Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 15, August, 1851

"Of such materials wretched men are made."

And so it fared with poor Hartley Coleridge. Up, indeed, to the time (1814) when he left school, he seems to have been as happy as most schoolboys are – nay, happier than most, in constant intercourse with Mr. Wordsworth, carrying on his English studies in his library at Allanbank, in the vale of Grasmere, and having become acquainted with John Wilson, then residing at his beautiful seat, Elleray, on the banks of Windermere, who became from that time, and continued to the last, one of his kindest friends. Through Mr. Southey's active intervention, he was sent to Merton College, Oxford. His curriculum there was at first distinguished. If inferior in scholarship to many, he yielded to none in general knowledge, in genius, and, above all, in conversation. Ultimately he gained a fellowship in Oriel, with high distinction. But his powers of table-talk became snares to him, and at the close of his probationary year he "was judged to have forfeited his fellowship on the ground mainly of intemperance." Great efforts were made by his father and others to reverse the sentence – but in vain. His ruin was now only a question of time. He repaired to London, but the precarious life of a man of letters was fitted to nurse instead of checking his morbid tendencies and unhappy habits. He next returned to the Lake country, commenced a school in conjunction with another gentleman, and even talked of entering into holy orders. But nothing would prosper with him. His school dwindled away, and he was reduced to make a scrambling livelihood by contributing to periodicals; domesticated the while at Grasmere, in the house of a farmer's widow. Various attempts were made, ever and anon, to make him useful – by taking him to Leeds to edit a biographical work, assisting a friend in teaching school at Ledbergh, etc; but all in vain. To Grasmere he as uniformly found his way back, to resume his erratic existence. In 1845, his mother's death brought him an annuity, which placed him on a footing of complete independence. During all this time he was employed fitfully in literary effort, wrote poems, contributed papers to "Blackwood's Magazine," and delivered occasional addresses to literary societies. He was gentle, amiable, frank; and, notwithstanding his oddities and errors, was a great favorite with all classes in Cumberland. He was, as a churchman and politician, liberal, almost radical, in his opinions. He was a daily reader of his Bible. To the last, he struggled sore to unloose the accursed bands of indolence and sensualism which bound him; but to little purpose.

At length, in the beginning of 1849, he departed this life, after giving various evidences of a penitent spirit. He lies now in a spot, beside which, in little more than a year, the dust of one – alike, but oh, how different! – Wordsworth, was to be consigned. He was in his fifty-second year. "His coffin, at the funeral, was light as that of a child." "It was," says his brother, "a winter's day when he was carried to his last earthly home, cold, but fine, with a few slight scuds of sleet and gleams of sunshine, one of which greeted us as we entered Grasmere, and another smiled brightly through the church-window. May it rest upon his memory!"

