The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862

It was Fine Art.

Bill Tarbox sometimes pressed the champion hard. But Bill stopped just short of Fine Art, in High Artisanship.

How Dunderbunk cheered this wondrous display! How delighted the whole population was to believe they possessed the best skater on the North River! How they struggled to imitate! How they tumbled, some on their backs, some on their faces, some with dignity like the dying Caesar, some rebelliously like a cat thrown out of a garret, some limp as an ancient acrobate! How they laughed at themselves and at each other!

“It’s all in the new skates,” says Wade, apologizing for his unapproachable power and finish.

“It’s suthin’ in the man,” says Smith Wheelwright.

“Now chase me, everybody,” said Wade.

And, for a quarter of an hour, he dodged the merry crowd, until at last, breathless, he let himself be touched by pretty Belle Purtett, rosiest of all the Dunderbunk bevy of rosy maidens on the ice.

“He rayther beats Bosting,” says Captain Isaac Ambuster to Smith Wheelwright. “It’s so cold there that they can skate all the year round; but he beats them, all the same.”

The Captain was sitting in a queer little bowl of a skiff on the deck of his tug, and rocking it like a cradle, as he talked.

“Bosting’s always hard to beat in anything,” rejoined the ex-Chairman. “But if Bosting is to be beat, here’s the man to do it.”

And now, perhaps, gentle reader, you think I have said enough in behalf of a limited fraternity, the Skaters.

The next chapter, then, shall take up the cause of the Lovers, a more numerous body, and we will see whether True Love, which never makes “smooth running,” can help its progress by a skate-blade.

CHAPTER VI.

“GO NOT, HAPPY DAY, TILL THE MAIDEN YIELDS.”

Christmas noon at Dunderbunk. Every skater was in galloping glee,—as the electric air, and the sparkling sun, and the glinting ice had a right to expect that they all should be.

Belle Purtett, skating simply and well, had never looked so pretty and graceful. So thought Bill Tarbox.

He had not spoken to her, nor she to him, for more than six months. The poor fellow was ashamed of himself and penitent for his past bad courses. And so, though he longed to have his old flame recognize him again, and though he was bitterly jealous and miserably afraid he should lose her, he had kept away and consumed his heart like a true despairing lover.

But to-day Bill was a lion, only second to Wade, the unapproachable lion-in-chief. Bill was reinstated in public esteem, and had won back his standing in the Foundry. He had to-day made a speech which Perry Purtett gave everybody to understand “none of Senator Bill Seward’s could hold the tallow to.” Getting up the meeting and presenting Wade with the skates was Bill’s own scheme, and it had turned out an eminent success. Everything began to look bright to him. His past life drifted out of his mind like the rowdy tales he used to read in the Sunday newspapers.

He had watched Belle Purtett all the morning, and saw that she distinguished nobody with her smiles, not even that coq du village, Ringdove. He also observed that she was furtively watching him.

By-and-by she sailed out of the crowd, and went off a little way to practise.

“Now,” said he to himself, “sail in, Bill Tarbox!”

Belle heard the sharp strokes of a powerful skater coming after her. Her heart divined who this might be. She sped away like the swift Camilla, and her modest drapery showed just enough and “ne quid nimis” of her ankles.

Bill admired the grace and the ankles immensely. But his hopes sank a little at the flight,—for he thought she perceived his chase and meant to drop him. Bill had not bad a classical education, and knew nothing of Galatea in the Eclogue,—how she did not hide, until she saw her swain was looking fondly after.

“She wants to get away,” he thought “But she sha’n’t,—no, not if I have to follow her to Albany.”

He struck out mightily. Presently the swift Camilla let herself be overtaken.

“Good morning, Miss Purtett.” (Dogged air.)

“Good morning, Mr. Tarbox.” (Taken-by-surprise air.)

“I’ve been admiring your skating,” says Bill, trying to be cool.

“Have you?” rejoins Belle, very cool and distant.

“Have you been long on the ice?” he inquired, hypocritically.

“I came on two hours ago with Mr. Ringdove and the girls,” returned she, with a twinkle which said, “Take that, Sir, for pretending you did not see me.”

“You’ve seen Mr. Wade skate, then,” Bill said, ignoring Ringdove.

“Yes; isn’t it splendid?” Belle replied, kindling.

