE KIND-HEARTED SHE-ELETHANT. 
 
 A kind-hearted She- Elephant, while walking through the Jun 
 gle where the Spicy Breezes blow soft o er Ceylon s Isle, heed 
 lessly set foot upon a Partridge, which she crushed to death within 
 a few inches of the Nest containing its Callow Brood. " Poor 
 little things!" said the generous Mammoth, "I have been a 
 Mother myself, and my affection shall atone for the Fatal Conse-
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 259 
 
 quences of my Neglect." So saying, she sat down upon the 
 Orphaned Birds. 
 
 Moral. The above Teaches us What Home is Without a 
 Mother ; also, that it is not every Person who should be intrusted 
 with the Care of an Orphan Asylum. 
 
 THE LION AND THE INSURANCE AGENT. 
 
 An Insurance Agent happening to meet a Lion, asked him if 
 he would insure his Life. " No," responded the Monarch of the 
 Forest with a resounding Roar, " nor yours." Thus saying he 
 tore the unhappy Man to pieces, and fed on his damaged Cheek 
 and other more penetrable Portions. 
 
 Moral. There is such a Thing as being instant out of Season. 
 
 THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE ANT. 
 
 A Frivolous Grasshopper, having spent the Summer in Mirth 
 and Revelry, went on the Approach of the inclement Winter to the 
 Ant, and implored it of its charity to stake him. " You had better 
 go to your Uncle," replied the prudent Ant ; had you imitated my 
 Forethought and deposited your Funds in a Savings Bank you 
 would not now be compelled to regard your Duster in the light of 
 an Ulster." Thus saying, the virtuous Ant retired, and read in 
 the Papers next morning that the Savings Bank where he had 
 deposited his Funds had suspended. 
 
 Moral. DUJII Vivimus, Vtvamus. 
 
 THE Two TURKEYS. 
 
 An Honest Farmer once led his two Turkeys into his Granary 
 and told them to eat, drink, and be merry. One of these Turkeys 
 was wise and one foolish. The foolish Bird at once indulged 
 excessively in the Pleasures of the Stable, unsuspicious of the 
 Future, but the wiser Fowl, in order that he might not be fattened 
 and slaughtered, fasted continually, mortified his Flesh and 
 devoted himself to gloomy Reflections upon the brevity of Life. 
 When Thanksgiving approached, the Honest Farmer killed both
 
 260 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 Turkeys, and by placing a Rock in the interior of the Prudent 
 Turkey made him weigh more than his plumper Brother. 
 
 Moral. As we Travel through Life, Let us Live by the 
 Way. 
 
 Burdette is one of the best of our popular para- 
 graphists. Banter, badinage, burlesque, irony, 
 verse, repartee, narrative, and lecture, from quiet 
 humor to the wildest buffoonery, he is at home in 
 all, a man of daring fun and extreme versatility. 
 
 " The body of a tramp was found beside a hay 
 stack out in Sac County one day last week, nearly 
 devoured by rats. As ^Esop remarked, Mus et 
 rusticus. " 
 
 From the Hawkcye Humorist : 
 
 " Woman is a natural traveler. It is a study to 
 see her start off on a trip by herself. She comes 
 down to the depot in an express wagon three hours 
 before train time. She insists on sitting on her 
 trunk out on the platform, to keep it from being 
 stolen. She picks up her reticule, fan, parasol, 
 lunch-basket, small pot with a house plant in it, 
 shawl, paper bag of candy, bouquet, (she never 
 travels without one), small tumbler and extra veil, 
 and chases hysterically after every switch engine 
 that goes by, under the impression that it is her 
 train. Her voice trembles as she presents herself at 
 the restaurant and tries to buy a ticket, and she 
 knocks with the handle of her parasol on the door of 
 the old disused tool-house, in vain hopes that the 
 baggage-man will come out and check her trunk.
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 261 
 
 She asks everybody in the depot and on the plat 
 form when the train will start, and where it will 
 stand, and, looking straight at the great clock, asks : 
 What time is it now ? She sees with terror the 
 baggage-man shy her trunk into a car where two 
 men are smoking instead of locking it up by itself 
 in a large, strong, brown car, with Bad order shops 
 chalked on the side, which she has long ago de 
 termined to be the baggage car, as the only safe one 
 in sight. Although the first at the depot she is the 
 last to get her ticket, and once on the car she sits to 
 the end of her journey in an agony of apprehension 
 that she has got on the wrong train, and will be 
 landed at some strange station, put in a close car 
 riage, drugged and murdered, and to every last male 
 passenger who walks down the aisle she stands up 
 and presents her ticket which she invariably carries 
 in her hand. She finally recognizes her waiting 
 friends on the platform, leaves the car in a burst of 
 gratitude, and the train is ten miles away before she 
 remembers that her reticule, fan, parasol, lunch- 
 basket, verbena, shawl, candy, tumbler, veil, and 
 bouquet are on the car-seat, where she left them or 
 at the depot in Peoria, for the life of her she can t 
 tell which." 
 
 I have the good fortune to know, as friends, many 
 of the wits of the New York press ; among them, 
 Mr. Alden, who delighted his friends with his " Sixth 
 Column Fancies " and " Shooting Stars " in the Daily 
 Times, Mr. Croffut, author of the " Cumedietta of
 
 262 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 Deseret," the Bourbon ballads, and for several years 
 connected with the Graphic, and known widely by 
 his witty doggerel and " Graphicalities." This dog 
 gerel is, perhaps, too funny, but it is Croffut s and 
 shall go in. 
 
 "WHY IS A ?" 
 
 " Willie, here s a conundrum Why s a " 
 Then, as she stammered and paused to think, 
 
 He cried, " Shoot it off ! Whoop er up, Liza ! 
 Bet y I ll guess it quicker n wink." 
 
 " Wait, Impatience ! Give me a minute " 
 She pleaded, then said : " What crime is a tar 
 
 And stuck once more. " There s a good joke in it ! " 
 She added, while he, " How slow you are ! " 
 
 Again she began, " What crime does a sailor, 
 
 In a soldier s quarters taken sick, 
 Resemble ? Now, then, you noisy railer ! 
 
 Just guess it ! Give us the answer quick 1 " 
 
 He guessed three weeks, and didn t get nigh it ; 
 
 Ate fish to strengthen his phosphoric brain ; 
 Set all his ingenious friends to try it ; 
 
 Then got shampooed, and went at it again. 
 
 At last he gave up, and she told the answer : 
 " A sailor took sick in such a place, Will, 
 
 Is like an attempt to murder a man, sir ! 
 You see he s a salt within tent took ill ! " 
 
 A shriek like the whoop of a Sioux he uttered, 
 Then fell in a swoon. They poulticed his head ; 
 
 In a week they saw that his pulse still fluttered ; 
 In a month they bolstered him up in bed.
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 263 
 
 The doctor sought Eliza to tell her, 
 
 1 Your William is crazy ; observe that grin ; 
 
 His mind still wanders ; you ll kill that feller 
 F you ever conundrum to him agin ! " 
 
 W. A. C. 
 
 Such clippings or sippings of American punch 
 would prove a pleasant beverage in a dull day. 
 Take, for instance, this soliloquy from a little paper 
 in Arkansas : 
 
 " vSome of our exchanges are publishing a curious 
 item to the effect, that a horse in Iowa pulled the 
 plug out of the bunghole of a barrel for the purpose 
 of slaking his thirst. We do not see anything extraor 
 dinary in the occurrence. Now, if the horse had 
 pulled the barrel out of the bunghole and slaked his 
 thirst with the plug, or if the barrel had pulled the 
 bunghole out of the horse and slaked its thirst with 
 the plug, or if the barrel had pulled the bunghole out 
 of the plug and slaked its thirst with the horse, or if 
 the plug had pulled the horse out of the barrel and 
 slaked its thirst with the bunghole, or if the bung- 
 hole had pulled the thirst out of the horse and slaked 
 the plug with the barrel, or if the barrel had pulled 
 the horse out of the bunghole and plugged its thirst 
 with the slake, it might be worth while to make a 
 fuss about it." 
 
 To personate folly a writer must appear foolish. 
 If he represents the ludicrous in life, he must often 
 play the buffoon, which, by the way, is a very diffi 
 cult part, and is generally given a higher place on
 
 264 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 the stage than heavy tragedy. Gravity, owl-like 
 gravity, is often a badge of mediocrity. 
 
 Comic journalism did not thrive at first in the 
 United States. The people were too serious ; life 
 was too earnest to stop to smile over a purely amus 
 ing paper. But Puck, Life, The Judge, and a half 
 dozen other funny sheets now manage to keep a 
 strong hold on the public. Hudson said, sometime 
 ago : " Our people don t want their wit on a separate 
 dish. No one can always be funny. Weekly drafts, 
 like a run on a bank, tend to exhaust them." There 
 are other newspaper wits that should be mentioned, 
 as Halleck and Drake in their famous " Croaker " 
 papers ; Joseph Neal with his " Charcoal sketches " ; 
 Lewis Gaylord Clark of the " Knickerbocker " Maga 
 zine ; and later, Will M. Carleton and Charles Follen 
 Adams, best known by his perfect poem of " Leedle 
 Yacob Strauss " ; but writing comical verses all the 
 time that appeal to the heart, while they raise a 
 smile. 
 
 Wit, humor that is full of absurd exaggerations, 
 and fun of an essentially American type, bubble 
 up spontaneously all over our country as freely as 
 the oil wells of Pennsylvania. Even the religious 
 weeklies have now a funny column, and some of the 
 paragraphs in our best dailies sparkle with wit that 
 deserves a longer life. 
 
 The humor of the newspapers is a natural and 
 wholesome product of our national development. 
 We are a nation of newspaper readers. The daily
 
 Our Early Newspaper Wits 265 
 
 and weekly journals reflect every phase of our busy 
 progressive life, and aim to keep pace with, if not to 
 direct the intellectual growth of the people. A col 
 umn which presents the current wit and humor of 
 the day has become an essential department of every 
 good paper. From the harrowing details of a railroad 
 accident on the first page, and from the scarcely less 
 depressing editorial struggle with the tariff question, 
 we turn with restful relief to the grotesque wit of 
 Bill Nye or the commonsense humor of Bob Burdette. 
 In the string of paragraphs clipped from the 
 funny columns all over the land, there is material 
 for a surer " Elixir of Life " than can ever be educed 
 from pulverized rabbit or solution of French Guinea 
 
 Pig- 
 Let us not forget the pioneers in this good work, 
 rough and coarse, but individual and interesting, 
 they are not surpassed by their successors. 
 
 The special characteristics of American humor 
 can be traced back to the dry maxims and shrewd 
 sense of Benjamin Franklin when the habits of our 
 people were simpler and the scope of the press nar 
 rower. A good joke or story found no means of 
 general circulation, unless through the humble me 
 dium of the traveling clown or negro minstrel. Even 
 in the enterprising newspaper of the present day 
 there appears now and then some weather-beaten 
 pleasantry, which, to the boy of forty years ago, is 
 suggestive of the burnt cork of the minstrel or the 
 cap and bells of the circus clown, now almost crowded
 
 266 Our Early Newspaper Wits 
 
 out of the arena by better things. In the rush and 
 worry of modern life the humorist has found a larger 
 field ; many brilliant names have been added to the 
 roll of newspaper wits, but those first in the field 
 have never been eclipsed.
 
 MADAME DE GENLIS. 
 
 Only France, that land of fascinating women and 
 phenomenal individualities, could have produced a 
 Madame de Genlis. Brilliant, yet tedious ; sensible, 
 absurd ; amiable, resentful ; eccentric, conventional ; 
 the author of nearly one hundred volumes sober 
 works on education, and worldly novels of very 
 questionable influence, poems and history, biography 
 and botany, natural history and etiquette, religion 
 and malicious scandal ; alternating between court 
 and convent for nearly a century ; adored and hated ; 
 praised and vindicated; regarded as a saint and 
 sinner ; a shameless intriguante and a French 
 Hannah More ! Was she not a captivating bundle 
 of opposite qualities ? I cannot claim genius for 
 my heroine, nor a large amount of the piety and 
 prudery she professed ; but as the Governor of 
 Princes (for Governor she would be called) while a 
 most successful writer for children, when stories for 
 children were almost unknown ; as a popular novel 
 ist ; as an extraordinary and entertaining person, 
 whose life affords both amusement and instruction 
 she is a marked character, a power in her day, a 
 type of the ancient nobility of France ; as regards
 
 268 Madame De Genlis 
 
 her social life, of a vanity that was at once sublime 
 and ridiculous. 
 
 She was born on the 25th of January, 1/46, on a 
 little estate in Burgundy, such a puny infant that it 
 was not thought worth while to dress her ; so she 
 was sewed up in a down pillow, and the atom was 
 laid in an armchair, to struggle with life or die. 
 In a few moments the corpulent mayor, almost blind, 
 came to pay his visit of congratulation, and separat 
 ing the huge flaps of his overcoat, was just about to 
 sit down in that very chair when the nurse screamed 
 and pulled him away. And in her Memoirs she 
 remarks, with her usual conceit : " It was not the 
 good nurse who saved me ; no, it was God himself, 
 acting by her instrumentality. He had given me a 
 mission upon earth, which he decreed should be 
 fulfilled." 
 
 She had the usual joys, sorrows, and hair-breadth 
 scapes of childhood was nearly drowned at eight 
 een months soon after tumbled into the kitchen 
 fire had a dangerous fall at five but bore a 
 charmed life. 
 
 Her father had purchased a large estate, beauti 
 fully situated. Its chateau resembled those de 
 scribed by Mrs. Radcliffe ; ancient and tumble 
 down, with old towers and immense courtyards, on 
 the opposite side of the Loire, near the famous 
 Abbey of Sept-Font s, where perpetual silence 
 reigned ; and her father, when the children were 
 too noisy in their evening games, would propose
 
 Madame De Genlis 269 
 
 they should play here the holy fathers of Sept-Font, 
 which changed the riotous frolic into peaceful 
 pantomime. 
 
