The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 34, August, 1860

The mother of Leclerc had uttered mysterious words which Jacqueline took for truth; the light was joyful and blessed, and of all things to be desired, though it smote the life from one like lightning. She waited alone with faith, watching till it should come,—left alone with this beam glimmering like a moth through darkness!—for thus was a believer, or one who resolved on believing, left in that day, when he turned from the machinery of the Church, and stood alone, searching for God without the aid of priestly intervention.

VI

There was something awful in such loneliness.

Jacqueline knew little of it until now, as she walked toward the fields, by the side of Elsie Méril.

She saw how she had depended on the priest of Domrémy, as he had been the lawgiver and the leader of her life. A spiritual life, to be sustained only by the invisible spirit, to be lived by faith, not in man, but in God, without intervention of saint or angel or Blessed Virgin,—was the world's life liberated by such freedom?

By faith, and not by sight, the just must live. Would He bow his heavens and come down to dwell with the contrite and the humble?

Wondrous strange it seemed,—incomprehensible,—more than she could manage or control. There are prisoners whose pardon proves the world too large for them: they find no rest until their prison-door is opened for them again.

Of this class was Elsie,—not Jacqueline. Elsie was afraid of freedom,—not equal to it,—unable to deal with it; satisfied with being a child, with being a slave, when it came to be a question whether she should accept and use her highest privilege and dignity. At this hour, and among all persuasions, you will find that Elsie does not stand alone. Little children there are, long as the world shall stand,—though not precisely such as we think of when we remember, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven."

It was enough for Elsie—it is enough for multitudes through all the reformations—that she had an earthly defence, even such as she relied on without trouble. She lived in the hour. She had never toiled to deliver her darling from the lions,—to redeem a soul from purgatory. She eased her conscience, when it was troubled, by such shallow discovery of herself as she deemed confession. She loved dancing, and all other amusements,—hated solitude, knew not the meaning of self-abnegation. And let her dance and enjoy herself!—some service to the body is rendered thereby. She might do greatly worse, and is incapable of doing greatly better. Will you stint the idiots of comfort,—or rather build them decent habitations, and even vex yourself to feed and clothe them, in reverent confidence that the Future shall surely take them up and bless them, unstop their ears, open their eyes, give speech to them and absolute deliverance?

There are others beside Elsie who congratulate themselves on non-committal,—they covet not the advanced and dangerous positions. Honorable, but dangerous positions! The head might be taken off, do you not see? And could all eternity compensate for the loss of time? Ah, the body might be mutilated,—the liberty restrained: as if, indeed, a man's freedom were not eternally established, when his enemies, howling around, must at least crucify him! as if a divine voice were not ever heard through the raging of the people, saying, "Come up higher!"

But a fern-leaf cannot grow into a mighty hemlock-tree. From the ashes of a sparrow the phoenix shall not rise. You will not to all eternity, by any artificial means, nor by a miracle, bring forth an eagle from a mollusk.

There was not a sadder heart in all those fields of Meaux than the heart of Jacqueline Gabrie. There was not a stronger heart. Not a hand labored more diligently. Under the broad-brimmed peasant-hat was a sad countenance,—under the peasant-dress a heavily burdened spirit. Silent, all day, she labored. She was alone at noon under the river-bordered trees, eating her coarse fare without zest, but with a conscience,—to sustain the body that was born to toil. But in the maelström of doubt and anxiety was she tossed and whirled, and she cared not for her life. To be rid of it, now for the first time, she felt might be a blessing. What purpose, indeed, had she? She turned her thought from this question, but it would not let her alone. Again and yet again she turned to meet it, and thus would surely have at length its satisfying answer.

John Leclerc might pass through this ordeal, as from the first she had expected of him. But she listened to the speech of many of her fellow-laborers. Some prophecies which had a sound incredible escaped them. She did not credit them, but they tormented her. They contended with one another. John, some foretold, would certainly retract. One day of public whipping would suffice. When the blood began to flow, he would see his duty clearer! The men were prophesying from the depths and the abundance of their self-consciousness. Others speculated on the final result of the executed sentence. They believed that the "obstinacy" and courage of the man would provoke his judges, and the executors of his sentence,—that with rigor they would execute it,—and that, led on by passion, and provoked by such as would side with the victim, the sentence would terminate in his destruction. Sooner or later, nothing but his life would be found ultimately to satisfy his enemies.