THE ORIENTAL SALOONS IN MADRID

"Come," said Don Philippe to us one evening, "come with me to a ball at the Salon de Oriente, where you will see a picture of Madrilenian life, too characteristic to be overlooked – a miniature of its beauty, its taste, and its profligacy combined, which no stranger who visits the metropolis should fail to note, and studiously observe." Having nothing of greater importance before us, we assented forthwith to the proposal of our entertaining teacher, who escorted us thither, as soon as we could put ourselves in proper trim for the occasion. The first glimpse of the ball-room was like a fairy scene. It was built in imitation of an Oriental palace, tastefully painted and illuminated with glittering chandeliers, in the most brilliant manner. The hall was quite thronged with persons of both sexes, a large proportion of whom were engaged in dancing the "Polka Mazurka," to the inspiring music of a full and splendid band. So exciting was the spectacle, that it was with the greatest difficulty we restrained ourselves for a few moments from rushing into the midst of the throng, and finally we broke from all restraint, and bade defiance to the counsels of Don Philippe, who evidently regarded us in the light of a couple of hot headed youths, whose harvest of wild oats had not yet been fully gathered. Away we dashed into the very midst of the merry sport as if, with military ardor, we intended to carry the place by storm; having secured a pair of female prizes, whose brilliant eyes, like lodestones, had drawn us toward them, while under our sudden spell of excitement we mingled with the concourse of laughing dancers, and became ourselves the gayest of the gay. The bright glances which gleamed around us, from every female eye, were softer than the blushes of the moonbeams! Every cheek was flushed with pleasure; every lip was red with joy! The men were wild with frolic, and the youthful damsels intoxicated with delight. Among the former, whom should I recognize, to my infinite surprise and astonishment, but my faithful guide to Segovia and the Escurial. In his dress he was completely metamorphosed into a fashionable gentleman, with white waistcoat and gloves, and the remainder of his suit of fine black broadcloth. In manners, he had not a superior in the room. Approaching me with respect, but with the polished ease of a man well acquainted with the world, he saluted us with unaffected cordiality, and then invited us to partake of some refreshments with him in an adjoining apartment, expressly intended and adapted for this purpose. We did not wish to offend him by a refusal, and therefore assented to his desire. Seating ourselves at a table together, we called for a favorite beverage among the Spaniards, composed of small-beer and lemon, mixed in proportions to suit the taste of those desiring it. An immense bowl, supplied with a certain quantity of iced lemonade, was first brought and placed in the centre of the table before us. Two or three bottles of beer were then opened and poured into this general receptacle, the contents of which were stirred up briskly with a kind of ladle or large spoon. Each of us then helped himself to the frothy compound, which, at the same time that it is very agreeable to the palate, does not produce the slightest inebriating effect.

Turning to me, my quondam guide asked if I had passed a pleasant evening. I replied in the affirmative, and told him I had been much struck with his skillful performance upon "the light fantastic toe." He seemed delighted with the compliment, and praised us highly in return, for the manner in which we had conducted ourselves throughout the entertainment. "These saloons," said he, "are resorted to by all classes of gentlemen in the metropolis, without distinction of rank or station, though they do not sustain so high a public reputation now as they possessed in former years. This is owing to the fact, that ladies of station no longer honor them with their presence, save during the period of the 'masquerades,' when it is said that even the queen herself has mingled among the general throng, confident that her disguise would secure her from either scrutiny or recognition. The females whom you have seen here to-night," continued my guide, "notwithstanding their modest appearance and genteel manners, are most of them either kept-mistresses or public courtesans, while the younger ones, apparently under the protection of their mothers and aunts, by whom they are accompanied, have been brought hither as to a market, in order to secure an 'amante' or lover, and make the most profitable sale of their charms! This may sound very horrible to your ears, yet I assure you that it is truth. You can scarcely have any conception of the extent of vice which prevails in Madrid, nor of the lightness and indifference with which it is regarded by the community. She who would be called by an evil name in any other country, is only regarded as a gay and lively girl in Spain, so low is the general standard of women. Absolute penury, and the want of respectable employment, have tended to produce this deplorable result, which must necessarily ensue, wherever the poverty and mismanagement of a Government, and the consequent inactivity of industry and commerce, does not create sufficient occupation for the poorer classes, to keep them above starvation, without having recourse to vice. It really offends me," continued my guide, with considerable warmth, "to hear a noble people abused for the existence of faults which do not properly belong to them." "Bravo," cried Don Philippe, "good, good, good! Down with the government! Send the cursed ministers to the infernals, and we'll have a grand Spanish republic. Then you'll see if the Spaniards are not as industrious and brave, and the women as virtuous and chaste, as those of any other land under the sun. Give the people a fair chance, and they will rise, like the bird you call a phœnix, and become a great and powerful nation. Success, I say, to the glorious cause of liberty and republicanism in Spain!"

PHANTOMS AND REALITIES. – AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 8

PART THE THIRD – NIGHT

IV

The interval of suspense to which we were doomed before we received any tidings of Forrester seemed to us interminable; and our speculations on the cause of his silence did not contribute to make our solitude the more endurable. We clung together, it is true; but it was like people on a raft, with our heads stretched out, looking apart into the distance for succor.