 When the little girl was six years old her mother 
 took her to Paris to visit an aunt, and she describes 
 graphically the horrors to which she was subjected, 
 in order to be made stylish and graceful. She had 
 two teeth pulled out, was squeezed into stiff corsets, 
 which pinched her terribly, her feet were imprisoned 
 in tight shoes, so that she could not take a step 
 without pain, three or four thousand curl papers 
 (this is her estimate) were used to twist her hair, and 
 she wore, for the first time, a hoop. Then, in order 
 to get rid of her country attitudes, she had an iron 
 collar put round her neck ; and as the unfortunate 
 little tot squinted slightly, she was obliged to wear 
 goggles four hours each day, and was, besides, for 
 bidden to run, jump, or ask questions ! Paris was 
 anything but a paradise to her then ; but soon came 
 the great ceremony of her public baptism, after 
 which (loaded with candies and playthings) she was 
 taken to the opera, and life looked bright again. 
 She was, she tells us, " a child of remarkable sweet 
 ness of disposition." 
 
 The next great event was her being received as 
 a Canoness of the noble chapter of St. Alix, as an 
 honorary novitiate ; the Grand Prior having dis 
 cerned the " aureole of moral grandeur upon her 
 youthful brow." This dignity confers the title of 
 Countess. Madame la Comtesse de Lancy was con-
 
 270 Madame De Genlis 
 
 ducted in pomp to the church, a consecrated ring 
 placed on her finger, and she was decorated with the 
 signs of the order. 
 
 Her education was almost totally neglected, for 
 her governess had, as she expresses it, " nothing of 
 profane knowledge " ; so history and other serious 
 studies were soon abandoned, and she was never 
 taught to write at all. Her mother was busy with 
 society and her own interests, and never saw her 
 except at meals. Her father, a handsome man, fond 
 of music and philosophy and hunting, seemed only 
 anxious to conquer her womanish antipathies to 
 mice and toads and spiders, he insisted on her tam 
 ing a mouse, and frequently obliged her to catch 
 spiders with her fingers and hold toads in her hands, 
 but never succeeded in removing the aversion. 
 
 At eight Felicite dictated romances and comedies 
 to Mademoiselle de Mars, when she did not know 
 how to form a single letter ; and she remarks : 
 " Even in the reveries of my infancy there was a 
 foundation of love, of glory, and of virtue, which in 
 a child must be thought remarkable." Her brother, 
 she says, was far from being so brilliant and remark 
 able a child as she was ! 
 
 A fondness for music and for teaching was 
 inborn. She used to get out of her window by a 
 rope, and, sliding down to the terrace, gather the 
 boys of the village about her to teach them the little 
 she knew poetry she had committed to memory, 
 and bits from the Catechism. In after years she was
 
 Madame De Genlis 271 
 
 ambitious to officiate as schoolma am in general to all 
 France, and felt abundantly able to fill the position. 
 
 In 1755 her father, of whom we hear little, went 
 to Paris and remained eighteen months. Her mother 
 resolved to prepare a. fete to celebrate his return, and 
 composed a comedietta in the pastoral style, in 
 which the pretty daughter took the part of Love. 
 Tragedies were also performed, and we imagine the 
 fashionable wife was more anxious to enliven the 
 dull monotony of the country than to honor her hus 
 band, whose long absence was endured with great 
 composure. As Iphigenia, Felicite was gorgeously 
 arrayed in cherry silk and silver, trimmed with 
 sables ; but her costume as Cupid was so becoming 
 that she ^ wore it regularly. The wings were sup 
 pressed on Sundays, and she adopted a red riding- 
 hood cloak ; but during the week she rambled and 
 danced over the fields with a short rose-colored dress 
 trimmed with lace and artificial flowers, blue wings, 
 long hair floating, quiver on shoulder, and bow in 
 hand ; and this chronic masquerade was indulged in 
 for nearly a year. This alone was enough to tinge 
 her whole life with romance. Her talent for acting 
 was always remarkable. 
 
 Her next attire was a regular boy s dress, and she 
 took daily lessons in fencing, as in dancing. She 
 praises her own agility, grace, and musical skill at 
 this age, and also declares that she could read char 
 acter from the face with unerring instinct. She 
 delighted in building air-castles, figuring for herself
 
 272 Madame De Genlis 
 
 an extraordinary and brilliant destiny, with persecu 
 tions and reverses of fortune no stranger than those 
 which actually occurred. 
 
 Lovers came while she was in short dresses, and 
 kept coming in crowds till she was quite an old lady 
 she, of course, always surprised, always cool and 
 cruel, with often fatal effect. " I was but eleven 
 years old," she writes, " and small of my age, when 
 I inspired the first passion at least, the first avowed 
 passion quite unconsciously. I even felt shocked, 
 grieved, when the son of one Pinat, an apothecary, 
 proclaimed a devotion which he could no longer con 
 ceal, in verses glowing with a Sappho s fire. If 
 there was no other proof of the distraction of mind, 
 the delirium of love, with which Louis Pinat was 
 afflicted, it would be manifest in the fact that he had 
 overlooked the impassable gulf which must ever 
 separate noblemen and apothecaries." She advised 
 him to leave that part of the country before the 
 mischief already done was irremediable. He yielded 
 and departed for Paris. Another, conscious of the 
 hopeless disparity in years, sought safety in flight. 
 and ultimately succeeded in banishing her image 
 from his memory. A young and promising lawyer 
 was the next victim ; refused, he at first contem 
 plated suicide, but changed his mind, and emigrated 
 to St. Domingo. Poor Baron de Zeolachen, Colonel 
 of Swiss Guards and eighty years of age, fell hope 
 lessly in love with the irresistible maiden ; she was
 
 Madame De Genlis 273 
 
 inexorable as ever, and " his days " (records his 
 destroyer) " were shortened." 
 
 The next winter was spent in Paris, and she re 
 members listening to Marmontel as he read his tale 
 of " The Self-styled Philosopher " to her aunt, little 
 thinking that the quiet girl in the corner would one 
 day be one of his severest critics and rouse his bitter 
 enmity. She now began to compose verses very 
 creditable for a child. One gentleman thought them 
 wonderful, copied several to show to his friends, and 
 presented the poetess with a copy of Rousseau s Odes 
 and Sacred Poems (a French lyric poet, not to be 
 confounded with Jean Jacques). One of the little 
 red morocco volumes was always in her pocket ; she 
 committed all to memory, and recited them with 
 great expression. The giver urged her to read con 
 stantly, but this was impossible, as her aunt was a 
 woman of the world and had few books ; but she suc 
 ceeded in procuring the libretto of a Gascon opera, 
 and had fallen asleep while reading in bed ; the can 
 dle set fire to the curtains, and her mother, stealing 
 in with a pleasant surprise an elegant bracelet, 
 with her miniature set in opals and emeralds, which 
 she intended to put on her arm found the chamber 
 full of suffocating smoke, and in ten minutes later 
 the unconscious prodigy would have been lost to the 
 world. 
 
 Her father, after some despairing struggles 
 against adverse fate, sold his marquisate and chateau 
 to meet the demands of creditors, and went to St.
 
 274 Madame De Genlis 
 
 Domingo, hoping to reestablish his fortune by a 
 speculation in sugar. Failing in this, he was taken 
 prisoner by an English ship when returning to 
 France, and carried to Launceton, where he formed 
 an intimacy with a fellow-prisoner Comte de 
 Genlis, a younger son of a noble French family, who 
 had served in the navy in the East Indies. Being 
 powerfully connected at the French Court, the Count 
 was soon exchanged ; and returning to Paris, pro 
 cured the liberation of M. Ducrest, who lived but a 
 short time afterward. 
 
 Felicite and her mother had been visitors at the 
 country house of a rich old gentleman, eccentric and 
 benevolent, who was, to quote from Madame s mem 
 oirs, " enchanted with the little talents I possessed, 
 and said often with a profound sigh in looking at me, 
 What a pity that she is but thirteen ! She played 
 wonderfully on harp and guitar, and sang and danced 
 like a professional. It is said that Mademoiselle 
 Ducrest supported herself at this time by giving les 
 sons on the harp, which was eminently creditable. 
 In the French Biographic Universelle, which devotes 
 many pages to her career, it is said that she danced 
 and played at the houses of her friends, with a charge 
 for admission : she does not mention either fact her 
 self. Lovers again pleaded their suits. One old fel 
 low wooed her with a huge packet sent by his valet, 
 containing his genealogy at full length. She liked 
 best a rich and handsome widower of twenty-six, but 
 was determined to marry no one but a man of quality
 
 Madame De Genlis 275 
 
 and belonging to the Court. She says frankly, that 
 she had received so much praise that vanity had be 
 come her ruling motive. She does say : " In spite of 
 all the praises with which I was loaded, I was ill at 
 ease in these brilliant parties, and I discovered two 
 things: first, that one ought not to enter into the 
 great world, but when one can be on a footing with 
 others as to dress ; and secondly, that if it had not 
 been for my talents these persons would have had no 
 wish to invite me." 
 
 But the coming man with all the requisite qualifi 
 cations is almost here. Her father, who carried 
 everywhere with him a box, on which was the por 
 trait of his daughter playing the harp, had shown her 
 picture to the brave young soldier, already decorated 
 with the cross of St. Louis. To him he read her 
 bright letters, and those of her mother, full of praise 
 for her many accomplishments, and glowing accounts 
 of social success. Genlis was about to be married to 
 a lady possessed of 40,000 francs a year. But he was 
 genuinely in love. The mother and daughter had 
 retired to a convent after the father s death, and 
 thither the Count followed them, and was soon mar 
 ried secretly and at midnight. It was a union with 
 love on one side, pure ambition on the other. His 
 rich relatives were angry and disgusted, and refused 
 to see either for some years. 
 
 When he was ordered to join his regiment, the 
 bride, only fifteen, was placed in a convent, where 
 her vivacity and irrepressible love of excitement
 
 276 Madame De Genlis 
 
 were constantly bubbling over in wild pranks with 
 the staid old nuns ; running about the corridors at 
 night in strange disguises, sometimes attired as the 
 devil himself, with horns on her merry head, and her 
 pretty face blackened. Or she would steal into the 
 cells of deaf old sisters, and paint their withered 
 cheeks with rouge, or patch them for mutual surprise, 
 when they rose for matins, and many a dance was 
 given in her apartments, music being provided by an 
 aged fiddler. Her mornings were devoted to music 
 and reading, and long letters to her mother and her 
 husband. Little plays were composed in honor of a 
 visit from her mother, from which she continued to 
 get a great deal of fun, allotting the different charac 
 ters in a most inappropriate and ridiculous way, and 
 persuading the duped performers that they were 
 irresistible. Indeed, one old creature who acted as 
 her maid, gray-haired, with bad complexion, and 
 minus twp front teeth, was induced to appear as a 
 shepherdess, with a short white petticoat bordered 
 with bright ribbon, and wearing on one side of her 
 head a jaunty little straw hat decked with flowers. 
 Extolled extravagantly for her acting and graces, 
 she received it all with amazing credulity, and when 
 the naughty instigator of all this mischief proposed 
 that this becoming and appropriate costume be worn 
 constantly, the humbugged fright consented, and 
 paraded about with a crook, to the delight of all ob 
 servers. 
 
 The school-girlish Madame was so happy at the
 
 Madame De Genlis 277 
 
 convent, that when her husband came to take her to 
 their home at Genlis, she pleaded for one month 
 more. " and was much surprised at receiving a dry 
 and decided refusal " - which is a very Frenchy 
 picture. 
 
 Her practical jokes in her own house were ex 
 quisitely ludicrous in conception and admirably car 
 ried out, and her vagaries of conduct must have 
 caused much astonishment to her more commonplace 
 neighbors. With her sister-in-law, both dressed as 
 peasant women, she went about buying milk, and 
 they then indulged in the luxury of a bath in milk, 
 the surface strewn with rose leaves. She once lost 
 her way on purpose while on a wild boar hunt, just 
 for an adventure, hoping to find a mysterious castle, 
 with inmates full of wit and courtesy eager to detain 
 her as their guest. After galloping for three hours, 
 very hungry, and no castle in view, she found that, 
 like Goldsmith s matron in "She Stoops to Conquer," 
 she was nearer home than she supposed. She had 
 given her husband a great fright and received a se 
 vere scolding. When laughed at as a fine lady at a 
 picnic on account of her embroidered white slippers, 
 she swallowed a live fish to prove that she was not 
 dainty. 
 
 But now she began to study in earnest. Educa 
 tion she had none ; as for history, she was so igno 
 rant she did not know where to begin, and never had 
 heard of geometry ; she at first had no guide in her 
 reading. But she was determined to lose no oppor-
 
 278 Madame De Genlis 
 
 tunity of learning ; it was her plan throughout life 
 to ask explanations of what she did not understand ; 
 and she kept a commonplace book by her and wrote 
 in it each day. These three habits would make any 
 young lady well-informed. 
 
 She gained some idea of field labor and of garden 
 ing, went to see cider made, visited the houses of the 
 village tradesmen where they were at work the 
 carpenter, weaver, basket-maker, etc. and con 
 stantly practised medicine at Genlis in partnership 
 with the village barber a wise physician confin 
 ing her prescriptions to simple drinks and nourish 
 ing broths, moderating the barber s rage for emetics, 
 and bled the peasants, giving thirty sons after each 
 bleeding. As was natural, she soon had a great num 
 ber of patients, all anxious to be bled. Phlebotomy 
 was the rage until the Count complained of the ex 
 pense of this treatment. With all this she learned 
 the game of billiards, and painted flowers and prac 
 ticed on some musical instrument every day. She 
 played well on half a dozen was a performer on 
 the bag-pipe, besides harp, guitar, violin, harpischord, 
 and organ. 
 