It might be so, thought Jacqueline Gabrie. What then? what then?—she thought. There was inspiration to the girl in that cruel prophecy. Her lifework was not ended. If Christ was the One Ransom, and it did truly fall on Him, and not on her, to care for those beloved, departed from this life, her work was still for love.

John Leclerc disabled or dead, who should care then for his aged mother?

Who should minister to him? Who, indeed, but Jacqueline?

Living or dying, she said to herself, with grand enthusiasm,—living or dying, let him do the Master's pleasure! She also was here to serve that Master; and while in spiritual things he fed the hungry, clothed the naked, gave the cup of living water, visited the imprisoned, and the sick of sin, she would bind herself to minister to him and his old mother in temporal things; so should he live above all cares save those of heavenly love. She could support them all by her diligence, and in this there would be joy.

She thought this through her toil; and the thought was its own reward. It strengthened her like an angel,—strengthened heart and faith. She labored as no other peasant-woman did that day,—like a beast of burden, unresisting, patient,—like a holy saint, so peaceful and assured, so conscious of the present very God!

[To be continued.]

* * * * *

MIDSUMMER

Around this lovely valley riseThe purple hills of Paradise.Oh, softly on yon banks of hazeHer rosy face the Summer lays!Becalmed along the azure sky,The argosies of cloudland lie,Whose shores, with many a shining rift,Far off their pearl-white peaks uplift.  Through all the long midsummer-day  The meadow-sides are sweet with hay.  I seek the coolest sheltered seat  Just where the field and forest meet,—  Where grow the pine-trees tall and bland,  The ancient oaks austere and grand,  And fringy roots and pebbles fret  The ripples of the rivulet.  I watch, the mowers as they go  Through the tall grass, a white-sleeved row;  With even stroke their scythes they swing,  In tune their merry whetstones ring;  Behind the nimble youngsters run  And toss the thick swaths in the sun;  The cattle graze; while, warm and still,  Slopes the broad pasture, basks the hill,  And bright, when summer breezes break,  The green wheat crinkles like a lake.  The butterfly and humble-bee  Come to the pleasant woods with me;  Quickly before me runs the quail,  The chickens skulk behind the rail,  High up the lone wood-pigeon sits,  And the woodpecker pecks and flits.  Sweet woodland music sinks and swells,  The brooklet rings its tinkling bells,  The swarming insects drone and hum,  The partridge beats his throbbing drum.  The squirrel leaps among the boughs,  And chatters in his leafy house.  The oriole flashes by; and, look!  Into the mirror of the brook,  Where the vain blue-bird trims his coat,  Two tiny feathers fall and float.  As silently, as tenderly,  The down of peace descends on me.  Oh, this is peace! I have no need  Of friend to talk, of book to read:  A dear Companion here abides;  Close to my thrilling heart He hides;  The holy silence is His Voice:  I lie and listen, and rejoice.

TOBACCO

"Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases! a good vomit, I confess, a virtuous herb, if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used. But as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lauds, health: hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul!"—BURTON. Anatomy of Melancholy.

A delicate subject? Very true; and one which must be handled as tenderly as biscuit de Sèvres, or Venetian glass. Whichever side of the question we may assume, as the most popular, or the most right, the feelings of so large and respectable a minority are to be consulted, that it behooves the critic or reviewer to move cautiously, and, imitating the actions of a certain feline household reformer, to show only the patte de velours.

