part like a mere cocotte. She died every inch a queen.

One finds a curious resemblance between the fate of Marie Antoinette and

that of her gallant lover, who outlived her for nearly twenty years. She

died amid the shrieks and execrations of a maddened populace in Paris;

he was practically torn in pieces by a mob in the streets of Stockholm.

The day of his death was the anniversary of the flight to Varennes. To

the last moment of his existence he remained faithful to the memory of

the royal woman who had given herself so utterly to him.

THE STORY OF AARON BURR

There will come a time when the name of Aaron Burr will be cleared from

the prejudice which now surrounds it, when he will stand in the public

estimation side by side with Alexander Hamilton, whom he shot in a duel

in 1804, but whom in many respects he curiously resembled. When the

white light of history shall have searched them both they will appear as

two remarkable men, each having his own undoubted faults and at the same

time his equally undoubted virtues.

Burr and Hamilton were born within a year of each other--Burr being

a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, and Alexander Hamilton being the

illegitimate son of a Scottish merchant in the West Indies. Each of them

was short in stature, keen of intellect, of great physical endurance,

courage, and impressive personality. Each as a young man served on

the staff of Washington during the Revolutionary War, and each of them

quarreled with him, though in a different way.

On one occasion Burr was quite unjustly suspected by Washington of

looking over the latter's shoulder while he was writing. "Washington

leaped to his feet with the exclamation:

"How dare you, Colonel Burr?"

Burr's eyes flashed fire at the question, and he retorted, haughtily:

"Colonel Burr DARE do anything."

This, however, was the end of their altercation The cause of Hamilton's

difference with his chief is not known, but it was a much more serious

quarrel; so that the young officer left his staff position in a fury and

took no part in the war until the end, when he was present at the battle

of Yorktown.

Burr, on the other hand, helped Montgomery to storm the heights of

Quebec, and nearly reached the upper citadel when his commander was

shot dead and the Americans retreated. In all this confusion Burr showed

himself a man of mettle. The slain Montgomery was six feet high, but

Burr carried his body away with wonderful strength amid a shower of

musket-balls and grape-shot.

Hamilton had no belief in the American Constitution, which he called "a

shattered, feeble thing." He could never obtain an elective office,

and he would have preferred to see the United States transformed into

a kingdom. Washington's magnanimity and clear-sightedness made Hamilton

Secretary of the Treasury. Burr, on the other hand, continued his

military service until the war was ended, routing the enemy at

Hackensack, enduring the horrors of Valley Forge, commanding a brigade

at the battle of Monmouth, and heading the defense of the city of New

Haven. He was also attorney-general of New York, was elected to the

United States Senate, was tied with Jefferson for the Presidency, and

then became Vice-President.

Both Hamilton and Burr were effective speakers; but, while Hamilton was

wordy and diffuse, Burr spoke always to the point, with clear and cogent

reasoning. Both were lavish spenders of money, and both were engaged

in duels before the fatal one in which Hamilton fell. Both believed in

dueling as the only way of settling an affair of honor. Neither of them

was averse to love affairs, though it may be said that Hamilton sought

women, while Burr was rather sought by women. When Secretary of the

Treasury, Hamilton was obliged to confess an adulterous amour in order

to save himself from the charge of corrupt practices in public office.

So long as Burr's wife lived he was a devoted, faithful husband to

her. Hamilton was obliged to confess his illicit acts while his wife,

formerly Miss Elizabeth Schuyler, was living. She spent her later years

in buying and destroying the compromising documents which her husband

had published for his countrymen to read.

The most extraordinary thing about Aaron Burr was the magnetic quality

that was felt by every one who approached him. The roots of this

penetrated down into a deep vitality. He was always young, always alert,

polished in manner, courageous with that sort of courage which does not

even recognize the presence of danger, charming in conversation, and

able to adapt it to men or women of any age whatever. His hair was still

dark in his eightieth year. His step was still elastic, his motions were

still as spontaneous and energetic, as those of a youth.

So it was that every one who knew him experienced his fascination. The

rough troops whom he led through the Canadian swamps felt the iron hand

of his discipline; yet they were devoted to him, since he shared all

their toils, faced all their dangers, and ate with them the scraps of

hide which they gnawed to keep the breath of life in their shrunken

bodies.

Burr's discipline was indeed very strict, so that at first raw recruits

rebelled against it. On one occasion the men of an untrained company

resented it so bitterly that they decided to shoot Colonel Burr as he

paraded them for roll-call that evening. Burr somehow got word of it and

contrived to have all the cartridges drawn from their muskets. When the

time for the roll-call came one of the malcontents leaped from the front

line and leveled his weapon at Burr.

"Now is the time, boys!" he shouted.

Like lightning Burr's sword flashed from its scabbard with such a

vigorous stroke as to cut the man's arm completely off and partly to

cleave the musket.

"Take your place in the ranks," said Burr.

The mutineer obeyed, dripping with blood. A month later every man

in that company was devoted to his commander. They had learned that

discipline was the surest source of safety.

But with this high spirit and readiness to fight Burr had a most

pleasing way of meeting every one who came to him. When he was arrested

in the Western forests, charged with high treason, the sound of his

voice won from jury after jury verdicts of acquittal. Often the sheriffs

would not arrest him. One grand jury not merely exonerated him from all

public misdemeanors, but brought in a strong presentment against the

officers of the government for molesting him.

It was the same everywhere. Burr made friends and devoted allies among

all sorts of men. During his stay in France, England, Germany, and

Sweden he interested such men as Charles Lamb, Jeremy Bentham, Sir

Walter Scott, Goethe, and Heeren. They found his mind able to meet

with theirs on equal terms. Burr, indeed, had graduated as a youth

with honors from Princeton, and had continued his studies there after

graduation, which was then a most unusual thing to do. But, of course,

he learned most from his contact with men and women of the world.

Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, in The Minister's Wooing, has given what is

probably an exact likeness of Aaron Burr, with his brilliant gifts and

some of his defects. It is strong testimony to the character of Burr

that Mrs. Stowe set out to paint him as a villain; but before she had

written long she felt his fascination and made her readers, in their

own despite, admirers of this remarkable man. There are many parallels,

indeed, between him and Napoleon--in the quickness of his intellect, the

ready use of his resources, and his power over men, while he was more

than Napoleon in his delightful gift of conversation and the easy play

of his cultured mind.

Those who are full of charm are willing also to be charmed. All his life

Burr was abstemious in food and drink. His tastes were most refined. It

is difficult to believe that such a man could have been an unmitigated

profligate.

In his twentieth year there seems to have begun the first of the

romances that run through the story of his long career. Perhaps one

ought not to call it the first romance, for at eighteen, while he was

studying law at Litchfield, a girl, whose name has been suppressed, made

an open avowal of love for him. Almost at the same time an heiress with

a large fortune would have married him had he been willing to accept her

hand. But at this period he was only a boy and did not take such things

seriously.

Two years later, after Burr had seen hard service at Quebec and on

Manhattan Island, his name was associated with that of a very beautiful

girl named Margaret Moncrieffe. She was the daughter of a British major,

but in some way she had been captured while within the American lines.

Her captivity was regarded as little more than a joke; but while she was

thus a prisoner she saw a great deal of Burr. For several months they

were comrades, after which General Putnam sent her with his compliments

to her father.

Margaret Moncrieffe had a most emotional nature. There can be no doubt

that she deeply loved the handsome young American officer, whom she

never saw again. It is doubtful how far their intimacy was carried.

Later she married a Mr. Coghlan. After reaching middle life she wrote

of Burr in a way which shows that neither years nor the obligations of

marriage could make her forget that young soldier, whom she speaks of

as "the conqueror of her soul." In the rather florid style of those days

the once youthful Margaret Moncrieffe expresses herself as follows:

Oh, may these pages one day meet the eye of him who subdued my virgin

heart, whom the immutable, unerring laws of nature had pointed out for

my husband, but whose sacred decree the barbarous customs of society

fatally violated!

Commenting on this paragraph, Mr. H. C. Merwin justly remarks that,

whatever may have been Burr's conduct toward Margaret Moncrieffe, the

lady herself, who was the person chiefly concerned, had no complaint

to make of it. It certainly was no very serious affair, since in the

following year Burr met a lady who, while she lived, was the only woman

for whom he ever really cared.

This was Theodosia Prevost, the wife of a major in the British army.

Burr met her first in 1777, while she was living with her sister in

Westchester County. Burr's command was fifteen miles across the river,

but distance and danger made no difference to him. He used to mount a

swift horse, inspect his sentinels and outposts, and then gallop to the

Hudson, where a barge rowed by six soldiers awaited him. The barge was

well supplied with buffalo-skins, upon which the horse was thrown with

his legs bound, and then half an hour's rowing brought them to the

other side. There Burr resumed his horse, galloped to the house of Mrs.

Prevost, and, after spending a few hours with her, returned in the same

way.

Mrs. Prevost was by no means beautiful, but she had an attractiveness

of her own. She was well educated and possessed charming manners, with

a disposition both gentle and affectionate. Her husband died soon after

the beginning of the war, and then Burr married her. No more ideal

family life could be conceived than his, and the letters which passed

between the two are full of adoration. Thus she wrote to him:

Tell me, why do I grow every day more tenacious of your regard? Is it

because each revolving day proves you more deserving?

And thus Burr answered her:

Continue to multiply your letters to me. They are all my solace. The

last six are constantly within my reach. I read them once a day at

least. Write me all that I have asked, and a hundred things which I have

not.

When it is remembered that these letters were written after nine years

of marriage it is hard to believe all the evil things that have been

said of Burr.

His wife died in 1794, and he then gave a double affection to his

daughter Theodosia, whose beauty and accomplishments were known

throughout the country. Burr took the greatest pains in her education,

and believed that she should be trained, as he had been, to be brave,

industrious, and patient. He himself, who has been described as a

voluptuary, delighted in the endurance of cold and heat and of severe

labor.

After his death one of his younger admirers was asked what Burr had done

for him. The reply was characteristic.

"He made me iron," was the answer.

No father ever gave more attention to his daughter's welfare. As to

Theodosia's studies he was very strict, making her read Greek and Latin

every day, with drawing and music and history, in addition to French.

Not long before her marriage to Joseph Allston, of South Carolina, Burr

wrote to her:

I really think, my dear Theo, that you will be very soon beyond all

verbal criticism, and that my whole attention will be presently directed

to the improvement of your style.

Theodosia Burr married into a family of good old English stock, where

riches were abundant, and high character was regarded as the best of

all possessions. Every one has heard of the mysterious tragedy which is

associated with her history. In 1812, when her husband had been elected

Governor of his state, her only child--a sturdy boy of eleven--died, and

Theodosia's health was shattered by her sorrow. In the same year Burr

returned from a sojourn in Europe, and his loving daughter embarked from

Charleston on a schooner, the Patriot, to meet her father in New

York. When Burr arrived he was met by a letter which told him that his

grandson was dead and that Theodosia was coming to him.

Weeks sped by, and no news was heard of the ill-fated Patriot. At last

it became evident that she must have gone down or in some other way have

been lost. Burr and Governor Allston wrote to each other letter after

letter, of which each one seems to surpass the agony of the other. At

last all hope was given up. Governor Allston died soon after of a broken

heart; but Burr, as became a Stoic, acted otherwise.

He concealed everything that reminded him of Theodosia. He never spoke

of his lost daughter. His grief was too deep-seated and too terrible for

speech. Only once did he ever allude to her, and this was in a letter

written to an afflicted friend, which contained the words:

Ever since the event which separated me from mankind I have been able

neither to give nor to receive consolation.

In time the crew of a pirate vessel was captured and sentenced to be

hanged. One of the men, who seemed to be less brutal than the rest,

told how, in 1812, they had captured a schooner, and, after their usual

practice, had compelled the passengers to walk the plank. All hesitated

and showed cowardice, except only one--a beautiful woman whose eyes were

as bright and whose bearing was as unconcerned as if she were safe on

shore. She quickly led the way, and, mounting the plank with a certain

scorn of death, said to the others:

"Come, I will show you how to die."

It has always been supposed that this intrepid girl may have been

Theodosia Allston. If so, she only acted as her father would have done

and in strict accordance with his teachings.

This resolute courage, this stern joy in danger, this perfect

equanimity, made Burr especially attractive to women, who love courage,

the more so when it is coupled with gentleness and generosity.

Perhaps no man in our country has been so vehemently accused regarding

his relations with the other sex. The most improbable stories were told

about him, even by his friends. As to his enemies, they took boundless

pains to paint him in the blackest colors. According to them, no woman

was safe from his intrigues. He was a perfect devil in leading them

astray and then casting them aside.

Thus one Matthew L. Davis, in whom Burr had confided as a friend, wrote

of him long afterward a most unjust account--unjust because we have

proofs that it was false in the intensity of its abuse. Davis wrote:

It is truly surprising how any individual could become so eminent as a

soldier, as a statesman, and as a professional man who devoted so much

time to the other sex as was devoted by Colonel Burr. For more than

half a century of his life they seemed to absorb his whole thought.

His intrigues were without number; the sacred bonds of friendship were

unhesitatingly violated when they operated as barriers to the indulgence

of his passions. In this particular Burr appears to have been unfeeling

and heartless.

It is impossible to believe that the Spartan Burr, whose life was one of

incessant labor and whose kindliness toward every one was so well known,

should have deserved a commentary like this. The charge of immorality

is so easily made and so difficult of disproof that it has been flung

promiscuously at all the great men of history, including, in our own

country, Washington and Jefferson as well as Burr. In England, when

Gladstone was more than seventy years of age, he once stopped to ask a

question of a woman in the street. Within twenty-four hours the London

clubs were humming with a sort of demoniac glee over the story that

this aged and austere old gentleman was not above seeking common street

amours.

And so with Aaron Burr to a great extent. That he was a man of strict

morality it would be absurd to maintain. That he was a reckless and

licentious profligate would be almost equally untrue. Mr. H. O. Merwin

has very truly said:

Part of Burr's reputation for profligacy was due, no doubt, to that

vanity respecting women of which Davis himself speaks. He never refused

to accept the parentage of a child.

"Why do you allow this woman to saddle you with her child when you KNOW

you are not the father of it?" said a friend to him a few months before

his death.

"Sir," he replied, "when a lady does me the honor to name me the father

of her child I trust I shall always be too gallant to show myself

ungrateful for the favor."

There are two curious legends relating to Aaron Burr. They serve to show

that his reputation became such that he could not enjoy the society of a

woman without having her regarded as his mistress.

When he was United States Senator from New York he lived in Philadelphia

at the lodging-house of a Mrs. Payne, whose daughter, Dorothy Todd, was

the very youthful widow of an officer. This young woman was rather

free in her manners, and Burr was very responsive in his. At the time,

however, nothing was thought of it; but presently Burr brought to the

house the serious and somewhat pedantic James Madison and introduced him

to the hoyden.

Madison was then forty-seven years of age, a stranger to society, but

gradually rising to a prominent position in politics--"the great little

Madison," as Burr rather lightly called him. Before very long he had

proposed marriage to the young widow. She hesitated, and some one

referred the matter to President Washington. The Father of his Country

answered in what was perhaps the only opinion that he ever gave on the

subject of matrimony. It is worth preserving because it shows that he

had a sense of humor:

For my own part, I never did nor do I believe I ever shall give advice

to a woman who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage... A woman very

rarely asks an opinion or seeks advice on such an occasion till her

mind is wholly made up, and then it is with the hope and expectation

of obtaining a sanction, and not that she means to be governed by your

disapproval.

Afterward when Dolly Madison with, her yellow turban and kittenish ways

was making a sensation in Washington society some one recalled her old

association with Burr. At once the story sprang to light that Burr had

been her lover and that he had brought about the match with Madison as

an easy way of getting rid of her.

There is another curious story which makes Martin Van Buren, eighth

President of the United States, to have been the illegitimate son of

Aaron Burr. There is no earthly reason for believing this, except that

Burr sometimes stopped overnight at the tavern in Kinderhook which was

kept by Van Buren's putative father, and that Van Buren in later life

showed an astuteness equal to that of Aaron Burr himself, so that he was

called by his opponents "the fox of Kinderhook." But, as Van Buren was

born in December of the same year (1782) in which Burr was married to

Theodosia Prevost, the story is utterly improbable when we remember,

as we must, the ardent affection which Burr showed his wife, not only

before their marriage, but afterward until her death.

Putting aside these purely spurious instances, as well as others cited

by Mr. Parton, the fact remains that Aaron Burr, like Daniel Webster,

found a great attraction in the society of women; that he could please

them and fascinate them to an extraordinary degree; and that during

his later life he must be held quite culpable in this respect. His

love-making was ardent and rapid, as we shall afterward see in the case

of his second marriage.

Many other stories are told of him. For instance, it is said that he

once took a stage-coach from Jersey City to Philadelphia. The only other

occupant was a woman of high standing and one whose family deeply hated

Aaron Burr. Nevertheless, so the story goes, before they had reached

Newark she was absolutely swayed by his charm of manner; and when the

coach made its last stop before Philadelphia she voluntarily became his

mistress.

It must also be said that, unlike those of Webster and Hamilton, his

intrigues were never carried on with women of the lower sort. This may

be held by some to deepen the charge against him; but more truly does it

exonerate him, since it really means that in many cases these women

of the world threw themselves at him and sought him as a lover, when

otherwise he might never have thought of them.

That he was not heartless and indifferent to those who had loved him

may be shown by the great care which he took to protect their names and

reputations. Thus, on the day before his duel with Hamilton, he made a

will in which he constituted his son-in-law as his executor. At the same

time he wrote a sealed letter to Governor Allston in which he said:

If you can pardon and indulge a folly, I would suggest that Mme. ----,

too well known under the name of Leonora, has claims on my recollection.

She is now with her husband at Santiago, in Cuba.

Another fact has been turned to his discredit. From many women, in the

course of his long life, he had received a great quantity of letters

written by aristocratic hands on scented paper, and these letters he had

never burned. Here again, perhaps, was shown the vanity of the man

who loved love for its own sake. He kept all these papers in a huge

iron-clamped chest, and he instructed Theodosia in case he should die to

burn every letter which might injure any one.

After Theodosia's death Burr gave the same instructions to Matthew L.

Davis, who did, indeed, burn them, though he made their existence a

means of blackening the character of Burr. He should have destroyed them

unopened, and should never have mentioned them in his memoirs of the man

who trusted him as a friend.

Such was Aaron Burr throughout a life which lasted for eighty years. His

last romance, at the age of seventy-eight, is worth narrating because it

has often been misunderstood.

Mme. Jumel was a Rhode Island girl who at seventeen years of age eloped

with an English officer, Colonel Peter Croix. Her first husband

died while she was still quite young, and she then married a French

wine-merchant, Stephen Jumel, some twenty years her senior, but a man of

much vigor and intelligence. M. Jumel made a considerable fortune in New

York, owning a small merchant fleet; and after Napoleon's downfall he

and his wife went to Paris, where she made a great impression in the

salons by her vivacity and wit and by her lavish expenditures.

Losing, however, part of what she and her husband possessed, Mme. Jumel

returned to New York, bringing with her a great amount of furniture and

paintings, with which she decorated the historic house still standing

in the upper part of Manhattan Island--a mansion held by her in her own

right. She managed her estate with much ability; and in 1828 M. Jumel

returned to live with her in what was in those days a splendid villa.

Four years later, however, M. Jumel suffered an accident from which he

died in a few days, leaving his wife still an attractive woman and not

very much past her prime. Soon after she had occasion to seek for legal

advice, and for this purpose visited the law-office of Aaron Burr.

She had known him a good many years before; and, though he was now

seventy-eight years of age, there was no perceptible change in him. He

was still courtly in manner, tactful, and deferential, while physically

he was straight, active, and vigorous.

A little later she invited him to a formal banquet, where he displayed

all his charms and shone to great advantage. When he was about to lead

her in to dinner, he said:

"I give my hand, madam; my heart has long been yours."

These attentions he followed up with several other visits, and

finally proposed that she should marry him. Much fluttered and no less

flattered, she uttered a sort of "No" which was not likely to discourage

a man like Aaron Burr.

"I shall come to you before very long," he said, "accompanied by a

clergyman; and then you will give me your hand because I want it."

This rapid sort of wooing was pleasantly embarrassing. The lady rather

liked it; and so, on an afternoon when the sun was shining and the

leaves were rustling in the breeze, Burr drove up to Mme. Jumel's

mansion accompanied by Dr. Bogart--the very clergyman who had married

him to his first wife fifty years before.

Mme. Jumel was now seriously disturbed, but her refusal was not a strong

one. There were reasons why she should accept the offer. The great

house was lonely. The management of her estate required a man's advice.

Moreover, she was under the spell of Burr's fascination. Therefore she

arrayed herself in one of her most magnificent Paris gowns; the members

of her household and eight servants were called in and the ceremony

was duly performed by Dr. Bogart. A banquet followed. A dozen cobwebbed

bottles of wine were brought up from the cellar, and the marriage feast

went on merrily until after midnight.

This marriage was a singular one from many points of view. It was

strange that a man of seventy-eight should take by storm the affections

of a woman so much younger than he--a woman of wealth and knowledge of

the world. In the second place, it is odd that there was still another

woman--a mere girl--who was so infatuated with Burr that when she was

told of his marriage it nearly broke her heart. Finally, in the early

part of that same year he had been accused of being the father of a

new-born child, and in spite of his age every one believed the charge to

be true. Here is a case that it would be hard to parallel.

The happiness of the newly married pair did not, however, last very

long. They made a wedding journey into Connecticut, of which state

Burr's nephew was then Governor, and there Burr saw a monster bridge

over the Connecticut River, in which his wife had shares, though they

brought her little income. He suggested that she should transfer the

investment, which, after all, was not a very large one, and place it in

a venture in Texas which looked promising. The speculation turned out to

be a loss, however, and this made Mrs. Burr extremely angry, the more

so as she had reason to think that her ever-youthful husband had been

engaged in flirting with the country girls near the Jumel mansion.

She was a woman of high spirit and had at times a violent temper. One

day the post-master at what was then the village of Harlem was surprised

to see Mrs. Burr drive up before the post-office in an open carriage.

He came out to ask what she desired, and was surprised to find her in a

violent temper and with an enormous horse-pistol on each cushion at her

side.

"What do you wish, madam?" said he, rather mildly.

"What do I wish?" she cried. "Let me get at that villain Aaron Burr!"

Presently Burr seems to have succeeded in pacifying her; but in the end

they separated, though she afterward always spoke most kindly of him.

When he died, only about a year later, she is said to have burst into

a flood of tears--another tribute to the fascination which Aaron Burr

exercised through all his checkered life.

It is difficult to come to any fixed opinion regarding the moral

character of Aaron Burr. As a soldier he was brave to the point of

recklessness. As a political leader he was almost the equal of Jefferson

and quite superior to Hamilton. As a man of the world he was highly

accomplished, polished in manner, charming in conversation. He made

friends easily, and he forgave his enemies with a broadmindedness that

is unusual.

On the other hand, in his political career there was a touch of

insincerity, and it can scarcely be denied that he used his charm too

often to the injury of those women who could not resist his insinuating

ways and the caressing notes of his rich voice. But as a husband, in his

youth, he was devoted, affectionate, and loyal; while as a father he was

little less than worshiped by the daughter whom he reared so carefully.

One of his biographers very truly says that no such wretch as Burr has

been declared to be could have won and held the love of such a wife and

such a daughter as Burr had.

When all the other witnesses have been heard, let the two Theodosias

be summoned, and especially that daughter who showed toward him an

affectionate veneration unsurpassed by any recorded in history or

romance. Such an advocate as Theodosia the younger must avail in some

degree, even though the culprit were brought before the bar of Heaven

itself.

GEORGE IV. AND MRS. FITZHERBERT

In the last decade of the eighteenth century England was perhaps the

most brilliant nation of the world. Other countries had been humbled

by the splendid armies of France and were destined to be still further

humbled by the emperor who came from Corsica. France had begun to

seize the scepter of power; yet to this picture there was another

side--fearful want and grievous poverty and the horrors of the

Revolution. Russia was too far away, and was still considered too

barbarous, for a brilliant court to flourish there. Prussia had the

prestige that Frederick the Great won for her, but she was still a

comparatively small state. Italy was in a condition of political chaos;

the banks of the Rhine were running blood where the Austrian armies

faced the gallant Frenchmen under the leadership of Moreau. But England,

in spite of the loss of her American colonies, was rich and prosperous,

and her invincible fleets were extending her empire over the seven seas.

At no time in modern England has the court at London seen so much real

splendor or such fine manners. The royalist emigres who fled from France

brought with them names and pedigrees that were older than the Crusades,

and many of them were received with the frankest, freest English

hospitality. If here and there some marquis or baron of ancient blood

was perforce content to teach music to the daughters of tradesmen in

suburban schools, nevertheless they were better off than they had

been in France, harried by the savage gaze-hounds of the guillotine.

Afterward, in the days of the Restoration, when they came back to

their estates, they had probably learned more than one lesson from the

bouledogues of Merry England, who had little tact, perhaps, but who were

at any rate kindly and willing to share their goods with pinched and

poverty-stricken foreigners.

The court, then, as has been said, was brilliant with notables from

Continental countries, and with the historic wealth of the peerage of

England. Only one cloud overspread it; and that was the mental condition

of the king. We have become accustomed to think of George III as a dull

creature, almost always hovering on the verge of that insanity which

finally swept him into a dark obscurity; but Thackeray's picture of him

is absurdly untrue to the actual facts. George III. was by no means a

dullard, nor was he a sort of beefy country squire who roved about the

palace gardens with his unattractive spouse.

Obstinate enough he was, and ready for a combat with the rulers of the

Continent or with his self-willed sons; but he was a man of brains and

power, and Lord Rosebery has rightly described him as the most striking

constitutional figure of his time. Had he retained his reason, and

had his erratic and self-seeking son not succeeded him during his own

lifetime, Great Britain might very possibly have entered upon other ways

than those which opened to her after the downfall of Napoleon.

The real center of fashionable England, however, was not George III.,

but rather his son, subsequently George IV., who was made Prince of

Wales three days after his birth, and who became prince regent during

the insanity of the king. He was the leader of the social world, the

fit companion of Beau Brummel and of a choice circle of rakes and

fox-hunters who drank pottle-deep. Some called him "the first gentleman

of Europe." Others, who knew him better, described him as one who

never kept his word to man or woman and who lacked the most elementary

virtues.

Yet it was his good luck during the first years of his regency to be

popular as few English kings have ever been. To his people he typified

old England against revolutionary France; and his youth and gaiety made

many like him. He drank and gambled; he kept packs of hounds and strings

of horses; he ran deeply into debt that he might patronize the sports

of that uproarious day. He was a gallant "Corinthian," a haunter of dens

where there were prize-fights and cock-fights, and there was hardly a

doubtful resort in London where his face was not familiar.

He was much given to gallantry--not so much, as it seemed, for

wantonness, but from sheer love of mirth and chivalry. For a time, with

his chosen friends, such as Fox and Sheridan, he ventured into reckless

intrigues that recalled the amours of his predecessor, Charles II. He

had by no means the wit and courage of Charles; and, indeed, the house

of Hanover lacked the outward show of chivalry which made the Stuarts

shine with external splendor. But he was good-looking and stalwart, and

when he had half a dozen robust comrades by his side he could assume

a very manly appearance. Such was George IV. in his regency and in

his prime. He made that period famous for its card-playing, its deep

drinking, and for the dissolute conduct of its courtiers and noblemen no

less than for the gallantry of its soldiers and its momentous victories

on sea and land. It came, however, to be seen that his true achievements

were in reality only escapades, that his wit was only folly, and his

so-called "sensibility" was but sham. He invented buckles, striped

waistcoats, and flamboyant collars, but he knew nothing of the

principles of kingship or the laws by which a state is governed.

The fact that he had promiscuous affairs with women appealed at first

to the popular sense of the romantic. It was not long, however, before

these episodes were trampled down into the mire of vulgar scandal.

One of the first of them began when he sent a letter, signed "Florizel,"

to a young actress, "Perdita" Robinson. Mrs. Robinson, whose maiden

name was Mary Darby, and who was the original of famous portraits

by Gainsborough and Reynolds, was a woman of beauty, talent, and

temperament. George, wishing in every way to be "romantic," insisted

upon clandestine meetings on the Thames at Kew, with all the stage

trappings of the popular novels--cloaks, veils, faces hidden, and armed

watchers to warn her of approaching danger. Poor Perdita took this

nonsense so seriously that she gave up her natural vocation for the

stage, and forsook her husband, believing that the prince would never

weary of her.

He did weary of her very soon, and, with the brutality of a man of such

a type, turned her away with the promise of some money; after which he

cut her in the Park and refused to speak to her again. As for the money,

he may have meant to pay it, but Perdita had a long struggle before she

succeeded in getting it. It may be assumed that the prince had to borrow

it and that this obligation formed part of the debts which Parliament

paid for him.

It is not necessary to number the other women whose heads he turned.

They are too many for remembrance here, and they have no special

significance, save one who, as is generally believed, became his wife so

far as the church could make her so. An act of 1772 had made it

illegal for any member of the English royal family to marry without the

permission of the king. A marriage contracted without the king's consent

might be lawful in the eyes of the church, but the children born of it

could not inherit any claim to the throne.

It may be remarked here that this withholding of permission was strictly

enforced. Thus William IV., who succeeded George IV., was married,

before his accession to the throne, to Mrs. Jordan (Dorothy Bland).

Afterward he lawfully married a woman of royal birth who was known as

Queen Adelaide.

There is an interesting story which tells how Queen Victoria came to

be born because her father, the Duke of Kent, was practically forced

to give up a morganatic union which he greatly preferred to a marriage

arranged for him by Parliament. Except the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke

of Kent was the only royal duke who was likely to have children in the

regular line. The only daughter of George IV. had died in childhood.

The Duke of Cumberland was for various reasons ineligible; the Duke of

Clarence, later King William IV., was almost too old; and therefore, to

insure the succession, the Duke of Kent was begged to marry a young and

attractive woman, a princess of the house of Saxe-Coburg, who was ready

for the honor. It was greatly to the Duke's credit that he showed deep

and sincere feeling in this matter. As he said himself in effect:

"This French lady has stood by me in hard times and in good times,

too--why should I cast her off? She has been more than a wife to me. And

what do I care for your plans in Parliament? Send over for one of the

Stuarts--they are better men than the last lot of our fellows that you

have had!"

In the end, however, he was wearied out and was persuaded to marry, but

he insisted that a generous sum should be settled on the lady who had

been so long his true companion, and to whom, no doubt, he gave many a

wistful thought in his new but unfamiliar quarters in Kensington Palace,

which was assigned as his residence.

Again, the second Duke of Cambridge, who died only a few years ago,

greatly desired to marry a lady who was not of royal rank, though of

fine breeding and of good birth. He besought his young cousin, as

head of the family, to grant him this privilege of marriage; but Queen

Victoria stubbornly refused. The duke was married according to the rites

of the church, but he could not make his wife a duchess. The queen never

quite forgave him for his partial defiance of her wishes, though the

duke's wife--she was usually spoken of as Mrs. FitzGeorge--was received

almost everywhere, and two of her sons hold high rank in the British

army and navy, respectively.

The one real love story in the life of George IV. is that which tells of

his marriage with a lady who might well have been the wife of any king.

This was Maria Anne Smythe, better known as Mrs. Fitzherbert, who was

six years older than the young prince when she first met him in company

with a body of gentlemen and ladies in 1784.

Maria Fitzherbert's face was one which always displayed its best

advantages. Her eyes were peculiarly languishing, and, as she had

already been twice a widow, and was six years his senior, she had the

advantage over a less experienced lover. Likewise, she was a Catholic,

and so by another act of Parliament any marriage with her would be

illegal. Yet just because of all these different objections the prince

was doubly drawn to her, and was willing to sacrifice even the throne if

he could but win her.

His father, the king, called him into the royal presence and said:

"George, it is time that you should settle down and insure the

succession to the throne."

"Sir," replied the prince, "I prefer to resign the succession and let my

brother have it, and that I should live as a private English gentleman."

Mrs. Fitzherbert was not the sort of woman to give herself up readily to

a morganatic connection. Moreover, she soon came to love Prince George

too well to entangle him in a doubtful alliance with one of another

faith than his. Not long after he first met her the prince, who was

always given to private theatricals, sent messengers riding in hot haste

to her house to tell her that he had stabbed himself, that he begged

to see her, and that unless she came he would repeat the act. The lady

yielded, and hurried to Carlton House, the prince's residence; but she

was prudent enough to take with her the Duchess of Devonshire, who was a

reigning beauty of the court.

The scene which followed was theatrical rather than impressive.--The

prince was found in his sleeping-chamber, pale and with his ruffles

blood-stained. He played the part of a youthful and love-stricken wooer,

vowing that he would marry the woman of his heart or stab himself

again. In the presence of his messengers, who, with the duchess,

were witnesses, he formally took the lady as his wife, while Lady

Devonshire's wedding-ring sealed the troth. The prince also acknowledged

it in a document.

Mrs. Fitzherbert was, in fact, a woman of sound sense. Shortly after

this scene of melodramatic intensity her wits came back to her, and she

recognized that she had merely gone through a meaningless farce. So

she sent back the prince's document and the ring and hastened to

the Continent, where he could not reach her, although his detectives

followed her steps for a year.

At the last she yielded, however, and came home to marry the prince

in such fashion as she could--a marriage of love, and surely one of

morality, though not of parliamentary law. The ceremony was performed

"in her own drawing-room in her house in London, in the presence of the

officiating Protestant clergyman and two of her own nearest relatives."

Such is the serious statement of Lord Stourton, who was Mrs.

Fitzherbert's cousin and confidant. The truth of it was never denied,

and Mrs. Fitzherbert was always treated with respect, and even regarded

as a person of great distinction. Nevertheless, on more than one

occasion the prince had his friends in Parliament deny the marriage in

order that his debts might be paid and new allowances issued to him by

the Treasury.

George certainly felt himself a husband. Like any other married prince,

he set himself to build a palace for his country home. While in search

of some suitable spot he chanced to visit the "pretty fishing-village"

of Brighton to see his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. Doubtless he found

it an attractive place, yet this may have been not so much because

of its view of the sea as for the reason that Mrs. Fitzherbert had

previously lived there.

However, in 1784 the prince sent down his chief cook to make

arrangements for the next royal visit. The cook engaged a house on the

spot where the Pavilion now stands, and from that time Brighton began to

be an extremely fashionable place. The court doctors, giving advice that

was agreeable, recommended their royal patient to take sea-bathing at

Brighton. At once the place sprang into popularity.

At first the gentry were crowded into lodging-houses and the

accommodations were primitive to a degree. But soon handsome villas

arose on every side; hotels appeared; places of amusement were opened.

The prince himself began to build a tasteless but showy structure,

partly Chinese and partly Indian in style, on the fashionable promenade

of the Steyne.

During his life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at Brighton the prince held what

was practically a court. Hundreds of the aristocracy came down from

London and made their temporary dwellings there; while thousands who

were by no means of the court made the place what is now popularly

called "London by the Sea." There were the Duc de Chartres, of France;

statesmen and rakes, like Fox, Sheridan, and the Earl of Barrymore; a

very beautiful woman, named Mrs. Couch, a favorite singer at the opera,

to whom the prince gave at one time jewels worth ten thousand pounds;

and a sister of the Earl of Barrymore, who was as notorious as her

brother. She often took the president's chair at a club which George's

friends had organized and which she had christened the Hell Fire Club.

Such persons were not the only visitors at Brighton. Men of much more

serious demeanor came down to visit the prince and brought with them

quieter society. Nevertheless, for a considerable time the place was

most noted for its wild scenes of revelry, into which George frequently

entered, though his home life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at the Pavilion was

a decorous one.

No one felt any doubt as to the marriage of the two persons, who seemed

so much like a prince and a princess. Some of the people of the place

addressed Mrs. Fitzherbert as "Mrs. Prince." The old king and his wife,

however, much deplored their son's relation with her. This was partly

due to the fact that Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Catholic and that she had

received a number of French nuns who had been driven out of France at

the time of the Revolution. But no less displeasure was caused by the

prince's racing and dicing, which swelled his debts to almost a million

pounds, so that Parliament and, indeed, the sober part of England were

set against him.

Of course, his marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert had no legal status; nor is

there any reason for believing that she ever became a mother. She had

no children by her former two husbands, and Lord Stourton testified

positively that she never had either son or daughter by Prince George.

Nevertheless, more than one American claimant has risen to advance

some utterly visionary claim to the English throne by reason of alleged

descent from Prince George and Mrs. Fitzherbert.

Neither William IV. nor Queen Victoria ever spent much time at Brighton.

In King William's case it was explained that the dampness of the

Pavilion did not suit him; and as to Queen Victoria, it was said that

she disliked the fact that buildings had been erected so as to cut

off the view of the sea. It is quite likely, however, that the queen

objected to the associations of the place, and did not care to be

reminded of the time when her uncle had lived there so long in a

morganatic state of marriage.

At length the time came when the king, Parliament, and the people at

large insisted that the Prince of Wales should make a legal marriage,

and a wife was selected for him in the person of Caroline, daughter of

the Duke of Brunswick. This marriage took place exactly ten years after

his wedding with the beautiful and gentle-mannered Mrs. Fitzherbert.

With the latter he had known many days and hours of happiness. With

Princess Caroline he had no happiness at all.

Prince George met her at the pier to greet her. It is said that as he

took her hand he kissed her, and then, suddenly recoiling, he whispered

to one of his friends:

"For God's sake, George, give me a glass of brandy!"

Such an utterance was more brutal and barbaric than anything his bride

could have conceived of, though it is probable, fortunately, that she

did not understand him by reason of her ignorance of English.

We need not go through the unhappy story of this unsympathetic,

neglected, rebellious wife. Her life with the prince soon became one

of open warfare; but instead of leaving England she remained to set the

kingdom in an uproar. As soon as his father died and he became king,

George sued her for divorce. Half the people sided with the queen,

while the rest regarded her as a vulgar creature who made love to her

attendants and brought dishonor on the English throne. It was a sorry,

sordid contrast between the young Prince George who had posed as a sort

of cavalier and this now furious gray old man wrangling with his furious

German wife.

Well might he look back to the time when he met Perdita in the moonlight

on the Thames, or when he played the part of Florizel, or, better still,

when he enjoyed the sincere and disinterested love of the gentle woman

who was his wife in all but legal status. Caroline of Brunswick was

thrust away from the king's coronation. She took a house within sight of

Westminster Abbey, so that she might make hag-like screeches to the

mob and to the king as he passed by. Presently, in August, 1821, only

a month after the coronation, she died, and her body was taken back to

Brunswick for burial.

George himself reigned for nine years longer. When he died in 1830 his

executor was the Duke of Wellington. The duke, in examining the late

king's private papers, found that he had kept with the greatest care

every letter written to him by his morganatic wife. During his last

illness she had sent him an affectionate missive which it is said George

"read eagerly." Mrs. Fitzherbert wished the duke to give up her letters;

but he would do so only in return for those which he had written to her.

It was finally decided that it would be best to burn both his and hers.

This work was carried out in Mrs. Fitzherbert's own house by the lady,

the duke, and the Earl of Albemarle.

Of George it may be said that he has left as memories behind him only

three things that will be remembered. The first is the Pavilion at

Brighton, with its absurdly oriental decorations, its minarets and

flimsy towers. The second is the buckle which he invented and which

Thackeray has immortalized with his biting satire. The last is the story

of his marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, and of the influence exercised

upon him by the affection of a good woman.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX

Perhaps some readers will consider this story inconsistent with those

that have preceded it. Yet, as it is little known to most readers and as

it is perhaps unique in the history of romantic love, I cannot forbear

relating it; for I believe that it is full of curious interest and

pathetic power.

All those who have written of the French Revolution have paused in

their chronicle of blood and flame to tell the episode of the peasant

Royalist, Charlotte Corday; but in telling it they have often omitted

the one part of the story that is personal and not political. The

tragic record of this French girl and her self-sacrifice has been told a

thousand times by writers in many languages; yet almost all of them have

neglected the brief romance which followed her daring deed and which was

consummated after her death upon the guillotine. It is worth our while

to speak first of Charlotte herself and of the man she slew, and then

to tell that other tale which ought always to be entwined with her great

deed of daring.

Charlotte Corday--Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armand--was a native of

Normandy, and was descended, as her name implies, from noble ancestors.

Her forefathers, indeed, had been statesmen, civil rulers, and soldiers,

and among them was numbered the famous poet Corneille, whom the French

rank with Shakespeare. But a century or more of vicissitudes had reduced

her branch of the family almost to the position of peasants--a fact

which partly justifies the name that some give her when they call her

"the Jeanne d'Arc of the Revolution."

She did not, however, spend her girlish years amid the fields and woods

tending her sheep, as did the other Jeanne d'Arc; but she was placed

in charge of the sisters in a convent, and from them she received such

education as she had. She was a lonely child, and her thoughts turned

inward, brooding over many things.

After she had left the convent she was sent to live with an aunt. Here

she devoted herself to reading over and over the few books which

the house contained. These consisted largely of the deistic writers,

especially Voltaire, and to some extent they destroyed her convent

faith, though it is not likely that she understood them very fully.

More to her taste was a copy of Plutarch's Lives. These famous stories

fascinated her. They told her of battle and siege, of intrigue and

heroism, and of that romantic love of country which led men to throw

away their lives for the sake of a whole people. Brutus and Regulus were

her heroes. To die for the many seemed to her the most glorious end that

any one could seek. When she thought of it she thrilled with a sort

of ecstasy, and longed with all the passion of her nature that such a

glorious fate might be her own.

Charlotte had nearly come to womanhood at the time when the French

Revolution first broke out. Royalist though she had been in her

sympathies, she felt the justice of the people's cause. She had seen the

suffering of the peasantry, the brutality of the tax-gatherers, and all

the oppression of the old regime. But what she hoped for was a

democracy of order and equality and peace. Could the king reign as a

constitutional monarch rather than as a despot, this was all for which

she cared.

In Normandy, where she lived, were many of those moderate republicans

known as Girondists, who felt as she did and who hoped for the same

peaceful end to the great outbreak. On the other hand, in Paris, the

party of the Mountain, as it was called, ruled with a savage violence

that soon was to culminate in the Reign of Terror. Already the

guillotine ran red with noble blood. Already the king had bowed his head

to the fatal knife. Already the threat had gone forth that a mere breath

of suspicion or a pointed finger might be enough to lead men and women

to a gory death.

In her quiet home near Caen Charlotte Corday heard as from afar the

story of this dreadful saturnalia of assassination which was making

Paris a city of bloody mist. Men and women of the Girondist party came

to tell her of the hideous deeds that were perpetrated there. All these

horrors gradually wove themselves in the young girl's imagination around

the sinister and repulsive figure of Jean Paul Marat. She knew nothing

of his associates, Danton and Robespierre. It was in Marat alone that

she saw the monster who sent innocent thousands to their graves, and who

reveled like some arch-fiend in murder and gruesome death.

In his earlier years Marat had been a very different figure--an

accomplished physician, the friend of nobles, a man of science and

original thought, so that he was nearly elected to the Academy of

Sciences. His studies in electricity gained for him the admiration

of Benjamin Franklin and the praise of Goethe. But when he turned to

politics he left all this career behind him. He plunged into the very

mire of red republicanism, and even there he was for a time so much

hated that he sought refuge in London to save his life.

On his return he was hunted by his enemies, so that his only place

of refuge was in the sewers and drains of Paris. A woman, one Simonne

Evrard, helped him to escape his pursuers. In the sewers, however,

he contracted a dreadful skin-disease from which he never afterward

recovered, and which was extremely painful as well as shocking to

behold.

It is small wonder that the stories about Marat circulated through the

provinces made him seem more a devil than a man. His vindictiveness

against the Girondists brought all of this straight home to Charlotte

Corday and led her to dream of acting the part of Brutus, so that she

might free her country from this hideous tyrant.

In January, 1793, King Louis XVI. met his death upon the scaffold; and

the queen was thrust into a foul prison. This was a signal for activity

among the Girondists in Normandy, and especially at Caen, where

Charlotte was present at their meetings and heard their fervid oratory.

There was a plot to march on Paris, yet in some instinctive way she felt

that such a scheme must fail. It was then that she definitely formed

the plan of going herself, alone, to the French capital to seek out the

hideous Marat and to kill him with her own hands.

To this end she made application for a passport allowing her to

visit Paris. This passport still exists, and it gives us an official

description of the girl. It reads:

Allow citizen Marie Corday to pass. She is twenty-four years of age,

five feet and one inch in height, hair and eyebrows chestnut color, eyes

gray, forehead high, mouth medium size, chin dimpled, and an oval face.

Apart from this verbal description we have two portraits painted while

she was in prison. Both of them make the description of the passport

seem faint and pale. The real Charlotte had a wealth of chestnut hair

which fell about her face and neck in glorious abundance. Her great

gray eyes spoke eloquently of truth and courage. Her mouth was firm yet

winsome, and her form combined both strength and grace. Such is the girl

who, on reaching Paris, wrote to Marat in these words:

Citizen, I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for your native place

doubtless makes you wish to learn the events which have occurred in that

part of the republic. I shall call at your residence in about an hour.

Be so good as to receive me and give me a brief interview. I will put

you in such condition as to render great service to France.

This letter failed to gain her admission, and so did another which she

wrote soon after. The fact is that Marat was grievously ill. His disease

had reached a point where the pain could be assuaged only by hot water;

and he spent the greater part of his time wrapped in a blanket and lying

in a large tub.

A third time, however, the persistent girl called at his house and

insisted that she must see him, saying that she was herself in danger

from the enemies of the Republic. Through an open door Marat heard her

mellow voice and gave orders that she should be admitted.

As she entered she gazed for a moment upon the lank figure rolling in

the tub, the rat-like face, and the shifting eyes. Then she approached

him, concealing in the bosom of her dress a long carving-knife which she

had purchased for two francs. In answer to Marat's questioning look she

told him that there was much excitement at Caen and that the Girondists

were plotting there.

To this Marat answered, in his harsh voice:

"All these men you mention shall be guillotined in the next few days!"

As he spoke Charlotte flashed out the terrible knife and with all her

strength she plunged it into his left side, where it pierced a lung and

a portion of his heart.

Marat, with the blood gushing from his mouth, cried out:

"Help, darling!"

His cry was meant for one of the two women in the house. Both heard it,

for they were in the next room; and both of them rushed in and succeeded

in pinioning Charlotte Corday, who, indeed, made only a slight effort to

escape. Troops were summoned, she was taken to the Prison de l'Abbaye,

and soon after she was arraigned before the revolutionary tribunal.

Placed in the dock, she glanced about her with an air of pride, as

of one who gloried in the act which she had just performed. A written

charge was read. She was asked what she had to say. Lifting her head

with a look of infinite satisfaction, she answered in a ringing voice:

"Nothing--except that I succeeded!"

A lawyer was assigned for her defense. He pleaded for her earnestly,

declaring that she must he regarded as insane; but those clear, calm

eyes and that gentle face made her sanity a matter of little doubt.

She showed her quick wit in the answers which she gave to the rough

prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, who tried to make her confess that she

had accomplices.

"Who prompted you to do this deed?" roared Tinville.

"I needed no prompting. My own heart was sufficient."

"In what, then, had Marat wronged you?"

"He was a savage beast who was going to destroy the remains of France in

the fires of civil war."

"But whom did you expect to benefit?" insinuated the prosecutor.

"I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand."

"What? Did you imagine that you had murdered all the Marats?"

"No, but, this one being dead, the rest will perhaps take warning."

Thus her directness baffled all the efforts of the prosecution to trap

her into betraying any of her friends. The court, however, sentenced her

to death. She was then immured in the Conciergerie.

This dramatic court scene was the beginning of that strange, brief

romance to which one can scarcely find a parallel. At the time there

lived in Paris a young German named Adam Lux. The continual talk about

Charlotte Corday had filled him with curiosity regarding this young girl

who had been so daring and so patriotic. She was denounced on every hand

as a murderess with the face of a Medusa and the muscles of a Vulcan.

Street songs about her were dinned into the ears of Adam Lux.

As a student of human nature he was anxious to see this terrible

creature. He forced his way to the front of the crowded benches in the

court-room and took his stand behind a young artist who was finishing a

beautiful sketch. From that moment until the end of the trial the

eyes of Adam Lux were fastened on the prisoner. What a contrast to the

picture he had imagined!

A mass of regal chestnut hair crowned with the white cap of a Norman

peasant girl; gray eyes, very sad and serious, but looking serenely

forth from under long, dark lashes; lips slightly curved with an

expression of quiet humor; a face the color of the sun and wind, a

bust indicative of perfect health, the chin of a Caesar, and the whole

expression one of almost divine self-sacrifice. Such were the features

that the painter was swiftly putting upon his canvas; but behind them

Adam Lux discerned the soul for which he gladly sacrificed both his

liberty and his life.

He forgot his surroundings and seemed to see only that beautiful, pure

face and to hear only the exquisite cadences of the wonderful voice.

When Charlotte was led forth by a file of soldiers Adam staggered from

the scene and made his way as best he might to his lodgings. There he

lay prostrate, his whole soul filled with the love of her who had in an

instant won the adoration of his heart.

Once, and only once again, when the last scene opened on the tragedy,

did he behold the heroine of his dreams.

On the 17th of July Charlotte Corday was taken from her prison to the

gloomy guillotine. It was toward evening, and nature had given a setting

fit for such an end. Blue-black thunder-clouds rolled in huge masses

across the sky until their base appeared to rest on the very summit of

the guillotine. Distant thunder rolled and grumbled beyond the river.

Great drops of rain fell upon the soldiers' drums. Young, beautiful,

unconscious of any wrong, Charlotte Corday stood beneath the shadow of

the knife.

At the supreme moment a sudden ray from the setting sun broke through

the cloud-wrack and fell upon her slender figure until she glowed in the

eyes of the startled spectators like a statue cut in burnished bronze.

Thus illumined, as it were, by a light from heaven itself, she

bowed herself beneath the knife and paid the penalty of a noble, if

misdirected, impulse. As the blade fell her lips quivered with her last

and only plea:

"My duty is enough--the rest is nothing!"

Adam Lux rushed from the scene a man transformed. He bore graven upon

his heart neither the mob of tossing red caps nor the glare of the

sunset nor the blood-stained guillotine, but that last look from

those brilliant eyes. The sight almost deprived him of his reason. The

self-sacrifice of the only woman he had ever loved, even though she had

never so much as seen him, impelled him with a sort of fury to his own

destruction.

He wrote a bitter denunciation of the judges, of the officers, and

of all who had been followers of Marat. This document he printed,

and scattered copies of it through every quarter in Paris. The last

sentences are as follows:

The guillotine is no longer a disgrace. It has become a sacred altar,

from which every taint has been removed by the innocent blood shed

there on the 17th of July. Forgive me, my divine Charlotte, if I find

it impossible at the last moment to show the courage and the gentleness

that were yours! I glory because you are superior to me, for it is

right that she who is adored should be higher and more glorious than her

adorer!

This pamphlet, spread broadcast among the people, was soon reported to

the leaders of the rabble. Adam Lux was arrested for treason against

the Republic; but even these men had no desire to make a martyr of this

hot-headed youth. They would stop his mouth without taking his life.

Therefore he was tried and speedily found guilty, but an offer was

made him that he might have passports that would allow him to return to

Germany if only he would sign a retraction of his printed words.

Little did the judges understand the fiery heart of the man they had

to deal with. To die on the same scaffold as the woman whom he had

idealized was to him the crowning triumph of his romantic love. He gave

a prompt and insolent refusal to their offer. He swore that if released

he would denounce his darling's murderers with a still greater passion.

In anger the tribunal sentenced him to death. Only then he smiled and

thanked his judges courteously, and soon after went blithely to the

guillotine like a bridegroom to his marriage feast.