 She had real genius for entertaining her friends, 
 and on one occasion planned a quadrille called the 
 Proverbs, in which each couple formed a proverb by 
 their costume, while the figures also represented a 
 proverb, " Run backwards before you leap." She 
 composed the air herself. Unfortunately for the 
 success of this novel diversion, some envious gen-
 
 Madame De Genlis 279 
 
 tlemen who were not invited to join the dance sent 
 a Savoyard dressed as a cat into their midst, creating 
 a great excitement. His proverb was, " Beware of 
 waking a sleeping cat." 
 
 With the birth of her daughter Caroline, the 
 young mother became more serious, and her first 
 real work was, " Reflections of a Mother Twenty 
 Years of Age." This manuscript was lost, but many 
 of its thoughts were transferred to her book, " Adele 
 and Theodore," which was translated into English 
 by Misses Edgeworth and Holcroft. Soon after her 
 twentieth birthday, she was presented at court by 
 the stately uncle and aunt of her husband, now com 
 pletely reconciled. 
 
 Her eight volumes of autobiography, written 
 after she was eighty, although absurd from her con 
 stant habit of self-adulation, are full of interesting 
 sketches of distinguished men and women, and 
 illustrate the history and social life of a century 
 agone. In these recollections she confesses every 
 one s faults but her own. The second volume 
 opens with a ludicrous mistake of hers in regard to 
 Rousseau. Prenele, a famous comic actor of that day, 
 who could imitate Rousseau to the life, confides to 
 Count de Genlis his intention of calling on Madame 
 as the eccentric philosopher. The little lady was 
 told of the coming joke, when, strange to say, both 
 gentlemen forgot all about it ; and when she heard 
 that Rousseau was anxious to make her acquaint 
 ance, and hear her play on the harp, she was in
 
 280 Madame De Genlis 
 
 great glee, received the actor with a merry laugh, 
 sang several of Rousseau s songs with careless ease, 
 and urged him to come next day to dine. It was 
 not till his departure that the misunderstanding was 
 explained. Then her husband had his turn of 
 laughing immoderately ; and it was decided that the 
 great man should never know her mistake. 
 
 In speaking of his works, he said : " I am not a 
 Catholic, but no one has spoken of the gospel with 
 more conviction and feeling." He talked admirably 
 of music, and was a real connoisseur, yet his own 
 compositions were not good. His sole means of 
 subsistence was copying music, which he did with 
 singular skill. He must have been extremely un 
 reasonable and immensely conceited. One evening 
 when Madame de Genlis had the loan of a grated 
 box, with private staircase, at the opera, she per 
 suaded Rousseau to go with them. He said that he 
 carefully avoided showing himself in public, but 
 consented. On entering the box he would not allow 
 the grate to be put down, saying he was sure 
 Madame would not like it. She was too prettily 
 dressed to remain hidden, and as she insisted, he 
 actually held it up, saying he would conceal himself 
 behind her. In a moment he put his head forward, 
 on purpose to be seen, and again and again, till sev 
 eral persons called out, " There is Rousseau ! " and 
 the cry passed through the house, but no applause. 
 He left as soon as the curtain fell, in a furious and 
 implacable state, really enraged to think he had not
 
 Madame De Genlis 281 
 
 produced a sensation ; but asserting that he would 
 never see Madame again, as she had taken him there 
 to be shown off, as wild beasts are exhibited at a fair. 
 And she really never met him again. The Mar 
 chioness of Pompadour having succeeded in putting 
 Voltaire and others at her feet, tried, as she said, to 
 tame Rosseau ; but a letter she received from him 
 disgusted her from making any more advances. 
 " He is an owl," said she one day to Madame de 
 Mirepoix. " Yes," said the Marechale, " but he is 
 Minerva s." 
 
 At twenty-four Madame de Genlis was made a 
 lady of honor in the household of the Due de 
 Chartres, afterwards Duke of Orleans, known during 
 the Revolution as Egalite, a profligate patron and 
 dangerous mischief-maker. The society of the 
 Palais Royal was of course the best in Paris, and 
 Madame de Genlis was a great favorite with all the 
 gentlemen, and with the ladies who were not 
 envious. But she kept up her studies with marvel 
 ous enthusiasm, always making extracts as she read. 
 She persuaded the Duchess of Chartres to learn 
 geography, and even taught her to spell, afterwards 
 giving her lessons in history and mythology. She 
 had also her secretary writing her notes and letters. 
 Still, she kept up her own embroidery, painting, and 
 music. She kept up her practice on the harp and 
 instruments, and collected a fine cabinet of shells, 
 minerals, and stones, which was afterwards confis 
 cated and sold for the benefit of the nation ; and she
 
 282 Madame De Genlis 
 
 continued to write comedies. Was there ever such 
 a versatile and busy woman ? 
 
 When Gliick went to Paris to have his operas 
 performed, he completely bewitched Madame de 
 Genlis, who was such an enthusiastic musician. 
 She went to all the rehearsals, and every evening to 
 the opera, and had Gliick and other famous per 
 formers come to her soirc cs twice a week. She sang 
 for them, and played his overtures on the harp ; but 
 at last felt that " music, Gliick, and the opera had 
 acquired too great a power over her." So she made 
 a resolution never again to go to opera or theater, 
 and she kept her vow faithfully, great as was the 
 sacrifice. She makes this frank comment: "I sin 
 cerely wish now that religion had been my motive 
 in this, but it was only the taste for study and the 
 pride of being distinguished." 
 
 She now took up the study of the English lan 
 guage, and avers that she could read the poets easily 
 in five months. Determined never to lose any time, 
 she would read in the coach while traveling, and 
 carried one of her little books of extracts in her 
 pocket to read in odd moments. In traveling, she 
 would lead into conversation anyone she met who 
 could teach her anything, and then write down what 
 she had collected. Having heard that one gentle 
 man had written in a few years four quarto volumes 
 by employing the ten or fifteen minutes before his 
 wife came to dinner, she copied one thousand verses 
 from various authors while waiting for the Duchesse
 
 Madame De Genlis 283 
 
 de Chartres, who was always a quarter of an hour 
 late. It was a curious and valuable collection, be 
 ginning with the oldest poetry known in France. 
 She went often to the Jardin des Plantes and the 
 Cabinet of Natural History, and met there Buffon, 
 who became an intimate friend. 
 
 In 1774, Louis XV died, and the unfortunate 
 Louis XVI was king. The next year Madame de 
 Genlis spent in traveling. While at Geneva she 
 visited Voltaire ; she had from a child disliked him 
 for his infidel sentiments, but still desired his ad 
 miration. " It was the custom for ladies to become 
 agitated, grow pale, and even to faint on seeing 
 Voltaire ; they threw themselves into his arms, 
 stammered and wept and adored." 
 
 This was the etiquette of a presentation at Ferney, 
 so that ordinary courtesy seemed almost a slight. 
 But Voltaire, perceiving her perplexity, kissed her 
 little hand, and the agony was over. She writes : 
 " During the whole time of dinner Voltaire was far 
 from agreeable. He seemed always in a passion 
 with his servants, crying out to them with such 
 strength of lungs that I often started involuntarily." 
 But it was the result of habit, and the servants did 
 not mind it in the least. He gave her a drive 
 through the village to see the houses he had built 
 and the benevolent establishments founded by him. 
 Such gross flattery as he had received had spoiled 
 him. He regarded himself as an oracle, and could 
 not brook contradiction or criticism. Imagine, then,
 
 284 Madame De Genlis 
 
 his feelings when reduced to absolute subjection by 
 a page whom he had vexed. " When Frederick the 
 Great made short excursions he often asked Voltaire 
 to accompany him. On one of these trips Voltaire 
 was alone in a post-chaise following the royal car 
 riage. A young page whom Voltaire had severely 
 scolded, as he thought unjustly, resolved to be 
 revenged ; accordingly, when he was sent in advance 
 to have horses ready, he told all the post-masters 
 and postilions that the king had an old monkey, of 
 which he was so very fond that he delighted in 
 dressing him up like a person belonging to the 
 court, and that he always took this animal with him ; 
 that the monkey cared for no one but the king, and 
 was extremely mischievous ; and that, therefore, if 
 he attempted to get out of the chaise, they must pre 
 vent him. After receiving this notice all the ser 
 vants of the different post-houses, whenever Voltaire 
 attempted to leave his carriage, opposed his exit, 
 and when he thrust out his hand to open the door, 
 he always received two or three sharp blows with a 
 stick upon his ringers, followed by shouts of laughter. 
 Voltaire, who did not understand a word of German, 
 could not demand an explanation of these singular 
 proceedings ; his fury became extreme, but it only 
 served to redouble the gayety of the post-masters, 
 and a large crowd constantly assembled, in conse 
 quence of the page s report, to see the king s 
 monkey and to hoot at him. What completed the 
 anger of Voltaire was that the king thought the
 
 Madame De Genlis 285 
 
 trick so good that he refused to punish the inventor ; 
 so the vengeance of the young page was complete." 
 
 Madame de Genlis s first book was a collection of 
 her plays and poems, published entirely for the ben 
 efit of a noble man, who was most unjustly impris 
 oned for life if he did not pay a much larger sum 
 than he or his friends could raise. One gentleman, 
 unknown to her, but touched by the generous effort, 
 paid three thousand francs for one copy ; the others 
 sold so well that in six days all were gone, with a 
 clear profit of forty-six thousand francs. The injured 
 party accepted the sum, the prisoner was set free. 
 This work was translated into all the modern lan 
 guages, and the Empress of Russia had a version 
 made with Russian text opposite the French. 
 
 And now comes a very marked change. The 
 Due and Duchesse de Chartres proposed that 
 Madame de Genlis take the entire charge of the 
 instruction of their children. With her mania for 
 teaching, and the honor of being offered a position 
 which the wisest men of the realm desired and cov 
 eted which Fenelon had filled in another reign 
 she could not refuse the offer. M. de Genlis, who 
 had not accompanied her to Paris, being informed 
 of the Duke s proposition, demurred, and requested 
 his wife to join him in the country. She refused to 
 do so, and they never saw each other again. It is 
 necessary just here to allude to the shadow on 
 Madame s character in her supposed intimacy with 
 the Duke. Her affected unconsciousness of any
 
 286 Madame De Genlis 
 
 scandal and her display of prudery is in strange con 
 trast to the convictions of the public. The Queen, 
 prejudiced by the complaints of the wife, excluded 
 her from the opportunities of display at court which 
 she would have gloried in, and she never could 
 obtain either a private or public audience. After 
 accepting the position she at once left the Palais 
 Royal, and retired to a pavilion built on her own 
 plan at the Convent Belle Chasse. She was then 
 thirty-one. She gave up dancing and rouge, then 
 universally worn. With her usual frankness (on all 
 subjects but one) she says: "It is singular that 
 though I had always possessed religious sentiments, 
 all the sacrifices of a devotee which I have made have 
 have not been inspired by religion ; and this is a 
 reflection which afflicts me." She gave up rouge, 
 because she had said it would be no sacrifice to her, 
 and no one seemed to believe her ; so she made a 
 bet with the Duke that she would renounce rouge 
 on the 25th of January, 1776, and kept her word. 
 
 Now began her earnest life-work with the four 
 children of the Duke, a daughter and three boys, the 
 eldest being Louis Philippe, afterward King of 
 France. Like Madame de Maintenon, she was 
 extremely practical a model housewife and with 
 an eye to every detail, settling the accounts daily, 
 while everything was rendered useful as a means of 
 education. The tapestry of the princess s room was 
 painted in oil, and on a blue ground were repre 
 sented busts of the seven kings of Rome, and the
 
 Madame De Genlis 287 
 
 emperors and empresses down to Constantine the 
 Great. Over the doors were historical scenes. The 
 staircases were covered with maps, which could be 
 taken down for lessons. Even the fire-screens, 
 hand-screens, and tops of the doors had lessons en 
 graved on them ; while in letters of gold, over the 
 grate which shut them out from the world, were 
 these words of Addison, taken from the Spectator : 
 " True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy 
 to pomp and noise." Her own daughters, two 
 beautiful girls, were educated with the Prince s 
 family. 
 
 During the first eighteen months in this sheltered 
 retreat she published several volumes of her Theater 
 of Education, all highly praised by the press and 
 critics of that time. Madame d Epinay was espe 
 cially delighted, and urged a visit. Here she met 
 Saint Lambert and Madame du Deffand. 
 
 She was now thoroughly in her element, and led, 
 as she says, a delicious life. She was the first gov 
 erness or tutor of princes in France who taught the 
 languages by means of conversation. There was an 
 English and Italian maid, and the little princesses 
 had an English child for a playmate ; one of the 
 valets was a well-educated German, another Italian, 
 and the princes were given a good teacher of Eng 
 lish. They now removed to St. Leu, a charming 
 residence, with a fine park. A small garden was laid 
 out for each of her pupils, and they dug in the dirt 
 like ordinary children, and planted flowers and veg-
 
 288 Madame De Genlis 
 
 etables. A botanist and chemist were attached to 
 the house, also a teacher of drawing. A theater was 
 built, where the children played pantomimes and her 
 own pieces. She says : " In the winter at Paris I had 
 a turning machine put into my ante-chamber, and in 
 recreation hours all the children, as well as myself, 
 learned to turn. I thus acquired, with them, all the 
 trades in which strength is not required ; making, 
 for instance, pocket-books and morocco portfolios, 
 which looked as well as those of English manufac 
 ture." They also made baskets, tapes, ribbons, gauze, 
 pasteboard, and plans in relief, artificial flowers, grat 
 ings for libraries in brass wire, marbled paper, gilt 
 frames, all sorts of work in hair, and even tried their 
 hands at wigs, and the boys learnt cabinet-making. 
 The Duke of Valois, with the aid of his brother, 
 made a large press and a table with drawers for a 
 poor peasant woman of St. Leu. This was their 
 amusement. " Beside their palace of the five orders 
 of architecture, which they could build and take down 
 at pleasure, I made them make various tools and uten 
 sils, the interior of a laboratory, with retorts, crucibles, 
 and alembics, and the interior of a cabinet of natural 
 history. These were afterwards displayed in the 
 gallery of the Palais Royal, and have since been 
 placed in the Louvre. I was very proud to see the 
 public admire the playthings I had invented for my 
 pupils." The princes were taught to swim and row, 
 and the Duke of Orleans bought an estate by the sea, 
 where six months were passed studying shells, fishes,
 
 Madame De Genlis 289 
 
 and sea-plants, and learning in a practical way about 
 ships. During one winter they were taken to a hos 
 pital, to dress the wounds of the poor. 
 