The omniscient Burton seems to have reached the pith of the matter. The two hostile sections of his proposition, though written so long since, would very well fit the smoker and the reformer of to-day. That portion of the world which is enough advanced to advocate reforms is entirely divided against itself on the subject of Tobacco. Immense interests, economical, social, and, as some conceive, moral, are arrayed on either side. The reformers have hitherto had the better of it in point of argument, and have pushed the attack with most vigor, yet with but trifling results. Smokers and chewers, et id omne genus, mollified by their habits, or laboring under guilty consciences, have made but a feeble defence. Nor in all this is there anything new. It is as old as the knowledge of the "weed" among thinking men,—in other words, about three centuries. The English adventurers under Drake and Raleigh and Hawkins, and the multitude of minor Protestant "filibusters" who followed in their train, had no sooner imported the habit of smoking tobacco, among the other outlandish customs which they brought home from the new Indies and the Spanish Main, than the higher powers rebuked the practice, which novelty and its own fascinations were rendering so fashionable, in language more forcible than elegant. The philippic of King James is so apposite that we may be pardoned for transcribing one oft-quoted sentence:—"But herein is not only a great vanity, but a great contempt of God's good gifts, that the sweetness of man's breath, being a good gift of God, should be wilfully corrupted by this stinking smoke…. A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmfull to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof neerest resembling the horrible Stygian smoake of the pit that is bottomless."6

The Popes Urban VIII. and Innocent XII. fulminated edicts of excommunication against all who used tobacco in any form; from which we may conclude that the new habit was spreading rapidly over Christendom. And not only the successors of St. Peter, but those also of the Prophet, denounced the practice, the Sultan Amurath IV. making it punishable with death. The Viziers of Turkey spitted the noses of smokers with their own pipes; the more considerate Shah of Persia cut them entirely off. The knout greeted in Russia the first indulgence, and death followed the second offence. In some of the Swiss cantons smoking was considered a crime second only to adultery. Modern republics are not quite so severe.

It is not to be supposed that in England the royal pamphlet had its desired effect. For we find that James laid many rigid sumptuary restrictions upon the practice which he abominated, based chiefly upon the extravagance it occasioned,—the expenses of some smokers being estimated at several hundred pounds a year. The King, however, had the sagacity to secure a preëmption-right as early as 1620.

Yet how could the practice but have increased, when, as Malcolm relates the tradition, such men as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Hugh Middleton sat smoking at their doors?—for "the public manner in which it was exhibited, and the aromatic flavor inhaled by the passengers, exclusive of the singularity of the circumstance and the eminence of the parties," could hardly have failed to favor its dissemination.

The silver-tongued Joshua Sylvester hoped to aid the royal cause by writing a poem entitled, "Tobacco battered, and the pipes shattered, (about their ears who idly idolize so base and barbarous a weed, or at least-wise overlove so loathsome a vanity,) by a volley of holy shot thundered from Mount Helicon." If the smoothness of the verses equalled the euphony of the title, this must have proved a moving appeal.

Stow contents himself with calling tobacco "a stinking weed, so much abused to God's dishonor."

Burton exhausts the subject in a single paragraph. Ben Jonson, though a jolly good fellow, was opposed to the habit of smoking. But Spenser mentions "divine tobacco." Walton's "Piscator" indulges in a pipe at breakfast, and "Venator" has his tobacco brought from London to insure its purity. Sweet Izaak could have selected no more soothing minister than the pipe to the "contemplative man's recreation."

As the new sedative gains in esteem, we find Francis Quarles, in his "Emblems," treating it in this serio-comic vein:—

  "Flint-hearted Stoics, you whose marble eyes  Contemn a wrinkle, and whose souls despise  To follow Nature's too affected fashion,  Or travel in the regent walk of passion,—  Whose rigid hearts disdain to shrink at  fears,  Or play at fast-and-loose with smiles and  tears,—  Come, burst your spleens with laughter to  behold  A new-found vanity, which days of old  Ne'er knew,—a vanity that has beset  The world, and made more slaves than Mahomet,—  That has condemned us to the servile yoke  Of slavery, and made us slaves to smoke,  But stay! why tax I thus our modern  times  For new-born follies and for new-born  crimes?  Are we sole guilty, and the first age free?  No: they were smoked and slaved as well  as we.  What's sweet-lipped honor's blast, but  smoke? what's treasure,  But very smoke? and what's more smoke  than pleasure?"

Brand gives us the whole matter in a nutshell, in the following quaint epigram, entitled "A Tobacconist," taken from an old collection:—

  "All dainty meats I do defy  Which feed men fat as swine;  He is a frugal man, indeed,  That on a leaf can dine.  "He needs no napkin for his hands  His fingers' ends to wipe,  That keeps his kitchen in a box,  And roast meat in a pipe."