Adam Lux! Spirit courtship had been carried on silently all through that

terrible cross-examination of Charlotte Corday. His heart was betrothed

to hers in that single gleam of the setting sun when she bowed beneath

the knife. One may believe that these two souls were finally united

when the same knife fell sullenly upon his neck and when his life-blood

sprinkled the altar that was still stained with hers.

NAPOLEON AND MARIE WALEWSKA

There are four women who may be said to have deeply influenced the life

of Napoleon. These four are the only ones who need to be taken into

account by the student of his imperial career. The great emperor was

susceptible to feminine charms at all times; but just as it used to be

said of him that "his smile never rose above his eyes," so it might as

truly be said that in most instances the throbbing of his heart did not

affect his actions.

Women to him were the creatures of the moment, although he might seem to

care for them and to show his affection in extravagant ways, as in his

affair with Mlle. Georges, the beautiful but rather tiresome actress.

As for Mme. de Stael, she bored him to distraction by her assumption

of wisdom. That was not the kind of woman that Napoleon cared for. He

preferred that a woman should be womanly, and not a sort of owl to sit

and talk with him about the theory of government.

When it came to married women they interested him only because of

the children they might bear to grow up as recruits for his insatiate

armies. At the public balls given at the Tuileries he would walk about

the gorgeous drawing-rooms, and when a lady was presented to him he

would snap out, sharply:

"How many children have you?"

If she were able to answer that she had several the emperor would look

pleased and would pay her some compliment; but if she said that she had

none he would turn upon her sharply and say:

"Then go home and have some!"

Of the four women who influenced his life, first must come Josephine,

because she secured him his earliest chance of advancement. She met him

through Barras, with whom she was said to be rather intimate. The young

soldier was fascinated by her--the more because she was older than he

and possessed all the practised arts of the creole and the woman of the

world. When she married him she brought him as her dowry the command of

the army of Italy, where in a few months he made the tri-color, borne by

ragged troops, triumphant over the splendidly equipped hosts of Austria.

She was his first love, and his knowledge of her perfidy gave him the

greatest shock and horror of his whole life; yet she might have held him

to the end if she had borne an heir to the imperial throne. It was her

failure to do so that led Napoleon to divorce Josephine and marry the

thick-lipped Marie Louise of Austria. There were times later when he

showed signs of regret and said:

"I have had no luck since I gave up Josephine!"

Marie Louise was of importance for a time--the short time when she

entertained her husband and delighted him by giving birth to the little

King of Rome. Yet in the end she was but an episode; fleeing from her

husband in his misfortune, becoming the mistress of Count Neipperg, and

letting her son--l'Aiglon--die in a land that was far from France.

Napoleon's sister, Pauline Bonaparte, was the third woman who comes to

mind when we contemplate the great Corsican's career. She, too, is an

episode. During the period of his ascendancy she plagued him with her

wanton ways, her sauciness and trickery. It was amusing to throw him

into one of his violent rages; but Pauline was true at heart, and when

her great brother was sent to Elba she followed him devotedly and gave

him all her store of jewels, including the famous Borghese diamonds,

perhaps the most superb of all gems known to the western world. She

would gladly have followed him, also, to St. Helena had she been

permitted. Remaining behind, she did everything possible in conspiring

to secure his freedom.

But, after all, Pauline and Marie Louise count for comparatively little.

Josephine's fate was interwoven with Napoleon's; and, with his Corsican

superstition, he often said so. The fourth woman, of whom I am writing

here, may be said to have almost equaled Josephine in her influence on

the emperor as well as in the pathos of her life-story.

On New-Year's Day of 1807 Napoleon, who was then almost Emperor of

Europe, passed through the little town of Bronia, in Poland. Riding with

his cavalry to Warsaw, the ancient capital of the Polish kingdom, he

seemed a very demigod of battle.

True, he had had to abandon his long-cherished design of invading and

overrunning England, and Nelson had shattered his fleets and practically

driven his flag from the sea; but the naval disaster of Trafalgar had

speedily been followed by the triumph of Austerlitz, the greatest and

most brilliant of all Napoleon's victories, which left Austria and

Russia humbled to the very ground before him.

Then Prussia had dared to defy the over-bearing conqueror and had put

into the field against him her armies trained by Frederick the Great;

but these he had shattered almost at a stroke, winning in one day the

decisive battles of Jena and Auerstadt. He had stabled his horses in

the royal palace of the Hohenzollerns and had pursued the remnant of the

Prussian forces to the Russian border.

As he marched into the Polish provinces the people swarmed by thousands

to meet him and hail him as their country's savior. They believed down

to the very last that Bonaparte would make the Poles once more a free

and independent nation and rescue them from the tyranny of Russia.

Napoleon played upon this feeling in every manner known to his artful

mind. He used it to alarm the Czar. He used it to intimidate the Emperor

of Austria; but more especially did he use it among the Poles themselves

to win for his armies thousands upon thousands of gallant soldiers, who

believed that in fighting for Napoleon they were fighting for the final

independence of their native land.

Therefore, with the intensity of patriotism which is a passion among the

Poles, every man and every woman gazed at Napoleon with something like

adoration; for was not he the mighty warrior who had in his gift what

all desired? Soldiers of every rank swarmed to his standards. Princes

and nobles flocked about him. Those who stayed at home repeated

wonderful stories of his victories and prayed for him and fed the flame

which spread through all the country. It was felt that no sacrifice was

too great to win his favor; that to him, as to a deity, everything that

he desired should be yielded up, since he was to restore the liberty of

Poland.

And hence, when the carriage of the emperor dashed into Bronia,

surrounded by Polish lancers and French cuirassiers, the enormous crowd

surged forward and blocked the way so that their hero could not pass

because of their cheers and cries and supplications.

In the midst of it all there came a voice of peculiar sweetness from the

thickest portion of the crowd.

"Please let me pass!" said the voice. "Let me see him, if only for a

moment!"

The populace rolled backward, and through the lane which they made a

beautiful girl with dark blue eyes that flamed and streaming hair that

had become loosened about her radiant face was confronting the emperor.

Carried away by her enthusiasm, she cried:

"Thrice welcome to Poland! We can do or say nothing to express our joy

in the country which you will surely deliver from its tyrant."

The emperor bowed and, with a smile, handed a great bouquet of roses to

the girl, for her beauty and her enthusiasm had made a deep impression

on him.

"Take it," said he, "as a proof of my admiration. I trust that I may

have the pleasure of meeting you at Warsaw and of hearing your thanks

from those beautiful lips."

In a moment more the trumpets rang out shrilly, the horsemen closed up

beside the imperial carriage, and it rolled away amid the tumultuous

shouting of the populace.

The girl who had so attracted Napoleon's attention was Marie Walewska,

descended from an ancient though impoverished family in Poland. When she

was only fifteen she was courted by one of the wealthiest men in Poland,

the Count Walewska. He was three or four times her age, yet her dark

blue eyes, her massive golden hair, and the exquisite grace of her

figure led him to plead that she might become his wife. She had accepted

him, but the marriage was that of a mere child, and her interest still

centered upon her country and took the form of patriotism rather than

that of wifehood and maternity.

It was for this reason that the young Countess had visited Bronia. She

was now eighteen years of age and still had the sort of romantic feeling

which led her to think that she would keep in some secret hiding-place

the bouquet which the greatest man alive had given her.

But Napoleon was not the sort of man to forget anything that had given

him either pleasure or the reverse. He who, at the height of his cares,

could recall instantly how many cannon were in each seaport of France

and could make out an accurate list of all his military stores; he who

could call by name every soldier in his guard, with a full remembrance

of the battles each man had fought in and the honors that he had won--he

was not likely to forget so lovely a face as the one which had gleamed

with peculiar radiance through the crowd at Bronia.

On reaching Warsaw he asked one or two well-informed persons about

this beautiful stranger. Only a few hours had passed before Prince

Poniatowski, accompanied by other nobles, called upon her at her home.

"I am directed, madam," said he, "by order of the Emperor of France,

to bid you to be present at a ball that is to be given in his honor

to-morrow evening."

Mme. Walewska was startled, and her face grew hot with blushes. Did the

emperor remember her escapade at Bronia? If so, how had he discovered

her? Why should he seek her out and do her such an honor?

"That, madam, is his imperial majesty's affair," Poniatowski told her.

"I merely obey his instructions and ask your presence at the ball.

Perhaps Heaven has marked you out to be the means of saving our unhappy

country."

In this way, by playing on her patriotism, Poniatowski almost persuaded

her, and yet something held her back. She trembled, though she was

greatly fascinated; and finally she refused to go.

Scarcely had the envoy left her, however, when a great company of nobles

entered in groups and begged her to humor the emperor. Finally her own

husband joined in their entreaties and actually commanded her to go; so

at last she was compelled to yield.

It was by no means the frank and radiant girl who was now preparing

again to meet the emperor. She knew not why, and yet her heart was full

of trepidation and nervous fright, the cause of which she could not

guess, yet which made her task a severe ordeal. She dressed herself in

white satin, with no adornment save a wreath of foliage in her hair.

As she entered the ballroom she was welcomed by hundreds whom she had

never seen before, but who were of the highest nobility of Poland.

Murmurs of admiration followed her, and finally Poniatowski came to her

and complimented her, besides bringing her a message that the emperor

desired her to dance with him.

"I am very sorry," she said, with a quiver of the lips, "but I really

cannot dance. Be kind enough to ask the emperor to excuse me."

But at that very moment she felt some strange magnetic influence; and

without looking up she could feel that Napoleon himself was standing by

her as she sat with blanched face and downcast eyes, not daring to look

up at him.

"White upon white is a mistake, madam," said the emperor, in his

gentlest tones. Then, stooping low, he whispered, "I had expected a far

different reception."

She neither smiled nor met his eyes. He stood there for a moment and

then passed on, leaving her to return to her home with a heavy heart.

The young countess felt that she had acted wrongly, and yet there was an

instinct--an instinct that she could not conquer.

In the gray of the morning, while she was still tossing feverishly, her

maid knocked at the door and brought her a hastily scribbled note. It

ran as follows:

I saw none but you, I admired none but you; I desire only you. Answer at

once, and calm the impatient ardor of--N.

These passionate words burned from her eyes the veil that had hidden

the truth from her. What before had been mere blind instinct became an

actual verity. Why had she at first rushed forth into the very streets

to hail the possible deliverer of her country, and then why had she

shrunk from him when he sought to honor her! It was all clear enough

now. This bedside missive meant that he had intended her dishonor and

that he had looked upon her simply as a possible mistress.

At once she crushed the note angrily in her hand.

"There is no answer at all," said she, bursting into bitter tears at the

very thought that he should dare to treat her in this way.

But on the following morning when she awoke her maid was standing beside

her with a second letter from Napoleon. She refused to open it and

placed it in a packet with the first letter, and ordered that both of

them should be returned to the emperor.

She shrank from speaking to her husband of what had happened, and there

was no one else in whom she dared confide. All through that day there

came hundreds of visitors, either of princely rank or men who had won

fame by their gallantry and courage. They all begged to see her, but to

them all she sent one answer--that she was ill and could see no one.

After a time her husband burst into her room, and insisted that she

should see them.

"Why," exclaimed he, "you are insulting the greatest men and the

noblest women of Poland! More than that, there are some of the most

distinguished Frenchmen sitting at your doorstep, as it were. There

is Duroc, grand marshal of France, and in refusing to see him you are

insulting the great emperor on whom depends everything that our country

longs for. Napoleon has invited you to a state dinner and you have given

him no answer whatever. I order you to rise at once and receive these

ladies and gentlemen who have done you so much honor!"

She could not refuse. Presently she appeared in her drawing-room, where

she was at once surrounded by an immense throng of her own countrymen

and countrywomen, who made no pretense of misunderstanding the

situation. To them, what was one woman's honor when compared with

the freedom and independence of their nation? She was overwhelmed by

arguments and entreaties. She was even accused of being disloyal to the

cause of Poland if she refused her consent.

One of the strangest documents of that period was a letter sent to her

and signed by the noblest men in Poland. It contained a powerful appeal

to her patriotism. One remarkable passage even quotes the Bible to point

out her line of duty. A portion of this letter ran as follows:

Did Esther, think you, give herself to Ahasuerus out of the fulness of

her love for him? So great was the terror with which he inspired her

that she fainted at the sight of him. We may therefore conclude that

affection had but little to do with her resolve. She sacrificed her own

inclinations to the salvation of her country, and that salvation it was

her glory to achieve. May we be enabled to say the same of you, to your

glory and our own happiness!

After this letter came others from Napoleon himself, full of the

most humble pleading. It was not wholly distasteful thus to have the

conqueror of the world seek her out and offer her his adoration any

more than it was distasteful to think that the revival of her own nation

depended on her single will. M. Frederic Masson, whose minute studies

regarding everything relating to Napoleon have won him a seat in the

French Academy, writes of Marie Walewska at this time: Every force

was now brought into play against her. Her country, her friends, her

religion, the Old and the New Testaments, all urged her to yield; they

all combined for the ruin of a simple and inexperienced girl of eighteen

who had no parents, whose husband even thrust her into temptation, and

whose friends thought that her downfall would be her glory.

Amid all these powerful influences she consented to attend the dinner.

To her gratification Napoleon treated her with distant courtesy, and, in

fact, with a certain coldness.

"I heard that Mme. Walewska was indisposed. I trust that she has

recovered," was all the greeting that he gave her when they met.

Every one else with whom she spoke overwhelmed her with flattery and

with continued urging; but the emperor himself for a time acted as if

she had displeased him. This was consummate art; for as soon as she was

relieved of her fears she began to regret that she had thrown her power

away.

During the dinner she let her eyes wander to those of the emperor almost

in supplication. He, the subtlest of men, knew that he had won. His

marvelous eyes met hers and drew her attention to him as by an electric

current; and when the ladies left the great dining-room Napoleon sought

her out and whispered in her ear a few words of ardent love.

It was too little to alarm her seriously now. It was enough to make

her feel that magnetism which Napoleon knew so well how to evoke and

exercise. Again every one crowded about her with congratulations. Some

said:

"He never even saw any of US. His eyes were all for YOU! They flashed

fire as he looked at you."

"You have conquered his heart," others said, "and you can do what you

like with him. The salvation of Poland is in your hands."

The company broke up at an early hour, but Mme. Walewska was asked to

remain. When she was alone General Duroc--one of the emperor's favorite

officers and most trusted lieutenants--entered and placed a letter from

Napoleon in her lap. He tried to tell her as tactfully as possible how

much harm she was doing by refusing the imperial request. She was deeply

affected, and presently, when Duroc left her, she opened the letter

which he had given her and read it. It was worded thus:

There are times when all splendors become oppressive, as I feel but too

deeply at the present moment. How can I satisfy the desires of a heart

that yearns to cast itself at your feet, when its impulses are checked

at every point by considerations of the highest moment? Oh, if you

would, you alone might overcome the obstacles that keep us apart. MY

FRIEND DUROC WILL MAKE ALL EASY FOR YOU. Oh, come, come! Your every wish

shall be gratified! Your country will be dearer to me when you take pity

on my poor heart. N.

Every chance of escape seemed to be closed. She had Napoleon's own word

that he would free Poland in return for her self-sacrifice. Moreover,

her powers of resistance had been so weakened that, like many women, she

temporized. She decided that she would meet the emperor alone. She would

tell him that she did not love him, and yet would plead with him to save

her beloved country.

As she sat there every tick of the clock stirred her to a new

excitement. At last there came a knock upon the door, a cloak was thrown

about her from behind, a heavy veil was drooped about her golden hair,

and she was led, by whom she knew not, to the street, where a finely

appointed carriage was waiting for her.

No sooner had she entered it than she was driven rapidly through the

darkness to the beautifully carved entrance of a palace. Half led, half

carried, she was taken up the steps to a door which was eagerly opened

by some one within. There were warmth and light and color and the scent

of flowers as she was placed in a comfortable arm-chair. Her wrappings

were taken from her, the door was closed behind her; and then, as

she looked up, she found herself in the presence of Napoleon, who was

kneeling at her feet and uttering soothing words.

Wisely, the emperor used no violence. He merely argued with her; he told

her over and over his love for her; and finally he declared that for her

sake he would make Poland once again a strong and splendid kingdom.

Several hours passed. In the early morning, before daylight, there came

a knock at the door.

"Already?" said Napoleon. "Well, my plaintive dove, go home and rest.

You must not fear the eagle. In time you will come to love him, and in

all things you shall command him."

Then he led her to the door, but said that he would not open it unless

she promised to see him the next day--a promise which she gave the more

readily because he had treated her with such respect.

On the following morning her faithful maid came to her bedside with

a cluster of beautiful violets, a letter, and several daintily made

morocco cases. When these were opened there leaped out strings and

necklaces of exquisite diamonds, blazing in the morning sunlight. Mme.

Walewska seized the jewels and flung them across the room with an order

that they should be taken back at once to the imperial giver; but

the letter, which was in the same romantic strain as the others, she

retained.

On that same evening there was another dinner, given to the emperor by

the nobles, and Marie Walewska attended it, but of course without the

diamonds, which she had returned. Nor did she wear the flowers which had

accompanied the diamonds.

When Napoleon met her he frowned upon her and made her tremble with the

cold glances that shot from his eyes of steel. He scarcely spoke to her

throughout the meal, but those who sat beside her were earnest in their

pleading.

Again she waited until the guests had gone away, and with a lighter

heart, since she felt that she had nothing to fear. But when she met

Napoleon in his private cabinet, alone, his mood was very different from

that which he had shown before. Instead of gentleness and consideration

he was the Napoleon of camps, and not of courts. He greeted her bruskly.

"I scarcely expected to see you again," said he. "Why did you refuse

my diamonds and my flowers? Why did you avoid my eyes at dinner? Your

coldness is an insult which I shall not brook." Then he raised his voice

to that rasping, almost blood-curdling tone which even his hardiest

soldiers dreaded: "I will have you know that I mean to conquer you. You

SHALL--yes, I repeat it, you SHALL love me! I have restored the name of

your country. It owes its very existence to me."

Then he resorted to a trick which he had played years before in dealing

with the Austrians at Campo Formio.

"See this watch which I am holding in my hand. Just as I dash it to

fragments before you, so will I shatter Poland if you drive me to

desperation by rejecting my heart and refusing me your own."

As he spoke he hurled the watch against the opposite wall with terrific

force, dashing it to pieces. In terror, Mme. Walewska fainted. When she

resumed consciousness there was Napoleon wiping away her tears with the

tenderness of a woman and with words of self-reproach.

The long siege was over. Napoleon had conquered, and this girl of

eighteen gave herself up to his caresses and endearments, thinking that,

after all, her love of country was more than her own honor.

Her husband, as a matter of form, put her away from him, though at heart

he approved what she had done, while the Polish people regarded her as

nothing less than a national heroine. To them she was no minister to the

vices of an emperor, but rather one who would make him love Poland for

her sake and restore its greatness.

So far as concerned his love for her, it was, indeed, almost idolatry.

He honored her in every way and spent all the time at his disposal

in her company. But his promise to restore Poland he never kept, and

gradually she found that he had never meant to keep it.

"I love your country," he would say, "and I am willing to aid in the

attempt to uphold its rights, but my first duty is to France. I cannot

shed French blood in a foreign cause."

By this time, however, Marie Walewska had learned to love Napoleon for

his own sake. She could not resist his ardor, which matched the ardor

of the Poles themselves. Moreover, it flattered her to see the greatest

soldier in the world a suppliant for her smiles.

For some years she was Napoleon's close companion, spending long hours

with him and finally accompanying him to Paris. She was the mother of

Napoleon's only son who lived to manhood. This son, who bore the name of

Alexandre Florian de Walewski, was born in Poland in 1810, and later

was created a count and duke of the second French Empire. It may be said

parenthetically that he was a man of great ability. Living down to 1868,

he was made much of by Napoleon III., who placed him in high offices

of state, which he filled with distinction. In contrast with the Duc

de Morny, who was Napoleon's illegitimate half-brother, Alexandre de

Walewski stood out in brilliant contrast. He would have nothing to do

with stock-jobbing and unseemly speculation.

"I may be poor," he said--though he was not poor--"but at least I

remember the glory of my father and what is due to his great name."

As for Mme. Walewska, she was loyal to the emperor, and lacked the greed

of many women whom he had made his favorites. Even at Elba, when he

was in exile and disgrace, she visited him that she might endeavor to

console him. She was his counselor and friend as well as his earnestly

loved mate. When she died in Paris in 1817, while the dethroned emperor

was a prisoner at St. Helena, the word "Napoleon" was the last upon her

lips.

THE STORY OF PAULINE BONAPARTE

It was said of Napoleon long ago that he could govern emperors and

kings, but that not even he could rule his relatives. He himself once

declared:

"My family have done me far more harm than I have been able to do them

good."

It would be an interesting historical study to determine just how far

the great soldier's family aided in his downfall by their selfishness,

their jealousy, their meanness, and their ingratitude.

There is something piquant in thinking of Napoleon as a domestic sort of

person. Indeed, it is rather difficult to do so. When we speak his name

we think of the stern warrior hurling his armies up bloody slopes and on

to bloody victory. He is the man whose steely eyes made his haughtiest

marshals tremble, or else the wise, far-seeing statesman and lawgiver;

but decidedly he is not a household model. We read of his sharp speech

to women, of his outrageous manners at the dinner-table, and of the

thousand and one details which Mme. de Remusat has chronicled--and

perhaps in part invented, for there has always existed the suspicion

that her animus was that of a woman who had herself sought the imperial

favor and had failed to win it.

But, in fact, all these stories relate to the Napoleon of courts and

palaces, and not to the Napoleon of home. In his private life this great

man was not merely affectionate and indulgent, but he even showed a

certain weakness where his relatives were concerned, so that he let them

prey upon him almost without end.

He had a great deal of the Italian largeness and lavishness of character

with his family. When a petty officer he nearly starved himself in

order to give his younger brother, Louis, a military education. He was

devotedly fond of children, and they were fond of him, as many anecdotes

attest. His passionate love for Josephine before he learned of her

infidelity is almost painful to read of; and even afterward, when he had

been disillusioned, and when she was paying Fouche a thousand francs

a day to spy upon Napoleon's every action, he still treated her with

friendliness and allowed her extravagance to embarrass him.

He made his eldest brother, Joseph, King of Spain, and Spain proved

almost as deadly to him as did Russia. He made his youngest brother,

Jerome, King of Westphalia, and Jerome turned the palace into a pigsty

and brought discredit on the very name of Bonaparte. His brother Louis,

for whom he had starved himself, he placed upon the throne of Holland,

and Louis promptly devoted himself to his own interests, conniving

at many things which were inimical to France. He was planning high

advancement for his brother Lucien, and Lucien suddenly married a

disreputable actress and fled with her to England, where he was received

with pleasure by the most persistent of all Napoleon's enemies.

So much for his brothers--incompetent, ungrateful, or openly his foes.

But his three sisters were no less remarkable in the relations which

they bore to him. They have been styled "the three crowned courtesans,"

and they have been condemned together as being utterly void of principle

and monsters of ingratitude.

Much of this censure was well deserved by all of them--by Caroline and

Elise and Pauline. But when we look at the facts impartially we shall

find something which makes Pauline stand out alone as infinitely

superior to her sisters. Of all the Bonapartes she was the only one who

showed fidelity and gratitude to the great emperor, her brother. Even

Mme. Mere, Napoleon's mother, who beyond all question transmitted to him

his great mental and physical power, did nothing for him. At the height

of his splendor she hoarded sous and francs and grumblingly remarked:

"All this is for a time. It isn't going to last!"

Pauline, however, was in one respect different from all her kindred.

Napoleon made Elise a princess in her own right and gave her the Grand

Duchy of Tuscany. He married Caroline to Marshal Murat, and they

became respectively King and Queen of Naples. For Pauline he did very

little--less, in fact, than for any other member of his family--and yet

she alone stood by him to the end.

This feather-headed, languishing, beautiful, distracting morsel of

frivolity, who had the manners of a kitten and the morals of a cat,

nevertheless was not wholly unworthy to be Napoleon's sister. One has to

tell many hard things of her; and yet one almost pardons her because

of her underlying devotion to the man who made the name of Bonaparte

illustrious for ever. Caroline, Queen of Naples, urged her husband to

turn against his former chief. Elise, sour and greedy, threw in

her fortunes with the Murats. Pauline, as we shall see, had the one

redeeming trait of gratitude.

To those who knew her she was from girlhood an incarnation of what

used to be called "femininity." We have to-day another and a higher

definition of womanhood, but to her contemporaries, and to many modern

writers, she has seemed to be first of all woman--"woman to the tips of

her rosy finger-nails," says Levy. Those who saw her were distracted

by her loveliness. They say that no one can form any idea of her beauty

from her pictures. "A veritable masterpiece of creation," she had been

called. Frederic Masson declares:

She was so much more the typical woman that with her the defects common

to women reached their highest development, while her beauty attained a

perfection which may justly be called unique.

No one speaks of Pauline Bonaparte's character or of her intellect, but

wholly of her loveliness and charm, and, it must be added, of her utter

lack of anything like a moral sense.

Even as a child of thirteen, when the Bonapartes left Corsica and took

up their abode in Marseilles, she attracted universal attention by her

wonderful eyes, her grace, and also by the utter lack of decorum which

she showed. The Bonaparte girls at this time lived almost on charity.

The future emperor was then a captain of artillery and could give them

but little out of his scanty pay.

Pauline--or, as they called her in those days, Paulette--wore unbecoming

hats and shabby gowns, and shoes that were full of holes. None the

less, she was sought out by several men of note, among them Freron, a

commissioner of the Convention. He visited Pauline so often as to cause

unfavorable comment; but he was in love with her, and she fell in love

with him to the extent of her capacity. She used to write him love

letters in Italian, which were certainly not lacking in ardor. Here is

the end of one of them:

I love you always and most passionately. I love you for ever, my

beautiful idol, my heart, my appealing lover. I love you, love you, love

you, the most loved of lovers, and I swear never to love any one else!

This was interesting in view of the fact that soon afterward she fell in

love with Junot, who became a famous marshal. But her love affairs never

gave her any serious trouble; and the three sisters, who now began to

feel the influence of Napoleon's rise to power, enjoyed themselves as

they had never done before. At Antibes they had a beautiful villa, and

later a mansion at Milan.

By this time Napoleon had routed the Austrians in Italy, and all France

was ringing with his name. What was Pauline like in her maidenhood?

Arnault says:

She was an extraordinary combination of perfect physical beauty and the

strangest moral laxity. She was as pretty as you please, but utterly

unreasonable. She had no more manners than a school-girl--talking

incoherently, giggling at everything and nothing, and mimicking the most

serious persons of rank.

General de Ricard, who knew her then, tells in his monograph of the

private theatricals in which Pauline took part, and of the sport which

they had behind the scenes. He says:

The Bonaparte girls used literally to dress us. They pulled our ears and

slapped us, but they always kissed and made up later. We used to stay in

the girls' room all the time when they were dressing.

Napoleon was anxious to see his sisters in some way settled. He proposed

to General Marmont to marry Pauline. The girl was then only seventeen,

and one might have had some faith in her character. But Marmont was

shrewd and knew her far too well. The words in which he declined the

honor are interesting:

"I know that she is charming and exquisitely beautiful; yet I have

dreams of domestic happiness, of fidelity, and of virtue. Such dreams

are seldom realized, I know. Still, in the hope of winning them--"

And then he paused, coughed, and completed what he had to say in a sort

of mumble, but his meaning was wholly clear. He would not accept the

offer of Pauline in marriage, even though she was the sister of his

mighty chief.

Then Napoleon turned to General Leclerc, with whom Pauline had for

some time flirted, as she had flirted with almost all the officers of

Napoleon's staff. Leclerc was only twenty-six. He was rich and of good

manners, but rather serious and in poor health. This was not precisely

the sort of husband for Pauline, if we look at it in the conventional

way; but it served Napoleon's purpose and did not in the least interfere

with his sister's intrigues.

Poor Leclerc, who really loved Pauline, grew thin, and graver still

in manner. He was sent to Spain and Portugal, and finally was made

commander-in-chief of the French expedition to Haiti, where the famous

black rebel, Toussaint l'Ouverture, was heading an uprising of the

negroes.

Napoleon ordered Pauline to accompany her husband. Pauline flatly

refused, although she made this an occasion for ordering "mountains of

pretty clothes and pyramids of hats." But still she refused to go on

board the flag-ship. Leclerc expostulated and pleaded, but the lovely

witch laughed in his face and still persisted that she would never go.

Word was brought to Napoleon. He made short work of her resistance.

"Bring a litter," he said, with one of his steely glances. "Order

six grenadiers to thrust her into it, and see that she goes on board

forthwith."

And so, screeching like an angry cat, she was carried on board, and set

sail with her husband and one of her former lovers. She found Haiti and

Santo Domingo more agreeable than she had supposed. She was there a

sort of queen who could do as she pleased and have her orders implicitly

obeyed. Her dissipation was something frightful. Her folly and her

vanity were beyond belief.

But at the end of two years both she and her husband fell ill. He was

stricken down by the yellow fever, which was decimating the French

army. Pauline was suffering from the results of her life in a tropical

climate. Leclerc died, the expedition was abandoned, and Pauline

brought the general's body back to France. When he was buried she, still

recovering from her fever, had him interred in a costly coffin and paid

him the tribute of cutting off her beautiful hair and burying it with

him.

"What a touching tribute to her dead husband!" said some one to

Napoleon.

The emperor smiled cynically as he remarked:

"H'm! Of course she knows that her hair is bound to fall out after her

fever, and that it will come in longer and thicker for being cropped."

Napoleon, in fact, though he loved Pauline better than his other

sisters--or perhaps because he loved her better--was very strict

with her. He obliged her to wear mourning, and to observe some of the

proprieties; but it was hard to keep her within bounds.

Presently it became noised about that Prince Camillo Borghese was

exceedingly intimate with her. The prince was an excellent specimen of

the fashionable Italian. He was immensely rich. His palace at Rome was

crammed with pictures, statues, and every sort of artistic treasure.

He was the owner, moreover, of the famous Borghese jewels, the finest

collection of diamonds in the world.

Napoleon rather sternly insisted upon her marrying Borghese.

Fortunately, the prince was very willing to be connected with Napoleon;

while Pauline was delighted at the idea of having diamonds that would

eclipse all the gems which Josephine possessed; for, like all of the

Bonapartes, she detested her brother's wife. So she would be married and

show her diamonds to Josephine. It was a bit of feminine malice which

she could not resist.

The marriage took place very quietly at Joseph Bonaparte's house,

because of the absence of Napoleon; but the newly made princess was

invited to visit Josephine at the palace of Saint-Cloud. Here was to be

the triumph of her life. She spent many days in planning a toilet that

should be absolutely crushing to Josephine. Whatever she wore must be a

background for the famous diamonds. Finally she decided on green velvet.

When the day came Pauline stood before a mirror and gazed at herself

with diamonds glistening in her hair, shimmering around her neck, and

fastened so thickly on her green velvet gown as to remind one of a

moving jewel-casket. She actually shed tears for joy. Then she entered

her carriage and drove out to Saint-Cloud.

But the Creole Josephine, though no longer young, was a woman of great

subtlety as well as charm. Stories had been told to her of the green

velvet, and therefore she had her drawing-room redecorated in the most

uncompromising blue. It killed the green velvet completely. As for the

diamonds, she met that maneuver by wearing not a single gem of any kind.

Her dress was an Indian muslin with a broad hem of gold.

Her exquisite simplicity, coupled with her dignity of bearing, made

the Princess Pauline, with her shower of diamonds, and her green velvet

displayed against the blue, seem absolutely vulgar. Josephine was most

generous in her admiration of the Borghese gems, and she kissed Pauline

on parting. The victory was hers.

There is another story of a defeat which Pauline met from another lady,

one Mme. de Coutades. This was at a magnificent ball given to the most

fashionable world of Paris. Pauline decided upon going, and intended,

in her own phrase, to blot out every woman there. She kept the secret of

her toilet absolutely, and she entered the ballroom at the psychological

moment, when all the guests had just assembled.

She appeared; and at sight of her the music stopped, silence fell upon

the assemblage, and a sort of quiver went through every one. Her costume

was of the finest muslin bordered with golden palm-leaves. Four bands,

spotted like a leopard's skin, were wound about her head, while these in

turn were supported by little clusters of golden grapes. She had copied

the head-dress of a Bacchante in the Louvre. All over her person were

cameos, and just beneath her breasts she wore a golden band held in

place by an engraved gem. Her beautiful wrists, arms, and hands were

bare. She had, in fact, blotted out her rivals.

Nevertheless, Mme. de Coutades took her revenge. She went up to Pauline,

who was lying on a divan to set off her loveliness, and began gazing at

the princess through a double eye-glass. Pauline felt flattered for a

moment, and then became uneasy. The lady who was looking at her said to

a companion, in a tone of compassion:

"What a pity! She really would be lovely if it weren't for THAT!"

"For what?" returned her escort.

"Why, are you blind? It's so remarkable that you SURELY must see it."

Pauline was beginning to lose her self-composure. She flushed and looked

wildly about, wondering what was meant. Then she heard Mme. Coutades

say:

"Why, her ears. If I had such ears as those I would cut them off!"

Pauline gave one great gasp and fainted dead away. As a matter of fact,

her ears were not so bad. They were simply very flat and colorless,

forming a contrast with the rosy tints of her face. But from that moment

no one could see anything but these ears; and thereafter the princess

wore her hair low enough to cover them.

This may be seen in the statue of her by Canova. It was considered a

very daring thing for her to pose for him in the nude, for only a bit of

drapery is thrown over her lower limbs. Yet it is true that this

statue is absolutely classical in its conception and execution, and its

interest is heightened by the fact that its model was what she afterward

styled herself, with true Napoleonic pride--"a sister of Bonaparte."

Pauline detested Josephine and was pleased when Napoleon divorced her;

but she also disliked the Austrian archduchess, Marie Louise, who was

Josephine's successor. On one occasion, at a great court function, she

got behind the empress and ran out her tongue at her, in full view of

all the nobles and distinguished persons present. Napoleon's eagle eye

flashed upon Pauline and blazed like fire upon ice. She actually took to

her heels, rushed out of the ball, and never visited the court again.

It would require much time to tell of her other eccentricities, of her

intrigues, which were innumerable, of her quarrel with her husband, and

of the minor breaches of decorum with which she startled Paris. One of

these was her choice of a huge negro to bathe her every morning. When

some one ventured to protest, she answered, naively:

"What! Do you call that thing a MAN?"

And she compromised by compelling her black servitor to go out and

marry some one at once, so that he might continue his ministrations with

propriety!

To her Napoleon showed himself far more severe than with either Caroline

or Elise. He gave her a marriage dowry of half a million francs when she

became the Princess Borghese, but after that he was continually checking

her extravagances. Yet in 1814, when the downfall came and Napoleon was

sent into exile at Elba, Pauline was the only one of all his relatives

to visit him and spend her time with him. His wife fell away and went

back to her Austrian relatives. Of all the Bonapartes only Pauline and

Mme. Mere remained faithful to the emperor.

Even then Napoleon refused to pay a bill of hers for sixty-two

francs, while he allowed her only two hundred and forty francs for the

maintenance of her horses. But she, with a generosity of which one would

have thought her quite incapable, gave to her brother a great part of

her fortune. When he escaped from Elba and began the campaign of 1815

she presented him with all the Borghese diamonds. In fact, he had them

with him in his carriage at Waterloo, where they were captured by the

English. Contrast this with the meanness and ingratitude of her sisters

and her brothers, and one may well believe that she was sincerely proud

of what it meant to be la soeur de Bonaparte.

When he was sent to St. Helena she was ill in bed and could not

accompany him. Nevertheless, she tried to sell all her trinkets, of

which she was so proud, in order that she might give him help. When

he died she received the news with bitter tears "on hearing all the

particulars of that long agony."

As for herself, she did not long survive. At the age of forty-four her

last moments came. Knowing that she was to die, she sent for Prince

Borghese and sought a reconciliation. But, after all, she died as she

had lived--"the queen of trinkets" (la reine des colifichets). She asked

the servant to bring a mirror. She gazed into it with her dying eyes;

and then, as she sank back, it was with a smile of deep content.

"I am not afraid to die," she said. "I am still beautiful!"

THE STORY OF THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE AND COUNT NEIPPERG

There is one famous woman whom history condemns while at the same time

it partly hides the facts which might mitigate the harshness of the

judgment that is passed upon her. This woman is Marie Louise, Empress

of France, consort of the great Napoleon, and archduchess of imperial

Austria. When the most brilliant figure in all history, after his

overthrow in 1814, was in tawdry exile on the petty island of Elba,

the empress was already about to become a mother; and the father of her

unborn child was not Napoleon, but another man. This is almost all that

is usually remembered of her--that she was unfaithful to Napoleon, that

she abandoned him in the hour of his defeat, and that she gave herself

with readiness to one inferior in rank, yet with whom she lived for

years, and to whom she bore what a French writer styled "a brood of

bastards."

Naturally enough, the Austrian and German historians do not have much

to say of Marie Louise, because in her own disgrace she also brought

disgrace upon the proudest reigning family in Europe. Naturally, also,

French writers, even those who are hostile to Napoleon, do not care

to dwell upon the story; since France itself was humiliated when its

greatest genius and most splendid soldier was deceived by his Austrian

wife. Therefore there are still many who know little beyond the bare

fact that the Empress Marie Louise threw away her pride as a princess,

her reputation as a wife, and her honor as a woman. Her figure seems to

crouch in a sort of murky byway, and those who pass over the highroad of

history ignore it with averted eyes.

In reality the story of Napoleon and Marie Louise and of the Count von

Neipperg is one which, when you search it to the very core, leads you

straight to a sex problem of a very curious nature. Nowhere else does

it occur in the relations of the great personages of history; but in

literature Balzac, that master of psychology, has touched upon the theme

in the early chapters of his famous novel called "A Woman of Thirty."

As to the Napoleonic story, let us first recall the facts of the

case, giving them in such order that their full significance may be

understood.

In 1809 Napoleon, then at the plenitude of his power, shook himself free

from the clinging clasp of Josephine and procured the annulment of his

marriage to her. He really owed her nothing. Before he knew her she had

been the mistress of another. In the first years of their life together

she had been notoriously unfaithful to him. He had held to her from

habit which was in part a superstition; but the remembrance of the wrong

which she had done him made her faded charms at times almost repulsive.

And then Josephine had never borne him any children; and without a

son to perpetuate his dynasty, the gigantic achievements which he

had wrought seemed futile in his eyes, and likely to crumble into

nothingness when he should die.

No sooner had the marriage been annulled than his titanic ambition

leaped, as it always did, to a tremendous pinnacle. He would wed. He

would have children. But he would wed no petty princess. This man who in

his early youth had felt honored by a marriage with the almost declassee

widow of a creole planter now stretched out his hand that he might take

to himself a woman not merely royal but imperial.

At first he sought the sister of the Czar of Russia; but Alexander

entertained a profound distrust of the French emperor, and managed to

evade the tentative demand. There was, however, a reigning family far

more ancient than the Romanoffs--a family which had held the imperial

dignity for nearly six centuries--the oldest and the noblest blood in

Europe. This was the Austrian house of Hapsburg. Its head, the Emperor

Francis, had thirteen children, of whom the eldest, the Archduchess

Marie Louise, was then in her nineteenth year.

Napoleon had resented the rebuff which the Czar had given him. He

turned, therefore, the more eagerly to the other project. Yet there were

many reasons why an Austrian marriage might be dangerous, or, at any

rate, ill-omened. Only sixteen years before, an Austrian arch-duchess,

Marie Antionette, married to the ruler of France, had met her death

upon the scaffold, hated and cursed by the French people, who had always

blamed "the Austrian" for the evil days which had ended in the flames

of revolution. Again, the father of the girl to whom Napoleon's fancy

turned had been the bitter enemy of the new regime in France. His troops

had been beaten by the French in five wars and had been crushed at

Austerlitz and at Wagram. Bonaparte had twice entered Vienna at the head

of a conquering army, and thrice he had slept in the imperial palace

at Schonbrunn, while Francis was fleeing through the dark, a beaten

fugitive pursued by the swift squadrons of French cavalry.

The feeling of Francis of Austria was not merely that of the vanquished

toward the victor. It was a deep hatred almost religious in its fervor.

He was the head and front of the old-time feudalism of birth and blood;

Napoleon was the incarnation of the modern spirit which demolished

thrones and set an iron heel upon crowned heads, giving the sacred

titles of king and prince to soldiers who, even in palaces, still showed

the swaggering brutality of the camp and the stable whence they sprang.

Yet, just because an alliance with the Austrian house seemed in so many

ways impossible, the thought of it inflamed the ardor of Napoleon all

the more.

"Impossible?" he had once said, contemptuously. "The word 'impossible'

is not French."

The Austrian alliance, unnatural though it seemed, was certainly quite

possible. In the year 1809 Napoleon had finished his fifth war with

Austria by the terrific battle of Wagram, which brought the empire of

the Hapsburgs to the very dust. The conqueror's rude hand had stripped

from Francis province after province. He had even let fall hints that

the Hapsburgs might be dethroned and that Austria might disappear from

the map of Europe, to be divided between himself and the Russian Czar,

who was still his ally. It was at this psychological moment that the

Czar wounded Napoleon's pride by refusing to give the hand of his sister

Anne.

The subtle diplomats of Vienna immediately saw their chance.

Prince Metternich, with the caution of one who enters the cage of a

man-eating-tiger, suggested that the Austrian archduchess would be a

fitting bride for the French conqueror. The notion soothed the wounded

vanity of Napoleon. From that moment events moved swiftly; and before

long it was understood that there was to be a new empress in France, and

that she was to be none other than the daughter of the man who had been

Napoleon's most persistent foe upon the Continent. The girl was to be

given--sacrificed, if you like--to appease an imperial adventurer. After

such a marriage, Austria would be safe from spoliation. The reigning

dynasty would remain firmly seated upon its historic throne.

But how about the girl herself? She had always heard Napoleon spoken of

as a sort of ogre--a man of low ancestry, a brutal and faithless enemy

of her people. She knew that this bold, rough-spoken soldier less than a

year before had added insult to the injury which he had inflicted on

her father. In public proclamations he had called the Emperor Francis a

coward and a liar. Up to the latter part of the year Napoleon was to

her imagination a blood-stained, sordid, and yet all-powerful monster,

outside the pale of human liking and respect. What must have been her

thoughts when her father first told her with averted face that she was

to become the bride of such a being?

Marie Louise had been brought up, as all German girls of rank were then

brought up, in quiet simplicity and utter innocence. In person she was

a tall blonde, with a wealth of light brown hair tumbling about a face

which might be called attractive because it was so youthful and so

gentle, but in which only poets and courtiers could see beauty. Her

complexion was rosy, with that peculiar tinge which means that in the

course of time it will become red and mottled. Her blue eyes were clear

and childish. Her figure was good, though already too full for a girl

who was younger than her years.

She had a large and generous mouth with full lips, the lower one

being the true "Hapsburg lip," slightly pendulous--a feature which has

remained for generation after generation as a sure sign of Hapsburg

blood. One sees it in the present emperor of Austria, in the late Queen

Regent of Spain, and in the present King of Spain, Alfonso. All the

artists who made miniatures or paintings of Marie Louise softened down

this racial mark so that no likeness of her shows it as it really was.

But take her all in all, she was a simple, childlike, German madchen

who knew nothing of the outside world except what she had heard from her

discreet and watchful governess, and what had been told her of Napoleon

by her uncles, the archdukes whom he had beaten down in battle.

When she learned that she was to be given to the French emperor her

girlish soul experienced a shudder; but her father told her how vital

was this union to her country and to him. With a sort of piteous dread

she questioned the archdukes who had called Napoleon an ogre.

"Oh, that was when Napoleon was an enemy," they replied. "Now he is our

friend."

Marie Louise listened to all this, and, like the obedient German girl

she was, yielded her own will.

Events moved with a rush, for Napoleon was not the man to dally.

Josephine had retired to her residence at Malmaison, and Paris was

already astir with preparations for the new empress who was to assure

the continuation of the Napoleonic glory by giving children to her

husband. Napoleon had said to his ambassador with his usual bluntness:

"This is the first and most important thing--she must have children."

To the girl whom he was to marry he sent the following letter--an odd

letter, combining the formality of a negotiator with the veiled ardor of

a lover:

MY COUSIN: The brilliant qualities which adorn your person have inspired

in me a desire to serve you and to pay you homage. In making my request

to the emperor, your father, and praying him to intrust to me the

happiness of your imperial highness, may I hope that you will understand

the sentiments which lead me to this act? May I flatter myself that it

will not be decided solely by the duty of parental obedience? However

slightly the feelings of your imperial highness may incline to me, I

wish to cultivate them with so great care, and to endeavor so constantly

to please you in everything, that I flatter myself that some day I shall

prove attractive to you. This is the end at which I desire to arrive,

and for which I pray your highness to be favorable to me.

Immediately everything was done to dazzle the imagination of the girl.

She had dressed always in the simplicity of the school-room. Her only

ornaments had been a few colored stones which she sometimes wore as a

necklace or a bracelet. Now the resources of all France were drawn upon.

Precious laces foamed about her. Cascades of diamonds flashed before her

eyes. The costliest and most exquisite creations of the Parisian shops

were spread around her to make up a trousseau fit for the princess who

was soon to become the bride of the man who had mastered continental

Europe.

The archives of Vienna were ransacked for musty documents which would

show exactly what had been done for other Austrian princesses who had

married rulers of France. Everything was duplicated down to the last

detail. Ladies-in-waiting thronged about the young archduchess; and

presently there came to her Queen Caroline of Naples, Napoleon's sister,

of whom Napoleon himself once said: "She is the only man among my

sisters, as Joseph is the only woman among my brothers." Caroline, by

virtue of her rank as queen, could have free access to her husband's

future bride. Also, there came presently Napoleon's famous marshal,

Berthier, Prince of Neuchatel, the chief of the Old Guard, who had just

been created Prince of Wagram--a title which, very naturally, he did not

use in Austria. He was to act as proxy for Napoleon in the preliminary

marriage service at Vienna.

All was excitement. Vienna had never been so gay. Money was lavished

under the direction of Caroline and Berthier. There were illuminations

and balls. The young girl found herself the center of the world's

interest; and the excitement made her dizzy. She could not but be

flattered, and yet there were many hours when her heart misgave her.

More than once she was found in tears. Her father, an affectionate

though narrow soul, spent an entire day with her consoling and

reassuring her. One thought she always kept in mind--what she had said

to Metternich at the very first: "I want only what my duty bids me

want." At last came the official marriage, by proxy, in the presence of

a splendid gathering. The various documents were signed, the dowry was

arranged for. Gifts were scattered right and left. At the opera

there were gala performances. Then Marie Louise bade her father a sad

farewell. Almost suffocated by sobs and with her eyes streaming with

tears, she was led between two hedges of bayonets to her carriage, while

cannon thundered and all the church-bells of Vienna rang a joyful peal.

She set out for France accompanied by a long train of carriages filled

with noblemen and noblewomen, with ladies-in-waiting and scores of

attendant menials. The young bride--the wife of a man whom she had never

seen--was almost dead with excitement and fatigue. At a station in the

outskirts of Vienna she scribbled a few lines to her father, which are a

commentary upon her state of mind:

I think of you always, and I always shall. God has given me power to

endure this final shock, and in Him alone I have put all my trust. He

will help me and give me courage, and I shall find support in doing my

duty toward you, since it is all for you that I have sacrificed myself.

There is something piteous in this little note of a frightened girl

going to encounter she knew not what, and clinging almost frantically

to the one thought--that whatever might befall her, she was doing as her

father wished.

One need not recount the long and tedious journey of many days over

wretched roads, in carriages that jolted and lurched and swayed. She was

surrounded by unfamiliar faces and was compelled to meet at every town

the chief men of the place, all of whom paid her honor, but stared at

her with irrepressible curiosity. Day after day she went on and on. Each

morning a courier on a foaming horse presented her with a great cluster

of fresh flowers and a few lines scrawled by the unknown husband who was

to meet her at her journey's end.

There lay the point upon which her wandering thoughts were focused--the

journey's end! The man whose strange, mysterious power had forced her

from her school-room, had driven her through a nightmare of strange

happenings, and who was waiting for her somewhere to take her to

himself, to master her as he had mastered generals and armies!

What was marriage? What did it mean? What experience still lay before

her! These were the questions which she must have asked herself

throughout that long, exhausting journey. When she thought of the past

she was homesick. When she thought of the immediate future she was

fearful with a shuddering fear.

At last she reached the frontier of France, and her carriage passed into

a sort of triple structure, the first pavilion of which was Austrian,

while the middle pavilion was neutral, and the farther one was French.

Here she was received by those who were afterward to surround her--the

representatives of the Napoleonic court. They were not all plebeians and

children of the Revolution, ex-stable boys, ex-laundresses. By this time

Napoleon had gathered around himself some of the noblest families of

France, who had rallied to the empire. The assemblage was a brilliant

one. There were Montmorencys and Beaumonts and Audenardes in abundance.

But to Marie Louise, as to her Austrian attendants, they were all alike.

They were French, they were strangers, and she shrank from them.

Yet here her Austrians must leave her. All who had accompanied her thus

far were now turned back. Napoleon had been insistent on this point.

Even her governess, who had been with her since her childhood, was not

allowed to cross the French frontier. So fixed was Napoleon's purpose

to have nothing Austrian about her, that even her pet dog, to which

she clung as a girl would cling, was taken from her. Thereafter she was

surrounded only by French faces, by French guards, and was greeted only

by salvos of French artillery.

In the mean time what was Napoleon doing at Paris. Since the annulment

of his marriage with Josephine he had gone into a sort of retirement.

Matters of state, war, internal reforms, no longer interested him; but

that restless brain could not sink into repose. Inflamed with the ardor

of a new passion, that passion was all the greater because he had

never yet set eyes upon its object. Marriage with an imperial princess

flattered his ambition. The youth and innocence of the bride stirred his

whole being with a thrill of novelty. The painted charms of Josephine,

the mercenary favors of actresses, the calculated ecstasies of the women

of the court who gave themselves to him from vanity, had long since

palled upon him. Therefore the impatience with which he awaited the

coming of Marie Louise became every day more tense.

For a time he amused himself with planning down to the very last details

the demonstrations that were to be given in her honor. He organized

them as minutely as he had ever organized a conquering army. He showed

himself as wonderful in these petty things as he had in those great

strategic combinations which had baffled the ablest generals of

Europe. But after all had been arranged--even to the illuminations, the

cheering, the salutes, and the etiquette of the court--he fell into a

fever of impatience which gave him sleepless nights and frantic days. He

paced up and down the Tuileries, almost beside himself. He hurried off

courier after courier with orders that the postilions should lash their

horses to bring the hour of meeting nearer still. He scribbled love

letters. He gazed continually on the diamond-studded portrait of the

woman who was hurrying toward him.

At last as the time approached he entered a swift traveling-carriage and

hastened to Compiegne, about fifty miles from Paris, where it had been

arranged that he should meet his consort and whence he was to escort her

to the capital, so that they might be married in the great gallery

of the Louvre. At Compiegne the chancellerie had been set apart for

Napoleon's convenience, while the chateau had been assigned to Marie

Louise and her attendants. When Napoleon's carriage dashed into the

place, drawn by horses that had traveled at a gallop, the emperor could

not restrain himself. It was raining torrents and night was coming

on, yet, none the less, he shouted for fresh horses and pushed on to

Soissons, where the new empress was to stop and dine. When he reached

there and she had not arrived, new relays of horses were demanded, and

he hurried off once more into the dark.

At the little village of Courcelles he met the courier who was riding in

advance of the empress's cortege.

"She will be here in a few moments!" cried Napoleon; and he leaped from

his carriage into the highway.