 Then her husband inherited a large estate, 100,- 
 ooo francs a year. He urged his wife to leave her 
 pupils and return to him ; but ambition, and sincere 
 attachment to the children, and self-love carried the 
 day, and she refused, which was afterwards a deep 
 grief to her. In her words : " In spite of the argu 
 ments of M. de Genlis, I persisted in a resolution 
 which has cost me dear. If I had fulfilled my real 
 duty, which was to rejoin him, especially when he 
 desired and entreated it so earnestly, I might easily 
 have induced him to leave France ; we should have 
 lived comfortably in a foreign land, and he would 
 not have perished on a scaffold ! This terrible reflec 
 tion causes me eternal remorse ; since his death it 
 never leaves me." 
 
 The assembly of the French Academy in 1783 
 gave the " Prize of Utility " to Madame d Epinay s 
 " Conversations of Emilia " in preference to Madame 
 de Genlis s " Adele and Theodore," a manual of edu 
 cation a matter of intense surprise to the latter; 
 but she consoled herself by attributing the decision 
 to her having spoken too favorably of religion and 
 too lightly of philosophy. " But how," says Grimm, 
 " could the vengeance of philosophy wound the high 
 piety of our illustrious governess ? Can she who re 
 nounces the toilet, rouge, and all the pleasures, all 
 the vanities of life, still regret its frivolous and pro-
 
 290 Madame De Genlis 
 
 fane laurels ? " The Duchess of Grammont said with 
 her usual frankness that she was overjoyed at the 
 success of Madame d Epinay, because she hoped that 
 Madame de Genlis would die with envy, which would 
 be an excellent thing ; or that she would revenge 
 herself by a good satire, which would be good again ; 
 and lastly, because she wished all the world to per 
 ceive, what she had for some time suspected, the 
 Academy to be falling into dotage. 
 
 At Belle Chasse an intimacy was formed with 
 Madame Necker. She made the first visit, bringing 
 her daughter, then sixteen. Madame de Genlis never 
 liked Madame de Stael. This is her first criticism : 
 " This young lady was not pretty, but she was very 
 animated, and though she spoke a deal too much, she 
 spoke cleverly." Madame Necker had educated her 
 on a poor plan, permitting her to pass much of her 
 time in her salon, among the crowd of beaux e sprits 
 who were constantly to be found there, while the 
 young miss discussed with them on love and the 
 passions. The solitude of her chamber and a few 
 good books would have been more to her advantage. 
 She learned to talk fast and much, without any re 
 flection, and has written in the same manner. She 
 had read little, and all her knowledge was superficial. 
 She had collected in her works not the result of 
 sound reading, but an infinite number of recollec 
 tions and incoherent conversations. Madame Necker 
 was a virtuous, calm, reserved person, without any 
 fancy. She was studied in all she did, and arranged
 
 Madame De Genlis 291 
 
 beforehand a part for all situations. The Chevalier 
 de Chastellux picked up a little book while waiting 
 for Madame Necker to appear as he was too early 
 for dinner and found a careful preparation of her 
 subjects for conversation during the dinner. His 
 own name caught his eye, and he read : " I must talk 
 to the Chevalier de Chastellux about Public Happi 
 ness and Agatha" two of his works. All were to 
 be complimented in some skillful way. The dinner 
 was peculiarly enjoyable to the amused chevalier, as 
 he saw that Madame repeated word for word the re 
 marks in her book. Madame de Genlis, throughout 
 her memoirs, gives the idea that Madame de Stael 
 was a failure, but that if she had been allowed to edu 
 cate her, it would have been vastly different, saying : 
 " I have often regretted sincerely that she had not 
 been my daughter or my pupil. I should then have 
 given her good literary principles, just ideas, and 
 unaffected manners. With such an education, joined 
 to her own talents and generous mind, she would 
 have been an accomplished person, and the first 
 female author of our day." 
 
 A short time before the Revolution, in 1785, she 
 visited England, and was received, by her own ac 
 count, with unusual honor, which she writes of as 
 frankly as of her failings. She says : " No woman is 
 allowed to enter the House of Commons, but that 
 assembly, by a special order, invited me to be pres 
 ent at one of the debates. I was not allowed to intro 
 duce any other woman." This was one of Sheridan s
 
 292 Madame De Genlis 
 
 practical jokes. " Tragedy was not played in the 
 summer, yet, in honor to me, Hamlet was performed 
 at one of the theaters. An account of all these things 
 was inserted in the English newspapers, with the 
 most complimentary notices of myself. There ap 
 peared also in the journals an infinite number of 
 verses in my honor. I received many marks of inter 
 est and esteem from the most distinguished persons 
 in England ; among others, Fox, Sheridan, the Duch 
 ess of Devonshire, Mr. Burke, and Miss Burney. The 
 Prince of Wales invited me to an entertainment, and 
 the Queen invited me to Windsor. This was a great 
 distinction, for she never received foreigners there. 
 Lord Mansfield, the celebrated English judge, re 
 quested permission to visit me. Mr. Horace Walpole 
 invited me to breakfast in his Gothic priory." 
 
 " I read a great many English works, and was 
 struck with the absurd contempt which the writers 
 of this country affect for other nations. With what 
 injustice have they criticised our literature, at the 
 same time they were stealing from or copying our 
 writers ! How are we represented on the English 
 stage ? The French are always treated there as 
 weak fops, and what seems still more singular, as 
 cowards. Let us compare this with the generous 
 good feeling of our authors, who have so highly 
 praised English writers and the English nation." 
 
 Walpole writes : " I will read no more of Rous 
 seau ; his Confessions disgusted me beyond any book 
 I ever opened. His Hen the schoolmistress, Mad-
 
 Madame De Genlis 293 
 
 ame de Genlis is arrived in London. I nauseate 
 her, too ; the eggs of education that he and she both 
 laid could not be hatched till the chickens were ready 
 to die of old age. I revere genius, I have a dear 
 friendship for common sense ; I have a partiality for 
 professed nonsense ; but I abhor extravagance, that 
 is given for the quintessence of sense, and affectation 
 that pretends to be philosophy." But when he met 
 her, the prejudice vanished, and he says : " Her per 
 son is agreeable, and she seems to have been pretty. 
 Her conversation is natural and reasonable, not pre- 
 cisive and affected, and searching to be eloquent, as 
 I had expected." But he joins with other men in 
 ridiculing the office she held. " The Due de Char- 
 tres has made Madame de Genlis governess of his 
 children. Why should not Madame de Schwellen- 
 berg be governess to our prince, and Bishop Hurd 
 wet nurse ? " 
 
 In Fanny Burney s Diary (1785) there are many 
 allusions to Madame de Genlis. She speaks of her at 
 first as the " sweetest and most accomplished French 
 woman she ever met with," and is, for a long time, 
 completely charmed ; but tales, true or false, were so 
 often forced into her unwilling ears, that she says : 
 " Notwithstanding the most ardent admiration of her 
 talents, and a zest yet greater for her engaging 
 society and elegantly lively and winning manners, I 
 yet dared no longer come within the precincts of her 
 fascinating allurements." 
 
 The biographer of Burke, describing Madame de
 
 294 Madame De Genlis 
 
 Genlis s visit to Butler s Court (1792) gives an un 
 pleasant anecdote : " Her great ambition was to do, 
 or be thought to do, everything ; to possess a universal 
 genius both in mind and mechanical powers beyond 
 the attainments of her own or even the other sex. 
 A ring which she wore, of very curious, indeed, ex 
 quisite workmanship, having attracted the notice of 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, he inquired by what good for 
 tune it had come into her possession, and received 
 for answer that it was executed by herself. Sir 
 Joshua stared, but made no reply. " I have done 
 with her," said he, the first time he was alone with 
 Mr. Burke afterwards. " To have the assurance to 
 tell me such a tale ! Why, my dear sir, it is an antique ; 
 no living artist in Europe can equal it." 
 
 She carried back and introduced into France, 
 where it was unknown, the moss rose, as Pope intro 
 duced the weeping willow into England by planting 
 some shoots which were sent him with a basket of 
 figs. 
 
 Soon after her return the Revolution began, and 
 her life was full of troubles charges of sympathy 
 with the Liberals, and serious danger from associa 
 tion with the children of the Duchess of Orleans, 
 whom she was accused of estranging from their 
 mother. 
 
 To all these attacks she pleaded " Not guilty," and 
 wrote a book to prove it, insisting that she was at all 
 times a Royalist. From her account, you judge her 
 to be peculiarly conscientious and pure, resisting all
 
 Madame De Genlis 295 
 
 admirers, and looking with severity upon damaged 
 reputation. She was either a hypocrite or grossly 
 slandered. Let us give her the benefit of the doubt. 
 
 Her husband, who fearlessly expressed himself 
 opposed to the execution of the king, was punished 
 on the scaffold. The Duke, also, was killed. After 
 Madame de Genlis had wandered about with Made 
 moiselle d Orleans for a year or two, the princess was 
 recalled, and her lonely governess went to Berlin, 
 where she gave lessons in literature, and designed 
 patterns for a print factory, and wrote novels, thus 
 supporting herself very comfortably. She said she 
 knew fifty-two trades by which she could earn her 
 living. Talleyrand, also an emigrt with Madame de 
 Stael, writing to her from Philadelphia, says of 
 America: "This country is a place where honest 
 men may prosper, though not, to be sure, quite so 
 well as rogues, who, as may be expected, have many 
 advantages on their side." She remained in exile 
 for nine years. At Hamburg she received a visit 
 from Klopstock, who talked at her steadily for three 
 hours, mostly of himself, and retired highly pleased 
 with her conversational ability. 
 
 In Paris, when she was allowed to return, in 1801, 
 everything had strangely, sadly altered. She said : 
 " Everything seemed new to me. I felt like a 
 stranger who stops at every step to look around. I 
 could scarcely recognize the streets, of which all the 
 names were changed. I found philosophers substi 
 tuted for saints. I saw passing hackney coaches,
 
 296 Madame De Genlis 
 
 which I recognized as the confiscated carriages of 
 my friends ; and in walking, I saw on the stalls books 
 which bore on their bindings the coats of arms of 
 my acquaintances, and in shops their portraits ex 
 hibited for sale. Three-fourths of the unfortunate 
 nobles whom these pictures represented had been 
 guillotined, and the rest, despoiled of everything, 
 were wandering in foreign lands. Even the lan 
 guage was changed. The Bureaux d Esprit, ridi 
 culed by those who were envious or unable to rival 
 them, such as the Hotel de Rambouillet, were gone 
 forever. Suppers were no longer in fashion, for our 
 customs had changed as well as the language. For 
 merly, the ladies, after dinner was over, rose and 
 left the table, in order to wash their mouths ; the 
 gentlemen went into an ante-chamber for the same 
 purpose. Now-a-days, this part of our toilette is per 
 formed at table in many houses, where Frenchmen, 
 seated by the side of ladies, wash their hands and 
 spit into a bowl. This spectacle would have been 
 truly astonishing to their grandfathers and grand 
 mothers." 
 
 As she was seriously in need of money, she 
 wrote the " Romance de La Valliere." This story 
 was greatly liked. Napoleon, who was inordinately 
 fond of novel-reading, read it through without stop 
 ping, and was affected by it even to tears. It went 
 through eighteen editions, and brought the age of 
 Louis XIV into fashion. Sir James Mclntosh said, 
 " It is surely a most fascinating book." Some
 
 Madame De Genlis 297 
 
 months after this success, " Madam de Maintenon " 
 appeared. Fontanes, in his letter acknowledging 
 the receipt of this book, closes by saying : "I doubt, 
 even in an age more worthy of you, whether the 
 Mesdames de Sevigne and La Fayette would have 
 pardoned you for surpassing them. It is true that 
 the La Rochefoucaulds, the La Fontaines, and the 
 La Bruyeres would have been at your feet, but where 
 are they at this day ? " 
 
 Then followed novels and plays thick as the 
 leaves of Vallambrosa. The Emperor now requested 
 from Madame de Genlis a letter once a fortnight on 
 " politics, finance, literature, and morals," as well as 
 on any other subjects that might occur to her. He 
 allotted to her handsome apartments in the Arsenal, 
 and a pension of six thousand francs. After telling 
 her readers how highly these letters were valued by 
 the first consul, she adds, " It was not my fault if he 
 did not become religious." 
 
 The Queen of Naples desired her as governess 
 for her family. She did not accept the position, but 
 was granted a pension of three thousand francs by 
 the Queen, who admired her greatly. In considera 
 tion of this compliment, Madame de Genlis prepared 
 a written course of history and literature, as a guide 
 for the Queen s children. 
 