“Tip-top!”

“But then he does everything better than anybody.”

“So he does!” Bill said,—true to his friend, and yet beginning to be jealous of this enthusiasm. It was not the first time he had been jealous of Wade; but he had quelled his fears, like a good fellow.

Belle perceived Bill’s jealousy, and could have cried for joy. She had known as little of her once lover’s heart as he of hers. She only knew that he stopped coming to see her when he fell, and had not renewed his visits now that he was risen again. If she had not been charmingly ruddy with the brisk air and exercise, she would have betrayed her pleasure at Bill’s jealousy with a fine blush.

The sense of recovered power made her wish to use it again. She must tease him a little. So she continued, as they skated on in good rhythm,—

“Mother and I wouldn’t know what to do without Mr. Wade. We like him so much,”—said ardently.

What Bill feared was true, then, he thought. Wade, noble fellow, worthy to win any woman’s heart, had fascinated his landlady’s daughter.

“I don’t wonder you like him,” said he. “He deserves it.”

Belle was touched by her old lover’s forlorn tone.

“He does indeed,” she said. “He has helped and taught us all so much. He has taken such good care of Perry. And then”—here she gave her companion a little look and a little smile—“he speaks so kindly of you, Mr. Tarbox.”

Smile, look, and words electrified Bill. He gave such a spring on his skates that he shot far ahead of the lady. He brought himself back with a sharp turn.

“He has done kinder than he can speak,” says Bill. “He has made a man of me again, Miss Belle.”

“I know it. It makes me very happy to hear you able to say so of yourself.” She spoke gravely.

“Very happy”—about anything that concerned him? Bill had to work off his overjoy at this by an exuberant flourish. He whisked about Belle,—outer edge backward. She stopped to admire. He finished by describing on the virgin ice, before her, the letters B.P., in his neatest style of podography,—easy letters to make, luckily.

“Beautiful!” exclaimed Belle. “What are those letters? Oh! B.P.! What do they stand for?”

“Guess!”

“I’m so dull,” said she, looking bright as a diamond. “Let me think! B.P.? British Poets, perhaps.”

“Try nearer home!”

“What are you likely to be thinking of that begins with B.P.?—Oh, I know! Boiler Plates!”

She looked at him,—innocent as a lamb. Bill looked at her, delighted with her little coquetry. A woman without coquetry is insipid as a rose without scent, as Champagne without bubbles, or as corned beef without mustard.

“It’s something I’m thinking of most of the time,” says he; “but I hope it’s softer than Boiler Plates. B.P. stands for Miss Isabella Purtett.”

“Oh!” says Belle, and she skated on in silence.

“You came down with Alonzo Ringdove?” Bill asked, suddenly, aware of another pang after a moment of peace.

“He came with me and his sisters,” she replied.

Yes; poor Ringdove had dressed himself in his shiniest black, put on his brightest patent-leather boots, with his new swan-necked skates newly strapped over them, and wore his new dove-colored overcoat with the long skirts, on purpose to be lovely in the eyes of Belle on this occasion. Alas, in vain!

“Mr. Ringdove is a great friend of yours, isn’t he?”

“If you ever came to see me now, you would know who my friends are, Mr. Tarbox.”

“Would you be my friend again, if I came, Miss Belle?”

“Again? I have always been so,—always, Bill.”

“Well, then, something more than my friend,—now that I am trying to be worthy of more, Belle?”

“What more can I be?” she said, softly.

“My wife.”

She curved to the right. He followed. To the left. He was not to be shaken off.

“Will you promise me not to say walves instead of valves, Bill?” she said, looking pretty and saucy as could be. “I know, to say W for V is fashionable in the iron business; but I don’t like it.”

“What a thing a woman is to dodge!” says Bill. “Suppose I told you that men brought up inside of boilers, hammering on the inside against twenty hammering like Wulcans on the outside, get their ears so dumfounded that they can’t tell whether they are saying valves or walves, wice or virtue,—suppose I told you that,—what would you say, Belle?”

“Perhaps I’d say that you pronounce virtue so well, and act it so sincerely, that I can’t make any objection to your other words. If you’d asked me to be your vife, Bill, I might have said I didn’t understand; but wife I do understand, and I say”—

She nodded, and tried to skate off. Bill stuck close to her side.