And so on, the singers of succeeding years, usque ad nauseam,—a loathing equalled only by that of the earlier writers for the plant, now so lauded.

Tobacco-worship seems to us to culminate in the following stanza from a German song:—

  "Tabak ist mein Leben,  Dem hab' ich mich ergeben, ergeben;  Tabak ist meine Lust.  Und eh' ich ihn sollt' lassen,  Viel lieber wollt' ich hassen,  Ja, hassen selbst eines Mädchens Kuss."

As it is with your sex, my dear Madam, that this question of Tobacco is to be mainly argued,—for, to your honor be it spoken, you have always been of the reformatory party,—let us hope, that, provided you have not read or translated the last verse, you have recovered your natural amiability, ruffled perhaps by this odious subject, and are prepared to believe us when we tell you that these opposite opinions cannot be wholly reconciled, and to follow us patiently while we attempt to show that a certain gentleman, introduced to your maternal ancestor at a very remote period of the world's history, is not so black as he is sometimes painted. Let us keep good-natured, at least, in this discussion; for we propose to settle it without taking off the gloves, as we intimated in the opening paragraph. Your patience will be much needed for the sad army of facts and figures which is to follow. Therefore it is but just that you should speak now, after these long sentences.

Your George will never smoke? Excuse me. When he will smoke depends upon the precocity of his individual generation; and that increases in a direct ratio with time itself, in this country. Thus, to state the matter in an approximate inverse arithmetical progression, and dating the birth of "young America" about the year 1825,—previously to which reigned the dark ages of oldfogydom, so called,—we find as follows: —From 1825 to 1835, young gentlemen learned to smoke when from 25 to 20 years of age; from 1835 to 1845, young gents, ditto, ditto, from 20 to 15 years; 1845 to 1855, from 15 to 10; 1855 to 1865, 10 to 5; 1865 to 1875, 5 to 0; and, if we continue, 1875 to 1885, zero to minus: but really the question is becoming too nebulous. Corollary. In about ten years, the youth of the United States will smoke contemporaneously with the infant Burmese, who, we are credibly informed, begin the habit aet. 3, or as soon as they have cut enough teeth to hold a cigar.

Therefore, we will say, Madam, at some indefinite period of his childhood or youth,—for we would not be so impolite as to infer your age by asking that of your son,—the susdit George will come home late from play some afternoon, languid, pale, and disinclined for tea. He will indignantly repel the accusation of feeling ill, and there will lurk about his person an indescribable odor of stale cinnamon, which you will be at a loss to account for, but which his elder brother will recognize as the natural result of smoking "cinnamon cigars," wherewith certain wicked tobacconists of this city tempt curious youth. If you follow him to his chamber, you will probably discover more damning evidence of his guilt.

We will draw the curtain over the scene of the Spartan mother—we hope you belong to that nearly extinct class—which is to follow. Let us suppose all differences settled, the habit ostensibly given up, and your darling, grown more honest or more artful,—the result is the same to your blissful ignorance,—studiously pursuing his way until he enters college. Some fine day you drive over to the neighboring university, and, entering his room unannounced, you find him coloring his first (factitious) meerschaum!—also a sad deficiency in his wardrobe of half-worn clothes. C'est une pipe qui coûte cher à culotter, the college meerschaum,—and in more ways than one, according to the "Autocrat":—"I do not advise you, young man, to consecrate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe," et seq. More bold, the Sophomore will smoke openly at home; and by the end of the third vacation, it is one of those unyielding faits accomplis against which reformers, household or peripatetic, beat their heads in vain.

Perhaps your husband smokes? If so, at what period of the twenty-four hours have you invariably found Mr. – most lenient to your little pecuniary peccadilloes? Is he not always most good-natured when his cigar is about one-third consumed, the ash evenly burnt and adherent, and not fallen into his shirt-bosom? Depend upon it, tobacco is a great soother of domestic differences.

Let us, then, look an existing, firmly rooted evil—if you will call it so—in the face, and see if it is quite so bad as it is represented. It is too wide-spread to be sneered away,—for we might almost say that smokers were the rule, and non-smokers the exception, among all civilized men, Charles Kingsley supports us here:—"'Man a cooking animal,' my dear Doctor Johnson? Pooh! man is a smoking animal. There is his ergon, his 'differential energy,' as the Aristotelians say,—his true distinction from the orangoutang. Ponder it well."