 Her drawing-room was crowded every evening 
 during the winter of 1812. Lady Morgan was often 
 seen there, fascinating all with her sparkling manner, 
 warmth of heart, and good nature not beautiful,
 
 298 Madame De Genlis 
 
 but always attractive. Madame Recamier was a con 
 stant visitor. She is usually spoken of as a beautiful 
 lay figure, or a soulless coquette, so that it is pleas 
 ant to hear a better opinion from one who knew her 
 well, and who was peculiarly quick to notice defects. 
 She says : " The more I conversed with her, the 
 more talent and interest I found in her conversation. 
 Had she not been so handsome and so celebrated for 
 her person, she would be ranked amongst the most 
 accomplished women of society. The world never 
 grants but one species of renown, and only lavishes 
 its praise for one darling quality. If Madame 
 Recamier had not been so beautiful, every one would 
 have praised the accuracy and discrimination of her 
 mind ; no one listens zvitk more attention (an important 
 trait where you wish to charm), for she feels and 
 comprehends everything. The delicacy of her sen 
 timents gives an inexpressible charm to that of her 
 mind. Her opinions on every subject indirectly 
 connected with morals are never calculated before 
 hand, and are extremely accurate. They are the 
 free, happy emanations of a pure and feeling heart. 
 Notwithstanding all the troubles and misfortunes 
 with which her life has been checkered, there is so 
 much sweetness in her temper, so much calmness in 
 her heart and conscience, that she has preserved 
 nearly all the fairness of her complexion, and all the 
 charming appearance of her early youth. The round 
 of pleasure in which she has lived has rendered her 
 completely unable to apply herself to serious occu-
 
 Madame De Genlis 299 
 
 pations. Disgusted with frivolous amusements of 
 every kind, tired of trifling, she now only gives her 
 self up to them through habits of idleness ; but she 
 is a proof that it is the most disagreeable situation 
 anyone can be placed in who possesses judgment and 
 talents. In her most intimate chats she rarely speaks 
 of herself, for the interests of her life have never 
 been but relative. She has long possessed friends, 
 who are deservedly devoted to her, in elevated sta 
 tions, but has never profited herself by her influence 
 with them, although always suggesting beneficent 
 plans for others. There does not exist a woman who- 
 has rendered more services than she without cabal 
 or intrigue, and there is not one who, after the loss 
 of a great fortune, has possessed more dignity under 
 reverses." 
 
 The remaining years of this long and busy life 
 were spent in publishing a number of volumes so 
 many that it would be fatiguing even to enumerate 
 the titles in entertaining her friends, and in 
 attacking the new ideas of the philosophers. At one 
 time, in the winter of 1820, she was writing five 
 books at the same time. 
 
 It is not strange that she was always looking 
 back regretfully to the good old times, when cul 
 tivated women queened it in their salons, and politics 
 were kept out of general conversation. She says: 
 
 " Our profound thinkers, our great statesmen, are 
 continually talking with contempt of the frivolity " 
 of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth
 
 300 Madame De Genlis 
 
 century. It is said again and again that society is 
 no longer frivolous. Alas ! it is true, and it is a 
 great misfortune, in my opinion. There is a great 
 pleasure in being able to argue well in a serious con 
 versation, or to talk trifles gracefully in a select 
 private party ; and the French, in former times, 
 seemed to have the exclusive privilege of wielding 
 this double power with success. Previous to this 
 horrid period, where impiety, licentiousness, and 
 pride run mad combined to give birth to all the 
 scenes we have witnessed, the frivolity of the French 
 was not a national defect. It was, on the contrary, 
 the preserver against pedantry, affectation, and a 
 thousand ridiculous and dangerous pretensions. It 
 was found where it ought to be to form the charm 
 of society, in the conversations of men of the world, 
 in letters, and the gayest amusements. It excluded 
 from our parties a positive and dogmatic spirit, 
 metaphysical discussions, politics, and dissertations ; 
 and was, in its turn, excluded from important affairs 
 and serious works. Men never thought more pro 
 foundly or wrote more elegantly and correctly than 
 when society was adorned by the most amiable 
 frivolity, which was nothing else but a relaxation of 
 mind, and a gaiety full of wit, feeling, and grace. 
 Were we to expunge from the letters of Madame de 
 Sevigne everything that is frivolous, we should take 
 away their principal charm. 
 
 " Such was frivolity amongst us in the times of
 
 Madame De Genlis 301 
 
 old. The following incident will show what modern 
 politeness is : 
 
 "Towards the end of June, 1821, I dined with 
 thirteen persons, amongst whom were four peers, 
 four marshals of France, and three generals ; among 
 the peers there were two dukes. Before dinner 
 they were in their own way very polite to me, and I 
 had no trouble in taking my share of the conversa 
 tion at dinner, for the peers on either side spoke of 
 nothing but politics, and addressed their conversa 
 tion to gentlemen at the other end of the table. We 
 returned to the drawing-room after dinner, and at 
 the moment I was sitting down I saw with surprise 
 that all the dukes and peers had escaped from me ; 
 each of them took hold of an armchair, dragged it 
 after him, approached his neighbor, and thus formed 
 a circle in the middle of the room. I was thus 
 left quite alone, with a semicircle of backs turned 
 towards me. To be sure, I saw the faces of the 
 other half of the party. I thought at first they had 
 seated themselves so to play at those little games 
 that require such an arrangement, but it was no 
 such thing ; it was solely for the purpose of discuss 
 ing the most difficult questions of state policy. 
 Everyone became a noisy orator, bawled out his 
 opinions, interrupted his neighbor, quarreled and 
 talked till he got hoarse ; they must all have been in 
 a precious state of perspiration. It was a correct 
 picture of the Chamber of Deputies in fact, it was 
 a great deal worse, for there was no president. I
 
 302 Madame De Genlis 
 
 had a great mind to play the part of one, and to call 
 them to order, but I had no bell, and my feeble voice 
 could not have been heard. This clamor and con 
 fusion lasted for more than an hour and a half, when 
 I left the drawing-room, delighted with having 
 received the first lesson of the new customs of 
 society, and the new code of French gallantry of 
 that politeness which has rendered us so celebrated 
 throughout Europe. I confess that down to this 
 moment I had very inadequate notions of all these 
 things. 
 
 " I now met with women who naturally hated all 
 kinds of interesting or witty conversation, because 
 they could take no share in it ; tittle tattle, or 
 scandal, formed all their talk ; they had produced a 
 coolness among all their husbands friends by their 
 insipidity, their dryness, and their aptness to take 
 offense the ordinary defect of women who want 
 talent and education. The most of these persons, 
 ridiculously vain, reckoned their reciprocal visits, 
 and bid (as it were ) for a courtesy ; they were always 
 on the qni i ii>e ! always uneasy with regard to the 
 manner in which they were treated, without know 
 ing positively how they ought to be treated ; so that 
 they were generally irritating themselves by imag 
 inary failures in politeness and ideal impertinences ! " 
 
 Youth and charm lingered with this inscrutable 
 little woman until the very last. At eighty she had 
 perfect health, required no glasses hearing as 
 good as at twenty, memory and mental faculties
 
 Madame De Genlis 303 
 
 unimpaired. The novel which is now most read of 
 all her works is " Mademoiselle de Clermont." " Bel- 
 isarius " was written simply to outdo Marmontel, who 
 had published a book on the same subject. She 
 revived in France the " Historical Novel," much in 
 the style of Madame Miihlbach. Like Ruskin, who 
 has planned more than seventy works which he 
 wants to give the world before he leaves it, she 
 closes her " Memoirs " with a hint of a dozen more 
 books which she hopes to publish. She had many 
 chimerical plans, such as the attempt to purify his 
 tory and philosophy by omitting everything irrev 
 erent, skeptical, or untrue ; just as some in our day 
 indulge the delusion that the drama would still be 
 attractive if raised to the moral standard of the 
 church. In short, she embraced the entire Cosmos in 
 her schemes of reform, and wondered that all think 
 ers did not turn round and follow meekly in her 
 train. In the long sketch of her in the " Universal 
 Biography of France," they say : " The world was 
 by her divided into two parts her friends and her 
 enemies, or rather, those who admired her and those 
 who criticised." Her " Memoirs " were an apology, a 
 compilation, selections from her works, a collection 
 of anecdotes in a word, they are anything but 
 memoirs. Call them what you will, they are full of 
 interest to this day. 
 
 A more conceited woman never lived, and her 
 frankness in quoting her various compliments, poet 
 ical tributes, and constant conquests is weak but
 
 304 Madame De Genlis 
 
 amusing. She felt herself capable of gracing any 
 position, of instructing and gaiding any who came 
 in her path ; no subject so abstruse or profound that 
 she could not master it ; no one escaped her criti 
 cism, yet she always spoke of herself as thoroughly 
 impartial, never malicious, abused by critics, robbed 
 by plagiarists. As the instructor of Louis Philippe 
 she deserves great honor. You remember that dur 
 ing his exile he supported himself by teaching, ris 
 ing at half-past four and walking miles to teach the 
 higher mathematics in a Swiss college. When a 
 civic crown was presented to him for saving a man 
 from drowning, he wrote at once to his old teacher : 
 " Without you, what should I have been ? " 
 
 Her works were wonderfully popular in their 
 day. By the way, it is a curious fact that W. S. Gil 
 bert, author of the irresistible " Bab Ballads," and 
 " Pygmalion and Galatea," to say nothing of " Pina 
 fore," borrowed wholesale from Madame de Genlis s 
 " Tale of an Old Castle " for his " Palace of Truth," 
 which is so much admired. It is little more than a 
 paraphrase of her story. 
 
 She had a slight, graceful figure, was rather yV///V, 
 with curling brown hair and " soft, spiritual eyes." 
 But her nose was her pride. Its praise had been sung 
 by several of her admirers. In her seventieth year 
 she stumbled over a trunk, broke two teeth, scratched 
 her face in three places, and broke that beautiful 
 nose that nose so delicate, so perfect in outline. 
 Her wailings over this calamity and her rhapsodic
 
 Madame De Genlis 305 
 
 reminiscence of her nose as it used to be, are serio 
 comic in the extreme. 
 
 Her last days were rather sad ; her means were 
 reduced, old friends gone, the glory of her nose 
 among the things that were ; yet Mrs. Opie, who 
 called upon her in her last year, speaks of her as a 
 really pretty and lively little old woman. She was 
 found dead December, 1830 the last morning of 
 the year aged eighty-four. 
 
 Men have reviewed her life and writings with 
 great severity. In the " Quarterly " for 1826 we find 
 this sentence : " If we may be allowed thus to express 
 ourselves, we should say Madame de Genlis has a 
 very large portion of a very small mind, and that 
 portion is particularly active. Her intellectual arse 
 nal is boundlessly stored with sparrow-shot." In her 
 eighty-third year she expressed the opinion that the 
 value set upon the opinions of old women is the sur 
 est, if not the only, test of the moral, religious, and 
 intellectual state of a country ; and in the " Suppers 
 of the Marechale de Luxembourg," gives a picture 
 of society under this government ! This, of course, 
 made her ridiculous, and reviewers were merciless. 
 Yet Miss Kavanaugh says in her sketch : " No woman 
 who has written so much, has written so w r ell." St. 
 Beuve says of her : " She was above everything an 
 author, and would certainly have invented writing, 
 if it had not appeared before her time. Her acquire 
 ments made her a living encyclopedia, which prided 
 itself on being the rival antagonist of all other ency-
 
 306 Madame De Genlis 
 
 clopedias. But she was the most gracious and gal 
 lant of pedagogues. Very beautiful, very fascinat 
 ing when she chose, knowing the strength and the 
 weak points of each one, and knowing how to cast 
 her spell of enchantment upon you, she became cold 
 and indifferent when you did not respond to her en 
 thusiasm ; of an infinite grace when admired, she 
 was hard and severe when one dared to disagree or 
 failed to please." 
 
 To judge her impartially she must not be taken 
 from the circle where she lived. She wrote for the 
 luxurious liabituts of palaces and salons. Let me 
 quote a few of her good thoughts : 
 
 " Constant and varied occupation is much more 
 powerful than amusements in dispelling sorrow and 
 anxiety." 
 
 " There are but two suffrages worthy of desire by 
 a feeling and upright heart ; one s own conscience, 
 and the voice of friendship." 
 
 " Virtue may be acquired, but goodness is a gift 
 of nature." 
 
 " A man declares his love, a woman confesses 
 hers." 
 
 " Evil-speaking always spoils the manners of a 
 woman." 
 
 "With the exception of the loss by death of those 
 we love, almost all our misfortunes and sorrows are 
 in part our own fault." 
 
 "Let musical teachers be given to those young 
 ladies only who have a musical voice and ear, and a
 
 Madame De Genlis 307 
 
 feeling for music ; let drawing be taught to those 
 only who have a taste for the art, and the number of 
 amateurs would be diminished ; and we should no 
 longer meet with that crowd of women with trifling 
 acquirements and high pretensions, which throws so 
 much ennui over the surface of society." 
 
 " Criticism at the present day is nothing but a con 
 tinual system of sneering and ridicule, more or less 
 witty and more or less worn out ; such a continual 
 shower of irony becomes monotonous." 
 
 " Sleep, which flies from luxury and indolence, is 
 the sure reward of real fatigue." 
 
 " Men of letters have an actually existing superi 
 ority over female authors that is perfectly evident 
 and indisputable. All the works of women put into 
 one scale will not weigh some fine pages of Bossuet 
 or Pascal, some scenes of Corneille, Racine, or Mo- 
 liere ; but it must not be concluded from this that 
 the mental constitution of women is inferior to that 
 of men. Genius is composed of all the qualities they 
 are admitted to possess, and which they may be en 
 dowed with in the highest degree fancy, sensibil 
 ity, and elevation of soul. The want of study and 
 education having at all times kept women apart from 
 the career of literature, they have shown their great 
 ness of soul, not by describing historical facts in their 
 writings, or by bringing forth ingenious fictions of 
 fancy ; but by real actions they have done better 
 than describe, and have often by their conduct fur 
 nished the models of sublime heroism. No woman
 
 308 Madame De Genlis 
 
 in her writing has described the lofty soul of Corne 
 lia ; what matters it, since Cornelia is not an imag 
 inary being ? " 
 
 French women of that early period, always excep 
 ting Madame de Sevigne, seem to be either fanatics 
 or flirts. We fear our eccentric friend is no excep 
 tion ; yet it is difficult to read her own story and not 
 believe in her innocence. Madame always ended 
 with a moral. In imitation, we regret that her char 
 acter and talents were ruined by excessive vanity. 
 This fault led her into a dangerous position, and 
 kept her there ; it shadowed every virtue, every ac 
 complishment, and makes us not unwilling to say 
 good-bye to Countess de Genlis, Jack-of-all-trades, 
 Paragon of Perfection, " Gouvcrneur du Rot."
 
 ARE WOMEN WITTY? 
 