“Is this true, Belle?” he said, almost doubtfully.

“True as truth!”

She put out her hand. He took it, and they skated on together,—hearts beating to the rhythm of their movements. The uproar and merriment of the village came only faintly to them. It seemed as if all Nature was hushed to listen to their plighted troth, their words of love renewed, more earnest for long suppression. The beautiful ice spread before them, like their life to come, a pathway untouched by any sorrowful or weary footstep. The blue sky was cloudless. The keen air stirred the pulses like the vapor of frozen wine. The benignant mountains westward kindly surveyed the happy pair, and the sun seemed created to warm and cheer them.

“And you forgive me, Belle?” said the lover. “I feel as if I had only gone bad to make me know how much better going right is.”

“I always knew you would find it out. I never stopped hoping and praying for it.”

“That must have been what brought Mr. Wade here.”

“Oh, I did hate him so, Bill, when I heard of something that happened between you and him! I thought him a brute and a tyrant. I never could get over it, until he told mother that you were the best machinist he ever knew, and would some time grow to be a great inventor.”

“I’m glad you hated him. I suffered rattlesnakes and collapsed flues for fear you’d go and love him.”

“My affections were engaged,” she said, with simple seriousness.

“Oh, if I’d only thought so long ago! How lovely you are!” exclaims Bill, in an ecstasy. “And how refined! And how good! God bless you!”

He made up such a wishful mouth,—so wishful for one of the pleasurable duties of mouths, that Belle blushed, laughed, and looked down, and as she did so saw that one of her straps was trailing.

“Please fix it, Bill,” she said, stopping and kneeling.

Bill also knelt, and his wishful mouth immediately took its chance.

A manly smack and sweet little feminine chirp sounded as their lips met.

Boom! twanging gay as the first tap of a marriage-bell, a loud crack in the ice rang musically for leagues up and down the river. “Bravo!” it seemed to say. “Well done, Bill Tarbox! Try again!” Which the happy fellow did, and the happy maiden permitted.

“Now,” said Bill, “let us go and hug Mr. Wade!”

“What! Both of us?” Belle protested. “Mr. Tarbox, I am ashamed of you!”

LIGHT LITERATURE

Though the smallest boulder is heavy, and even the merest pebble has a perceptible weight, yet the entire planet, toward which both gravitate, floats more lightly than any feather. In literature somewhat analogous may be observed. Here also are found the insignificant lightness of the pebble and the mighty lightness of the planet; while between them range the weighty masses, superior to the petty ponderability of the one, and unequal to the firmamental float of the other. Accordingly, setting out from the mote-and-pebble extreme, you find, that, up to a certain point, increasing values of thought are commonly indicated by increasing gravity, by more and more of state-paper weightiness; but beyond this the rule is reversed, and lightness becomes the sign and measure of excellence. Bishop Butler and Richard Hooker—especially the latter, the first book of whose “Ecclesiastical Polity” is a truly noble piece of writing—stand, perhaps, at the head of the weighty class of writers in our language; but going beyond these to the “Areopagitica” of Milton, or even to the powerful prose of Raleigh, you pass the boundary-line, and are touched with the buoyant influences of the Muse. Shakspeare and Plato are lighter than levity; they are lifting forces, and weigh less than nothing. The novelette of the season, or any finest and flimsiest gossamer that is fabricated in our literary looms, compares with “Lear,” with “Prometheus Bound,” with any supreme work, only as cobwebs and thistle-down, that are easily borne by the breeze, may compare with sparrows and thrushes, that can fly and withal sing.

There is a call for “light reading,” and I for one applaud the demand. A lightening influence is the best that books or men can bestow upon us. Information is good, but invigoration is a thousand times better. Cheer, cheer and vigor for the world’s heart! It is because man’s hope is so low, and his imaginations so poor, that he is earthly and evil. Wings for these unfledged hearts! Transformation for these grubs! Give us animation, inspiration, joy, faith! Give us enlivening, lightsome airs, to which our souls shall, on a sudden, begin to dance, keeping step with the angels! What else is worth having? Each one of these sordid sons of men—is he not a new-born Apollo, who waits only for the ambrosia from Olympus, to spring forth in divineness of beauty and strength?