The rain descended harder than ever, and he took refuge in the arched

doorway of the village church, his boots already bemired, his great coat

reeking with the downpour. As he crouched before the church he heard the

sound of carriages; and before long there came toiling through the

mud the one in which was seated the girl for whom he had so long been

waiting. It was stopped at an order given by an officer. Within it,

half-fainting with fatigue and fear, Marie Louise sat in the dark,

alone.

Here, if ever, was the chance for Napoleon to win his bride. Could he

have restrained himself, could he have shown the delicate consideration

which was demanded of him, could he have remembered at least that he was

an emperor and that the girl--timid and shuddering--was a princess, her

future story might have been far different. But long ago he had ceased

to think of anything except his own desires.

He approached the carriage. An obsequious chamberlain drew aside the

leathern covering and opened the door, exclaiming as he did so, "The

emperor!" And then there leaped in the rain-soaked, mud-bespattered

being whose excesses had always been as unbridled as his genius. The

door was closed, the leathern curtain again drawn, and the horses set

out at a gallop for Soissons. Within, the shrinking bride was at the

mercy of pure animal passion, feeling upon her hot face a torrent of

rough kisses, and yielding herself in terror to the caresses of wanton

hands.

At Soissons Napoleon allowed no halt, but the carriage plunged on, still

in the rain, to Compiegne. There all the arrangements made with so much

care were thrust aside. Though the actual marriage had not yet taken

place, Napoleon claimed all the rights which afterward were given in the

ceremonial at Paris. He took the girl to the chancellerie, and not to

the chateau. In an anteroom dinner was served with haste to the imperial

pair and Queen Caroline. Then the latter was dismissed with little

ceremony, the lights were extinguished, and this daughter of a line of

emperors was left to the tender mercies of one who always had about him

something of the common soldier--the man who lives for loot and lust....

At eleven the next morning she was unable to rise and was served in bed

by the ladies of her household.

These facts, repellent as they are, must be remembered when we call

to mind what happened in the next five years. The horror of that night

could not be obliterated by splendid ceremonies, by studious attention,

or by all the pomp and gaiety of the court. Napoleon was then

forty-one--practically the same age as his new wife's father, the

Austrian emperor; Marie Louise was barely nineteen and younger than her

years. Her master must have seemed to be the brutal ogre whom her uncles

had described.

Installed in the Tuileries, she taught herself compliance. On their

marriage night Napoleon had asked her briefly: "What did your parents

tell you?" And she had answered, meekly: "To be yours altogether and to

obey you in everything." But, though she gave compliance, and though her

freshness seemed enchanting to Napoleon, there was something concealed

within her thoughts to which he could not penetrate. He gaily said to a

member of the court:

"Marry a German, my dear fellow. They are the best women in the

world--gentle, good, artless, and as fresh as roses."

Yet, at the same time, Napoleon felt a deep anxiety lest in her very

heart of hearts this German girl might either fear or hate him secretly.

Somewhat later Prince Metternich came from the Austrian court to Paris.

"I give you leave," said Napoleon, "to have a private interview with the

empress. Let her tell you what she likes, and I shall ask no questions.

Even should I do so, I now forbid your answering me."

Metternich was closeted with the empress for a long while. When he

returned to the ante-room he found Napoleon fidgeting about, his eyes a

pair of interrogation-points.

"I am sure," he said, "that the empress told you that I was kind to

her?"

Metternich bowed and made no answer.

"Well," said Napoleon, somewhat impatiently, "at least I am sure that

she is happy. Tell me, did she not say so?"

The Austrian diplomat remained unsmiling.

"Your majesty himself has forbidden me to answer," he returned with

another bow.

We may fairly draw the inference that Marie Louise, though she adapted

herself to her surroundings, was never really happy. Napoleon became

infatuated with her. He surrounded her with every possible mark of

honor. He abandoned public business to walk or drive with her. But the

memory of his own brutality must have vaguely haunted him throughout it

all. He was jealous of her as he had never been jealous of the fickle

Josephine. Constant has recorded that the greatest precautions were

taken to prevent any person whatsoever, and especially any man, from

approaching the empress save in the presence of witnesses.

Napoleon himself underwent a complete change of habits and demeanor.

Where he had been rough and coarse he became attentive and refined. His

shabby uniforms were all discarded, and he spent hours in trying on new

costumes. He even attempted to learn to waltz, but this he gave up in

despair. Whereas before he ate hastily and at irregular intervals,

he now sat at dinner with unusual patience, and the court took on a

character which it had never had. Never before had he sacrificed either

his public duty or his private pleasure for any woman. Even in the first

ardor of his marriage with Josephine, when he used to pour out his heart

to her in letters from Italian battle-fields, he did so only after he

had made the disposition of his troops and had planned his movements

for the following day. Now, however, he was not merely devoted, but

uxorious; and in 1811, after the birth of the little King of Rome, he

ceased to be the earlier Napoleon altogether. He had founded a dynasty.

He was the head of a reigning house. He forgot the principles of the

Revolution, and he ruled, as he thought, like other monarchs, by the

grace of God.

As for Marie Louise, she played her part extremely well. Somewhat

haughty and unapproachable to others, she nevertheless studied

Napoleon's every wish. She seemed even to be loving; but one can

scarcely doubt that her obedience sprang ultimately from fear and

that her devotion was the devotion of a dog which has been beaten into

subjection.

Her vanity was flattered in many ways, and most of all by her

appointment as regent of the empire during Napoleon's absence in the

disastrous Russian campaign which began in 1812. It was in June of that

year that the French emperor held court at Dresden, where he played,

as was said, to "a parterre of kings." This was the climax of his

magnificence, for there were gathered all the sovereigns and princes who

were his allies and who furnished the levies that swelled his Grand Army

to six hundred thousand men. Here Marie Louise, like her husband, felt

to the full the intoxication of supreme power. By a sinister coincidence

it was here that she first met the other man, then unnoticed and little

heeded, who was to cast upon her a fascination which in the end proved

irresistible.

This man was Adam Albrecht, Count von Neipperg. There is something

mysterious about his early years, and something baleful about his silent

warfare with Napoleon. As a very young soldier he had been an Austrian

officer in 1793. His command served in Belgium; and there, in a

skirmish, he was overpowered by the French in superior numbers, but

resisted desperately. In the melee a saber slashed him across the right

side of his face, and he was made prisoner. The wound deprived him of

his right eye, so that for the rest of his life he was compelled to wear

a black bandage to conceal the mutilation.

From that moment he conceived an undying hatred of the French, serving

against them in the Tyrol and in Italy. He always claimed that had the

Archduke Charles followed his advice, the Austrians would have forced

Napoleon's army to capitulate at Marengo, thus bringing early eclipse

to the rising star of Bonaparte. However this may be, Napoleon's success

enraged Neipperg and made his hatred almost the hatred of a fiend.

Hitherto he had detested the French as a nation. Afterward he

concentrated his malignity upon the person of Napoleon. In every way he

tried to cross the path of that great soldier, and, though Neipperg was

comparatively an unknown man, his indomitable purpose and his continued

intrigues at last attracted the notice of the emperor; for in 1808

Napoleon wrote this significant sentence:

The Count von Neipperg is openly known to have been the enemy of the

French.

Little did the great conqueror dream how deadly was the blow which this

Austrian count was destined finally to deal him!

Neipperg, though his title was not a high one, belonged to the old

nobility of Austria. He had proved his bravery in war and as a duelist,

and he was a diplomat as well as a soldier. Despite his mutilation, he

was a handsome and accomplished courtier, a man of wide experience, and

one who bore himself in a manner which suggested the spirit of romance.

According to Masson, he was an Austrian Don Juan, and had won the hearts

of many women. At thirty he had formed a connection with an Italian

woman named Teresa Pola, whom he had carried away from her husband. She

had borne him five children; and in 1813 he had married her in order

that these children might be made legitimate.

In his own sphere the activity of Neipperg was almost as remarkable as

Napoleon's in a greater one. Apart from his exploits on the field of

battle he had been attached to the Austrian embassy in Paris, and,

strangely enough, had been decorated by Napoleon himself with, the

golden eagle of the Legion of Honor. Four months later we find him

minister of Austria at the court of Sweden, where he helped to lay the

train of intrigue which was to detach Bernadotte from Napoleon's cause.

In 1812, as has just been said, he was with Marie Louise for a short

time at Dresden, hovering about her, already forming schemes. Two years

after this he overthrew Murat at Naples; and then hurried on post-haste

to urge Prince Eugene to abandon Bonaparte.

When the great struggle of 1814 neared its close, and Napoleon, fighting

with his back to the wall, was about to succumb to the united armies of

Europe, it was evident that the Austrian emperor would soon be able to

separate his daughter from her husband. In fact, when Napoleon was sent

to Elba, Marie Louise returned to Vienna. The cynical Austrian diplomats

resolved that she should never again meet her imperial husband. She was

made Duchess of Parma in Italy, and set out for her new possessions; and

the man with the black band across his sightless eye was chosen to be

her escort and companion.

When Neipperg received this commission he was with Teresa Pola at Milan.

A strange smile flitted across his face; and presently he remarked, with

cynical frankness:

"Before six months I shall be her lover, and, later on, her husband."

He took up his post as chief escort of Marie Louise, and they journeyed

slowly to Munich and Baden and Geneva, loitering on the way. Amid the

great events which were shaking Europe this couple attracted slight

attention. Napoleon, in Elba, longed for his wife and for his little

son, the King of Rome. He sent countless messages and many couriers; but

every message was intercepted, and no courier reached his destination.

Meanwhile Marie Louise was lingering agreeably in Switzerland. She was

happy to have escaped from the whirlpool of politics and war. Amid the

romantic scenery through which she passed Neipperg was always by her

side, attentive, devoted, trying in everything to please her. With him

she passed delightful evenings. He sang to her in his rich barytone

songs of love. He seemed romantic with a touch of mystery, a gallant

soldier whose soul was also touched by sentiment.

One would have said that Marie Louise, the daughter of an imperial

line, would have been proof against the fascinations of a person so far

inferior to herself in rank, and who, beside the great emperor, was less

than nothing. Even granting that she had never really loved Napoleon,

she might still have preferred to maintain her dignity, to share his

fate, and to go down in history as the empress of the greatest man whom

modern times have known.

But Marie Louise was, after all, a woman, and she followed the guidance

of her heart. To her Napoleon was still the man who had met her amid the

rain-storm at Courcelles, and had from the first moment when he touched

her violated all the instincts of a virgin. Later he had in his way

tried to make amends; but the horror of that first night had never

wholly left her memory. Napoleon had unrolled before her the drama of

sensuality, but her heart had not been given to him. She had been his

empress. In a sense it might be more true to say that she had been

his mistress. But she had never been duly wooed and won and made his

wife--an experience which is the right of every woman. And so this

Neipperg, with his deferential manners, his soothing voice, his magnetic

touch, his ardor, and his devotion, appeased that craving which the

master of a hundred legions could not satisfy.

In less than the six months of which Neipperg had spoken the

psychological moment had arrived. In the dim twilight she listened to

his words of love; and then, drawn by that irresistible power which

masters pride and woman's will, she sank into her lover's arms, yielding

to his caresses, and knowing that she would be parted from him no more

except by death.

From that moment he was bound to her by the closest ties and lived with

her at the petty court of Parma. His prediction came true to the very

letter. Teresa Pola died, and then Napoleon died, and after this Marie

Louise and Neipperg were united in a morganatic marriage. Three children

were born to them before his death in 1829.

It is interesting to note how much of an impression was made upon her by

the final exile of her imperial husband to St. Helena. When the news was

brought her she observed, casually:

"Thanks. By the way, I should like to ride this morning to Markenstein.

Do you think the weather is good enough to risk it?"

Napoleon, on his side, passed through agonies of doubt and longing when

no letters came to him from Marie Louise. She was constantly in his

thoughts during his exile at St. Helena. "When his faithful friend and

constant companion at St. Helena, the Count Las Casas, was ordered by

Sir Hudson Lowe to depart from St. Helena, Napoleon wrote to him:

"Should you see, some day, my wife and son, embrace them. For two years

I have, neither directly nor indirectly, heard from them. There has been

on this island for six months a German botanist, who has seen them

in the garden of Schoenbrunn a few months before his departure.

The barbarians (meaning the English authorities at St. Helena) have

carefully prevented him from coming to give me any news respecting

them."

At last the truth was told him, and he received it with that high

magnanimity, or it may be fatalism, which at times he was capable of

showing. Never in all his days of exile did he say one word against her.

Possibly in searching his own soul he found excuses such as we may find.

In his will he spoke of her with great affection, and shortly before his

death he said to his physician, Antommarchi:

"After my death, I desire that you will take my heart, put it in the

spirits of wine, and that you carry it to Parma to my dear Marie Louise.

You will please tell her that I tenderly loved her--that I never ceased

to love her. You will relate to her all that you have seen, and every

particular respecting my situation and death."

The story of Marie Louise is pathetic, almost tragic. There is the taint

of grossness about it; and yet, after all, there is a lesson in it--the

lesson that true love cannot be forced or summoned at command, that it

is destroyed before its birth by outrage, and that it goes out only when

evoked by sympathy, by tenderness, and by devotion.

END OF VOLUME TWO

THE WIVES OF GENERAL HOUSTON

Sixty or seventy years ago it was considered a great joke to chalk up

on any man's house-door, or on his trunk at a coaching-station, the

conspicuous letters "G. T. T." The laugh went round, and every one

who saw the inscription chuckled and said: "They've got it on you, old

hoss!" The three letters meant "gone to Texas"; and for any man to go to

Texas in those days meant his moral, mental, and financial dilapidation.

Either he had plunged into bankruptcy and wished to begin life over

again in a new world, or the sheriff had a warrant for his arrest.

The very task of reaching Texas was a fearful one. Rivers that overran

their banks, fever-stricken lowlands where gaunt faces peered out from

moldering cabins, bottomless swamps where the mud oozed greasily and

where the alligator could be seen slowly moving his repulsive form--all

this stretched on for hundreds of miles to horrify and sicken the

emigrants who came toiling on foot or struggling upon emaciated horses.

Other daring pioneers came by boat, running all manner of risks upon the

swollen rivers. Still others descended from the mountains of Tennessee

and passed through a more open country and with a greater certainty of

self-protection, because they were trained from childhood to wield the

rifle and the long sheath-knife.

It is odd enough to read, in the chronicles of those days, that amid all

this suffering and squalor there was drawn a strict line between "the

quality" and those who had no claim to be patricians. "The quality" was

made up of such emigrants as came from the more civilized East, or

who had slaves, or who dragged with them some rickety vehicle with

carriage-horses--however gaunt the animals might be. All others--those

who had no slaves or horses, and no traditions of the older states--were

classed as "poor whites"; and they accepted their mediocrity without a

murmur.

Because he was born in Lexington, Virginia, and moved thence with his

family to Tennessee, young Sam Houston--a truly eponymous American

hero--was numbered with "the quality" when, after long wandering, he

reached his boyhood home. His further claim to distinction as a boy came

from the fact that he could read and write, and was even familiar with

some of the classics in translation.

When less than eighteen years of age he had reached a height of

more than six feet. He was skilful with the rifle, a remarkable

rough-and-tumble fighter, and as quick with his long knife as any

Indian. This made him a notable figure--the more so as he never abused

his strength and courage. He was never known as anything but "Sam." In

his own sphere he passed for a gentleman and a scholar, thanks to his

Virginian birth and to the fact that he could repeat a great part of

Pope's translation of the "Iliad."

His learning led him to teach school a few months in the year to the

children of the white settlers. Indeed, Houston was so much taken with

the pursuit of scholarship that he made up his mind to learn Greek and

Latin. Naturally, this seemed mere foolishness to his mother, his six

strapping brothers, and his three stalwart sisters, who cared little

for study. So sharp was the difference between Sam and the rest of the

family that he gave up his yearning after the classics and went to the

other extreme by leaving home and plunging into the heart of the forest

beyond sight of any white man or woman or any thought of Hellas and

ancient Rome.

Here in the dimly lighted glades he was most happy. The Indians admired

him for his woodcraft and for the skill with which he chased the wild

game amid the forests. From his copy of the "Iliad" he would read to

them the thoughts of the world's greatest poet.

It is told that nearly forty years after, when Houston had long led a

different life and had made his home in Washington, a deputation of more

than forty untamed Indians from Texas arrived there under the charge of

several army officers. They chanced to meet Sam Houston.

One and all ran to him, clasped him in their brawny arms, hugged him

like bears to their naked breasts, and called him "father." Beneath the

copper skin and thick paint the blood rushed, and their faces changed,

and the lips of many a warrior trembled, although the Indian may not

weep.

In the gigantic form of Houston, on whose ample brow the beneficent

love of a father was struggling with the sternness of the patriarch and

warrior, we saw civilization awing the savage at his feet. We needed no

interpreter to tell us that this impressive supremacy was gained in the

forest.

His family had been at first alarmed by his stay among the Indians;

but when after a time he returned for a new outfit they saw that he was

entirely safe and left him to wander among the red men. Later he came

forth and resumed the pursuits of civilization. He took up his studies;

he learned the rudiments of law and entered upon its active practice.

When barely thirty-six he had won every office that was open to him,

ending with his election to the Governorship of Tennessee in 1827.

Then came a strange episode which changed the whole course of his life.

Until then the love of woman had never stirred his veins. His physical

activities in the forests, his unique intimacy with Indian life, had

kept him away from the social intercourse of towns and cities. In

Nashville Houston came to know for the first time the fascination of

feminine society. As a lawyer, a politician, and the holder of important

offices he could not keep aloof from that gentler and more winning

influence which had hitherto been unknown to him.

In 1828 Governor Houston was obliged to visit different portions of

the state, stopping, as was the custom, to visit at the homes of "the

quality," and to be introduced to wives and daughters as well as to

their sportsman sons. On one of his official journeys he met Miss Eliza

Allen, a daughter of one of the "influential families" of Sumner County,

on the northern border of Tennessee. He found her responsive, charming,

and greatly to be admired. She was a slender type of Southern beauty,

well calculated to gain the affection of a lover, and especially of

one whose associations had been chiefly with the women of frontier

communities.

To meet a girl who had refined tastes and wide reading, and who was at

the same time graceful and full of humor, must have come as a pleasant

experience to Houston. He and Miss Allen saw much of each other, and few

of their friends were surprised when the word went forth that they were

engaged to be married.

The marriage occurred in January, 1829. They were surrounded with

friends of all classes and ranks, for Houston was the associate of

Jackson and was immensely popular in his own state. He seemed to have

before him a brilliant career. He had won a lovely bride to make a home

for him; so that no man seemed to have more attractive prospects. What

was there which at this time interposed in some malignant way to blight

his future?

It was a little more than a month after his marriage when he met a

friend, and, taking him out into a strip of quiet woodland, said to him:

"I have something to tell you, but you must not ask me anything about

it. My wife and I will separate before long. She will return to her

father's, while I must make my way alone."

Houston's friend seized him by the arm and gazed at him with horror.

"Governor," said he, "you're going to ruin your whole life! What reason

have you for treating this young lady in such a way? What has she done

that you should leave her? Or what have you done that she should leave

you? Every one will fall away from you."

Houston grimly replied:

"I have no explanation to give you. My wife has none to give you. She

will not complain of me, nor shall I complain of her. It is no

one's business in the world except our own. Any interference will be

impertinent, and I shall punish it with my own hand."

"But," said his friend, "think of it. The people at large will not allow

such action. They will believe that you, who have been their idol, have

descended to insult a woman. Your political career is ended. It will not

be safe for you to walk the streets!"

"What difference does it make to me?" said Houston, gloomily. "What must

be, must be. I tell you, as a friend, in advance, so that you may be

prepared; but the parting will take place very soon."

Little was heard for another month or two, and then came the

announcement that the Governor's wife had left him and had returned to

her parents' home. The news flew like wildfire, and was the theme

of every tongue. Friends of Mrs. Houston begged her to tell them the

meaning of the whole affair. Adherents of Houston, on the other hand,

set afloat stories of his wife's coldness and of her peevishness. The

state was divided into factions; and what really concerned a very few

was, as usual, made everybody's business.

There were times when, if Houston had appeared near the dwelling of his

former wife, he would have been lynched or riddled with bullets. Again,

there were enemies and slanderers of his who, had they shown themselves

in Nashville, would have been torn to pieces by men who hailed Houston

as a hero and who believed that he could not possibly have done wrong.

However his friends might rage, and however her people might wonder and

seek to pry into the secret, no satisfaction was given on either side.

The abandoned wife never uttered a word of explanation. Houston was

equally reticent and self-controlled. In later years he sometimes drank

deeply and was loose-tongued; but never, even in his cups, could he be

persuaded to say a single word about his wife.

The whole thing is a mystery and cannot be solved by any evidence that

we have. Almost every one who has written of it seems to have indulged

in mere guesswork. One popular theory is that Miss Allen was in love

with some one else; that her parents forced her into a brilliant

marriage with Houston, which, however, she could not afterward endure;

and that Houston, learning the facts, left her because he knew that her

heart was not really his.

But the evidence is all against this. Had it been so she would surely

have secured a divorce and would then have married the man whom she

truly loved. As a matter of fact, although she did divorce Houston, it

was only after several years, and the man whom she subsequently married

was not acquainted with her at the time of the separation.

Another theory suggests that Houston was harsh in his treatment of his

wife, and offended her by his untaught manners and extreme self-conceit.

But it is not likely that she objected to his manners, since she had

become familiar with them before she gave him her hand; and as to his

conceit, there is no evidence that it was as yet unduly developed. After

his Texan campaign he sometimes showed a rather lofty idea of his own

achievements; but he does not seem to have done so in these early days.

Some have ascribed the separation to his passion for drink; but here

again we must discriminate. Later in life he became very fond of spirits

and drank whisky with the Indians, but during his earlier years he

was most abstemious. It scarcely seems possible that his wife left him

because he was intemperate.

If one wishes to construct a reasonable hypothesis on a subject where

the facts are either wanting or conflicting, it is not impossible to

suggest a solution of this puzzle about Houston. Although his abandoned

wife never spoke of him and shut her lips tightly when she was

questioned about him, Houston, on his part, was not so taciturn. He

never consciously gave any direct clue to his matrimonial mystery; but

he never forgot this girl who was his bride and whom he seems always

to have loved. In what he said he never ceased to let a vein of

self-reproach run through his words.

I should choose this one paragraph as the most significant. It was

written immediately after they had parted:

Eliza stands acquitted by me. I have received her as a virtuous, chaste

wife, and as such I pray God I may ever regard her, and I trust I ever

shall. She was cold to me, and I thought she did not love me.

And again he said to an old and valued friend at about the same time:

"I can make no explanation. I exonerate the lady fully and do not

justify myself."

Miss Allen seems to have been a woman of the sensitive American type

which was so common in the early and the middle part of the last

century. Mrs. Trollope has described it for us with very little

exaggeration. Dickens has drawn it with a touch of malice, and yet not

without truth. Miss Martineau described it during her visit to

this country, and her account quite coincides with those of her two

contemporaries.

Indeed, American women of that time unconsciously described themselves

in a thousand different ways. They were, after all, only a less striking

type of the sentimental Englishwomen who read L. E. L. and the earlier

novels of Bulwer-Lytton. On both sides of the Atlantic there was a reign

of sentiment and a prevalence of what was then called "delicacy." It was

a die-away, unwholesome attitude toward life and was morbid to the last

degree.

In circles where these ideas prevailed, to eat a hearty dinner was

considered unwomanly. To talk of anything except some gilded "annual,"

or "book of beauty," or the gossip of the neighborhood was wholly to be

condemned. The typical girl of such a community was thin and slender and

given to a mild starvation, though she might eat quantities of jam and

pickles and saleratus biscuit. She had the strangest views of life and

an almost unnatural shrinking from any usual converse with men.

Houston, on his side, was a thoroughly natural and healthful man, having

lived an outdoor life, hunting and camping in the forest and displaying

the unaffected manner of the pioneer. Having lived the solitary life of

the woods, it was a strange thing for him to meet a girl who had been

bred in an entirely different way, who had learned a thousand little

reservations and dainty graces, and whose very breath was coyness and

reserve. Their mating was the mating of the man of the forest with the

woman of the sheltered life.

Houston assumed everything; his bride shrank from everything. There was

a mutual shock amounting almost to repulsion. She, on her side, probably

thought she had found in him only the brute which lurks in man. He, on

the other, repelled and checked, at once grasped the belief that his

wife cared nothing for him because she would not meet his ardors

with like ardors of her own. It is the mistake that has been made by

thousands of men and women at the beginning of their married lives--the

mistake on one side of too great sensitiveness, and on the other side of

too great warmth of passion.

This episode may seem trivial, and yet it is one that explains many

things in human life. So far as concerns Houston it has a direct bearing

on the history of our country. A proud man, he could not endure the

slights and gossip of his associates. He resigned the governorship of

Tennessee, and left by night, in such a way as to surround his departure

with mystery.

There had come over him the old longing for Indian life; and when he was

next visible he was in the land of the Cherokees, who had long before

adopted him as a son. He was clad in buckskin and armed with knife

and rifle, and served under the old chief Oolooteka. He was a gallant

defender of the Indians.

When he found how some of the Indian agents had abused his adopted

brothers he went to Washington to protest, still wearing his frontier

garb. One William Stansberry, a Congressman from Ohio, insulted Houston,

who leaped upon him like a panther, dragged him about the Hall of

Representatives, and beat him within an inch of his life. He was

arrested, imprisoned, and fined; but his old friend, President Jackson,

remitted his imprisonment and gruffly advised him not to pay the fine.

Returning to his Indians, he made his way to a new field which promised

much adventure. This was Texas, of whose condition in those early

days something has already been said. Houston found a rough American

settlement, composed of scattered villages extending along the disputed

frontier of Mexico. Already, in the true Anglo-Saxon spirit, the

settlers had formed a rudimentary state, and as they increased and

multiplied they framed a simple code of laws.

Then, quite naturally, there came a clash between them and the Mexicans.

The Texans, headed by Moses Austin, had set up a republic and asked

for admission to the United States. Mexico regarded them as rebels and

despised them because they made no military display and had no very

accurate military drill. They were dressed in buckskin and ragged

clothing; but their knives were very bright and their rifles carried

surely. Furthermore, they laughed at odds, and if only a dozen of them

were gathered together they would "take on" almost any number of Mexican

regulars.

In February, 1836, the acute and able Mexican, Santa Anna, led across

the Rio Grande a force of several thousand Mexicans showily uniformed

and completely armed. Every one remembers how they fell upon the little

garrison at the Alamo, now within the city limits of San Antonio, but

then an isolated mission building surrounded by a thick adobe wall. The

Americans numbered less than three hundred men.

A sharp attack was made with these overwhelming odds. The Americans

drove the assailants back with their rifle fire, but they had nothing to

oppose to the Mexican artillery. The contest continued for several days,

and finally the Mexicans breached the wall and fell upon the garrison,

who were now reduced by more than half. There was an hour of blood, and

every one of the Alamo's defenders, including the wounded, was put to

death. The only survivors of the slaughter were two negro slaves, a

woman, and a baby girl.

When the news of this bloody affair reached Houston he leaped forth to

the combat like a lion. He was made commander-in-chief of the scanty

Texan forces. He managed to rally about seven hundred men, and set out

against Santa Anna with little in the way of equipment, and with

nothing but the flame of frenzy to stimulate his followers. By march and

countermarch the hostile forces came face to face near the shore of San

Jacinto Bay, not far from the present city of Houston. Slowly they moved

upon each other, when Houston halted, and his sharpshooters raked the

Mexican battle-line with terrible effect. Then Houston uttered the cry:

"Remember the Alamo!"

With deadly swiftness he led his men in a charge upon Santa Anna's

lines. The Mexicans were scattered as by a mighty wind, their commander

was taken prisoner, and Mexico was forced to give its recognition to

Texas as a free republic, of which General Houston became the first

president.

This was the climax of Houston's life, but the end of it leaves us with

something still to say. Long after his marriage with Miss Allen he took

an Indian girl to wife and lived with her quite happily. She was a very

beautiful woman, a half-breed, with the English name of Tyania Rodgers.

Very little, however, is known of her life with Houston. Later still--in

1840--he married a lady from Marion, Alabama, named Margaret Moffette

Lea. He was then in his forty-seventh year, while she was only

twenty-one; but again, as with his Indian wife, he knew nothing but

domestic tranquillity. These later experiences go far to prove the

truth of what has already been given as the probable cause of his first

mysterious failure to make a woman happy.

After Texas entered the Union, in 1845, Houston was elected to the

United States Senate, in which he served for thirteen years. In 1852,

1856, and 1860, as a Southerner who opposed any movement looking toward

secession, he was regarded as a possible presidential candidate; but his

career was now almost over, and in 1863, while the Civil War--which he

had striven to prevent--was at its height, he died.

LOLA MONTEZ AND KING LUDWIG OF BAVARIA

Lola Montez! The name suggests dark eyes and abundant hair, lithe limbs

and a sinuous body, with twining hands and great eyes that gleam with

a sort of ebon splendor. One thinks of Spanish beauty as one hears the

name; and in truth Lola Montez justified the mental picture.

She was not altogether Spanish, yet the other elements that entered into

her mercurial nature heightened and vivified her Castilian traits.

Her mother was a Spaniard--partly Moorish, however. Her father was an

Irishman. There you have it--the dreamy romance of Spain, the exotic

touch of the Orient, and the daring, unreasoning vivacity of the Celt.

This woman during the forty-three years of her life had adventures

innumerable, was widely known in Europe and America, and actually lost

one king his throne. Her maiden name was Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna

Gilbert. Her father was a British officer, the son of an Irish knight,

Sir Edward Gilbert. Her mother had been a danseuse named Lola Oliver.

"Lola" is a diminutive of Dolores, and as "Lola" she became known to the

world.

She lived at one time or another in nearly all the countries of Europe,

and likewise in India, America, and Australia. It would be impossible

to set down here all the sensations that she achieved. Let us select the

climax of her career and show how she overturned a kingdom, passing but

lightly over her early and her later years.

She was born in Limerick in 1818, but her father's parents cast off

their son and his young wife, the Spanish dancer. They went to India,

and in 1825 the father died, leaving his young widow without a

rupee; but she was quickly married again, this time to an officer of

importance.

The former danseuse became a very conventional person, a fit match for

her highly conventional husband; but the small daughter did not take

kindly to the proprieties of life. The Hindu servants taught her more

things than she should have known; and at one time her stepfather found

her performing the danse du ventre. It was the Moorish strain inherited

from her mother.

She was sent back to Europe, however, and had a sort of education in

Scotland and England, and finally in Paris, where she was detected in

an incipient flirtation with her music-master. There were other persons

hanging about her from her fifteenth year, at which time her

stepfather, in India, had arranged a marriage between her and a rich but

uninteresting old judge. One of her numerous admirers told her this.

"What on earth am I to do?" asked little Lola, most naively.

"Why, marry me," said the artful adviser, who was Captain Thomas James;

and so the very next day they fled to Dublin and were speedily married

at Meath.

Lola's husband was violently in love with her, but, unfortunately,

others were no less susceptible to her charms. She was presented at

the vice-regal court, and everybody there became her victim. Even the

viceroy, Lord Normanby, was greatly taken with her. This nobleman's

position was such that Captain James could not object to his attentions,

though they made the husband angry to a degree. The viceroy would draw

her into alcoves and engage her in flattering conversation, while poor

James could only gnaw his nails and let green-eyed jealousy prey upon

his heart. His only recourse was to take her into the country, where she

speedily became bored; and boredom is the death of love.

Later she went with Captain James to India. She endured a campaign in

Afghanistan, in which she thoroughly enjoyed herself because of the

attentions of the officers. On her return to London in 1842, one Captain

Lennox was a fellow passenger; and their association resulted in an

action for divorce, by which she was freed from her husband, and yet by

a technicality was not able to marry Lennox, whose family in any case

would probably have prevented the wedding.

Mrs. Mayne says, in writing on this point:

Even Lola never quite succeeded in being allowed to commit bigamy

unmolested, though in later years she did commit it and took refuge in

Spain to escape punishment.

The same writer has given a vivid picture of what happened soon after

the divorce. Lola tried to forget her past and to create a new and

brighter future. Here is the narrative:

Her Majesty's Theater was crowded on the night of June 10,1843. A new

Spanish dancer was announced--"Dona Lola Montez." It was her debut, and

Lumley, the manager, had been puffing her beforehand, as he alone knew

how. To Lord Ranelagh, the leader of the dilettante group of fashionable

young men, he had whispered, mysteriously:

"I have a surprise in store. You shall see."

So Ranelagh and a party of his friends filled the omnibus boxes,

those tribunes at the side of the stage whence success or failure was

pronounced. Things had been done with Lumley's consummate art; the

packed house was murmurous with excitement. She was a raving beauty,

said report--and then, those intoxicating Spanish dances! Taglioni,

Cerito, Fanny Elssler, all were to be eclipsed.

Ranelagh's glasses were steadily leveled on the stage from the

moment her entrance was imminent. She came on. There was a murmur of

admiration--but Ranelagh made no sign. And then she began to dance.

A sense of disappointment, perhaps? But she was very lovely, very

graceful, "like a flower swept by the wind, she floated round the

stage"--not a dancer, but, by George, a beauty! And still Ranelagh made

no sign.

Yet, no. What low, sibilant sound is that? And then what confused, angry

words from the tribunal? He turns to his friends, his eyes ablaze with

anger, opera-glass in hand. And now again the terrible "Hiss-s-s!" taken

up by the other box, and the words repeated loudly and more angrily

even than before--the historic words which sealed Lola's doom at Her

Majesty's Theater: "WHY, IT'S BETTY JAMES!"

She was, indeed, Betty James, and London would not accept her as Lola

Montez. She left England and appeared upon the Continent as a beautiful

virago, making a sensation--as the French would say, a succes de

scandale--by boxing the ears of people who offended her, and even on one

occasion horsewhipping a policeman who was in attendance on the King of

Prussia. In Paris she tried once more to be a dancer, but Paris would

not have her. She betook herself to Dresden and Warsaw, where she

sought to attract attention by her eccentricities, making mouths at the

spectators, flinging her garters in their faces, and one time removing

her skirts and still more necessary garments, whereupon her manager

broke off his engagement with her.

An English writer who heard a great deal of her and who saw her often

about this time writes that there was nothing wonderful about her except

"her beauty and her impudence." She had no talent nor any of the graces

which make women attractive; yet many men of talent raved about her. The

clever young journalist, Dujarrier, who assisted Emile Girardin, was her

lover in Paris. He was killed in a duel and left Lola twenty thousand

francs and some securities, so that she no longer had to sing in the

streets as she did in Warsaw.

She now betook herself to Munich, the capital of Bavaria. That country

was then governed by Ludwig I., a king as eccentric as Lola herself. He

was a curious compound of kindliness, ideality, and peculiar ways. For

instance, he would never use a carriage even on state occasions. He

prowled around the streets, knocking off the hats of those whom he

chanced to meet. Like his unfortunate descendant, Ludwig II., he

wrote poetry, and he had a picture-gallery devoted to portraits of the

beautiful women whom he had met.

He dressed like an English fox-hunter, with a most extraordinary hat,

and what was odd and peculiar in others pleased him because he was odd

and peculiar himself. Therefore when Lola made her first appearance at

the Court Theater he was enchanted with her. He summoned her at once to

the palace, and within five days he presented her to the court, saying

as he did so:

"Meine Herren, I present you to my best friend."

In less than a month this curious monarch had given Lola the title of

Countess of Landsfeld. A handsome house was built for her, and a pension

of twenty thousand florins was granted her. This was in 1847. With the

people of Munich she was unpopular. They did not mind the eccentricities

of the king, since these amused them and did the country no perceptible

harm; but they were enraged by this beautiful woman, who had no softness

such as a woman ought to have. Her swearing, her readiness to box the

ears of every one whom she disliked, the huge bulldog which accompanied

her everywhere--all these things were beyond endurance.

She was discourteous to the queen, besides meddling with the politics of

the kingdom. Either of these things would have been sufficient to

make her hated. Together, they were more than the city of Munich could

endure. Finally the countess tried to establish a new corps in the

university. This was the last touch of all. A student who ventured to

wear her colors was beaten and arrested. Lola came to his aid with all

her wonted boldness; but the city was in commotion.

Daggers were drawn; Lola was hustled and insulted. The foolish king

rushed out to protect her; and on his arm she was led in safety to the

palace. As she entered the gates she turned and fired a pistol into the

mob. No one was hurt, but a great rage took possession of the people.

The king issued a decree closing the university for a year. By this

time, however, Munich was in possession of a mob, and the Bavarians

demanded that she should leave the country.

Ludwig faced the chamber of peers, where the demand of the populace was

placed before him.

"I would rather lose my crown!" he replied.

The lords of Bavaria regarded him with grim silence; and in their eyes

he read the determination of his people. On the following day a royal

decree revoked Lola's rights as a subject of Bavaria, and still another

decree ordered her to be expelled. The mob yelled with joy and burned

her house. Poor Ludwig watched the tumult by the light of the leaping

flames.

He was still in love with her and tried to keep her in the kingdom; but

the result was that Ludwig himself was forced to abdicate. He had given

his throne for the light love of this beautiful but half-crazy woman.

She would have no more to do with him; and as for him, he had to give

place to his son Maximilian. Ludwig had lost a kingdom merely because

this strange, outrageous creature had piqued him and made him think that

she was unique among women.

The rest of her career was adventurous. In England she contracted a

bigamous marriage with a youthful officer, and within two weeks they

fled to Spain for safety from the law. Her husband was drowned, and she

made still another marriage. She visited Australia, and at Melbourne she

had a fight with a strapping woman, who clawed her face until Lola

fell fainting to the ground. It is a squalid record of horse-whippings,

face-scratchings--in short, a rowdy life.

Her end was like that of Becky Sharp. In America she delivered lectures

which were written for her by a clergyman and which dealt with the art

of beauty. She had a temporary success; but soon she became quite

poor, and took to piety, professing to be a sort of piteous, penitent

Magdalen. In this role she made effective use of her beautiful dark

hair, her pallor, and her wonderful eyes. But the violence of her

disposition had wrecked her physically; and she died of paralysis in

Astoria, on Long Island, in 1861. Upon her grave in Greenwood Cemetery,

Brooklyn, there is a tablet to her memory, bearing the inscription:

"Mrs. Eliza Gilbert, born 1818, died 1861."

What can one say of a woman such as this? She had no morals, and her

manners were outrageous. The love she felt was the love of a she-wolf.

Fourteen biographies of her have been written, besides her own

autobiography, which was called The Story of a Penitent, and which tells

less about her than any of the other books. Her beauty was undeniable.

Her courage was the blended courage of the Celt, the Spaniard, and the

Moor. Yet all that one can say of her was said by the elder Dumas when

he declared that she was born to be the evil genius of every one who

cared for her. Her greatest fame comes from the fact that in less than

three years she overturned a kingdom and lost a king his throne.

LEON GAMBETTA AND LEONIE LEON

The present French Republic has endured for over forty years. Within

that time it has produced just one man of extraordinary power and parts.

This was Leon Gambetta. Other men as remarkable as he were conspicuous

in French political life during the first few years of the republic;

but they belonged to an earlier generation, while Gambetta leaped

into prominence only when the empire fell, crashing down in ruin and

disaster.

It is still too early to form an accurate estimate of him as a

statesman. His friends praise him extravagantly. His enemies still

revile him bitterly. The period of his political career lasted for

little more than a decade, yet in that time it may be said that he

lived almost a life of fifty years. Only a short time ago did the French

government cause his body to be placed within the great Pantheon, which

contains memorials of the heroes and heroines of France. But, though

we may not fairly judge of his political motives, we can readily

reconstruct a picture of him as a man, and in doing so recall his

one romance, which many will remember after they have forgotten his

oratorical triumphs and his statecraft.

Leon Gambetta was the true type of the southern Frenchman--what his

countrymen call a meridional. The Frenchman of the south is different

from the Frenchman of the north, for the latter has in his veins a

touch of the viking blood, so that he is very apt to be fair-haired and

blue-eyed, temperate in speech, and self-controlled. He is different,

again, from the Frenchman of central France, who is almost purely

Celtic. The meridional has a marked vein of the Italian in him, derived

from the conquerors of ancient Gaul. He is impulsive, ardent, fiery in

speech, hot-tempered, and vivacious to an extraordinary degree.

Gambetta, who was born at Cahors, was French only on his mother's side,

since his father was of Italian birth. It is said also that somewhere in

his ancestry there was a touch of the Oriental. At any rate, he was one

of the most southern of the sons of southern France, and he showed

the precocious maturity which belongs to a certain type of Italian.

At twenty-one he had already been admitted to the French bar, and

had drifted to Paris, where his audacity, his pushing nature, and his

red-hot un-restraint of speech gave him a certain notoriety from the

very first.

It was toward the end of the reign of Napoleon III. that Gambetta saw

his opportunity. The emperor, weakened by disease and yielding to a sort

of feeble idealism, gave to France a greater freedom of speech than it

had enjoyed while he was more virile. This relaxation of control

merely gave to his opponents more courage to attack him and his empire.

Demagogues harangued the crowds in words which would once have led to

their imprisonment. In the National Assembly the opposition did all

within its power to hamper and defeat the policy of the government.

In short, republicanism began to rise in an ominous and threatening way;

and at the head of republicanism in Paris stood forth Gambetta, with his

impassioned eloquence, his stinging phrases, and his youthful boldness.

He became the idol of that part of Paris known as Belleville, where

artisans and laborers united with the rabble of the streets in hating

the empire and in crying out for a republic.

Gambetta was precisely the man to voice the feelings of these people.

Whatever polish he acquired in after years was then quite lacking; and

the crudity of his manners actually helped him with the men whom he

harangued. A recent book by M. Francis Laur, an ardent admirer of

Gambetta, gives a picture of the man which may be nearly true of him in

his later life, but which is certainly too flattering when applied to

Gambetta in 1868, at the age of thirty.

How do we see Gambetta as he was at thirty? A man of powerful frame and

of intense vitality, with thick, clustering hair, which he shook as

a lion shakes its mane; olive-skinned, with eyes that darted fire, a

resonant, sonorous voice, and a personal magnetism which was instantly

felt by all who met him or who heard him speak. His manners were not

refined. He was fond of oil and garlic. His gestures were often more

frantic than impressive, so that his enemies called him "the furious

fool." He had a trick of spitting while he spoke. He was by no means

the sort of man whose habits had been formed in drawing-rooms or among

people of good breeding. Yet his oratory was, of its kind, superb.

In 1869 Gambetta was elected by the Red Republicans to the Corps

Legislatif. From the very first his vehemence and fire gained him a

ready hearing. The chamber itself was arranged like a great theater, the

members occupying the floor and the public the galleries. Each orator

in addressing the house mounted a sort of rostrum and from it faced the

whole assemblage, not noticing, as with us, the presiding officer

at all. The very nature of this arrangement stimulated parliamentary

speaking into eloquence and flamboyant oratory.

After Gambetta had spoken a few times he noticed in the gallery a tall,

graceful woman, dressed in some neutral color and wearing long black

gloves, which accentuated the beauty of her hands and arms. No one in

the whole assembly paid such close attention to the orator as did this

woman, whom he had never seen before and who appeared to be entirely

alone.

When it came to him to speak on another day he saw sitting in the

same place the same stately and yet lithe and sinuous figure. This was

repeated again and again, until at last whenever he came to a peculiarly

fervid burst of oratory he turned to this woman's face and saw it

lighted up by the same enthusiasm which was stirring him.

Finally, in the early part of 1870, there came a day when Gambetta

surpassed himself in eloquence. His theme was the grandeur of republican

government. Never in his life had he spoken so boldly as then, or with

such fervor. The ministers of the emperor shrank back in dismay as this

big-voiced, strong-limbed man hurled forth sentence after sentence like

successive peals of irresistible artillery.

As Gambetta rolled forth his sentences, superb in their rhetoric and all

ablaze with that sort of intense feeling which masters an orator in the

moment of his triumph, the face of the lady in the gallery responded to

him with wonderful appreciation. She was no longer calm, unmoved, and

almost severe. She flushed, and her eyes as they met his seemed to

sparkle with living fire. When he finished and descended from the

rostrum he looked at her, and their eyes cried out as significantly as

if the two had spoken to each other.

Then Gambetta did what a person of finer breeding would not have done.

He hastily scribbled a note, sealed it, and called to his side one of

the official pages. In the presence of the great assemblage, where he

was for the moment the center of attention, he pointed to the lady in

the gallery and ordered the page to take the note to her.

One may excuse this only on the ground that he was completely carried

away by his emotion, so that to him there was no one present save this

enigmatically fascinating woman and himself. But the lady on her side

was wiser; or perhaps a slight delay gave her time to recover her

discretion. When Gambetta's note was brought to her she took it quietly

and tore it into little pieces without reading it; and then, rising, she

glided through the crowd and disappeared.

Gambetta in his excitement had acted as if she were a mere adventuress.

With perfect dignity she had shown him that she was a woman who retained

her self-respect.

Immediately upon the heels of this curious incident came the outbreak of

the war with Germany. In the war the empire was shattered at Sedan. The

republic was proclaimed in Paris. The French capital was besieged by

a vast German army. Gambetta was made minister of the interior, and

remained for a while in Paris even after it had been blockaded. But his

fiery spirit chafed under such conditions. He longed to go forth into

the south of France and arouse his countrymen with a cry to arms against

the invaders.

Escaping in a balloon, he safely reached the city of Tours; and there he

established what was practically a dictatorship. He flung himself with

tremendous energy into the task of organizing armies, of equipping them,

and of directing their movements for the relief of Paris. He did, in

fact, accomplish wonders. He kept the spirit of the nation still

alive. Three new armies were launched against the Germans. Gambetta was

everywhere and took part in everything that was done. His inexperience

in military affairs, coupled with his impatience of advice, led him

to make serious mistakes. Nevertheless, one of his armies practically

defeated the Germans at Orleans; and could he have had his own way, even

the fall of Paris would not have ended the war.

"Never," said Gambetta, "shall I consent to peace so long as France

still has two hundred thousand men under arms and more than a thousand

cannon to direct against the enemy!"

But he was overruled by other and less fiery statesmen. Peace was made,

and Gambetta retired for a moment into private life. If he had not

succeeded in expelling the German hosts he had, at any rate, made

Bismarck hate him, and he had saved the honor of France.

It was while the National Assembly at Versailles was debating the terms

of peace with Germany that Gambetta once more delivered a noble and

patriotic speech. As he concluded he felt a strange magnetic attraction;

and, sweeping the audience with a glance, he saw before him, not very

far away, the same woman with the long black gloves, having about

her still an air of mystery, but again meeting his eyes with her own,

suffused with feeling.

Gambetta hurried to an anteroom and hastily scribbled the following

note:

At last I see you once more. Is it really you?

The scrawl was taken to her by a discreet official, and this time she

received the letter, pressed it to her heart, and then slipped it into

the bodice of her gown. But this time, as before, she left without

making a reply.

It was an encouragement, yet it gave no opening to Gambetta--for she

returned to the National Assembly no more. But now his heart was full of

hope, for he was convinced with a very deep conviction that somewhere,

soon, and in some way he would meet this woman, who had become to him

one of the intense realities of his life. He did not know her name. They

had never exchanged a word. Yet he was sure that time would bring them

close together.

His intuition was unerring. What we call chance often seems to know

what it is doing. Within a year after the occurrence that has just been

narrated an old friend of Gambetta's met with an accident which confined

him to his house. The statesman strolled to his friend's residence. The

accident was a trifling one, and the mistress of the house was holding

a sort of informal reception, answering questions that were asked her by

the numerous acquaintances who called.

As Gambetta was speaking, of a sudden he saw before him, at the

extremity of the room, the lady of his dreams, the sphinx of his waking

hours, the woman who four years earlier had torn up the note which he

addressed to her, but who more recently had kept his written words. Both

of them were deeply agitated, yet both of them carried off the situation

without betraying themselves to others, Gambetta approached, and they

exchanged a few casual commonplaces. But now, close together, eye and

voice spoke of what was in their hearts.

Presently the lady took her leave. Gambetta followed closely. In the

street he turned to her and said in pleading tones:

"Why did you destroy my letter? You knew I loved you, and yet all these

years you have kept away from me in silence."

Then the girl--for she was little more than a girl--hesitated for a

moment. As he looked upon her face he saw that her eyes were full of

tears. At last she spoke with emotion:

"You cannot love me, for I am unworthy of you. Do not urge me. Do not

make promises. Let us say good-by. At least I must first tell you of my

story, for I am one of those women whom no one ever marries."

Gambetta brushed aside her pleadings. He begged that he might see her

soon. Little by little she consented; but she would not see him at her

house. She knew that his enemies were many and that everything he did

would be used against him. In the end she agreed to meet him in the park

at Versailles, near the Petit Trianon, at eight o'clock in the morning.

When she had made this promise he left her. Already a new inspiration

had come to him, and he felt that with this woman by his side he could

accomplish anything.

At the appointed hour, in the silence of the park and amid the sunshine

of the beautiful morning, the two met once again. Gambetta seized her

hands with eagerness and cried out in an exultant tone:

"At last! At last! At last!"

But the woman's eyes were heavy with sorrow, and upon her face there was

a settled melancholy. She trembled at his touch and almost shrank from

him. Here was seen the impetuosity of the meridional. He had first

spoken to this woman only two days before. He knew nothing of her

station, of her surroundings, of her character. He did not even know her

name. Yet one thing he knew absolutely--that she was made for him and

that he must have her for his own. He spoke at once of marriage; but at

this she drew away from him still farther.

"No," she said. "I told you that you must not speak to me until you have

heard my story."

He led her to a great stone bench near by; and, passing his arm about

her waist, he drew her head down to his shoulder as he said:

"Well, tell me. I will listen."

Then this girl of twenty-four, with perfect frankness, because she was

absolutely loyal, told him why she felt that they must never see each

other any more-much less marry and be happy. She was the daughter of a

colonel in the French army. The sudden death of her father had left her

penniless and alone. Coming to Paris at the age of eighteen, she had

given lessons in the household of a high officer of the empire. This man

had been attracted by her beauty, and had seduced her.

Later she had secured the means of living modestly, realizing more

deeply each month how dreadful had been her fate and how she had been

cut off from the lot of other girls. She felt that her life must be a

perpetual penance for what had befallen her through her ignorance and

inexperience. She told Gambetta that her name was Leonie Leon. As is the

custom of Frenchwomen who live alone, she styled herself madame. It is

doubtful whether the name by which she passed was that which had been

given to her at baptism; but, if so, her true name has never been

disclosed.

When she had told the whole of her sad story to Gambetta he made nothing

of it. She said to him again:

"You cannot love me. I should only dim your fame. You can have nothing

in common with a dishonored, ruined girl. That is what I came here to

explain to you. Let us part, and let us for all time forget each other."

But Gambetta took no heed of what she said. Now that he had found

her, he would not consent to lose her. He seized her slender hands and

covered them with kisses. Again he urged that she should marry him.

Her answer was a curious one. She was a devoted Catholic and would not

regard any marriage as valid save a religious marriage. On the other

hand, Gambetta, though not absolutely irreligious, was leading the

opposition to the Catholic party in France. The Church to him was not so

much a religious body as a political one, and to it he was unalterably

opposed. Personally, he would have no objections to being married by a

priest; but as a leader of the anti-clerical party he felt that he must

not recognize the Church's claim in any way. A religious marriage would

destroy his influence with his followers and might even imperil the

future of the republic.

They pleaded long and earnestly both then and afterward. He urged a

civil marriage, but she declared that only a marriage according to the

rites of the Church could ever purify her past and give her back her

self-respect. In this she was absolutely stubborn, yet she did not urge

upon Gambetta that he should destroy his influence by marrying her in

church.