 ANTITHESES IN CRITICISM. 
 
 "Women have more wit than humor." Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes. 
 
 "Women have more humor than wit. John Boyle O Reilly. 
 
 " Women are not witty, I am sorry." John Boyle O Reilly. 
 
 " Humor is the rarest of qualities in women." Richard Grant 
 White. 
 
 It is best not to indulge in too positive state 
 ments when wishing to convince. So I ask the 
 question, "Are women witty?" hoping that my 
 readers will give a hearty verdict in the affirmative. 
 Even this gentle interrogative has roused many a 
 sneering reply, much adverse criticism, and one 
 superior cynic inquires with a patronizing air if 
 Miss Sanborn has never heard of Hood and Hook, 
 Curran, Sheridan, etc., and what we women have to 
 compare with their brilliancy, as if a modest plea for 
 a recognition of woman s wit and humor argued 
 ignorance of those immortals or any desire to belittle 
 their fame. 
 
 From time immemorial, men have declared with 
 owl-like solemnity and about as much wisdom, that 
 women have no sense of humor, no capacity for wit, 
 no woman s name in any collection of humorous
 
 310 Are Women Witty? 
 
 poetry, epigrams, or repartees, until the last two 
 years. In Mason s " Masterpieces of Humor " lately 
 published by Putnam, women are represented for 
 the first time. And special tributes are now given 
 occasionally, as in a recent eclectic Sarah Orne 
 Jewett is said to " possess genuine humor, the 
 humor of Lamb and of Hood ; the humor which is 
 likely to bring a tear to the eye as well as a smile to 
 the lips." 
 
 I wish to own that Pope recognized the quality 
 in woman and acknowledged it several times, as : 
 
 " Her tongue bewitched as oddly as her eyes, 
 Less wit than mimic, more a wit than wise ! " 
 
 But search magazines from the earliest to the 
 latest. You find at regular intervals heavy articles 
 on wit and humor, with hackneyed definitions of 
 these undefinable and elusive qualities, illustrations 
 oft quoted, but no woman s name. And more than 
 half of the wit of the past consists of hits at women, 
 and satire on their faults and foibles. 
 
 " Why," says Stinson Jarvis, or Jarvis Stinson, 
 in an open letter to the Century, " Why, in literature 
 are there no female humorists ? " 
 
 Why, in the name of common sense and common 
 perception, does he fail to see that both humorous 
 and witty women abound in America ? 
 
 He answers his own question. "Is it not because 
 our sister has been so far compelled by nature to 
 make idols and because she is too much in earnest 
 over her devotion to lapse into what would seem to
 
 Are Women Witty? 311 
 
 be frivolity ? If, in spite of all her effort, some 
 other power throws her idols down, or, if they throw 
 themselves down, she may become bitter or sad or 
 savage or religious, but never humorous ! " 
 
 I will give a few words written to me last week 
 from an editor of one of the most important New 
 York dailies to show the general impression of cul 
 tivated men : 
 
 " I used to think that there were no humorists of 
 the female sex, but one day in Puck, Madeline 
 Bridges, in the course of a colloquy between desert 
 nomads, made one of them ask the other to come 
 in out of the simoon, as we in American slang ask 
 people to come in out of the wet. Whereupon I 
 concluded that a sense of humor did exist in the 
 feminine mind." How absurdly ignorant, conceited, 
 and patronizing. 
 
 John Kendrick Bangs in a recent lecture indulges 
 in the old slur about woman s utter lack of wit. 
 
 You naturally remember him as the author of 
 "The Idiot Club!" 
 
 But women are waking up to reciprocal courte 
 sies, and enjoy satirizing some of the many assail 
 able characteristics of men as : 
 
 Geo. Eliot. " I m not denyin the women are 
 foolish ; God Almighty made em to match the 
 men." 
 
 Mrs. Phelps Ward. " As a rule, a man can t cul 
 tivate his mustache and his talents impartially." 
 
 Mrs. Phelps Ward. " No men are so fussy about
 
 312 Are Women Witty? 
 
 what they eat as those who think their brains the 
 biggest part of them." 
 
 Rose Terry Cooke. " Marryin a man ain t like 
 settin alongside of him nights and hearin him talk 
 pretty ; that s the fust prayer. There s lots an lots 
 o meetin after that ! " 
 
 A lady once told me she could always know 
 when she had taken too much wine at dinner her 
 husband s jokes began to seem funny ! 
 
 From Ouida. " A man is never so honest as when 
 he speaks well of himself." 
 
 Lucretia Mott s humorous comment when she 
 entered a room where her husband and his brother 
 Richard were sitting, both of them remarkable for 
 their taciturnity and reticence : u I thought you 
 must both be here it was so still ! " 
 
 A wealthy parvenu lately gave the church which 
 he attends two tablets of stone, with the Ten Com 
 mandments engraved upon them ; whereupon a 
 witty lady member of the church remarked that his 
 reason for giving away the Commandments was that 
 he couldn t keep them. 
 
 Recall the usual themes for a man s jokes, in print 
 or in the home. 
 
 The poor mother-in-law ! Is she to be forever 
 traduced and roared over in barroom, theater, the 
 club, and at stag dinners ? From the time of Adam, 
 who is supposed to have congratulated himself that 
 he had none, that feeble joke has been tottering 
 down the ages. Entire plays are based on it, and
 
 Are Women Witty? 313 
 
 cultivated audiences crowd our best theaters to see a 
 popular company, skilled in interpreting Shakes 
 peare, rushing wildly round the stage, several stars 
 in assumed hysterics or convulsions ; while the 
 mother-in-law, an unreasonable tyrant and virago, 
 chases long-suffering sons-in-law around the room, 
 striking them over the head with an umbrella, or 
 slapping their faces like a modern fish-wife. This 
 is uproariously applauded, and the morning papers 
 report " A Brilliant Hit." " Instantaneous Success." 
 " Peals of Laughter." The earliest attempts at 
 dramatic representation were not more exaggerated 
 and absurd. In fact, the scolding of Noah s wife in 
 the Chester Miracle Play is more truly humorous. 
 
 As this much abused and vilified woman too 
 often supports the son-in-law, or acts as nurse, cook, 
 and general servant with willing affection and devo 
 tion for his entire family, this seems more cruel than 
 comical. A man seldom gives this relative any 
 credit for humor. Let us honor the one who ac 
 knowledged the wit of his mother-in-law ! He says : 
 " A few weeks after my son had swallowed a penny, 
 she wrote to inquire, Has Ernest got over his 
 financial difficulties yet ? 
 
 How tired we are of the mouldy jokes on the 
 new bonnet, seal-skin sack, mortality caused by 
 young wife s attempts at cooking, shoes several 
 sizes too small, sleeves or hats as many sizes too 
 large, the big feet of Chicago girls, the gum-chew-
 
 314 Are Women Witty? 
 
 ing at Vassar, and the frigid bean-devourer of Bos 
 ton, also the mythical ice-cream fiend. 
 
 Prohibit vulgarity, profanity, flings at our sex, 
 and the loudly vaunted wit of the past shrinks sur 
 prisingly. 
 
 With men the most irresistible humor often lies 
 on the dangerous border-line between humor and 
 vulgarity, while the humor of cultivated women, 
 delicate and subtle, effervescent and evanescent, is 
 more difficult to catch and preserve, like the sea 
 weed in Emerson s " Each and All." 
 
 One eminent authority allows that there have 
 been two really witty women in England : Lady 
 Montagu and Catherine Fanshawe. We all know 
 the former as letter-writer, converser, beauty, phil 
 anthropist, gossip, traveler, and wit, and perhaps all 
 will recall the same sarcastic sentence : " There is 
 but one reason I am glad I am a woman : I shall 
 never have to marry one." 
 
 Miss Fanshawe was not only witty, but was 
 known as an artist, a poet, and a thoroughly delight 
 ful woman. " Never running the risk of giving a 
 moment s pain to anyone," a difficult attainment for 
 ordinary mortals ; still more so for a wit. Too 
 many acting on the principle, " If you cannot speak 
 evil " of a person do not speak of him ! 
 
 The enigma on the letter H ascribed to Byron 
 and printed in various editions of his poems, was 
 written by this versatile woman. She composed 
 capital charades in verse, a fashionable pastime then.
 
 Are Women Witty? 315 
 
 When the Regents Park was first laid out she 
 parodied the two well-known lines from Pope s 
 " Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady : " 
 
 " Here shall the spring its earliest sweets bestow, 
 Here the first roses of the year shall blow." 
 
 in this fashion, only altering one word in first 
 line, one letter in second : 
 
 " Here shall the spring its earliest coughs bestow, 
 Here the first noses of the year shall blow." 
 
 English women do not equal the French as wits, 
 but we can instance Lady Blessington, Jane Austen, 
 Fanny Burney, Jane Taylor, Hannah More, Mary 
 Ferrier, Mary Russell Mitford, Mrs. Carlyle, 
 Madame Mohl, Lady Ashburton, Mrs. Grote, 
 George Eliot, and many more. 
 
 We even have a veritable witticism from the 
 Queen. Hearing of the grace and agility of a pretty 
 Scotch lassie who had danced a sword dance most 
 cleverly for some of her officers she commanded the 
 same diversion for herself and was equally enter 
 tained. At the close of the brilliant performance 
 the girl advanced and courtesied profoundly. 
 " What can I do for you ? " asked her majesty. 
 
 "Give me the head of Gladstone," said the mod 
 ern Herodias. 
 
 " I would gladly do that, my dear, but he lost it 
 some years since." 
 
 Princess Maud of Wales, like her father, the 
 Prince of Wales, dearly loves a joke, and is inclined
 
 316 Are Women Witty? 
 
 to be witty and facetious at all times. Some of the 
 best current puns in London are attributed to the 
 Princess Maud, just as fugitive jokes are yet credited 
 to Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Miss Havergal, who is known by her noble life 
 work and volumes of devotional verses, was not 
 devoid of genuine humor. When reading her 
 interesting memoirs I copied a rhyme about Bores, 
 which will appeal to all. 
 
 " People of every age and class, 
 Under review appeared to pass, 
 Specimens, too, in greatest variety, 
 Of every sort of bores in society, 
 Boorish bores and bores polite, 
 People who stay too late at night, 
 People who make long morning calls, 
 People who think of nothing but balls, 
 People who never a move will make, 
 People who never a hint will take, 
 Strong-minded bores and weak-minded, too, 
 Masculine, feminine, not a few, 
 People who borrow books to lose. 
 People who will not wipe their shoes, 
 People who keep your mind on the rack, 
 Lest some pussy escape from the sack, 
 Over-stupid and over-clever, 
 People who seem to talk forever, 
 People who mutter and people who drawl, 
 People who will not talk at all. 
 Old pianos that rattle and jingle, 
 Or Broadwood Grands that make your ears tingle, 
 With polka and waltzes four hours a day, 
 All barrel organs whatever they play,
 
 Are Women Witty? 317 
 
 All German bands that won t play in tune, 
 People who practice too late or too soon, 
 Contraltos that groan and sopranos that squall, 
 Bassos that bellow and tenors that bawl." 
 
 And so on. The list is too long to quote entire, 
 for bores, like the poor, we always have with us ! 
 
 By the way, Eliza Leslie said : " Avoid giving 
 invitations to bores. They will come without." 
 
 Lady Blessington may not have been pre-emi 
 nently witty, but said some good things as, " When 
 the Sun shines on you, you see your friends. It re 
 quires sunshine to be seen by them to advantage." 
 " Friends are the thermometers by which we may 
 judge the temperature of our own fortunes." Her 
 biographer speaks of her sallies of wit in her early 
 happy days. Unlike Mad. de Stael, from whose tor 
 rent-like monologue men fled as for their lives, she 
 seldom engrossed the conversation ; never dogma 
 tised or played the learned lady. Brilliant thoughts 
 were thrown off by her with the utmost ease. One 
 ban mot followed another without pause or effort, and 
 best of all, while her wit and humor were producing 
 their desired effect, she would take care, by an apt 
 word or gesture to draw out the persons who were 
 best fitted to thrive in society, giving a chance to 
 all a give-and-take mode of interchange, sure to 
 make a woman popular and essential for the would- 
 be leader of a salon. 
 
 Louis Napoleon, after his election to the presi 
 dency of the French republic, did not invite Lady
 
 318 Are Women Witty? 
 
 Blessington to the Tuileries, although, he had often 
 been entertained by her in London. Meeting her 
 one day, he inquired if she expected to remain long 
 in Paris. To which her cool reply was : " And you ? " 
 
 Of a very awkward man coming into the room, 
 Mrs. Montague once whispered to Sir William Pepys : 
 " There is a man who would give one of his hands to 
 know what to do with the other." 
 
 She wrote many sparkling poems or verses for 
 the showy, superficial annals then so popular. 
 
 After spraining her ankle severely and made pain 
 fully lame, Miss Cobbe says : "I went to drive in 
 Regent s Park, and came rather late into the draw 
 ing room full of company, supported by what my 
 maid called my best crutches. The servant did not 
 know me and announced Miss Cobble. I cor 
 rected her loudly enough for the guests to hear in 
 that moment of pause : " No ! Miss Hobble. " 
 
 Lord Houghton s sister was often annoyed at her 
 brother s indiscriminate hospitality. " Do you re 
 member, my dear," he asked her at dinner one day, 
 " whether that famous scoundrel X. was hanged or 
 acquitted ? " He must have been hanged, or you 
 would have had him to dinner long ago," replied the 
 lady. 
 
 Mrs. Asquith has a ready wit and nimble tongue, 
 and fears no one. She was the life of the celebrated 
 yachting party given at Copenhagen, when Mr. 
 Gladstone met the Czar. Upon her return to Lon 
 don, she convulsed society with her word pictures of
 
 Are Women Witty? 319 
 
 Mr. Gladstone who wanted to talk all the time, and 
 Lord Tennyson who thought no entertainment so 
 delightful as reading his own poetry, the two holding 
 forth to rival, but constantly decreasing, companies 
 at opposite ends of the ship. 
 
