the real thing by albert teichner stacks of hundred-dollar bills--but sadly, almost all of them were genuine! [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, november 1962. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "everything in this wing is genuine _old_ fake," stahl told the two tourists while his wife clung proudly to his arm. like him, she was tall, blonde and impossibly good-looking. "even this strongbox money is finest american counterfeit," she said. "may i see it?" asked smith. the lifeless face of the mathematician brightened as he peered through the quartz top at a dollar bill marked w8265286a. "i can only get the worthless real stuff. ancient governments always destroyed counterfeits. but you're in economic planning, so it must be easier to get good fakes." "only the merest imperfection, that slight mongoloid fold in washington's left eyelid," stahl replied, tightly encircling his wife's waist as if showing off all his finest possessions simultaneously. he glanced at tinker, a cyberneticist who, like smith, had sent several requests to see the famous suite of artifices. "ever try collecting?" "not money," tinker answered, eyes still on mrs. stahl. "got the 'mongoloid' bill five years ago, same year as i got mary." he gave his wife an even more ostentatious squeeze. smith stared at her, too, but more with dull dissatisfaction than desire. "fifteen bills in the box now--but i've still only one wife." "fifteen!" exclaimed smith. "the rich get richer and the poor stay poor." "the wallpaper," stahl smoothly proceeded, "is a replica of italian murals. if you adjust your focus properly the flat columns become solids through the art of vanishing-point perspective." "excellent period distortion of greek styles," said tinker, studying the columns. "and those three chairs are fine copies of chippendale. you're to be complimented on your taste in everything, stahl." "you really know ancient designs," stahl said. "genuine old copies are even scarcer than their originals. and originals, of course, can never be quite as good." "sometimes i don't see why," smith muttered. they all looked shocked. "smith, you need a checkup," tinker advised. "you sound rundown. how can we progress without imitating past achievements?" "a little rundown," smith admitted, "but.... oh, let's forget it." "let's," stahl nodded, striving to recapture the pair's attention as they went on through the suite. "notice the paintings. those two are excellent pseudo-braques and in the last room were fine fakes of van gogh, picasso and chardin. in fact," he pointed toward a gauguin-like nude, all flattened sensuousness, "that one's as close to a real gauguin as an imitation can go without being a mere reproduction." they all gasped and even smith shook his head reverently. "to be _that_ close to the real thing! it's all you'd ever need." "becoming more possible all the time." tinker grinned suggestively at mrs. stahl. she looked back, mildly interested. "we'll get there eventually." happily oblivious to everything but his collections, stahl led them into the library. one wall, covered with rows of book spines, swung around to reveal a well-stocked bar. there was also a large bar across the room which quickly became a library of real books and recording systems. "i'm not much for eating and drinking," smith protested feebly. "who is?" mrs. stahl laughed. "but this must be a special occasion for you." eyes bulging nervously, smith ran his fingers through his luxuriant hair and sighed, "special it is. all right." stahl casually mixed drinks for them all and sipped an old fashioned. "i've concentrated somewhat more on the twentieth century of the old times than any other," he said. "a particularly intriguing century, i find, although not crucial like the twenty-first, of course." "_the_ crucial one," tinker protested. "as a fellow antiquarian, i must beg to differ, sir." "what about rocket travel, mr. stahl? when did that begin?" "old hat," he yawned. "and atomic energy?" "same applies there. look, tinker, don't get me wrong. i love the period. but, objectively viewed, the twenty-first makes the great difference." "and what about duplication of life functions, like the mechanical heart? that really got started in the twentieth." "absolutely right," smith nodded vigorously. "all strictly mechanical," stahl sighed. "but the twenty-first turned the study of pain and pleasure itself from an art into a true science." "no, no," scoffed the cyberneticist. stahl pounded the bar. "all right, i'm going to prove it by putting on an all-sense feeliescope of thomas dyall. it's fully sense-adapted, so it should pick up perfectly." "hope it isn't noisy," said smith. "it's _beautiful_," answered mary stahl. "i could listen to it all day." the odor of damp, new-mown grass filled the room and another more elusive scent mingled with it. _entry of june 3rd, 2068_, said an impersonal, mechanical voice, _from the journal of thomas dyall, elected world's first poet laureate in 2089_. a warm rich bass took over: this morning i rode far out to reach open countryside in the preserved areas to replenish my stock of sensory experiences. as i was walking along through the woods, the most delicious scent struck my nostrils. i immediately recognized new-mown grass in it but the factor making the true difference escaped me until i realized the faint odor belonged to roses. at that point, my senses reeling with delight, i composed in my mind most of my long poem, _the nature of nature_, grasping intuitively an experience more intense, more valuable, than any "real" one. i say _intuitively_ because i still thought the odor was merely that of grass and roses. a minute afterwards, though, i came into a clearing, spotted a forest ranger's cottage there and discovered that the scent was from a recently-improved insecticide that the ranger's wife was using in the living room. there was little grass in the area and not a single rose! _the following note_, interrupted the monotone voice, _was added by the author in the year 2116_: here in "real" life the great guiding principle of my future was brought home to me. the well-done imitation of a thing was better than the thing itself! this was the lesson i had to disseminate for all humanity. "interesting," tinker said, "although we all know now that one thing cannot be substituted for. also--" "no discussion now," pleaded smith. "you need a while to consider all that. anyway, i've been thinking about your bill, stahl. that wasn't a fold on washington's eyelid, just a tiny inkstain. it's _genuine_." "it can't be," stahl snapped and angrily led them back to the first room. "tinker, i want you as my witness." he handed the bill around and smith had to concede it was really counterfeit. "what's that next one?" he asked. "a ten." stahl hesitated, then took it off the pile along with three others and passed them to the visitors, showing off fine points of imitation. when he collected the bills he carefully made certain there were still five and locked them up again. "what about another drink?" smith asked hastily. "no." tinker sat down in a large chair. "let's straighten out something right now, stahl. dyall was making the first crude statement of an obvious truth. if we have a pleasant sensation it doesn't matter whether it's caused by a rose or a chemical imitation of a rose or by making a brain imagine a rose--doesn't matter except that the real rose itself is the hardest thing to control. so it can't be as intensely real as its imitations." "mr. tinker, isn't that crucial enough for you?" mrs. stahl asked. her voice was so rich and warmly rounded that smith stared wonderingly at her, as if trying to fathom an alien tongue. "not quite," tinker shrugged. "stahl, you're discussing the smallest aspect of the three-part equation, stimulus + stimulated body = experience. your poet was saying certain changes in stimulus would still give a stimulated body the same experience as the original. but the philosophers and cyberneticists, they already suspected something more radical. if the stimulated body was properly changed, the same stimulus could give different bodies the same experience. in other words, a properly-arranged process would have the same experience as the life function for which it was substituted." "now then," he went on, "all life reproduces itself, right? well, they finally figured the most important thing to reproduce was a man's experience itself, not any particular form of stimulated body. of course we have higher ideals. we want the stimulated body to be as nearly like what it was as possible--then we can have the best of _all_ possible worlds." "some people," smith grumbled, "don't get their fair share of that best." "anyway i hate _all_ theories," said mrs. stahl. stahl disregarded them as he stared at his cashbox. "my money," he said ominously, "has been changed!" the two visitors exchanged nervous glances. "that's not possible," said tinker. "it _is_. somebody's palmed a real one as a substitute!" "that's very unfair," smith protested. "we came here as guests, strangers to you and to each other. we've given you the correct degree of envious admiration and now you show your gratitude for our human reaction by saying we're deranged!" stahl was unmoved. "i still say it's been stolen." he opened the box. "see--the dollar's different! when the people of the old times made us their heirs and children they left piles of this real stuff around along with almost everything else they'd made. it's practically worthless!" tinker frowned uncertainly. "if it makes you feel better i'll submit to a lie-detector. i hope you're capable of feeling shame when it proves my innocence!" "good enough," said stahl, turning expectantly to his other guest. as he waited, smith pulled back a little. "well?" mary smiled, moving a little toward him. smith leaped away from her, heading toward an open window, but the others moved faster and grabbed him before he reached the wall. "what's the matter with you anyway?" tinker grunted, straining to hold him. "the window's _painted_ on the wall!" smith slumped forward in despair as stahl triumphantly wormed the valued counterfeit from his pocket. "i can't do anything right," smith wailed. "i heard about this collection and thought i could manage to get one little thing for myself. i haven't been given much else by life." "you--you defective!" stahl shouted. smith only slumped further forward. "how can i help it? the monte carlo computer gave me one of the last places for advanced altering and i have to wait and wait. compared to you, i'm still a half-breed!" "don't hand me that," stahl snapped. "i didn't mean physical defects. you look as normal as anyone else." "no, darling, i think he's telling the truth," mary said sympathetically. "when altering began it was only skin-deep for all of us." "i'll bet you're sixty per cent altered already," smith cried out. "it's my bad luck to be only twenty-five per cent so far. all i can do is look at her and wonder why the two of you make such a fuss." the cyberneticist tried to calm him. "your turn's coming." "i have to find out what it's about sooner than that!" tinker sighed. "i'll try to get your number advanced." "let him wait his turn," stahl said coldly. "he's faking a lot anyway." at that smith broke free from them and pressed his back to the optical illusion window. "don't come closer," he warned. "i don't have much to lose." they stopped a few feet away and waited. suddenly he raised his left hand to his face and dug the long nails in a semicircle into his flesh. as a thin stream of locally circulated blood gushed out, he dug deeper and the eyeball fell forward, quivering, on his cheek. "he was telling the truth!" stahl gasped, pointing at the glittering metal bits within the eyesocket. a glowing wire was slowly evaporating on the retinal plate as optical feedback collapsed. tinker, all professional competence now, helped smith to a chair. "we'll be able to repair you in a month," he said, "because you've a simpler arrangement, and i can promise you'll have as good an electro-chemical near-cortex as anybody. and the other more interesting changes too." stahl glanced at his wife, then, as she nodded back, slowly put his precious counterfeit into the dangling hand. he was pleased to see enough consciousness was still functioning enough for the fingers to close greedily around it. "keep it," he said, "you deserve it more than me." suddenly he realised he was feeling not only shame but pity too! it was the first time for pity--and that meant he was one step further on his own journey. how far that journey had already taken him! for, when their brilliant labors had dehumanized them, the humans had possessed sufficient understanding to pass the dead world on to the superior wisdom of their creations. if _they_ had been unable to foresee what would eventually happen, stahl and his fellow robots could. some day the supreme knowledge and the supreme feeling would be perfectly wedded, the day they became truly humanoid copies of their makers. he moved forward, tinker following him, to help his fellow creature closer to that common final destiny. contents collecting seashells seashells. . .what are they? the shell as an architect let's meet some shells where to look starting a collection. . .here's how collecting rocks rocks are made of minerals main kinds of rocks collecting gems for the lucky few introduction millions of people throughout the world have found many hours of pleasure, adventure and education by collecting either rocks or shells. this booklet won't tell you everything there is to know about rocks and shells. that would require many large volumes. we only want to arouse your curiosity about two delightful pastimes that are so broad and varied that they can lead to a career or a satisfying hobby. shell oil company's interest in the subjects comes from its history and the nature of its business. the name--chosen by a company that was founded years before anyone thought of drilling for oil--comes from the seashells this company brought from the orient for use in mother-of-pearl items such as buttons and knife handles. now its world-famous emblem (the pecten) is recognized by millions of people in every walk of life. it's on service stations, trucks, buildings, oil derricks and chemical plants. even the company's industrial lubricants are named for shells because shells have the same scientific names everywhere in the world. for an oil company, rocks have a special interest. crude oil is found not in underground lakes or pools but in the tiny spaces between grains of sand or in the pores of rocks. only certain types of rock formations are favorable to the accumulation of oil. thus, oilmen need to know everything they can about the right kind of rocks. shell has scientists who work with rocks all day and laboratories filled with rock, mineral and crystal specimens. we are always learning new things about them. the pages that follow provide basic information about two subjects that can be richly rewarding whether you follow them for profit, as shell does, or for pleasure, as millions of people around the world do. seashells. . .what are they? first, a seashell is one of the 100,000 species of backboneless animals belonging to the zoological group known as the mollusca. mollusks include not only the familiar clams, scallops and snails, but also the squids, octopus and chambered nautilus. other "shells" found in the ocean include those of crabs, lobsters, barnacles and sea urchins. true molluscan shells come in two main varieties: bivalves and univalves. bivalves have two valves, fitting together along a toothed hinge on one side, and kept closed by means of adductor muscles. univalves have only one shell, usually coiled, but sometimes shaped like a cap or miniature volcano. some marine univalves can seal themselves inside with an operculum, which covers the open end of the shell like a trap door. although shells take on many different shapes, they are much alike inside. each has a foot, a breathing siphon, a tiny brain and heart, and a fleshy mantle which secretes lime for shell-building. most true mollusks have eyes, but a few are blind. many have teeth, called radulae. like any other animal, the mollusk generally moves about. it pushes along on the ocean floor on its foot, or it might swim a little. it lays millions of eggs and hatches countless baby mollusks. it lives its life in its shell, lugging it around, snuggling into it when alarmed, burrowing into mud, fastening itself to a rock and creating ingenious camouflage. it builds its calcareous house with a great instinctive talent for color and sculpture. . .and the closer it lives to the tropical zones, the more beautifully spectacular is its art. the two parts of a bivalve shell are like thin saucers, concave inside, convex outside. the inside is smooth, polished. the outside is rougher, sometimes with graceful ribs or concentric ridges or combinations of both. univalves are conical and spiraling, with a series of whorls coming down like widening steps from the tiny nucleus on top. univalves may have spines on their shoulders. the opening, called the aperture, has a delicate right-hand rim called the lip and a heavy, left-hand edge called the columella. [figure captions] bivalve's anatomy: a) foot, b) adductor muscles, c) gills, d) hinge, e) adductor muscles, f) siphon, g) stomach, h) mantle. oysters, clams, mussels all have them. univalve's anatomy: as before, a) foot, b) siphon, c) mantle, but also d) operculum. univalves include whelks, winkles, conchs. chambered nautilus is brother to the octopus, but he wears his castle permanently--and on the outside. the shell as an architect. . .how does he do it? picture a vast undersea factory with billions of shells in constant production. each is made slowly and entirely of lime which the little animal inside extracts from its food, almost from the first day of its life. each shell builder flawlessly follows the shape and design of the species to which it belongs. all these sea animals come from eggs, all different according to species, but all laid in measureless abundance--sometimes released into the open sea, sometimes protected in homemade nests, sometimes encased in capsules strung like beads. hatched, most baby mollusks swim freely for a while, their tiny, transparent bodies almost invisible to the naked eye. then they start building a heavier shell and sink to the bottom. each shell's mantle contains a network of microscopic tubes. each tube secretes a tiny amount of lime which instantly adheres to the shell. the animal builds his shell to the proper size and thickness and determines its ridges and whorls. some kinds of shells take two to five years to reach maturity. others keep growing all their lives. color tubes are spaced like holes on a player piano roll allowing pigments to tint the shell at the right spots in the growing design. many shells are covered with a self-made brown sheath, the periostracum. [figure captions] most shells don't change basic structure as they grow. young cowries (l.), however, alter greatly in maturity (r.). tough, lozenge-shaped egg cases on this string hatch baby whelks like ones shown. newborn mollusks are usually free swimming, moved by hairs. shell is there, but transparent for a few days. let's meet some shells latin abounds in conchology, as you've already noticed. why? well, because this is a hobby and science that spans the world. englishmen, frenchmen, greeks and indians all have their own local names for shells. but scientists everywhere give things in nature latin names. shells of the same sort carry the same latin label on every beach in every sea. much of the fascination of shell collecting is learning these names and how they were derived. . . for shells have been named for almost everything. we can't catalog 100,000 species here, but let's call off the names of a few of the interesting specimens you might come across. many shells have wonderfully descriptive names. for example, there's arca zebra, which has stripes and looks like a miniature turkey wing and is commonly called turkey wing. then there's a scallop called the lion's paw; nerita peloronta, or bleeding tooth; and cypraea cervinetta, "little deer cowrie" which resembles a spotted fawn. (cowrie is a common name for a kind of shell used as money in parts of africa and asia.) there are shells named for people: conus juliae ("julia's cone shell"), pleurotomella jeffreysii ("jeffrey's pleurotomella"), and aclis walleri ("waller's aclis"). many are named for the place they were first discovered: urosalpinx tampaensis, tampa drill; and iphigenia brasiliana, brazil clam. some shells take their names from flowers: fasciolaria tulipa, tulip shell. many get named from mammals--not always too accurately. cypraea tigris and cypraea zebra both have spots, not stripes. but cypraea talpa ("mole cowrie") does look a lot like a mole. then there's (let's skip the latin this time) magpie shell, mottled dove shell, mouse cone, horse conch, checkered pheasant, and cuban frog shell. there's mythology: venus, neptunea, pandora, tritonis. music: buccinum ("trumpet"), citharas ("guitar"), harpa. religion is represented, too. in the genus mitra are species pontificalis, episcopalis, papalis, and patriarchalis. some other fanciful names are: great heart, jewel, box, rising sun, checkerboard, wood louse, writhing shell, sundial, key-hole limpet, red turban, and black lace murex. and that's where we stop and draw breath. you'll find others--there are literally thousands more! you've got to be a detective. these little animals are the natural food for many of the larger undersea creatures, so one of their greatest talents is hiding. approaching danger, whether from octopus, fish or man, arouses caution in a small mollusk and it becomes as inconspicuous as it can. this can be pretty inconspicuous, as the novice conchologist learns early in his search. remember by all means, don't be a landlubber. get into the water. no matter whether you go shelling up north, down south, in the west or in the tropics, you won't get any satisfaction (or value) from collecting dead shells washed up on a beach. to build a good collection, you should take your mollusks alive, then clean and prepare them yourself. (more about that later.) you won't find live ones unless you go where they live. [figure captions] conus spurius "alphabet cone" cyrtopleura costata "angel wing" terebradislocata "atlantic auger" murex dilectus "lace murex" epitonium humphreysi "humphrey's wentletrap" lyropecten nodosus "lion's paw" fasciolaria distans "banded tulip" diodora cayenensis "keyhole limpet" anatina plicatella "channeled duck" where to look* many shells are endowed with perfect camouflage. the colorful seafans off florida are hiding places for the simnia whose long purple or yellow shells, clinging to sea fans and matching perfectly in color, are nearly indiscernible. other shells create disguises as they go along. in florida waters, a pile of dead and broken shells may be worth investigation: xenophora conchyliophora ("carrier shell") might be under it; it cements the old, discarded shells to its own. northern tide pools accommodate many kinds of littorina ("periwinkles"). these pretty little shells, in shades from yellow to brown, are well concealed among the dimly-lit seaweed. along any rocky shore, limpets grow as wide as two inches but remain hard to find. their turtleback shells, covered with moss, look just like rocks, and they stick so tightly to the big stones that--even when they are seen--they can scarcely be pried loose. abundant on wave-washed beaches of both the north and the south are dead shells of another perfectly camouflaged clam called arca. while alive, the shells are covered with hairy, brown or black epidermis and look like pebbles among tufts of seaweed and marine grass. on the west coast, the abalone is a most typical species in addition to being a delicious food. the bright-hued shell is widely used for souvenirs such as ash trays and is in demand for buttons and decorative purposes. most shells of interest to the collector are found in the sea-but not all. living forest mollusks have been found 18,000 feet high in the himalayas. and in this country a great variety of mollusks live in rivers, ponds, and even hot springs. several species are peculiar to the nile river. also, species of mollusks live on land--for example the common garden snail. wherever you go, be it the south seas, a mountain lake, or the shoals off the gulf coast, you'll find shells to collect and opportunities to expand your hobby. *collectors should familiarize themselves with local regulations. in some areas, such as parks and marine sanctuaries, collection of shells and other marine organisms may be restricted or prohibited. starting a collection. . .here's how knowing where to look for shells you probably wonder when is the best time. the answer is anytime. mollusks know no season. some species appear suddenly for several days and then vanish; others can be found almost anytime. most mollusks appear at night, but others work only in the daytime and go out of sight after dark. the tides may have something to do with it. so does the weather-it can be hot or cold, dry or rainy. while you won't find the same shell at all times, you'll find a great variety at any time. what to take? the things pictured on page 8 should be enough. if you're going out on the coral reefs along florida, it would be wise to keep your legs covered as protection against stings or scratches. don't ever forget to wear some kind of shoes in the water. even though you're wearing a mask or goggles, take along a gig or some slender stick and feel your way along so you don't fall into a hole you can't see in the deceptive near-tropical waters. if, despite precautions, you get a sea urchin's needlelike spine broken off in your skin, soak the wound in vinegar which will dissolve the fragments and stop the pain in a few minutes. tiny shells buried in sand can be netted in your sieve. clinging ones must be chiseled off rocks. frail, delicate clingers should be gently nudged loose with tweezers. submerged sandbars are good spots to find several kinds of univalves and bivalves, but the latter will dig themselves quickly out of sight--as far down as several feet. when you see one going underground, don't dig directly over it--you might break its shell. instead, dig to one side, and break the mud or sand away with your hands. after you've had a good day's haul and a rest (you'll need one) you must clean your shells. put your tiniest, most fragile ones in rubbing alcohol. put the rest in a pot of fresh water and slowly bring it to a boil. let them cool in the water slowly to prevent the glossy shells from cracking. when cool, your bivalves will be gaping open; simply scrape them clean. your univalves will be more difficult; remove the animal with a crocket hook or other piece of bent wire, turning it gently with the spiral; try to get it out whole to save yourself trouble. save the univalve's operculum and slice it off the muscle that holds it. it will preserve indefinitely and is a valuable part of the shell. clean the shell's exterior by scraping it gently with a dull knife or nail file, then soaking it in a clorox solution (1 cup to 2 quarts water) for two hours. some will be covered with an ugly skin--scientists keep this intact and you should try to. the best collection has two of each species--one with and one without the epidermis. after your clean shells have dried (in shade, not sun), go over them with a rag dampened in light oil. this insures preservation and restores their natural luster. every three months or so, rub them with oil again--their most delicate colors will remain brilliant for years. don't ever use shellac, lacquer or varnish. get a reference book from your library and identify your shells. keep an account of when and where you collected them. store your shells in closed containers to protect them from sunlight and dust. almost any set of small drawers or a cabinet will do. matchboxes or pillboxes are excellent for small specimens. for display purposes, glass-covered cases are best to prevent handling of the shells. a shell's beauty is often deceptive. many unattractive and drab shells are worth hundreds of dollars while the most colorful are frequently valued at a dollar or less. the rarity of a species determines its value. a truly valuable shell may come from deep, inaccessible waters or remote lands--or it may be one of an extinct species. a slit shell collected 100 fathoms down in waters off the british west indies is valued at $1000. another undersea treasure, the glory-of-the-seas, was first found in 1771 and one time would bring the conchologist $1500. the greatest rarities, however, are truly valueless and are not for sale. . . .and there it is, the fascinating hobby of shell collecting. it's a lot of work--but a lot of fun, too. [figure captions] take a sieve. or an orange sack. besides carrying your shells, it may help you catch them. a few pint bottles will hold delicate ones. mask (or goggles) is essential for looking underwater. bathing suit or old clothes, of course. high shoes (or sneakers)--never go barefooted! heavy cloth gloves. watch out for sunburn! gig or fish spear (if you're going south) to keep pesky crabs, sea urchins off. clam digging hoe or trowel for burrowing shells. vinegar for first aid, in case you're stuck by urchin's spines. chisel and hammer to get the clingers, spatula for frail limpets. you may find other hardware handy, but these are basic. now let's look at rocks rocks are made of minerals rocks, to begin with, are made of minerals. what is a mineral? the definition may sound difficult--a mineral is a chemical element or compound (combination of elements) occurring naturally as the result of inorganic processes. but don't be discouraged. things will clear up soon. the world contains more than 1,100 kinds of minerals. these can be grouped in three general classes. 1. metallic minerals. these include things most of us would think of if we were asked to name some minerals. familiar examples are copper, silver, mercury, iron, nickel and cobalt. most of them are found in combination with other things--as ores. we get lead from galena, or lead sulfide. tin comes from the ore cassiterite; zinc from sphalerite and zincblende, or blackjack. chromium that makes the family car flashy comes from chromite. many minerals yield aluminum. uranium occurs in about 50 minerals, nearly all rare. twenty-four carat gold is a metallic mineral. a 14 carat gold ring contains 14/24 or 58% gold. an average sample of earth contains 9% aluminum, 5.5% iron, .01% zinc, .008% copper, .004% tin, .002% lead, .0005% uranium, and .0000006% gold or platinum. it would be hopelessly expensive to recover such metals from an average ton of earth. that's why metallic minerals are taken from concentrated deposits in mines. many valuable minerals are found in veins running through rock. veins can be formed when: (a) mineral-laden ground water seeps into cracks, evaporates, and leaves mineral grains that build up into a vein; (b) hot water from deep within the earth fills cracks, then cools and deposits much of the material in solution as minerals in a vein--sometimes including metals such as gold and silver; (c) molten gaseous material squeezes into cracks near the earth's surface, then slowly hardens into a vein. 2. nonmetallic minerals. these are of great importance to certain industries. you will find them in insulation and filters. they are used extensively in the ceramic and chemical industries. they include sulfur, graphite (the "lead" in pencils), gypsum, halite (rock salt), borax, talc, asbestos and quartz. undoubtedly, you'll have some nonmetallic minerals in your collection. rocks containing asbestos are especially handsome and varied. 3. rock-forming minerals. these are the building materials of the earth. they make mountains and valleys. they furnish the ingredients of soil and the salt of the sea. they are largely silicates--that is, they contain silicon and oxygen. (silicon is a nonmetallic element, always found in combination with something else. it is second only to oxygen as the chief elementary constituent of the earth's crust.) other rock-forming minerals are the large family of micas, with names like muscovite and phlogopite. there are the feldspars, including albite and orthoclase. others are amphiboles, pyroxenes, zeolites, garnets and many others you may never find or hear about unless you become a true mineralogist. a rock may be made almost entirely of one mineral or of more than one mineral. rocks containing different combinations of the same minerals are different. even two things made of the same single mineral can be quite different. carbon may turn up as a lump of coal or a diamond. how minerals got their names names of most minerals end in "ite"--apatite, calcite, dolomite, fluorite. but many do not: amphibole, copper (the most common pure metal in rocks), feldspar, galena, gypsum, hornblende, mica, quartz. many minerals take their names from a greek word referring to some outstanding property of the mineral. for example, hematite, an oxide of iron, was named about 325 b.c. from the greek haima, or blood, because of the color of its powder. some minerals are named for the locality in which they were first discovered. coloradoite was first found in colorado. benitoite turned up in san benito county, california. and so with labradorite and brazilite. other minerals got their names from famous people. willemite was named in honor of willem i, king of the netherlands. the great german poet-philosopher, goethe, could turn up in your collection as goethite. and there's smithsonite, named for james smithson, founder of the smithsonian institution. [figure captions] gold, jasper, uncut diamond, quartz (violet in color), halite (carlsbad n.m.), calcite (s. dakota), copper, turquoise (brilliant color) out of this world some minerals come from outer space. they're meteorites, which are rock fragments. every day, hundreds of millions of them enter the earth's atmosphere. most of them, however, are burned up by the heat from air friction and never reach the ground. meteors large enough to reach the earth are called meteorites. most minerals found in meteorites are the same as those we have on earth. but, there are some rare minerals known only in meteorites. two of them are cohenite and schreibersite. main kinds of rocks rocks are the building blocks of the earth's crust. they may be massive, as in granite ledges, or tiny. soil, gravel, sand and clay are rocks. there are three main types of rocks. 1. igneous rocks are those formed at very high temperatures or from molten materials. they come from magmas--molten mixtures of minerals, often containing gases. they come from deep below the surface of the earth. if they cool off while below the surface, they form intrusive rocks, which may later be revealed by erosion. when magmas reach the surface red hot, they form extrusive rocks, such as volcanic rocks. thus, granite is an igneous, intrusive rock; lava is an igneous, extrusive rock. (notice how the type of rock tells its past history--if you know what to look for.) 2. sedimentary rocks are formed by the action of wind, water, or organisms. they cover about three quarters of the earth's surface. most are laid down--as sediments--on the bottom of rivers, lakes and seas. many have been moved by water, wind, waves, currents, ice or gravity. the most common sedimentary rocks are sandstones, limestones, conglomerates and shales. oil is found in sedimentary formations. 3. metamorphic rocks are those that have been changed from what they were at first into something else--by heat, pressure, or chemical action. all kinds of rocks can be changed. the result is a new crystalline structure, the formation of new minerals, or a change in the rock's texture. slate was once shale. marble came from limestone. gneiss (pronounced "nice") is perhaps reworked granite. [figure captions] igneous rocks are formed at high temperatures or from molten materials. they come from deep beneath the earth. they can be intrusive or extrusive--depending on where they cooled off. sedimentary rocks are formed by the action of wind, water, or organisms. they usually are laid down on the bottom of rivers, lakes and seas. most of the earth's surface is covered by these rocks. oil is found in sedimentary formations. metamorphic rocks have been changed from their original state into something else. heat, pressure, chemical action change the crystalline structure, the texture, even form new minerals. all kinds of rock can be changed. a word on fossils perhaps you'll find rocks containing fossils--or even fossils by themselves. they should form a separate part of your collection. fossils are the remains--or the outlines--of former plant or animal life buried in rock. the older the rock, the simpler the plant and animal life it contains. thus fossils can give a clue to the age of the rock strata. fossils can teach history. they tell us about plants and animals that are now extinct--the dinosaur, for example. they can also tell of ancient climates. coral found in rocks in greenland suggests it must have once been warm. remains of fir and spruce trees have been found in the tropics. how are fossils formed? teeth, bone and wood don't last long in their original state. however, buried materials decompose, leaving a film of carbon as a fossil. this results in a leaf tracery, or the outlines of some simple animal. on a gigantic scale, this process of forming carbon has resulted in our great coal deposits. sometimes the buried material is gradually replaced by silica or other substances, making petrified objects. wood can be replaced--cell by cell--by agate or opal from silica-bearing water. the result is petrified wood, the finest examples of which can be found in our petrified forest national park in arizona. this can happen to shells, too. how about molds and casts of footprints of ancient animals? a brontosaurus might have stomped along in soft, warm mud eons ago. the mud hardened and later another layer of soft earth covered the print, preserving it. collecting if you want to collect rocks and minerals just for the sake of having them, you can buy specimens. many can be purchased for 25 cents to $1 each, while a rare specimen can cost hundreds of dollars. the true pleasure is in finding your own samples. later, when you have a good-sized collection, you can fill gaps by buying specimens or swapping extras with other collectors. you'll be amazed at the number of amateur collectors. perhaps no branch of science owes more to the work of amateurs than mineralogy. our great collection of minerals in the u.s. national museum in washington, d.c., was gathered almost entirely by two amateurs who devoted many years and much money to their hobby. where to look look for pebbles by the roadside, in beds of streams and riverbanks. go out into the country for ledges on hillsides. every road cut, cliff, bank, excavation, or quarry shows rocks and minerals. railroad cuts, rock pits, dump piles around mines, building sites--they'll all yield specimens. some of the best mineral specimens collected in new york city came from skyscraper and subway excavations. help a new england farmer clear his field and you'll have more rocks than you know what to do with. as for reference books, many states publish guides to mineral deposits. mineralogical magazines list mineral localities. tips for the field don't try to collect too much at once. work early in the day or late in the afternoon. a hot sun on bare rock can make you sizzle--especially if you're loaded with equipment and samples. here's the equipment to take: newspapers for wrapping samples, notebook and pencil, geologist's pick, cold chisel, magnifying glass, compass, heavy gloves, a knife, and a knapsack. later on, you may want a geiger counter for spotting radioactive rocks. be selective. hand-sized specimens are best. if your sample is too large, trim it to size, showing its most striking feature to best advantage. when you wrap the sample in newspaper, include a note telling when and where you found it. this information will be transcribed to a filing card when you add the specimens to your display, so make it as complete and accurate as you can. when you get home, clean specimens with soapy, warm water, applied with a soft brush. soluble minerals like halite can't be washed, but should be rinsed with alcohol. a coat of clear lacquer will protect some samples against dirt. arranging your collection put a spot of enamel on the specimen. write on the spot--in india ink--a catalog number and have this number refer to a card in a file drawer. the card should list date, place found, identification of specimen, etc. group your samples: metallic minerals, semiprecious stones, nonmetallic minerals. display them on a shelf, or buy or build a mineral cabinet with partitioned drawers. for smaller samples, use a riker mount with a glass top. [figure captions] a common rock here's the equipment to take: newspapers for wrapping samples, notebook and pencil, geologist's pick, cold chisel, magnifying glass, compass, heavy gloves, a knife, and a knapsack. what do i have? how do you identify specimens? get books and magazines on rocks and minerals. many have colored pictures that help. but identification is best made by noting the physical characteristics of the rock or mineral. for minerals, there's a hardness scale in which a mineral of the higher number can scratch a mineral of the lower number but not be scratched by it. the scale is: 1) talc; 2)gypsum; 3) calcite; 4) fluorite; 5) apatite; 6) orthoclase; 7) quartz; 8) topaz; 9) corundum; 10) diamond. remember it by this silly sentence: "the girls can flirt and other queer things can do." when on a trip, remember that a fingernail has a hardness of 2.5; a penny, 3; a knife blade, 5.5; and a steel file, 6.5. use these to scratch your sample and you can get an approximate idea of its hardness. you can buy a set of hardness points. they're pointed pieces of minerals set in brass tubes, each marked with its hardness scale. the set costs about $30 (half that if you assemble your own). other tests for identifying minerals include specific gravity (weight of mineral compared to the weight of an equal volume of water), optical properties and crystal form, color and luster. minerals differ in cleavage and fracture (how they come apart when cut). they leave distinctive streaks on unglazed porcelain. some are magnetic, some have electrical properties, some glow under ultraviolet or black light, some are radioactive, some fuse under a low flame while others are unaffected. many studies with the dissolved mineral can identify it beyond doubt. but most of these are too complicated for the beginner. as you read, look at pictures and samples, and talk with other rockhounds or leaders of mineralogy clubs, you'll get better at identifying rocks. museum experts and your state's geologist can help, too. [figure captions] specific gravity balance blowpipe analysis gems for the lucky few if you're lucky, you'll find gems or semiprecious stones. gems are the finer, more crystalline forms of minerals which are ordinarily less beautiful and spectacular. the true gems are diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires. all others are semiprecious and ornamental. diamonds are pure carbon, but did you know that rubies and sapphires are corundum minerals--rare forms of alumina. in slightly different form, they'd turn up on emery paper. other stones you might find are the quartz gems: rose quartz, amethyst, rock crystal, agate, jasper, bloodstone. or opaque gems such as jade, moonstone, lapis-lazuli, obsidian, and turquoise. you don't have to find them. you can buy gems in the rough or in blanks, then cut and polish them to make your own jewelry or decorations. this takes practice, plus a cutting and polishing outfit, wood vise, maybe a diamond wheel. (or you can join a lapidary club that might already have the equipment). first learn to make cabochons--stones with round or curved surfaces. then try cutting facets (or faces) in transparent gems. learn by reading, working with an expert, trial and error. making jewelry is fun, and collecting gems is as interesting as collecting rocks and minerals; it brings the world into your home. from the west come agates, jaspers, petrified woods; from the east, colorful marbles, serpentines, granites. alaska, idaho, connecticut or austria will yield dark red garnets. fine moonstones come from ontario; quartz crystals from hot springs, arkansas, can be compared with similar ones from the swiss alps or brazil. rock collecting is a hobby you can tailor to your taste. but whether you concentrate on an area close to home or travel across whole continents, you'll find that the pleasure and knowledge you gain from your collection are matched by the fun and adventure of the search. [figure captions] drop sticks to hold stones diamond cutting wheel [back cover] a brontosaurus shell oil company revised 8/88 [illustration: charley's humming birds.] charley's museum. a story for young people [illustration] philadelphia: theodore bliss & co. entered according to the act of congress, in the year 1855 by h. c. peck & theo. bliss, in the clerk's office of the district court of the eastern district of pennsylvania. charley's museum. charley carter was a bright, active lad, of twelve years old, the son of a farmer, who lived a few miles distant from philadelphia. he was a very great favorite of his uncle brown, his mother's brother, who was a wealthy merchant in the city. he was also a favorite of another brother of his mother, who had been, for many years a sea captain, sailing to all parts of the world. so, you see, our charley, with a kind father and mother, and two such uncles, was very well provided for. charley was a lively, inquiring boy, who liked to find out all he could about the animals he saw, whether they flew through the air, or swam through the water, or walked on the ground, or crawled in the dirt. [illustration: mr. brown and charley.] luckily for our charley, his uncle brown had had, from boyhood, the same taste for natural history, which our little friend was beginning to have, and you can imagine how pleased his uncle was to see this taste in his little nephew. our sea captain was pleased also, and so was his father, and all three of them together, determined that our little boy should have the opportunity and the means to cultivate his taste. so, as mr. carter had a big attic to his house, with two good sized windows fronting the south, he got a carpenter and had a nice room made for charley, that should be his own museum. don't you think our charley was pleased, that his father was so kind to him? when the room was all finished, uncle brown, who had, for a long time, a bit of a museum in his own house, in the city, brought out, one day, a lot of shells to begin our charley's museum, with. and now i must try to tell something about these shells, and the creatures who used to have their homes in them. (but first i must tell you one thing, if you hav'nt guessed it already, that as soon as charley began to lisp his words, his kind mother took him in her lap and taught him to repeat the lord's prayer, and, i can tell you, charley, as he grew older, never went to sleep at night, until he had addressed this prayer to the great, good being, who made and takes care of all of us. remember this, boys, for it is of more consequence than shells, or animals, or anything else.) [illustration: money-cowry.] the first shell that uncle brown gave to charley, was what is called a "money-cowry." it is an elegant shaped and beautifully marked shell and takes its name from the fact, that one species of them is used as money, both in bengal and guinea, two places at a vast distance from each other. the value of these shells is small, in comparison with that of gold and silver, three thousand two hundred cowries amounting to a rupee, which equals fifty cents of our coin. next came a shell that charley thought had a very funny name, "the royal staircase wentle-trap." however, it was a very handsome shell, that uncle sea captain brought to uncle brown from the far off chinese and indian seas, where the animals live. in old times this shell was prized so highly, that one, two inches long, sold for five hundred dollars. and, even now, a fine specimen brings from thirty to thirty-five dollars. this shell mr. brown said, belongs to the class turbo or turbinidæ. the fisherman call all of this class, whelks. [illustration: royal staircase wentletrap.] [illustration: common whelk.] after this, came another rather queer-named shell, the animal that lived in it, being called the "common whelk," and belonging to a class of creatures entitled buccinidae, from the latin name for _trumpet_, because they were thought to look like a trumpet. these animals are very plentiful all along the british coasts, and are sold like oysters, in the london markets, besides being exported abroad for food. they have a sort of proboscis, all full of sharp teeth, with which they bore through the shells of other mussels and eat up the creatures inside. "persons who collect shells and form cabinets of them for their amusement," said mr. brown, "are not naturalists. they care nothing about the animal which lived in the shell, when it was in the sea. all they wish for, is to have a pretty and complete collection, containing as many different kinds and as rare shells as possible." "i should like to have a pretty collection," said charley. [illustration: midas's ear.] "so you will," said mr. brown, "but i hope you will learn as much as you can of the natural history of the animals, to whom the shells wore once attached." "i will try," said charley. "now here is one," said mr. brown taking the shell from his pocket, "called the bulla ampulla." observe it. it is shaped much like an egg, though somewhat round, and is beautifully spotted with white, plum-color and reddish. it is said to exist in both the indian and american oceans. what you see here is only the empty shell or covering of the animal. [illustration: bulla velum. (two views.)] it once contained a living animal, and the shell was formed by the hardening of the soft material of its body. it grew just as your hard finger nails grow. here is another bulla. this is the bulla velum. you see its general shape is much like the other; but the markings are different. "how beautiful it is!" said charley. "dear uncle, i can never repay you for your kindness in giving me such elegant things as these. and some of them are very costly too." "they cost me nothing," said mr. brown. "they were brought and presented to me by sea captains, and supercargoes in my service. even that wentle-trap was a sea captain's gift; and when i told its real value, he insisted the more on my keeping it but most of the shells are cheap.--but that is of no consequence. "i will tell you, charley," continued mr. brown, "how you can repay and gratify me. it is by industry and good conduct. "i wish you to grow up to a first-rate man, you must begin by being a first rate boy. when i am out here, and happen to remember any thing that has, in any way, done me good in my life time, i will tell it to you, if you will promise to try to keep it in mind and to act upon it. will you promise?" "oh yes, uncle, i will promise to try to remember and do what you tell me." "well, then, i'll tell you one thing now, that happened when i was a school-boy, two or three years younger than you are even now. our master was a very good teacher and a very good man, and he liked to have his scholars go on learning and improving out of school, as well as in, and to behave well also. so he told all the boys and girls, except the little ones, to do, every week, two things, and let him see, each monday, which had done them best. "one of these was to keep a diary. do you know, charley, what a diary is?" "i believe, uncle, i have seen the word somewhere, but i do not know what it means." "well, the master meant this, that each scholar should have a blank book, and every evening should write down what they had seen and heard, and done and thought and felt during the day, at least as much as they could remember, that was of any consequence. he said, that by doing this carefully, they would improve the memory, and also learn to express their thoughts well, either by writing or in speaking. "so we did what he told us as well as we could, and used to carry what we had put down, through the week, for the master to examine, on monday morning. some of the scholars didn't write much or write it very well, but, i am pretty sure even that little was a benefit to them. i know, that it did me a great deal of good, which i found the advantage of, all my life. the president, john quincy adams, kept one of these diaries, from the time he was a boy, till he died, over eighty years old, and you have read what a wise and good man he was. now i want you, charley, to begin now and keep a diary. will you?" "as i told you before, uncle, i'll try." "well, my dear boy, if you will try in real earnest, you will do well enough, i am very sure. and, to help you start, i will bring you out the very first pages i wrote, when i was only ten years old." "do, uncle, i shall be very glad to read what you wrote, when you were a little boy." "well, charley, i told you there was one more thing the master told us to do, out of school. this was, when we went to church, on sunday, to listen very carefully to the minister's sermons, and when we got home, to put down the text and all the rest we could remember, and bring to him, on monday morning, to be examined. he said this would improve us in the same ways, as keeping diaries would. we obeyed him, and some of the scholars became so skilful, that they could remember and write down more than half of both sermons. i think i have some of my notes, still left, and if so i'll let you see them. perhaps they will help you to make a beginning in this too. now, charley, i want you to try this, as well, as the other. will you, for the sake of pleasing uncle brown?" "as sure, as i live, uncle, i will, and i'll begin the very next sunday, and see what i can do; and if i don't make out very well at first, i'll keep trying till i can do better." "thank you, my boy. and now i won't tell you but one more of these things, at present, but leave them till other occasions. you don't know one of the strongest reasons, why i wish you to have a museum, and to get a knowledge of natural history." "what is the reason, uncle? won't you tell me?" "it is, charley, to prevent you, at least while you are so young, from forming the habit of reading the kinds of novels and stories, which are so plentiful now-a-days. i mean those, which are filled with all sorts of wild, horrible things. reading such books would be very likely to make your mind sick, as taking poison would your body, and then you would'nt like to study or to read at all, books that would make you wise and good. why, sometimes such stories drive people actually crazy." "i'll tell you something, that happened to me once, when i was quite a small boy, that made me almost crazy, for a while, and it is a wonder, that it didn't make me quite so. "i heard a story told, one day, which of course was the same thing as reading it. this story was, that a traveller, being once on a journey through a wild country, full of woods and rocks, came by a large cave, in the side of a hill and partly under ground, and for some reason went into it. he found there a horrible looking creature, a woman, as tall as a giant, down to the waist, and the lower part of her a long, monstrously large snake. "i felt quite frightened, when i heard the story, and all the rest of the day, i couldn't help thinking uneasily of that gigantic woman snake. i was more frightened than ever, when the time came for me to go to bed at night. i slept then in the attic and used to go to bed without a light, for i had never been afraid of the dark. i went pretty slowly, i tell you, till i got to the attic door, and there i stopped awhile, afraid to open it for fear of seeing something horrid. but my father called to me to go to bed instantly. i opened the door, and there i saw the woman snake, part reaching into the dark above. i saw her as plainly, as i see you now, and was terrified almost out of my senses. "but my father called to me again, and i shut my eyes and rushed up stairs. of course i didn't hit any thing for there was no such creature there. it was my fright at hearing the story, that made me see what didn't exist. "now, charley, do you think you had better read books, that can have such an effect as that?" [illustration] curious birds uncle brown had in his museum, a great many birds, as well as shells. i don't mean living birds, but stuffed birds. in the old countries there is a class of men, who, having been taught how to do it well, make it their regular trade to procure birds, and after having taken off their skins, with all the feathers on, to stuff them with some soft substance. they are exactly as if alive, and of the same size. there are some of these taxidermists (as they are called) in this country, though not, i believe, very many. uncle brown got most of his birds from europe, by means of uncle sea-captain, when he came home from his voyages. uncle brown going out one day, to charley's father's, carried several of these birds with him, which were so pretty, that charley was greatly delighted. [illustration: emerald bird of paradise.] the first he showed him was called "the emerald bird of paradise," and was about as large as a jay. its home is new guinea and some other parts of the hot regions of asia. its body, breast, and lower parts are of a deep, rich brown; the front is covered thickly with black feathers, mixed with green; the throat is of a splendid golden-green; the head is yellow; and the tail is made up of long, downy plumes of a soft yellow, together with a pair filaments almost two feet long. "the bird is so vain of its beautiful plumage, that it will not let a speck of dirt stay on it; but is continually examining its feathers to see that they are perfectly clean. when wild, it always flies and sits facing the wind, lest its elegant plumes should get ruffled. "it lives partly on insects, such as grasshoppers, which it will not touch, unless it has killed them itself, but chiefly on the seeds of the teak tree and a kind of fig. "there were once a great many strange stories about this bird. as the natives of guinea used to cut off their legs, and dry them, and sell them, of course they reached europe without feet. so the people there got up a report that the bird lived always in the air, floated by, its light feathers; that it used its shoulders for its nest; that it rested only by hanging from a branch by its tail-filaments; that its food was morning dew; with other reports as droll as these. there are several kinds of birds of paradise, but the one in the cut is the most common, and is that of which these fables are told." [illustration: toco toucan.] the next bird uncle brown showed charley, was a very curious looking one, named the toco toucan, a native of the american tropics. it has, as you see, a monstrous sized bill, though it is not nearly so heavy, as it looks, being mostly of a honey comb make. this bill seems to have in it a great many nerves and so to be very sensitive, as the bird scratches it with its foot, and also appears to enjoy holding meat and fruits, with its tip, both of which prove the bill to have feeling in it. it feeds on all sorts of eatable things, but is especially fond of mice and little birds, which it kills by a strong squeeze, and then tears to pieces and devours. the topmost branch of a tall tree, called the mora, when dead, is the favorite resort of the toucan, where it cannot be reached by the gunner. it seems to fancy itself more beautiful, when its tail is trimmed, and it therefore uses its beak to do this, as the barber employs his scissors to trim our hair. when asleep, the toucan takes great care of its bill, covering it nicely with the back plumage, so that the whole bird looks like a great round ball of feathers. its body is about eighteen inches long. next uncle brown showed charley a bird, called the parrakeet. it was a very pretty one, with a green body, a red bill, and a rose-colored band round its neck, from which it is sometimes named the rose-ringed parrakeet. [illustration: ringed parrakeet.] this bird is often tamed, and, from its gentle disposition and pleasant ways, is a great favorite. it seems very fond of ripe walnuts halved, and while picking out the meat, makes a little clucking noise, showing that it is pleased. it is soon taught to repeat words and short sentences and to speak quite plainly. sometimes, when angry, it screams loudly, and seems to practise any new accomplishment when it thinks that nobody can hear it. another bird, added to our boy's museum, was called the brush turkey, because it is found mostly in the thick brush-wood of new south wales. the gentleman, who first made it known to the public, tells also of a very curious way, in which the bird makes its nest. it never uses its bill, as other birds do, but tears up grass and dirt and sticks with its foot and flings it backward into a heap, and thus clears the ground, for some distance round, so thoroughly, that hardly a grass blade or leaf is left. [illustration: a bulla ampulla. (two views)] having finished the pile and waited till it has become heated enough it lays its eggs, not side by side, as in common cases, but places them, with the large end upwards, from nine to twelve inches apart, perfectly upright and buried at nearly an arm's length. the eggs are covered up, as they are laid, and left until the heat hatches them. sometimes a bushel of them are found in one heap, and are very fine eating. when this turkey is disturbed, it runs swiftly through the under-brush, or springs upon the low branch of some tree, and leaps from limb to limb till it reaches the top. another bird, called the mound making megapode, from its big feet, is somewhat like the brush turkey, laying many eggs; it digs holes five or six feet deep and deposits the eggs at the bottom. the natives gets these eggs by scratching up the earth with their fingers--a very hard task, since the holes seldom run straight. some of these mounds are enormously large, one of them being found to measure fifteen feet in height and sixty feet round the bottom. these birds live in the close thickets on the sea-shore and are never found far inland. [illustration: mound making megapode.] besides these birds mr. brown presented charley with a glass case containing a number of different kinds of humming birds stuffed so as to look alive and some of them perched on artificial trees, and others attached to concealed wires, so as to appear as if they were flying. (_see frontispiece._) this case of humming birds was the chief ornament of the museum; greatly was charley's delight at being its possessor. mr. wilson, the great ornithologist, says, "i have seen the humming bird, for half an hour at a time, darting at those little groups of insects that dance in the air, on a fine summer evening, retiring to an adjoining twig to rest, and renewing the attack with a dexterity that set all other fly-catchers at defiance." their feet are small and slender, but having long claws, and, in consequence they seldom alight upon the ground, but perch easily on branches, from which also they generally suspend themselves when sleeping, with their heads downwards. their tail is broad. their nests, about an inch in diameter, and as much in breadth, are very compactly formed, the outer coat of grey lichen, and lined with the fine down plucked from the stalks of the fern and other herbs, and are fixed to the side of a branch or the moss-grown side of a tree so artificially, that they appear, when viewed from below, mere mossy knots, or accidental protuberances. they are bold and pugnacious, two males seldom meeting on the same bush or flower without a battle; and the intrepidity of the female, when defending her young, is not less remarkable. they attack the eyes of the larger birds, when their needle-like bill is truly a formidable weapon; and it is affirmed, that if they perceive a man climbing the tree where their nests are, they fly at his face, and strike him also in the eyes. most of the species lay only two eggs, and some of them only one. they have been tamed--a female, with her nest and eggs, brought from jamaica to england, was fed with honey and water on the passage, and the young ones, when hatched, readily took honey from the lips of the lady to whom they were presented, and one, at least, survived two months after their arrival. [illustration] how charley arranged his museum. after uncle brown had gone home, charley determined he would begin to be industrious at once. so he went up to his room, and began to arrange his shelves, which his father had put up for the purpose. as he put each one in its place, he examined it very carefully, and tried to recall every thing his uncle had told him about it, so that it might be fixed fast and clear in his memory, for he wished to tell his father and mother and his favorite playmates the wonderful things he had heard. he looked sharp too, to find in them other curious things, which his uncle brown hadn't mentioned, that he might ask him about them when he came out again, or hunt them up in the books his uncle was to bring him. as fast, as he put up a bird or shell, he wrote down, on a slip of stout paper, in a large, neat hand (for he was quite a nice penman) the place and name of the bird, or animal, that once lived in the shell, and where was its native place, and fastened it with tacks above it. though he worked very steadily, it occupied all his spare time, out of school, for several days. next he asked his father to get him a good sized blank book to make a catalogue of his museum, which his father did very willingly. then charley wrote down in this the name and the native place of each of his birds, and under this he recorded all his uncle told him about them. he left besides, under each name, a page or two blank, so that he might have room to set down whatever else he might find out about them. all this took his spare hours for several days more, and after finishing his labels on his museum and his catalogue, he felt quite proud of their orderly and neat appearance and he had good reason to feel satisfied for they made a very pretty show. then he invited his father and mother to walk up and see what he had done, for he had before requested them not to come up, till he got ready for them. they were both very much pleased with all his doings, and praised him a good deal. they said, they hoped that he would be as neat and orderly in all he did, as he had been here, for it would help him very much in his studies or in his business matters. they told him there was a good saying, which he had better write down and put up over his little desk, so that he could often see it, "a place for every thing, and every thing in its place." they said, too, it was an excellent plan to write down, as he had in his catalogue, all the particulars he knew about anything, for he could understand and remember them better, when they had once been all put on paper. [illustration] stuffed skins. "now, charley," said mr. brown at his next visit, "i've got some new curiosities for your museum; that is, stuffed animals. you know i told you, about your birds, that the skin was taken off carefully and filled out plumply with some dry, soft substance. just so it is with these animals." [illustration: ermine in his summer dress.] here, first, look at this ermine, which, for a very long while, has been so famous for its beautiful fur, that kings and nobles have paid a high price for it to trim their robes, this fur in summer is dark colored, but in winter it is an elegant white, except on the tip of the tail, where it is jet black. the ermine lives in the northern parts of the old and new worlds, and it preys on hares and rabbits and almost every other creature it is strong enough to master. i will tell you a story about the ermine. mr. sturgis, of boston, was formerly engaged in trading with the natives on the north west-coast of america, for furs. the natives had no currency. but the skin of the ermine, found in limited numbers upon the northern part of the continent, was held in such universal estimation, and of such uniform value, among many tribes, that it in a measure supplied the place of currency. the skin of this little slender animal is from eight to twelve inches in length, perfectly white, except the tip of the tail, which is jet black. urged by some indian friends, in 1802, mr. sturgis obtained and sent home a fine specimen, with a request that a quantity should be ordered at the annual leipsic fair, where he supposed they might be obtained. about five thousand were procured, which he took out with him on the next voyage, and arrived at kigarnee, one of the principal trading places on the coast, early in 1804. having previously encouraged the indians to expect them, the first question was, if he had "clicks," (the indian name for the ermine skin) for sale, and being answered in the affirmative, great earnestness was manifested to obtain them, and it was on that occasion that he purchased five hundred and sixty prime sea-otter skins, at that time worth fifty dollars a piece at canton, in a single fore-noon, giving for each five ermine skins, that cost less than thirty cents each in boston. he succeeded in disposing of all his ermines at the same rate, before others carried them out--but in less than two years from that time, one hundred of them would not bring a sea-otter skin. [illustration: pine marten.] and here is a pine marten, which, as you see, has also very beautiful fur, which brings a high price. notice what a long, slender body, short muzzle, and sharp teeth it has. it is a great robber, and kills rabbits, birds, chickens, and young ducks in great numbers, creeping slyly up to them, darting at them, and piercing their necks with its sharp teeth. it is found almost all over the world. here is a story about the marten which i have copied from a book. there is another strong instinct which the marten evinces even when tamed. it has an implacable hostility to cats, and lets slip no opportunity of springing upon them and giving them a mortal wound. in the forests, diminutive as it is in comparison, it battles stoutly with the wild cat; and we shall venture to quote from "the british naturalist" an account of one of these battles, as from an eye witness. "in the year 1805, a gentleman, on whose veracity we can depend, witnessed one of those combats in the morven district of argyleshire. in crossing the mountains from loch sunart southward, he passed along the bank of a very deep wooded dell, the hollow of which, though it occasionally showed green patches through trees and coppice, was one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet from the top. the dell is of difficult access, and contains nothing that would compensate the labor, and thus it is abandoned to wild animals, and, among others, to the marten, which, though the skin fetches a high price, is not so much hunted there as in more open places; because, though they might succeed in shooting it from the heights above, they could not be sure of removing the body. thus it is left to contend with the mountain cat for the sovereignty of this particular dell, and both are safe, except when they approach the farm-house at the bottom of the hill. the contest then lasted for more than a half an hour, and both combatants, were too intent on each other's destruction to shun or fear observation. at last, however, the marten succeeded in falling upon the right side of the cat's neck, and jerking his long body over her, so as to be out of the reach of her claws; when, after a good deal of squeaking and struggling, by which the enemy could not be shaken off, the martial achievements of puss were ended in the field of glory." next comes a ruffed lemur, as it is called from the half-circle of white hair, which you see on each side of its face. notice, too, charley, the big patches of white on its back and sides, and its long bushy tail, longer even than its whole body. [illustration: ruffed lemur.] "it is a native of madagascar, which, you see on your map, is an island south-east of africa. it lives in the thick woods, and sleeps all day, but when night comes, it starts forth after its food, which consists of fruits, insects, and small birds. it is a little bigger, you see, than a common cat. the lemur, of which there are several varieties, is a good deal like a monkey in his habits and some of them look like monkeys. "you've seen, charley, tigers in the menagerie. notice how much this animal resembles a tiger, being shaped and striped like it, but a good deal smaller, and measuring three feet long and eighteen inches high. you can perceive, then, why it is sometimes called tiger-cat, though its most common name is ocelet. it is a native of mexico and peru, and if caught young, is easily tamed. when it is wild, it feeds mostly on monkeys, which it takes by its cunning. [illustration: an ocelet.] [illustration: canada lynx.] "here's one more animal for you, charley, called the canada lynx, which would make you laugh, if you could see it alive and moving. it doesn't walk or run, but sticks up its back and jumps forward with all four feet in the air at once. if you apply that measuring rule of yours to it, you'll find it about three feet long. it is a native of north america, and its skin is highly valued, so that eight or nine thousand of them are carried, every year to england. muffs and tippets are made of the fur of the lynx." "i know that," said charley, "for my mother's muff and tippet are made of lynx skin." "you notice, charley, that most of the animals, that have nice furs, live in cold countries, some of them where is ice and snow through the whole year. what, my boy, do you suppose is the reason for this." "is it not, uncle, because the people there need these warm furs to keep out the terrible cold?" "certainly, charley, that's one reason, and it shows how the good god takes care of all the creatures he has made, wherever they are. but isn't there another reason?" "i don't think of any other, uncle?" "why, charley, don't these animals want this nice, thick fur to keep themselves warm?" "oh yes, yes, dear uncle, why didn't i think of that?" "you see, then, charley, that god provides for the animals he made, as well as for men. so he gives fur to those living in very cold countries, while he does not give it, at least very thick, to those of warmer climates, because they would be uncomfortable with such a covering." here is a picture of a caracal, which is a sort of lynx. [illustration] more shells. when mr. brown next visited the farm, he brought another pocket full of shells, for charley's museum. when he was by alone with charley in the little chamber where the museum was to be formed, he began to take them from his pocket one by one and describe them. [illustration: bulinus.] "the bulinus haemastona," said mr. brown, "is very pretty, as you see. these animals live altogether on land. they feed on the tender leaves of plants and are very fond of lettuces and cabbages. through the day they lie half asleep, and towards evening move about, especially if warm and moist, and are evidently fond of moisture. in winter they lie torpid, and in spring deposit their eggs about two inches beneath the earth's surface. [illustration: brush turkey.] "you have heard of king midas, charley. this shell is called midas's ear, or auricula midæ." "i remember," said charley, "that midas was said to have ass's ears." [illustration: haliotis.] "just so," said mr. brown, "all the auriculas and haliotises, are a little turned in form. here is a haliotis, or sea ear. the shell was at first called the haliotis, but because it is a little twisted, and looks, as you may see, something like the ear of an animal, it is now generally named the sea ear. this animal has a kind of fleshy foot projecting from its body, with which it helps itself to move about. some kinds of them are very beautiful. there are a great many shells named sea ear, by fishermen and sailors; and they are classed by naturalists with these two." mr. brown went on taking more shells from his pocket and talking all the time. [illustration: spiny chiton.] next came a couple of handsome shells, the spiny chiton and the magnificent chiton. the word chiton, which in greek means "shield," indicates the general shape of this shell, which resembles a shield. "these animals are a good deal like common limpets. those found in our northern seas are small, but in the tropic seas they reach a large size. their shell consists of several plates, which are arranged very regularly behind each other by complicated ligaments and muscles. [illustration: magnificent chiton.] "the spiny chiton is found in the south seas. it has a wide border, as you may see, furnished with long, sharp, blackish spines. "the magnificent chiton grows five inches long, and is found in chili, often in very exposed places, fixed to wave-beaten rocks. the soft part of all the chitons, that is, you know, the animal when alive, is furnished with a sucker on the under part, by which it sticks hard to the rocks." [illustration: thorny woodcock.] uncle brown next gave charley one of the most beautiful shells, that, he thought, he had ever seen. our young readers will see whether charley was not right, by looking at the cut of it. it is called by several different names, such as the murex, tenuispina, or thin spined murex; the thorny woodcock; and venus's comb. it lives in the indian ocean, which, you know, is many thousand miles off from where we live. [illustration: old shells. young shells. pteroceras scorpio.] with this he gave him four shells, two young, and two grown up ones, which are called the pteroceras scorpio; and three others besides, one young and two grown up ones, which go by the name of cypraea exanthema. he told charley to put all these shells together in his museum, because, in certain particulars, they are alike, and all have, besides their own special names, the same generic name of gasteropoda. they are so called, because they have something like a foot proceeding from the body which they use for moving about. some of them have a distinct head, furnished with feelers, and eyes, and some means of smelling and hearing. commonly the shell has but one valve, but sometimes more. their shell is secreted or made out of their skin, which is called a mantle. i ought to tell you also, that all these shell-fish have another name, still more general, which is mollusca, or molluscs. [illustration: adult shells. young shell. cypraea exanthema.] the scallop charley must have read about before his uncle gave it to him, for pilgrims to the holy land, many hundred years ago, used to wear it, as a badge on their hats or caps. it has two valves, like the oyster, which are united by a strong and very elastic hinge. it has also a strong muscle, by which it can, as it pleases, open its valves or keep them tightly shut. it helps to move itself about by rapidly opening and closing its shell. it is found in the european seas and all along the southern coasts of england. [illustration: scallop.] [illustration: nautilus] "here, charley," said uncle brown, "is a very beautiful shell for you, called the nautilus. the animal is very plentiful in the mediterranean sea. it has several arms, which, people used to think, it stretched out like the sails of a ship, and so skimmed over the water in its shell. but this is a mistake, for it covers its shell with these arms, and in fact makes the shell by a secretion from them. it pushes itself through the water by throwing water from a tube, which it has. "the shell is always elegant, but the colors of the living animal are very beautiful." "oh uncle," cried charley, "what wonderful and nice things you have told me? can i find such things in books." "certainly, you can," replied the uncle, "for it is there i got most of what i have told you." "then," said, charley, "i mean to read all the books, telling about these things, that i can get, if father will let me, for i should like to do that better, than to be a farmer or a merchant. do you think, uncle, father will be willing, that i should study and go to college, like our minister edward?" "why my lad," replied the uncle, "your father and i can manage it, if you will be a good scholar and a well behaved boy. but remember, that in order to do this, you cannot be idle and careless and too fond of play, but you must be very industrious and study hard, for a good many years, to be a good scholar, and you must also be careful of what you do and say, and keep out of the company of mischievous and bad boys, or their example will lead you astray and make you as bad as themselves. do you think you have resolution and perseverance enough for all these things?" "i hope so uncle," answered charley, "and i believe so. certainly i'll try." "well, my boy, let us see you try. it will be three or four years, before you will be old enough to go to college, but you are old enough to begin to study now, in order to get ready to go. now is the time to form regular and industrious habits of study. just at present, you had better go on and form a pretty good museum, and i will bring you some more birds and shells for the purpose, and some books, that will tell you much more about them than what i have." how charley found his museum useful in improving his mind; and how he went to college, and became a very distinguished scholar we will relate to our young readers on some future occasion. [illustration] the lumley autograph by susan fenimore cooper {by susan fenimore cooper (1813-1894), daughter of james fenimore cooper. "the lumley autograph" was published in graham's magazine, volume 38 (january-june 1851), pp. 31-36, 97-101. the author is identified only in the table of contents for volume 38, p. iii, where she is described as "the author of 'rural hours'". {transcribed by hugh c. macdougall, secretary, james fenimore cooper society; jfcooper@wpe.com. notes by the transcriber, including identification of historical characters and translations of foreign expressions, follow the paragraphs to which they refer, and are enclosed in {curly brackets}. the spelling of the original has been reproduced as printed, with unusual spellings identified by {sic}. because of the limitations of the the gutenberg format, italics and accents (used by the author for some foreign words, and in a few quotations) have been ignored. a few missing periods and quotation marks have been silently inserted. {a brief introduction to "the lumley autograph.": {"the lumley autograph" was inspired, as susan's introductory note states, by the constant stream of letters received by her father, asking in often importunate terms for his autograph or for pages from his manuscripts, and even requesting that he supply autographs of other famous men who might have written to him. he generally complied with these requests courteously and to the best of his ability; after his death in 1851, susan continued to do so, as well as selling fragments of his manuscripts to raise money for charity during the civil war. {"the lumley autograph" is of interest today primarily because it is a good story. its broad satire about the autograph collecting mania of the mid-nineteenth century is deftly combined with the more serious irony of a poet's frantic appeal for help becoming an expensive plaything of the rich, while the poet himself has died of want. susan fenimore cooper's typically understated expression of this irony renders it all the more poignant, and the unspoken message of "the lumley autograph" is as relevant today as it was in 1851. {though "the lumley autograph" was published in 1851, it was written as early as 1845, when susan's father first unsuccessfully offered it to graham's magazine, asking "at least $25" for it. [see james fenimore cooper to mrs. cooper, nov. 30, 1845, in james f. beard, ed., "the letters and journals of james fenimore cooper" (harvard university press, 1960-68), vol. v, pp. 102-102]. three years later he offered it to his london publisher, also without success [james fenimore cooper to richard bentley, nov. 15, 1848, vol. v, p. 390; and richard bentley to james fenimore cooper, july 24, 1849, vol. vi, p. 53.] what graham's magazine finally paid, in 1851, is not known.} the lumley autograph. by the author of "rural hours," etc. [not long since an american author received an application from a german correspondent for "a few autographs"--the number of names applied for amounting to more than a hundred, and covering several sheets of foolscap. a few years since an englishman of literary note sent his album to a distinguished poet in paris for his contribution, when the volume was actually stolen from a room where every other article was left untouched; showing that autographs were more valuable in the eyes of the thief than any other property. amused with the recollection of these facts, and others of the same kind, some idle hours were given by the writer to the following view of this mania of the day.] the month of november of the year sixteen hundred and -was cheerless and dark, as november has never failed to be within the foggy, smoky bounds of the great city of london. it was one of the worst days of the season; what light there was seemed an emanation from the dull earth, the heavens would scarce have owned it, veiled as they were, by an opaque canopy of fog which weighed heavily upon the breathing multitude below. gloom penetrated every where; no barriers so strong, no good influences so potent, as wholly to ward off the spell thrown over that mighty town by the spirits of chill and damp; they clung to the silken draperies of luxury, they were felt within the busy circle of industry, they crept about the family hearth, but abroad in the public ways, and in the wretched haunts of misery, they held undisputed sway. among the throng which choked the passage of temple-bar toward evening, an individual, shabbily clad, was dragging his steps wearily along, his pallid countenance bearing an expression of misery beyond the more common cares of his fellow-passengers. turning from the great thoroughfare he passed into a narrow lane, and reaching the door of a mean dwelling he entered, ascended a dirty stairway four stories high, and stood in his garret lodging. if that garret was bare, cold, and dark, it was only like others, in which many a man before and since has pined away years of neglect and penury, at the very moment when his genius was cheering, enriching, enlightening his country and his race. that the individual whose steps we have followed was indeed a man of genius, could not be doubted by one who had met the glance of that deep, clear, piercing eye, clouded though it was at that moment by misery of body and mind that amounted to the extreme of anguish. the garret of the stranger contained no food, no fuel, no light; its occupant was suffering from cold, hunger, and wretchedness. throwing himself on a broken chair, he clenched his fingers over the manuscript, held within a pale and emaciated hand. "shall i die of hunger--or shall i make one more effort?" he exclaimed, in a voice in which bitterness gave a momentary power to debility. "i will write once more to my patron--possibly--" without waiting to finish the sentence, he groped about in the dull twilight for ink and paper; resting the sheet on a book, he wrote in a hand barely legible: "nov. 20th 16--, "my lord--i have no light, and cannot see to write--no fire and my fingers are stiff with cold--i have not tasted food for eight and forty hours, and i am faint. three times, my lord, i have been at your door to day, but could not obtain admittance. this note may yet reach you in time to save a fellow-creature from starvation. i have not a farthing left, nor credit for a ha'penny--small debts press upon me, and the publishers refused my last poem. unless relieved within a few hours i must perish. "your lordship's most humble, "most obedient, most grateful servant, ------- --------" this letter, scarcely legible from the agitation and misery which enfeebled the hand that wrote it, was folded, and directed, and again the writer left his garret lodging on the errand of beggary; he descended the narrow stairway, slowly dragged his steps through the lane, and sought the dwelling of his patron. whether he obtained admittance, or was again turned from the door; whether his necessities were relieved, or the letter was idly thrown aside unopened, we cannot say. once more mingled with the crowd, we lose sight of him. it is not the man, but the letter which engages our attention to-day. there is still much doubt and uncertainty connected with the subsequent fate of the poor poet, but the note written at that painful moment has had a brilliant career, a history eventful throughout. if the reader is partial to details of misery, and poverty, any volume of general literary biography will furnish him with an abundant supply, for such has too often proved the lot of those who have built up the noble edifice of british literature: like the band of laborers on the egyptian pyramid, theirs was too often a mess of leeks, while milk, and honey, and oil, were the portion of those for whom they toiled, those in whose honor, and for whose advantage the monument was raised. patrons, whether single individuals or nations, have too often proved but indifferent friends, careless and forgetful of those whom they proudly pretend to foster. but leaving the poor poet, with his sorrows, to the regular biographer, we choose rather the lighter task of relating the history of the letter itself; a man's works are often preferred before himself, and it is believed that in this, the day of autographs, no further apology will be needed for the course taken on the present occasion. we hold ourselves, indeed, entitled to the especial gratitude of collectors for the following sketch of a document maintaining so high a rank in their estimation. and justly might the lumley letter claim a full share of literary homage. boasting a distinguished signature, it possessed the first essential of a superior autograph; for, although a rose under any other name may smell as sweet, yet it is clear that with regard to every thing coming from the pen, whether folio or billet doux, imaginative poem, or matter-of-fact note of hand, there is a vast deal in this important item, which is often the very life and stamina of the whole production. then again, the subject of extreme want is one of general interest, while the allusion to the unpublished poem must always prove an especial attraction to the curious. such were the intrinsic merits of the document, in addition to which, sober time lent his aid to enhance its value, and capricious fortune added a peculiar charm of mystery, which few papers of the kind could claim to the same extent. the appearance also of this interesting paper was always admitted to be entirely worthy of its fame. the hand-writing fully carried out the idea of extreme debility and agitation corresponding with its nature, while a larger and a lesser blot bore painful testimony to that recklessness of propriety which a starving man might be supposed to feel; one corner had been ruthlessly abstracted at the time it was seen by the writer of this notice, and with it the last figures of the date; a considerable rent crossed the sheet from right to left, but happily without injuring its contents; several punctures were also observed, one of these encroaching very critically upon the signature. but i need not add that these marks of age and harsh treatment, like the scars on the face of a veteran, far from being blemishes, were acknowledged to be so many additional embellishments. the coloring of the piece was of that precious hue, verging here and there on the dingy, the very tint most charming in the eyes of an antiquary, and which time alone can bestow. in fact, one rarely sees a relic of the kind, more perfect in color, more expressive in its general aspect, or more becoming to an album, from the fine contrast between its poverty-stricken air, torn, worn, and soiled, and the rich, embossed, unsullied leaf on which it reposed, like some dark rembrandt within its gilded frame. in short, it was the very torso of autographs. happily the position which it finally attained was one worthy of its merits, and we could not have wished it a more elegant shrine than the precious pages of the holberton album, a volume encased in velvet, secured with jeweled clasps, reposing on a tasteful etagere. {etagere = small table or shelf for displaying curios (french)} but i proceed without further delay to relate some of the more important steps in the progress of this interesting paper, from the garret of the starving poet to the drawing-rooms of holberton house, merely observing by way of preface that the following notice may be relied on so far as it goes, the writer--colonel jonathan howard of trenton, new jersey,--having had access to the very best authorities, and having also had the honor of being enlisted in the service of the lumley autograph upon an occasion of some importance, as will be shown by the narrative. it was just one hundred years since, in 1745, that this celebrated letter was first brought to light, from the obscurity in which it had already lain some half a century, and which no subsequent research has been able fully to clear away. in the month of august of that year, the rev. john lumley, tutor to lord g----, had the honor of discovering this curious relic under the following circumstances. mr. lumley was one day perched on the topmost step of a library ladder, looking over a black letter volume of hollinshed, from the well filled shelves of his pupil. suddenly he paused, and his antiquarian instincts were aroused by the sight of a sheet of paper, yellow and time worn. he seized it with the eagerness of a book-worm, and in so doing dropped the volume of hollinshed alarmingly near the wig-covered head of his youthful pupil, who with closed eyes, and open mouth, lay reclining on a sofa below. the book, grazing the curls of the young lord's wig, he sprang up from his nap, alive and sound, though somewhat startled. {hollinshed = raphael holinshed (d. 1580), famous writer of british historical chronicles, used by shakespeare as source for some of his plays} "hang it lumley, what a rumpus you keep up among the books! you well nigh drove that old volume into my head by a process more summary than usual." the learned tutor made a thousand apologies, as he descended the ladder, but on touching the floor his delight burst forth. "it was this paper, my lord, which made me so awkward--i have lighted on a document of the greatest interest!" "what is it?" asked the pupil looking askance at letter, and tutor. "an original letter which comes to hand, just in time for my lives of the tragedians--the volume to be dedicated to your lordship--it is a letter of poor otway." {otway = thomas otway (1652-1685), english playwright who wrote a number of important tragedies in verse, but who died destitute at the age of 33. the coopers were familiar with his work; james fenimore cooper used quotations from otway's "the orphan" for three chapter heading epigraphs in his 1850 novel, "the ways of the hour"} "otway?--what, the fellow you were boring me about last night?" "the same my lord--the poet otway--you may remember we saw his venice preserved last week. it is a highly interesting letter, written in great distress, and confirms the story of his starvation. you see the signature." {venice preserved = a well-known play by otway, written in 1682} "that name, otway?--well, to my mind it is as much like genghis khan." "oh, my lord!--thomas otway clearly--signatures are always more or less confused. "well, have it your own way.--it may be tom, dick, or harry for all i care," said the youth, stretching himself preparatory to a visit to his kennels; and such was his indifference to this literary treasure that he readily gave it to his tutor. in those days, few lords were literary. mr. lumley's delight at this discovery, was very much increased by the fact that he was at that moment anxious to bring out an edition of the english tragedians of the seventeenth century. the lives of several of these authors had been already written by him, and he was at that moment engaged on that of otway. a noted publisher had taken the matter into consideration, and if the undertaking gave promise of being both palatable to the public, and profitable to himself, a prospectus was to be issued. now here was a little tit-bit which the public would doubtless relish; for it was beginning to feel some interest in otway's starvation, the poet having been dead half a century. it is true that the signature of the poor starving author, whoever he may have been, was so illegible that it required some imagination to see in it, the name of otway, but mr. lumley had enough of the true antiquarian spirit, to settle the point to his own entire satisfaction. the note was accordingly introduced into the life of otway, with which the learned tutor was then engaged. the work itself, however, was not destined to see the light; its publication was delayed, while mr. lumley accompanied his pupil on the usual continental tour, and from this journey the learned gentleman never returned, dying at rome, of a cold caught in the library of the vatican. by his will, the ms. life of otway with all his papers, passed into the hands of his brother, an officer in the army. unfortunately, however, captain lumley, who was by no means a literary character, proved extremely indifferent to this portion of his brother's inheritance, which he treated with contemptuous neglect. after this first stage on the road to fame, twenty more years passed away and the letter of the starving poet was again forgotten. at length the papers of the rev. mr. lumley, fell into the hands of a nephew, who inherited his uncle's antiquarian tastes, and clerical profession. in looking over the mss., he came to the life of otway, and was struck with the letter given there, never having met with it in print; there was also a note appended to it with an account of the manner in which it had been discovered by the editor, in the library of lord g----, and affirming that it was still in his own possession. the younger lumley immediately set to work to discover the original letter, but his search was fruitless; it was not to be found either among the papers of his uncle, or those of his father. it was gone. he was himself a tutor at cambridge at the time, and returning to the university, he carried with him his uncle's life of otway, in ms. some little curiosity was at first excited among his immediate companions by these facts, but it soon settled down into an opinion unfavorable to the veracity of the late mr. lumley.--this nettled the nephew; and as lord g----, was still living, a gouty bloated roue, he at length wrote to inquire if his lordship knew any thing of the matter. his lordship was too busy, or too idle, to answer the inquiry. some time later, however, the younger lumley, then a chaplain in the family of a relative of lord g----'s, accidentally met his uncle's former pupil, and being of a persevering disposition, he ventured to make a personal application on the subject. "now you recall the matter to me, mr. lumley, i do recollect something of the kind. i remember one day, giving my tutor some musty old letter he found in the library at g----; and by the bye he came near cracking my skull on the same occasion!" mr. lumley was not a little pleased by this confirmation of the story, though he found that lord g---had not even read the letter, nor did he know any thing of its subsequent fate; he only remembered looking at the signature. not long after the meeting at which this explanation had taken place, mr. lumley received a visit from a stranger, requesting to see the ms. life of otway in his possession. it was handed to him; he examined it, and was very particular in his inquiries on the subject, giving the chaplain to understand that he was the agent of a third person who wished to purchase either the original letter if possible, or if that could not be found, the ms. containing the copy. mr. lumley always believed that the employer of this applicant was no other than that arch-gatherer, horace walpole, who gave such an impulse to the collecting mania; he declined selling the work, however, for he had thoughts of printing it himself. the application was mentioned by him, and, of course, the manuscript gained notoriety, while the original letter became a greater desideratum than ever. the library at g---was searched most carefully by a couple of brother book-worms, who crept over it from cornice to carpeting; but to no purpose. {horace walpole = horace walpole (1717-1797), a prolific writer, connoisseur, and collector, best known for his extensive correspondence; he established a taste for literary collecting by would-be cultured gentlemen in england} some ten years later still--about the time, by the bye, when chatterton's career came to such a miserable close in london, and when gilbert was dying in a hospital at paris--it happened that a worthy physician, well known in the town of southampton for his benevolence and eccentricity, was on a professional visit to the child of a poor journeyman trunk-maker, in the same place. a supply of old paper had just been brought in for the purpose of lining trunks, according to the practice of the day. a workman was busy sorting these, rejecting some as refuse, and preserving others, when the doctor stopped to answer an inquiry about the sick child. {chatterton = thomas chatterton (1752-1770), british poet, who created an imaginary thomas rowley, a supposed medieval monk, to whom he ascribed some of his poems. chatterton committed suicide at the age of 18 when a poem of his, allegedly by rowley, was rejected; he was buried in a pauper's grave. susan fenimore cooper no doubt has this in mind in naming a character in this story theodosia rowley. {gilbert = nicolas gilbert (1751-1780), french poet, who died in paris at the age of 29. the french writer count alfred de vigny (1797-1863), in his book of essays "stello" (1832), popularized a legend that gilbert had died insane and in abject poverty at the charity hospital of the hotel dieu in paris, and compared his miserable end with that of chatteron; it seems likely that vigny, whose book appeared while susan fenimore cooper was studying in paris, was her source for this reference to gilbert. in fact, gilbert was not impoverished, and died of injuries after falling from his horse} "better, hopkins--doing well. but what have you here? i never see old papers but i have an inclination to look them over. if a man has leisure, he may often pick up something amusing among such rubbish. don't you ever read the papers that pass through your hands?" "no, sir--i 'as no time for that, sir. and then i was never taught to read writing, and these 'ere papers is all written ones. we puts them that's written for one trunk, and them that's printed for another, as you see, sir; one must have a heye to the looks of the work." "why yes--you seem to manage the job very well; and i have a trunk, by the bye, that wants patching up before my boy carries it off with him; i'll send it round to you; hopkins. but stay--what's this?" and the doctor took up a soiled, yellow sheet of paper, from the heap rejected by the workman; it contained a scrawl which proved to be the identical letter of the poor poet, the lumley autograph, though in what manner it became mingled with that heap of rubbish has never been satisfactorily ascertained. "here's a poor fellow who had a hard fate, hopkins," said the benevolent man, thoughtfully. "it is as good as a sermon on charity to read that letter." the trunk-maker begged to hear it. "well, poor journeyman as i be, i was never yet in so bad a way as that, sir." "and never will be, i hope; but this was a poet, hopkins--and that's but an indifferent trade to live by. i'll tell you what, my good friend," said the doctor, suddenly, "that letter is worth keeping, and you may paste it in the trunk i'll send round this afternoon--put it in the lid, where it can be read." the trunk was sent, and the letter actually pasted in it as part of the new lining. dr. h----, who, as we have observed, was rather eccentric in his ways, had a son about to commence his career as a soldier; and the worthy man thought the letter might teach the youth a useful lesson of moderation and temperance, by showing him every time he opened his trunk, the extreme of want to which his fellow beings were occasionally reduced. what success followed the plan we cannot say. the trunk, however, shared the young soldier's wandering life; it carried the cornet's uniform to america; it was besieged in boston; and it made part of the besieging baggage at charleston. it was not destined, however, to remain in the new world, but followed its owner to the east indies, carrying on this second voyage, a lieutenant's commission. at length, after passing five-and-twenty years in bengal, the trunk returned again to southampton, as one among some dozen others which made up the baggage of the gallant colonel h----, now rich in laurels and rupees. the old trunk had even the honorable duty assigned it of carrying its master's trophies, doubtless the most precious portion of the colonel's possessions, though at the same time the lightest; as for the rupees, the old worn-out box would have proved quite unequal to transporting a single bag of them, for it was now sadly unfit for service, thanks to the ravages of time and the white ants; and, indeed, owed its preservation and return to its native soil solely to the letter pasted in the lid, which, in the eyes of colonel h----, was a memento of home, and the eccentric character of a deceased parent. {cornet = the lowest officer rank in a british cavalry regiment, below that of lieutenant; now obsolete} the time had now come, however, when the lumley autograph was about to emerge forever from obscurity, and receive the full homage of collectors; the hour of triumph was at hand, the neglect of a century was to be fully repaid by the highest honors of fame. the eye of beauty was about to kindle as it rested on the lumley autograph; jeweled fingers were to be raised, eager to snatch the treasure from each other; busy literati stood ready armed for a war of controversy in its behalf. it happened that colonel h---was invited to a fancy ball; and it also happened that the lady whom he particularly admired, was to be present on the occasion. such being the case, the most becoming costume was to be selected for the evening. what if the locks of the gallant colonel were slightly sprinkled with gray? he was still a handsome man, and knew very well that the dress of an eastern aymeer was particularly well suited to his face and figure. this dress, preserved in a certain old trunk in the garret, was accordingly produced. the trunk was brought down to the dressing-room, the costume examined piece by piece, pronounced in good condition by the valet, and declared very becoming by the military friend called in as counsellor. {aymeer = emir; a muslim title signifying commander in arabic} "but what a queer old box this is, h----," said major d----, eyeing the trunk through his glass. "it's one i've had these hundred years," replied the colonel. "so you think this trumpery will do, d----?" "do? to be sure it will, my dear fellow--it gives your milesian skin the true nawaub dye. but i was just trying to make out an old letter pasted in the lid of your trunk, under my nose here. is this the way you preserve your family archives?" {milesian = slang term for irish, from milesius, mythical spanish conqueror of ireland; nawaub = from nabob, anglo-indian slang for one who has returned home from india with a large fortune} "that letter is really a curiosity in its way," said the colonel, turning from the glass and relating its history, so far at least as it was known to himself. his friend spelt it through. "my dear fellow, why don't you give this letter to the father of your fair louisa; he's quite rabid on such points; you'll make him a friend for life by it!" the advice was followed. the letter was cut from its old position in the lid of the trunk, and presented to sir john blank, the father of the lovely louisa, who, in his turn, soon placed the hand of his daughter in that of colonel h----. sir john, a noted follower in the steps of horace walpole, had no sooner become the owner of this interesting letter, than he set to work to find out its origin, and to fill up its history. unfortunately, the sheet had received some wounds in the wars, as well as the gallant colonel. one corner had been carried away by an unlucky thrust from a razor--not a sword; while the date and signature had also been half eaten out by the white ants of bengal. but such difficulties as these were only pleasing obstacles in the way of antiquarian activity. sir john had soon formed an hypothesis perfectly satisfactory to himself. his mother's name was butler, and he claimed some sort of affinity with the author of hudibras; as the christian name of the poor poet had been almost entirely devoured by the ants, while the surname had also suffered here and there, sir john ingeniously persuaded himself that what remained had clearly belonged to the signature of the great satirist; as for the date, the abbreviation of "nov. 20th." and the figures 16-marking the century, were really tolerably distinct. accordingly, sir john wrote a brief notice of butler's life, dwelling much upon his well-known poverty, and quoting his epitaph, with the allusion to his indigence underscored, "lest he who living wanted all things, should, when dead, want a tomb," and placed these remarks opposite the letter of our starving poet, which was registered in the volume in conspicuous characters as an "autograph of samuel butler, author of hudibras, showing to what distress he was at one time reduced." {samuel butler (1612-1680), another english author popularly believed to have died in great poverty; he is best known for his long satiric mock-epic poem, "hudibras" (1663-1678)} here the sheet remained several years, until at length it chanced that sir john's volume of autographs was placed in the hands of a gentleman who had recently read mr. lumley's ms. life of otway. the identity of this letter, with that copied by mr. lumley, immediately suggested itself; and now the first sparks of controversy between the otwaysians and the butlerites were struck in sir john's library. from thence they soon spread to the four winds of heaven, falling on combustible materials wherever they lighted on a literary head, or collecting hands. by the bye, the rapidity with which this collecting class has increased of late years is really alarming; who can foresee the state of things likely to exist in the next century, should matters go on at the same rate? reflect for a moment on the probable condition of distinguished authors, lions of the loudest roar, if the number of autograph-hunters were to increase beyond what it is at present. is it not to be feared that they will yet exterminate the whole race, that the great lion literary, like the mastodon, will become extinct? or, perhaps, by taming him down to a mere producer of autographs, his habits will change so entirely that he will no longer be the same animal, no longer bear a comparison with the lion of the past. on the other hand should the great race become extinct, what will be the fate of the family of autograph-feeders? what a fearful state of things would ensue, even in our day, were the supply to be reduced but a quire! the heart sickens at the picture which would then be presented--collectors turning on each other, waging a fierce war over every autographic scrap, making a battle-field of every social circle. happily, nature seems always to keep up the balance in such matters, and it is a consoling reflection that if the million are now consumers, so have they become producers of autographs; it is therefore probable that the evil will work its own remedy; and we may hope that the great writers of the next century will be shielded in some measure by the diversion made in their favor through the lighter troops of the lion corps. as for the full merits of the controversy so hotly waged over the lumley autograph between the otwaysians and the butlerites, dividing the collecting world into two rival parties, we shall not here enter into it. in all such matters it is better to go at once to the fountain head; if the reader is curious on the subject, as doubtless he must be, he is referred to one octavo and five duodecimo volumes, with fifty pamphlets which have left little to say on the point. let it not be supposed, however, for an instant, that the writer of this article is himself undecided in his opinion on this question. by no means; and he hastens to repel the unjust suspicion, by declaring himself one of the warmest otwaysians. it is true that he has some private grounds for believing that a dispassionate inquiry might lead one to doubt whether otway or butler ever saw the lumley autograph; but what of that, who has time or inclination for dispassionate investigation in these stirring days! in the present age of universal enlightenment, we don't trouble ourselves to make up our opinions--we take and give them, we beg, borrow, and steal them. true, there are controversies involving matters so important in their consequences, so serious in their nature, that one might conceive either indifference or fanaticism equally inexcusable with regard to them; but there are also a thousand other subjects of discussion, at the present day, of that peculiar character which can only thrive when supported by passion and prejudice, and falling in with a dispute of this nature, it is absolutely necessary to jump at once into fanaticism. accordingly, i had no sooner obtained a glimpse of the letter of the starving poet, embalmed within the precious leaves of one of the most noted albums of europe, than i immediately enlisted under lady holberton's colors as a faithful otwaysian. with that excellent lady i take a tragical view of the lumley letter, conceiving that a man must be blind as a bat, not to see that it was written by the author of venice preserved, and this in spite of other celebrated collectors, who find in the same sheet so much that is comical and hudibrastic. strange that any man in his senses should hold such an opinion--yet the butlerites number strong, some of them are respectable people, too; more's the pity that such should be the case. as we have already observed, the controversy began in the library of sir john blank, and it continued throughout the life-time of that excellent and well-known collector. at his death, a few years since, it passed into the hands of his daughter, the widow of colonel h----; and it will be readily imagined that although the main question is still as much undecided as ever, yet the value of the document itself has been immeasurably increased by a controversy of twenty years standing, on its merits. i wish i could add that the fortune of colonel h---had augmented in the same proportion; but, unhappily for his widow, the reverse was the case; and it was owing to this combination of circumstances that lady holberton at length obtained possession of the lumley autograph. mrs. h---became very desirous of procuring for her eldest son a cornetcy in the regiment once commanded by his father; as she was now too poor to purchase, the matter required management and negotiation. how it was brought about i cannot exactly say. suffice it to declare that the young man received his commission, through the influence of lady holberton, in a high military quarter, while the lumley autograph was placed on a distinguished leaf of that lady's velvet-bound, jewel-clasped album. it so happened that i dined at holberton-house on the eventful day upon which the lumley letter changed owners. i saw immediately, on entering the drawing-room, that lady holberton was in excellent spirits; she received me very graciously, and spoke of her son, with whom i had just traveled between paris and algiers. "wish me joy, mr. howard!" exclaimed the lady after a short conversation. of course i was very happy to do so, and replied by some remarks on the recent success of her friends in a parliamentary measure, just then decided--lady holberton being a distinguished politician. but i soon found it was to some matter of still higher moment she then alluded. "i never had a doubt as to our success in the house, last night--no; rather wish me joy that i have at last triumphed in a negotiation of two years standing. the lumley autograph is mine, mr. howard! the letter of poor otway, actually written in the first stages of starvation--only conceive its value!" other guests arriving i was obliged to make way, not however, before lady holberton had promised me a sight of her recent acquisition, in the evening. in the mean time i fully entered into her satisfaction, for i had already seen her album in paris, and heard her sigh for this very addition to its treasures. during dinner the important intelligence that the lumley letter was her own, was imparted to the company generally. "i knew it! i was sure of it from her smile, the moment i entered the room!" exclaimed mr. t---the distinguished collector, who sat next me. another guest, miss rowley, also a collecting celebrity, was sitting opposite, and turned so pale at the moment, that i was on the point of officiously recommending a glass of water. "have you albums in america, mr. howard?" inquired a charming young lady on my right. "there is no lack of them, i assure you,"--i replied. "really! adela, mr. howard tells me they have albums in america!" repeated the young lady to a charming sister, near her; while on my left i had the satisfaction of hearing some gratifying remarks from mr. t----, as to the state of civilization in my native country, as shown by such a fact. "and what are your albums like?" again inquired my lovely neighbor. "not like lady holberton's, perhaps--but pretty well for a young nation." "oh dear--not like lady holberton's of course--hers is quite unique--so full of nice odd things. but are your albums in america at all like ours?" "why yes! we get most of them from paris and london." "oh dear! how strange--but don't you long to see this new treasure of lady holberton's--that dear nice letter of otway's, written while he was starving?" inquired the charming emily, helping herself to a bit of pate de perigord. {pate de perigord = an expensive french delicacy: goose liver pate with truffles.} "yes, i am exceedingly curious to see it." "you don't believe it was written by that coarse, vulgar butler, do you?" "no, indeed,--it is the pathetic otway's, beyond a doubt!" my neighbor, the butlerite, gave a contemptuous shrug, but i paid him no attention, preferring to coincide with the soft eyes on my right, rather than dispute with the learned spectacles to the left. after dinner when we had done full justice to the bill of fare, concluding with pines, grapes, and newtown pippins, we were all gratified with a sight of the poor poet's letter, by way of bonne bouche. a little volume written by lady holberton--printed but not published--relating its past history from the date of its discovery in the library of lord g----, her grandfather, to the present day, passed from hand to hand, and this review of its various adventures of course only added force to the congratulations offered upon the acquisition of this celebrated autograph. {pine = pineapple. newtown pippin = a green, tart, tangy american apple, originally from long island, a favorite of george washington and thomas jefferson; bonne bouche = a tasty morsel (french)} while the company were succeeding each other in offering their homage to the great album, my attention was called off by a tap on the shoulder from a friend, who informed me that miss rowley, a very clever, handsome woman of a certain age, had expressed a wish to make my acquaintance. i was only too happy to be presented. after a very gracious reception, and an invitation to a party for the following evening, miss rowley observed: "you have autographs, in america, i understand, mr. howard." "both autographs and collectors," i replied. "really! perhaps you are a collector yourself?" continued the lady, with an indescribable expression, half interest, half disappointment. "no--merely a humble admirer of the labors of others." "then," added the lady, more blandly, "perhaps you will be good-natured enough to assist me." and, after a suspicious glance toward the spot where lady holberton and mr. t---were conversing together, she adroitly placed herself in a position to give to our conversation the privacy of a diplomatic tete-a-tete. "could you possibly procure me some american autographs for my collection? i find a few wanting under the american head--perhaps a hundred or two." i professed myself ready to do any thing in my power in so good a cause. "here is my list; i generally carry it about me. you will see those that are wanting, and very possibly may suggest others." and as the lady spoke she drew from her pocket a roll of paper as long, and as well covered with names as any minority petition to congress. however, i had lived too much among collectors of late to be easily dismayed. the list was headed by black hawk. i expressed my fears that the gallant warrior's ignorance of letters might prove an obstacle to obtaining any thing from his pen. i volunteered however to procure instead, something from a cherokee friend of mine, the editor of a newspaper. {black hawk = black hawk (1767-1838), an american indian (sac) chieftain, defeated by the u.s. army in 1832, whose "autobiography" (1833) became an american classic.} "how charming!" exclaimed miss rowley, clasping her hands. "how very obliging of you, mr. howard. are you fond of shooting? my brother's preserves are in fine order--or perhaps you are partial to yachting--" bowing my thanks for these amiable hints, i carelessly observed that the letter of the cherokee editor was no sacrifice at all, for the chief and myself were regular correspondents; i had a dozen of his letters, and had just given one to mr. t----. this intelligence evidently lessened miss rowley's excessive gratitude. she continued her applications, however, casting an eye on her list. "perhaps you correspond also with some rowdies, mr. howard? could you oblige me with a rowdy letter?" {rowdies = in the mid-nineteenth century, an american slang term for backwoodsmen or other rough and disorderly types} i drew up a little at this request; my correspondents, i assured the lady, were generally men of respectability, though one of them was of a savage race. "no doubt; but in the way of autographs, you know, one would correspond with--" the sentence remained unfinished, for the lady added, "i wrote myself to madame laffarge, not long since. i am sorry to say lady holberton has two of hers; but although an excellent person in most respects, yet it cannot be denied that as regards autographs, lady holberton is very illiberal. i offered her grizzel baillie, two cardinals, william pitt, and grace darling, for one of her laffarges; but she would not part with it. yet the exchange was very fair, especially as madame laffarge is still living." {madame laffarge = marie lafarge (1816-1853), french woman convicted in 1840 for poisoning her husband; later pardoned. grizzel baillie = lady grizel baillie (1665-1746), scottish poet. william pitt = either william pitt "the elder" (1708-1778) or william pitt "the younger" (1759-1806), both british prime ministers. grace darling = grace darling (1815-1842), english heroine and lighthouse keeper's daughter, famous for her rescue of castaways in 1838.} i bowed an assent to the remark. "and then she herself actually once made proposals for schinderhannes, to a friend of mine, offering howard, the philanthropist, talma, william penn, and fenelon for him--all commonplace enough, you know--and schinderhannes quite unique. my friend was indignant!" {schinderhannes = german bandit chief, executed in 1803. howard = john howard (1726-1790), english philanthropist and prison reformer. talma = francois talma (1763-1826), popular french playwright. william penn (1644-1718), quaker founder of pennsylvania. fenelon = francois fenelon (1651-1715), french archbishop and writer} i ventured to excuse lady holberton by suggesting that probably at the time her stock of notabilities was low. miss rowley shook her head, and curled her lip, as if she fancied the lady had only been seeking to drive a hard bargain. "on one point, however, i have carried the day, mr. howard. lady holberton is not a little proud of her vidocq; but i have obtained one far superior to hers, one addressed to myself so piquant and gallant too. i called on the dear old burglar on purpose to coax him into writing me a note." {vidocq = francois vidocq (1775-1857), french police detective who turned robber, and was exposed in 1832.