Through all this interplay of argument and pleading and emotion the

two grew every moment more hopelessly in love. Then the woman, with a

woman's curious subtlety and indirectness, reached a somewhat singular

conclusion. She would hear nothing of a civil marriage, because a civil

marriage was no marriage in the eyes of Pope and prelate. On the other

hand, she did not wish Gambetta to mar his political career by going

through a religious ceremony. She had heard from a priest that the

Church recognized two forms of betrothal. The usual one looked to a

marriage in the future and gave no marriage privileges until after the

formal ceremony. But there was another kind of betrothal known to the

theologians as sponsalia de praesente. According to this, if there were

an actual betrothal, the pair might have the privileges and rights of

marriage immediately, if only they sincerely meant to be married in the

future.

The eager mind of Leonie Leon caught at this bit of ecclesiastical law

and used it with great ingenuity.

"Let us," she said, "be formally betrothed by the interchange of a

ring, and let us promise each other to marry in the future. After such

a betrothal as this we shall be the same as married; for we shall be

acting according to the laws of the Church."

Gambetta gladly gave his promise. A betrothal ring was purchased; and

then, her conscience being appeased, she gave herself completely to her

lover. Gambetta was sincere. He said to her:

"If the time should ever come when I shall lose my political station,

when I am beaten in the struggle, when I am deserted and alone, will you

not then marry me when I ask you?"

And Leonie, with her arms about his neck, promised that she would. Yet

neither of them specified what sort of marriage this should be, nor did

it seem at the moment as if the question could arise.

For Gambetta was very powerful. He led his party to success in the

election of 1877. Again and again his triumphant oratory mastered the

National Assembly of France. In 1879 he was chosen to be president

of the Chamber of Deputies. He towered far above the president of the

republic--Jules Grevy, that hard-headed, close-fisted old peasant--and

his star had reached its zenith.

All this time he and Leonie Leon maintained their intimacy, though it

was carefully concealed save from a very few. She lived in a plain but

pretty house on the Avenue Perrichont in the quiet quarter of Auteuil;

but Gambetta never came there. Where and when they met was a secret

guarded very carefully by the few who were his close associates. But

meet they did continually, and their affection grew stronger every year.

Leonie thrilled at the victories of the man she loved; and he found joy

in the hours that he spent with her.

Gambetta's need of rest was very great, for he worked at the highest

tension, like an engine which is using every pound of steam. Bismarck,

whose spies kept him well informed of everything that was happening in

Paris, and who had no liking for Gambetta, since the latter always spoke

of him as "the Ogre," once said to a Frenchman named Cheberry:

"He is the only one among you who thinks of revenge, and who is any sort

of a menace to Germany. But, fortunately, he won't last much longer. I

am not speaking thoughtlessly. I know from secret reports what sort of

a life your great man leads, and I know his habits. Why, his life is

a life of continual overwork. He rests neither night nor day. All

politicians who have led the same life have died young. To be able

to serve one's country for a long time a statesman must marry an ugly

woman, have children like the rest of the world, and a country place

or a house to one's self like any common peasant, where he can go and

rest."

The Iron Chancellor chuckled as he said this, and he was right. And yet

Gambetta's end came not so much through overwork as by an accident.

It may be that the ambition of Mme. Leon stimulated him beyond his

powers. However this may be, early in 1882, when he was defeated in

Parliament on a question which he considered vital, he immediately

resigned and turned his back on public life. His fickle friends soon

deserted him. His enemies jeered and hooted the mention of his name.

He had reached the time which with a sort of prophetic instinct he had

foreseen nearly ten years before. So he turned to the woman who had

been faithful and loving to him; and he turned to her with a feeling of

infinite peace.

"You promised me," he said, "that if ever I was defeated and alone you

would marry me. The time is now."

Then this man, who had exercised the powers of a dictator, who had

levied armies and shaken governments, and through whose hands there had

passed thousands of millions of francs, sought for a country home. He

found for sale a small estate which had once belonged to Balzac, and

which is known as Les Jardies. It was in wretched repair; yet the small

sum which it cost Gambetta--twelve thousand francs--was practically all

that he possessed. Worn and weary as he was, it seemed to him a haven of

delightful peace; for here he might live in the quiet country with the

still beautiful woman who was soon to become his wife.

It is not known what form of marriage they at last agreed upon. She may

have consented to a civil ceremony; or he, being now out of public life,

may have felt that he could be married by the Church. The day for their

wedding had been set, and Gambetta was already at Les Jardies. But there

came a rumor that he had been shot. Still further tidings bore the news

that he was dying. Paris, fond as it was of scandals, immediately spread

the tale that he had been shot by a jealous woman.

The truth is quite the contrary. Gambetta, in arranging his effects in

his new home, took it upon himself to clean a pair of dueling-pistols;

for every French politician of importance must fight duels, and Gambetta

had already done so. Unfortunately, one cartridge remained unnoticed in

the pistol which Gambetta cleaned. As he held the pistol-barrel against

the soft part of his hand the cartridge exploded, and the ball passed

through the base of the thumb with a rending, spluttering noise.

The wound was not in itself serious, but now the prophecy of Bismarck

was fulfilled. Gambetta had exhausted his vitality; a fever set in, and

before long he died of internal ulceration.

This was the end of a great career and of a great romance of love.

Leonie Leon was half distraught at the death of the lover who was so

soon to be her husband. She wandered for hours in the forest until she

reached a convent, where she was received. Afterward she came to Paris

and hid herself away in a garret of the slums. All the light of her life

had gone out. She wished that she had died with him whose glory had been

her life. Friends of Gambetta, however, discovered her and cared for her

until her death, long afterward, in 1906.

She lived upon the memories of the past, of the swift love that had come

at first sight, but which had lasted unbrokenly; which had given her the

pride of conquest, and which had brought her lover both happiness and

inspiration and a refining touch which had smoothed away his roughness

and made him fit to stand in palaces with dignity and distinction.

As for him, he left a few lines which have been carefully preserved, and

which sum up his thought of her. They read:

To the light of my soul; to the star, of my life--Leonie Leon. For ever!

For ever!

LADY BLESSINGTON AND COUNT D'ORSAY

Often there has arisen some man who, either by his natural gifts or

by his impudence or by the combination of both, has made himself a

recognized leader in the English fashionable world. One of the first of

these men was Richard Nash, usually known as "Beau Nash," who flourished

in the eighteenth century. Nash was a man of doubtful origin; nor was

he attractive in his looks, for he was a huge, clumsy creature with

features that were both irregular and harsh. Nevertheless, for nearly

fifty years Beau Nash was an arbiter of fashion. Goldsmith, who wrote

his life, declared that his supremacy was due to his pleasing manners,

"his assiduity, flattery, fine clothes, and as much wit as the ladies

had whom he addressed." He converted the town of Bath from a rude little

hamlet into an English Newport, of which he was the social autocrat. He

actually drew up a set of written rules which some of the best-born and

best-bred people follow slavishly.

Even better known to us is George Bryan Brummel, commonly called "Beau

Brummel," who by his friendship with George IV.--then Prince Regent--was

an oracle at court on everything that related to dress and etiquette and

the proper mode of living. His memory has been kept alive most of all by

Richard Mansfield's famous impersonation of him. The play is based upon

the actual facts; for after Brummel had lost the royal favor he died an

insane pauper in the French town of Caen. He, too, had a distinguished

biographer, since Bulwer-Lytton's novel Pelham is really the narrative

of Brummel's curious career.

Long after Brummel, Lord Banelagh led the gilded youth of London, and

it was at this time that the notorious Lola Montez made her first

appearance in the British capital.

These three men--Nash, Brummel, and Ranelagh--had the advantage of

being Englishmen, and, therefore, of not incurring the old-time English

suspicion of foreigners. A much higher type of social arbiter was a

Frenchman who for twenty years during the early part of Queen Victoria's

reign gave law to the great world of fashion, besides exercising a

definite influence upon English art and literature.

This was Count Albert Guillaume d'Orsay, the son of one of Napoleon's

generals, and descended by a morganatic marriage from the King of

Wurttemburg. The old general, his father, was a man of high courage,

impressive appearance, and keen intellect, all of which qualities he

transmitted to his son. The young Count d'Orsay, when he came of age,

found the Napoleonic era ended and France governed by Louis XVIII. The

king gave Count d'Orsay a commission in the army in a regiment stationed

at Valence in the southeastern part of France. He had already visited

England and learned the English language, and he had made some

distinguished friends there, among whom were Lord Byron and Thomas

Moore.

On his return to France he began his garrison life at Valence, where he

showed some of the finer qualities of his character. It is not merely

that he was handsome and accomplished and that he had the gift of

winning the affections of those about him. Unlike Nash and Brummel,

he was a gentleman in every sense, and his courtesy was of the highest

kind. At the balls given by his regiment, although he was more courted

than any other officer, he always sought out the plainest girls and

showed them the most flattering attentions. No "wallflowers" were left

neglected when D'Orsay was present.

It is strange how completely human beings are in the hands of fate. Here

was a young French officer quartered in a provincial town in the valley

of the Rhone. Who would have supposed that he was destined to become

not only a Londoner, but a favorite at the British court, a model of

fashion, a dictator of etiquette, widely known for his accomplishments,

the patron of literary men and of distinguished artists? But all these

things were to come to pass by a mere accident of fortune.

During his firsts visit to London, which has already been mentioned,

Count d'Orsay was invited once or twice to receptions given by the Earl

and Countess of Blessington, where he was well received, though this was

only an incident of his English sojourn. Before the story proceeds

any further it is necessary to give an account of the Earl and of Lady

Blessington, since both of their careers had been, to say the least,

unusual.

Lord Blessington was an Irish peer for whom an ancient title had been

revived. He was remotely descended from the Stuarts of Scotland, and

therefore had royal blood to boast of. He had been well educated, and in

many ways was a man of pleasing manner. On the other hand, he had early

inherited a very large property which yielded him an income of about

thirty thousand pounds a year. He had estates in Ireland, and he owned

nearly the whole of a fashionable street in London, with the buildings

erected on it.

This fortune and the absence of any one who could control him had made

him wilful and extravagant and had wrought in him a curious love of

personal display. Even as a child he would clamor to be dressed in the

most gorgeous uniforms; and when he got possession of his property his

love of display became almost a monomania. He built a theater as an

adjunct to his country house in Ireland and imported players from London

and elsewhere to act in it. He loved to mingle with the mummers, to try

on their various costumes, and to parade up and down, now as an oriental

prince and now as a Roman emperor.

In London he hung about the green-rooms, and was a well-known figure

wherever actors or actresses were collected. Such was his love of the

stage that he sought to marry into the profession and set his heart on a

girl named Mary Campbell Browne, who was very beautiful to look at, but

who was not conspicuous either for her mind or for her morals. When Lord

Blessington proposed marriage to her she was obliged to tell him that

she already had one husband still alive, but she was perfectly willing

to live with him and dispense with the marriage ceremony. So for several

years she did live with him and bore him two children.

It speaks well for the earl that when the inconvenient husband died a

marriage at once took place and Mrs. Browne became a countess. Then,

after other children had been born, the lady died, leaving the earl a

widower at about the age of forty. The only legitimate son born of this

marriage followed his mother to the grave; and so for the third time the

earldom of Blessington seemed likely to become extinct. The death of

his wife, however, gave the earl a special opportunity to display his

extravagant tastes. He spent more than four thousand pounds on the

funeral ceremonies, importing from France a huge black velvet catafalque

which had shortly before been used at the public funeral of Napoleon's

marshal, Duroc, while the house blazed with enormous wax tapers and

glittered with cloth of gold.

Lord Blessington soon plunged again into the busy life of London. Having

now no heir, there was no restraint on his expenditures, and he borrowed

large sums of money in order to buy additional estates and houses and to

experience the exquisite joy of spending lavishly. At this time he had

his lands in Ireland, a town house in St. James's Square, another in

Seymour Place, and still another which was afterward to become famous as

Gore House, in Kensington.

Some years before he had met in Ireland a lady called Mrs. Maurice

Farmer; and it happened that she now came to London. The earlier story

of her still young life must here be told, because her name afterward

became famous, and because the tale illustrates wonderfully well the

raw, crude, lawless period of the Regency, when England was fighting

her long war with Napoleon, when the Prince Regent was imitating all

the vices of the old French kings, when prize-fighting, deep drinking,

dueling, and dicing were practised without restraint in all the large

cities and towns of the United Kingdom. It was, as Sir Arthur Conan

Doyle has said, "an age of folly and of heroism"; for, while it produced

some of the greatest black-guards known to history, it produced also

such men as Wellington and Nelson, the two Pitts, Sheridan, Byron,

Shelley, and Sir Walter Scott.

Mrs. Maurice Farmer was the daughter of a small Irish landowner named

Robert Power--himself the incarnation of all the vices of the time.

There was little law in Ireland, not even that which comes from public

opinion; and Robert Power rode hard to hounds, gambled recklessly,

and assembled in his house all sorts of reprobates, with whom he held

frightful orgies that lasted from sunset until dawn. His wife and his

young daughters viewed him with terror, and the life they led was a

perpetual nightmare because of the bestial carousings in which their

father engaged, wasting his money and mortgaging his estates until the

end of his wild career was in plain sight.

There happened to be stationed at Clonmel a regiment of infantry in

which there served a captain named Maurice St. Leger Farmer. He was a

man of some means, but eccentric to a degree. His temper was so utterly

uncontrolled that even his fellow officers could scarcely live with

him, and he was given to strange caprices. It happened that at a ball in

Clonmel he met the young daughter of Robert Power, then a mere child of

fourteen years. Captain Farmer was seized with an infatuation for the

girl, and he went almost at once to her father, asking for her hand in

marriage and proposing to settle a sum of money upon her if she married

him.

The hard-riding squireen jumped at the offer. His own estate was being

stripped bare. Here was a chance to provide for one of his daughters,

or, rather, to get rid of her, and he agreed that she should be married

out of hand. Going home, he roughly informed the girl that she was to

be the wife of Captain Farmer. He so bullied his wife that she was

compelled to join him in this command.

What was poor little Margaret Power to do? She was only a child. She

knew nothing of the world. She was accustomed to obey her father as she

would have obeyed some evil genius who had her in his power. There were

tears and lamentations. She was frightened half to death; yet for her

there was no help. Therefore, while not yet fifteen her marriage took

place, and she was the unhappy slave of a half-crazy tyrant. She had

then no beauty whatsoever. She was wholly undeveloped--thin and pale,

and with rough hair that fell over her frightened eyes; yet Farmer

wanted her, and he settled his money on her, just as he would have spent

the same amount to gratify any other sudden whim.

The life she led with him for a few months showed him to be more of

a devil than a man. He took a peculiar delight in terrifying her, in

subjecting her to every sort of outrage; nor did he refrain even from

beating her with his fists. The girl could stand a great deal, but this

was too much. She returned to her father's house, where she was received

with the bitterest reproaches, but where, at least, she was safe from

harm, since her possession of a dowry made her a person of some small

importance.

Not long afterward Captain Farmer fell into a dispute with his

colonel, Lord Caledon, and in the course of it he drew his sword on

his commanding officer. The court-martial which was convened to try him

would probably have had him shot were it not for the very general belief

that he was insane. So he was simply cashiered and obliged to leave the

service and betake himself elsewhere. Thus the girl whom, he had married

was quite free--free to leave her wretched home and even to leave

Ireland.

She did leave Ireland and establish herself in London, where she had

some acquaintances, among them the Earl of Blessington. As already said,

he had met her in Ireland while she was living with her husband; and now

from time to time he saw her in a friendly way. After the death of his

wife he became infatuated with Margaret Farmer. She was a good deal

alone, and his attentions gave her entertainment. Her past experience

led her to have no real belief in love. She had become, however, in a

small way interested in literature and art, with an eager ambition to be

known as a writer. As it happened, Captain Farmer, whose name she bore,

had died some months before Lord Blessington had decided to make a new

marriage. The earl proposed to Margaret Farmer, and the two were married

by special license.

The Countess of Blessington--to give the lady her new title--was now

twenty-eight years of age and had developed into a woman of great

beauty. She was noted for the peculiarly vivacious and radiant

expression which was always on her face. She had a kind of vivid

loveliness accompanied by grace, simplicity, and a form of exquisite

proportions. The ugly duckling had become a swan, for now there was no

trace of her former plainness to be seen.

Not yet in her life had love come to her. Her first husband had been

thrust upon her and had treated her outrageously. Her second husband was

much older than she; and, though she was not without a certain kindly

feeling for one who had been kind to her, she married him, first of all,

for his title and position.

Having been reared in poverty, she had no conception of the value of

money; and, though the earl was remarkably extravagant, the new countess

was even more so. One after another their London houses were opened

and decorated with the utmost lavishness. They gave innumerable

entertainments, not only to the nobility and to men of rank,

but--because this was Lady Blessington's peculiar fad--to artists and

actors and writers of all degrees. The American, N. P. Willis, in his

Pencilings by the Way, has given an interesting sketch of the countess

and her surroundings, while the younger Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) has

depicted D'Orsay as Count Mirabel in Henrietta Temple. Willis says:

In a long library, lined alternately with splendidly bound books and

mirrors, and with a deep window of the breadth of the room opening upon

Hyde Park, I found Lady Blessington alone. The picture, to my eye, as

the door opened, was a very lovely one--a woman of remarkable beauty,

half buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin, reading by a magnificent

lamp suspended from the center of the arched ceiling. Sofas, couches,

ottomans, and busts, arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through

the room; enameled tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in

every corner, and a delicate white hand in relief on the back of a book,

to which the eye was attracted by the blaze of diamond rings.

All this "crowded sumptuousness" was due to the taste of Lady

Blessington. Amid it she received royal dukes, statesmen such as

Palmerston, Canning, Castlereagh, Russell, and Brougham, actors such

as Kemble and Matthews, artists such as Lawrence and Wilkie, and men of

letters such as Moore, Bulwer-Lytton, and the two Disraelis. To maintain

this sort of life Lord Blessington raised large amounts of money,

totaling about half a million pounds sterling, by mortgaging his

different estates and giving his promissory notes to money-lenders. Of

course, he did not spend this vast sum immediately. He might have lived

in comparative luxury upon his income; but he was a restless, eager,

improvident nobleman, and his extravagances were prompted by the urgings

of his wife.

In all this display, which Lady Blessington both stimulated and shared,

there is to be found a psychological basis. She was now verging upon the

thirties--a time which is a very critical period in a woman's emotional

life, if she has not already given herself over to love and been loved

in return. During Lady Blessington's earlier years she had suffered in

many ways, and it is probable that no thought of love had entered her

mind. She was only too glad if she could escape from the harshness

of her father and the cruelty of her first husband. Then came her

development into a beautiful woman, content for the time to be

languorously stagnant and to enjoy the rest and peace which had come to

her.

When she married Lord Blessington her love life had not yet commenced;

and, in fact, there could be no love life in such a marriage--a marriage

with a man much older than herself, scatter-brained, showy, and having

no intellectual gifts. So for a time she sought satisfaction in social

triumphs, in capturing political and literary lions in order to exhibit

them in her salon, and in spending money right and left with a lavish

hand. But, after all, in a woman of her temperament none of these things

could satisfy her inner longings. Beautiful, full of Celtic vivacity,

imaginative and eager, such a nature as hers would in the end be starved

unless her heart should be deeply touched and unless all her pent-up

emotion could give itself up entirely in the great surrender.

After a few years of London she grew restless and dissatisfied. Her

surroundings wearied her. There was a call within her for something more

than she had yet experienced. The earl, her husband, was by nature no

less restless; and so, without knowing the reason--which, indeed, she

herself did not understand--he readily assented to a journey on the

Continent.

As they traveled southward they reached at length the town of Valence,

where Count d'Orsay was still quartered with his regiment. A vague,

indefinable feeling of attraction swept over this woman, who was now a

woman of the world and yet quite inexperienced in affairs relating to

the heart. The mere sound of the French officer's voice, the mere sight

of his face, the mere knowledge of his presence, stirred her as nothing

had ever stirred her until that time. Yet neither he nor she appears to

have been conscious at once of the secret of their liking. It was enough

that they were soothed and satisfied with each other's company.

Oddly enough, the Earl of Blessington became as devoted to D'Orsay as

did his wife. The two urged the count to secure a leave of absence and

to accompany them to Italy. This he was easily persuaded to do; and the

three passed weeks and months of a languorous and alluring intercourse

among the lakes and the seductive influence of romantic Italy. Just

what passed between Count d'Orsay and Margaret Blessington at this time

cannot be known, for the secret of it has perished with them; but it

is certain that before very long they came to know that each was

indispensable to the other.

The situation was complicated by the Earl of Blessington, who, entirely

unsuspicious, proposed that the Count should marry Lady Harriet

Gardiner, his eldest legitimate daughter by his first wife. He pressed

the match upon the embarrassed D'Orsay, and offered to settle the sum

of forty thousand pounds upon the bride. The girl was less than fifteen

years of age. She had no gifts either of beauty or of intelligence; and,

in addition, D'Orsay was now deeply in love with her stepmother.

On the other hand, his position with the Blessingtons was daily growing

more difficult. People had begun to talk of the almost open relations

between Count d'Orsay and Lady Blessington. Lord Byron, in a letter

written to the countess, spoke to her openly and in a playful way

of "YOUR D'Orsay." The manners and morals of the time were decidedly

irregular; yet sooner or later the earl was sure to gain some hint of

what every one was saying. Therefore, much against his real desire, yet

in order to shelter his relations with Lady Blessington, D'Orsay agreed

to the marriage with Lady Harriet, who was only fifteen years of age.

This made the intimacy between D'Orsay and the Blessingtons appear to be

not unusual; but, as a matter of fact, the marriage was no marriage.

The unattractive girl who had become a bride merely to hide the

indiscretions of her stepmother was left entirely to herself; while the

whole family, returning to London, made their home together in Seymour

Place.

Could D'Orsay have foreseen the future he would never have done what

must always seem an act so utterly unworthy of him. For within two years

Lord Blessington fell ill and died. Had not D'Orsay been married he

would now have been free to marry Lady Blessington. As it was, he was

bound fast to her stepdaughter; and since at that time there was no

divorce court in England, and since he had no reason for seeking

a divorce, he was obliged to live on through many years in a most

ambiguous situation. He did, however, separate himself from his childish

bride; and, having done so, he openly took up his residence with Lady

Blessington at Gore House. By this time, however, the companionship of

the two had received a sort of general sanction, and in that easy-going

age most people took it as a matter of course.

The two were now quite free to live precisely as they would. Lady

Blessington became extravagantly happy, and Count d'Orsay was accepted

in London as an oracle of fashion. Every one was eager to visit Gore

House, and there they received all the notable men of the time. The

improvidence of Lady Blessington, however, was in no respect diminished.

She lived upon her jointure, recklessly spending capital as well as

interest, and gathering under her roof a rare museum of artistic

works, from jewels and curios up to magnificent pictures and beautiful

statuary.

D'Orsay had sufficient self-respect not to live upon the money that had

come to Lady Blessington from her husband. He was a skilful painter, and

he practised his art in a professional way. His portrait of the Duke of

Wellington was preferred by that famous soldier to any other that had

been made of him. The Iron Duke was, in fact, a frequent visitor at Gore

House, and he had a very high opinion of Count d'Orsay. Lady Blessington

herself engaged in writing novels of "high life," some of which were

very popular in their day. But of all that she wrote there remains only

one book which is of permanent value--her Conversations with Lord Byron,

a very valuable contribution to our knowledge of the brilliant poet.

But a nemesis was destined to overtake the pair. Money flowed through

Lady Blessington's hands like water, and she could never be brought to

understand that what she had might not last for ever. Finally, it

was all gone, yet her extravagance continued. Debts were heaped up

mountain-high. She signed notes of hand without even reading them. She

incurred obligations of every sort without a moment's hesitation.

For a long time her creditors held aloof, not believing that her

resources were in reality exhausted; but in the end there came a crash

as sudden as it was ruinous. As if moved by a single impulse, those to

whom she owed money took out judgments against her and descended

upon Gore House in a swarm. This was in the spring of 1849, when Lady

Blessington was in her sixtieth year and D'Orsay fifty-one.

It is a curious coincidence that her earliest novel had portrayed the

wreck of a great establishment such as her own. Of the scene in Gore

House Mr. Madden, Lady Blessington's literary biographer, has written:

Numerous creditors, bill-discounters, money-lenders, jewelers,

lace-venders, tax-collectors, gas-company agents, all persons having

claims to urge pressed them at this period simultaneously. An execution

for a debt of four thousand pounds was at length put in by a house

largely engaged in the silk, lace, India-shawl, and fancy-jewelry

business.

This sum of four thousand pounds was only a nominal claim, but it opened

the flood-gates for all of Lady Blessington's creditors. Mr. Madden

writes still further:

On the 10th of May, 1849, I visited Gore House for the last time. The

auction was going on. There was a large assemblage of people of fashion.

Every room was thronged; the well-known library-salon, in which the

conversaziones took place, was crowded, but not with guests. The

arm-chair in which the lady of the mansion was wont to sit was occupied

by a stout, coarse gentleman of the Jewish persuasion, busily engaged

in examining a marble hand extended on a book, the fingers of which

were modeled from a cast of those of the absent mistress of the

establishment. People, as they passed through the room, poked the

furniture, pulled about the precious objects of art and ornaments of

various kinds that lay on the table; and some made jests and ribald

jokes on the scene they witnessed.

At this compulsory sale things went for less than half their value.

Pictures by Lawrence and Landseer, a library consisting of thousands

of volumes, vases of exquisite workmanship, chandeliers of ormolu, and

precious porcelains--all were knocked down relentlessly at farcical

prices. Lady Blessington reserved nothing for herself. She knew that

the hour had struck, and very soon she was on her way to Paris, whither

Count d'Orsay had already gone, having been threatened with arrest by a

boot-maker to whom he owed five hundred pounds.

D'Orsay very naturally went to Paris, for, like his father, he had

always been an ardent Bonapartist, and now Prince Louis Bonaparte had

been chosen president of the Second French Republic. During the prince's

long period of exile he had been the guest of Count d'Orsay, who had

helped him both with money and with influence. D'Orsay now expected

some return for his former generosity. It came, but it came too late. In

1852, shortly after Prince Louis assumed the title of emperor, the count

was appointed director of fine arts; but when the news was brought to

him he was already dying. Lady Blessington died soon after coming to

Paris, before the end of the year 1849.

Comment upon this tangled story is scarcely needed. Yet one may quote

some sayings from a sort of diary which Lady Blessington called her

"Night Book." They seem to show that her supreme happiness lasted only

for a little while, and that deep down in her heart she had condemned

herself.

A woman's head is always influenced by her heart; but a man's heart is

always influenced by his head.

The separation of friends by death is less terrible than the divorce of

two hearts that have loved, but have ceased to sympathize, while memory

still recalls what they once were to each other.

People are seldom tired of the world until the world is tired of them.

A woman should not paint sentiment until she has ceased to inspire it.

It is less difficult for a woman to obtain celebrity by her genius than

to be pardoned for it.

Memory seldom fails when its office is to show us the tombs of our

buried hopes.

BYRON AND THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI

In 1812, when he was in his twenty-fourth year, Lord Byron was more

talked of than any other man in London. He was in the first flush of his

brilliant career, having published the early cantos of "Childe Harold."

Moreover, he was a peer of the realm, handsome, ardent, and possessing a

personal fascination which few men and still fewer women could resist.

Byron's childhood had been one to excite in him strong feelings of

revolt, and he had inherited a profligate and passionate nature. His

father was a gambler and a spendthrift. His mother was eccentric to a

degree. Byron himself, throughout his boyish years, had been morbidly

sensitive because of a physical deformity--a lame, misshapen foot.

This and the strange treatment which his mother accorded him left him

headstrong, wilful, almost from the first an enemy to whatever was

established and conventional.

As a boy, he was remarkable for the sentimental attachments which he

formed. At eight years of age he was violently in love with a young girl

named Mary Duff. At ten his cousin, Margaret Parker, excited in him a

strange, un-childish passion. At fifteen came one of the greatest

crises of his life, when he became enamored of Mary Chaworth, whose

grand-father had been killed in a duel by Byron's great-uncle. Young as

he was, he would have married her immediately; but Miss Chaworth was

two years older than he, and absolutely refused to take seriously the

devotion of a school-boy.

Byron felt the disappointment keenly; and after a short stay at

Cambridge, he left England, visited Portugal and Spain, and traveled

eastward as far as Greece and Turkey. At Athens he wrote the pretty

little poem to the "maid of Athens"--Miss Theresa Macri, daughter of

the British vice-consul. He returned to London to become at one leap the

most admired poet of the day and the greatest social favorite. He was

possessed of striking personal beauty. Sir Walter Scott said of him:

"His countenance was a thing to dream of." His glorious eyes, his

mobile, eloquent face, fascinated all; and he was, besides, a genius of

the first rank.

With these endowments, he plunged into the social whirlpool, denying

himself nothing, and receiving everything-adulation, friendship, and

unstinted love. Darkly mysterious stories of his adventures in the East

made many think that he was the hero of some of his own poems, such

as "The Giaour" and "The Corsair." A German wrote of him that "he was

positively besieged by women." From the humblest maid-servants up to

ladies of high rank, he had only to throw his handkerchief to make

a conquest. Some women did not even wait for the handkerchief to be

thrown. No wonder that he was sated with so much adoration and that he

wrote of women:

I regard them as very pretty but inferior creatures. I look on them as

grown-up children; but, like a foolish mother, I am constantly the slave

of one of them. Give a woman a looking-glass and burnt almonds, and she

will be content.

The liaison which attracted the most attention at this time was that

between Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron has been greatly blamed for

his share in it; but there is much to be said on the other side. Lady

Caroline was happily married to the Right Hon. William Lamb, afterward

Lord Melbourne, and destined to be the first prime minister of Queen

Victoria. He was an easy-going, genial man of the world who placed too

much confidence in the honor of his wife. She, on the other hand, was

a sentimental fool, always restless, always in search of some new

excitement. She thought herself a poet, and scribbled verses, which

her friends politely admired, and from which they escaped as soon as

possible. When she first met Byron, she cried out: "That pale face is my

fate!" And she afterward added: "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know!"

It was not long before the intimacy of the two came very near the point

of open scandal; but Byron was the wooed and not the wooer. This woman,

older than he, flung herself directly at his head. Naturally enough,

it was not very long before she bored him thoroughly. Her romantic

impetuosity became tiresome, and very soon she fell to talking always

of herself, thrusting her poems upon him, and growing vexed and peevish

when he would not praise them. As was well said, "he grew moody and she

fretful when their mutual egotisms jarred."

In a burst of resentment she left him, but when she returned, she was

worse than ever. She insisted on seeing him. On one occasion she made

her way into his rooms disguised as a boy. At another time, when she

thought he had slighted her, she tried to stab herself with a pair of

scissors. Still later, she offered her favors to any one who would kill

him. Byron himself wrote of her:

You can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things that she has said

and done.

Her story has been utilized by Mrs. Humphry Ward in her novel, "The

Marriage of William Ashe."

Perhaps this trying experience led Byron to end his life of dissipation.

At any rate, in 1813, he proposed marriage to Miss Anne Millbanke,

who at first refused him; but he persisted, and in 1815 the two were

married. Byron seems to have had a premonition that he was making a

terrible mistake. During the wedding ceremony he trembled like a leaf,

and made the wrong responses to the clergyman. After the wedding was

over, in handing his bride into the carriage which awaited them, he said

to her:

"Miss Millbanke, are you ready?"

It was a strange blunder for a bridegroom, and one which many regarded

at the time as ominous for the future. In truth, no two persons could

have been more thoroughly mismated--Byron, the human volcano, and his

wife, a prim, narrow-minded, and peevish woman. Their incompatibility

was evident enough from the very first, so that when they returned from

their wedding-journey, and some one asked Byron about his honeymoon, he

answered:

"Call it rather a treacle moon!"

It is hardly necessary here to tell over the story of their domestic

troubles. Only five weeks after their daughter's birth, they parted.

Lady Byron declared that her husband was insane; while after trying many

times to win from her something more than a tepid affection, he gave up

the task in a sort of despairing anger. It should be mentioned here, for

the benefit of those who recall the hideous charges made many decades

afterward by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe on the authority of Lady Byron,

that the latter remained on terms of friendly intimacy with Augusta

Leigh, Lord Byron's sister, and that even on her death-bed she sent an

amicable message to Mrs. Leigh.

Byron, however, stung by the bitter attacks that were made upon him,

left England, and after traveling down the Rhine through Switzerland,

he took up his abode in Venice. His joy at leaving England and ridding

himself of the annoyances which had clustered thick about him, he

expressed in these lines:

Once more upon the waters! yet once more!

And the waves bound beneath me as a steed

That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar!

Meanwhile he enjoyed himself in reckless fashion. Money poured in upon

him from his English publisher. For two cantos of "Childe Harold" and

"Manfred," Murray paid him twenty thousand dollars. For the fourth

canto, Byron demanded and received more than twelve thousand dollars.

In Italy he lived on friendly terms with Shelley and Thomas Moore; but

eventually he parted from them both, for he was about to enter upon a

new phase of his curious career.

He was no longer the Byron of 1815. Four years of high living and much

brandy-and-water had robbed his features of their refinement. His look

was no longer spiritual. He was beginning to grow stout. Yet the change

had not been altogether unfortunate. He had lost something of his wild

impetuosity, and his sense of humor had developed. In his thirtieth

year, in fact, he had at last become a man.

It was soon after this that he met a woman who was to be to him for

the rest of his life what a well-known writer has called "a star on the

stormy horizon of the poet." This woman was Teresa, Countess Guiccioli,

whom he first came to know in Venice. She was then only nineteen years

of age, and she was married to a man who was more than forty years her

senior. Unlike the typical Italian woman, she was blonde, with dreamy

eyes and an abundance of golden hair, and her manner was at once modest

and graceful. She had known Byron but a very short time when she found

herself thrilling with a passion of which until then she had never

dreamed. It was written of her:

She had thought of love but as an amusement; yet she now became its

slave.

To this love Byron gave an immediate response, and from that time until

his death he cared for no other woman. The two were absolutely mated.

Nevertheless, there were difficulties which might have been expected.

Count Guiccioli, while he seemed to admire Byron, watched him with

Italian subtlety. The English poet and the Italian countess met

frequently. When Byron was prostrated by an attack of fever, the

countess remained beside him, and he was just recovering when Count

Guiccioli appeared upon the scene and carried off his wife. Byron was in

despair. He exchanged the most ardent letters with the countess, yet he

dreaded assassins whom he believed to have been hired by her husband.

Whenever he rode out, he went armed with sword and pistols.

Amid all this storm and stress, Byron's literary activity was

remarkable. He wrote some of his most famous poems at this time, and he

hoped for the day when he and the woman whom he loved might be united

once for all. This came about in the end through the persistence of the

pair. The Countess Guiccioli openly took up her abode with him, not to

be separated until the poet sailed for Greece to aid the Greeks in

their struggle for independence. This was in 1822, when Byron was in his

thirty-fifth year. He never returned to Italy, but died in the historic

land for which he gave his life as truly as if he had fallen upon the

field of battle.

Teresa Guiccioli had been, in all but name, his wife for just three

years. Much, has been said in condemnation of this love-affair; but in

many ways it is less censurable than almost anything in his career. It

was an instance of genuine love, a love which purified and exalted this

man of dark and moody moments. It saved him from those fitful passions

and orgies of self-indulgence which had exhausted him. It proved to be

an inspiration which at last led him to die for a cause approved by all

the world.

As for the woman, what shall we say of her? She came to him unspotted by

the world. A demand for divorce which her husband made was rejected.

A pontifical brief pronounced a formal separation between the two. The

countess gladly left behind "her palaces, her equipages, society, and

riches, for the love of the poet who had won her heart."

Unlike the other women who had cared for him, she was unselfish in

her devotion. She thought more of his fame than did he himself. Emilio

Castelar has written:

She restored him and elevated him. She drew him from the mire and set

the crown of purity upon his brow. Then, when she had recovered this

great heart, instead of keeping it as her own possession, she gave it to

humanity.

For twenty-seven years after Byron's death, she remained, as it were,

widowed and alone. Then, in her old age, she married the Marquis de

Boissy; but the marriage was purely one of convenience. Her heart was

always Byron's, whom she defended with vivacity. In 1868, she published

her memoirs of the poet, filled with interesting and affecting

recollections. She died as late as 1873.

Some time between the year 1866 and that of her death, she is said to

have visited Newstead Abbey, which had once been Byron's home. She was

very old, a widow, and alone; but her affection for the poet-lover of

her youth was still as strong as ever.

Byron's life was short, if measured by years only. Measured by

achievement, it was filled to the very full. His genius blazes like

a meteor in the records of English poetry; and some of that splendor

gleams about the lovely woman who turned him away from vice and folly

and made him worthy of his historic ancestry, of his country, and of

himself.

THE STORY OF MME. DE STAEL

Each century, or sometimes each generation, is distinguished by some

especial interest among those who are given to fancies--not to call them

fads. Thus, at the present time, the cultivated few are taken up with

what they choose to term the "new thought," or the "new criticism," or,

on the other hand, with socialistic theories and projects. Thirty years

ago, when Oscar Wilde was regarded seriously by some people, there were

many who made a cult of estheticism. It was just as interesting when

their leader--

Walked down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily

In his medieval hand,

or when Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan guyed him as

Bunthorne in "Patience."

When Charles Kingsley was a great expounder of British common sense,

"muscular Christianity" was a phrase which was taken up by many

followers. A little earlier, Puseyism and a primitive form of socialism

were in vogue with the intellectuals. There are just as many different

fashions in thought as in garments, and they come and go without any

particular reason. To-day, they are discussed and practised everywhere.

To-morrow, they are almost forgotten in the rapid pursuit of something

new.

Forty years before the French Revolution burst forth with all its

thunderings, France and Germany were affected by what was generally

styled "sensibility." Sensibility was the sister of sentimentality and

the half-sister of sentiment. Sentiment is a fine thing in itself. It is

consistent with strength and humor and manliness; but sentimentality and

sensibility are poor cheeping creatures that run scuttering along the

ground, quivering and whimpering and asking for perpetual sympathy,

which they do not at all deserve.

No one need be ashamed of sentiment. It simply gives temper to the

blade, and mellowness to the intellect. Sensibility, on the other hand,

is full of shivers and shakes and falsetto notes and squeaks. It is, in

fact, all humbug, just as sentiment is often all truth.

Therefore, to find an interesting phase of human folly, we may look back

to the years which lie between 1756 and 1793 as the era of sensibility.

The great prophets of this false god, or goddess, were Rousseau in

France and Goethe with Schiller in Germany, together with a host of

midgets who shook and shivered in imitation of their masters. It is not

for us to catalogue these persons. Some of them were great figures

in literature and philosophy, and strong enough to shake aside the

silliness of sensibility; but others, while they professed to be great

as writers or philosophers, are now remembered only because their

devotion to sensibility made them conspicuous in their own time. They

dabbled in one thing and another; they "cribbed" from every popular

writer of the day. The only thing that actually belonged to them was a

high degree of sensibility.

And what, one may ask, was this precious thing--this sensibility?

It was really a sort of St. Vitus's dance of the mind, and almost of

the body. When two persons, in any way interested in each other, were

brought into the same room, one of them appeared to be seized with

a rotary movement. The voice rose to a higher pitch than usual, and

assumed a tremolo. Then, if the other person was also endowed with

sensibility, he or she would rotate and quake in somewhat the same

manner. Their cups of tea would be considerably agitated. They would

move about in as unnatural a manner as possible; and when they left the

room, they would do so with gaspings and much waste of breath.

This was not an exhibition of love--or, at least, not necessarily

so. You might exhibit sensibility before a famous poet, or a gallant

soldier, or a celebrated traveler--or, for that matter, before a

remarkable buffoon, like Cagliostro, or a freak, like Kaspar Hauser.

It is plain enough that sensibility was entirely an abnormal thing, and

denoted an abnormal state of mind. Only among people like the Germans

and French of that period, who were forbidden to take part in public

affairs, could it have flourished so long, and have put forth such

rank and fetid outgrowths. From it sprang the "elective affinities" of

Goethe, and the loose morality of the French royalists, which rushed

on into the roaring sea of infidelity, blasphemy, and anarchy of the

Revolution.

Of all the historic figures of that time, there is just one which

to-day stands forth as representing sensibility. In her own time she

was thought to be something of a philosopher, and something more of a

novelist. She consorted with all the clever men and women of her age.

But now she holds a minute niche in history because of the fact that

Napoleon stooped to hate her, and because she personifies sensibility.

Criticism has stripped from her the rags and tatters of the philosophy

which was not her own. It is seen that she was indebted to the brains of

others for such imaginative bits of fiction as she put forth in Delphine

and Corinne; but as the exponent of sensibility she remains unique. This

woman was Anne Louise Germaine Necker, usually known as Mme. de Stael.

There was much about Mile. Necker's parentage that made her interesting.

Her father was the Genevese banker and minister of Louis XVI, who failed

wretchedly in his attempts to save the finances of France. Her mother,

Suzanne Curchod, as a young girl, had won the love of the famous English

historian, Edward Gibbon. She had first refused him, and then almost

frantically tried to get him back; but by this time Gibbon was more

comfortable in single life and less infatuated with Mlle. Curchod, who

presently married Jacques Necker.

M. Necker's money made his daughter a very celebrated "catch." Her

mother brought her to Paris when the French capital was brilliant beyond

description, and yet was tottering to its fall. The rumblings of the

Revolution could be heard by almost every ear; and yet society and the

court, refusing to listen, plunged into the wildest revelry under the

leadership of the giddy Marie Antoinette.

It was here that the young girl was initiated into the most elegant

forms of luxury, and met the cleverest men of that time--Voltaire,

Rousseau, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Volney. She set herself to be the

most accomplished woman of her day, not merely in belles lettres, but in

the natural and political sciences. Thus, when her father was drawing

up his monograph on the French finances, Germaine labored hard over

a supplementary report, studying documents, records, and the most

complicated statistics, so that she might obtain a mastery of the

subject.

"I mean to know everything that anybody knows," she said, with an

arrogance which was rather admired in so young a woman.

But, unfortunately, her mind was not great enough to fulfil her

aspiration. The most she ever achieved was a fair knowledge of many

things--a knowledge which seemed surprising to the average man, but

which was superficial enough to the accomplished specialist.

In her twentieth year (1786) it was thought best that she should marry.

Her revels, as well as her hard studies, had told upon her health, and

her mother believed that she could not be at once a blue-stocking and a

woman of the world.

There was something very odd about the relation that existed between the

young girl and this mother of hers. In the Swiss province where they had

both been born, the mother had been considered rather bold and forward.

Her penchant for Gibbon was only one of a number of adventures that

have been told about her. She was by no means coy with the gallants of

Geneva. Yet, after her marriage, and when she came to Paris, she seemed

to be transformed into a sort of Swiss Puritan.

As such, she undertook her daughter's bringing up, and was extremely

careful about everything that Germaine did and about the company she

kept. On the other hand, the daughter, who in the city of Calvin had

been rather dull and quiet in her ways, launched out into a gaiety such

as she had never known in Switzerland. Mother and daughter, in fact,

changed parts. The country beauty of Geneva became the prude of Paris,

while the quiet, unemotional young Genevese became the light of all the

Parisian salons, whether social or intellectual.

The mother was a very beautiful woman. The daughter, who was to become

so famous, is best described by those two very uncomplimentary English

words, "dumpy" and "frumpy." She had bulging eyes--which are not

emphasized in the flattering portrait by Gerard--and her hair was

unbecomingly dressed. There are reasons for thinking that Germaine

bitterly hated her mother, and was intensely jealous of her charm

of person. It may be also that Mme. Necker envied the daughter's

cleverness, even though that cleverness was little more, in the end,

than the borrowing of brilliant things from other persons. At any rate,

the two never cared for each other, and Germaine gave to her father the

affection which her mother neither received nor sought.

It was perhaps to tame the daughter's exuberance that a marriage was

arranged for Mlle. Necker with the Baron de Stael-Holstein, who then

represented the court of Sweden at Paris. Many eyebrows were lifted when

this match was announced. Baron de Stael had no personal charm, nor any

reputation for wit. His standing in the diplomatic corps was not very

high. His favorite occupations were playing cards and drinking enormous

quantities of punch. Could he be considered a match for the extremely

clever Mlle. Necker, whose father had an enormous fortune, and who

was herself considered a gem of wit and mental power, ready to discuss

political economy, or the romantic movement of socialism, or platonic

love?

Many differed about this. Mlle. Necker was, to be sure, rich and clever;

but the Baron de Stael was of an old family, and had a title. Moreover,

his easy-going ways--even his punch-drinking and his card-playing--made

him a desirable husband at that time of French social history, when the

aristocracy wished to act exactly as it pleased, with wanton license,

and when an embassy was a very convenient place into which an indiscreet

ambassadress might retire when the mob grew dangerous. For Paris was now

approaching the time of revolution, and all "aristocrats" were more or

less in danger.

At first Mme. de Stael rather sympathized with the outbreak of the

people; but later their excesses drove her back into sympathy with

the royalists. It was then that she became indiscreet and abused the

privilege of the embassy in giving shelter to her friends. She was

obliged to make a sudden flight across the frontier, whence she did

not return until Napoleon loomed up, a political giant on the

horizon--victorious general, consul, and emperor.

Mme. de Stael's relations with Napoleon have, as I remarked above, been

among her few titles to serious remembrance. The Corsican eagle and the

dumpy little Genevese make, indeed, a peculiar pair; and for this reason

writers have enhanced the oddities of the picture.

"Napoleon," says one, "did not wish any one to be near him who was as

clever as himself."

"No," adds another, "Mme. de Stael made a dead set at Napoleon, because

she wished to conquer and achieve the admiration of everybody, even of

the greatest man who ever lived."

"Napoleon found her to be a good deal of a nuisance," observes a third.

"She knew too much, and was always trying to force her knowledge upon

others."

The legend has sprung up that Mme. de Stael was too wise and witty to

be acceptable to Napoleon; and many women repeated with unction that the

conqueror of Europe was no match for this frowsy little woman. It is,

perhaps, worth while to look into the facts, and to decide whether

Napoleon was really of so petty a nature as to feel himself inferior to

this rather comic creature, even though at the time many people thought

her a remarkable genius.

In the first place, knowing Napoleon, as we have come to know him

through the pages of Mme. de Remusat, Frederic Masson, and others, we

can readily imagine the impatience with which the great soldier would

sit at dinner, hastening to finish his meal, crowding the whole ceremony

into twenty minutes, gulping a glass or two of wine and a cup of coffee,

and then being interrupted by a fussy little female who wanted to

talk about the ethics of history, or the possibility of a new form of

government. Napoleon, himself, was making history, and writing it in

fire and flame; and as for governments, he invented governments all over

Europe as suited his imperial will. What patience could he have with

one whom an English writer has rather unkindly described as "an ugly

coquette, an old woman who made a ridiculous marriage, a blue-stocking,

who spent much of her time in pestering men of genius, and drawing from

them sarcastic comment behind their backs?"

Napoleon was not the sort of a man to be routed in discussion, but

he was most decidedly the sort of man to be bored and irritated by

pedantry. Consequently, he found Mme. de Stael a good deal of a nuisance

in the salons of Paris and its vicinity. He cared not the least for her

epigrams. She might go somewhere else and write all the epigrams she

pleased. When he banished her, in 1803, she merely crossed the Rhine

into Germany, and established herself at Weimar.

The emperor received her son, Auguste de Stael-Holstein, with much good

humor, though he refused the boy's appeal on behalf of his mother.

"My dear baron," said Napoleon, "if your mother were to be in Paris

for two months, I should really be obliged to lock her up in one of the

castles, which would be most unpleasant treatment for me to show a lady.

No, let her go anywhere else and we can get along perfectly. All Europe

is open to her--Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg; and if she wishes to write

libels on me, England is a convenient and inexpensive place. Only Paris

is just a little too near!"

Thus the emperor gibed the boy--he was only fifteen or sixteen--and made

fun of the exiled blue-stocking; but there was not a sign of malice in

what he said, nor, indeed, of any serious feeling at all. The

legend about Napoleon and Mme. de Stael must, therefore, go into the

waste-basket, except in so far as it is true that she succeeded in

boring him.

For the rest, she was an earlier George Sand--unattractive in person,

yet able to attract; loving love for love's sake, though seldom

receiving it in return; throwing herself at the head of every

distinguished man, and generally finding that he regarded her overtures

with mockery. To enumerate the men for whom she professed to care would

be tedious, since the record of her passions has no reality about it,

save, perhaps, with two exceptions.

She did care deeply and sincerely for Henri Benjamin Constant, the

brilliant politician and novelist. He was one of her coterie in Paris,

and their common political sentiments formed a bond of friendship

between them. Constant was banished by Napoleon in 1802, and when Mme.

de Stael followed him into exile a year later he joined her in Germany.

The story of their relations was told by Constant in Adolphe, while Mme.

de Stael based Delphine on her experiences with him. It seems that he

was puzzled by her ardor; she was infatuated by his genius. Together

they went through all the phases of the tender passion; and yet, at

intervals, they would tire of each other and separate for a while, and

she would amuse herself with other men. At last she really believed that

her love for him was entirely worn out.

"I always loved my lovers more than they loved me," she said once, and

it was true.

Yet, on the other hand, she was frankly false to all of them, and hence

arose these intervals. In one of them she fell in with a young Italian

named Rocca, and by way of a change she not only amused herself with

him, but even married him. At this time--1811--she was forty-five, while

Rocca was only twenty-three--a young soldier who had fought in Spain,

and who made eager love to the she-philosopher when he was invalided at

Geneva.

The marriage was made on terms imposed by the middle-aged woman who

became his bride. In the first place, it was to be kept secret; and

second, she would not take her husband's name, but he must pass himself

off as her lover, even though she bore him children. The reason she gave

for this extraordinary exhibition of her vanity was that a change of

name on her part would put everybody out.

"In fact," she said, "if Mme. de Stael were to change her name, it would

unsettle the heads of all Europe!"

And so she married Rocca, who was faithful to her to the end, though she

grew extremely plain and querulous, while he became deaf and soon lost

his former charm. Her life was the life of a woman who had, in her own

phrase, "attempted everything"; and yet she had accomplished nothing

that would last. She was loved by a man of genius, but he did not love

her to the end. She was loved by a man of action, and she tired of him

very soon. She had a wonderful reputation for her knowledge of history

and philosophy, and yet what she knew of those subjects is now seen to

be merely the scraps and borrowings of others.

Something she did when she introduced the romantic literature into

France; and there are passages from her writings which seem worthy of

preservation. For instance, we may quote her outburst with regard to

unhappy marriages. "It was the subject," says Mr. Gribble, "on which she

had begun to think before she was married, and which continued to haunt

her long after she was left a widow; though one suspects that the word

'marriage' became a form of speech employed to describe her relations,

not with her husband, but with her lovers." The passage to which I refer

is as follows:

In an unhappy marriage, there is a violence of distress surpassing all

other sufferings in the world. A woman's whole soul depends upon the

conjugal tie. To struggle against fate alone, to journey to the grave

without a friend to support you or to regret you, is an isolation of

which the deserts of Arabia give but a faint and feeble idea. When

all the treasure of your youth has been given in vain, when you can no

longer hope that the reflection of these first rays will shine upon the

end of your life, when there is nothing in the dusk to remind you of

the dawn, and when the twilight is pale and colorless as a livid specter

that precedes the night, your heart revolts, and you feel that you have

been robbed of the gifts of God upon earth.

Equally striking is another prose passage of hers, which seems less the

careful thought of a philosopher than the screeching of a termagant. It

is odd that the first two sentences recall two famous lines of Byron:

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;

'Tis woman's whole existence.