Query.—What did the old Roman do without a cigar? How idle through the day? How survive his interminable post-coenal potations?—The thought is not our own. It occurs somewhere in De Quincey, we believe. It is one of those self-evident propositions you wonder had not occurred to you before.—What an accessory of luxury the pipe would have been to him who passed the livelong day under the mosaic arches of the Thermoe! The strigiles would have vanished before the meerschaum, had that magic clay then been known. How completely would the hookah and the narghileh have harmonized with the crater, cyathi, and tripods of the triclinium in that portraiture of the "Decadence of Rome" which hangs in the Luxembourg Gallery! Poor fellows! they managed to exist without them.

Though pipes are found carved on very old sculptures in China, and the habit of smoking was long since extensively followed there, according to Pallas, and although certain species of the tobacco-plant, as the Nicotiana rustica, would appear to be indigenous to the country, yet we have the best reason to conclude that America, if not the exclusive home of the herb, was the birthplace of its use by man. The first great explorer of the West found the sensuous natives of Hispaniola rolling up and smoking tobacco-leaves with the same persistent indolence that we recognize in the Cuban of the present day. Rough Cortés saw with surprise the luxurious Aztec composing himself for the siesta in the middle of the day as invariably as his fellow Dons in Castile. But he was amazed that the barbarians had discovered in tobacco a sedative to promote their reveries and compose them to sleep, of which the hidalgos were as yet ignorant, but which they were soon to appropriate with avidity, and to use with equal zest. Humboldt says that it had been cultivated by the people of Orinoco from time immemorial, and was smoked all over America at the time of the Spanish Conquest,—also that it was first discovered by Europeans in Yucatan, in 1520, and was there called Petum. Tobacco, according to the same authority, was taken from the word tabac, the name of an instrument used in the preparation of the herb.

Though Columbus and his immediate followers doubtless brought home specimens of tobacco among the other spoils of the New World, Jean Nicot, ambassador to Portugal from Francis II., first sent the seeds to France, where they were cultivated and used about the year 1560. In honor of its sponsor, Botany has named the plant Nicotiana tabacum, and Chemistry distinguished as Nicotin its active alkaloid. Sir Francis Drake first brought tobacco to England about 1586. It owed the greater part of its early popularity, however, to the praise and practice of Raleigh: his high standing and character would have sufficed to introduce still more novel customs. The weed once inhaled, the habit once acquired, its seductions would not allow it to be easily laid aside; and we accordingly find that royal satire, public odium, and ruinous cost were alike inadequate to restrain its rapidly increasing consumption. Somewhere about the year 1600 or 1601 tobacco was carried to the East, and introduced among the Turks and Persians,—it is not known by whom: the devotion of modern Mussulmans might reasonably ascribe it to Allah himself. It seems almost incredible that the Oriental type of life and character could have existed without tobacco. The pipe seems as inseparable as the Koran from the follower of Mahomet.

Barely three centuries ago, then, the first seeds of the Nicotiana tabacum germinated in European soil: now, who shall count the harvests? Less than three centuries ago, Raleigh attracted a crowd by sitting smoking at his door: now, the humblest bog-trotter of Ireland must be poor indeed who cannot own or borrow a pipe. A little more than a century and a half ago, the import into Great Britain was only one hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and part of that was reëxported: now, the imports reach thirty million pounds, and furnish to government a revenue of twenty millions of dollars,—being an annual tax of three shillings four pence on every soul in the United Kingdom. Nor is the case of England an exceptional one. The tobacco-zone girdles the globe. From the equator, through fifty degrees of latitude, it grows and is consumed on every continent. On every sea it is carried and used by the mariners of every nation. Its incense rises in every clime, as from one vast altar dedicated to its worship,—before which ancient holocausts, the smoke of burnt-offerings in the old Jewish rites, the censers of the Church, and the joss-sticks of the East, must "pale their ineffectual fires." All classes, all ages, in all climates, and in some countries both sexes, use tobacco to dispel heat, to resist cold, to soothe to reverie, or to arouse the brain, according to their national habitations, peculiarities, or habits.