At last, at the end of a fortnight, there came a note in Forrester's handwriting (which I well remembered), signed only with an initial letter, requiring to see me alone in a roadside hostelrie about half a mile inland. The note was cautiously worded, so that if it fell into other hands, its purport would be unintelligible.

I thought this strange; but Forrester was always fond of a little mystery, and on the present occasion there might be a necessity for it. I am ashamed to say, that after I had read this note two or three times, I felt some hesitation about giving him the meeting. The doubt was unworthy of us both; yet I could not help asking myself, over and over again, why he wished me to go alone? – why he appointed to meet me at night? – why he should act under a mask in an affair which demanded the utmost candor on all sides? – and a hundred other uncomfortable questions. Circumstances had made me anxious and distrustful; and I was so conscious of the irritable state of my nerves, that, even while these suspicions were passing through my brain, I made an effort to do justice to my friend by recalling to mind the incidents of our former intercourse, throughout which he had displayed a fidelity and steadfastness that entitled him to my most implicit confidence. Even if it had been otherwise, I had no choice but to trust to him; it was indispensable that we should know the determination of our implacable enemy, and it was through Forrester alone we could obtain that information.

The night was dark and stormy. The solitary walk to the little inn afforded me time to collect myself for an interview which I approached with no slight uneasiness. I had left Astræa behind me in a depressed and fretful mood. She could not comprehend why she was excluded from our councils, and seemed to regard it as a sort of conspiracy to dishonor and humiliate her. Every trifling circumstance that affected her personally was viewed in the same light, with jealousy and suspicion. Poor Astræa! Her life was already beginning to jar with mental discords, and the shadows of the future were falling thickly upon her, and darkening her path.

The hostelrie at which I had the appointment with Forrester stood on the edge of a bleak common. In that part of the country there are many similar wastes, stretching a half mile or more into the interior, covered with a scant and sickly herbage, and presenting on the surface an arid picture of sand, stones, and shells, as if these great, unprofitable pastures had been redeemed from the sea without being converted into available land. There is a salt flavor in the air over these wild inland stretches; the sea seems to pursue you with its saline weeds, its keen winds, and measured murmurs; and the absolute solitude of a scene in which you very rarely meet a house or a tree, is calculated to make a dismal impression on a person otherwise out of humor with the world. I felt it forcibly that night. I thought the northeast wind that swept diagonally across the common was more wintry and biting than usual; and the red light in the distant window of the "Jolly Gardeners" (of all conceivable signs for such a spot!) looked as if it were dancing away further and further from me as I advanced across the heath.

At last I reached the inn – a low tiled house, with a tattered portico jutting out upon the road some ten or twelve feet, a few latticed windows, and a narrow passage, lighted by a single candle in a sconce on the wall, leading into a sanded parlor beyond a little square "bar" that looked like the inside of a cupboard, decorated with a variety of jugs, teacups, saucers, and other ware hung up in rows all round. The house was altogether a very tolerable specimen of what used to be called an ale-house in remote country districts; a place suggestive of the strictest caution about liquors, but where you might repose with confidence on an impromptu entertainment of rashers and eggs. It was exactly the sort of house that Forrester would have preferred to a well-appointed hostel in the days of our summer vagrancy, when we used to wander toward Hampstead and Highgate, avoiding beaten tracks and crowded localities, and seeking out for ourselves, whenever we could find it, a secluded "Barley Mow" shut up in a nest of orchards. He had not lost his early tastes – nor had I! That little "bar," with its innumerable samples of delft, threw me back sundry years of my life, to the time when I was free to dream or idle, to go into the haunts of men, or to desert them at will. The incident was a trifling one in itself; but it shot through my heart like a bolt of fire. It was the first time I had gone out and left Astræa alone behind me. I thought of her, seated in her lonely room, brooding over her desolation, and torturing herself with speculations upon the business in which I was engaged: while I? – I was out again on the high road, exulting in a man's privilege to act for myself, with her destiny, for good or evil, at my disposal, and possessing the power of returning into the world from whence I had drawn her, and in which she could never again appear! I? – I was at large once more, with the memories of the freedom and tranquillity I had relinquished tempting my thoughts into rebellion. And she? – alas! she never seemed in my eyes so forlorn and lost as at that moment!