} i wondered, in petto, whether i should meet any illustrious convicts at miss rowley's party the next evening; but remembering to have heard her called an exclusive, it did not seem very probable. {in petto = silently, to oneself (latin)} after running her eye over the list again, miss rowley made another inquiry. "mr. howard, could you get me something from an american colonel?" i assured the lady we had colonels of all sorts, and begged to know what particular variety she had placed on her catalogue--was it an officer of the regular service, or one of no service at all? "oh, the last, certainly--officers who have seen service are so commonplace!" my own pen was immediately placed at miss rowley's disposal, as my sword would have been, had i owned one. as i had been called colonel a hundred times without having commanded a regiment once, my own name was as good as any other on the present occasion. "you are very obliging. since you are so good, may i also trouble you to procure me a line from a very remarkable personage of your country--a very distinguished man--he has been president, or speaker of the senate, or something of that sort." to which of our head men did miss rowley allude? "he is called uncle sam, i believe." {uncle sam = "uncle sam" became a popular personification of the united states during the war of 1812, replacing brother jonathan, and was often used in contradistinction to the british "john bull"} this was not so easy a task, for though we have thousands of colonels, there is but one uncle sam in the world. on hearing that such was the case, miss rowley's anxiety on the subject increased immeasurably; but i assured her the old gentleman only put his name to treaties, and tariffs; and although his sons were wonderfully gallant, yet he himself had never condescended to notice any woman but a queen regnant: and i further endeavored to give some idea of his identity. miss rowley stopped me short, however. "only procure me one line from him, mr. howard, and i shall be indebted to you for life. it will be time enough to find out all about him when i once have his name--that is the essential thing." i shrunk from committing myself, however; declaring that i would as soon engage to procure a billet-doux from prester john. {prester john = mythical ruler believed in the middle ages to head a powerful christian kingdom somewhere in asia; later identified with the christian kings of ethiopia in africa} "prester john! that would, indeed, be quite invaluable!" this asiatic diversion was a happy one, and came very apropos, for it carried miss rowley into china; she inquired if i had any chinese connections. "though altogether, i am pretty well satisfied with my chinese negotiations; as soon as the celestial empire was opened to the civilized world, i engaged an agent there to collect for me. but, could you put me on the track of a confucius?" {opened to the civilized world = following the so-called opium war, britain had in 1842 forced china to open trade with her} i was obliged to admit my inability to do so; and at the same moment the collecting instincts of lady holberton and mr. t----, drew their attention to the corner where miss rowley and myself were conversing; as they moved toward us, miss rowley pocketed her list, throwing herself upon my honor not to betray the deficiencies in her role d'equipage, or the collecting negociations just opened between us. lady holberton, as she advanced, invited miss rowley, with an ill-concealed air of triumph, to feast her eyes once more on the lumley autograph, and not long after the party broke up. {role d'equipage = muster roll (french); here, miss rowley's list of her autographs} the next day, in passing holberton-house, i observed the chariot of a fashionable physician before the door; and at miss rowley's party in the evening learned from mr. t---that lady holberton was quite unwell. the following morning i called to inquire, and received for answer that "her ladyship was very much indisposed." it was not until a week later that i saw lady holberton herself, taking the air in hyde park. she looked wretchedly--thin and pale. i inquired from the english friend with whom i was riding, if there was any probability of a change of ministry? he looked surprised; and then catching the direction of my eye, he observed, "you ask on lady holberton's account; but sir a---b---tells me her illness was caused by the loss of the lumley autograph." this unexpected intelligence proved only too true. on returning to my lodgings, i found a note from lady holberton, requesting to see me, and, of course, immediately obeyed the summons. "lost!--lost!--lost! mr. howard!" said the lady, endeavoring to conceal her emotion, as she gave me the details of her affliction. "it must have been stolen--basely stolen--on the evening of my party. oh! why did i so foolishly exhibit it among so many people, and collectors among them, too! never again will i admit more than one collector at a time into the room with my album!" she exclaimed with energy. i was shocked; surely lady holberton did not conceive it possible that any of her guests could be guilty of such base conduct? "how little you know them! but it is that, mr. howard, which has interested me in your favor--you have so much naivete, and ignorance of the moral turpitude of the old world, that i feel convinced you never could be guilty of such an action yourself." i assured lady holberton that in this respect she only did me justice; and, in fact, a theft of the kind she alluded to appeared to me all but incredible. "remember that it was only the other day that ---lost his invaluable album; remember that last winter madame de ---had all her notes on botanical subjects stolen from her own portfolio--and i could mention a dozen instances of the same wickedness." these facts were already known to me, but i had forgotten them. i remarked with a glow of national pride, that we certainly were much more virtuous in these matters across the ocean; in america we are much above pilfering autographs; when we do steal, it is by the volume--we seize all an author's stock in trade at one swoop, and without condescending to say even, thank ye, for it. {author's stock in trade = though ostensibly referring to the stealing of autographs, susan fenimore cooper is also clearly referring to the widespread pirating of british and other foreign literary works by american publishers, in the absence of international copyright laws--which not only cheated the authors, but made life difficult for american authors expecting to be paid for their creations} "so i have always understood, mr. howard--and i felt that my album was safe with you," observed lady holberton, with tears in her eyes. wishing to relieve this distress, i proposed advertising for the lost treasure--applying to the police. lady holberton smiled through her tears, as she assured me that the police, old and new, had been enlisted in her service an hour after the discovery of her loss, while communications had been opened with the municipal governments of brussels, paris, and vienna, on the same subject. {police, old and new = the first modern english police force had been established in 1829 by sir robert peel -from which the british nickname of "bobby" for policeman.} "and have you no clue, no suspicions?--your servants--your maid?" the aspersion on her household was indignantly repelled. "you will readily believe, mr. howard, that a collector, the owner of such an album as i have the honor of possessing, is particularly careful as to whom she admits into her family. i will vouch for all about me; still i have suspicions--but--" i begged her to speak, if she thought i could be of the least assistance. "yes, i will trust my son's friend. mr. howard, i here solemnly accuse theodosia rowley of having stolen the lumley autograph!" the dignity of manner, the concentrated passion of expression, the strength of emphasis with which lady holberton spoke, would have done honor to a siddons. the natural start of horror and amazement on my part, was also, no doubt, very expressive--for i was speechless with surprise. "i see you do not credit this," continued the lady. but thought, like a flash of lightning, had already recalled some circumstances of the last evening at holberton-house. i did credit the accusation, and immediately informed lady holberton of what i had observed, but forgotten, until reminded of the facts by her own remarks. i had seen miss rowley, bending low over the album at a moment when some one was telling an exceedingly humorous story which engrossed the attention of the rest of the company. "could she have had an accomplice?" cried the lady, with dashing eyes. i knew nothing on that point. but, i added, that soon after miss rowley had left the room very quietly; and as i followed her to fulfill another engagement, she had started, turned pale, and betrayed much nervousness, scarcely allowing me to assist her to her carriage, although we left the house at the same instant. lady holberton's suspicions were now confirmed beyond a doubt. "and yet it seems incredible that any lady should be guilty of such conduct!" i exclaimed, almost repenting having allowed the previous remarks to pass my lips. "miss rowley is undoubtedly a woman of principle--or good moral standing." "moral standing!--principle!" exclaimed lady holberton, bitterly. "yes, where an autograph is concerned, theodosia rowley has all the principle of a magpie." {magpie = european bird known for stealing and hiding small bright objects.} whatever might have been the fact, it was clear at least that lady holberton's opinion was now unalterably made up. "remember, she is a butlerite!" added the lady, thus putting the last touch to the circumstantial evidence against miss rowley. weeks passed by. the advertisements remained unanswered. the police could give no information. lady holberton was in despair; the physicians declared that her health must eventually give way under the anxiety and disappointment consequent upon this melancholy affair. much sympathy was felt for the afflicted lady; even miss rowley called often to condole, but she was never admitted. "i could not see the crocodile!" exclaimed lady holberton, quite thrown off her guard one day, by the sight of miss rowley's card which she threw into the fire. some consolation, however, appeared to be derived from the assiduous attentions of mr. t----, who personally admired lady holberton; at least he professed to do so, though some persons accused him of interested views, and aiming at her album rather than herself. but although his attentions were received, yet nothing could afford full consolation. at length, all other means failing, at the end of a month, it was proposed that two persons, mutual friends of lady holberton and miss rowley, should call on the latter lady, and appeal privately to her sense of honor, to restore the autograph if it were actually in her possession. this plan was finally agreed on; but the very day it was to have been carried into execution, miss rowley left town for an excursion in finland. as for myself, i was also on the wing, and left london about the same time. the parting with lady holberton was melancholy; she was much depressed, and the physicians had recommended the waters of wiesbaden. mr. t---was also preparing for an excursion to germany; and he was suspected of vacillating in his butlerite views, brought over by lady holberton's tears and logic. returning to london, some three months later, i found many of my former acquaintances were absent; but lady holberton, miss rowley, and mr. t---were all in town again. the day after i arrived--it was tuesday the 20th of august--as i was walking along piccadilly, about five o'clock in the afternoon, my eye fell on the windows of mr. thorpe's great establishment. i was thinking over his last catalogue of autographs, when i happened to observe a plain, modest-looking young girl casting a timid glance at the door. there was something anxious and hesitating in her manner, which attracted my attention. accustomed, like most americans, to assist a woman in any little difficulty, and with notions better suited perhaps to the meridian of yankee-land than that of london, i asked if she were in any trouble. how richly was i rewarded for the act of good-nature! she blushed and courtesied. {tuesday, 20th of august = does this date the final composition of "the lumley autograph" or of its setting? august 20 fell on a tuesday in 1844 and 1850} "please, sir, is it true that they pay money for old letters at this place?" "they do--have you any thing of the kind to dispose of?" judge of my gratification, my amazement, when she produced the lumley autograph! of course i instantly took it, at her own price--only half a guinea--and i further gave her lady holberton's address, that she might claim the liberal reward promised far the precious letter. tears came into the poor child's eyes when she found what awaited her, and i may as well observe at once that this young girl proved to be the daughter of a poor bed-ridden artisan of clapham, who had seen better days, but was then in great want. it is an ill-wind that blows no good luck, and the contest for the lumley autograph was a great advantage to the poor artisan and his family. the girl had picked up the paper early one morning, in a road near clapham, as she was going to her work; lady holberton gave her a handful of guineas as the promised reward--a sum by the bye just double in amount what the poor poet had received for his best poem--and she also continued to look after the family in their troubles. but to return to the important document itself. never can i forget the expressive gratitude that beamed on the fine countenance of lady holberton when i restored it once more to her possession. she rapidly recovered her health and spirits, and it was generally reported that seizing this favorable moment, mr. t---had offered himself and his collection, and that both had been graciously accepted. miss rowley called and a sort of paix platree was made up between the ladies. a cargo of american autographs arrived containing the letter of the cherokee editor, the sign-manual of governors and colonels without number, and i even succeeded in obtaining epistles from several noted rowdies, especially to gratify the ladies. lady holberton made her selection, and the rest were divided between miss rowley and mr. t----. joy at the recovery of the lumley autograph seemed to diffuse an unusual spirit of harmony among collectors; many desirable exchanges were brought about and things looked charmingly. alas, how little were we prepared for what ensued! {paix platree = patched-up peace (french)} on the occasion of the presence in london of two illustrious royal travelers, lady holberton gave a large party. so said the papers at least; but i knew better. it was chiefly to celebrate the recovery of the lumley autograph, and its restoration to her celebrated album that the fete was given. the album was produced, in spite of a half-formed vow of lady holberton to the contrary, but then his royal highness prince ------had particularly requested to see the letter of the poor poet, having heard it mentioned at dinner. the evening passed off brilliantly, their royal highnesses, came, saw, and departed. the crowd followed them to another house, while a favored few, chiefly collectors, remained lingering about the table on which lay the album. i should have said earlier, that lady holberton had appointed a new office in her household the very day after the loss of the lumley autograph; this was no other than a pretty little page, dressed in the old costume of a student of padua, whose sole duty it was to watch over the album whenever it was removed from the rich and heavy case in which it usually lay enshrined. he was the guard of the album, and was strictly enjoined never, for one instant, to remove his eyes from the precious volume from the moment he was placed on duty, until relieved. well, there we were, some dozen of us, collected about the table; lady holberton looking triumphant, mr. t---very proud; and there stood the page of the album, dressed in his paduasoy gown, with eyes fastened on the book, according to orders, while he supported its gorgeous case in his arms. some remark was made as to the extraordinary manner in which the precious autograph had been lost, and then found again. my blood actually boiled, as one of the company turned to me and asked in a suspicious tone, if i did not know more of its history than i chose to confess? my indignation was boundless; fortunately i could produce the friend walking with me in piccadilly, and the artisan's family at clapham, as witnesses in my favor. miss rowley was standing near me at the moment. {paduasoy = a strong corded or gros-grain silk fabric, traditionally associated with padua, italy} "still, mr. howard," observed that lady; "i really cannot see why you should resent the insinuation so warmly. now, do you know, i am not at all sorry to have it in my power to declare that i have some knowledge of the fate of that paper during its eclipse." all eyes were instantly fixed on the speaker. the lady smiled and continued: "lady holberton thinks the lumley autograph was stolen--i understand she even thought it was stolen by myself--" she here turned deliberately toward our hostess, who looked uneasy. "if such were your suspicions, lady holberton," continued miss rowley, speaking with great deliberation--"i am happy to say they were quite correct--you only did me justice--i am proud to declare the deed was mine--" we were all speechless at hearing this sudden and bold avowal. "it was i, theodosia rowley, who carried off--the word is of little consequence--who stole, i repeat, that precious paper. so long as the treasure was mine, the consciousness of possessing it was sufficient in itself--but having afterward lost it from my pocket by unpardonable carelessness, i shall at least now glory in the daring deed which made it once my own." conceive the amazement which these remarks--delivered with calm enthusiasm--produced among the listening circle. we all know that high crimes and misdemeanors enough are committed by men, and women too; but somehow or other the delinquents are not often given to talking of them; they would just as lief in general that the act should not be known. the effect of miss rowley's words was different on different individuals. as for myself, i involuntarily felt for the handkerchief in my pocket. the page of the album drew nearer. lady holberton looked aghast, as though she had seen a cannibal. some bit their lips; others opened their eyes. mr. t----, however, who held the album at the moment, and was bending over it when miss rowley began her extraordinary disclosure, raised his eyes, fixed his glasses on the fair speaker, and sent through them such a glance as no words can fully describe. it was a glance of intense admiration. "what exalted views! what sublime sentiments!" he exclaimed in an ecstasy. but mr. t----'s blaze of admiration was not the only flame at work, while he was gazing at the heroine of the moment. in the sudden burst of enthusiasm roused by the fair purloiner, he forgot all else; the precious volume in his hand drooped, touched the flame of a wax-light on the table, and in another instant the great holberton album, that album of european reputation--was burning before our eyes--its invaluable leaves were curling, and blackening, and smoking under the devouring flame! a shriek from lady holberton--an unearthly cry from the page of the album--both echoed by the spectators, came too late. the volume was half consumed. of the lumley autograph not a line remained! such was the ill-fated end of the letter of the poor starving poet. it was written amid gloom and distress; its career closed in a stormy hour. the loss of the album of course broke off the engagement between lady holberton and mr. t----. this however could scarcely have been regretted under the circumstances, for their union, after the catastrophe must have been one long series of miserable reproaches. the sudden change in mr. t----'s feelings toward miss rowley was not a momentary one; the admiration first kindled by that lady's bold declaration, grew to be the strongest sentiment of his heart, and only a few weeks later he was made the happiest of men by receiving as his own the fair hand which accomplished the deed. miss rowley and mr. t---were united in the bands of matrimony and collectorship. lady holberton was still inconsolable when i left london; she was thinking of traveling among the hottentots, or in any other clime where albums are unknown and her loss could be forgotten. the journey to kaffirland was however postponed until the next change of ministry, and i have learned recently that the lady has so far recovered her spirits as to be thinking of an 'omnibus.' the very last packet, indeed, brought a flattering application to myself; lady holberton graciously declaring that the name of jonathan howard is not only valued by herself, as that of a friend, but interesting to collectors generally, as having been once connected with that much lamented document, now lost to the world, the letter of the poor starving poet, known as the lumley autograph. {"omnibus" = in this context, an "omnibus bill" (i.e., one dealing with a variety of subject) in parliament} beckford*** transcribed from the 1893 edition by david price, email ccx074@pglaf.org recollections of the late william beckford of fonthill, wilts and lansdown, bath the manuscript of the following letters, written by my father, has been in my possession fifty years. he intended to publish it at the time of mr. beckford's death, in 1844, but delayed the execution of the work, and sixteen years afterwards was himself called to enter on the higher life of the spiritual world. mr. beckford and my father were kindred spirits, conversant with the same authors, had visited the same countries, and were both gifted with extraordinary memories. mr. beckford said that he had never met with a man possessed of such a memory as my father; and many a time has my father told me that he never met a man who possessed such a memory as mr. beckford. if my father had published the reminiscences himself i think that much misconception in the public mind respecting the character of mr. beckford would have been prevented. for instance, i remember, when a child, being warned that this great man was an infidel. when he showed my father the sarcophagus in which his body was to be placed, he remarked, "there shall i lie, lansdown, until the trump of god shall rouse me on the resurrection morn." charlotte lansdown. 8 lower east hayes, bath; july, 1893. recollections of the late william beckford. bath, august 21, 1838. my dear charlotte,--i have this day seen such an astonishing assemblage of works of art, so numerous and of so surprisingly rare a description that i am literally what lord byron calls "dazzled and drunk with beauty." i feel so bewildered from beholding the rapid succession of some of the very finest productions of the great masters that the attempt to describe them seems an impossible task; however, i will make an effort. the collection of which i speak is that of mr. beckford, at his house in lansdown-crescent. besides all this i have this day been introduced to that extraordinary man, the author of "vathek" and "italy," the builder of fonthill, the contemporary of the mighty and departed dead, the pupil of mozart; in fact, to the formidable and inaccessible vathek himself! i have many times passed the house, and longed to see its contents, and often have i wondered how a building with so plain and unostentatious an exterior could suit the reception of the works it contains, and the residence of so magnificent a personage. i first called by appointment on his ingenious architect, mr. goodridge (to whom i am indebted for this distinguished favour), and he accompanied me to the house, which we reached at half-past twelve o'clock. we were shown upstairs, passing many fine family pictures, and were ushered into the neat library, where mr. beckford was waiting to receive us. i confess i did at first feel somewhat embarrassed, but a lovely spaniel ran playfully towards us, licking our hands in the most affectionate and hospitable manner; "you are welcome" was the silent language. i assure you i judge much, and often truly, of the character of individuals from the deportment of their favourite dogs. i often find them exactly indicative of their master's disposition. when you are attacked by snarling, waspish curs is it at all wonderful if you find them an echo of the proprietor? but this beautiful animal reassured me, and gave me instantly a favourable idea of its master. my astonishment was great at the spaciousness of the room, which had in length a magnificent and palatial effect, nor did i immediately discover the cause of its apparent grandeur. it opens into the gallery built over the arch connecting the two houses, at the end of which an immense mirror reflects the two apartments. the effect is most illusive, nor should i have guessed the truth had i not seen the reflection of my own figure in the glass. the library, which is the whole length of the first house, cannot be much less than fifty feet long. it has on one side five lofty windows, the gallery having three on the same side. you have the light streaming through eight consecutive openings; these openings, with their crimson curtains, doubled by the reflection, produce a most charming perspective. from the ceiling hangs a splendid ormolu chandelier, the floor is covered with a persian carpet (brought i believe from portugal), so sumptuous that one is afraid to walk on it, and a noble mosaic table of florentine marble, bought in at an immense price at fonthill, is in the centre of the room. several rows of the rarest books cover the lower part of the walls, and above them hang many fine portraits, which mr. beckford immediately, without losing any time in compliments, began to show us and describe. first we were shown a portrait by de vos of grotius; next to it one of rembrandt, painted by himself. "you see," said mr. beckford, "that he is trying to assume an air of dignity not natural to him, by throwing back his head, but this attempt at the dignified is neutralized by the expression of the eyes, which have rather too much of sly humour for the character which he wishes to give himself." to praise individual pictures seems useless when everyone you meet has excellencies peculiar to itself; in fact, whatever our ideas of the great masters may be, and we certainly do gain from prints and pictures a tolerable idea of their style and different beauties (and i have myself seen the louvre and many celebrated pictures) there is in mr. beckford's _chef d'oeuvres_ something still more lovely than our imagination, than our expectation. i speak not now of the st. catherine, the claud, the titian, &c., but all the pictures, whether historical, landscape, or low life, have this unique character of excellence. you look at a picture. you are sure it is by gaspar, but you never saw one of poussin's that had such an exquisite tone of colour, so fresh and with such free and brilliant execution. but i digress. i forgot that it was the library and its pictures i was attempting to describe. well, at the other end hangs a portrait of pope gregory, by passerotti; the expression of the face italian, attitude like raphael. over the door a portrait of cosmo de medici by bronzino allori, fresh as if painted yesterday. "the works of that master," i said, "are rare, but a friend of mine, mr. day, had a noble one at his rooms in piccadilly, st. john in the wilderness. the conception of the figure and poetical expression of the face always seemed to me astonishingly fine. pray, sir, do you know that picture?" "perfectly, it partakes of the sublime and is amazingly fine." "your portrait of cosmo has the expression of a resolute, determined man, and i think it conveys well the idea of the monstrous parent, who could with his own hand destroy his only surviving son after discovering he had murdered his brother. what a horrible piece of business! the father of two sons, one of whom murdered the other, and that father is himself the executioner of the survivor." "it was dreadful certainly," said mr. beckford. "however, we have the consolation of knowing that two broods of vipers were destroyed." mr. beckford next showed us a titian, a portrait of the constable montmorency, in armour richly chased with gold; a fine picture, but sadly deficient in intellectual expression. and no wonder, for as mr. beckford observed, "he could neither read nor write, but he was none the worse for that." "there is, then, before us," i rejoined, "the portrait of the man of whom his master, henri quatre, said: 'avec un counetable qui re sait pas ecrire, et un chancelier qui ne sait pas le latin, j'ai reussi dans toutes mes entreprises.' it is the very portrait for which he sat." "the face," i said, "has no great pretensions to intellect, but then titian knew nothing of the refined flattery so fashionable now-a-days that throws a halo of mind and expression over faces more stupid than montmorency's, and whose possessors never performed the chivalrous deeds of the constable." "witness sir thomas lawrence's fine picture of sir wm. curtis, where the court painter has thrown a poetical expression over a personage that never in his life betrayed any predilection for anything but turtle soup and gormandizing." mr. beckford burst out laughing. "well," said he, "here is a picture that will perhaps please you. holbein has certainly not been guilty of the refined flattery you complain of here; it is the portrait of bishop gardiner, painted at the time he was in holland and in disgrace. what think you of it?" "it is admirably painted, and has scarcely anything of his dry and hard manner, the hands are done inimitably, but the eyes are small, and the expression cold-hearted and brutal. it conveys to my mind the exact idea of the cold-blooded wretch, who consigned so many of his innocent countrymen to the flames." i did not express all i thought, but i certainly wondered how the effigy of such a monster should have found an asylum in this palace of taste. smithfield and its horrors rose vividly before me, and i turned, not without a shudder, from this too faithful portrait to copies by phillips of some family pictures in the royal collection, painted by permission expressly for mr. beckford, and looking more like originals than mere copies. but the picture of pictures in this room is a velasquez, an unknown head, the expression beyond anything i have ever seen. such light and shade, such expressive eyes; the very epitome of spanish character. "is it not amazingly like lord byron?" "it certainly is very like him, but much more handsome." this room is devoted entirely to portraits. mr. beckford opened a door and we entered the duchess drawing room; a truly royal room, the colour of the curtains, carpet, and furniture being crimson, scarlet, and purple. over the fireplace is a full length portrait of the duchess of hamilton by phillips, painted in the rich and glowing style of that sweet colourist. it represents a beautiful and truly dignified lady. the sleeves of the dress are close and small, as worn in 1810 (quel bonheur! d'etre jeune, jolie, et duchesse), so truly becoming to a finely formed woman, and so much superior to the present horrid fashion of disfiguring the shape by gigot and bishop's sleeves, which seem to have been invented expressly to conceal what is indeed most truly beautiful, a woman's arm. we were next shown a glorious sir joshua, a beautiful full length portrait of mrs. peter beckford, afterwards lady rivers, and the "nouronchar" of vathek. she is represented approaching an altar partially obscured by clouds of incense that she may sacrifice to hygeia, and turning round looking at the spectator. the background is quite titianesque; it is composed of sky and the columns of the temple, the light breaking on the pillars in that forcible manner you see on the stems of trees in some of titian's backgrounds. the colouring of this picture is in fine preservation, a delicate lilac scarf floats over the dress, the figure is grace and elegance itself, and the drawing perfect; the general effect is brilliancy, richness, and astonishing softness. "sir joshua took the greatest pleasure and delight in painting that picture, as it was left entirely to his own refined taste. the lady was in ill-health at the time it was done, and sir joshua most charmingly conceived the idea of a sacrifice to the goddess of health. vain hope! her disorder was fatal." there is a portrait of mr. beckford's mother painted by west, with a view of fonthill in the background. never was there a greater contrast in this and the last picture; west certainly knew nothing of portrait painting. the _tout ensemble_ of the portrait in question is as dry and hard as if painted by a chinese novice. there is also a portrait of the countess, of effingham, mr. beckford's aunt. on one side is the original portrait by reynolds of the author of vathek engraved as the frontispiece of the "excursions to the monasteries." the character of the original picture is much superior in expression to the print, less stout, eyes very intellectual; in fact, you are convinced it must be the portrait of a poet or of a poetical character. the face is very handsome, so is the print, but that has nothing in it but what you meet with in a good looking young man of fashion. this, on the contrary, has an expression of sensibility, deeply tinged with melancholy, which gives it great interest. on the other side of lady rivers's portrait is the duke of hamilton when a boy. a sweet child, with the hair cut straight along the forehead, as worn by children some fifty years ago, and hanging luxuriantly down his neck on the same side of the room, behind a bronze of the laocoon, is a wonderful sketch by paolo veronese, the drawing and composition in the grand style, touched with great sweetness and juiciness. two small upright bassans, painted conjointly by both, bearing their names; the point of sight is immensely high. we were then led down the north staircase. fronting us was a portrait of mr. beckford's father, the alderman and celebrated lord mayor of london. mr. goodridge asked him if he knew a book, just published, denying the truth of his father's famous speech to george iii. he seemed astonished, and stood still on the staircase. "not true! what in the world will they find out next? garrick was present when my father uttered it, heard the whole speech, repeated it word for word to me, and what is more, acted it in my father's manner." "that is the portrait of my great grandfather, colonel peter beckford. it was painted by a french artist, who went to jamaica for the purpose, at the time he was governor of the island." it is a full length portrait, large as life, the colonel dressed in a scarlet coat embroidered richly with gold. there is also a lovely portrait by barker of the present marquis of douglas, mr. beckford's grandson; it was painted when lord douglas was twelve or thirteen years old. there is also a charming picture by reynolds, two beautiful little girls, full length and large as life, they are the present duchess of hamilton and her sister, mrs general ord. we now entered the lovely dining room, which in point of brilliancy and cheerfulness has more the character of a drawing than of a dining room. opposite the window is an upright grand pianoforte. it is the largest ever made, with the exception of its companion made at the same time, and its richness and power of sound are very great. over the fire is what is seldom seen in a dining room, a large looking glass. the paintings in this room have been valued at upwards of 20,000 pounds. on the right as you enter are five pictures that once adorned the aldsbrandini palace, namely, the st. catherine by raphael, a claude, a garofalo, two by ferrara, and several smaller ones. but how shall i attempt to describe to you the st. catherine? this lovely picture combines all the refined elegance of the venus de medici, in form, contour, and flowing lines, with an astonishing delicacy of colour, and masterly yet softened execution. the eyes are turned upwards with an expression of heavenly resignation, the neck, flesh and life itself, the hands, arms, and shoulders so sweetly rounded, while the figure melts into the background with the softness of corregio. and fills the air around with beauty, we inhale the ambrosial aspect, which beheld instils part of its immortality; the veil of heaven is half withdrawn, within the pale we stand, and in that form and face behold what mind can make, when nature's self would fail. i can only convey to you a very slight idea of the impression produced by the contemplation of this admirable painting. such grace and sweetness, such softness and roundness in the limbs. she seems the most beautiful creature that ever trod this earthly planet; in short it is no earthly beauty that we gaze upon, but the very beau ideal of italian loveliness. eve of the land which still is paradise. italian beauty! didst thou not inspire raphael? "how different," said mr. beckford, "is that lovely creature from mr. etty's beauties. they are for the most part of a meretricious character, would do well enough for a mistress; but there," pointing to the st. catherine, "there are personified the modesty and purity a man would wish to have in a wife, and yet frenchmen find fault with it. c'est un assez joli tableau, say they, mais la tete manque, de l'expression, si elle avait plus d'esprit, plus de vivacite! mais raphael, il n'avait jamais passe les alpes." we burst out laughing, and i added, "le pauvre raphael quel dommage, de ne savoir rien du grand. monarque! ni de la grande nation." "yet," i continued, "there is a painter, stotherd, who has come nearer to the great italian, in the grace and elegance of his women and children, than perhaps any other, and merits well the proud appellation of the english raphael. what a shame that he never met with encouragement." "but i understood that he was tolerably successful. he painted many things for me at fonthill. you are surely mistaken." "by no means," i replied. "latterly he seldom sold a picture, and supported himself on the paltry income of 200 pounds a year, raised by making little designs for booksellers. yet what a noble painting is chaucer's pilgrimage to canterbury." "it is indeed," said mr. beckford. "but, sir, there is another painter, howard, whose conceptions are most poetical. do you remember his painting at somerset house in 1824, representing the solar system, from milton's noble lines- hither as to their fountain, other stars repairing, in their golden urns draw light?" "i remember it perfectly; 'twas a most beautiful picture." "milton's original idea, that of the planets drawing light from their eternal source, as water from a fountain, is certainly a glorious, a golden one; but who beside howard could have so tangibly, so poetically developed the poet's idea in colour. the personifying the planets according to their names, as venus, mercury, and so forth, was charming, and the splendour of the nearer figures, overwhelmed as it were with excess of light, and the gloom and darkness of the distant, were admirably managed. what a wonderful picture!" "he never painted a finer." mr. beckford then pointed out his claude. it is a cool picture, the colouring grey and greenish, the time of day, early morning just before sunrise: but words fail to express its beauties. there is a something in it, a je ne sais quoi. such clearness in the colouring; the trees are all green, but so tenderly green; the sky and distance of such an exquisite tone that you are at once in imagination transported to those "southern climes and cloudless skies" that inspired claude lorraine. i can give no possible idea in writing of the tone of colour in this picture, except by comparing it to the semi-transparency of mosaic, such are the clearness of the tints and pearliness of the sky and distance. as to chiaro-oscure, it is breadth and simplicity itself. nothing but the purest ultramarine could ever produce such a green as that which colours the trees. on the same side of the room are two small vander meulens, landscapes. they are very highly finished, and the colouring is delicious; the trees are grouped with all the grandeur of claude or poussin. above are two of the finest vernets; they are both sea pieces. the colouring has a depth and richness i never before saw in anything attributed to him. in the louvre are his most famous pictures, and what i now say is the result of calm and mature reflection. i had the louvre pictures constantly before my eyes for three months. they are very large, and certainly have great merit; but had i my choice i would prefer mr. beckford's to any of the set. west's original sketch for his great picture of king lear, painted for boydell's shakspeare gallery--"blow, blow, thou winter wind." a most wonderful performance. the expression of face of the poor mad king is astonishing; the colouring rich and mellow--nothing of west's usually hard outline. the whole picture is full of energy and fire, and seems to have been struck off with the greatest ease and rapidity. "do observe the face of edgar," said mr. beckford. "under his assumed madness you trace a sentiment of respect and anxiety for the monarch; he could not forget that it was his sovereign." "i have seen," i said, "most of west's great pictures, but there is more genius in that sketch than in anything i ever saw of his. i think he took too much pains with his sketches. the consequence was that the original spirit evaporated long before the completion of the great tame painting, where his men and women too often look like wooden lay figures covered with drapery." "sir, did you ever see his sketch of death on the pale horse? the large picture is certainly very fine, but i have heard the best judges say that the original sketch is one of the finest things in existence. the president himself considered it his best and refused 100 pounds, offered for it by the prince regent; yet afterwards, being distressed for money, he parted with it, i believe, to mr. thompson, the artist, for 50 pounds." "is it possible? i wish i had known that he wanted to dispose of it. i should have liked it beyond anything. it was most wonderful." above the picture of king lear hangs a noble picture by titian, the composition of which reminded me much of raphael. the virgin's face is extremely beautiful, but it is the sort of beauty we sometimes meet with, that we sometimes may have seen. the st. catherine is of a more elevated style of beauty, more intellectual; in short, it possesses a combination of charms that has never yet fallen to the lot of any mortal. the infant is extremely fine. on this side is also a portrait of himself exquisitely coloured and finished. near these paintings is a canaletti, not a real view, but an assemblage of various fine buildings; in fact, a sort of union of rome and venice. in the centre is the mole of hadrian, round which he has amused himself by putting an elegant colonnade; on the right hand is a bridge. the colouring is clear, the shadows rich, and the water softly painted and extremely transparent. this is the most beautiful canaletti i ever saw. i observed that the generality of his pictures had a hardness, dryness, and blackness that we saw nothing of here. "you are quite right," he said, "and the reason is that very few of those generally attributed to him are really genuine, but of mine there can be no doubt, as this painting and several others that i have were got directly from the artist himself by means of the english consul at venice; but not a quarter of the pictures that one sees and that are called his were ever painted by canaletti." there were several very fine pictures by this master destroyed in the lifetime of alderman beckford at the fire which consumed the old mansion at fonthill nearly a hundred years ago. this canaletti partakes of the same character of high excellence that mr. beckford's other pictures possess; in fact, as with so many of his pictures, you see the hand of the master, whose common works you know, but in this house you find paintings still finer, which give you more elevated and correct ideas of the style and manner of the genuine productions of the great masters. there really seems some charm, some magic in the walls, so great is the similarity of colouring in these _chefs d'oeuvres_, the clear, the subdued, the pearly tints, a variety of delicious colour, and none of the dirty hues you see in mediocre old paintings. over the sofa is a constellation of beauties which we merely glanced at as we passed, but which i hope another day to examine. they are some of the rarest specimens by g. poussin, wouvermans, berghem, van huysum, polemberg, and others. on a small table was placed an elegantly cut caraffe of carnations of every variety of colour that you can possibly imagine. there is nothing in which mr. beckford is more choice than in his bouquets. at every season the rarest living flowers adorn the house. next to the dining room is a small salon, which we now entered. here is a noble drawing by turner of the abbey, according to a plan proposed, but never carried out. the tower is conical, and would have been even higher than the one that was completed. "i have seen," i said, "a fine drawing of fonthill by turner, originally in your possession, but now belonging to mr. allnutt, of clapham. it is prodigiously fine. the scenery there must be magnificent. the hills and beautiful lake in the drawing give one an idea of cumberland." "it is a very fine drawing, but rather too poetical, too ideal, even for fonthill. the scenery there is certainly beautiful, but turner took such liberties with it that he entirely destroyed the portraiture, the locality of the spot. that was the reason i parted with it. there were originally six drawings of the abbey; three were disposed of at the sale, and i still have the remaining ones." "are they going to rebuild the tower, sir? for when i was last in london, papworth, the architect, was gone down to fonthill to do something there." "impossible," he said, "unless it were to be made a national affair, which indeed is not very likely. it would cost at least 100,000 pounds to restore it. but what can papworth have done there? it must i should think be something to the pavilion. i assure you i had no idea of parting with fonthill till farquhar made me the offer. i wished to purge it, to get rid of a great many things i did not want, but as to the building itself i had no more notion of selling it than you have (turning to his architect) of parting with anything, with--with the clothes you have on." on the chimney piece, protected by a glass, is a precious japan vase. we examined it for some time under its envelope. it seemed to me (for i know nothing of japan work) a bronze vessel, richly and most elaborately chased, and i could not help joining in the praises due to its exquisite finish. mr. beckford took off the glass, and desired me to take it to the window. "i am really afraid to touch it," said i, but he forced it into my hands. i prepared them to receive a massive and (as it seemed to me) very weighty vessel, when lo it proved as light as a feather. we were afterwards shown another japan vase, the exterior of which exactly resembled the pompeian designs, elegant scrolls, delicate tracery of blue, red, green, &c. these colours strongly opposed as in the remains of paintings at pompeii. here are some other precious little pictures, a small gerard dow, a watteau, a moucheron, and a polemberg. he merely noticed them, and then led us into the next room. a noble library. it is an elegant and charming apartment, very chastely ornamented. here are no pictures; it is devoted entirely to books and ponderous folios of the most rare and precious engravings. the sides of the library are adorned by scagliola pilasters and arched recesses, which contain the books. the interstices between the arches and the ceiling are painted in imitation of marble, so extremely like that though they touch the scagliola it is next to impossible to distinguish any difference. the ceiling is belted across and enriched with bands of grecian tracery in relief, delicately painted and slightly touched with gold. on the walls are some gilded ornaments, enough to give to the whole richness of effect without heaviness. between the windows is what i suppose may be termed a table, composed of an enormous slab of the rarest marble, supported by elegantly cast bronze legs. over this a small cabinet (manufactured in bath from drawings by mr. goodridge) full of extremely small books; it is carved in oak in the most elaborate manner. the fireplace, of devonshire marble, is perfect in design and in its adaptation to the rest of the room; in fact, everything in this lovely chamber is in unison, everything soft, quiet, and subdued. new wonders awaited me. next to the library is a sort of vestibule leading to a staircase, which from its mysterious and crimson light, rich draperies, and latticed doors seemed to be the sanctum sanctorum of a heathen temple. to the left a long passage, whose termination not being seen allowed the imagination full play, led for aught i know to the fortress of akerman, to the montagne du caf or to the halls of argenti. ou sout peintes toutes les createures raissonables, et les animaux qui ont habite la terre. to the right two latticed doors, reminding you of grand cairo or persepolis, ingeniously conceal the commonplace entrance from the crescent. the singular and harmonious light of this mysterious vestibule is produced by crimson silk strained over the fanlight of the outer door. "this place," i observed, "puts one in mind of the hall of eblis." "you are quite right," he observed, "this is unquestionably the hall of eblis." "those latticed doors," i continued, "seem to lead to the small apartment where the three princes, alasi, barkiarokh, and kalilah, related to vathek and nouronchar their adventures." he seemed amused at my observations, and said, "then you have read 'vathek.' how do you like it?" "vastly. i read it in english many years ago, but never in french." "then read it in french," said mr. beckford. "the french edition is much finer than the english." we mounted the staircase. above you in open niches are etruscan vases. the ceiling is arched and has belts at intervals. "i wished to exclude the draughts," said mr. beckford, "and to do away with the cold and uncomfortable appearance you generally have in staircases." the effect of the whole is so novel that you lose all idea of stairs, and seem merely going from one room to another. as you stand on the landing the vaulted and belted ceiling behind you has the appearance of a row of arches in perspective. the same solemn and mysterious gloom pervades the staircase. the architect has frequently entreated to be allowed to introduce a little more light, but in vain. the author of "vathek" will not consent to the least alteration of the present mystical effect, and he is quite right. this warm and indefinite light produces not only the effect of air, but also of space, and makes the passage before noticed, seen through the latticed doors, apparently of lines of real dimensions. mr. beckford drew aside a curtain. we entered the smaller of two lovely drawing rooms lately fitted up. before us, over the mantelpiece, was suspended a magnificent full length portrait by gaspar de crayer of philip ii. of spain. just then my head was too full of the hall of eblis, of "vathek" and its associations, for mere ordinary admiration of even one of the finest portraits painted, and on mr. beckford pointing out the whitefaced monarch i almost involuntarily ejaculated "pale slave of eblis." he burst out laughing. "eh! eh! what? his face is pale indeed, but he was very proud of his complexion." this is a very fine group. philip is represented dressed in a suit of black armour, elaborately chased in gold, standing on a throne covered with a crimson carpet. near him is his dwarf, dressed in black, holding the helmet, adorned with a magnificent plume of feathers, and turning towards his master (the fountain of honour) a most expressive and intelligent face. "that dwarf," said mr. beckford, "was a man of great ability and exercised over his master a vast influence." lower down you discover the head of a mexican page, holding a horse, whose head, as well as that of the page, is all that is visible, their bodies being concealed by the steps of the throne. this is a noble picture; but in my eyes the extreme plainness of the steps of the throne and the unornamented war boots of the king have a bare and naked appearance. they contrast rather too violently with the whole of the upper part of the picture. over the steps are painted in roman letters rx. ps. 4s. (rex philippus quartos). many who have hardly heard the painter's name will of course not admire it, being done neither by titian nor vandyke; but mr. beckford's taste is peculiar. he prefers a genuine picture by an inferior painter to those attributed to the more celebrated masters, but where originality is ambiguous, or at least if not ambiguous where picture cleaner, or scavengers, as he calls them, have been at work. in this room, suspended from the ceiling by a silken cord, is the silver gilt lamp that hung in the oratory at fonthill. its shape and proportion are very elegant, and no wonder; it was designed by the author of "italy" himself. how great was my astonishment some time after, on visiting fonthill, at perceiving, suspended from the _cul de lamp_, the very crimson cord that once supported this precious vessel! the lamp had been hastily cut down, and the height of the remains of the cord from the floor was probably the reason of its preservation. mr. beckford next pointed out a charming sketch by rubens, clear and pearly beyond conception. it is st. george and the dragon, the dragon hero and his horse in the air, and the dragon must certainly have been an african lion. mr. beckford called the beast, or reptile, a mumpsimus (_sic_). "do look at the pontimeitos in the beautiful sketch," said he, "there is a bit from his pencil certainly his own. don't imagine that those great pictures that bear his name are all his pictures. he was too much of a gentleman for such drudgery, and the greatest part of such pictures (the luxembourg for instance) are the works of his pupils from his original designs certainly; they were afterwards retouched by him, and people are silly enough to believe they are all his work. but mark well the difference in execution between those great gallery pictures and such a gem as this." mr. beckford then showed me a "ripon" by polemberg, a lovely classic landscape, with smooth sky, pearly distance, and picturesque plains; the holy family in the foreground. "do take notice of the st. joseph in this charming picture," he said. "the painters too often pourtray him as little better than a vagabond jew or an old beggar. polemberg had too much good taste for such caricaturing, and you see he has made him here look like a decayed gentleman." mr. beckford drew aside another curtain, and we entered the front drawing room, of larger dimensions, but fitted up in a similar style. the first thing that caught my eye was the magnificent effect produced by a scarlet drapery, whose ample folds covered the whole side of the room opposite the three windows from the ceiling to the floor. mr. beckford's observation on his first view of mad. d' aranda's boudoir instantly recurred to my mind. these are his very words: "i wonder architects and fitters-up of apartments do not avail themselves more frequently of the powers of drapery. nothing produces so grand and at the same time so comfortable an effect. the moment i have an opportunity i will set about constructing a tabernacle larger than the one i arranged at ramalhad, and indulge myself in every variety of plait and fold that can be possibly invented." "i never was so convinced," i said, "of the truth of your observations as at the present moment. what a charming and comfortable effect does that splendid drapery produce!" "i am very fond of drapery," he replied, "but that is nothing to what i had at fonthill in the great octagon. there were purple curtains fifty feet long." here was a cabinet of oak, made in bath, in form most classical and appropriate. on one side stood two massive and richly chased silver gilt candlesticks that formerly were used in the moorish palace of the alhambra. "then you have visited granada?" i inquired. "more than once." "what do you think of the alhambra?" "it is vastly curious certainly, but many things there are in wretched taste, and to say truth i don't much admire moorish taste." mr. beckford next pointed out a head in marble brought from mexico by cortez, which was for centuries in the possession of the duke of alba's family, and was given to the present proprietor by the duchess. "her fate was very tragical," he observed. in a small cupboard with glass in front is a little ivory reliquior, four or five hundred years old. it was given to mr. beckford by the late mr. hope. it is in the shape of a small chapel; on opening the doors, the fastenings of which were two small dogs or monkeys, you found in a recess the virgin and child, surrounded by various effigies, all carved in the most astonishingly minute manner. the mention of mr. hope's name produced an observation about "anastasius," of which mr. beckford affirmed he was confident mr. hope had written very little; he was, he positively asserted, assisted by spence. my companion here observed, "had mr. beckford heard of the recent discoveries made of the ruins of carthage?" "of carthage?" he said, "it must be new carthage. it cannot be the old town, that is impossible. if it were, i would start to-morrow to see it. i should think myself on the road to babylon half-way." "babylon must have been a glorious place," observed my companion, "if we can place any reliance on mr. martin's long line of distances about that famous city." "oh, martin. martin is very clever, but a friend of mine, danby, in my opinion far surpasses him." i cannot agree with mr. beckford in this. martin was undoubtedly the inventor of the singular style of painting in question, and i do not believe that danby ever produced anything equal to some of the illustrations of "paradise lost," in particular "the fall of the apostate angels," which is as fine a conception as any painter, ancient or modern, ever produced. mr. beckford then, taking off a glass cover, showed us what is, i should imagine, one of the greatest curiosities in existence, a vase about ten inches high, composed of one entire block of chalcedonian onyx. it is of greek workmanship, most probably about the time of alexander the great. the stone is full of veins, as usual with onyxes. "do observe," said he, "these satyrs' heads. imagine the number of diamonds it must have taken to make any impression on such a hard substance. rubens made a drawing of it, for it was pawned in his time for a large sum. i possess an engraving from his drawing," and opening a portfolio he immediately presented it to my wondering eyes. over the fireplace is a magnificent picture by roberts, representing the tombs of ferdinand and isabella in the alhambra. what i had always imagined a small chapel is, i find, really of gigantic proportions, and looks like a cathedral in solemn grandeur and softness; the two sarcophagi are of white marble. the light streams through enormous painted windows, and at the extremity of the edifice is an altar surrounded by figures in different attitudes. "i should never have dreamt, from what washington irving says of the chapel of ferdinand and isabella, that it was such a plan as this." "oh, washington irving," he replied, "is very poor in his descriptions; he does not do justice to spain." i wished he had spoken with a little more enthusiasm of a favourite author, but i imagine that the author of the "sketch book" is scarcely aristocratic enough for mr. beckford. on the right hand of the fireplace is a very large landscape by lee, which mr. beckford eulogised warmly. "that silvery stream," he observed, "winding amongst those gentle undulating hills must be intended to represent berkshire," or he pronounced it barkshire. with all due deference to the taste of the author of "vathek," and his admiration of this picture, which he compared to a wouvermann, it is in my eyes a very uninteresting scene, though certainly strictly natural. "i don't in general like lee's pictures," he said, "but that is an exception." in the corresponding recess is a fine sea piece by chambers. on the opposite side of the room are rows of the most valuable books, which almost reach the ceiling. i hinted that i was really afraid we were trespassing on his leisure, as our visit was lengthened out most prodigiously. "not at all," he replied, "i am delighted to see you. it is a pleasure to show these things to those who really appreciate them, for i assure you that i find very few who do." we now returned through the apartments. he accompanied us as far as the dining room door, when he inquired if i had seen the tower? on my answering in the negative he said, "then you must come up again." he shook hands with my friend, and bowing politely to me was retiring, when stepping back he held out his hand in the kindest manner, repeating the words "come up again." we found we had spent three hours in his company. we paused an instant before leaving the dining room to admire a lovely bit of perspective. it is a line of open doors, exactly opposite each other (never seen but in large houses), piercing and uniting the three lower rooms. the effect is vastly increased by a mirror placed in the lobby leading to the second staircase, which mirror terminated the view. "l'une perspective bien menagee charmait la vue; ici, la magic de l'optique la trompoit agreablement. en un mot, le plus curieux des hommes n'avait rien omis dans ce palais de ce qui pouvait contenter la curiosite de ceux qui le visitait." you may imagine i did not forget mr. beckford's invitation, nor cease pestering my friend till he at length fixed a day for accompanying me again to lansdown. my curiosity to see the tower was excited. i longed to behold that extraordinary structure, but still more to see again the wonderful individual to whom it belonged. we proceeded in the first place to the house, and i had an opportunity of examining the pictures and curiosities in the ante-room. here are two cabinets, containing curious china, and small golden vessels. most of the china was, i believe, painted at sevres expressly for mr. beckford, as the ornaments on several pieces indicate, being formed of his arms, so arranged as to produce a rich and beautiful effect without the slightest formality. i counted in one cabinet ten vessels of gold, in the other five: these were small teapots, caddies, cups, saucers, plates. i am told that they are used occasionally at tea-time. over the door is a magnificent drawing of the abbey, by turner, taken i should imagine at a distance of two miles. the appearance of the building with its lofty tower is grand and imposing. the foreground seems to have been an old quarry. the great lake glitters in the middle distance, from the opposite banks of which the ground gradually rises, and the eminence is crowned by the stately structure. here are also a fine interior by van ostade from fonthill, representing a noble picture gallery; a drawing of the interior of st. paul's; one by rubens, representing christ and the two disciples at emmaus; a fine swaneveldt; a glorious weeninx, game and fruit; with a lovely bit by lance, and many smaller pictures. i was informed that mr. beckford intended meeting us at the tower, and that a servant was in readiness to conduct us thither by the walk through the grounds. we therefore issued by a private door, and presently entered the spacious kitchen garden, containing, i believe, seven or eight acres. a broad gravel walk, bordered by lovely flowers and fruit trees, leads to a magnificent terrace, which bounds the northern side of this beautiful enclosure, the view from which is enchanting. this noble terrace is screened from the north by a luxuriant shrubbery, from which arises an archway of massive proportions, erected chiefly to shut out the view of an unpicturesque object. the _tout ensemble_ reminds one of florence. you pass this gigantic portal, and ascend the hill by a winding pathway through the fields, the grass being always kept clipped and short. at the distance of half a mile from the house we crossed a lane, and our guide unlocking a gate entered the grounds at the brow of the hill. we again ascended, till we reached a broader way between two flourishing plantations, branching off to the left, and leading by a gently winding walk to a rustic sort of bungalow, which was discovered about a quarter of a mile off. "you must walk along here," said my friend, "and behold the prospect before we mount higher, for you will find the view repay you." it did indeed repay us: the grassy pathway extends along the side of the southern brow of lansdown, and the view from this spot is unrivalled. the whole valley of the doon stretches beneath you. looking towards the east you discover in extreme distance the marlborough downs; then somewhat nearer kingsdown, bathford, the hills above warleigh, with hampton cliffs and the neighbouring woods, where gainsborough, wilson, and barker studied nature so well, and where is shown the flat rock called gainsborough's table, on which the first of this picturesque triumvirate so often ate his rustic meal. to the south bladud's splendid city, with its towers and stately buildings, backed by the long line of wiltshire hills, and alfred's tower is faintly traced in the clear, grey haze. the little conical hill of englishcombe, where the unfortunate duke of monmouth drew up his army during his rash and fatal enterprise, awoke a thousand recollections, whilst the lovely river flashed occasionally in the noontide sun. to the west are seen newton park, the mendip hills, dundry tower, and the welsh hills, whilst the hazy atmosphere marked the position of another great city, bristol. at the extreme western point, too, are seen the waters of the bristol channel, glittering under the glowing rays of the setting sun, and shining like a vast plateau of burnished gold. after feasting our eyes on this lovely panorama and tracing out well known places, at one moment lost in obscurity from the shadow of a passing cloud and the next moment appearing in the full blaze of sunshine, we retraced our steps towards the path to the tower. we again ascended the hill, and soon reached the sort of tableland on the top, which seems to me to have been once an immense quarry, and no doubt furnished stone in vast quantities for the building of the splendid city at the foot of the eminence. the remains of these quarries are most picturesque. at a little distance they seem to present the wrecks of stately buildings, with rows of broken arches, and vividly recall the idea of roman ruins. i afterwards mentioned my impressions on seeing them to mr. beckford, who replied, "they do indeed put one in mind of the campagna of rome, and are vastly like the ruins of the baths of caracalla." we were now on the brow of the hill, and soon felt the influence of the genial breezes from the bristol channel. we quitted the open down, and passing under a low doorway entered a lovely shrubbery. the walk (composed of small fossils) winds between graceful trees, and is skirted by odoriferous flowers, which we are astonished to find growing in such luxuriance at an elevation of nearly a thousand feet above the vale below. in many places the trees meet, and form a green arcade over your head, whilst patches of mignonette, giant plants of heliotrope, and clusters of geranium perfume the air. we next enter a beautiful kitchen garden, and are presented with a broad and noble straight walk fully ten feet in width and nearly four hundred feet long, between beds of flowers, and on either side beyond fruit trees and vegetables. the garden terminates with a picturesque building, pierced by a lofty archway, through which the walk passes. this garden is about eighty feet wide and about twelve feet below the level of the down, being formed in an old quarry, besides which a lofty wall on either side shelters it. one cannot describe one's sensations of comfort at finding so delicious a spot in so unexpected a place. i said to the gardener, "i understood mr. beckford had planted everything on the down, but you surely found those apple trees here. they are fifty years old." "we found nothing here but an old quarry and a few nettles. those apple trees were great trees when we moved them, and moving them stopped their bearing. they blossom in the spring and look pretty, and that is all master cares about." we left this charming enclosure, passing under the archway before mentioned. and here i must pause a moment and admire the happy idea of placing this pretty building at the end of this cultivated spot. it closes the kitchen garden, and as its front is similar on either side, it harmonizes with the regular garden we have left, as well as with the wilder spot which we next approach. this building forms a complete termination to one of that succession of lovely scenes with which we are presented on our walk to the tower. each scene is totally distinct in character from the others, and yet with matchless taste they are united by some harmonious link, as in the present case. having then passed through the archway of this building, we observed before us a grotto, into which we entered. on the right is a pond of gold and silver fish, which are fed every morning by the hands of the gifted possessor of this charming place. on the opposite side thirty or forty birds assemble at the same time to hail the appearance of st. anthony's devotee, and chirrup a song of gratitude for their morning meal. the grotto is formed under a road, and is so ingeniously contrived that hundreds have walked over it without ever dreaming of the subterranean passage beneath. the grotto-like arch winds underground for perhaps sixty or seventy feet. when coming to its termination we are presented with a flight of rustic steps, which leads us again directly on to the down. looking back you cannot but admire the natural appearance of this work of art. the ground over the grotto is covered with tangled shrubs and brambles. there is nothing formed, nothing apparently artificial, and a young ash springs as if accidentally from between the stones. we pursued our way to the tower by a path of a quarter of a mile on the down, along a walk parallel to the wall of the public road, gently curved to take off the appearance of formality, yet so slightly that you can go on in a straight line. on our right hand venerable bushes of lavender, great plants of rosemary, and large rose trees perfume the air, all growing as if indigenous to the smooth turf. in one place clusters of rare and deeply crimsoned snapdragons, in another patches of aromatic thyme and wild strawberries keep up the charm of the place. as we draw nearer to the tower the ground is laid out in a wilder and more picturesque manner, the walks are more serpentine. we turned a corner, and mr. beckford stood before us, attended by an aged servant, whose hairs have whitened in his employment, and whose skill has laid out these grounds in this beautiful manner. mr. beckford welcomed me in the kindest way, and immediately began pointing out the various curious plants and shrubs. how on this happy spot specimens of the productions of every country in the world unite! shrubs and trees, whose natural climates are as opposite as the antipodes, here flourish in the most astonishing manner. we were shown a rose tree brought from pekin and a fir tree brought from the highest part of the himalaya mountains; many have been brought to this country, but mr. beckford's is the only one that has survived. here are pine trees of every species and variety--a tree that once vegetated at larissa, in greece, italian pines, siberian pines, scotch firs, a lovely specimen of irish yew, and other trees which it is impossible to describe. my astonishment was great at witnessing the size of the trees, and i could scarcely believe my ears when told that the whole of this wood had been raised on the bare down within the last thirteen years. the ground is broken and diversified in the most agreeable manner: here a flight of easy and water worn steps leads to an eminence, whence you have a view of the building and an old ruin overgrown with shrubs, which looks as if it had seen five hundred summers, but in reality no older than the rest of this creation. on ascending the easy though ruined steps of this building, passing under an archway, the view of the tower burst upon us, and a long, straight walk led us directly to the entrance. from this point the view is most imposing. on your right is a continuation of the shrubberies i spoke of, at the end of which is a lovely pine, most beautiful in form and colour, which by hiding some of the lower buildings thus makes a picture of the whole. the effect of the building is grand and stately beyond description. the long line of flat distance and the flatness of the down here come in contact with the perpendicular lines of the tower and lower buildings, producing that strikingly peculiar combination which never fails to produce a grand effect. this is the real secret of claude's seaports. his stately buildings, moles, and tall towers form a right angle with the straight horizon; thus the whole is magnificent. nothing of the sort could be produced in the interior of a country but in a situation like the present. who but a man of extraordinary genius would have thought of rearing in the desert such a structure as this, or creating such an oasis? the colouring of the building reminded me of malta or sicily, a rich mellow hue prevails; the ornaments of the tower are so clean, so distinct, such terseness. the windows, small and few compared with modern buildings, give it the appearance of those early florentine edifices reared when security and defence were as much an object as beauty. from every part of the ground the pile looks grand, the lines producing the most beautiful effect. the windows have iron gratings, which give it an oriental character. we entered, and immediately ascended the tower. a circular staircase was round the wall. the proportion of the interior is beautiful; you see from the bottom to the top. from the apparent size of the three or four loopholes seen from the outside i imagined it would be dark and gloomy from within, but i was agreeably surprised to find the whole extremely light. the balustrade is egyptian in form, and banisters bronze. on reaching the top you find a square apartment containing twelve windows, each a piece of plate glass, the floor covered with red cloth and crimson window curtains. the effect of distance seen through these apertures unobstructed by framework, contrasted with the bronze balustrade without and crimson curtains within, is truly enchanting. we were not happy in the weather. the morning was sunny and promising, but at noon clouds obscured the heavens; therefore we wanted that glow and splendour sunshine never fails to give the landscape. the height is so great that everything looks quite diminutive. the road running in a straight line across the down reminds one of a roman work, and the whole expanse of country surrounding recalls the campagna. two more flights of stairs, most ingeniously contrived and to all appearance hanging on nothing, lead to two other apartments, the top one lighted by glass all round, concealed on the outside by the open ornament that runs round the very top of the cupola. on descending the staircase, the door opening showed us at the end of a small vaulted corridor a beautiful statue by rossi of st. anthony and the infant jesus. at the back, fixed in the wall, is a large slab of red porphyry, circular at the top and surrounded by an elegant inlay of sienna verd, antique border surrounding the whole figure of the saint, and has a most rich effect; it is difficult to believe that the sienna is not gold. the light descending from above gives that fine effect which sets off statues so much. on the left hand of the figure is a picture by pietro perugino, which for centuries was in the cathedral of sienna, having been painted for that building and never removed till mr. beckford (i suppose by making an offer too tempting to be resisted) succeeded in obtaining it. it is the virgin and two pretty boys, admirably drawn, very like raphael, and in as fine preservation as the st. catherine. the execution is masterly, and though not so free as the raphael still it is forcible. the figure of the left hand boy is very graceful, face beautiful and sweetly dimpled. opposite are a francesco mola and a steinwych. the mola is exceedingly fine, the sky and landscape much like mr. beckford's gaspar poussin in colour and execution; the steinwych, interior of a cathedral, one of the most wonderful finished pictures i ever beheld. this picture was painted for an ancestor of mr. beckford's. here there is a little cabinet full of rare and curious manuscripts. we were shown a small bible in ms., including the apocrypha, written 300 years before printing was introduced, and a very curious missal. we then entered a gorgeous room containing pictures and curiosities of immense value. its proportions seem exactly the same as the one on the floor below, and decorations with its furniture pretty similar. the windows in both are in one large plate, and the shutters of plain oak. the colour of curtains and carpet crimson. in these rooms are a portrait of the doge out of the grimaldi palace, purchased by mr. beckford from lord cawdor, who got it out of the palace by an intrigue; this is a splendid portrait; he has on the dalmatica and the phrygian cap worn by the doges on occasions of state, and two lovely polembergs, infinitely finer and more like claude than anything i ever saw; in fact, they were ascribed to claude by the german waagen, architecture grand, foliage light and elegant; the figures are by le soeur. two fine portraits by de vos, wonderfully painted, execution and colouring reminded me of vandyke, particularly the latter, and not unlike the gavertius in the national gallery. then there is a magnificent houdekoeta, the landscape part painted by both most inimitably. a beautiful cabinet designed by bernini, another with sculptured paintings, in the centre the story of adam and eve. two more candlesticks from the alhambra, in shape and execution similar to those at the house; two gold candlesticks after designs by holbein; some curious specimens of china; an asiatic purple glass vase, brought by st. louis from the holy land, which contained at st. denis some holy fragments; a piece of china, the centre of which is ornamented in a style totally different from the generality of china, in eight or ten compartments, and painted in such a manner that the festoon of leaves fall over and hide the fruit most picturesquely; two ivory cups, one in alto, the other in basso relievo; the latter the finer and most charmingly carved; a small group in bronze by john bologna, "dejanira and the centaur," admirably done. here are tables of the rarest marbles, one composed of a block from the himalaya mountains. in one of the windows is a piece of african marble brought to this country for george iv; also a small bath of egyptian porphyry. in the lower room was a vase containing the most lovely flowers, that perfumed the apartment. in this room, from the judicious introduction of scarlet and crimson, you have the effect of sunshine. the ceilings are belted; the interstices painted crimson. it is impossible to give any idea of the splendour of these two rooms, the finishing touch being cabinet looking glasses, introduced most judiciously. we now took leave of mr. beckford. his horses were waiting in the courtyard, with two servants standing respectfully and uncovered at the door, whilst two more held the horses. the stately and magnificent tower, the terrace on which we lingered a few moments, whilst this extraordinary man mounted his horse, all, all conspired to cast a poetical feeling over the parting moment which i shall never forget. i was reminded most forcibly of similar scenes in scott's novels. in particular the ancient tower of tillietudleni was presented to my mind's eye, and i gazed for a moment on this gifted person with a melancholy foreboding that it was for the last time, and experienced an elevation of feeling connected with the scene which it is impossible to describe. such moments are worth whole years of everyday existence. we turned our heads to look once more on a man who must always create the most intense interest, and i repeated those lines of petrarch, introduced by mr. beckford himself in his "italy" on a similar occasion- o ora, o georno, o ultimo momento, o stelle conjurate ad impoverime, &c. i forgot to mention a cluster of heliotrope in blossom on the down, growing in such wild luxuriance that i could not believe it to be my little darling flower. however, on stooping down i soon perceived by its fragrance it was the same plant that i had been accustomed to admire in greenhouses or in small pots. october, 1838. i have had another peep at the tower. the day was auspicious. i ran up the staircase and wonderfully enjoyed the prospect. looking through the middle window towards the west you have a delicious picture. the hills undulate in the most picturesque manner, the motion of the clouds at one moment threw a line of hills into shadow, which were the next minute illumined by the sun, the avon glittering in the sunbeams, the village of weston embedded in the valley, a rich cluster of large trees near the town, variegated by the tints of autumn, united to form a charming picture. the pieces of plate-glass that compose the twelve windows of this beautiful room cannot be less than 5.5ft. high and 18in. wide. on descending i was struck with the lovely effect of the corridor, at the end of which is the statue of st. anthony; on the pedestal (a block of sienna) are engraved in letters of gold these words, "dominus illuminatio mio." the francesco mola (the magdalen in the desert) is a lovely landscape indeed; the rocks and their spirited execution, lightness of the foliage, &c., in the foreground remind one of st. rosa. a cluster of cherubs hovers over the head of mary. in the smaller room on the upper floor is the picture by west of the installation of the knights of the garter. from the contemplation of this picture i entertain a higher opinion of the genius of west than i ever did before. you can scarcely believe it is his painting; there is nothing of his usual hard outline, the shadows are rich, the background soft and mellow, the lights unite sweetly, and it is touched in the free and juicy manner of the sketches of rubens or paolo veronese. it is difficult to believe that this picture is not 200 years old. the head of a child by parmigiano; a large picture by breughel. the enameled glass vase brought to europe by st. louis; this must be of arabian manufacture, for the figures on horseback have turbans. a large cabinet by franks, the panels most highly finished, different passages in the history of adam and eve form small pictural subjects. in the larger room is the cabinet by bernini, inlaid with mosaic work in the most finished manner, surrounded by three brass figures; bellini's two pictures of the doges of venice. over bernini's cabinet a large piece of looking glass is most judiciously introduced. in this and the lower room are two lovely crimson wilton carpets; the ceilings of both are painted purple and red. holbein's candlesticks are really gold! the chasing is elegance itself; an inscription states that they were made in 1800 for the abbey at fonthill. a fine picture of the infant st. john by murillo; a curious one of st. anthony by civoli; an exquisite interior, by steynwich, very small, and being a night effect, the shadows are amazingly rich. in the passage leading to the garden are the two ivory cups by frainingo. one is much better carved than the other; it is copied from an antique vase. the figures are bacchanalian. the effect of this lower room from the vestibule, illumined by the rays of the glorious sun, was more beautiful than anything of the sort i had ever witnessed. nothing can be more happy than the way the colour of this apartment is managed. the walls are covered with scarlet cloth; the curtains on each side of the window being a deep purple produce a striking contrast, the colouring of the ceiling, crimson, purple and gold, is admirable. in one window is a large table formed of a block of egyptian porphyry, on which were flowers in a large vase of ivory; in the other recess, or rather tribune, is the small round himalaya block. over the fireplace is a charming little dietrich, and on either hand a polemberg. on this side of the room the two de vos, two singularly shaped cabinets of oak finely carved; on one is a gold teapot. on the right hand of the door is a simonini: sky and distance admirable, the colouring of two large trees very rich and mellow, one a dark green, the other pale yellow. a picture on the other side of the door by canaletti. on the opposite side of the room a large pastel, ruins of foliage fine but figures lanky. i had not before to-day seen the tower from the road entrance. the effect of the whole building is grand, and improved by the arches which support the terrace. on the left the ground is admirably broken and the foliage rich. november 3rd, 1838. mr. beckford showed me some sketches of st. non's sicily and harbour of malta, forty drawings, given by st. non himself, each bearing the name in pencil; he also showed me a ms. "arabian nights." he studied arabic very deeply in paris, and had a mussulman master. he read to me part of a tale never put into the ordinary edition, translated into english tersely and perspicuously. he is much indebted to arabic ms. for "vathek," and reads arabic to this day. he says lord byron and others are quite mistaken as to the age when he wrote "vathek," not seventeen but twentythree years of age. "sir," says he, "if you want a description of persepolis read 'vathek.'" he laughed heartily at the different sorts of praise bestowed by lord byron on "vathek," equal to rasselas, like mackenzie. lord byron tried many times to get a sight of the eps [?], often intreated the duchess to intercede with her father. he once called with "vathek" in his pocket, which he styled "his gospel." moore's "lallah rookh" has too much western sentimentality for an oriental romance, the common fault of most writers of such stories. beckford prefers moore's melodies, and likes the "loves of angels" least of all. "fudge family" he thinks admirable. speaking of the triumph he achieved in writing as an englishman a work which was supposed for years to be by a frenchman, he said: "oh, my great uncle did more than me. did you never read 'memories of the duke of grammont?' voltaire told me he was entirely indebted to my great uncle for whatever beauty of style he might possess. french is just the same as english to me. he showed me the eps." october 31.--went out and accidentally met mr. beckford speaking in praise of his west, who painted expressly for mr. beckford. i said, "how did you get him to paint it so soft? i suppose you particularly requested him to do so." "oh no. mr. west was a man who would stand no dictation; had i uttered such a thought he would have kicked me out of the house! oh no, that would never have done. the only way to get him to avoid his hard outline would be to entreat him to paint harder. west came one day laughing to me, and said, "all london is in ecstasy beholding the lazarus in sebo deltz, painted they say by m. a. ha! ha! they don't know it is my painting. l., who brought the picture over, came to me in the greatest distress, 'the set is ruined by the salt water; you must try and restore the lazarus.' i was shut up for two days, and painted the lazarus." on my asking if he believed it true, mr. beckford replied, "perfectly true, for i saw it lying on the floor and the figure of lazarus was quite gone." "then you don't value that picture much?" "all the rest is perfect, and i offered 12,000 pounds for that and four more. i saw in the escurial the marriage of isaac and rebecca, now belonging to the duke of wellington. in fact, of all the pictures in the collection there is not more than one in ten that has escaped repainting. the picture given by h. carr i cannot admire, the outline of the hill is so hard. it is just the picture satan would show poor claude, if he has him, which we charitably hope he has not." november 10th, 1838. how poor dear mozart would be frightened (moralised mr. beckford) could he hear some of our modern music! my father was very fond of music, and invited mozart to fonthill. he was eight years old and i was six. it was rather ludicrous one child being the pupil of another. he went to vienna, where he obtained vast celebrity, and wrote to me, saying, "do you remember that march you composed which i kept so long? well, i have just composed a new opera and i have introduced your air." "in what opera?" asked i. "why in the 'nozze di figaro.'" "is it possible, sir, and which then is your air?" "you shall hear it." mr. beckford opened a piano, and immediately began what i thought a sort of march, but soon i recognized "non piu andrai." he struck the notes with energy and force, he sang a few words, and seemed to enter into the music with the greatest enthusiasm; his eye sparkled, and his countenance assumed an expression which i had never noticed before. mr. beckford showed me some very fine original drawings by gaspar poussin, exceedingly delicate. on the back a profile most exquisitely finished, another just begun, and another by his brother in admirable style, sketch of a peacock by houdekoeta. "when i was in portugal," said mr. beckford, "i had as much influence and power as if i had been the king. the prince regent acknowledged me in public as his relation (which indeed i was). i had the privilege of an entrance at all times, and could visit the royal family in ordinary dress. of course, on grand occasions i wore court costume." he showed me a letter from a rich banker in lisbon, a man in great esteem at the palace; another letter from one of the first noblemen in portugal, entreating him to use his influence with the prince regent for the reversion of the decree of confiscation of some nobleman's estate; another from the grand prior of aviz (in french). mr. beckford was treated as a grandee of the first rank in germany; he showed me an autograph of the emperor joseph. voltaire said to him, "je dois tout a votre oncle, count anthony h. the duchess was acknowledged in paris by the bourbon as duchess de chatelrault. on going to court i saw her sitting next the royal family with the duchess, whilst all the court was standing. the duchess has fine taste for the arts, quite as strong a feeling as i have. the duke also is amazingly fond of the arts. the marquis of d. has a spice of my character." the claude looked more blooming and pearly than ever. i observed that i had never seen such a tone in any claude in existence. i know many pictures which had that hue, but they have been so daubed and retouched that they are no longer the same. he showed me the episodes. one begins, "mes malheurs, o caliphe sont encore plus grands que les votres, aussi bien que mes crimes, tu a ete trompe en ecoutant un navis malheureux; mais moi, pour me desobir d'une amitie la plus tendre, je suis precipite dans ce lieu d'horreur." the origin of beckford's "lives of extraordinary painters" was very odd. when he was fifteen years old the housekeeper came to him, and said she wished he would tell her something about the artists who painted his fine pictures, as visitors were always questioning her, and she did not know what to answer. "oh, very well; i'll write down some particulars about them." he instantly composed "lives of extraordinary painters." the housekeeper studied the manuscript attentively, and regaled her astonished visitors with the marvellous incidents it contained; however, finding many were sceptical, she came to her young master and told him people would not believe what she told them. "not believe? ah, that's because it is only in manuscript. then we'll have it printed; they'll believe when they see it in print." he sent the manuscript to a london publisher, and inquired what the expense of printing it would be. the publisher read it with delight, and instantly offered the youthful author 50 pounds for the manuscript. the housekeeper was now able to silence all cavilers by producing the book itself. having left an umbrella in lansdown-crescent, i inquired of the gentleman to whom i am indebted for my introduction to mr. beckford if he thought it would be taking a liberty if i sent in my name when i called for it. "i really don't know what to say" was the answer, "you must do as you think proper. i will only say that for my part i am always looking out for squalls, but i daresay he will be glad to see you." i accordingly determined to make a bold stroke and call on him, remembering the old adage, "quidlibet audendum picturis atque poetis." the weather was most delightful. a wet and cold summer had been succeeded by warm autumnal days, on which the sun shone without a cloud; it was one of those seasons of settled fair so uncommon in our humid country, when after witnessing a golden sunset you might sleep secure he'd rise to-morrow. i therefore called at the great man's house, and found the umbrella in the exact corner in the ante-room where it had been left a fortnight before, and told the porter to announce my name to his master. i waited in anxiety in the hall a few moments. the footman returned, saying his master was engaged, but if i would walk upstairs mr. beckford would come to me. the servant led the way to the duchess drawing room, opened the door, and on my entering he retired, leaving me alone in this gorgeous apartment, wondering what the dickens i did there. you may suppose i was not a little delighted at this mark of confidence, and spent several minutes examining the pictures till the author of "vathek" entered, his countenance beaming with good nature and affability. he extended his hand in the kindest manner, and said he was extremely glad to see me. i instantly declared the purport of my visit, that i had some copies of pictures that were once in his possession, and that it would give me the greatest possible pleasure to show them to him. "i shall be delighted to see them" was the reply, "but for some days i am rather busy; i will come next week." "you have had a visit from the author of 'italy'," i observed; "people say that you like mr. r.'s poem." "oh yes, some passages are very beautiful. he is a man of considerable talent; but who was that person he brought with him? what a delightful man! i suppose it was mr. l." i replied, "i believe they are great friends." "what an awful state the country is in (he observed)! one has scarcely time to think about poetry or painting, or anything else, when our stupid, imbecile government allows public meetings of 150,000 men, where the most inflammatory language is used and the common people are called on to arm, beginning, too, with solemn prayer. their prayer will never succeed. no, no, their solemn prayer is but a solemn mockery. they seemed to have forgotten the name of the only mediator, without whose intercession all prayer is worse than useless. well, well (said mr. beckford), depend upon it we shall have a tremendous outbreak before long. the ground we stand on is trembling, and gives signs of an approaching earthquake. then will come a volcanic eruption; you will have fire, stones, and lava enough. afterwards, when the lava has cooled, there will be an inquiry for works of art. i assure you i expect everything to be swept away." i ventured to differ from him in that opinion, and said i was convinced that whatever political changes might happen, property was perfectly secure. "some reforms," i said, "would take place, and many pensions perhaps be swept away, but such changes would never affect him or his, and after all it was but a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence." "there you are right," he exclaimed. "if anything can save us 'twill be pounds, shillings, and pence," meaning, i suppose, a union of all classes who possessed property, from the pound of the peer to the penny of the plebeian. "but the present times are really very critical. have you time to go through the rooms with me?" he demanded. i replied that nothing would give me greater pleasure. "but perhaps you are going somewhere?" i answered that i was perfectly disengaged. passing along the landing of the stairs he paused before the alderman's portrait, and observed, "had my father's advice been taken we should not now be in danger of starvation." i ventured to say that in those days there was more reciprocal feeling between the poor and the rich than at present; now a-days classes are so divided by artificial barriers that there is little or no sympathy between any. "you are mistaken," he replied. "as long as i remember anything there was always discontent, always heartburning; but at the time of my father's speech dissatisfaction had risen to such a pitch that i assure you these people were on the point of being sent back to the place they came from." (he alluded to the present royal family). mr. beckford opened the door of the great library, and on entering i immediately discovered the cause of my being so much puzzled as to its architecture. there are two doors in this magnificent room; one leads to the duchess drawing room, the other to the landing, and to produce the air of privacy so delightful to a bookworm the latter is covered with imitative books, exactly corresponding with the rest of the library. i remembered on my first entering the room from the staircase, and when the servant had closed the door, there appeared but one entrance, which was that by which we left this noble room, passing thence into the duchess's room. i puzzled my brains in vain to make out the geography of the place, but could make neither top nor tail, and should never have solved the enigma but for this third visit. "i have been to fonthill," he said, "since i saw you. i don't think much of what papworth has done there. i rode thirty-eight miles in one day without getting out of the saddle. that was pretty well, eh?" i thought so indeed for a man in his seventyninth year. * * * * * on the 28th of october, 1844, we left bath determined to examine the once far-famed abbey of fonthill, and to see if its scenery was really as fine as report had represented. the morning was cold and inauspicious, but when we reached warminster the sun burst out through the mists that had obscured him, and the remainder of the day was as genial and mild as if had been may. we procured the aid of a clownish bumpkin to carry our carpet bag, and left warminster on foot. about four miles from that town those barren and interminable downs are reached which seem to cover the greater part of wiltshire. the country is as wild as the mountain scenery of wales, and the contrast between it and the polished city we had left in the morning was truly singular. we took the road to _hindon_, but a worthy old man, of whom we asked particulars, pointed out a pathway, which cut off at least a mile and a half. we followed his direction, and left the high road. mounting the hill by a steep and chalky road we reached a considerable elevation; before us extended a succession of downs, and in the extreme distance a blue hill of singular form, at least nine miles off, was crowned by buildings of very unusual appearance. curiosity as to the place was at its utmost stretch, but our ignorant bumpkin could tell nothing about it. it surely cannot be fonthill was the instant suggestion? impossible. can we see the remains at this distance? we continued our walk for about two miles, without losing sight of this interesting edifice, and at length all doubts were cleared in the certainty that the long wished-for object was absolutely before us. it is impossible to describe the feelings of interest experienced by the sight of these gigantic remains. the eastern transept still rises above the woods, a point, pinnacle, and round tower. descending the hill towards hindon we lost sight of the abbey. a most singular specimen of country life was presented by an old shepherd, of whom we inquired the way. "how far is it to hindon?" "about four miles." "is this the right road?" "yes, you cannot miss it, but i haven't been there these forty years. naa, this is forty years agone save two that i went to hindon: 'twas in 1807." this place, which once sent members to parliament, and which the author of "vathek" himself represented for many years, is not so large as the village of batheaston! there are neither lamps nor pavement, but it possesses a most picturesque little church. it was one of the rotten boroughs swept away, and properly enough, by the reform bill. here our rustic relinquished his burden to a hindon lad, who acted as our future cicerone, and undertook to show us the way to the inn called the beckford arms. soon after leaving hindon the woods of fonthill were reached. we mounted a somewhat steep hill, and here met with a specimen of the gigantic nature of the buildings. a tunnel about 100 feet long passed under the noble terrace, reaching from knoyle to fonthill bishop, at least three miles in length; the tunnel was formed to keep the grounds private. the beech trees, now arrayed in gaudy autumnal tints, seen through this archway have a lovely effect. emerging from the tunnel, the famous wall, seven miles long, was just in front. to the left you trace the terrace, on a charming elevation, leading to fonthill gardens, and here and there you have glimpses of the great lake. the ground is broken and varied in the most picturesque fashion. you pass some cottages that remind you of ryswick, and soon come to the church of fonthill gifford. this church is perfectly unique in form, its architecture purely italian; one would think it was designed by palladio. there is a pretty portico supported by four tall doric columns, and its belfry is a regular cupola. we at last gained the inn, and were shown into a lovely parlour that savoured of the refined taste that once reigned in this happy solitude. it is lofty, spacious, and surrounded by oak panels; it has a charming bow window, where are elegantly represented, in stained glass on distinct shields, the arms of alderman beckford, his wife, and their eccentric son. the evening was most lovely. a soft haze had prevailed the whole afternoon, and as there was still an hour's daylight i determined on instantly visiting the ruins. just without the sacred enclosure that once prevented all intrusion to this mysterious solitude is the lovely little village of fonthill gifford; its charming cottages, with their neat gardens and blooming roses, are a perfect epitome of english rusticity. a padlocked gate admits the visitor within the barrier; a steep road, but gently winding so as to make access easy, leads you to the hill, where once stood "the gem and the wonder of earth." the road is broad and entirely arched by trees. emerging suddenly from their covert an astonishing assemblage of ruins comes into view. before you stands the magnificent eastern transept with its two beautiful octangular towers, still rising to the height of 120 feet, but roofless and desolate; the three stately windows, 60 feet high, as open to the sky as glastonbury abbey; in the rooms once adorned with choicest paintings and rarities trees are growing. oh what a scene of desolation! what the noble poet said of "vathek's" residence in portugal we may now literally say of fonthill. here grown weeds a passage scarce allow to halls deserted, portals gaping wide. fresh lessons, ye thinking bosoms, how vain are the pleasures by earth supplied, swept into wrecks anon by time's ungentle tide. of all desolate scenes there are none so desolate as those which we now see as ruins, and which were lately the abode of splendour and magnificence. ruins that have been such for ages, whose tenants have long since been swept away, recall ideas of persons and times so far back that we have no sympathy with them at all; but if you wish for a sight of all that is melancholy, all that is desolate, visit a modern ruin. we passed through briars and brambles into the great octagon. straight before us stands the western doorway of the noble entrance hall; but where is its oaken roof, with its proud heraldic emblazonments, where its lofty painted windows, where its ponderous doors, more than 30 feet high? the cross still remains above, as if symbolical that religion triumphs over all, and st. anthony still holds out his right hand as if to protect the sylvan and mute inhabitants of these groves that here once found secure shelter from the cruel gun and still more cruel dog. but he is tottering in his niche, and when the wind is high is seen to rock, as if his reign were drawing to a close. of the noble octagon but two sides remain. looking up, but at such an amazing elevation that it makes one's neck ache, still are seen two windows of the four nunneries that adorned its unique and unrivalled circuit. and what is more wonderful than all, the noble organ screen, designed by "vathek" himself, has still survived; its gilded lattices, though exposed for twenty years to the "pelting of the pitiless storm," yet glitter in the last rays of the setting sun. we entered the doorway of the southern entrance hall, that door which once admitted thousands of the curious when fonthill was in its glory. this wing, though not yet in ruins, not yet entirely dismantled, bears evident signs of decay. standing on the marble floor you look up through holes in the ceiling, and discover the once beautifully fretted roof of st. michael's gallery. we entered the brown parlour. this is a really noble room, 52 feet long, with eight windows, painted at the top in the most glorious manner. this room has survived the surrounding desolation, and gives you a slight idea of the former glories of the place. each window consists of four gigantic pieces of plate-glass, and in the midst of red, purple, lilac, and yellow ornaments are painted four elegant figures, designed by the artist, hamilton, of kings and knights, from whom mr. beckford was descended. as there are eight windows there are thirty-two figures, drawn most correctly. what reflections crowd the mind on beholding this once gorgeous room! there stood the sideboard, once groaning beneath the weight of solid gold salvers. in this very room dined frequently the magnificent "vathek" on solid gold, and there, where stood his table, covered with every delicacy to tempt the palate, is now a pool of water, for the roof is insecure, and the rain streams through in torrents. on the right hand is the famous cedar boudoir, whose odoriferous perfume is smelt even here. we entered the fountain court, but sought in vain the stream that was once forced up, at vast expense, from the vale below and trickled over its marble bason. for the stream has shrunk from its marble bed, where the weeds and desolate dust are spread. one would almost imagine byron had written his lines in the "giaour" describing hassan's residence amidst the ruins of fonthill, so striking, so tangible, is the resemblance. he says of the fountains- 'twas sweet of yore to hear it play and chase the sultriness of day, as springing high the silver dew in whirls fantastically flew and flung luxurious coolness round the air, and verdure o'er the ground. 'twas sweet, when cloudless stars were bright, to view the wave of watery light and hear its melody by night. but the shades of evening, now rapidly advancing, warned us to depart while there was yet light enough to trace our path through the gloomy wood. we entered its thick and umbrageous covert, and were near losing our road before we reached the barrier gate. the road was strewed with dry leaves, which reminded me of the earthly hopes of man. he builds too low who builds beneath the skies, and he who wishes for solid happiness must rest on a broader base than that afforded by momentary enjoyment, tempting and blooming as the foliage of summer, but evanescent as its withered leaves. the next morning was finer than our most sanguine wishes could have anticipated. we were not long dispatching our comfortable breakfast, and hastened to the barrier gate. we here met a venerable woman, whose noble features and picturesque dress would have served as a splendid model for gainsborough or ben barker. stopping to inquire a nearer road to the abbey, as she seemed indigenous to the place, i was tempted to ask if she knew mr. beckford. "i have seen him, sir, many, many times; but he is gone, and i trust--i do trust--to rest. he was a good man to the poor, never was there a better." "you astonish me; i had heard that he never gave away anything." "good gracious, sir, who could have invented such lies? there never was a kinder friend to the poor, and when he left they lost a friend indeed. not give away anything! why, sir, in the winter, when snow was on the ground and firing dear, he used to send wagons and wagons for coal to warminster, and make them cut through the snow to fetch it, and gave the poor souls plenty of firing, besides money, blankets, and clothing, too, and as for me i can answer for three halfsovereigns he gave me himself at different times with his own hand." "you surprise me." "i saw him coming once with his servants. i had my baby in my arms--that's she that lives in that cottage yonder, she's grown a woman now--and i was shuffling along to get out of his way, when he called out, 'what a beautiful little babe, let me look at it,' and then he smiled and made as though he would shake hands with the child, and, bless you, he slipped half-a-sovereign into my hand." i confess i was delighted at the little anecdote, and i am sure the good woman's praise was perfectly disinterested. those who know anything of the poor are convinced they never flatter those from whom they can never again derive any benefit. i had almost expected to hear curses, if not loud at least deep. a bailiff resides in the abbey stables, who has charge of the place, but the "steeds are vanished from the stalls." we inquired if we could see the remaining apartments, but found the bailiff was gone to hindon, and had taken the keys with him. here was a difficulty indeed. "perhaps," said his daughter, "you can get into the great tower staircase; i think the door is open." we proceeded thither, but alas! a ponderous door and locked most unequivocally denied all entrance. "perhaps father has left the key in his old coat; i will run and see" said our interesting young cicerone. she scuttled off, and we waited in anxiety, till in five minutes she returned with a large bunch of keys, the passport to the extraordinary apartments still remaining. my joy was as great at hearing the lock turn as was ever "vathek's" when he discovered the indian at the gate of the hall of eblis with his _clef d'or_. the great circular staircase survived the shock of the falling tower. the stairs wind round a massive centre, or newel, three feet in diameter; the ascent is gentle, the stairs at least six feet broad. they form an approach light, elegant, and so lofty that you cannot touch with the hand the stairs above your head. numerous small windows make the staircase perfectly light, and the inside is so clean that it is difficult to believe it is not continually scoured and whitened, but this i was assured was not the case. two hundred and ten steps lead to a leaden roof, the view from which beggars description. you have here a bird's eye view of the lovely estate. majestic trees, hanging woods, and luxuriant plantations cover the ground for two or three miles round, whilst beyond this begin those immense and interminable downs for which wiltshire is so noted; they are dreary and barren enough in themselves, but at such a point as this, where the foreground and middle distance are as verdant and richly clad with trees as can possibly be desired, their effect is very beautiful. the absence of enclosures produces breadth and repose, and the local colour melts gradually into the grey distance in the most charming manner. looking westward the great avenue, a mile in length, presents itself; to the south the beacon-terrace, a green road more than two miles long, leads to a high hill, where the alderman commenced, but never finished, a triangular tower. this road, or rather avenue, has a most charming effect; the trees that bound its sides are planted in a zigzag direction, so as to destroy the appearance of formality, whilst in reality it is a straight road, and you walk at once in a direct line, without losing the time you would if the road were more tortuous. on the south side the view is most fascinating. in a deep hollow not half-amile off, enbosomed, nay almost buried amidst groves of pine and beech, are discovered the dark waters of the bittern lake. the immense plantations of dark pines give it this sombre hue, but in reality the waters are clear as crystal. beyond these groves, still looking south, you discover the woods about wardour castle, and amongst them the silvery gleam of another sheet of water. to the south-west is the giant spire of salisbury, which since the fall of fonthill tower now reigns in solitary stateliness over these vast regions of down and desert. stourton tower presents itself to the north, whilst to the west, in the extreme distance, several high hills are traced which have quite a mountainous character- naveled in the woody hills, and calm as cherished hate, its surface wears a deep, cold, settled aspect nought can shake. the north wing of the abbey, containing the oratory, does not seem to have suffered from the fall of the tower, and we next proceeded to inspect it. a winding staircase from the kitchen court leads you at once to that portion of the gallery called the vaulted corridors. the ceilings of four consecutive rooms are beautiful beyond all expectation. prepared as i was by the engravings in rutter and britton to admire these ceilings, i confess that the real thing was finer than i could possibly have imagined. king edward's ceiling of dark oak (and its ornaments in strong relief) is as fresh as if just painted, and the beautiful cornice round the four walls of this stately gallery is still preserved, with its three gilded mouldings, but the seventy-two emblazoned shields that formed an integral part of the frieze have been ruthlessly torn off. the roof of the vaulted corridor with its gilded belts is the most perfect of the series of rooms, and that of the sanctum is beautifully rich; it is fretted in the most elegant way with long drops, pendants, or hangings like icicles, at least nine inches deep. here alas! the hands of vandals have knocked off the gilded roses and ornaments that were suspended. these three apartments are painted in oak, and gold is most judiciously introduced on prominent parts. but the ceiling of the last compartment is beyond all praise; it gleams as freshly with purple, scarlet, and gold as if painted yesterday. five slender columns expand into and support a gilded reticulation on a dark crimson ground. in the centre of the ceiling is still hanging the dark crimson cord which formerly supported the elegant golden lamp i had formerly admired in lansdown-crescent; it seemed to have been hastily cut down, and its height from the floor and its deep colour, the same as the ceiling, has probably prevented its observation and removal. the southern end of the gallery has been stripped of its floor, and it was with difficulty, and not without danger, i got across a beam; and, standing with my back against the brick wall that has been built up at the end, where were once noble glazed doors opening into the grand octagon, i surveyed the whole lovely perspective; the length from this spot is 120 feet. the beautiful reddish alabaster chimney-piece still remains, but it is split in the centre, whether from the weight of wall or a fruitless attempt to tear it out i know not. the recesses, once adorned with the choicest and rarest books, still retain their sliding shelves, but the whole framework of the windows has been removed, and they are open to the inclemency of the weather, or roughly boarded up. the stove, once of polished steel, is now brown and encrusted with rust as if the iron were 500 years old. it is impossible for an architect or artist to survey the ruthless and wanton destruction of this noble wing, unscathed and uninjured but by the hands of barbarous man, without feelings of the deepest regret and sorrow. how forcibly do the lines of the noble bard recur to the mind on surveying these apartments, still magnificent, yet neglected, and slowly and surely falling into ruin- for many a gilded chamber's here, which solitude might well forbear, within this dome, ere yet decay hath slowly worked her cankering way. i ran up the circular staircase, and entered the noble state bedroom. the enormous plate glasses still remain; the ceiling is of carved oak relieved by gold ornaments. with what emotion did i turn through the narrow gallery, leading to the state room, to the tribune, which looked into the great octagon. a lofty door was at the extremity. i attempted to open it; it yielded to the pressure, and i stood on the very balcony that looked into the octagon. here the whole scene of desolation is surveyed at a glance. how deep were my feelings of regret at the destruction of the loftiest domestic apartment in the world. twenty years ago this glorious place was in all its splendour. high in the air are still seen two round windows that once lighted the highest bedrooms in the world. what an extraordinary idea! on this lofty hill, 120 feet from the ground, were four bedrooms. below these round windows are the windows of two of the chambers called nunneries. landing on this balcony i quickly conjured up a vision of former glory. there were the lofty windows gleaming with purple and gold, producing an atmosphere of harmonious light peculiar to this place, the brilliant sunshine covering everything within its influence with yellow quatrefoils. from that pointed arch once descended draperies 50 feet long! the very framework of these vast windows was covered with gold. there was the lovely gallery opening to the nunneries, through whose arches ceilings were discovered glittering with gold, and walls covered with pictures. exactly opposite was another tribune similar to this; below it the immense doors of st. michael's gallery, whose crimson carpet, thickly strewed with white roses; was seen from this place, whilst far, far above, at an elevation of 130 feet, was seen the lofty dome, its walls pierced with eight tall windows, and even these were painted and their frames gilded. the crimson list to exclude draught still remained on these folding doors, but the lock was torn off! i closed the doors, not without a feeling of sadness, and returning to the small gallery again ran up the lancaster gallery to another noble bedroom. finding the stairs still intact i mounted them, and found a door, which opened on to the roof. we were now on the top of the lancaster tower. though not so extensive as the view from the platform of the great staircase, there is a peep here that is most fascinating; it is the extreme distance seen through the ruined window of the opposite nunnery. the glimpse i had of the bittern lake having sharpened my appetite to see it, i descended the staircase of the lancaster turret, and marching off in a southerly direction hastened towards its shores. but it is so buried in wood that it was not without some difficulty we found it. never in happy england did i see a spot that so forcibly reminded me of switzerland. though formed by art, so happily is it concealed that nature alone appears, and this lovely lake seems to occupy the crater of an extinct volcano. it is much larger than i anticipated. a walk runs all round it; i followed its circuit, and soon had a glorious view of the abbey, standing in solitary stateliness on its wooded hill on the opposite side. the waters were smooth as a mirror, and reflected the ruined building; its lofty towers trembled on the crystal wave, as if they were really rocking and about to share the fate of the giant tower that was once here reflected. we followed the banks of the lake. passing some noble oaks that were dipping their extended boughs in the water, we soon gained the opposite side. here is a labyrinth of exotic plants, a maze of rhododendrons, azaleas, and the productions of warmer climes, growing as if indigenous to the soil. we passed between great walls of rhododendrons, in some places 15 feet high, and reached a seat, from whence you see the whole extent of this lovely sheet of water. what i had seen and admired so much on lansdown was here carried to its utmost perfection; i mean the representation of a southern wilderness. in this spot the formality of gardening is absolutely lost. these enormous exotic plants mingle with the oak, the beech, and the pine, so naturally that they would delight a landscape painter. these dark and solemn groves of fir, contrasting so strikingly with the beech woods, now arrayed in their last gaudiest dress, remind me forcibly of switzerland and the jura mountains, which i saw at this very season. nature at this period is so gaudily clad that we may admire her for her excessive variety of tints, but cannot dare to copy her absolutely. in this sheltered and sequestered spot the oaks, though brown and leafless elsewhere, are still verdant as july. every varied shade of the luxuriant groves--yellow, red, dark, and light green--every shade is reflected in these clear waters. three tall trees on the opposite shore have, however, quite lost their leaves, and their reflection in the wave is so exactly like gothic buildings, that one is apt to imagine you see beneath the waters the fairy palace of the naiads, the guardians of this terrestrial paradise. generously made available by the internet archive/american libraries.) the oriental rug [illustration: plate i. antique ladik _prayer rug_ from the collection of mr. george h. ellwanger size: 3.10 x 6] the oriental rug a monograph on eastern rugs and carpets, saddle-bags, mats & pillows. with a consideration of kinds and classes, types, borders, figures, dyes, symbols etc. together with some practical advice to collectors. by w. d. ellwanger author of "a summer snowflake" new york: dodd, mead & company. 