 Among French women, the only difficulty is to 
 select from a host. Think of Madame du Defraud, 
 blind, old, bitter, but admired. Helvetius was 
 blamed in her presence for having made selfishness 
 the supreme motive of human action. " Bah ! " said 
 she, " he has only revealed every one s secret." 
 
 When someone complained that Voltaire "had 
 not much invention," she exclaimed, " What more 
 can you ask ? He has invented history." 
 
 Madame de Stael s reply to the diplomat, who, 
 sitting between herself and Madame Recamier, said : 
 " Here I am between wit and beauty." " Yes, and 
 without possessing either." 
 
 Madame de Sevigne writes : " One loves so much 
 to talk of one s self that one never tires of a tete-a-tete 
 with a lover for years. That is the reason for con 
 fession. It is for the pleasure of talking of one s self, 
 even though speaking evil." The phrase " After us 
 the deluge," has been given to Madame de Pompa 
 dour. Marie Antoinette s milliner ought to be re 
 membered for her epigram " Nothing is new that 
 has not been forgotten." Sophie Arnould, a fasci 
 nating French actress, about 1744, was noted for her 
 wit, so much so that Arsene Houssaye has preserved 
 her ban mots in a volume called Arnoitldiana, which
 
 320 Are Women Witty? 
 
 will compare with anything of its kind in the French 
 language. For a dozen years prior to the Revolu 
 tion, Sophie Arnould was a queen of society, as well 
 as art, and in her elegant salon she held a brilliant 
 court, where distinguished men were proud to pay 
 homage to her beauty and genius. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin said he nowhere found such 
 pleasure and such wit as with her. Poets sang her 
 praises, artists were eager for her portrait. " What 
 are you thinking of ? " she said to Bernard in one of 
 his abstracted moods, " I was talking to myself," he 
 replied. " Be careful," she said, " you gossip with a 
 flatterer." 
 
 To a physician whom she met with a gun : " Ah, 
 Doctor, you are afraid of your professional resources 
 failing ? " 
 
 A beautiful but brainless woman complained of 
 the persistency of her lovers : " You have only to 
 open your mouth and speak, to get rid of their im 
 portunities." Being told that a Capuchin monk had 
 been devoured by rats, she exclaimed with an ex 
 pressive shrug: "Poor beasts! their hunger must 
 have been something terrible ! " 
 
 I come with pride and delight to the witty women 
 of our own country, beginning at Boston, with Helen 
 Bell, Rufus Choate s brilliant daughter, who made 
 that remark quoted without credit by Emerson, " To 
 a woman, the consciousness of being well dressed 
 gave a sense of tranquility which religion failed to 
 bestow."
 
 Are Women Witty? 321 
 
 Julia Ward Howe is undeniably witty. Her con 
 currence with a dilapidated bachelor, who retained 
 little but his conceit, was excellent. He said : " It is 
 time now for me to settle down as a married man, 
 but I want so much ; I want youth, health, wealth, of 
 course; beauty, grace "Yes," she interrupted 
 sympathetically, " You poor man, you do want them 
 all." 
 
 Of a conceited young man airing his disbelief at 
 length in a magazine article, she said : " Charles evi 
 dently thinks he has invented Atheism." After 
 dining with a certain family noted for their chilling 
 manners and lofty exclusiveness, she hurried to the 
 house of a jolly friend, and seating herself before the 
 glowing fire, sought to regain a natural warmth, ex 
 plaining, " I have spent three hours with the Mer de 
 Glace, the Tete Noir, and the Yung Frau, and am 
 nearly frozen." 
 
 Pathos and humor as twins are exemplified by 
 her tearful horror over the panorama of Gettysburg, 
 and then urged by Mrs. Livermore to dine with her, 
 saying : " O no ! my dear, its quarter past two, and 
 Mr. Howe will be wild if he does not get not his 
 burg but get his dinner." 
 
 Think of many other witty Boston women : Lu- 
 cretia Hale with her inimitable Peterkin Family, her 
 sister Susan with her flashing repartee and genuine 
 epigrams, Mrs. Phelps Ward, Sarah Orne Jewett, 
 Abby Morton Diaz, Mrs. Maria Porter. 
 
 It was Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who said
 
 322 Are Women Witty? 
 
 that the Cunard steamer Oregon committed suicide to 
 avoid being put on that company s Boston line. 
 
 Miss Hale recently sent me some economic aphor 
 isms to keep my spirits up : " One swallow does not 
 make a summer, neither does one scholar pay the 
 dressmaker s bill." " There are no birds in last 
 year s nest, but last winter s bonnet may bear another 
 flower." 
 
 Charlotte Fiske Bates, formerly of Cambridge, 
 excels in epigrams, quatrains, and short humorous 
 poems. 
 
 There is much genuine humor among the women 
 journalists of Boston, although they make no pre 
 tensions to wit, and do not seem to know how truly 
 they possess it. " Do you live on the Back Bay ? 
 said a lady the other day to Miss Jenkins, so well 
 k nown by her " Chatterer " column in the Herald 
 and whose home is on a narrow little street up town. 
 " Rather, the small of the Back Bay," she answered 
 instantly. Marion Howard Brazier spoke in one of 
 her letters of a woman who had been married for 
 fifty-six years and had never missed lighting the 
 kitchen fire, and added thoughtfully : " Her husband 
 must be the most extraordinary fire-escape on record." 
 
 While on a visit in Quebec, our driver said he 
 carried a Boston woman and party up into the citadel 
 court, and there pointed out the small brass cannon, 
 saying : " This we captured from you at Bunker 
 Hill." She quickly replied, " Ah, well, never mind, 
 we have the hill."
 
 Are Women Witty? 323 
 
 A very " fresh " young- man lately made the ac 
 quaintance of a young lady from Boston, to whom he 
 proceeded to pour out a long story of some adventure 
 in which he had played the hero. His listener was 
 much surprised. " Did you really do that ? " she 
 asked. " I done it," answered the proud young man, 
 and he began forthwith upon another long narrative, 
 more startling even than the first. The Boston 
 woman again expressed her polite surprise. " Yes," 
 said the fellow, with an inflation of the chest, " that s 
 what I done." A third story followed, with another 
 " I done it," and then the Boston girl remarked : " Do 
 you know, you remind me so strongly of Banquo s 
 ghost ? " " You mean the ghost in Shakespeare s 
 play?" "Yes." "And why?" "Why, don t you 
 remember that Macbeth said to him, Thou canst 
 not say I did it ? The young man could not imag 
 ine why everybody laughed. 
 
 Reading this lecture in towns near Boston, I 
 asked for instances of humor among their women, 
 and secured several. A minister s wife disliked liv 
 ing in one of these suburban places, giving as her 
 reason that it had the quiet of the grave without its 
 peace . Another woman said : " If I am ever tried for 
 my life, I do hope I can have a jury of my own fam 
 ily, for they would never agree." And a young girl 
 hunting in vain for the box of hard boiled eggs pro 
 vided for a picnic, and harder yet, failing to find 
 them, exclaimed : " Those eggs must have been mis 
 laid."
 
 324 Are Women Witty ? 
 
 The first wife of Mr. Higginson was a noted wit. 
 Many of her sayings are preserved in his novels. 
 In New York we count the witty women by tens : 
 Mary Mapes Dodge, Mrs. Runkle, Mrs. Botta, Mrs. 
 Alice Wellington Rollins, Mrs. Lizzie Champney, 
 Mrs. Terhune (Marion Harland), Mary D. Brine, 
 Josephine Pollard, Mrs. E. T. Corbett, Mrs. Victor, 
 Mary Kyle Dallas, and Kate Douglass Wiggins 
 Riggs, who will count two-score at least. In Brook 
 lyn, Caroline B. LeRow, Frances Lee Pratt, Ella 
 Kirk, and a dozen more. I would like to illustrate 
 by extracts from their work. Marietta Holley be 
 longs to New York state. Her Samantha Allen and 
 Betsey Bobbet convulsed the continent. She is con 
 stantly solicited for humorous articles and more 
 funny books, until she is well-nigh killed. Men, I 
 mean publishers, find that women s wit puts much 
 money in their pockets. As they rattle the gold and 
 caressingly count the bills from twentieth editions, 
 do they still think of women as sad, crushed, senti 
 mental, hero-adoring geese, who can t see the humor 
 ous side? Octave Thanet is most decidedly humor 
 ous. Phoebe Gary has been called " the wittiest 
 woman in America." She parodied Whittier s exqui 
 site Maud Muller. I recall four pithy lines : 
 
 " We re apt to fuss and fret 
 About the one we didn t get ; 
 But we needn t make such an awful fuss 
 If the one we didn t want didn t get us."
 
 Are Women Witty? 325 
 
 Barnum asked her one evening what was her 
 favorite brand of champagne ? " We drink Heidseik, 
 but we keep Mum." Another day he reported the 
 marriage of his skeleton man and the fat woman. 
 She said instantly, " I suppose they loved through 
 thick and thin." 
 
 Fanny Fern must not be forgotten, nor Aunt 
 Fanny Barrows, nor Margaret Undergrift. The 
 Misses Wilder of Brooklyn had a great reputation 
 for ready wit. Once, when the Misses Wilder, 
 both being at that time not yet engaged, proposed 
 to have a screen to separate their parlors, a young 
 gentleman was asked to suggest a motto to em 
 broider on the screen. He replied : " For many 
 have called but few have chosen." Miss Maud 
 Wilder retorted on the instant : " No, we will put 
 on, for your special benefit, Be not faithless but be 
 leaving. " I will give two verses from Maud, now 
 Mrs. Goodwin : 
 
 Carved in the old Cathedral 
 Where the wise men service said, 
 
 Just over the old oak pulpit, 
 
 Is a monkey, scratching his head. 
 
 But to-day, in our high church pulpits, 
 The case is reversed ; instead, 
 
 Tis the monkey reads the service, 
 And the wise man scratches his head. 
 
 The driver for Mrs. Kemble and her coaching 
 parties at Lenox said : "If I could have bottled up 
 the sparkle, the wit and humor evolved in those ex-
 
 326 Are Women Witty? 
 
 cursions, I could have made a book to be read by 
 everybody, but it would be too difficult now to repro 
 duce it. If you have read Miss Sedgwick and heard 
 Mrs. Kemble and Miss Cushman, you can possibly 
 imagine what must have been its character. Miss C. 
 said, I could drive the slowest and get there the 
 quickest of any man she ever knew." 
 
 It was Fanny Kemble who spoke of some one as 
 " single as a stray glove." Mrs. Child, describing 
 adornments of a room, speaks of a vase of flowers 
 done in water colors, looking sickly and straggling 
 about as if they were only neighbors-in-law ; and 
 Ophelia with a quantity of " carrotty " hair which is 
 thrown over three or four rheumatic trees, and one 
 foot ankle-deep in water, as if she were going to see 
 which she liked best, hanging or drowning. 
 
 Rose Terry Cooke possessed both wit and humor, 
 and they shone in her sketches of New England 
 characters, and in her daily conversation. I remem 
 ber she spoke to me of some one as a " decayed 
 gentlewoman," but quickly added, li not offensively 
 so." 
 
 In Washington think of Gail Hamilton, Kate 
 Field, Julia Schayer, and Grace Greenwood. Grace 
 Greenwood makes capital puns, and has said a thou 
 sand witty things, as when she said of a genuine 
 type of the old New England Yankee, " He looks 
 as if the Lord had made him and then pincJied him." 
 
 Some lady was describing an unfortunate man 
 who had tumbled awkwardly about in getting into
 
 Are Women Witty ? 327 
 
 an omnibus, grabbing at ladies knees for support, as 
 " a perfect savage." " Of the Pawnee tribe, doubt 
 less," said Grace. She used to be a chronic punster, 
 and is one of the best raconteurs in America. She, 
 doubtless, inherited her wit from her mother. She 
 says, that on coming into the breakfast room on a 
 winter s morning, she saw her mother in a shawl of 
 brilliant hue, and cried out, " See the scarlet woman ! " 
 Her mother rose and with a mocking bow responded, 
 " Yes, and the mother of abominations." This re 
 minds me of Talmage s youngest daughter who was 
 fond of evening gaieties and often slept late in con 
 sequence. Coming down about nine o clock, she met 
 her parent s stern gaze, and received the depressing 
 greeting : " Good morning, daughter of sin." " Morn 
 ing, Father," was her response. 
 
 In Philadelphia, Miss Louise Stockton displays a 
 quaint humor almost equal to her brother Frank. 
 
 In Chicago I consider Mrs. Clinton Locke and 
 Sarah Hackett Stevens among their wittiest women. 
 Mrs. Locke is the wife of the popular rector. To 
 count them all would be impossible. 
 
 The Rev. Clericus has been waiting half an hour 
 to speak to his wife, who is having a call from Mrs. 
 Longwind. Hearing the front door close he sup 
 poses the visitor is gone. 
 
 The Rev. Clericus (calling from his study) : 
 " Well, is that old bore gone at last? " 
 
 Mrs. Clericus (from the drawing-room, where Mrs. 
 Longwind still sits) : " Oh, yes, dear, she went an
 
 328 Are Women Witty? 
 
 hour ago ; but our dear Mrs. Longwind is here I 
 know you will want to come in and see her." 
 
 Xor can we visit every city, town, village, and 
 hamlet, to add examples that plentifully exist ; we 
 must classify. 
 