A single glance at the boxed-up "bar," and the honest round face, with a skin-cap over it, that gaped at me behind a complete breastwork of pewter and glass, awakened me from the state of reverie in which I had entered the house. I dare say I looked rather bewildered, like a man just shaking off a fit of abstraction, for the honest round face immediately started out of the chair which served as a socket for the body to which it belonged, and without waiting to hear me ask any questions, instantly proposed to conduct me to the gentleman up-stairs, who had been for some time expecting my arrival.

I found Forrester in a small room which was reached by a flight of stairs, so sharp and precipitate, that they looked as if they were inserted on the face of the wall. Having lighted me into the room, the honest face disappeared, and left us alone together.

Forrester stretched out his hand, as I thought, somewhat formally; then motioning me to a seat opposite to him, waited in silence till the landlord had left the room.

"You are surprised I should have asked you to come here," he said.

"No," I replied, interrupting him, hastily; "but I am surprised we did not hear from you sooner. In the name of Heaven, what can have been the cause of your silence?"

"How long is it since I saw you?"

"How long? Upward of a fortnight, and we expected a letter every day. But the world forgets us when we forget ourselves."

"It might be well with some people, if the world did forget them," he rejoined; "but that is no affair of mine. I have not forgotten you, whatever you may have deserved from others."

This was uttered in a tone of asperity unusual with Forrester. But I felt that I had provoked it by the unacknowledging spirit in which I had met him after all the trouble he had taken on my account, and I was proceeding to make the best apology I could, when he cut me short with a wave of his hand, and entered upon the business that brought us together.

"You were aware when I undertook to negotiate between you and the husband of Astræa, that I was his friend as well as yours. He had even stronger claims upon my friendship; I had known him in our boyhood; and when I returned, after an interval of years, and found him bereaved, as I had been myself – and by the same person – you can not be astonished that I should feel some interest in his situation."

"I do not blame you for that," I returned, hardly knowing what I said, I was so amazed by the tone and substance of this unexpected opening.

"Blame me?" reiterated Forrester. "Blame me for sympathizing with an early friend, whose life, like my own, had been blasted to the root? You must suppose my nature to be something different from that of other men, if you imagine I could witness his sufferings unmoved."

"To what is this intended to lead?" I demanded. "When I saw you last, your sympathies were not so exclusive. You were then, Forrester, the friend of both?"

"Am I not so still? What brings me here? It is not exactly the sort of weather a man would select for a trip of pleasure into the country. What brings me here? Your business. Does this look like a failure of friendship? You are soured – isolation and self-reproaches, which pride will not suffer you to acknowledge, have turned your blood to acid. You are ready to quarrel for straws, and your whole care is how to escape the responsibility which passion and selfishness have brought upon you."

I leaped from my chair at these words, and looked fiercely at Forrester. He was perfectly calm, and continued to speak in a voice of freezing quietness.

"Pray, resume your seat. It is sheer waste of time to lose your temper with me. Either I must speak candidly to you, or there is an end to our intercourse."

"Yes – candidly, but not insultingly," I replied, seizing my chair, and, after giving it a very ill-tempered fling upon the ground, throwing myself into it.

"How foolish it is in you to exhibit this humor to me," he resumed after a short pause. "I imagine I have a right to speak to you exactly what I think, and that the interest I have taken in your concerns ought to protect me from the suspicion of desiring to insult you. Were it my cue to insult you, it is not in this affair I should look for the grounds of quarrel. But let that pass. I have seen the man whom you have made your mortal enemy, and have endeavored to prevail upon him to break the marriage. I have failed."

"Failed? How? Why? What does he say? He is a fiend!"