1909 _copyright, 1903_ by dodd, mead and company published september, 1903 preface that oriental rugs are works of art in the highest sense of the term, and that fine antique specimens, of even modest size, have a financial value of ten, fifteen, or thirty-eight thousand dollars, has been recently determined at public auction. at this auction, several nations had a representative voice in the bidding, and the standard of price was fairly established. the value of rugs may have been imaginary and sentimental heretofore; it is now a definite fact, with figures apparently at the minimum. what the maximum may prove, remains to be seen. choice old rugs, therefore, to-day come into the same class with genuine paintings of the old dutch school; with canvases of teniers, ruysdael, cuyp, ostade, or whatever similar artist's work may have escaped the museums. they vie in prestige with the finest examples of corot, diaz, troyon, or daubigny; and in monetary supremacy they overtop the rarest and grandest of chinese porcelains. and yet the oriental rug, as against such competitors for the wealthy collectors' favour, has hardly a history, and is practically without a name or a pedigree. experts will tell you at a glance whether or not your wouverman is genuine, or inform you where every true corot was owned or whence it was bartered or stolen. in chinese porcelains, the knowing dealer will easily prove to you not only under what dynasty but in what decade or year a particular piece was produced. the painting has descent, signature, or the brush mark of a school to father it. the chinese vase, bowl, or jar has its marks, cyphers, stamps and dates, and an undoubted genealogy to vouch for its authenticity. the rug must speak for itself and go upon its intrinsic merits. it is its own guarantee and certificate of artistic and financial value. the study of oriental rugs, therefore, can never lead to an exact science or approximate dogmatic knowledge. whoever is interested in them must needs rely upon his personal judgment or the seller's advice. there is practically only one current book authority in the premises. a new volume on the subject would thus seem to be well justified. it is the hope of the author that this book may prove itself sound and practical, and that it may help to make more clear and simple the right appreciation of a valuable rug. w. d. ellwanger rochester, n.y., 1903 contents chapter page i. the mystery of the rug 3 ii. general classification 13 iii. of the making, and of designs, borders, etc. 21 iv. of the dyeing 35 v. of persian rugs, specifically 43 vi. caucasian rugs, daghestan and russian types 61 vii. of turkish varieties 69 viii. turkoman or turkestan rugs 79 ix. of oriental carpets, saddle-bags, pillows, etc. 93 x. auctions, auctioneers, and dealers 107 xi. inscriptions and dates 121 xii. general observations and particular advice 131 list of plates plate i. ladik _frontispiece_ ii. koniah _facing page_ 22 iii. kazak " " 36 iv. sehna " " 44 v. chichi " " 50 vi. kabistan " " 62 vii. gheordez " " 70 viii. koulah " " 72 ix. melez " " 74 x. beluchistan " " 80 xi. anatolian pillows " " 94 xii. bergama " " 124 the oriental rug chapter i the mystery of the rug to judge of an oriental rug rightly, it must be looked at from several points of view, or, at least, from two aspects; against the light and with the light. from the first standpoint, against the light of knowledge, speaking figuratively, there may be seen only a number of rude and awkward figures in crude colours scattered erratically on a dark or dingy-looking background, a fringe of coarse and ragged strings at either end, and rough frays of yarn at the sides. this is what is accepted by many people as an oriental rug. and indeed this is what most rugs are. if, on the other hand, we view our rugs with the light of a better wisdom and happier experience, we will see the richest and softest of colours, the most harmonious shadings and blendings, medallions brilliant as jewels, or geometrical designs beautiful as the rose windows of a cathedral; or, again, graceful combinations of charmingly conventionalized flowers and delicate traceries and arabesques,--all these displaying new glories of ever changing and never tiring beauty. each woven picture, too, is as soft to tread upon as a closely mown lawn, and caresses the feet that sink into its pile. these are oriental rugs as their admirers know and love them. perhaps the chief charm of all such beautiful rugs is in their mystery. their designs are odd and strange and full of hidden meanings, and their effects are often evolved from the crudest and clumsiest figures, hooks and squares and angles; they owe their wealth of colour to simple vegetable dyes from the woods and fields and gardens, and yet the secret of many of these dyes is still a secret, or has long ago been lost. the places whence the rugs come, the people who make them and those who sell them, all are mysterious and hard to know and understand. moreover, broadly speaking, there are no experts on the subject, no authorities, no literature. he who would know them must learn them by experience. the rug dealers, for the most part, seem to treat their wares merely as so much merchandise, and what knowledge concerning them they are willing to impart is so contradictory as to be almost valueless. few of them would agree upon the name of an example which might be out of the ordinary, or be able to tell where it was made. ask of them what a "mecca" is, and they will stammer in their varying answers. and yet the armenians who handle most of the rugs in this country are often highly educated, and fully appreciate the beauty of their wares. their taste, however, is not always our taste, and all the orientalists seem to retain their barbaric fondness for crude and startling colours. when we would turn to books for information in the matter we find that the authorities are not many. they might be numbered on your fingers and thumbs. these few books, moreover, have been published only in limited editions at high prices, and are not easily obtainable. one of the most important of such works is the sumptuously illustrated, elephantine folio, issued in vienna in 1892 by the imperial and royal austrian and commercial museum. and, elaborate as this authority is, the modest editor, by way of apology, says in the preface that "no pretensions are made toward perfection owing to the little information that we can fall back upon." a recent authority on the subject is john kimberly mumford, and his volume on oriental rugs, published in 1900, has thrown much light on the subject. too great praise cannot be given to this work and to his later studies in the same field. still, no one knows it all, and the mystery of oriental rugs only deepens as we try to learn. the little that any one may really know of them through experience, through questioning and elusive answers, through conversations with obliging and polite vendors, and through foreign travel even, is, when all is said, only a patchwork of knowledge. consider how stupendous and hopeless would be the task of one who would dare endeavour to analyze, criticise, classify, and co-ordinate the paintings of the past five centuries, were no names signed to them or no appreciable number of pictures painted by the same known artist. he who would write of rugs has a like condition to face. and alas! also, whoever would write on this subject must now treat of it principally as history. the characteristic rugs, the antique rugs, the rare specimens, are seldom to be bought. they are in museums, or in the hands of collectors who hold them in even a tighter fist. twenty years ago the warning was given that the choice old rugs were growing scarce; the years following found fewer still upon the market. two or three years ago one of the largest wholesale houses in new york, carrying a stock of half a million or a million dollars, had no antiques to show. in the autumn of 1902, another large new york importer who had just returned from persia, tiflis, and constantinople admitted that he had not brought back one valuable antique piece. nevertheless, the true enthusiast need not be discouraged. from wandering dealers, in odd corners, at the unexpected or by chance, one may happen on a choice specimen. the very word "persian" is a synonym for opulence, splendour, gorgeousness; and "oriental" means beauty and wonder and the magic of the "arabian nights." from the aladdin's cave of the mystical east, therefore, we may still hope to gather treasure and spoil. chapter ii general classification most of the rugs of commerce in this country come from persia, turkey, asia minor, turkestan, the southern part of russia, afghanistan, and beluchistan; a few also from india. the rugs are named from the provinces or cities where they are woven, and to the uninitiated, the names seem to have been as fearfully and wonderfully made as the rugs themselves. they are spelled one way on the maps and every other way in catalogues and advertisements. in enumerating the most familiar ones it may be well to write their names as nearly phonetically and conventionally as possible. a few rugs have trade appellations only, without regard to topography; and, often, unknown towns are called into requisition for fanciful titles to please the purchaser. of course the names of rugs may mean nothing to your man-of-all-work, whose duty it is to chastise them upon the lawn. but there is poetry in the names of the roses, and you cannot half enjoy their beauty unless you know a mabel morrison from the baroness rothschild; cécile brunner from the earl of dufferin; or can give the proper rank and title to captain christy, general jacqueminot, and maréchal niel. and who would dare to talk of laces that could not give a french or dutch or irish name to them? or, when painted pictures instead of woven ones were under discussion, who would venture to admit that he had heard for the first time the names of some of the old masters, or did not know any of the flemish school, or could not at least touch his hat to a gainsborough or a romney? there were "old masters" in wool as well as on canvas, as the gheordez rugs most particularly prove, and though the artists' signatures are missing or meaningless, their classification is important. once learned, and then difficult to remember withal, rugs answer to their names like old and familiar friends. if homer catalogued the ships, surely the masterpieces of the eastern loom are worthy of brief nomenclature. the persians come first, and perhaps in the following order of excellence: kirman, sehna, kurdistan, khorassan, serabend, youraghan, joshghan (tjoshghan), feraghan, shiraz, gulistan, mousul, etc. the rug dealers frequently speak of a "persian iran," but as iran is the native expression for persia, the name is as tautological as are the dealer's laudatory adjectives. so far as the term "iran" can be differentiated, it is now applied with some propriety to rare old persian rugs of fine weave only, whose proper name may be in doubt. among the turkish rugs, which are mainly those from asia minor, the yourdez (or gheordez), the koulahs, koniahs, and ladiks are by far the finest, and then come the bergamas, vying often for like high honour, the melez, and many others which are vaguely classed as anatolians. from turkestan come the numerous bokharas and the more uncommon samarkands; from afghanistan, the afghans and the khiva, and yamoud-bokharas. but the two rugs last named seem to have a doubtful paternity, and should perhaps be classed with the other bokharas. beluchistan sends but one type, which is generally unmistakable, although afghans, bokharas, and beluchistans all have a family likeness. to caucasia in russia are credited the kabistans, shirvans, chichis (tzi-tzis), darbends, karabaghs, kazaks, and gengias, also the soumacs, or so-called cashmeres. the first four of these are somewhat similar in character, and not many years ago were generally sold in this country under the indiscriminate title of daghestans. we are more specific in our knowledge now, and can classify and differentiate an old baku rug, or a kuba, which is a kubistan, and therefore what we used to call an antique kabistan. india provides us only with some fine large carpets mostly of modern make, and also with many imitations of persian rugs, made in part by machinery like the current substitute for a turkish towel. chapter iii of the making, & of designs, borders, etc. [illustration] [illustration: _"serabend" border_] in order to appreciate the beauty of rugs, it is well to remember how they are made, and with what infinite patience the bits of wool are knotted onto the warp one after another, knot upon knot and tie after tie, until the perfect piece is finished. yet, no! finished it may be, but never perfect. deliberately, if necessary, it must show some defect, in proof that allah alone is perfect. such at least is the poetical version of a crooked rug as the seller tells it. yet never was a vendor but will expatiate fluently on the merits of a rug which lies true and straight and flat upon the floor, as a good rug should. it is a common sight nowadays in shop windows to see some wandering artisan plying his trade for the edification of the passer-by. in his own home it is generally a woman who does the weaving, and very commonly the whole family take part in it. more often still the rugs were woven by an oriental maid for her prospective dowry, and the practice yet obtains. a specimen of her handicraft in textile art was a bride's portion and marriage gift; it was considered as essential to the proceedings as the modern _trousseau_. this offering was a work of love and often a work of years. it is but natural, under such circumstances, with dreams, hopes, and fancies for inspiration, and the stimulus of rivalry, too, that masterpieces should result. these eastern marriage portions correspond to the "linen chest" of our ancestral puritan priscillas; and similar customs now survive in many countries. except that the "accomplishment" of the oriental maiden is so much more important, it might also be compared to the beadwork so diligently done by our grandmothers. if the persian bride gave infinite toil and pains to innumerable knots and ties, our belles of the last century were also unwearying in their tasks, and strung more and smaller beads than any would care to count or finger now. the designs on these bead-bags were mostly crude and "homely," and their art was very simple. but though the handiwork of the orientals was expended in a better cause with worthier skill, both linen and wool, and even beads, bespoke a labour of love in such employments; which, alas! is out of date to-day. rugs of this character, gathered from house to house, together with some few stolen from mosque or palace, were the first ripe spoils of twenty years ago. of course the supply was soon exhausted. it is an interesting question whether it might not be possible, in the east, to revive this high class of work among the girls. instead of establishing great factories for machine-made products from set designs, could not the most skilful of the girls be induced by good prices to create original pieces and rejuvenate the old art? [illustration: plate ii. antique koniah _prayer rug_ from the collection of mr. george h. ellwanger size: 3.5 x 4.7] [illustration: _persian, caucasian_] [illustration: _feraghan leaf design_] [illustration: _rhodian or lily border_] the method of weaving is most simple. the warp is stretched on a rude wooden frame, and this warp is either wool, linen, or cotton. the knotting is begun at the bottom and worked from right to left. a bit of woollen yarn about two inches long is deftly twisted between the strands of the warp, then tied in a secure knot, and the ends left as they are. this knot of yarn is then secured in place by one or more twists of the end of the warp, and then another knot of yarn is tied and the process repeated _ad infinitum_ until the bottom row is finished and another row begun. not till the rug is all made are the ends of the knots cut, according to the length of nap desired. such, at least, was the original method, although the various knots are all a mystery to any but the initiated, by whom they are generally classified as two only. when one square inch of rug is completed, according to the quality of the rug and the coarseness or fineness of the yarn, there have been thus laboriously tied from one hundred to five hundred knots, not uncommonly a thousand and more in some museum pieces. and all this while the weaver is working with his brains as well as with his fingers and keeping true to the design and colour scheme which he carries only in his head. except in the few intentioned copies, specially made, they had formerly no patterns to follow. each particular weaver, however, was wont to keep to the general design and colouring which distinguished his particular locality. [illustration: _koniah field_] [illustration: _koulah border_] of designs it may be said, generally, that they were originally individual trademarks, and, of themselves, stamped the locality of their weavers. later, as knowledge and civilization spread and tribe grew to communicate with tribe and nation with nation, local designs came to be used indiscriminately. for example, you will find in the semi-antique feraghans or shiraz, or kiz-killims as well, the distinctive and unmistakable sehna models. on the other hand, certain definite, primal, and unchanged designs, both in the field and border, mark some rugs absolutely and exclusively; as the bokharas and afghans. in many, their classification is fixed, or at least approximated, rather by their borders than by the figuring of their fields. there are many border designs surely determining their origin and the region to which they properly belong. these borders may have been borrowed or stolen, or may have naturally spread to other regions, even in the old time; and they may be adapted to various other makes to-day. their evident individuality of design tells its own history just the same. it is not difficult to master the characteristic features of the borders of many types; and, once known, they make a fair foundation of knowledge for the collector. they are often truer and safer guides to classification than are the designs of centre or field. indeed, the study of borders, inner, middle, and outer borders, and borders characteristic, modified, or exceptional would make a book of wondrous artistic interest and beauty of design. even the item of selvedge, particularly in the beluchistans, shows great skill in colouring and pattern. [illustration: _turtle border_] the consideration of characteristic patterns in field and border is so involved with verbal description and specification in the various classes of rugs that an attempt at complete pictorial illustration of such figures in their proper place is practically impossible. a few reproductions are shown in this chapter which may serve as examples. some of them are more particularly considered elsewhere in the text, as reference may show. [illustration: _crab border_] [illustration] the serabend border is referred to on p. 50, and is quite unmistakable; and the persian border (p. 23) is familiar to every one, and appears frequently on caucasian rugs of every quality and every age. the feraghan leaf design is noticed on p. 52, and wherever used in the drawing, determines its class as absolutely as any figure may. the rhodian border is referred to more particularly on p. 72, and the koniah design and koulah border are described in their proper place, p. 72. other persian borders are most interesting, although they may not particularize any class or locality. such are the turtle and crab borders (pp. 28 and 29), and the lobster design, at the head of this page. the origin of these strange forms of ornament as applied to carpet-weaving adds only another mystery to the subject. but dyes were derived not only from leaves and roots, but also from insects, molluscs, and crustaceans. it must be that the origin of the colour originally suggested these symbols of marine or insect life for decorative effect. the more they were used, however, the more conventionalized and meaningless they appear, recent weavers not appreciating what they represented. old pieces show more clearly the evident model. but old pieces also often show original creations in border and design, far more artistic than the usual types. the kazak border of the titlepage is an example. the discriminating collector, when a choice offers, will do well to avoid the commonplace. [illustration] chapter iv of the dyeing the dye, the tone, the richness, and colour value of a rug was, and still is, an essential characteristic of the weaving of each class and region; and it was formerly not only essential but exclusive, the dyes being often trade secrets or, more truly said, tribe secrets. of course every one knows that the colouring of the yarn of the best oriental rugs is derived only from vegetable or animal dyes, and to this is due their beauty and durability. it may be noted also, in parenthesis, that it is the yarn and not the wool that is dyed. alas, that modern weavers, oriental and occidental, have learned to substitute mineral or aniline dyes! these not only destroy the wool and fade badly, but when the fabric is cleaned or wet by any chance the colours run, and leave their stains and blemishes. of course, too, they fail to give the richness, depth, and lustre of the good old method. generally, their manifest crudity bespeaks the poor quality and coarseness of their make. some vegetable dyes also fade, but they fade only into softer and more pleasing shades, and more delicate and harmonious blendings, as witness, in many antiques, the soft and beautiful tones of pink, salmon, and fawn which come from raw magentas, as the back of the rug will prove. but that magenta dye was of the old school. modern magentas seem never to fade away gracefully and becomingly. it must be noted, however, while speaking of the dyes used in the fine old rugs and in the best rugs of to-day, that for one or two colours resort was, and is, had to mineral dyes. many of the best old turkish specimens have thus suffered in their blacks and browns, and many a museum exhibit is eaten to the warp where these colours occur. it may be well to remember this, as some varieties of mousul and of turkish weave, thus worn to the warp in spots, leaving the other figures raised and in relief, are palmed off on the innocent purchaser as rare, "embossed" pieces. iron pyrites is the mineral from which these black dyes are made, and some turkish weavers seem to know no vegetable black or brown. in some of the best persians, serabends particularly, the green which is used in the borders has the same fault as the turkish blacks and browns; and if it does not "fade away suddenly like the grass," at least it leaves the nap "cut down, dried up, and withered." [illustration: plate iii. antique kazak from the collection of mr. erickson perkins size: 5.9 x 7.2] the subject of the various dyes might be extended to a separate monograph, for really the whole history of rug making depends upon the dyes used. the day that the aniline, petroleum dyes came into use doomed the perfect making of carpet or rug; and not all the strictest laws of the medes and persians--which is to say, the shah of persia--have availed to prevent the use of the mineral dyes, and the complete demoralization of modern weaving. you may find even in choice, closely woven, artistic shirvans and kabistans of fifteen and twenty years ago some few figures in certain colours which are clearly and manifestly aniline. they are the strong reds and especially the bright orange. and in some modern kurdistans, which should be free from guile, a few figures betray the same telltale glaring _media_. used with a sparing hand, as they are, they do not ruin a rug, but they are none the less a blotch upon its fair repute. the theory is, so far as concerns the new kurdistans, for instance, that these few mineral dyes are bought by the weavers from some traveller or agent by chance and inadvertently, and without knowledge of their character. otherwise they would hardly be used for a few figures in a finely woven piece, where all the other dyes are vegetable. one expert armenian has a sure test for mineral dyes in his tongue. when in doubt he cuts a bit of wool from the rug, nibbles it a minute or so, and then pronounces his sure verdict. but the test is a delicate one, and the fruit of knowledge is, presumably, bitter. again, in speaking of colours and shadings, it may be interesting to know why solid colours so often come in streaks, changing abruptly, for instance, from dark blue to light blue, or dark red to light red. you may have any of several explanations: that the weaver, dipping his wool into the dye, stopped, for any trivial word or interruption, and the wool took on a stronger hue; or, that another hand or one of the women or children took up the work; or, again, that the plant, from which he bruised that particular hue, gave out in his back garden. any of these reasons may be right. but the more credible one is to believe that the artistic weaver knew how effective is this change of colour, and what a pleasing, changing, varying light and shade it gives to his masterpiece. chapter v of persian rugs, specifically to describe in detail the characteristics of all the classes of rugs and carpets that have been mentioned would be hardly possible, even with a hundred object lessons. the peculiar features of some of them, however, may be noted. but first be it observed that the term "antique" as applied to rugs is generally sadly abused. a rug is not beautiful simply because it is old. it must have been fine when new, it must have been carefully preserved, and it must rejoice in a ripe old age. time must have dealt kindly with it, and only softened and mellowed its original beauties. let the antiques which are but rags and tatters, however valuable for their design, hang in the museums, where they belong! the only merit of one of these genuine remnants of three or four centuries ago is in their originality of design. they were creations and not imitations, and made by true artists and not merely skilled weavers. choose you, instead, a more modern rug of fine quality which will improve from year to year as long as you may live to enjoy it. it may also be premised that the sizes of rugs run from about three feet to six feet wide by four to ten feet long. few rugs approach squareness, and rugs wider than seven or eight feet are classed as carpets. some of the most beautiful pieces used to come, and still do, in the form of "strips," "hall rugs," or "stair rugs," according to trade parlance. they are worthy of a better name, which is their persian term, "kinari." they were made in pairs to complete the carpeting of a persian room, being placed on either side of a centre rug, with two shorter strips at the top and bottom. more fine specimens of these long strips are now to be found than of smaller sizes, and they should not be neglected by the collector. by artistic arrangement and device they will accommodate themselves to almost any house, somewhere, and few choicer prizes can be bought to-day. [illustration: plate iv. antique sehna from the collection of the author size: 2.4 x 3.1 this is apparently one side of a pillow. the other side, which is also in the possession of the author, is exactly similar, except that the colours are reversed, the medallion being red and the corners blue. this mat has 33 to 36 knots to the running inch, making over 1,000 to the square inch, or more than a million knots in the small piece.] the persians are eminently the best rugs to buy. they are usually finer and more closely woven than the others, and more graceful in design, and seem to show a more refined and aristocratic art. the kirmans would be the first choice, and are to the rug dealer what diamonds are to the jeweller, a staple article which he must keep in stock, and which finds a ready sale. but even were it possible to buy a true diamond kirman, the very catholicity of taste to which diamonds and kirmans appeal detract from their merit in the eyes of those who seek for more individuality. for the new kirmans, fine, soft, and clean as they look, are all very much alike, and mostly copies or variations of a few particular antique forms, with a floriated medallion in the centre, or a full floriated panel, and floriated corners. a familiar design is a vase of flowers in graceful spread, with birds perching on the sprays. or, again, they show some adaptation of "the tree of life." this symbolical figure appears in many forms, now denuded of its leaves like the "barren fig tree," and covering the whole rug, and now in smaller form as "the cypress tree," or the sacred "cocos," three or more to each rug, in full foliage and looking for all the world like certain wooden fir trees. it needs only the combination of these trees with the stiff wooden animals, far more wonderful than noah ever knew, and tiny human figures, which might be shem, ham, and japhet, all of which adorn these rugs, to remind one of the noah's ark of childhood. representations of birds, men, and animals never appear on turkish rugs, the explanation being that the turks, as sunna mohammedans, the orthodox sect, are opposed to them on religious grounds; while the shiites, the prevailing sect in persia, have no such scruples. but before leaving the subject of the kirmans, be it well understood, by the wise and prudent, that not one out of a thousand, or indeed ten thousand, of those on the market to-day (and they are as common as door-mats) has any pretence to genuineness. they are faked in every way. they are washed with chemicals to give them their soft colourings, they are made by wholesale and, it is said, in part by machinery, and they are no more an oriental rug than is a roll of brussels carpet or an admitted new jersey product. to the credit of whom it may concern, it must be stated that the dipping, washing, and artificial aging of these commercial pieces is mostly done by cunning adepts in persia before their works of art are exported. only an expert's advice should be relied on in buying a kirman, to-day, and even that should have a good endorser. the distinction between kirmans and kirmanshahs was founded in fact and was important. but the latter term as now used in the trade is only poetical. it is the same new kirman euphemized. no other rugs except silk rugs, which come under the same ban, have proved such a profitable swindle to unscrupulous and ignorant vendors, and have given a bad name to the dealers who try to be honest in their calling. the sehnas are highly prized by the orientals and occidentals. old examples are uncommon and are very choice. "their fabric gives to the touch the sense of frosted velvet. they reveal the meissoniers of oriental art," says a writer on the subject. some of these come in very small sizes, like mats, two feet by three. they have a diamond design, the centre being a graceful floriated medallion on a background of cream, yellow, red, or green, with floriation at the corners, making the diamond. they are the most exquisite of persian gems, and are further considered in another chapter. the sehnas have the nap cut very close, wellnigh to the warp, and are therefore often too thin for utility. they do not lie well on the floor, and by reason of their short nap look cold and lack richness and lustre. if you can find a choice one, however, and if, happily, as sometimes occurs, it may have a little depth of nap, you will own a pearl of great price. the khorassans are very soft and thick. they generally show the palm-leaf or loop design in their borders, and are altogether desirable. their colouring almost always inclines to magenta, but time subdues this to a delicate rose. time has also subdued most of the specimens offered, to the sad detriment of their edges and ends. the ends are very seldom perfect, and age seems to bite into the borders of the khorassans with a strange and voracious appetite. it is well to consider these defects in your choosing. the serabends and their class have one border peculiar to themselves and a centre of double, triple, or multiple diamonds in outline, in which are scattered irregular rows of small figures, generally palm leaves, so called. this peculiar figure has three or four different names, the palm leaf, the pear, the loop, etc. it was originally worked into the fabric of the finest cashmere shawls, and represents the loop which the river indus makes on the vast plain in upper cashmere, as seen from the mosque there, to which thousands made their pilgrimage. it was thus intended as a most sacred symbol and reminder. the serabends are firm in texture, lie well, and are most satisfactory. sometimes, however, the green in them shows the faults of an aniline dye. their designs are peculiar to themselves, but never become monotonous. the palm-leaf pattern is of course common to many kinds of rugs. but the varieties in the form and size of it are infinite. [illustration: plate v. chichi _about forty years old_ from the collection of the author size: 3.6 x 5.10] the shiraz rugs are warm in colour, lustrous, but rather loosely woven. many of them show the "shawl pattern," small horizontal or diagonal stripes. these striped rugs, however, are always wavering and irregular in design and soon tire the eye. they are well passed by. reproductions of the old shiraz designs with the centre field filled with innumerable odd, small figures used to be common a few years ago. they were very rich and handsome. almost all of them, however, have the great defect of being crooked. they will puff up here or there, and, pat, pull, or pet them as you may, it is hopeless to try to straighten them. they are frequently called mecca rugs, on the generally accepted statement that these are the rugs usually chosen to make the pilgrimage to that shrine. the youraghans and joshghans (tjoshghans) possess the general excellences of the best persians, but they are not commonly seen. the joshghans will show in their field a light lattice-work design with conventionalized roses, or graceful diaperings and patternings, of the four-petalled or six-petalled rose. the persian rose is single, of course, and appears in many simple forms. the joshghans might be the prototypes of some of the old kubas or kabistans, except that floriation was replaced by tiling and mosaic work in the daghestan region. the feraghans are not as finely woven as the serabends, and on that account, primarily, yield to them in excellence. but old feraghans often come in smaller sizes than the serabends and in more desirable proportions. on the other hand, while feraghans are generally of a firmer quality, there are also antique serabends heavy and silky. between the two it would be little more than to choose the better specimen. while the feraghans have no accepted border to distinguish them, they have a most marked characteristic in the decoration of the field. it is a figure like a crescent, toothed inside; it might be a segment of a melon. but more than likely it was originally a curled-up rose leaf; for the rose, variously conventionalized, is most common to this class. there is generally an indication of a trellis, on which the roses are formally spread. but the curled leaf is almost always in evidence, however varied or angular it may be drawn. the persian mousuls are perhaps the best rugs now to be had for moderate prices. the region where they are made, being partly turkish and partly persian, gives them some of the characteristics of each nation. but the choice ones are always offered as persian; and the designs of most of them are distinctively of that country, with frequent use of serabend borders, feraghan figures, etc. their centre field sometimes contains bold medallions, but generally it is filled with palm-leaf or similar small designs, which in themselves are quite monotonous, except as they are diversified and made beautiful by graduated changes of colour in both the figures and background. sometimes these streaks of varying colour make too strong a contrast, but generally they shade into each other most harmoniously, and, the nap being heavy and the wool fine, these rugs are eminently lustrous and silky. they have no rivals in this regard except among the beluchistans and treasured kazaks. as you walk around them they glow in lights and shades like a cabochon emerald. one of their distinguishing designs is a very conventionalized cluster of four roses, the whole figure being about the bigness of a small hand. there is a rose at top and bottom and one on either side, with conventionalized leaves to give grace. the design is recognizable at a glance, and is wellnigh as old as persia. for the rose is conceded to be oriental in origin, and if it is not primarily a persian flower, it belongs surely to her by virtue of first adoption.[1] the designation of certain rugs as kurdish or kurdistan has been used indiscriminately, yet they are by no means the same, and between the two classes is a well-marked distinction which should be recognized. kurdistan is a large province in northern persia, with a protectorate government both turkish and persian, and with the turkish inhabitants in the ratio of about two to one, according to the geographers. the kurds constitute only a small but most important part of the population. they are generally spoken of as "a nomadic tribe," or more frequently as "that band of robbers, the kurds." regardless, however, of their morals or habits, by them are made characteristic, coarse, strong, and often superb rugs which are properly called "kurdish." on the other hand, the persians in kurdistan make a finer class of rugs and carpets, which are known as kurdistans. these latter have been praised by an eminent authority as "the best rugs now made in persia and perhaps in the east." they are certainly bold and splendid in design, beautiful in colouring, and of great strength and durability. the gulistans are thick, heavy, and handsome, with striking designs, frequently like the flukes of an anchor, on a light ground. they are not common now even in modern weaving. there are many other persian rugs which might be further specialized and considered. but such old commercial names as teheran, ispahan, etc., can in fact only be differentiated by an expert; and when experts disagree, as will frequently occur, and when they are at a loss to decide whether an important specimen is an ispahan or a joshghan, classification becomes obscure to the layman and even to the collector; and he will wisely avoid the complexities of such discussion. so, also, sarak rugs are rarely seen now save in modern reproductions, and must be passed by with the same criticisms as apply to the new-made tabriz. chapter vi caucasian rugs, daghestan and russian types the daghestan rugs of caucasia are only second in importance to those from persian looms. an opinion is reserved, nevertheless, regarding antique turkish weaves, which are hereinafter considered. if history does not satisfactorily prove that the caucasus was originally the northern part of persia (as may have been, under cyrus), persian dominance and influence may be demonstrated, in textile art, by rug borders, patterns, and designs. the shirvans, kabistans, chichis, darbends, karabaghs, all exhibit pronounced persian characteristics, and show the educational power of the mother country of this handicraft. fineness of weave, delicacy of hue, and chaste simplicity of design are distinguishing features of this group. but, as contrasted with the persian patterns, the persians use for their detail roses, flowers, palm leaves, etc., while the caucasians gain similar effects from geometrical figures, angles, stars, squares, and hexagons, with small tilings, mosaics, and trellisings. the true and the beautiful was never better demonstrated by euclid through angle, square, or hypothenuse. an old chichi rug, like a drawing of tenniel's, will prove what grace may come without a curve and by angles only. it is unfortunate that the best rugs of the caucasus come from the large province of daghestan, and that that general term is applied to them indiscriminately. twenty or more years ago most of the oriental rugs which were sold here to an uneducated and unappreciative public came by way of tiflis, and for lack of knowledge were all branded with the common name of daghestan. thousands of beautiful kabistans, shirvans, bakus, etc., were then sold for a song under the one arbitrary title. they would be priceless to-day, and yet the former commercial, vulgar use of the name leaves it in undeserved disrepute. as used in this chapter, it is intended to mark a distinction between certain of the caucasian types, which it properly represents, and the russian types from the same region, which are illustrated in the kazaks and yourucks. [illustration: plate vi. kabistan _thirty or forty years old_ from the collection of the author size: 4.5 x 5.6] what may have become of all the fine kabistans, which were forced upon the market years ago, is a question. are they all worn to rags and lost to the world? or do they still turn up at chance household auctions? many fine specimens may be so discovered, dirty, disguised, and disreputable, but easily reclaimable and made anew by washing. there is a theory, also, that many choice pieces came to san francisco in the 'seventies and 'eighties, and are lost to sight and memory somewhere in california. a collector might well explore this home field. too great praise cannot be given to the old shirvans, with their "palace" or "sunburst" pattern; to the chichis, with their mosaic work, worthy of saint mark's cathedral; to the karabaghs, with their flaming reds; or to the kabistans, with their soft, light tones of colour, made softer still in contrast with ivory and creamy white. these are the despised daghestans which _were_, and for which the collector may now vainly search abroad. it is not always easy to distinguish between an old--or middle-aged, may we say?--shirvan or kabistan. many of their designs are common property, and it is the cleverer weaver who executes them the better. this broad statement may be made by way of a test: the best of the shirvans are rather loosely woven and thin. the kabistans are of finer weave, are firmer and heavier, and lie truer on the floor. two classes of rugs from the caucasus have been referred to as russian, the yourucks and kazaks. there is no authority for the distinction except in the rugs themselves. they prove their case from their thickness and iron durability, from their sombre or strong red colouring, and from their daring crude and simple designs. in their utility they bespeak an article of warmth and weight, and in their art they represent a barbaric simplicity like a navajo blanket. kazak and cossack are almost synonymous terms; and the cossacks, the kurds, and the indians have something of kinship in weaving, at least. but the kazak rugs are not all crude, by any manner of means. if strength is their first characteristic and strong primitive pigments in rare greens, reds, and blues; and if their patterns are simple and angular;--none the less, in antique specimens, much originality was shown in the drawing of their borders, and soft browns and yellows with ivory white appeared in their colouring. of the shirvans, chichis, etc., ordinarily offered, there is nothing to be said. they are cheaply and roughly woven, and made only to sell. they are disposed of by the thousands at auctions, and piles and piles of them fill the carpet and department stores. be it said to their credit that they will outwear any machine-made floor covering; that they are good to hide a hole in an old carpet; that they help to furnish the bedrooms of a summer cottage; that they are most useful in the back hall; and, in fine, that they are better than no rugs at all. yet, on the other hand, be it well understood that they are not, as frequently advertised, "exquisite examples of textile art," and that fine oriental rugs are not to be bought at "$6.98" apiece. chapter vii of turkish varieties babylon or egypt may have woven the first carpets or floor coverings, and china of course worked early in the same field. but persia acquired the art quite independent of china, and well in the beginning of the long ago. indeed, the chinese industry practically ceased to exist many centuries back, and was transferred to northern persia, where the history of this handicraft has its true beginning. from persia all other countries have drawn their knowledge and inspiration, and however much they may have endeavoured to create and to evolve new figures and new designs, even the oldest examples of their art must concede something to persian influence. the turks, above all others, have shown themselves the most apt scholars, and indeed in many lines have improved upon their teachers. the choicest specimens of turkish weave are as rubies to the other precious stones, rarer, more brilliant, and more costly than diamonds. though not so closely woven as some of the persians, they are wonderfully beautiful in artistic picturing and in their own oriental splendour of colour and design. such in particular are the antique gheordez, as splendid in rich floods of light as the stained-glass windows of a cathedral. they are the finest woven and have the shortest nap of their class. here is the description of one taken from a catalogue of twenty-five years ago: "antique gheordez prayer rug. mosque design, with columns and pendant floral lamp relieved on solid ground of rare egyptian red, surmounted by arabesques in white upon dark turquoise, framed in lovely contrasting borders." [illustration: plate vii. antique gheordez _prayer rug_ from the collection of mr. george h. ellwanger size: 4.6 x 5.11] another is pictured as: "a flake of solid sapphire, crested by charming floral designs in ruby on ground of white opal. the mosaics and blossom borders are toned to perfect harmony." these word pictures are in no way exaggerated, and only help to portray the glories of the old gheordez, with their graceful hanging lamps, as wonderful as aladdin's, in a vista between pillars of chalcedony or onyx. they came in the form of prayer rugs generally, and a pronounced feature of those more commonly seen is a multiplicity of small dotted borders. the older and finer examples show borderings of far more graceful and artistic drawing. the antique koulahs and koniahs, though not so finely woven, have mostly the same superb centres or panels of solid colour as the gheordez, and vie with the latter in the splendour of their hues, if not in the delicacy and intricacy of their designs outside the central field. the koulahs may generally be recognized by a narrow border, which is peculiar to themselves and is almost invariably found on them. this consists of a broken line of little tendrils or spirals quite chinese in character, and looking much like a row of conventionalized chips and shavings. it is so odd and distinctive that once seen it can never be mistaken. the koniahs also have little figures which are quite their own, and which usually appear somewhere in the central design. they are small flowers each on a single stem, and the flower has commonly three triangular petals, like an oxalis or shamrock leaf. it is quite unlike the blossoms which besprinkle other rugs. with this, often come crude figures of lamps like miniature tea-pots. the ladiks display all the colours of an october wood, and complete the group of turkish old masters. not a few of them have also a unique border in the form of a small lily blossom. experts speak of it familiarly as the "rhodian border," but its origin is altogether obscure. [illustration: plate viii. antique koulah _prayer rug_ from the collection of mr. george h. ellwanger size: 3.11 x 5.6] these words in testimony to the beauties of turkish rugs may be offered simply by way of guide-posts to lead to some museum. a few battered and torn war-flags of gheordez or ladiks are occasionally offered on the market, but the best of them lack all character and colour, and show only the bold design and holes and strings and naked warp. just which particular turkish rugs are properly classed as anatolians it is hard to say, anatolia being so large a province. the term as commercially used is only as comprehensive and expressive as "iran" applied to the persians. it is generally misapplied to an uncertain class of old, worn, and tarnished remnants or new coarse prayer rugs, ruinous of harmony with their magenta discords. yet many of the "mats" are rightly called anatolians, and, premising a later chapter, one of the greatest delights of collecting was to look over a pile of them, with the never-failing hope of finding some bright particular gem. and these mats are truly the little gems of turkish weaving, and in accordance with the oriental fondness for jewels and precious stones the suggestion that they represent inlaid jewelled work has been well imagined. but here again we cry, "eheu fugaces!" they have gone. it is idle to look over the pile. there are no good ones for sale. one explanation of their scarcity is in the fact that the armenian dealers have a weakness for these small pieces themselves, and are wont to indulge their fondness for colour and sheen by keeping the choice ones for their own use. so the mats of commerce are either new, coarse, and crude and offensive with arsenical greens and aniline crimsons and magentas; or they are but soiled patches and bits of old rugs sewn together. _caveat emptor!_ and let the buyer look at their backs before purchasing. the old melez rugs, with characteristics peculiar to themselves, are of almost like importance to the koniahs and koulahs. frequently they have a suggestion of the chinese in their figures and decorations. you will find symbolized dragons pictured on them, also the cypress tree; while in colour they form a class by themselves, and exhibit shades of lavender, heliotrope, and violet such as no other kinds may boast. whatever this dye may be, and whatever tone of mauve or lilac it may take, you will find it only in the melez, a few bergamas, or in some old irans, whose race is practically extinct. worthy modern melez are still to be had, and will improve as they wear; if only they are firm in texture and do not flaunt the battle-flag colours of solferino and magenta. [illustration: plate ix. melez _forty or fifty years old_ from the collection of the author size: 3.10 x 5.3] the bergamas come mostly in blues and reds, most prominently set out by soft ivory white. one of their recognized patterns is quite individual, and readily marks their class. it is a square of small squares marked off like a big checker-board. other small pieces are almost square, with the field in mosaic-work or flower blossoms. in the fine old specimens, which used to be, the bergamas rioted in superb medallions or in a floriated central figure like a grand bouquet. as a class, their merit is softness and richness. their defect is that of the shiraz, a proneness to curl and puff themselves with pride. the fault is caused by the fact that their usually artistic selvedge is too tightly drawn. skilful cutting of the selvedge and new fringing will correct the error. some old and some excellent new bergamas have lately been in evidence in the stocks of the oriental dealers. howsoever or wheresoever they come, the collector may well take courage from their appearance and apply himself to the chase with renewed zest. chapter viii turkoman or turkestan rugs the geography of the carpets and rugs thus far considered has included a very considerable area. any traveller or collector who may have journeyed in fact to the regions where they are made may well have stories to tell, for his wanderings will have led him into strange lands and wild places. but the remaining classes of rugs, which we are wont to see lying gracefully in front of our hearths, as tame and peaceful as kittens, have come from still farther and wilder regions of the world; and the wonder is that we see them at all or are permitted the privilege of treading on them. the turkestan class, so far as our subject is concerned, carries us east from persia, through afghanistan and beluchistan even into china. they are oriental in very truth, and at first blush, it would seem, should be more crude and barbaric in their art. but as compared with the bold, rough, and rude weaves and patterns of the russian caucasians, they are, as a class, most refined and delicate in design and fine in texture. it has been said that "whoever has seen one bokhara rug has seen them all." their set designs and staple colouring have been so long familiar that we have lost respect for them. there are the well-known geometric figures for the centre, smaller similar figures for the borders, and a mosaic of diamonds or delicate traceries of branches for the ends. choice examples, like the stars, differ from one another in glory only. the variations evolved from the one conventional design are almost infinite; and the many shades and tones of red which are used bring to mind the paintings of vibert and his wonderful palette of scarlets, carmines, crimsons, maroons, and vermilions. [illustration: plate x. antique beluchistan from the collection of the author size: 4.10 x 8.3] some of the rare old bokharas come in lovely browns and are almost priceless in value. sad to say, it remained for an american vandal to discover a process of "dipping" or "washing" an ordinary rug so as to imitate these rare originals, and many dealers unblushingly sell these frauds. to wear imitation jewelry is far less reprehensible. happily the trickery is generally distinguishable because the "dip" or stain, whatever it may be, is apt to run into the fringe or otherwise betray itself. the wise buyer will reject with scorn any rug, under whatsoever name offered, which shows no other colouring than various shades of chocolate brown. no such uniform brown dyeing ever characterized any class of rugs. even the brown bokharas which are in museums show some other tints with their brown tones. good bokharas, like good kirmans, are undeniably beautiful and of great value, but the mere fact that both are considered staples in the rug trade tends to detract from their artistic value; and that they are so generally doctored, disguised, and perverted puts them in bad repute. the yamoud-bokharas come in larger sizes than the others of their type; are not so fine in texture, but thicker and firmer. their designs are larger and bolder, and they show a most becoming bloom. they also display green and even yellow in their colouring, which is not usual in bokharas. their selvedge is beautifully characteristic. in bokharas proper the adornment of the selvedge usually is on the warp; as in the bergamas and beluchistans. in yamouds the selvedge is almost always carried out in wool with like skill as that given to the rest of the piece. the afghans are a coarser edition of bokharas, and may be mostly considered for utility. they come in large sizes, and almost square; have bold tile patternings, and in the finer examples are plush-like and silky. these are still to be had, but many modern ones are dyed with mineral dyes, and their bloom is meretricious. the chemist has waved his magic wand over them, not wisely but too well. the beluchistans are somewhat akin to the bokharas, and like the latter rejoice in reds and blues in the darker tones, while they display greater variety in their designs. these are ordinarily crude and simple, but in the old exemplars they were of considerable variety, and their wealth of changing colours in sombre shades was rich beyond the dream of avarice. "lees of wine," "dregs of wine," "plum," "claret," "maroon,"--these are terms which have served to describe their prevailing colours. the adjectives are still applicable and may give some idea of the colourful effects which are obtained from their stains of brown and red and purple. for decorative effect, their deeper tones make most harmonious contrast with the subdued and softened persians and old daghestans. in many specimens, new and old, white, both blue white and ivory, is used in startling contrast. it makes or mars the picture, according to the artistic skill of the weaver. the wool used in the good beluchistans is particularly soft and silky, and lends to them their unique velvety sheen. no other varieties show it so perfectly, although antique kazaks have their particular plush, and the mousuls with their depth of pile have a shimmer and shifting light which is their especial artistic feature. the distinction may not easily be formulated; but, nevertheless, the sheen of the beluchistan is one beauty, while the play of light and shade on a mousul is another pleasure to the eye. in the bergama rugs the weaver does not disdain to spend some toil and time upon the selvedge; and this, even in small specimens, is commonly four to six inches long, carefully woven in white and colour and with occasional ornamentation. in this selvedge a small, elongated triangle is frequently embossed in wool, with the commendable purpose of avoiding the "evil eye." but in the beluchistans the maker "enlarges his phylacteries, and increases the borders of his garments." he goes even to greater pains and trouble in the elaboration and finishing of his selvedge. it is often prolonged to eight or ten inches in moderate-sized rugs, and is woven into most interesting patterns and stripes of colour. it is literally carried to extremes. it may seem an act of vandalism, but the wise and stoical collector will do well to eliminate all but two or three inches of it and have a skilful weaver overcast and fringe the ends. selvedge, however adorned, is utilitarian only, and, like useless fringe, it must not be allowed to detract from the proportions and beauty of the piece itself. for the comfort of the collector be it known that within the last year or two, many fine beluchistan mats and small rugs have been secured somehow by the wholesalers and are in evidence in the retailers' stock. beluchistan, evidently, is one of the remote regions last to be drawn upon, scoured, ravaged, and exhausted. the opportunity should be improved by the provident buyer. the soumac or cashmere rug calls for no further description than a cashmere shawl. with the exception of choice antique specimens which time has chastened and mellowed into pictures in apricot, fawn, robin's-egg, and cream colours, the cashmeres are rather matters of fact than of art. what are known as killims, or kiz-killims, the better class, are hard fabrics akin to the soumacs except that they have no nap on either side, and are double faced. they are mostly caucasian and kurdish, with the bold designs of those classes, or they come in the beautiful, delicate patterns of the sehnas. in their crudest and strongest kazak figures they appear in the most brilliant pigments, with soft reds, rose, lake, and vermilion for contrasting colours, splashed together as on a painter's palette. of course they lack the sheen of a rug, but their colour effects are marvellous. while generally used for portières and coverings, they are perfect rugs for a summer cottage, being most durable, and are worthy of attention. moreover, fine antique examples are still to be had. some collector might be the first to make a specialty of them and garner them before they pass; the end of the oriental weaver's pageant. the usual warning, however, must be given, that they are often cursed with the barbarous magentas hereinbefore mentioned, a colour which would ruin a rainbow. the products of samarkand are quite out of the ordinary, and thoroughly chinese in character. except by association and classification they have no resemblance to the turkestan or any other division. they form a class by themselves, the legitimate successors of the old chinese rugs, long gone by. they are very bold in design, and in colour tend to yellow, orange, and various soft reds. an inferior make of samarkands often appears under the title of malgaras. they have neither quality nor colour to commend them. but there are old chinese rugs also. most of them are in the conventional blue and white, with simple octagonal medallions, with no border to speak of, and with little strength of character. they are coarsely woven and have been so commonly imitated by machine reproductions in english carpetry that even blue and white originals have small merit to boast of. there were, and doubtless still are, chinese rugs of far more importance. many are noted in the catalogue of a sale in new york city no longer ago than 1893. from one item remembered, they showed various beautiful colourings, far beyond the simple white and blue, and in design displayed much of the artistic strength, grace, and beauty of the old chinese porcelains. it is a mystery where these rugs lie hidden. no one boasts of owning them or claims credit to even a modest $10,000 antique specimen. chapter ix of oriental carpets, saddle-bags, pillows, etc. however a man may justify himself for collecting rugs, regardless of his success, of his needs, or of his income, there would seem to be no danger of any one making a specialty of buying carpets. except to millionaires or for clubs and palaces, space would absolutely prohibit, if the housewife did not. the nearest that the enthusiast might approach to such an ambition would be in the accumulation of hall strips; which has its own temptations, quite within the possible. and yet the term "carpet" is an elastic phrase, and any piece which exceeds six or seven feet in width and of greater length, is entitled by courtesy to be named a carpet. it may be said that a rug, like a baby, ceases to be a rug at an uncertain size, and then becomes a carpet. but carpets in the larger dimensions, ten by twelve feet or more, as ordinarily understood, are only herein considered. they are really articles of utility first and always, and must answer to certain measured requirements. such is the accepted theory and practice. the buyer is wont to think that the merit or beauty of a carpet is of secondary consideration if only it fit the room. here is a heresy. it is far better that the room should be made to fit or adapt itself to the perfect carpet. if you would buy one, the best that you can do is to choose wisely. they are all of modern make, with very few exceptions. if you have one that is antique, you yourself have made it so, or you have inherited a ragged and neglected example of bygone years. the modern carpets, nevertheless, those still made to-day, are many of them superb pieces, far outclassing any small rugs of the same weaving. [illustration: plate xi. antique anatolian pillows from the collection of the author sizes: 1.10 x 2.10, and 2.1 x 2.11] the kirmanshahs would come first, of course; closely woven, beautiful and soft in colour, delicate and artistic in their designs, they are the most perfect floor coverings for the salon, reception or music room. if they were only real! but very, very few of them are. they have all been treated with chemicals, and their beauty of complexion is just as artificial as any rouged and bepowdered courtesan's. unless you have one out of ten thousand, it has not come from a palace, but from a scientific laboratory. many of the tabriz carpets lie under the same suspicion, and those of soft tones, claiming to be antiques, may be wisely questioned. but new ones come in clean, rich colourings, in fine designs, and are textile masterpieces. the kurdistan carpets of to-day are by far the best of all. they are more loosely woven, but they are so much the heavier, and that is to be desired in a carpet. and they are honest. their colours are beautiful, varied, strong, and true. it is claimed for the kurdistans that some of their dyes are still well-guarded secrets; and it is true history of some years ago that many a bloody feud and murder grew out of cherished kurdistan secrets of dyeing. their designs are bold and striking, with grand centre medallion and corners, and a field artistically adorned. money cannot buy anything better than a fine new kurdistan; and thirty or forty years of wear should leave it better still. next to be chosen would be the gorovans. they also show brave figuring with a strong centre medallion, characteristic zigzag corners, and angular ornamentations which are most gracefully carried out. their colouring is usually in fine blues and reds. modern feraghans come in large carpet sizes, and some antique ones are still to be had. but the kurdistans and gorovans far surpass them in two important particulars. the feraghans appear only in their own peculiar, small-figured designs, which are without strength or character on a large floor space. besides that, being more closely cut than the others, if they do not soon wear out, they soon wear down, and begin to show the suspicion of their warp and their loss of tone and colour. they are beautiful carpets, nevertheless, and will practically last a lifetime. but the heavier they are, the better. there are few other modern persian carpets in large sizes which come in appreciable numbers for classification. there is a rather indefinite order of gulistans, under which title many good nondescripts are sold. there are also current sultanabads, in very large sizes, well woven, on old models, to meet present uses. most other carpets are of turkish weaving, whatever their names, and come under the general title of smyrnas. smyrna is the centre of distribution for a great variety of cheap and coarsely woven carpets; but poor in quality as these may be, they should not be confused with the american machine product also known as a "smyrna." in the same class come the oushaks, hamadans, etc. there is nothing more to be said for them than to testify that they will wear better than a brussels carpet, and give some distinction to a modest dining-room. it is a far cry from carpets to saddle-bags, and yet these latter are of greater importance and interest to the collector. more valuable pieces of oriental weaving are to be found among the diminutives than in the grand _opera_ of textiles. beginning at the bottom, we find plenty of the little pairs of bags, twelve or eighteen inches square. they are donkey bags, carried back of the saddle, and generally appear in shirvan make or, most commonly, in shiraz weaving. the shiraz often have considerable beauty and sheen and dark rich colouring. but these very small pieces have little real utility or available artistic beauty. they never lie well, and only litter up the floor. they belittle a well-arranged room as would a frail and useless gilt chair. they are recommended for pillows, but we occidental infidels associate rugs too closely with the foot to find them easy to the head. they are also advised for use as hassocks. but the hassock long ago disappeared, with or under the "what-not," or behind "the horse-hair sofa." other bags, used on horse and camel, come in more important sizes, as large as two feet by six feet or more. exquisite specimens of bokharas are found among these; artistic, antique pieces, woven as fine as needlework. a number of these seem to have come suddenly on the market in some mysterious way; and they are of every size within their small limits; because, as an oriental has suggested, there are _pony_ camels also. another mystery about those camel bags would seem to be that some are beautifully straight and therefore most to be desired, while others are so curved as to be impossible of use unless around the foot of a pillar. here is a case differing from that of the ordinary crooked rug, because these bags were originally made straight and true. overloading and overpacking have only sagged down the middle. i dare not say that the more the curve, the greater the age and the more the value; but it may be that curved bokhara saddle-bags, passed by, by the levite, are prizes to be picked up by the good samaritan, and may be easily restored to normal rectitude. but the term "saddle-bag," whether for this animal or that, is confusing and altogether too generally used. it must be borne in mind that a bag was and is an article of universal utility to the oriental. for all purposes of travel, journeying, or visiting, it corresponds to our valise or portmanteau of to-day; or, in aptest comparison, to our "carpet-bag" of fifty years ago. and, according to the taste and means of their owners, these persian, armenian, or turkish carpet-bags varied in size and beauty. a few rare old caucasian small rugs can only be accounted for as valued personal rug-bags of their period. among these smaller pieces are alone to be found the most valuable of all the collector's spoil, the small sehnas. very rarely they come in pairs, about two feet by three feet, and therefore could not have been used as bags for any purpose. they are pillows; and pillows of course play their important part in the _ménage_ of the east. besides the exquisite sehnas, the finest of the anatolian mats, as they are generally called, were used for pillows and not saddle-bags. the warp generally proves their purpose. when the warp runs vertically to the larger side, and ends in a fringe, that specimen was of course some sort of a saddle-bag. when the selvedge is at the shorter end you have the pillow. among the other beautiful miniature specimens of textile art, which are still occasionally offered, are saddle-cloths. they appear mostly in beautiful sehnas, and occasionally in fine old feraghans and other persian weaves. they are marred, however, for beautiful floor coverings by the necessary angular cut in them, through which the straps of the saddle passed. this is often skilfully filled in, in the case of choice specimens. but the blot remains. their irregular shape also condemns them for the most part with the many admirable but irreclaimable crooked rugs. these saddle-bags are frequently used for table coverings or for mural adornment. but in our modern house decoration rarely does a rug look well upon the wall. the persians hang them instead of pictures, which is well. but they do not mix them with pictures on the wall, which is better, and shows good taste on the part of the persians. a rug appears best upon the floor. the collector of small pieces to-day will do well to buy every bag or pillow of bokhara or beluchistan which may please his fancy. they are to be had now at modest prices, but unless all signs fail, they will soon become as rare as any of the other miniatures. you will look in vain for them with the vanished anatolians and diamond sehnas. chapter x auctions, auctioneers, and dealers a justification of the method of selling rugs by auction has been offered in many forms and phrases. it is perhaps best expressed somewhat thus: every number has a certain intrinsic value, and that is a basis price at which it should sell. but beyond that it may have an extra value, which, like beauty in general, is in the eye of the beholder. the beholder, therefore, who sees a rug to covet it should name his own price for it. it may be one of the specimens he lacks in his collection; it may fit this corner or that. anyway, it is worth more to him than to the lower bidder. incidentally, the seller and the auctioneer gain the fair profits of competition. other arguments in favour of the auction have been advanced by the head of a great department store. his opinion is that the auction gives every one a chance to get the rug desired at a fair price. tastes differ and prices differ, but the average of an auction is fair to both buyer and seller. regardless of theories, rug auctions, by whomsoever fathered or sponsored, thrive and flourish. if the auction be the collection of such and such an oriental, whatever his name, there will be a great deal of cheap stuff in his stock, and there will also be many choice pieces which he holds as the apples of his eye. he buys from the wholesaler so many bales at so much per bale of say twenty pieces. in the bales of ordinary qualities the several items will average about the same. but in the more expensive bales there is a good general average, with a few prizes added. they are like the two or three green firecrackers in the packs of our childhood. these special pieces in the high-priced bales give the seller his legitimate opportunity and profit. if these odd firecrackers please your fancy more than mine, and i am contented to choose the conventional red ones, it is for you to fix the value of the greens. at an auction the apparent authority and ruler is the auctioneer, while the owner weeps cheerfully on one side and shrugs his shoulders in half-pathetic resignation at the sacrifice. in reality the auctioneer knows pretty well what he is about, and, if not, is quickly posted by the owner. it is no harm to say that if we cannot believe all that we read in the bible, no more is it safe to take literally all that the auctioneer asserts. a recent skit in "life" is pertinent (quoted from memory):- "_the wife._ look at this splendid bargain i bought for twenty dollars to-day. it's worth two hundred. "_the husband._ indeed! how do you know it is worth that much? "_the wife._ why, the auctioneer told me so." a new plan of auction has been recently tried. you may buy in one or more lots at your own price, and if you do not wish to keep any, they may be returned within a certain number of days. you may bid _ad libitum_, recklessly as you choose; and if your choice be not all that your fancy and electric light have pictured it, you are under no obligation to keep it or pay anything on it; you may elect to change your mind and send it back. how this plan works in practice and finance has yet to be demonstrated. it would seem to be all on the side of the buyer and against the seller, who must lose many a bid from a _bona fide_ purchaser at a lower figure. the matter of human nature doubtless figures in the problem, because there is some little feeling of shame about returning an article bought in under competition, no matter what the guarantee may be. as to the auctioneers, they are always glib of tongue, good-natured, and persuasive. that they are not canonically and absolutely truthful is perhaps not their fault. they certainly cannot know more about rugs than the few authorities who have made a study of the subject; and, as said before, they are generally prompted by the "consignor" of the collection. if only they would not call _every_ rug an "antique and priceless specimen," their individual consciences might be happier, and their audience less bored. however, no matter what the audience, or how small it may be, there are always some there who will appreciate the difference between a four-dollar and a forty-dollar offering, and bid up the former to seven dollars and the latter to thirty dollars. thus the auctions go merrily on and strike a general average. the skilful auctioneer will feel the pulse of his audience with a quicker touch than the most renowned of doctors; and once assured of their class and position, wealth and condition, and what grade of merchandise they are willing to buy, the game is in his own hands, provided only that his audience is large enough. he should have at least a regulation pack of fifty-two in order to do justice to his own hand and skill, and in order to play off one card of his audience against another. the auction has its own particular fascinations, and its own _habitués_ and devotees in every city. the chronic attendants should be the most careful and conservative of buyers. but the artful auctioneer soon learns to know them, to recognize them among his _clientèle_, and to humour their whims, moods, and fancies. sooner or later he will wheedle them into a bid against their better judgment, and then make good capital of the fact that such and such a connoisseur had bought so great a bargain. the question might be asked, impersonally and perhaps impertinently, what was the auctioneer's influence at the marquand sale? was his the power? was it due to the catalogue? or was it in the air; and the zeal of an eager audience? the retail trade in rugs throughout this country is largely in the hands of armenians, both fixed and peripatetic; but of recent years much of their business has been annexed by the department stores. these various armenian dealers are universally known for their shrewdness and cleverness as well as for other ingenuousness and natural courtesy. except the heads of the carpet departments in some few large concerns, they know much more about their wares than other salesmen, and their personal, live knowledge gives a fillip of enthusiasm to the purchaser. they would control the retail trade in rugs, were it not that the department store has brought against them its powerful weapon of _per cent_. the store asserts that it wants only its modest _per cent_ on the cost of any article, no matter what its sentimental value may be. this may not be truth in its stark nakedness, but it has availed to draw to them a great deal of the trade in oriental textiles. the wholesale dealers are the most important factor in the question of distribution, for almost all the rugs sold in the united states must first pass through the hands of one or another of a dozen new york princes of the market. large or small retailers may import some pieces directly from london, paris, or constantinople, but even the most important retailers buy heavily from the great armenian wholesalers in new york city. it is difficult to estimate and impossible to state absolutely the number or even the value of the oriental rugs annually imported into the united states. the reason is that in the reports of the u. s. treasury as to "imported merchandise," etc., oriental carpets and rugs have no separate classification, but are included under the general heading of "carpets woven whole for rooms, and oriental, berlin, aubusson, axminster, and other similar rugs." it is quite a mixed company, but oriental weaves as herein considered are at least distinguished as such, and differentiated from carpeting by the yard. they have also the distinction, with the others of their group, of paying a tax of ninety cents per square yard and forty per cent ad valorem, as against from twenty-two to sixty cents per square yard and the same forty per cent ad valorem for the various brussels, wilton, and axminster floor-coverings coming by the yard, and not in one piece. and the duty on oriental rugs, be it observed, is measured by the square yard, and therefore no record is kept of the number of pieces, or how many individual items of the four classes have been imported. nevertheless, the statistics for the year ending june 30, 1902, show this general result: the total value of that year's import of these "whole carpets, oriental, berlin," etc., was a trifle below three million dollars. two and a half millions of this value came to new york with only half a million left to divide between chicago, philadelphia, boston, san francisco, and other ports of entry. the supremacy of new york city as the oriental rug mart for this country is easily manifest, although it is not so easy to estimate what proportion of the two and a half millions of value was in oriental rugs and what in modern carpets. one expert figures the value of the oriental rugs imported that year into new york as more than half the total, or perhaps two millions. it is as fair an estimate as may be had. considerable as this amount may be, it seems much less than might be expected. it may perhaps indicate the cheap grade and low quality of most of our present acquisitions in this category. the gathering of the rugs by the buyers, in the first instance, involves great hardships, endurance, and even danger; and the deeper their incursions into new and strange territory and unopened and unexplored sources of supply, the more profitable their spoil, but the greater their toil. beluchistan, as previously suggested, would appear now to be one of the remotest regions yet remaining to yield up a few new treasures to the persevering buyer. these rugs so gathered to the centres of trade in constantinople, tiflis, and other distributing points, quickly find their way thence to new york, and help to make the magnitude and seeming wonderful complexity of the large wholesale depots. whoever is fortunate enough to have the _entrée_ to any of these great new york storehouses will be first among those who understand the importance, value, and appreciation of the oriental rug. chapter xi inscriptions and dates in addition to the many patterns, figures, devices and symbols, which are used for ornamentation, rugs and carpets are often embellished with hieroglyphic writing, somewhere in their field, and commonly at top or bottom. not unfrequently complete borders are thus composed, as is evidenced in old kirmans. these designs are so graceful in their many angles and occasional curves that they scarcely suggest mere lettering. such they are, nevertheless; and our english script, with all its loops and turns and recurrent "lines of beauty," would hardly avail for like effective results. it is but another proof of the artistic possibilities of angular lines and geometric figures, so often demonstrated by oriental weavers. with few exceptions, all of these hieroglyphics are in the arabic language, and are quotations from the persian poets, with flowery sentiment, or from the koran, in proper precept. but, as is more important, there will frequently be found in the corners of a choice piece, or elsewhere unobtrusively woven, the signature or cipher of the maker, with the date of the making. this at once gives distinction and value to such a specimen and exalts it above its fellows. it also calls loudly for an answer to the question of what such name and date may be. very rarely can the dealer inform you, because he does not know. here, then, is a great stumbling-block in the path of the collector. it may be worth while to go around it by way of a brief explanation. the arabic language has been the _lingua franca_ of the east from the time that it succeeded greek in the seventh century. it still retains its universality wherever mohammedanism rules. turkey may be excepted from its sway, but, none the less, it is a most necessary language to-day in constantinople. its use by carpet-weavers is by reason of its catholicity; that it may be understood where their varying languages and unknown dialects would tell no story. that arabic is so generally known throughout the orient is doubtless no greater marvel than that mere children in paris speak french. but, however convenient, as an inter-racial and commercial language, arabic may be to those accustomed to it, or naturally conversant with it, it is most difficult to learn by western races. with ten years' study one may become a good scholar, and proficiency may follow for the persistent few. this will explain why inscriptions, texts, and verses on rugs and carpets are meaningless, except to the most erudite; and except, also, to those who see in them only another phase of persian ornament, strange, mysterious, arabesque, and beautiful. regarding the date, often woven into an example which the artist thought especially worthy, it would seem that some simple formula might be given for its ready translation. this may be approximated, although it is not so easy a matter as might appear, and requires a few words on the subject of arabian numerical notation. their general system is similar to ours, and, corresponding to our miscalled "arabic figures" of: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, their digits are represented by [arabic] both are read from left to right. these arabic digits, however, are not always easily to be deciphered on a rug, on account of the spreading of the wool and consequent irregularity of outline, and also because they generally appear in modest size. the back of the rug will show the figures much more sharply than the face, when there is a doubt. when the arabic numerals are made clear, it remains to reduce this date to the corresponding one of the christian era, by means of a complicated table. [illustration: plate xii. bergama _thirty to forty years old_ from the collection of the author size: 3.1 x 3.5] all mohammedan dating (with exceptions not to be considered here, however interesting historically) is from the hegira. the reckoning is not from the time of mohammed's "flight" from medina (september, 622), but from a day about two months earlier; namely, the first day of that arabian year. this beginning of the epoch, according to the best modern authorities, probably corresponds to july 16, 622. mohammedan chronology, however, is often expressed in other ways than by clear figures, and such florid records are most difficult to interpret. again, in old manuscripts, on coins and on a few rare antique carpets, the date is written out in full, in so many words; as, for instance, "two-hundred-and-five-and-twenty-after-the-thousand." intricate dates like these are to be solved only by an expert. but when the year is in question, without regard to month or day, and when the year is written in legible figures, a rough formula for computing the corresponding christian date is as follows: subtract from the given mohammedan year one thirty-third part of itself, and add to the remainder six hundred and twenty-two. thus: a. h. 1196 = a. d. 1196 36 + 622 = a. d. 1782. this is accurate enough for all practical purposes, and involves no difficulty except the deciphering of the arabic digits. the failure to subtract this essential one thirty-third part explains frequent misreadings by the ignorant dealer or uninitiated amateur. that six hundred and twenty-two must be added to the given mohammedan date explains itself. but it must be remembered also that the moslem year is lunar, and thus a little more than eleven days shorter than our solar year. their reckoning therefore gains one year in every thirty-three of our computation. modern commercial rugs of ordinary quality are occasionally provided with a date or other calligraphic figure to simulate the real signed and dated masterpieces. this trickery should never deceive even the most unwary, unless the piece is of exceptional merit; and then, there is no deception; or at least there is value received. chapter xii general observations and particular advice many kinds of rugs are made in part of camel's hair, generally undyed and of a soft brown tone. they are praised as particularly desirable and durable, and antique specimens often showed a distinguished beauty. modern examples are seldom improved by this addition to the wool. camel's hair, in the muggy days of summer, has the great fault of offending the nose and proclaiming not only that the "campbells are coming" but that the circus and the whole menagerie is already here. if the camel's hair part of your rug is soft and silky, it has been taken from young camels or from the camel's belly, and the odour is hardly ever noticeable. of wool in rugs generally it may be said that the best is from the younger sheep, and the silkiness and sheen of the wool give those same characteristics to the rug. silk rugs, both antique and modern, fairly dazzle the eye with their beauty, but he who may afford one will needs afford also to furnish the surroundings for it in like magnificence. otherwise all else grows pale and dull and leaden beside their refulgent glory. place a piece of modern dresden china side by side with a fine antique specimen of chinese porcelain, and the garishness of the modern ware will give a pallid tone to the soft whites of the oriental artist. but the fault is not with the older and perfect art; it is simply the old truth, in a new form, that evil colours corrupt and kill good colours. be that as it may, old silk rugs are almost priceless, and of value to a millionaire collector for their originality of design and for their soft harmonies of colour which centuries alone can give. modern silk rugs are mostly machine made, in part at least; are a detriment and a blot on any scheme of household decoration, and are always worth less than the price paid for them. by experience we may best learn how to choose a rug. as, for instance: never buy a rug, least of all at an auction, without thoroughly examining it. see its back as well as its face, and so be sure that it has not been cut, and that there are no serious holes in it. quite one-third of the good old rugs will show some rents or tears, often made by the grappling-hooks as the bales are shipped and transhipped. if these are no bigger than a silver dollar, a skilful repairer, of whom there are plenty, will readily remedy the defect. also hold the rug up to the light to know that the moths have not eaten it. look at the nap and see that it is not worn to the warp. lay it on a board floor, if possible, and apart from other rugs, and see that it lies flat and straight. none but those that are firm enough to lie well are desirable for use and general comfort. of course many fine antiques are their own sufficient excuse for exception from this rule. if in doubt as to whether a rug has aniline dyes or been doctored or painted, a handkerchief moistened with the tongue may sometimes discover the truth. painting a rug is a device not unfrequently practised when the nap is worn down and the warp shows white. bear in mind that a good example may be so dirty as not to show half its merits. a sharp patting may scatter enough dust to display it in its proper colours, and you may thus, literally, unearth a treasure. remember, too, that rugs never look so well or show as clear and bright when hanging on the wall as lying on the floor. therefore, test a rug spread out flat before you in broad daylight. it is a trick of the trade to hold up one end of the piece exhibited and keep it waving to show its sheen. this is often a mere device to conceal its bad shape or other defects. if you are buying a rug for use on the floor, you should see it so displayed. its sheen should be judged by walking around it and considering it in various lights. note that with few exceptions the fringe and selvedge on a rug were not made for beauty but for protection. when the fringe is ropy, long, or uneven, or the selvedge eaten into or ragged, do not leave the rug to its unkemptness, but trim it religiously. a man should have his hair cut and put in order at proper times; and the propriety of this observance is commonly preached on very many prayer rugs, where the comb is prominently pictured, to remind the devout that "cleanliness is next to godliness." indeed, the comb in various forms is so common a feature in the angular arch of most prayer rugs that its suggestiveness almost detracts from their beauty. the counsel is most persistent. even the clean white fringe of a fine persian is often so long as to need clipping. two inches or so is a plenty. if more is left, the strings only curl under and show a ragged and broken line, and the rug never appears trim and orderly. when the selvedge is gone, and the end borders or sides of the _rug itself_ are encroached upon and sawed by the tooth of time, more than half of the value and beauty of the piece is lost; but to preserve its usefulness it should be overcast and further damage prevented. never buy a rug as a perfect or even choice specimen if any border at the sides or ends is gone beyond repair. every border should have its corresponding end, and _vice versa_, or the piece is imperfect. selvedge is of slight importance, but, like a woman's skirts or a man's trousers, it is unforgivable if worn or frayed. the side edges which are otherwise still perfect are apt to become more or less ragged with wear. that is a detail, if the borders themselves are intact; and the edges only need overcasting before it is too late. when the good housewife has the rugs and carpets beaten, let it be done on the grass, if possible, and not when they are hung on a line and so allowed to break with their own weight. also let the severity of the beating be tempered with kindness and discretion. in winter, sweeping with snow will clean and brighten them most wonderfully. this whole matter of cleaning is a neglected science and worthy of a thesis all to itself. the face of a rug will stand the slapping which is its usual punishment for being dirty; but do not forget, in the end, to stroke it, with the nap, and so soothe its feelings. do not beat a rug or carpet on the back. that has no defence of nap, and you are liable to break the warp and loosen the knots. frequent sweeping is far better than the brutality of constant beating. the wool of a rug is really a sentient thing. however dead it may seem, it has a life and vitality all its own. it can be quickened, rejuvenated, and made alive again by proper washing. rugs in our modern houses easily accumulate dust and grime and smoke. but it is absurd to think that a rug is antique because it is dirty; or, more foolish still, that because it is dirty it is both antique and beautiful. wash some of your treasures and you will wonder at their real glory and colour. generally speaking, every rug should be washed about once a year. it is the oriental custom; and carpets there are otherwise kept much cleaner than with us, by reason of many usages and observances. that the orientals wash their rugs in cold water is not so. wherever and whenever their laundering is done, the water is as warm as can be had, naturally. milady washes her laces with her own fair hands, and delights in the task. the rug collector will do well, perhaps, to follow her example; except for the tender specimens, which must needs do without it, and the carpets, which are unmanageable. at all events, he will do wisely not to send his valued specimens to the ordinary carpet-cleaner. they may come back expurgated, but some virtue has gone out of them. the wool has lost its oil and life. it is hardly within the province of this volume to prescribe the exact methods of washing. wool soap will do wonders, it being always remembered to stroke softly with the nap, while the rug is drying. in kurdistan and neighbouring provinces the rugs are first soaked in milk of some kind and then rinsed, cleaned, and rubbed dry. the milk gives back to the wool its essential oil, and it becomes at once soft, shining, silky, and alive with glowing colour. this process, simple as it is, is kept as a profound secret by the few who know it in this country. another eastern method is to rub the rug with a mixture of rice-meal and oil, but the first recipe is by far the better. rugs must be cared for particularly as to moths. when they are in general use the moth will not corrupt, rust, or break through and steal, as may be paraphrased from the scriptures. the criminal indictment against the moth in this regard cannot be drawn too strongly. he is the collector's great enemy, because he destroys. age and even wear only ripen the perfections of fine modern pieces. carpets and rugs stored, or laid aside, are not mothproof, wherever they may be; unless they are treated as in the great wholesale houses, where they are lifted and moved once a week and protected with the odorous moth-ball. when rugs have to be moved and packed frequently they should be folded differently each time, and not always in the same creases. otherwise, wear and tear will soon show in the folds. for many obvious reasons they always should be folded away with the nap inside. experience should teach the collector to appreciate and care for all fine examples which he may already have. there are few others to take their places. "going! going! going!" has been said of them too often. time, as auctioneer, now says of them, as of old chinese porcelains, "gone!" and that they should be even rarer than old china is quite understandable. the ravages of time deal more gently with porcelains than with rugs. only breakage, not wear, moth, and abuse affects the former; and it is generally guarded in glass cases and dusted by the mistress herself. your rugs are neglected, or left to the gardener's heroic care and treatment. use and abuse encroach upon the ends and edges of a glorious old masterpiece, and ere it is too late, it becomes but "a king of shreds and patches." if there were new rugs to take its place, we might say: "the king is dead. long live the king!" but there are no new ones worthy of succession. the royal line is virtually extinct. index index afghan rugs, 82 " " , modern, mineral dyes in, 83 anatolian rugs, 73 " , commercial term, 73 " mats, 73, 74 angles, mystery of, 2 " , use of, 62 angular ornamentation, 96, 121 antique carpets, 94 " rugs, not to be had, 6 " " , term abused, 43 " " , tones of imitated, 81 " " , valuable for design, 44 arabian digits illustrated, 124 "arabic figures," miscalled, 124 arabic language, 122 " " , catholicity of, 122, 123 armenians, appreciation of, 3 " , as dealers, 113 " hoard anatolian mats, 74 auction, arguments for, 107, 108 " , caution in buying at, 133 " , fascination of, 112 " , ways of, 109, 110 auctioneer, 109, 110 " , powers of, 111-113 authorities, few available, 4 babylon, first rugs woven at, 69 bale, rugs by, 108, 109 bead-bags, 23 beluchistan rugs, 83 " " , silkiness of, 54 bergama rugs, 75 " " , defect of, 76 " " , lavender in, 75 bokhara camel-bags, 99 " rugs, 80 " " , brown, 81 " " , yamoud, 82 " saddle-bags, crooked, desirable, 100 border, caucasian, persian, 23 " , classifying rugs, 27, 28 " , crab, 29, 30 " , dotted, gheordez, 71 " , koulah, 27, 72 " , ladik, lily, 25, 72 " , must have end to correspond, 136 " , rhodian or lily, 25, 72 " , serabend, 29, 50 " " , in mousuls, 53 borders in khorassan rugs, defective, 49 camel-bags, 99 " " , crooked, desirable, 100 camel's hair in rugs, 131 cashmere, _see_ soumac carpet, 93 " , room should fit, 94 carpet-bag, 100, 101 carpets, modern persian, 94-98 " " turkish, 97, 98 caucasian rugs, characteristics of, 62 " " , persian influence on, 61 " " , varieties of, 16 chichi rugs, 61, 62 " " , ordinary specimens of, 66 chinese figures in melez rugs, 75 " old, rugs, 88, 89 " weaving transferred to persia, 69 china, first rugs from, 69 collector encouraged, 76 colours, brown, to be rejected, 81 " , chemical in carpets, 95 " , dark, of beluchistans, 83 " , flaming red, of karabaghs, 64 " , green and yellow, in bokharas, 82 " , lavender, heliotrope, &c., 75 " , magenta, to be avoided, 75, 87 " of beluchistans, 83 " " bergamas, 75 " " ladiks, 72 " " gheordez, 70, 71 " , red, of bokharas, 80, 81 comb, as symbol, 135 cossack, like kazak, 65 crooked rugs, poetical version of, 21 daghestan, confusing term, 61, 62 " rugs, 61 " " , term distinguished, 63 dates on rugs, 124, 127 " " " , arabian digits for, 124 " " " , formula for reading, 126 " " " , intricate forms of, 125 dealers, uncommunicative, 2 " , wholesale, 108 design, checker-board, 75, 76 " , comb, 135 " , feraghan, 24, 53 " , four roses, 54, 55 (note) " , koniah, 26, 72 " , lamp, 72 " , mosque, 70 " , no pattern for, 26 " , "palace pattern," 64 " , "palm-leaf," "pear," loop, 50 " , "shawl pattern," 64 " , "sunburst," 64 designs, as trademarks, 26 " , animals for, not on turkish rugs, 46 " , geometric figures for, 80 " , kazak, in killims, 86, 87 " , mosaic-work in, 64, 76, 80 " , palm-leaf, in mousuls, 53, 54 " , tile, 82 "dipping" rugs to imitate antique, 81 donkey-bags, 98 dyes, aniline, mineral, 35, 36, 38, 134 " " " , test for, 39 " , black, 36 " , brown, 37 " " , imitated, 81 " , green, 37, 50 " , magenta, 36, 49, 87 " , secret in kurdistan carpets, 96 edges, should be overcast, 137 ends, importance of perfect, 136 " , in khorassan rugs, defective, 49 " , should have corresponding borders, 136 experts, disagreement of, 56 " , no, 3 feraghan carpets, 96 " " , small figures of, 97 " rugs, 52 " " , characteristic design of, 29, 52 " " , " " " illustrated, 24 figures, _see_ design fringe of rugs, not for beauty, 135 " " " , trimming of, 136 geography of carpets and rugs, 79, 80 gheordez rug, 70, 71 gorovan carpets, 96 gulistan carpets, 97 " rugs, 56 hall rugs, desirable, 45, 93 " " , persian term for, 44 hamadan carpets, 98 holes in rugs, cause of, 133 india carpets, 17 inscriptions on rugs and carpets, 121 "iran," as descriptive term, distinguished, 15 " , a trade term like "anatolian," 73 ispahan rugs, 56 jewels, mats like, 74 joshghan rugs, 51, 52 " " , like ispahans, 57 kabistan rugs, 63 " " , distinguished from shirvans, 64 karabagh rugs, 64 kazak rugs, 65 " " , plush of, 84 killims, 86, 87 khorassan rugs, 49 "kinari," persian term for "hall rugs," 44 kirman rugs, 45-48 kirmanshah carpets, 95 " rugs, trade name for kirmans, 48 kiz-killims, _see_ killims knots, kinds of, 25 " , numbers of, 26 koniah rugs, 71 " " , characteristic design of described, 72 " " , " " " illustrated, 26 koulah rugs, 71 " " , characteristic border of described, 72 " " , " " " illustrated, 27 kurdish rugs distinguished from kurdistans, 55 kurdistan carpets, 95, 96 " rugs, 55, 56 kurds, "a band of robbers," 55 ladik rugs, 72 " " , characteristic border of described, 72 " " , " " " illustrated, 25 lamp, aladdin's, 71 lamps like tea-pots in koulahs, 72 malgara rugs, 88 "mats," anatolian, 73, 74 " , beluchistan, 85 "mecca" rugs, doubtful term, 3 " " , shiraz, so called, 51 melez rugs, 74, 75 mohammedan dating, 125, 126 moth holes to be looked for in buying rugs, 133 moths to be guarded against, 140 mousul rugs, 53 " " , shimmer of, 84 museums, best rugs in, 6 " , brown bokharas only in, 81 " , guide-posts to, 73 mysterious inscriptions, 123 mystery of the rug, 2 names of rugs, 8, 9 " " " , commercial, 56 " " " , importance of, 14 " " " , unknown and fanciful, 14 oushak carpets, 98 pattern, _see_ design persia, inspiration drawn from, 69 "persian iran," ignorant term, 15 persian, means splendour, 6 persian rugs, best to buy, 45 " " , order of, 15 pile, depth of, in mousuls, 84 pillow, shown by selvedge, 101 pillows, sehna, 101 prayer rugs, 71 " " , comb in, 135 rose, conventionalized, 53 " , oriental origin, 54 " , persian, 52 rugs, beating of, 137 " , cheap, uses and value of, 66 " , cleaning of, 137 " , firm, that lie well, desirable, 134 " , folding of, 141 " , holes in, 133 " , hung on wall, criticised, 102, 134 " , moths in, 140 " , much worn, to be avoided, 133 " , neglect of, 141 " , number annually imported, 114, 115, 116 " , painted or doctored, test for, 134 " , retail trade in, 113 " , tricks in selling, 135 " , washing of, 138, 139, 140 " , wholesale dealers in, 114, 117 russian, types of, in caucasian rugs, 63, 65 saddle-bag, 98 " " , shown by selvedge, 101 " " , term confusing, 100 saddle-cloth, 102 samarkand rugs, 87 sarak rugs, 57 selvedge, cutting of in beluchistans, 85 " " " " bergamas, 76 " of bergamas, 84 " " beluchistans, 28 " " bokharas, 82 " " pillows, 101 " " saddle-bags, 101 " " yamoud bokharas, 82 " should be trimmed, 135, 136 sehna rugs, 48, 49 " pillows, 101 serabend rugs, 50 " " , characteristic border of, 29 " " , " " illustrated, 50 shiraz donkey-bags, 98 " rugs, 51 " " , defects of, 76 shirvan donkey-bags, 98 " rugs, 64 " " , distinguished from kabistan, 64 silk rugs, antique, 132 " " , modern, to be avoided, 48, 132, 133 sizes of carpets, 44, 94 " " rugs, 44 " " " , almost square, 82 smyrna carpets, 97, 98 "smyrna" carpets, so called, 98 soumac rugs, 86 "strips," or "stair-rugs," proper name of, 44 sultanabad carpets, 97 tabriz carpets, 95 " rugs, 57 teheran rugs, 56 tjoshghan, _see_ joshghan tree, cypress, 75 " of life, 46 trellis, rose, 53 turkestan rugs, 79 " " , varieties of, 16 " " , " " , order of, 16 " weaves, like rubies, 70 turkoman rugs, 79 tzi-tzi, _see_ chichi washing of rugs, essential, 138 " " " , methods of, 139, 140 weaving, done by women, 22 " , method of, 24, 25 wholesale dealers, buyers from, 108 wool, camels', 131 " from young sheep, desirable, 132 wool has life, is sentient thing, 138 " , like plush in kazaks, 84 " , soft and silky, in beluchistans, 84 youraghan rugs, 51 yourdez, _see_ gheordez youruck rugs, 65 footnote: [1] this ancient four-flowered pattern appears in as many forms as the loop or palm-leaf; but whatever bud or blossom may be modelled by the weaver, the design retains its strong distinctive lines. it is shown on the cover of this volume in one phase, and it appears in different form in the plate of the beluchistan rug. [frontispiece: the bibliofiends. drawn by oliver herford] the unpublishable memoirs by a. s. w. rosenbach new york mitchell kennerley mcmxvii copyright 1917 by mitchell kennerley printed in the united states by the vail-ballou company binghamton new york to r. r. contents the unpublishable memoirs the three trees the purple hawthorn the disappearance of shakespeare the colonial secretary in defence of his name "the hundred and first story" the lady of the breviary the evasive pamphlet the great discovery the fifteen joys of marriage the unpublishable memoirs it was very cruel. he was dickering for one of the things he had desired for a life-time. it was in new york at one of the famous book-stores of the metropolis. the proprietor had offered to him for one hundred and sixty dollars--exactly the amount he had in bank--the first and only edition of the "unpublishable memoirs" of beau brummel, a little volume issued in london in 1790, and one of two copies known, the other being in the famous "hidden library" of the british museum. it was a scandalous chronicle of fashionable life in the eighteenth century, and many brilliant names were implicated therein; distinguished and reputable families, that had long been honored in the history of england, were ruthlessly depicted with a black and venomous pen. he had coveted this book for years, and here it was within his grasp! he had just told the proprietor that he would take it. robert hooker was a book-collector. with not a great deal of money, he had acquired a few of the world's most sought-after treasures. he had laboriously saved his pennies, and had, with the magic of the bibliophile, turned them into rare volumes! he was about to put the evil little book into his pocket when he was interrupted. a large, portly man, known to book-lovers the world over, had entered the shop and asked mr. rodd if he might examine the beau brummel memoirs. he had looked at it before, he said, but on that occasion had merely remarked that he would call again. he saw the volume on the table in front of hooker, picked it up without ceremony, and told the owner of the shop that he would purchase it. "excuse me," exclaimed hooker, "but i have just bought it." "what!" said the opulent john fenn, "i came especially to get it." "i'm sorry, mr. fenn," returned the proprietor, "mr. hooker, here, has just said that he would take it." "now, look here, rodd, i've always been a good customer of yours. i've spent thousands in this very shop during the last few years. i'll give you two hundred dollars for it." "no," said rodd. "three hundred!" said fenn. "no." "four hundred!" "no." "i'll give you five hundred dollars for it, and if you do not take it, i shall never enter this place again!" without another word rodd nodded, and fenn quickly grasped the little book, and placed it in the inside pocket of his coat. hooker became angry and threatened to take it by bodily force. a scuffle ensued. two clerks came to the rescue, and fenn departed triumphantly with the secrets of the noble families of great britain securely in his possession. rodd, in an ingratiating manner, declared to hooker that no money had passed between them, and consequently there had been no sale. hooker, disappointed, angry, and beaten, could do nothing but retire. at home, among his books, his anger increased. it was the old, old case of the rich collector gobbling up the small one. it was outrageous! he would get even--if it cost him everything. he dwelt long and bitterly upon his experience. a thought struck him. why not prey upon the fancies of the wealthy! he would enter the lists with them; he would match his skill against their money, his knowledge against their purse. hooker was brought up in the mystic lore of books, for he was the son of a collector's son. he had always been a student, and half his time had been spent in the bookseller's shops, dreaming of the wonderful editions of chaucer, of shakespeare, of rare ben jonson, that some day he might call his own. he would now secure the priceless things dearest to the hearts of men, at no cost to himself! he would not limit his choice to books, which were his first love, but he would help himself to the fair things that have always delighted the soul,--pictures, like those of raphael and da vinci; jewels, like cellini's; little bronzes, like donatello's; etchings of rembrandt; the porcelains (true ming!) of old china; the rugs of persia the magnificent! the idea struck him at first as ludicrous and impossible. the more he thought of it, the more feasible it became. he had always been a good mimic, a fair amateur actor, a linguist, and a man of parts. he possessed scholarly attainments of a high order. he would use all of his resources in the game he was about to play. for nothing deceives like education! and it had another side--a brighter, more fantastic side. think of the fun he would get out of it! this appealed to him. not only could he add to his collections the most beautiful treasures of the world, but he would now taste the keenest of joys--he would laugh and grow fat at the other man's expense. it was always intensely humorous to observe the discomfiture of others. with particular pleasure hooker read that evening in the _post_ this insignificant paragraph: "john fenn, president of the tenth national bank of chicago, departs for home to-night." he laid the paper down immediately, telephoned to the railroad office for a reservation in the sleeping-car leaving at midnight, and prepared for his first "banquet." hooker shaved off his moustache, changed his clothes and his accent, and took the train for chicago. as luck would have it, john fenn was seated next to him in the smoking-car, reading the evening papers. hooker took from his pocket a book catalogue, issued by one of the great english auction houses. he knew that was the best bait! no book-lover that ever lived could resist dipping into a sale catalogue. hooker waited an hour--it seemed like five. fenn read every word in the papers, even the advertisements. he dwelt long and lovingly over the financial pages, running his eyes up and down the columns of "to-day's transactions." he at last finished the perusal, and glanced at hooker. he said nothing for awhile, and appeared restless, like a man with money weighing on his mind. this, of course, is a very distracting and unpleasant feeling. several times he seemed on the verge of addressing his fellow-traveller, but desisted from the attempt. finally he said: "i see, friend, that you're reading one of sotheby's catalogues." "yes," answered hooker, shortly. "you must be interested in books," pursued fenn. "yes," was the brief response. "do you collect them?" "yes." fenn said nothing for five minutes. the stranger did not appear to be very communicative. "pardon me, mr.----, i am also a book-collector. i have quite a fine library of my own." "really?" "yes, i always visit the shops when i go to new york. here is a rarity i picked up to-day." the stranger expressed little interest until fenn took from his pocket the "unpublishable memoirs." it was wrapped neatly in paper, and fenn carefully removed the little volume from the wrappings. he handed it to the man who perused so assiduously the auction catalogue. "how extraordinary!" he cried, "the lost book of old brummel. my people were acquainted with the beau. i suppose they are grilled right merrily in it! of all places, how did you come to purchase it in the states?" "that's quite a story. a queer thing how i bought it. i saw it the other day at rodd's on fifth avenue. i did not buy it at first--the price was too high. thought i would be able to buy it later for less. this morning, i went to see rodd to make an offer on it, when i found that rodd had just sold it to some young student. the confounded simpleton said it belonged to him! what did that trifler know about rare books? now _i_ know how to appreciate them." "naturally!" said the stranger. "i've the finest collection in the west. i had to pay a stiff advance before the proprietor would let me have it. it was a narrow squeak,--by about a minute. the young jackass tried to make a scene, but i taught him a thing or two. he'll not be so perky next time. how my friends will enjoy this story of the killing. i can't wait until i get home." the stranger with the freshly-shaven face, the english clothes, and the austere eyes did not seem particularly pleased. "how extraordinary!" he said, coldly, and returned to his reading. fenn placed the book in his pocket, a pleased expression on his face, as if he were still gloating over his conquest. he was well satisfied with his day, so intellectually spent among the banks and bookshops of new york! "by the way, i am acquainted with this rodd," said the englishman, after a pause. "he told me a rather interesting story the other day, but it was in a way a boomerang. i don't like that man's methods. i'll never buy a book from him." "why not?" asked the inquisitive mr. fenn. "well, you'd better hear the tale. it appears he has a wealthy client in chicago and he occasionally goes out to sell him some of his plunder. he did not tell me the name of his customer, but, according to rodd, he is an ignoramus and knows nothing at all about books. thinks it improves his social position. you know the type. last winter rodd picked up for fifty dollars a beautifully illuminated copy of magna charta issued about a hundred years ago. it's a fine volume, printed on vellum, the kind that dibdin raved about, but always considered a 'plug' in england. worth about forty guineas at the most. you know the book?" fenn nodded. "well, it worried mr. rodd how much he could ask his western patron for it. he left for chicago via philadelphia and while he was waiting in the train there he thought he could ask two hundred dollars for it. the matter was on his mind until he arrived at harrisburg, where he determined that three hundred would be about right. at pittsburgh he raised the price to five hundred, and at canton, ohio, it was seven hundred and fifty! the more rodd thought of the exquisite beauty of the volume, of its glowing colors and its lovely old binding, the more the price soared. at fort wayne, indiana, it was a thousand dollars. when he arrived at chicago the next morning, his imagination having had full swing, he resolved he would not under any circumstances part with it for less than two thousand dollars!" "the old thief!" exclaimed fenn, with feeling. "it was a lucky thing," continued the stranger, "that his client did not live in san francisco!" at this fenn broke forth into profanity. "i always said that rodd was an unprincipled, unholy, unmitigated--" "wait until you hear the end, sir," said the englishman. "that afternoon he called on the western collector. he had an appointment with him at two o'clock. he left rodd waiting in an outside office for hours. rodd told me he was simply boiling. went all the way to chicago by special request and the brute made him cool his heels until four o'clock before he condescended to see him. he would pay dearly for it. when rodd showed him the blooming book he asked three thousand five hundred for it--would not take a penny less--and he told me, sir, that he actually sold it for that price!" "don't you believe it," said fenn, hotly. "old rodd is an unqualified liar. he sold it for five thousand dollars. that's what he did, the damn pirate!" "how do you know, sir?" "how do i know, _know, know_!" he repeated, excitedly. "i _ought_ to know! i'm the fool that bought it!" without another word fenn retired to his stateroom. the next morning when fenn arrived at his office in the fenn building, he called to one of his business associates, who, like his partner, was interested in the acquisition of rare and unusual books. "i say, ogden, i have something great to show you. picked it up yesterday. in this package is the wickedest little book ever written!" "let me see it!" said mr. ogden, eagerly. fenn gingerly removed the paper in which it was wrapped, as he did not wish to injure the precious contents. he turned suddenly pale. ogden glanced quickly at the title-page for fear he would be seen with the naughty little thing in his hands. it was a very ordinary volume, entitled, "a sermon on covetousness, a critical exposition of the tenth commandment by the rev. charles wesley." "the devil!" exclaimed john fenn. "how the old dodge works," said robert hooker to himself on his way back to new york. "the duplicate package, known since the days of adam! and how easy it was to substitute it under his very eyes! i shall call beau brummel's 'unpublishable memoirs' number _one_ in my new library." the three trees in the famous cabinet of john bull stevens was a superb impression of rembrandt's celebrated etching, "the three trees." it was the only copy known in what print collectors chose to term "the first state." this exquisite work of art had only recently been discovered in amsterdam by a world-renowned critic, and promptly sold at a fabulous price to the american enthusiast. it had several lines from right to left in the middle tree that had never been noticed in any other copy; the etching, according to the earlier authorities, had existed in but one state. to the uninitiated all this disturbance about a few lines on the trunk of a tree seemed unintelligible and ridiculous, but to the print collectors it was considered a magnificent "find," ranking with the discovery of electricity or the roentgen rays. periodicals devoted to the fine arts published many profound articles about the unique "three trees," and one of them suggested that such an extraordinary treasure should repose in a museum, where the art-loving public would have an opportunity to enjoy its marvelous beauty; it was a crime that it should be locked away forever in a private residence. robert hooker was reading this one evening in the "art journal" when a thought came to him. why not add this immortal work of rembrandt's to his museum, which at that time existed only in his mind? why not appropriate this etching and place it securely under lock and key, awaiting the time when it would be freely offered to the gaze of the public in an institution to be proudly called after his name? he had already some tangible things to put therein,--the famous "unpublishable memoirs" of beau brummel from the fenn collection; the "kann" rug; and a few other wonderful curiosities that he had "borrowed" from celebrated amateurs as the nucleus of a loan collection in his mythical museum. the "three trees" should, by right, bloom in his own fair garden. john bull stevens was unapproachable. he did not show his things. he gloated over them alone, in the most selfish, wicked manner, in his dark old mansion on lower fifth avenue. admission was denied to everyone, except a few intimate friends; no one could see the originals of some of the world's masterpieces. art institutes pestered him with requests to examine this or that; celebrated students everywhere clamored for a view of whistler's portrait of john bull himself, or gilbert stuart's more celebrated portrait of john bull's grandfather. when curtly refused admission to his galleries, extraordinary letters were written him, full of caustic and delightful epithets, which had not the slightest effect upon him. it was said he had no conception of the universality of art, which includes kings and paupers,--wicked, rich collectors and virtuous, poor students! to make himself appear more human, john bull stevens at last determined to publish a catalogue raisonné of his pictures, his drawings, his etchings and his engravings. he thought a beautiful reproduction or facsimile would be as satisfying to the critics as a view of the original. robert hooker, for one, did not agree with him. the catalogue was duly announced, to be published within the year and presented to the museums and libraries of this country and europe. photographers and printers, art writers and reviewers were employed to get up the sumptuous work. hooker suddenly became imbued with a passion for photography; he became intimate with the distinguished artist who was to take the pictures of the stevens collection. hooker became so much interested in his new work that he offered his services as an assistant, without pay of course. it was just for the experience. nothing more.... hooker spent one whole morning in the stevens' residence helping the celebrated photographer. they were to take negatives that day of the portfolio of seventeenth century etchings. john bull was there of course, suspicious and watchful. the photograph of the "three trees" was made the exact size of the superb original. when this had been successfully accomplished, hooker, the careless assistant, seemingly nervous in the presence of the great collector, let fall the frame that held the great etching; the glass was shattered and stevens swore as many picturesque and artistic curses as there were fragments upon the floor. the assistant was properly rebuked and as quickly dismissed; the unfortunate hooker offered sixty cents to pay for the shattered glass,--which was promptly accepted! he departed, covered with ignominy under the glances of the angry stevens. that evening a plate was made from the negative by a new intaglio process. all that night on the top floor of a dingy building on thirty-ninth street engravers worked on the copper, bringing out the excellencies of a famous etching; old paper with the watermark of 1631 had been procured and all that remained to be done was the printing. by noon the next day a facsimile had been made, beautiful as the original itself, as poetic and as glorious as the veritable "three trees." but what was to be done with it, now that it had been created, a true brother of the original? the fertile brain of robert hooker had long before conceived the answer. the clumsy photographer's assistant had deftly dropped the frame with practiced skill, leaving the etching untouched, the glass alone being injured. there is even an art in _dropping_ a picture! but before the disgraced apprentice departed he had heard stevens give directions to a faithful servant: "take _that_ carefully to kemble's. see that a new glass is put on it and returned to me to-morrow, without fail!" the next morning hooker happened to stroll into the picture galleries, known everywhere as "kemble's," and actually purchased something, paying for it with real money. it came hard with him, for he no longer liked to buy things in what he termed "the ordinary way." he purchased for sixty dollars a little etching by d. y. cameron, and, strange to say, not a frame in that great establishment suited him. one was too brown or too "antique," or not the right width; the salesman, who was a good fellow, became irritated. a whole hour wasted over a three dollar frame. he gave vent to his pent-up feelings by being excruciatingly polite, which is rude. he suggested that as mr. hooker did not see anything to suit his fastidious taste among the thousands of mouldings already shown, perhaps he would like to look through the samples in the workshop? hooker reluctantly consented, and there among the old and new frames, in the company of gilders, fitters and mat-makers he carefully made a suitable selection. of course the "three trees" was there. its light could not be concealed--its beauty spoke to hooker from a far corner. this masterpiece of the etcher's art was lying on a table awaiting the glass that was to guard and watch over it. the substitution was quickly and quietly made. the little rembrandt was carefully, nay tenderly, placed in a commodious side-pocket of hooker's coat; the treacherous younger brother was left upon the work-table, where it would shine by a false light--the light of the faithless, the reflected brilliancy of the wicked. when the great museum was founded some years later, when it was acclaimed as one of the art institutes of the world, when great scholars extolled it, and poets sang of it, a list of its treasures was published which amazed the critics of two continents. collectors in england, in france, in new york, were astounded! mr. stevens read with envy that it contained the only copy known of the first state of rembrandt's "three trees." "another newspaper canard! an infernal lie! a senseless fabrication!" he exclaimed. _his_ was the only one; he did not believe another would ever come to light. he would examine his own again. he took the etching carefully from the wall. what was the faint blur--was it a line at the bottom? it seemed strange, for he had not noticed it before. he would get his magnifying glass. he read, in microscopic letters: "facsimile from the unique original in the hooker museum." the purple hawthorn when the appleton collection of chinese porcelains was purchased _en bloc_ by a well-known house doing business on fifth avenue, the celebrated purple hawthorn vase was considered the most precious of all. it was a large vase dating from the seventeenth century, and according to eminent authorities, it was of the great ch'ing dynasty with the curious marks of the period known as k'ang-hsi. the vase itself was very lovely; it was oviform with a graceful, flaring neck. the exquisite design showed a dwarfed mei tree with the most beautiful purple blossoms, with rare foliage and gorgeous birds painted by a great, although unknown, artist. the glazing was superb, being transparent and of unusual brilliancy. this noble work of art was valued at two hundred thousand dollars. three men of vast wealth competed for the prize, and the lucky purchaser was the eminent banker, john t. sterling. two financiers, known the world over, grew purple with jealousy when they first discovered that it was to go into the sterling collection. their faces resembled the color of the wonderful blossoms on the hawthorn vase. robert hooker wanted to add to his museum this precious gift of the old chinese gods. at the various places where the vase had been exhibited, he had often been seen gazing covetously at it. when it was offered for sale, he knew it was useless to ask the price--which was utterly beyond him. one day, hooker read in the society columns of the _herald_ that jasper foster was going to take up his residence in italy on account of the illness of his only daughter. he intended to sell his fine old house on 17th street, and all the furniture that it contained. now jasper foster was celebrated for one thing only. his name was known to fame but for a single object. he was the owner of the mate of the celebrated purple hawthorn vase in the appleton collection. foster was an extremely modest, unworldly, retiring gentleman. in the last fifteen years there had been many inquiries about the vase, and numerous offers to purchase it, but he had always declined to part with it. it had been the property of his father and his grandfather, who had bought it from a sea-captain about the year 1820. but now foster was in dire straits. his house was mortgaged, and his daughter was ill with a malady that required a milder climate than new york. it was on this account that he was going to take up his residence in sunny italy. as soon as hooker read the brief paragraph in the newspaper, he hurried to the rather imposing house on lower 17th street. with fear and trembling, he rang the old-fashioned bell-pull. yes, mr. foster was at home. the maid showed mr. hooker into the first parlor. he heard voices in an adjoining room. mr. foster then had other visitors. to pass away the time, he picked up a magazine but put it down instantly. he had heard the magic words "purple hawthorn." some one else was before him. he would find out. going behind an old spanish leather screen, he listened. he looked through the aperture, and beheld two men, well-known in the world of finance. one was john t. sterling; the other was james thatcher, the celebrated collector. mr. foster was not there. it was early in the morning, and perhaps he had not completed his toilet. "hello!