Nevertheless, I know not of any reading so hopelessly heavy as large portions of that which claims the name of light. Light writing it may be; but, considered as reading, one would be unjust to charge upon it any lack of avoirdupois. It is like the bran of wheat, which, though of little weight in the barrel, is heavy enough in the stomach,—Dr. Sylvester Graham to the contrary notwithstanding. It is related of an Italian culprit, that, being required, in punishment of his crime, to make choice between lying in prison for a term of years and reading the history of Guicciardini, he chose the latter, but, after a brief trial, petitioned for leave to reverse his election. I never attempted Guicciardini; but I did once attempt Pope’s “Dunciad.” And was it really the doom of a generation of readers to find delight in this book? One must suppose so. There are those in our day whose hard fate it is to read and to like James’s and Bulwer’s novels. But greatly mistaken is the scholar who, for relief from severe studies, goes to an empty or insincere book. It is like saying money, after large and worthy expenditures, by purchasing at a low price that which is worth nothing,—buying “gold” watches at a mock-auction room.

Indeed, no book, however witty, lively, saltatory, can have the volant effects we covet, if it want substance and seriousness. Substance, however, is to be widely distinguished from ponderability. Oxygen is not so ponderous as lead or granite, but it is far more substantial than either, and, as every one knows, infinitely more serviceable to life. The distinction is equally valid when applied to books and to men. The “airy nothings” of imagination prove to be the most enduring somethings of the world’s literature; and the last lightness of heart may go with the purest truth of soul and the most precious virtue of intelligence. All expressions carry the perpetual savors of their origin; and as brooks that dance and frolic with the sunbeams and murmur to the birds, light-hearted forever, will yet bear sands of gold, if they flow from auriferous hills, so any bubble and purl of laughter, proceeding from a wise and wealthy soul, will bear a noble significance. In point of fact, some of the merriest books in the world are among the most richly freighted. And as airy and mirthful books may be substantial and serious, so it is an effect very similar to that of noble and significant mirth that is produced upon us by the grandest pieces of serious writing. Thus, he who rightly reads the “Phaedon” or “Phaedrus” of Plato smiles through all the depths of his brain, though no pronounced smile show on his face; and he who rightly reads the book of Cervantes, though the laughters plunge, as it were, in cascades from his lips, is earnest at heart, and full of sound and tender meditations.

If now, setting aside all books, whether pretending to gayety or gravity, that are simply empty and ineffectual, we inquire for the prime distinction between books light in a worthy and unworthy sense, it will appear to be the distinction between inspiration and alcohol,—between effects divinely real and effects illusory and momentary. The drunkard dreams of flying, and fancies the stars themselves left below him, while he is really lying in the gutter. There are those, and numbers of those, who in reading seek no more than to be cheated in a similar way. Indeed, to acknowledge a disagreeable fact, there is a very great deal of reading in our day that is simply a substitute for the potations and “heavy-handed revel” of our Saxon ancestors. In both cases it is a spurious exaltation of feeling that is sought; in both cases those who for a moment seem to themselves larks ascending to meet the sun are but worms eating earth.

This celestial lightness, which constitutes the last praise and causes the purest benefit of books, comes not of any manner of writing; no mere vivacity, though that of a French writer of memoirs, though that of Arsène Houssaye himself, can compass it; by no knack or talents is it to be attained. Perfect style has, indeed, many allurements, and is of exceeding price; but it is no chariot of Elijah, nevertheless. Was ever style more delightful, of its kind, than Dryden’s? Was ever style more heavy and monotonous than that of Swedenborg in his theological works? But I have read Dryden, not indeed without pleasure in his masterly exquisite ease and sureness of statement and his occasional touches of admirable good sense, yet with no slightest liberation of spirit, with no degree, greater or less, of that magical and marvellous evocation, of inward resource, whose blessed surprise now and then in life makes for us angelic moments, and feelingly persuades us that our earth also is a star and in the sky. On the other hand, I once read Swedenborg’s “Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom” with such enticement, such afflatus, such quickening and heightening of soul, as I cannot describe without seeming excessive. Until half through the book, I turned every page with the feeling that before another page I might see the chasm between the real and phenomenal worlds fairly bridged over. Of course, it disappointed me in the end; but what of that? To have kindled and for a time sustained the expectation which should render possible such disappointment was a benefit that a whole Bodleian Library might fail to confer. These benefits come to us not from the writer as such, but from the man behind the writer. He who dwells aloft amid the deathless orient imaginations of the human race, easily inhabiting their atmosphere as his native element,—about him, and him only, are the halos and dawns of immortal youth; and his speech, though with many babyish or barbarous fancies, many melancholies and vices of the blood compounded, carries nevertheless some refrain of divine hilarity, that beguiles men of their sordidness, their sullenness, and low cares, they know not how nor why.