"Strange that he should have just the same opinion of you. Beelzebub is rather a respectable and virtuous person in his estimation compared with you. Just possible both may be right!"

I never saw Forrester in this sort of vein before. It was as if he were determined to lacerate my feelings and lay them bare; and yet there was a certain eccentric kindness under this rough treatment, which helped to reconcile me to it. At all events, I was bound to endure it; I knew that if I outraged him by any show of distrust or violence, his lips would be closed forever. I felt, too, that I had given him some provocation in the first instance by the temper I had betrayed; and that the fault was at least as much mine as his.

"Well," I cried, "you must forgive me, Forrester, if I am a little chafed and galled, and, as you say, soured. Circumstances have pressed hardly upon me. Remember how long I have been shut out from communication with society – and the state of anxiety and suspense in which I have lived. You must make allowances for me."

"Exactly. I must make allowances for you. But when I ask you to make allowances for him, who has gone through sufferings a hundred-fold more acute, which you have inflicted upon him, what kind of response do I receive? No matter. I do make allowances for you. If you are not entirely absorbed by selfish considerations, you will endeavor to comprehend the wrong you have committed, and do what you can to avoid making it worse."

"Wrong? Premeditated wrong I never will admit. My conscience is clear of that. But I will not argue with you. What would you have me do?"

"Leave the country. You have no other alternative."

"What? Fly from this demon, who first tempted me, and who now wants to triumph over my ruin?"

"You say your conscience is clear of wrong. You have a happy conscience. But it deceives you. It is true, that when you first knew Astræa, you were ignorant of his rights; but you were not ignorant of them when he found you together and claimed her. Up to that moment, you might have had some excuse. There was yet time to save her, yourself, and him. How did you act, then? If we are to discuss this matter with any hope of arriving at a rational conclusion, you must rid yourself of the flattering deception that you have been doing no wrong. We are not children, but grown-up men and responsible agents."

"Well, I put myself in your hands. But that I should become an exile because this man chooses to pursue me with vindictive feelings, does seem something monstrous."

"From your point of sight, I dare say it does. Just change places with him. A man who desires to decide justly will always endeavor to look at both sides of a question. Put yourself in his position. He loves this woman. I am satisfied he loves her more truly and tenderly, and less selfishly now than he ever loved her from the beginning. You sneer at that. You do not credit the possibility of such a thing. It is a constitutional fallacy of yours to believe that no man loves as you do – that there is a leaven of earth in other men which mixes with their devotion and corrupts it. You have nursed this creed all your life, and it has grown with your growth. You alone are pure and spiritual. I remember you had that notion once before. I remember how you exalted yourself on the intensity and endurance of your passion. Surely by this time you should have outlived that delusion; for even then you might have seen men with hearts as – But I am wandering from the subject."

"I understand you. I was young, superstitious, ignorant – "

"I will speak plainly. You are not capable of a great devotion. Your character is not strong enough. You have none of the elements of power necessary to the maintenance of the martyrdom of love. In a nature constituted like yours, passion burns up fiercely, and goes out suddenly. I have heard you say – some years gone by! – that you were consumed by a love which would end only with your life. I was silent. I loved, too; but I vailed my eyes, and spoke not, as the coffin which contained all I cherished in the world was lowered into the grave. Hope – affection – the desire of life, were buried with it. You see me now wasted, haggard, solitary, a wreck upon the waters. And you? I find you plunged into the ecstasies of a new passion. And what of the old one? Where are the traces of it now? Some men can not live except in this condition of excitement. You are one of them. But do not deceive yourself into the belief that others have not hearts, because they do not show them in spasms such as these. Do not despise the faithful agonies even of the dwarf!"

I felt the severe justice of the reproach less in Forrester's words than in his pallid face, and the pangs he struggled to conceal. I was even secretly compelled to admit that there was a miserable truth in what he said about Mephistophiles; yet it was difficult for me to give utterance to the expression of any sympathy in the sufferings of a man who seemed to have directed his whole energies to the pursuit of an insane and unprofitable vengeance.