The passage by Mme. de Stael is longer and less piquant:

Love is woman's whole existence. It is only an episode in the lives

of men. Reputation, honor, esteem, everything depends upon how a woman

conducts herself in this regard; whereas, according to the rules of

an unjust world, the laws of morality itself are suspended in men's

relations with women. They may pass as good men, though they have caused

women the most terrible suffering which it is in the power of one human

being to inflict upon another. They may be regarded as loyal, though

they have betrayed them. They may have received from a woman marks of

a devotion which would so link two friends, two fellow soldiers, that

either would feel dishonored if he forgot them, and they may consider

themselves free of all obligations by attributing the services to

love--as if this additional gift of love detracted from the value of the

rest!

One cannot help noticing how lacking in neatness of expression is this

woman who wrote so much. It is because she wrote so much that she wrote

in such a muffled manner. It is because she thought so much that her

reflections were either not her own, or were never clear. It is because

she loved so much, and had so many lovers--Benjamin Constant; Vincenzo

Monti, the Italian poet; M. de Narbonne, and others, as well as young

Rocca--that she found both love and lovers tedious.

She talked so much that her conversation was almost always mere personal

opinion. Thus she told Goethe that he never was really brilliant until

after he had got through a bottle of champagne. Schiller said that to

talk with her was to have a "rough time," and that after she left him,

he always felt like a man who was just getting over a serious illness.

She never had time to do anything very well.

There is an interesting glimpse of her in the recollections of Dr.

Bollmann, at the period when Mme. de Stael was in her prime. The worthy

doctor set her down as a genius--an extraordinary, eccentric woman in

all that she did. She slept but a few hours out of the twenty-four, and

was uninterruptedly and fearfully busy all the rest of the time. While

her hair was being dressed, and even while she breakfasted, she used to

keep on writing, nor did she ever rest sufficiently to examine what she

had written.

Such then was Mme. de Stael, a type of the time in which she lived, so

far as concerns her worship of sensibility--of sensibility, and not

of love; for love is too great to be so scattered and made a thing to

prattle of, to cheapen, and thus destroy. So we find at the last that

Germaine de Stael, though she was much read and much feted and much

followed, came finally to that last halting-place where confessedly

she was merely an old woman, eccentric, and unattractive. She sued her

former lovers for the money she had lent them, she scolded and found

fault--as perhaps befits her age.

But such is the natural end of sensibility, and of the woman who

typifies it for succeeding generations.

THE STORY OF KARL MARX

Some time ago I entered a fairly large library--one of more than two

hundred thousand volumes--to seek the little brochure on Karl Marx

written by his old friend and genial comrade Wilhelm Liebknecht. It was

in the card catalogue. As I made a note of its number, my friend the

librarian came up to me, and I asked him whether it was not strange

that a man like Marx should have so many books devoted to him, for I had

roughly reckoned the number at several hundred.

"Not at all," said he; "and we have here only a feeble nucleus of the

Marx literature--just enough, in fact, to give you a glimpse of what

that literature really is. These are merely the books written by Marx

himself, and the translations of them, with a few expository monographs.

Anything like a real Marx collection would take up a special room in

this library, and would have to have its own separate catalogue. You

see that even these two or three hundred books contain large volumes

of small pamphlets in many languages--German, English, French, Italian,

Russian, Polish, Yiddish, Swedish, Hungarian, Spanish; and here," he

concluded, pointing to a recently numbered card, "is one in Japanese."

My curiosity was sufficiently excited to look into the matter somewhat

further. I visited another library, which was appreciably larger, and

whose managers were evidently less guided by their prejudices. Here were

several thousand books on Marx, and I spent the best part of the day in

looking them over.

What struck me as most singular was the fact that there was scarcely

a volume about Marx himself. Practically all the books dealt with his

theory of capital and his other socialistic views. The man himself, his

personality, and the facts of his life were dismissed in the most meager

fashion, while his economic theories were discussed with something

that verged upon fury. Even such standard works as those of Mehring and

Spargo, which profess to be partly biographical, sum up the personal

side of Marx in a few pages. In fact, in the latter's preface he seems

conscious of this defect, and says:

Whether socialism proves, in the long span of centuries, to be good or

evil, a blessing to men or a curse, Karl Marx must always be an object

of interest as one of the great world-figures of immortal memory. As

the years go by, thoughtful men and women will find the same interest in

studying the life and work of Marx that they do in studying the life

and work of Cromwell, of Wesley, or of Darwin, to name three immortal

world-figures of vastly divergent types.

Singularly little is known of Karl Marx, even by his most ardent

followers. They know his work, having studied his Das Kapital with the

devotion and earnestness with which an older generation of Christians

studied the Bible, but they are very generally unacquainted with the

man himself. Although more than twenty-six years have elapsed since the

death of Marx, there is no adequate biography of him in any language.

Doubtless some better-equipped German writer, such as Franz Mehring or

Eduard Bernstein, will some day give us the adequate and full biography

for which the world now waits.

Here is an admission that there exists no adequate biography of Karl

Marx, and here is also an intimation that simply as a man, and not

merely as a great firebrand of socialism, Marx is well worth studying.

And so it has occurred to me to give in these pages one episode of his

career that seems to me quite curious, together with some significant

touches concerning the man as apart from the socialist. Let the

thousands of volumes already in existence suffice for the latter. The

motto of this paper is not the Vergilian "Arms and the man I sing,"

but simply "The man I sing"--and the woman. Karl Marx was born nearly

ninety-four years ago--May 5, 1818--in the city which the French call

Treves and the Germans Trier, among the vine-clad hills of the Moselle.

Today, the town is commonplace enough when you pass through it, but when

you look into its history, and seek out that history's evidences, you

will find that it was not always a rather sleepy little place. It was

one of the chosen abodes of the Emperors of the West, after Rome

began to be governed by Gauls and Spaniards, rather than by Romans and

Italians. The traveler often pauses there to see the Porta Nigra, that

immense gate once strongly fortified, and he will doubtless visit also

what is left of the fine baths and amphitheater.

Treves, therefore, has a right to be termed imperial, and it was

the birthplace of one whose sway over the minds of men has been both

imperial and imperious.

Karl Marx was one of those whose intellectual achievements were so great

as to dwarf his individuality and his private life. What he taught

with almost terrific vigor made his very presence in the Continental

monarchies a source of eminent danger. He was driven from country to

country. Kings and emperors were leagued together against him. Soldiers

were called forth, and blood was shed because of him. But, little by

little, his teaching seems to have leavened the thought of the whole

civilized world, so that to-day thousands who barely know his name are

deeply affected by his ideas, and believe that the state should control

and manage everything for the good of all.

Marx seems to have inherited little from either of his parents. His

father, Heinrich Marx, was a provincial Jewish lawyer who had adopted

Christianity, probably because it was expedient, and because it enabled

him to hold local offices and gain some social consequence. He had

changed his name from Mordecai to Marx.

The elder Marx was very shrewd and tactful, and achieved a fair position

among the professional men and small officials in the city of Treves.

He had seen the horrors of the French Revolution, and was philosopher

enough to understand the meaning of that mighty upheaval, and of the

Napoleonic era which followed.

Napoleon, indeed, had done much to relieve his race from petty

oppression. France made the Jews in every respect the equals of the

Gentiles. One of its ablest marshals--Massena--was a Jew, and therefore,

when the imperial eagle was at the zenith of its flight, the Jews in

every city and town of Europe were enthusiastic admirers of Napoleon,

some even calling him the Messiah.

Karl Marx's mother, it is certain, endowed him with none of his gifts.

She was a Netherlandish Jewess of the strictly domestic and conservative

type, fond of her children and her home, and detesting any talk that

looked to revolutionary ideas or to a change in the social order. She

became a Christian with her husband, but the word meant little to her.

It was sufficient that she believed in God; and for this she was teased

by some of her skeptical friends. Replying to them, she uttered the only

epigram that has ever been ascribed to her.

"Yes," she said, "I believe in God, not for God's sake, but for my own."

She was so little affected by change of scene that to the day of her

death she never mastered German, but spoke almost wholly in her native

Dutch. Had we time, we might dwell upon the unhappy paradox of her life.

In her son Karl she found an especial joy, as did her husband. Had the

father lived beyond Karl's early youth, he would doubtless have been

greatly pained by the radicalism of his gifted son, as well as by his

personal privations. But the mother lived until 1863, while Karl was

everywhere stirring the fires of revolution, driven from land to land,

both feared and persecuted, and often half famished. As Mr. Spargo says:

It was the irony of life that the son, who kindled a mighty hope in the

hearts of unnumbered thousands of his fellow human beings, a hope that

is today inspiring millions of those who speak his name with reverence

and love, should be able to do that only by destroying his mother's hope

and happiness in her son, and that every step he took should fill her

heart with a great agony.

When young Marx grew out of boyhood into youth, he was attractive to all

those who met him. Tall, lithe, and graceful, he was so extremely dark

that his intimates called him "der neger"--"the negro." His loosely

tossing hair gave to him a still more exotic appearance; but his eyes

were true and frank, his nose denoted strength and character, and his

mouth was full of kindliness in its expression. His lineaments were not

those of the Jewish type.

Very late in life--he died in 1883--his hair and beard turned white,

but to the last his great mustache was drawn like a bar across his

face, remaining still as black as ink, and making his appearance very

striking. He was full of fun and gaiety. As was only natural, there soon

came into his life some one who learned to love him, and to whom, in his

turn, he gave a deep and unbroken affection.

There had come to Treves--which passed from France to Prussia with

the downfall of Napoleon--a Prussian nobleman, the Baron Ludwig von

Westphalen, holding the official title of "national adviser." The baron

was of Scottish extraction on his mother's side, being connected with

the ducal family of Argyll. He was a man of genuine rank, and might have

shown all the arrogance and superciliousness of the average Prussian

official; but when he became associated with Heinrich Marx he evinced

none of that condescending manner. The two men became firm friends, and

the baron treated the provincial lawyer as an equal.

The two families were on friendly terms. Von Westphalen's infant

daughter, who had the formidable name of Johanna Bertha Julie Jenny von

Westphalen, but who was usually spoken of as Jenny, became, in time, an

intimate of Sophie Marx. She was four years older than Karl, but the two

grew up together--he a high-spirited, manly boy, and she a lovely and

romantic girl.

The baron treated Karl as if the lad were a child of his own. He

influenced him to love romantic literature and poetry by interpreting

to him the great masterpieces, from Homer and Shakespeare to Goethe and

Lessing. He made a special study of Dante, whose mysticism appealed to

his somewhat dreamy nature, and to the religious instinct that always

lived in him, in spite of his dislike for creeds and churches.

The lore that he imbibed in early childhood stood Karl in good stead

when he began his school life, and his preparation for the university.

He had an absolute genius for study, and was no less fond of the sports

and games of his companions, so that he seemed to be marked out for

success. At sixteen years of age he showed a precocious ability for

planning and carrying out his work with thoroughness. His mind was

evidently a creative mind, one that was able to think out difficult

problems without fatigue. His taste was shown in his fondness for the

classics, in studying which he noted subtle distinctions of meaning

that usually escape even the mature scholar. Penetration, thoroughness,

creativeness, and a capacity for labor were the boy's chief

characteristics.

With such gifts, and such a nature, he left home for the university of

Bonn. Here he disappointed all his friends. His studies were neglected;

he was morose, restless, and dissatisfied. He fell into a number of

scrapes, and ran into debt through sundry small extravagances. All the

reports that reached his home were most unsatisfactory. What had come

over the boy who had worked so hard in the gymnasium at Treves?

The simple fact was that he had became love-sick. His separation from

Jenny von Westphalen had made him conscious of a feeling which he had

long entertained without knowing it. They had been close companions. He

had looked into her beautiful face and seen the luminous response of her

lovely eyes, but its meaning had not flashed upon his mind. He was not

old enough to have a great consuming passion, he was merely conscious of

her charm. As he could see her every day, he did not realize how much he

wanted her, and how much a separation from her would mean.

As "absence makes the heart grow fonder," so it may suddenly draw aside

the veil behind which the truth is hidden. At Bonn young Marx felt as

if a blaze of light had flashed before him; and from that moment

his studies, his companions, and the ambitions that he had hitherto

cherished all seemed flat and stale. At night and in the daytime there

was just one thing which filled his mind and heart--the beautiful vision

of Jenny von Westphalen.

Meanwhile his family, and especially his father, had become anxious at

the reports which reached them. Karl was sent for, and his stay at Bonn

was ended.

Now that he was once more in the presence of the girl who charmed him

so, he recovered all his old-time spirits. He wooed her ardently, and

though she was more coy, now that she saw his passion, she did not

discourage him, but merely prolonged the ecstasy of this wonderful

love-making. As he pressed her more and more, and no one guessed the

story, there came a time when she was urged to let herself become

engaged to him.

Here was seen the difference in their ages--a difference that had an

effect upon their future. It means much that a girl should be four years

older than the man who seeks her hand. She is four years wiser; and a

girl of twenty is, in fact, a match for a youth of twenty-five. Brought

up as she had been, in an aristocratic home, with the blood of two noble

families in her veins, and being wont to hear the easy and somewhat

cynical talk of worldly people, she knew better than poor Karl the

un-wisdom of what she was about to do.

She was noble, the daughter of one high official and the sister of

another. Those whom she knew were persons of rank and station. On the

other hand, young Marx, though he had accepted Christianity, was the son

of a provincial Jewish lawyer, with no fortune, and with a bad record at

the university. When she thought of all these things, she may well have

hesitated; but the earnest pleading and intense ardor of Karl Marx

broke down all barriers between them, and they became engaged, without

informing Jenny's father of their compact. Then they parted for a while,

and Karl returned to his home, filled with romantic thoughts.

He was also full of ambition and of desire for achievement. He had won

the loveliest girl in Treves, and now he must go forth into the world

and conquer it for her sake. He begged his father to send him to

Berlin, and showed how much more advantageous was that new and splendid

university, where Hegel's fame was still in the ascendent.

In answer to his father's questions, the younger Marx replied:

"I have something to tell you that will explain all; but first you must

give me your word that you will tell no one."

"I trust you wholly," said the father. "I will not reveal what you may

say to me."

"Well," returned the son, "I am engaged to marry Jenny von Westphalen.

She wishes it kept a secret from her father, but I am at liberty to tell

you of it."

The elder Marx was at once shocked and seriously disturbed. Baron

von Westphalen was his old and intimate friend. No thought of romance

between their children had ever come into his mind. It seemed disloyal

to keep the verlobung of Karl and Jenny a secret; for should it be

revealed, what would the baron think of Marx? Their disparity of rank

and fortune would make the whole affair stand out as something wrong and

underhand.

The father endeavored to make his son see all this. He begged him to go

and tell the baron, but young Marx was not to be persuaded.

"Send me to Berlin," he said, "and we shall again be separated; but I

shall work and make a name for myself, so that when I return neither

Jenny nor her father will have occasion to be disturbed by our

engagement."

With these words he half satisfied his father, and before long he was

sent to Berlin, where he fell manfully upon his studies. His father

had insisted that he should study law; but his own tastes were for

philosophy and history. He attended lectures in jurisprudence "as a

necessary evil," but he read omnivorously in subjects that were nearer

to his heart. The result was that his official record was not much

better than it had been at Bonn.

The same sort of restlessness, too, took possession of him when he

found that Jenny would not answer his letters. No matter how eagerly and

tenderly he wrote to her, there came no reply. Even the most passionate

pleadings left her silent and unresponsive. Karl could not complain, for

she had warned him that she would not write to him. She felt that their

engagement, being secret, was anomalous, and that until her family knew

of it she was not free to act as she might wish.

Here again was seen the wisdom of her maturer years; but Karl could not

be equally reasonable. He showered her with letters, which still she

would not answer. He wrote to his father in words of fire. At last,

driven to despair, he said that he was going to write to the Baron von

Westphalen, reveal the secret, and ask for the baron's fatherly consent.

It seemed a reckless thing to do, and yet it turned out to be the

wisest. The baron knew that such an engagement meant a social sacrifice,

and that, apart from the matter of rank, young Marx was without any

fortune to give the girl the luxuries to which she had been accustomed.

Other and more eligible suitors were always within view. But here Jenny

herself spoke out more strongly than she had ever done to Karl. She

was willing to accept him with what he was able to give her. She cared

nothing for any other man, and she begged her father to make both of

them completely happy.

Thus it seemed that all was well, yet for some reason or other

Jenny would not write to Karl, and once more he was almost driven to

distraction. He wrote bitter letters to his father, who tried to comfort

him. The baron himself sent messages of friendly advice, but what young

man in his teens was ever reasonable? So violent was Karl that at last

his father wrote to him:

I am disgusted with your letters. Their unreasonable tone is loathsome

to me. I should never had expected it of you. Haven't you been lucky

from your cradle up?

Finally Karl received one letter from his betrothed--a letter that

transfused him with ecstatic joy for about a day, and then sent him

back to his old unrest. This, however, may be taken as a part of Marx's

curious nature, which was never satisfied, but was always reaching after

something which could not be had.

He fell to writing poetry, of which he sent three volumes to

Jenny--which must have been rather trying to her, since the verse was

very poor. He studied the higher mathematics, English and Italian,

some Latin, and a miscellaneous collection of works on history and

literature. But poetry almost turned his mind. In later years he wrote:

Everything was centered on poetry, as if I were bewitched by some

uncanny power.

Luckily, he was wise enough, after a time, to recognize how halting

were his poems when compared with those of the great masters; and so he

resumed his restless, desultory work. He still sent his father letters

that were like wild cries. They evoked, in reply, a very natural burst

of anger:

Complete disorder, silly wandering through all branches of science,

silly brooding at the burning oil-lamp! In your wildness you see with

four eyes--a horrible setback and disregard for everything decent. And

in the pursuit of this senseless and purposeless learning you think

to raise the fruits which are to unite you with your beloved one! What

harvest do you expect to gather from them which will enable you to

fulfil your duty toward her?

Writing to him again, his father speaks of something that Karl had

written as "a mad composition, which denotes clearly how you waste your

ability and spend nights in order to create such monstrosities." The

young man was even forbidden to return home for the Easter holidays.

This meant giving up the sight of Jenny, whom he had not seen for a

whole year. But fortune arranged it otherwise; for not many weeks later

death removed the parent who had loved him and whom he had loved, though

neither of them could understand the other. The father represented the

old order of things; the son was born to discontent and to look forward

to a new heaven and a new earth.

Returning to Berlin, Karl resumed his studies; but as before, they

were very desultory in their character, and began to run upon social

questions, which were indeed setting Germany into a ferment. He took his

degree, and thought of becoming an instructor at the university of Jena;

but his radicalism prevented this, and he became the editor of a liberal

newspaper, which soon, however, became so very radical as to lead to his

withdrawal.

It now seemed best that Marx should seek other fields of activity. To

remain in Germany was dangerous to himself and discreditable to Jenny's

relatives, with their status as Prussian officials. In the summer of

1843, he went forth into the world--at last an "international." Jenny,

who had grown to believe in him as against her own family, asked for

nothing better than to wander with him, if only they might be married.

And they were married in this same summer, and spent a short honeymoon

at Bingen on the Rhine--made famous by Mrs. Norton's poem. It was the

brief glimpse of sunshine that was to precede year after year of anxiety

and want.

Leaving Germany, Marx and Jenny went to Paris, where he became known to

some of the intellectual lights of the French capital, such as Bakunin,

the great Russian anarchist, Proudhon, Cabet, and Saint-Simon. Most

important of all was his intimacy with the poet Heine, that marvelous

creature whose fascination took on a thousand forms, and whom no one

could approach without feeling his strange allurement.

Since Goethe's death, down to the present time, there has been no figure

in German literature comparable to Heine. His prose was exquisite. His

poetry ran through the whole gamut of humanity and of the sensations

that come to us from the outer world. In his poems are sweet melodies

and passionate cries of revolt, stirring ballads of the sea and tender

love-songs--strange as these last seem when coming from this cynic.

For cynic he was, deep down in his heart, though his face, when in

repose, was like the conventional pictures of Christ. His fascinations

destroyed the peace of many a woman; and it was only after many years of

self-indulgence that he married the faithful Mathilde Mirat in what

he termed a "conscience marriage." Soon after he went to his

"mattress-grave," as he called it, a hopeless paralytic.

To Heine came Marx and his beautiful bride. One may speculate as to

Jenny's estimate of her husband. Since his boyhood, she had not seen him

very much. At that time he was a merry, light-hearted youth, a jovial

comrade, and one of whom any girl would be proud. But since his long

stay in Berlin, and his absorption in the theories of men like Engels

and Bauer, he had become a very different sort of man, at least to her.

Groping, lost in brown studies, dreamy, at times morose, he was by no

means a sympathetic and congenial husband for a high-bred, spirited

girl, such as Jenny von Westphalen. His natural drift was toward a

beer-garden, a group of frowsy followers, the reek of vile tobacco, and

the smell of sour beer. One cannot but think that his beautiful wife

must have been repelled by this, though with her constant nature she

still loved him.

In Heinrich Heine she found a spirit that seemed akin to hers. Mr.

Spargo says--and in what he says one must read a great deal between the

lines:

The admiration of Jenny Marx for the poet was even more ardent than

that of her husband. He fascinated her because, as she said, he was "so

modern," while Heine was drawn to her because she was "so sympathetic."

It must be that Heine held the heart of this beautiful woman in his

hand. He knew so well the art of fascination; he knew just how to supply

the void which Marx had left. The two were indeed affinities in heart

and soul; yet for once the cynical poet stayed his hand, and said no

word that would have been disloyal to his friend. Jenny loved him with a

love that might have blazed into a lasting flame; but fortunately there

appeared a special providence to save her from herself. The French

government, at the request of the King of Prussia, banished Marx from

its dominions; and from that day until he had become an old man he was

a wanderer and an exile, with few friends and little money, sustained by

nothing but Jenny's fidelity and by his infinite faith in a cause that

crushed him to the earth.

There is a curious parallel between the life of Marx and that of Richard

Wagner down to the time when the latter discovered a royal patron.

Both of them were hounded from country to country; both of them

worked laboriously for so scanty a living as to verge, at times, upon

starvation. Both of them were victims to a cause in which they earnestly

believed--an economic cause in the one case, an artistic cause in

the other. Wagner's triumph came before his death, and the world has

accepted his theory of the music-drama. The cause of Marx is far greater

and more tremendous, because it strikes at the base of human life and

social well-being.

The clash between Wagner and his critics was a matter of poetry and

dramatic music. It was not vital to the human race. The cause of Marx

is one that is only now beginning to be understood and recognized by

millions of men and women in all the countries of the earth. In

his lifetime he issued a manifesto that has become a classic among

economists. He organized the great International Association of Workmen,

which set all Europe in a blaze and extended even to America. His great

book, "Capital"--Das Kapital--which was not completed until the last

years of his life, is read to-day by thousands as an almost sacred work.

Like Wagner and his Minna, the wife of Marx's youth clung to him through

his utmost vicissitudes, denying herself the necessities of life so that

he might not starve. In London, where he spent his latest days, he was

secure from danger, yet still a sort of persecution seemed to follow

him. For some time, nothing that he wrote could find a printer. Wherever

he went, people looked at him askance. He and his six children lived

upon the sum of five dollars a week, which was paid him by the New York

Tribune, through the influence of the late Charles A. Dana. When his

last child was born, and the mother's life was in serious danger, Marx

complained that there was no cradle for the baby, and a little later

that there was no coffin for its burial.

Marx had ceased to believe in marriage, despised the church, and cared

nothing for government. Yet, unlike Wagner, he was true to the woman who

had given up so much for him. He never sank to an artistic degeneracy.

Though he rejected creeds, he was nevertheless a man of genuine

religious feeling. Though he believed all present government to be an

evil, he hoped to make it better, or rather he hoped to substitute for

it a system by which all men might get an equal share of what it is

right and just for them to have.

Such was Marx, and thus he lived and died. His wife, who had long been

cut off from her relatives, died about a year before him. When she was

buried, he stumbled and fell into her grave, and from that time until

his own death he had no further interest in life.

He had been faithful to a woman and to a cause. That cause was so

tremendous as to overwhelm him. In sixty years only the first great

stirrings of it could be felt. Its teachings may end in nothing, but

only a century or more of effort and of earnest striving can make it

plain whether Karl Marx was a world-mover or a martyr to a cause that

was destined to be lost.

FERDINAND LASSALLE AND HELENE VON DONNIGES

The middle part of the nineteenth century is a period which has become

more or less obscure to most Americans and Englishmen. At one end the

thunderous campaigns of Napoleon are dying away. In the latter part

of the century we remember the gorgeousness of the Tuileries, the four

years' strife of our own Civil War, and then the golden drift of peace

with which the century ended. Between these two extremes there is a

stretch of history which seems to lack interest for the average student

of to-day.

In America, that was a period when we took little interest in the

movement of affairs on the continent of Europe. It would not be easy,

for instance, to imagine an American of 1840 cogitating on problems of

socialism, or trying to invent some new form of arbeiterverein. General

Choke was still swindling English emigrants. The Young Columbian was

still darting out from behind a table to declare how thoroughly he

defied the British lion. But neither of these patriots, any more than

their English compeers, was seriously disturbed about the interests of

the rest of the world. The Englishman was contentedly singing "God Save

the Queen!" The American, was apostrophizing the bird of freedom

with the floridity of rhetoric that reached its climax in the "Pogram

Defiance." What the Dutchies and Frenchies were doing was little more to

an Englishman than to an American.

Continental Europe was a mystery to English-speaking people. Those who

traveled abroad took their own servants with them, spoke only English,

and went through the whole European maze with absolute indifference. To

them the socialist, who had scarcely received a name, was an imaginary

being. If he existed, he was only a sort of offspring of the Napoleonic

wars--a creature who had not yet fitted into the ordinary course of

things. He was an anomaly, a person who howled in beer-houses, and who

would presently be regulated, either by the statesmen or by the police.

When our old friend, Mark Tapley, was making with his master a homeward

voyage to Britain, what did he know or even care about the politics of

France, or Germany, or Austria, or Russia? Not the slightest, you may be

sure. Mark and his master represented the complete indifference of the

Englishman or American--not necessarily a well-bred indifference, but

an indifference that was insular on the one hand and republican on

the other. If either of them had heard of a gentleman who pillaged an

unmarried lady's luggage in order to secure a valuable paper for another

lady, who was married, they would both have looked severely at this

abnormal person, and the American would doubtless have added a remark

which had something to do with the matchless purity of Columbia's

daughters.

If, again, they had been told that Ferdinand Lassalle had joined in the

great movement initiated by Karl Marx, it is absolutely certain that

neither the Englishman nor the American could have given you the

slightest notion as to who these individuals were. Thrones might

be tottering all over Europe; the red flag might wave in a score of

cities--what would all this signify, so long as Britannia ruled the

waves, while Columbia's feathered emblem shrieked defiance three

thousand miles away?

And yet few more momentous events have happened in a century than the

union which led one man to give his eloquence to the social cause, and

the other to suffer for that cause until his death. Marx had the higher

thought, but his disciple Lassalle had the more attractive way of

presenting it. It is odd that Marx, today, should lie in a squalid

cemetery, while the whole western world echoes with his praises,

and that Lassalle--brilliant, clear-sighted, and remarkable for his

penetrating genius--should have lived in luxury, but should now know

nothing but oblivion, even among those who shouted at his eloquence and

ran beside him in the glory of his triumph.

Ferdinand Lassalle was a native of Breslau, the son of a wealthy

Jewish silk-merchant. Heymann Lassal--for thus the father spelled his

name--stroked his hands at young Ferdinand's cleverness, but he meant it

to be a commercial cleverness. He gave the boy a thorough education at

the University of Breslau, and later at Berlin. He was an affectionate

parent, and at the same time tyrannical to a degree.

It was the old story where the father wishes to direct every step that

his son takes, and where the son, bursting out into youthful manhood,

feels that he has the right to freedom. The father thinks how he has

toiled for the son; the son thinks that if this toil were given for

love, it should not be turned into a fetter and restraint. Young

Lassalle, instead of becoming a clever silk-merchant, insisted on a

university career, where he studied earnestly, and was admitted to the

most cultured circles.

Though his birth was Jewish, he encountered little prejudice against his

race. Napoleon had changed the old anti-Semitic feeling of fifty years

before to a liberalism that was just beginning to be strongly felt in

Germany, as it had already been in France. This was true in general, but

especially true of Lassalle, whose features were not of a Semitic type,

who made friends with every one, and who was a favorite in many salons.

His portraits make him seem a high-bred and high-spirited Prussian,

with an intellectual and clean-cut forehead; a face that has a sense of

humor, and yet one capable of swift and cogent thought.

No man of ordinary talents could have won the admiration of so many

compeers. It is not likely that such a keen and cynical observer as

Heinrich Heine would have written as he did concerning Lassalle, had not

the latter been a brilliant and magnetic youth. Heine wrote to Varnhagen

von Ense, the German historian:

My friend, Herr Lassalle, who brings you this letter, is a young man of

remarkable intellectual gifts. With the most thorough erudition, with

the widest learning, with the greatest penetration that I have ever

known, and with the richest gift of exposition, he combines an energy of

will and a capacity for action which astonish me. In no one have I found

united so much enthusiasm and practical intelligence.

No better proof of Lassalle's enthusiasm can be found than a few lines

from his own writings:

I love Heine. He is my second self. What audacity! What overpowering

eloquence! He knows how to whisper like a zephyr when it kisses

rose-blooms, how to breathe like fire when it rages and destroys; he

calls forth all that is tenderest and softest, and then all that is

fiercest and most daring. He has the sweep of the whole lyre!

Lassalle's sympathy with Heine was like his sympathy with every one

whom he knew. This was often misunderstood. It was misunderstood in his

relations with women, and especially in the celebrated affair of the

Countess von Hatzfeldt, which began in the year 1846--that is to say, in

the twenty-first year of Lassalle's age.

In truth, there was no real scandal in the matter, for the countess was

twice the age of Lassalle. It was precisely because he was so young that

he let his eagerness to defend a woman in distress make him forget

the ordinary usage of society, and expose himself to mean and unworthy

criticism which lasted all his life. It began by his introduction to

the Countess von Hatzfeldt, a lady who was grossly ill-treated by her

husband. She had suffered insult and imprisonment in the family castles;

the count had deprived her of medicine when she was ill, and had

forcibly taken away her children. Besides this, he was infatuated

with another woman, a baroness, and wasted his substance upon her even

contrary to the law which protected his children's rights.

The countess had a son named Paul, of whom Lassalle was extremely fond.

There came to the boy a letter from the Count von Hatzfeldt ordering him

to leave his mother. The countess at once sent for Lassalle, who brought

with him two wealthy and influential friends--one of them a judge of a

high Prussian court--and together they read the letter which Paul had

just received. They were deeply moved by the despair of the countess,

and by the cruelty of her dissolute husband in seeking to separate the

mother from her son.

In his chivalrous ardor Lassalle swore to help the countess, and

promised that he would carry on the struggle with her husband to the

bitter end. He took his two friends with him to Berlin, and then to

Dusseldorf, for they discovered that the Count von Hatzfeldt was not far

away. He was, in fact, at Aix-la-Chapelle with the baroness.

Lassalle, who had the scent of a greyhound, pried about until he

discovered that the count had given his mistress a legal document,

assigning to her a valuable piece of property which, in the ordinary

course of law, should be entailed on the boy, Paul. The countess at

once hastened to the place, broke into her husband's room, and secured a

promise that the deed would be destroyed.

No sooner, however, had she left him than he returned to the baroness,

and presently it was learned that the woman had set out for Cologne.

Lassalle and his two friends followed, to ascertain whether the document

had really been destroyed. The three reached a hotel at Cologne, where

the baroness had just arrived. Her luggage, in fact, was being carried

upstairs. One of Lassalle's friends opened a trunk, and, finding a

casket there, slipped it out to his companion, the judge.

Unfortunately, the latter had no means of hiding it, and when the

baroness's servant shouted for help, the casket was found in the

possession of the judge, who could give no plausible account of it. He

was, therefore, arrested, as were the other two. There was no evidence

against Lassalle; but his friends fared badly at the trial, one of them

being imprisoned for a year and the other for five years.

From this time Lassalle, with an almost quixotic devotion, gave himself

up to fighting the Countess von Hatzfeldt's battle against her husband

in the law-courts. The ablest advocates were pitted against him. The

most eloquent legal orators thundered at him and at his client, but he

met them all with a skill, an audacity, and a brilliant wit that won for

him verdict after verdict. The case went from the lower to the higher

tribunals, until, after nine years, it reached the last court of appeal,

where Lassalle wrested from his opponents a magnificently conclusive

victory--one that made the children of the countess absolutely safe.

It was a battle fought with the determination of a soldier, with the

gallantry of a knight errant, and the intellectual acumen of a learned

lawyer.

It is not surprising that many refuse to believe that Lassalle's feeling

toward the Countess von Hatzfeldt was a disinterested one. A scandalous

pamphlet, which was published in French, German, and Russian, and

written by one who styled herself "Sophie Solutzeff," did much to spread

the evil report concerning Lassalle. But the very openness and frankness

of the service which he did for the countess ought to make it clear that

his was the devotion of a youth drawn by an impulse into a strife where

there was nothing for him to gain, but everything to lose. He denounced

the brutality of her husband, but her letters to him always addressed

him as "my dear child." In writing to her he confides small love-secrets

and ephemeral flirtations--which he would scarcely have done, had the

countess viewed him with the eye of passion.

Lassalle was undoubtedly a man of impressionable heart, and had many

affairs such as Heine had; but they were not deep or lasting. That he

should have made a favorable impression on the women whom he met is

not surprising, because of his social standing, his chivalry, his

fine manners, and his handsome face. Mr. Clement Shorter has quoted an

official document which describes him as he was in his earlier years:

Ferdinand Lassalle, aged twenty-three, a civilian born at Breslau and

dwelling recently at Berlin. He stands five feet six inches in height,

has brown, curly hair, open forehead, brown eyebrows, dark blue eyes,

well proportioned nose and mouth, and rounded chin.

We ought not to be surprised, then, if he was a favorite in

drawing-rooms; if both men and women admired him; if Alexander von

Humboldt cried out with enthusiasm that he was a wunderkind, and if

there were more than Sophie Solutzeff to be jealous. But the rather

ungrateful remark of the Countess von Hatzfeldt certainly does not

represent him as he really was.

"You are without reason and judgment where women are concerned," she

snarled at him; but the sneer only shows that the woman who uttered it

was neither in love with him nor grateful to him.

In this paper we are not discussing Lassalle as a public agitator or

as a Socialist, but simply in his relations with the two women who most

seriously affected his life. The first was the Countess von Hatzfeldt,

who, as we have seen, occupied--or rather wasted--nine of the best years

of his life. Then came that profound and thrilling passion which ended

the career of a man who at thirty-nine had only just begun to be famous.

Lassalle had joined his intellectual forces with those of Heine and

Marx. He had obtained so great an influence over the masses of the

people as to alarm many a monarch, and at the same time to attract many

a statesman. Prince Bismarck, for example, cared nothing for Lassalle's

championship of popular rights, but sought his aid on finding that he

was an earnest advocate of German unity.

Furthermore, he was very far from resembling what in those early days

was regarded as the typical picture of a Socialist. There was nothing

frowzy about him; in his appearance he was elegance itself; his manners

were those of a prince, and his clothing was of the best. Seeing him in

a drawing-room, no one would mistake him for anything but a gentleman

and a man of parts. Hence it is not surprising that his second love was

one of the nobility, although her own people hated Lassalle as a bearer

of the red flag.

This girl was Helene von Donniges, the daughter of a Bavarian

diplomat. As a child she had traveled much, especially in Italy and in

Switzerland. She was very precocious, and lived her own life without

asking the direction of any one. At twelve years of age she had been

betrothed to an Italian of forty; but this dark and pedantic person

always displeased her, and soon afterward, when she met a young

Wallachian nobleman, one Yanko Racowitza, she was ready at once to

dismiss her Italian lover. Racowitza--young, a student, far from home,

and lacking friends--appealed at once to the girl's sympathy.

At that very time, in Berlin, where Helene was visiting her grandmother,

she was asked by a Prussian baron:

"Do you know Ferdinand Lassalle?"

The question came to her with a peculiar shock. She had never heard the

name, and yet the sound of it gave her a strange emotion. Baron Korff,

who perhaps took liberties because she was so young, went on to say:

"My dear lady, have you really never seen Lassalle? Why, you and he were

meant for each other!"

She felt ashamed to ask about him, but shortly after a gentleman who

knew her said:

"It is evident that you have a surprising degree of intellectual kinship

with Ferdinand Lassalle."

This so excited her curiosity that she asked her grandmother:

"Who is this person of whom they talk so much--this Ferdinand Lassalle?"

"Do not speak of him," replied her grandmother. "He is a shameless

demagogue!"

A little questioning brought to Helene all sorts of stories about

Lassalle--the Countess von Hatzfeldt, the stolen casket, the mysterious

pamphlet, the long battle in the courts--all of which excited her still

more. A friend offered to introduce her to the "shameless demagogue."

This introduction happened at a party, and it must have been an

extraordinary meeting. Seldom, it seemed, was there a better instance

of love at first sight, or of the true affinity of which Baron Korff

had spoken. In the midst of the public gathering they almost rushed into

each other's arms; they talked the free talk of acknowledged lovers; and

when she left, he called her love-names as he offered her his arm.

"Somehow it did not appear at all remarkable," she afterward declared.

"We seemed to be perfectly fitted to each other."

Nevertheless, nine months passed before they met again at a soiree. At

this time Lassaller gazing upon her, said:

"What would you do if I were sentenced to death?"

"I should wait until your head was severed," was her answer, "in order

that you might look upon your beloved to the last, and then--I should

take poison!"

Her answer delighted him, but he said that there was no danger. He

was greeted on every hand with great consideration; and it seemed not

unlikely that, in recognition of his influence with the people, he might

rise to some high position. The King of Prussia sympathized with him.

Heine called him the Messiah of the nineteenth century. When he passed

from city to city, the whole population turned out to do him honor.

Houses were wreathed; flowers were thrown in masses upon him, while the

streets were spanned with triumphal arches.

Worn out with the work and excitement attending the birth of the

Deutscher Arbeiterverein, or workmen's union, which he founded in 1863,

Lassalle fled for a time to Switzerland for rest. Helene heard of his

whereabouts, and hurried to him, with several friends. They met again

on July 25,1864, and discussed long and intensely the possibilities of

their marriage and the opposition of her parents, who would never permit

her to marry a man who was at once a Socialist and a Jew.

Then comes a pitiful story of the strife between Lassalle and the

Donniges family. Helene's father and mother indulged in vulgar words;

they spoke of Lassalle with contempt; they recalled all the scandals

that had been current ten years before, and forbade Helene ever to

mention the man's name again.

The next scene in the drama took place in Geneva, where the family

of Herr von Donniges had arrived, and where Helene's sister had been

betrothed to Count von Keyserling--a match which filled her mother with

intense joy. Her momentary friendliness tempted Helene to speak of her

unalterable love for Lassalle. Scarcely had the words been spoken when

her father and mother burst into abuse and denounced Lassalle as well as

herself.

She sent word of this to Lassalle, who was in a hotel near by. Scarcely

had he received her letter, when Helene herself appeared upon the scene,

and with all the intensity of which she was possessed, she begged him

to take her wherever he chose. She would go with him to France, to

Italy--to the ends of the earth!

What a situation, and yet how simple a one for a man of spirit! It is

strange to have to record that to Lassalle it seemed most difficult. He

felt that he or she, or both of them, had been compromised. Had she a

lady with her? Did she know any one in the neighborhood?

What an extraordinary answer! If she were compromised, all the more

ought he to have taken her in his arms and married her at once, instead

of quibbling and showing himself a prig.

Presently, her maid came in to tell them that a carriage was ready to

take them to the station, whence a train would start for Paris in a

quarter of an hour. Helene begged him with a feeling that was beginning

to be one of shame. Lassalle repelled her in words that were to stamp

him with a peculiar kind of cowardice.

Why should he have stopped to think of anything except the beautiful

woman who was at his feet, and to whom he had pledged his love? What did

he care for the petty diplomat who was her father, or the vulgar-tongued

woman who was her mother? He should have hurried her and the maid into

the train for Paris, and have forgotten everything in the world but his

Helene, glorious among women, who had left everything for him.

What was the sudden failure, the curious weakness, the paltriness of

spirit that came at the supreme moment into the heart of this hitherto

strong man? Here was the girl whom he loved, driven from her parents,

putting aside all question of appearances, and clinging to him with a

wild and glorious desire to give herself to him and to be all his own!

That was a thing worthy of a true woman. And he? He shrinks from her

and cowers and acts like a simpleton. His courage seems to have dribbled

through his finger-tips; he is no longer a man--he is a thing.

Out of all the multitude of Lassalle's former admirers, there is

scarcely one who has ventured to defend him, much less to laud him; and

when they have done so, their voices have had a sound of mockery that

dies away in their own throats.

Helene, on her side, had compromised herself, and even from the

view-point of her parents it was obvious that she ought to be married

immediately. Her father, however, confined her to her room until it

was understood that Lassalle had left Geneva. Then her family's

supplications, the statement that her sister's marriage and even her

father's position were in danger, led her to say that she would give up

Lassalle.

It mattered very little, in one way, for whatever he might have done,

Lassalle had killed, or at least had chilled, her love. His failure at

the moment of her great self-sacrifice had shown him to her as he really

was--no bold and gallant spirit, but a cringing, spiritless self-seeker.

She wrote him a formal letter to the effect that she had become

reconciled to her "betrothed bridegroom"; and they never met again.

Too late, Lassalle gave himself up to a great regret. He went about

trying to explain his action to his friends, but he could say nothing

that would ease his feeling and reinstate him in the eyes of the

romantic girl. In a frenzy, he sought out the Wallachian student, Yanko

von Racowitza, and challenged him to a mortal duel. He also challenged

Helene's father. Years before, he had on principle declined to fight a

duel; but now he went raving about as if he sought the death of every

one who knew him.

The duel was fought on August 28, 1864. There was some trouble about

pistols, and also about seconds; but finally the combatants left a

small hotel in a village near Geneva, and reached the dueling-grounds.

Lassalle was almost joyous in his manner. His old confidence had come

back to him; he meant to kill his man.

They took their stations high up among the hills. A few spectators saw

their figures outlined against the sky. The command to fire rang out,

and from both pistols gushed the flame and smoke.

A moment later, Lassalle was seen to sway and fall. A chance shot,

glancing from a wall, had struck him to the ground. He suffered

terribly, and nothing but opium in great doses could relieve his pain.

His wound was mortal, and three days later he died.

Long after, Helene admitted that she still loved Lassalle, and believed

that he would win the duel; but after the tragedy, the tenderness and

patience of Racowitza won her heart. She married him, but within a

year he died of consumption. Helene, being disowned by her relations,

prepared herself for the stage. She married a third husband named

Shevitch, who was then living in the United States, but who has since

made his home in Russia.

Let us say nothing of Lassalle's political career. Except for his work

as one of the early leaders of the liberal movement in Germany, it has

perished, and his name has been almost forgotten. As a lover, his story

stands out forever as a warning to the timid and the recreant. Let men

do what they will; but there is just one thing which no man is permitted

to do with safety in the sight of woman--and that is to play the craven.

THE STORY OF RACHEL

Outside of the English-speaking peoples the nineteenth century witnessed

the rise and triumphant progress of three great tragic actresses. The

first two of these--Rachel Felix and Sarah Bernhardt--were of Jewish

extraction; the third, Eleanor Duse, is Italian. All of them made their

way from pauperism to fame; but perhaps the rise of Rachel was the most

striking.

In the winter of 1821 a wretched peddler named Abraham--or Jacob--Felix

sought shelter at a dilapidated inn at Mumpf, a village in Switzerland,

not far from Basel. It was at the close of a stormy day, and his small

family had been toiling through the snow and sleet. The inn was the

lowest sort of hovel, and yet its proprietor felt that it was too good

for these vagabonds. He consented to receive them only when he learned

that the peddler's wife was to be delivered of a child. That very night

she became the mother of a girl, who was at first called Elise. So

unimportant was the advent of this little waif into the world that the

burgomaster of Mumpf thought it necessary to make an entry only of the

fact that a peddler's wife had given birth to a female child. There was

no mention of family or religion, nor was the record anything more than

a memorandum.

Under such circumstances was born a child who was destined to excite the

wonder of European courts--to startle and thrill and utterly amaze great

audiences by her dramatic genius. But for ten years the family--which

grew until it consisted of one son and five daughters--kept on its

wanderings through Switzerland and Germany. Finally, they settled

down in Lyons, where the mother opened a little shop for the sale of

second-hand clothing. The husband gave lessons in German whenever he

could find a pupil. The eldest daughter went about the cafes in the

evening, singing the songs that were then popular, while her small

sister, Rachel, collected coppers from those who had coppers to spare.

Although the family was barely able to sustain existence, the father and

mother were by no means as ignorant as their squalor would imply. The

peddler Felix had studied Hebrew theology in the hope of becoming a

rabbi. Failing this, he was always much interested in declamation,

public reading, and the recitation of poetry. He was, in his way, no

mean critic of actors and actresses. Long before she was ten years of

age little Rachel--who had changed her name from Elise--could render

with much feeling and neatness of eloquence bits from the best-known

French plays of the classic stage.

The children's mother, on her side, was sharp and practical to a high

degree. She saved and scrimped all through her period of adversity.

Later she was the banker of her family, and would never lend any of her

children a sou except on excellent security. However, this was all to

happen in after years.

When the child who was destined to be famous had reached her tenth

year she and her sisters made their way to Paris. For four years the

second-hand clothing-shop was continued; the father still taught German;

and the elder sister, Sarah, who had a golden voice, made the rounds of

the cafes in the lowest quarters of the capital, while Rachel passed the

wooden plate for coppers.

One evening in the year 1834 a gentleman named Morin, having been taken

out of his usual course by a matter of business, entered a BRASSERIE

for a cup of coffee. There he noted two girls, one of them singing with

remarkable sweetness, and the other silently following with the wooden

plate. M. Morin called to him the girl who sang and asked her why she

did not make her voice more profitable than by haunting the cafes at

night, where she was sure to meet with insults of the grossest kind.

"Why," said Sarah, "I haven't anybody to advise me what to do."

M. Morin gave her his address and said that he would arrange to have her

meet a friend who would be of great service to her. On the following

day he sent the two girls to a M. Choron, who was the head of the

Conservatory of Sacred Music. Choron had Sarah sing, and instantly

admitted her as a pupil, which meant that she would soon be enrolled

among the regular choristers. The beauty of her voice made a deep

impression on him.

Then he happened to notice the puny, meager child who was standing near

her sister. Turning to her, he said:

"And what can you do, little one?"

"I can recite poetry," was the reply.

"Oh, can you?" said he. "Please let me hear you."

Rachel readily consented. She had a peculiarly harsh, grating voice, so

that any but a very competent judge would have turned her away. But M.

Choron, whose experience was great, noted the correctness of her accent

and the feeling which made itself felt in every line. He accepted her as

well as her sister, but urged her to study elocution rather than music.

She must, indeed, have had an extraordinary power even at the age

of fourteen, since not merely her voice but her whole appearance was

against her. She was dressed in a short calico frock of a pattern

in which red was spotted with white. Her shoes were of coarse black

leather. Her hair was parted at the back of her head and hung down her

shoulders in two braids, framing the long, childish, and yet gnome-like

face, which was unusual in its gravity.

At first she was little thought of; but there came a time when she

astonished both her teachers and her companions by a recital which she

gave in public. The part was the narrative of Salema in the "Abufar"

of Ducis. It describes the agony of a mother who gives birth to a child

while dying of thirst amid the desert sands. Mme. de Barviera has left a

description of this recital, which it is worth while to quote:

While uttering the thrilling tale the thin face seemed to lengthen with

horror, the small, deep-set black eyes dilated with a fixed stare as

though she witnessed the harrowing scene; and the deep, guttural tones,

despite a slight Jewish accent, awoke a nameless terror in every one who

listened, carrying him through the imaginary woe with a strange feeling

of reality, not to be shaken, off as long as the sounds lasted.

Even yet, however, the time had not come for any conspicuous success.

The girl was still so puny in form, so monkey-like in face, and so

gratingly unpleasant in her tones that it needed time for her to attain

her full growth and to smooth away some of the discords in her peculiar

voice.

Three years later she appeared at the Gymnase in a regular debut; yet

even then only the experienced few appreciated her greatness. Among

these, however, were the well-known critic Jules Janin, the poet and

novelist Gauthier, and the actress Mlle. Mars. They saw that this lean,

raucous gutter-girl had within her gifts which would increase until she

would be first of all actresses on the French stage. Janin wrote some

lines which explain the secret of her greatness:

All the talent in the world, especially when continually applied to

the same dramatic works, will not satisfy continually the hearer. What

pleases in a great actor, as in all arts that appeal to the imagination,

is the unforeseen. When I am utterly ignorant of what is to happen,

when I do not know, when you yourself do not know what will be your

next gesture, your next look, what passion will possess your heart, what

outcry will burst from your terror-stricken soul, then, indeed, I am

willing to see you daily, for each day you will be new to me. To-day I

may blame, to-morrow praise. Yesterday you were all-powerful; to-morrow,

perhaps, you may hardly win from me a word of admiration. So much the

better, then, if you draw from me unexpected tears, if in my heart you

strike an unknown fiber; but tell me not of hearing night after night

great artists who every time present the exact counterpart of what they

were on the preceding one.

It was at the Theatre Francais that she won her final acceptance as the

greatest of all tragedians of her time. This was in her appearance in

Corneille's famous play of "Horace." She had now, in 1838, blazed forth

with a power that shook her no, less than it stirred the emotions and

the passions of her hearers. The princes of the royal blood came in

succession to see her. King Louis Philippe himself was at last tempted

by curiosity to be present. Gifts of money and jewels were showered on

her, and through sheer natural genius rather than through artifice she

was able to master a great audience and bend it to her will.

She had no easy life, this girl of eighteen years, for other actresses

carped at her, and she had had but little training. The sordid ways of

her old father excited a bitterness which was vented on the daughter.

She was still under age, and therefore was treated as a gold-mine by her

exacting parents. At the most she could play but twice a week. Her form

was frail and reed-like. She was threatened with a complaint of the

lungs; yet all this served to excite rather than to diminish public

interest in her. The newspapers published daily bulletins of her health,

and her door was besieged by anxious callers who wished to know her

condition. As for the greed of her parents, every one said she was

not to blame for that. And so she passed from poverty to riches, from

squalor to something like splendor, and from obscurity to fame.

Much has been written about her that is quite incorrect. She has been

credited with virtues which she never possessed; and, indeed, it may be

said with only too much truth that she possessed no virtues whatsoever.

On the stage while the inspiration lasted she was magnificent. Off

the stage she was sly, treacherous, capricious, greedy, ungrateful,

ignorant, and unchaste. With such an ancestry as she had, with such an

early childhood as had been hers, what else could one expect from her?

She and her old mother wrangled over money like two pickpockets. Some of

her best friends she treated shamefully. Her avarice was without bounds.

Some one said that it was not really avarice, but only a reaction from

generosity; but this seems an exceedingly subtle theory. It is possible

to give illustrations of it, however. She did, indeed, make many

presents with a lavish hand; yet, having made a present, she could

not rest until she got it back. The fact was so well known that her

associates took it for granted. The younger Dumas once received a

ring from her. Immediately he bowed low and returned it to her finger,

saying:

"Permit me, mademoiselle, to present it to you in my turn so as to save

you the embarrassment of asking for it."

Mr. Vandam relates among other anecdotes about her that one evening she

dined at the house of Comte Duchatel. The table was loaded with the

most magnificent flowers; but Rachel's keen eyes presently spied out the

great silver centerpiece. Immediately she began to admire the latter;

and the count, fascinated by her manners, said that he would be glad to

present it to her. She accepted it at once, but was rather fearful

lest he should change his mind. She had come to dinner in a cab, and

mentioned the fact. The count offered to send her home in his carriage.