 How do men dispose of such humorous literature 
 as that given to us by Catharine Sedgwick, Eliza 
 Leslie, Caroline M. Kirkland, Mrs. Whitney, Mrs. 
 Stowe, Rose Terry Cooke, Mrs. Whicher of Widow 
 Bedott papers, Mrs. Ellen H. Rollins in " New Eng 
 land By-gones," Mrs. Walker who originated that 
 saying: " The total depravity of inanimate things," 
 Mrs. McDonell, "Sherwood Bonner," whose skit in 
 the Chestnut Street Radical Club of Boston will 
 carry her name on for generations, Mary Wilkins, 
 etc., etc., unless men only read their own wit and 
 admire their own brilliancy. Junius Henry Brown 
 thinks that man cannot change his long-held esti 
 mate of woman s mental calibre from which, as he 
 made it up, he carefully eliminated all sense of the 
 ludicrous. It is a wise man who writes, " Don t 
 you know that men hate to meet women in the 
 arena for any sort of contest but one that of hearts / 
 
 In these progressive days when women are tak 
 ing high rank in every profession and every busi 
 ness, when young girls are winning prizes for math 
 ematics, oratory, essays, in fair competition with 
 young men, when middle-aged women are managing 
 yachts and riding bicycles, and the muscles of our 
 college girls are being hardened by boating, golf,
 
 Are Women Witty? 329 
 
 and tennis, it is simply absurd to cling to this moss- 
 back fallacy of the past. Such critics remind me of 
 a mole which, blind and living under ground, only 
 comes out of his hole to nibble with sharp teeth at 
 something growing above him. 
 
 The professional wit carefully reserves his good 
 things for pay, in print, or for after-dinner display, 
 but half the women of my acquaintance are saying 
 and writing good things all the time, without the 
 least effort or self-consciousness. At every age, from 
 ninety to nine, I find an abundant fund of illustra 
 tion ; and even younger. Think of dear old Mrs. 
 Wade, eighty-six years of age, more lively than 
 many a maiden in her teens, fond of games, excelling 
 in fancy work, admired by all. When a lonely old 
 fellow actually proposed to her a few years ago, she 
 relegated him to the position of a brother, and when 
 he would not be sent away, and begged her to make 
 the subject a matter of prayer, she said quickly, with 
 a quizzical smile, " No, I m not going to bother the 
 Lord with questions I can answer myself." And 
 she said she d concluded to wade through the rest of 
 her life. 
 
 Old ladies often continue to see the humorous 
 side. One such old dame, living in New Hampshire, 
 and nearing her centennial, was bidding farewell to 
 her oldest son, who had come on from the far west 
 to see her. " Kiss me again, mother," he said. " I 
 may not have another." And she inquired, " Why, 
 James, don t you feel as well as usual ? "
 
 330 Are Women Witty? 
 
 Another venerable woman, who could not remem 
 ber some story she desired to quote, said : " Why, 
 sometimes I seem, to know nothing." It was during 
 that period in politics when a certain party were 
 known by that name, andherson said : " You ll have 
 to join the Know-Nothings." "Well, I won t have 
 to go far," she retorted, looking keenly at him. 
 
 At a large party given in honor of her arriving at 
 her ninetieth birthday, she was heard to say : " I 
 seem to be one among ten thousand, even if I am not 
 altogether lovely." 
 
 " The woman clergyman is often witty, as is Anna 
 Shaw." Once, when answering the question-box, at 
 a meeting, the question was asked, " Who is respon 
 sible for the liquor business ? " She answered tersely, 
 " Men. Of course they have votes and the business 
 can be voted up or down, according to the will of the 
 voters." A minister in the audience said, " Sister 
 Shaw, don t you think that is rather hard on the 
 men ? Don t you think the devil has something to 
 do with the liquor traffic ? " She looked thoughtful 
 a moment, and then looking at the brother, said, 
 " Well, yes, if the brother is willing to accept the 
 company, men and the devil." A friend says: 
 
 Since I wrote you last I have recalled a sharp 
 repartee made, in my hearing, by a little girl only 
 five years of age. She was a member of the family 
 that occupied part of the house in which I lived while 
 studying at Andover. She was teased a good 
 deal by a brother a little older than herself, on
 
 Are Women Witty? 331 
 
 account of the color of her hair, which was an unmis 
 takable red. The brother mentioned had a capillary 
 covering of an indescribable hue, probably of the 
 shade which the old lady defined as " half-way be 
 tween a dander-grey russet and a fire-stone drab." 
 He had ruthlessly tormented his little sister one 
 day, when she suddenly turned on him and exclaimed, 
 with flashing eyes : " Well, I can tell you one thing, 
 Fred, I know what color my hair is, and that is more 
 than you can say ! " 
 
 If the merit of a retort can be gauged by its suc 
 cess, this one ought to rank high, for it put an end 
 to the persecution. 
 
 Susan B. Anthony represents the elderly spinster, 
 witty to the last, as quick now as when, thirty years 
 ago, Horace Greeley said to her : " The ballot and 
 the bullet go together. You women say you want to 
 vote. And you re ready to fight, too ? " 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Greeley, we are ready to fight at the 
 point of the goose quill the way you always have ! " 
 
 The wit of young girls is apt to take the form of 
 repartee, and to be highly spiced with pepper-sauce, 
 as, at a church wedding, when an impecunious 
 groom said impressively : " With all my worldly 
 goods I thee endow," his cousin in the front pew 
 w r hispered : " There goes his valise." 
 
 A young English attache of the legation in 
 Washington remarked to an American belle some 
 years ago : "I am weally sorry to see that the 
 Bering Sea affair is not likely to be amicably ad-
 
 332 Are Women Witty? 
 
 justed, for, of course, with our superior navy, we 
 could just wipe you off the face of the earth." She 
 replied with one word " Again ? " 
 
 Is not that as true wit, in condensed form, as the 
 remark of Talleyrand, and a cruel one it was to the 
 wretched sufferer on his deathbed, who said, " Oh, I 
 suffer the torments of hell!" "Ddjh?" (already?) 
 asked the diplomat. 
 
 It was the younger daughter of Judge Chase, 
 who, on passing General McClellan, who was leaning 
 gracefully over the back of a chair at a reception : 
 " Ah, General, behind your entrenchments, as 
 usual." 
 
 Another girl, who had spent a winter in Wash 
 ington society, with no end of admirers and atten 
 tion, went for the summer to a seaside resort, where 
 the flattering devotion continued. 
 
 Among the train was an addle-pated dude, who 
 said to her one evening, in a patronizing way, 
 in the intervals between his cane-suckings, " Weally, 
 Miss Scott, you must have an awfully nice time, 
 don t you know so much attention. Why, some 
 times I truly fear it will turn your head." " Indeed, 
 Mr. Softy, I have more fear for my stomach." 
 
 Fashionable Doctor : " My dear young lady, you 
 are drinking unfiltered water, which swarms with 
 animal organisms. You should have it boiled ; that 
 will kill them." 
 
 His Patient : " Well, doctor, I think I d sooner be 
 an aquarium than a cemetery."
 
 Are Women Witty? 333 
 
 A well known society woman of the West end, 
 unfamiliar with the niceties of the English language, 
 spoke at one of those delightful teas which char 
 acterize this delightful season of the year, of a 
 spinal staircase of great beauty which had been con 
 structed in the house of a neighbor. There was a 
 bright girl near by who heard this architectural 
 or anatomical reference. She said, aside, and it 
 was very mean of her to whisper : 
 
 " Perhaps the lady refers to her neighbor s back 
 stairs." 
 
 It w T as at a state ball. The Englishman and the 
 American girl were talking over some of those 
 present, when the Englishman said : " That is Lord 
 B - who has just passed you. Have you met 
 him ? " 
 
 " Yes," was the answer. " and I thought he was 
 extremely dull." 
 
 " You surprise me," said he, " he is one of the 
 most brilliant lights of our service." 
 
 " Really? " she replied. " Then it is my turn to 
 be surprised. His light flickered so when he talked 
 with me that I set him down as one of your tallow 
 diplomats." 
 
 And surely our married belles are not slow at 
 retort. 
 
 At a supper party in London the other night the 
 conversation turned on "talking shop." Some one 
 declared that an actor or musician was never happy 
 unless allowed to talk shop by the hour, and then it
 
 334 Are Women Witty? 
 
 was pointed out that doctors and barristers were 
 "just as bad." A witty lady present laughingly 
 added: "Yes, philosophers talk Schopenhauer, ladies 
 shopping, tipplers Schoppen, musicians Chopin, 
 and actors shop." 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln s remark, as the vivacious Miss 
 Todd, to her lank, gawky admirer, is worth quoting : 
 Young Abe said, " Miss Todd, I want to dance 
 with you the worst way." And she added, "he 
 surely did." 
 
 Mrs. Fred Grant is a witty woman, as is proved 
 by her remark to Frederick Douglass, who regretted 
 being dragged into a political excitement as a nom 
 inee : " You ll have to figure as the dark horse, Mr. 
 Douglass." 
 
 Mrs. George Pendleton replied appropriately to 
 one of our English critics who complained : " You 
 have no antiquities ; no curiosities in your country ! " 
 " Antiquities will come in time, and as for our curi 
 osities, we import them." 
 
 And that suggests the response of Miss Patterson, 
 who married a Bonaparte, and was asked at a dinner 
 in England why the Americans had such bad man 
 ners. She said she supposed it was because of 
 their direct English descent without any infusion 
 from the Aborigines ! 
 
 It was a Washington woman who said : " Sumner 
 should never have married. His self-love was so 
 intense as to make it almost bigamy." 
 
 Rudyard Kipling s mother is described as the
 
 Are Women Witty? 335 
 
 wittiest woman in Northern India. She said of an 
 extremely erudite but garrulous official, that he 
 ought never to be allowed to talk, but should be 
 consulted when required as a cyclopaedia of inform 
 ation. 
 
 Married women do not lag behind when attacked. 
 Rev. Dr. Trask of anti-tobacco fame said to his 
 petite wife soon after their marriage : " I confess I 
 am disappointed in your height." " No more than I 
 am in your depth," she retorted. 
 
 Of wit in dramatic form let me say that Gilbert 
 borrowed his " Palace of Truth " almost bodily from 
 " The Tale of an Old Castle," by Madame de Genlis, 
 and that those inimitable farces, " The Belles of the 
 Kitchen " and " Fun in a Fog " were written by an 
 Englishman especially for the Yokes family. 
 
 In our own country, Mrs. Monatt s "Fashion," a 
 comedy in five acts, was played most successfully 
 and for a long " run " at Wallack s in New York and 
 in Philadelphia, and Mr. French, the publisher of 
 plays, tells me it has been acted all over the Union, 
 and has everywhere been a great favorite. 
 
 Mrs. Verplanck s " Sealed Instructions " also met 
 with marked approval. 
 
 Miss Merington s plays written for Sothern are 
 complained of by the masculine critics as being " too 
 witty " ! bristling with epigrams and over-radiant 
 with brilliant repartee. 
 
 Lovers of mirth are now enjoying in New York 
 Miss Martha Morton s comedy, " His Wife s Father,"
 
 336 Are Women Witty? 
 
 and Crane is complimented for the quality of his 
 humor. Neil Burgess burlesques Widow Bedott, 
 and is regarded as its author. The younger 
 McCarthy does give to Madame Rejane genuine 
 wit in her art. Miss Kate Vannah and Miss Bartlett 
 are now collaborating a comedietta. 
 
 Women s wit never fails, even in the street cars : 
 
 Polite gentleman, rising, " Take my seat, 
 Madame." 
 
 " Never mind, thank you, I get out here, too ! " 
 
 Severe conductor, " Miss, this is the smoker s 
 seat." 
 
 Young lady, " Must I smoke if I sit here ? " 
 
 " You can t keep a good man down," said the 
 proverb-loving boarder. 
 
 "Not," said the typewriter boarder, "not unless 
 he has a seat in the car. Then you can t get him 
 up." 
 
 The concise description of a -ladies lunch as 
 " Giggle, gabble, gobble," was from a New York 
 leader in society. It has been widely ascribed to 
 Dr. Holmes, who assured me in an autograph letter 
 that it did not belong to him. 
 
 Fully half the humorous poetry in our current 
 magazines is from women. I know several who 
 earn their pin-money sending their own off-hand 
 jokes and those of their less enterprising sisters to 
 comic papers for good pay. 
 
 In Dean Ramsay s " Reminiscences of Scottish 
 Humor " he quotes Jimmy Fraser, an idiot, who
 
 Are Women Witty? 337 
 
 said the cleverest thing of them all. I would gladly 
 include a witty idiot girl in my collection, but can 
 not find an idiot girl ! 
 
 Off-hand letters scribbled on shipboard fairly 
 scintillate. Here is one bit from a very seasick 
 girl: 
 
 " Life is intolerable and the whole world a huge 
 mass of food. And alas for the busy, restless mind. 
 I actually wished I had lost mine before starting, for 
 the one thing you can retain is ideas. Ten minutes 
 for refreshments, hot fried oysters, boiled eggs, 
 hotel gongs, etc., chase through my brain like mad. 
 Still laboring under the delusion of must eat I 
 take a cracker, one small, dry, hard, Boston cracker. 
 Heller s tricks pale beside this one of mine, for I 
 instantly threw up several dozen. I try a little 
 brandy, but tis quickly converted into a brandy- 
 sling. " 
 
 Books of travel from the pens of women, are 
 they deficient in humorous incident and vivid sense 
 of fun ? 
 
 Some man regards the absence of a funny column 
 in a girl s paper as proof of no humor. It seems to 
 me evidence of wit and sense anything less humor 
 ous than those efforts I know not of. 
 
 After a careful consideration of masculine wit as 
 shown to-day in the weakly efforts of professional 
 humorists, the pathetic senilities of Punch, the 
 tedious specimens of after-dinner fireworks, when 
 nothing will go off, being damped by dullness and
 
 338 Are Women Witty? 
 
 reiteration, the confessed inability of our noted 
 story-tellers to invent or smuggle a new and really 
 laughter-provoking anecdote, I deem it unwise to 
 wish to live up to, or rather down to, this somnolent 
 and twilight interregnum of masculine wit. 
 
 And in time this absurd, unmeaning fallacy will 
 disappear, and the wit and humor of women will be 
 generously and universally acknowledged. 
 
 If it is a " very serious thing to be a funny man," 
 it is even more dangerous to be a witty woman. 
 For remember : 
 
 " Tho you re bright and tho you re pretty, 
 They ll not love you if you re witty ! "