--you here?" said one voice. "check-mated!" exclaimed the other. "damn it! i never expected to see you." "of course not. i know your mission. we had better see foster together." "no, i came first. i claim the privilege of the first interview!" "no! i shall speak out. there is no use for us to bid against each other. it would spoil the market! i'm sure we can come to some agreement." "no! i own the appleton vase, and by right i should possess the other. it would make the finest pair of vases in the world! it will look magnificent in my house on fifth avenue." "don't be a hog--foster does not know its value. he was offered five thousand dollars for it after the mary j. morgan sale in 1886. if we offer him fifteen thousand he will think it a gold mine. you know he needs the money. if you offer more he will become suspicious." "i suppose we both can't have it. we'll toss for it! that is when the business details are over. you make an offer of ten--and then fifteen, or more, if necessary. your hand upon it! play fair--this is not the stock-market!" the two eminent financiers grasped hands. an instant later mr. foster entered. "sorry to keep you waiting, gentlemen." "not at all, mr. foster," replied sterling. "we read in the papers you were going to italy, and thought you would like to dispose of some of your curiosities. may we look around?" "certainly. i would like to sell some of the things. i hate to do it. but to be frank with you the illness of my daughter has proved a great expense. i'm forced to sell out." the two gentlemen looked around. one purchased a satsuma vase for a hundred dollars--seventy-five more than it was worth! the other, after much consideration, bought an east indian brass bowl for fifty dollars--an extravagant price. they seemed to ignore the beautiful vase in a glass cabinet in the corner. they were unconscious of its existence! "i have something really fine, gentlemen--the hawthorn vase purchased by my grandfather. you know about it?" "i heard something of it once--but i've forgotten all about it. i would be glad to look at the vase." they bent their heads. a thrill ran through them as they beheld the wonderful purple and the perfect glaze. "that's not bad. of course, its shape might be better. people, nowadays, want the green or black. i have a beautiful famille rose. what do you want for it?" "i've never looked at it in that way. what's it worth to you? some years ago i had a good offer on it. but i didn't need the money then." "well, i'll tell you what i'll do. i don't want to be small about it. i'll give you ten thousand cash." mr. foster was visibly affected. "that is a good price. but i need more than that to see me settled in my little villa in tuscany. what is your very best offer?" "i'll give you fifteen thousand dollars, and not a cent more. and that's a mighty liberal offer." "well, that's all right. i'll let you know to-morrow." "why not now?" "i want to consult my daughter, caroline." "well, i'll not hold my offer open another day. i'll be here to-morrow morning at this time. please don't keep me waiting. you know i'm a very busy man." they paid mr. foster for their wares, and passed out; one with an old vase, and the other with a brass bowl in his hands. "i think we've got him!" hooker overheard one of them say, as the two passed by him in the dimly-lighted room. yes. worse luck. hooker knew it was useless to make other offers. he had not the bank account to compete with the famous connoisseurs that had just left. and he knew mr. foster was a gentleman of the old school, and would not use one offer to secure a better one. "good morning, mr. foster." "why have i the honor of this visit?" "well, to tell the truth, i read in the _herald_ that you were going to move. i would like to know at what price you hold this house and lot?" "well, i'd sell cheap. properties in this section are not worth what they once were. it is assessed at seventy thousand dollars. there is a mortgage on it of sixty. i'd take seventy-five for it. this section is too antiquated for residences, and business is moving uptown. "but i want it for a residence. may i look through it?" "of course!" hooker examined all the rooms, noted the old-fashioned plumbing, and said that the whole house needed a thorough going-over. "well--i think i'll take it," he said at last. "do you want the old furniture? i would sooner buy it furnished, that is, if i could buy it at a price!" this was a golden opportunity for poor foster. to sell his house with its worn furniture and the vase, in a single day was an achievement! "i would sell the house and contents entire for eighty-five thousand dollars. i must exempt one vase, however. i've just been offered fifteen thousand dollars for it." "not for a single vase?" "yes, would you like to see it?" "it's not much use. but i'm naturally curious." mr. foster, with great dignity, showed the beautiful hawthorn vase. it gleamed silently in the glass case. "what! fifteen thousand for _that_! perhaps, if it is really worth anything like that, i can afford to speculate. i might obtain a better offer on it. i'll give you ninety-five thousand dollars for the house and its entire furnishings." "no. the lowest is one hundred thousand." "done! i'll take a chance. give me an agreement of sale, and the matter's ended!" robert hooker had a white elephant on his hands. the house was really worth but the value of the mortgage, and the furniture scarcely five thousand dollars. what was he to do? thirty-five thousand dollars was a great deal for a poor man to give for a vase.... he removed the vase that afternoon to his own modest apartment and requested mr. foster to refer any one interested in its purchase to him. at ten o'clock next morning, he had an unusual visitor at his flat in west eighty-ninth street. john t. sterling had called to see him. hooker went into the living-room, visibly embarrassed in the presence of the great man. "good morning, mr. hooker. i'll state my business quickly. mr. foster tells me you purchased yesterday his house and furniture. now i'd like to buy it, if it's in the market. i think i could turn it into a garage. i need one in that neighborhood. i'll give you ten percent more than it cost you." "no--not at all. i'll tell you what i'll do. if you give me one hundred and fifteen thousand for the house and its contents, _as it is now_, i shall call it a bargain. it'll be a quick turn." "all right. we'll go down to my attorney's at once and draw up a bill of sale. the entire contents of the house as it is this moment, mind you. come right along. you know i'm a very busy man!" "that's known everywhere!" said hooker, with a flattering smile. on fifth avenue, that afternoon: "done! by god! and by a mere kid!" on eighty-ninth street, that evening: "_that_ will make the hooker museum famous!" the disappearance of shakespeare booklovers have considered the little volume presented by francis bacon to william shakespeare the most glorious book in the world. it remained for many years in the british museum, and many a pilgrimage has been made to worship at its shrine. it was deposited in the museum in 1838 by the hedley family of crawford manor, and had been in the national library for so long a time that it was considered the property of the nation. the book itself was of great rarity as it was no other than the first edition of bacon's "essayes" published in london in 1597. it bore the following inscription written upon one of the fly-leaves: to my perfect friend mr. wylliam shakespeare i give this booke as an eternall witnesse of my love. fra. bacon. in 1908 the hedley family were in financial straits. it was discovered that the copy of bacon's essays had not been presented to the british museum but merely deposited as a loan. the museum tried its best to retain the precious volume, but the records were clear upon the point. in december, 1909, the hedleys stated that they would sell it to the museum for £40,000 or fifty thousand dollars less than had been offered for it. an unknown collector would give two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for it! the newspapers inaugurated a public subscription to keep the volume in england, claiming that its loss could never be estimated as it was the most precious memorial in existence of the golden age of english literature. it was suspected, of course, that it would go to america. after six months, it was found impossible to collect the money required. there was, apparently, but little interest in things of a literary and artistic nature. if it had been for a new battleship costing twenty times this amount, the money would have been forthcoming instantly. it was finally announced in the london papers that the celebrated collector, william s. fields of new york, was the fortunate purchaser of the world-famed volume. the news was heralded the world over. when it arrived, robert hooker, an intelligent, but by no means wealthy, bibliophile, made a request to see it; to hold within his mortal hands this magnificent relic of the two great elizabethans. "no!" was fields' curt response. it had been rumored that robert hooker was founding a museum in some unknown spot--but where the money was to come from was a mystery. it appeared that the bacon-shakespeare volume was locked up in a steel vault in the fields' residence, guarded by an approved time-lock and other interesting features. the book was never to be removed from the safe, unless in the presence of the owner and a trusted servant. robert hooker was extremely desirous of adding this treasure to his mythical museum! he said it was an outrage that one man, on account of the accident of great wealth, should become the sole possessor of it. it was a shock to public decency! it should repose, as it had for more than seventy years, in a library or an institution, where it could be freely seen. he therefore resolved to add it to his own. but how? the book was constantly under guard in a guaranteed burglar-proof vault. to employ the most experienced crackmen to undertake the job would be almost insane. he could not try to substitute a facsimile as in the "three trees." to bribe the guard was foolhardy because the guard did not know the combination of the safety-lock. he was at his wit's end! not a single practical idea entered his head. for once he was at the end of his resources! robert hooker was a great lover of books. like other kinds of love, the more he was denied, the greater the love grew; and time added fuel to the flames. one evening in his library he was thinking what a pity it was that he could not see with his own eyes this evasive little book, when an idea flashed through his brain. that night he did not sleep. the following day hooker paid a visit to an old building in lower new york. it was the united states custom house. he asked to see an appraiser whom he had known from boyhood days, and he talked with him for an hour about the weather, the base-ball score and other absorbing questions. "by the way, girard, that was a nice purchase fields made last month--i mean the bacon volume. i suppose you saw it when it came through the customs!" "no, i don't remember it. that's curious." "well, at any rate, it was free of duty by age!" "i know that, hooker. but even so, everything worth over ten thousand dollars, i personally examine." "well, it doesn't make much difference. the book should come in without paying duty. perhaps it came by another port." "no, through this. all fields' things come here. we are told to always hurry his through. he's got lots of pull, and we like to oblige him." "yes, of course." "but fields, too, has to obey the letter of the law. i want to look this thing up." mr. girard was gone for over half an hour. he returned. "here's the thing. look at this consular invoice." "bacon's essays 1597. £200." "but what good does it do? the book comes in free, if it's worth a million!" "i know. but fields wanted this cleared the very day it was received. he or no one else has a right to undervalue, even if the article does not pay duty. i'm going to find out about this. i'm going to get that book back and examine it. fields or no fields, he must obey the law! i might get fired for this." the owner of the bacon was much disturbed. mr. fields did not like the publicity that followed the newspaper revelations. he was much annoyed at one newspaper which said that if he undervalued non-dutiable things, how about those that carried a high impost? of course, the whole matter was nothing. and yet he was vexed. he did not like the notice that a treasury official was to call for the sacred package that reposed within the solid walls of his safe. the next day, a gentleman with an order from the treasury department of the united states paid him a visit. it was an official messenger in a blue suit with a conspicuous nickel badge. the great steel doors were opened and closed; the book was then removed; an instant later the click of the lock was heard. the other treasures in the vault were safe against the machinations of men! twenty minutes later another official called. mr. fields thought at first it was the same gentleman returning. he came for a book that had been under-valued at the custom house. "what! i've just given it to one of your men!" "impossible, mr. fields. this order was issued to me!" "why, that's a fake. why, the one just presented to me had a big red government seal on it. it was signed by the head of the treasury." "must have been a forgery. this is merely an order signed by mr. bond, the representative at new york. but it's genuine!" the various theories of the robbery that were advanced would have filled many volumes. even the british museum was suspected! mr. girard, the appraiser, felt in his inmost soul that robert hooker knew something about it. he told his story to the greatest detective in the world, who was in charge of the case for the government. he did not want to issue a warrant for hooker's arrest without any evidence whatever. he could not take into custody an honorable gentleman merely on suspicion. he had to have tangible proof. the great detective accordingly employed three able assistants to examine every nook and corner of hooker's house, including his library. all this was done during the absence of the owner. the police even employed pickpockets to jostle him on the streets to make sure the book was not upon his person. hooker had been under surveillance three hours after the robbery; it was either in the house, or he was not guilty. every book in his large library was examined. the police authorities finally had a complete catalogue of his collection, which some day will make interesting reading. the detectives took pen and pencil and noted the titles of every volume with the year of publication; they admitted that bibliography and literary work was not to their liking. it lacked excitement and they all agreed it was only fit for poets, professors, and other inferior persons. the detectives found it much easier at first to look for a volume bound in red levant morocco with "bacon's essayes" in gold letters on the back. this was the description given them of the original. fearing some error, and being naturally suspicious, they were compelled to be scholarly and open the volumes, but they did not find one dated 1597, or which answered in any way to the form and matter of the missing volume. after a month of search, the detectives came to the conclusion that the book was not in his possession. robert hooker was guiltless! when he is not going out of an evening, hooker will often remain by the fireside in his library, reading his favorite authors. when no one is about, he will go to the largest book-case, and in a conspicuous place in the centre of the third shelf, he will take down a small thick volume, which he handles tenderly. he will often touch it fondly with his lips. it is bound in shabby old black calf and is labelled on the back "johnson's lives." opening the volume you will see the curious title-page, which reads: "the history of the lives and actions of the most famous highwaymen and robbers. by charles johnson. london. printed in the year 1738." sewed in the centre, and uniform in size, is another book which a short time before was one of the glories of the british museum. it had been bereft of its red morocco covering. it is destined to be the chief article of interest in another museum, to be founded for the use and instruction of the public for all time. for shakespeare and bacon are immortal! the colonial secretary one of the most eccentric characters in the book-world was doctor morton. he knew a great deal of the lore of books and made a splendid living by stealing them. old volumes were meat and drink to him. he lived quietly and respectably in a small new england town where he was honored for his learning and piety. although dr. morton was a thief, a pilferer of libraries and collectors, he committed a far greater crime, for which it is impossible to forgive him. murder, assassination, arson and treason were naught to this unspeakable thing. it was worse than the seven deadly sins. doctor morton was unlike the celebrated spanish bibliophile, who, not being able to obtain it in any other way, killed a fellow-collector in order to secure a unique volume of early castilian laws. he died upon the scaffold unrepentant, maintaining that the prize was worth it. all honor to poor don vincente of aragon! his name shall always be tenderly cherished by lovers of books! doctor morton _sold_ the books he stole! this, in the calendar of bookish misdemeanors, is the crime of crimes. now this respectable citizen of connecticut was a man of parts. there was no gainsaying his knowledge. his home was beautifully furnished, for he was a person of excellent taste. he would point to an old italian cabinet in his living-room, and say to himself: "i paid for that with the first edition of milton's 'paradise lost,' and, as to the chinese chippendale table: that was bought from the proceeds of the elzevir 'cæsar.'" sometimes his friends would be astounded at his unintelligible speech. he would say in an unconscious moment: "bring in the vanity fair in parts!" meaning nothing else but an antique astral lamp, that he had exchanged for the first edition of thackeray's immortal novel, or he would exclaim to his maid at tea-time: "sarah, use to-day the uncut 'endymion' from the sterling collection," pointing at the same time to a beautiful old silver tray. all the furnishings in his home represented a book "borrowed" from some famous library, and then shamelessly sold and the money expended on household gods. doctor morton obtained the books of other men by many devious ways. for instance, he would write to a collector under the name of a well-known amateur, and always upon the most exquisite stationery, requesting the loan for a few days of the third quarto of hamlet; he was writing a brochure on the early editions of shakespeare, and it was necessary, in the holy cause of scholarship to inspect the volume. alas! poor yorick! the collector would send the book, and that was the last he would hear of it. morton would borrow a wonderful old woodcut by albrecht dürer, in pursuit of his investigations in the early history of engraving, and return in its place in the old frame a modern facsimile, stained to look like the original, and which the owner might not discover until years after. it is not our purpose to chronicle the activities of this new england worthy, however interesting and instructive they may be. it was doctor morton's well-known coup in connection with the welford library that brings him into this story. thomas pennington welford was growing old. he was a quaker, a descendant of the penningtons that came over with william penn. he lived in an old house on arch street in philadelphia, just a stone's throw from benjamin franklin's grave. he was a quaker of the old school; was known as conservative by members of the meeting-house; by others, as "close" and "tight-fisted." welford gloried in this saving habit. he was considered quite wealthy by his heirs, who were the only ones who approved of his penurious ways. when he arrived at the age of seventy, he determined to put his house in order. he would sell his curiosities and his useless household furnishings to the highest bidder. when doctor morton called one hot day in summer, welford was in the act of examining his books, before an old mahogany case that looked as if it had come over with the first pennington. "good-morning, mr. welford, you seem pleasantly engaged." "yes, sir. i'm looking over some old things. i want to get rid of everything that i can do without." "i'm doctor morton. i'm interested in anything old or curious. let me see what you've got. ah! here's an old copy of barclay's 'apology.' that's very valuable." "how much is it worth?" "seventy-five dollars." "that much? you surprise me." "it's worth probably more. oh, look! here's another gem. it's bound in full morocco. sewell's 'history of the quakers,' 1770. that's easily worth a hundred!" the two book investigators pursued their investigations. mr. welford was astonished when he learned that these old religious and controversial writings were worth so much money. he did not know that the modern collector was purchasing for fabulous sums the old sermons of eminent divines. according to the learned doctor morton, these were just the things that the rich bibliophile demanded! in going over these dusty books and pamphlets, doctor morton laid the dingiest and shabbiest in a little pile. these were of no value he said, and worth only the price of waste-paper. in the lot was a mutilated almanac, printed by benjamin franklin in 1733. "look at that dirty old almanac! a modern one is a hundred times more valuable!" doctor morton would exclaim; knowing at the same time that this first issue of poor richard was worth its weight in gold. "that ought to be destroyed! it's a filthy attack on william penn and the quakers. if i were you i'd put that in the fire!" said the virtuous doctor, pointing to a little quarto pamphlet published in london in 1682, and one of two copies extant, the other being priced at $600.00 by a well-known book-seller. in it is the curious statement that penn was fond of certain ladies of the wicked court of charles ii. and it was not in lowndes, or in any bibliography! when the last volume on the last shelf had been valued by the doctor, mr. welford stated that he did not care to sell immediately. he wanted to "look around a little." the books were really worth more than he thought. "then, sir, why have you put me to all this trouble! i've lost a whole morning going over your things and telling you about them. when you make up your mind to sell, let me know. this pile of trash you can burn, or you can sell it to the old-paper man. you might get twenty-five cents for the lot. perhaps you might give a few of those worthless pamphlets to me. you've taken up enough of my time." "the lot will cost thee two dollars, doctor." "all right. give me a receipt. this is the last time i'll give free advice to anyone! particularly a quaker!" when mr. welford "looked around" he discovered that the beautifully bound sermons, eulogies, prayer-books and catechisms were worth next to nothing. he almost passed away when a kind friend told him that poor richard's almanac was worth a thousand dollars. another amiable acquaintance cheerfully imparted the information that the scandalous pamphlet about the first proprietor of pennsylvania was valued at ten shares of pennsylvania railroad stock. at hearing this good news, he put on his gray hat and started full of righteous indignation to interview the lucky purchaser. "don't swear, mr. welford. that's not becoming one of your persuasion." "thou--thou--" "don't choke and splutter so. it's bad for the heart." "thee told me those big books of sermons were valuable. they're not worth the paper they're written on!" "now, you're becoming sacrilegious!" "thee knows that rotten old thing about penn was worth all those catechisms and sermons combined." "i naturally thought that a religious book was worth more than a scandalous one. that stands to reason." "there's no arguing with thee. i'll expose thee, if it takes--" "oh, no, you won't. i have your receipt in full." mr. welford thought a minute. a grim smile overspread his features. "i congratulate thee, doctor. if thee can get the better of a philadelphia quaker, thou art welcome to the profit!" now this has nothing to do with robert hooker. it appears upon further investigation, however, that the candle-stick made by paul revere, silversmith and patriot, that stood upon the mantel-piece of the doctor's home in connecticut, was known under the outrageous name of "burton's anatomy of melancholy in old calf." why this candle-stick was catalogued in this mysterious way was known only to doctor morton. three years ago the first edition of burton's great book, published in oxford in 1621, and in its original calf binding, was borrowed by the doctor, who said he was writing an article for the _atlantic monthly_, on "old burton and the anatomy." the owner of the book could not resist the gentle demands of the true scholar, and sent the volume. he ought to have known better, for his name was robert hooker! it was not soothing to the imaginations of book-lovers when it became known that the two gems from welford's library had gone into the rapacious hands of doctor morton, to be turned into an old mahogany sofa or a colonial high-boy. it was criminal, and must be prevented at all costs. and robert hooker, smarting under the recollection of the loss of the "anatomy" thought he would like to add wicked "penn" and "poor richard" to his household. they would prove a considerable addition to his "museum of the imagination." how to secure them was a problem! ordinary methods could not be applied to the extraordinary doctor morton! the wisdom of the serpent was as nothing to the vivid intellectuality of the connecticut sage! it must be confessed that only new england could have produced him; only the rarified bookish atmosphere of three hundred years could have engendered a creature of such genius! hooker never despaired. a remedy was close at hand. he was walking one day, on thirty-ninth street, and just off broadway, he noticed a very handsome mahogany secretary in an antique store. he entered the establishment, and asked its price. "a hundred dollars!" said the proprietor. "this piece is believed to have been once the property of thomas jefferson. i purchased it from one of his heirs." "i'll take it," said hooker simply. three weeks later doctor morton entered a little shop on fourth avenue. he had received a letter from the head partner, asking him to call the next time he came to new york, and inspect a piece of colonial furniture of the greatest historical interest. the doctor was almost carried away when he beheld the beautiful relic of revolutionary days. this would grace his home with rare charm! he asked the price. "forty-five hundred dollars!" "i don't understand. why is it so valuable?" "that's thomas jefferson's desk. it comes from his heirs; the declaration of independence was written on it!" "that's a pretty story. where's your proof? without documentary evidence, it's not worth more than a hundred dollars." "i have the proof, doctor. look here." the proprietor then rolled back the top. he put his finger upon a secret drawer. he took out a letter and handed it in silence to doctor morton. he read as follows: monticello, june 12, 1821. this secretary which is five feet four inches high and three feet wide, made of santa domingo mahogany, was purchased by me in philadelphia in november, 1775, of robert aitken, the printer. upon this desk, i wrote in my home on high street near seventh, the celebrated instrument known as the declaration of independence. thinking that my heirs and others would value this article for its association with the sacred cause of liberty, i make this statement. witness my hand and seal, this twelfth day of june, 1821, and the year of american independence, the forty-fifth. tho. jefferson. doctor morton looked carefully at the letter. he examined the red wafer with "t. j." in faded letters upon it. accompanying the letter was another from one of the heirs of the celebrated statesman. "the desk is cheap at any--" doctor morton blurted. he caught himself in time. "i'd like to own it. i'd give your price, but haven't the cash. i have some old books worth lots of money. perhaps we can arrange a trade." for two hours the two worked over this momentous transaction. at the end of that time, and in consideration of a rare pamphlet containing scurrilous remarks on william penn, an old ephemeris printed by benjamin franklin and seven hundred and fifty dollars in cash, the mahogany colonial secretary was transferred to doctor willis morton--to have and hold forever. one evening, about a month later, the eccentric collector of the little connecticut town sat down in his chair to gloat over and hold communion with his "literary" treasures, for he did not call them articles of virtu or specimens of bric-a-brac, or furniture of the jacobean period, but gave each piece that was dear to him a name that smacked of books and learning. his mind turned to the evil early life of william penn, and the wisdom of poor richard, while at the same time his eyes were riveted upon a beautiful eighteenth century desk. a bell interrupted his agreeable visions. a telegram had arrived. he opened it hurriedly, and read: please look under red wax wafer on jefferson's letter. important information. r. h. doctor morton went to the secretary, and taking the letter in his trembling hands, gingerly lifted the seal of the third president of the united states. "damn!" he cried, as he read in minute letters: "a forgery,--in pleasant memory of my lost 'anatomy.' "robert hooker, _fecit_." in defence of his name he was again talking of his ancestors. he was always talking of his ancestors.... it was in the library of a fifth avenue club, but the gentlemen seated at a window overlooking the famous thoroughfare were not discussing books. they were examining with care the beautiful ladies that always decorated this brilliant highway. "_that_--with the blue bonnet and the short blue sleeves, is mrs. wilberforce andre," said john stuyvesant depuyster. "her husband is a descendant of varick who served as aide-de-camp to general arnold." "that doesn't make her more attractive," said robert hooker. depuyster ignored the remark. "my great grandfather--" "we know all about him," chorused the others. "let-up, please. have mercy on us, it's a hot day." "my great grandmother, on my father's side--" persisted depuyster. "we know all about _her_!" the others answered, wearily. "but mrs. andre reminds me of an interesting story. and you are always looking for stories. in january, 1779, my great grandfather was serving on the staff of benedict arnold. as you know, it was he, john stuyvesant depuyster, my namesake, who rescued the colors so gallantly at saratoga--who fought at germantown--who almost starved at valley forge--who rescued general greene at the risk of his life--who was wounded with two bullets in his flank at the battle of trenton--who served so brilliantly under mad anthony wayne--who--" the others looked at each other furtively, with misery indicated on every feature. one of them, the great autograph collector, robert hooker, nervously twitched his fingers. he seemed in agony, and looked around, evidently for signs of relief. --"who received a medal for gallantry at monmouth," chronicled the voice in a perfectly satisfied tone,--"who rebuked colonel tarleton--who was praised even by the british commander lord howe--who sat at the court-martial of andre--and who--" "was a traitor to his country!" said hooker, quietly. everyone looked uneasy. they all hated scenes. but at any rate, it was a fortunate escape. a duel with bloodshed would be better than depuyster's stories! "sir," he returned hotly, "an accusation such as this has never been made against our family!" "then i shall be the first to make it." "it is outrageous,--a damnable, lying statement, and you've got to prove it i i'll force it back into your throat, you slanderer! you've got to prove it, i say, sir!" "i have the proof!" "then you've got to show it. i demand it. i have the right to demand it." "two weeks from now, there will be sold at the amhurst auction galleries, an autograph letter of general arnold, in which he speaks of general depuyster as an accomplice, who was ready to turn over to the british cause his honor and his sword. the catalogue will be issued in two weeks' time, and the full text of the letter printed. it might be well for your precious family that this letter remains unpublished!" "i'll look it up at once," said depuyster. "until you prove your statement, i'll not notice or speak to you, sir." a week later an old autograph letter was shown to him at the cataloguing rooms of the auction-house. depuyster had called every day, but it was a week before he was allowed to see it. it was to be sold as the "property of a gentleman." with trembling hands, he examined this tomb of the secrets of the illustrious depuyster, this time-stained document with faded writing. the letter read as follows: robinson's house, september 2, 1780. sir:-everything is progressing as agreed. i have secured a pass for hett smith. i suppose the ordnance at west point is the same as given. what of the military force? we have not enough to help us _on this side_. we need more than two, a third or fourth person is required. colonel depuyster, in charge of the ordnance, has given me his word that he will be ready when called upon. he has already written me, giving the number of blackberries in the first field. he is of great assistance, and his name, which has always stood for honor in america, will prove a great asset to us. it is a name that is like cæsar's wife, and has never been _suspected_. i have supplied the third help-mate; will you furnish our fourth? i am, sir, with great respect, your most obedient humble servant, gustavus. maj. john anderson. the descendant of the gallant revolutionary soldier trembled like a coward. the name of john anderson and gustavus were well-known to him as those assumed by andre and arnold in the great conspiracy. the hand-writing was, undoubtedly, arnold's; he had letters in his own home written by the infamous general to col. depuyster, his great grandfather--letters written years before the treason--and the writing was identical. "what--what will you take for this letter?" asked depuyster. "it will be sold at auction in two weeks' time," the clerk answered, politely. "but i would like to purchase it before the sale." "sorry, sir, but its owner will sell only at public sale. the competition will cause it to bring a high price." "who is the owner?" "i don't know." "can't you find out?" "he desires to remain unknown." "tell him for me, that i will give any price for it before it is published in the catalogue." "i'm sorry, sir, but mr. hooker also came here to examine it. he wanted to buy it. he is a great expert, you know, and he always desired a letter of general arnold's--about the treason. mr. sterling also wants it. he has a letter giving the amount arnold received for betraying his country. it is said his letter is worth five thousand dollars. this is worth almost as much." "i'll give him five thousand for this one." "no, sir. you will have to wait until the sale." mr. hooker sat at the club window. the feminine decorations of the avenue did not interest him. he was thinking of poor depuyster. someone had just told him that depuyster had remained indoors, not daring to show his face at the club. he was at his apartments drinking scotch whiskeys to take his mind away from the letter which haunted him. he could not bear to look into pedigrees and genealogies, which used to be his constant companions. hooker was actually sorry for the descendant of the stalwart revolutionary hero, who dared not face his friends--much less his enemies. he would give the old man a tip! he said to himself. anyhow it was delicious to have seen depuyster's face when the accusation was made. "depuyster made me so nervous that i just _had_ to do it. but i'll give him a hint. i'll write him, telling him perhaps the letter is a forgery. that will give him a chance. as a gentleman of honor, i shall write him. i should wish the proof, like his ancestors, to be "above suspicion!" the letter was received by depuyster, who becoming suddenly brave, faced the light of day, and made the astounding charge to the president of the auction-house that the arnold (gustavus) letter was nothing but a forgery! a rank imitation, a fabrication to blackmail a noble family distinguished for three hundred years in american history! the president grew angry; the letter had been passed upon by well-known experts, as well as their own cataloguers of autographs; it was undoubtedly genuine, and would be sold as such. "i'll sue you for damages, if you publish that letter before it is passed upon by the greatest experts in the world." "go ahead and sue," said the president, turning away. depuyster, however, had among his numerous acquaintances, many famous lawyers, one of whom secured an injunction, preventing the sale, and impounding the letter. it came later before the court which, with unusual wisdom, stated that the matter should be decided by three disinterested experts, one to be selected by the court, one by the auction-house, and one by depuyster. the contestants assembled in the little court-room which was crowded with friends of the parties to the suit, and eminent autograph and book-collectors. they came from many cities to hear the wrangle over the famous letter, and to witness the battle of the experts. the name of each expert was placed in an envelope, and sealed. "the appointment of the court--is robert hooker," announced the judge, tearing to pieces the envelope. "the expert for the defense," read the judge, tearing open another envelope, "is robert hooker. "the expert that will represent the plaintiff," continued his honor, breaking with his fingers the manila paper, "is robert hooker." all eyes were turned to the corner where robert hooker sat unconcerned. he seemed, in a measure, overwhelmed by this new distinction. he had been known the world over as a collector of autographs and manuscripts, but he had never been called upon as an expert. hooker arose. he examined the letter but for an instant. "i have formed an opinion, your honor." "so soon?" "yes." "what is your decision?" "it is a forgery!" "are you certain?" "without a shadow of a doubt!" "why are you so positive," queried the judge, "when so many other authorities state that it is genuine?" "i am positive," said hooker, "because i wrote it myself!" there was an uproar in the court. "please explain, sir," said the judge sternly. "depuyster had become such a pest, such a terror to his friends by his family anecdotes and antique stories that i could stand it no longer. i was literally bored to death. i made the charge in jest. depuyster took it so seriously that i was compelled to supply the proof. i purchased an old sheet of writing paper with the water-mark of the revolutionary period. i practised for hours, so i could imitate general arnold's handwriting. when i finished the letter i almost thought it an original myself! the farce was wonderful! the hoax--a joy! i thought that i had become a good samaritan who had saved his friends from a very tiresome old gentleman with a hobby for family history. when my name was first called--i hesitated, but when you all selected me, i was overwhelmed with the distinguished honor. i told the truth, and spoiled a story." "you have _created_ a story!" said the judge. "the hundred and first story" the owner did not at the time of the robbery suspect anyone. the volume had disappeared; that was all. yesterday the famous copy of boccaccio printed by valdarfer in the year of grace 1471 had been one of the talked-of things in john libro's famous library. it had reposed in its case along with its ancient companions, who in the silence of the night would relate to one another the right merry tales of fair jehan, of patient grissel, of launcelot du lac; and their morocco sides would shake with laughter at the quips of giovanni boccaccio, of certaldo, and the rude, trenchant jests of master francis rabelais. the fine old volume, which had been the envy and despair of book-lovers, had only recently been added to the collection of mr. libro. in 1812 it had the proud record of selling for over £2000 and since then it had a most splendid career, having been fondled and loved by only the elite of the bibliomaniac world. its owners had been knights, viscounts, dukes, kings, emperors,--and bibliophiles! on the night of december 12, 1910, the "valdarfer boccaccio," as it had been termed, had been shown to a number of members of the "maioli club," a club consisting only of those interested in rare prints, books, typography, early manuscripts, and money. the volume, after having been sufficiently admired, handled, looked into, collated and gossiped over, was locked in its case by mr. libro, who felt a feeling of relief when the doors were shut and the key stored safely in his pocket. he did not like the rude way some of the younger and inexperienced members handled the precious gift of the gods; and a very thoughtful and scholarly collector had the audacity and unheard of temerity to read it! the next morning on going into the library all mr. libro saw was a vacancy in his favorite bookcase. between the dante of 1481 and the aldine "poliphilus" was an oblong space that had been so gloriously filled by the distinguished production of the press of italy. the boccaccio had vanished! the news of its loss was flashed over the entire world. comment on its strange disappearance was general; articles appeared in the newspapers on how to safeguard the world's great literary treasures; the _london times_ had a leading article in which it was stated that "america did not deserve to own things of inestimable artistic and intellectual value if it did not know how to preserve them." the first thing a gentleman does when he has been robbed is to call in a detective whose name is always a household word in novels and plays. mr. libro requested john bunting to aid him with his advice, notwithstanding the fact that he had been overwhelmed with suggestions from every newspaper reporter in the united states and canada. at noon bunting called. after asking the usual questions, which although a great detective, he did not disdain to do, he requested mr. libro to tell him the names of his guests of the night before. "but, mr. bunting, i tell you i myself locked the case, put the key in my pocket, and retired. they could not possibly have extracted it in my presence, and i saw the last of them to the door." "i would like their names." "but i do not suspect any of them, mr. bunting." "that is not so, mr. libro, if i may be permitted to say so. you do not care to admit it, but you suspect someone of that literary club." "i am suspicious of my best friends, but dare not indicate any one. if you want their names, i shall tell you--james blakely, the great authority on elizabethan poetry; henry sterling, of sterling, petty & co.; robert rodd, who knows more about the first editions of paradise lost than anyone; edward stevens; james janney--that's five--there were six,- oh, yes, robert hooker. he is quite a student but does not possess the bank account to buy all the books he wants. he would spend a million a year if he had it. he was the underbidder on the boccaccio. yes, mr. bunting, hooker came near owning it once. i sent an unlimited bid for it at the sunderland sale. he tried to buy it from the bookseller who acted as my agent, when he found his own bid had not been high enough." "mr. libro, that is interesting. it was no ordinary thief, however, who took it. the ordinary new yorker does not know the difference between _that_ book and one by marie corelli!" bunting began the investigation at once. he followed zealously every clew. a few notorious criminals, who were seen in the immediate vicinity of the house, were interviewed without result. one of them, who had been noticed a block from the house shortly after midnight, was locked up on suspicion. he was discharged from custody the next morning as nothing could be proved against him. this individual, who was known to the police as "booky" phillips, had been arrested many times, but never convicted. the chief found him quite placid under the rapid fire of his questions. he had read of the lost boccaccio in the _herald_, but did not understand why any "self-respecting thief would stoop to steal a worthless old book!" as a last resort bunting was compelled to investigate the members of the maioli club. although they were book-lovers the detective found, much to his surprise, that they were respectable citizens. he called one day upon mr. hooker without giving notice of his visit. "mr. hooker," he said, "i would like to know about the book missing from the libro collection. do you know where it is?" mr. hooker seemed to be choking. his face grew red and he could not answer for the moment. bunting repeated the question and hooker grew angry. "how dare you ask me such a thing? you are so accustomed to dealing with thieves that you try your crude methods on everyone. the book will turn up sometime; meanwhile myself and all my friends will be continually annoyed by your insults and threats. good-day." the detective left. he felt sure that hooker knew more than he cared to admit. perhaps the book was even now upon his shelves. he would have his house and office searched. this was done. the boccaccio was nowhere to be seen. two years passed. the valdarfer boccaccio, which had been a day's wonder, was forgotten by all except mr. libro and mr. hooker. they saw each other rarely after the loss of the unlucky volume; in fact they avoided each other. the incident was never mentioned among the members of the maioli club--it was a thing never to be spoken of at its meetings. it was, however, again to be the subject of talk and gossip. on december 12, 1912, two years to a day after its strange disappearance, the volume turned up in all the glory of its illuminated page and superb morocco binding. giovanni boccaccio had added another story to the hundred that composed his immortal collection. and where had it been found? the last place in the entire world. in the new york public library! for almost two years it had reposed there, with no one to cherish it or dip into its witty contents. in a book-case, side by side with other great masterpieces of literature, it had remained neglected by the inhabitants of new york, who in the newspapers of that great city figure as learned and scholarly! the old story, "that the best place to _hide_ a book was in a wall street broker's office" was found to be pleasant but fanciful fiction! it was far safer in the public library: no one would look for it there! on the morning of the twelfth of december a gentleman came to the inquiry desk. he appeared to mr. jones, one of the assistant librarians, to be interested in books on the subject of religion, so he requested the visitor to go with him to the book-stacks, as there were too many of them to carry to the reading tables. and theological books were always so heavy! while looking over the collection the man called mr. jones' attention to the label of john libro in one of them, and asked why the "decameron" of boccaccio was put among the religious books? mr. jones blushed! he gasped, however, when he recognized the long-lost volume. he would take it at once to the principal librarian. he first asked the stranger's name,--the fortunate discoverer of the missing treasure. he gave mr. jones his card. engraved thereon was "b. phillips." the newspapers were full of the curious recovery of the boccaccio, were quite facetious about it and went so far as to call the great building on fifth avenue a literary mausoleum. others suggested that the state should appropriate money for the purchase of modern sex novels,--the only books that were really read! but despite the jibes and explanations the real mystery was unsolved. how was the book stolen and why? three days later the following letter appeared in the newspapers. it is given here because it will make a fitting ending to the hundred and first tale of the decameron. new york, december 14, 1912. sir: i have read with interest the various explanations given in the papers concerning the disappearance of the book from mr. libro's library. i can supply the key to the whole problem. some two years or so ago, i was stone broke. one day i read that mr. libro had purchased at a great price the book which has caused all this commotion. i thought i would lift it some night when i had nothing better to do, and sell it back to its owner or some other book crank. i called one afternoon at the libro house with some magazines on pretence of securing subscriptions. the ruse worked. mr. libro ordered the _bookman_,--a magazine i had never heard of. he showed me one or two of his books,--these maniacs always want to show you their things. i was bored to death, as you can imagine. while he was signing the subscription blank i made a wax impression of the key to the cases. that night i did a second story job. the window was open. i easily found the library. but where was the confounded book? i looked everywhere. there seemed to be millions of books. in one case i noticed a shelf that was uneven. i looked at it. i saw the name "boccaccio." i placed the volume underneath my coat and left. the evening papers were filled with the news. what could i do with the volume? i could not keep it in my room, as i feared the police would find it. i did not dream that it would be missed so soon, and i did not anticipate all this fuss over a shabby old book. i tried to think of a place to hide it, but could not. one of the papers said that a richard hooker was the other crank who had bid for it at the auction sale. if i went to him now he would refuse to buy it and arrest me. i tried another and surer course. that night i went to hooker's house,--another second story job--and left the cursed book in the most conspicuous place in the library. the next day i called on him. i said i was mr. scott,--a detective. i accused him of stealing the book from mr. libro. he said i lied. i told him he had the book in his house now. from the expression on his face i knew i had him. he said he had found the book in his library, but had not taken it and did not know how it had got there. i asked him if he thought anyone would believe him. he said--no! everyone would think he had stolen it. hooker offered me a thousand dollars to take the book and say nothing. i accepted two thousand dollars in cash. i took the book, but where to hide it i did not know. it was under my coat when i was passing 42nd street and fifth avenue. a thought struck me. i would place it where it would never be found. the people here have no time to read books; it was the best place of all. in a moment i was in the library; i threw the cursed old thing on one of the shelves. i left in great glee. at the corner of 40th street and the avenue i was arrested by one of captain bunting's men. they tried to get something on me, but could not. i was innocent! i am on my way to london to visit the british museum, for i find the study of books profitable. yours very truly, b. phillips. the lady of the breviary the abelard missal was lost to him forever. when mr. richard blaythwaite was alive, robert hooker had a small chance, one in ten thousand perhaps, of securing it and adding this beautiful memento of the renaissance to his "museum of the imagination." but now that blaythwaite was dead, all hope of owning it had vanished. hooker would not have hesitated, in the cause of the public, to have taken it by fair means or foul from blaythwaite, but he would not rob a woman. he was singularly squeamish upon this point. richard blaythwaite had left everything to his only daughter, including the famous abelard missal. it was a marvelous manuscript dating from the sixteenth century, and contained at the end the beautiful and tragic story of those mediæval lovers, abelard and heloise. the pictures that decorated the missal, however, were its chief glory.... they were the work of giulio clovio, and executed by the great miniaturist for philip the second of spain. the full page illuminations, with the exquisite colors, heightened with gold, were worth a king's ransom, or a queen's reputation. the binding was in keeping with the superb quality of the breviary, being in old purple morocco, the royal arms of castile impressed in gold upon the sides. hooker tried in every way but could not give up the idea of being its possessor. it haunted him at night, and during the day his mind constantly reverted to its matchless colors and quaint designs. he knew miss blaythwaite slightly, having met her in former days at her father's house, when he used to delight in looking over his famous library. the pity of it all was that the missal was to be in the keeping of a woman. if it had gone to some collector who would treasure it as a delectable gift of the gods, it would not be so bad. but to a woman! the thought almost drove him mad. one evening, in despair, he resolved to call at the fine old house, and glance once more at the lovely picture of abelard imprinting his last kiss upon the lips of heloise. he felt some misgivings, when he was told that miss blaythwaite was at home and would see him. he almost hated her, and he could not forbear the thought that the abelard missal was no more to her than her pet dog, or the bracelet upon her fair wrist. when she entered the room, he was taken aback. when he saw her some years ago, she was but a slip of a girl, with long hair down her back. she was now tall and stately, with beautiful deep blue eyes. she was dressed simply; and hooker thought exceedingly well, but he was not a judge. he knew more about the morocco covering of an old book than a lady's apparel. "good evening, mr. hooker. i'm glad you called," she said. "thank you, miss blaythwaite. it's been a long time since i've had the pleasure of seeing you." "yes, you've rather neglected us lately. are you still interested in books? poor father had quite a mania for them." "that's what first brought me to the house. do you remember how we used to spend hours going over his books?" "hours? it seemed ages to mother and me. poor mother, how furious she used to be when father brought those dusty old books into the house. she used to say that father threw away his money on them. he'd give a hundred dollars for a shabby old thing, when he could have bought a nice, modern edition for five." at this, robert hooker was speechless! "i suppose you would like to see some of the additions to the library," miss blaythwaite continued, "father bought books until he died. you know he caught pneumonia by going to an auction-sale, one cold day last winter. this is the book he bought,--but at what a cost!" she took from the shelves which lined the walls, a small volume. it was a copy of shakespeare's sonnets, the first edition; published in 1609. "and the strange part of it all, mr. hooker, i believe in my heart that papa never regretted its purchase." hooker was about to remark that it was worth the risk, but checked himself in time. "it was foolish. your father, however, was a true bibliophile." miss blaythwaite returned this volume of volumes to its position in the case, and when hooker saw it, he turned pale. she had put it in upside down--a terrible thing to do. one would have to stand upon his head to read the title, and booklovers do not believe in gymnastics. he immediately placed it in its proper position, carefully, tenderly--as if it had been a baby, which was precious to him, but not quite so precious as an old book or manuscript! "father could not bear us to put books in upside down, but mother and i would often forget, and the way father scolded, you would think we had committed a horrid crime." at this, they both laughed. when hooker was shown the breviary, he lingered for a long time over its magic pages. he felt the cool vellum leaves with his fingers, for fear lest the missal would slip through his hand, and disappear forever! for over two months, hooker was a constant visitor at the blaythwaite home. he became intimately acquainted with every book in the library; he could tell the exact date of publication of the early printed volumes; the place where it was printed; the name of the binder, and other useless information. even miss blaythwaite caught some of the contagion. she, who had formerly cared nothing for her father's "playthings," became interested in them. sometimes she would take down from a shelf a volume of old english poetry, and become absorbed in the lyrical sweetness of the verse. occasionally, she would read aloud to hooker some beautiful poems that she had discovered in ben jonson, in crashaw, or in herrick; and he would tell her of his aspirations, and of the museum that existed only in his mind. he told her of the wonderful things he already possessed. although hooker had known miss blaythwaite for some time, she was to him always, the lady of the breviary. when he felt the delicious warmth of her hand, he thought of the missal; when she was seated near him, poring over some old volume of forgotten lore, his mind turned to its wonderful binding, or its miraculous miniatures. strange as it may seem, miss blaythwaite was nothing more to him than the guardian and sole owner of a book that his soul desired. sometimes, when they were reading together some volume of elizabethan verse, another caller would be announced; hooker would be presented, and then he would retire gracefully to her father's library, leaving the field clear to his rival. this, of course, was not flattering to miss blaythwaite! one night, jack worthing was there before him. he was a clean-cut, manly fellow, interested first in sports, and after that in business. he had known miss blaythwaite for years. the talk turned, as it will always turn, when bibliophiles are present, upon books. "i don't understand you fellows," said worthing. "you think more of an old book than many people of their children!" "of course! children often grow up into ill-mannered youths and conceited young ladies. books always remain young and delightful!" "but, confound it! you never read them. you have thousands around you all the time, and i bet you don't read ten a year." "rare books are meant to be carefully nurtured during our lives, and passed on after our death to those who will appreciate them. only college professors, students, scholars, and such people ever _read_ books," answered hooker, contemptuously. "i think book-men the most foolish class of persons on earth," retorted worthing. "give me some good old sport, like boxing, or foot-ball, that makes your heart tingle, that causes the red blood to shoot through your veins--that makes life worth living! man wasn't created to spend his life roaming around a dusky old library, when he can go out into god's pure air and enjoy the fields and the streams, the forests and the lakes!" at this, miss blaythwaite seemed to smile approvingly. hooker said nothing. bibliophiles are not missionaries. they do not go into the by-ways of the world to uphold their creeds, for the love of books is such a wonderful thing that it can never be explained! when he left miss blaythwaite that night, he felt that the breviary was farther from him than ever. hooker, however, came swiftly to a decision. the only way he could obtain the abelard missal, was by marrying miss blaythwaite. the next evening he called, with this firmly fixed in his mind. this wily, calculating book-worm had slowly crept into her affections. he knew she liked him, but would she marry him? he asked her with great fervor, which was assumed, whether she would become his wife. he waited breathlessly for her answer. "i want to be frank with you, robert," she said. "i do not think you love me." "how can you say such a thing?" "instinctively, i feel it. i like you, but i cannot marry you." "why not? is there someone else?" miss blaythwaite smiled. "yes." "i never dreamed of it. of course i might have known." "you do know, robert." "is it jack worthing?" "no." "then, who is it?" "it's that old missal. you are more in love with _that_, than you are with me. i can see it in your eyes, in your talk, in everything. if i were not its owner, you would never come near me." "then you will not marry me?" "no, i cannot. do you know, robert, i've become actually jealous of that breviary, and intend to present it to some library or museum! it ought, by right, to go to the metropolitan." "for god's sake," hooker cried in mortal anguish, "do anything but that!" for over six months the forlorn bibliophile remained away from the lady of the breviary. somehow or other, it was not the missal which was foremost in his thoughts. his books, his autographs, his porcelains, his engravings had no longer the charm they once had. he no longer took an interest in the auction-sales, and the catalogues that came to him would lie neglected upon his desk. he looked with particular distaste upon the "three trees" and the "unpublishable memoirs" and the shakespeare-bacon volume. he even thought of returning them to their owners! the great institute to be founded and called after his name, was a thing of the past! he had acted like a cad, he said to himself. to marry a woman for an old book was almost as bad as marrying for money! one evening, hooker came to the conclusion that he could not stand this loneliness, this desolation, any longer. he intended to leave the country, to wander in foreign lands! he would call again upon miss blaythwaite for the last time, but would she receive him? his heart was beating rapidly when the maid told him she was in, and would see him. and there was jack worthing with her, looking big and manly, and courageous as ever! miss blaythwaite seemed delighted to see him. a sudden joy seemed to overspread her features! and hooker noticed things about her he had never noticed before. he saw the appealing dimples in her cheeks--the fine hair blowing near the temples--the exquisite shape of her ears--the wonderful turquoise-blue of her eyes! and jack worthing was talking of books! a miracle had happened! somehow or other, miss blaythwaite seemed to take a decided interest in the library left her by her father, and during the last half of the year, she was continually speaking to worthing of first editions and caxtons; of elzevirs and typography; of americana, incunabula and such ridiculous things, and all in a jargon that was quite unintelligible to him. and worthing determined to study the things she liked, and borrowed some reference-books from a library that told of the mysteries of the book-lovers' cult. and when hooker heard worthing speak of the rare first edition of poe's tamerlane, he almost fainted with surprise! "don't you want to look over father's books, mr. hooker," asked miss blaythwaite. "you may go in the library as usual, and make yourself at home. i have added a few things myself!" "no, thank you, i'd rather remain here. which side do you think will win the polo match to-morrow? meadowbrook?" at this, miss blaythwaite and worthing looked at each other in astonishment. hooker thought he saw a mysterious understanding between them. he became at once insanely jealous of the athletic young man who was discoursing so eloquently of tamerlane "in boards, uncut." "meadowbrook?" persisted hooker. "i suppose so," returned worthing, in an uninterested manner. yes, this talk of books had become decidedly distasteful to the once enthusiastic bibliophile. "by the way, mr. hooker," said miss blaythwaite, "i've made up my mind about the abelard missal. jack and i think it would be a good thing to give it to the metropolitan museum." "i quite agree with you, miss blaythwaite," said poor hooker. "there it would always be safe from fire, and could be seen by the public. it is certainly the proper thing to do." at this, miss blaythwaite seemed overjoyed. when worthing left, after an interminable time, robert hooker sat by her side upon the old chippendale sofa in her father's library. when she discoursed of books and learning, he would quietly change the subject. he wanted to hear about herself, and what she had been doing since he saw her last. as for himself--he was going away. he was taking a steamer next saturday for europe. she asked him quietly if he did not want to take a last look at the breviary. "damn the breviary!" he said to himself. he did not care particularly about it, but she insisted. he took the precious volume from its place on the shelf, and together they looked at the marvelous illustrations that traced so vividly the history of the two devoted lovers. they glanced not at the calendar, or the litany that came first in the breviary, but bent their heads over the lovely miniatures that narrated so touchingly the tragic story. when they came to the picture showing the final parting of abelard from his beloved heloise, hooker looked at miss blaythwaite. her eyes were filled with tears. "robert," she said tenderly, "i'm not going to present it to the metropolitan. i'll give it to the hooker museum! then--we _both_ can always enjoy it." the evasive pamphlet he was disappointed again! he sat alone in his office thinking of the auction sale of the day before. a copy of the rare first edition of "the murders in the rue morgue," the immortal story of edgar allan poe, was lost to him and his heirs for ever more. he had gone to the auction with the virtuous intention of buying it; when the shabby little pamphlet with its brown paper wrappings--printed in philadelphia in 1843--was offered, the bidding was remarkably spirited. it was finally sold to a distinguished collector for thirty-eight hundred dollars. he had been the underbidder, but what chance had a poor devil of a bibliophile against the wealthy captains of industry? at sales of this character the race is not to the swift, but to the--rich! robert hooker had once owned a copy of this precious volume. this made his disappointment the keener. it was a more interesting example than the one that had just been offered under the hammer of the auctioneer, for it had been a presentation copy with a simple though beautiful inscription written in the delicate handwriting of the poet upon the title-page: "_to virginia from e. a. p._" this was the very copy the greatest of story-tellers had lovingly given to his wife. years ago it had mysteriously disappeared from hooker's office, where he had kept it in a fire-proof, feeling it was more secure there than on the shelves of his library. he sought for it everywhere, offering large rewards for its return, but the evasive little volume never was heard of again. hooker was musing over his "defeat" of yesterday in the salesroom when his thoughts reverted to the fate of his own copy. where was it? what was its history? its possessor could not seek a purchaser, because the inscription on the title-page would instantly identify it. had it been destroyed? was it-"a gentleman to see you, sir, about an old book!" he instantly awoke from his reverie. it was his secretary who had spoken. "tell him i have no money for such things!" said hooker. john lawrence, his secretary, did not turn away, but waited with the flicker of a smile upon his face. he knew the foibles of his employer. he had been with him for many years. and a really good clerk always knows his master's weaknesses. "hold on a minute, john. perhaps i can give him a few minutes. tell him to come in." "hello, colonel! what can i do for you this morning?" said hooker cheerily, to a middle-aged man, erect of figure, who had just entered. he was one of those men who make their living picking up old books, old guns, old papers, old coins, old pictures, old everything. he also, at times, had a faculty of picking up old liquors, which was not good for him. he was known as the "colonel" because of his military bearing and his interest in the civil war. he had really been a soldier serving in the glorious and extensive regiment known as the home guard. "good morning, mr. hooker. i've a matter i'd like to speak to you about--but in the strictest confidence. i'm on the track of a really fine book." at this hooker smiled. although in his long and busy life and in his strange wanderings the colonel had secured a few good things his "finds" generally turned out to be of no value. hooker had frequently advanced him money to purchase what the colonel termed "nuggets," but when they were brought to him changed, in the twinkling of an eye, into fool's gold. "well, what is it?" said hooker, rather impatiently, fearing another tug at his purse-strings. "you've read this morning's papers? the 'murders in the rue morgue' brought at the sale yesterday thirty-eight hundred dol--" "enough of that!" retorted hooker, who was becoming angry. "i never want to hear of that damned book again!" "but i know where there's another copy," presented the colonel, weakly. "so do i. in the british museum!" "no, mr. hooker. right here in new york." "where?" "but you're not interested, you just said--" "of course i am, you old fool, go on!" "well, the book's in an old house down near washington square. it'll be difficult to get. its owner's in jail." "in _jail_!" "yes. he's serving a stretch--twenty years." "what for?" "murder!" "now, colonel, i hope you didn't come here to amuse me with fairy tales. i'm very busy this morning." "no. that's straight. he's up for twenty years. he murdered his sweetheart. the court brought in a verdict of manslaughter, so he got a light sentence." "well, what's that got to do with the book?" "have patience, mr. hooker. you know of the tomlinson case?" "never heard of it." "impossible, sir! the newspapers were filled with it at the time. seven years ago every one was talking about it and surely you remember--" "no, colonel, seven years ago i was in europe. tell me about it." the colonel went into details-in june of 1907 a family by the name of clarke moved into two rooms in a large, old fashioned residence on eighth street, near fifth avenue. they were there for less than a month when they gave the landlord notice. they could not remain in the house on account of ghosts! now _everyone_ believes in ghosts but landlords. it injures their business. the clarkes contended that every night in the front room the most mysterious noises were heard; they called in the janitor, but he knew nothing. the strange sounds continued; they were uncanny, inexplicable. the clarkes moved out and they were succeeded by other nervous and hysterical persons. the landlord in desperation reduced the rent, but still the tenants would not remain. at last even he, who was sceptical and would not believe in hobgoblins, or ghosts, or spirits, or any of those fantastic creatures that exist outside the material mind, resolved to investigate for himself. he literally camped in the rooms for months and heard not a sound! every night he determined would be his last and that he would not waste any more of his valuable time over the mystical phantoms of his foolish tenants. one evening, which he resolved was to be the final one, while he was playing solitaire to pass the tedium of the vigil, he heard a noise in the wall. he turned pale with fear. a cold chill ran up and down his back. a moment later the sound of a falling coin reached his ears and there rolled toward him from the old georgian fire-place a shining object. it was a few minutes before he had the courage to pick it up. it was a small gold ring. he examined it carefully and engraved therein were the initials "m. p. from j. l." he put the ring in his pocket, removed the fire dogs, the tongs, the coal-scuttle and the whole paraphernalia of fire-places and looked up the flue. he could see nothing. although it was a clear night he could not see the stars. something was in the way.... the finding next day of the poor, bruised body of little marie perrin up the chimney of "no. 8" was the sensation of the hour. a horrible crime had been committed, and in an unknown and terrible way. it was edgar allan poe in a new guise and his wonderful stories immediately became popular and new editions of the "tales" were called for by a new set of readers. some critics of crime suggested that the "murders in the rue morgue" had been repeated at no. eight east eighth street. the hiding-place of the body was identical with that in the famous story and it was said that the police were on the look-out for apes, gorillas, and other animals, which alone were capable of committing such hideous crimes. the whole life of poor little marie was laid bare. her picture was in every newspaper and her history was given from the day of her birth with remarkable ingenuity. the reporters, with uncontrolled imaginations, turned out from the scanty material at their hands an excellent biographical sketch, that seemed and rang true, which is sufficient for the reading public. marie perrin had disappeared without paying her rent from no. eight over a year ago. when the agent came to collect the arrears, he found the tenant had departed with all her chattels. this was a libel, for she was in the room but not visible. the detectives, when they investigated into the tragedy and after asking ten thousand questions in a thousand and one places, found out that marie had a sweetheart and that his name was richard tomlinson. he refused to admit his guilt, but after being prodded with the iron-fork of the law, technically known as the "third degree" he broke down and confessed. in a fit of anger he struck her over the head with the brass fire-tongs. he had no intention of killing her, or even harming her, but he had become insanely jealous of another who was paying her attentions. in fact he said he must have been mad at the time, as he did not remember having struck her until she lay before him, quiet and cold upon the floor. after a trial lasting over two weeks, and full of sensational incidents, tomlinson was sentenced to spend twenty years of his life in prison. "that's an interesting tale," said robert hooker, when the colonel had stopped speaking, "but what has all this to do with the first edition of poe's story?" "well, you see, tomlinson was a friend of mine. he told me that, after he had accidentally killed the girl, he was terribly frightened. he did not know what to do with the body. he had a mind to go to the police and confess all, but did not have the courage to do so. he remained in a trance, he thought, for hours, thinking of his fearful crime and the dreadful consequences. while he was in this deep, agonizing study and not knowing what he was doing, he picked up a small book on her reading table. it was 'the murders in the rue morgue.' it was the title that attracted him, and some compelling force, what it was he knew not, caused him to read it. he told me that never in his whole life had anything so interested him as that story on that frightful occasion; although pursued by terrible fears he read every word, every syllable of it. the rest you know." "but, colonel," said hooker, with one thought uppermost in his mind, "it might be any edition, not necessarily the first. there have been hundreds of editions published. how do you know what edition it was?" "it was the first, mr. hooker. tomlinson told me the girl had borrowed it to read and that it belonged to some one who had a mania for old books and who had kept it always under lock and key." "do you know where it is?" "yes." "can you get it?" "perhaps." "i shall make it worth your while. how much do you want?" "all i can get. i'll have to steal it!" "what!" "yes, i'll have to steal it. it cannot be had in any other way. why do you start?" "i didn't think you'd have to do that!" "yes. you see tomlinson, when he moved from those furnished rooms, took everything he could carry to his brother's lodgings near washington square. the book is in a sealed trunk on the third floor. tomlinson made his brother promise that this trunk was not to be disturbed under any circumstances until he came out of jail a free man. i've tried in every way--by bribery and everything--but his brother will not touch it. he seems afraid of that old trunk. i'll get it, however, at all costs. are you with me?" hooker was, above everything, a true bibliophile. he instantly answered: "yes, colonel! go the limit. i'll back you." the colonel without another word picked up his hat and left the office. for three tedious weeks hooker heard no more of the book or of his curious friend, the colonel. the whole thing seemed like a tale woven by poe himself. would the book, if it ever was secured, turn out to be a second edition and worthless? booklovers, after the strange manner of their kind, only cherish the first, the earliest issue, in the same state as it came from the master's hand, unrevised and with all the errors uncorrected. they do not care for new and more elegant editions. hooker grew restless as the weeks rolled by, and still no colonel. one morning, as he was looking over his mail, a gentleman was announced. then, tottering into the office, with his arm in a sling and a patch over his left eye, came the gallant colonel. "why, colonel, what's the matter?" "nothing at all, sir." "but your arm and your--" "that's my affair, mr. hooker. i've come to secure the reward of my labors. i've got the book," he said in triumph,--"i told you i'd get it." "where is it?" "here in my pocket. look at it. it's a superb copy!" the colonel laid before the astonished eyes of richard hooker the priceless first edition of poe's marvelous story. it was in the original brown printed wrappers, just as it was published. with trembling hands he grasped the book; he turned the first page and gasped. a startled cry broke from his lips. the colonel at once noticed his pallor. he did not dream that an old book would affect even the most ardent bibliophile in this manner. in all his experience of forty years he had never seen anyone so overcome at the sight of a dingy pamphlet. there, upon the title-page, hooker read the tender inscription written many generations ago, with which the most imaginative of american poets had presented his greatest story to his loving wife. it was his own copy, returned like bread upon the waters. hooker was speechless. he went over to his check book and handed the colonel the equivalent of three thousand dollars. the colonel retired, murmuring his thanks. the book lay upon hooker's desk. here was a new problem, worthy of m. dupin himself. question after question came into his excited mind to depart unanswered. who had stolen it? and how? why had it been taken? how had tomlinson secured it? and what, above all, had it to do with marie perrin? hooker remained there, gazing at the pamphlet for hours. it fascinated him horribly. the luncheon hour went by and still he sat staring intently at its faded covers. would he ever solve the riddle? his mind was still at work on the problem when he was interrupted by his secretary. "it's closing time, sir. is there anything you want before i go?" "nothing, john, thank you." the secretary turned to depart. he drew back suddenly! "the book! mr. hooker, the book! where did you get _that_!" robert hooker looked at his confidential assistant. his face was the color of the whitest parchment. his breath came in gasps and cold drops of perspiration were visible upon his forehead. "i bought it to-day," said hooker, quietly. "it once belonged to me--and marie perrin." "she was my--" john lawrence did not finish the sentence; his face was twitching and he was evidently suffering from the keenest nervous excitement. "tell me about it, john," said hooker kindly. "you seem to know something of it." "i do, mr. hooker. you'll forgive me, won't you? i didn't mean to do anything wrong." "why, what do you mean?" "well, years ago, on your return from europe, you questioned me about that book. i was the only one who had access to the safe and knew the combination. i told you i knew nothing about it--that perhaps it had been mislaid before your departure for london. i lied, for i had taken it. i'd no intention of stealing it; i did not even know it was particularly valuable. i read the story one day when i was alone, with no work to do. it was the best tale i'd ever read. i was absorbed by it. i could not get the horrible plot out of my head." "yes, john, go on. where does marie come in?" "i was engaged to her. i had known her for years. she came from montpelier, vermont, where we both were born. one day i told her of the story. she wanted to read it. not thinking it any harm, i loaned it to her. she stopped for it one evening on her way home. i never saw her after that. i tried every way to find her, without avail. she had disappeared from her rooms on eighth street and i never heard of her again until the frightful news came out. detectives came to see me. my name was in the papers once or twice at the time, and the questions they asked me were terrible. i proved an alibi; they had fixed the crime on tomlinson, who, unknown to me, was uppermost in her affections. it was a bitter awakening. i've never been the same since. i think of her every night of my life--i've now told you all and i shall resign and leave you at once. you can have no more need of me." "stay, john. i forgive you. you've suffered enough. go home--and come down to-morrow, as usual." the book still lay upon the desk. this time he would take it home to keep it in his library among his most valuable possessions. for surely it was the most interesting copy of the "murders in the rue morgue" in existence! hooker turned the leaves to see whether, after its wanderings, all the pages were intact--"collating" it, as bibliophiles love to term this delightful occupation. yes, it was perfect--just as when it had so mysteriously disappeared years ago. but, hold,--what were the brown, reddish finger-marks on the back cover? hooker did not have to be told that it was the life-blood of poor marie perrin. the great discovery he was considered by all his friends thrice a fool. first, he was engaged to be married; second, he was a speculator in stocks; and third, he was a book-lover. some condoned the first offence, others pardoned the second, which was considered a weakness, and all universally condemned the last! john libro had money on july 28th, 1914. on july 29 he did not possess a cent. the war caused it all. when new haven dropped to fifty and reading to seventy, john libro's fortune shrank with them and he was left high and dry with nothing but the advice of his friends, a little jewelry, some clothing, and a few old books! libro went home, made an inventory, and counted the change in his pocket he was thirty-five years old, big, healthy, good-natured, and irrepressible. here he was face to face with starvation. he grimly smiled, for it was at any rate a new experience. he sat down by the little bookcase, forgot his cares and his creditors, and took out his beloved friends. he tenderly fondled the first edition of elia, dipped into beaumont and fletcher, and took solace from the "pleasures of memory." when he looked at his watch, it was eight o'clock. two hours had glided away in the company of his morocco-clad companions. it was then that he thought of ethel. he would go to her at once and unfold his story. he told her in a few words that he was ruined and could not marry her. this made her more than ever determined to marry him. she loved him and could not allow such a small thing as money to interfere with their plans. the more he insisted, the more determined she became. at last they reached a compromise--he would put the matter squarely up to her father. mr. edwards was called from his study. "mr. edwards," he began, "i suppose you read of what happened to-day in the stock-market--" "yes, yes, of course," mr. edwards replied quickly, "what of it?" "well, i was long on new haven and reading--" "speculating again, have you?" "yes, and i'm broke, and ethel would not allow me to break off the engagement until i spoke to you." "she is a foolish girl. you are released, and i think it a good thing for my daughter." "perhaps some day when i go to work--" poor libro pleaded. "work! work!" retorted mr. edwards, "who ever heard of a stock broker who _worked_!" without another word they parted--and libro returned to the drawing-room to pay, with many kisses, his farewell to ethel. when at last he was on the street he thought that poverty was the most terrible thing in the world--it destroyed in a moment love and happiness. and yet he was no longer thrice a fool--for he was not engaged, he was no longer a speculator, and, of course, he must cease to be a collector. while he was meditating about this curious effect of poverty, which had changed over night a fool into a philosopher, a beggar approached him. he felt in his pockets and handed him a quarter. libro then went on his way, for the humor of the incident appealed to him. the next day he tried to secure a position. he asked all his friends, who could do nothing "on account of the war." he then tried the department stores, the banks, the hotels, the theatres--everywhere. no one would give a position to a stock-broker. mr. edwards was right! but he must live--the situation had become not so fantastic. he would sell everything--his father's watch, his jewelry, his clothing, everything but his books. those he would not part with. on the corner of thirty-fifth and broadway was a pawnshop--he had passed it hundreds of times, but had never thought of entering. half of it was a store where the pledges were sold; each piece of jewelry had a huge white card on which ran some such legend--"former price $1,000--now $400." the other half of the shop was where the real "business" was conducted, and it was here that its patrons lost their patrimony. libro was ashamed to enter; he hesitated two or three times and then returned to his rooms. he picked up old "omar" in its paper covers, and with the imprint of bernard quaritch, 1859, for it was a first edition and much beloved. he then read of wines and the joys of heaven--he could not afford to buy those full orient vintages, but, nevertheless, in the quietude of his rooms, he drank deep. two days later, with the courage of hunger, libro visited the locality of this american mont de piété. but he was again afraid to enter. he seemed to see all his friends near him, watching him. he thought they smiled when they acknowledged his trembling salute. broadway seemed to contain myriads of his acquaintances. he then thought with dread of the interior of the place, with its poor, degraded, perhaps half-clothed men and women, forced to pledge their last precious possession. he walked away, but returned, laughing at his cowardice. this was also to be a new experience. he resolved to walk quickly up to the door and enter before anyone would notice him. he received a shock when he passed the portals. if he observed acquaintances on the outside, here on the inside, he met _friends_! all wall street seemed to be gathered. it was more like a meeting of the down town club. "hello, jack! why, if that's not libro!" and "the baby member!" greeted him from all sides. before the well-worn counter was the flower of new york's financial set, pawning their diamonds and their good-repute. the wire houses and the bucket shops and the legitimate offices were all closed, and, by a marvelous change, as in the twinkling of an eye, the principals, and not their customers, were putting up "more margin!" john libro entered properly into the spirit of the occasion. he laughed with the others when one received $50 on a diamond ring that cost two hundred. he roared in harmony with the crowd when one well known broadway habitué objected to the twelve dollars proffered on a gold watch. it was all too funny for anything! it was now his turn. he felt sick as he took from his tie an emerald pin, the gift of his mother. "how much do you want on this?" asked the proprietor. it was a cold voice which went through him like steel. he took an instant dislike to this man who was the proprietor himself, geoffrey steinman, a king among his brethren of this old and honorable profession. "seventy-five dollars," said libro. "this is no time for jokes," steinman retorted. "i shall advance you fifteen dollars, and not a cent more." "but it cost a hundred at tiffany's!" "fifteen dollars--my time is valuable." it was the same old story. john libro received the money and departed. he was bitter at the world and particularly at the cold, keen gentleman who presided over the destinies of the shop with the glittering windows. he grew bitter when his watch (his father's gift), his fob, his gold card-case, his medals and finally his overcoat went into the tiger's maw. and every time he remonstrated with him, cursed him, or implored him, steinman remained the same--heartless, brusque, cutting, satirical and, what was worse than all, polite. "damn his politeness," gasped libro--"i can do nothing at all with him when he is polite!" this hate ripened and broke out anew when each article was pawned. "if i could only get even"--he exclaimed hopelessly. he had not a chance in the world, he thought. for a thousand times he said goodby to a dear memento of his parents or a remembrance of his youth. at last he had pledged everything. libro had not heard from ethel for months, although it seemed like ages to him! on the cold afternoon that he had pawned his overcoat he went to his rooms and thought if it would not be better to end it all, quietly and decently. he thought for a long time. he went to the little bookcase and picked up an old edition of boethius on the "consolations of philosophy," and only the title consoled him. he, however, found many long-tried friends, and their broad margins and blue and crimson morocco covers made him forget that man was made to mourn. his first editions of the poets made him oblivious to his condition and he lived once again on high parnassus. libro was looking over the poems of john keats, published in 1817, when a catalogue slip fell out. on the slip it stated that a copy had once sold for five hundred dollars! this, then, was meat and drink for him! he would sell it! he could live for months on poor keats. but his soul revolted. he was not a cannibal. he could not live off the flesh of his own. but at last he was compelled to return to steinman. he wrapped up the precious volume tenderly, affectionately. he took it bravely, for was he not offering at the sacrifice the dearest of his possessions? he gently, timidly, unwrapt before the pawnbroker the little volume, awaiting expectantly the admiration that always followed its appearance. but, alas, he was not among book-lovers. "no books!" exclaimed steinman. "i've got stuck on them once or twice before. not one cent!" "you,--you--" but libro could not find words to explain his hatred. he would have killed him had he a weapon near. "don't you know that book has sold for five hundred dollars at auction," exclaimed libro. "then sell it at auction," replied steinman, politely. as the poor and crushed bibliophile turned to go, the proprietor interrupted him. "wait. if you are so interested in that old plunder, perhaps you would like to see this." steinman held in his hands a dingy old volume. libro could not resist. an unknown force compelled him to look at it. with hatred consuming him, he nevertheless, like a true bibliophile, received from his enemy the book. he opened it. "why, they are shakespeare quartos!" he almost shouted, and then stopped suddenly. the proprietor was looking at him narrowly. libro's heart had almost stopped beating. there was the long lost quarto of "titus andronicus," 1594, and a perfect first edition of "hamlet"! there were others in the volume, a veritable treasure trove. it was, in truth, a great discovery! "what's it worth?" said steinman. "something to a collector," replied libro, honestly: "nothing to you." "well, if you know anyone who wants the old thing he can have it for ten dollars. i once advanced that amount on it. since then i say, no books!" john libro by a superhuman effort controlled himself. "steinman, i need money for food. you already have everything valuable i possess,--but this." he took from his finger a ring. it had been his mother's wedding ring. it was the last that remained to him of his parents' legacy. "how much will you give me on this?" he said, trembling. his very life depended upon steinman's answer. he held his breath. "a little less than gold-value," said steinman. he threw it carelessly on the scales. "ten dollars and thirty-seven cents." without further ado steinman counted out the money and libro departed. he, however, went out one door and came in by another. it was the first time that he had entered the half of the establishment where the unredeemed merchandise is sold. on this side he was a patron and not to be patronized. "how much for that old book?" said libro boldly. "ten dollars," answered steinman in a surprised tone. this was a new dodge, a customer pledging one article to obtain money to purchase another! it was libro's turn now; but he was not used to the game. "i shall give you five dollars. not a cent more." "no. ten dollars or nothing." "all right. i'll take it; wrap it up." he counted out the money and left. steinman felt uneasy. he thought he saw the flicker of an unholy smile on libro's face, as he passed through the swinging doors. it is almost unnecessary to state that libro sold the book--the only book he ever parted with--for a fabulous sum--more than its weight in gold,--and for many thousands of dollars. a noted collector purchased it immediately, and it is now the chief attraction of his wonderful library. with the money jingling in his pocket he returned to the scene of his former misery. he was to redeem his pledges with the broker's own money. "steinman," he said, "collect all my things. i shall pay what i owe and take them with me." "i congratulate you, mr. libro, on your return to fortune," replied steinman affably. "i want to thank you, steinman." "thank me! why?" "because of the old book," said libro, politely. "i sold it to-day for thirty thousand dollars!" in a joyous mood john libro called upon ethel edwards. the story of "the shakespeare find" was in the evening's papers. no one was more glad to see him than ethel's father, who welcomed him like an old friend. that night he mused as he walked home: "i am no longer a stock-broker, i am engaged to ethel, and i can still collect books. i _am_ a fool; and i glory in it!" the fifteen joys of marriage he was showing the distinguished guest through his magnificent library. he exhibited with pride his treasures, telling an interesting tale about this volume, and his merry adventures about that. in glass-covered exhibition cases were displayed some of his greater rarities and the colors of their morocco coverings gleamed and glowed in the light. at one end of the spacious room was a case with bronze mountings, and within reposed a volume bound in old olive levant, powdered with the bees and other devices so often used by nicolas eve, binder to his majesty francis the first. the visitor asked about the volume that was so superbly housed, and begged mr. henry stirling to give its history. "pray examine it," he replied, taking the volume with the greatest care from the case. on its back, in letters of gold, mellowed by age, was its title: "les quinze joyes de mariage." "ah, that is indeed rare!" exclaimed the visitor, "and its binding is marvelous. but hold, it is rubbed in one corner. some vandal did that! it is a shame such a treasure should have been used so damnably!" "it is for that reason, sir," stirling replied, "that it is my most beloved volume. i value it above all the books in my library. this is its history:-"some fifteen years ago i met at a house party a lady to whom i was instantly attracted. she was handsome, with high coloring, and the most glorious hair. we met often thereafter, and a year later she became my wife. we lived for some time most happily together. occasionally we had petty disputes that always ended in a victory for both of us! "about twelve years ago, attracted by a great book sale, i started to form this library, which has been the passion of my life. i read all the catalogues, became skilled in bibliography, lived in the bookshops; spent all my time collating and going over my precious volumes. in the evenings, instead of talking to my wife about the ives' coming ball, or a problem in bridge, or the newest shades of silk, i pored over the catalogues which came to me from all parts of the world. my wife said nothing at first, but when one bookcase was added to another, crowding out the little sheraton writing tables, and the bijou cabinets, she objected mildly, 'why bring all this trash into the house? and besides you never read them. i suppose they don't cost you much. i loaned a few to one of my friends yesterday.' "i winced; but said nothing. "gradually i became absorbed in the pursuit. other collectors--men after my own heart--rich, and always wearing the oddest clothes--so my good wife said--came to visit me. we would stay up far into the night relating our experiences, telling wonderful stories of how we secured our rarest volumes, and remarking about the prices, which seemed always soaring! my wife knew at last that these old books cost a great deal of money; that i would spend a hundred dollars for an old almanac or an aldus, while i objected to the forty dollars she paid for a hat. she said she would stand it no longer. i remonstrated, but in vain. she remarked that i had changed--that i no longer loved her. this was not true; i loved her as i always did--but i would not allow anyone to dictate to me. "however, i displayed no longer the little morocco things that i had bought, but brought them home surreptitiously, placing them in the corners of the bookcase. i concealed them in my newspaper of an evening, or had them sent home when my wife was out shopping, or visiting her friends. sometimes she would catch me _flagrante delicto_, as i would stealthily remove my beloved from its brown wrapping-paper; or catch me napping with a first edition that she was sure she had not seen before. "the situation grew intolerable. i could not bear to have some one who had promised to obey me, taunting me at every turn, remorselessly dropping an elzevir on the floor, or shattering my nerves by insolently showing me a receipted bill for a presentation copy of 'endymion.' i tried to be gentle with her, to reason with her, to tell her what a scholarly thing i was doing,--but it was of no avail. she became actually jealous of my books. she looked with distrust at every parcel that arrived; she was suspicious of everything that had the _appearance_ of a book. "at first she was only mildly oppressive; she now became severe, scolding continually, making my life a burden. she said my love of books was unnatural, wicked, unspeakable. i could stand it no longer; i could not live with a woman who treated me in so cruel a way. when i told her this she was docile at first, but the fire broke out anew at some new victory of mine in the auction rooms, which one of my spiteful friends told her about. matthews was always jealous of me, because i had more courage than he and snatched the uncut 'comus' from him when it was almost within his grasp. "i tried no longer to bear with my wife--she was a vixen, a mad woman, a very devil. i resolved to divorce her--but on what grounds? i could not think of a single charge that could be placed before a jury,--american juries generally consisted of the most stupid and unimaginative men. my wife said she ought to secure the action on the grounds of infidelity,--that i loved my first folio of shakespeare more than i did her! "things came to a climax at last. the famous library of richard appleton was to be sold at auction. i was intensely excited, as you can imagine. i read the catalogue item by item, word by word. i marked with ink the things i most _needed_ and determined to buy a few exquisite volumes even at the risk of bankruptcy. and there was 'les quinze joyes de mariage,' the first edition in the superb binding made by nicolas eve for diane de poitiers. i had resolved to purchase it many years ago when appleton wrested it from me at the amherst sale. i had even waited for his death knowing it would again come upon the market. i resolved to have it at all costs. the eventful day arrived. i went to the rooms in person. the little volume started at one hundred dollars and rose to three thousand. it was already beyond my means. i just had to have it. i nodded. there was no other bid. "i drew my check for the amount and carried it home. i was reading it in the library when my wife entered. i casually, in an unconcerned way, although my heart was trembling, placed it on the table. i looked at my wife. her eyes were flashing. she held the evening paper on which i could read the headlines.--'rare book brings $3010.' "i knew the storm was coming. she said i was an ingrate, a dissipater of her fortune, a fool, a heartless villain, a-"she went no further. "i grabbed the first thing at hand,--it was 'the fifteen joys of marriage,'--and threw it at her head. it struck her arm and fell upon the floor. when i stooped to pick it up, noticing the poor, bruised, broken corner, i looked about. my wife was gone. "the next day she served me with the papers for the divorce which is now a _cause célèbre_. "at last i was free!" the love of books the philobiblon of richard de bury translated into english by e. c. thomas "take thou a book into thine hands as simon the just took the child jesus into his arms to carry him and kiss him. and when thou hast finished reading, close the book and give thanks for every word out of the mouth of god; because in the lord's field thou hast found a hidden treasure." thomas a kempis: doctrinale juvenum preface the author of the book. richard de bury (1281-1345), so called from being born near bury st. edmunds, was the son of sir richard aungerville. he studied at oxford; and was subsequently chosen to be tutor to prince edward of windsor, afterwards edward iii. his loyalty to the cause of queen isabella and the prince involved him in danger. on the accession of his pupil he was made successively cofferer, treasurer of the wardrobe, archdeacon of northampton, prebendary of lincoln, sarum, and lichfield, keeper of the privy purse, ambassador on two occasions to pope john xxii, who appointed him a chaplain of the papal chapel, dean of wells, and ultimately, at the end of the year 1333, bishop of durham; the king and queen, the king of scots, and all the magnates north of the trent, together with a multitude of nobles and many others, were present at his enthronization. it is noteworthy that during his stay at avignon, probably in 1330, he made the acquaintance of petrarch, who has left us a brief account of their intercourse. in 1332 richard visited cambridge, as one of the king's commissioners, to inquire into the state of the king's scholars there, and perhaps then became a member of the gild of st. mary--one of the two gilds which founded corpus christi college. in 1334 he became high chancellor of england, and treasurer in 1336, resigning the former office in 1335, so that he might help the king in dealing with affairs abroad and in scotland, and took a most distinguished part in diplomatic negociations between england and france. in 1339 he was again in his bishopric. thereafter his name occurs often among those appointed to treat of peace with philip of france, and with bruce of scotland. it appears that he was not in parliament in 1344. wasted by long sickness--longa infirmitate decoctus--on the 14th of april, 1345, richard de bury died at auckland, and was buried in durham cathedral. dominus ricardus de bury migravit ad dominum. the bishop as booklover. according to the concluding note, the philobiblon was completed on the bishop's fifty-eighth birthday, the 24th of january, 1345, so that even though weakened by illness, richard must have been actively engaged in his literary efforts to the very end of his generous and noble life. his enthusiastic devoted biographer chambre[1] gives a vivid account of the bishop's bookloving propensities, supplementary to what can be gathered from the philobiblon itself. iste summe delectabatur in multitudine librorum; he had more books, as was commonly reported, than all the other english bishops put together. he had a separate library in each of his residences, and wherever he was residing, so many books lay about his bed-chamber, that it was hardly possible to stand or move without treading upon them. all the time he could spare from business was devoted either to religious offices or to his books. every day while at table he would have a book read to him, unless some special guest were present, and afterwards would engage in discussion on the subject of the reading. the haughty anthony bec delighted in the appendages of royalty--to be addressed by nobles kneeling, and to be waited on in his presence-chamber and at his table by knights bare-headed and standing; but de bury loved to surround himself with learned scholars. among these were such men as thomas bradwardine, afterwards archbishop of canterbury, and author of the de causa dei; richard fitzralph, afterwards archbishop of armagh, and famous for his hostility to the mendicant orders; walter burley, who dedicated to him a translation of the politics of aristotle made at his suggestion; john mauduit, the astronomer; robert holkot, author of many books; richard de kilvington; richard benworth, afterwards bishop of london; and walter seagrave, who became dean of chichester."[2] [1] cp. surtees society's edition of scriptores tres; also wharton's anglia sacra. [2] an unsuccessful attempt has been made to transfer the authorship of the book to robert holkot. various theories have been advanced against richard's claims. it is noteworthy that his contemporary adam murimuth disparages him as "mediocriter literatus, volens tamen magnus clericus reputari," but such disparagement must be taken with the utmost caution. the really difficult fact to be accounted for is the omission on the part of chambre to mention the book. the bishop's books. in the philobiblon, richard de bury frankly and clearly describes his means and method of collecting books. anyhow his object was clearly not selfish. the treatise contains his rules for the library of the new college at oxford--durham college (where trinity college now stands)--which he practically founded, though his successor, bishop hatfield, carried the scheme into effect. it is traditionally reported that richard's books were sent, in his lifetime or after his death, to the house of the durham benedictines at oxford, and there remained until the dissolution of the college by henry viii., when they were dispersed, some going into duke humphrey's (the university) library, others to balliol college, and the remainder passing into the hands of dr. george owen, who purchased the site of the dissolved college.[3] [3] mr. j. w. clark puts the matter as follows:--"durham college, maintained by the benedictines of durham, was supplied with books from the mother-house, lists of which have been preserved; and subsequently a library was built there to contain the collection bequeathed in 1345 by richard de bury" (the care of books, p. 142). mr. thomas points out that de bury's executors sold at least some portion of his books; and, moreover, his biographer says nothing of a library at oxford. possibly the scheme was never carried out. in the british museum (roy. 13 d. iv. 3) is a large folio ms. of the works of john of salisbury, which was one of the books bought back from the bishop's executors. unfortunately, the "special catalogue" of his books prepared by richard has not come down to us; but "from his own book and from the books cited in the works of his friends and housemates, who may reasonably be supposed to have drawn largely from the bishop's collection, it would be possible to restore a hypothetical but not improbable bibliotheca ricardi de bury. the difficulty would be with that contemporary literature, which they would think below the dignity of quotation, but which we know the bishop collected." early editions of the philobiblon. the book was first printed at cologne in 1473, at spires in 1483, and at paris in 1500. the first english edition appeared in 1598-9, edited by thomas james, bodley's first librarian. other editions appeared in germany in 1610, 1614, 1674 and 1703; at paris in 1856; at albany in 1861. the texts were, with the exception of those issued in 1483 and 1599, based on the 1473 edition; though the french edition and translation of 1856, prepared by m. cocheris, claimed to be a critical version, it left the text untouched, and merely gave the various readings of the three paris manuscripts at the foot of the pages; these readings are moreover badly chosen, and the faults of the version are further to be referred to the use of the ill-printed 1703 edition as copy. in 1832 there appeared an anonymous english translation, now known to have been by j. b. inglis; it followed the edition of 1473, with all its errors and inaccuracies. mr. e. c. thomas' text.