"Yes, that will do admirably," said she. "There will be no danger of my

being robbed of your present, which I had better take with me."

"With pleasure, mademoiselle," replied the count. "But you will send me

back my carriage, won't you?"

Rachel had a curious way of asking every one she met for presents and

knickknacks, whether they were valuable or not. She knew how to make

them valuable.

Once in a studio she noticed a guitar hanging on the wall. She begged

for it very earnestly. As it was an old and almost worthless instrument,

it was given her. A little later it was reported that the dilapidated

guitar had been purchased by a well-known gentleman for a thousand

francs. The explanation soon followed. Rachel had declared that it was

the very guitar with which she used to earn her living as a child in the

streets of Paris. As a memento its value sprang from twenty francs to a

thousand.

It has always been a mystery what Rachel did with the great sums of

money which she made in various ways. She never was well dressed; and as

for her costumes on the stage, they were furnished by the theater. When

her effects were sold at public auction after her death her furniture

was worse than commonplace, and her pictures and ornaments were

worthless, except such as had been given her. She must have made

millions of francs, and yet she had very little to leave behind her.

Some say that her brother Raphael, who acted as her personal manager,

was a spendthrift; but if so, there are many reasons for thinking that

it was not his sister's money that he spent. Others say that Rachel

gambled in stocks, but there is no evidence of it. The only thing that

is certain is the fact that she was almost always in want of money. Her

mother, in all probability, managed to get hold of most of her earnings.

Much may have been lost through her caprices. One instance may be cited.

She had received an offer of three hundred thousand francs to act at St.

Petersburg, and was on her way there when she passed through Potsdam,

near Berlin. The King of Prussia was entertaining the Russian Czar. An

invitation was sent to her in the shape of a royal command to appear

before these monarchs and their guests. For some reason or other Rachel

absolutely refused. She would listen to no arguments. She would go on to

St. Petersburg without delay.

"But," it was said to her, "if you refuse to appear before the Czar at

Potsdam all the theaters in St. Petersburg will be closed against you,

because you will have insulted the emperor. In this way you will be

out the expenses of your journey and also the three hundred thousand

francs."

Rachel remained stubborn as before; but in about half an hour she

suddenly declared that she would recite before the two monarchs, which

she subsequently did, to the satisfaction of everybody. Some one said to

her not long after:

"I knew that you would do it. You weren't going to give up the three

hundred thousand francs and all your travelling expenses."

"You are quite wrong," returned Rachel, "though of course you will not

believe me. I did not care at all about the money and was going back to

France. It was something that I heard which made me change my mind. Do

you want to know what it was? Well, after all the arguments were over

some one informed me that the Czar Nicholas was the handsomest man

in Europe; and so I made up my mind that I would stay in Potsdam long

enough to see him."

This brings us to one phase of Rachel's nature which is rather sinister.

She was absolutely hard. She seemed to have no emotions except those

which she exhibited on the stage or the impish perversity which

irritated so many of those about her. She was in reality a product of

the gutter, able to assume a demure and modest air, but within coarse,

vulgar, and careless of decency. Yet the words of Jules Janin, which

have been quoted above, explain how she could be personally very

fascinating.

In all Rachel's career one can detect just a single strand of real

romance. It is one that makes us sorry for her, because it tells us that

her love was given where it never could be openly requited.

During the reign of Louis Philippe the Comte Alexandre Walewski held

many posts in the government. He was a son of the great Napoleon. His

mother was that Polish countess who had accepted Napoleon's love because

she hoped that he might set Poland free at her desire. But Napoleon was

never swerved from his well-calculated plans by the wish of any woman,

and after a time the Countess Walewska came to love him for himself. It

was she to whom he confided secrets which he would not reveal to his own

brothers. It was she who followed him to Elba in disguise. It was her

son who was Napoleon's son, and who afterward, under the Second Empire,

was made minister of fine arts, minister of foreign affairs, and,

finally, an imperial duke. Unlike the third Napoleon's natural

half-brother, the Duc de Moray, Walewski was a gentleman of honor and

fine feeling. He never used his relationship to secure advantages for

himself. He tried to live in a manner worthy of the great warrior who

was his father.

As minister of fine arts he had much to do with the subsidized theaters;

and in time he came to know Rachel. He was the son of one of the

greatest men who ever lived. She was the child of roving peddlers whose

early training had been in the slums of cities and amid the smoke of

bar-rooms and cafes. She was tainted in a thousand ways, while he was a

man of breeding and right principle. She was a wandering actress; he was

a great minister of state. What could there be between these two?

George Sand gave the explanation in an epigram which, like most

epigrams, is only partly true. She said:

"The count's company must prove very restful to Rachel."

What she meant was, of course, that Walewski's breeding, his dignity

and uprightness, might be regarded only as a temporary repose for the

impish, harsh-voiced, infinitely clever actress. Of course, it was all

this, but we should not take it in a mocking sense. Rachel looked up out

of her depths and gave her heart to this high-minded nobleman. He looked

down and lifted her, as it were, so that she could forget for the time

all the baseness and the brutality that she had known, that she might

put aside her forced vivacity and the self that was not in reality her

own.

It is pitiful to think of these two, separated by a great abyss which

could not be passed except at times and hours when each was free. But

theirs was, none the less, a meeting of two souls, strangely different

in many ways, and yet appealing to each other with a sincerity and truth

which neither could show elsewhere.

The end of poor Rachel was one of disappointment. Tempted by the fact

that Jenny Lind had made nearly two million francs by her visit to the

United States, Rachel followed her, but with slight success, as was to

be expected. Music is enjoyed by human beings everywhere, while French

classical plays, even though acted by a genius like Rachel, could be

rightly understood only by a French-speaking people. Thus it came about

that her visit to America was only moderately successful.

She returned to France, where the rising fame of Adelaide Ristori was

very bitter to Rachel, who had passed the zenith of her power. She went

to Egypt, but received no benefit, and in 1858 she died near Cannes. The

man who loved her, and whom she had loved in turn, heard of her death

with great emotion. He himself lived ten years longer, and died a little

while before the fall of the Second Empire.

END OF VOLUME THREE

DEAN SWIFT AND THE TWO ESTHERS

The story of Jonathan Swift and of the two women who gave their lives

for love of him is familiar to every student of English literature.

Swift himself, both in letters and in politics, stands out a conspicuous

figure in the reigns of King William III and Queen Anne. By writing

Gulliver's Travels he made himself immortal. The external facts of his

singular relations with two charming women are sufficiently well known;

but a definite explanation of these facts has never yet been given.

Swift held his tongue with a repellent taciturnity. No one ever dared

to question him. Whether the true solution belongs to the sphere of

psychology or of physiology is a question that remains unanswered.

But, as the case is one of the most puzzling in the annals of love, it

may be well to set forth the circumstances very briefly, to weigh the

theories that have already been advanced, and to suggest another.

Jonathan Swift was of Yorkshire stock, though he happened to be born in

Dublin, and thus is often spoken of as "the great Irish satirist," or

"the Irish dean." It was, in truth, his fate to spend much of his life

in Ireland, and to die there, near the cathedral where his remains now

rest; but in truth he hated Ireland and everything connected with it,

just as he hated Scotland and everything that was Scottish. He was an

Englishman to the core.

High-stomached, proud, obstinate, and over-mastering, independence was

the dream of his life. He would accept no favors, lest he should put

himself under obligation; and although he could give generously, and

even lavishly, he lived for the most part a miser's life, hoarding every

penny and halfpenny that he could. Whatever one may think of him, there

is no doubt that he was a very manly man. Too many of his portraits give

the impression of a sour, supercilious pedant; but the finest of them

all--that by Jervas--shows him as he must have been at his very prime,

with a face that was almost handsome, and a look of attractive humor

which strengthens rather than lessens the power of his brows and of the

large, lambent eyes beneath them.

At fifteen he entered Trinity College, in Dublin, where he read widely

but studied little, so that his degree was finally granted him only as

a special favor. At twenty-one he first visited England, and became

secretary to Sir William Temple, at Moor Park. Temple, after a

distinguished career in diplomacy, had retired to his fine country

estate in Surrey. He is remembered now for several things--for having

entertained Peter the Great of Russia; for having, while young, won

the affections of Dorothy Osborne, whose letters to him are charming in

their grace and archness; for having been the patron of Jonathan Swift;

and for fathering the young girl named Esther Johnson, a waif, born out

of wedlock, to whom Temple gave a place in his household.

When Swift first met her, Esther Johnson was only eight years old; and

part of his duties at Moor Park consisted in giving her what was then

an unusual education for a girl. She was, however, still a child, and

nothing serious could have passed between the raw youth and this little

girl who learned the lessons that he imposed upon her.

Such acquaintance as they had was rudely broken off. Temple, a man of

high position, treated Swift with an urbane condescension which drove

the young man's independent soul into a frenzy. He returned to Ireland,

where he was ordained a clergyman, and received a small parish at

Kilroot, near Belfast.

It was here that the love-note was first seriously heard in the

discordant music of Swift's career. A college friend of his named Waring

had a sister who was about the age of Swift, and whom he met quite

frequently at Kilroot. Not very much is known of this episode, but

there is evidence that Swift fell in love with the girl, whom he rather

romantically called "Varina."

This cannot be called a serious love-affair. Swift was lonely, and Jane

Waring was probably the only girl of refinement who lived near Kilroot.

Furthermore, she had inherited a small fortune, while Swift was

miserably poor, and had nothing to offer except the shadowy prospect of

future advancement in England. He was definitely refused by her; and it

was this, perhaps, that led him to resolve on going back to England and

making his peace with Sir William Temple.

On leaving, Swift wrote a passionate letter to Miss Waring--the only

true love-letter that remains to us of their correspondence. He protests

that he does not want Varina's fortune, and that he will wait until

he is in a position to marry her on equal terms. There is a smoldering

flame of jealousy running through the letter. Swift charges her with

being cold, affected, and willing to flirt with persons who are quite

beneath her.

Varina played no important part in Swift's larger life thereafter; but

something must be said of this affair in order to show, first of all,

that Swift's love for her was due only to proximity, and that when he

ceased to feel it he could be not only hard, but harsh. His fiery spirit

must have made a deep impression on Miss Waring; for though she at the

time refused him, she afterward remembered him, and tried to renew their

old relations. Indeed, no sooner had Swift been made rector of a larger

parish, than Varina let him know that she had changed her mind, and was

ready to marry him; but by this time Swift had lost all interest in her.

He wrote an answer which even his truest admirers have called brutal.

"Yes," he said in substance, "I will marry you, though you have treated

me vilely, and though you are living in a sort of social sink. I am

still poor, though you probably think otherwise. However, I will marry

you on certain conditions. First, you must be educated, so that you

can entertain me. Next, you must put up with all my whims and likes and

dislikes. Then you must live wherever I please. On these terms I will

take you, without reference to your looks or to your income. As to the

first, cleanliness is all that I require; as to the second, I only ask

that it be enough."

Such a letter as this was like a blow from a bludgeon. The insolence,

the contempt, and the hardness of it were such as no self-respecting

woman could endure. It put an end to their acquaintance, as Swift

undoubtedly intended it should do. He would have been less censurable

had he struck Varina with his fist or kicked her.

The true reason for Swift's utter change of heart is found, no doubt, in

the beginning of what was destined to be his long intimacy with Esther

Johnson. When Swift left Sir William Temple's in a huff, Esther had been

a mere schoolgirl. Now, on his return, she was fifteen years of age, and

seemed older. She had blossomed out into a very comely girl, vivacious,

clever, and physically well developed, with dark hair, sparkling eyes,

and features that were unusually regular and lovely.

For three years the two were close friends and intimate associates,

though it cannot be said that Swift ever made open love to her. To the

outward eye they were no more than fellow workers. Yet love does not

need the spoken word and the formal declaration to give it life and make

it deep and strong. Esther Johnson, to whom Swift gave the pet name of

"Stella," grew into the existence of this fiery, hold, and independent

genius. All that he did she knew. She was his confidante. As to his

writings, his hopes, and his enmities, she was the mistress of all his

secrets. For her, at last, no other man existed.

On Sir William Temple's death, Esther John son came into a small

fortune, though she now lost her home at Moor Park. Swift returned to

Ireland, and soon afterward he invited Stella to join him there.

Swift was now thirty-four years of age, and Stella a very attractive

girl of twenty. One might have expected that the two would marry, and

yet they did not do so. Every precaution was taken to avoid anything

like scandal. Stella was accompanied by a friend--a widow named Mrs.

Dingley--without whose presence, or that of some third person, Swift

never saw Esther Johnson. When Swift was absent, how ever, the two

ladies occupied his apartments; and Stella became more than ever

essential to his happiness.

When they were separated for any length of time Swift wrote to Stella

in a sort of baby-talk, which they called "the little language." It was

made up of curious abbreviations and childish words, growing more and

more complicated as the years went on. It is interesting to think of

this stern and often savage genius, who loved to hate, and whose hate

was almost less terrible than his love, babbling and prattling in little

half caressing sentences, as a mother might babble over her first child.

Pedantic writers have professed to find in Swift's use of this "little

language" the coming shadow of that insanity which struck him down in

his old age.

As it is, these letters are among the curiosities of amatory

correspondence. When Swift writes "oo" for "you," and "deelest" for

"dearest," and "vely" for "very," there is no need of an interpreter;

but "rettle" for "let ter," "dallars" for "girls," and "givar" for

"devil," are at first rather difficult to guess. Then there is a system

of abbreviating. "Md" means "my dear," "Ppt" means "poppet," and "Pdfr,"

with which Swift sometimes signed his epistles, "poor, dear, foolish

rogue."

The letters reveal how very closely the two were bound together, yet

still there was no talk of marriage. On one occasion, after they had

been together for three years in Ireland, Stella might have married

another man. This was a friend of Swift's, one Dr. Tisdall, who made

energetic love to the sweet-faced English girl. Tisdall accused Swift of

poisoning Stella's mind against him. Swift replied that such was not

the case. He said that no feelings of his own would ever lead him to

influence the girl if she preferred another.

It is quite sure, then, that Stella clung wholly to Swift, and cared

nothing for the proffered love of any other man. Thus through the years

the relations of the two remained unchanged, until in 1710 Swift

left Ireland and appeared as a very brilliant figure in the London

drawing-rooms of the great Tory leaders of the day.

He was now a man of mark, because of his ability as a controversialist.

He had learned the manners of the world, and he carried him self with an

air of power which impressed all those who met him. Among these persons

was a Miss Hester--or Esther--Vanhomrigh, the daughter of a rather

wealthy widow who was living in London at that time. Miss Vanhomrigh--a

name which she and her mother pronounced "Vanmeury"--was then seventeen

years of age, or twelve years younger than the patient Stella.

Esther Johnson, through her long acquaintance with Swift, and from

his confidence in her, had come to treat him almost as an intellectual

equal. She knew all his moods, some of which were very difficult, and

she bore them all; though when he was most tyrannous she became only

passive, waiting, with a woman's wisdom, for the tempest to blow over.

Miss Vanhomrigh, on the other hand, was one of those girls who, though

they have high spirit, take an almost voluptuous delight in yielding to

a spirit that is stronger still. This beautiful creature felt a positive

fascination in Swift's presence and his imperious manner. When his eyes

flashed, and his voice thundered out words of anger, she looked at him

with adoration, and bowed in a sort of ecstasy before him. If he chose

to accost a great lady with "Well, madam, are you as ill-natured and

disagreeable as when I met you last?" Esther Vanhomrigh thrilled at the

insolent audacity of the man. Her evident fondness for him exercised a

seductive influence over Swift.

As the two were thrown more and more together, the girl lost all her

self-control. Swift did not in any sense make love to her, though he

gave her the somewhat fanciful name of "Vanessa"; but she, driven on by

a high-strung, unbridled temperament, made open love to him. When he was

about to return to Ireland, there came one startling moment when Vanessa

flung herself into the arms of Swift, and amazed him by pouring out a

torrent of passionate endearments.

Swift seems to have been surprised. He did what he could to quiet her.

He told her that they were too unequal in years and fortune for anything

but friendship, and he offered to give her as much friendship as she

desired.

Doubtless he thought that, after returning to Ireland, he would not see

Vanessa any more. In this, however, he was mistaken. An ardent girl,

with a fortune of her own, was not to be kept from the man whom

absence only made her love the more. In addition, Swift carried on his

correspondence with her, which served to fan the flame and to increase

the sway that Swift had already acquired.

Vanessa wrote, and with every letter she burned and pined. Swift

replied, and each reply enhanced her yearning for him. Ere long,

Vanessa's mother died, and Vanessa herself hastened to Ireland and took

up her residence near Dublin. There, for years, was enacted this tragic

comedy--Esther Johnson was near Swift, and had all his confidence;

Esther Vanhomrigh was kept apart from him, while still receiving

missives from him, and, later, even visits.

It was at this time, after he had become dean of St. Patrick's

Cathedral, in Dublin, that Swift was married to Esther Johnson--for it

seems probable that the ceremony took place, though it was nothing more

than a form. They still saw each other only in the presence of a third

person. Nevertheless, some knowledge of their close relationship leaked

out. Stella had been jealous of her rival during the years that Swift

spent in London. Vanessa was now told that Swift was married to the

other woman, or that she was his mistress. Writhing with jealousy, she

wrote directly to Stella, and asked whether she was Dean Swift's wife.

In answer Stella replied that she was, and then she sent Vanessa's

letter to Swift himself.

All the fury of his nature was roused in him; and he was a man who could

be very terrible when angry. He might have remembered the intense love

which Vanessa bore for him, the humility with which she had accepted his

conditions, and, finally, the loneliness of this girl.

But Swift was utterly unsparing. No gleam of pity entered his heart as

he leaped upon a horse and galloped out to Marley Abbey, where she was

living--"his prominent eyes arched by jet-black brows and glaring with

the green fury of a cat's." Reaching the house, he dashed into it, with

something awful in his looks, made his way to Vanessa, threw her letter

down upon the table and, after giving her one frightful glare, turned on

his heel, and in a moment more was galloping back to Dublin.

The girl fell to the floor in an agony of terror and remorse. She was

taken to her room, and only three weeks afterward was carried forth,

having died literally of a broken heart.

Five years later, Stella also died, withering away a sacrifice to

what the world has called Swift's cruel heartlessness and egotism. His

greatest public triumphs came to him in his final years of melancholy

isolation; but in spite of the applause that greeted The Drapier Letters

and Gulliver's Travels, he brooded morbidly over his past life. At last

his powerful mind gave way, so that he died a victim to senile dementia.

By his directions his body was interred in the same coffin with

Stella's, in the cathedral of which he had been dean.

Such is the story of Dean Swift, and it has always suggested several

curious questions. Why, if he loved Stella, did he not marry her long

before? Why, when he married her, did he treat her still as if she were

not his wife? Why did he allow Vanessa's love to run like a scarlet

thread across the fabric of the other affection, which must have been so

strong?

Many answers have been given to these questions. That which was

formulated by Sir Walter Scott is a simple one, and has been generally

accepted. Scott believed that Swift was physically incapacitated for

marriage, and that he needed feminine sympathy, which he took where he

could get it, without feeling bound to give anything in return.

If Scott's explanation be the true one, it still leaves Swift exposed to

ignominy as a monster of ingratitude. Therefore, many of his biographers

have sought other explanations. No one can palliate his conduct toward

Vanessa; but Sir Leslie Stephen makes a plea for him with reference

to Stella. Sir Leslie points out that until Swift became dean of St.

Patrick's his income was far too small to marry on, and that after his

brilliant but disappointing three years in London, when his prospects of

advancement were ruined, he felt himself a broken man.

Furthermore, his health was always precarious, since he suffered from a

distressing illness which attacked him at intervals, rendering him both

deaf and giddy. The disease is now known as Meniere's disease, from its

classification by the French physician, Meniere, in 1861. Swift felt

that he lived in constant danger of some sudden stroke that would

deprive him either of life or reason; and his ultimate insanity makes it

appear that his forebodings were not wholly futile. Therefore, though he

married Stella, he kept the marriage secret, thus leaving her free, in

case of his demise, to marry as a maiden, and not to be regarded as a

widow.

Sir Leslie offers the further plea that, after all, Stella's life was

what she chose to make it. She enjoyed Swift's friendship, which she

preferred to the love of any other man.

Another view is that of Dr. Richard Garnett, who has discussed the

question with some subtlety. "Swift," says Dr. Garnett, "was by nature

devoid of passion. He was fully capable of friendship, but not of love.

The spiritual realm, whether of divine or earthly things, was a region

closed to him, where he never set foot." On the side of friendship

he must greatly have preferred Stella to Vanessa, and yet the latter

assailed him on his weakest side--on the side of his love of imperious

domination.

Vanessa hugged the fetters to which Stella merely submitted. Flattered

to excess by her surrender, yet conscious of his obligations and his

real preference, he could neither discard the one beauty nor desert the

other.

Therefore, he temporized with both of them, and when the choice was

forced upon him he madly struck down the woman for whom he cared the

less.

One may accept Dr. Garnett's theory with a somewhat altered conclusion.

It is not true, as a matter of recorded fact, that Swift was incapable

of passion, for when a boy at college he was sought out by various young

women, and he sought them out in turn. His fiery letter to Miss Waring

points to the same conclusion. When Esther Johnson began to love him he

was heart-free, yet unable, because of his straitened means, to marry.

But Esther Johnson always appealed more to his reason, his friendship,

and his comfort, than to his love, using the word in its material,

physical sense. This love was stirred in him by Vanessa. Yet when he

met Vanessa he had already gone too far with Esther Johnson to break the

bond which had so long united them, nor could he think of a life without

her, for she was to him his other self.

At the same time, his more romantic association with Vanessa roused

those instincts which he had scarcely known himself to be possessed of.

His position was, therefore, most embarrassing. He hoped to end it when

he left London and returned to Ireland; but fate was unkind to him in

this, because Vanessa followed him. He lacked the will to be frank

with her, and thus he stood a wretched, halting victim of his own dual

nature.

He was a clergyman, and at heart religious. He had also a sense of

honor, and both of these traits compelled him to remain true to Esther

Johnson. The terrible outbreak which brought about Vanessa's death was

probably the wild frenzy of a tortured soul. It recalls the picture of

some fierce animal brought at last to bay, and venting its own anguish

upon any object that is within reach of its fangs and claws.

No matter how the story may be told, it makes one shiver, for it is a

tragedy in which the three participants all meet their doom--one crushed

by a lightning-bolt of unreasoning anger, the other wasting away through

hope deferred; while the man whom the world will always hold responsible

was himself destined to end his years blind and sleepless, bequeathing

his fortune to a madhouse, and saying, with his last muttered breath:

"I am a fool!"

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY AND MARY GODWIN

A great deal has been said and written in favor of early marriage; and,

in a general way, early marriage may be an admirable thing. Young men

and young women who have no special gift of imagination, and who have

practically reached their full mental development at twenty-one or

twenty-two--or earlier, even in their teens--may marry safely; because

they are already what they will be. They are not going to experience any

growth upward and outward. Passing years simply bring them more closely

together, until they have settled down into a sort of domestic unity,

by which they think alike, act alike, and even gradually come to look

alike.

But early wedlock spells tragedy to the man or the woman of genius. In

their teens they have only begun to grow. What they will be ten years

hence, no one can prophesy. Therefore, to mate so early in life is

to insure almost certain storm and stress, and, in the end, domestic

wreckage.

As a rule, it is the man, and not the woman, who makes the false step;

because it is the man who elects to marry when he is still very young.

If he choose some ill-fitting, commonplace, and unresponsive nature to

match his own, it is he who is bound in the course of time to learn his

great mistake. When the splendid eagle shall have got his growth,

and shall begin to soar up into the vault of heaven, the poor little

barn-yard fowl that he once believed to be his equal seems very far away

in everything. He discovers that she is quite unable to follow him in

his towering flights.

The story of Percy Bysshe Shelley is a singular one. The circumstances

of his early marriage were strange. The breaking of his marriage-bond

was also strange. Shelley himself was an extraordinary creature. He was

blamed a great deal in his lifetime for what he did, and since then some

have echoed the reproach. Yet it would seem as if, at the very beginning

of his life, he was put into a false position against his will. Because

of this he was misunderstood until the end of his brief and brilliant

and erratic career.

SHELLEY AND MARY GODWIN

In 1792 the French Revolution burst into flame, the mob of Paris stormed

the Tuileries, the King of France was cast into a dungeon to await his

execution, and the wild sons of anarchy flung their gauntlet of defiance

into the face of Europe. In this tremendous year was born young Shelley;

and perhaps his nature represented the spirit of the time.

Certainly, neither from his father nor from his mother did he derive

that perpetual unrest and that frantic fondness for revolt which

blazed out in the poet when he was still a boy. His father, Mr. Timothy

Shelley, was a very usual, thick-headed, unromantic English squire. His

mother--a woman of much beauty, but of no exceptional traits--was the

daughter of another squire, and at the time of her marriage was simply

one of ten thousand fresh-faced, pleasant-spoken English country girls.

If we look for a strain of the romantic in Shelley's ancestry, we

shall have to find it in the person of his grandfather, who was a very

remarkable and powerful character.

This person, Bysshe Shelley by name, had in his youth been associated

with some mystery. He was not born in England, but in America--and

in those days the name "America" meant almost anything indefinite and

peculiar. However this might be, Bysshe Shelley, though a scion of

a good old English family, had wandered in strange lands, and it was

whispered that he had seen strange sights and done strange things.

According to one legend, he had been married in America, though no one

knew whether his wife was white or black, or how he had got rid of her.

He might have remained in America all his life, had not a small

inheritance fallen to his share. This brought him back to England, and

he soon found that England was in reality the place to make his fortune.

He was a man of magnificent physique. His rovings had given him ease

and grace, and the power which comes from a wide experience of life. He

could be extremely pleasing when he chose; and he soon won his way into

the good graces of a rich heiress, whom he married.

With her wealth he became an important personage, and consorted with

gentlemen and statesmen of influence, attaching himself particularly to

the Duke of Northumberland, by whose influence he was made a baronet.

When his rich wife died, Shelley married a still richer bride; and so

this man, who started out as a mere adventurer without a shilling to his

name, died in 1813, leaving more than a million dollars in cash, with

lands whose rent-roll yielded a hundred thousand dollars every year.

If any touch of the romantic which we find in Shelley is a matter

of heredity, we must trace it to this able, daring, restless, and

magnificent old grandfather, who was the beau ideal of an English

squire--the sort of squire who had added foreign graces to native

sturdiness. But young Shelley, the future poet, seemed scarcely to be

English at all. As a young boy he cared nothing for athletic sports.

He was given to much reading. He thought a good deal about abstractions

with which most schoolboys never concern themselves at all.

Consequently, both in private schools and afterward at Eton, he became

a sort of rebel against authority. He resisted the fagging-system. He

spoke contemptuously of physical prowess. He disliked anything that he

was obliged to do, and he rushed eagerly into whatever was forbidden.

Finally, when he was sent to University College, Oxford, he broke

all bounds. At a time when Tory England was aghast over the French

Revolution and its results, Shelley talked of liberty and equality on

all occasions. He made friends with an uncouth but able fellow student,

who bore the remarkable name of Thomas Jefferson Hogg--a name that seems

rampant with republicanism--and very soon he got himself expelled from

the university for publishing a little tract of an infidel character

called "A Defense of Atheism."

His expulsion for such a cause naturally shocked his father. It probably

disturbed Shelley himself; but, after all, it gave him some satisfaction

to be a martyr for the cause of free speech. He went to London with his

friend Hogg, and took lodgings there. He read omnivorously--Hogg says

as much as sixteen hours a day. He would walk through the most crowded

streets poring over a volume, while holding another under one arm.

His mind was full of fancies. He had begun what was afterward called

"his passion for reforming everything." He despised most of the laws of

England. He thought its Parliament ridiculous. He hated its religion. He

was particularly opposed to marriage. This last fact gives some point to

the circumstances which almost immediately confronted him.

Shelley was now about nineteen years old--an age at which most English

boys are emerging from the public schools, and are still in the

hobbledehoy stage of their formation. In a way, he was quite far from

boyish; yet in his knowledge of life he was little more than a mere

child. He knew nothing thoroughly--much less the ways of men and women.

He had no visible means of existence except a small allowance from

his father. His four sisters, who were at a boarding-school on Clapham

Common, used to save their pin-money and send it to their gifted brother

so that he might not actually starve. These sisters he used to call

upon from time to time, and through them he made the acquaintance of a

sixteen-year-old girl named Harriet Westbrook.

Harriet Westbrook was the daughter of a black-visaged keeper of a

coffee-house in Mount Street, called "Jew Westbrook," partly because of

his complexion, and partly because of his ability to retain what he

had made. He was, indeed, fairly well off, and had sent his younger

daughter, Harriet, to the school where Shelley's sisters studied.

Harriet Westbrook seems to have been a most precocious person. Any girl

of sixteen is, of course, a great deal older and more mature than a

youth of nineteen. In the present instance Harriet might have been

Shelley's senior by five years. There is no doubt that she fell in love

with him; but, having done so, she by no means acted in the shy and

timid way that would have been most natural to a very young girl in her

first love-affair. Having decided that she wanted him, she made up her

mind to get Mm at any cost, and her audacity was equaled only by his

simplicity. She was rather attractive in appearance, with abundant hair,

a plump figure, and a pink-and-white complexion. This description makes

of her a rather doll-like girl; but doll-like girls are just the sort to

attract an inexperienced young man who has yet to learn that beauty and

charm are quite distinct from prettiness, and infinitely superior to it.

In addition to her prettiness, Harriet Westbrook had a vivacious manner

and talked quite pleasingly. She was likewise not a bad listener;

and she would listen by the hour to Shelley in his rhapsodies about

chemistry, poetry, the failure of Christianity, the national debt, and

human liberty, all of which he jumbled up without much knowledge, but in

a lyric strain of impassioned eagerness which would probably have made

the multiplication-table thrilling.

For Shelley himself was a creature of extraordinary fascination, both

then and afterward. There are no likenesses of him that do him justice,

because they cannot convey that singular appeal which the man himself

made to almost every one who met him.

The eminent painter, Mulready, once said that Shelley was too beautiful

for portraiture; and yet the descriptions of him hardly seem to bear

this out. He was quite tall and slender, but he stooped so much as

to make him appear undersized. His head was very small-quite

disproportionately so; but this was counteracted to the eye by his

long and tumbled hair which, when excited, he would rub and twist in a

thousand different directions until it was actually bushy. His eyes and

mouth were his best features. The former were of a deep violet blue, and

when Shelley felt deeply moved they seemed luminous with a wonderful

and almost unearthly light. His mouth was finely chiseled, and might be

regarded as representing perfection.

One great defect he had, and this might well have overbalanced his

attractive face. The defect in question was his voice. One would have

expected to hear from him melodious sounds, and vocal tones both rich

and penetrating; but, as a matter of fact, his voice was shrill at the

very best, and became actually discordant and peacock-like in moments of

emotion.

Such, then, was Shelley, star-eyed, with the delicate complexion of a

girl, wonderfully mobile in his features, yet speaking in a voice high

pitched and almost raucous. For the rest, he arrayed himself with care

and in expensive clothing, even though he took no thought of neatness,

so that his garments were almost always rumpled and wrinkled from his

frequent writhings on couches and on the floor. Shelley had a strange

and almost primitive habit of rolling on the earth, and another of

thrusting his tousled head close up to the hottest fire in the house,

or of lying in the glaring sun when out of doors. It is related that he

composed one of his finest poems--"The Cenci"--in Italy, while stretched

out with face upturned to an almost tropical sun.

But such as he was, and though he was not yet famous, Harriet Westbrook,

the rosy-faced schoolgirl, fell in love with him, and rather plainly

let him know that she had done so. There are a thousand ways in which

a woman can convey this information without doing anything un-maidenly;

and of all these little arts Miss Westbrook was instinctively a

mistress.

She played upon Shelley's feelings by telling him that her father was

cruel to her, and that he contemplated actions still more cruel. There

is something absurdly comical about the grievance which she brought to

Shelley; but it is much more comical to note the tremendous seriousness

with which he took it. He wrote to his friend Hogg:

Her father has persecuted her in a most horrible way, by endeavoring

to compel her to go to school. She asked my advice; resistance was the

answer. At the same time I essayed to mollify Mr. Westbrook, in vain! I

advised her to resist. She wrote to say that resistance was useless, but

that she would fly with me and throw herself on my protection.

Some letters that have recently come to light show that there was a

dramatic scene between Harriet Westbrook and Shelley--a scene in the

course of which she threw her arms about his neck and wept upon his

shoulder. Here was a curious situation. Shelley was not at all in love

with her. He had explicitly declared this only a short time before. Yet

here was a pretty girl about to suffer the "horrible persecution" of

being sent to school, and finding no alternative save to "throw herself

on his protection"--in other words, to let him treat her as he would,

and to become his mistress.

The absurdity of the situation makes one smile. Common sense should have

led some one to box Harriet's ears and send her off to school without a

moment's hesitation; while as for Shelley, he should have been told how

ludicrous was the whole affair. But he was only nineteen, and she was

only sixteen, and the crisis seemed portentous. Nothing could be more

flattering to a young man's vanity than to have this girl cast herself

upon him for protection. It did not really matter that he had not

loved her hitherto, and that he was already half engaged to another

Harriet--his cousin, Miss Grove. He could not stop and reason with

himself. He must like a true knight rescue lovely girlhood from the

horrors of a school!

It is not unlikely that this whole affair was partly managed or

manipulated by the girl's father. Jew Westbrook knew that Shelley was

related to rich and titled people, and that he was certain, if he lived,

to become Sir Percy, and to be the heir of his grandfather's estates.

Hence it may be that Harriet's queer conduct was not wholly of her own

prompting.

In any case, however, it proved to be successful. Shelley's ardent and

impulsive nature could not bear to see a girl in tears and appealing

for his help. Hence, though in his heart she was very little to him, his

romantic nature gave up for her sake the affection that he had felt for

his cousin, his own disbelief in marriage, and finally the common sense

which ought to have told him not to marry any one on two hundred pounds

a year.

So the pair set off for Edinburgh by stagecoach. It was a weary and most

uncomfortable journey. When they reached the Scottish capital, they

were married by the Scottish law. Their money was all gone; but their

landlord, with a jovial sympathy for romance, let them have a room, and

treated them to a rather promiscuous wedding-banquet, in which every one

in the house participated.

Such is the story of Shelley's marriage, contracted at nineteen with a

girl of sixteen who most certainly lured him on against his own better

judgment and in the absence of any actual love.

The girl whom he had taken to himself was a well-meaning little thing.

She tried for a time to meet her husband's moods and to be a real

companion to him. But what could one expect from such a union? Shelley's

father withdrew the income which he had previously given. Jew Westbrook

refused to contribute anything, hoping, probably, that this course would

bring the Shelleys to the rescue. But as it was, the young pair drifted

about from place to place, getting very precarious supplies, running

deeper into debt each day, and finding less and less to admire in each

other.

Shelley took to laudanum. Harriet dropped her abstruse studies, which

she had taken up to please her husband, but which could only puzzle her

small brain. She soon developed some of the unpleasant traits of the

class to which she belonged. In this her sister Eliza--a hard and

grasping middle-aged woman--had her share. She set Harriet against her

husband, and made life less endurable for both. She was so much older

than the pair that she came in and ruled their household like a typical

stepmother.

A child was born, and Shelley very generously went through a second

form of marriage, so as to comply with the English law; but by this

time there was little hope of righting things again. Shelley was much

offended because Harriet would not nurse the child. He believed her hard

because she saw without emotion an operation performed upon the infant.

Finally, when Shelley at last came into a considerable sum of money,

Harriet and Eliza made no pretense of caring for anything except the

spending of it in "bonnet-shops" and on carriages and display. In

time--that is to say, in three years after their marriage--Harriet

left her husband and went to London and to Bath, prompted by her elder

sister.

This proved to be the end of an unfortunate marriage. Word was brought

to Shelley that his wife was no longer faithful to him. He, on his

side, had carried on a semi-sentimental platonic correspondence with a

schoolmistress, one Miss Hitchener. But until now his life had been

one great mistake--a life of restlessness, of unsatisfied longing, of a

desire that had no name. Then came the perhaps inevitable meeting with

the one whom he should have met before.

Shelley had taken a great interest in William Godwin, the writer and

radical philosopher. Godwin's household was a strange one. There was

Fanny Imlay, a child born out of wedlock, the offspring of Gilbert

Imlay, an American merchant, and of Mary Wollstonecraft, whom Godwin had

subsequently married. There was also a singularly striking girl who

then styled herself Mary Jane Clairmont, and who was afterward known

as Claire Clairmont, she and her brother being the early children of

Godwin's second wife.

One day in 1814, Shelley called on Godwin, and found there a beautiful

young girl in her seventeenth year, "with shapely golden head, a

face very pale and pure, a great forehead, earnest hazel eyes, and an

expression at once of sensibility and firmness about her delicately

curved lips." This was Mary Godwin--one who had inherited her mother's

power of mind and likewise her grace and sweetness.

From the very moment of their meeting Shelley and this girl were fated

to be joined together, and both of them were well aware of it. Each felt

the other's presence exert a magnetic thrill. Each listened eagerly

to what the other said. Each thought of nothing, and each cared for

nothing, in the other's absence. It was a great compelling elemental

force which drove the two together and bound them fast. Beside this

marvelous experience, how pale and pitiful and paltry seemed the

affectations of Harriet Westbrook!

In little more than a month from the time of their first meeting,

Shelley and Mary Godwin and Miss Clairmont left Godwin's house at four

o 'clock in the morning, and hurried across the Channel to Calais. They

wandered almost like vagabonds across France, eating black bread and

the coarsest fare, walking on the highways when they could not afford to

ride, and putting up with every possible inconvenience. Yet it is worth

noting that neither then nor at any other time did either Shelley or

Mary regret what they had done. To the very end of the poet's brief

career they were inseparable.

Later he was able to pension Harriet, who, being of a morbid

disposition, ended her life by drowning--not, it may be said, because

of grief for Shelley. It has been told that Fanny Imlay, Mary's sister,

likewise committed suicide because Shelley did not care for her, but

this has also been disproved. There was really nothing to mar the inner

happiness of the poet and the woman who, at the very end, became his

wife. Living, as they did, in Italy and Switzerland, they saw much of

their own countrymen, such as Landor and Leigh Hunt and Byron, to whose

fascinations poor Miss Clairmont yielded, and became the mother of the

little girl Allegra.

But there could have been no truer union than this of Shelley's with

the woman whom nature had intended for him. It was in his love-life, far

more than in his poetry, that he attained completeness. When he died

by drowning, in 1822, and his body was burned in the presence of Lord

Byron, he was truly mourned by the one whom he had only lately made his

wife. As a poet he never reached the same perfection; for his genius was

fitful and uncertain, rare in its flights, and mingled always with that

which disappoints.

As the lover and husband of Mary Godwin, there was nothing left to wish.

In his verse, however, the truest word concerning him will always be

that exquisite sentence of Matthew Arnold:

"A beautiful and ineffectual angel beating his luminous wings against

the void in vain."

THE STORY OF THE CARLYLES

To most persons, Tennyson was a remote and romantic figure. His homes in

the Isle of Wight and at Aldworth had a dignified seclusion about them

which was very appropriate to so great a poet, and invested him with a

certain awe through which the multitude rarely penetrated. As a matter

of fact, however, he was an excellent companion, a ready talker, and

gifted with so much wit that it is a pity that more of his sayings have

not been preserved to us.

One of the best known is that which was drawn from him after he and a

number of friends had been spending an hour in company with Mr. and Mrs.

Carlyle. The two Carlyles were unfortunately at their worst, and gave a

superb specimen of domestic "nagging." Each caught up whatever the other

said, and either turned it into ridicule, or tried to make the author of

it an object of contempt.

This was, of course, exceedingly uncomfortable for such strangers as

were present, and it certainly gave no pleasure to their friends. On

leaving the house, some one said to Tennyson:

"Isn't it a pity that such a couple ever married?"

"No, no," said Tennyson, with a sort of smile under his rough beard.

"It's much better that two people should be made unhappy than four."

The world has pretty nearly come around to the verdict of the poet

laureate. It is not probable that Thomas Carlyle would have made any

woman happy as his wife, or that Jane Baillie Welsh would have made any

man happy as her husband.

This sort of speculation would never have occurred had not Mr. Froude,

in the early eighties, given his story about the Carlyles to the world.

Carlyle went to his grave, an old man, highly honored, and with no

trail of gossip behind him. His wife had died some sixteen years before,

leaving a brilliant memory. The books of Mr. Froude seemed for a moment

to have desecrated the grave, and to have shed a sudden and sinister

light upon those who could not make the least defense for themselves.

For a moment, Carlyle seemed to have been a monster of harshness,

cruelty, and almost brutish feeling. On the other side, his wife took

on the color of an evil-speaking, evil-thinking shrew, who tormented the

life of her husband, and allowed herself to be possessed by some demon

of unrest and discontent, such as few women of her station are ever

known to suffer from.

Nor was it merely that the two were apparently ill-mated and unhappy

with each other. There were hints and innuendos which looked toward some

hidden cause for this unhappiness, and which aroused the curiosity of

every one. That they might be clearer, Froude afterward wrote a book,

bringing out more plainly--indeed, too plainly--his explanation of the

Carlyle family skeleton. A multitude of documents then came from every

quarter, and from almost every one who had known either of the Carlyles.

Perhaps the result to-day has been more injurious to Froude than to the

two Carlyles.

Many persons unjustly speak of Froude as having violated the confidence

of his friends in publishing the letters of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. They

take no heed of the fact that in doing this he was obeying Carlyle's

express wishes, left behind in writing, and often urged on Froude while

Carlyle was still alive. Whether or not Froude ought to have accepted

such a trust, one may perhaps hesitate to decide. That he did so is

probably because he felt that if he refused, Carlyle might commit the

same duty to another, who would discharge it with less delicacy and less

discretion.

As it is, the blame, if it rests upon any one, should rest upon Carlyle.

He collected the letters. He wrote the lines which burn and scorch with

self-reproach. It is he who pressed upon the reluctant Froude the duty

of printing and publishing a series of documents which, for the most

part, should never have been published at all, and which have done equal

harm to Carlyle, to his wife, and to Froude himself.

Now that everything has been written that is likely to be written by

those claiming to possess personal knowledge of the subject, let us

take up the volumes, and likewise the scattered fragments, and seek to

penetrate the mystery of the most ill-assorted couple known to modern

literature.

It is not necessary to bring to light, and in regular order, the

external history of Thomas Carlyle, or of Jane Baillie Welsh, who

married him. There is an extraordinary amount of rather fanciful gossip

about this marriage, and about the three persons who had to do with it.

Take first the principal figure, Thomas Carlyle. His life until that

time had been a good deal more than the life of an ordinary country-man.

Many persons represent him as a peasant; but he was descended from the

ancient lords of a Scottish manor. There was something in his eye, and

in the dominance of his nature, that made his lordly nature felt. Mr.

Froude notes that Carlyle's hand was very small and unusually well

shaped. Nor had his earliest appearance as a young man been commonplace,

in spite of the fact that his parents were illiterate, so that his

mother learned to read only after her sons had gone away to Edinburgh,

in order that she might be able to enjoy their letters.

At that time in Scotland, as in Puritan New England, in each family the

son who had the most notable "pairts" was sent to the university that

he might become a clergyman. If there were a second son, he became an

advocate or a doctor of medicine, while the sons of less distinction

seldom went beyond the parish school, but settled down as farmers,

horse-dealers, or whatever might happen to come their way.

In the case of Thomas Carlyle, nature marked him out for something

brilliant, whatever that might be. His quick sensibility, the way in

which he acquired every sort of learning, his command of logic, and,

withal, his swift, unerring gift of language, made it certain from the

very first that he must be sent to the university as soon as he had

finished school, and could afford to go.

At Edinburgh, where he matriculated in his fourteenth year, he

astonished every one by the enormous extent of his reading, and by

the firm hold he kept upon it. One hesitates to credit these so-called

reminiscences which tell how he absorbed mountains of Greek and immense

quantities of political economy and history and sociology and various

forms of metaphysics, as every Scotsman is bound to do. That he read all

night is a common story told of many a Scottish lad at college. We may

believe, however, that Carlyle studied and read as most of his fellow

students did, but far beyond them, in extent.

When he had completed about half of his divinity course, he assured

himself that he was not intended for the life of a clergyman. One who

reads his mocking sayings, or what seemed to be a clever string of jeers

directed against religion, might well think that Carlyle was throughout

his life an atheist, or an agnostic. He confessed to Irving that he did

not believe in the Christian religion, and it was vain to hope that he

ever would so believe.

Moreover, Carlyle had done something which was unusual at that time.

He had taught in several local schools; but presently he came back to

Edinburgh and openly made literature his profession. It was a daring

thing to do; but Carlyle had unbounded confidence in himself--the

confidence of a giant, striding forth into a forest, certain that he can

make his way by sheer strength through the tangled meshes and the

knotty branches that he knows will meet him and try to beat him back.

Furthermore, he knew how to live on very little; he was unmarried; and

he felt a certain ardor which beseemed his age and gifts.

Through the kindness of friends, he received some commissions to write

in various books of reference; and in 1824, when he was twenty-nine

years of age, he published a translation of Legendre's Geometry. In the

same year he published, in the London Magazine, his Life of Schiller,

and also his translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. This successful

attack upon the London periodicals and reviews led to a certain

complication with the other two characters in this story. It takes us to

Jane Welsh, and also to Edward Irving.

Irving was three years older than Carlyle. The two men were friends, and

both of them had been teaching in country schools, where both of them

had come to know Miss Welsh. Irving's seniority gave him a certain

prestige with the younger men, and naturally with Miss Welsh. He had

won honors at the university, and now, as assistant to the famous Dr.

Chalmers, he carried his silk robes in the jaunty fashion of one who has

just ceased to be an undergraduate. While studying, he met Miss Welsh at

Haddington, and there became her private instructor.

This girl was regarded in her native town as something of a personage.

To read what has been written of her, one might suppose that she was

almost a miracle of birth and breeding, and of intellect as well. As a

matter of fact, in the little town of Haddington she was simply prima

inter pares. Her father was the local doctor, and while she had a

comfortable home, and doubtless a chaise at her disposal, she was

very far from the "opulence" which Carlyle, looking up at her from his

lowlier surroundings, was accustomed to ascribe to her. She was, no

doubt, a very clever girl; and, judging from the portraits taken of her

at about this time, she was an exceedingly pretty one, with beautiful

eyes and an abundance of dark glossy hair.

Even then, however, Miss Welsh had traits which might have made it

certain that she would be much more agreeable as a friend than as a

wife. She had become an intellectuelle quite prematurely--at an age, in

fact, when she might better have been thinking of other things than the

inwardness of her soul, or the folly of religious belief.

Even as a young girl, she was beset by a desire to criticize and to

ridicule almost everything and every one that she encountered. It was

only when she met with something that she could not understand, or

some one who could do what she could not, that she became comparatively

humble. Unconsciously, her chief ambition was to be herself

distinguished, and to marry some one who could be more distinguished

still.

When she first met Edward Irving, she looked up to him as her superior

in many ways. He was a striking figure in her small world. He was known

in Edinburgh as likely to be a man of mark; and, of course, he had had

a careful training in many subjects of which she, as yet, knew very

little. Therefore, insensibly, she fell into a sort of admiration

for Irving--an admiration which might have been transmuted into love.

Irving, on his side, was taken by the young girl's beauty, her vivacity,

and the keenness of her intellect. That he did not at once become her

suitor is probably due to the fact that he had already engaged himself

to a Miss Martin, of whom not much is known.

It was about this time, however, that Carlyle became acquainted with

Miss Welsh. His abundant knowledge, his original and striking manner of

commenting on it, his almost gigantic intellectual power, came to her

as a revelation. Her studies with Irving were now interwoven with her

admiration for Carlyle.

Since Irving was a clergyman, and Miss Welsh had not the slightest

belief in any form of theology, there was comparatively little that

they had in common. On the other hand, when she saw the profundities of

Carlyle, she at once half feared, and was half fascinated. Let her speak

to him on any subject, and he would at once thunder forth some striking

truth, or it might be some puzzling paradox; but what he said could

never fail to interest her and to make her think. He had, too, an

infinite sense of humor, often whimsical and shot through with sarcasm.

It is no wonder that Miss Welsh was more and more infatuated with the

nature of Carlyle. If it was her conscious wish to marry a man whom she

could reverence as a master, where should she find him--in Irving or in

Carlyle?

Irving was a dreamer, a man who, she came to see, was thoroughly

one-sided, and whose interests lay in a different sphere from hers.

Carlyle, on the other hand, had already reached out beyond the little

Scottish capital, and had made his mark in the great world of London,

where men like De Quincey and Jeffrey thought it worth their while to

run a tilt with him. Then, too, there was the fascination of his talk,

in which Jane Welsh found a perpetual source of interest:

The English have never had an artist, except in poetry; no musician; no

painter. Purcell and Hogarth are not exceptions, or only such as confirm

the rule.

Is the true Scotchman the peasant and yeoman--chiefly the former?

Every living man is a visible mystery; he walks between two eternities

and two infinitudes. Were we not blind as molea we should value

our humanity at infinity, and our rank, influence and so forth--the

trappings of our humanity--at nothing. Say I am a man, and you say all.

Whether king or tinker is a mere appendix.

Understanding is to reason as the talent of a beaver--which can build

houses, and uses its tail for a trowel--to the genius of a prophet and

poet. Reason is all but extinct in this age; it can never be altogether

extinguished.

The devil has his elect.

Is anything more wonderful than another, if you consider it maturely?

I have seen no men rise from the dead; I have seen some thousands rise

from nothing. I have not force to fly into the sun, but I have force to

lift my hand, which is equally strange.

Is not every thought properly an inspiration? Or how is one thing more

inspired than another?

Examine by logic the import of thy life, and of all lives. What is it?

A making of meal into manure, and of manure into meal. To the cui bono

there is no answer from logic.

In many ways Jane Welsh found the difference of range between Carlyle

and Irving. At one time, she asked Irving about some German works, and

he was obliged to send her to Carlyle to solve her difficulties. Carlyle

knew German almost as well as if he had been born in Dresden; and

the full and almost overflowing way in which he answered her gave her

another impression of his potency. Thus she weighed the two men who

might become her lovers, and little by little she came to think of

Irving as partly shallow and partly narrow-minded, while Carlyle loomed

up more of a giant than before.

It is not probable that she was a woman who could love profoundly.

She thought too much about herself. She was too critical. She had too

intense an ambition for "showing off." I can imagine that in the end

she made her choice quite coolly. She was flattered by Carlyle's strong

preference for her. She was perhaps repelled by Irving's engagement to

another woman; yet at the time few persons thought that she had chosen

well.

Irving had now gone to London, and had become the pastor of the

Caledonian chapel in Hatton Garden. Within a year, by the extraordinary

power of his eloquence, which, was in a style peculiar to himself, he

had transformed an obscure little chapel into one which was crowded

by the rich and fashionable. His congregation built for him a handsome

edifice on Regent Square, and he became the leader of a new cult, which

looked to a second personal advent of Christ. He cared nothing for

the charges of heresy which were brought against him; and when he was

deposed his congregation followed him, and developed a new Christian

order, known as Irvingism.

Jane Welsh, in her musings, might rightfully have compared the two men

and the future which each could give her. Did she marry Irving, she was

certain of a life of ease in London, and an association with men and

women of fashion and celebrity, among whom she could show herself to be

the gifted woman that she was. Did she marry Carlyle, she must go with

him to a desolate, wind-beaten cottage, far away from any of the things

she cared for, working almost as a housemaid, having no company save

that of her husband, who was already a dyspeptic, and who was wont to

speak of feeling as if a rat were tearing out his stomach.