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON

We set out at a little past eleven, and made our first stage to Manchester. We were by this time sufficiently Anglicized to reckon the morning a bright and sunny one; although the May sunshine was mingled with water, as it were, and distempered with a very bitter east-wind.

Lancashire is a dreary county, (all, at least, except its hilly portions,) and I have never passed through it without wishing myself anywhere but in that particular spot where I then happened to be. A few places along our route were historically interesting; as, for example, Bolton, which was the scene of many remarkable events in the Parliamentary War, and in the market-square of which one of the Earls of Derby was beheaded. We saw, along the way-side, the never-failing green fields, hedges, and other monotonous features of an ordinary English landscape. There were little factory villages, too, or larger towns, with their tall chimneys, and their pennons of black smoke, their uglinesses of brick-work, and their heaps of refuse matter from the furnace, which seems to be the only kind of stuff which Nature cannot take back to herself and resolve into the elements, when man has thrown it aside. These hillocks of waste and effete mineral always disfigure the neighborhood of ironmongering towns, and, even after a considerable antiquity, are hardly made decent with a little grass.

At a quarter to two we left Manchester by the Sheffield and Lincoln Railway. The scenery grew rather better than that through which we had hitherto passed, though still by no means very striking; for (except in the show-districts, such as the Lake country, or Derbyshire) English scenery is not particularly well worth looking at, considered as a spectacle or a picture. It has a real, homely charm of its own, no doubt; and the rich verdure, and the thorough finish added by human, art, are perhaps as attractive to an American eye as any stronger feature could be. Our journey, however, between Manchester and Sheffield was not through a rich tract of country, but along a valley walled in by bleak, ridgy hills extending straight as a rampart, and across black moorlands with here and there a plantation of trees. Sometimes there were long and gradual ascents, bleak, windy, and desolate, conveying the very impression which the reader gets from many passages of Miss Bronté’s novels, and still more from those of her two sisters. Old stone or brick farm-houses, and, once in a while, an old church-tower, were visible: but these are almost too common objects to be noticed in an English landscape.

On a railway, I suspect, what little we do see of the country is seen quite amiss, because it was never intended to be looked at from any point of view in that straight line; so that it is like looking at the wrong side of a piece of tapestry. The old highways and footpaths were as natural as brooks and rivulets, and adapted themselves by an inevitable impulse to the physiognomy of the country; and, furthermore, every object within view of them had some subtile reference to their curves and undulations: but the line of a railway is perfectly artificial, and puts all precedent things at sixes-and-sevens. At any rate, be the cause what it may, there is seldom anything worth seeing—within the scope of a railway traveller’s eye; and if there were, it requires an alert marksman to take a flying shot at the picturesque.

At one of the stations, (it was near a village of ancient aspect, nestling round a church, on a wide Yorkshire moor,) I saw a tall old lady in black, who seemed to have just alighted from the train. She caught my attention by a singular movement of the head, not once only, but continually repeated, and at regular intervals, as if she were making a stern and solemn protest against some action that developed itself before her eyes, and were foreboding terrible disaster, if it should be persisted in. Of course, it was nothing more than a paralytic or nervous affection; yet one might fancy that it had its origin in some unspeakable wrong, perpetrated half a lifetime ago in this old gentlewoman’s presence, either against herself or somebody whom she loved still better. Her features had a wonderful sternness, which, I presume, was caused by her habitual effort to compose and keep them quiet, and thereby counteract the tendency to paralytic movement. The slow, regular, and inexorable character of the motion,—her look of force and self-control, which had the appearance of rendering it voluntary, while yet it was so fateful,—have stamped this poor lady’s face and gesture into my memory; so that, some dark day or other, I am afraid she will reproduce herself in a dismal romance.