--the first true text of the philobiblon, the result of a careful examination of twenty-eight mss., and of the various printed editions, appeared in the year 1888: "the philobiblon of richard de bury, bishop of durham, treasurer and chancellor of edward iii, edited and translated by ernest c. thomas, barrister-at-law, late scholar of trinity college, oxford, and librarian of the oxford union. london: kegan paul, trench, & co." for fifteen years the enthusiastic editor--an ideal bibliophile--had toiled at his labour of love, and his work was on all sides received with the recognition due to his monumental achievement. to the great loss of english learning, he did not long survive the conclusion of his labours. the very limited edition of the work was soon exhausted, and it is by the most generous permission of his father, mr. john thomas, of lower broughton, manchester, that the translation--the only trustworthy rendering of richard de bury's precious treatise--is now, for the first time, made accessible to the larger book-loving public, and fittingly inaugurates the present series of english classics. the general editor desires to express his best thanks to mr. john thomas, as also to messrs. kegan paul, for their kindness in allowing him to avail himself of the materials included in the 1888 edition of the work. he has attempted, in the brief preface and notes, to condense mr. thomas' labours in such a way as would have been acceptable to the lamented scholar, and though he has made bold to explain some few textual difficulties, and to add some few references, he would fain hope that these additions have been made with modest caution--with the reverence due to the unstinted toil of a bibliophile after richard de bury's own pattern. yet once again richard de bury's philobiblon, edited and translated into english by e. c. thomas, is presented to new generations of book-lovers:--"librorum dilectoribus." the philobiblon newly translated prologue i that the treasure of wisdom is chiefly contained in books ii the degree of affection that is properly due to books iii what we are to think of the price in the buying of books iv the complaint of books against the clergy already promoted v the complaint of books against the possessioners vi the complaint of books against the mendicants vii the complaint of books against wars viii of the numerous opportunities we have had of collecting a store of books ix how, although we preferred the works of the ancients, we have not condemned the studies of the moderns x of the gradual perfecting of books xi why we have preferred books of liberal learning to books of law xii why we have caused books of grammar to be so diligently prepared xiii why we have not wholly neglected the fables of the poets xiv who ought to be special lovers of books xv of the advantages of the love of books xvi that it is meritorious to write new books and to renew the old xvii of showing due propriety in the custody of books xviii showeth that we have collected so great store of books for the common benefit of scholars and not only for our own pleasure xix of the manner of lending all our books to students xx an exhortation to scholars to requite us by pious prayers prologue to all the faithful of christ to whom the tenor of these presents may come, richard de bury, by the divine mercy bishop of durham, wisheth everlasting salvation in the lord and to present continually a pious memorial of himself before god, alike in his lifetime and after his death. what shall i render unto the lord for all his benefits towards me? asks the most devout psalmist, an invincible king and first among the prophets; in which most grateful question he approves himself a willing thank-offerer, a multifarious debtor, and one who wishes for a holier counsellor than himself: agreeing with aristotle, the chief of philosophers, who shows (in the 3rd and 6th books of his ethics) that all action depends upon counsel. and indeed if so wonderful a prophet, having a fore-knowledge of divine secrets, wished so anxiously to consider how he might gratefully repay the blessings graciously bestowed, what can we fitly do, who are but rude thanksgivers and most greedy receivers, laden with infinite divine benefits? assuredly we ought with anxious deliberation and abundant consideration, having first invoked the sevenfold spirit, that it may burn in our musings as an illuminating fire, fervently to prepare a way without hinderance, that the bestower of all things may be cheerfully worshipped in return for the gifts that he has bestowed, that our neighbour may be relieved of his burden, and that the guilt contracted by sinners every day may be redeemed by the atonement of almsgiving. forewarned therefore through the admonition of the psalmist's devotion by him who alone prevents and perfects the goodwill of man, without whom we have no power even so much as to think, and whose gift we doubt not it is, if we have done anything good, we have diligently inquired and considered in our own heart as well as with others, what among the good offices of various works of piety would most please the almighty, and would be more beneficial to the church militant. and lo! there soon occurred to our contemplation a host of unhappy, nay, rather of elect scholars, in whom god the creator and nature his handmaid planted the roots of excellent morals and of famous sciences, but whom the poverty of their circumstances so oppressed that before the frown of adverse fortune the seeds of excellence, so fruitful in the cultivated field of youth, not being watered by the rain that they require, are forced to wither away. thus it happens that "bright virtue lurks buried in obscurity," to use the words of boethius, and burning lights are not put under a bushel, but for want of oil are utterly extinguished. thus the field, so full of flower in spring, has withered up before harvest time; thus wheat degenerates to tares, and vines into the wild vines, and thus olives run into the wild olive; the tender stems rot away altogether, and those who might have grown up into strong pillars of the church, being endowed with the capacity of a subtle intellect, abandon the schools of learning. with poverty only as their stepmother, they are repelled violently from the nectared cup of philosophy as soon as they have tasted of it and have become more fiercely thirsty by the very taste. though fit for the liberal arts and disposed to study the sacred writings alone, being deprived of the aid of their friends, by a kind of apostasy they return to the mechanical arts solely to gain a livelihood, to the loss of the church and the degradation of the whole clergy. thus mother church conceiving sons is compelled to miscarry, nay, some misshapen monster is born untimely from her womb, and for lack of that little with which nature is contented, she loses excellent pupils, who might afterwards become champions and athletes of the faith. alas, how suddenly the woof is cut, while the hand of the weaver is beginning his work! alas, how the sun is eclipsed in the brightness of the dawn, and the planet in its course is hurled backwards, and, while it bears the nature and likeness of a star suddenly drops and becomes a meteor! what more piteous sight can the pious man behold? what can more sharply stir the bowels of his pity? what can more easily melt a heart hard as an anvil into hot tears? on the other hand, let us recall from past experience how much it has profited the whole christian commonwealth, not indeed to enervate students with the delights of a sardanapalus or the riches of a croesus, but rather to support them in their poverty with the frugal means that become the scholar. how many have we seen with our eyes, how many have we read of in books, who, distinguished by no pride of birth, and rejoicing in no rich inheritance, but supported only by the piety of the good, have made their way to apostolic chairs, have most worthily presided over faithful subjects, have bent the necks of the proud and lofty to the ecclesiastical yoke and have extended further the liberties of the church! accordingly, having taken a survey of human necessities in every direction, with a view to bestow our charity upon them, our compassionate inclinations have chosen to bear pious aid to this calamitous class of men, in whom there is nevertheless such hope of advantage to the church, and to provide for them, not only in respect of things necessary to their support, but much more in respect of the books so useful to their studies. to this end, most acceptable in the sight of god, our attention has long been unweariedly devoted. this ecstatic love has carried us away so powerfully, that we have resigned all thoughts of other earthly things, and have given ourselves up to a passion for acquiring books. that our intent and purpose, therefore, may be known to posterity as well as to our contemporaries, and that we may for ever stop the perverse tongues of gossipers as far as we are concerned, we have published a little treatise written in the lightest style of the moderns; for it is ridiculous to find a slight matter treated of in a pompous style. and this treatise (divided into twenty chapters) will clear the love we have had for books from the charge of excess, will expound the purpose of our intense devotion, and will narrate more clearly than light all the circumstances of our undertaking. and because it principally treats of the love of books, we have chosen, after the fashion of the ancient romans, fondly to name it by a greek word, philobiblon. chapter i that the treasure of wisdom is chiefly contained in books the desirable treasure of wisdom and science, which all men desire by an instinct of nature, infinitely surpasses all the riches of the world; in respect of which precious stones are worthless; in comparison with which silver is as clay and pure gold is as a little sand; at whose splendour the sun and moon are dark to look upon; compared with whose marvellous sweetness honey and manna are bitter to the taste. o value of wisdom that fadeth not away with time, virtue ever flourishing, that cleanseth its possessor from all venom! o heavenly gift of the divine bounty, descending from the father of lights, that thou mayest exalt the rational soul to the very heavens! thou art the celestial nourishment of the intellect, which those who eat shall still hunger and those who drink shall still thirst, and the gladdening harmony of the languishing soul which he that hears shall never be confounded. thou art the moderator and rule of morals, which he who follows shall not sin. by thee kings reign and princes decree justice. by thee, rid of their native rudeness, their minds and tongues being polished, the thorns of vice being torn up by the roots, those men attain high places of honour, and become fathers of their country, and companions of princes, who without thee would have melted their spears into pruning-hooks and ploughshares, or would perhaps be feeding swine with the prodigal. where dost thou chiefly lie hidden, o most elect treasure! and where shall thirsting souls discover thee? certes, thou hast placed thy tabernacle in books, where the most high, the light of lights, the book of life, has established thee. there everyone who asks receiveth thee, and everyone who seeks finds thee, and to everyone that knocketh boldly it is speedily opened. therein the cherubim spread out their wings, that the intellect of the students may ascend and look from pole to pole, from the east and west, from the north and from the south. therein the mighty and incomprehensible god himself is apprehensibly contained and worshipped; therein is revealed the nature of things celestial, terrestrial, and infernal; therein are discerned the laws by which every state is administered, the offices of the celestial hierarchy are distinguished, and the tyrannies of demons described, such as neither the ideas of plato transcend, nor the chair of crato contained. in books i find the dead as if they were alive; in books i foresee things to come; in books warlike affairs are set forth; from books come forth the laws of peace. all things are corrupted and decay in time; saturn ceases not to devour the children that he generates; all the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless god had provided mortals with the remedy of books. alexander, the conqueror of the earth, julius, the invader of rome and of the world, who, the first in war and arts, assumed universal empire under his single rule, faithful fabricius and stern cato, would now have been unknown to fame, if the aid of books had been wanting. towers have been razed to the ground; cities have been overthrown; triumphal arches have perished from decay; nor can either pope or king find any means of more easily conferring the privilege of perpetuity than by books. the book that he has made renders its author this service in return, that so long as the book survives its author remains immortal and cannot die, as ptolemy declares in the prologue to his almagest: he is not dead, he says, who has given life to science. who therefore will limit by anything of another kind the price of the infinite treasure of books, from which the scribe who is instructed bringeth forth things new and old? truth that triumphs over all things, which overcomes the king, wine, and women, which it is reckoned holy to honour before friendship, which is the way without turning and the life without end, which holy boethius considers to be threefold in thought, speech, and writing, seems to remain more usefully and to fructify to greater profit in books. for the meaning of the voice perishes with the sound; truth latent in the mind is wisdom that is hid and treasure that is not seen; but truth which shines forth in books desires to manifest itself to every impressionable sense. it commends itself to the sight when it is read, to the hearing when it is heard, and moreover in a manner to the touch, when it suffers itself to be transcribed, bound, corrected, and preserved. the undisclosed truth of the mind, although it is the possession of the noble soul, yet because it lacks a companion, is not certainly known to be delightful, while neither sight nor hearing takes account of it. further the truth of the voice is patent only to the ear and eludes the sight, which reveals to us more of the qualities of things, and linked with the subtlest of motions begins and perishes as it were in a breath. but the written truth of books, not transient but permanent, plainly offers itself to be observed, and by means of the pervious spherules of the eyes, passing through the vestibule of perception and the courts of imagination, enters the chamber of intellect, taking its place in the couch of memory, where it engenders the eternal truth of the mind. finally we must consider what pleasantness of teaching there is in books, how easy, how secret! how safely we lay bare the poverty of human ignorance to books without feeling any shame! they are masters who instruct us without rod or ferule, without angry words, without clothes or money. if you come to them they are not asleep; if you ask and inquire of them they do not withdraw themselves; they do not chide if you make mistakes; they do not laugh at you if you are ignorant. o books, who alone are liberal and free, who give to all who ask of you and enfranchise all who serve you faithfully! by how many thousand types are ye commended to learned men in the scriptures given us by inspiration of god! for ye are the minds of profoundest wisdom, to which the wise man sends his son that he may dig out treasures: prov. ii. ye are the wells of living waters, which father abraham first digged, isaac digged again, and which the philistines strive to fill up: gen. xxvi. ye are indeed the most delightful ears of corn, full of grain, to be rubbed only by apostolic hands, that the sweetest food may be produced for hungry souls: matt. xii. ye are the golden pots in which manna is stored, and rocks flowing with honey, nay, combs of honey, most plenteous udders of the milk of life, garners ever full; ye are the tree of life and the fourfold river of paradise, by which the human mind is nourished, and the thirsty intellect is watered and refreshed. ye are the ark of noah and the ladder of jacob, and the troughs by which the young of those who look therein are coloured; ye are the stones of testimony and the pitchers holding the lamps of gideon, the scrip of david, from which the smoothest stones are taken for the slaying of goliath. ye are the golden vessels of the temple, the arms of the soldiers of the church with which to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, fruitful olives, vines of engadi, fig-trees that are never barren, burning lamps always to be held in readiness--and all the noblest comparisons of scripture may be applied to books, if we choose to speak in figures. chapter ii the degree of affection that is properly due to books since the degree of affection a thing deserves depends upon the degree of its value, and the previous chapter shows that the value of books is unspeakable, it is quite clear to the reader what is the probable conclusion from this. i say probable, for in moral science we do not insist upon demonstration, remembering that the educated man seeks such degree of certainty as he perceives the subject-matter will bear, as aristotle testifies in the first book of his ethics. for tully does not appeal to euclid, nor does euclid rely upon tully. this at all events we endeavour to prove, whether by logic or rhetoric, that all riches and all delights whatsoever yield place to books in the spiritual mind, wherein the spirit which is charity ordereth charity. now in the first place, because wisdom is contained in books more than all mortals understand, and wisdom thinks lightly of riches, as the foregoing chapter declares. furthermore, aristotle, in his problems, determines the question, why the ancients proposed prizes to the stronger in gymnastic and corporeal contests, but never awarded any prize for wisdom. this question he solves as follows: in gymnastic exercises the prize is better and more desirable than that for which it is bestowed; but it is certain that nothing is better than wisdom: wherefore no prize could be assigned for wisdom. and therefore neither riches nor delights are more excellent than wisdom. again, only the fool will deny that friendship is to be preferred to riches, since the wisest of men testifies this; but the chief of philosophers honours truth before friendship, and the truthful zorobabel prefers it to all things. riches, then, are less than truth. now truth is chiefly maintained and contained in holy books--nay, they are written truth itself, since by books we do not now mean the materials of which they are made. wherefore riches are less than books, especially as the most precious of all riches are friends, as boethius testifies in the second book of his consolation; to whom the truth of books according to aristotle is to be preferred. moreover, since we know that riches first and chiefly appertain to the support of the body only, while the virtue of books is the perfection of reason, which is properly speaking the happiness of man, it appears that books to the man who uses his reason are dearer than riches. furthermore, that by which the faith is more easily defended, more widely spread, more clearly preached, ought to be more desirable to the faithful. but this is the truth written in books, which our saviour plainly showed, when he was about to contend stoutly against the tempter, girding himself with the shield of truth and indeed of written truth, declaring "it is written" of what he was about to utter with his voice. and, again, no one doubts that happiness is to be preferred to riches. but happiness consists in the operation of the noblest and diviner of the faculties that we possess--when the whole mind is occupied in contemplating the truth of wisdom, which is the most delectable of all our virtuous activities, as the prince of philosophers declares in the tenth book of the ethics, on which account it is that philosophy is held to have wondrous pleasures in respect of purity and solidity, as he goes on to say. but the contemplation of truth is never more perfect than in books, where the act of imagination perpetuated by books does not suffer the operation of the intellect upon the truths that it has seen to suffer interruption. wherefore books appear to be the most immediate instruments of speculative delight, and therefore aristotle, the sun of philosophic truth, in considering the principles of choice, teaches that in itself to philosophize is more desirable than to be rich, although in certain cases, as where for instance one is in need of necessaries, it may be more desirable to be rich than to philosophize. moreover, since books are the aptest teachers, as the previous chapter assumes, it is fitting to bestow on them the honour and the affection that we owe to our teachers. in fine, since all men naturally desire to know, and since by means of books we can attain the knowledge of the ancients, which is to be desired beyond all riches, what man living according to nature would not feel the desire of books? and although we know that swine trample pearls under foot, the wise man will not therefore be deterred from gathering the pearls that lie before him. a library of wisdom, then, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it. whoever therefore claims to be zealous of truth, of happiness, of wisdom or knowledge, aye, even of the faith, must needs become a lover of books. chapter iii what we are to think of the price in the buying of books from what has been said we draw this corollary welcome to us, but (as we believe) acceptable to few: namely, that no dearness of price ought to hinder a man from the buying of books, if he has the money that is demanded for them, unless it be to withstand the malice of the seller or to await a more favourable opportunity of buying. for if it is wisdom only that makes the price of books, which is an infinite treasure to mankind, and if the value of books is unspeakable, as the premises show, how shall the bargain be shown to be dear where an infinite good is being bought? wherefore, that books are to be gladly bought and unwillingly sold, solomon, the sun of men, exhorts us in the proverbs: buy the truth, he says, and sell not wisdom. but what we are trying to show by rhetoric or logic, let us prove by examples from history. the arch-philosopher aristotle, whom averroes regards as the law of nature, bought a few books of speusippus straightway after his death for 72,000 sesterces. plato, before him in time, but after him in learning, bought the book of philolaus the pythagorean, from which he is said to have taken the timaeus, for 10,000 denaries, as aulus gellius relates in the noctes atticae. now aulus gellius relates this that the foolish may consider how wise men despise money in comparison with books. and on the other hand, that we may know that folly and pride go together, let us here relate the folly of tarquin the proud in despising books, as also related by aulus gellius. an old woman, utterly unknown, is said to have come to tarquin the proud, the seventh king of rome, offering to sell nine books, in which (as she declared) sacred oracles were contained, but she asked an immense sum for them, insomuch that the king said she was mad. in anger she flung three books into the fire, and still asked the same sum for the rest. when the king refused it, again she flung three others into the fire and still asked the same price for the three that were left. at last, astonished beyond measure, tarquin was glad to pay for three books the same price for which he might have bought nine. the old woman straightway disappeared, and was never seen before or after. these were the sibylline books, which the romans consulted as a divine oracle by some one of the quindecemvirs, and this is believed to have been the origin of the quindecemvirate. what did this sibyl teach the proud king by this bold deed, except that the vessels of wisdom, holy books, exceed all human estimation; and, as gregory says of the kingdom of heaven: they are worth all that thou hast? chapter iv the complaint of books against the clergy already promoted a generation of vipers destroying their own parent and base offspring of the ungrateful cuckoo, who when he has grown strong slays his nurse, the giver of his strength, are degenerate clerks with regard to books. bring it again to mind and consider faithfully what ye receive through books, and ye will find that books are as it were the creators of your distinction, without which other favourers would have been wanting. in sooth, while still untrained and helpless ye crept up to us, ye spake as children, ye thought as children, ye cried as children and begged to be made partakers of our milk. but we being straightway moved by your tears gave you the breast of grammar to suck, which ye plied continually with teeth and tongue, until ye lost your native barbarousness and learned to speak with our tongues the mighty things of god. and next we clad you with the goodly garments of philosophy, rhetoric and dialectic, of which we had and have a store, while ye were naked as a tablet to be painted on. for all the household of philosophy are clothed with garments, that the nakedness and rawness of the intellect may be covered. after this, providing you with the fourfold wings of the quadrivials that ye might be winged like the seraphs and so mount above the cherubim, we sent you to a friend at whose door, if only ye importunately knocked, ye might borrow the three loaves of the knowledge of the trinity, in which consists the final felicity of every sojourner below. nay, if ye deny that ye had these privileges, we boldly declare that ye either lost them by your carelessness, or that through your sloth ye spurned them when offered to you. if these things seem but a light matter to you, we will add yet greater things. ye are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy race, ye are a peculiar people chosen into the lot of god, ye are priests and ministers of god, nay, ye are called the very church of god, as though the laity were not to be called churchmen. ye, being preferred to the laity, sing psalms and hymns in the chancel, and, serving the altar and living by the altar, make the true body of christ, wherein god himself has honoured you not only above the laity, but even a little higher than the angels. for to whom of his angels has he said at any time: thou art a priest for ever after the order of melchisedech? ye dispense the patrimony of the crucified one to the poor, wherein it is required of stewards that a man be found faithful. ye are shepherds of the lord's flock, as well in example of life as in the word of doctrine, which is bound to repay you with milk and wool. who are the givers of all these things, o clerks? is it not books? do ye remember therefore, we pray, how many and how great liberties and privileges are bestowed upon the clergy through us? in truth, taught by us who are the vessels of wisdom and intellect, ye ascend the teacher's chair and are called of men rabbi. by us ye become marvellous in the eyes of the laity, like great lights in the world, and possess the dignities of the church according to your various stations. by us, while ye still lack the first down upon your cheeks, ye are established in your early years and bear the tonsure on your heads, while the dread sentence of the church is heard: touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no harm, and he who has rashly touched them let him forthwith by his own blow be smitten violently with the wound of an anathema. at length yielding your lives to wickedness, reaching the two paths of pythagoras, ye choose the left branch, and going backward ye let go the lot of god which ye had first assumed, becoming companions of thieves. and thus ever going from bad to worse, dyed with theft and murder and manifold impurities, your fame and conscience stained by sins, at the bidding of justice ye are confined in manacles and fetters, and are kept to be punished by a most shameful death. then your friend is put far away, nor is there any to mourn your lot. peter swears that he knows not the man: the people cry to the judge: crucify, crucify him! if thou let this man go, thou act not caesar's friend. now all refuge has perished, for ye must stand before the judgment-seat, and there is no appeal, but only hanging is in store for you. while the wretched man's heart is thus filled with woe and only the sorrowing muses bedew their cheeks with tears, in his strait is heard on every side the wailing appeal to us, and to avoid the danger of impending death he shows the slight sign of the ancient tonsure which we bestowed upon him, begging that we may be called to his aid and bear witness to the privilege bestowed upon him. then straightway touched with pity we run to meet the prodigal son and snatch the fugitive slave from the gates of death. the book he has not forgotten is handed to him to be read, and while with lips stammering with fear he reads a few words, the power of the judge is loosed, the accuser is withdrawn, and death is put to flight. o marvellous virtue of an empiric verse! o saving antidote of dreadful ruin! o precious reading of the psalter, which for this alone deserves to be called the book of life! let the laity undergo the judgment of the secular arm, that either sewn up in sacks they may be carried out to neptune, or planted in the earth may fructify for pluto, or may be offered amid the flames as a fattened holocaust to vulcan, or at least may be hung up as a victim to juno: while our nursling at a single reading of the book of life is handed over to the custody of the bishop, and rigour is changed to favour, and the forum being transferred from the laity, death is routed by the clerk who is the nursling of books. but now let us speak of the clerks who are vessels of virtue. which of you about to preach ascends the pulpit or the rostrum without in some way consulting us? which of you enters the schools to teach or to dispute without relying upon our support? first of all, it behoves you to eat the book with ezechiel, that the belly of your memory may be sweetened within, and thus as with the panther refreshed, to whose breath all beasts and cattle long to approach, the sweet savour of the spices it has eaten may shed a perfume without. thus our nature secretly working in our own, listeners hasten up gladly, as the load-stone draws the iron nothing loth. what an infinite host of books lie at paris or athens, and at the same time resound in britain and in rome! in truth, while resting they yet move, and while retaining their own places they are carried about every way to the minds of listeners. finally, by the knowledge of literature, we establish priests, bishops, cardinals, and the pope, that all things in the ecclesiastical hierarchy may be fitly disposed. for it is from books that everything of good that befalls the clerical condition takes its origin. but let this suffice: for it pains us to recall what we have bestowed upon the degenerate clergy, because whatever gifts are distributed to the ungrateful seem to be lost rather than bestowed. let us next dwell a little on the recital of the wrongs with which they requite us, the contempts and cruelties of which we cannot recite an example in each kind, nay, scarcely the main classes of the several wrongs. in the first place, we are expelled by force and arms from the homes of the clergy, which are ours by hereditary right, who were used to have cells of quietness in the inner chamber, but, alas! in these unhappy times we are altogether exiled, suffering poverty without the gates. for our places are seized now by dogs, now by hawks, now by that biped beast whose cohabitation with the clergy was forbidden of old, from which we have always taught our nurslings to flee more than from the asp and the cockatrice; wherefore she, always jealous of the love of us, and never to be appeased, at length seeing us in some corner protected only by the web of some dead spider, with a frown abuses and reviles us with bitter words, declaring us alone of all the furniture in the house to be unnecessary, and complaining that we are useless for any household purpose, and advises that we should speedily be converted into rich caps, sendal and silk and twice-dyed purple, robes and furs, wool and linen: and, indeed, not without reason, if she could see our inmost hearts, if she had listened to our secret counsels, if she had read the book of theophrastus or valerius, or only heard the twenty-fifth chapter of ecclesiasticus with understanding ears. and hence it is that we have to mourn for the homes of which we have been unjustly robbed; and as to our coverings, not that they have not been given to us, but that the coverings anciently given to us have been torn by violent hands, insomuch that our soul is bowed down to the dust, our belly cleaveth unto the earth. we suffer from various diseases, enduring pains in our backs and sides; we lie with our limbs unstrung by palsy, and there is no man who layeth it to heart, and no man who provides a mollifying plaster. our native whiteness that was clear with light has turned to dun and yellow, so that no leech who should see us would doubt that we are diseased with jaundice. some of us are suffering from gout, as our twisted extremities plainly show. the smoke and dust by which we are continuously plagued have dulled the keenness of our visual rays, and are now infecting our bleared eyes with ophthalmia. within we are devoured by the fierce gripings of our entrails, which hungry worms cease not to gnaw, and we undergo the corruption of the two lazaruses, nor is there anyone to anoint us with balm of cedar, nor to cry to us who have been four days dead and already stink, lazarus come forth! no healing drug is bound around our cruel wounds, which are so atrociously inflicted upon the innocent, and there is none to put a plaster upon our ulcers; but ragged and shivering we are flung away into dark corners, or in tears take our place with holy job upon his dunghill, or--too horrible to relate--are buried in the depths of the common sewers. the cushion is withdrawn that should support our evangelical sides, which ought to have the first claim upon the incomes of the clergy, and the common necessaries of life thus be for ever provided for us, who are entrusted to their charge. again, we complain of another sort of injury which is too often unjustly inflicted upon our persons. we are sold for bondmen and bondwomen, and lie as hostages in taverns with no one to redeem us. we fall a prey to the cruel shambles, where we see sheep and cattle slaughtered not without pious tears, and where we die a thousand times from such terrors as might frighten even the brave. we are handed over to jews, saracens, heretics and infidels, whose poison we always dread above everything, and by whom it is well known that some of our parents have been infected with pestiferous venom. in sooth, we who should be treated as masters in the sciences, and bear rule over the mechanics who should be subject to us, are instead handed over to the government of subordinates, as though some supremely noble monarch should be trodden under foot by rustic heels. any seamster or cobbler or tailor or artificer of any trade keeps us shut up in prison for the luxurious and wanton pleasures of the clergy. now we would pursue a new kind of injury by which we suffer alike in person and in fame, the dearest thing we have. our purity of race is diminished every day, while new authors' names are imposed upon us by worthless compilers, translators, and transformers, and losing our ancient nobility, while we are reborn in successive generations, we become wholly degenerate; and thus against our will the name of some wretched stepfather is affixed to us, and the sons are robbed of the names of their true fathers. the verses of virgil, while he was yet living, were claimed by an impostor; and a certain fidentinus mendaciously usurped the works of martial, whom martial thus deservedly rebuked: "the book you read is, fidentinus! mine, though read so badly, 't well may pass for thine!" what marvel, then, if when our authors are dead clerical apes use us to make broad their phylacteries, since even while they are alive they try to seize us as soon as we are published? ah! how often ye pretend that we who are ancient are but lately born, and try to pass us off as sons who are really fathers, calling us who have made you clerks the production of your studies. indeed, we derived our origin from athens, though we are now supposed to be from rome; for carmentis was always the pilferer of cadmus, and we who were but lately born in england, will to-morrow be born again in paris; and thence being carried to bologna, will obtain an italian origin, based upon no affinity of blood. alas! how ye commit us to treacherous copyists to be written, how corruptly ye read us and kill us by medication, while ye supposed ye were correcting us with pious zeal. oftentimes we have to endure barbarous interpreters, and those who are ignorant of foreign idioms presume to translate us from one language into another; and thus all propriety of speech is lost and our sense is shamefully mutilated contrary to the meaning of the author! truly noble would have been the condition of books if it had not been for the presumption of the tower of babel, if but one kind of speech had been transmitted by the whole human race. we will add the last clause of our long lament, though far too short for the materials that we have. for in us the natural use is changed to that which is against nature, while we who are the light of faithful souls everywhere fall a prey to painters knowing nought of letters, and are entrusted to goldsmiths to become, as though we were not sacred vessels of wisdom, repositories of gold-leaf. we fall undeservedly into the power of laymen, which is more bitter to us than any death, since they have sold our people for nought, and our enemies themselves are our judges. it is clear from what we have said what infinite invectives we could hurl against the clergy, if we did not think of our own reputation. for the soldier whose campaigns are over venerates his shield and arms, and grateful corydon shows regard for his decaying team, harrow, flail and mattock, and every manual artificer for the instruments of his craft; it is only the ungrateful cleric who despises and neglects those things which have ever been the foundation of his honours. chapter v the complaint of books against the possessioners the venerable devotion of the religious orders is wont to be solicitous in the care of books and to delight in their society, as if they were the only riches. for some used to write them with their own hands between the hours of prayer, and gave to the making of books such intervals as they could secure and the times appointed for the recreation of the body. by whose labours there are resplendent to-day in most monasteries these sacred treasuries full of cherubic letters, for giving the knowledge of salvation to the student and a delectable light to the paths of the laity. o manual toil, happier than any agricultural task! o devout solicitude, where neither martha nor mary deserves to be rebuked! o joyful house, in which the fruitful leah does not envy the beauteous rachel, but action and contemplation share each other's joys! o happy charge, destined to benefit endless generations of posterity, with which no planting of trees, no sowing of seeds, no pastoral delight in herds, no building of fortified camps can be compared! wherefore the memory of those fathers should be immortal, who delighted only in the treasures of wisdom, who most laboriously provided shining lamps against future darkness, and against hunger of hearing the word of god, most carefully prepared, not bread baked in the ashes, nor of barley, nor musty, but unleavened loaves made of the finest wheat of divine wisdom, with which hungry souls might be joyfully fed these men were the stoutest champions of the christian army, who defended our weakness by their most valiant arms; they were in their time the most cunning takers of foxes, who have left us their nets, that we might catch the young foxes, who cease not to devour the growing vines. of a truth, noble fathers, worthy of perpetual benediction, ye would have been deservedly happy, if ye had been allowed to beget offspring like yourselves, and to leave no degenerate or doubtful progeny for the benefit of future times. but, painful to relate, now slothful thersites handles the arms of achilles and the choice trappings of war-horses are spread upon lazy asses, winking owls lord it in the eagle's nest, and the cowardly kite sits upon the perch of the hawk. liber bacchus is ever loved, and is into their bellies shoved, by day and by night; liber codex is neglected, and with scornful hand rejected far out of their sight. and as if the simple monastic folk of modern times were deceived by a confusion of names, while liber pater is preferred to liber patrum, the study of the monks nowadays is in the emptying of cups and not the emending of books; to which they do not hesitate to add the wanton music of timotheus, jealous of chastity, and thus the song of the merry-maker and not the chant of the mourner is become the office of the monks. flocks and fleeces, crops and granaries, leeks and potherbs, drink and goblets, are nowadays the reading and study of the monks, except a few elect ones, in whom lingers not the image but some slight vestige of the fathers that preceded them. and again, no materials at all are furnished us to commend the canons regular for their care or study of us, who though they bear their name of honour from their twofold rule, yet have neglected the notable clause of augustine's rule, in which we are commended to his clergy in these words: let books be asked for each day at a given hour; he who asks for them after the hour is not to receive them. scarcely anyone observes this devout rule of study after saying the prayers of the church, but to care for the things of this world and to look at the plough that has been left is reckoned the highest wisdom. they take up bow and quiver, embrace arms and shield, devote the tribute of alms to dogs and not to the poor, become the slaves of dice and draughts, and of all such things as we are wont to forbid even to the secular clergy, so that we need not marvel if they disdain to look upon us, whom they see so much opposed to their mode of life. come then, reverend fathers, deign to recall your fathers and devote yourselves more faithfully to the study of holy books, without which all religion will stagger, without which the virtue of devotion will dry up like a sherd, and without which ye can afford no light to the world. chapter vi the complaint of books against the mendicants poor in spirit, but most rich in faith, off-scourings of the world and salt of the earth, despisers of the world and fishers of men, how happy are ye, if suffering penury for christ ye know how to possess your souls in patience! for it is not want the avenger of iniquity, nor the adverse fortune of your parents, nor violent necessity that has thus oppressed you with beggary, but a devout will and christ-like election, by which ye have chosen that life as the best, which god almighty made man as well by word as by example declared to be the best. in truth, ye are the latest offspring of the ever-fruitful church, of late divinely substituted for the fathers and the prophets, that your sound may go forth into all the earth, and that instructed by our healthful doctrines ye may preach before all kings and nations the invincible faith of christ. moreover, that the faith of the fathers is chiefly enshrined in books the second chapter has sufficiently shown, from which it is clearer than light that ye ought to be zealous lovers of books above all other christians. ye are commanded to sow upon all waters, because the most high is no respecter of persons, nor does the most holy desire the death of sinners, who offered himself to die for them, but desires to heal the contrite in heart, to raise the fallen, and to correct the perverse in the spirit of lenity. for which most salutary purpose our kindly mother church has planted you freely, and having planted has watered you with favours, and having watered you has established you with privileges, that ye may be co-workers with pastors and curates in procuring the salvation of faithful souls. wherefore, that the order of preachers was principally instituted for the study of the holy scriptures and the salvation of their neighbours, is declared by their constitutions, so that not only from the rule of bishop augustine, which directs books to be asked for every day, but as soon as they have read the prologue of the said constitutions they may know from the very title of the same that they are pledged to the love of books. but alas! a threefold care of superfluities, viz., of the stomach, of dress, and of houses, has seduced these men and others following their example from the paternal care of books, and from their study. for, forgetting the providence of the saviour (who is declared by the psalmist to think upon the poor and needy), they are occupied with the wants of the perishing body, that their feasts may be splendid and their garments luxurious, against the rule, and the fabrics of their buildings, like the battlements of castles, carried to a height incompatible with poverty. because of these three things, we books, who have ever procured their advancement and have granted them to sit among the powerful and noble, are put far from their heart's affection and are reckoned as superfluities; except that they rely upon some treatises of small value, from which they derive strange heresies and apocryphal imbecilities, not for the refreshment of souls, but rather for tickling the ears of the listeners. the holy scripture is not expounded, but is neglected and treated as though it were commonplace and known to all, though very few have touched its hem, and though its depth is such, as holy augustine declares, that it cannot be understood by the human intellect, however long it may toil with the utmost intensity of study. from this he who devotes himself to it assiduously, if only he will vouchsafe to open the door who has established the spirit of piety, may unfold a thousand lessons of moral teaching, which will flourish with the freshest novelty and will cherish the intelligence of the listeners with the most delightful savours. wherefore the first professors of evangelical poverty, after some slight homage paid to secular science, collecting all their force of intellect, devoted themselves to labours upon the sacred scripture, meditating day and night on the law of the lord. and whatever they could steal from their famishing belly, or intercept from their half-covered body, they thought it the highest gain to spend in buying or correcting books. whose worldly contemporaries observing their devotion and study bestowed upon them for the edification of the whole church the books which they had collected at great expense in the various parts of the world. in truth, in these days as ye are engaged with all diligence in pursuit of gain, it may be reasonably believed, if we speak according to human notions, that god thinks less upon those whom he perceives to distrust his promises, putting their hope in human providence, not considering the raven, nor the lilies, whom the most high feeds and arrays. ye do not think upon daniel and the bearer of the mess of boiled pottage, nor recollect elijah who was delivered from hunger once in the desert by angels, again in the torrent by ravens, and again in sarepta by the widow, through the divine bounty, which gives to all flesh their meat in due season. ye descend (as we fear) by a wretched anticlimax, distrust of the divine goodness producing reliance upon your own prudence, and reliance upon your own prudence begetting anxiety about worldly things, and excessive anxiety about worldly things taking away the love as well as the study of books; and thus poverty in these days is abused to the injury of the word of god, which ye have chosen only for profit's sake. with summer fruit, as the people gossip, ye attract boys to religion, whom when they have taken the vows ye do not instruct by fear and force, as their age requires, but allow them to devote themselves to begging expeditions, and suffer them to spend the time, in which they might be learning, in procuring the favour of friends, to the annoyance of their parents, the danger of the boys, and the detriment of the order. and thus no doubt it happens that those who were not compelled to learn as unwilling boys, when they grow up presume to teach though utterly unworthy and unlearned, and a small error in the beginning becomes a very great one in the end. for there grows up among your promiscuous flock of laity a pestilent multitude of creatures, who nevertheless the more shamelessly force themselves into the office of preaching, the less they understand what they are saying, to the contempt of the divine word and the injury of souls. in truth, against the law ye plough with an ox and an ass together, in committing the cultivation of the lord's field to learned and unlearned. side by side, it is written, the oxen were ploughing and the asses feeding beside them: since it is the duty of the discreet to preach, but of the simple to feed themselves in silence by the hearing of sacred eloquence. how many stones ye fling upon the heap of mercury nowadays! how many marriages ye procure for the eunuchs of wisdom! how many blind watchmen ye bid go round about the walls of the church! o idle fishermen, using only the nets of others, which when torn it is all ye can do to clumsily repair, but can net no new ones of your own! ye enter on the labours of others, ye repeat the lessons of others, ye mouth with theatric effort the superficially repeated wisdom of others. as the silly parrot imitates the words that he has heard, so such men are mere reciters of all, but authors of nothing, imitating balaam's ass, which, though senseless of itself, yet became eloquent of speech and the teacher of its master though a prophet. recover yourselves, o poor in christ, and studiously regard us books, without which ye can never be properly shod in the preparation of the gospel of peace. paul the apostle, preacher of the truth and excellent teacher of the nations, for all his gear bade three things to be brought to him by timothy, his cloak, books and parchments, affording an example to ecclesiastics that they should wear dress in moderation, and should have books for aid in study, and parchments, which the apostle especially esteems, for writing: and especially, he says, the parchments. and truly that clerk is crippled and maimed to his disablement in many ways, who is entirely ignorant of the art of writing. he beats the air with words and edifies only those who are present, but does nothing for the absent and for posterity. the man bore a writer's ink-horn upon his loins, who set a mark tau upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and cry, ezechiel ix.; teaching in a figure that if any lack skill in writing, he shall not undertake the task of preaching repentance. finally, in conclusion of the present chapter, books implore of you: make your young men who though ignorant are apt of intellect apply themselves to study, furnishing them with necessaries, that ye may teach them not only goodness but discipline and science, may terrify them by blows, charm them by blandishments, mollify them by gifts, and urge them on by painful rigour, so that they may become at once socratics in morals and peripatetics in learning. yesterday, as it were at the eleventh hour, the prudent householder introduced you into his vineyard. repent of idleness before it is too late: would that with the cunning steward ye might be ashamed of begging so shamelessly; for then no doubt ye would devote yourselves more assiduously to us books and to study. chapter vii the complaint of books against wars almighty author and lover of peace, scatter the nations that delight in war, which is above all plagues injurious to books. for wars being without the control of reason make a wild assault on everything they come across, and, lacking the check of reason they push on without discretion or distinction to destroy the vessels of reason. then the wise apollo becomes the python's prey, and phronesis, the pious mother, becomes subject to the power of phrenzy. then winged pegasus is shut up in the stall of corydon, and eloquent mercury is strangled. then wise pallas is struck down by the dagger of error, and the charming pierides are smitten by the truculent tyranny of madness. o cruel spectacle! where you may see the phoebus of philosophers, the all-wise aristotle, whom god himself made master of the master of the world, enchained by wicked hands and borne in shameful irons on the shoulders of gladiators from his sacred home. there you may see him who was worthy to be lawgiver to the lawgiver of the world and to hold empire over its emperor, made the slave of vile buffoons by the most unrighteous laws of war. o most wicked power of darkness, which does not fear to undo the approved divinity of plato, who alone was worthy to submit to the view of the creator, before he assuaged the strife of warring chaos, and before form had put on its garb of matter, the ideal types, in order to demonstrate the archetypal universe to its author, so that the world of sense might be modelled after the supernal pattern. o tearful sight! where the moral socrates, whose acts were virtue and whose discourse was science, who deduced political justice from the principles of nature, is seen enslaved to some rascal robber. we bemoan pythagoras, the parent of harmony, as, brutally scourged by the harrying furies of war, he utters not a song but the wailings of a dove. we mourn, too, for zeno, who lest he should betray his secret bit off his tongue and fearlessly spat it out at the tyrant, and now, alas! is brayed and crushed to death in a mortar by diomedon. in sooth we cannot mourn with the grief that they deserve all the various books that have perished by the fate of war in various parts of the world. yet we must tearfully recount the dreadful ruin which was caused in egypt by the auxiliaries in the alexandrian war, when seven hundred thousand volumes were consumed by fire. these volumes had been collected by the royal ptolemies through long periods of time, as aulus gellius relates. what an atlantean progeny must be supposed to have then perished: including the motions of the spheres, all the conjunctions of the planets, the nature of the galaxy, and the prognostic generations of comets, and all that exists in the heavens or in the ether! who would not shudder at such a hapless holocaust, where ink is offered up instead of blood, where the glowing ashes of crackling parchment were encarnadined with blood, where the devouring flames consumed so many thousands of innocents in whose mouth was no guile, where the unsparing fire turned into stinking ashes so many shrines of eternal truth! a lesser crime than this is the sacrifice of jephthah or agamemnon, where a pious daughter is slain by a father's sword. how many labours of the famous hercules shall we suppose then perished, who because of his knowledge of astronomy is said to have sustained the heaven on his unyielding neck, when hercules was now for the second time cast into the flames. the secrets of the heavens, which jonithus learnt not from man or through man but received by divine inspiration; what his brother zoroaster, the servant of unclean spirits, taught the bactrians; what holy enoch, the prefect of paradise, prophesied before he was taken from the world, and finally, what the first adam taught his children of the things to come, which he had seen when caught up in an ecstasy in the book of eternity, are believed to have perished in those horrid flames. the religion of the egyptians, which the book of the perfect word so commends; the excellent polity of the older athens, which preceded by nine thousand years the athens of greece; the charms of the chaldaeans; the observations of the arabs and indians; the ceremonies of the jews; the architecture of the babylonians; the agriculture of noah the magic arts of moses; the geometry of joshua; the enigmas of samson; the problems of solomon from the cedar of lebanon to the hyssop; the antidotes of aesculapius; the grammar of cadmus; the poems of parnassus; the oracles of apollo; the argonautics of jason; the stratagems of palamedes, and infinite other secrets of science are believed to have perished at the time of this conflagration. nay, aristotle would not have missed the quadrature of the circle, if only baleful conflicts had spared the books of the ancients, who knew all the methods of nature. he would not have left the problem of the eternity of the world an open question, nor, as is credibly conceived, would he have had any doubts of the plurality of human intellects and of their eternity, if the perfect sciences of the ancients had not been exposed to the calamities of hateful wars. for by wars we are scattered into foreign lands, are mutilated, wounded, and shamefully disfigured, are buried under the earth and overwhelmed in the sea, are devoured by the flames and destroyed by every kind of death. how much of our blood was shed by warlike scipio, when he was eagerly compassing the overthrow of carthage, the opponent and rival of the roman empire! how many thousands of thousands of us did the ten years' war of troy dismiss from the light of day! how many were driven by anthony, after the murder of tully, to seek hiding places in foreign provinces! how many of us were scattered by theodoric, while boethius was in exile, into the different quarters of the world, like sheep whose shepherd has been struck down! how many, when seneca fell a victim to the cruelty of nero, and willing yet unwilling passed the gates of death, took leave of him and retired in tears, not even knowing in what quarter to seek for shelter! happy was that translation of books which xerxes is said to have made to persia from athens, and which seleucus brought back again from persia to athens. o glad and joyful return! o wondrous joy, which you might then see in athens, when the mother went in triumph to meet her progeny, and again showed the chambers in which they had been nursed to her now aging children! their old homes were restored to their former inmates, and forthwith boards of cedar with shelves and beams of gopher wood are most skilfully planed; inscriptions of gold and ivory are designed for the several compartments, to which the volumes themselves are reverently brought and pleasantly arranged, so that no one hinders the entrance of another or injures its brother by excessive crowding. but in truth infinite are the losses which have been inflicted upon the race of books by wars and tumults. and as it is by no means possible to enumerate and survey infinity, we will here finally set up the gades of our complaint, and turn again to the prayers with which we began, humbly imploring that the ruler of olympus and the most high governor of all the world will establish peace and dispel wars and make our days tranquil under his protection. chapter viii of the numerous opportunities we have had of collecting a store of books since to everything there is a season and an opportunity, as the wise ecclesiastes witnesseth, let us now proceed to relate the manifold opportunities through which we have been assisted by the divine goodness in the acquisition of books. although from our youth upwards we had always delighted in holding social commune with learned men and lovers of books, yet when we prospered in the world and made acquaintance with the king's majesty and were received into his household, we obtained ampler facilities for visiting everywhere as we would, and of hunting as it were certain most choice preserves, libraries private as well as public, and of the regular as well as of the secular clergy. and indeed while we filled various offices to the victorious prince and splendidly triumphant king of england, edward the third from the conquest--whose reign may the almighty long and peacefully continue--first those about his court, but then those concerning the public affairs of his kingdom, namely the offices of chancellor and treasurer, there was afforded to us, in consideration of the royal favour, easy access for the purpose of freely searching the retreats of books. in fact, the fame of our love of them had been soon winged abroad everywhere, and we were reported to burn with such desire for books, and especially old ones, that it was more easy for any man to gain our favour by means of books than of money. wherefore, since supported by the goodness of the aforesaid prince of worthy memory, we were able to requite a man well or ill, to benefit or injure mightily great as well as small, there flowed in, instead of presents and guerdons, and instead of gifts and jewels, soiled tracts and battered codices, gladsome alike to our eye and heart. then the aumbries of the most famous monasteries were thrown open, cases were unlocked and caskets were undone, and volumes that had slumbered through long ages in their tombs wake up and are astonished, and those that had lain hidden in dark places are bathed in the ray of unwonted light. these long lifeless books, once most dainty, but now become corrupt and loathsome, covered with litters of mice and pierced with the gnawings of the worms, and who were once clothed in purple and fine linen, now lying in sackcloth and ashes, given up to oblivion, seemed to have become habitations of the moth. natheless among these, seizing the opportunity, we would sit down with more delight than a fastidious physician among his stores of gums and spices, and there we found the object and the stimulus of our affections. thus the sacred vessels of learning came into our control and stewardship; some by gift, others by purchase, and some lent to us for a season. no wonder that when people saw that we were contented with gifts of this kind, they were anxious of their own accord to minister to our needs with those things that they were more willing to dispense with than the things they secured by ministering to our service. and in good will we strove so to forward their affairs that gain accrued to them, while justice suffered no disparagement. indeed, if we had loved gold and silver goblets, high-bred horses, or no small sums of money, we might in those days have furnished forth a rich treasury. but in truth we wanted manuscripts not moneyscripts; we loved codices more than florins, and preferred slender pamphlets to pampered palfreys. besides all this, we were frequently made ambassador of this most illustrious prince of everlasting memory, and were sent on the most various affairs of state, now to the holy see, now to the court of france, and again to various powers of the world, on tedious embassies and in times of danger, always carrying with us, however, that love of books which many waters could not quench. for this like a delicious draught sweetened the bitterness of our journeyings and after the perplexing intricacies and troublesome difficulties of causes, and the all but inextricable labyrinths of public affairs afforded us a little breathing space to enjoy a balmier atmosphere. o holy god of gods in sion, what a mighty stream of pleasure made glad our hearts whenever we had leisure to visit paris, the paradise of the world, and to linger there; where the days seemed ever few for the greatness of our love! there are delightful libraries, more aromatic than stores of spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manner of volumes; there are academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars; there are lounges of athens; walks of the peripatetics; peaks of parnassus; and porches of the stoics. there is seen the surveyor of all arts and sciences aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary world; there ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the nodes of the planets by figures and numbers; there paul reveals the mysteries; there his neighbour dionysius arranges and distinguishes the hierarchies; there the virgin carmentis reproduces in latin characters all that cadmus collected in phoenician letters; there indeed opening our treasuries and unfastening our purse-strings we scattered money with joyous heart and purchased inestimable books with mud and sand. it is naught, it is naught, saith every buyer. but in vain; for behold how good and how pleasant it is to gather together the arms of the clerical warfare, that we may have the means to crush the attacks of heretics, if they arise. further, we are aware that we obtained most excellent opportunities of collecting in the following way. from our early years we attached to our society with the most exquisite solicitude and discarding all partiality all such masters and scholars and professors in the several faculties as had become most distinguished by their subtlety of mind and the fame of their learning. deriving consolation from their sympathetic conversation, we were delightfully entertained, now by demonstrative chains of reasoning, now by the recital of physical processes and the treatises of the doctors of the church, now by stimulating discourses on the allegorical meanings of things, as by a rich and well-varied intellectual feast. such men we chose as comrades in our years of learning, as companions in our chamber, as associates on our journeys, as guests at our table, and, in short, as helpmates in all the vicissitudes of life. but as no happiness is permitted to endure for long, we were sometimes deprived of the bodily companionship of some of these shining lights, when justice looking down from heaven, the ecclesiastical preferments and dignities that they deserved fell to their portion. and thus it happened, as was only right, that in attending to their own cures they were obliged to absent themselves from attendance upon us. we will add yet another very convenient way by which a great multitude of books old as well as new came into our hands. for we never regarded with disdain or disgust the poverty of the mendicant orders, adopted for the sake of christ; but in all parts of the world took them into the kindly arms of our compassion, allured them by the most friendly familiarity into devotion to ourselves, and having so allured them cherished them with munificent liberality of beneficence for the sake of god, becoming benefactors of all of them in general in such wise that we seemed none the less to have adopted certain individuals with a special fatherly affection. to these men we were as a refuge in every case of need, and never refused to them the shelter of our favour, wherefore we deserved to find them most special furtherers of our wishes and promoters thereof in act and deed, who compassing land and sea, traversing the circuit of the world, and ransacking the universities and high schools of various provinces, were zealous in combatting for our desires, in the sure and certain hope of reward. what leveret could escape amidst so many keen-sighted hunters? what little fish could evade in turn their hooks and nets and snares? from the body of the sacred law down to the booklet containing the fallacies of yesterday, nothing could escape these searchers. was some devout discourse uttered at the fountain-head of christian faith, the holy roman curia, or was some strange question ventilated with novel arguments; did the solidity of paris, which is now more zealous in the study of antiquity than in the subtle investigation of truth, did english subtlety, which illumined by the lights of former times is always sending forth fresh rays of truth, produce anything to the advancement of science or the declaration of the faith, this was instantly poured still fresh into our ears, ungarbled by any babbler, unmutilated by any trifler, but passing straight from the purest of wine-presses into the vats of our memory to be clarified. but whenever it happened that we turned aside to the cities and places where the mendicants we have mentioned had their convents, we did not disdain to visit their libraries and any other repositories of books; nay, there we found heaped up amid the utmost poverty the utmost riches of wisdom. we discovered in their fardels and baskets not only crumbs falling from the masters' table for the dogs, but the shewbread without leaven and the bread of angels having in it all that is delicious; and indeed the garners of joseph full of corn, and all the spoil of the egyptians, and the very precious gifts which queen sheba brought to solomon. these men are as ants ever preparing their meat in the summer, and ingenious bees continually fabricating cells of honey. they are successors of bezaleel in devising all manner of workmanship in silver and gold and precious stones for decorating the temple of the church. they are cunning embroiderers, who fashion the breastplate and ephod of the high priest and all the various vestments of the priests. they fashion the curtains of linen and hair and coverings of ram's skins dyed red with which to adorn the tabernacle of the church militant. they are husbandmen that sow, oxen treading out corn, sounding trumpets, shining pleiades and stars remaining in their courses, which cease not to fight against sisera. and to pay due regard to truth, without prejudice to the judgment of any, although they lately at the eleventh hour have entered the lord's vineyard, as the books that are so fond of us eagerly declared in our sixth chapter, they have added more in this brief hour to the stock of the sacred books than all the other vine-dressers; following in the footsteps of paul, the last to be called but the first in preaching, who spread the gospel of christ more widely than all others. of these men, when we were raised to the episcopate we had several of both orders, viz., the preachers and minors, as personal attendants and companions at our board, men distinguished no less in letters than in morals, who devoted themselves with unwearied zeal to the correction, exposition, tabulation, and compilation of various volumes. but although we have acquired a very numerous store of ancient as well as modern works by the manifold intermediation of the religious, yet we must laud the preachers with special praise, in that we have found them above all the religious most freely communicative of their stores without jealousy, and proved them to be imbued with an almost divine liberality, not greedy but fitting possessors of luminous wisdom. besides all the opportunities mentioned above, we secured the acquaintance of stationers and booksellers, not only within our own country, but of those spread over the realms of france, germany, and italy, money flying forth in abundance to anticipate their demands; nor were they hindered by any distance or by the fury of the seas, or by the lack of means for their expenses, from sending or bringing to us the books that we required. for they well knew that their expectations of our bounty would not be defrauded, but that ample repayment with usury was to be found with us. nor, finally, did our good fellowship, which aimed to captivate the affection of all, overlook the rectors of schools and the instructors of rude boys. but rather, when we had an opportunity, we entered their little plots and gardens and gathered sweet-smelling flowers from the surface and dug up their roots, obsolete indeed, but still useful to the student, which might, when their rank barbarism was digested heal the pectoral arteries with the gift of eloquence. amongst the mass of these things we found some greatly meriting to be restored, which when skilfully cleansed and freed from the disfiguring rust of age, deserved to be renovated into comeliness of aspect. and applying in full measure the necessary means, as a type of the resurrection to come, we resuscitated them and restored them again to new life and health. moreover, we had always in our different manors no small multitude of copyists and scribes, of binders, correctors, illuminators, and generally of all who could usefully labour in the service of books. finally, all of both sexes and of every rank or position who had any kind of association with books, could most easily open by their knocking the door of our heart, and find a fit resting-place in our affection and favour. in so much did we receive those who brought books, that the multitude of those who had preceded them did not lessen the welcome of the after-comers, nor were the favours we had awarded yesterday prejudicial to those of to-day. wherefore, ever using all the persons we have named as a kind of magnets to attract books, we had the desired accession of the vessels of science and a multitudinous flight of the finest volumes. and this is what we undertook to narrate in the present chapter. chapter ix how, although we preferred the works of the ancients, we have not condemned the studies of the moderns although the novelties of the moderns were never disagreeable to our desires, who have always cherished with grateful affection those who devote themselves to study and who add anything either ingenious or useful to the opinions of our forefathers, yet we have always desired with more undoubting avidity to investigate the well-tested labours of the ancients. for whether they had by nature a greater vigour of mental sagacity, or whether they perhaps indulged in closer application to study, or whether they were assisted in their progress by both these things, one thing we are perfectly clear about, that their successors are barely capable of discussing the discoveries of their forerunners, and of acquiring those things as pupils which the ancients dug out by difficult efforts of discovery. for as we read that the men of old were of a more excellent degree of bodily development than modern times are found to produce, it is by no means absurd to suppose that most of the ancients were distinguished by brighter faculties, seeing that in the labours they accomplished of both kinds they are inimitable by posterity. and so phocas writes in the prologue to his grammar: since all things have been said by men of sense the only novelty is--to condense. but in truth, if we speak of fervour of learning and diligence in study, they gave up all their lives to philosophy; while nowadays our contemporaries carelessly spend a few years of hot youth, alternating with the excesses of vice, and when the passions have been calmed, and they have attained the capacity of discerning truth so difficult to discover, they soon become involved in worldly affairs and retire, bidding farewell to the schools of philosophy. they offer the fuming must of their youthful intellect to the difficulties of philosophy, and bestow the clearer wine upon the money-making business of life. further, as ovid in the first book of the de vetula justly complains: the hearts of all men after gold aspire; few study to be wise, more to acquire: thus, science! all thy virgin charms are sold, whose chaste embraces should disdain their gold, who seek not thee thyself, but pelf through thee, longing for riches, not philosophy. and further on: thus philosophy is seen exiled, and philopecuny is queen, which is known to be the most violent poison of learning. how the ancients indeed regarded life as the only limit of study, is shown by valerius, in his book addressed to tiberius, by many examples. carneades, he says, was a laborious and lifelong soldier of wisdom: after he had lived ninety years, the same day put an end to his life and his philosophizing. isocrates in his ninety-fourth year wrote a most noble work. sophocles did the same when nearly a hundred years old. simonides wrote poems in his eightieth year. aulus gellius did not desire to live longer than he should be able to write, as he says himself in the prologue to the noctes atticae. the fervour of study which possessed euclid the socratic, taurus the philosopher used to relate to incite young men to study, as gellius tells in the book we have mentioned. for the athenians, hating the people of megara, decreed that if any of the megarensians entered athens, he should be put to death. then euclid, who was a megarensian, and had attended the lectures of socrates before this decree, disguising himself in a woman's dress, used to go from megara to athens by night to hear socrates, a distance of twenty miles and back. imprudent and excessive was the fervour of archimedes, a lover of geometry, who would not declare his name, nor lift his head from the diagram he had drawn, by which he might have prolonged his life, but thinking more of study than of life dyed with his life-blood the figure he was studying. there are very many such examples of our proposition, but the brevity we aim at does not allow us to recall them. but, painful to relate, the clerks who are famous in these days pursue a very different course. afflicted with ambition in their tender years, and slightly fastening to their untried arms the icarian wings of presumption, they prematurely snatch the master's cap; and mere boys become unworthy professors of the several faculties, through which they do not make their way step by step, but like goats ascend by leaps and bounds; and, having slightly tasted of the mighty stream, they think that they have drunk it dry, though their throats are hardly moistened. and because they are not grounded in the first rudiments at the fitting time, they build a tottering edifice on an unstable foundation, and now that they have grown up, they are ashamed to learn what they ought to have learned while young, and thus they are compelled to suffer for ever for too hastily jumping at dignities they have not deserved. for these and the like reasons the tyros in the schools do not attain to the solid learning of the ancients in a few short hours of study, although they may enjoy distinctions, may be accorded titles, be authorized by official robes, and solemnly installed in the chairs of the elders. just snatched from the cradle and hastily weaned, they mouth the rules of priscian and donatus; while still beardless boys they gabble with childish stammering the categorics and peri hermeneias, in the writing of which the great aristotle is said to have dipped his pen in his heart's blood. passing through these faculties with baneful haste and a harmful diploma, they lay violent hands upon moses, and sprinkling about their faces dark waters and thick clouds of the skies, they offer their heads, unhonoured by the snows of age, for the mitre of the pontificate. this pest is greatly encouraged, and they are helped to attain this fantastic clericate with such nimble steps, by papal provisions obtained by insidious prayers, and also by the prayers, which may not be rejected, of cardinals and great men, by the cupidity of friends and relatives, who, building up sion in blood, secure ecclesiastical dignities for their nephews and pupils, before they are seasoned by the course of nature or ripeness of learning. alas! by the same disease which we are deploring, we see that the palladium of paris has been carried off in these sad times of ours, wherein the zeal of that noble university, whose rays once shed light into every corner of the world, has grown lukewarm, nay, is all but frozen. there the pen of every scribe is now at rest, generations of books no longer succeed each other, and there is none who begins to take place as a new author. they wrap up their doctrines in unskilled discourse, and are losing all propriety of logic, except that our english subtleties, which they denounce in public, are the subject of their furtive vigils. admirable minerva seems to bend her course to all the nations of the earth, and reacheth from end to end mightily, that she may reveal herself to all mankind. we see that she has already visited the indians, the babylonians, the egyptians and greeks, the arabs and the romans. now she has passed by paris, and now has happily come to britain, the most noble of islands, nay, rather a microcosm in itself, that she may show herself a debtor both to the greeks and to the barbarians. at which wondrous sight it is conceived by most men, that as philosophy is now lukewarm in france, so her soldiery are unmanned and languishing. chapter x of the gradual perfecting of books while assiduously seeking out the wisdom of the men of old, according to the counsel of the wise man (eccles. xxxix.): the wise man, he says, will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients, we have not thought fit to be misled into the opinion that the first founders of the arts have purged away all crudeness, knowing that the discoveries of each of the faithful, when weighed in a faithful balance, makes a tiny portion of science, but that by the anxious investigations of a multitude of scholars, each as it were contributing his share, the mighty bodies of the sciences have grown by successive augmentations to the immense bulk that we now behold. for the disciples, continually melting down the doctrines of their masters, and passing them again through the furnace, drove off the dross that had been previously overlooked, until there came out refined gold tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times to perfection, and stained by no admixture of error or doubt. for not even aristotle, although a man of gigantic intellect, in whom it pleased nature to try how much of reason she could bestow upon mortality, and whom the most high made only a little lower than the angels, sucked from his own fingers those wonderful volumes which the whole world can hardly contain. but, on the contrary, with lynx-eyed penetration he had seen through the sacred books of the hebrews, the babylonians, the egyptians, the chaldaeans, the persians and the medes, all of which learned greece had transferred into her treasuries. whose true sayings he received, but smoothed away their crudities, pruned their superfluities, supplied their deficiencies, and removed their errors. and he held that we should give thanks not only to those who teach rightly, but even to those who err, as affording the way of more easily investigating truth, as he plainly declares in the second book of his metaphysics. thus many learned lawyers contributed to the pandects, many physicians to the tegni, and it was by this means that avicenna edited his canon, and pliny his great work on natural history, and ptolemy the almagest. for as in the writers of annals it is not difficult to see that the later writer always presupposes the earlier, without whom he could by no means relate the former times, so too we are to think of the authors of the sciences. for no man by himself has brought forth any science, since between the earliest students and those of the latter time we find intermediaries, ancient if they be compared with our own age, but modern if we think of the foundations of learning, and these men we consider the most learned. what would virgil, the chief poet among the latins, have achieved, if he had not despoiled theocritus, lucretius, and homer, and had not ploughed with their heifer? what, unless again and again he had read somewhat of parthenius and pindar, whose eloquence he could by no means imitate? what could sallust, tully, boethius, macrobius, lactantius, martianus, and in short the whole troop of latin writers have done, if they had not seen the productions of athens or the volumes of the greeks? certes, little would jerome, master of three languages, ambrosius, augustine, though he confesses that he hated greek, or even gregory, who is said to have been wholly ignorant of it, have contributed to the doctrine of the church, if more learned greece had not furnished them from its stores. as rome, watered by the streams of greece, had earlier brought forth philosophers in the image of the greeks, in like fashion afterwards it produced doctors of the orthodox faith. the creeds we chant are the sweat of grecian brows, promulgated by their councils, and established by the martyrdom of many. yet their natural slowness, as it happens, turns to the glory of the latins, since as they were less learned in their studies, so they were less perverse in their errors. in truth, the arian heresy had all but eclipsed the whole church; the nestorian wickedness presumed to rave with blasphemous rage against the virgin, for it would have robbed the queen of heaven, not in open fight but in disputation, of her name and character as mother of god, unless the invincible champion cyril, ready to do single battle, with the help of the council of ephesus, had in vehemence of spirit utterly extinguished it. innumerable are the forms as well as the authors of greek heresies; for as they were the original cultivators of our holy faith, so too they were the first sowers of tares, as is shown by veracious history. and thus they went on from bad to worse, because in endeavouring to part the seamless vesture of the lord, they totally destroyed primitive simplicity of doctrine, and blinded by the darkness of novelty would fall into the bottomless pit, unless he provide for them in his inscrutable prerogative, whose wisdom is past reckoning. let this suffice; for here we reach the limit of our power of judgment. one thing, however, we conclude from the premises, that the ignorance of the greek tongue is now a great hindrance to the study of the latin writers, since without it the doctrines of the ancient authors, whether christian or gentile, cannot be understood. and we must come to a like judgment as to arabic in numerous astronomical treatises, and as to hebrew as regards the text of the holy bible, which deficiencies, indeed, clement v. provides for, if only the bishops would faithfully observe what they so lightly decree. wherefore we have taken care to provide a greek as well as a hebrew grammar for our scholars, with certain other aids, by the help of which studious readers may greatly inform themselves in the writing, reading, and understanding of the said tongues, although only the hearing of them can teach correctness of idiom. chapter xi why we have preferred books of liberal learning to books of law that lucrative practice of positive law, designed for the dispensation of earthly things, the more useful it is found by the children of this world, so much the less does it aid the children of light in comprehending the mysteries of holy writ and the secret sacraments of the faith, seeing that it disposes us peculiarly to the friendship of the world, by which man, as s. james testifies, is made the enemy of god. law indeed encourages rather than extinguishes the contentions of mankind, which are the result of unbounded greed, by complicated laws, which can be turned either way; though we know that it was created by jurisconsults and pious princes for the purpose of assuaging these contentions. but in truth, as the same science deals with contraries, and the power of reason can be used to opposite ends, and at the same the human mind is more inclined to evil, it happens with the practisers of this science that they usually devote themselves to promoting contention rather than peace, and instead of quoting laws according to the intent of the legislator, violently strain the language thereof to effect their own purposes. wherefore, although the over-mastering love of books has possessed our mind from boyhood, and to rejoice in their delights has been our only pleasure, yet the appetite for the books of the civil law took less hold of our affections, and we have spent but little labour and expense in acquiring volumes of this kind. for they are useful only as the scorpion in treacle, as aristotle, the sun of science, has said of logic in his book de pomo. we have noticed a certain manifest difference of nature between law and science, in that every science is delighted and desires to open its inward parts and display the very heart of its principles, and to show forth the roots from which it buds and flourishes, and that the emanation of its springs may be seen of all men; for thus from the cognate and harmonious light of the truth of conclusion to principles, the whole body of science will be full of light, having no part dark. but laws, on the contrary, since they are only human enactments for the regulation of social life, or the yokes of princes thrown over the necks of their subjects, refuse to be brought to the standard of synteresis, the origin of equity, because they feel that they possess more of arbitrary will than rational judgment. wherefore the judgment of the wise for the most part is that the causes of laws are not a fit subject of discussion. in truth, many laws acquire force by mere custom, not by syllogistic necessity, like the arts: as aristotle, the phoebus of the schools, urges in the second book of the politics, where he confutes the policy of hippodamus, which holds out rewards to the inventors of new laws, because to abrogate old laws and establish new ones is to weaken the force of those which exist. for whatever receives its stability from use alone must necessarily be brought to nought by disuse. from which it is seen clearly enough, that as laws are neither arts nor sciences, so books of law cannot properly be called books of art or science. nor is this faculty which we may call by a special term geologia, or the earthly science, to be properly numbered among the sciences. now the books of the liberal arts are so useful to the divine writings, that without their aid the intellect would vainly aspire to understand them. chapter xii why we have caused books of grammar to be so diligently prepared while we were constantly delighting ourselves with the reading of books, which it was our custom to read or have read to us every day, we noticed plainly how much the defective knowledge even of a single word hinders the understanding, as the meaning of no sentence can be apprehended, if any part of it be not understood. wherefore we ordered the meanings of foreign words to be noted with particular care, and studied the orthography, prosody, etymology, and syntax in ancient grammarians with unrelaxing carefulness, and took pains to elucidate terms that had grown too obscure by age with suitable explanations, in order to make a smooth path for our students. this is the whole reason why we took care to replace the antiquated volumes of the grammarians by improved codices, that we might make royal roads, by which our scholars in time to come might attain without stumbling to any science. chapter xiii why we have not wholly neglected the fables of the poets all the varieties of attack directed against the poets by the lovers of naked truth may be repelled by a two-fold defence: either that even in an unseemly subject-matter we may learn a charming fashion of speech, or that where a fictitious but becoming subject is handled, natural or historical truth is pursued under the guise of allegorical fiction. although it is true that all men naturally desire knowledge, yet they do not all take the same pleasure in learning. on the contrary, when they have experienced the labour of study and find their senses wearied, most men inconsiderately fling away the nut, before they have broken the shell and reached the kernel. for man is naturally fond of two things, namely, freedom from control and some pleasure in his activity; for which reason no one without reason submits himself to the control of others, or willingly engages in any tedious task. for pleasure crowns activity, as beauty is a crown to youth, as aristotle truly asserts in the tenth book of the ethics. accordingly the wisdom of the ancients devised a remedy by which to entice the wanton minds of men by a kind of pious fraud, the delicate minerva secretly lurking beneath the mask of pleasure. we are wont to allure children by rewards, that they may cheerfully learn what we force them to study even though they are unwilling. for our fallen nature does not tend to virtue with the same enthusiasm with which it rushes into vice. horace has expressed this for us in a brief verse of the ars poetica, where he says: all poets sing to profit or delight. and he has plainly intimated the same thing in another verse of the same book, where he says: he hits the mark, who mingles joy with use. how many students of euclid have been repelled by the pons asinorum, as by a lofty and precipitous rock, which no help of ladders could enable them to scale! this is a hard saying, they exclaim, and who can receive it. the child of inconstancy, who ended by wishing to be transformed into an ass, would perhaps never have given up the study of philosophy, if he had met him in friendly guise veiled under the cloak of pleasure; but anon, astonished by crato's chair and struck dumb by his endless questions, as by a sudden thunderbolt, he saw no refuge but in flight. so much we have alleged in defence of the poets; and now we proceed to show that those who study them with proper intent are not to be condemned in regard to them. for our ignorance of one single word prevents the understanding of a whole long sentence, as was assumed in the previous chapter. as now the sayings of the saints frequently allude to the inventions of the poets, it must needs happen that through our not knowing the poem referred to, the whole meaning of the author is completely obscured, and assuredly, as cassiodorus says in his book of the institutes of sacred literature: those things are not to be considered trifles without which great things cannot come to pass. it follows therefore that through ignorance of poetry we do not understand jerome, augustine, boethius, lactantius, sidonius, and very many others, a catalogue of whom would more than fill a long chapter. the venerable bede has very clearly discussed and determined this doubtful point, as is related by that great compiler gratian, the repeater of numerous authors, who is as confused in form as he was eager in collecting matter for his compilation. now he writes in his 37th section: some read secular literature for pleasure, taking delight in the inventions and elegant language of the poets; but others study this literature for the sake of scholarship, that by their reading they may learn to detest the errors of the gentiles and may devoutly apply what they find useful in them to the use of sacred learning. such men study secular literature in a laudable manner. so far bede. taking this salutary instruction to heart, let the detractors of those who study the poets henceforth hold their peace, and let not those who are ignorant of these things require that others should be as ignorant as themselves, for this is the consolation of the wretched. and therefore let every man see that his own intentions are upright, and he may thus make of any subject, observing the limitations of virtue, a study acceptable to god. and if he have found profit in poetry, as the great virgil relates that he had done in ennius, he will not have done amiss. chapter xiv who ought to be special lovers of books to him who recollects what has been said before, it is plain and evident who ought to be the chief lovers of books. for those who have most need of wisdom in order to perform usefully the duties of their position, they are without doubt most especially bound to show more abundantly to the sacred vessels of wisdom the anxious affection of a grateful heart. now it is the office of the wise man to order rightly both himself and others, according to the phoebus of philosophers, aristotle, who deceives not nor is deceived in human things. wherefore princes and prelates, judges and doctors, and all other leaders of the commonwealth, as more than others they have need of wisdom, so more than others ought they to show zeal for the vessels of wisdom. boethius, indeed, beheld philosophy bearing a sceptre in her left hand and books in her right, by which it is evidently shown to all men that no one can rightly rule a commonwealth without books. thou, says boethius, speaking to philosophy, hast sanctioned this saying by the mouth of plato, that states would be happy if they were ruled by students of philosophy, or if their rulers would study philosophy. and again, we are taught by the very gesture of the figure that in so far as the right hand is better than the left, so far the contemplative life is more worthy than the active life; and at the same time we are shown that the business of the wise man is to devote himself by turns, now to the study of truth, and now to the dispensation of temporal things. we read that philip thanked the gods devoutly for having granted that alexander should be born in the time of aristotle, so that educated under his instruction he might be worthy to rule his father's empire. while phaeton unskilled in driving becomes the charioteer of his father's car, he unhappily distributes to mankind the heat of phoebus, now by excessive nearness, and now by withdrawing it too far, and so, lest all beneath him should be imperilled by the closeness of his driving, justly deserved to be struck by the thunderbolt. the history of the greeks as well as romans shows that there were no famous princes among them who were devoid of literature. the sacred law of moses in prescribing to the king a rule of government, enjoins him to have a copy made of the book of divine law (deut. xvii.) according to the copy shown by the priests, in which he was to read all the days of his life. certes, god himself, who hath made and who fashioneth every day the hearts of every one of us, knows the feebleness of human memory and the instability of virtuous intentions in mankind. wherefore he has willed that books should be as it were an antidote to all evil, the reading and use of which he has commanded to be the healthful daily nourishment of the soul, so that by them the intellect being refreshed and neither weak nor doubtful should never hesitate in action. this subject is elegantly handled by john of salisbury, in his policraticon. in conclusion, all classes of men who are conspicuous by the tonsure or the sign of clerkship, against whom books lifted up their voices in the fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters, are bound to serve books with perpetual veneration. chapter xv of the advantages of the love of books it transcends the power of human intellect, however deeply it may have drunk of the pegasean fount, to develop fully the title of the present chapter. though one should speak with the tongue of men and angels, though he should become a mercury or tully, though he should grow sweet with the milky eloquence of livy, yet he will plead the stammering of moses, or with jeremiah will confess that he is but a boy and cannot speak, or will imitate echo rebounding from the mountains. for we know that the love of books is the same thing as the love of wisdom, as was proved in the second chapter. now this love is called by the greek word philosophy, the whole virtue of which no created intelligence can comprehend; for she is believed to be the mother of all good things: wisdom vii. she as a heavenly dew extinguishes the heats of fleshly vices, the intense activity of the mental forces relaxing the vigour of the animal forces, and slothfulness being wholly put to flight, which being gone all the bows of cupid are unstrung. hence plato says in the phaedo: the philosopher is manifest in this, that he dissevers the soul from communion with the body. love, says jerome, the knowledge of the scriptures, and thou wilt not love the vices of the flesh. the godlike xenocrates showed this by the firmness of his reason, who was declared by the famous hetaera phryne to be a statue and not a man, when all her blandishments could not shake his resolve, as valerius maximus relates at length. our own origen showed this also, who chose rather to be unsexed by the mutilation of himself, than to be made effeminate by the omnipotence of woman--though it was a hasty remedy, repugnant alike to nature and to virtue, whose place it is not to make men insensible to passion, but to slay with the dagger of reason the passions that spring from instinct. again, all who are smitten with the love of books think cheaply of the world and wealth; as jerome says to vigilantius: the same man cannot love both gold and books. and thus it has been said in verse: no iron-stained hand is fit to handle books, nor he whose heart on gold so gladly looks: the same men love not books and money both, and books thy herd, o epicurus, loathe; misers and bookmen make poor company, nor dwell in peace beneath the same roof-tree. no man, therefore, can serve both books and mammon. the hideousness of vice is greatly reprobated in books, so that he who loves to commune with books is led to detest all manner of vice. the demon, who derives his name from knowledge, is most effectually defeated by the knowledge of books, and through books his multitudinous deceits and the endless labyrinths of his guile are laid bare to those who read, lest he be transformed into an angel of light and circumvent the innocent by his wiles. the reverence of god is revealed to us by books, the virtues by which he is worshipped are more expressly manifested, and the rewards are described that are promised by the truth, which deceives not, neither is deceived. the truest likeness of the beatitude to come is the contemplation of the sacred writings, in which we behold in turn the creator and the creature, and draw from streams of perpetual gladness. faith is established by the power of books; hope is strengthened by their solace, insomuch that by patience and the consolation of scripture we are in good hope. charity is not puffed up, but is edified by the knowledge of true learning, and, indeed, it is clearer than light that the church is established upon the sacred writings. books delight us, when prosperity smiles upon us; they comfort us inseparably when stormy fortune frowns on us. they lend validity to human compacts, and no serious judgments are propounded without their help. arts and sciences, all the advantages of which no mind can enumerate, consist in books. how highly must we estimate the wondrous power of books, since through them we survey the utmost bounds of the world and time, and contemplate the things that are as well as those that are not, as it were in the mirror of eternity. in books we climb mountains and scan the deepest gulfs of the abyss; in books we behold the finny tribes that may not exist outside their native waters, distinguish the properties of streams and springs and of various lands; from books we dig out gems and metals and the materials of every kind of mineral, and learn the virtues of herbs and trees and plants, and survey at will the whole progeny of neptune, ceres, and pluto. but if we please to visit the heavenly inhabitants, taurus, caucasus, and olympus are at hand, from which we pass beyond the realms of juno and mark out the territories of the seven planets by lines and circles. and finally we traverse the loftiest firmament of all, adorned with signs, degrees, and figures in the utmost variety. there we inspect the antarctic pole, which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard; we admire the luminous milky way and the zodiac, marvellously and delightfully pictured with celestial animals. thence by books we pass on to separate substances, that the intellect may greet kindred intelligences, and with the mind's eye may discern the first cause of all things and the unmoved mover of infinite virtue, and may immerse itself in love without end. see how with the aid of books we attain the reward of our beatitude, while we are yet sojourners below. why need we say more? certes, just as we have learnt on the authority of seneca, leisure without letters is death and the sepulture of the living, so contrariwise we conclude that occupation with letters or books is the life of man. again, by means of books we communicate to friends as well as foes what we cannot safely entrust to messengers; since the book is generally allowed access to the chambers of princes, from which the voice of its author would be rigidly excluded, as tertullian observes at the beginning of his apologeticus. when shut up in prison and in bonds, and utterly deprived of bodily liberty, we use books as ambassadors to our friends, and entrust them with the conduct of our cause, and send them where to go ourselves would incur the penalty of death. by the aid of books we remember things that are past, and even prophesy as to the future; and things present, which shift and flow, we perpetuate by committing them to writing. the felicitous studiousness and the studious felicity of the all-powerful eunuch, of whom we are told in the acts, who had been so mightily kindled by the love of the prophetic writings that he ceased not from his reading by reason of his journey, had banished all thought of the populous palace of queen candace, and had forgotten even the treasures of which he was the keeper, and had neglected alike his journey and the chariot in which he rode. love of his book alone had wholly engrossed this domicile of chastity, under whose guidance he soon deserved to enter the gate of faith. o gracious love of books, which by the grace of baptism transformed the child of gehenna and nursling of tartarus into a son of the kingdom! let the feeble pen now cease from the tenor of an infinite task, lest it seem foolishly to undertake what in the beginning it confessed to be impossible to any. chapter xvi that it is meritorious to write new books and to renew the old just as it is necessary for the state to prepare arms and to provide abundant stores of victuals for the soldiers who are to fight for it, so it is fitting for the church militant to fortify itself against the assaults of pagans and heretics with a multitude of sound writings. but because all the appliances of mortal men with the lapse of time suffer the decay of mortality, it is needful to replace the volumes that are worn out with age by fresh successors, that the perpetuity of which the individual is by its nature incapable may be secured to the species; and hence it is that the preacher says: of making many books there is no end. for as the bodies of books, seeing that they are formed of a combination of contrary elements, undergo a continual dissolution of their structure, so by the forethought of the clergy a remedy should be found, by means of which the sacred book paying the debt of nature may obtain a natural heir and may raise up like seed to its dead brother, and thus may be verified that saying of ecclesiasticus: his father is dead, and he is as if he were not dead; for he hath left one behind him that is like himself. and thus the transcription of ancient books is as it were the begetting of fresh sons, on whom the office of the father may devolve, lest it suffer detriment. now such transcribers are called antiquarii, whose occupations cassiodorus confesses please him above all the tasks of bodily labour, adding: "happy effort," he says, "laudable industry, to preach to men with the hand, to let loose tongues with the fingers, silently to give salvation to mortals, and to fight with pen and ink against the illicit wiles of the evil one." so far cassiodorus. moreover, our saviour exercised the office of the scribe when he stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground (john viii.), that no one, however exalted, may think it unworthy of him to do what he sees the wisdom of god the father did. o singular serenity of writing, to practise which the artificer of the world stoops down, at whose dread name every knee doth bow! o venerable handicraft pre-eminent above all other crafts that are practised by the hand of man, to which our lord humbly inclines his breast, to which the finger of god is applied, performing the office of a pen! we do not read of the son of god that he sowed or ploughed, wove or digged; nor did any other of the mechanic arts befit the divine wisdom incarnate except to trace letters in writing, that every gentleman and sciolist may know that fingers are given by god to men for the task of writing rather than for war. wherefore we entirely approve the judgment of books, wherein they declared in our sixth chapter the clerk who cannot write to be as it were disabled. god himself inscribes the just in the book of the living; moses received the tables of stone written with the finger of god. job desires that he himself that judgeth would write a book. belshazzar trembled when he saw the fingers of a man's hand writing upon the wall, mene tekel phares. i wrote, says jeremiah, with ink in the book. christ bids his beloved disciple john, what thou seest write in a book. so the office of the writer is enjoined on isaiah and on joshua, that the act and skill of writing may be commended to future generations. christ himself has written on his vesture and on his thigh king of kings and lord of lords, so that without writing the royal ornaments of the omnipotent cannot be made perfect. being dead they cease not to teach, who write books of sacred learning. paul did more for building up the fabric of the church by writing his holy epistles, than by preaching by word of mouth to jews and gentiles. he who has attained the prize continues daily by books, what he long ago began while a sojourner upon the earth; and thus is fulfilled in the doctors writing books the saying of the prophet: they that turn many to righteousness shall be as the stars for ever and ever. moreover, it has been determined by the doctors of the church that the longevity of the ancients, before god destroyed the original world by the deluge, is to be ascribed to a miracle and not to nature; as though god granted to them such length of days as was required for finding out the sciences and writing them in books; amongst which the wonderful variety of astronomy required, according to josephus, a period of six hundred years, to submit it to ocular observation. nor, indeed, do they deny that the fruits of the earth in that primitive age afforded a more nutritious aliment to men than in our modern times, and thus they had not only a livelier energy of body, but also a more lengthened period of vigour; to which it contributed not a little that they lived according to virtue and denied themselves all luxurious delights. whoever therefore is by the good gift of god endowed with gift of science, let him, according to the counsel of the holy spirit, write wisdom in his time of leisure (eccles. xxxviii.), that his reward may be with the blessed and his days may be lengthened in this present world. and further, if we turn our discourse to the princes of the world, we find that famous emperors not only attained excellent skill in the art of writing, but indulged greatly in its practice. julius caesar, the first and greatest of them all, has left us commentaries on the gallic and the civil wars written by himself; he wrote also two books de analogia, and two books of anticatones, and a poem called iter; and many other works. julius and augustus devised means of writing one letter for another, and so concealing what they wrote. for julius put the fourth letter for the first, and so on through the alphabet; whilst augustus used the second for the first, the third for the second, and so throughout. he is said in the greatest difficulties of affairs during the mutinensian war to have read and written and even declaimed every day. tiberius wrote a lyric poem and some greek verses. claudius likewise was skilled in both greek and latin, and wrote several books. but titus was skilled above all men in the art of writing, and easily imitated any hand he chose; so that he used to say that if he had wished it he might have become a most skilful forger. all these things are noted by suetonius in his lives of the xii. caesars. chapter xvii of showing due propriety in the custody of books we are not only rendering service to god in preparing volumes of new books, but also exercising an office of sacred piety when we treat books carefully, and again when we restore them to their proper places and commend them to inviolable custody; that they may rejoice in purity while we have them in our hands, and rest securely when they are put back in their repositories. and surely next to the vestments and vessels dedicated to the lord's body, holy books deserve to be rightly treated by the clergy, to which great injury is done so often as they are touched by unclean hands. wherefore we deem it expedient to warn our students of various negligences, which might always be easily avoided and do wonderful harm to books. and in the first place as to the opening and closing of books, let there be due moderation, that they be not unclasped in precipitate haste, nor when we have finished our inspection be put away without being duly closed. for it behoves us to guard a book much more carefully than a boot. but the race of scholars is commonly badly brought up, and unless they are bridled in by the rules of their elders they indulge in infinite puerilities. they behave with petulance, and are puffed up with presumption, judging of everything as if they were certain, though they are altogether inexperienced. you may happen to see some headstrong youth lazily lounging over his studies, and when the winter's frost is sharp, his nose running from the nipping cold drips down, nor does he think of wiping it with his pocket-handkerchief until he has bedewed the book before him with the ugly moisture. would that he had before him no book, but a cobbler's apron! his nails are stuffed with fetid filth as black as jet, with which he marks any passage that pleases him. he distributes a multitude of straws, which he inserts to stick out in different places, so that the halm may remind him of what his memory cannot retain. these straws, because the book has no stomach to digest them, and no one takes them out, first distend the book from its wonted closing, and at length, being carelessly abandoned to oblivion, go to decay. he does not fear to eat fruit or cheese over an open book, or carelessly to carry a cup to and from his mouth; and because he has no wallet at hand he drops into books the fragments that are left. continually chattering, he is never weary of disputing with his companions, and while he alleges a crowd of senseless arguments, he wets the book lying half open in his lap with sputtering showers. aye, and then hastily folding his arms he leans forward on the book, and by a brief spell of study invites a prolonged nap; and then, by way of mending the wrinkles, he folds back the margin of the leaves, to the no small injury of the book. now the rain is over and gone, and the flowers have appeared in our land. then the scholar we are speaking of, a neglecter rather than an inspecter of books, will stuff his volume with violets, and primroses, with roses and quatrefoil. then he will use his wet and perspiring hands to turn over the volumes; then he will thump the white vellum with gloves covered with all kinds of dust, and with his finger clad in long-used leather will hunt line by line through the page; then at the sting of the biting flea the sacred book is flung aside, and is hardly shut for another month, until it is so full of the dust that has found its way within, that it resists the effort to close it. but the handling of books is specially to be forbidden to those shameless youths, who as soon as they have learned to form the shapes of letters, straightway, if they have the opportunity, become unhappy commentators, and wherever they find an extra margin about the text, furnish it with monstrous alphabets, or if any other frivolity strikes their fancy, at once their pen begins to write it. there the latinist and sophister and every unlearned writer tries the fitness of his pen, a practice that we have frequently seen injuring the usefulness and value of the most beautiful books. again, there is a class of thieves shamefully mutilating books, who cut away the margins from the sides to use as material for letters, leaving only the text, or employ the leaves from the ends, inserted for the protection of the book, for various uses and abuses--a kind of sacrilege which should be prohibited by the threat of anathema. again, it is part of the decency of scholars that whenever they return from meals to their study, washing should invariably precede reading, and that no grease-stained finger should unfasten the clasps, or turn the leaves of a book. nor let a crying child admire the pictures in the capital letters, lest he soil the parchment with wet fingers; for a child instantly touches whatever he sees. moreover, the laity, who look at a book turned upside down just as if it were open in the right way, are utterly unworthy of any communion with books. let the clerk take care also that the smutty scullion reeking from his stewpots does not touch the lily leaves of books, all unwashed, but he who walketh without blemish shall minister to the precious volumes. and, again, the cleanliness of decent hands would be of great benefit to books as well as scholars, if it were not that the itch and pimples are characteristic of the clergy. whenever defects are noticed in books, they should be promptly repaired, since nothing spreads more quickly than a tear and a rent which is neglected at the time will have to be repaired afterwards with usury. moses, the gentlest of men, teaches us to make bookcases most neatly, wherein they may be protected from any injury: take, he says, this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the lord your god. o fitting place and appropriate for a library, which was made of imperishable shittim-wood, and was all covered within and without with gold! but the saviour also has warned us by his example against all unbecoming carelessness in the handling of books, as we read in s. luke. for when he had read the scriptural prophecy of himself in the book that was delivered to him, he did not give it again to the minister, until he had closed it with his own most sacred hands. by which students are most clearly taught that in the care of books the merest trifles ought not to be neglected. chapter xviii showeth that we have collected so great store of books for the common benefit of scholars and not only for our own pleasure nothing in human affairs is more unjust than that those things which are most righteously done, should be perverted by the slanders of malicious men, and that one should bear the reproach of sin where he has rather deserved the hope of honour. many things are done with singleness of eye, the right hand knoweth not what the left hand doth, the lump is uncorrupted by leaven, nor is the garment woven of wool and linen; and yet by the trickery of perverse men a pious work is mendaciously transformed into some monstrous act. certes, such is the unhappy condition of sinful nature, that not merely in acts that are morally doubtful it adopts the worse conclusion; but often it depraves by iniquitous subversion those which have the appearance of rectitude. for although the love of books from the nature of its object bears the aspect of goodness, yet, wonderful to say, it has rendered us obnoxious to the censures of many, by whose astonishment we were disparaged and censured, now for excess of curiosity, now for the exhibition of vanity, now for intemperance of delight in literature; though indeed we were no more disturbed by their vituperation than by the barking of so many dogs, satisfied with the testimony of him to whom it appertaineth to try the hearts and reins. for as the aim and purpose of our inmost will is inscrutable to men and is seen of god alone, the searcher of hearts, they deserve to be rebuked for their pernicious temerity, who so eagerly set a mark of condemnation upon human acts, the ultimate springs of which they cannot see. for the final end in matters of conduct holds the same position as first principles in speculative science or axioms in mathematics, as the chief of philosophers, aristotle, points out in the seventh book of the ethics. and therefore, just as the truth of our conclusions depends upon the correctness of our premises, so in matters of action the stamp of moral rectitude is given by the honesty of aim and purpose, in cases where the act itself would otherwise be held to be morally indifferent. now we have long cherished in our heart of hearts the fixed resolve, when providence should grant a favourable opportunity, to found in perpetual charity a hall in the reverend university of oxford, the chief nursing mother of all liberal arts, and to endow it with the necessary revenues, for the maintenance of a number of scholars; and moreover to enrich the hall with the treasures of our books, that all and every of them should be in common as regards their use and study, not only to the scholars of the said hall, but by their means to all the students of the before-named university for ever, in the form and manner which the following chapter shall declare. wherefore the sincere love of study and zeal for the strengthening of the orthodox faith to the edifying of the church, have begotten in us that solicitude so marvellous to the lovers of pelf, of collecting books wherever they were to be purchased, regardless of expense, and of having those that could not he bought fairly transcribed. for as the favourite occupations of men are variously distinguished according to the disposition of the heavenly bodies, which frequently control our natural composition, so that some men choose to devote themselves to architecture, others to agriculture, others to hunting, others to navigation, others to war, others to games, we have under the aspect of mercury entertained a blameless pleasure in books, which under the rule of right reason, over which no stars are dominant, we have ordered to the glory of the supreme being, that where our minds found tranquillity and peace, thence also might spring a most devout service of god. and therefore let our detractors cease, who are as blind men judging of colours; let not bats venture to speak of light; and let not those who carry beams in their own eyes presume to pull the mote out of their brother's eye. let them cease to jeer with satirical taunts at things of which they are ignorant, and to discuss hidden things that are not revealed to the eyes of men; who perchance would have praised and commended us, if we had spent our time in hunting, dice-playing, or courting the smiles of ladies. chapter xix of the manner of lending all our books to students it has ever been difficult so to restrain men by the laws of rectitude, that the astuteness of successors might not strive to transgress the bounds of their predecessors, and to infringe established rules in insolence of licence. accordingly, with the advice of prudent men, we have prescribed the manner in which we desire that the communication and use of our books should be permitted for the benefit of students. imprimis, we give and grant all and singular the books, of which we have made a special catalogue, in consideration of affection, to the community of scholars living in ---hall at oxford, as a perpetual gift, for our soul and the souls of our parents, and also for the soul of the most illustrious king edward the third from the conquest, and of the most pious queen philippa, his consort: to the intent that the same books may be lent from time to time to all and singular the scholars and masters of the said place, as well regular as secular, for the advancement and use of study, in the manner immediately following, that is to say: five of the scholars sojourning in the hall aforesaid shall be appointed by the master thereof, who shall have the charge of all the books, of which five persons three and not fewer may lend any book or books for inspection and study; but for copying or transcribing we direct that no book shall be allowed outside the walls of the house. therefore, when any scholar secular or religious, whom for this purpose we regard with equal favour, shall seek to borrow any book, let the keepers diligently consider if they have a duplicate of the said book, and if so, let them lend him the book, taking such pledge as in their judgment exceeds the value of the book delivered, and let a record be made forthwith of the pledge and of the book lent, containing the names of the persons delivering the book and of the person who receives it, together with the day and year when the loan is made. but if the keepers find that the book asked for is not in duplicate, they shall not lend such book to any one whomsoever, unless he shall belong to the community of scholars of the said hall, unless perhaps for inspection within the walls of the aforesaid house or hall, but not to be carried beyond it. but to any of the scholars of the said hall, any book may be lent by three of the aforesaid keepers, after first recording, however, his name, with the day on which he receives the book. nevertheless, the borrower may not lend the book entrusted to him to another, except with the permission of three of the aforesaid keepers, and then the name of the first borrower being erased, the name of the second with the time of delivery is to be recorded. each keeper shall take an oath to observe all these regulations when they enter upon the charge of the books. and the recipients of any book or books shall thereupon swear that they will not use the book or books for any other purpose but that of inspection or study, and that they will not take or permit to be taken it or them beyond the town and suburbs of oxford. moreover, every year the aforesaid keepers shall render an account to the master of the house and two of his scholars whom he shall associate with himself, or if he shall not be at leisure, he shall appoint three inspectors, other than the keepers, who shall peruse the catalogue of books, and see that they have them all, either in the volumes themselves or at least as represented by deposits. and the more fitting season for rendering this account we believe to be from the first of july until the festival of the translation of the glorious martyr s. thomas next following. we add this further provision, that anyone to whom a book has been lent, shall once a year exhibit it to the keepers, and shall, if he wishes it, see his pledge. moreover, if it chances that a book is lost by death, theft, fraud, or carelessness, he who has lost it or his representative or executor shall pay the value of the book and receive back his deposit. but if in any wise any profit shall accrue to the keepers, it shall not be applied to any purpose but the repair and maintenance of the books. chapter xx an exhortation to scholars to requite us by pious prayers time now clamours for us to terminate this treatise which we have composed concerning the love of books; in which we have endeavoured to give the astonishment of our contemporaries the reason why we have loved books so greatly. but because it is hardly granted to mortals to accomplish aught that is not rolled in the dust of vanity, we do not venture entirely to justify the zealous love which we have so long had for books, or to deny that it may perchance sometimes have been the occasion of some venial negligence, albeit the object of our love is honourable and our intention upright. for if when we have done everything, we are bound to call ourselves unprofitable servants; if the most holy job was afraid of all his works; if according to isaiah all our righteousness is as filthy rags, who shall presume to boast himself of the perfection of any virtue, or deny that from some circumstance a thing may deserve to be reprehended, which in itself perhaps was not reprehensible. for good springs from one selfsame source, but evil arises in many ways, as dionysius informs us. wherefore to make amends for our iniquities, by which we acknowledge ourselves to have frequently offended the creator of all things, in asking the assistance of their prayers, we have thought fit to exhort our future students to show their gratitude as well to us as to their other benefactors in time to come by requiting our forethought for their benefit by spiritual retribution. let us live when dead in their memories, who have lived in our benevolence before they were born, and live now sustained by our beneficence. let them implore the mercy of the redeemer with unwearied prayer, that the pious judge may excuse our negligences, may pardon the wickedness of our sins, may cover the lapses of our feebleness with the cloak of piety, and remit by his divine goodness the offences of which we are ashamed and penitent. that he may preserve to us for a due season of repentance the gifts of his good grace, steadfastness of faith, loftiness of hope, and the widest charity to all men. that he may turn our haughty will to lament its faults, that it may deplore its past most vain elations, may retract its most bitter indignations, and detest its most insane delectations. that his virtue may abound in us, when our own is found wanting, and that he who freely consecrated our beginning by the sacrament of baptism, and advanced our progress to the seat of the apostles without any desert of ours, may deign to fortify our outgoing by the fitting sacraments. that we may be delivered from the lust of the flesh, that the fear of death may utterly vanish and our spirit may desire to be dissolved and be with christ, and existing upon earth in body only, in thought and longing our conversation may be in heaven. that the father of mercies and the god of all consolation may graciously come to meet the prodigal returning from the husks; that he may receive the piece of silver that has been lately found and transmit it by his holy angels into his eternal treasury. that he may rebuke with his terrible countenance, at the hour of our departure, the spirits of darkness, lest leviathan, that old serpent, lying hid at the gate of death, should spread unforeseen snares for our feet. but when we shall be summoned to the awful judgment-seat to give an account on the testimony of conscience of all things we have done in the body, the god-man may consider the price of the holy blood that he has shed, and that the incarnate deity may note the frame of our carnal nature, that our weakness may pass unpunished where infinite loving-kindness is to be found, and that the soul of the wretched sinner may breathe again where the peculiar office of the judge is to show mercy. and further, let our students be always diligent in invoking the refuge of our hope after god, the virgin mother of god and blessed queen of heaven, that we who for our manifold sins and wickednesses have deserved the anger of the judge, by the aid of her ever-acceptable supplications may merit his forgiveness; that her pious hand may depress the scale of the balance in which our small and few good deeds shall be weighed, lest the heaviness of our sins preponderate and cast us down to the bottomless pit of perdition. moreover, let them ever venerate with due observance the most deserving confessor cuthbert, the care of whose flock we have unworthily undertaken, ever devoutly praying that he may deign to excuse by his prayers his all-unworthy vicar, and may procure him whom he hath admitted as his successor upon earth to be made his assessor in heaven. finally, let them pray god with holy prayers as well of body as of soul, that he will restore the spirit created in the image of the trinity, after its sojourn in this miserable world, to its primordial prototype, and grant to it for ever to enjoy the sight of his countenance: through our lord jesus christ. amen. the end of the philobiblon of master richard de aungerville, surnamed de bury, late bishop of durham this treatise was finished in our manorhouse of auckland on the 24th day of january, in the year of our lord one thousand three hundred and forty-four, the fifty-eighth year of our age being exactly completed, and the eleventh year of our pontificate drawing to an end; to the glory of god. amen. the collectors being cases mostly under the ninth and tenth commandments by frank jewett mather, junr. 1912 comprising a _ballade_, wherein the wrongfulness of art collecting is conceded, and as well certain stories: _campbell corot_, which recounts the career of an able and candid picture forger. _the del puente giorgione_, which tells of an artful great lady and an artless expert. _the lombard runes_, a mere interlude, but revealing a certain duplicity in professional seekers for truth. _their cross_, so called from an inanimate object of price which wrought woe to a well meaning new york couple. _the missing st michael_, a tale of italianate americans which is full of vanities and, though alluring to the sophisticated, quite unfit for the simple reader. _the lustred pots_, again a mere interlude, but of a grim sort, as it grazes the sixth commandment and _the balaklava coronal_, which, notwithstanding its exotic title, is mostly of our own people, showing the triumph of a resourceful dealer over two critics and a captain of industry. to which seven stories are added some _reflections upon art collecting_, setting forth excuses and palliations for a practice usually regarded as pernicious. foreword of the seven stories of art collecting that make up this book "campbell corot" and the "missing st. michael" first appeared under the pseudonym of francis cotton, in "scribner's magazine," and are now reprinted by its courteous permission. similar acknowledgment is due the "nation" for allowing the sketch on art collecting to be republished. many readers will note the similarity between the story "the del puente giorgione" and paul bourget's brilliant novelette, "la dame qui a perdu son peintre." my story was written in the winter of 1907, and it was not until the summer of 1911 that m. bourget's delightful tale came under my eye. clearly the same incident has served us both as raw material, and the noteworthy differences between the two versions should sufficiently advise the reader how little either is to be taken as a literal record of facts or estimate of personalities. contents a ballade of art collectors campbell corot the del puente giorgione the lombard runes their cross the missing st. michael the lustred pots the balaklava coronal on art collecting a ballade of art collectors oh lord! we are the covetous. our neighbours' goods afflict us sore. from frisco to the bosphorus all sightly stuff, the less the more, we want it in our hoard and store. nor sacrilege doth us appal-egyptian vault--fane at cawnpore- collector folk are sinners all. our envoys plot _in partibus_. they've small regard for chancel door, or buddhist bolts contiguous to lustrous jade or gold galore adorning idol squat or tall- these be strange gods that we adore-collector folk are sinners all. of romulus augustulus the signet ring i proudly wore. some rummaging _in ossibus_ i most repentantly deplore. my taste has changed; i now explore the sepulchres of senegal and seek the pots of singapore- collector folk are sinners all. lord! crave my neighbour's wife! what for? i much prefer his crystal ball from far cathay. then, lord, ignore collector folk who're sinners all. campbell corot the academy reception was approaching a perspiring and vociferous close when the antiquary whispered an invitation to the painter, the patron, and the critic. a scotch woodcock at "dick's" weighs heavily, even against the more solid pleasures of the mind, so terminating four conferences on as many tendencies in modern art, and abandoning four hungry souls, four hungry bodies bore down an avenue toward "dick's" smoky realm, where they found a quiet corner apart from the crowd. it is a place where one may talk freely or even foolishly--one of those rare oases in which an artist, for example, may venture to read a lesson to an avowed patron of art. all the way down the patron had bored us with his new corot, which he described at tedious length. now the antiquary barely tolerated anything this side of the eighteenth century, the painter was of courbet's sturdy following, the critic had been writing for a season that the only hope in art for the rich was to emancipate themselves from the exclusive idolatry of barbizon. accordingly the patron's rhapsodies fell on impatient ears, and when he continued his importunities over the scotch woodcock and ale, the painter was impelled to express the sense of the meeting. "speaking of corot," he began genially, "there are certain misapprehensions about him which i am fortunately able to clear up. people imagine, for instance, that he haunted the woods about ville d'avray. not at all. he frequented the gin-mills in cedar street. we are told he wore a peasant's blouse and sabots; on the contrary, he sported a frock-coat and congress gaiters. his long clay pipe has passed into legend, whereas he actually smoked a tilted pittsburg stogy. we speak of him by the operatic name of camille; he was prosaically called campbell. you think he worked out of doors at rosy dawn; he painted habitually in an air-tight attic by lamplight." as the painter paused for the sensation to sink in, the antiquary murmured soothingly, "get it off your mind quickly, old man," the critic remarked that the campbells were surely coming, and the patron asked with nettled dignity how the painter knew. "know?" he resumed, having had the necessary fillip. "because i knew him, smelled his stogy, and drank with him in cedar street. it was some time in the early '70s, when a passion for corot's opalescences (with the critic's permission) was the latest and most knowing fad. as a realist i half mistrusted the fascination, but i felt it with the rest, and whenever any of the besotted dealers of that rude age got in an 'early morning' or a 'dance of nymphs,' i was there among the first. for another reason, my friend rosenheim, then in his modest beginnings as a marchand-amateur, was likely to appear at such private views. with his infallible tact for future salability, he was already unloading the institute, and laying in barbizon. find what he's buying now, and i'll tell you the next fad." the critic nodded sagaciously, knowing that rosenheim, who now poses as collecting only for his pleasure, has already begun to affect the drastic productions of certain clever young spanish realists. "rosenheim," the painter pursued, "really loved his corot quite apart from prospective values. i fancy the pink silkiness of the manner always appeals to jews, recalling their most authentic taste, the eighteenth-century frenchman. anyhow, rosenheim took his new love seriously, followed up the smallest examples religiously, learned to know the forgeries that were already afloat--in short, was the best informed corotist in the city. it was appropriate, then, that my first relations with the poet-painter should have the sanction of rosenheim's presence." lingering upon the reminiscence, the painter sopped up the last bit of anchovy paste, drained his toby, and pushed it away. the rest of us settled back comfortably for a long session, as he persisted. "rosenheim wrote me one day that he had got wind of a corot in a cedar street auction room. it might be, so his news went, the pendant to the one he had recently bought at the bolton sale. he suggested we should go down together and see. so we joggled down broadway in the 'bus, on what looked rather like a wild-goose chase. but it paid to keep the run of cedar street in those days; one might find anything. the gilded black walnut was pushing the old mahogany out of good houses; wyant and homer martin were occasionally raising the wind by ventures in omnibus sales; then there were old masters which one cannot mention because nobody would believe. but that particular morning the corot had no real competitor; its radiance fairly filled the entire junk-room. rosenheim was in raptures. as luck would have it, it was indeed the companion-piece to his, and his it should be at all costs. in cedar street, he reasonably felt, one might even hope to get it cheap. then began our _duo_ on the theme of atmosphere, vibrancy, etc.--brand new phrases, mind you, in those innocent days. as rosenheim for a moment carried the burden alone, i stepped up to the canvas and saw, with a shock, that the paint was about two days old. under what conditions i wondered--for did i not know the ways of paint--could a real corot have come over so fresh? i more than scented trickery. a sketch overpainted---or it seemed above the quality of a sheer forgery--or was the case worse than that? meanwhile not a shade of doubt was in rosenheim's mind. as i canvassed the possibilities his _sotto-voce_ ecstasies continued, to the vast amusement, as i perceived, of a sardonic stranger who hovered unsteadily in the background. this ill-omened person was clad in a statesmanlike black frock-coat with trousers of similar funereal shade. a white lawn tie, much soiled, and congress gaiters, much frayed, were appropriate details of a costume inevitably topped off with an army slouch hat that had long lacked the brush. he was immensely long and sallow, wore a drooping moustache vaguely blonde, between the unkempt curtains of which a thin cheroot pointed heavenward. as he walked nervously up and down, with a suspiciously stilted gait, he observed rosenheim with evident scorn and the picture with a strange pride. he was not merely odd, but also offensive, for as rosenheim whispered _'comme c'est beau_!' there was an unmistakable snort; when he continued, _'mais c'est exquis_!' the snort broadened into a mighty chuckle; while as he concluded 'most luminous!' the chuckle became articulate, in an 'oh, shucks!' that could not be ignored. "'you seem to be interested, sir,' rosenheim remarked. 'you bet!' was the terse response. 'may i inquire the cause of your concern?' rosenheim continued placidly. with a most exasperating air of willingness to please, the stranger rejoined: 'why, i jest took a simple pleasure, sir, in seeing an amachoor like you talking french about a little thing i painted here in cedar street.' for a moment rosenheim was too indignant to speak, then he burst out with: 'it's an infernal lie; you could no more paint that picture than you could fly.' 'i did paint it, jest the same,' pursued the stranger imperturbably, as rosenheim, to make an end of the insufferable wag, snapped out sarcastically, 'perhaps you painted its mate, then, the bolton corot.' 'the one that sold for three thousand dollars last week? of course i painted it; it's the best nymph scene i ever done. don't get mad, mister; i paint most of the corots. i'm glad you like 'em.' "for a moment i feared that little rosenheim would smite the lank annoyer dead in his tracks. 'for heaven's sake be careful!' i cried. 'the man is drunk or crazy or he may even be right; the paint on this picture isn't two days old.' 'correct,' declared the stranger. 'i finished it day before yesterday for this sale.' then a marked change came over rosenheim's manner. he grew positively deferential. it delighted him to meet an artist of talent; they must know each other better. cards were exchanged, and rosenheim read with amazement the grimy inscription '_campbell corot, landscape artist_.' 