Who would have said that in going with Carlyle she had made the better

choice? Any one would have said it who knew the three--Irving, Carlyle,

and Jane Welsh.

She had the penetration to be certain that whatever Irving might possess

at present, it would be nothing in comparison to what Carlyle would have

in the coming future. She understood the limitations of Irving, but to

her keen mind the genius of Carlyle was unlimited; and she foresaw that,

after he had toiled and striven, he would come into his great reward,

which she would share. Irving might be the leader of a petty sect,

but Carlyle would be a man whose name must become known throughout the

world.

And so, in 1826, she had made her choice, and had become the bride of

the rough-spoken, domineering Scotsman who had to face the world with

nothing but his creative brain and his stubborn independence. She had

put aside all immediate thought of London and its lures; she was going

to cast in her lot with Carlyle's, largely as a matter of calculation,

and believing that she had made the better choice.

She was twenty-six and Carlyle was thirty-two when, after a brief

residence in Edinburgh, they went down to Craigenputtock. Froude has

described this place as the dreariest spot in the British dominions:

The nearest cottage is more than a mile from it; the elevation, seven

hundred feet above the sea, stunts the trees and limits the garden

produce; the house is gaunt and hungry-looking. It stands, with the

scanty fields attached, as an island in a sea of morass. The landscape

is unredeemed by grace or grandeur--mere undulating hills of grass and

heather, with peat bogs in the hollows between them.

Froude's grim description has been questioned by some; yet the actual

pictures that have been drawn of the place in later years make it

look bare, desolate, and uninviting. Mrs. Carlyle, who owned it as an

inheritance from her father, saw the place for the first time in March,

1828. She settled there in May; but May, in the Scottish hills, is

almost as repellent as winter. She herself shrank from the adventure

which she had proposed. It was her husband's notion, and her own, that

they should live there in practical solitude. He was to think and write,

and make for himself a beginning of real fame; while she was to hover

over him and watch his minor comforts.

It seemed to many of their friends that the project was quixotic to a

degree. Mrs. Carlyle delicate health, her weak chest, and the beginning

of a nervous disorder, made them think that she was unfit to dwell in

so wild and bleak a solitude. They felt, too, that Carlyle was too

much absorbed with his own thought to be trusted with the charge of a

high-spirited woman.

However, the decision had been made, and the newly married couple went

to Craigenputtock, with wagons that carried their household goods and

those of Carlyle's brother, Alexander, who lived in a cottage near by.

These were the two redeeming features of their lonely home--the presence

of Alexander Carlyle, and the fact that, although they had no servants

in the ordinary sense, there were several farmhands and a dairy-maid.

Before long there came a period of trouble, which is easily explained

by what has been already said. Carlyle, thinking and writing some of

the most beautiful things that he ever thought or wrote, could not make

allowance for his wife's high spirit and physical weakness. She, on her

side--nervous, fitful, and hard to please--thought herself a slave,

the servant of a harsh and brutal master. She screamed at him when her

nerves were too unstrung; and then, with a natural reaction, she called

herself "a devil who could never be good enough for him." But most of

her letters were harsh and filled with bitterness, and, no doubt, his

conduct to her was at times no better than her own.

But it was at Craigenputtock that he really did lay fast and firm the

road to fame. His wife's sharp tongue, and the gnawings of his own

dyspepsia, were lived down with true Scottish grimness. It was here that

he wrote some of his most penetrating and sympathetic essays, which were

published by the leading reviews of England and Scotland. Here, too, he

began to teach his countrymen the value of German literature.

The most remarkable of his productions was that strange work entitled

Sartor Resartus (1834), an extraordinary mixture of the sublime and the

grotesque. The book quivers and shakes with tragic pathos, with inward

agonies, with solemn aspirations, and with riotous humor.

In 1834, after six years at Craigenputtock, the Carlyles moved to

London, and took up their home in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, a far from

fashionable retreat, but one in which the comforts of life could be more

readily secured. It was there that Thomas Carlyle wrote what must

seem to us the most vivid of all his books, the History of the French

Revolution. For this he had read and thought for many years; parts of

it he had written in essays, and parts of it he had jotted down in

journals. But now it came forth, as some one has said, "a truth clad in

hell-fire," swirling amid clouds and flames and mist, a most wonderful

picture of the accumulated social and political falsehoods which

preceded the revolution, and which were swept away by a nemesis that was

the righteous judgment of God.

Carlyle never wrote so great a book as this. He had reached his middle

style, having passed the clarity of his early writings, and not having

yet reached the thunderous, strange-mouthed German expletives which

marred his later work. In the French Revolution he bursts forth, here

and there, into furious Gallic oaths and Gargantuan epithets; yet this

apocalypse of France seems more true than his hero-worshiping of old

Frederick of Prussia, or even of English Cromwell.

All these days Thomas Carlyle lived a life which was partly one

of seclusion and partly one of pleasure. At all times he and his

dark-haired wife had their own sets, and mingled with their own friends.

Jane had no means of discovering just whether she would have been

happier with Irving; for Irving died while she was still digging

potatoes and complaining of her lot at Craigenputtock.

However this may be, the Carlyles, man and wife, lived an existence that

was full of unhappiness and rancor. Jane Carlyle became an invalid, and

sought to allay her nervous sufferings with strong tea and tobacco and

morphin. When a nervous woman takes to morphin, it almost always means

that she becomes intensely jealous; and so it was with Jane Carlyle.

A shivering, palpitating, fiercely loyal bit of humanity, she took it

into her head that her husband was infatuated with Lady Ashburton, or

that Lady Ashburton was infatuated with him. She took to spying on them,

and at times, when her nerves were all a jangle, she would lie back

in her armchair and yell with paroxysms of anger. On the other hand,

Carlyle, eager to enjoy the world, sought relief from his household

cares, and sometimes stole away after a fashion that was hardly

guileless. He would leave false addresses at his house, and would dine

at other places than he had announced.

In 1866 Jane Carlyle suddenly died; and somehow, then, the conscience

of Thomas Carlyle became convinced that he had wronged the woman whom he

had really loved. His last fifteen years were spent in wretchedness and

despair. He felt that he had committed the unpardonable sin. He recalled

with anguish every moment of their early life at Craigenputtock--how she

had toiled for him, and waited upon him, and made herself a slave;

and how, later, she had given herself up entirely to him, while he had

thoughtlessly received the sacrifice, and trampled on it as on a bed of

flowers.

Of course, in all this he was intensely morbid, and the diary which he

wrote was no more sane and wholesome than the screamings with which his

wife had horrified her friends. But when he had grown to be a very old

man, he came to feel that this was all a sort of penance, and that the

selfishness of his past must be expiated in the future. Therefore, he

gave his diary to his friend, the historian, Froude, and urged him to

publish the letters and memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Mr. Froude,

with an eye to the reading world, readily did so, furnishing them with

abundant footnotes, which made Carlyle appear to the world as more or

less of a monster.

First, there was set forth the almost continual unhappiness of the pair.

In the second place, by hint, by innuendo, and sometimes by explicit

statement, there were given reasons to show why Carlyle made his wife

unhappy. Of course, his gnawing dyspepsia, which she strove with all her

might to drive away, was one of the first and greatest causes. But again

another cause of discontent was stated in the implication that Carlyle,

in his bursts of temper, actually abused his wife. In one passage there

is a hint that certain blue marks upon her arm were bruises, the result

of blows.

Most remarkable of all these accusations is that which has to do with

the relations of Carlyle and Lady Ashburton. There is no doubt that Jane

Carlyle disliked this brilliant woman, and came to have dark suspicions

concerning her. At first, it was only a sort of social jealousy. Lady

Ashburton was quite as clever a talker as Mrs. Carlyle, and she had a

prestige which brought her more admiration.

Then, by degrees, as Jane Carlyle's mind began to wane, she transferred

her jealousy to her husband himself. She hated to be out-shone, and

now, in some misguided fashion, it came into her head that Carlyle had

surrendered to Lady Ashburton his own attention to his wife, and had

fallen in love with her brilliant rival.

On one occasion, she declared that Lady Ashburton had thrown herself at

Carlyle's feet, but that Carlyle had acted like a man of honor, while

Lord Ashburton, knowing all the facts, had passed them over, and had

retained his friendship with Carlyle.

Now, when Froude came to write My Relations with Carlyle, there were

those who were very eager to furnish him with every sort of gossip.

The greatest source of scandal upon which he drew was a woman named

Geraldine Jewsbury, a curious neurotic creature, who had seen much of

the late Mrs. Carlyle, but who had an almost morbid love of offensive

tattle. Froude describes himself as a witness for six years, at Cheyne

Row, "of the enactment of a tragedy as stern and real as the story of

Oedipus." According to his own account:

I stood by, consenting to the slow martyrdom of a woman whom I have

described as bright and sparkling and tender, and I uttered no word

of remonstrance. I saw her involved in a perpetual blizzard, and did

nothing to shelter her.

But it is not upon his own observations that Froude relies for his most

sinister evidence against his friend. To him comes Miss Jewsbury with

a lengthy tale to tell. It is well to know what Mrs. Carlyle thought of

this lady. She wrote:

It is her besetting sin, and her trade of novelist has aggravated

it--the desire of feeling and producing violent emotions.... Geraldine

has one besetting weakness; she is never happy unless she has a grande

passion on hand.

There were strange manifestations on the part of Miss Jewsbury toward

Mrs. Carlyle. At one time, when Mrs. Carlyle had shown some preference

for another woman, it led to a wild outburst of what Miss Jewsbury

herself called "tiger jealousy." There are many other instances of

violent emotions in her letters to Mrs. Carlyle. They are often highly

charged and erotic. It is unusual for a woman of thirty-two to write to

a woman friend, who is forty-three years of age, in these words, which

Miss Jewsbury used in writing to Mrs. Carlyle:

You are never out of my thoughts one hour together. I think of you much

more than if you were my lover. I cannot express my feelings, even to

you--vague, undefined yearnings to be yours in some way.

Mrs. Carlyle was accustomed, in private, to speak of Miss Jewsbury as

"Miss Gooseberry," while Carlyle himself said that she was simply "a

flimsy tatter of a creature." But it is on the testimony of this

one woman, who was so morbid and excitable, that the most serious

accusations against Carlyle rest. She knew that Froude was writing a

volume about Mrs. Carlyle, and she rushed to him, eager to furnish any

narratives, however strange, improbable, or salacious they might be.

Thus she is the sponsor of the Ashburton story, in which there is

nothing whatsoever. Some of the letters which Lady Ashburton wrote

Carlyle have been destroyed, but not before her husband had perused

them. Another set of letters had never been read by Lord Ashburton at

all, and they are still preserved--friendly, harmless, usual letters.

Lord Ashburton always invited Carlyle to his house, and there is no

reason to think that the Scottish philosopher wronged him.

There is much more to be said about the charge that Mrs. Carlyle

suffered from personal abuse; yet when we examine the facts, the

evidence resolves itself into practically nothing. That, in his

self-absorption, he allowed her to Sending Completed Page, Please

Wait... overflowed toward a man who must have been a manly, loving

lover. She calls him by the name by which he called her--a homely

Scottish name.

GOODY, GOODY, DEAR GOODY:

You said you would weary, and I do hope in my heart you are wearying. It

will be so sweet to make it all up to you in kisses when I return. You

will take me and hear all my bits of experiences, and your heart will

beat when you find how I have longed to return to you. Darling, dearest,

loveliest, the Lord bless you! I think of you every hour, every moment.

I love you and admire you, like--like anything. Oh, if I was there,

I could put my arms so close about your neck, and hush you into the

softest sleep you have had since I went away. Good night. Dream of me. I

am ever YOUR OWN GOODY.

It seems most fitting to remember Thomas Carlyle as a man of strength,

of honor, and of intellect; and his wife as one who was sorely tried,

but who came out of her suffering into the arms of death, purified and

calm and worthy to be remembered by her husband's side.

THE STORY OF THE HUGOS

Victor Hugo, after all criticisms have been made, stands as a literary

colossus. He had imaginative power which makes his finest passages

fairly crash upon the reader's brain like blasting thunderbolts. His

novels, even when translated, are read and reread by people of every

degree of education. There is something vast, something almost Titanic,

about the grandeur and gorgeousness of his fancy. His prose resembles

the sonorous blare of an immense military band. Readers of English care

less for his poetry; yet in his verse one can find another phase of his

intellect. He could write charmingly, in exquisite cadences, poems

for lovers and for little children. His gifts were varied, and he knew

thoroughly the life and thought of his own countrymen; and, therefore,

in his later days he was almost deified by them.

At the same time, there were defects in his intellect and character

which are perceptible in what he wrote, as well as in what he did. He

had the Gallic wit in great measure, but he was absolutely devoid of any

sense of humor. This is why, in both his prose and his poetry, his most

tremendous pages often come perilously near to bombast; and this is why,

again, as a man, his vanity was almost as great as his genius. He had

good reason to be vain, and yet, if he had possessed a gleam of humor,

he would never have allowed his egoism to make him arrogant. As it was,

he felt himself exalted above other mortals. Whatever he did or said or

wrote was right because he did it or said it or wrote it.

This often showed itself in rather whimsical ways. Thus, after he had

published the first edition of his novel, The Man Who Laughs, an English

gentleman called upon him, and, after some courteous compliments,

suggested that in subsequent editions the name of an English peer who

figures in the book should be changed from Tom Jim-Jack.

"For," said the Englishman, "Tom Jim-Jack is a name that could not

possibly belong to an English noble, or, indeed, to any Englishman. The

presence of it in your powerful story makes it seem to English readers a

little grotesque."

Victor Hugo drew himself up with an air of high disdain.

"Who are you?" asked he.

"I am an Englishman," was the answer, "and naturally I know what names

are possible in English."

Hugo drew himself up still higher, and on his face there was a smile of

utter contempt.

"Yes," said he. "You are an Englishman; but I--I am Victor Hugo."

In another book Hugo had spoken of the Scottish bagpipes as "bugpipes."

This gave some offense to his Scottish admirers. A great many persons

told him that the word was "bagpipes," and not "bugpipes." But he

replied with irritable obstinacy:

"I am Victor Hugo; and if I choose to write it 'bugpipes,' it IS

'bugpipes.' It is anything that I prefer to make it. It is so, because I

call it so!"

So, Victor Hugo became a violent republican, because he did not wish

France to be an empire or a kingdom, in which an emperor or a king

would be his superior in rank. He always spoke of Napoleon III as "M.

Bonaparte." He refused to call upon the gentle-mannered Emperor of

Brazil, because he was an emperor; although Dom Pedro expressed an

earnest desire to meet the poet.

When the German army was besieging Paris, Hugo proposed to fight a duel

with the King of Prussia, and to have the result of it settle the war;

"for," said he, "the King of Prussia is a great king, but I am Victor

Hugo, the great poet. We are, therefore, equal."

In spite, however, of his ardent republicanism, he was very fond of

speaking of his own noble descent. Again and again he styled himself "a

peer of France;" and he and his family made frequent allusions to the

knights and bishops and counselors of state with whom he claimed an

ancestral relation. This was more than inconsistent. It was somewhat

ludicrous; because Victor Hugo's ancestry was by no means noble. The

Hugos of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were not in any

way related to the poet's family, which was eminently honest and

respectable, but by no means one of distinction. His grandfather was

a carpenter. One of his aunts was the wife of a baker, another of a

barber, while the third earned her living as a provincial dressmaker.

If the poet had been less vain and more sincerely democratic, he would

have been proud to think that he sprang from good, sound, sturdy

stock, and would have laughed at titles. As it was, he jeered at

all pretensions of rank in other men, while he claimed for himself

distinctions that were not really his. His father was a soldier who rose

from the ranks until, under Napoleon, he reached the grade of general.

His mother was the daughter of a ship owner in Nantes.

Victor Hugo was born in February, 1802, during the Napoleonic wars, and

his early years were spent among the camps and within the sound of the

cannon-thunder. It was fitting that he should have been born and reared

in an age of upheaval, revolt, and battle. He was essentially the

laureate of revolt; and in some of his novels--as in Ninety-Three--the

drum and the trumpet roll and ring through every chapter.

The present paper has, of course, nothing to do with Hugo's public life;

yet it is necessary to remember the complicated nature of the man--all

his power, all his sweetness of disposition, and likewise all his vanity

and his eccentricities. We must remember, also, that he was French, so

that his story may be interpreted in the light of the French character.

At the age of fifteen he was domiciled in Paris, and though still a

schoolboy and destined for the study of law, he dreamed only of poetry

and of literature. He received honorable mention from the French

Academy in 1817, and in the following year took prizes in a poetical

competition. At seventeen he began the publication of a literary

journal, which survived until 1821. His astonishing energy became

evident in the many publications which he put forth in these boyish

days. He began to become known. Although poetry, then as now, was not

very profitable even when it was admired, one of his slender volumes

brought him the sum of seven hundred francs, which seemed to him

not only a fortune in itself, but the forerunner of still greater

prosperity.

It was at this time, while still only twenty years of age, that he met

a young girl of eighteen with whom he fell rather tempestuously in love.

Her name was Adele Foucher, and she was the daughter of a clerk in the

War Office. When one is very young and also a poet, it takes very little

to feed the flame of passion. Victor Hugo was often a guest at the

apartments of M. Foucher, where he was received by that gentleman

and his family. French etiquette, of course, forbade any direct

communication between the visitor and Adele. She was still a very young

girl, and was supposed to take no share in the conversation. Therefore,

while the others talked, she sat demurely by the fireside and sewed.

Her dark eyes and abundant hair, her grace of manner, and the picture

which she made as the firelight played about her, kindled a flame in the

susceptible heart of Victor Hugo. Though he could not speak to her,

he at least could look at her; and, before long, his share in the

conversation was very slight. This was set down, at first, to his

absent-mindedness; but looks can be as eloquent as spoken words. Mme.

Foucher, with a woman's keen intelligence, noted the adoring gaze of

Victor Hugo as he silently watched her daughter. The young Adele herself

was no less intuitive than her mother. It was very well understood,

in the course of a few months, that Victor Hugo was in love with Adele

Foucher.

Her father and mother took counsel about the matter, and Hugo himself,

in a burst of lyrical eloquence, confessed that he adored Adele and

wished to marry her. Her parents naturally objected. The girl was but

a child. She had no dowry, nor had Victor Hugo any settled income. They

were not to think of marriage. But when did a common-sense decision,

such as this, ever separate a man and a woman who have felt the

thrill of first love! Victor Hugo was insistent. With his supreme

self-confidence, he declared that he was bound to be successful, and

that in a very short time he would be illustrious. Adele, on her side,

created "an atmosphere" at home by weeping frequently, and by going

about with hollow eyes and wistful looks.

The Foucher family removed from Paris to a country town. Victor Hugo

immediately followed them. Fortunately for him, his poems had attracted

the attention of Louis XVIII, who was flattered by some of the verses.

He sent Hugo five hundred francs for an ode, and soon afterward settled

upon him a pension of a thousand francs. Here at least was an income--a

very small one, to be sure, but still an income. Perhaps Adele's father

was impressed not so much by the actual money as by the evidence of the

royal favor. At any rate, he withdrew his opposition, and the two young

people were married in October, 1822--both of them being under age,

unformed, and immature.

Their story is another warning against too early marriage. It is true

that they lived together until Mme. Hugo's death--a married life of

forty-six years--yet their story presents phases which would have made

this impossible had they not been French.

For a time, Hugo devoted all his energies to work. The record of his

steady upward progress is a part of the history of literature, and need

not be repeated here. The poet and his wife were soon able to leave the

latter's family abode, and to set up their own household god in a home

which was their own. Around them there were gathered, in a sort of

salon, all the best-known writers of the day--dramatists, critics,

poets, and romancers. The Hugos knew everybody.

Unfortunately, one of their visitors cast into their new life a drop of

corroding bitterness. This intruder was Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve,

a man two years younger than Victor Hugo, and one who blended learning,

imagination, and a gift of critical analysis. Sainte-Beuve is to-day

best remembered as a critic, and he was perhaps the greatest critic ever

known in France. But in 1830 he was a slender, insinuating youth who

cultivated a gift for sensuous and somewhat morbid poetry.

He had won Victor Hugo's friendship by writing an enthusiastic notice of

Hugo's dramatic works. Hugo, in turn, styled Sainte-Beuve "an eagle,"

"a blazing star," and paid him other compliments no less gorgeous and

Hugoesque. But in truth, if Sainte-Beuve frequented the Hugo salon, it

was less because of his admiration for the poet than from his desire to

win the love of the poet's wife.

It is quite impossible to say how far he attracted the serious attention

of Adele Hugo. Sainte-Beuve represents a curious type, which is far more

common in France and Italy than in the countries of the north. Human

nature is not very different in cultivated circles anywhere. Man loves,

and seeks to win the object of his love; or, as the old English proverb

has it:

It's a man's part to try,

And a woman's to deny.

But only in the Latin countries do men who have tried make their

attempts public, and seek to produce an impression that they have been

successful, and that the woman has not denied. This sort of man, in

English-speaking lands, is set down simply as a cad, and is excluded

from people's houses; but in some other countries the thing is regarded

with a certain amount of toleration. We see it in the two books written

respectively by Alfred de Musset and George Sand. We have seen it still

later in our own times, in that strange and half-repulsive story in

which the Italian novelist and poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio, under a very

thin disguise, revealed his relations with the famous actress, Eleanora

Duse. Anglo-Saxons thrust such books aside with a feeling of disgust for

the man who could so betray a sacred confidence and perhaps exaggerate

a simple indiscretion into actual guilt. But it is not so in France and

Italy. And this is precisely what Sainte-Beuve attempted.

Dr. George McLean Harper, in his lately published study of Sainte-Beuve,

has summed the matter up admirably, in speaking of The Book of Love:

He had the vein of emotional self-disclosure, the vein of romantic or

sentimental confession. This last was not a rich lode, and so he was at

pains to charge it secretly with ore which he exhumed gloatingly, but

which was really base metal. The impulse that led him along this false

route was partly ambition, partly sensuality. Many a worse man would

have been restrained by self-respect and good taste. And no man with a

sense of honor would have permitted The Book of Love to see the light--a

small collection of verses recording his passion for Mme. Hugo, and

designed to implicate her.

He left two hundred and five printed copies of this book to be

distributed after his death. A virulent enemy of Sainte-Beuve was not

too expressive when he declared that its purpose was "to leave on the

life of this woman the gleaming and slimy trace which the passage of a

snail leaves on a rose." Abominable in either case, whether or not the

implication was unfounded, Sainte-Beuve's numerous innuendoes in regard

to Mme. Hugo are an indelible stain on his memory, and his infamy not

only cost him his most precious friendships, but crippled him in every

high endeavor.

How monstrous was this violation of both friendship and love may be seen

in the following quotation from his writings:

In that inevitable hour, when the gloomy tempest and the jealous gulf

shall roll over our heads, a sealed bottle, belched forth from the

abyss, will render immortal our two names, their close alliance, and our

double memory aspiring after union.

Whether or not Mme. Hugo's relations with Sainte-Beuve justified the

latter even in thinking such thoughts as these, one need not inquire too

minutely. Evidently, though, Victor Hugo could no longer be the friend

of the man who almost openly boasted that he had dishonored him. There

exist some sharp letters which passed between Hugo and Sainte-Beuve.

Their intimacy was ended.

But there was something more serious than this. Sainte-Beuve had in fact

succeeded in leaving a taint upon the name of Victor Hugo's wife. That

Hugo did not repudiate her makes it fairly plain that she was innocent;

yet a high-spirited, sensitive soul like Hugo's could never forget that

in the world's eye she was compromised. The two still lived together

as before; but now the poet felt himself released from the strict

obligations of the marriage-bond.

It may perhaps be doubted whether he would in any case have remained

faithful all his life. He was, as Mr. H.W. Wack well says, "a man of

powerful sensations, physically as well as mentally. Hugo pursued every

opportunity for new work, new sensations, fresh emotion. He desired to

absorb as much on life's eager forward way as his great nature craved.

His range in all things--mental, physical, and spiritual--was so far

beyond the ordinary that the gage of average cannot be applied to him.

The cavil of the moralist did not disturb him."

Hence, it is not improbable that Victor Hugo might have broken through

the bonds of marital fidelity, even had Sainte-Beuve never written his

abnormal poems; but certainly these poems hastened a result which may or

may not have been otherwise inevitable. Hugo no longer turned wholly

to the dark-haired, dark-eyed Adele as summing up for him the whole of

womanhood. A veil was drawn, as it were, from before his eyes, and he

looked on other women and found them beautiful.

It was in 1833, soon after Hugo's play "Lucrece Borgia" had been

accepted for production, that a lady called one morning at Hugo's house

in the Place Royale. She was then between twenty and thirty years of

age, slight of figure, winsome in her bearing, and one who knew the arts

which appeal to men. For she was no inexperienced ingenue. The name upon

her visiting-card was "Mme. Drouet"; and by this name she had been known

in Paris as a clever and somewhat gifted actress. Theophile Gautier,

whose cult was the worship of physical beauty, wrote in almost lyric

prose of her seductive charm.

At nineteen, after she had been cast upon the world, dowered with that

terrible combination, poverty and beauty, she had lived openly with a

sculptor named Pradier. This has a certain importance in the history

of French art. Pradier had received a commission to execute a statue

representing Strasburg--the statue which stands to-day in the Place

de la Concorde, and which patriotic Frenchmen and Frenchwomen drape in

mourning and half bury in immortelles, in memory of that city of Alsace

which so long was French, but which to-day is German--one of Germany's

great prizes taken in the war of 1870.

Five years before her meeting with Hugo, Pradier had rather brutally

severed his connection with her, and she had accepted the protection

of a Russian nobleman. At this time she was known by her real

name--Julienne Josephine Gauvin; but having gone upon the stage, she

assumed the appellation by which she was thereafter known, that of

Juliette Drouet.

Her visit to Hugo was for the purpose of asking him to secure for her

a part in his forth-coming play. The dramatist was willing, but

unfortunately all the major characters had been provided for, and he

was able to offer her only the minor one of the Princesse Negroni. The

charming deference with which she accepted the offered part attracted

Hugo's attention. Such amiability is very rare in actresses who have had

engagements at the best theaters. He resolved to see her again; and he

did so, time after time, until he was thoroughly captivated by her.

She knew her value, and as yet was by no means infatuated with him.

At first he was to her simply a means of getting on in her

profession--simply another influential acquaintance. Yet she brought to

bear upon him the arts at her command, her beauty and her sympathy, and,

last of all, her passionate abandonment.

Hugo was overwhelmed by her. He found that she was in debt, and

he managed to see that her debts were paid. He secured her other

engagements at the theater, though she was less successful as an actress

after she knew him. There came, for a time, a short break in their

relations; for, partly out of need, she returned to her Russian

nobleman, or at least admitted him to a menage a trois. Hugo underwent

for a second time a great disillusionment. Nevertheless, he was not too

proud to return to her and to beg her not to be unfaithful any more.

Touched by his tears, and perhaps foreseeing his future fame, she gave

her promise, and she kept it until her death, nearly half a century

later.

Perhaps because she had deceived him once, Hugo never completely lost

his prudence in his association with her. He was by no means lavish with

money, and he installed her in a rather simple apartment only a short

distance from his own home. He gave her an allowance that was relatively

small, though later he provided for her amply in his will. But it was

to her that he brought all his confidences, to her he entrusted all his

interests. She became to him, thenceforth, much more than she appeared

to the world at large; for she was his friend, and, as he said, his

inspiration.

The fact of their intimate connection became gradually known through

Paris. It was known even to Mme. Hugo; but she, remembering the affair

of Sainte-Beuve, or knowing how difficult it is to check the will of a

man like Hugo, made no sign, and even received Juliette Drouet in her

own house and visited her in turn. When the poet's sons grew up to

manhood, they, too, spent many hours with their father in the little

salon of the former actress. It was a strange and, to an Anglo-Saxon

mind, an almost impossible position; yet France forgives much to genius,

and in time no one thought of commenting on Hugo's manner of life.

In 1851, when Napoleon III seized upon the government, and when Hugo was

in danger of arrest, she assisted him to escape in disguise, and with a

forged passport, across the Belgian frontier. During his long exile

in Guernsey she lived in the same close relationship to him and to his

family. Mme. Hugo died in 1868, having known for thirty-three years that

she was only second in her husband's thoughts. Was she doing penance, or

was she merely accepting the inevitable? In any case, her position was

most pathetic, though she uttered no complaint.

A very curious and poignant picture of her just before her death has

been given by the pen of a visitor in Guernsey. He had met Hugo and his

sons; he had seen the great novelist eating enormous slices of roast

beef and drinking great goblets of red wine at dinner, and he had

also watched him early each morning, divested of all his clothing and

splashing about in a bath-tub on the top of his house, in view of

all the town. One evening he called and found only Mme. Hugo. She was

reclining on a couch, and was evidently suffering great pain. Surprised,

he asked where were her husband and her sons.

"Oh," she replied, "they've all gone to Mme. Drouet's to spend the

evening and enjoy themselves. Go also; you'll not find it amusing here."

One ponders over this sad scene with conflicting thoughts. Was there

really any truth in the story at which Sainte-Beuve more than hinted?

If so, Adele Hugo was more than punished. The other woman had sinned far

more; and yet she had never been Hugo's wife; and hence perhaps it

was right that she should suffer less. Suffer she did; for after her

devotion to Hugo had become sincere and deep, he betrayed her confidence

by an intrigue with a girl who is spoken of as "Claire." The knowledge

of it caused her infinite anguish, but it all came to an end; and she

lived past her eightieth year, long after the death of Mme. Hugo. She

died only a short time before the poet himself was laid to rest in Paris

with magnificent obsequies which an emperor might have envied. In her

old age, Juliette Drouet became very white and very wan; yet she never

quite lost the charm with which, as a girl, she had won the heart of

Hugo.

The story has many aspects. One may see in it a retribution, or one may

see in it only the cruelty of life. Perhaps it is best regarded simply

as a chapter in the strange life-histories of men of genius.

THE STORY OF GEORGE SAND

To the student of feminine psychology there is no more curious and

complex problem than the one that meets us in the life of the gifted

French writer best known to the world as George Sand.

To analyze this woman simply as a writer would in itself be a long,

difficult task. She wrote voluminously, with a fluid rather than a

fluent pen. She scandalized her contemporaries by her theories, and by

the way in which she applied them in her novels. Her fiction made her,

in the history of French literature, second only to Victor Hugo.

She might even challenge Hugo, because where he depicts strange and

monstrous figures, exaggerated beyond the limits of actual life, George

Sand portrays living men and women, whose instincts and desires she

understands, and whom she makes us see precisely as if we were admitted

to their intimacy.

But George Sand puzzles us most by peculiarities which it is difficult

for us to reconcile. She seemed to have no sense of chastity whatever;

yet, on the other hand, she was not grossly sensual. She possessed the

maternal instinct to a high degree, and liked better to be a mother

than a mistress to the men whose love she sought. For she did seek men's

love, frankly and shamelessly, only to tire of it. In many cases she

seems to have been swayed by vanity, and by a love of conquest, rather

than by passion. She had also a spiritual, imaginative side to her

nature, and she could be a far better comrade than anything more

intimate.

The name given to this strange genius at birth was Amantine Lucile

Aurore Dupin. The circumstances of her ancestry and birth were quite

unusual. Her father was a lieutenant in the French army. His grandmother

had been the natural daughter of Marshal Saxe, who was himself the

illegitimate son of Augustus the Strong of Poland and of the bewitching

Countess of Konigsmarck. This was a curious pedigree. It meant strength

of character, eroticism, stubbornness, imagination, courage, and

recklessness.

Her father complicated the matter by marrying suddenly a Parisian of the

lower classes, a bird-fancier named Sophie Delaborde. His daughter,

who was born in 1804, used afterward to boast that on one side she was

sprung from kings and nobles, while on the other she was a daughter

of the people, able, therefore, to understand the sentiments of the

aristocracy and of the children of the soil, or even of the gutter.

She was fond of telling, also, of the omen which attended on her birth.

Her father and mother were at a country dance in the house of a fellow

officer of Dupin's. Suddenly Mme. Dupin left the room. Nothing was

thought of this, and the dance went on. In less than an hour, Dupin was

called aside and told that his wife had just given birth to a child. It

was the child's aunt who brought the news, with the joyous comment:

"She will be lucky, for she was born among the roses and to the sound of

music."

This was at the time of the Napoleonic wars. Lieutenant Dupin was on the

staff of Prince Murat, and little Aurore, as she was called, at the age

of three accompanied the army, as did her mother. The child was

adopted by one of those hard-fighting, veteran regiments. The rough old

sergeants nursed her and petted her. Even the prince took notice of her;

and to please him she wore the green uniform of a hussar.

But all this soon passed, and she was presently sent to live with

her grandmother at the estate now intimately associated with her

name--Nohant, in the valley of the Indre, in the midst of a rich

country, a love for which she then drank in so deeply that nothing in

her later life could lessen it. She was always the friend of the peasant

and of the country-folk in general.

At Nohant she was given over to her grand-mother, to be reared in a

strangely desultory sort of fashion, doing and reading and studying

those things which could best develop her native gifts. Her father had

great influence over her, teaching her a thousand things without seeming

to teach her anything. Of him George Sand herself has written:

Character is a matter of heredity. If any one desires to know me, he

must know my father.

Her father, however, was killed by a fall from a horse; and then the

child grew up almost without any formal education. A tutor, who also

managed the estate; believed with Rousseau that the young should be

reared according to their own preferences. Therefore, Aurore read poems

and childish stories; she gained a smattering of Latin, and she was

devoted to music and the elements of natural science. For the rest of

the time she rambled with the country children, learned their games, and

became a sort of leader in everything they did.

Her only sorrow was the fact that her mother was excluded from Nohant.

The aristocratic old grandmother would not allow under her roof her

son's low-born wife; but she was devoted to her little grandchild. The

girl showed a wonderful degree of sensibility.

This life was adapted to her nature. She fed her imagination in a

perfectly healthy fashion; and, living so much out of doors, she

acquired that sound physique which she retained all through her life.

When she was thirteen, her grandmother sent the girl to a convent school

in Paris. One might suppose that the sudden change from the open woods

and fields to the primness of a religious home would have been a great

shock to her, and that with her disposition she might have broken

out into wild ways that would have shocked the nuns. But, here, as

elsewhere, she showed her wonderful adaptability. It even seemed as

if she were likely to become what the French call a devote. She gave

herself up to mythical thoughts, and expressed a desire of taking the

veil. Her confessor, however, was a keen student of human nature, and

he perceived that she was too young to decide upon the renunciation of

earthly things. Moreover, her grandmother, who had no intention that

Aurore should become a nun, hastened to Paris and carried her back to

Nohant.

The girl was now sixteen, and her complicated nature began to

make itself apparent. There was no one to control her, because her

grandmother was confined to her own room. And so Aurore Dupin, now in

superb health, rushed into every sort of diversion with all the zest of

youth. She read voraciously--religion, poetry, philosophy. She was an

excellent musician, playing the piano and the harp. Once, in a spirit of

unconscious egotism, she wrote to her confessor:

Do you think that my philosophical studies are compatible with Christian

humility?

The shrewd ecclesiastic answered, with a touch of wholesome irony:

I doubt, my daughter, whether your philosophical studies are profound

enough to warrant intellectual pride.

This stung the girl, and led her to think a little less of her own

abilities; but perhaps it made her books distasteful to her. For a while

she seems to have almost forgotten her sex. She began to dress as a boy,

and took to smoking large quantities of tobacco. Her natural brother,

who was an officer in the army, came down to Nohant and taught her to

ride--to ride like a boy, seated astride. She went about without any

chaperon, and flirted with the young men of the neighborhood. The prim

manners of the place made her subject to a certain amount of scandal,

and the village priest chided her in language that was far from tactful.

In return she refused any longer to attend his church.

Thus she was living when her grandmother died, in 1821, leaving to

Aurore her entire fortune of five hundred thousand francs. As the girl

was still but seventeen, she was placed under the guardianship of the

nearest relative on her father's side--a gentleman of rank. When the

will was read, Aurore's mother made a violent protest, and caused a most

unpleasant scene.

"I am the natural guardian of my child," she cried. "No one can take

away my rights!"

The young girl well understood that this was really the parting of the

ways. If she turned toward her uncle, she would be forever classed

among the aristocracy. If she chose her mother, who, though married, was

essentially a grisette, then she must live with grisettes, and find her

friends among the friends who visited her mother. She could not belong

to both worlds. She must decide once for all whether she would be a

woman of rank or a woman entirely separated from the circle that had

been her father's.

One must respect the girl for making the choice she did. Understanding

the situation absolutely, she chose her mother; and perhaps one would

not have had her do otherwise. Yet in the long run it was bound to be a

mistake. Aurore was clever, refined, well read, and had had the training

of a fashionable convent school. The mother was ignorant and coarse, as

was inevitable, with one who before her marriage had been half shop-girl

and half courtesan. The two could not live long together, and hence it

was not unnatural that Aurore Dupin should marry, to enter upon a new

career.

Her fortune was a fairly large one for the times, and yet not large

enough to attract men who were quite her equals. Presently, however, it

brought to her a sort of country squire, named Casimir Dudevant. He was

the illegitimate son of the Baron Dudevant. He had been in the army,

and had studied law; but he possessed no intellectual tastes. He was

outwardly eligible; but he was of a coarse type--a man who, with passing

years, would be likely to take to drink and vicious amusements, and in

serious life cared only for his cattle, his horses, and his hunting. He

had, however, a sort of jollity about him which appealed to this girl of

eighteen; and so a marriage was arranged. Aurore Dupin became his wife

in 1822, and he secured the control of her fortune.

The first few years after her marriage were not unhappy. She had a son,

Maurice Dudevant, and a daughter, Solange, and she loved them both. But

it was impossible that she should continue vegetating mentally upon

a farm with a husband who was a fool, a drunkard, and a miser. He

deteriorated; his wife grew more and more clever. Dudevant resented

this. It made him uncomfortable. Other persons spoke of her talk as

brilliant. He bluntly told her that it was silly, and that she must stop

it. When she did not stop it, he boxed her ears. This caused a breach

between the pair which was never healed. Dudevant drank more and more

heavily, and jeered at his wife because she was "always looking for noon

at fourteen o'clock." He had always flirted with the country girls; but

now he openly consorted with his wife's chambermaid.

Mme. Dudevant, on her side, would have nothing more to do with this

rustic rake. She formed what she called a platonic friendship--and it

was really so--with a certain M. de Seze, who was advocate-general at

Bordeaux. With him this clever woman could talk without being called

silly, and he took sincere pleasure in her company. He might, in fact,

have gone much further, had not both of them been in an impossible

situation.

Aurore Dudevant really believed that she was swayed by a pure and mystic

passion. De Seze, on the other hand, believed this mystic passion to

be genuine love. Coming to visit her at Nohant, he was revolted by the

clownish husband with whom she lived. It gave him an esthetic shock to

see that she had borne children to this boor. Therefore he shrank back

from her, and in time their relation faded into nothingness.

It happened, soon after, that she found a packet in her husband's desk,

marked "Not to be opened until after my death." She wrote of this in her

correspondence:

I had not the patience to wait till widowhood. No one can be sure of

surviving anybody. I assumed that my husband had died, and I was very

glad to learn what he thought of me while he was alive. Since the

package was addressed to me, it was not dishonorable for me to open it.

And so she opened it. It proved to be his will, but containing, as a

preamble, his curses on her, expressions of contempt, and all the vulgar

outpouring of an evil temper and angry passion. She went to her husband

as he was opening a bottle, and flung the document upon the table.

He cowered at her glance, at her firmness, and at her cold hatred. He

grumbled and argued and entreated; but all that his wife would say in

answer was:

"I must have an allowance. I am going to Paris, and my children are to

remain here."

At last he yielded, and she went at once to Paris, taking her daughter

with her, and having the promise of fifteen hundred francs a year out of

the half-million that was hers by right.

In Paris she developed into a thorough-paced Bohemian. She tried to make

a living in sundry hopeless ways, and at last she took to literature.

She was living in a garret, with little to eat, and sometimes without

a fire in winter. She had some friends who helped her as well as they

could, but though she was attached to the Figaro, her earnings for the

first month amounted to only fifteen francs.

Nevertheless, she would not despair. The editors and publishers might

turn the cold shoulder to her, but she would not give up her ambitions.

She went down into the Latin Quarter, and there shook off the

proprieties of life. She assumed the garb of a man, and with her quick

perception she came to know the left bank of the Seine just as she had

known the country-side at Nohant or the little world at her convent

school. She never expected again to see any woman of her own rank in

life. Her mother's influence became strong in her. She wrote:

The proprieties are the guiding principle of people without soul and

virtue. The good opinion of the world is a prostitute who gives herself

to the highest bidder.

She still pursued her trade of journalism, calling herself a "newspaper

mechanic," sitting all day in the office of the Figaro and writing

whatever was demanded, while at night she would prowl in the streets

haunting the cafes, continuing to dress like a man, drinking sour wine,

and smoking cheap cigars.

One of her companions in this sort of hand-to-mouth journalism was a

young student and writer named Jules Sandeau, a man seven years younger

than his comrade. He was at that time as indigent as she, and their

hardships, shared in common, brought them very close together. He was

clever, boyish, and sensitive, and it was not long before he had fallen

at her feet and kissed her knees, begging that she would requite the

love he felt for her. According to herself, she resisted him for six

months, and then at last she yielded. The two made their home together,

and for a while were wonderfully happy. Their work and their diversions

they enjoyed in common, and now for the first time she experienced

emotions which in all probability she had never known before.

Probably not very much importance is to be given to the earlier

flirtations of George Sand, though she herself never tried to stop the

mouth of scandal. Even before she left her husband, she was credited

with having four lovers; but all she said, when the report was brought

to her, was this: "Four lovers are none too many for one with such

lively passions as mine."

This very frankness makes it likely that she enjoyed shocking her prim

neighbors at Nohant. But if she only played at love-making then, she now

gave herself up to it with entire abandonment, intoxicated, fascinated,

satisfied. She herself wrote:

How I wish I could impart to you this sense of the intensity and

joyousness of life that I have in my veins. To live! How sweet it

is, and how good, in spite of annoyances, husbands, debts, relations,

scandal-mongers, sufferings, and irritations! To live! It is

intoxicating! To love, and to be loved! It is happiness! It is heaven!

In collaboration with Jules Sandeau, she wrote a novel called Rose

et Blanche. The two lovers were uncertain what name to place upon the

title-page, but finally they hit upon the pseudonym of Jules Sand. The

book succeeded; but thereafter each of them wrote separately, Jules

Sandeau using his own name, and Mme. Dudevant styling herself George

Sand, a name by which she was to be illustrious ever after.

As a novelist, she had found her real vocation. She was not yet well

known, but she was on the verge of fame. As soon as she had written

Indiana and Valentine, George Sand had secured a place in the world of

letters. The magazine which still exists as the Revue des Deux Mondes

gave her a retaining fee of four thousand francs a year, and many other

publications begged her to write serial stories for them.

The vein which ran through all her stories was new and piquant. As was

said of her:

In George Sand, whenever a lady wishes to change her lover, God is

always there to make the transfer easy.

In other words, she preached free love in the name of religion. This was

not a new doctrine with her. After the first break with her husband, she

had made up her mind about certain matters, and wrote:

One is no more justified in claiming the ownership of a soul than in

claiming the ownership of a slave.

According to her, the ties between a man and a woman are sacred only

when they are sanctified by love; and she distinguished between love and

passion in this epigram:

Love seeks to give, while passion seeks to take.

At this time, George Sand was in her twenty-seventh year. She was

not beautiful, though there was something about her which attracted

observation. Of middle height, she was fairly slender. Her eyes were

somewhat projecting, and her mouth was almost sullen when in repose. Her

manners were peculiar, combining boldness with timidity. Her address was

almost as familiar as a man's, so that it was easy to be acquainted with

her; yet a certain haughtiness and a touch of aristocratic pride made it

plain that she had drawn a line which none must pass without her

wish. When she was deeply stirred, however, she burst forth into an

extraordinary vivacity, showing a nature richly endowed and eager to

yield its treasures.

The existence which she now led was a curious one. She still visited her

husband at Nohant, so that she might see her son, and sometimes, when

M. Dudevant came to town, he called upon her in the apartments which she

shared with Jules Sandeau. He had accepted the situation, and with his

crudeness and lack of feeling he seemed to think it, if not natural,

at least diverting. At any rate, so long as he could retain her

half-million francs, he was not the man to make trouble about his former

wife's arrangements.

Meanwhile, there began to be perceptible the very slightest rift within

the lute of her romance. Was her love for Sandeau really love, or was

it only passion? In his absence, at any rate, the old obsession still

continued. Here we see, first of all, intense pleasure shading off into

a sort of maternal fondness. She sends Sandeau adoring letters. She is

afraid that his delicate appetite is not properly satisfied.

Yet, again, there are times when she feels that he is irritating and

ill. Those who knew them said that her nature was too passionate and

her love was too exacting for him. One of her letters seems to make

this plain. She writes that she feels uneasy, and even frightfully

remorseful, at seeing Sandeau "pine away." She knows, she avows, that

she is killing him, that her caresses are a poison, and her love a

consuming fire.

It is an appalling thought, and Jules will not understand it. He laughs

at it; and when, in the midst of his transports of delight, the idea

comes to me and makes my blood run cold, he tells me that here is the

death that he would like to die. At such moments he promises whatever I

make him promise.

This letter throws a clear light upon the nature of George Sand's

temperament. It will be found all through her career, not only that

she sought to inspire passion, but that she strove to gratify it after

fashions of her own. One little passage from a description of her

written by the younger Dumas will perhaps make this phase of her

character more intelligible, without going further than is strictly

necessary:

Mme. Sand has little hands without any bones, soft and plump. She is

by destiny a woman of excessive curiosity, always disappointed, always

deceived in her incessant investigation, but she is not fundamentally

ardent. In vain would she like to be so, but she does not find it

possible. Her physical nature utterly refuses.

The reader will find in all that has now been said the true explanation

of George Sand. Abounding with life, but incapable of long stretches of

ardent love, she became a woman who sought conquests everywhere without

giving in return more than her temperament made it possible for her to

do. She loved Sandeau as much as she ever loved any man; and yet she

left him with a sense that she had never become wholly his. Perhaps

this is the reason why their romance came to an end abruptly, and not

altogether fittingly.

She had been spending a short time at Nohant, and came to Paris without

announcement. She intended to surprise her lover, and she surely did so.

She found him in the apartment that had been theirs, with his arms about

an attractive laundry-girl. Thus closed what was probably the only true

romance in the life of George Sand. Afterward she had many lovers, but

to no one did she so nearly become a true mate.

As it was, she ended her association with Sandeau, and each pursued a

separate path to fame. Sandeau afterward became a well-known novelist

and dramatist. He was, in fact, the first writer of fiction who was

admitted to the French Academy. The woman to whom he had been unfaithful

became greater still, because her fame was not only national, but

cosmopolitan.

For a time after her deception by Sandeau, she felt absolutely devoid

of all emotions. She shunned men, and sought the friendship of Marie

Dorval, a clever actress who was destined afterward to break the heart

of Alfred de Vigny. The two went down into the country; and there George

Sand wrote hour after hour, sitting by her fireside, and showing herself

a tender mother to her little daughter Solange.

This life lasted for a while, but it was not the sort of life that

would now content her. She had many visitors from Paris, among them

Sainte-Beuve, the critic, who brought with him Prosper Merimee, then

unknown, but later famous as master of revels to the third Napoleon and

as the author of Carmen. Merimee had a certain fascination of manner,

and the predatory instincts of George Sand were again aroused. One day,

when she felt bored and desperate, Merimee paid his court to her,

and she listened to him. This is one of the most remarkable of her

intimacies, since it began, continued, and ended all in the space of a

single week. When Merimee left Nohant, he was destined never again to

see George Sand, except long afterward at a dinner-party, where the two

stared at each other sharply, but did not speak. This affair, however,

made it plain that she could not long remain at Nohant, and that she

pined for Paris.

Returning thither, she is said to have set her cap at Victor Hugo,

who was, however, too much in love with himself to care for any one,

especially a woman who was his literary rival. She is said for a time to

have been allied with Gustave Planche, a dramatic critic; but she

always denied this, and her denial may be taken as quite truthful. Soon,

however, she was to begin an episode which has been more famous than any

other in her curious history, for she met Alfred de Musset, then a youth

of twenty-three, but already well known for his poems and his plays.

Musset was of noble birth. He would probably have been better for a

plebeian strain, since there was in him a touch of the degenerate.

His mother's father had published a humanitarian poem on cats. His

great-uncle had written a peculiar novel. Young Alfred was nervous,

delicate, slightly epileptic, and it is certain that he was given to

dissipation, which so far had affected his health only by making

him hysterical. He was an exceedingly handsome youth, with exquisite

manners, "dreamy rather than dazzling eyes, dilated nostrils, and

vermilion lips half opened." Such was he when George Sand, then seven

years his senior, met him.

There is something which, to the Anglo-Saxon mind, seems far more absurd

than pathetic about the events which presently took place. A woman like

George Sand at thirty was practically twice the age of this nervous boy

of twenty-three, who had as yet seen little of the world. At first she

seemed to realize the fact herself; but her vanity led her to begin an

intrigue, which must have been almost wholly without excitement on her

part, but which to him, for a time, was everything in the world.

Experimenting, as usual, after the fashion described by Dumas, she went

with De Musset for a "honeymoon" to Fontainebleau. But they could not

stay there forever, and presently they decided upon a journey to Italy.

Before they went, however, they thought it necessary to get formal

permission from Alfred's mother!

Naturally enough, Mme. de Musset refused consent. She had read George

Sand's romances, and had asked scornfully:

"Has the woman never in her life met a gentleman?"

She accepted the relations between them, but that she should be asked

to sanction this sort of affair was rather too much, even for a French

mother who has become accustomed to many strange things. Then there was

a curious happening. At nine o'clock at night, George Sand took a cab

and drove to the house of Mme. de Musset, to whom she sent up a message

that a lady wished to see her. Mme. de Musset came down, and, finding a

woman alone in a carriage, she entered it. Then George Sand burst forth

in a torrent of sentimental eloquence. She overpowered her lover's

mother, promised to take great care of the delicate youth, and finally

drove away to meet Alfred at the coach-yard.

They started off in the mist, their coach being the thirteenth to

leave the yard; but the two lovers were in a merry mood, and enjoyed

themselves all the way from Paris to Marseilles. By steamer they went

to Leghorn; and finally, in January, 1834, they took an apartment in a

hotel at Venice. What had happened that their arrival in Venice should

be the beginning of a quarrel, no one knows. George Sand has told the

story, and Paul de Musset--Alfred's brother--has told the story, but

each of them has doubtless omitted a large part of the truth.

It is likely that on their long journey each had learned too much of

the other. Thus, Paul de Musset says that George Sand made herself

outrageous by her conversation, telling every one of her mother's

adventures in the army of Italy, including her relations with the

general-in-chief. She also declared that she herself was born within

a month of her parents' wedding-day. Very likely she did say all these

things, whether they were true or not. She had set herself to wage war

against conventional society, and she did everything to shock it.

On the other hand, Alfred de Musset fell ill after having lost ten

thousand francs in a gambling-house. George Sand was not fond of persons

who were ill. She herself was working like a horse, writing from eight

to thirteen hours a day. When Musset collapsed she sent for a handsome

young Italian doctor named Pagello, with whom she had struck up a casual

acquaintance. He finally cured Musset, but he also cured George Sand of

any love for Musset.

Before long she and Pagello were on their way back to Paris, leaving the

poor, fevered, whimpering poet to bite his nails and think unutterable

things. But he ought to have known George Sand. After that, everybody

knew her. They knew just how much she cared when she professed to care,

and when she acted as she acted with Pagello no earlier lover had any

one but himself to blame.