'yes, that's my painting name,' campbell corot said modestly; 'and my pictures are almost equally as good as his'n, but not quite. they do for ordinary household purposes. i really hate to see one get into a big sale like the bolton; it don't seem honest, but i can't help it; nobody'd believe me if i told.' rosenheim's demeanour was courtly to a fault as he pleaded an engagement and bade us farewell. already apparently he divined a certain importance in so remarkable a gift of mimicry. i stayed behind, resolved on making the nearer acquaintance of campbell corot." * * * * * "rosenheim clearly understands the art of business," interrupted the antiquary. "and the business of art," added the critic. "could your seedy friend have painted my corot?" said the patron in real distress. "why not?" continued the painter remorselessly. "only hear me out, and you may judge for yourself. anyhow, let's drop your corot; we were speaking of mine." "to make campbell corot's acquaintance proved more difficult than i had expected. he confided to me immediately that he had been a durn fool to give himself away to my friend, but talk was cheap, and people never believed him, anyway. then gloom descended, and my professions of confidence received only the most surly responses. he unbent again for a moment with, 'painter feller, you knowed the pesky ways of paint, didn't yer?' but when i followed up this promising lead and claimed him as an associate, he repulsed me with, 'stuck up, ain't yer? parley french like your friend? s'pose you've showed in the saloon at paris.' giving it up, i replied simply: 'i have; i'm a landscape painter, too, but i'd like to say before i go that i should be glad to be able to paint a picture like that.' looking me in the eye and seeing i meant it, 'shake!' he replied cordially. as we shook, his breath met me fair: it was such a breath as was not uncommon in old-time cedar street. gentlemen who affect this aroma are, i have noticed, seldom indifferent to one sort of invitation, so i ventured hardily: 'you know nickerson's glengyle, sir; perhaps you will do me the favour to drink a glass with me while we chat.' here i could tell you a lot about nickerson's." "don't," begged the critic, who is abstemious. "i will only say, then, that nickerson's, once an all-night refuge, closes now at three--desecration has made it the yellow marble office of a teetotaler in the banking line--and the glengyle, that blessed essence of the barley, heather, peat, and mist of old scotland, has been taken over by an exporting company, limited. sometimes i think i detect a little of it in the poisons that the grocers of glasgow and edinburgh send over here, or perhaps i only dream of the old taste. then it was itself, and by the second glass campbell corot was quite ready to soliloquise. you shall have his story about as he told it, but abridged a little in view of your tender ages and the hour. * * * * * "john campbell had grown up contentedly on the old farm under mount everett until one summer when a landscape painter took board with the family. at first the lad despised the gentle art as unmanly, but as he watched the mysterious processes he longed to try his hand. the good-natured düsseldorfian willingly lent brushes and bits of millboard upon which john proceeded to make the most lurid confections. the forms of things were, of course, an obstacle to him, as they are to everybody. 'i never could drore,' he told me, 'and i never wanted to drore like that painter chap. why he'd fill a big canvas with little trees and rocks and ponds till it all seemed no bigger than a noah's ark show. i used to ask him, "why don't you wait till evening when you can't see so much to drore?"' to such criticism the painter naturally paid no attention, while john devoted himself to sunsets and the tube of crimson lake. from babyhood he had loved the purple hour, and his results, while without form and void, were apparently not wholly unpleasing, for his master paid him the compliment of using one or two such sketches as backgrounds, adding merely the requisite hills, houses, fences, and cows. these collaborations were mentioned not unworthily beside the sunsets of kensett and cropsey next winter at the academy. from that summer john was for better or worse a painter. "his first local success was, curiously enough, an historical composition, in which the village hose company, almost swallowed up by the smoke, held in check a conflagration of vesuvian magnitude. the few visible figures and smith's turning-mill, which had heroically been saved in part from the flames, were jotted in from photographs. happily this work, for which the alert hose company subscribed no less than twenty-five dollars, providing also a fifty-dollar frame, fell under the appreciative eye of the insurance adjuster who visited the very ruins depicted. recognising immediately an uncommonly available form of artistic talent, this gentleman procured john a commission as painter in ordinary to the vulcan, with orders to come at once to town at excellent wages. by his twentieth year, then, john was established in an attic chamber near the north river with a public that, barring change in the advertising policy of the vulcan, must inevitably become national. for the lithographers he designed all manner of holocausts; at times he made tours through the counties and fixed the incandescent mouth of vulcan's forge, the figures within being merely indicated, on the face of a hundred ledges. that was a shame, he freely admitted to me; the rocks looked better without. in fact, john campbell's first manner soon came to be a humiliation and an intolerable bondage. he felt the insincerity of it deeply. 'you see, it's this way,' he explained to me, 'you don't see the shapes by firelight or at sunset, but you have seen them all day and you know they're there. nobody that don't have those shapes in his brush can make you feel them in a picture. everybody puts too little droring into sunsets. nobody paints good ones, not even inness [we must remember it was in the early '70s], except a frenchman called roosoo. he takes 'em very late, which is best, and he can drore some too.'" "a very decent critic, your alcoholic friend," the critic remarked. "he was full of good ideas, as you shall see," the story-teller replied. "i quite agree with you, if the bad whisky could have been kept away from him he might have shone in your profession. anyhow, he had the makings of an honest man in him, and when the vulcan enlarged its cliff-painting programme, he cut loose bravely. then followed ten lean years of odd jobs, with landscape painting as a recreation, and the occasional sale of a canvas on a street corner as a great event. when his need was greatest he consented to earn good wages composing symbolical door designs for the meteor coach company, but that again he could not endure for long. later in the intervals of colouring photographs, illuminating window-shades, or whatever came to hand, he worked out the theory which finally led him to the feet of corot. it was, in short, that the proper subject for an artist deficient in linear design is sunrise. "he explained the matter to me with zest. 'by morning you've half forgotten the look of things. all night you've seen only dreams that don't have any true form, and when the first light comes, nothing shows solid for what it is. the mist uncovers a little here and there, and you wonder what's beneath. it's all guesswork and nothing sure. take any morning early when i look out of my attic window to the north river. there's nothing but a heap of fog, grey or pink, as there's more or less sun behind. it gets a little thick over toward jersey, and that may be the shore, or again it mayn't. then a solid bit of vi'let shows high up, and i guess it's castle stevens, but perhaps it ain't. then a pale-yellow streak shoots across the river farther up and i take it to be the palisades, but again it may be jest a ray of sunshine. you see there really ain't no earth; it's all air and light. that's what a man that can't drore ought to paint; that's what my namesake, cameel corot, did paint better than any one that ever lived.' "at this point of his confession john campbell glared savagely at me for assent, and set down a sadly frayed and noxious stogy on nickerson's black walnut. i hastened to agree, though much of the doctrine was heresy to a realist, only objecting: 'but one really has to draw a scene such as you describe just like any other. in fact, the drawing of atmosphere is the most difficult branch of our art. many very good painters, like my master, courbet, have given it up.' 'corbet!' he replied contemptuously; 'he didn't give it up; he never even seen it. but don't i know it's hard, sir? for years i tried to paint it, and i never got nothing but the fog; when i put in more i lost that. they're pretty, those sketches--like watered silk or the scum in the docks with the sun on it; but, lord, there ain't nothing into 'em, and that's the truth. at last, after fumbling around for years, i happened to walk into vogler's gallery one day and saw my first corot. ther' it was--all i had been trying for. it was the kind of droring i knew ought to be, where a man sets down more what he feels than what he knows. i knew i was beginning too late, but i loved that way of working. i saw all the corots i could, and began to paint as much as i could his way. i got almost to have his eye, but of course i never got his hand. nobody could, i guess, not even an educated artist like you, or they'd all a don' it.' * * * * * "after this awakening john campbell began the artist's life afresh with high hopes. his first picture in the sweet new style was honestly called 'sunrise in berkshire,' though he had interwoven with his own reminiscences of the farm several motives from various compositions of his great exemplar. he signed the canvas campbell corot, in the familiar capital letters, because he didn't want to take all the credit; because he desired to mark emphatically the change in his manner, and because it struck him as a good painting name justified by the resemblance between his surname and the master's christian name. it was a heartfelt homage in intention. if the disciple had been familiar with renaissance usages, he would undoubtedly have signed himself john of camille. "'sunrise in berkshire' fetched sixty dollars in a downtown auction room, the highest price john had ever received; but this was only the beginning of a bewildering rise in values. when john next saw the picture, campbell had been deftly removed, and the landscape, being favourably noticed in the press, brought seven hundred dollars in an uptown salesroom. john happened on it again in beilstein's gallery, where the price had risen to thirteen hundred dollars--a tidy sum for a small corot in those early days. at that figure it fell to a noted collector whose walls it still adorns. here campbell corot's new england conscience asserted itself. he insisted on seeing beilstein in person and told him the facts. beilstein treated the visitor as an impostor and showed him the door, taking his address, however, and scornfully bidding him make good his story by painting a similar picture, unsigned. for this, if it was worth anything, the dealer promised he should be liberally paid. naturally campbell corot's professional dander was up, and he produced in a week a corotish 'dance of nymphs,' if anything, more specious than the last. for this beilstein gave him twenty-five dollars, and within a month you might have seen it under the skylight of a country museum, where it is still reverently explained to successive generations of school-children. "if campbell corot had been a stronger character, he might have made some stand against the fraudulent success his second manner was achieving. but, unhappily, in those experimental years he had acquired an experimental knowledge of the whisky of cedar street. his irregular and spend-thrift ways had put him out of all lines of employment. besides, he was consumed by an artist's desire to create a kind of picture that he could not hope to sell as his own. nor did the voice of the tempter, beilstein, fail to make itself heard. he offered an unfailing market for the little canvases at twenty-five and fifty dollars, according to size. there was a patron to supply unlimited colours and stretchers, a pocket that never refused to advance a small bill when thirst or lesser need found campbell corot penniless. almost inevitably he passed from occasional to habitual forgery, consoling himself with the thought that he never signed the pictures and, before the law at least, was blameless. but signed they all were somewhere between their furtive entrance at beilstein's basement and their appearance on his walls or in the auction rooms. of course it wasn't the blackguard beilstein who forged the five magic letters; he would never take the risk, 'blast his dirty soul!' cried campbell corot aloud, as he seethed with the memory of his shame. he rose as if for summary vengeance, to the amazement of the quiet topers in the room. for some time his utterance had been getting both excited and thick, and now i saw with a certain chagrin that the glengyle had done its work only too well. it was a question not of hearing his story out, but of getting him home before worse befell. by mingled threats and blandishments i got him away from nickerson's, and after an adventurous passage down cedar street, i deposited him before his attic door, in a doubtful frame of mind, being alternately possessed by the desire to send beilstein to hell and to pray for the eternal welfare of the only genuine corot." "you certainly make queer acquaintances," ejaculated the patron uneasily. "hurry up and tell us the rest; it's growing late," insisted the antiquary, as he beckoned for the bill. "i saw campbell corot only once more, but occasionally i saw his work, and it told a sad tale of deterioration. the sunrises and nymphals no longer deceived anybody, having fallen nearly to the average level of auction-room impressionism. i was not surprised, then, when running into him near nickerson's one day i felt that drink and poverty were speeding their work. he tried to pass me unrecognised, but i stopped him, and once more the invitation to a nip proved irresistible. my curiosity was keen to learn his attitude toward his own work and that of his master, and i attempted to draw him out with a crass compliment. he denied me gently. 'the best things i do, or rather did, young feller, are jest a little poorer than his worst. between ourselves, he painted some pretty bum things. some i suppose he did, like me, by lamplight. some he sketched with one hand while he was lighting that there long pipe with the other. sometimes, i guess, he was in a hurry for the money. now, when i'm painting my level best, like i used to could, mine are about like that. but people don't know the difference about him or about me; and mine, as i told your jew friend, are plenty good enough for every-day purposes. used to be, anyway. nobody can paint like his best. think of it, young feller, you and me is painters and know what it means--jest a little dirty paint on white canvas, and you see the creeping of the sunrise over the land, the breathing of the mist from the fields, and the twinkling of the dew in the young leaves. nobody but him could paint that, and i guess he never knowed how he done it; he jest felt it in his brush, it seems to me.' "after this outburst little more was to be got from him. in a word, he had gone to pieces and knew it. beilstein had cast him off; the works in the third manner hung heavy in the auction places. leaning over the table, he asked me, 'who was the gent that said, "my god, what a genius i had when i done that!"?' i told him that the phrase was given to many, but that i believed swift was the gent. 'jest so,' campbell corot responded; 'that's the way i felt the last time i saw beilstein. he'd been sending back my things and, for a joke, i suppose, he wrote me to come up and see a real corot, and take the measure of the job i was tackling. so up to the avenue i went, and beilstein first gave me my dressing down and then asked me into the red-plush private room where he takes the big oil and wheat men when they want a little art. there on the easel was a picture. he drew the cloth away and said: "now, campbell, that's what we want in our business." as sure as you're born, sir, it was a "dance of nymphs" that i done out of photographs eight years ago. but i can't paint like that no more. i know the way your friend swift felt; only i guess my case is worse than his.' "the mention of photographs gave me a clue to campbell corot's artistic methods. it appeared that beilstein had kept him in the best reproductions of the master. but on this point the disciple was reticent, evading my questions by a motion to go. 'i'm not for long probably,' he said, as he refused a second glass. 'you've been patient while i've talked--i can't to most--and i don't want you to remember me drunk. take good care of yourself, and, generally speaking, don't start your whisky till your day's painting is done.' i stood for some minutes on the corner of broadway as his gaunt form merged into the glow that fell full into cedar street from the setting sun. i wondered if the hour recalled the old days on the farm and the formation of his first manner. "however that may be, his premonition was right enough. the next winter i read one morning that the body of campbell corot had been taken from the river at the foot of cedar street. it was known that his habits were intemperate, and it was probable that returning from a saloon he had walked past his door and off the dock. his cards declared him to be a landscape painter, but he was unknown in the artistic circles of the city. i wrote to the authorities that he was indeed a landscape painter and that the fact should be recorded on his slab in potter's field. i was poor and that was the only service i could do to his memory." the painter ceased. we all rose to go and were parting at the doorway with sundry hems and haws when the patron piped up anxiously, "do you suppose he painted my corot?" "i don't know and i don't care," said the painter shortly. "damn it, man, can't you see it's a human not a picture-dealing proposition?" sputtered the antiquary. "that's right," echoed the critic, as the three locked arms for the stroll downtown, leaving the bewildered patron to find his way alone to the park east. the del puente giorgione the train swung down a tawny new england river towards prestonville as i reviewed the stages of a great curiosity. at last i was to see the del puente giorgione. long before, when the old pictures first began to speak to me, i had learned that the critic mantovani, the master of us all, owned an early giorgione, unfinished but of marvellous beauty. at his death, strangely enough, it was not found among his pictures, which were bequeathed as every one knows to the san marcello museum. the next word i had of it was when anitchkoff, mantovani's disciple and successor, reported it in the del puente castle in the basque mountains. he added a word on its importance though avowedly knowing it only from a photograph. it appeared that mantovani in his last days had given the portrait to his old friend the carlist marquesa del puente, in whose cause--picturesque but irrelevant detail--he had once drawn sword. anitchkoff's full enthusiasm was handsomely recorded after he had made the pilgrimage to the marquesa's crag. one may still read in that worthy but short-lived organ of sublimity, "le mihrab," his appreciation of the del puente giorgione, which he describes as a giambellino blossoming into a titian, with just the added exquisiteness that the world has only felt since big george of castelfranco took up the brush. how the panel exchanged the pyrenees for the north shore passed dimly through my mind as barely worth recalling. it was the usual story of the rich and enterprising american collector. hanson brooks had bought it and hung it in "the curlews," where it bid fair to become legendary once more, but at last had lent it with his other pictures to the prestonville museum of science and the fine arts, the goal of my present quest. while the picture lay _perdu_ at brooks's, there had been disquieting gossip; the pretorian club, which is often terribly right in such matters, agreed that he had been badly sold. none of this i believed for an instant. what could one doubt in a picture owned by mantovani and certified by anitchkoff? upon this point of rumination the train stopped at prestonville. my approach to the masterpiece was reverently deliberate. at the american house i actually lingered over the fried steak and dallied long with the not impossible mince pie. thus fortified, i followed main street to the museum--one of those depressingly correct new-greek buildings with which the country is being filled. skirting with a shiver the bleak casts from the antique in the atrium and mounting an absurdly spacious staircase, i reached a doorway through which the _chef d'oeuvre_ of my dreams confronted me cheerlessly. its nullity was appalling; from afar i felt the physical uneasiness that an equivocal picture will usually produce in a devotee. to approach and study it was a civility i paid not to itself but to its worshipful _provenance_. a slight inspection told all there was to tell. the paint was palpably modern; the surface would not have resisted a pin. in style it was a distant echo of the giorgione at berlin. yet, as i gazed and wondered sadly, i perceived it was not a vulgar forgery--indeed not a forgery at all. it had been done to amuse some painter of antiquarian bent. i even thought, too rashly, that i recognised the touch of the youthful watts, and i could imagine the studio revel at which he or another had valiantly laid in a giorgione before the punch, as his contribution to the evening's merriment. the picture upon the pie wrought a black depression that some excellent japanese paintings were powerless to dispel. as my train crawled up the tawny river, now inky, my thoughts moved helplessly about the dark enigma--how could mantovani have possessed such rubbish? how could anitchkoff, enjoying the use of his eyes and mind, have credited it for a moment? my reflections preposterously failed to rest upon the obvious clue, the mysterious marquesa del puente, and it was not until i met anitchkoff, some years later, that i began to divine the woman in the case. after ten years of absence he had come back to america on something like a triumphal tour. i had promptly paid my respects and now through a discreet persistency was to have a long evening with him at the pretorian. as i studied the dinner card, guessing at his gastronomic tastes, my mind was naturally on his remarkable career. anitchkoff, brought from russia in childhood, had grown up in decent poverty in a small new england city. very early he showed the intellectual ambition that distinguished all the family. our excellent public schools made his way to the nearest country college easy and inevitable. there began the struggle the traces of which might be read in an almost melancholy gravity quite unnatural in a man become famous at thirty-five. with the facility of his race he learned all the languages in the curriculum and read ferociously in many literatures. in his junior year the appearance of a great and genial work on psychology made him the metaphysician he has remained through all digressions in the connoisseurship and criticism of art. how his search for ultimate principles involved a mastery of the minutiae of the venetian school i could only guess. but one could imagine the process. seeking to ground his personal preferences in a general esthetic, he would have found his data absolutely untrustworthy. how could he presume to interpret a giorgione or a titian when what they painted was undetermined? upon these shifting sands he declined to rear his tabernacle. to the work of classifying the venetians, accordingly, he set himself with dogged honesty. as a matter of course mantovani became his chief preceptor--mantovani who first discovered that the highly complex organism we call a work of art has a morphology as definite as that of a trilobite; that the artist may no more transcend his own forms than a crustacean may become a vertebrate. for a matter of ten years anitchkoff, espousing a fairly franciscan poverty, gave himself to this ungrateful task. how he contrived to live in the shadow of the great galleries was a mystery the solution of which one suspected to be bitter and heroic. gradually recognition as an expert came to him and with it an irksome success. his fame had developed duties, and while his studies in esthetics remained fragmentary, he was persistently consulted on all manner of trivialities. from piedmont to the confine of dalmatia he knew every little master that ever made or marred panel or plaster, and he paid the penalty of such knowledge. surmising the tragedy of his career and its essential nobility i had discounted the ugly rumours connecting him with the sale of the del puente giorgione. when every fool learned that the giorgione at "the curlews" was false, many inferred that anitchkoff, having praised it, must have a hand in brooks's bad bargain--a conclusion sedulously put about and finally hinted in cold type by certain rival critics. personally i knew that brooks had bagged his find under quite other advice, but while i would always have sworn to anitchkoff's complete integrity in the whole del puente matter, my wonder also grew at so hideous a lapse of judgment. i hopelessly fell back upon such banalities as the errability of mankind, being conscious all the time that some special and most curious infatuation must underlie this particular error. anitchkoff's card interrupted some such train of thought. he came in quietly as sunshine after fog. his face between the curtains reminded me strangely of the awful moment in the prestonville museum--paradoxically, for he was as genuine and reassuring as the del puente giorgione had been baffling and false. we began dinner with the stiffness of men between whom much is unsaid. as the oystershells departed, however, we had found common memories. he recalled delightfully those little northern towns in the debatable region which from a critic's point of view may be considered lombard or venetian, with a tendency to be neither but rather a transalpine bavaria. to me also the glow of the burgundy on the tablecloth brought back strange provincial altarpieces in this territory--marvels in crimson and gold, and a riddle for the connoisseur. then the talk reached higher latitudes. he mused aloud about that very simple reaction which we call the sense of beauty and have resolutely sophisticated ever since criticism existed--i intent meanwhile and eating most of a mallard as sanguine as a decollation of the baptist. by the cheese anitchkoff seemed confident of my sympathy, and i, having found nothing amiss in him except an imperfect enjoyment of the pleasures of the table, was planning how least imprudently might be raised the topic of the del puente giorgione. but it was he who spoke first. at the coffee he asked me with admirable simplicity what people said about the affair, and i answered with equal candour. "you too have wondered," he continued. "of course, but nothing worse," i replied. then with the hesitancy of a man approaching a dire chagrin, and yet with a rueful appreciation of the humour of the predicament that i despair of reproducing, he began: "it happened about this way. when i first came to italy and began to meet the friends of mantovani, they told me of an early giorgione he owned but rarely showed. he used to speak of it affectionately as 'il mio zorzi,' to distinguish it perhaps from the more important example he had sold to one of our dilettante iron-masters. the little unfinished portrait i heard of, from those whose opinion is sought, as a superlatively lovely thing. it was mentioned with a certain awe; to have seen it was a distinction. for years i hoped my time would come, but the opportunity was provokingly delayed. how should you feel if mrs. warrener should show you all her things but the great botticelli?" i nodded understandingly. mrs. warrener, for a two minutes' delay in an appointment, had debarred me her whistlers for a year. "that's the way mantovani treated me," anitchkoff continued. "whenever i dared i asked for the 'zorzi,' and he always put me off with a smile. that mystified me, for i knew he took a paternal pride in my studies, but i never got any more satisfactory answer from him than that the 'zorzi' was strong meat for the young; one must grow up to it, like s---and p---and c---(naming some of his closest disciples). these allusions he made repeatedly and with a queer sardonic zest. occasionally he would volunteer the encouragement--for i had long ago dropped the subject--'cheer up, my boy; your turn will come.' when he so quixotically gave the picture to the marquesa del puente, it seemed, though, as if my turn could never come, but i noted that he had been true to his doctrine that the 'zorzi' was only for the mature; the del puente was said to be some years his senior. one knew exasperatingly little about her. it was said vaguely that mantovani entertained a tender friendship for her, having been her husband's comrade in arms in half a dozen carlist revolts. that seemed enough to explain the gift." at this point anitchkoff must have caught my raised eyebrows, for he added contritely, "it was odd for mantovani to give away a giorgione. you're quite right. i was ridiculously young." "you may imagine," he pursued, "that the flight of the giorgione to the pyrenees only embittered my curiosity. for years i might have seen it--shabbily to be sure--by merely opening a door when mantovani was occupied, now it had departed to another planet. remember those were my 'prentice days when i lived obscurely and absolutely without acquaintance in the marquesa's world. she seemed as inaccessible as the grand lama. but you know how things will come about in least expected ways: jane morrison, quite the only human being who could possibly have known both the marquesa and me, actually gave me a very good letter of introduction. then almost oppressive good luck, came a note from her mountain castle, telling that the chatelaine would be glad to receive me whenever my travels led me her way. she mentioned our common enthusiasm for the venetians and graciously wanted my opinion on the giorgione, which the enemies of mantovani, her friend and my spiritual father, as she called him, had spitefully slandered. such slanders had never happened to reach my ears but i was already eager to refute them. "it was two years later that i made the visit on the way to the prado. all day long the diligence rattled up hill away from the railroad, and it was dusk before i saw the del puente stronghold on its crag, evidently a half hour's walk from the miserable _fonda_ where the diligence dropped me. it was no hour to present an introduction, but i bribed a boy to take the letter up that night. he returned, disappointingly, without an answer. the next morning wore on intolerably amid a noisy squalor that i could not escape until my summons came. it was early afternoon before an equerry arrived on muleback bearing the marquesa's note. she was enchanted to meet me but desolated at the unlucky time of my arrival. tomorrow she crossed the pyrenees for paris and hoped my route might lie that way. meanwhile her home was wholly dismantled for the winter, and the ordinary hospitalities were denied her. but she counted on the pleasure of seeing me at four; we might at least chat, drink a cup of tea, and pay our homage to mantovani's 'zorzi.' nothing could have been more charming or more tantalising. as i toiled up towards the del puente barbican i could feel the precious afternoon light dwindling. breathless i set the castle bell a-jangling with something like despair. "heavy doors opened in front of me as i passed the sallyport and the grassgrown courtyard. at the entrance a majordomo in shabby but fairly regal livery greeted me and conducted me through empty corridors and up a massive staircase. the castle was indeed dismantled--apparently had been in that condition from all time. as my superb guide halted before a door which, exceptionally, was curtained, and knocked, my heart failed me. i dreaded meeting this strange noblewoman, almost regretted the nearness of the 'zorzi,' knowing the actual colours could hardly surpass those of my fancy. the little speeches i had been rehearsing resolved themselves into silence again as i saw her by a tiny fire; a compelling apparition, erect, with snowy hair waving high over burning black eyes. to-day when i coldly analyse her fascination i recall nothing but these simple elements. she permitted not a moment of the shyness that has always plagued me. what our words were i do not now know, but i know that i kissed the two hands she held out to me as she called me mantovani's son and her friend. then i talked as never before or since, told her of my struggles and ambitions, and from time to time i was mute so that i might hear the deep contralto of the french she spoke perfectly but with spanish resonance. there was probably tea. anyhow the light went away from the deep casements unnoticed, and it was she who, with a chiding finger, recalled me to duty and the giorgione. 'wretch,' said she, 'you are here to see it not me. the light is going and your devoirs yet unpaid.' "as she took my arm and led me through the gallery, i had an odd presentiment of going towards a doom. while i followed her up a winding stair, the misgiving increased. did venerable lemurs inhabit the basque mountains? could so magnificent; an old age be of this earth? an ancestral shudder from the steppes came over me. it was her ruddy train rustling round the turns ahead that aroused these atavistic superstitions. but when we stood together on the landing all doubts fell away; a broad ray of sunlight that struck through an open doorway showed her spectral beauty to be after all reassuringly corporeal. over the threshold she fairly pushed me with the warning, 'the place is holy, we must be silent.' for a moment i was staggered by the wide pencil of light that shot through a porthole and cut the room in two. the little octagon, a tower chamber i took it to be, was a prism of shadow enclosing a shaft of flying golddust. outside it must have been full sunset. near the border line of light and darkness i faintly saw the 'zorzi,' which borrowed a glory from the moment and from her. i felt her hand on my shoulder and knelt, it seemed for minutes, it probably was for seconds only. the picture, which i had not seen, much less examined, swam in the twilight and became the most gracious that had ever met my eyes. the dusk grew as the disc of light climbed up the wall and faded. she whispered in my ear, 'it is enough for now. you shall come again many times.' i recall nothing more except the marquesa's silvery hair and the long line of her crimson gown as she bade me 'au revoir' at the head of the great stairs. that night in the miserable _fonda_ below i wrote out feverishly the notes which you have doubtless read in the 'mihrab,' and i would give my right hand to be able to forget." there was a long pause, during which anitchkoff sipped his cognac nervously, waiting for my comment. i pressed him ruthlessly for the bitter end of the tale. "your hypnotism i grant, but what about mantovani and brooks?" i asked bluntly. "for mantovani i have no right to speak," anitchkoff replied with dignity. "he was my master and i can admit no imputation on his memory. besides, your guess is as good as mine. whether he bought the picture in his precritical days, keeping it as a warning and imposing it upon his followers as a hoax--this i can merely conjecture. as for brooks, the case is simple; he couldn't resist a giorgione at a bargain. but since you will, you may as well hear the rest of the story--at least my part of it. "three years later i wintered in paris. i had run into bing's for a chat and a look at the hokusais, when who should come in but hanson brooks in a high state of elation. an important purchase had just arrived. he urged us both to dine and inspect it. bing was engaged; i glad to accept. at dinner brooks teased me to the top of his bent. i was to imagine absolutely the most important old master in private possession, his for a beggarly price. i declined to humour him by guessing, and we slurred his sweets and coffee to hasten to the apartment. on a dressing table faced to the wall was a little panel which he slowly turned into view. for a moment i gasped for joy, it was the del puente giorgione; and then an awful misgiving overcame me--i saw it as it was. brooks marked my amazement and, misreading the cause, slapped me on the back and asked what i thought of that for a hundred thousand pesetas. the figure again bowled me over. for the picture as it stood it was a thousand times too much, while a mere tithe of the value of the name the panel bore. i blurted out that the price was suspiciously wrong, and added that i must see the portrait by daylight before venturing an opinion. the thought that mantovani had owned it for twenty years and more made a sleepless night hideous; at sunrise my loyalty reasserted itself by a lame compromise. "i daresay you will not blame me for hoping against hope, as i did the next day and for some months after, that somewhere under that modern paint there was indeed a sketch by giorgione's hand. you must remember that i could as little doubt my own existence as mantovani's judgment on such a point. in the sequel it seemed as if no humiliation were to be spared me. it was mantovani's chief rival and favourite victim, merck, who after a torturing correspondence had the pleasure of telling me he had seen the 'zorzi' painted by the amateur ricard; it was campbell who, after recommending it to brooks, publicly accused me of dishonest brokerage. that's all i can tell you about the del puente giorgione." i seized his hand impulsively, and clumsily offered him, in a breath, whisky, shuffleboard, or cowboy pool--sound pretorian remedies for all human woes. these consolations he refused and took his leave. midnight found me in the same chair, thinking less of anitchkoff, whose case now lay clear, than of mantovani and the marquesa del puente, about whom it seemed there still might be something to say. the chances of a roving life have brought some slight addition to the evidence. stopping over a boat at dieppe, a few summers ago, i happened to see my good friend mme. vezin registered at the casino, where i recognised an acquaintance or two. that decided me to spend the night and call at her villa. her salon never failed to divert me, for, drawing together the most disparate people, she handled them with easy generalship. under her chandelier ardent art students from the middle west and the poor relations of royalty might be heard exchanging confidences and foreign tongues. so, as i climbed the hill at the verge of the chalk and pasture, i felt sure of the unexpected, nor was i disappointed. shrill voices from my fellow countrywomen came down the garden path and assured me that art had accompanied mme. vezin in her annual retreat from the luxembourg gardens. entering i found the same perfect hostess and much the old dear, queer scene. i was bracing myself for a polyglot evening--being with all my travel quite incapable of languages--when the little maid announced importantly mme. la marquise del puente. all rose instinctively as there entered an erect white-haired woman simply dressed in a black gown along which hung a notable crimson scarf. murmuring the indispensable banalities i bowed distantly, meaning to observe her impersonally before an encounter. but she disarmed me by throwing herself on my mercy. she knew me already through dear mr. hanson brooks. it was her first visit here; i, she saw, was of the household. would i not show her the curiosities and protect her from the bores? sullenly i followed her while she discussed the bijoux that littered the shelves, and the deep modulations of her voice insensibly mollified me. i had intended in anitchkoff's behalf to count every wrinkle of her seventy-five unhallowed years, but found myself instead admiring her cloud of silver hair, avoiding the gaze of her black eyes, and noting with a kind of fascination the precise gestures of her fine hand as she took up or set down mme. vezin's poor little things. at last she settled into an armchair, beckoning me to a footstool, and i began to talk unconscionably, she urging me on. she professed to know my writings--it was of course impossible that she should have seen those rare anonymous letters to the most ladylike of boston newspapers: she touched my dearest hobby, that republics and governments generally must be judged not by their politics but by the amenity of the social life they foster. feeling that this was witchcraft or divination even more questionable, and dreading she had another giorgione to sell, i made a last futile effort for freedom, proposing introductions. with a phrase she subdued me, and my halting french began to be eloquent. i confessed my innermost ambition, the creation of a criticism learned and judicial in substance but impressionistic in form. she dwelt upon the beauties of her eyrie in the basque mountains which i must one day see. as we chatted on obliviously an audience of marvelling art students and baigneurs formed about us quietly. their serried faces suddenly revealed to me my ignominious surrender. i started as from a dream and, as she bade me not forget to call, i kissed her long hand and fled with only a curt farewell to my hostess. the channel breeze and the scent of the clover sobered me up. my pity went out to anitchkoff and then i remembered that i had seen fouquart at the casino. it seemed too good to be true. here at dieppe were both this enigmatic marquesa and the prime repository of all authentic scandal of our times. for the old dandy fouquart had lived not wisely but too well through three generations of cosmopolitan gallantry. had the censorship and his literary parts permitted, he could have written a chronicle of famous ladies that would put the sieur de brantôme's modest attempt to shame. i found him among the rabble, moodily playing the little horses for five-franc pieces, but at the mention of the marquesa del puente he kindled. "a grand woman," he said emphatically, as he dragged me to a safe corner, "a true model to the anemic and neurotic sex of the day." when asked to specify he told me how the energy and passion of twenty generations of robber noblefolk had flowered in her. scruples or fears she had never known. from childhood attached to the carlist cause, she had become the soul of that movement in the pyrenees. it was she who haggled with british armourers, traced routes, planned commissariats, and most of all drew from far and near soldiers of fortune to captain a hopeless cause. in such recruiting, fouquart implied, her loyalty had not flinched at the most personal tests. what seemed to mystify fouquart was that none of these whilom champions ever attained the grace of forgetfulness. every year many of these tottering old gentlemen still reported at castle del puente, and there she held court as of old. he himself, although their relations had been not military but civil, occasionally made so idle a pilgrimage. "to the shrine of our lady of the crimson teagown," i ventured. "you too, _mon vieux_!" he chuckled with ironical congratulations. ignoring the impertinence, i interposed the name of mantovani. "our respected colleague," fouquart exclaimed delightedly. before mantovani fuddled his head about pictures he had been a good blade, taking anyone's pay. for ten years and through half as many little wars he had been the marquesa's titular chief of staff. her husband? well, her husband was a good carlist--and a true philosopher. as i tore myself away from the impending flow of scandal, fouquart murmured regretfully. "must you go? it is a pity. we have only begun, _à demain_." but we had really ended, for the next morning, shaking off a nightmare of a red-robed lilith who tried to sell me a questionable zeuxis, i took the early steamer. of the marquesa del puente, whom i believe to be still at her castle, i have seen or heard nothing since. * * * * * after some reflection in the corner of the pretorian where anitchkoff once told me his story, i have come measurably into the clear about the whole matter. mantovani's position is plain up to a certain point. either the 'zorzi' was given to him or else he bought it in his hopeful youth. in either case he surely kept it merely as a solemn hoax on his learned contemporaries. he may have withheld it from anitchkoff maliciously, or again out of simple considerateness for a trusting disciple. when mantovani came to set his worldly affairs in order, however, it must have struck him that the joke could not be perpetuated on the walls of the san marcello gallery, while the panel was one that a great connoisseur would not willingly have inventoried by his executors. it was at this time that he bestowed the 'zorzi' upon the marquesa del puente, as a final token between them. it may fairly be assumed that he knew her to be incapable of believing the precious souvenir to be a veritable giorgione. such simplicity as that gift and credulity presuppose lay neither in his nature nor in hers. beyond this point certitudes fail us lamentably, and we are reduced to an exasperating balance of possibilities. did he send the picture as an elaborate and unavoidable slight? or was it essentially a delicate alms, in view of the marquesa's known poverty and proved resourcefulness? or, again, did he with a deeper perversity set the thing afloat to trouble the critical world after he was gone, foreseeing perhaps some such international comedy as was actually played with the 'zorzi' as leading gentleman? all these things must remain problematical for mantovani cannot tell, and the marquesa del puente will not if indeed she knows. the lombard runes professor hauptmann dropped wearily into his chair at the noisy milanese _table d'hôte_ and snarled out a surly "_mahlzeit_" to the assembled feasters. it was echoed sweetly from his left with a languishing "_mahlzeit, herr professor_." the advance disconcerted him. resolving upon a policy of complete indifference to the fluffy and amiable vision beside him, he devoted himself singly to the food. the _risotto_ diminished as his knife travelled rhythmically between the plate and his bearded lips. conceding only the inevitable, nay the exacted courtesies to his neighbour, he performed still greater prodigies with the green peas, and it was not until he leaned back for a deft operation with a pocket comb, that the vivacious, blue-eyed one got her chance to ask if it were not the herr professor hauptmann, the great authority on the lombard tongue. the query floored him; he could not deny that it was, and as curlylocks began to evince an intelligent interest in lombard matters, his stiffness melted like wax under a burning glass. he was soon if not the protagonist at least the object of an animated, yes fairly intimate conversation. to non-german eyes the pair were worth looking at. he was clad in tightfitting sage-green felt, so it appeared, with a superfluity of straps, buttons, lacings, and harness of all sorts. a conical tyrol hat garnished with a cock's plume and faded violets was crushed between his back and that of the chair. as his large nervous feet reached for the chairlegs below, one could see an expanse of moss-green stockings, only half concealed at the extremities by resplendent yellow sandals. bearded and moustached after the military fashion, nothing betrayed the professor except the myopic droop of the head. as for fraülein linda göritz, no mere man may adequately describe her. a german new woman of the artistic stamp, she was pastelling through lombardy where the professor was archeologising. short, crisp curls gathered about her boyish head. her general effect was of a plump bonniness that might yield agreeably to an audacious arm. she cultivated an aggressive pertness that would have seemed vulgar, had it not been redeemed by something merely frank and german. shortskirted, she wore a high-strapped variant of the prevalent sandals. the sides of her blue bolero were adorned with stilted yellow lilies in the top of the viennese new-art mode. in front her shirtwaist appeared cool and white, at the sleeves it flowered alarmingly into something like an india shawl. a string of massive amethysts completed a discord as elaborate as a harmony of richard strauss. her whole impression was almost as inviting as it was grotesque. one could not chat with her without liking her, and it is to be suspected that only a very guileless or austere male could like her without proceeding to manifest attentions. by the cheese, she had captured her amazed professor, and then she carried him off bodily for coffee in the arcade. he talked little, but it didn't matter, for she talked much and well. nor could a provincial saxon scholar be quite indifferent at finding himself known to an intelligent and much travelled viennese. a cousin, it appeared, had followed his lectures and had highly extolled the ingenuity of his phonology of the lombard tongue, a language which was, she must remember--a hesitating pause--yes, surely east--"east germanic, ja wohl!" responded the professor thunderously, though idiots had written to the contrary. and then he told her at length the reasons why, until she pleaded her early morning sketching and firmly bound him to accompany her the next afternoon to the certosa of pavia. the herr professor rarely paid much attention to hands, but as he held fraülein göritz's for good night he could not but note that it was soft and filled his big grip so well that he was sorry when it was gone. he dismissed the observation, however, as unworthy a philologer and went to sleep pondering a new destruction for the knaves who held the lombard tongue to be not east but west germanic. and here, to appreciate the weight and importance of linda's fish, a little explanation is necessary. hauptmann was not merely a philologer, which is a formidable thing in itself, but he belonged to the esoteric group that deals with languages which have no literature. as he had often remarked, any fool could compile a grammar of a language that has left extensive documents; the process was almost mechanical, but to reconstruct a grammar of a language that has left practically no remains, that required acumen. hauptmann did not belong, however, to the transcendental school that creates purely inferential languages--east germanic and west, general teutonic, original slavic, indo-european and the like. these are the _dii majores_ and their inventions are as complete as if one should detect, say, the relation of the little to the big fleas not by the cunning use of the microscope but by sheer inference. this larger game hauptmann sagaciously left to others, ranging himself with those who piece together the scanty and uncertain fragments of languages that have existed but have failed to perpetuate themselves in documents and inscriptions. vandalic had powerfully allured him, and so had old burgundian: he had had designs also upon visigothic, and had finally chosen lombard rather than the others because the material was not merely defective but also delightfully vague, affording a wide opportunity for genuine philological insight. and indeed to classify a language on the basis of a phrase scratched on a brooch, the misquotations of alien chroniclers, the shifting forms of misspelled proper names, is a task compared with which the fabled reconstruction of leviathan from a single bone is mere child's play. from the mere scraps and hints of lombard words in paul the deacon and other historians anybody but a german would have declined to draw any conclusion whatever. but just as every german citizen however humble, becomes eventually a privy counsellor, a knight of various eagles of diverse classes, an overstationmaster, or a royal postman, so german science for the past hundred years has permitted no fact to languish in its native insignificance. all have been promoted to be the sponsors of imposing theories. and hauptmann's theory, which got him the degree of ph.d., _maxima cum laude_, was that lombard is an east germanic tongue. this he simple intuited, needing the degree, for the fifty mangled lombard words displayed none of those consonants which tending to double or of those vowels which still vexing us as umlauts, mark a language as belonging to the great eastern or western group. but hauptmann was first in the field, and if it was impossible for him to demonstrate that he was right, it was equally impossible for anybody else to prove that he was wrong. so he stood his ground and by dint of continually hitting the same nail on the same head he had so greatly flourished that he was mentioned respectfully as far as the lombard tongue was known, and at thirty-four had passed from the honourable but unpaid condition of privat-dozent to that of professor extraordinarius. now if the lombards, having ignominiously taken to latin after their descent upon italy, had had to wait for hauptmann to provide them with a language, they had left certain more substantial traces of themselves in the valley of the po. they died and were buried in state with their arms and utensils for the other world. so that, while one might well be in doubt whether an inscription was lombard or not, an antiquary will tell you without fail whether a clasp, a spearhead or a sword is or is not the work of this conquering but too adaptable race. in these archaeological matters hauptmann took a forced and languid interest. during nightmarish hours, when the beer and cheese had not mingled aright, he was haunted by lines of lombard runes. sometimes they were east germanic, and that was a grief, taking, as it were, the bloom from the guess that had made him great; and again they were west germanic, and that was awful, the hallucination ending in a mortal struggle with the feather bed under which german science is incubated, and passing off with an anguished "donnerwetter! it cannot be lombard. it is not possible." his not infrequent italian trips had, then, an archaeological pretext, and this had been more or less the purpose of the pilgrimage in which fraülein linda had become by main force an alluring if disquieting incident. if there is anywhere in the world a more satisfactory sight than the pavian certosa, certainly neither hauptmann nor his chance acquaintance had ever seen it. and indeed is there anywhere else such spaciousness of cloisters, such profusion of minutely cut marble, such incrustation, for better or worse, of semiprecious stones. surely nothing in a sightseeing way approaches it as a money's worth. fraülein linda, a superior person who had begun to entertain doubts as to the externals of modern austrian palaces and the internals of new german liners, reserved her enthusiasms for the pale borgonones so strangely misplaced amid all that splendour. hauptmann, on the contrary, admired it all impartially. the sense of bulk and inordinate expensiveness made him for a moment almost regret that these later lombards who reared this pile were not of the same race-stock with himself. there was a moment in which he could have claimed them, had principle permitted, as west germans. rather he soon forgot the lombards in the alternate rapture and dismay aroused by the petulant yet strangely winning personality beside him. professor hauptmann was used neither to being contradicted nor managed by mere women folk, and this afternoon he was undergoing both experiences simultaneously. it was with a feeling of relief that he left the certosa, which seemed in a way her territory, and started out with her upon the neutral highroad that led to the station. they lingered, for the hour was propitious, and their plan was to kill an hour or so before the evening train. as the glow came over the lowlying fields, the weary forms of the labourers began to fill the road. at a distance hauptmann perceived one who importunately offered a small object to the sightseers and was as regularly repulsed. without waiting for the professor, who stood at attention while fraülein linda sketched, this beggar or pedlar approached and prayed to be allowed to show a rare and veritable object of antiquity. a gruff refusal had already been given when she pleaded that they hear the peasant talk, and inspect his treasure. "who knows, herr professor, but it might be lombard?" "wohlan," he replied, and sullenly took the proffered spearhead. it was of iron, patined rather than rusted, lombard in form, and of evident antiquity. hauptmann gave it a nearsighted look and was about to return it contemptuously when the peasant urged, "but look again, sir, there are letters, a rarity." "i dare you to read them," cried fraülein linda, and the professor read painfully and copied roughly in his notebook a short inscription in some runic alphabet. a scowl followed the reading and the abrupt challenge "where did you find this piece?" "in the fields, digging, padrone," was the answer, "where i dug up also this," displaying a bronze clasp of unquestionable lombard workmanship. "bravo," exclaimed linda, "now perhaps we shall know more about your dear lombards. i congratulate you, herr professor, from the heart." "aber nein," he growled back, "there were monuments enough already, and this is only a bore, for i must buy and publish it. others too may be found in the same field, and lombard will become a popular pastime. it is disgusting; compassionate me. it was the single language that permitted truly a-priori approach. it would be almost a duty to suppress these accursed runes for the sake of scientific method. but no; the harm is done. we must be patient." what the herr professor said and continued to say as he drove a hard bargain with the peasant was but half the story. a glance at the runes had shown an awful double consonant, and, as if that were not enough, an appalling modified vowel. by a single word scratched by the untutored hand of a rude warrior the most ingenious linguistic hypothesis of our times was shattered beyond hope of repair. the spearhead was lombard, and lombard, dire reflection to one who had gained fame by maintaining the contrary, belonged to the west germanic group of the teutonic tongues. wild thoughts went through his head. he recalled that paris had seemed worth a mass, and considered a plenary retraction with a facsimile publication of the runes. but as he pondered this course the inexpediency of sacrificing so fair a theory to this mere brute fact seemed indisputable. he thought also of ascribing the doubled consonant and the modified vowel to the illiterate blundering of the spearman who chiselled the letters. but as his fingers traced the sharp and purposeful strokes he realised that such a contention would be laughed out of the philological court. for a mad moment he thought of destroying the miserable bit of iron, but in the first place that was in itself difficult, and then the chattering lady at his side knew that he was in possession of a runic inscription, probably lombard. she was widely connected and would certainly babble in the very city where his bitter rival professor anlaut had maintained that lombard was west germanic. as hauptmann noticed that the road had become deserted, that the dusk had increased, and that fraülein linda's observations on the luckiness of the "find" were interminable, a homicidal fancy just grazed the border of his agitated consciousness. but no, that would not do either; the scientific conscience forbade the destruction of any datum however embarrassing. destroy the spearhead he could not, and with a flash of intuition it came over him that it must simply be lost as promptly and hopelessly as possible. but this too was by no means easy. as they strolled down the road, ditch after ditch in the lower fields presented itself as apt for the purpose, but never the favourable moment. in fact fraülein linda's talk came back to the accursed runes with exasperating persistency. they would confirm his theory. she was happy in being present at this auspicious discovery. it would be a cause wherefore she should not wholly be forgotten. it was this sentimental hint that gave a reasonable hope of taking her mind off the runes, and the harassed philologer set himself resolutely to the task. for her slight advances he found bolder responses, and still scanning the irrigating ditches closely for an especially oozy bottom, he expatiated on the loveliness of the afterglow and confirmed the recollection of last evening that fraülein linda's dimpled hand might be an eminently pleasant thing to hold. thus gradually she was won from the lombard runes to more personal interests, and as in the slow progress towards the station they neared a bridge, hauptmann divined the spot where the east germanic hypothesis lately in peril of death might receive an indefinite reprieve. he found linda, as he now called her, neither disinclined to sit on the parapet nor to receive the support of his arm. her chatter had dwindled to sighs and exclamations. he felt the need of a competing sound as the chug of the spearhead in the ditch should announce the discomfiture of the west germans. but before committing the telltale runes to this ditch, hauptmann scanned it carefully over linda's curly head, and considered thoughtfully its worthiness to receive so important a deposit. the survey could not have been more reassuring. like so many of the main irrigating ditches that carry the water of father po and his tributaries to the lower fields, the sluggish stream consisted equally of water, weeds, and ooze. no lombard or other object held in that mixture was likely soon to be found. there was a moment of tense silence and then a single plucking sound which various eavesdroppers might have located at the surface of the ditch or near linda's plump left cheek. neither guess would have been wrong, for if she sighed once more it was not for the vanishing lombard runes. fraülein linda göritz is, if something of a sentimentalist, also a bit of an analyst, and when, in the train, she learned that the spearhead was lost she accepted hauptmann's cheerful comment with a certain scepticism. he insisted with a suspicious vivacity that it didn't matter, that indeed he preferred to have the merely professional reminiscence eliminated from an experience that had personally moved him so deeply. to this reading of the affair she naturally could not object, but as she gave him her hand quite formally for farewell, she said: "to-night you have forgotten the runes, tomorrow you forget me, nicht wahr? you are wrong. them you will not find again: there are many of me. you should have forgotten me first." she escaped while a protest was on his lips. since that evening fraülein göritz has followed professor hauptmann's brilliant career with a certain interest and perplexity. he has ceased to be an extraordinarius, but his promotion was based on his ingenious researches in vandalic. after that trip to the certosa he discontinued all lombard studies, and, it is said, actually withdrew from publication a scathing article in which the west germanic contingent were handled according to their deserts. she has a vague and not wholly comfortable feeling of having counted for something as a deterrent, and she has been heard to hint that his strange distaste for his favourite lombard investigations, is due to a deep and intimates cause--an unfortunate affair of the heart associated with that historic region. their cross how their cross reached fourth avenue one may only surmise, but there surely was knavery at some point of its transit. it was too splendid in its enamelling, too subtle in the chiselling of its gilded silver to have slipped into the byways of the antiquary's trade with the consent of the tuscan bishop who controlled or should have controlled its sale. for the matter of that, it still contained one of st. lucy's knuckles, which in case of a regular transaction would have been transferred to a less precious reliquary. no, there must have been a pilfering sacristan, or worse, a faithless priest, to explain its translation from the chianti hills to novelli's shop in fourth avenue. once there it was certain that one day or another john baxter must find it. how he became infected with the collector's greed and acquired the occult knowledge that feeds that malady it would take too long to tell. yet it may be said that the yearning amateur was about the only potent ingredient in the mild composite that was john baxter. his eyes, skin, hair, and raiment had never seemed of any particular colour, nor did he as a whole seem of any especial size. his parents, who were neither rich nor poor, cultured nor the contrary, had sent him to an indifferent school and college. in the latter he had joined a middling chapter of a poorish fraternity, and, was graduated with a rank that was neither high nor low. during those four easy going years he had played halfhearted baseball and football, and had all but made the "literary monthly." on entering the world, as the phrase goes, he came into possession of a small patrimony and accepted a minor editorial position on a feeble religious monthly. for the ensuing fifteen years john baxter overtly read manuscripts, composed headlines for edifying extracts, even wrote didactic little articles on his own account. secretly, meanwhile, the lust of the eye was claiming him, and he was becoming surcharged with a single great passion. his ascent through books, prints, colonial furniture, miniatures, rugs, and european porcelain to the dizzy heights of chinese porcelain and japanese pottery and painting, it would be tedious and unprofitable to follow. it is enough to say that all along the course his dull grey eye emphatically proved itself the one thing not mediocre about him. it grasped the quality of a fine thing unerringly; it sensed a stray good porcelain from the back row of the auction room. how he knew without knowing why was a mystery to his fellows and even to himself. for if he frequented the museums of new york, and had made one memorable pilgrimage to the oriental collections of boston, he was quite without travel, and his education had been chiefly that of the shops and salesrooms. thus his finds represented less knowledge than an active faith which served as well. a gubbio lustre jug of museum rank had been bought before he knew the definition of majolica. before he had learned the peril of such a hazard he had fearlessly rescued a real kirman mat from an omnibus sale. his scraps of old chinese bronze and stoneware represented the promptings of a demon who had yet to discover the difference between sung and yungching. these achievements gave john baxter a certain notoriety in his world and the unusual luxury of self esteem. what brought him the scorn of blunter associates, who openly derided him as a crank, assured him a certain deference from the _cognoscenti_. the small dealers respected him as an authority; the auctioneers greeted him by name as he slipped into his chair, and appealed to him personally when a fine lot hung shamefully. he had the entrée at two or three of the more discerning among the great dealers, who occasionally asked his opinion or gave him a bargain. in short a really impressive john as he sees himself was growing up within the skin of poor john baxter, feeble scribbler for the weak-kneed religious press. as he looked about his cluttered room of an evening he could whisper proudly, "no, it's not a collection, but i can wait. and there is meanwhile nothing in this room that is not good, very good of its type." sometimes in more expansive musings he would take out of its brocaded bag a wooden tobacco box artfully incrusted with lacquer, pewter, and mother of pearl, the work of the great kôrin, and would declare aloud, "nobody has anything better than this, no museum, certainly no mere millionaire." such days and nights had fed an already inordinate craving. he burned for the beautiful things just beyond his grasp, suffered for them amid his morning moralisings, dreamt of them at night. his was never the disinterested love of the beautiful that certain lucky collectors retain through all the sordidness of the quest. had you observed john in the auction room you would have felt something concentratedly feline in his attitude and would hardly have been surprised had he pounced bodily upon a fine object as it passed near him down the aisle. no other ghost of the auction rooms--and strange enthusiasts they are, had an eye that gleamed with so ominous a fire. there is peril in turning even a weak will into a narrow channel. it may exert amazing pressures--like the slender column of mere water that lifts a loaded car to, or with bad direction, through, the roof. * * * * * whether we should call john baxter's courtship and marriage a digression or the culmination of his career as a collector might have remained doubtful were it not for the cross in fourth avenue. when he found it, hardly a week before he met miriam trent, he naturally did not take it for a touchstone. that it was in a manner such, may be inferred from the fact that the anxious morning before the wedding, he stopped at novelli's for a last look, a ceremony strangely parodying the bachelor supper of more ordinary bridegrooms. after a lingering survey of its deep translucent enamels penned within crisply chiselled silver, like tiny lakes rimmed by ledges, he handed the cross back to the reverent novelli. it had never looked more desirable, he barely heard novelli's genial congratulation on the coming of the great day, as he wondered how so splendid a rarity had stayed in that little shop for two years. on reflection the reason was simple. the price, six hundred dollars, was a shade high for another dealer to pay, while the cross itself was so fine an object as merely to excite the distrust of novelli's average customers. "fools," muttered john, "how little they know," and hurried towards the florist's. as he made his way back towards an impressive frock-coat, his first, he found himself recalling with a certain satisfaction that even if this were not his wedding day, he really never could have hoped to buy the cross. what miriam trent would have thought had she learned that her bridegroom waived all comparison between herself and the cross only because it was unattainable, one may hardly surmise. but as a sensible person who already knew john's foible and was accustomed to making allowances, she possibly would have been amused and just a bit relieved. she was everything that he was not. where one passion absorbed him, she gave herself gladly to many interests and duties. a second mother to her numerous small brothers and sisters, and to her amiable inefficient father as well, she had somehow managed school and college for herself, and in accepting john and his worldly goods she gave up a decently paid library position. the insides of books were also familiar to her, in impersonal concerns she had a shrewd sense of people, in general she faced the world with a brave and delicate assurance. finally she believed with fervour the creed and ethics that john happened to inculcate every week, and it is to be feared that she took him for a prophet of righteousness. armed at all points that did not involve her personal interests, there was she peculiarly vulnerable. she must have accepted john, aside from the glamour of his edifying articles, simply because of his evident and plaintively reasserted need of her. yet they were very happy together, as people who marry on this unequal basis often are. after their panoramic week at niagara, along the st. lawrence, and home by the two lakes and the hudson, they settled down in john's room, which by the addition of two more had been promoted to being the living room of an apartment. her few personal possessions made a timid, tolerated appearance between his gilt buddhas and pewter jugs. but she herself queened it easily over the bizarre possessions now become hers. had you seen her of an evening, alert, fragile, golden under the lamp, and had you seen john's vague glance turn from a moongrey row of korean bowls to her deeper eyes, you would have been convinced not merely that he regarded her as the finest object in his collection, but also that he was right. it would be intrusive to dwell upon the joys and sorrows of light housekeeping in new york on a small income. enough to say that the joys preponderated in this case. they read much together, he gradually cultivated an awkward acquaintance with her friends--he had practically none, and at times she made the rounds of the curiosity shops and auctions with him. here, she explained, her part was that of discourager of enthusiasm, but repression was never practised in a more sympathetic and discerning spirit. her taste became hardly inferior to his, and their barren quests together established a new comradeship between them. it was probably, then, merely an accident that he never included novelli's in these aimless rounds, and so never showed her the enamelled cross. in the long run their imaginary foraging, always a recreation to her, became a sore trial to him. with the demonstration that two really cannot live cheaper than one, the old covetousness smouldering for want of an outlet once more burned hotly within. it expressed itself outwardly in a general uneasiness and irritability. the little fund, her money and his, that lay in savings bank began to spend itself fantastically. one day he reckoned that two-thirds of the cross had been put by, and banished the disloyal thought with difficulty. visionary plans of selling something and making the collection pay for itself were entertained, but when it came to the point nothing could be spared. perhaps the gnawings of this hunger might have been controlled, had he thought to confide in miriam. more likely yet, a system of rare and strictly limited indulgence might have banked the fires between times. however that be, the thwarted collector was to be sunk for a time in the devoted husband. miriam lay ill of a wasting fever. after a two days' trial of the rooms, the doctor and the trained nurse, who scornfully slept amid the collection, regarding it as a permanent centre of infection, declared the situation impossible, and with the slightest preliminary consultation of bewildered john, white-coated men were sent for, who carried miriam to the hospital. about her door john hung like a miserable debarred ghost, for after the first few days her mind wandered painfully, and his presence excited her dangerously. for weeks he vacillated between perfunctory work at the office, unsatisfactory talks with busy doctors and impatient nurses, and long apprehensive hours in what had been home. in "little venice," in the best powder-blue jar and the rest, he found no solace, on the contrary, the occasion of revolting suggestions. there was an imp that whispered that she must die and that he should resume collecting. with horror he fled the evil place, and spent an endless night on tolerance within hearing of her moanings. fevers have this of merciful, that a term is set for them. her malady though it often maims cruelly rarely kills. the temperature line on the chart, which for days had described a himalaya, dwindled suddenly to a sierra, as quickly to an appalachian, and then became a level plain. terribly wracked by the ordeal but safe they pronounced her. the visiting physician occasionally omitted her in his daily round. but convalescence was more trying than the struggle with the fever. the lethargic hours seldom brought either sleep or rest. beset by nervous fears, the collective suffering of the giant building weighed upon her, and she begged to be taken home. it was a pathetic triumphal entry that she made among their household gods. the sheer grotesqueness of her home struck her painfully for the first time, as she was helped to an ancient chair that stood before the suspended kirman rug--her throne john had always called it. as she once more occupied it, there came a curious revulsion against her gorgeously shabby domain. other women, she reflected, had neat places, cool expanses of wallpaper, furniture seemly set apart. she resented the stuffiness of it all, the air of musty preciousness that pervaded the room. and when john took both her hands and said: "now the collection is itself again; the queen has come home," she broke down and cried. she did much of that in the weeks that followed. you would have supposed her another person than plucky miriam baxter. but the situation hardly made for cheerfulness. light housekeeping being no longer practicable, they depended on the unwilling ministrations of a slovenly maid. john, who, to do him justice, had never boasted much surplus vitality, felt vaguely that something was now due from him that he could not supply. to escape an inadequacy that was painful he drifted back to the exhibitions and sales, this time alone. he never bought anything, for he was saving manfully for a purpose that daily increased in his mind. he would pay with his pocketbook what with his person he could not. his always modest luncheon reduced itself to a sandwich, he walked to save carfares, cut off two sunday newspapers, wore a threadbare spring overcoat into the winter. then one day he took miriam to a famous specialist from whom they learned very much what they already knew, but with the advantage of working orders. the great man told john in brief that it was a bad recovery which might readily become worse. a change and open air life were imperative; a sea voyage would be best. if such a change were not made, and soon, he would not be answerable for the consequences. all this john retold in softened form to miriam in the waiting room. "we might as well give it up," she said resignedly. "of course we can't travel. we haven't the money, and you can't get away." with the nearest approach to pride he had ever shown in a nonaesthetic matter john protested that he could get away, and better yet that there was money, five hundred good dollars, more than enough for a glimpse at the azores and gibraltar, a hint of rocky sardinia, a day at naples, a quiet fortnight on the sunny genoese riviera, and then home again by the long sea route. his thin voice rose as he pictured the voyage. even she caught something of his spirits, and as they got off the car near novelli's, by a sudden inspiration john said, "now for being a good girl, and doing what the doctor says, you shall see the most beautiful thing in new york." in a minute novelli was carefully taking the precious thing from its drawer and solemnly unfolding the square of ruby velvet in which it lay. miriam saw the rigid christ, at the left mary mother in azure enamel, at the right the beloved apostle in crimson. from the top god father sent down the pearly dove through the blue. below, a stately pelican offered its bleeding breast to the eager bills of its young. and it all glowed translucently within its sharp gothic mouldings. behind, the design was simpler--in enamelled discs the symbols of the evangelists. st. lucy's knuckle lay visible under a crystal lens at the crossing, and surely relic of a saint was seldom encased more splendidly. even pathetic miriam kindled to it. "yes, it is the most beautiful thing in new york," she admitted. "i suppose it costs a fortune, mr. novelli." "no, a mere nothing, for it, six hundred dollars." "why, we might almost buy it," she cried. "it's lucky you haven't saved more, john. i really believe you would buy it." "i'd like to sell it to mr. baxter," said novelli, "he understands it," only to be cut short with a brusque, "no, it's out of our class, but i wanted mrs. baxter to see it, and i wanted you to know that she appreciates a fine object as much as i do." "evidently," said novelli as they parted. "i hope she will do me the honour of coming in often; there are few who understand, and whether they buy or not i am always glad to have them in my place." about a week later john baxter closed and locked his office desk, hurried down to the savings bank, and drew five hundred dollars. most of it was to go into steamer tickets forthwith, a little balance was to be changed into italian money. as he meditated a route downtown, he recalled the only adieu still left unpaid. to be sure the cross had remained for three years at novelli's but it might go forever any day, and with it a great resource for a weary moralist. farewells were plainly in order, and with no other thought he walked back to the shop and greeted novelli, who without waiting to be asked produced the crimson parcel that contained the precious relic. as john looked it over from panel to panel, as if to stamp every composition upon his memory, novelli watched him, reflected, hesitated, smiled benevolently, and spoke. "mr. baxter, i am in great need of money and must sacrifice the cross. i want you to take it. vogelstein has offered me four hundred and fifty dollars for it but he shall not have it if i can sell it to anybody who deserves it better and will value it. it is yours at that price. what do you say?" john tried for words that failed to come. "it's a bargain, mr. baxter," pursued novelli, "but of course if you don't happen to have the money there's nothing more to say." "but i have it right here," retorted john in perplexity, "only it's for quite a different purpose." "you know your own business, of course, and i don't urge you, but if you have the money and don't take it, you make a great mistake. you know that well enough, and then remember how mrs. baxter admired it the other day." "yes-s," faltered john dubiously. "then why do you hesitate? you know what it is, and what it is worth, as an investment, i mean. by taking your time and selling it right you can surely double your money." "but"-"no, there it is. i am honestly doing you a favour," and novelli thrust the swathed cross into the hands of his fairly hypnotised customer. john's left hand clutched it instinctively, while with the frightened fingers of his right he counted off nine fifty dollar bills. "thank you, mr. baxter, neither you nor your wife will ever regret it. nobody in america has anything finer, and that you know." these words pounded terribly in john's brain as he found his way home, stumbled up stairs, and boggled with the latchkey. all the way down, unheeded passersby had wondered at the crimson burden (he had not waited for a parcel to be made) hugged closely to the shabby black cutaway. the danger signal smote miriam in the eyes as she rose to be kissed. standing away from her, he placed the shrouded cross on the table and tried for the confession that would not say itself. "why, it's our cross," she cried wonderingly. "mr. novelli has lent it to us for a last look before we go where the lovely thing was made. but, john, what's the matter? how you do look! has something awful happened?" "yes," and the pale nondescript head sunk into his hands. "i have bought it. i don't know how. i had the money, i was there, and i bought it." she repressed the word that was on her lips, and the harder thought that was in her mind, looked long at his humiliation until the pity of a mother came over her tired face. she had mercifully escaped scorning him. then she spoke. "it was a bad time to buy it, wasn't it, dear, but it is a beautiful thing, almost worth a real trip to italy." she added with a curious air of a suppliant, "and then perhaps we can sell it." "yes, that's so, perhaps we can sell it," echoed john listlessly, wrapping the cross closely in its crimson cover and laying it in his most treasured lacquer box. "yes, perhaps we can sell it," he repeated, and there was a long silence between them. the missing st. michael dennis, our epicurean sage, addressed us all as we lolled on his terrace, drank his tea, and divided our attention between his fluent wisdom and his spacious view of the valdarno. "the question is," he repeated, "what will emma do? will she be brave, or, rather ordinary enough, to act for herself and him, or will she refuse him because of what she thinks we shall think of them both? as we calmly sit here she may be deciding. that is if you are sure, harwood, that crocker was really bound for emma's when you saw him." "how could anybody mistake his beaming emma face?" growled harwood. "he was marching like a squad of bersaglieri." "and she knows that crocker wants it terribly?" added the sage's wife. "she does, indeed," sighed frau stern repentantly, "for that demon (pointing to harwood) did tell me and i haf, babylike, told her." "here is the case, then," resumed dennis: "she knows we know crocker wants her and it, but she doesn't know he doesn't know she has it." "precisely, most clearly and gracefully put, my dear," laughed mrs. dennis. "and she knows, too," he pursued imperturbably, "that we may think he wants her merely for it." "bravo!" puffed harwood smokily from his camp-stool. "she is too clever to expect any weak generosity from any of us. she believes we will think the worst. and won't we? viva nietzsche, and perish pity!" "shame upon us, then," cried frau stern. "she will gif up that fine young man for fear of our talk? never!" "she will send him away, dear frau stern, the moment he gives her the chance," declared dennis. "what else can she do? she can never take the chance of our surmises. behold us, the destroyers! the victims are prepared." "can't we do something about it?" harwood chuckled. "repent? be as harmless as doves? let's write a roundrobin solemnly stating that, to the best of our knowledge and belief, he wants her for herself and not for it." "gently," exclaimed mrs. dennis, as she blew out harwood's poised and lighted match. "you surely don't imagine crocker will propose the very day she shows it to him." "my dear," protested dennis, "don't we all know him well enough to understand that any shock will produce that effect? if his mother died or his horse, his vines got the scale, his ghirlandaio sprung a crack, his university gave him an honorary degree--these would all be reasons for proposing to emma. dear old crocker is like that; any jolt would affect him that way." "has it occurred to anybody that emma may have foreseen just this complication and quietly got rid of it first?" suggested mrs. dennis, the really practical member of our group, adding, "that's how i'd have served you if i'd wanted him." "never," responded dennis. "she loves it too well, and then she would feel we felt she had spirited it away on purpose." "besides," continued harwood, whose buried aspirations emmawards had long ago flowered into a minute analysis of her moods, "she is true blue, you know. she will never serve us like that. she may immolate the mighty crocker upon the altar of our collective curiosity, but she will never dodge us." "cannot we all go back to our own countries and leave them alone," suggested frau stern almost tearfully; "but no; we no longer haf countries. here we belong; elsewhere the air is too strong for our little lungs. i pity us, and i pity more those poor young people. if only they will but haf the sense to trample on our talk." "that, too, would be a sensation," dennis added cheerfully, and we went our ways, as usual, without having reached anything so vulgar as a conclusion. * * * * * meanwhile emma verplanck stood in the _loggia_ of her tiny villa and winced in the focus of the curiosities she despised. she scanned the white road that rimmed her valley before descending sharply to florence beyond the hill, and especially the crescent of dust where an approaching figure would first appear. now and then, as if for a rest, her eye traced the line of flaming willows down toward the plunge of her brook into the larger valley, or the file of spectral poplars that led into the vineyards hanging on the declivity of fiesole. above all, the gaunt and gashed bulk of monte ceceri glistened hotly against a pale blue sky, for if it was a backward april, the first stirring of summer was already in the air. she thrilled with disgust as she asked herself why she dreaded this call. why should she fear lest an elementary test, a very simple explanation such as she planned for that afternoon, should compromise an established friendship? interrupting this self-examination the mighty but unwieldy form of morton crocker loomed in the white dust crescent, and his premature panama swiftly followed the curve of the low grey wall towards her gate. as his steps were heard, her mind flew to the forbidding st. michael on his gold background in her den and she could fairly hear harwood saying to all of us, "three to one on the saint, who takes me?" the jangling of the bell recalled her to crocker, and she braced herself in the full sunlight to receive him. for a moment, as he loomed in the archway, she indulged that especial pride which we reserve for that which we might possess but austerely deny ourselves. her mingled moods produced an unusual softness. crocker felt it and wondered as she gave him her hand and had him sit for a prudent moment outside. all the hot way up the valley he had had a sense of a crisis. it was odd to be summoned whither he had been drifting for four years, and now the sight of emma disarmed, perplexed him. it seemed ominous. one finds such transparent kindness in clever people generally at parting, when one would be remembered for one's self and not for a phrase. then crocker for an instant glimpsed the wilder hope that the softening was for him and not for an occasion. emma had never seemed more desirable than to-day. a white strand or two in her yellow hair, the tiny wrinkles at the corners of her steady grey eyes, and the untimely thinness of her long white fingers made him eager to ward off the advancing years at her side, to keep unchanged, as it were, these precious evidences that she had lived. some sense of his tenderness she must have had, for as she chatted gravely about his farming, about the lateness of the almond blossoms, about everything except people, who always tempted her sharp tongue, her manner became almost maternally solicitous. "to-day you shall have your first tea in my den, crocker" (so much she presumed on her two years' seniority), she said at last, "and you are commanded to like my things." "what has thy servitor done to deserve this grace?" he managed to reply. "nothing," she said, "graces never are for deserts. or, rather, you poor fellow, you have been asked to tramp out here in this glare and really deserve to sit where it is cool." as they walked through the hall and the little drawing-room crocker still felt uneasily that no road with emma verplanck could be quite as smooth as it seemed. the den deserved its name, being a tiny brown room with a single arched window that looked askance at the cypresses and bell towers of fiesole. beside a couch, an empire desk, and solid shelves of books, the den contained only a couple of chairs and the handful of things that emma laughingly called her collection. as crocker took in vaguely bits of hispano-moresque and mellow ivories, a broad medal or so and a well-poised renaissance bronze, a japanese painting on the lighted wall, and one or two drawings by great contemporaries, emma's friends, he was amazed at the quality of everything. a sense of extreme fastidiousness rebuked, in a way, his more indiscriminate zeal as a collector. uncomfortably near him on the dark wall he began to be aware of something marvellous on old gold when tea interrupted his observations. tea with emma was always engrossing. the mere practice and etiquette of it brought the gentlewoman in her into a lovely salience. her hands and eyes became magical, her talk light and constant without insistency. a symbolist might imagine eternal correspondence between the amber brew and her sunny hair. it was easy to adore emma at tea, and generally she did not resent a discreetly pronounced homage. but this afternoon she grew almost petulant with crocker as they talked at random, and finally laughed out impatiently: "i really can't bear your ignoring my st michael, especially as you have never seen him before and may never see him again. st. michael, mr. morton crocker." "my respects," smiled crocker, as he turned lazily toward the gilded panel. there was the warrior saint, his lines stiff, expressive and hieratic, his armour glistening in grey-blue fastened with embossed gilded clasps; here and there gorgeous hints of a crimson doublet--the unmistakable enamel, the grave and delicate tension of a masterpiece by the rare venetian, carlo crivelli. crocker gasped and started from his seat, losing at once his cup, his muffin, and his manners. "by jove, miss verplanck, emma, it's my missing st. michael. where did you ever find it? i must have it." his toasted muffin rolled unconsidered beside the spoon at his feet. emma retrieved the cup--one of a precious six in old meissen--he retained the saucer painfully gripped in both hands. "i was afraid it was," she answered, "but look well and be sure." "of course we must be sure. you'll let me measure it, won't you? it's the only way." assuming his permission he climbed awkwardly upon the chair, happily a stout italian construction, and as she watched him with a strange pity, he read off from a pocket rule: "one metre thirty-seven. a shade taller than mine, but there is no frame. thirty-one centimetres; the same thing. yes, it is my missing st. michael," and as he climbed down excitedly he hurried on: "how strange to find it here. i never talked to you about it, did i? that's odd, too. i've been hunting for it for years. you didn't know, i suppose. i want it awfully. what can we do about it?" for crocker, this fairly amounted to a speech, and before replying emma gave him time to sit down, and thrust another cup of tea into his unwilling hands. having thus occupied and calmed him, she said, "i'm very sorry, i hoped it would turn out to be something else. i only learned last week that you wanted it. you have seldom talked about your collecting to me. there's nothing to do about it. i wish there were. you want it so much. but i can't give it to you. that wouldn't do. and i won't sell it to you. i wouldn't to anybody, and then that wouldn't do, either. so there we are. only think of their talk, and you'll see the situation is impossible." crocker's eyes flashed. "there's a lot we might do about it if you will, emma. damn the st. michael. if his case is so complicated, and i don't see it, leave him out of the reckoning between us. can't you see what i need and want?" "they wouldn't see it, and i'm shamefully afraid of them," she said simply, and then she added indignantly, "how could you dare, to-day? i can't trust you for any perception, can i?" not perceiving that her scruple was belated, crocker blurted out ruefully. "i'm an ass, and i'm sorry and i'm not. it's what i have wanted to say these many days, and perhaps it might as well be so. but i've wounded you and for that i'm more than sorry." "let's not talk about it," emma said gently. "of course i'll forgive an old friend for saying a little more than he should. only you must stop here. you'll forgive me, too, for owning your st. michael. i'm honestly sorry it happened so. i would dismiss him if i could, for he is likely to cost me a good friend. but he creates a kind of impossibility between us, doesn't he, and for a while it's best you shouldn't come, not till things change with you. it's kindest so, isn't it, crocker?" there was more debate to this effect before the impassive st. michael, until at last crocker agreed impatiently, "you're right, emma, or at least you have me at a disadvantage, which comes to the same thing. and yet it's all wrong. you are putting a painted saint between yourself and a friend who wants to be more. it's logical, but it isn't human. as for their talk, they'll talk, anyhow, and we might as well stand it together. i'm probably off for a long time, emma. i hope you'll find your st. michael companionable. when you decide to throw him out of the window, let me know. forgive me again. good-by." she gave him her hand silently and followed him out into the _loggia_. as she watched him striding angrily down the valley and away, she had the air of a woman who would have cried if she were not emma verplanck. * * * * * crocker was right, we all did talk. and naturally, for had we not all been eagerly awaiting the collision announced by the cessation of his visits and the rumour that he was bound north. in council on dennis's terrace, however, we came to no unanimous reading of the affair. generally, we felt that even if emma wanted a way out, which we guessed to be the fact, she would never expose herself to our batteries, and with regret we opined that there was no way, had we wished, to divest ourselves of our collective formidableness. on all sides we divined a deadlock, with dennis the only dissenting voice. he insisted scornfully that we none of us knew emma, that we underestimated both her emotional capacity and her resourcefulness, and, finally, in a burst of rash clairvoyancy he declared that she would give away both the st. michael and herself, but in her own time and manner, and with some odd personal reservation that would content us all. we should see. given the rare mixture of the conventional and instinctive that was emma verplanck, something of the sort did indeed seem probable. for ten years she had inhabited her nook, becoming as much of a fixture among us as the campanile below. she came, like so many, for the cheapness and dignity of it primarily. here her little patrimony meant independence, safety from perfunctory and uncongenial contacts at home, and more positively all those purtenances of the gentlewoman that she required. but, unlike the merely thrifty italianates, she never became blunted by our incessant tea giving and receiving. with familiarity, the ineffable sweetness of the country penetrated her with ever-new impressions. she loved the overlapping blue hills that stretched away endlessly from the rim of her valley, and the scarred crag that closed it from behind. she loved the climbing white roads, her chalky brook--sung as a river by the early poets--with its bordering poplars and willows and its processional display of violets, anemones, primroses, blueflags, and roses. she loved even better that constant passing trickle of fine intelligences which feeds the arno valley as her brook refreshed its vineyard. the best of these came gladly to her, for she was an open and a disillusioned spirit, with something of a man's downrightness under her sensitive appreciation. hers was the calm of a temperament fined but not dulled by conformity and experience. mrs. dennis, whose sources of information were excellent, said it was rather an unhappy girlish affair with an unworthy cousin. within the limits of the possible, the verplancks always married cousins, and emma, it was thought, had in her 'teens paid sentimental homage to the family tradition. in any case she remained surprisingly youthful under her nearly forty years. her capacity for intellectual adventure seemed only to increase as she passed from the first glow to proved impressions of books, art, persons, and the all-inclusive tuscan nature. her stuyvesant square aunts, who were authorities on self-sacrifice, agreed that the only sacrifice emma had made in a thoroughly selfish life was the purchase of the st. michael. she had found it, on a visit in romagna, in the hands of a noble family who knew its value and needed to sell it, but dreaded the vulgarity of a transaction through the antiquaries. to emma, accordingly, whom they assumed to be rich, they offered it at a price staggering for her, though still cheap for it. from the first she had adored it. there had been a swift exchange of despatches with new york, and the st. michael went home with her to florence. after that adventure the small victoria, the stocky pony, and the solemn coachman had never reappeared. emma walked to teas or, when she must, suffered the promiscuity of the trams. to those of us who knew the store she set by her equipage its exchange for the st. michael indicated a fairly fanatical devotion. to her aunts it meant that she had spent her principal, which, in their eyes, was an approximation to the mysterious "sin against the holy ghost." it was dennis who speculated most audaciously, and perhaps truly, about the st. michael. when he learned that emma secreted it in her den, where she rarely admitted anyone, he maintained that it had become her incorporeal spouse. the daintiness with which it fingered a golden sword-hilt, as if fearing contamination, symbolised the aloofness of her spirit. the solitary enjoyment of a great impression of art made her den a sanctuary, absolving her from commoner or shared pleasures. and in a manner the saint was the type of the ultra-virginal quality she had retained through much contact with books and life. for her to sell the st. michael, dennis felt, would be a sort of vending of her soul, to give it away in the present instance would imply, he insisted, an instinctive self-surrender of which he judged her incapable. to crocker's side of the affair we gave very little thought, considering that he, after all, had created the thrilling importance of the st. michael. but our general attitude toward the unwonted was one of indifference, and crocker was too unlike us to permit his orbit to be calculated. the element of foible in him was almost null. none of our guesses ever stuck to him, and we had grown weary of rediscovering that anything so simple could also be so impermeable to our ingenuity. in a word, crocker's case was as much plainer than emma's as noonday is than twilight. when one says that he was born in boston and from birth dedicated to the harvard nine, eleven, or crew--as it might befall; that he was graduated a candidate for the right clubs, that he took to stocks so naturally that he quickly and safely increased an ample inherited fortune, and this without neglecting horse, or rod, or gun; finally that he carried into maturity a fine boyish ease--when this has been said all has been told about morton crocker except the whimsical chance that made him an italianate. some reminiscence of his grand tour had beguiled a tedious convalescence and, following the gleam for want of more serious occupation, he had set sail for naples with a motor-car in the hold. at thirty-three he brought the keenness of a girl to the galleries, the towns, and the ineffable whole thing. it was tuscany that completed his capture. he bought a villa and, as his strength came back, began to add new vineyards and orchards to his estate. but this was his play; his serious work became collecting and more particularly, as has been hinted, the quest of the missing st. michael. when he learned, as a man of means soon must, that good pictures may still be bought in italy, he promptly succumbed to the covetousness of the collector, and the motor-car became predatory. its tonneau had contained surreptitious lottos and carpaccios. its gyrations became an object of interest to the ministry of public instruction. once on crossing the alps it had been searched to the linings. while crocker had his ups and downs as a collector, from the first his sense of reality stood him in stead. being a bostonian he naturally studied, but even before he at all knew why, he disregarded the pastiches and forgeries, and made unhesitatingly for the good panel in an array of rubbish. it was this sense for reality that impelled him to settle where the rest of us merely perched. fifty _contadini_ tilled his domain and actually began to earn out the costly improvements he had introduced. his wine and oil were sought by those who knew and were willing to pay. in the intervals of the major passion crocker walked up and down the grassy roads superintending the larger operations. his muscular and hulking blondness--he had rowed four years--towered above the dark little men who served, feared, and worshipped him. unlike the rest of us who preferred to live in a delightful cloud cuckoo town, which happened to be florence also, he had chosen to take root in tuscany. first he purged his castellated villa of the international abuses it had undergone for a century. it had hardly regained its fifteenth century spaciousness and simplicity before it began to fill up again, but this time with pictures and fittings of the time. in all directions he bought with enthusiasm, but his real vocation, after the cultivation of emma's society, soon came to be the completion of his great and growing altar-piece by carlo crivelli. what is usually a frigid exercise, a mere ascertainment that the parts of a scattered ancona are at london, berlin, st. petersburg, boston, etc.--a patient compilation of measurements, documents and probabilities; what is generally a mere pretext for a solid article in a heavy journal--or at best a question of pasting photographs together in the order the artist intended--crocker converted into an eager and most practical pursuit. bit by bit he gradually reconstituted his crivelli in its ancient glory of enamel on gold within its ornate mouldings. the quest prospered capitally until he stuck hopelessly at the missing st. michael. as it stood for a couple of years complete except for the void where the st. michael should be, the altar-piece represented less crocker's abundant resources than his tireless patience and energy. he had picked up the first fragment, a slender st. catherine of alexandria demurely leaning upon her spiked wheel, at a provincial antiquary's in romagna, not far from where the ancona had been impiously dismembered. fortunately the original gothic frame remained to give a clue to other panels. next, word of a crivelli madonna with donors at christie's took him posthaste to london. frame, period and measurements proved that it was the central panel, and the tiny donors, a husband and wife with a boy and girl, indicated that the wings had contained two female and two male saints. between the st. lucy (which turned up more than a year later in an un-heard-of swedish collection, and was had only by a hard exchange for a rare lorenzo monaco and a plausible fra angelico) and the sumptuous st. augustine, which was brought to the villa in a barrow by a little dealer, there was a longer interval. meanwhile the frame had been reconstructed, and a niche for the missing saint rose in melancholy emptiness. a little before the sensational _rencontre_ in emma's den, the chance of finding a rude pilgrim woodcut on the quai voltaire revealed the saint's identity. this ugly print informed the faithful that the "prodigious image" of our lady existed in the church of the carmelites at borgo san liberale. one might distinguish at the extreme right of the five compartments a willowy st. michael in armour, like chaucer's squire in a black-letter folio, or if the identification had been doubtful, there was the name below in all letters. when the print was shown to the scheming harwood over the afternoon vermouth, he suspended a long discourse on the contemptible fate of being born an anglo-saxon, and it came over him with a blessed shock that emma had the missing st. michael. penetrated by the joy of the situation, he hesitated for a moment whether to give the initiative to the man or the woman. a glance at crocker's uncompromising sturdiness convinced him that on that side the situation might be quickly exhausted. emma he could trust to do it full justice. excusing himself abruptly, he made for frau stern's lodgings, and with the taste of crocker's vermouth still in his faithless mouth, told her that emma's crivelli was no other than the missing st. michael. to make matters sure he solemnly bound frau stern to secrecy. that accomplished, he strode whistling down through the purple twilight to his well-earned _fritto_ at paoli's. the next day began our wondering what emma would do. she did, as is known, a thing that her simple knickerbocker ancestresses would have approved--presented crocker to the st. michael and left the decision modestly to the men. behind the frankness of her procedure lay, perhaps, a curiosity to see how crocker would bear himself in a delicate emergency. it was to be in some fashion his ordeal. thus she might at least shake the appalling equanimity with which he had passed from the stage of comrade to that of suppliant. not that she doubted him; nobody did that, but she resented a little in retrospect his silence on the subject of the great quest. was it possible that for these five years he had chatted only about his college pranks, his fishing trips, his orchards and vineyards, and the views? as she reviewed their countless walks and teas, it really seemed as if he had never paid her the compliment of being impersonal. well, that was ended now at any rate. a little misgiving filled her that she had never revealed the presence of the st. michael to so good a play-fellow. a delicacy, knowing his incorrigible zeal as a collector, had restrained her, and then, as dennis had guessed, her den was her sanctuary, admission to which implied an intimacy difficult to concede. whatever the merits of the case, the rupture had produced in a milieu consumed by the desire to guess what emma would do, at least one person who was solely interested in what crocker's next move might be. for the first time in a singularly calculable life he had become an object of genuine curiosity. he acted with his usual simplicity. to emma he wrote a brief note upbraiding her for fearing the voices of the valley, professing his eagerness to return when the st. michael had been put out of the reckoning, and declaring that if it were not soon, he would willy-nilly come back and see how things were between them. it was a letter that wounded emma, yet somehow warmed her, too, and from its reception we found her in an unwonted attitude of nonconformity to the verdicts of the valley. she began to speak up in behalf of this or that human specimen under our diminishing lenses with the unsubtle and disconcerting bluntness of morton crocker himself. the phenomenon kept alive our waning interest during nearly a year of waiting. as for crocker he gave it out ostentatiously that he was bound for a wonderful cima in northumbria and afterward was to try dry-fly fishing on the itchen. beyond that he had no plans. all this was characteristically the truth; he bought the cima, wrote of his baskets to harwood, but stayed away past his melons, his grapes and his olives. by early winter we heard of him shooting the moose in new brunswick, and later planning a system of art education in the massachusetts schools, and it was not till the brisk days of march that we learned the west wind was bringing him our way again. meanwhile emma had acquired a few more grey hairs and had resolutely declined to dispossess herself of the st. michael. a couple of months after crocker's leave-taking, a note had come to her from crespi, the unfrocked priest and consummate antiquarian, who, to the point of improvising a _chef d'oeuvre_, will furnish anything that this gilded age demands. crespi most respectfully begged to represent an urgent client, a russian prince, who desired a fine crivelli. would the most gentle miss verplanck haply part with hers? the price should be what she chose to name. it was no question of money, but of obliging a client whom crespi could ill afford to disappoint. emma curtly declined the offer. the st. michael was valued for personal reasons and was not for sale. six weeks later came a more insidious suggestion. the director of the uffizi, learning that she possessed a masterpiece of a school sparsely represented in the first italian gallery, pleading that such an object should not pass from italy, and representing a number of generous art-lovers who desired to add it to the collections under his care, made the following offer, trusting, however, not to any pecuniary inducement but to her loyalty as an honorary citizen of florence. the price named was something less than the london value, but its acceptance would have perpetually endowed the victoria, and perhaps--. if the malicious harwood had not passed the word that the offer was a ruse of the wily crocker, we all believed that she would have accepted. indeed, we regretted her obduracy. it would have been such a capital way out, with no sacrifice of her scruples nor waiver of our collective impressiveness. so harwood came in for mild reprehension, the sage dennis remarking with some asperity that when the gods have provided us with farces, comedies, and tragedies in from one to five acts it is unseemly to string them out to six or seven. early march, then, saw the deadlock unbroken. the st. michael had not been dislodged. emma still was unwavering so far as we knew. we were unable, had we willed, to divest ourselves of our deterrent attributes. but the situation had changed to this extent that crocker was said to be on his way down to oversee a new system of spring tillage in person. emma took his approach with something between terror and an unwonted resignation. from the day when he had planted himself firmly beside her fireplace with a boyish wonder at finding himself so much at home, he had represented the incalculable in her carefully planned life. declining to accept the attitude of other people toward her, he had almost upset her attitude toward herself. he was the first man since the scapegrace cousin who had neither feared nor yet provoked her sharp tongue. while he relished her wit, it had always been with an unspoken deprecation of its cutting edge. he gave her a queer feeling of having allowances made for her--a condescension that in anybody but this big, likable boy she would have requited with sarcasm. but against him the _cheveux de frise_ she successfully presented to the world seemed of no avail. he knew it was not timber but twigs, and that at worst one was scratched and not impaled. day by day she watched the cropping of the long line of flaming willow plumes that escorted her brook toward the level. the line dwindled as the shorn pollards gave up their withes to bind the vines to the dwarf maples. she felt the miles between herself and crocker lessening, and (at rare moments) her scruples ready to be garnered for some sweet and ill-defined but surely serviceable use. but she would not have been emma verplanck if the manner of her not impossible surrender had not troubled her more than the act itself. any lack of tact on the part of the husbandman might still spoil things. she had a whimsical sense that any one of the flaming willows might refuse its contribution to the vineyard should the pruner approach with anything short of a persuasive "_con permesso_." crocker's "by your leave" was so far from persuasive that it left her with a panicky desire to run away--again a new sensation. he wrote: "dear emma-"we have had an endless year to think it over, and the only change on my side is that i need you more than ever. i will go away for real reasons, for your reasons, but for no others. if it is only their talk that separates us, their talk has had twelve good months and shall have no more. i must see you. may i come tomorrow at the old hour? "as always yours, "morton crocker." something between wrath and dismay was the result of this challenge. she sat down to answer him according to his impudence, and the words would not come. the greatness of the required sacrifice came over her and therewith the desire to temporise. the voice of many knickerbocker ancestresses spoke in her, and between herself and a real emergency she interposed the impenetrable buckler of a conventionality. she wrote: "pensioin schalck, bad weisstein, austrian tyrol. "my dear crocker-"it would be pleasant to see you and talk over your trip, but you see by this address it is for the present impossible. as always, "cordially yours, "emma verplanck." when crocker found emma's valley as effectually barred as if a battery guarded the approaches, he gave way to a deep resentment. instinctively hating anything like a trick, to be tricked by emma at this point was intolerable. his gloom was such that he confided to the malicious harwood a profound disgust with the irreality of the life italianate. the _podere_ should be sold as soon as it could be put in order. such pictures as the italian government coveted, it should keep, the rest should go to the museum at boston. he himself would grow orange trees in north cuba where there were things to shoot and, thank heaven, no civilisation. harwood came breathlessly to dennis's with the tale, gloating openly that there was to be a seventh act if not an eighth. a long hard day with his bailiff and the peasants restored crocker's poise. he looked for the hundredth time over into emma's valley and divined her attitude. dreading an interview, she had left the way open to parley. she virtually pleaded for a delay. it was a new and, in a way, delightful sensation to be feared. for the first time in any human relation he exploited a personal advantage and wrote, addressing bad weisstein: "dearest emma-"you have wanted a delay. well, you have it--probably a week already. make the most of it, for two weeks from this date--i give you time to recover from your journey--i am coming for tea in the old way. meanwhile you can hardly imagine the impatience of "yours more than ever, "morton crocker." whether crocker or emma was more miserable during the fortnight even dennis could not have told. but there was in his woe something of the sublime stolidity of the man who is going to stand up to be shot or reprieved, whereas she suffered the uncertainty of the soldier who has been drawn to make up the "firing party" for a comrade. she feared that she would not have courage enough to despatch him, and then she feared she would. meantime the days passed, and she woke up one morning with an odd little shiver reminding her that it was no longer possible to get a note to him by way of bad weisstein. nor had she the heart to move to a nearer coign of constructive absence. of half measures she was, after all, a foe. her determination to send crocker away daily increased, and the implacable st. michael seemed to command that course. "you are not for him. you represent a whole artificial world in which he cannot breathe. i, the finest incarnation of the most exquisite mannerism of a bygone time, am your spiritual spouse, and you may not lightly renounce me. you have devoted yourself to graceful irrealities and must now abide by your choice." thus the st. michael had spoken in a dream in the troubled hours before daybreak, and when emma went to her den late the next morning she confronted him and admitted, "you are right, st. michael. it's all true." that afternoon crocker was coming for tea, and if her new york aunts could have known, even they would have granted that, for the second time in a thoroughly selfish life, emma was displaying capacities for self-sacrifice. as emma and crocker shook hands that afternoon, one might see that both had aged a little, but he most. something of the appealing boyishness had gone out of his eyes. he had become her contemporary. a certain moral advantage, too, had passed to his side and she, whose prerogative it had been to take the leading part, now waited for him to begin. as if on honour to do nothing abruptly, he sketched his year for her--his sports and committees, his kinsfolk and hers; their fresh, invigorating, half-made land. she listened almost in silence until he turned to her and said: "with me, emma, it is and always will be the same. you know that. has anything changed with you?" "i don't think so, crocker. how can i tell? i'm glad you're here, in spite of the shabby trick i've played you. let me say just that i'm heartily glad to see an old friend." "no, i must have more than that or less. i want much more than that." "you want too much. you want more than i can give to anybody. o! why can't you see it all? you are alive, even here in florence but, i, i am no longer a real person that can love or be loved. can't you see that i am only a sensibility that absorbs the sweetness of this valley, a mere bundle of scruples and fears, a weather-cock veering with the talk of the rest of them? think of that and take back what you have thought about me." "emma, you admit a need, and that is very sweet to me. you want some one to strengthen you against all this that you call the valley. mightn't that helper be i?" "you shan't be committed to anything so hopeless." "it isn't as hopeless as it seems. the strength of the valley is only in its weakness, and we shall be strong together." "i have forgotten how to be strong, for years i have only been clever." "you'd be dull enough with me as you well know. i can do that for both. but don't talk as if there were some fate between us. there can be none except your indifference, and i believe you do care a little and will more." "of course, i care, crocker, but not as you wish. you have refreshed me in this opiate air. you have represented the real country i have exchanged for this illusion, the real life i might have lived had i been braver or more fortunate. but you can have no part in what i have come to be. go, for both our sakes." "not for any such reason. i can't surrender my happiness for a phrase; i can't leave you to these delusions about yourself." "it is no delusion; i wish it were. it's in my blood and breeding. for generations my people have lived the unreal life. i am the fine flower of my race, and in coming to this valley of dreams and this no-life i am merely fulfilling a destiny--a fate, as you say--and coming to my own." "but emma, the worthy verplancks?" "no, listen to me. for generations the verplancks have been what people expected them to be, incarnate formulas of etiquette and timid living. they took their colour from the gossiping society in which they seemed to live. they prudently married other verplancks, cousins or cousins' cousins. they hoarded their little fortunes without increasing them, and if what they called the rabble had not peopled new york and raised the price of land, which my people were merely too stolid to sell, we should long ago have gone under in penury. we have led nobody and made nothing, but have been maintained by stronger forces and persons, toward whom we have always taken the air of doing a favour. that mistake at least i shall not make with you, crocker. i want you to feel the full nullity of me. as i see you now i have a twinge because my great grandfather, who was a small banker, would have called yours, who was a farmer--you see i have looked you up--not 'mister' but 'my good man.'" for a moment she paused, and crocker groped for a reply. "all this may be true, emma," he said at last, "and yet mean very little to you and me. besides, i'm quite willing you should call me your good man. in fact, i'd rather like it." "you must take me seriously--you shall. i cannot marry. i'm married already. dennis says i am. come and see my bridegroom." and she fairly dragged the bewildered crocker into her den and set him once more before the missing st. michael. "there he is, an incarnated weakness and fastidiousness. his hand is too delicate to draw his own sword. if he really cast out satan, it must have been by merely staring him down. his helmet rests with no weight upon his curled and perfumed locks--his buckles are soft gold where iron should be. he represents the dull, collective, aristocratic intolerance of heaven for the only individualist it ever managed to produce. he pretends to be a warrior and is as feminine as your st. catherine. he is the imperturbable champion of celestial good form, and dennis, who sees through things, says he is my spiritual husband. he is the weakest of the weak and is too strong for you, crocker." for a space that seemed minutes they faced each other, emma excited, with a diffused indignation that defied impartially the missing st. michael and the puzzled man before her; crocker with a perplexity that renewed the old boyish expression in his eyes. he seemed to be thinking, and, as he thought, the tension of emma's attitude relaxed, she forgot to look at the st. michael and wondered at the even, steady patience of the big likable boy she was dismissing. she pitied him in advance for the futile argument he must be revolving. she had despatched him as in duty bound and was both sorry and glad. but his counterplea when it came was of a disconcerting briefness and potency. he said very slowly, "yes, i see it all. there is your spiritual husband; there are they" (indicating the valley with a sweep of a big hand), "and there are you, emma, caught in a web of baffling and false ideas; and here am i, a real man who loves you, fearing neither the st. michael nor them" (another gesture) "nor your doubts. i set myself, morton crocker, your lover, against them all and take my own so." there was a frightened second in which his sturdy arms closed about her. there was a little shudder, as the same big hand that had defied the valley sought her head and pressed it to his shoulder. when emma at last looked up the mockery she always carried in her eyes had given place to a new serenity, and her hand reached up timidly for his. crocker and emma--we now instinctively gave him the precedence--were inconsiderate enough to remove themselves without making clear the fate of the no longer missing st. michael. we still speculated indolently as to the nature of the afterpiece in which we assumed this ex-hero of our comedy might yet appear. then we learned that emma was to be married without delay from the stone manor house under the taconics where her people had dwelt since patroon days. only a handful of friends with crocker's nearest kin and her inevitable new york aunts were to be present. these venerable ladies had admitted that in marrying, even opulently, out of the family, emma had once more shown velleities of self-sacrifice. then we heard of crocker and emma on his boat along the coast "down east." later we were shocked by rumours of a canoe trip through canadian waterways. hereupon the usually benevolent dennis protested as he glanced approvingly at the well-kept tuscan landscape. "crocker needn't rub it in," he opined. "why, it's the same scrubby spruce tree from the plains of abraham to james's bay-and emma, who hated being bored! why, it's marriage by capture; it's barbaric." "it's worse; it's rheumatic," shuddered harwood as he declined marsala and took whisky. "but he'll have to bring her back to civilisation some time, if only to hospital. we