Only sentimentalists can take this story seriously. To them it has a

sort of morbid interest. They like to picture Musset raving and shouting

in his delirium, and then, to read how George Sand sat on Pagello's

knees, kissing him and drinking out of the same cup. But to the healthy

mind the whole story is repulsive--from George Sand's appeal to Mme.

de Musset down to the very end, when Pagello came to Paris, where his

broken French excited a polite ridicule.

There was a touch of genuine sentiment about the affair with

Jules Sandeau; but after that, one can only see in George Sand a

half-libidinous grisette, such as her mother was before her, with a

perfect willingness to experiment in every form of lawless love. As for

Musset, whose heart she was supposed to have broken, within a year he

was dangling after the famous singer, Mme. Malibran, and writing poems

to her which advertised their intrigue.

After this episode with Pagello, it cannot be said that the life of

George Sand was edifying in any respect, because no one can assume that

she was sincere. She had loved Jules Sandeau as much as she could love

any one, but all the rest of her intrigues and affinities were in the

nature of experiments. She even took back Alfred de Musset, although

they could never again regard each other without suspicion. George Sand

cut off all her hair and gave it to Musset, so eager was she to keep

him as a matter of conquest; but he was tired of her, and even this

theatrical trick was of no avail.

She proceeded to other less known and less humiliating adventures. She

tried to fascinate the artist Delacroix. She set her cap at Franz Liszt,

who rather astonished her by saying that only God was worthy to be

loved. She expressed a yearning for the affections of the elder Dumas;

but that good-natured giant laughed at her, and in fact gave her some

sound advice, and let her smoke unsentimentally in his study. She was

a good deal taken with a noisy demagogue named Michel, a lawyer at

Bourges, who on one occasion shut her up in her room and harangued her

on sociology until she was as weary of his talk as of his wooden shoes,

his shapeless greatcoat, his spectacles, and his skull-cap, Balzac felt

her fascination, but cared nothing for her, since his love was given to

Mme. Hanska.

In the meanwhile, she was paying visits to her husband at Nohant, where

she wrangled with him over money matters, and where he would once have

shot her had the guests present not interfered. She secured her dowry

by litigation, so that she was well off, even without her literary

earnings. These were by no means so large as one would think from her

popularity and from the number of books she wrote. It is estimated that

her whole gains amounted to about a million francs, extending over a

period of forty-five years. It is just half the amount that Trollope

earned in about the same period, and justifies his remark--"adequate,

but not splendid."

One of those brief and strange intimacies that marked the career of

George Sand came about in a curious way. Octave Feuillet, a man of

aristocratic birth, had set himself to write novels which portrayed

the cynicism and hardness of the upper classes in France. One of these

novels, Sibylle, excited the anger of George Sand. She had not known

Feuillet before; yet now she sought him out, at first in order to berate

him for his book, but in the end to add him to her variegated string of

lovers.

It has been said of Feuillet that he was a sort of "domesticated

Musset." At any rate, he was far less sensitive than Musset, and George

Sand was about seventeen years his senior. They parted after a short

time, she going her way as a writer of novels that were very different

from her earlier ones, while Feuillet grew more and more cynical and

even stern, as he lashed the abnormal, neuropathic men and women about

him.

The last great emotional crisis in George Sand's life was that which

centers around her relations with Frederic Chopin. Chopin was the

greatest genius who ever loved her. It is rather odd that he loved her.

She had known him for two years, and had not seriously thought of him,

though there is a story that when she first met him she kissed him

before he had even been presented to her. She waited two years, and in

those two years she had three lovers. Then at last she once more met

Chopin, when he was in a state of melancholy, because a Polish girl had

proved unfaithful to him.

It was the psychological moment; for this other woman, who was a

devourer of hearts, found him at a piano, improvising a lamentation.

George Sand stood beside him, listening. When he finished and looked up

at her, their eyes met. She bent down without a word and kissed him on

the lips.

What was she like when he saw her then? Grenier has described her in

these words:

She was short and stout, but her face attracted all my attention, the

eyes especially. They were wonderful eyes--a little too close together,

it may be, large, with full eyelids, and black, very black, but by no

means lustrous; they reminded me of unpolished marble, or rather of

velvet, and this gave a strange, dull, even cold expression to her

countenance. Her fine eyebrows and these great placid eyes gave her an

air of strength and dignity which was not borne out by the lower part of

her face. Her nose was rather thick and not over shapely. Her mouth was

also rather coarse, and her chin small. She spoke with great simplicity,

and her manners were very quiet.

Such as she was, she attached herself to Chopin for eight years. At

first they traveled together very quietly to Majorca; and there, just as

Musset had fallen ill at Venice, Chopin became feverish and an invalid.

"Chopin coughs most gracefully," George Sand wrote of him, and again:

Chopin is the most inconstant of men. There is nothing permanent about

him but his cough.

It is not surprising if her nerves sometimes gave way. Acting as sick

nurse, writing herself with rheumatic fingers, robbed by every one about

her, and viewed with suspicion by the peasants because she did not go

to church, she may be perhaps excused for her sharp words when, in fact,

her deeds were kind.

Afterward, with Chopin, she returned to Paris, and the two lived openly

together for seven years longer. An immense literature has grown around

the subject of their relations. To this literature George Sand herself

contributed very largely. Chopin never wrote a word; but what he failed

to do, his friends and pupils did unsparingly.

Probably the truth is somewhat as one might expect. During the first

period of fascination, George Sand was to Chopin what she had been to

Sandeau and to Musset; and with her strange and subtle ways, she had

undermined his health. But afterward that sort of love died out, and was

succeeded by something like friendship. At any rate, this woman showed,

as she had shown to others, a vast maternal kindness. She writes to him

finally as "your old woman," and she does wonders in the way of nursing

and care.

But in 1847 came a break between the two. Whatever the mystery of it may

be, it turns upon what Chopin said of Sand:

"I have never cursed any one, but now I am so weary of life that I am

near cursing her. Yet she suffers, too, and more, because she grows

older as she grows more wicked."

In 1848, Chopin gave his last concert in Paris, and in 1849 he died.

According to some, he was the victim of a Messalina. According to

others, it was only "Messalina" that had kept him alive so long.

However, with his death came a change in the nature of George Sand.

Emotionally, she was an extinct volcano. Intellectually, she was at

her very best. She no longer tore passions into tatters, but wrote

naturally, simply, stories of country life and tales for children.

In one of her books she has given an enduring picture of the

Franco-Prussian War. There are many rather pleasant descriptions of her

then, living at Nohant, where she made a curious figure, bustling about

in ill-fitting costumes, and smoking interminable cigarettes.

She had lived much, and she had drunk deep of life, when she died in

1876. One might believe her to have been only a woman of perpetual

liaisons. Externally she was this, and yet what did Balzac, that great

master of human psychology, write of her in the intimacy of a private

correspondence?

She is a female bachelor. She is an artist. She is generous. She is

devoted. She is chaste. Her dominant characteristics are those of a man,

and therefore, she is not to be regarded as a woman. She is an excellent

mother, adored by her children. Morally, she is like a lad of twenty;

for in her heart of hearts, she is more than chaste--she is a prude. It

is only in externals that she comports herself as a Bohemian. All her

follies are titles to glory in the eyes of those whose souls are noble.

A curious verdict this! Her love-life seems almost that of neither man

nor woman, but of an animal. Yet whether she was in reality responsible

for what she did, when we consider her strange heredity, her wretched

marriage, the disillusions of her early life--who shall sit in judgment

on her, since who knows all?

THE MYSTERY OF CHARLES DICKENS

Perhaps no public man in the English-speaking world, in the last

century, was so widely and intimately known as Charles Dickens. From

his eighteenth year, when he won his first success in journalism, down

through his series of brilliant triumphs in fiction, he was more and

more a conspicuous figure, living in the blaze of an intense publicity.

He met every one and knew every one, and was the companion of every

kind of man and woman. He loved to frequent the "caves of harmony" which

Thackeray has immortalized, and he was a member of all the best Bohemian

clubs of London. Actors, authors, good fellows generally, were his

intimate friends, and his acquaintance extended far beyond into the

homes of merchants and lawyers and the mansions of the proudest nobles.

Indeed, he seemed to be almost a universal friend.

One remembers, for instance, how he was called in to arbitrate between

Thackeray and George Augustus Sala, who had quarreled. One remembers how

Lord Byron's daughter, Lady Lovelace, when upon her sick-bed, used to

send for Dickens because there was something in his genial, sympathetic

manner that soothed her. Crushing pieces of ice between her teeth in

agony, she would speak to him and he would answer her in his rich, manly

tones until she was comforted and felt able to endure more hours of pain

without complaint.

Dickens was a jovial soul. His books fairly steam with Christmas cheer

and hot punch and the savor of plum puddings, very much as do his

letters to his intimate friends. Everybody knew Dickens. He could

not dine in public without attracting attention. When he left the

dining-room, his admirers would descend upon his table and carry off

egg-shells, orange-peels, and other things that remained behind, so that

they might have memorials of this much-loved writer. Those who knew him

only by sight would often stop him in the streets and ask the

privilege of shaking hands with him; so different was he from--let us

say--Tennyson, who was as great an Englishman in his way as Dickens, but

who kept himself aloof and saw few strangers.

It is hard to associate anything like mystery with Dickens, though

he was fond of mystery as an intellectual diversion, and his last

unfinished novel was The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Moreover, no one

admired more than he those complex plots which Wilkie Collins used

to weave under the influence of laudanum. But as for his own life, it

seemed so normal, so free from anything approaching mystery, that we can

scarcely believe it to have been tinged with darker colors than those

which appeared upon the surface.

A part of this mystery is plain enough. The other part is still

obscure--or of such a character that one does not care to bring it

wholly to the light. It had to do with his various relations with women.

The world at large thinks that it knows this chapter in the life of

Dickens, and that it refers wholly to his unfortunate disagreement with

his wife. To be sure, this is a chapter that is writ large in all of his

biographies, and yet it is nowhere correctly told. His chosen biographer

was John Forster, whose Life of Charles Dickens, in three volumes,

must remain a standard work; but even Forster--we may assume through

tact--has not set down all that he could, although he gives a clue.

As is well known, Dickens married Miss Catherine Hogarth when he

was only twenty-four. He had just published his Sketches by Boz, the

copyright of which he sold for one hundred pounds, and was beginning the

Pickwick Papers. About this time his publisher brought N. P. Willis

down to Furnival's Inn to see the man whom Willis called "a young

paragraphist for the Morning Chronicle." Willis thus sketches Dickens

and his surroundings:

In the most crowded part of Holborn, within a door or two of the Bull

and Mouth Inn, we pulled up at the entrance of a large building used

for lawyers' chambers. I followed by a long flight of stairs to an upper

story, and was ushered into an uncarpeted and bleak-looking room, with

a deal table, two or three chairs and a few books, a small boy and Mr.

Dickens for the contents.

I was only struck at first with one thing--and I made a memorandum of

it that evening as the strongest instance I had seen of English

obsequiousness to employers--the degree to which the poor author was

overpowered with the honor of his publisher's visit! I remember saying

to myself, as I sat down on a rickety chair:

"My good fellow, if you were in America with that fine face and

your ready quill, you would have no need to be condescended to by a

publisher."

Dickens was dressed very much as he has since described Dick Swiveller,

minus the swell look. His hair was cropped close to his head, his

clothes scant, though jauntily cut, and, after changing a ragged

office-coat for a shabby blue, he stood by the door, collarless and

buttoned up, the very personification of a close sailer to the wind.

Before this interview with Willis, which Dickens always repudiated, he

had become something of a celebrity among the newspaper men with whom he

worked as a stenographer. As every one knows, he had had a hard time in

his early years, working in a blacking-shop, and feeling too keenly the

ignominious position of which a less sensitive boy would probably have

thought nothing. Then he became a shorthand reporter, and was busy at

his work, so that he had little time for amusements.

It has been generally supposed that no love-affair entered his life

until he met Catherine Hogarth, whom he married soon after making her

acquaintance. People who are eager at ferreting out unimportant facts

about important men had unanimously come to the conclusion that up to

the age of twenty Dickens was entirely fancy-free. It was left to an

American to disclose the fact that this was not the case, but that even

in his teens he had been captivated by a girl of about his own age.

Inasmuch as the only reproach that was ever made against Dickens was

based upon his love-affairs, let us go back and trace them from this

early one to the very last, which must yet for some years, at least,

remain a mystery.

Everything that is known about his first affair is contained in a book

very beautifully printed, but inaccessible to most readers. Some years

ago Mr. William K. Bixby, of St. Louis, found in London a collector of

curios. This man had in his stock a number of letters which had passed

between a Miss Maria Beadnell and Charles Dickens when the two were

about nineteen and a second package of letters representing a later

acquaintance, about 1855, at which time Miss Beadnell had been married

for a long time to a Mr. Henry Louis Winter, of 12 Artillery Place,

London.

The copyright laws of Great Britain would not allow Mr. Bixby to publish

the letters in that country, and he did not care to give them to the

public here. Therefore, he presented them to the Bibliophile Society,

with the understanding that four hundred and ninety-three copies, with

the Bibliophile book-plate, were to be printed and distributed among

the members of the society. A few additional copies were struck off,

but these did not bear the Bibliophile book-plate. Only two copies are

available for other readers, and to peruse these it is necessary to

visit the Congressional Library in Washington, where they were placed on

July 24, 1908.

These letters form two series--the first written to Miss Beadnell in

or about 1829, and the second written to Mrs. Winter, formerly Miss

Beadnell, in 1855.

The book also contains an introduction by Henry H. Harper, who sets

forth some theories which the facts, in my opinion, do not support;

and there are a number of interesting portraits, especially one of Miss

Beadnell in 1829--a lovely girl with dark curls. Another shows her in

1855, when she writes of herself as "old and fat"--thereby doing herself

a great deal of injustice; for although she had lost her youthful

beauty, she was a very presentable woman of middle age, but one who

would not be particularly noticed in any company.

Summing up briefly these different letters, it may be said that in

the first set Dickens wrote to the lady ardently, but by no means

passionately. From what he says it is plain enough that she did not

respond to his feeling, and that presently she left London and went to

Paris, for her family was well-to-do, while Dickens was living from hand

to mouth.

In the second set of letters, written long afterward, Mrs. Winter seems

to have "set her cap" at the now famous author; but at that time he was

courted by every one, and had long ago forgotten the lady who had so

easily dismissed him in his younger days. In 1855, Mrs. Winter seems to

have reproached him for not having been more constant in the past; but

he replied:

You answered me coldly and reproachfully, and so I went my way.

Mr. Harper, in his introduction, tries very hard to prove that in

writing David Copperfield Dickens drew the character of Dora from Miss

Beadnell. It is a dangerous thing to say from whom any character in

a novel is drawn. An author takes whatever suits his purpose in

circumstance and fancy, and blends them all into one consistent whole,

which is not to be identified with any individual. There is little

reason to think that the most intimate friends of Dickens and of his

family were mistaken through all the years when they were certain that

the boy husband and the girl wife of David Copperfield were suggested by

any one save Dickens himself and Catherine Hogarth.

Why should he have gone back to a mere passing fancy, to a girl who

did not care for him, and who had no influence on his life, instead

of picturing, as David's first wife, one whom he deeply loved, whom he

married, who was the mother of his children, and who made a great part

of his career, even that part which was inwardly half tragic and wholly

mournful?

Miss Beadnell may have been the original of Flora in Little Dorrit,

though even this is doubtful. The character was at the time ascribed

to a Miss Anna Maria Leigh, whom Dickens sometimes flirted with and

sometimes caricatured.

When Dickens came to know George Hogarth, who was one of his

colleagues on the staff of the Morning Chronicle, he met Hogarth's

daughters--Catherine, Georgina, and Mary--and at once fell ardently in

love with Catherine, the eldest and prettiest of the three. He himself

was almost girlish, with his fair complexion and light, wavy hair, so

that the famous sketch by Maclise has a remarkable charm; yet nobody

could really say with truth that any one of the three girls was

beautiful. Georgina Hogarth, however, was sweet-tempered and of a

motherly disposition. It may be that in a fashion she loved Dickens

all her life, as she remained with him after he parted from her sister,

taking the utmost care of his children, and looking out with unselfish

fidelity for his many needs.

It was Mary, however, the youngest of the Hogarths, who lived with the

Dickenses during the first twelvemonth of their married life. To Dickens

she was like a favorite sister, and when she died very suddenly, in her

eighteenth year, her loss was a great shock to him.

It was believed for a long time--in fact, until their separation--that

Dickens and his wife were extremely happy in their home life. His

writings glorified all that was domestic, and paid many tender tributes

to the joys of family affection. When the separation came the whole

world was shocked. And yet rather early in Dickens's married life there

was more or less infelicity. In his Retrospections of an Active Life,

Mr. John Bigelow writes a few sentences which are interesting for their

frankness, and which give us certain hints:

Mrs. Dickens was not a handsome woman, though stout, hearty, and

matronly; there was something a little doubtful about her eye, and

I thought her endowed with a temper that might be very violent when

roused, though not easily rousable. Mrs. Caulfield told me that a

Miss Teman--I think that is the name--was the source of the difficulty

between Mrs. Dickens and her husband. She played in private theatricals

with Dickens, and he sent her a portrait in a brooch, which met with

an accident requiring it to be sent to the jeweler's to be mended. The

jeweler, noticing Mr. Dickens's initials, sent it to his house. Mrs.

Dickens's sister, who had always been in love with him and was jealous

of Miss Teman, told Mrs. Dickens of the brooch, and she mounted her

husband with comb and brush. This, no doubt, was Mrs. Dickens's version,

in the main.

A few evenings later I saw Miss Teman at the Haymarket Theatre, playing

with Buckstone and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mathews. She seemed rather a

small cause for such a serious result--passably pretty, and not much of

an actress.

Here in one passage we have an intimation that Mrs. Dickens had a

temper that was easily roused, that Dickens himself was interested in

an actress, and that Miss Hogarth "had always been in love with him, and

was jealous of Miss Teman."

Some years before this time, however, there had been growing in the mind

of Dickens a certain formless discontent--something to which he could

not give a name, yet which, cast over him the shadow of disappointment.

He expressed the same feeling in David Copperfield, when he spoke of

David's life with Dora. It seemed to come from the fact that he had

grown to be a man, while his wife had still remained a child.

A passage or two may be quoted from the novel, so that we may set them

beside passages in Dickens's own life, which we know to have referred to

his own wife, and not to any such nebulous person as Mrs. Winter.

The shadow I have mentioned that was not to be between us any more,

but was to rest wholly on my heart--how did that fall? The old unhappy

feeling pervaded my life. It was deepened, if it were changed at all;

but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed me like a strain of

sorrowful music faintly heard in the night. I loved my wife dearly; but

the happiness I had vaguely anticipated, once, was not the happiness I

enjoyed, AND THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMETHING WANTING.

What I missed I still regarded as something that had been a dream of

my youthful fancy; that was incapable of realization; that I was now

discovering to be so, with some natural pain, as all men did. But that

it would have been better for me if my wife could have helped me more,

and shared the many thoughts in which I had no partner, and that this

might have been I knew.

What I am describing slumbered and half awoke and slept again in the

innermost recesses of my mind. There was no evidence of it to me; I knew

of no influence it had in anything I said or did. I bore the weight of

all our little cares and all my projects.

"There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and

purpose." These words I remembered. I had endeavored to adapt Dora to

myself, and found it impracticable. It remained for me to adapt myself

to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be happy; to bear on my own

shoulders what I must, and be still happy.

Thus wrote Dickens in his fictitious character, and of his fictitious

wife. Let us see how he wrote and how he acted in his own person, and of

his real wife.

As early as 1856, he showed a curious and restless activity, as of one

who was trying to rid himself of unpleasant thoughts. Mr. Forster

says that he began to feel a strain upon his invention, a certain

disquietude, and a necessity for jotting down memoranda in note-books,

so as to assist his memory and his imagination. He began to long

for solitude. He would take long, aimless rambles into the country,

returning at no particular time or season. He once wrote to Forster:

I have had dreadful thoughts of getting away somewhere altogether by

myself. If I could have managed it, I think I might have gone to the

Pyrenees for six months. I have visions of living for half a year or so

in all sorts of inaccessible places, and of opening a new book therein.

A floating idea of going up above the snow-line, and living in some

astonishing convent, hovers over me.

What do these cryptic utterances mean? At first, both in his novel and

in his letters, they are obscure; but before long, in each, they become

very definite. In 1856, we find these sentences among his letters:

The old days--the old days! Shall I ever, I wonder, get the frame of

mind back as it used to be then? Something of it, perhaps, but never

quite as it used to be.

I find that the skeleton in my domestic closet is becoming a pretty big

one.

His next letter draws the veil and shows plainly what he means:

Poor Catherine and I are not made for each other, and there is no help

for it. It is not only that she makes me uneasy and unhappy, but that

I make her so, too--and much more so. We are strangely ill-assorted for

the bond that exists between us.

Then he goes on to say that she would have been a thousand times happier

if she had been married to another man. He speaks of "incompatibility,"

and a "difference of temperaments." In fact, it is the same old story

with which we have become so familiar, and which is both as old as the

hills and as new as this morning's newspaper.

Naturally, also, things grow worse, rather than better. Dickens comes to

speak half jocularly of "the plunge," and calculates as to what effect

it will have on his public readings. He kept back the announcement of

"the plunge" until after he had given several readings; then, on April

29, 1858, Mrs. Dickens left his home. His eldest son went to live with

the mother, but the rest of the children remained with their father,

while his daughter Mary nominally presided over the house. In the

background, however, Georgina Hogarth, who seemed all through her life

to have cared for Dickens more than for her sister, remained as a sort

of guide and guardian for his children.

This arrangement was a private matter, and should not have been brought

to public attention; but it was impossible to suppress all gossip about

so prominent a man. Much of the gossip was exaggerated; and when it came

to the notice of Dickens it stung him so severely as to lead him into

issuing a public justification of his course. He published a

statement in Household Words, which led to many other letters in other

periodicals, and finally a long one from him, which was printed in the

New York Tribune, addressed to his friend Mr. Arthur Smith.

Dickens afterward declared that he had written this letter as a strictly

personal and private one, in order to correct false rumors and scandals.

Mr. Smith naturally thought that the statement was intended for

publication, but Dickens always spoke of it as "the violated letter."

By his allusions to a difference of temperament and to incompatibility,

Dickens no doubt meant that his wife had ceased to be to him the same

companion that she had been in days gone by. As in so many cases, she

had not changed, while he had. He had grown out of the sphere in which

he had been born, "associated with blacking-boys and quilt-printers,"

and had become one of the great men of his time, whose genius was

universally admired.

Mr. Bigelow saw Mrs. Dickens as she really was--a commonplace woman

endowed with the temper of a vixen, and disposed to outbursts of actual

violence when her jealousy was roused.

It was impossible that the two could have remained together, when in

intellect and sympathy they were so far apart. There is nothing strange

about their separation, except the exceedingly bad taste with which

Dickens made it a public affair. It is safe to assume that he felt the

need of a different mate; and that he found one is evident enough from

the hints and bits of innuendo that are found in the writings of his

contemporaries.

He became a pleasure-lover; but more than that, he needed one who could

understand his moods and match them, one who could please his tastes,

and one who could give him that admiration which he felt to be his due;

for he was always anxious to be praised, and his letters are full of

anecdotes relating to his love of praise.

One does not wish to follow out these clues too closely. It is certain

that neither Miss Beadnell as a girl nor Mrs. Winter as a matron made

any serious appeal to him. The actresses who have been often mentioned

in connection with his name were, for the most part, mere passing

favorites. The woman who in life was Dora made him feel the same

incompleteness that he has described in his best-known book. The

companion to whom he clung in his later years was neither a light-minded

creature like Miss Beadnell, nor an undeveloped, high-tempered woman

like the one he married, nor a mere domestic, friendly creature like

Georgina Hogarth.

Ought we to venture upon a quest which shall solve this mystery in the

life of Charles Dickens! In his last will and testament, drawn up and

signed by him about a year before his death, the first paragraph reads

as follows:

I, Charles Dickens, of Gadshill Place, Higham, in the county of Kent,

hereby revoke all my former wills and codicils and declare this to be my

last will and testament. I give the sum of one thousand pounds, free

of legacy duty, to Miss Ellen Lawless Ternan, late of Houghton Place,

Ampthill Square, in the county of Middlesex.

In connection with this, read Mr. John Bigelow's careless jottings made

some fifteen years before. Remember the Miss "Teman," about whose name

he was not quite certain; the Hogarth sisters' dislike of her; and the

mysterious figure in the background of the novelist's later life. Then

consider the first bequest in his will, which leaves a substantial

sum to one who was neither a relative nor a subordinate, but--may we

assume--more than an ordinary friend?

HONORE DE BALZAC AND EVELINA HANSKA

I remember once, when editing an elaborate work on literature, that the

publisher called me into his private office. After the door was closed,

he spoke in tones of suppressed emotion.

"Why is it," said he, "that you have such a lack of proportion? In the

selection you have made I find that only two pages are given to George

P. Morris, while you haven't given E. P. Roe any space at all! Yet, look

here--you've blocked out fifty pages for Balzac, who was nothing but an

immoral Frenchman!"

I adjusted this difficulty, somehow or other--I do not just remember

how--and began to think that, after all, this publisher's view of things

was probably that of the English and American public. It is strange that

so many biographies and so many appreciations of the greatest novelist

who ever lived should still have left him, in the eyes of the reading

public, little more than "an immoral Frenchman."

"In Balzac," said Taine, "there was a money-broker, an archeologist, an

architect, an upholsterer, a tailor, an old-clothes dealer, a journeyman

apprentice, a physician, and a notary." Balzac was also a mystic, a

supernaturalist, and, above all, a consummate artist. No one who is all

these things in high measure, and who has raised himself by his genius

above his countrymen, deserves the censure of my former publisher.

Still less is Balzac to be dismissed as "immoral," for his life was one

of singular self-sacrifice in spite of much temptation. His face was

strongly sensual, his look and bearing denoted almost savage power; he

led a free life in a country which allowed much freedom; and yet

his story is almost mystic in its fineness of thought, and in its

detachment, which was often that of another world.

Balzac was born in 1799, at Tours, with all the traits of the people

of his native province--fond of eating and drinking, and with plenty of

humor. His father was fairly well off. Of four children, our Balzac was

the eldest. The third was his sister Laure, who throughout his life was

the most intimate friend he had, and to whom we owe his rescue from much

scandalous and untrue gossip. From her we learn that their father was a

combination of Montaigne, Rabelais, and "Uncle Toby."

Young Balzac went to a clerical school at seven, and stayed there for

seven years. Then he was brought home, apparently much prostrated,

although the good fathers could find nothing physically amiss with him,

and nothing in his studies to account for his agitation. No one ever did

discover just what was the matter, for he seemed well enough in the

next few years, basking on the riverside, watching the activities of

his native town, and thoroughly studying the rustic types that he was

afterward to make familiar to the world. In fact, in Louis Lambert he

has set before us a picture of his own boyish life, very much as Dickens

did of his in David Copperfield.

For some reason, when these years were over, the boy began to have what

is so often known as "a call"--a sort of instinct that he was to attain

renown. Unfortunately it happened that about this time (1814) he and his

parents removed to Paris, which was his home by choice, until his death

in 1850. He studied here under famous teachers, and gave three years

to the pursuit of law, of which he was very fond as literary material,

though he refused to practise.

This was the more grievous, since a great part of the family property

had been lost. The Balzacs were afflicted by actual poverty, and Honore

endeavored, with his pen, to beat the wolf back from the door. He earned

a little money with pamphlets and occasional stories, but his thirst

for fame was far from satisfied. He was sure that he was called to

literature, and yet he was not sure that he had the power to succeed. In

one of his letters to his sister, he wrote:

I am young and hungry, and there is nothing on my plate. Oh, Laure,

Laure, my two boundless desires, my only ones--to be famous, and to be

loved--they ever be satisfied?

For the next ten years he was learning his trade, and the artistic use

of the fiction writer's tools. What is more to the point, is the fact

that he began to dream of a series of great novels, which should give

a true and panoramic picture of the whole of human life. This was the

first intimation of his "Human Comedy," which was so daringly undertaken

and so nearly completed in his after years. In his early days of

obscurity, he said to his readers:

Note well the characters that I introduce, since you will have to follow

their fortunes through thirty novels that are to come.

Here we see how little he had been daunted by ill success, and how his

prodigious imagination had not been overcome by sorrow and evil fortune.

Meantime, writing almost savagely, and with a feeling combined of

ambition and despair, he had begun, very slowly indeed, to create a

public. These ten years, however, had loaded him with debts; and his

struggle to keep himself afloat only plunged him deeper in the mire.

His thirty unsigned novels began to pay him a few hundred francs, not

in cash, but in promissory notes; so that he had to go still deeper into

debt.

In 1827 he was toiling on his first successful novel, and indeed one of

the best historic novels in French literature--The Chouans. He speaks of

his labor as "done with a tired brain and an anxious mind," and of the

eight or ten business letters that he had to write each day before he

could begin his literary work.

"Postage and an omnibus are extravagances that I cannot allow myself,"

he writes. "I stay at home so as not to wear out my clothes. Is that

clear to you?"

At the end of the next year, though he was already popular as a

novelist, and much sought out by people of distinction, he was at the

very climax of his poverty. He had written thirty-five books, and was in

debt to the amount of a hundred and twenty-four thousand francs. He was

saved from bankruptcy only by the aid of Mme. de Berny, a woman of high

character, and one whose moral influence was very strong with Balzac

until her early death.

The relation between these two has a sweetness and a purity which are

seldom found. Mme. de Berny gave Balzac money as she would have given it

to a son, and thereby she saved a great soul for literature. But there

was no sickly sentiment between them, and Balzac regarded her with a

noble love which he has expressed in the character of Mme. Firmiani.

It was immediately after she had lightened his burdens that the real

Balzac comes before us in certain stories which have no equal, and

which are among the most famous that he ever wrote. What could be more

wonderful than his El Verdugo, which gives us a brief horror while

compelling our admiration? What, outside of Balzac himself, could be

more terrible than Gobseck, a frightful study of avarice, containing

a deathbed scene which surpasses in dreadfulness almost anything in

literature? Add to these A Passion in the Desert, The Girl with the

Golden Eyes, The Droll Stories, The Red Inn, and The Magic Skin, and you

have a cluster of masterpieces not to be surpassed.

In the year 1829, when he was just beginning to attain a slight success,

Balzac received a long letter written in a woman's hand. As he read

it, there came to him something very like an inspiration, so full of

understanding were the written words, so full of appreciation and of

sympathy with the best that he had done. This anonymous note pointed out

here and there such defects as are apt to become chronic with a

young author. Balzac was greatly stirred by its keen and sympathetic

criticism. No one before had read his soul so clearly. No one--not even

his devoted sister, Laure de Surville--had judged his work so wisely,

had come so closely to his deepest feeling.

He read the letter over and over, and presently another came, full of

critical appreciation, and of wholesome, tonic, frank, friendly words

of cheer. It was very largely the effect of these letters that roused

Balzac's full powers and made him sure of winning the two great objects

of his first ambition--love and fame--the ideals of the chivalrous,

romantic Frenchman from Caesar's time down to the present day.

Other letters followed, and after a while their authorship was made

known to Balzac. He learned that they had been written by a young Polish

lady, Mme. Evelina Hanska, the wife of a Polish count, whose health was

feeble, and who spent much time in Switzerland because the climate there

agreed with him.

He met her first at Neuchatel, and found her all that he had imagined.

It is said that she had no sooner raised her face, and looked him

fully in the eyes, than she fell fainting to the floor, overcome by

her emotion. Balzac himself was deeply moved. From that day until their

final meeting he wrote to her daily.

The woman who had become his second soul was not beautiful.

Nevertheless, her face was intensely spiritual, and there was a mystic

quality about it which made a strong appeal to Balzac's innermost

nature. Those who saw him in Paris knocking about the streets at night

with his boon companions, hobnobbing with the elder Dumas, or rejecting

the frank advances of George Sand, would never have dreamed of this

mysticism.

Balzac was heavy and broad of figure. His face was suggestive only of

what was sensuous and sensual. At the same time, those few who looked

into his heart and mind found there many a sign of the fine inner strain

which purified the grosser elements of his nature. He who wrote the

roaring Rabelaisian Contes Drolatiques was likewise the author of

Seraphita.

This mysticism showed itself in many things that Balzac did. One little

incident will perhaps be sufficiently characteristic of many others. He

had a belief that names had a sort of esoteric appropriateness. So, in

selecting them for his novels, he gathered them with infinite pains from

many sources, and then weighed them anxiously in the balance. A writer

on the subject of names and their significance has given the following

account of this trait:

The great novelist once spent an entire day tramping about in the

remotest quarters of Paris in search of a fitting name for a character

just conceived by him. Every sign-board, every door-plate, every affiche

upon the walls, was scrutinized. Thousands of names were considered

and rejected, and it was only after his companion, utterly worn out by

fatigue, had flatly refused to drag his weary limbs through more than

one additional street, that Balzac suddenly saw upon a sign the name

"Marcas," and gave a shout of joy at having finally secured what he was

seeking.

Marcas it was, from that moment; and Balzac gradually evolved a

Christian name for him. First he considered what initial was most

appropriate; and then, having decided upon Z, he went on to expand this

into Zepherin, explaining minutely just why the whole name Zepherin

Marcas, was the only possible one for the character in the novel.

In many ways Balzac and Evelina Hanska were mated by nature. Whether

they were fully mated the facts of their lives must demonstrate. For the

present, the novelist plunged into a whirl of literary labor, toiling as

few ever toiled--constructing several novels at the same time, visiting

all the haunts of the French capital, so that he might observe and

understand every type of human being, and then hurling himself like a

giant at his work.

He had a curious practise of reading proofs. These would come to him in

enormous sheets, printed on special paper, and with wide margins for his

corrections. An immense table stood in the midst of his study, and upon

the top he would spread out the proofs as if they were vast maps. Then,

removing most of his outer garments, he would lie, face down, upon the

proof-sheets, with a gigantic pencil, such as Bismarck subsequently used

to wield. Thus disposed, he would go over the proofs.

Hardly anything that he had written seemed to suit him when he saw it

in print. He changed and kept changing, obliterating what he disliked,

writing in new sentences, revising others, and adding whole pages in the

margins, until perhaps he had practically made a new book. This process

was repeated several times; and how expensive it was may be judged from

the fact that his bill for "author's proof corrections" was sometimes

more than the publishers had agreed to pay him for the completed volume.

Sometimes, again, he would begin writing in the afternoon, and continue

until dawn. Then, weary, aching in every bone, and with throbbing head,

he would rise and turn to fall upon his couch after his eighteen hours

of steady toil. But the memory of Evelina Hanska always came to him;

and with half-numbed fingers he would seize his pen, and forget his

weariness in the pleasure of writing to the dark-eyed woman who drew him

to her like a magnet.

These are very curious letters that Balzac wrote to Mme. Hanska. He

literally told her everything about himself. Not only were there long

passages instinct with tenderness, and with his love for her; but he

also gave her the most minute account of everything that occurred, and

that might interest her. Thus he detailed at length his mode of living,

the clothes he wore, the people whom he met, his trouble with his

creditors, the accounts of his income and outgo. One might think that

this was egotism on his part; but it was more than that. It was a strong

belief that everything which concerned him must concern her; and he

begged her in turn to write as freely and as fully.

Mme. Hanska was not the only woman who became his friend and comrade,

and to whom he often wrote. He made many acquaintances in the

fashionable world through the good offices of the Duchesse de Castries.

By her favor, he studied with his microscopic gaze the beau monde of

Louis Philippe's rather unimpressive court.

In a dozen books he scourged the court of the citizen king--its

pretensions, its commonness, and its assemblage of nouveaux riches. Yet

in it he found many friends--Victor Hugo, the Girardins--and among them

women who were of the world. George Sand he knew very well, and she made

ardent love to him; but he laughed her off very much as the elder Dumas

did.

Then there was the pretty, dainty Mme. Carraud, who read and revised his

manuscripts, and who perhaps took a more intimate interest in him than

did the other ladies whom he came to know so well. Besides Mme. Hanska,

he had another correspondent who signed herself "Louise," but who never

let him know her name, though she wrote him many piquant, sunny letters,

which he so sadly needed.

For though Honore de Balzac was now one of the most famous writers of

his time, his home was still a den of suffering. His debts kept pressing

on him, loading him down, and almost quenching hope. He acted toward his

creditors like a man of honor, and his physical strength was still

that of a giant. To Mme. Carraud he once wrote the half pathetic, half

humorous plaint:

Poor pen! It must be diamond, not because one would wish to wear it, but

because it has had so much use!

And again:

Here I am, owing a hundred thousand francs. And I am forty!

Balzac and Mme. Hanska met many times after that first eventful episode

at Neuchatel. It was at this time that he gave utterance to the poignant

cry:

Love for me is life, and to-day I feel it more than ever!

In like manner he wrote, on leaving her, that famous epigram:

It is only the last love of a woman that can satisfy the first love of a

man.

In 1842 Mme. Hanska's husband died. Balzac naturally expected that an

immediate marriage with the countess would take place; but the woman

who had loved him mystically for twelve years, and with a touch of the

physical for nine, suddenly draws back. She will not promise anything.

She talks of delays, owing to the legal arrangements for her children.

She seems almost a prude. An American critic has contrasted her attitude

with his:

Every one knows how utterly and absolutely Balzac devoted to this one

woman all his genius, his aspiration, the thought of his every moment;

how every day, after he had labored like a slave for eighteen hours, he

would take his pen and pour out to her the most intimate details of his

daily life; how at her call he would leave everything and rush across

the continent to Poland or to Italy, being radiantly happy if he could

but see her face and be for a few days by her side. The very thought of

meeting her thrilled him to the very depths of his nature, and made him,

for weeks and even months beforehand, restless, uneasy, and agitated,

with an almost painful happiness.

It is the most startling proof of his immense vitality, both physical

and mental, that so tremendous an emotional strain could be endured

by him for years without exhausting his fecundity or blighting his

creativeness.

With Balzac, however, it was the period of his most brilliant work;

and this was true in spite of the anguish of long separations, and the

complaints excited by what appears to be caprice or boldness or a faint

indifference. Even in Balzac one notices toward the last a certain sense

of strain underlying what he wrote, a certain lack of elasticity and

facility, if of nothing more; yet on the whole it is likely that without

this friendship Balzac would have been less great than he actually

became, as it is certain that had it been broken off he would have

ceased to write or to care for anything whatever in the world.

And yet, when they were free to marry, Mme. Hanska shrank away. Not

until 1846, four years after her husband's death, did she finally give

her promise to the eager Balzac. Then, in the overflow of his happiness,

his creative genius blazed up into a most wonderful flame; but he soon

discovered that the promise was not to be at once fulfilled. The shock

impaired that marvelous vitality which had carried him through debt, and

want, and endless labor.

It was at this moment, by the irony of fate, that his country hailed him

as one of the greatest of its men of genius. A golden stream poured

into his lap. His debts were not all extinguished, but his income was so

large that they burdened him no longer.

But his one long dream was the only thing for which he cared; and though

in an exoteric sense this dream came true, its truth was but a mockery.

Evelina Hanska summoned him to Poland, and Balzac went to her at once.

There was another long delay, and for more than a year he lived as a

guest in the countess's mansion at Wierzchownia; but finally, in March,

1850, the two were married. A few weeks later they came back to France

together, and occupied the little country house, Les Jardies, in which,

some decades later, occurred Gambetta's mysterious death.

What is the secret of this strange love, which in the woman seems to be

not precisely love, but something else? Balzac was always eager for her

presence. She, on the other hand, seems to have been mentally more at

ease when he was absent. Perhaps the explanation, if we may venture upon

one, is based upon a well-known physiological fact.

Love in its completeness is made up of two great elements--first, the

element that is wholly spiritual, that is capable of sympathy, and

tenderness, and deep emotion. The other element is the physical,

the source of passion, of creative energy, and of the truly virile

qualities, whether it be in man or woman. Now, let either of these

elements be lacking, and love itself cannot fully and utterly exist.

The spiritual nature in one may find its mate in the spiritual nature

of another; and the physical nature of one may find its mate in the

physical nature of another. But into unions such as these, love does not

enter in its completeness. If there is any element lacking in either

of those who think that they can mate, their mating will be a sad and

pitiful failure.

It is evident enough that Mme. Hanska was almost wholly spiritual, and

her long years of waiting had made her understand the difference between

Balzac and herself. Therefore, she shrank from his proximity, and from

his physical contact, and it was perhaps better for them both that their

union was so quickly broken off by death; for the great novelist died of

heart disease only five months after the marriage.

If we wish to understand the mystery of Balzac's life--or, more truly,

the mystery of the life of the woman whom he married--take up and read

once more the pages of Seraphita, one of his poorest novels and yet a

singularly illuminating story, shedding light upon a secret of the soul.

CHARLES READE AND LAURA SEYMOUR

The instances of distinguished men, or of notable women, who have broken

through convention in order to find a fitting mate, are very numerous. A

few of these instances may, perhaps, represent what is usually called

a Platonic union. But the evidence is always doubtful. The world is not

possessed of abundant charity, nor does human experience lead one to

believe that intimate relations between a man and a woman are compatible

with Platonic friendship.

Perhaps no case is more puzzling than that which is found in the

life-history of Charles Reade and Laura Seymour.

Charles Reade belongs to that brilliant group of English writers and

artists which included Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton, Wilkie Collins, Tom

Taylor, George Eliot, Swinburne, Sir Walter Besant, Maclise, and Goldwin

Smith. In my opinion, he ranks next to Dickens in originality and power.

His books are little read to-day; yet he gave to the English stage the

comedy "Masks and Faces," which is now as much a classic as Goldsmith's

"She Stoops to Conquer" or Sheridan's "School for Scandal." His power as

a novelist was marvelous. Who can forget the madhouse episodes in Hard

Cash, or the great trial scene in Griffith Gaunt, or that wonderful

picture, in The Cloister and the Hearth, of Germany and Rome at the end

of the Middle Ages? Here genius has touched the dead past and made it

glow again with an intense reality.

He was the son of a country gentleman, the lord of a manor which had

been held by his family before the Wars of the Boses. His ancestors had

been noted for their services in warfare, in Parliament, and upon the

bench. Reade, therefore, was in feeling very much of an aristocrat.

Sometimes he pushed his ancestral pride to a whimsical excess, very much

as did his own creation, Squire Raby, in Put Yourself in His Place.

At the same time he might very well have been called a Tory democrat.

His grandfather had married the daughter of a village blacksmith, and

Reade was quite as proud of this as he was of the fact that another

ancestor had been lord chief justice of England. From the sturdy

strain which came to him from the blacksmith he, perhaps, derived

that sledge-hammer power with which he wrote many of his most famous

chapters, and which he used in newspaper controversies with his

critics. From his legal ancestors there may have come to him the love

of litigation, which kept him often in hot water. From those who had

figured in the life of royal courts, he inherited a romantic nature,

a love of art, and a very delicate perception of the niceties of

cultivated usage. Such was Charles Reade--keen observer, scholar,

Bohemian--a man who could be both rough and tender, and whose boisterous

ways never concealed his warm heart.

Reade's school-days were Spartan in their severity. A teacher with

the appropriate name of Slatter set him hard tasks and caned him

unmercifully for every shortcoming. A weaker nature would have been

crushed. Reade's was toughened, and he learned to resist pain and to

resent wrong, so that hatred of injustice has been called his dominating

trait.

In preparing himself for college he was singularly fortunate in his

tutors. One of them was Samuel Wilberforce, afterward Bishop of Oxford,

nicknamed, from his suavity of manner, "Soapy Sam"; and afterward, when

Reade was studying law, his instructor was Samuel Warren, the author

of that once famous novel, Ten Thousand a Year, and the creator of

"Tittlebat Titmouse."

For his college at Oxford, Reade selected one of the most beautiful

and ancient--Magdalen--which he entered, securing what is known as a

demyship. Reade won his demyship by an extraordinary accident. Always an

original youth, his reading was varied and valuable; but in his studies

he had never tried to be minutely accurate in small matters. At that

time every candidate was supposed to be able to repeat, by heart, the

"Thirty-Nine Articles." Reade had no taste for memorizing; and out of

the whole thirty-nine he had learned but three. His general examination

was good, though not brilliant. When he came to be questioned orally,

the examiner, by a chance that would not occur once in a million times,

asked the candidate to repeat these very articles. Reade rattled them

off with the greatest glibness, and produced so favorable an impression

that he was let go without any further questioning.

It must be added that his English essay was original, and this also

helped him; but had it not been for the other great piece of luck he

would, in Oxford phrase, have been "completely gulfed." As it was,

however, he was placed as highly as the young men who were afterward

known as Cardinal Newman and Sir Robert Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke).

At the age of twenty-one, Reade obtained a fellowship, which entitled

him to an income so long as he remained unmarried. It is necessary to

consider the significance of this when we look at his subsequent career.

The fellowship at Magdalen was worth, at the outset, about twelve

hundred dollars annually, and it gave him possession of a suite of rooms

free of any charge. He likewise secured a Vinerian fellowship in law, to

which was attached an income of four hundred dollars. As time went

on, the value of the first fellowship increased until it was worth

twenty-five hundred dollars. Therefore, as with many Oxford men of

his time, Charles Reade, who had no other fortune, was placed in this

position--if he refrained from marrying, he had a home and a moderate

income for life, without any duties whatsoever. If he married, he must

give up his income and his comfortable apartments, and go out into the

world and struggle for existence.

There was the further temptation that the possession of his fellowship

did not even necessitate his living at Oxford. He might spend his time

in London, or even outside of England, knowing that his chambers at

Magdalen were kept in order for him, as a resting-place to which he

might return whenever he chose.

Reade remained a while at Oxford, studying books and men--especially the

latter. He was a great favorite with the undergraduates, though less so

with the dons. He loved the boat-races on the river; he was a prodigious

cricket-player, and one of the best bowlers of his time. He utterly

refused to put on any of the academic dignity which his associates

affected. He wore loud clothes. His flaring scarfs were viewed as being

almost scandalous, very much as Longfellow's parti-colored waistcoats

were regarded when he first came to Harvard as a professor.

Charles Reade pushed originality to eccentricity. He had a passion for

violins, and ran himself into debt because he bought so many and such

good ones. Once, when visiting his father's house at Ipsden, he shocked

the punctilious old gentleman by dancing on the dining-table to the

accompaniment of a fiddle, which he scraped delightedly. Dancing,

indeed, was another of his diversions, and, in spite of the fact that he

was a fellow of Magdalen and a D.C.L. of Oxford, he was always ready to

caper and to display the new steps.

In the course of time, he went up to London; and at once plunged into

the seething tide of the metropolis. He made friends far and wide, and

in every class and station--among authors and politicians, bishops and

bargees, artists and musicians. Charles Reade learned much from all of

them, and all of them were fond of him.

But it was the theater that interested him most. Nothing else seemed to

him quite so fine as to be a successful writer for the stage. He viewed

the drama with all the reverence of an ancient Greek. On his tombstone

he caused himself to be described as "Dramatist, novelist, journalist."

"Dramatist" he put first of all, even after long experience had shown

him that his greatest power lay in writing novels. But in this early

period he still hoped for fame upon the stage.

It was not a fortunate moment for dramatic writers. Plays were bought

outright by the managers, who were afraid to risk any considerable sum,

and were very shy about risking anything at all. The system had not yet

been established according to which an author receives a share of the

money taken at the box-office. Consequently, Reade had little or no

financial success. He adapted several pieces from the French, for which

he was paid a few bank-notes. "Masks and Faces" got a hearing, and drew

large audiences, but Reade had sold it for a paltry sum; and he shared

the honors of its authorship with Tom Taylor, who was then much better

known.

Such was the situation. Reade was personally liked, but his plays were

almost all rejected. He lived somewhat extravagantly and ran into debt,

though not very deeply. He had a play entitled "Christie Johnstone,"

which he believed to be a great one, though no manager would venture

to produce it. Reade, brooding, grew thin and melancholy. Finally, he

decided that he would go to a leading actress at one of the principal

theaters and try to interest her in his rejected play. The actress he

had in mind was Laura Seymour, then appearing at the Haymarket under the

management of Buckstone; and this visit proved to be the turning-point

in Reade's whole life.

Laura Seymour was the daughter of a surgeon at Bath--a man in large

practise and with a good income, every penny of which he spent. His

family lived in lavish style; but one morning, after he had sat up all

night playing cards, his little daughter found him in the dining-room,

stone dead. After his funeral it appeared that he had left no provision

for his family. A friend of his--a Jewish gentleman of Portuguese

extraction--showed much kindness to the children, settling their affairs

and leaving them with some money in the bank; but, of course, something

must be done.

The two daughters removed to London, and at a very early age Laura had

made for herself a place in the dramatic world, taking small parts at

first, but rising so rapidly that in her fifteenth year she was cast

for the part of Juliet. As an actress she led a life of strange

vicissitudes. At one time she would be pinched by poverty, and at

another time she would be well supplied with money, which slipped

through her fingers like water. She was a true Bohemian, a

happy-go-lucky type of the actors of her time.

From all accounts, she was never very beautiful; but she had an instinct

for strange, yet effective, costumes, which attracted much attention.

She has been described as "a fluttering, buoyant, gorgeous little

butterfly." Many were drawn to her. She was careless of what she did,

and her name was not untouched with scandal. But she lived through it

all, and emerged a clever, sympathetic woman of wide experience, both on

the stage and off it.

One of her admirers--an elderly gentleman named Seymour--came to her one

day when she was in much need of money, and told her that he had just

deposited a thousand pounds to her credit at the bank. Having said

this, he left the room precipitately. It was the beginning of a sort of

courtship; and after a while she married him. Her feeling toward him was

one of gratitude. There was no sentiment about it; but she made him a

good wife, and gave no further cause for gossip.

Such was the woman whom Charles Reade now approached with the request

that she would let him read to her a portion of his play. He had seen

her act, and he honestly believed her to be a dramatic genius of the

first order. Few others shared this belief; but she was generally

thought of as a competent, though by no means brilliant, actress. Reade

admired her extremely, so that at the very thought of speaking with her

his emotions almost choked him.

In answer to a note, she sent word that he might call at her house. He

was at this time (1849) in his thirty-eighth year. The lady was a little

older, and had lost something of her youthful charm; yet, when Reade was

ushered into her drawing-room, she seemed to him the most graceful and

accomplished woman whom he had ever met.

She took his measure, or she thought she took it, at a glance. Here was

one of those would-be playwrights who live only to torment managers

and actresses. His face was thin, from which she inferred that he was

probably half starved. His bashfulness led her to suppose that he was

an inexperienced youth. Little did she imagine that he was the son of a

landed proprietor, a fellow of one of Oxford's noblest colleges, and one

with friends far higher in the world than herself. Though she thought so

little of him, and quite expected to be bored, she settled herself in a

soft armchair to listen. The unsuccessful playwright read to her a scene

or two from his still unfinished drama. She heard him patiently, noting

the cultivated accent of his voice, which proved to her that he was at

least a gentleman. When he had finished, she said:

"Yes, that's good! The plot is excellent." Then she laughed a sort of

stage laugh, and remarked lightly: "Why don't you turn it into a novel?"

Reade was stung to the quick. Nothing that she could have said would

have hurt him more. Novels he despised; and here was this woman, the

queen of the English stage, as he regarded her, laughing at his drama

and telling him to make a novel of it. He rose and bowed.

"I am trespassing on your time," he said; and, after barely touching the

fingers of her outstretched hand, he left the room abruptly.

The woman knew men very well, though she scarcely knew Charles Reade.

Something in his melancholy and something in his manner stirred her

heart. It was not a heart that responded to emotions readily, but it was