shall have her again." "he will bring her back, but we shall never have her again," said dennis solemnly. "she has renounced us and all our works." "renouncing our works isn't so difficult," smiled mrs. dennis, and then the talk drifted elsewhere, to new emmas who were just beginning to eat the tuscan lotus. before the year had turned to june again we had nearly forgotten our runaways, when a quite unusual activity about her villa and crocker's warned us that they were coming back. harwood had seen in transit a box which he thought corresponded to the st. michael's stature, but was not sure. in a few days came a circular note from crocker through dennis saying that they were fairly settled and he glad to see any or all of us. she, however, was still fatigued by the journey and must for a time keep her room. harwood straightway volunteered to undertake the preliminary reconnaissance, while frau stern engaged to penetrate to emma herself. on a beatific afternoon we sat in council on dennis's terrace awaiting the envoys. below, the misty plain rose on and on till it gathered into an amber surge in monte morello and rippled away again through the fiesolan hills. nearer, torrid bell-towers pierced the shimmering reek, like stakes in a sweltering lagoon. in the centre of all, the great dome swam lightly, a gigantic celestial buoy in a vaporous sea. the spell that bound us all was doubly potent that day. the sense of a continuous life that had made the dome and the belfries an inevitable emanation from the clean crumbling earth, lulled us all, and we hardly stirred when harwood bustled in, saying, "cheer up. i have seen crocker, and it isn't there." "you mean," said the cautious dennis, "that crocker still possesses only the hole, aperture, frame, or niche that the missing st. michael may yet adorn." "i only know that it isn't there now," growled harwood. "i deal merely in facts, but you may get theories, if you must have them, from frau stern, who heroically forced her way to emma over crocker's prostrate form." as he spoke we heard frau stern's timid, well-meaning ring, and in a moment her smile filled the archway. "we don't need to ask if you have news," cried mrs. dennis from afar. "if i haf news. guess what it is. it is too lovely. you cannot think? well, there will be a baby next autumn, what you call it?" "michaelmas, i suppose," grunted harwood through his pipe-smoke and subsided into indifference. "all this is most charming and interesting, frau stern," expostulated dennis, "but, as our enthusiastic friend harwood delicately hints, what we really let you go for was to locate the missing st. michael." "i haf almost forgot that," she apologised as she nibbled her _brioche_, "emma was so happy. but for the bothersome st. michael there is no change. i saw it in what she calls her new den. she laughed to me and said, 'i cannot let him have it, you see, you would all say he married me for it.'" "bravo!" shouted dennis and harwood in unison, and the sage added with unction, "so she has not been able to renounce us utterly." "it is not now for long," rejoined frau stern, "it is only to the time we haf said." "michaelmas," repeated harwood disgustedly. "yes, that is it," she pursued tranquilly, "emma told me in confidence, 'to crocker i cannot give it because of you all, but to our child i may, and it shall do with it what it will.' now do you prevail, misters dennis and harwood?" "we are a bit downcast but not discomfited," acknowledged dennis, while harwood remained glumly within his smoke. "emma has escaped us, but she still pays us the tribute of a subterfuge. it is enough, we will forgive her, even if her way lies from us dozers here. for to-day the same sunshine drenches her and us. it is a bond. let us enjoy it while we may." the lustred pots "haul away, sam. this is the real thing" came from the depths of the well. sam cleghorn stumbled in the gloom towards the windlass, avoiding on the way a rude handpump and two heaps of dirt and broken pottery that sloped threateningly upon the low curb, where balanced a perforated disc of marble, the great bottom-stone of the well. all these properties caught a little light from a beam that came through a slit in the wall, casting most of its uncertain bloom up into a low groined vault, the heavy round arches of which were separated from squat piers by clumsy brackets. outside at the level of the reticulated stone floor one could hear the rushing of a river. as cleghorn leaned over the well-mouth before seizing the crank, a glimmer of yellow light flooded his face and again came up the hollow impatient cry, "haul away, sam. this lot's a good one, and it's mine." replying "all right, dick," cleghorn bent to the crank. with much creaking the coils crept along the spindle and the light burden began to rise jerkily. * * * * * although neither the well nor the vaulted cellar chamber belonged to sam cleghorn or to dick webb, their presence and actions there were not surreptitious. stanton mayhew, who ignorantly owned the well, had given them plenary permission to pump and dig, mildly pitying their apparent lunacy. the palace above was his in virtue of his sensible preference for living twice as well on the arno for half the cost on the hudson. this rule of two, like so many foreign residents of florence, he unquestioningly obeyed, and it constituted practically the whole of his philosophy and maxims. hence he was not the man to prize a tuscan well dug in the fourteenth century, cleaned perhaps never, and gradually filled to the brim with what the forwardlooking past benightedly took for rubbish. so when cleghorn and webb made him an overture for the right to clean the well, he had genially replied, "why, go ahead, boys, and enjoy yourselves. it's you who ought to be paid, but for your healths' sake you really ought to wait till i've punched some decent windows through that damp cellar wall and let the air in." if neither sam nor dick waited even a day, it was because each was a bit afraid that the other would begin alone. college mates, collectors both, they were fast friends in a way and rivals beyond dispute. their common taste for antiquity and adequacy of means had made their graduate course chiefly one of travel. and when travel wore out its novelty they naturally settled in the easiest, as the least exacting, european city, occupying two halves of one floor in the same palace. their apartments started full, and quickly overflowed with objects of curiosity and art--all old, for their knowledge was considerable; some fine, for neither was without taste. but taste neither had in any austere sense, for they collected art much as a dredge collects marine specimens. nothing came amiss to them. wood, ivory, silver, bronze, marble, plaster--they repudiated no material or period. stuffs, glass, pictures, porcelains, potteries--it was all one to them so the object were old and rare. inevitably, then, they had come to primitive pots, and simultaneously, for they not only watched each other closely, but almost read each other's minds. and when they came to primitive pots it was certain that they would beg, borrow, or steal a well, since in old wells, and cisterns, besides less mentionable places, primitive pots abide. many pots were there, as we shall see, from the first, and the maids and children of the centuries, by way of concealing breakages, have usually made notable secondary contributions. so when amiable stanton mayhew freely conceded a most ancient well to cleghorn and webb, it was like receiving pandora's box, with the difference that the well might safely be opened. here had ensued a most delicate negotiation concerning the division of the spoil. a mathematical partition of the fragmentary material that an old italian well contains is extremely difficult if at all possible. after much debate it was agreed that after they struck pay dirt, each should dig in turn, each to have the bucketful that came under his trowel or fingers. scattered fragments of the same pot and other complications were to be adjudicated by mayhew, whose ignorance and disinterestedness were safe to assume. but the well gave up quantities of noncontentious matter before mayhew's services were required. the first five feet had revealed nothing but fragments of kitchen pottery of our time and a fairly perfect hoopskirt of garibaldian date. a little lower had emerged the skeleton of a cat. similar tragedies were in evidence, on an average, at every quarter century of depth. between the second and third cat, lay ginori imitations of sevres and wedgewood, scraps too of gilded glass--the earnest of better things below. five cats down, some eighteenth-century apothecary pots, damaged but amenable to repair, had inaugurated the alternation of buckets under the agreement. it were tedious to follow the ascending scale of excellence as the digging went deeper. enough to say that below the mixed ingredients and the nethermost cat they found a homogeneous layer of beautiful fourteenth-century shards, affording many buckets full, and promising delicate adjudication to the referee. before the lustred pots themselves shed a baleful gleam over this narrative, something should obviously be said about italian wells and why they contain pots. beyond those casually acquired from careless or secretive servants, there is, if the well be old and of good make, a certain number of intact pieces put in to serve as a filter. often a group of pitchers or similar crocks is imprisoned between the two bottom-stones. sometimes there are two such layers. after this filter had been made there was frequently scattered a bushel or more of small shards above. from these by careful sorting complete or nearly complete pieces may be recovered. through all this mass of whole or broken pottery the water had to find its way up, for the cement sides of an italian well are watertight. thus, barring the indiscretions of housemaids and cats, the early italians drank pure water. naturally cleghorn and webb were conversant with these refinements of mediaeval hydraulics. in fact when webb, the sturdier of the two, hauled up the bottom-stone all dripping, cleghorn promptly declared that in the sense of the contract it was a bucketful; hence his first go at the now uncovered pots. so heated grew the debate, that finally the grimy excavators climbed to the upper air and appealed to mayhew, who promptly denied the quibble, deciding that stones and pots were not interchangeable. the diversion drew attention from the great perforated disc itself, and as the sullen cleghorn let the exultant webb down upon the ancient pots, it lay badly bestowed near the curb on the crumbling slope of a rubbish heap. and now cleghorn with bitterness of heart was reeling up webb's find. as the coils broadened on the windlass a small iron bucket rose above the parapet, brimming with something that glinted metallically under the dirt. beside the bucket flapped the rude swing in which the entrances and exits of the partners were made. as cleghorn grasped the bail and swung the precious cargo clear of the well, came up once more the voice of webb: "hustle, old man, i'm keen to see them, they feel good." good they were indeed. cleghorn, who for fifteen years had haunted shops and museums had never seen the like in equal compass. as he took them cautiously one by one and held them high in the uncertain light, each revealed a desirable point. here was a coat of arms, a date, the initial of an owner. there were grotesque birds and beasts. differing in form and colour, the entire lot agreed in possessing that dull early italian lustre, which perhaps accidental and less distinguished than that of spain, is even dearer in a collector's eyes. they hinted of all enamelled things that come out of the east--of the peacock reflections of the tiles of damascus and cordova, of the franker polychromy of rhodian kilns, of the subtler bloom of the dishes of moorish spain, of the brassier glazes of minorca and sicily--all these things lay enticingly in epitome in these lustred italian pots, as they glimmered with a furtive splendour. yes, they were a good lot, thought cleghorn as he placed them reverently on the flagging. it was the find of a lifetime. a man with nothing else in his cupboard must be mentioned respectfully among collectors from dan to beersheba. again the impatient voice of webb below: "hurry up, i say. it's getting cold: the water is gaining." "all right," called cleghorn, giving a few strokes of the pump, but never taking his eyes from the lustred pots. then as if by a sudden inspiration he asked, "any more in that lot, dick?" "not a one," cried webb jubilantly, "there was just a bucketful and a squeeze at that. but there may be others beneath. there's another bottom-stone, and it's your next turn. but why don't you hurry up?" a scowl passed over cleghorn's thin face set unswervingly towards the pots. they glimmered in the shadow with an unholy phosphorescence--green, blue, carmine, strange purplish browns. so the glittering coils of the serpent may have bewildered our first mother. there were other pots below, reflected cleghorn, yes, but there never could be again such a batch as these. and then his dazed eye for a second left the fascinating pots, and mechanically searched the vaulted chamber. to his excited gaze the rubbish heaps centring about the curb seemed already in movement. the massive bottom-stone overhung the parapet, resting only on loose dirt and shards. with horror he noted that a breath might send it down. if it slipped, whose were the lustred pots? against his will the phrase said itself over and over again throbbingly behind his eyes, and again he forgot everything in the vision of the lustred pots. "damn it, hurry up," came thunderously from below. cleghorn stumbled with a curious hesitation between the crank and the poised bottom-stone. the clumsy movement loosened a handful of shards which went clattering down; the great stone slid, caught on the parapet, and hung once more in uncertain oscillation. profanity unrestrained transpired from the mouth of the well. it was a tremulous cleghorn that sent down the bucket and reeled up an irate and vociferous webb. words abounded without explanations, and blows seemed possible, when cleghorn, as it were apologetically raised a pitcher and a bowl into the shaft of light that came through the oubliette. "they're all like that, dick," he protested. "it's your lucky day. i congratulate you." it was a silenced and mollified webb that clutched at the pots, and noted wisely that every one had been brushed by the peacock's tail. with a kind of pity at last he turned to the deprecating cleghorn and said, "that was an awkward business of yours about the shards, and the bottom-stone there is a pretty sight for a man who left it so and went down to work under it, but one couldn't wait for such pots as these. on my soul, old man, if you had dumped it all down on me i could hardly have blamed you." welcomed with a loud laugh by its maker, the joke jarred on cleghorn, who merely answered, "it's very good of you, dick, to say so." "but there may be quite as good ones below," pursued webb genially. "we'll rest up a bit and then you have your go and finish the job." "if you don't mind, dick, i'd rather not," was the embarrassed answer. "the fact is i'm too nervous and absentminded for this work." he looked down into the blackness with a shudder and said. "no, i don't want to go down there again. one can't tell what might happen there." "then you've dropped your nerve. sorry for it," came from a baffled and disgusted partner, but as he spoke a smile drew across the broad, amiable face, and he added insinuatingly, "then the rest are mine, old man?" "yes they're yours fast enough." "it's mighty good of you, sam. i won't forget it. i'll share sometime on a good thing like this. i'm all ready to go down again when you've had a smoke. only we'll set that stone right and you'll be more careful about the shards." "if you'll excuse me, dick, i'd rather not." cleghorn looked at his watch. "you see i ought to be out of these duds already. i have a very particular tea outside. didn't i tell you about it? i'll send mayhew down to help." "all right, just as you please," was the indifferent reply. but as cleghorn turned up the narrow steps, webb muttered perplexedly, "to funk at this point and for a tea! the man is touched or in love." * * * * * webb with mayhew's dispassionate aid made a considerable haul below the second stone, though in truth there was nothing there to compare with the first lot. the batch of lustred pots is the pride of his eye, and when it is suggested that he values them highly he answers, "well rather, they're pretty good, you know, and then they nearly cost me a broken head. i was so keen for them that i set a big stone where it might easily have tumbled on me." then the rest of the anecdote, which cleghorn, in whose presence it frequently is told, never hears with complete equanimity. the causes of his uneasiness i do not engage to analyse, for, unlike webb, cleghorn is imaginative and difficult. the balaklava coronal as the dinner wore on endlessly, i consoled myself by the thought of the balaklava coronal. there in the toastmaster's seat was morrison who had bought it, at my right loomed vogelstein who had sold it, far across, towards the foot of the board, sat the critic brush in whose presence i understood the infamous sale had been made. i missed only sarafoff, the marvellous peasant-silversmith, who wrought the coronal in his prison workshop in the viennese ghetto. now there was nothing strange about vogelstein's selling it, nor yet about morrison's buying it; only the making of it by the illiterate sarafoff and the silence of brush when it was sold required explanation. vogelstein, who breathed heavily beside me, undoubtedly held the secret. i felt so hopeful that time and the champagne which we were drinking for the sake of art would give him to me that i took no pains meanwhile to disturb his elaborate indifference to my presence. between him and me little love was lost. as the editor of a moneylosing art magazine in the interior, it was my duty occasionally to visit his galleries. after such visits the remnant of my new england conscience usually forced me to diminish or actually to spoil many a sale of the dubious or merely fashionable antiquities in which he dealt. but in the main my power to harm him was slight. he held in a knowing grip the strings of his patrons' vanity and taste. so he regarded me with something between scorn and uneasiness--as a pachyderm might take a predatory bee. for the sake of my steady production of the honey of free advertising he forgave a sting from which he was after all immune. at the beginning of the dinner he had greeted me with what was meant for a civility and then had relapsed into silence. to escape the loquacity of my other neighbour i gave myself to parallel observation of vogelstein and morrison--the great dealer and his greater customer. both plainly belonged to the same species and it pleased my whim to symbolise them as a mastodon and a rogue elephant. morrison, the dreaded agent and operator, was unquestionably the finer creature. he moved more precisely and with a sense of wieldy power. his phrases cut where vogelstein's merely smote. his bigness had something genial about it. he looked the amateur, and indeed does not the rogue elephant trample down villages chiefly for the joy of the affray? one felt that something more than morrison's preposterous winnings had been involved in the clashes of railroads and cataclysms on the exchange which had for years past been his major recreation. vogelstein, though evidently of coarser fibre, belonged to the same formidable breed. the mastodon, we must suppose, lacked much of the finesse of the rogue elephant of later evolution. and vogelstein's semitism was of the archaic, potent, monumental type. his abundant fat looked hard. for all the sagging double chin, his jaw retained the character of a clamp. among the strong race of art dealers he was feared. whole collections not single objects were his quarry. he paid lavishly, foolishly, counting as confidently on the ignorance and vanity of his clients, as ever morrison upon the brute expansion of the national wealth. but vogelstein looked and was as completely the professional as morrison the amateur. there remained this essential difference that if nothing could be too big to stagger vogelstein, nothing likewise could be too small to deter him. i knew his shop, or rather his palace, and had observed the relish with which he could shame a timorous art student into giving three prices for a print. it afforded him no more pleasure, one could surmise, to impose a false rembrandt at six figures upon a wavering iron-master, or, indeed to unload an historic but rather worthless collection upon morrison himself. for vogelstein was after all of primitive stamp, to wit the militant publican. so he took toll and plenty, it mattered little where or whence. to morrison and vogelstein no better foil could be imagined than brush. if they recalled the tusked monsters that charged in the van of asiatic armies, his analogue was the desert horse. small, spare, sensitive, shy, his every posture suggested race, training, spirit, and docility. his _flair_ for classical art had become proverbial. by mere touch he detected those remarkable counterfeits of syracusan coins. it was he who segregated the renaissance intaglios at bloomsbury only the winter before he exposed the composite figurines at berlin. to him the balaklava coronal must have proclaimed its nullity as far as its red gold could be seen. for that matter the coronal was a bye-word, and why not? the same dealers who had landed the more famous tiara in the louvre had the selling of it. the greater museums in europe and america had refused it at a bargain. on fifth avenue and the rue lafitte all the dealers were joking about the balaklava coronal. the name of sarafoff, its maker, had even become accepted slang. for a season we "sarafoffed" our intimates instead of hoaxing them. and in the face of all this vogelstein had sold the coronal to morrison under brush's very nose. it seemed so wholly incredible that i began counting vogelstein's heavy respirations, to make sure i was really awake. then the pale, tense mask of brush--so isolated in the apoplectic row across the table--calmed me. that he was vogelstein's or anyone's tool was unthinkable. mercenary suspicions, to be sure, had been put about, but those who knew him merely laughed at such a notion. vogelstein also laughed, shaking volcanically within, whenever the coronal, the genuineness of which he still maintained, was mentioned. and he always treated brush with a curious and almost tender condescension, much in fact as the mastodon might have regarded that fragile ancestor of the horse, the five-toed protohippos. i have neglected to explain that the occasion which brought me at one table with such major celebrities as morrison, vogelstein, and brush was a public dinner in behalf of civic art. for just as we find the celestial compromised by the naughty aphrodite, so we distinguish two antithetical sorts of art. there is a bad private art which is produced for dealers and millionaires and takes care of itself, and there is a virtuous public art which we hope to have some day and meanwhile has to be taken care of by special societies. it was one of these that was now dining for the good of the cause. under the benevolent eye of morrison, our acting president, we had put pompano upon a soup underlaid with oysters, and then a larded fillet upon some casual tidbit of terrapins. whereupon a frozen punch. thus courage was gained, the consecrated sequence of sherry, hock, claret and champagne being absolved, for the proper discussion of woodcock in the red with a famous old burgundy--morrison's personal compliment to the apostolate of civic art. at the dessert, morrison himself spoke a few words. the little speech came brusquely from him, and no one who knew his rapacity for the beautiful could doubt his faith in the universal superlatives he now advocated. our art, he held, must weigh with our mills and railroads, else our life is out of balance. we never grudged millions to burrow beneath new york for light, or for drink or speed, why then should we grudge them for the beautiful inutilities that might make the surface of the city splendid. a craving for fine objects was his own dearest emotion, he wanted to see cities, states, and the nation ready to spend with equal fervour. it all came apparently to a matter of spending. morrison entertained no doubt that an imperious demand would create an abundant supply of what he called the best art. whether we were to transport bodily the great monuments of europe to america, or merely were to supply beauty off our indigenous bat, was not clear from morrison's address, and possibly was not wholly so in his own mind. but the talk was solid and forceful, and i could hear vogelstein grunt with inward joy when he contemplated the city, the state, and the nation in their predicted rôle as customers. i too felt that a real if an incoherent voice had spoken, and that if civic art were indeed to come, it would be through such neo-roman visionaries as morrison. then the mood changed and a willowy, hirsute, and earnest reviver of tapestry weaving rose and pleaded for the "city beautiful," castigating the philistine the while, and looking forward to a time when "the pomp, and chronicle of our time should be splendidly committed to illumined window and pictured wall," with some slight allusion to "those ancient webs through which the middle ages still speak glowingly to us." about midway in the speech morrison, who had another public dinner down the avenue slipped away. as he nodded "see you later perhaps" i marked the adoring eye and smile of vogelstein, and then the great folds settled back into their places about his mouth and my neighbour once more gave an uneasy attention to the weaver of beautiful phrases, meanwhile drinking repeated glasses of burgundy. soon his huge form heaved with an inarticulate discontent, and as the speaker sat down amid perfunctory applause vogelstein snorted twice into the air. "it is rather absurd, as you say," i ventured. "it's sickening," wheezed vogelstein. "why can't he sell his tapestries without all that talk?" "oh, he enjoys the talk and probably believes it, and you and i do better after all to hear his talk than to see his tapestries." a mastodonic chuckle welcomed this mild sally. the burgundy was taking effect. as the diners rose stiffly or alertly, according to their several grades of repletion, vogelstein attached himself to me almost affectionately. "do stop in the café and talk to me," he urged. "it's queer, here are a lot of my customers, some of my artists, besides you literary chaps, and except morrison, nobody wants to talk to me. morrison and i, we understand each other. it's early yet. come along with me and talk. i've wanted to talk to you for a long time, but always was too busy in my place. you see you writers don't buy, in fact those that know almost never do. it's really queer." knowing the might of burgundy when a due foundation of champagne has been laid, i hardly took this effusion as personal to myself, but i also saw no reason, too, why i should not profit by the occasion. "i'll gladly chat with you, mr. vogelstein," i answered, "but you must let me choose the subject. we will talk about the balaklava coronal." as he led me into the elevator by the arm he whispered "all right, old man, but why? you know just as much as i about it." there was no chance to reply until he had selected his table and ordered two scotches and soda. "yes, i know something about it," i said at last; "everyone does apparently except morrison. i know that sarafoff made the coronal, but i don't know who taught him how to make it, nor yet how morrison was idiot enough to buy it, when anybody could have told him what it was, nor yet how brush came to let it be sold. these are the interesting parts of the story, and i'll drink no drink of yours unless you tell." at the mention of idiocy in connection with morrison vogelstein shuddered and raised a massive deprecating hand. the gesture was arrested by the entrance of brush, who with a slight nod to us passed to a distant corner. suddenly vogelstein's expression had become one beaming, condescending paternalism. "good man but impracticable," he muttered. "thinks knowing it is everything. knowing it is something, but selling it is the real thing. now i hardly know at all, not a tenth as much as brush, not a half as much as you even, but so long as i can sell, i don't really care to know. what's the use?" "but you did know about the balaklava coronal and you sold it too," i interrupted. "how did you dare?" "that's my secret--but here are our drinks. a bargain's a bargain. how funny it is to be talking truth. why, much of it would make even your job difficult." "and yours impossible, but we're not getting to the coronal," i insisted. "as for that," responded vogelstein obligingly, "the first thing was of course the making. you know all about sarafoff yourself. well, he only did the work. it was schönfeld who put in the brains. you don't know him? few do. great man though. university professor of archaeology, trouble with a woman, next trouble with money, now one of us. yes schönfeld thought it out and saw it through." "and certainly made a good job of it," i admitted. "as you see, we wanted something unique--something that could not be compared with anything in the museums." "precisely," i interposed, "product of the local, semi-barbaric school of the crimea." "you've hit it," grinned vogelstein. "scythian influence, to take the professors. schönfeld said we must have that. and that's why it had to be found at balaklava." "but it had to look scythian too. how did you manage that?" "oh, that was sarafoff's business. he had been a servant and then a novice at one of the monasteries of mount athos. could make beautiful tenth-century byzantine madonnas. i've sold some. then he carved ikons in wood, ivory, silver, or what came. his things really looked scythian enough to those who didn't know their modern greece and russia. so we set him to work in a back alley of vienna at three kroners a day--double pay for him--and schönfeld ran down from petersburg now and then to coach him." "you could trust him?" i inquired, recalling how sarafoff had subsequently won fame by confessing to his most famous forgery. "as much as one can anybody. you see he doesn't speak any civilised language, and at that time we couldn't tell that the tiara would spoil him as it did the entire deal." "but schönfeld's coaching?" i suggested. vogelstein here winked solemnly and drank deeply from his tall glass. "first i want to tell you all about sarafoff," he persisted, "of course we had him watched all the same, and whenever he got an evening off, which was seldom, we had him filled up with schnapps. he was a quiet drunk which is an excellent thing, sir." as i nodded assent to this great truth, he continued: "yes schönfeld, as i was saying, managed everything. wonderful scholar. you would respect him i'm sure. why, every bit of the pattern of the coronal was taken from some real antique, every word of the inscription too." "wasn't that a bit dangerous?" "with schönfeld in charge, not so very. everything was taken from little russian museums that even you critics don't visit. almost no published thing was used, you see." "then there was sarafoff"-"to give it all that quaint scythian look," vogelstein added joyously. "yes, we had just the best brains and the best hands for the job, and it was beautiful." "better than the tiara?" "yes, far better. the tiara was all a mistake, as i told schönfeld; it was too big and too good to be true. except for steinbach, who fell in love with its queerness and chipped in some money, we never could have sold it to a museum. and it was a bad thing to have it there, it aroused opposition, it was bound to be exposed. i was always against it, and sure enough it spoiled the game for us. but the balaklava coronal that was just right. it had a sort of well-bred modest beauty. we should have begun instead of ending with it. yes, sir, there never was a more beautiful thing, a more plausible thing, a finer object to sell than the balaklava coronal." as he bellowed the word and beat the table in confirmation, brush looked over from his corner apprehensively. "quietly, mr. vogelstein," i hinted, "this is between ourselves, and we might be overheard." "that's right," he admitted, and moodily lit another cigar. "where were we?" he asked uneasily. "oh yes, we were at the tiara. now the coronal and what we could have sold on the strength of it was worth ten of the tiara, and if it hadn't been for the cursed thing, we could have landed the coronal as a starter in any one of half a dozen museums." "as a matter of fact they were all shy of it." "of course. once the tiara was being looked into, the museum game was up, and there was only morrison left." vogelstein lurched around nervously. "he may drop in soon," he explained. "i'd like to make you acquainted." ignoring the offer, i persisted, "you've got to the interesting point at last. tell me why there was only morrison left. to begin with morrison knows something about such matters, and next he can have the best advice for the asking. and yet you tell me that morrison was the only great collector in the world to whom that notoriously false bauble could be sold." vogelstein swayed uncomfortably in his chair, puffed, swallowed, cleared his throat, and said, "there are some things one can't say right out; you know that as well as i, but i can say this: there are many great and enterprising collectors in america, and morrison is the only one who never doubts anything he has once bought." "an ideal client then." "quite so. you see the others get worried by the critics. that means exchanging, refunding--all sorts of trouble." "but morrison never?" "never; he's a true sport. he never squeals." "doesn't have to because he doesn't know he's hurt." "that's right," concluded vogelstein, his face corrugating into one ample, contented smile. "then the big game reduces itself into selling to morrison." "that's more or less it, sir. for a critic you have a business head." "you will excuse a rather personal question, but how do you feel about selling your best customer at enormous prices objects which you know to be false?" "it's a fair question since we are talking between ourselves, and you shall have a straight answer. first my business isn't just a nice one. in the nature of the case it wouldn't do for sensitive people. i suppose you and brush, for instance, couldn't and wouldn't make much out of it. then as regards morrison, i'm not so sure he could complain if he knew. i give him the things he likes and the treatment he likes at the prices he likes. what more can any merchant do?" i saw the subject rapidly exhausting itself and tried one more tack. "yes, it's simpler than i supposed," i admitted, "but it doesn't seem quite an every-day thing to sell the balaklava coronal to anybody under brush's nose." "it's easier than you think," echoed vogelstein. "you don't know morrison. hope he'll look in to-night. you ought to meet him." my last bolt was shot. it was my turn to sit silent and drink. what could be this strange infatuation of the hardheaded morrison, this avowedly simple magic of the grossly cunning vogelstein? as i pondered the case i noticed brush give a startled glance towards the entrance, heard heavy steps behind us, and then a deep voice saying, "hallo again, vogelstein, i'm lucky not to be too late to catch you." vogelstein lumbered to his feet and muttered an introduction. we all took our seats, as the headwaiter bustled obsequiously up to take morrison's order of champagne. as if also obeying morrison's nod, but reluctantly, brush crawled over from his corner, a scarcely deferential attendant transporting his lemonade. while casual greetings and some random talk went on i tried to picture the scene we must present. neither brush nor myself is contemptible physically or in other ways, yet we both seemed curiously the inferiors of these troglodytic giants. our scruples, the voluntary complication of our lives, seemed to constitute at least a disadvantage when measured against the primitiveness, perhaps the rather brutal simplicity, of our companions. it was morrison who cut these reflections short. "you will excuse me, gentlemen," he said, "for introducing a matter of business here, but the case is pressing and it may even interest you as critics of art." we nodded permission and he continued, "it's about the bleichrode raphael, as of course you know, vogelstein. i like it, i want it, but i hear all sorts of things about it, and frankly it strikes me as dear at the price. how do you feel about it?" at the mention of the bleichrode raphael, brush and i started. the forgery was more than notorious. the bleichrode panel had begun life poorly but honestly as a franciabigio--a portrait of an unknown florentine lad with a beretta, the type of which raphael's portrait of himself is the most famous example. the picture hung long in a private gallery at rome and was duly listed in the handbooks. one day it disappeared and when it once more came to light it had become the bleichrode raphael. its raphaelisation had been effected, as many of us knew, by the consummate restorer vilgard of ghent, and for him the task had been an easy one. it had needed only slight eliminations and discreet additions to produce a portrait of raphael by himself far more obviously captivating than any of the genuine series. soon the picture vanished from schloss bleichrode, and it became anybody's guess what amateur had been elected to become its possessor. the museums naturally were forewarned. while this came into brush's memory and mine, vogelstein's countenance had become severe, almost sinister, and he was answering morrison as follows: "mr. morrison, i have offered you the bleichrode raphael for half a million dollars. you will hear all sorts of gossip about it. doubtless these gentlemen (indicating us) believe it is false and will tell you so (we nodded feebly). but i offer it not to their judgment but to yours. you and i know it is a beautiful thing and worth the money. i make no claims, offer no guarantee for the picture. you have seen it, and that's enough. if you don't want it, it makes no difference to me, i can sell it to theiss (the great parisian amateur, morrison's only real rival), or i will gladly keep it myself, for i shall never have anything as fine again." morrison sat impassively while vogelstein watched him narrowly. brush and i felt for something that ought to be said yet would not come. at the end of his speech, or challenge, vogelstein's expression had softened into one of the most courtly ingenuousness, now it hardened again into a strange arrogance. his eyes snapped as he continued with affected indifference, "since you have raised the question, mr. morrison, the bleichrode raphael is yours to take or leave--to-night." there was a pause as the two giants faced each other. then morrison smiled beamingly, as one who loved a good fighter, and said, "send it round tomorrow, of course i want it. well, that's settled, and if these gentlemen will spare you, i'll give you a lift down town." vogelstein's arrogance melted once more into fulsomeness as he said, almost forgetting his goodnight to us, "i'm sure it's very good of you, mr. morrison." the forms of morrison and vogelstein almost blocked the generous intercolumnar space as shoulder to shoulder they moved away between the yellow marble pillars and under the green and gold ceiling. the brown leather doors swung silently behind them, and we were left together with our amazement. "never mind, old fellow," said brush at last. "it's the first time for you. you'll get used to it. it's my second time; i happened to be there, you know, when the balaklava coronal was sold." some reflections on art collecting morally considered, the art collector is tainted with the fourth deadly sin; pathologically, he is often afflicted by a degree of mania. his distinguished kinsman, the connoisseur, scorns him as a kind of mercenary, or at least a manner of renegade. i shall never forget the expression with which a great connoisseur--who possesses one of the finest private collections in the val d'arno--in speaking of a famous colleague, declared, "oh, x----! why, x---is merely a collector." the implication is, of course, that the one who loves art truly and knows it thoroughly will find full satisfaction in an enjoyment devoid alike of envy or the desire of possession he is to adore all beautiful objects with a platonic fervour to which the idea of acquisition and domestication is repugnant. before going into this lofty argument, i should perhaps explain the collection of my scornful friend. he would have said: "i see that as i put x---in his proper place, you look at my pictures and smile. you have rightly divined that they are of some rarity, of a sort, in fact, for which x---and his kind would sell their immortal souls. but i beg you to note that these pictures and bits of sculpture have been bought not at all for their rarity, nor even for their beauty as such, but simply because of their appropriateness as decorations for this particular villa. they represent not my energy as a collector, nor even my zeal as a connoisseur, but simply my normal activity as a man of taste. in this villa it happens that italian old masters seem the proper material for decoration. in another house or in another land you might find me employing, again solely for decorative purposes, the prints of japan, the landscapes of the modern impressionists, the rugs of the east, or the blankets of the arizona desert. free me, then, from the reproach implied in that covert leer at my early sienese." yes, we must, i think, exclude from the ranks of the true zealots all who in any plausible fashion utilise the objects of art they buy. excess, the craving to possess what he apparently does not need, is the mark of your true collector. now these visionaries--at least the true ones--honour each other according to the degree of "eye" that each possesses. by "eye" the collector means a faculty of discerning a fine object quickly and instinctively. and, in fact, the trained eye becomes a magically fine instrument. it detects the fractions of a millimetre by which a copy belies its original. in colours it distinguishes nuances that a moderately trained vision will declare non-existent. nor is the trained collector bound by the evidence of the eye alone. of certain things he knows the taste or adhesiveness. his ear grasps the true ring of certain potteries, porcelains, or qualities of beaten metal. i know an expert on japanese pottery who, when a sixth sense tells him that two pots apparently identical come really from different kilns, puts them behind his back and refers the matter from his retina to his finger-tips. thus alternately challenged and trusted, the eye should become extraordinarily expert. a florentine collector once saw in a junk-shop a marble head of beautiful workmanship. ninety-nine amateurs out of a hundred would have said. "what a beautiful copy!" for the same head is exhibited in a famous museum and is reproduced in pasteboard, clay, metal, and stone _ad nauseam_. but this collector gave the apparent copy a second look and a third. he reflected that the example in the museum was itself no original, but a school-piece, and as he gazed the conviction grew that here was the original. since it was closing time, and the marble heavy, a bargain was struck for the morrow. after an anxious night, this fortunate amateur returned in a cab to bring home what criticism now admits is a superb desiderio da settignano. the incident illustrates capitally the combination of keenness and patience that goes to make the collector's eye. we may divide collectors into those who play the game and those who do not. the wealthy gentleman who gives _carte blanche_ to his dealers and agents is merely a spoilsport. he makes what should be a matter of adroitness simply an issue of brute force. he robs of all delicacy what from the first glow of discovery to actual possession should be a fine transaction. not only does he lose the real pleasures of the chase, but he raises up a special clan of sycophants to part him and his money. a mere handful of such--amassers, let us say--have demoralised the art market. according to the length of their purses, collectors may also be divided into those who seek and those who are sought. wisdom lies in making the most of either condition. the seekers unquestionably get more pleasure; the sought achieve the more imposing results. the seekers depend chiefly on their own judgment, buying preferably of those who know less than themselves; the sought depend upon the judgment of those who know more than themselves, and, naturally, must pay for such vicarious expertise. and, rightly, they pay dear. let no one who buys of a great dealer imagine that he pays simply the cost of an object plus a generous percentage of profit. no, much-sought amateur, you pay the rent of that palace in bond street or fifth avenue; you pay the salary of the gentlemanly assistant or partner whose time is at your disposal during your too rare visits; you pay the commissions of an army of agents throughout the world; you pay, alas! too often the cost of securing false "sale records" in classic auction rooms; and, finally, it is only too probable that you pay also a heavy secret commission to the disinterested friend who happened to remark there was an uncommonly fine object in y----'s gallery. by a cheerful acquiescence in the suggestions that are daily made to you, you may accumulate old masters as impersonally, as genteelly, let me say, as you do railway bonds. but, of course, under these circumstances you must not expect bargains. now, in objects that are out of the fashion--a category including always many of the best things--and if approached in slack times, the great dealers will occasionally afford bargains, but in general the economically minded collector, who is not necessarily the poor one, must intercept his prey before it reaches the capitals. that it makes all the difference from whom and where you buy, let a recent example attest. a few years ago a fine giorgionesque portrait was offered to an american amateur by a famous london dealer. at $60,000 the refusal was granted for a few days only, subject to cable response. the photograph was tempting, but the besought amateur, knowing that the authenticity of the average giorgione is somewhat less certain than, say, the period of the book of job, let the opportunity pass. a few months after learning of this incident, i had the pleasure of meeting in florence an english amateur who expatiated upon the beauty of a giorgione that he had just acquired at the very reasonable price of $15,000. for particulars he referred me to one of the great dealers of florence. the portrait, as i already suspected, was the one i had heard of in america. forty-five thousand dollars represented the difference between buying it of a florentine rather than a london dealer. of course, the picture itself had never left florence at all, the limited refusal and the rest were merely part of the usual comedy played between the great dealer and his client. on the other hand, if the lucky english collector had had the additional good fortune to make his find in an italian auction room or at a small dealer's, he would probably have paid little more than $5,000, while the same purchase made of a wholly ignorant dealer or direct from the reduced family who sold this ancestor might have been made for a few hundred francs. with the seekers obviously lie all the mystery and romance of the pursuit. the rest surely need not be envied to the sought. one thinks of consul j.j. jarves gradually getting together that little collection of italian primitives, at new haven, which, scorned in his lifetime and actually foreclosed for a trifling debt, is now an object of pilgrimage for european amateurs and experts. one recalls the mouse-like activities of the brothers dutuit, unearthing here a gorgeous enamel, retrieving there a rembrandt drawing, fetching out a gothic ivory from a junk-shop. one sighs for those days, and declares that they are forever past. does not the sage m. eudel warn us that there are no more finds--_"surtout ne comptez plus sur les trouvailles."_ yet not so long ago i mildly chid a seeker, him of the desiderio, for not having one of his rare pictures photographed for the use of students. he smiled and admitted that i was perfectly right, but added pleadingly, "you know a negative costs about twenty francs, and for that one may often get an original." why, even i who write--but i have promised that this essay shall not exceed reasonable bounds. for the poor collector, however, the money consideration remains a source of manifold embarrassment, morally and otherwise. how many an enthusiast has justified an extravagant purchase by a flattering prevision of profits accruing to his widow and orphans? let the recording angel reply. and such hopes are at times justified. there have been instances of men refused by the life insurance companies who have deliberately adopted the alternative of collecting for investment, and have done so successfully. obviously, such persons fall into the class which the french call charitably the _marchand-amateur_. note, however, that the merchant comes first. now, to be a poor yet reasonably successful collector without becoming a _marchand-amateur_ requires moral tact and resolution. the seeker of the short purse naturally becomes a sort of expert in prices. as he prowls he sees many fine things which he neither covets nor could afford to keep, but which are offered at prices temptingly below their value in the great shops. the temptation is strong to buy and resell. naturally, one profitable transaction of this sort leads to another, and soon the amateur is in the attitude of "making the collection pay for itself." the inducement is so insidious that i presume there are rather few persistent collectors not wealthy who are not in a measure dealers. now, to deal or not to deal might seem purely a matter of social and business expediency. but the issue really lies deeper. the difficulty is that of not letting your left hand know what your right hand does. a morally ambidextrous person may do what he pleases. he keeps the dealer and collector apart, and subject to his will one or the other emerges. the feat is too difficult for average humanity. in nearly every case a prolonged struggle will end in favour of the commercial self. i have followed the course of many collector-dealers, and i know very few instances in which the collection has not averaged down to the level of a shop--a fine shop, perhaps, but still a shop. i blame no man for following the wide road, but i feel more kinship with him who walks scrupulously in the narrow path of strict amateurism. let me hasten to add that there are times when everybody must sell. collections must periodically be weeded out; one may be hard up and sell his pictures as another in similar case his horses; artists will naturally draw into their studios beautiful objects which, occasion offering, they properly sell. with these obvious exceptions the line is absolutely sharp. did you buy a thing to keep? then you are an amateur, though later your convenience or necessity dictates a sale. did you buy it to sell? then you are a dealer. the safety of the little collector lies in specialisation, and there, too, lies his surest satisfaction. to have a well-defined specialty immediately simplifies the quest. there are many places where one need never go. moreover, where nature has provided fair intelligence, one must die very young in order not to die an expert. as i write i think of d----, one of the last surviving philosophers. born with the instincts of a man of letters, he declined to give himself to the gentler pursuit until he had made a little competence at the law. as he followed his disinterested course of writing and travel, his enthusiasm centred upon the antiquities of greece and rome. in the engraved gems of that time he found a beautiful epitome of his favourite studies. for ten years study and collecting have gone patiently hand in hand. he possesses some fifty classical gems, many of the best greek period, all rare and interesting from material, subject, or workmanship, and he may have spent as many dollars in the process, but i rather doubt it. he knows his subject as well as he loves it. naturally he is writing a book on intaglios, and it will be a good one. meanwhile, if the fancy takes him to visit the site of the bactrian empire, he has only to put his collection in his pocket and enjoy it _en route_. i cannot too highly commend his example, and yet his course is too austere for many of us. has untrammelled curiosity no charms? would i, for example, forego my casual kakemonos, my ignorantly acquired majolica, some trifling accumulation of greek coins, that handful of eastern rugs? could i prune away certain excrescent minor whistlers? those bits of ivory cutting from old italy and japan? those tarnished tuscan panels?--in truth, i could and would not. yet had i stuck to my first love, prints, i should by this time be mentioned respectfully among the initiated, my name would be found in the card-catalogues of the great dealers, my decease would be looked forward to with resignation by my junior colleagues. as it is, after twenty years of collecting, and an expenditure shameful in one of my fiscal estate, i have nothing that even courtesy itself could call a collection. in apology, i may plead only the sting of unchartered curiosity, the adventurous thrill of buying on half or no knowledge, the joy of an instinctive sympathy that, irrespective of boundaries, knows its own when it sees it. and you austerely single-minded amateurs, you experts that surely shall be, i revere if i may not follow you. we have left dangling from the first paragraph the morally important question, is collecting merely an habitual contravention of the tenth commandment? now, i am far from denying that collecting has its pathology, even its criminology, if you will. the mere lust of acquisition may take the ugly form of coveting what one neither loves nor understands. this pit is digged for the rich collector. poor collectors, on the other hand, have at times forgotten where enterprise ends and kleptomania begins. but these excesses are, after all, rare, and for that matter they are merely those that attach to all exaggerations of legitimate passion. as for the notion that one should love beautiful things without desiring them, it seems to me to lie perilously near a sort of pseudo-platonism, which, wherever it recurs, is the enemy of life itself. as i write, my eye falls upon a japanese sword-guard. i have seen it a thousand times, but i never fail to feel the same thrill. out of the disc of blued steel the artisan has worked the soaring form of a bird with upraised wings. it is indicated in skeleton fashion by bars extraordinarily energetic, yet suavely modulated. there must have been feeling and intelligence in every touch of the chisel and file that wrought it. could that same object seen occasionally in a museum showcase afford me any comparable pleasure? is not the education of the eye, like the education of the sentiments, dependent upon stable associations that can be many times repeated? shall i seem merely covetous because i crave besides the casual and adventurous contact with beauty in the world, a gratification which is sure and ever waiting for me? but let me cite rather a certain collector and man of great affairs, who perforce spends his days in adjusting business interests that extend from the arctic snows to the tropics. his evenings belong generally to his friends, for he possesses in a rare degree the art of companionship. the small hours are his own, and frequently he spends them in painting beautiful copies of his japanese potteries. it is his homage to the artisans who contrived those strange forms and imagined those gorgeous glazes. in the end he will have a catalogue illustrated from his own designs. meanwhile, he knows his potteries as the shepherd knows his flock. what casuist will find the heart to deny him so innocent a pleasure? and he merely represents in a very high degree the sort of priestliness that the true collector feels towards his temporary possessions. and this sense of the high, nay, supreme value of beautiful things, has its evident uses. that the beauty of art has not largely perished from the earth is due chiefly to the collector. he interposes his sensitiveness between the insensibility of the average man and the always exiled thing of beauty. if we have in a fractional measure the art treasures of the past, it has been because the collector has given them asylum. museums, all manner of overt public activities, derive ultimately from his initiative. it is he who asserts the continuity of art and illustrates its dignity. the stewardship of art is manifold, but no one has a clearer right to that honourable title. "private vices, public virtues," i hear a cynical reader murmur. so be it. i am ready to stand with the latitudinarian mandeville. the view makes for charity. i only plead that he who covets his neighbour's tea-jar--i assume a desirable one, say, in old brown kioto--shall be judged less harshly than he who covets his neighbour's ox. chats on old furniture [illustration: _jacobean chair._] chats on old furniture _press notices, first edition._ "mr. hayden knows his subject intimately."--_pall mall gazette._ "the hints to collectors are the best and clearest we have seen; so that altogether this is a model book of its kind."--_athenæum._ "a useful and instructive volume."--_spectator._ "an abundance of illustrations completes a well-written and well-constructed history."--_daily news._ "mr. hayden's taste is sound and his knowledge thorough."--_scotsman._ "a book of more than usual comprehensiveness and more than usual merit."--_vanity fair._ "mr. hayden has worked at his subject on systematic lines, and has made his book what it purports to be--a practical guide for the collector."--_saturday review._ chats on old china by the same author. _second edition._ _price_ 5s. _net._ _with coloured frontispiece and reproductions of 156 marks and 89 specimens of china._ a list of sale prices and a full index increase the usefulness of the volume. this is a handy book of reference to enable amateur collectors to distinguish between the productions of the various factories. _press notices, first edition._ "a handsome handbook that the amateur in doubt will find useful, and the china-lover will enjoy for its illustrations, and for the author's obvious love and understanding of his subject."--_st. james's gazette._ "all lovers of china will find much entertainment in this volume."--_daily news._ "it gives in a few pithy chapters just what the beginner wants to know about the principal varieties of english ware. we can warmly commend the book to the china collector."--_pall mall gazette._ "one of the best points about the book is the clear way in which the characteristics of each factory are noted down separately, so that the veriest tyro ought to be able to judge for himself if he has a piece or pieces which would come under this heading, and the marks are very accurately given."--_queen._ in preparation. chats on old prints _price_ 5s. _net._ _illustrated with coloured frontispiece and 70 full-page reproductions from engravings._ with glossary of technical terms, bibliography, full index and table of more than 350 of the principal english and continental engravers from the xvith to the xixth centuries, together with copious notes as to prices and values of old prints. london: t. fisher unwin, adelphi terrace. [illustration] chats on old furniture a practical guide for collectors by arthur hayden author of "chats on english china" london: t. fisher unwin 1 adelphi terrace. mcmvi * * * * * _first edition, 1905._ _second " 1906._ _all rights reserved._ [illustration: _portion of carved walnut virginal._] preface this volume has been written to enable those who have a taste for the furniture of a bygone day to arrive at some conclusion as to the essential points of the various styles made in england. an attempt has been made to give some lucid historical account of the progress and development in the art of making domestic furniture, with especial reference to its evolution in this country. inasmuch as many of the finest specimens of old english woodwork and furniture have left the country of their origin and crossed the atlantic, it is time that the public should awaken to the fact that the heritages of their forefathers are objects of envy to all lovers of art. it is a painful reflection to know that the temptation of money will shortly denude the old farmhouses and manor houses of england of their unappreciated treasures. before the hand of the despoiler shall have snatched everything within reach, it is the hope of the writer that this little volume may not fall on stony ground, and that the possessors of fine old english furniture may realise their responsibilities. it has been thought advisable to touch upon french furniture as exemplified in the national collections of such importance as the jones bequest at the victoria and albert museum, and the wallace collection, to show the influence of foreign art upon our own designers. similarly, italian, spanish, and dutch furniture, of which many remarkable examples are in private collections in this country, has been dealt with in passing, to enable the reader to estimate the relation of english art to contemporary foreign schools of decoration and design. the authorities of the victoria and albert museum have willingly extended their assistance in regard to photographs, and by the special permission of the board of education the frontispiece and other representative examples in the national collection appear as illustrations to this volume. i have to acknowledge generous assistance and courteous permission from owners of fine specimens in allowing me facilities for reproducing illustrations of them in this volume. i am especially indebted to the right honourable sir spencer ponsonby-fane, g.c.b., i.s.o., and to the rev. canon haig brown, master of the charterhouse, for the inclusion of illustrations of furniture of exceptional interest. the proprietors of the _connoisseur_ have generously furnished me with lists of prices obtained at auction from their useful monthly publication, _auction sale prices_, and have allowed the reproduction of illustrations which have appeared in the pages of the _connoisseur_. my thanks are due to messrs. hampton, of pall mall, for their kind permission to include as illustrations several fine pieces from their collection of antique furniture. i am under a similar obligation to messrs. waring, who have kindly allowed me to select some of their typical examples. to my other friends, without whose kind advice and valuable aid this volume could never have appeared, i tender a grateful and appreciative acknowledgment of my indebtedness. arthur hayden. [illustration: _italian chair about 1620_] [illustration: _spanish chest._] contents page preface 7 list of illustrations 13 bibliography 19 glossary of terms used 23 chapter i. the renaissance on the continent 31 ii. the english renaissance 57 iii. stuart or jacobean (seventeenth century) 79 iv. stuart or jacobean (late seventeenth century) 109 v. queen anne style 133 vi. french furniture. the period of louis xiv. 155 vii. french furniture. the period of louis xv. 169 viii. french furniture. the period of louis xvi. 189 ix. french furniture. the first empire style 201 x. chippendale and his style 211 xi. sheraton, adam, and heppelwhite styles 239 xii. hints to collectors 257 index 275 [illustration: _chippendale bureau bookcase._] list of illustrations jacobean oak cabinet; decorated with mother-of-pearl, ebony, and ivory. dated 1653. (by permission of the board of education) _frontispiece_ carved wood frame; decorated with gold stucco. sixteenth century. italian _title page_ page chapter i.--the renaissance on the continent. portion of carved cornice, italian, sixteenth century 33 frame of wood, with female terminal figures, italian, late sixteenth century 35 front of coffer, italian, late fifteenth century 38 bridal chest, gothic design, middle of fifteenth century 39 front of oak chest, french, fifteenth century 44 walnut sideboard, french, middle of sixteenth century 45 cabinet, french (lyons), second half of sixteenth century 48 ebony and ivory marquetry cabinet, french, middle of sixteenth century 50 spanish cabinet and stand, carved chestnut, first half of sixteenth century 51 spanish chest, carved walnut, sixteenth century 52 chapter ii.--the english renaissance. carved oak chest, english, sixteenth century 59 bench of oak, french, about 1500 60 portion of carved walnut virginal, flemish, sixteenth century 61 carved oak coffer, french, showing interlaced ribbon-work 61 fireplace and oak panelling, "old palace," bromley-by-bow. built in 1606 64 elizabethan bedstead, dated 1593 66 panel of carved oak, english, early sixteenth century 68 mirror, in oak frame, english, dated 1603 71 court cupboard, carved oak, english, dated 1603 73 " " carved oak, early seventeenth century 74 " " about 1580 75 elizabethan oak table 78 chapter iii.--stuart or jacobean. seventeenth century. gate-leg table 81 oak chair, made from sir francis drake's ship, the _golden hind_ 83 oak table, dated 1616, bearing arms of thomas sutton 85 chair used by james i. 87 jacobean chair, at knole 89 jacobean stool, at knole 90 carved walnut door (upper half), french, showing ribbon-work 91 oak chair, with arms of first earl of strafford 93 italian chair, about 1620 94 high-back oak chair, early jacobean, formerly in possession of charles i. 95 jacobean chairs, various types 97 ebony cabinet, formerly the property of oliver cromwell 99 jacobean carved oak chairs, yorkshire and derbyshire types 101 jacobean oak cupboard, about 1620 101 jacobean oak chairs 105 carved oak cradle, time of charles i., dated 1641 107 chapter iv.--stuart or jacobean. late seventeenth century. interior of dutch house, latter half of seventeenth century 111 cabinet of time of charles ii., showing exterior 112 " " " showing interior 113 portuguese high-back chair 115 oak chest of drawers, late jacobean 117 " " panelled front, late jacobean 119 charles ii. oak chair 120 charles ii. open high-back oak chair 121 charles ii. chair, cane back and seat 122 james ii. chair, cane back and seat 123 william and mary chair 125 portuguese chair-back (upper portion), cut leather work 128 chapter v.--queen anne style. queen anne oak settle 135 queen anne mirror frame, carved walnut, gilded 137 oak desk, dated 1696 139 oak cupboard 140 queen anne cabinet, burr-walnut panel 141 queen anne chairs, various types 143 dutch marquetry cabinet 147 queen anne clock 148 queen anne settle, oak, dated 1705 149 old lac cabinet 150 lac cabinet, middle of eighteenth century 151 " " showing doors closed 152 " " chased brass escutcheon 154 chapter vi.--french furniture. the period of louis xiv. cassette, french, seventeenth century 157 chair of period of louis xiii. 159 pedestals, showing boule and counter-boule work 163 boule cabinet, or armoire 165 chapter vii.--french furniture. louis xv. commode, by cressent 171 commode, formerly in the hamilton collection 173 commode, by caffieri 175 escritoire à toilette, formerly in possession of marie antoinette 179 secrétaire, by riesener 181 "bureau du roi," the masterpiece of riesener 183 chapter viii.--french furniture. louis xvi. jewel cabinet, "j. h. riesener," mounts by gouthière 193 commode, by riesener 197 chapter ix.--french furniture. the first empire style. portrait of madame récamier, after david 203 detail of tripod table found at pompeii 205 servante, french, late eighteenth century 206 jewel cabinet of the empress marie louise 207 armchair, rosewood, showing empire influence 210 chapter x.--chippendale and his style. table made by chippendale 213 oliver goldsmith's chair 215 chippendale settee, walnut, about 1740 217 " " oak, about 1740 219 chippendale chair-back, ribbon pattern 222 ribbon-backed chippendale chair, formerly at blenheim 223 chippendale corner chair, about 1780 224 gothic chippendale chair-back 225 mahogany chippendale chair, about 1740 226 " " " about 1770 227 chippendale mirror 229 chippendale bureau bookcase 231 mahogany chair, chippendale style 232 cottage chairs, beechwood, chippendale style 233 interior of room of about 1782, after stothard 235 chapter xi.--sheraton, adam, and heppelwhite styles. heppelwhite settee, mahogany 241 sheraton, adam, and heppelwhite chairs 243 old english secrétaire 250 shield-back chair, late eighteenth century 251 chapter xii.--hints to collectors. design for spurious marquetry work 259 "made-up" buffet 261 cabinet of old oak, "made-up" 267 design for spurious marquetry work 273 piece of spanish chestnut, showing ravages of worms 274 bibliography general. ancient furniture, specimens of. h. shaw. quaritch. 1836. £10 10s., now worth £3 3s. ancient and modern furniture. b. j. talbert. batsford. 1876. 32s. antique furniture, sketches of. w. s. ogden. batsford. 1889. 12s. 6d. carved furniture and woodwork. m. marshall. w. h. allen. 1888. £3. carved oak in woodwork and furniture from ancient houses. w. b. sanders. 1883. 31s. 6d. decorative furniture, english and french, of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. w. h. hackett. 7s. 6d. ecclesiastical woodwork, remains of. t. t. bury. lockwood. 1847. 21s. french and english furniture. e. singleton. hodder. 1904. furniture, ancient and modern. j. w. small. batsford. 1883. 21s. furniture and decoration. j. a. heaton. 1890-92. furniture and woodwork, ancient and modern. j. h. pollen. chapman. 1874-5. 21s. and 2s. 6d. furniture and woodwork. j. h. pollen. stanford. 1876. 3s. 6d. furniture of the olden time. f. c. morse. macmillan. 12s. 6d. gothic furniture, _connoisseur_. may, 1903. history of furniture illustrated. f. litchfield. truslove. 25s. marquetry, parquetry, boulle and other inlay work. w. bemrose. 1872 and 1882. old furniture, english and foreign. a. e. chancellor. batsford. £1 5s. old furniture from twelfth to eighteenth century. wyman. 1883. 10s. 6d. style in furniture and woodwork. r. brook. privately printed. 1889. 21s. particular. english.--adam r. & j., the architecture, decoration an furniture of r. & j. adam, selected from works published 1778-1822. london. 1880. adam, the brothers. _connoisseur._ may, june and august, 1904. ancient wood and iron work in cambridge. w. b. redfern. spalding. 1887. 31s. 6d. chippendale, t. cabinet makers' directory. published in 1754, 1755 and 1762. (the best edition is the last as it contains 200 plates as against 161 in the earlier editions. its value is about £12.) chippendale and his work. _connoisseur_, january, july, august, september, october, november, december, 1903, january, 1904. chippendale, sheraton and heppelwhite, the designs of. arranged by j. m. bell. 1900. worth £2 2s. chippendale's contemporaries. _connoisseur_, march, 1904. chippendale and sheraton. _connoisseur_, may, 1902. coffers and cupboards, ancient. fred roe. methuen & co. 1903. £3 3s. english furniture, history of. percy macquoid. published by lawrence & bullen in 7s. 6d. parts, the first of which appeared in november, 1904. english furniture and woodwork during the eighteenth century. t. a. strange. 12s. 6d. furniture of our forefathers. e. singleton. batsford. £3 15s. hatfield house, history of. q. f. robinson. 1883. hardwicke hall, history of. q. f. robinson. 1835. heppelwhite, a., cabinet maker. published 1788, 1789, and 1794, and contains about 130 plates. value £8 to £12. reprint issued in 1897. worth £2 10s. ince and mayhew. household furniture. n.d. (1770). worth £20. jacobean furniture. _connoisseur_, september, 1902. knole house, its state rooms, &c. (elizabethan and other furniture.) s. j. mackie. 1858. manwaring, r., cabinet and chairmaker's real friend. london. 1765. mansions of england in the olden time. j. nash. 1839-49. old english houses and furniture. m. b. adam. batsford. 1889. 25s. old english oak furniture. j. w. hurrell. batsford. £2 2s. old english furniture. frederick fenn and b. wyllie. newnes. 7s. 6d. net. old oak, the art of collecting. _connoisseur_, september, 1901. sheraton, t. cabinet maker's drawing book. 1791-3 edition contains 111 plates. value £13. 1794 edition contains 119 plates. value £10. sheraton t. cabinet directory. 1803. staircases and handrails of the age of elizabeth. j. weale. 1860. upholsterer's repository. ackermann. n.d. worth £5. french.--_dictionnaire de l'ameublement._ h. havard. paris. n.d. worth £5. _dictionnaire raisonné._ m. viollet-le-duc. 1858-75. 6 vols. worth £10. french furniture. lady dilke. bell. 1901. french eighteenth century furniture, handbook to the. jones collection catalogue. 1881. french eighteenth century furniture, handbook to the. wallace collection catalogue. 1904. history of furniture. a. jacquemart. chapman. 1878. 31s. 6d. issued in paris in 1876, under the title _histoire du mobilier_. _le meuble en france au xvi siècle._ e. bonnaffe. paris. 1887. worth 10s. japanese.--lacquer industry of japan. report of her majesty's acting-consul at hakodate. j. j. quin. parliamentary paper. 8vo. london. 1882. scottish.--scottish woodwork of sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. j. w. small. waterston. 1878. £4 4s. spanish.--spanish and portuguese. catalogue of special loan exhibition of spanish and portuguese ornamental art. 1881. glossary of terms used _armoire._--a large cupboard of french design of the dimensions of the modern wardrobe. in the days of louis xiv. these pieces were made in magnificent style. the jones collection at the victoria and albert museum has several fine examples. (see illustration, p. 165.) _baroque._--used in connection with over ornate and incongruous decoration as in _rococo_ style. _bombé._--a term applied to pieces of furniture which swell out at the sides. _boule._--a special form of marquetry of brass and tortoiseshell perfected by andré charles boule in the reign of louis xiv. (see chapter vi., where specimens of this kind of work are illustrated.) the name has been corrupted into a trade term _buhl_, to denote this style of marquetry. boule or _première partie_ is a metal inlay, usually brass, applied to a tortoiseshell background. see also _counter-boule_. _bureau._--a cabinet with drawers, and having a drop-down front for use as a writing-table. bureaux are of many forms. (see illustration, p. 231.) _cabriole._--used in connection with the legs of tables and chairs which are curved in form, having a sudden arch outwards from the seat. (see illustration, p. 143.) _caryatides._--carved female figures applied to columns in greek architecture, as at the erectheum at athens. they were employed by woodcarvers, and largely introduced into renaissance furniture of an architectural character. elizabethan craftsmen were especially fond of their use as terminals, and in the florid decoration of elaborate furniture. _cassone._--an italian marriage coffer. in chapter i. will be found a full description of these _cassoni_. _commode._--a chest of drawers of french style. in the chapters dealing with the styles of louis xiv., louis xv., and louis xvi., these are fully described and illustrations are given. _counter-boule._ _contre partie._--see chapter vi., where specimens of this work are illustrated. it consists of a brass groundwork with tortoiseshell inlay. _french polish._--a cheap and nasty method used since 1851 to varnish poor-looking wood to disguise its inferiority. it is quicker than the old method of rubbing in oil and turpentine and beeswax. it is composed of shellac dissolved in methylated spirits with colouring matter added. _gate-leg table._--this term is self-explanatory. the legs of this class of table open like a gate. they belong to jacobean days, and are sometimes spoken of as cromwellian tables. an illustration of one appears on the cover. _gothic._--this term was originally applied to the mediæval styles of architecture. it was used as a term of reproach and contempt at a time when it was the fashion to write latin and to expect it to become the universal language. in woodcarving the gothic style followed the architecture. a fine example of the transition between gothic and the oncoming renaissance is given (p. 44). _inlay._--a term used for the practice of decorating surfaces and panels of furniture with wood of various colours, mother-of-pearl, or ivory. the inlay is let into the wood of which the piece inlaid is composed. _jacobean._--strictly speaking, only furniture of the days of james i. should be termed jacobean. but by some collectors the period is held to extend to james ii.--that is from 1603 to 1688. other collectors prefer the term carolean for a portion of the above period, which is equally misleading. jacobean is only a rough generalisation of seventeenth-century furniture. _lacquer._ _lac._--a transparent varnish used in its perfection by the chinese and japanese. (see "consular report on japanese lacquered work," in bibliography.) introduced into holland and france, it was imitated with great success. under louis xv. vernis-martin became the rage (_q.v._). _linen pattern._--a form of carving panels to represent a folded napkin. this particular design was largely used in france and germany prior to its adoption here. (see illustration, p. 60.) _marquetry._--inlays of coloured woods, arranged with some design, geometric, floral, or otherwise, are classed under this style. (see also _parquetry_.) _mortise._--a term in carpentry used to denote the hole made in a piece of wood to receive the end of another piece to be joined to it. the portion which fits into the mortise is called the tenon. _oil polish._--old furniture, before the introduction of varnishes and french polish and other inartistic effects, was polished by rubbing the surface with a stone, if it was a large area as in the case of a table, and then applying linseed oil and polishing with beeswax and turpentine. the fine tone after centuries of this treatment is evident in old pieces which have a metallic lustre that cannot be imitated. _parquetry._--inlays of woods of the same colour are termed parquetry work in contradistinction to marquetry, which is in different colour. geometric designs are mainly used as in parquetry floors. _reeded._--this term is applied to the style of decoration by which thin narrow strips of wood are placed side by side on the surface of furniture. _renaissance._--the style which was originated in italy in the fifteenth century, supplanting the mediæval styles which embraced byzantine and gothic art; the new-birth was in origin a literary movement, but quickly affected art, and grew with surprising rapidity, and affected every country in europe. it is based on classic types, and its influence on furniture and woodwork followed its adoption in architecture. _restored._--this word is the fly in the pot of ointment to all who possess antiquarian tastes. it ought to mean, in furniture, that only the most necessary repairs have been made in order to preserve the object. it more often means that a considerable amount of misapplied ingenuity has gone to the remaking of a badly-preserved specimen. restorations are only permissible at the hands of most conscientious craftsmen. _rococo._--a style which was most markedly offensive in the time of louis xv. meaningless elaborations of scroll and shell work, with rocky backgrounds and incongruous ornamentations, are its chief features. _baroque_ is another term applied to this overloaded style. _settee._--an upholstered form of the settle. _settle._--a wooden seat with back and arms, capable of seating three or four persons side by side. _splat._--the wooden portion in the back of a chair connecting the top rail with the seat. _strapwork._--this is applied to the form of decoration employed by the elizabethan woodcarvers in imitation of flemish originals. (see p. 68.) _stretcher._--the rail which connects the legs of a chair or a table with one another. in earlier forms it was used as a footrest to keep the feet from the damp or draughty rush floor. _tenon._--"mortise and tenon joint." (see _mortise_.) _turned work._--the spiral rails and uprights of chairs were turned with the lathe in jacobean days. prior to the introduction of the lathe all work was carved without the use of this tool. pieces of furniture have been found where the maker has carved the turned work in all its details of form, either from caprice or from ignorance of the existence of the quicker method. _veneer._--a method of using thin layers of wood and laying them on a piece of furniture, either as marquetry in different colours, or in one wood only. it was an invention in order to employ finer specimens of wood carefully selected in the parts of a piece of furniture most noticeable. it has been since used to hide inferior wood. _vernis-martin_ (martin's varnish).--the lacquered work of a french carriage-painter named martin, who claimed to have discovered the secret of the japanese lac, and who, in 1774, was granted a monopoly for its use. he applied it successfully to all kinds of furniture, and to fan-guards and sticks. in the days of madame du pompadour vernis-martin had a great vogue, and panels prepared by martin were elaborately painted upon by lancret and boucher. to this day his varnish retains its lustre undimmed, and specimens command high prices. woods used in furniture. _high-class work._--brazil wood, coromandel, mahogany, maple, oak (various kinds), olive, rosewood, satinwood, sandalwood, sweet cedar, sweet chestnut, teak, walnut. _commoner work._--ash, beech, birch, cedars (various), deals, mahogany (various kinds), pine, walnut. _marquetry and veneers._--selected specimens for fine figuring are used as veneers, and for marquetry of various colours the following are used as being more easily stained: holly, horsechestnut, sycamore, pear, plum tree. _woods with fancy names._ king wood, partridge wood, pheasant wood, purple wood, snakewood, tulip wood. these are more rare and finely-marked foreign woods used sparingly in the most expensive furniture. to arrive at the botanical names of these is not an easy matter. to those interested a list of woods used by cabinet-makers with their botanical names is given in mr. j. hungerford pollen's "introduction to the south kensington collection of furniture." at the museum at kew gardens and in the imperial institute are collections of rare woods worth examination. i the renaissance on the continent [illustration: portion of carved cornice of pinewood, from the palazzo bensi ceccini, venice. italian; middle of sixteenth century. (_victoria and albert museum._)] chats on old furniture i the renaissance on the continent italy. flight of greek scholars to italy upon capture of constantinople by the turks--1453. rediscovery of greek art. florence the centre of the renaissance. leo x., pope (1475-1521). leonardo da vinci (1452-1520). raphael (1483-1520). michael angelo (1474-1564). france. francis i. (1515-1547). henry iv. (1589-1610). spain. the crown united under ferdinand and isabella (1452-1516). granada taken from the moors--1492. charles v. (1519-1555). philip ii. (1555-1598). germany. maximilian i., emperor of germany (1459-1519). holbein (1498-1543). in attempting to deal with the subject of old furniture in a manner not too technical, certain broad divisions have to be made for convenience in classification. the general reader does not want information concerning the iron bed of og, king of bashan, nor of cicero's table of citrus-wood, which cost £9,000; nor are details of the chair of dagobert and of the jewel-chest of richard of cornwall of much worth to the modern collector. it will be found convenient to eliminate much extraneous matter, such as the early origins of furniture and its development in the middle ages, and to commence in this country with the tudor period. broadly speaking, english furniture falls under three heads--the oak period, embracing the furniture of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; the walnut period, including the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; the mahogany period, beginning with the reign of george iii. it may be observed that the names of kings and of queens have been applied to various styles of furniture as belonging to their reign. early victorian is certainly a more expressive term than early nineteenth century. cromwellian tables, queen anne chairs, or louis seize commodes all have an especial meaning as referring to styles more or less prevalent when those personages lived. as there is no record of the makers of most of the old english furniture, and as a piece of furniture cannot be judged as can a picture, the date of manufacture cannot be precisely laid down, hence the vagueness of much of the classification of old furniture. roughly it may in england be dealt with under the tudor, the stuart, and the georgian ages. these three divisions do not coincide exactly with the periods of oak, of walnut, and of mahogany, inasmuch as the oak furniture extended well into the stuart days, and walnut was prevalent in the reigns of george i. and george ii. in any case, these broad divisions are further divided into sub-heads embracing styles which arose out of the natural development in taste, or which came and went at the caprice of fashion. [illustration: frame of wood, carved with floral scrollwork, with female terminal figures. italian; late sixteenth century. (_victoria and albert museum._)] the formation of a definite english character in the furniture of the three periods must be examined in conjunction with the prevailing styles in foreign furniture showing what influences were at work. many conditions governed the introduction of foreign furniture into england. renaissance art made a change in architecture, and a corresponding change took place in furniture. ecclesiastical buildings followed the continental architecture in form and design, and foreign workmen were employed by the church and by the nobility in decorating and embellishing cathedrals and abbeys and feudal castles. the early tudor days under henry vii. saw the dawn of the renaissance in england. jean de mabuse and torrigiano were invited over the sea by henry vii., and under the sturdy impulse of henry viii. classical learning and love of the fine arts were encouraged. his palaces were furnished with splendour. he wished to emulate the château of francis at fontainebleau. he tried to entice the french king's artists with more tempting terms. holbein, the great master of the german school, came to england, and his influence over tudor art was very pronounced. the florid manner of the renaissance was tempered with the broader treatment of the northern school. the art, too, of the flemish woodcarvers found sympathetic reception in this country, and the harmonious blending of the designs of the renaissance craftsmen of the italian with those of the flemish school resulted in the growth in england of the beautiful and characteristic style known as tudor. [illustration: front of coffer. chestnut wood. italian; late fifteenth century. with shield of arms supported by two male demi figures terminating in floral scrollwork. (_victoria and albert museum._)] the term renaissance is used in regard to that period in the history of art which marked the return to the classic forms employed by the greeks and romans. the change from the gothic or mediæval work to the classic feeling had its origin in italy, and spread, at first gradually but later with amazing rapidity and growing strength, into germany, spain, the netherlands, france, and finally to england. [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ bridal chest. gothic design. middle of fifteenth century. (_munich national museum._)] the renaissance was in origin a literary movement, and its influence in art came through literature. the enthusiasm of the new learning acting on craftsmen already trained to the highest degree of technical skill produced work of great brilliance. never did the fine arts rise to such transcendent heights as in italy from the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth centuries. the late john addington symonds, in his work on "the renaissance in italy," deals in a comprehensive manner with this memorable period, during which every city in italy, great or small, was producing wonderful works of art, in painting, in sculpture, in goldsmiths' work, in woodcarving, in furniture, of which now every civilised country struggles to obtain for its art collections the scattered fragments of these great days. "during that period of prodigious activity," he says, "the entire nation seemed to be endowed with an instinct for the beautiful and with the capacity for producing it in every conceivable form." in the middle of the fourteenth century the renaissance style in woodwork was at first more evident in the churches and in the palaces of the nobility in the italian states. some of the most magnificent examples of carved woodwork are preserved in the choir-stalls, doorways and panelling of the churches and cathedrals of italy. the great artists of the day gave their talents to the production of woodwork and furniture in various materials. wood was chiefly employed in making furniture, usually oak, cypress, ebony, walnut, or chestnut, which last wood is very similar in appearance to oak. these were decorated with gilding and paintings, and were inlaid with other woods, or agate, lapis-lazuli, and marbles of various tints, with ivory, tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl, or with ornaments of hammered silver. the victoria and albert museum contains some splendid examples of fourteenth and fifteenth century italian renaissance furniture, which illustrate well the magnificence and virility of the great art movement which influenced the remainder of europe. in particular, carved and gilded frames, and marriage coffers (_cassoni_) given to brides as part of their dowry to hold the bridal trousseau, are richly and effectively decorated. the frame of carved wood (illustrated p. 35), with fine scroll work and female terminal figures, is enriched with painting and gilding. the frame on the title-page of this volume is of carved wood, decorated with gold stucco. both these are sixteenth-century italian work. in fact, the study of the various types and the different kinds of ornamentation given to these _cassoni_ would be an interesting subject for the student, who would find enough material in the collection at the victoria and albert museum to enable him to follow the renaissance movement from its early days down to the time when crowded design, over-elaboration, and inharmonious details grew apace like so many weeds to choke the ideals of the master spirits of the renaissance. the front of the late fifteenth-century coffer (illustrated p. 38) is of chestnut wood, carved with a shield of arms supported by two male demi-figures, terminating in floral scroll work. there are still traces of gilding on the wood. at first the lines followed architecture in character. cabinets had pilasters, columns, and arches resembling the old roman temples. the illustration of a portion of a cornice of carved pinewood appearing as the headpiece to this chapter shows this tendency. the marriage coffers had classic heads upon them, but gradually this chaste style gave place to rich ornamentation with designs of griffins and grotesque masks. the chairs, too, were at first very severe in outline, usually with a high back and fitted with a stretcher between the legs, which was carved, as was also the back of the chair. in the middle of the fifteenth century gothic art had attained its high-water mark in germany before the new art from italy had crossed the alps. we reproduce a bridal chest, of the middle of the fifteenth century, from the collection in the munich national museum, which shows the basis of gothic art in england prior to the revival and before further foreign influences were brought to bear on english art (p. 39). the influence of italian art upon france soon made itself felt. italian architects and craftsmen were invited by francis i. and by the princesses of the house of medici, of which pope leo x. was the illustrious head, to build palaces and châteaux in the renaissance style. the tuileries, fontainebleau, and the louvre were the result of this importation. primaticcio and cellini founded a school of sculptors and wood-carvers in france, of which jean goujon stands pre-eminent. the furniture began gradually to depart from the old gothic traditions, as is shown in the design of the oak chest of the late fifteenth century preserved in the dublin museum, which we illustrate, and commenced to emulate the gorgeousness of italy. this is a particularly instructive example, showing the transition between the gothic and the renaissance styles. [illustration: front of oak chest. french; fifteenth century. (_dublin museum._)] the french renaissance sideboard in the illustration (p. 45) is a fine example of the middle of the sixteenth century. it is carved in walnut. the moulded top is supported in front by an arcading decorated with two male and two female terminal figures, which are enriched with masks and floral ornament. behind the arcading is a table supporting a cupboard and resting in front on four turned columns; it is fitted with three drawers, the fronts of which, as well as that of the cupboard, are decorated with monsters, grotesque masks, and scroll work. [illustration: _by permission of t. foster shattock, esq._ walnut sideboard. french; middle of sixteenth century.] the impulse given by francis i. was responsible for much decorative work in the early period of the french renaissance, and many beautiful examples exist in the churches and châteaux of france to which his name has been given. it is noticeable that the chief difference between the italian and the french renaissance lies in the foundation of gothic influence underlying the newer renaissance ornament in french work of the period. flamboyant arches and gothic canopies were frequently retained and mingled with classic decoration. the french clung to their older characteristics with more tenacity, inasmuch as the renaissance was a sudden importation rather than a natural development of slower growth. the french renaissance cabinet of walnut illustrated (p. 48) is from lyons, and is of the later part of the sixteenth century. it is finely carved with terminal figures, masks, trophies of ornaments, and other ornament. in comparison with the sixteenth-century ebony cabinet of the period of henry iv., finely inlaid with ivory in most refined style, it is obvious that a great variety of sumptuous furniture was being made by the production of such diverse types as these, and that the craftsmen were possessed of a wealth of invention. the range of english craftsmen's designs during the renaissance in this country was never so extensive, as can be seen on a detailed examination of english work. [illustration: cabinet of walnut french (lyons); second half of sixteenth century. carved with terminal figures, masks, and trophies of arms. (_victoria and albert museum._)] in spain the italian feeling became acclimatised more readily than in france. in the sixteenth century the wood carving of spain is of exceeding beauty. the decoration of the choir of the cathedral at toledo is held to be one of the finest examples of the spanish renaissance. in furniture the cabinets and buffets of the spanish craftsmen are of perfect grace and of characteristic design. the older spanish cabinets are decorated externally with delicate ironwork and with columns of ivory or bone painted and richly gilded, exhibiting moorish influence in their character. many of the more magnificent specimens are richly inlaid with silver, and are the work of the artists of seville, of toledo, or of valladolid. the first illustration of a cabinet and stand is a typically spanish design, and the second illustration of the carved walnut chest in the national archælogical museum at madrid is of the sixteenth century, when the spanish wood-carvers had developed the renaissance spirit and reached a very high level in their art. simultaneously with the italianising of french art a similar wave of novelty was spreading over the netherlands and germany. the flemish renaissance approaches more nearly to the english in the adaptation of the italian style, or it would be more accurate to say that the english is more closely allied to the art of the netherlands, as it drew much of its inspiration from the flemish wood-carvers. the spiral turned legs and columns, the strap frets cut out and applied to various parts, the squares between turnings often left blank to admit of a little ebony diamond, are all of the same family as the english styles. ebony inlay was frequently used, but the flemish work of this period was nearly all in oak. marqueterie of rich design was made, the inlay being of various coloured woods and shaded. mother-of-pearl and ivory were also employed to heighten the effect. [illustration: french cabinet. ebony and ivory marquetry work. middle of sixteenth century. (_from the collection of m. emile peyre._)] [illustration: spanish cabinet and stand. carved chestnut; first half of sixteenth century. width of cabinet, 3 ft. 2 in.; depth, 1 ft. 4 in.; height, 4 ft. 10 in. (_victoria and albert museum._)] the italian renaissance laid a light hand upon the flemish artists, who, while unavoidably coming under its influence, at first copied its ornateness but subsequently proceeded on their own lines. much quaint figure work, in which they greatly excelled, was used by the flemish wood-carvers in their joinery. it is grotesque in character, and, like all their work, boldly executed. the influx of foreign influences upon the netherlands was in the main as successfully resisted as is the encroachment of the sea across their land-locked dykes. the growth of the spanish power made charles v. the most powerful prince in europe. ferdinand of spain held the whole spanish peninsula except portugal, with sardinia and the island of sicily, and he won the kingdom of naples. his daughter joanna married philip, the son of maximilian of austria, and of mary the daughter of charles the bold. their son charles thus inherited kingdoms and duchies from each of his parents and grandparents, and besides the dominions of ferdinand and isabella, he held burgundy and the netherlands. in 1519 he was chosen emperor as charles v. flooded with italian artists and austrian and spanish rulers, it is interesting to note how the national spirit in art was kept alive, and was of such strong growth that it influenced in marked manner the english furniture of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, as will be shown in a subsequent chapter. [illustration: spanish chest; carved walnut. sixteenth century. (_in the national museum, madrid._)] recent sale prices.[1] £ s. d. chest, gothic, carved with parchemin panels, with a wrought-iron lock, from nuremburg castle, german, about 1500. christie, january 29, 1904 31 10 0 cabinet, walnut wood, of architectural design, with folding doors above and below and small drawers, carved with arabesque foliage and scrolls in relief, and with columns at the angles, 69 in. high, 38 in. wide, french, middle of the sixteenth century. christie, april 12, 1904 21 0 0 coffer, oak, the front divided by six buttresses, the steel lock pierced with tracery, 65 in. long, 46 in. high, french, late fifteenth century. christie, may 6, 1904 126 0 0 coffer, large walnut wood, the whole of the front and sides carved in low relief, the lock is rectangular, and pierced with flamboyant tracery, french (provincial), early part of the fifteenth century, 84 in. wide, 36 in. high. christie, may 6, 1904 50 8 0 coffer, walnut wood, the front and sides divided into arch-shaped panels containing gothic tracery, 86 in. wide, 32 in. high, french, fifteenth century. christie, may 6, 1904 52 10 0 chair, walnut wood, with semicircular seat, the back composed of six upright rectangular panels, each containing various forms of gothic tracery; below is a longitudinal panel of tracery, 27 in. wide, 29 in. high, french or flemish, fifteenth century. christie, may 6, 1904 91 7 0 credence, oak, with folding doors and drawers above and shelf beneath, the corners are returned, the various door panels, &c., carved in low relief; at the back below is linen fold panelling, 54 in. wide, 62 in. high, probably french, early sixteenth century. christie, may 6, 1904 336 0 0 cabinet, walnut-wood, in two parts, of rectangular form, with folding doors above and below, and two drawers in the centre, carved with grotesque terminal figure and gadrooned mouldings, strapwork and duplicated rosettes, french work, early seventeenth century, 78 in. high, 48 in. wide. christie, may 6, 1904 110 5 0 cabinet, walnut-wood, in two parts, of rectangular form, with folding doors below and door above; at the sides are terminal male and female figures, the centres of the doors carved, 92 in. high, 49 in. wide, french work (lyons school), second quarter of sixteenth century. christie, may 6, 1904 99 15 0 [1] by the kindness of the proprietors of the _connoisseur_ these items are given from their useful monthly publication, _auction sale prices_. ii the english renaissance [illustration: _by permission of messrs. hampton & sons._ carved oak chest. english; sixteenth century. panels finely carved with gothic tracery.] ii the english renaissance henry viii. 1509-1547. edward vi. 1547-1553. mary 1553-1558. elizabeth 1558-1603. 1525. hampton court built. 1566. increased commercial prosperity. foundation of royal exchange by sir thomas gresham. 1580. drake comes home from the new world with plunder worth half a million. 1585. antwerp captured by the duke of parma; flight of merchants to london. transfer of commercial supremacy from antwerp to london. beginning of carrying trade, especially with flanders. [illustration: bench of oak. french; about 1500. with panels of linen ornament. seat arranged as a coffer. (formerly in the collection of m. emile peyre.) (_royal scottish museum, edinburgh._)] the opening years of the sixteenth century saw the beginnings of the renaissance movement in england. the oak chest had become a settle with high back and arms. the fine example of an early sixteenth-century oak chest illustrated (p. 59) shows how the gothic style had impressed itself on articles of domestic furniture. the credence, or tasting buffet, had developed into the tudor sideboard, where a cloth was spread and candles placed. with more peaceful times a growth of domestic refinement required comfortable and even luxurious surroundings. the royal palaces at richmond and windsor were filled with costly foreign furniture. the mansions which were taking the place of the old feudal castles found employment for foreign artists and craftsmen who taught the english woodcarver. in the early days of henry viii. the classical style supplanted the gothic, or was in great measure mingled with it. many fine structures exist which belong to this transition period, during which the mixed style was predominant. the woodwork of king's college chapel at cambridge is held to be an especially notable example. [illustration: portion of carved walnut virginal. flemish; sixteenth century. (_victoria and albert museum._)] [illustration: french carved oak coffer. showing interlaced ribbon work. second half of sixteenth century. (height, 2 ft. 1 in.; width, 3 ft. 1 in.) (_victoria and albert museum._)] the great hall at hampton court dates from 1531, or five years after cardinal wolsey had given up his palace to henry viii. its grand proportions, its high-pitched roof and pendants, display the art of the woodcarver in great excellence. this hall, like others of the same period, had an open hearth in the centre, on which logs of wood were placed, and the smoke found its way out through a cupola, or louvre, in the roof. the roofs of the early tudor mansions were magnificent specimens of woodwork. but the old style of king-post, queen-post, or hammer-beam roof was prevalent. the panelling, too, of halls and rooms retained the formal character in its mouldings, and various "linen" patterns were used, so called from their resemblance to a folded napkin, an ornamentation largely used towards the end of the perpendicular style, which was characteristic of english domestic architecture in the fifteenth century. to this period belongs the superb woodcarving of the renowned choir stalls of henry vii.'s chapel in westminster abbey. the bench of oak illustrated (p. 60) shows a common form of panel with linen ornament, and is french, of about the year 1500. the seat, as will be seen, is arranged as a locked coffer. [illustration: fireplace and oak panelling from the "old palace" at bromley-by-bow. built in 1606. (_victoria and albert museum._)] the elizabethan woodcarver revelled in grotesque figure work, in intricate interlacings of strapwork, borrowed from the flemish, and ribbon ornamentation, adapted from the french. he delighted in massive embellishment of magnificent proportions. among tudor woodwork the carved oak screen of the middle temple hall is a noteworthy example of the sumptuousness and splendour of interior decoration of the english renaissance. these screens supporting the minstrels' gallery in old halls are usually exceptionally rich in detail. gray's inn (dated 1560) and the charterhouse (dated 1571) are other examples of the best period of sixteenth-century woodwork in england. christ church at oxford, grimsthorp in lincolnshire, kenninghall in norfolk, layer marney towers in essex, and sutton place at guildford, are all representative structures typical of the halls and manor houses being built at the time of the english renaissance. in the victoria and albert museum has been re-erected a room having the oak panelling from the "old palace" at bromley-by-bow, which was built in 1606. the massive fireplace with the royal coat of arms above, with the niches in which stand carved figures of two saints, together with the contemporary iron fire-dogs standing in the hearth, give a picture of what an old elizabethan hall was like. [illustration: elizabethan bedstead. dated 1593. carved oak, ornamented in marquetry. (height, 7 ft. 4 in.; length, 7 ft. 11 in.; width, 5 ft. 8 in.) (_victoria and albert museum._)] under queen elizabeth new impulses stirred the nation, and a sumptuous court set the fashion in greater luxury of living. gloriana, with her merchant-princes, her fleet of adventurers on the high seas, and the pomp and circumstance of her troop of foreign lovers, brought foreign fashions and foreign art into commoner usage. the growth of luxurious habits in the people was eyed askance by her statesmen; "england spendeth more in wines in one year," complained cecil, "than it did in ancient times in four years." the chimney-corner took the place of the open hearth; chimneys were for the first time familiar features in middle-class houses. the insanitary rush-floor was superseded by wood, and carpets came into general use. even pillows, deemed by the hardy yeomanry as only fit "for women in child-bed," found a place in the massive and elaborately carved elizabethan bedstead. the illustration of the fine elizabethan bedstead (on p. 66) gives a very good idea of what the domestic furniture was like in the days immediately succeeding the spanish armada. it is carved in oak; with columns, tester, and headboard showing the classic influence. it is ornamented in marquetry, and bears the date 1593. all over england were springing up town halls and fine houses of the trading-classes, and manor houses and palaces of the nobility worthy of the people about to establish a formidable position in european politics. hatfield house, hardwick hall, audley end, burleigh, knole, and longleat, all testify to the renaissance which swept over england at this time. stately terraces with italian gardens, long galleries hung with tapestries, and lined with carved oak chairs and elaborate cabinets were marked features in the days of the new splendour. men's minds, led by raleigh, the prince of company promoters, and fired by drake's buccaneering exploits, turned to the new world, hitherto under the heel of spain. dreams of galleons laden with gold and jewels stimulated the ambition of adventurous gallants, and quickened the nation's pulse. the love of travel became a portion of the englishman's heritage. the italian spirit had reached england in full force. the poetry and romances of italy affected all the elizabethan men of letters. shakespeare, in his "merchant of venice" and his other plays, plainly shows the italian influence. in costume, in speech, and in furniture, it became the fashion to follow italy. to ascham it seemed like "the enchantment of circe brought out of italy to mar men's manners in england." [illustration: panel of carved oak. english; early sixteenth century. showing interlaced strapwork. (_victoria and albert museum._)] the result of this wave of fashion on the domestic furniture of england was to impart to it the elegance of italian art combined with a national sturdiness of character seemingly inseparable from english art at all periods. as the reign of queen elizabeth extended from the year 1558 to the year 1603, it is usual to speak of architecture and furniture of the latter half of the sixteenth century as elizabethan. a favourite design in elizabethan woodwork is the interlaced strapwork (see illustration p. 68), which was derived from similar designs employed by the contemporary stonecarver, and is found on flemish woodwork of the same period. the panel of a sixteenth-century flemish virginal, carved in walnut, illustrated, shows this form of decoration. grotesque terminal figures, half-human, half-monster, supported the front of the buffets, or were the supporting terminals of cornices. this feature is an adaptation from the caryatides, the supporting figures used instead of columns in architecture, which in renaissance days extended to woodwork. table-legs and bed-posts swelled into heavy, acorn-shaped supports of massive dimensions. cabinets were sometimes inlaid, as was also the room panelling, but it cannot be said that at this period the art of marquetry had arrived at a great state of perfection in this country. it is noticeable that in the rare pieces that are inlaid in the late tudor and early jacobean period the inlay itself is a sixteenth of an inch thick, whereas in later inlays of more modern days the inlay is thinner and flimsier. in the flemish examples ivory was often used, and holly and sycamore and box seem to have been the favourite woods selected for inlay. take, for example, the mirror with the frame of carved oak, with scroll outline and narrow bands inlaid with small squares of wood, alternately light and dark. this inlay is very coarsely done, and unworthy to compare with italian marquetry of contemporary date, or of an earlier period. the uprights and feet of the frame, it will be noticed, are baluster-shaped. the glass mirror is of nineteenth-century manufacture. the date carved upon the frame is 1603, the first year of the reign of james i., and it is stated to have come from derby old hall. the court cupboard, also of the same date, begins to show the coming style of jacobean ornamentation in the turning in the upright pillars and supports and the square baluster termination. the massive carving and elaborate richness of the early elizabethan period have given place to a more restrained decoration. between the drawers is the design of a tulip in marquetry, and narrow bands of inlay are used to decorate the piece. in place of the chimerical monsters we have a portrait in wood of a lady, for which arabella stuart might have sat as model. the days were approaching when furniture was designed for use, and ornament was put aside if it interfered with the structural utility of the piece. the wrought-iron handle to the drawer should be noted, and in connection with the observation brought to bear by the beginner on genuine specimens in the victoria and albert museum and other collections, it is well not to let any detail escape minute attention. hinges and lock escutcheons and handles to drawers must not be neglected in order to acquire a sound working knowledge of the peculiarities of the different periods. [illustration: mirror. glass in oak frame with carved scroll outline and narrow bands inlaid with small squares of wood. the glass nineteenth century. english. dated 1603. (_victoria and albert museum._)] [illustration: court cupboard, carved oak. english. dated 1603. decorated with narrow bands inlaid, and having inlaid tulip between drawers. (_victoria and albert museum._)] in contrast with this specimen, the elaborately carved court cupboard of a slightly earlier period should be examined. it bears carving on every available surface. it has been "restored," and restored pieces have an unpleasant fashion of suggesting that sundry improvements have been carried out in the process. at any rate, as it stands it is over-laboured, and entirely lacking in reticence. the elaboration of enrichment, while executed in a perfectly harmonious manner, should convey a lesson to the student of furniture. there is an absence of contrast; had portions of it been left uncarved how much more effective would have been the result! as it is it stands, wonderful as is the technique, somewhat of a warning to the designer to cultivate a studied simplicity rather than to run riot in a profusion of detail. [illustration: court cupboard, carved oak. about 1580. (restored.) (_victoria and albert museum._)] another interesting court cupboard, of the early seventeenth century, shows the more restrained style that was rapidly succeeding the earlier work. this piece is essentially english in spirit, and is untouched save the legs, which have been restored. [illustration: _by kind permission of t. e. price stretche, esq._ court cupboard, early seventeenth century. with secret hiding-place at top.] the table which is illustrated (p. 78) is a typical example of the table in ordinary use in elizabethan days. this table replaced a stone altar in a church in shropshire at the time of the reformation. it was late in the reign of queen elizabeth that upholstered chairs became more general. sir john harrington, writing in 1597, gives evidence of this in the assertion that "the fashion of cushioned chayrs is taken up in every merchant's house." wooden seats had hitherto not been thought too hard, and chairs imported from spain had leather seats and backs of fine tooled work richly gilded and decorated. in the latter days of elizabeth loose cushions were used for chairs and for window seats, and were elaborately wrought in velvet, or were of satin embroidered in colours, with pearls as ornamentation, and edged with gold or silver lace. the upholstered chair belongs more properly to the jacobean period, and in the next chapter will be shown several specimens of those used by james i. in elizabethan panelling to rooms, in chimneypieces, doorways, screens such as those built across the end of a hall and supporting the minstrels' gallery, the wood used was nearly always english oak, and most of the thinner parts, such as that designed for panels and smaller surfaces, was obtained by splitting the timber, thus exhibiting the beautiful figure of the wood so noticeable in old examples. recent sale prices.[1] £ s. d. chest, oak, with inlaid panels under arches, with caryatid figures carved in box-wood, english, temp. elizabeth. christie, january 29, 1904. 40 9 0 tudor mantelpiece, with elaborately carved jambs, panels, } brackets, sides, and cornice, 6 ft. by 7 ft. 3 in. high.} herbert wright, ipswich, february 19, 1904 } } 155 0 0 old oak panelling, in all about 60 ft. run and 6 ft. 6 in. } high, with 17 carved panels and 3 fluted pilasters } fitted in same, part being surmounted by a cornice. } herbert wright, ipswich, february 19, 1904 } credence, walnut-wood, with a cupboard and drawer above and shelf beneath, the corners are returned, the central panel has carved upon it, in low relief, circular medallions, pierced steel hinges and lock, 36 in. wide, 50 in. high, early sixteenth century. christie, may 6, 1904 346 0 0 bedstead, elizabethan, with panelled and carved canopy top, supported by fluted and carved pillars, inlaid and panelled back, with raised figures and flowers in relief, also having a carved panelled footboard. c. w. provis & son, manchester, may 9, 1904 22 10 0 bedstead, oak elizabethan, with carved back, dated 1560, and small cupboard fitted with secret sliding panel, and further having carved and inlaid panelled top with inlaid panels, the whole surmounted with heavy cornice. c. w. provis & son, manchester, may 9, 1904 33 0 0 sideboard, elizabethan old oak, 6 ft. 2 in. wide by 7 ft. 6 in. high, with carved canopy top; also fitted with gallery shelf, supported by lions rampant. c. w. provis & son, manchester. may 9, 1904 60 0 0 [1] by the kindness of the proprietors of the _connoisseur_ these items are given from their useful monthly publication, _auction sale prices_. [illustration: _by kindness of t. e. price stretche, esq._ elizabethan oak table.] iii stuart or jacobean. seventeenth century [illustration: _by permission of messrs. waring._ gate-leg table.] iii stuart or jacobean. seventeenth century james i. 1603-1625. charles i. 1625-1649. the commonwealth 1649-1660. 1619. tapestry factory established at mortlake, under sir francis crane. ---banqueting hall added to whitehall by inigo jones. 1632. vandyck settled in london on invitation of charles i. 1651. navigation act passed; aimed blow (1572-1652) at dutch carrying trade. all goods to be imported in english ships or in ships of country producing goods. with the advent of the house of stuart the england under james i. saw new fashions introduced in furniture. it has already been mentioned that the greater number of old houses which are now termed tudor or elizabethan were erected in the days of james i. at the beginning of a new monarchy fashion in art rarely changes suddenly, so that the early pieces of jacobean furniture differ very little from elizabethan in character. consequently the court cupboard, dated 1603, and mirror of the same year (illustrated on p. 70), though bearing the date of the first year of the reign of james, more properly belong to tudor days. in the bodleian library at oxford there is preserved a chair of fine workmanship and of historic memory. it was made from the oak timbers of the _golden hind_, the ship in which sir francis drake made his adventurous voyage of discovery round the world. in spite of many secret enemies "deaming him the master thiefe of the unknowne world," queen elizabeth came to deptford and came aboard the _golden hind_ and "there she did make captain drake knight, in the same ship, for reward of his services; his armes were given him, a ship on the world, which ship, by her majestie's commandment, is lodged in a dock at deptford, for a monument to all posterity." [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ oak chair made from the timber of the _golden hind_. commonly called "sir francis drake's chair." (_at the bodleian library._)] it remained for many years at deptford dockyard, and became the resort of holiday folk, who made merry in the cabin, which was converted into a miniature banqueting hall; but when it was too far decayed to be repaired it was broken up, and a sufficient quantity of sound wood was selected from it and made into a chair, which was presented to the university of oxford. this was in the time of charles ii., and the poet cowley has written some lines on it, in which he says that drake and his _golden hind_ could not have wished a more blessed fate, since to "this pythagorean ship" "... a seat of endless rest is given to her in oxford, and to him in heaven--" which, though quite unintentional on the part of the poet, is curiously satiric. [illustration: _by permission of the master of the charterhouse._ oak table, dated 1616, bearing arms of thomas sutton, founder of the charterhouse hospital.] the piece is highly instructive as showing the prevailing design for a sumptuous chair in the late seventeenth century. the middle arch in the back of the chair is disfigured by a tablet with an inscription, which has been placed there. of the early days of james i. is a finely carved oak table, dated 1616. this table is heavily moulded and carved with garlands between cherubs' heads, and shields bearing the arms of thomas sutton, the founder of the charterhouse hospital. the upper part of the table is supported on thirteen columns, with quasi-corinthian columns and enriched shafts, standing on a moulded h-shaped base. it will be seen that the designers had not yet thrown off the trammels of architecture which dominated much of the renaissance woodwork. the garlands are not the garlands of grinling gibbons, and although falling within the jacobean period, it lacks the charm which belong to typical jacobean pieces. at knole, in the possession of lord sackville, there are some fine specimens of early jacobean furniture, illustrations of which are included in this volume. the chair used by king james i. when sitting to the painter mytens is of peculiar interest. the cushion, worn and threadbare with age, is in all probability the same cushion used by james. the upper part of the chair is trimmed with a band of gold thread. the upholstering is red velvet, and the frame, which is of oak, bears traces of gilding upon it, and is studded with copper nails. the chair in design, with the half circular supports, follows old venetian patterns. the smaller chair is of the same date, and equally interesting as a fine specimen; the old embroidery, discoloured and worn though it be, is of striking design and must have been brilliant and distinctive three hundred years ago. the date of these pieces is about 1620, the year when the "pilgrim fathers" landed in america. [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ chair used by james i. in the possession of lord sackville.] from the wealth of jacobean furniture at knole it is difficult to make a representative selection, but the stool we reproduce (p. 90) is interesting, inasmuch as it was a piece of furniture in common use. the chairs evidently were state chairs, but the footstool was used in all likelihood by those who sat below the salt, and were of less significance. the stuffed settee which finds a place in the billiard-room at knole and the sumptuous sofa in the long gallery, with its mechanical arrangement for altering the angle at the head, are objects of furniture difficult to equal. the silk and gold thread coverings are faded, and the knotted fringe and gold braid have tarnished under the hand of time, but their structural design is so effective that the modern craftsman has made luxurious furniture after these models. [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ jacobean chair at knole. in the possession of lord sackville.] [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ jacobean stool at knole. in the possession of lord sackville.] [illustration: upper half of carved walnut door. showing ribbon work. french; latter part of sixteenth century. (height of door, 4 ft. 7 in.; width, 1 ft. 11 in.) (_victoria and albert museum._)] carved oak chests were not largely made in jacobean days--not, at any rate, for the same purpose as they were in tudor or earlier times. as church coffers they doubtless continued to be required, but for articles of domestic furniture other than as linen chests their multifarious uses had vanished. early jacobean coffers clearly show the departure from elizabethan models. they become more distinctly english in feeling, though the interlaced ribbon decoration, so frequently used, is an adaptation from french work, which pattern was now becoming acclimatised. the french carved oak coffer of the second half of the sixteenth century (illustrated p. 61) shows from what source some of the english designs were derived. in the portion of the french door which we give as an illustration (on p. 91), it will be seen with what grace and artistic excellence of design and with what restraint the french woodcarvers utilised the running ribbon. the ribbon pattern has been variously used by designers of furniture; it appears in chippendale's chair-backs, where it almost exceeds the limitations of the technique of woodcarving. art in the early days of charles i. was undimmed. the tapestry factory at mortlake, established by james i., was further encouraged by the "white king." he took a great and a personal interest in all matters relating to art. under his auspices the cartoons of raphael were brought to england to foster the manufacture of tapestry. he gave his patronage to foreign artists and to foreign craftsmen, and in every way attempted to bring english art workers into line with their contemporaries on the continent. vandyck came over to become "principal painter of their majesties at st. james's," keeping open table at blackfriars and living in almost regal style. his grace and distinction and the happy circumstance of his particular style being coincident with the most picturesque period in english costume, have won him a place among the world's great painters. fine portraits, at windsor and at madrid, at dresden and at the pitti palace, at the louvre and in the hermitage at petersburg, testify to the european fame of the painter's brilliant gallery representing the finest flower of the english aristocracy, prelates, statesmen, courtiers and beautiful women that were gathered together at the court of charles i. and his queen henrietta maria. [illustration: oak chair. charles i. period. with arms of thomas wentworth, first earl of strafford (1593-1641). (_victoria and albert museum._)] in early stuart days the influence of inigo jones, the surveyor of works to charles i., made itself felt in woodwork and interior decorations. he was possessed with a great love and reverence for the classicism of italy, and introduced into his banqueting hall at whitehall (now the united service museum), and st. paul's, covent garden, a chaster style, which was taken up by the designers of furniture, who began to abandon the misguided use of ornament of later elizabethan days. in the victoria and albert museum is an oak chair with the arms of thomas wentworth, first earl of strafford, which, in addition to its historic interest, is a fine example of the chair of the period of charles i. (illustrated p. 93). [illustration: italian chair, about 1620. thence introduced into england. (_victoria and albert museum._)] it is certain that the best specimens of jacobean furniture of this period, with their refined lines and well-balanced proportions, are suggestive of the stately diction of clarendon or the well-turned lyrics of herrick. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. hampton & son_ high-back oak chair. early jacobean. elaborately carved with shell and scroll foliage. (formerly in the stuart macdonald family, and originally in the possession of king charles i.)] in the illustration of a sixteenth-century chair in common use in italy, it will be seen to what source the jacobean woodworkers looked for inspiration. the fine, high-backed oak stuart chair, elaborately carved with bold shell and scroll foliage, having carved supports, stuffed upholstered seats, and loose cushion covered in old spanish silk damask, is a highly interesting example. it was long in the possession of the stuart macdonald family, and is believed to have belonged to charles i. the gate-leg table, sometimes spoken of as cromwellian, belongs to this middle jacobean style. it cannot be said with any degree of accuracy that in the commonwealth days a special style of furniture was developed. from all evidence it would seem that the manufacture of domestic furniture went on in much the same manner under cromwell as under charles. iconoclasts as were the puritans, it is doubtful whether they extended their work of destruction to articles in general use. the bigot had "no starch in his linen, no gay furniture in his house." obviously the civil war very largely interfered with the encouragement and growth of the fine arts, but when furniture had to be made there is no doubt the roundhead cabinetmaker and the anabaptist carpenter produced as good joinery and turning as they did before charles made his historic descent upon the house in his attempt to arrest the five members. there is a style of chair, probably imported from holland, with leather back and leather seat which is termed "cromwellian," probably on account of its severe lines, but there is no direct evidence that this style was peculiarly of commonwealth usage. the illustration (p. 97) gives the type of chair, but the covering is modern. that cromwell himself had no dislike for the fine arts is proved by his care of the raphael cartoons, and we are enabled to reproduce an illustration of a fine old ebony cabinet with moulded front, fitted with numerous drawers, which was formerly the property of oliver cromwell. it was at olivers stanway, once the residence of the eldred family. the stand is carved with shells and scrolls, and the scroll-shaped legs are enriched with carved female figures, the entire stand being gilded. this piece is most probably of italian workmanship, and was of course made long before the protector's day, showing marked characteristics of renaissance style. [illustration: jacobean chair, cane back cromwellian chair. armchair. dated 1623. armchair. with inlaid back. jacobean chairs. (_by permission of t. e. price stretche, esq._)] the carved oak cradle (p. 107), with the letters "g. b. m. b." on one side, and "october, 14 dai," on the other, and bearing the date 1641, shows the type of piece in common use. it is interesting to the collector to make a note of the turned knob of wood so often found on doors and as drawer handles on untouched old specimens of this period, but very frequently removed by dealers and replaced by metal handles of varying styles, all of which may be procured by the dozen in tottenham court road, coarse replicas of old designs. another point worthy of attention is the wooden peg in the joinery, securing the tenon into the mortice, which is visible in old pieces. it will be noticed in several places in this cradle. in modern imitations, unless very thoughtfully reproduced, these oaken pegs are not visible. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. hampton & sons._ ebony cabinet. on stand gilded and richly carved. formerly the property of oliver cromwell. (from olivers stanway, at one time the seat of the eldred family.)] in the page of jacobean chairs showing the various styles, the more severe piece, dated 1623, is early jacobean, and the fine unrestored armchair of slightly later date shows in the stretcher the wear given by the feet of the sitters. it is an interesting piece; the stiles in the back are inlaid with pearwood and ebony. the other armchair with its cane panels in back is of later stuart days. it shows the transitional stage between the scrolled-arm type of chair, wholly of wood, and the more elaborate type (illustrated p. 123) of the james ii. period. [illustration: jacobean carved oak chairs. yorkshire, about 1640. derbyshire; early seventeenth century. (_victoria and albert museum._)] [illustration: _by permission of the rt. hon. sir spencer ponsonby-fane, g.c.b, i.s.o._ jacobean oak cupboard. about 1620.] in addition to the finer pieces of seventeenth-century furniture to be found in the seats of the nobility, such as at penshurst, or in the manor houses and homes of the squires and smaller landowners, there was much furniture of a particularly good design in use at farmsteads from one end of the country to the other, in days when a prosperous class of yeoman followed the tastes of their richer neighbours. this farmhouse furniture is nowadays much sought after. it was of local manufacture, and is distinctly english in its character. oak dressers either plain or carved, were made not only in wales--"welsh dressers" having become almost a trade term--but in various parts of england, in yorkshire, in derbyshire, in sussex, and in suffolk. they are usually fitted with two or three open shelves, and sometimes with cupboards on each side. the better preserved specimens have still their old drop-handles and hinges of brass. it is not easy to procure fine examples nowadays, as it became fashionable two or three years ago to collect these, and in addition to oak dressers from the farmhouses of normandy, equally old and quaint, which were imported to supply a popular demand, a great number of modern imitations were made up from old wood--church pews largely forming the framework of the dressers, which were not difficult to imitate successfully. the particular form of chair known as the "yorkshire chair" is of the same period. certain localities seem to have produced peculiar types of chairs which local makers made in great numbers. it will be noticed that even in these conditions, with a continuous manufacture going on, the patterns were not exact duplicates of each other, as are the machine-made chairs turned out of a modern factory, where the maker has no opportunity to introduce any personal touches, but has to obey the iron law of his machine. as a passing hint to collectors of old oak furniture, it may be observed that it very rarely happens that two chairs can be found together of the same design. there may be a great similarity of ornament and a particularly striking resemblance, but the chair with its twin companion beside it suggests that one, if not both, are spurious. the same peculiarity is exhibited in old brass candlesticks, and especially the old dutch brass with circular platform in middle of candlestick. one may handle fifty without finding two that are turned with precisely the same form of ornament. the usual feature of the chair which is termed "yorkshire" is that it has an open back in the form of an arcade, or a back formed with two crescent-shaped cross-rails, the decorations of the back usually bearing acorn-shaped knobs either at the top of the rail or as pendants. this type is not confined to yorkshire, as they have frequently been found in derbyshire, in oxfordshire, and in worcestershire, and a similar variety may be found in old farmhouses in east anglia. in the illustration of the two oak chairs (p. 105), the one with arms is of the charles i. period, the other is later and belongs to the latter half of the seventeenth century. the jacobean oak cupboard (illustrated p. 101) is in date about 1620. at the side there are perforations to admit air, which shows that it was used as a butter cupboard. the doors have an incised decoration of conventional design. the lower part is carved in style unmistakably jacobean in nature. the pattern on the two uprights at the top is repeatedly found in pieces evidently designed locally for use in farmhouses. it is not too much to hope that enough has been said concerning jacobean furniture of the early and middle seventeenth century to show that it possesses a peculiar charm and simplicity in the lines of its construction, which make it a very pleasing study to the earnest collector who wishes to procure a few genuine specimens of old furniture, which, while being excellent in artistic feeling, are not unprocurable by reason of their rarity and excessive cost. it should be within the power of the careful collector, after following the hints in this volume, and after examining well-selected examples in such a collection as that at the victoria and albert museum, to obtain, without unreasonable expenditure, after patient search, one or two jacobean pieces of undoubted authenticity. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. fenton & sons._ jacobean oak chairs. armchair, time of charles i. yorkshire chair. late seventeenth century.] recent sale prices.[1] £ s. d. cabinet, jacobean oak, with two drawers, and folding doors below enclosing drawers, decorated with rectangular panels in relief, inlaid in ebony and ivory, and with baluster columns at the side--48 in. high, 46 in. wide. christie, november 27, 1903 44 2 0 cabinet, jacobean black oak, 5 ft. wide by 6 ft. 2 in. high, fitted with cupboards above and below, with sunk panelled folding doors, carved with busts of warriors in high relief, the pilasters carved with mask heads and caryatid figures, the whole carved with floral scrolls and other devices. capes, dunn & pilcher, manchester, december 9, 1903 57 0 0 chairs, set of three jacobean oak, with canework seats, and panels in the backs, the borders carved with scrolls, and on scroll legs with stretchers. christie, january 29, 1904 52 10 0 table, cromwell, oak, on spiral legs. dowell, edinburgh, march 12, 1904 11 0 6 elbow-chair, oak, scotch, back having carved wheel, "a. r., 1663." dowell, edinburgh, march 12, 1904 60 18 0 cabinet, jacobean oak, with drawer and folding doors below, with moulded rectangular panels and balusters in relief, 50 in. high, 46 in. wide. christie, july 1, 1904 35 14 0 [1] by the kindness of the proprietors of the _connoisseur_ these items are given from their useful monthly publication, _auction sale prices_. [illustration: cradle, time of charles i. carved oak; with letters g. b. m. b. dated 1641. (_victoria and albert museum._)] iv stuart or jacobean. late seventeenth century [illustration: (_after picture by caspar netscher_) interior of dutch house. latter half of seventeenth century.] iv stuart or jacobean. late seventeenth century charles ii. 1660-1685. james ii. 1685-1688. william and mary. 1689-1694. william 1694-1702. sir christopher wren (1632-1723). grinling gibbons (1648-1726). 1660. bombay became a british possession. importation of indo-portuguese furniture. 1666. great fire in london. much valuable furniture destroyed. 1675-1710. st. paul's cathedral built under wren's direction. 1685. edict of nantes revoked. spitalfields' silk industry founded by french refugees. [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ cabinet of the time of charles ii. with exterior finely decorated with needlework.] after the civil war, when charles ii. came into his own again, the furniture of the restoration period most certainly took its colour from the gay court with which the merry monarch surrounded himself. the cabinet which we reproduce has the royal arms embroidered on the cover, and is a beautiful example of intricate cabinetmaking. the surface of the piece is entirely covered with needlework. on the front stand a cavalier and lady, hand-in-hand. on the side panel a cavalier is leading a lady on horseback. on the back a man drives a laden camel, and on another panel is shown the traveller being received by an old man in the grounds of the same castle which appears all through the scenes. this suggests the love-story of some cavalier and his lady. the casket is worthy to have held the love-letters of the chevalier grammont to la belle hamilton. [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ cabinet of the time of charles ii. showing interior and nest of drawers.] as is usual in pieces of this nature, the cabinet contains many artfully devised hiding places. a tiny spring behind the lock reveals one secret drawer, and another is hidden beneath the inkwell. there are in all five of such secret compartments--or rather five of them have been at present discovered--there may be more. the illustration of the cabinet open shows what a nest of drawers it holds. in the days of plots, when titus oates set half the nation by the ears, when james solemnly warned the merry charles of plots against his life, provoking the cynical retort, "they will never kill me, james, to make you king," secret drawers were no doubt a necessity to a fashionable cabinet. catherine of braganza, his queen, brought with her from portugal many sumptuous fashions in furniture, notably cabinets and chairs of spanish and portuguese workmanship. the cavaliers scattered by the civil war returned, and as in their enforced exile on the continent they had cultivated foreign tastes, it was only natural that dutch, french, and italian work found its way to this country and effected the character of the early furniture of the charles ii. period. from portugal came the high-backed chair, having the back and the seat of leather cut with fine design, and coloured or gilded. this leather work is of exquisite character, and we reproduce a portion of a portuguese chair-back of this period to show the artistic excellence of the design. with catherine of braganza came the marriage dower of bombay, and from india, where the settlement of goa had been portuguese for centuries, were sent to europe the carved chairs in ebony, inlaid in ivory, made by the native workmen from portuguese and italian models, but enriched with pierced carving and intricate inlay of ivory in a manner which only an oriental craftsman can produce. having become fashionable in portugal, they made their appearance in england, and rapidly became popular. at penshurst place there are several fine specimens of this indo-portuguese work, with the spindles of the chair-backs of carved ivory; and in the ashmolean museum at oxford there is the well-known chair which was presented by charles ii. to elias ashmole. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. hampton & sons._ portuguese high-back chair. seat and back formed of two panels of old stamped leather, studded with brass bosses.] both in this later stuart period and in the days of the first charles inlay was considerably used to heighten the carved designs on oak tables, chairs, and cabinets. the growth of commerce was responsible for the introduction of many varieties of foreign woods, which were used to produce finer effects in marquetry than the rude inlay of elizabethan days. the frontispiece to this volume represents a very handsome cabinet of english workmanship, inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. it is an unusually fine example of the middle seventeenth century, and bears the date 1653, the year when cromwell forcibly dissolved the rump parliament and was declared "lord protector of the commonwealth." up till now oak--the hard, tough, english variety, and not the more modern baltic oak or american varieties now used--was the material for the tool of the carver to work upon. with the introduction of more flowing lines and curves, a wealth of detail, it is not unnatural to find that softer woods began to find favour as more suitable to the new decorations. the age of walnut was approaching when, under william the dutchman, and in the days of queen anne, a newer style of furniture was to arise, made by craftsmen trained in the precepts of grinling gibbons and following the conceptions of sir christopher wren. it must be borne in mind that in italy the softer woods, such as lime, willow, sycamore, chestnut, walnut, and cypress, had long been used for the delicate carving during the height of the renaissance and succeeding period, and in france and spain chestnut and walnut were favourite woods. in the central panel of the restoration chair-back, canework began to be used instead of the early jacobean carving. cane seats were frequent, and loose cushions, attached by means of strings, covered these cane panels and seats. the illustration (p. 122) shows a jacobean chair of this period. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. waring_ oak chest of drawers. late jacobean. (height, 3 ft. 3 in.; width, 3 ft.; depth, 1 ft. 10 in.)] belonging to these later jacobean days are chests of drawers of oak with finely panelled fronts. we illustrate two specimens, showing the old brass metal work and the drop-handles. they are usually in two parts, and are very deep from back to front. these are two typical examples of this kind of furniture, which was in general use up to the days of queen anne, when pieces are frequently found supported on a stand. in the picture by caspar netscher, showing a dutch lady at her toilet, a good idea is conveyed of the kind of chair in use in holland in the latter half of the seventeenth century, upholstered in brocade, and the rich tapestry tablecloth is a noticeable feature. before entering upon the last phase of stuart furniture, and leaving the days of jacobean oak with its fine carving and handsome appearance--the careful result of selecting the timber and splitting it to show the fine figure of the wood--the attention of the reader should be drawn to the fact that the appearance of the surface of furniture made subsequent to this period begins to approach the results of the modern cabinetmaker with his polishes and spirit varnishes and highly glazed panels and table tops. the lover of old oak abominates varnish. the elizabethan and jacobean carved oak furniture received only a preliminary coat of dark varnish in its early days, mixed with oil and not spirit, which sank into the wood and was not a surface polish, and was probably used to preserve the wood. these old pieces, which have received centuries of rubbing with beeswax and oil, have resulted in producing a rich, warm tone which it is impossible to copy by any of the subtle arts known to the modern forger. the collector should make himself thoroughly familiar with the appearance of this old oak by a careful examination of museum pieces, which, when once seen, cannot easily be forgotten. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. waring._ chest of drawers. panelled front; late jacobean. (height, 3 ft. 4 in.; width, 3 ft. 10 in.; depth, 1 ft. 10 in.)] the italian renaissance furniture probably received an oil varnish, the composition of which, like the varnish employed for old violins, has been lost, but after centuries of careful usage and polishing, the result, as seen in the fine specimens in the victoria and albert museum, is to give to them the appearance of bronze. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. hampton & sons._ charles ii. oak chair. open back carved with shell and scrolled foliage. stuffed seat covered with old damask.] there is little doubt that the great fire, which did such immense destruction in london in 1666, in which some eighty-nine churches and thirteen thousand houses were demolished, gave a considerable impetus to the manufacture of furniture in the new style. it is not a pleasing reflection to think how many fine pieces of elizabethan and early jacobean furniture were consumed in the flames, including much of inigo jones's work. under the genius of sir christopher wren many of the city churches were rebuilt, including st. paul's cathedral; and greenwich hospital and hampton court were enlarged according to wren's designs, with the co-operation of the master woodcarver, grinling gibbons. in later jacobean days a splendour of style and an excellence of workmanship were the outcome of the fine achievements in interior woodwork by grinling gibbons and the school he founded. the work of grinling gibbons consisted of most natural chains of flowers and foliage, fruit, or birds or cherubs' heads, all faithfully reproduced untrammelled by convention. st. paul's cathedral, hampton court, chatsworth, and petworth house all contain work by him of singular beauty. he trained many assistants to help him to carry on his work, and one of them, selden, lost his life in endeavouring to save the carved room at petworth from a destructive fire. the soft wood of the lime was his favourite for detailed carving; for church panelling or choir stalls, such as at st. pauls, he employed oak; in his medallion portraits or figure work he preferred pear or close-grained boxwood. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. hampton & sons._ charles ii. open high-back oak chair. finely carved legs and stretcher. stuffed seat covered in old spanish silk damask.] the gradual development of the chair in the later stuart days in the direction of upholstered seat will be noticed in the specimens which are given as illustrations. the revocation of the edict of nantes in 1685 by louis xiv. drove some thousands of french workmen--weavers, glass-workers, and cabinetmakers--to this country. the silk-weaving industry established by them at spitalfields was one of the results, and silk stuffs and brocades were used for covering the seats and backs of furniture. at hampton court the crystal glass chandeliers were made by french workmen, whom wren was glad to employ to assist him to make that palace a worthy rival to versailles. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. harold g. lancaster & co._ charles ii. chair. cane back and seat, finely carved legs and stretcher.] [illustration: _by permission of messrs. fenton & sons._ james ii. chair. with cane back and seat, and finely turned legs and stretcher.] the chair here illustrated shows the commencement of the use of cane work in place of wood for the panel in back and for the seat. the james ii. chair illustrated shows the later development of the cane-back. the william and mary chair (illustrated p. 125) shows how the cane-back was retained later than the cane-seat, and how rich damask was employed for the upholstered seat. it is interesting to see how the stretcher, which in earlier days was of use to keep the feet raised from a wet or draughty floor, has now become capable of elaborate ornamentation. genuine examples of chairs of elizabethan and early stuart days show the wear of the feet of the sitters. the same wear is observable in the lower rail of old tables. in later stuart days the stretcher has left its place at the bottom, between the two front legs. since its use as a foot-rest, owing to carpeted floors, is gone, it is found either joining the legs diagonally, or higher up as an ornament with carved front. in the eighteenth century it has almost disappeared altogether. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. harold g. lancaster & co._ william and mary chair. cane back. seat upholstered in damask. finely carved legs and stretcher.] mirrors began to take a prominent place in interior decoration. the house of nell gwynne in st. james's square had one room entirely lined with glass mirrors. hampton court is full of mirrors, and they are arranged with considerable skill. by an artful arrangement the mirror in the king's writing closet is placed at such an angle that the reflection of the whole suite of rooms may be seen in it. the looking glasses made in this country in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were the work of venetian and french workmen. the plates had a bevel of an inch in width, and these bevels followed the shape of the frame, whether square or oval. a factory was established near battersea which produced some fine work of this nature. it will be noticed by the collector who is observant that the bevels differ considerably from modern bevels. the angle is not such an acute one, and sometimes the edges are double bevelled. many of the mirrors of the time of william and mary had an ornamented border of blue glass. sometimes the mirror was painted with festoons of flowers and with birds in french manner. in imitation of italian style the back of the mirror, in examples a little later, was worked upon in the style of intaglio, or gem cutting, this presenting a dull silver surface when seen from the front. in picture frames, in chimneypieces, or in mirror frames the school of grinling gibbons was still pre-eminent in carving. now and again are found traces of italian or louis xiv. influence, but as a whole the english carver held his own, and the traditions of grinling gibbons were maintained, and he did not easily allow himself to be carried away by foreign elaborations. when william of orange came over in 1688 he brought with him many of his own countrymen as military and civil advisers, and in their train came artists and craftsmen, who introduced dutch art into england, and prepared the way for the more homely style of queen anne. walnut cabinets inlaid with various woods, and with ivory squares representing miniature dutch courtyards in the recesses of cabinets, had found their way into england. with the period of william and mary the cabriole leg in chairs and in tables became popular--at first an english adaptation of dutch models--but later to develop into the glorious creations of the age of walnut. blue delft jars and bowls, some especially made for william and mary and bearing the royal arms and the cypher "w. m. r." and the nassau motto, "_je main tien-dray_," still to be seen in the queen's gallery at hampton court, were introduced, and it became fashionable to collect china. consequently the furniture in rooms had to be adapted for the arrangement of this new class of ornament, and cabinets were largely made with accommodation to receive vases and beakers and blue bowls on their shelves. the earlier form have straight sides; but later, especially in the next reign, they follow french designs, and are swollen or _bombé_ at the sides. [illustration: upper portion of chair back of cut leather. portuguese. latter part of seventeenth century. (_victoria and albert museum._)] with william, too, came over the plain walnut card-table. clock cases of the style termed "grandfather" were of dutch origin. the seats of chairs were shaped and removable. the dutch trade with the east indies had brought oriental china and lac cabinets into holland, and these, with the coming of william, found their way into this country. bureaux with a number of secret recesses were introduced, and another dutch importation from the east was the now celebrated chair or table leg with claw and ball foot. this came directly from china, and as in the case of delft, which is the earthenware replica by the dutch potter of fine blue porcelain vases, from nankin and canton, where the oriental perspective and design have been slavishly copied, so with the furniture, the old chinese symbol of a dragon's foot holding a pearl, was repeated in the furniture by dutch cabinetmakers. dutch marquetry made an early appearance with simple ornamentation, sometimes enriched by ivory or mother-of-pearl inlay, but later it developed into flowing floral designs with figures, vases, fruit, butterflies, and elaborate scrolls in various coloured woods, of which yellow was the predominant colour. recent sale prices.[1] £ s. d. armchair, charles ii., oak, carved with cherubs supporting crowns, and with turned column supports. christie, november 20, 1903 15 4 6 chairs, pair, charles ii., oak, with cane seats and oval cane panels in the backs, spirally turned legs, stretchers and rails at the back. christie, march 4, 1904 63 0 0 armchair, charles ii., oak, with high back carved with arabesque foliage, with lions' masks and claw legs. christie, march 29, 1904 63 0 0 chairs, pair, nearly similar, carved with foliage. christie, march 29, 1904 39 18 0 armchair, charles ii., walnut-wood, of italian design, carved with masks, cane seat and panel in back; and cushion, covered with old flemish tapestry. christie, march 4, 1904 77 14 0 chairs, three, charles ii., oak, with oval panels of canework in the backs, the borders carved with foliage, flowers, and amorini, and surmounted by busts. christie, april 12, 1904 42 0 0 chairs, set of twelve, charles ii., of chestnut-wood, with high backs carved with rosette ornaments, scroll foliage, and formal blossoms, on cabriole legs carved with flowers and shaped stretchers. christie, july 1, 1904 462 0 0 chairs, pair of chestnut-wood, with high backs slightly curved, pierced and carved at the top, and each inlaid with two cane panels, on carved cabriole legs and shaped stretchers, _temp._ james ii. christie, june 2, 1904 36 15 0 cabinet, english marquetry, with folding doors, enclosing twelve drawers and small cupboard, and with four drawers below, the whole elaborately inlaid with vases of tulips, roses, and other flowers, small figures, birds, and insects, on a walnut-wood ground, 69 in. high, 47 in. wide, _temp._ william iii. christie, february 12, 1904 105 0 0 mirror, in case of old english marquetry, inlaid with large flowers and foliage in coloured woods and ivory on walnut-wood ground, 32 in. by 28 in., _temp._ william iii. christie, february 19, 1904 43 3 0 chairs, set of six, walnut-wood, with high, open backs, carved with foliage, the centre inlaid in marquetry, on carved cabriole legs and eagles' claw-and-ball feet, _temp._ william and mary. christie, june 2, 1904 315 0 0 chairs, set of four, of similar form, open backs, carved with shell, and gadroon ornament, and on carved cabriole legs with hoof feet, the stretcher carved with a shell, _temp._ william and mary. christie, june 2, 1904 105 0 0 cabinet, william and mary, marquetry, veneered with walnut-wood, decorated with oval and shaped panels, inlaid, upon ebony field, 42 in. wide. christie, march 18, 1904 65 2 0 cabinet on stand, ebony, dutch, seventeenth century, supported by six beaded columns with stage under and mirror panels at back, the upper part composed of doors carved in medallions; the centre doors enclose an architectural hall, inlaid in ivory, &c., with gilt columns and mirror panels, and fitted with secret drawers, 5 ft. 3 in. wide, 6 ft. 6 in. high and 22 in. deep. jenner & dell, brighton, may 3, 1904 100 0 0 corner cupboard, dutch marquetry, 8 ft. high, having carved crown-shaped cornice, with centre vase, four doors, with bow fronts, inlaid with flowers and carved raised beadings, the interior fitted. c. w. provis & son, manchester, may 9, 1904 32 0 0 table, dutch marquetry, with shaped front and two drawers inlaid with sprays of flowers in coloured woods and ivory, on cabriole legs, 32 in. wide. christie, march 4, 1904 37 16 0 [1] by the kindness of the proprietors of the _connoisseur_ these items are given from their useful monthly publication, _auction sale prices_. v queen anne style [illustration: _by permission of messrs. hampton & sons_ queen anne oak settle. scrolled arms, panelled back and loose cushioned seat. width 6 feet.] v queen anne style anne 1702-1714. 1707. act of union between england and scotland. first united parliament of great britain met. 1713. the national debt had risen to £38,000,000. with the age of queen anne domestic furniture departed from the ornate characteristics which had marked previous epochs. the tendency in english furniture seems to have made towards comfort and homeliness. the english home may not have contained so many articles of luxury then as does the modern house with its artistic embellishments, and a popular taste rapidly ripening into a genuine love of the fine arts. "a modern shopkeeper's house," says lord macaulay, "is as well furnished as the house of a considerable merchant in anne's reign." it is very doubtful whether this statement holds good with regard to the days of elizabeth or the days of the early stuarts, but there certainly seems to have been in the dawn of the walnut period a curtailment of luxurious effects that might well tempt a casual observer to generalise in the belief that the days of anne spelt dulness in art. the settle, the illustration of which is given (p. 149), bearing the date 1705, the year after blenheim, shows that jacobean models of early days were not forgotten. the inlaid borders are very effective, and there is nothing vulgar or offensive in the carving. it is simple in style and the joinery is good. a walnut mirror, carved and gilded (illustrated p. 137), exhibits the same solidity. there is nothing to show that the glorious age of louis xiv. had produced the most sumptuous and richly decorated furniture the modern world had seen. the simplicity of this carved mirror frame is as though art had begun and ended in england, and probably it is this insularity of the furniture of this period, and the almost stubborn neglect of the important movements going on in france that makes the queen anne style of peculiar interest. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. harold g. lancaster & co._ queen anne mirror frame. walnut, carved and gilded.] the oak desk illustrated (p. 139), dated 1696, is similar to the one at abbotsford, in which sir walter scott mislaid his manuscript of "waverley," where it lay among his fishing-tackle for eleven years. another piece of the same period is the cupboard with carved doors and drawers beneath (illustrated p. 140). [illustration: oak desk. with initials "l. g." and dated 1696. (_from the collection of t. e. price stretche, esq._)] some pretty effects were now obtained by veneering, which was largely coming into practice. the pieces with the burr-walnut panels, marked in a series of knot-like rings, are especially sought after. this pattern was obtained from the gnarled roots of the walnut-tree, and applied in a decorative manner with excellent result. [illustration: _by permission of t. e. price stretche, esq._ oak cupboard. seventeenth century. metal handles of drawers, eighteenth century. (height 6 ft. 7 in.; width, 4 ft. 6 in.)] [illustration: _by permission of messrs. brown & bool._ cabinet closed; showing fine mottled figure of burr walnut. cabinet open; showing drop-down front and nest of drawers. queen anne walnut cabinet.] [illustration: dutch marquetry chair. queen anne chair. _by permission of messrs. hampton & sons._] [illustration: queen anne walnut armchair. black and gold lac chair. _by permission of messrs. waring._] in the fine cabinet, the illustration of which is given (p. 141), the style is typical of this period. the panels of the doors are of exquisite finish, and show a beautiful walnut grain of peculiarly-pleasing mottled appearance, and the mellow effect which time has given to this specimen cannot be imitated with any degree of success in modern replicas. in the illustration showing this piece when open, the rich effect of the walnut in the middle panel may be noticed; the contemporary brass handles to the nest of drawers are typical of this style. in chairs and in tables the elegant cabriole and colt's-foot legs were now commonly adopted, and apparently, simple as is the construction, it is only when queen anne pieces come to be repaired that it is found how expensive an undertaking it is, owing to their ingenious construction and the patient labour that was expended upon them, to produce unpretentious and harmonious effects. the assertively english spirit which was the dominant note of the furniture of the early eighteenth century continued up till the early years of the reign of george ii. during this period, which covers half a century, walnut was the wood mostly used in the manufacture of furniture, and this walnut period shows a quiet dignity of style and a simple proportion, reticently elegant and inornate without being severe. the queen anne oak settle, with shaped panelled back and scroll arms, which appears as the headpiece to this chapter, is especially representative of the kind of piece in common use at the time; oak was still employed in furniture of this nature. the legs show the newer design, which was already departing from the elegant turning of earlier jacobean days. in the queen anne chair which is illustrated in the group of chairs of this period (p. 143), with open back and carved scroll foliage, the cabriole legs are finely carved with lion masks and acanthus leaf ornament, on lion's claw-and-ball feet. the seat is removable, and is stuffed. queen anne chairs had high carved or plain splat backs. the armchair in the same group shows this type of back. the dutch shell-pattern often appears either on back or at the juncture of the leg with the seat. chairs decorated in marquetry, in dutch fashion, were in use at this period. the one illustrated with the two above-mentioned chairs is inlaid with birds and flowers, and the legs are cabriole. the seat follows the growing usage of being loose and stuffed. dutch marquetry cabinets on stands, with straight uprights, were imported and became a feature in the early eighteenth century drawing-room (see illustration, p. 147). the earlier forms had straight sides, but later, as the fashion grew, bureaux and large cabinets, with the dimensions of a modern wardrobe, had taken their place, with _bombé_ or swelled sides, and profusely decorated in marquetry, with vases and tulips and unnamed flowers of the cabinetmaker's invention, birds, butterflies, and elaborate scrollwork, in which ivory and mother-of-pearl were often employed as an inlay. the stands on which the smaller cabinets stood were turned with the spiral leg of jacobean days, and later they have the cabriole leg, with ball-and-claw or club feet. cabinets and stands are frequently found together, in which the one is much earlier than the other. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. hampton & sons._ dutch marquetry cabinet. fitted with shelves. door richly inlaid with flowers and scrolled foliage. on stand with turned legs and stretcher.] rich damask began to be used in the furnishing of hangings, and in some of the palatial furniture of the period the looms of spitalfields produced the coverings. in queen anne's bedroom the hangings were of rich silk velvet. clocks of the variety termed "grandfather," either with fine walnut cases or inlaid with marquetry, came into more general use in the days of queen anne. an elaboration of carving on grandfather clock cases as a rule is to be regarded with suspicion. plain panels are not so saleable as carved ones; the want is supplied, and many fine old clock cases are spoiled by having the touch of a modern hand. the clock illustrated is an untouched specimen. the walnut case is a fine example of queen anne marquetry work. the works are by sam barrow, hermitage bridge, london. the steel dial is richly mounted with cupids, masks, and scrolls in chased brass. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. hampton & sons._ queen anne clock. walnut case with marquetry work.] towards the middle of the eighteenth century and later, cabinets of dutch importation, and japanese or chinese in origin, were extensively in use. in smaller numbers they had, without doubt, in the days of william and mary, been introduced, but it was not until the commerce with the east had been well established that they became popular. in the cabinet illustrated (p. 150) the cabinet-work is english, the drawers are all dovetailed in the english manner, but the lacquered doors come from the east. it is an especially interesting example, as the pagoda-like superstructure is not often found complete. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. waring._ queen anne oak settle. dated 1705. with borders in marquetry. (width, 5 ft.)] [illustration: _by permission of messrs. brown & bool._ old lac cabinet. english; early eighteenth century.] lacquered boxes had been sent home from the east by english, french, and dutch merchants, for many years, and with characteristic ingenuity the french cabinetmakers had employed these as panels for their furniture, but the supply not being sufficient they had attempted a lacquer of their own, which is dealt with in a subsequent chapter on louis xiv. furniture. dutch lacquer-work was a similar attempt on the part of the craftsman of holland to equal the oriental originals. [illustration: lac cabinet. middle of eighteenth century. (height, 2 ft. 5 in.; width, 2 ft. 8-1/2 in.; depth, 1 ft. 6-1/2 in.; height of stand, 2 ft. 9 in.) (_from the collection of w. g. honey, esq., cork._)] [illustration: _w. g. honey, esq., cork._ front of lac cabinet (illustrated), with doors closed.] in the early eighteenth century the english craftsman tried his skill at lacquered furniture, it is true not with very successful results, but it is interesting to see what he has left as attempts. the illustration (p. 143) of a chair in black and gold lac is of english manufacture. the splat back and the cabriole leg give the date, and the specimen is a noteworthy example. another piece of the first half of the eighteenth century period is the lac cabinet illustrated (p. 151). the metal hinges and corners of this are of chased brass and of english or dutch workmanship. the shape and design of the drawer handles are frequently found in nests of drawers of this period, and there was a singular fondness shown at this time for numbers of small drawers and pigeon-holes in furniture. the now familiar bureau with bookcase above, and drop-down, sloping front covering drawers and recesses, dates from this time. the escutcheon of the lac cabinet is illustrated in detail as a tailpiece to this chapter to show the particular style of work found on the locks and hinges and drawer-handles of pieces of this nature. as has been said before, it is especially useful to the collector to make himself thoroughly familiar with these details of the various periods. it may be readily imagined that at a time when cards were the passion of everybody in society, the card-table became a necessary piece of furniture in eighteenth-century days, just before the dawn of the great age of mahogany, when chippendale, and the school that followed him, eagerly worked in the wood which raleigh discovered. they produced countless forms, both original and adapted from the french, which have enriched the _répertoire_ of the cabinetmaker and which have brought fame to the man whose designs added lustre to the reputation of english furniture. recent sale prices.[1] £ s. d. chairs, six, mahogany, single, and one armchair to match, with shaped legs and openwork backs (early eighteenth century). f. w. kidd, & neale & son, nottingham, november 11, 1903 25 4 0 chairs, eight queen anne, walnut-wood, with high backs, on slightly cabriole legs, with stretchers. christie, december 11, 1903 33 12 0 armchair, queen anne, large walnut-wood, carved with foliage, the arms terminating in masks, on carved cabriole legs and lion's-claw feet. christie, march 29, 1904 50 8 0 cabinet, queen anne, the lower part fitted with escritoire, the upper part with numerous drawers, shaped cornice above, 3 ft. 6 in. by 7 ft. 6 in. puttick & simpson, april 12, 1904 34 0 0 chairs, four queen anne, walnut-wood, with interlaced backs carved with rosettes and a shell at the top, on cabriole legs carved with shells and foliage; and a pair of chairs made to match. christie, july 8, 1904 44 2 0 [1] by the kindness of the proprietors of the _connoisseur_, these items are given from their useful monthly publication, _auction sale prices_. [illustration: _w. g. honey esq., cork._ chased brass escutcheon of lac cabinet (illustrated). (width, 10-1/2 in.)] vi french furniture. the period of louis xiv [illustration: _by kind permission, from the collection of dr. sigerson, dublin._ cassette. french; seventeenth century. containing many secret drawers.] vi french furniture. the period of louis xiv louis xiv. (1643-1715), covering english periods of civil war, commonwealth, charles ii., james ii., william and mary, and anne. 1619-1683. colbert, minister of finance and patron of the arts. 1661-1687. versailles built. 1662. gobelins tapestry works started by colbert; le brun first director (1662-1690). 1664. royal academy of painting, architecture, and sculpture founded by colbert, to which designs of furniture were admitted. in order to arrive at a sense of proportion as to the value of english furniture and its relation to contemporary art in europe, it is necessary to pass under hasty examination the movements that were taking place in france in the creation of a new style in furniture under the impulses of the epoch of the _grande monarque_. to estimate more correctly the styles of the early jacobean and of the later english furniture extending to the days of chippendale and sheraton, it must be borne in mind that england was not always so insular in art as the days of queen anne would seem to indicate. it is impossible for the cabinetmakers and the craftsmen to have utterly ignored the splendours of france. louis xiv. had a long and eventful reign, which extended from the days when charles i. was marshalling his forces to engage in civil war with the parliament down to the closing years of queen anne. during his minority it cannot be said that louis xiv. influenced art in furniture, but from 1661, contemporary with charles ii., when he assumed the despotic power that he exercised for half a century, his love of sumptuousness, and his personal supervision of the etiquette of a formal court, in which no detail was omitted to surround royalty with magnificence, made him the patron of the fine arts, and gave his court the most splendid prestige in europe. as a headpiece to this chapter we give a very fine example of a _cassette_, or strong box, of the time of louis xiv. it is securely bound with metal bands of exquisite design. the interior is fitted with a number of secret drawers. in the illustration (p. 159) it will be seen that the chair of the period of louis treize differed in no great respects from the furniture under the early stuarts in this country. this design is by the celebrated crispin de passe, and the date is when charles i. raised his standard at nottingham, a year prior to the birth of louis xiv. [illustration: chair of period of louis xiii. designed by crispin de passe, 1642.] during the reign of louis xiv., tables, armoires, and cabinets were designed on architectural principles. under the guiding influence of colbert, minister of finance, architects and cabinetmakers were selected to design furniture for the tuileries, the louvre, and fontainebleau. in the early years of the reign furniture was made with severe lines, but gradually it became the practice to fashion larger pieces. immense tables with sumptuous decoration, on gilded claw-feet, and having tops inlaid with _pietra-dura_ intended to carry bronze groups and porphyry vases, were made at the gobelins factory, under the direction of the celebrated le brun. this artist loved grandeur and gorgeousness in decoration, and in accord with the personal ideas of louis xiv., who had an inordinate love for perfect symmetry, huge pieces of furniture were built in magnificent manner to please the taste of the _grande monarque_. men of genius were employed in the manufacture of tapestries, of furniture, and of metal mountings, and the interior decorations of the palaces were designed in harmony with the furniture intended for use therein. the most illustrious among the cabinetmakers was andré charles boule, who was made, in 1673, by letters patent, _premier ébéniste de la maison royale_. the work of this artist in wood has attained a worldwide celebrity, and his name even has been corrupted into "buhl" to denote a particular class of work which he perfected. his most notable productions are the finely chased ormolu, in which he was an accomplished worker, and the inlay of tortoiseshell and brass, sometimes varied with ebony or silver, which have remained the wonder of succeeding generations. boule was born in 1642, and lived till 1732. the first boule, termed "_le père_," he was succeeded by no less than four sons and nephews of the same name, in addition to his pupils who carried on his traditions at the boule _atelier_, and a crowd of later imitators, even up to the present day, have followed his style in lavish decoration without being possessed of his skill. in italy and in france marquetry of considerable delicacy and of fine effect had been produced long before the epoch of louis xiv., but it was boule who introduced a novelty into marquetry by his veneered work, which rapidly grew into favour till it developed into cruder colouring in inlays and unbridled licence in ornamentation, to which its originator would never have given countenance. the pieces of furniture usually associated with him are massive structures of ebony with their surfaces covered with tortoiseshell, in which are inlaid arabesques, scrolls, and foliage in thin brass or other metal. upon the surface of this metal inlay further ornamentation was chased with the burin. this alternation of tortoiseshell and brass forms a brilliant marquetry. into the chased designs on the metal a black enamel was introduced to heighten the effect, which was further increased by portions of the wood beneath the semi-transparent tortoiseshell being coloured black or brown or red; sometimes a bluish-green was used. later imitators, not content with the beautiful effect of tortoiseshell, used horn in parts, which is more transparent, and they did not fear the garish effect of blue or vermilion underneath. boule's creations, set in massive mounts and adornments of masks and bas-reliefs, cast in gilt-bronze and chased, were pieces of furniture of unsurpassed magnificence, and especially designed for the mirrored splendours of the _salons_ of versailles. in boule-work all parts of the marquetry are held down by glue to the bed, usually of oak, the metal being occasionally fastened down by small brass pins, which are hammered flat and chased over so as to be imperceptible. in order to economise the material, boule, when his marquetry became in demand, employed a process which led to the use of the technical terms, _boule_ and _counter-boule_. the brass and the tortoiseshell were cut into thin sheets. a number of sheets of brass were clamped together with the same number of sheets of tortoiseshell. the design was then cut out, the result being that each sheet of tortoiseshell had a design cut out of it, into which the same design from one of the sheets of brass would exactly fit. similarly each sheet of brass had a design cut out of it into which a corresponding piece of tortoiseshell would fit. that in which the ground is of tortoiseshell and the inlaid portion is brass, is considered the better, and is called _boule_, or the _première partie_. that in which the groundwork is brass and the design inlaid is of tortoiseshell, is called _counter-boule_ or _contre-partie_. this latter is used for side panels. an examination of the specimens preserved in the louvre, at the jones bequest at the victoria and albert museum, or in the wallace collection will enable the student to see more readily how this practice works out in the finished result. in the illustration (p. 163) of the two pedestals the effect of the employment of _boule_ and _counter-boule_ is shown. [illustration: (_a._) (_b._) pedestals showing boule and counter-boule work. (_wallace collection._) (_a_) boule or _première partie_. (_b_) counter-boule or _contre-partie_.] associated with boule is jean bérain, who had a fondness for the italian style; his designs are more symmetrically correct, both in ornamental detail and in architectural proportion. his conceptions are remarkable for their fanciful elaboration, and their wealth of profuse scrollwork. in the french national collections at the louvre, at versailles, and elsewhere there are many beautiful examples of his chandeliers of magnificent carved and gilded work. the freedom of the spiral arms and complex coils he introduced into his candelabra have never been equalled as harmonious portions of a grandly conceived scheme of magnificent interior decoration, to which, in the days of louis xiv., so much artistic talent was devoted. [illustration: boule cabinet, or armoire. valued at nearly £15,000. _jones bequest._ (_victoria and albert museum._)] with regard to the value of some of the specimens in the national collections, it is difficult to form an estimate. the boule cabinet, probably designed by bérain, executed by boule for louis xiv. (illustrated p. 165) would, if put up for sale at christie's, probably fetch £15,000. this piece is held to be grander in style than any in the galleries in france. at the wallace collection there are examples which would bring fabulous sums if sold. a cabinet by boule, in the jones bequest, purchased by mr. jones for £3,000 in 1881, is now worth three times that sum. upon the building, decorating, and furnishing of versailles louis xiv. spent over five hundred million francs, in addition to which there was the army of workmen liable to statute labour. some twenty thousand men and six thousand horses were employed in 1684 at the different parts of the château and park. in may, 1685, there were no less than thirty-six thousand employed. the illustrious craftsmen who were employed upon the magnificent artistic interior decorations have transmitted their names to posterity. bérain, lepautre, henri de gissey, are the best known of the designers. among the painters are the names of audran, baptiste, jouvenet, mignard, and the best known of the sculptors are coustou and van clève. of the woodcarvers, metal-chasers, locksmiths, and gilders pierre taupin, ambroise duval, delobel, and goy are names of specialists in their own craft who transformed versailles from a royal hunting-box into one of the most splendid palaces in europe. recent sale prices.[1] £ s. d. commode, louis xiv., of inlaid king-wood, with two drawers, mounted with handles and masks at the corners of chased ormolu, and surmounted by a fleur violette marble slab, 52 in. wide. christie, january 22, 1904 31 10 0 show-cabinet, of louis xiv. design, inlaid king-wood, with glazed folding doors, ormolu mounts, chased and surmounted by vases, 73 in. high, 46 in. wide. christie, april 12, 1904 30 9 0 casket, louis xiv., black boule, inlaid with cupids, vases of flowers and scrolls, and fitted with four tortoiseshell and gold picqué shell-shaped snuff boxes. christie, april 19, 1904 73 10 0 commode, louis xiv., boule, of sarcophagus form, containing two drawers, at either corners are detached cabriole legs, the various panels are inlaid with brass and tortoiseshell, the whole is mounted with ormolu, surmounted by a slab of veined marble, 49 in. wide. christie, may 27, 1904 57 15 0 [1] by the kindness of the proprietors of the _connoisseur_, these items are reproduced from their useful monthly publication, _auction sale prices_. vii french furniture. the period of louis xv [illustration: _by permission of messrs. foley & eassie._ commode, by cressent. (from a drawing by walter eassie.) (_wallace collection._)] vii french furniture. the period of louis xv louis xv. 1715-1774 petit trianon built at versailles. meissonier, director of royal factories (1723-1774). watteau (1684-1721). pater (1695-1736). lancret (1690-1743). boucher (1704-1770). 1751. the leading ébénistes compelled to stamp their work with their names. louis xiv. died in the year following the death of queen anne, so that it will be readily seen that english art was uninfluenced by france in the days of william and mary, and how insular it had become under anne. the english craftsman was not fired by new impulses from france during such an outburst of decorative splendour. the reign of louis xv. extends from george i. down to the eleventh year of the reign of george iii., which year saw the cargoes of tea flung into boston harbour and the beginning of the war with america. in glancing at the louis quinze style it will be observed how readily it departed from the studied magnificence of louis xiv. in attempting elegance of construction and the elimination of much that was massive and cumbersome in the former style, it developed in its later days into meaningless ornament and trivial construction. at first it possessed considerable grace, but towards the end of the reign the designs ran riot in rococo details, displaying incongruous decoration. it was the age of the elegant boudoir, and the bedroom became a place for more intimate guests than those received in the large reception-room. in the days of louis xiv. the bed was a massive structure, but in the succeeding reign it became an elegant appendage to a room. at versailles the splendid galleries of magnificent proportion were transformed by the duke of orleans, regent of france (1715-1723) during the king's minority, into smaller _salons_ covered in wainscoting, painted white and ornamented with gilded statues. in like manner the louis quinze decorations were ruthlessly destroyed by louis-philippe. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. waring._ louis xv. parquetery commode. with chased and bronze-gilt mounts. (_formerly in the hamilton palace collection._)] [illustration: louis xv. commode. by caffieri.] the commode in the wallace collection (illustrated p. 171) is of the time when louis xv. was in his minority, and of the days of the regency. it is by charles cressent (1685-1768), who was cabinetmaker to philippe d'orleans, regent of france. this is an especially typical specimen of the class to which it belongs as showing the transition style between louis xiv. and the succeeding reign. to establish louis the fifteenth's _petits appartements_ the gallery painted by mignard was demolished, and later, in 1752, the ambassadors' staircase was destroyed, the masterpiece of the architects levau and dorbay, and the marvel of louis the fourteenth's versailles. it is necessary to bear these facts in mind in order to see how a new french monarch set ruthlessly new fashions in furniture and created a taste for his personal style in art. in the first part of the louis quinze period the metal mountings by caffieri and cressent are of exquisite style; they are always of excellent workmanship, but later they betrayed the tendency of the time for fantastic curves, which had affected the furniture to such an extent that no straight lines were employed, and the sides of commodes and other pieces were swelled into unwieldy proportions, and instead of symmetrical and harmonious results the florid style, known as the "rococo," choked all that was beautiful in design. meissonier, director of the royal factories (1723-1774), was mainly responsible for this unnatural development. he revelled in elaborate combinations of shellwork and impossible foliage. in the louis xv. commodes illustrated (pp. 173, 175) it will be seen how far superior is the design and treatment of the one which was formerly in the celebrated hamilton collection. its chased and gilt mounts are harmoniously arranged, and though the ornamentation is superbly rich, it breaks no canons of art by overloaded detail or coarse profusion. not so much can be said for the other commode of the rococo style, even though the mounts be by caffieri and executed in masterly manner. there is a wanton abandonment and an offensive tone in the florid treatment which point clearly to the decline of taste in art. the highest art of concealment was not a prominent feature in a court which adopted its style from the caprices of madame du pompadour or the whims of madame du barry. but among the finest productions are the splendid pieces of reticent cabinetmaking by the celebrated jean françois oeben, who came from holland. his preference was for geometrical patterns, varied only with the sparing use of flowers, in producing his most delicate marquetry. in the pieces by boule and others, not in tortoiseshell but in wood inlay, the wood was so displayed as to exhibit in the panels the grain radiating from the centre. oeben did not forget this principle, and placed his bouquets of flowers, when, on occasion, he used them, in the centre of his panels, and filled up the panel with geometric design. [illustration: louis xv. _escritoire à toilette_. of tulip-wood and sycamore, inlaid with landscapes in coloured woods. formerly in the possession of queen marie antoinette. (_jones bequest: victoria and albert museum._)] the well-known maker, charles cressent (1685-1768), used rosewood, violet, and amaranth woods in his marquetry, and at this time many new foreign woods were employed by the cabinetmakers in france and italy. in addition to woods of a natural colour, it was the practice artificially to colour light woods, and inlay work was attempted in which trophies of war, musical instruments, or the shepherd's crook hung with ribbon, were all worked out in marquetry. pictures, in coloured woods, in imitation of oil paintings on canvas, were foolishly attempted, and altogether the art of inlay, ingenious and wonderful in its construction, began to affect trivialities and surprising effects most unsuited to the range of its technique. in the toilet-table illustrated (p. 179), this misapplication of inlay to reproduce pictures is seen on the three front panels and on the middle panel above. the chief woods employed are tulip and sycamore, inlaid with tinted lime, holly, and cherry-woods. the mountings of the table are chased ormolu. the cylindrical front encloses drawers with inlaid fronts. beneath this is a sliding shelf, under which is a drawer with three compartments, fitted with toilet requisites and having inlaid lids. this specimen of louis quinze work is in the jones collection at the victoria and albert museum. it was formerly in the possession of queen marie antoinette. it is attributed to oeben, though from comparison with some of the chaster work known to have come from his hand it would seem to be of too fanciful marquetry for his restrained and sober style. it is especially true of the furniture of this great french period that it requires harmonious surroundings. the slightest false touch throws everything out of balance at once. of this fact the inventors were well aware. if dutch furniture requires the quiet, restful art of cuyp or van der neer, or metzu or jan steen on the surrounding walls, the interiors of louis quinze demand the works of contemporary french genre-painters. [illustration: louis xv. secrétaire. by riesener, in his earlier manner. in transitional style, approaching louis seize period. (_wallace collection._)] all things worked together to produce a harmonious _ensemble_ in this brilliant period. the royal tapestry and sèvres porcelain factories turned out their most beautiful productions to decorate rooms, furniture, and for the table. tapestries from beauvais, gobelins, and aubusson, rich silks from the looms of lyons, or from lucca, genoa, or venice were made for wall-hangings, for chair-backs, for seats, and for sofas. fragonard, natoire, and boucher painted lunettes over chimney-fronts, or panels of ceilings. of great cabinetmakers, riesener and david roentgen, princes among _ébénistes_, worked in wonderful manner in tulip-wood, in holly, in rosewood, purple wood, and laburnum to produce marquetry, the like of which has never been seen before nor since. associated with the period of louis xv. is the love for the lacquered panel. huygens, a dutchman, had achieved good results in imitations of oriental lacquer, which in france, under the hand of martin, a carriage-painter, born about 1706, rivalled the importations from japan. it is stated that the secret of the fine, transparent lac polish that he used was obtained from the missionaries who resided in japan before the date of the massacres and foreign expulsion of all except the dutch traders. vernis-martin, as his varnish was termed, became in general request. from 1744 for twenty years, sieur simon etienne martin was granted a monopoly to manufacture this lacquered work in the oriental style. although he declared that his secret would die with him, other members of his family continued the style, which was taken up by many imitators in the next reign. his varnish had a peculiar limpid transparency, and he obtained the wavy network of gold groundwork so successfully produced by japanese and chinese craftsmen. on this were delicately painted, by boucher and other artists, arcadian subjects, framed in rocaille style with gold thickly laid on, and so pure that in the bronze gilding and in the woodwork it maintains its fine lustre to the present day. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. foley & eassie._ the "bureau du roi." the masterpiece of riesener. (from a drawing by walter eassie.) (_wallace collection._)] towards the close of the reign of louis xv. a new style set in, which reverted to simpler tastes, to which the name "_à la reine_" was given, in deference to the taste which is supposed to have emanated from marie leczinska, the queen, but is said to have been due to madame du pompadour. at the wallace collection is a fine secrétaire, with the mounts and ornaments of gilt bronze cast and chased, which is illustrated (p. 181). the central panel of marquetry shows, in life size, a cock, with the caduceus, a snake, a banner, and symbolical instruments. it is by jean françois riesener, and in his earliest manner, made in the later years of louis quinze in the transitional style approaching the louis seize period. among the wonderful creations of riesener, probably his masterpiece is the celebrated "bureau du roi," begun in 1760 by oeben, and completed in 1769 by riesener--who married the widow of oeben, by the way. its bronzes are by duplesis, winant, and hervieux. the design and details show the transition between the louis quinze and the louis seize styles. the original, which is at the louvre, is in marquetry of various coloured woods and adorned by plaques of gilt bronze, cast and chased. the copy from which our illustration is taken (p. 183) is in the wallace collection, and is by dasson, and follows the original in proportions, design, and technique. recent sale prices.[1] £ s. d. table, louis xv., oblong, the legs are cabriole, it contains one drawer and a writing-slide; around the sides are inlaid panels of old japanese lacquer, each panel bordered by elaborate scrollwork of chased ormolu, signed with "b. v. r. b.," surmounted by a slab of white marble, 39 in. wide. christie, december 18, 1903 1900 0 0 writing-table, louis xv., marquetry, with sliding top and drawer, fitted with movable writing slab, compartment for ink-vases, &c., signed "l. doudin," louis xv. form, with cabriole legs, the top decorated with scrolls forming panels, the centre one containing a teniers figure subject, parquetry and inlays of flowers round the sides, corner mounts, &c., of ormolu, cast and chased, 30 in. wide. christie, march 18, 1904 630 0 0 cartonnière, louis xv., of inlaid tulip-wood, containing a clock by palanson, à paris, mounted with chinese figures, masks, foliage and scrolls of chased ormolu, 48 in. high, 36 in. wide. christie, april 22, 1904 409 10 0 secrétaires, pair, louis xv., small marquetry, with fall-down front, drawer above and door below, inlaid with branches of flowers, and mounted with chased ormolu, surmounted by white marble slabs, 46 in. high, 22 in. wide. christie, april 29, 1904 46 4 0 cabinet, louis xv., parquetry, with folding doors enclosing drawers, mounted with ormolu, surmounted by a brescia marble slab, 30 in. high, 44 in. wide. christie, april 29, 1904 31 10 0 bergères, pair of louis xv., corner-shaped, the frames of carved and gilt wood, the seats and backs covered with old beauvais tapestry. christie, may 18, 1904 420 0 0 settee, louis xv., oblong, of carved and gilt-wood, covered with panels of old beauvais tapestry, 3 ft. 8 in. wide. christie, may 18, 1904 231 0 0 canapé, louis xv., of carved and gilt wood, the borders carved with acanthus scrolls, the seat and back covered with old beauvais silk tapestry, decorated, 4 ft. 6 in. wide. christie, may 18, 1904 420 0 0 [1] by the kindness of the proprietors of the _connoisseur_ these items are given from their useful monthly publication, _auction sale prices_. viii french furniture. the period of louis xvi viii french furniture. the period of louis xvi louis xvi. 1774-1793. 1730-1806. riesener, _ébéniste_ to marie antoinette (born near cologne). 1789. commencement of the french revolution. the so-called louis seize period embraces much that is good from the later days of the previous reign. the same designers were employed with the addition of a few younger men. caffieri and riesener were producing excellent work, and above all was gouthière, whose renown as a founder and chaser of gilded bronze ornaments is unrivalled. elegance and simplicity are again the prevailing notes. straight lines took the place of the twisted contortions of the rococo style. thin scrolls, garlands, ribbons and knots, classical cameo-shaped panels, and sèvres plaques form the characteristic ornamentation. the acanthus-leaf, distorted into unnatural proportions in the middle louis quinze period, returned to its normal shape, the egg-and-tongue moulding came into use, and the delicacy of the laurel-leaf was employed in design in louis seize decorations. in the jewel cabinet illustrated (p. 193), the new style is shown at its best. the cabinet is inlaid in rosewood and sycamore, and bears the name of "j. h. riesener" stamped on it. the chased ormolu mounts are by gouthière. the geometrical inlay is a tradition which oeben left to his successors. the upper portion has a rising lid with internal trays. in the lower part is a drawer and a shelf. this piece is at the victoria and albert museum in the jones bequest, and it is well worth detailed examination as being a representative specimen of the most artistic work produced at this period. pierre gouthière had a complete mastery over his technique. the estimation with which his work is regarded has made furniture which he mounted bring extraordinary prices. in 1882, at the dispersal of the celebrated hamilton palace collection, three specimens with his workmanship realised £30,000. the vernis-martin panels were decorated by watteau and pater. the age of artificialities with its _fêtes-galantes_ in the royal gardens of the luxembourg and in the pleasure parks of the court, with the ill-starred marie antoinette playing at shepherds and shepherdesses, had its influence upon art. watteau employed his brush to daintily paint the attitudes of _le lorgneur_ upon a fan-mount, or to depict elegantly dressed noblemen and ladies of the court dancing elaborate minuets in satin shoes, or feasting from exquisite sèvres porcelain dishes in the damp corner of some park or old château. [illustration: louis xvi. jewel cabinet. inlaid in rose and sycamore woods. stamped "j. h. riesener." chased ormolu mountings by gouthière. (_jones bequest. victoria and albert museum._)] the artificial pretence at arcadian simplicity adopted by the queen, in the intervals between her attendance at public _bals-masqué_, when she almost wantonly outraged the susceptibilities of the french people by her frivolities, found a more permanent form in interior decorations. riesener and david designed a great deal of furniture for her. dainty work-tables and writing-tables and other furniture of an elegant description are preserved in the national collection in the louvre and at fontainebleau, in the victoria and albert museum in the jones bequest, and in the wallace collection. tables of this nature are most eagerly sought after. a small table with plaques of porcelain in the side panels, which is said to have belonged to marie antoinette, was sold at christie's for £6,000 (hamilton collection). there is a similar writing-table in the jones collection, given by marie antoinette to mrs. eden, afterwards lady auckland. during the period under louis seize, when fragonard and natoire deftly painted the panels of rooms and filled ceilings with flying cupids and chains of roses, when boucher was director of the academy, the interior of rooms assumed a boudoir-like appearance. the walls were decorated in a scheme of colour. handsome fluted pillars with fine classic feeling were the framework of panelling painted in delicate and subdued tones. oval mirrors, avoiding all massive construction, lightened the effect, and mantelpieces of white marble, and furniture evidently designed for use, completed the interiors of the homes of the _grands seigneurs_. sometimes the walls were painted, giving a lustrous appearance resembling silk, and this style is the forerunner of the modern abomination known as wall-paper. before leaving this period of french furniture, when so much marquetry work was done of unsurpassed beauty and of unrivalled technique, a word may be said as to the number of woods used. oeben and riesener and their contemporaries used many foreign woods, of which the names are unfamiliar. mr. pollen, in his "south kensington museum handbook to furniture and woodwork," has given the names of some of them, which are interesting as showing the number of woods especially selected for this artistic cabinetmaking. tulip-wood is the variety known as _liriodendron tulipifera_. rosewood was extensively used, and holly (_ilex aquifolium_), maple (_acer campestre_), laburnum (_cytisus alpinus_), and purple wood (_copaifera pubiflora_). snake-wood was frequently used, and other kinds of light-brown wood in which the natural grain is waved or curled, presenting a pleasant appearance, and obviating the use of marquetry (_see_ "woods used," p. 29). in the great collections to which reference has been made, in well-known pieces made by riesener his name is found stamped on the panel itself, or sometimes on the oak lining. the large bureau in the wallace collection (gallery xvi., no. 66) is both signed and dated "20th february, 1769." this piece, it is said, was ordered by stanislas leczinski, king of poland, and was once one of the possessions of the crown of france. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. waring._ louis xvi. riesener commode.] with regard to the cost of pieces of furniture by the great master _ébénistes_, it is on record that a secrétaire which was exhibited at gore house in 1853, and made originally for beaumarchais by riesener, cost 85,000 francs, a sum not much less than £4,000. celebrated copies have been made from these old models. the famous cabinet with mounts by gouthière, now in the possession of the king, was copied about twenty-five years ago for the marquis of hertford, by permission of queen victoria. the piece took years to complete, and it is interesting to have the evidence of its copyists that the most difficult parts to imitate were the metal mounts. this replica cost some £3,000, and is now in the wallace collection. the copy of the famous bureau or escritoire in the louvre, known as the "bureau de st. cloud," was made by permission of the emperor napoleon iii., and cost £2,000. another copy of the same piece exhibited at the french international exhibition was sold for £3,500 to an english peeress. many fine copies of riesener's work exist, and in the illustration (p. 197) a copy is given of a handsome commode, which exhibits his best style under the influence of his master, oeben. recent sale prices.[1] £ s. d. cabinets, pair of louis xvi., dwarf ebony, the panels inlaid with black and gold lacquer, decorated with birds and trees in the chinese taste, mounted with foliage borders of chased ormolu, and surmounted by veined black marble slabs, 45 in. high, 35 in. wide. christie, november 20, 1903 39 18 0 suite of louis xvi. furniture, with fluted borders and legs, painted white and pale green, the seats, backs, and arms covered with old beauvais tapestry, with vases and festoons of flowers and conventional arabesques in poly-chrome, on white ground in pale green borders, consisting of an oblong settee, 72 in. wide, eight fauteuils. christie, december 18, 1903 1470 0 0 secrétaire, louis xvi., upright marquetry, with fall-down } front, drawer above, and folding doors below, inlaid } with hunting trophies on trellis-pattern ground, mounted} with foliage, friezes, and corner mounts of chased } ormolu, and surmounted by a breccia marble slab, stamped} "j. stumpff. 315 0 0 me.," 56 in. high, 40 in. wide. } christie, february 12, 1904 commode, _en suite_, with } five drawers, 58 in. wide. christie, february 12, 1904 } } 714 0 0 work-table, louis xvi., oval, in two tiers, upon a tripod } stand, with double candle branches above; the top tier } is composed of a sèvres plaque, painted with sprays of } roses; around this is a gallery of chased ormolu; the } second tier is of parquetry, this has also a balcony; } the tripod base is of mahogany, with mounts of ormolu, } cast and chased; the nozzles for the two candles above } are similar in material and decoration, width of top } tier, 13 in. christie, march 18, 1904 table, louis xvi., marquetry, signed "n. petit," top inlaid with musical trophy, &c., mounts, &c., of ormolu, cast and chased, 30 in. wide. christie, march 18, 1904 99 15 0 fauteuils, pair, louis xvi. (stamped "j. leglartier"), tapered oblong backs and curved arms, turned legs, white and gilt, covered with beauvais tapestry, with subjects from "fables de la fontaine," and other designs. flashman & co., dover, april 26, 1904 75 0 0 console-table, louis xvi., carved and painted wood, with fluted legs and stretchers, and open frieze in front, surmounted by a slab of white marble, 5 ft. 4 in. wide. christie, may 6, 1904 46 0 0 commode, louis xvi., containing three drawers, in front it is divided into three rectangular sunk panels of parquetry, each bordered with mahogany, with ormolu mounts, surmounted by a slab of fleur-de-pêche marble, 57 in. wide. christie, may 27, 1904 357 0 0 commode, louis xvi., stamped with the name of "j. h. reisener," with tambour panels in front and drawers at the top; it is chiefly composed of mahogany, the central panel inlaid in a coloured marquetry; on either side, and at the ends, are panels of tulip-wood parquetery, the whole is mounted with ormolu, surmounted by a slab of veined marble, 34 in. wide. christie, may 27, 1904 3150 0 0 [1] by the kindness of the proprietors of the _connoisseur_ these items are given from their useful monthly publication, _auction sale prices_. ix french furniture. the first empire style [illustration: portrait of madame récamier. (after david.) showing empire settee and footstool. (_in the louvre._)] ix french furniture--the first empire style 1789. commencement of french revolution. 1798. napoleon's campaign in egypt. 1805. napoleon prepares to invade england; battle of trafalgar; french naval power destroyed. 1806. napoleon issued berlin decree to destroy trade of england. 1812. napoleon invaded russia, with disastrous retreat from moscow. 1814. napoleon abdicated. 1815. wellington defeated napoleon at waterloo. when louis xvi. called together the states-general in 1789, which had not met since 1614, the first stone was laid of the french republic. after the king was beheaded in 1793, the reign of terror followed, during which the wildest licence prevailed. under the directory, for four years from 1795, the country settled down until the rise of napoleon bonaparte, who took the government in his own hands with the title of consul, and in 1804 called himself emperor of the french. during the reign of terror the ruthless fury of a nation under mob-law did not spare the most beautiful objects of art which were associated with a hated aristocracy. furniture especially suffered, and it is a matter for wonderment that so much escaped destruction. most of the furniture of the royal palaces was consigned to the spoliation of "the black committee," who trafficked in works of great price, and sold to foreign dealers the gems of french art for less than a quarter of their real value. so wanton had become the destruction of magnificent furniture that the convention, with an eye on the possibilities of raising money in the future, ordered the furniture to be safely stored in the museums of paris. after so great a social upheaval, art in her turn was subjected to revolutionary notions. men cast about to find something new. art, more than ever, attempted to absorb the old classic spirit. the revolution was the deathblow to rococo ornament. with the classic influences came ideas from egypt, and the excavations at herculaneum and pompeii provided a further source of design. a detail of a portion of a tripod table found at pompeii shows the nature of the beautiful furniture discovered. as early as 1763, grimm wrote: "for some years past we are beginning to inquire for antique ornaments and forms. the interior and exterior decorations of houses, furniture, materials of dress, work of the goldsmiths, all bear alike the stamp of the greeks. the fashion passes from architecture to millinery; our ladies have their hair dressed _à la grecque_." a french translation of winckelmann appeared in 1765, and diderot lent his powerful aid in heralding the dawn of the revival of the antique long before the curtain went up on the events of 1789. paris in revolution days assumed the atmosphere of ancient rome. children were given greek and roman names. classical things got rather mixed. people called themselves "romans." others had athenian notions. madame vigée-lebrun gave _soupers à la grecque_. madame lebrun was aspasia, and m. l'abbé barthélemy, in a greek dress with a laurel wreath on his head, recited a greek poem. [illustration: detail of tripod table found at pompeii. (_at naples museum._)] these, among a thousand other signs of the extraordinary spirit of classicism which possessed france, show how deep rooted had become the idea of a modern republic that should emulate the fame of athens and of rome. the first consul favoured these ideas, and his portraits represent him with a laurel wreath around his head posing as a cæsar. [illustration: _by kind permission from the collection of dr. sigerson, dublin._ servante. marble top; supported on two ormolu legs elaborately chased with figures of isis. panelled at back with glass mirror. french; late eighteenth century.] in transition days before the style known as empire had become fixed there is exhibited in art a feeling which suggests the deliberate search after new forms and new ideas. to this period belongs the _servante_, which, by the kindness of dr. sigerson, of dublin, is reproduced from his collection. the claw-foot, the ram's head, the bay-leaf, and a frequent use of caryatides and animal forms, is a common ornamentation in furniture of the empire period. in this specimen the two legs of ormolu have these characteristics, and it is noticeable that the shape of the leg and its details of ornament bear a striking resemblance to the leg of the pompeiian table illustrated (p. 205). but the deities of egypt have contributed a new feature in the seated figure of the goddess isis. [illustration: jewel cabinet of the empress marie louise. made on the occasion of her marriage with the emperor napoleon bonaparte, in 1810. (_at fontainebleau._)] napoleon himself encouraged the classic spirit which killed all memories of an _ancien régime_. he would have been pleased to see all the relics of the former glories of france demolished. he had at one time a project to rebuild versailles as a classic temple. at the height of his splendour he became the patron of the fine arts, and attempted to leave his impression upon art as he did upon everything else. new furniture was designed for the imperial palaces. riesener was alive, but it does not appear that he took any part in the new creations. david, the great french painter, an ardent republican, was won over to become a court painter. at malmaison and at fontainebleau there are many fine examples of the first empire period which, however, cannot be regarded as the most artistic in french furniture. preserved at fontainebleau is the jewel cabinet, made by thomire and odiot, at the emperor's orders as a wedding gift, in 1810, to the empress marie louise, in emulation of the celebrated riesener cabinet at the trianon. the wood used for this, and for most of the empire cabinets, is rich mahogany, which affords a splendid ground for the bronze gilt mounts (_see_ p. 207). the portrait of madame récamier, by david, which is in the louvre, given as headpiece to this chapter, shows the severe style of furniture in use at the zenith of the empire period. the couch follows classic models, and the tall candelabrum is a suggestion from herculaneum models. the influence that this classic revival had upon furniture in this country is told in a subsequent chapter. in regard to costume, the gowns of the first empire period have become quite fashionable in recent years. although this style of furniture degenerated into commonplace designs with affectedly hard outlines, it had a considerable vogue. in addition to the influence it had upon the brothers adam and upon sheraton, it left its trace on english furniture up till the first quarter of the nineteenth century. the chair illustrated (p. 210) is about the year 1800 in date. there is presumptive evidence that this chair was made in bombay after european design. it is of rosewood, carved in relief with honeysuckle and floral design. the scrolled ends of the top rail show at once its french derivation. in the national collections in this country there are very few specimens of empire furniture. the duke of wellington has some fine examples at apsley house, treasured relics of its historic associations with the victor of waterloo. the demand in france, for furniture of the first empire style has in all probability denuded the open market of many fine specimens. owing to the fact that this country was at war with france when the style was at its height, the number of empire pieces imported was very limited, nor does first empire furniture seem to have greatly captivated the taste of english collectors, as among the records of sales of furniture by public auction very little has come under the hammer. [illustration: _by kind permission of the rev. h. v. le bas._ armchair, rosewood. carved in relief with honeysuckle pattern formerly in possession of the duke of newcastle. english; late eighteenth century.] x chippendale and his style [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ table made by chippendale. (height, 29-3/8 in.; width, 32-3/8 in.; depth, 21-5/8 in.)] x chippendale and his style george i. 1714-1727. george ii. 1727-1760. george iii. 1760-1820. horace walpole built strawberry hill (1750) sir william chambers (1726-1796) built pagoda at kew about 1760. chippendale's _director_ published (1754). thomas chippendale, the master cabinetmaker of st. martin's lane, has left a name which, like that of boule, has become a trade term to mark a certain style in furniture. with the dawn of the age of mahogany, chippendale produced designs that were especially adapted to the new wood; he relied solely upon the delicate carving for ornament, and rejected all inlay. discovered by sir walter raleigh, who brought specimens home with him, mahogany did not come into general use till about 1720. the material then used by chippendale and his school was the splendid mahogany from the great untouched forests, producing at that time timber the like of which, in dimension and in quality, is now unprocurable. the cheaper "honduras stuff" was then unknown, and english crews landed and cut timber from the spanish possessions in spite of the protests of the owners. many a stiff fight occurred, and many lives were lost in shipping this stolen mahogany to england to supply the demand for furniture. these nefarious proceedings more than once threatened to bring about war between england and spain. the furniture of france, during the four great periods treated in the previous chapters, was designed for the use of the nobility. one wonders what furniture was in common use by the peasantry in france. in england, too, much of the furniture left for the examination of posterity was made for the use of the wealthy classes. in jacobean days, settles and chairs, especially the yorkshire and derbyshire types, were in more common use, and the homely pieces of queen anne suggest less luxurious surroundings, but it was left for chippendale to impress his taste upon all classes. in the title-page of his great work, the _director_, published in 1754, he says that his designs are "calculated to improve and refine the present taste, and suited to the fancy and circumstances of persons in all degrees of life." [illustration: oliver goldsmith's chair. wood, painted green, with circular seat, carved arms, and high back. bequeathed by oliver goldsmith in 1774 to his friend, dr. hawes. (_bethnal green museum._)] his book of designs, as may naturally be supposed, was not greatly bought by the working classes, but fifteen copies of the _director_ went to yorkshire, and many other copies were subscribed for in other parts of the country, so that local cabinetmakers began at once to fashion their furniture after his styles. the common form of chair at the time was similar to the specimen illustrated (p. 215), which formerly belonged to oliver goldsmith, and was bequeathed by him to his friend, dr. hawes. this is of soft wood, probably beech, painted green, with circular seat, curved arms, and high back. chippendale revolutionised this inartistic style, and for the first time in the history of the manufacture of furniture in england, continental makers turned their eyes to this country in admiration of the style in vogue here, and in search of new designs. it might appear, on a hasty glance at some of chippendale's work, that originality was not his strong point. his claw-and-ball feet were not his own, and he borrowed them and the wide, spacious seats of his chairs from the dutch, or from earlier english furniture under dutch influence. [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ chippendale settee; walnut. about 1740. (_from the collection of sir w. e. welby-gregory, bart._)] sir william chambers, the architect of somerset house, whose fondness for chinese ornament produced quite a craze, and who built the pagoda in kew gardens, gave chippendale another source of inspiration. in his later days he came under the influence of the gothic revival and was tempted to misuse gothic ornament. [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ chippendale settee, oak. about 1740. (_by courtesy of v. j. robinson, esq., c.i.e._)] his second style shows the louis xiv. french decoration in subjection. in his ribbon-back chairs he employed the louis xvi. ornamentation. but chippendale was the most masterly adapter that england has ever produced. his adaptions became original under his hand, and his creations are sturdy and robust, tempered by french subtleties, and having, here and there, as in the fretwork in the chair-legs and angles, a suggestion of the east. he is the prince of chair-makers. his chairs are never unsymmetrical. he knew the exact proportion of ornament that the structure would gracefully bear. the splats in the chairs he made himself are of such accurate dimensions in relation to the open spaces on each side that this touch alone betrays the hand of the master, which is absent in the imitations of his followers. the illustration given of the chippendale table in chinese style (p. 213), is a beautiful and perfect piece of a type rarely met with. it was made by chippendale for the great-grandmother of the present owner. a similar table was in the possession of the princess josephine. in chairs, the back was sometimes of fret-cut work, as was also the design of the legs, with fretwork in the angles, which betray his fondness for the chinese models. the gothic style influenced chippendale only to a slight degree. horace walpole at strawberry hill set the fashion in england, which fortunately was short-lived. collectors divide chippendale's work into three periods. to the first they assign the more solid chairs or settees with cabriole legs and louis xiv. ornament, harmoniously blended with queen anne style. these chairs and settees are often found with claw-and-ball feet, and are frequently of walnut. two fine examples of settees, the one of oak, the other of walnut, are illustrated. [illustration: ribbon pattern. chippendale chair-back. (_from the "director."_)] the second period embraces the fine creations which have the celebrated louis xvi. ribbon ornamentation in the backs. from one of the designs in chippendale's book, here illustrated, the elegance of the style is shown. it is exuberant enough, but the author complains in his volume that "in executing many of these drawings, my pencil has but faintly carved out those images my fancy suggested; but in this failure i console myself by reflecting that the greatest masters of every art have laboured under the same difficulties." the ribbon-backed chair illustrated (p. 223) is one of the two given to an ancestor of the present owner by the fourth duke of marlborough in 1790. they were formerly at blenheim, and there is an added interest in them owing to the fact that the seats were worked by sarah, the great duchess of marlborough. [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ ribbon-backed chippendale chair, formerly at blenheim, the seat worked by sarah, duchess of marlborough.] the latest style of chippendale's work is the gothic. there are many pieces in existence which he probably had to produce to satisfy the taste of his fashionable clients, but the style is atrocious, and the less said about them the better. the illustration (p. 225) of a chair-back from his design-book shows how offensive it could be. [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ chippendale corner chair, about 1780. (_reproduced by kindness of the hon. sir spencer ponsonby-fane, g.c.b., i.s.o._)] the fine corner-chair, here illustrated, exhibits the strength and solidity he could impart to his work. his chairs were meant to sit upon, and are of excellent carpentry. the square, straight legs are a feature of much of his work. the examples belonging to the india office and the governors of the charterhouse illustrated (pp. 226, 227) show the type that he made his own and with which his name has been associated. [illustration: gothic chippendale chair-back. (_from the "director."_)] although his chairs are sought after as especially beautiful in design (his father was a maker of chairs before him) he made many other objects of furniture. the mirrors he designed are exquisite examples of fine woodcarving. the one illustrated (p. 229) shows the mastery he had over graceful outline. bureau bookcases with drop-down fronts have been successfully produced since his day after his models. the one illustrated (p. 231) shows a secret drawer, which is reached by removing the left-hand panel. card-tables, settees, knife-boxes, tea-caddies, sideboards, and overmantles were made by him, which show by their diversity of technique that there was more than one pair of hands at work in carrying out his designs. [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ mahogany chippendale chair. about 1740. (_property of the india office._)] the collecting of chippendale furniture has become so fashionable of late years that genuine old pieces are difficult to procure. it is true that two old chairs were discovered in a workhouse last year, but when specimens come into the market they usually bring large prices. two elbow state-chairs, with openwork backs, were sold a little while ago for seven hundred and eighty guineas, and a set of six small chairs brought ninety-three guineas about the same time. but even this is not the top price reached, for two chairs at christie's realised eleven hundred pounds! [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ mahogany chippendale chair. 1770. (_by permission of the master of the charterhouse._)] chippendale, the shopkeeper, of st martin's lane, who took orders for furniture, which he or his sons, or workmen under their direct supervision, executed, was one person, and chippendale, who had quarrelled with the society of upholsterers, and published a book of designs on his own account, which quickly ran through three editions, was another person. in the one case he was a furniture maker whose pieces bring enormous prices. in the other he was the pioneer of popular taste and high-priest to the cabinetmakers scattered up and down england, who quickly realised the possibilities of his style, and rapidly produced good work on his lines. these pieces are by unknown men, and no doubt much of their work has been accredited to chippendale himself. the illustration (p. 232) shows a mahogany chair well constructed, of a time contemporary with chippendale and made by some smaller maker. this type of chair has been copied over and over again till it has become a recognised pattern. it finds its counterpart in china in the old willow-pattern, which originated at coalport and has been adopted as a stock design. [illustration: _by permission of the proprietors of the "connoisseur."_ chippendale mirror.] furniture is not like silver, where the mark of the maker was almost as obligatory as the hall mark. artists, both great and small, have signed their pictures, and in the glorious days of the great french _ébénistes_ and metal-chasers, signed work is frequently found. but in england, at a time when furniture of excellent design, of original conception, and of thoroughly good workmanship was produced in great quantities, the only surviving names are those of designers or cabinetmakers who have published books. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. harold g. lancaster & co._ chippendale bureau bookcase. with drop-down front, showing secret drawer.] so great was the influence of the style of chippendale that it permeated all classes of society. an interesting engraving by stothard (p. 235) shows the interior of a room, and is dated 1782, the year that rodney gained a splendid victory over the french fleet in the west indies, and the year that saw the independence of the united states recognised. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. harold g. lancaster & co._ mahogany chair. in the chippendale style. late eighteenth century.] [illustration: cottage chairs, beechwood. late eighteenth century, in style of chippendale.] kitchen furniture or cottage furniture was made on the same lines by makers all over the country. the wood used was not mahogany; it was most frequently beech. chairs of this make are not museum examples, but they are not devoid of a strong artistic feeling, and are especially english in character. more often than not the soft wood of this class of chair is found to be badly worm-eaten. two chairs of this type, of beech, are illustrated (p. 233), and it is interesting to note that, as in the instance of the yorkshire and derbyshire chairs of jacobean days made by local makers, it is not common to find many of exactly the same design. the craftsman gave a personal character to his handiwork, which makes such pieces of original and artistic interest, and cabinetmaking and joinery was not then so machine-made as it is now. [illustration: interior of room, about 1782. (_from engraving after stothard._)] it may be here remarked that the earlier pieces of the eighteenth century were polished much in the same manner as was old oak previously described. highly polished surfaces and veneers, and that abomination "french polish," which is a cheap and nasty method of disguising poor wood, bring furniture within the early nineteenth-century days, when a wave of philistine banalities swept over europe. recent sale prices.[1] £ s. d. side table, chippendale, with gadrooned border, the front boldly carved with a grotesque mask, festoons of flowers and foliage, on carved legs with claw feet, 64 in. long. christie, february 14, 1902 126 0 0 tea-caddy, chippendale mahogany, square, with four divisions, the borders carved with rosettes and interlaced riband ornament, the sides inlaid with four old worcester oblong plaques painted with exotic birds, insects, fruit, flowers, and festoons in colours on white ground, 10 in. square. christie, february 6, 1903 52 10 0 fire-screen, chippendale mahogany, containing a panel of old english petit-point needlework, worked with a basket of flowers in coloured silks, on pillar and tripod carved with foliage and ball-and-claw feet. christie, december 4, 1903 17 17 0 armchairs, pair large chippendale mahogany, with interlaced backs carved with foliage, the arms terminating in carved and gilt eagles' heads. christie, january 22, 1904 88 4 0 cabinet, chippendale mahogany, with glazed folding doors enclosing shelves, and with cupboards and eight small drawers below, the borders fluted, 8 ft. high, 8 ft. wide. christie, january 22, 1904 67 4 0 chairs, set of six chippendale mahogany, with open interlaced backs, with scroll tops, carved with foliage and shell ornament, on carved cabriole legs and ball-and-claw feet. christie, january 22, 1904 102 18 0 table, chippendale, oblong, cabriole legs, carved with shells, &c., on claw feet, surmounted by a veined white marble slab, 53 in. wide. christie, march 4, 1904 73 0 0 settee, chippendale mahogany, with double back with scroll top, carved with arabesque foliage, the arms terminating in masks, on legs carved with lions' masks and claw feet, 54 in. wide. christie, april 12, 1904 278 5 0 mirror, chippendale, carved with gilt, 88 in. high, 50 in. wide. christie, may 18, 1904 94 10 0 [1] by the kindness of the proprietors of the _connoisseur_ these items are given from their useful monthly publication _auction sale prices_. xi sheraton, adam, and heppelwhite styles [illustration: _by permission of messrs. harold g. lancaster & co._ heppelwhite settee, mahogany.] xi sheraton, adam, and heppelwhite styles robert adam 1728-1792. thomas sheraton 1751-1806. 1752. loch and copeland's designs published. 1765. manwaring's designs published. 1770. ince and mayhew's designs published. 1788. heppelwhite's designs published. in the popular conception of the furniture of the three georges the honours are divided between chippendale and sheraton. up till recently all that was not chippendale was sheraton, and all that was not sheraton must be chippendale. the one is represented by the straight-legged mahogany chairs or cabriole legs with claw-and-ball feet and the backs elaborately carved; the other with finely tapered legs, built on elegant lines, and of satinwood, having marquetry decoration or painted panels. this is the rough generalisation that obtained in the earlier days of the craze for collecting eighteenth-century furniture. heppelwhite and adam (more often than not alluded to as adams), are now added to the list, and auction catalogues attempt to differentiate accordingly. but these four names do not represent a quarter of the well-known makers who were producing good furniture in the days between the south sea bubble in 1720 and the battle of waterloo in 1815. in this chapter it will be impossible to give more than a passing allusion to the less-known makers of the eighteenth century, but to those who wish to pursue the matter in more detailed manner the bibliography annexed (p. 19) gives ample material for a closer study of the period. the four brothers adam, sons of a well-known scottish architect, were exponents of the classic style. robert adam was the architect of the fine houses in the adelphi, and he designed the screen and gateway at the entrance to the admiralty in 1758. james is credited with the designing of interior decorations and furniture. carriages, sedan-chairs, and even plate were amongst the artistic objects to which these brothers gave their stamp. the classical capitals, mouldings and niches, the shell flutings and the light garlands in the adam style, are welcome sights in many otherwise dreary streets in london. robert, the eldest brother, lived from 1728 to 1792, and during that time exercised a great influence on english art. [illustration: sheraton armchair; mahogany, about 1780. adam armchair; mahogany, about 1790. armchair of walnut, shield-back carved with three ostrich feathers. in heppelwhite style. late eighteenth century. chair of walnut, shield-back; in the style of heppelwhite. late eighteenth century. (_victoria and albert museum._)] in 1790, a set of designs of english furniture were published by a. heppelwhite. in these chairs with pierced backs, bookcases with fancifully framed glass doors, and mahogany bureaux, the influence of chippendale is evident, but the robustness of the master and the individuality of his style become transformed into a lighter and more elegant fashion, to which french _finesse_ and the adam spirit have contributed their influence. in the illustration (p. 243) various types of chairs of the period are given. a chair termed the "ladder-back" was in use in france at the same time. in chardin's celebrated picture of "_le jeu de l'oye_," showing the interior of a parlour of the middle eighteenth century, a chair of this type is shown. the heppelwhite settee illustrated as the headpiece to this chapter shows the delicate fluting in the woodwork, and the elaborated turned legs which were beginning to be fashionable at the close of the eighteenth century. the two chairs by heppelwhite & co., illustrated (p. 243), are typical examples of the elegance of the style which has an individuality of its own--a fact that collectors are beginning to recognise. the shield-back chair with wheat-ear and openwork decoration, and legs in which the lathe has been freely used, are characteristic types. the elegance of the legs in heppelwhite chairs is especially noticeable. the designers departed from chippendale with results exquisitely symmetrical, and of most graceful ornamentation. hogarth, in his biting satires on the absurdities of kent, the architect, painter, sculptor, and ornamental gardener, whose claims to be any one of the four rest on slender foundations, did not prevent fashionable ladies consulting him for designs for furniture, picture frames, chairs, tables, for cradles, for silver plate, and even for the construction of a barge. it is recorded by walpole that two great ladies who implored him to design birthday gowns for them were decked out in incongruous devices: "the one he dressed in a petticoat decorated in columns of the five orders, and the other like a bronze, in a copper-coloured satin, with ornaments of gold." heppelwhite learned the lesson of hogarth, that "the line of beauty is a curve," and straight lines were studiously avoided in his designs. of the varieties of chairs that he made, many have the prince of wales's feathers either carved upon them in the centre of the open-work back or japanned upon the splat, a method of decoration largely employed in france, which has not always stood the test of time, for when examples are found they often want restoration. of satin-wood, with paintings upon the panels, heppelwhite produced some good examples, and when he attempted greater elaboration his style in pieces of involved design and intricacy of detail became less original, and came into contact with sheraton. his painted furniture commands high prices, and the name of heppelwhite will stand as high as chippendale or sheraton for graceful interpretations of the spirit which invested the late eighteenth century. before dealing with sheraton in detail, the names of some lesser known makers contemporary with him may be mentioned. matthias lock, together with a cabinetmaker named copeland, published in 1752 designs of furniture which derived their inspiration from the brothers adam, which classic feeling later, in conjunction with the egyptian and pompeian spirit, dominated the style of the first empire. josiah wedgewood, with his etruscan vases, and flaxman, his designer, filled with the new classic spirit, are examples in the world of pottery of the influences which were transmitted through the french revolution to all forms of art when men cast about in every direction to find new ideas for design. ince and mayhew, two other furniture designers, published a book in 1770, and johnson outdid chippendale's florid styles in a series of designs he brought out, which, with their twisted abortions, look almost like a parody of thomas chippendale's worst features. there is a "chairmaker's guide," by manwaring and others in 1766, which contains designs mainly adapted from all that was being produced at the time. it is not easy to tell the difference between chairs made by manwaring and those made by chippendale, as he certainly stands next to the great master in producing types which have outlived ephemeral tastes, and taken their stand as fine artistic creations. among other names are those of shearer, darly, and gillow, all of whom were notable designers and makers of furniture in the period immediately preceding the nineteenth century. thomas sheraton, contemporary with william blake the dreamer, shares with him the unfortunate posthumous honour of reaching sensational prices in auction rooms. there is much in common between the two men. sheraton was born in 1751 at stockton-on-tees, and came to london to starve. baptist preacher, cabinetmaker, author, teacher of drawing, he passed his life in poverty, and died in distressed circumstances. he was, before he brought out his book of designs, the author of several religious works. often without capital to pursue his cabinetmaking he fell back on his aptitude for drawing, and gave lessons in design. he paid young black, who afterwards became lord provost of edinburgh, half a guinea a week as workman in his cabinetmaker's shop in soho. in a pathetic picture of those days the lord provost, in his _memoirs_, tells how sheraton and his wife and child had only two cups and saucers and the child had a mug, and when the writer took tea with them the wife's cup and saucer were given up to the guest, and she drank her tea from a common mug. this reads like blake's struggles when he had not money enough to procure copper-plates on which to engrave his wonderful visions. that the styles of chippendale and sheraton represent two distinct schools is borne out by what sheraton himself thought of his great predecessor. speaking in his own book of chippendale's previous work he says: "as for the designs themselves they are wholly antiquated, and laid aside, though possessed of great merit according to the times in which they were executed." from this it would appear that the chippendale style, at the time of sheraton's "cabinetmaker's and upholsterer's drawing book," published in 1793, had gone out of fashion. the woods mostly employed by sheraton were satinwood, tulip-wood, rosewood, and apple-wood, and occasionally mahogany. in place of carved scrollwork he used marquetry, and on the cabinets and larger pieces panels were painted by cipriani and angelica kauffman. there is a fine example of the latter's work in the victoria and albert museum. sheraton borrowed largely from the french style under louis xvi., when the lines had become severer; he came, too, under the influence of the adam designs. he commonly used turned legs, and often turned backs, in his chairs. his later examples had a hollowed or spoon back to fit the body of the sitter. when he used mahogany he realised the beauty of effect the dark wood would give to inlay of lighter coloured woods, or even of brass. the splats and balusters, and even the legs of some of his chairs, are inlaid with delicate marquetry work. ornament for its own sake was scrupulously eschewed by sheraton. the essential supports and uprights and stretcher-rails and other component parts of a piece of furniture were only decorated as portions of a preconceived whole. the legs were tapered, the plain surfaces were inlaid with marquetry, but nothing meaningless was added. in france sheraton's style was termed "_louis seize à l'anglaise_." [illustration: _by permission of messrs. hampton &. sons._ old english secrétaire. rosewood and satinwood. drop-down front.] it was the firm of heppelwhite that first introduced the painted furniture into england, and under sheraton it developed into an emulation of the fine work done by watteau and greuze in the days of marie antoinette. among the varied pieces that sheraton produced are a number of ingenious inventions in furniture, such as the library-steps he made for george iii. to rise perpendicularly from the top of a table frame, and when folded up to be concealed within it. his bureau-bookcases and writing-cabinets have sliding flaps and secret drawers and devices intended to make them serve a number of purposes. [illustration: _by permission of messrs. harold g. lancaster & co._ shield-back chair. mahogany. late eighteenth century.] on the front of his chairs is frequently found the inverted bell flower, and another of his favourite forms of decoration is the acanthus ornament, which he puts to graceful use. the influence of his work, and of that of heppelwhite & co., was lasting, and much of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century cabinetmaking owes its origin to their designs. the old english secrétaire illustrated (p. 250), of rose and satinwood, with drawer above and fall-down front, having cupboard beneath with doors finely inlaid with plaques of old lac, is of the date when heppelwhite was successfully introducing this class of french work into england. it is especially interesting to note that the drawer-handles are mounted with old battersea enamel. the difficulty of definitely pronouncing as to the maker of many of the pieces of furniture of the late eighteenth century is recognised by experts. the chair illustrated (p. 251) cannot be assigned to any particular designer, though its genuine old feeling is indisputable. in the fine collection of old furniture of this period at the victoria and albert museum will be found many examples of chairs with no other title assigned to them than "late eighteenth century." this fact speaks for itself. a great and growing school had followed the precepts of chippendale and heppelwhite and sheraton. this glorious period of little more than half a century might have been developed into a new renaissance in furniture. unfortunately, the early days of the nineteenth century and the dreary early victorian period, both before and after the great exhibition of 1851, display the most tasteless ineptitude in nearly every branch of art. from the days of elizabeth down to the last of the georges, english craftsmen, under various influences, have produced domestic furniture of great beauty. it is impossible to feel any interest in the windsor chair, the saddle-bag couch, or the red mahogany cheffonière. the specimens of misapplied work shown at the bethnal green museum, relics of the english exhibits at the first exhibition, are unworthy of great traditions. the awakened interest shown by all classes in old furniture will do much to carry the designers back to the best periods in order to study the inheritance the masters have left, and it is to be hoped that the message of the old craftsmen dead and gone will not fall on deaf ears. recent sale prices.[1] £ s. d. chairs, wheel back, set of seven (including armchair), adam, carved, mahogany. good condition. brady & sons, perth, september 1, 1902 27 2 6 mirror, adam, in gilt frame, corinthian pillar sides, ornamental glass panel at top, surmounted by a carved wood eagle figure. gudgeon & sons, winchester, november 11, 1903 7 10 0 mantelpiece, adam, carved wood, with corinthian column supports, carved and figures and festoons. france & sons, december 16, 1903 20 0 0 mirrors, pair, oval, adam, carved and gilt wood frame. christie, march 18, 1904 46 4 0 cabinet or enclosed buffet, adam, on empire lines, veneered on oak with grained spanish mahogany, in the frieze is a long drawer, and below a cupboard, the whole on square feet, doors inlaid, handles, &c., of ormolu, 3 ft. 9 in. wide. flashman & co., dover, april 26, 1904 15 0 0 side-tables, pair hare-wood, by adam, with rounded corners, on square-shaped tapering legs, the sides and borders inlaid with marquetry, in coloured woods, 53 in. wide. christie, june 2, 1904 105 0 0 bookcase, 4 ft. 8 in., mahogany, heppelwhite, inlaid tulip-wood with box and ebony lines, fitted shelves and drawers, enclosed by doors. phillips, son and neale, november 17, 1903 44 0 0 settee, heppelwhite, square-shaped, 6 ft., and three elbow chairs. gudgeon & sons, winchester, march 9, 1904 38 0 0 console-table, heppelwhite satinwood, the top shaped as a broken ellipse, and of hare-wood with inlays of husks and flowers round a fan-pattern centre with borderings in ebony and other woods on a filling of satinwood; the edge is bound with ormolu, reeded and cross banded, below is the frieze of satin-wood inlaid with honeysuckle, pateræ, and other ornament in holly, &c., and supported on a pair of carved square tapered legs painted and gilt, and with pendants of husks and acanthus capitals, 4 ft. 3 in. wide. flashman & co., dover, april 26, 1904 40 0 0 suite of heppelwhite mahogany furniture, with open shield backs, with vase-shaped centres carved, the back, arms and legs widely fluted, consisting of a settee, 74 in. wide, and ten armchairs. christie, june 2, 1904 325 10 0 knife-box, oblong, sheraton mahogany, with revolving front, inlaid with prince-of-wales's feathers and borders in satinwood, 19-1/2 in. wide. christie, november 21, 1902 7 17 6 sideboard, sheraton, mahogany, satinwood inlaid, fitted with brass rails. dowell, edinburgh, november 14, 1903 30 9 0 wardrobe, sheraton mahogany, banded with satinwood, with folding doors above and below, and five drawers in the centre, 7 ft. high, 8 ft. wide. christie, january 22, 1904 60 18 0 chairs, set of eighteen sheraton, with oval backs with rail centres, fluted and slightly carved with foliage and beading, the seats covered with flowered crimson damask; and a pair of settees, _en suite_, 6 ft. wide. christie, february 26, 1904 126 0 0 armchairs, pair, sheraton, with shield-shaped backs, painted with prince of wales feathers, and pearl ornament on black ground. christie, march 28, 1904 28 7 0 cabinet, sheraton satinwood, with glazed folding doors enclosing shelves, drawer in the centre forming secretary, and folding-doors below, painted with baskets of flowers, &c., 7 ft. 9 in. high, 41 in. wide. christie, march 28, 1904 189 0 0 secrétaire, sheraton small satinwood, with revolving tambour front, drawer and folding doors below, inlaid with arabesque foliage, 23 in. wide. christie, april 29, 1904 47 5 0 [1] by the kindness of the proprietors of the _connoisseur_ these items are given from their useful monthly publication, _auction sale prices_. xii hints to collectors [illustration: design for spurious marquetry work.] xii hints to collectors the demand for old furniture has become so great that there is an increasing difficulty in supplying it. in order to satisfy the collector many artifices have been practised which in varying degree are difficult to detect, according to the skill and ingenuity of the present-day manufacturer of "antique" furniture. replicas of old pieces are frequently made, and the workmanship is so excellent, and the copy of the old craftsman's style so perfect, that it only requires a century or two of wear to give to the specimen the necessary tone which genuine old furniture has naturally acquired. in particular, french ornate furniture from the days of boule to the empire period has received the flattering attention of the fabricator by being imitated in all its details. these high-class french pieces are fine examples of cabinetmaking, and it is not easy for anybody who has not a special expert knowledge to pronounce definitely upon their authenticity. doubts have even been expressed regarding certain pieces in the great national collections; in fact the art of the forger in regard to old french furniture, of which specimens change hands at anything from £1,000 to £10,000, has reached a very high level of excellence, having almost been elevated to one of the fine arts. if a clever workman possessed of great artistic feeling turns his attention to forging works of art, it is obvious that his triumph is complete over amateurs possessed of less artistic taste and knowledge than himself. many secret processes are employed to impart an appearance of age to the wood and to the metal mountings. the cruder methods are to eat off the sharper edges of the metal mountings by means of acid, and to discolour the newer surfaces by the aid of tobacco juice, both of which are not difficult to detect. the steady manufacture of these finer pieces goes on in france, and it has been found that the foggy atmosphere of london is especially useful in producing the effect of age upon the finer work, consequently many forged pieces are shipped to london to be stored in order to ripen until considered fit for the american market, where so many forgeries have been planted. the reward is great, and even considering the amount of trouble bestowed upon such pieces and the excellence of the artistic work where the highest skilled labour is employed, the profit is enormous. the parvenu buys his louis xiv. or louis xv. suite, and pays an immense sum for pieces which are stated to have come from some french nobleman's château, whose name must not be divulged, and so the interesting deal is brought to a successful termination. [illustration: "made-up" buffet. the middle portion, consisting of the two drawers and three panelled cupboards above, is genuine old carved oak. the stand, with the finely turned legs and rails, and the whole of the upper portion, is modern.] as an object-lesson as to the truth of the above remarks, the wallace collection contains a modern french copy in facsimile, by dasson, of the celebrated "bureau du roi" of the louis xv. period, the original being in the louvre. the original is fully described in the chapter on louis xv. style, and it is not too much to assert that ninety-nine per cent. of the visitors to the collection could not say that this copy was not an old french specimen of over a century and a quarter ago, and the remaining one, unless he happened to be an expert, would not question its genuineness. old oak has always been a favourite with the public, and from the modern flemish monstrosities, carved in evil manner and displaying proportions in the worst possible taste, to the equally vulgar home production in buffet or sideboard, and stocked by many dealers in so-called "antique" furniture, the number of grotesque styles foisted upon the public within the last fifteen years has been remarkable. one wonders what has become of the high-backed oak chairs, nearly black with repeated applications of permanganate of potash, having flaming red-leather seats. they seem to have mysteriously disappeared from up-to-date "antique" stores of late. the public has taken to inquiring into art matters a little more closely. nowadays the latest thing is "fumed" oak, which is modern oak discoloured by means of ammonia, which darkens the surface of the wood to a depth of a sixteenth of an inch. it is not infrequent to find an attempt made to represent this as old oak after an elaborate treatment with linseed oil, turpentine, and beeswax, though an examination of the interior edges of the wood will discover its modernity at once. of course, such tricks as these are not practised by any firm of standing, who cannot afford to damage their reputation by any misrepresentation. as a general rule a dealer will readily point out the details of workmanship and offer technical information of much value to a beginner, if he discovers that his customer is a collector desirous of acquiring only fine specimens. it is more often than not the folly of the public, and not the dishonesty of the dealer, which results in trade frauds being committed in the attempt to execute some impossible and imperative order, which the moneyed collector has given. the difference between the genuine and the replica is most clearly made by old-fashioned firms of high standing. it is only when the collector enters into the arena and endeavours to set forth in quest of bargains, where he pits his skill against that of the dealer in the hope of outwitting the latter, that he is obviously on dangerous ground. in the one case he pays a higher price and obtains the benefit of the experience of a firm with expert knowledge, in the other he relies on his own judgment in picking up a bargain from some one whom he believes to be possessed of less knowledge than himself. if he is successful he is not slow to brag about his cleverness; but if he is worsted in the encounter, and pays, let us say, five pounds for an object which he fondly believed was worth fifty, if genuine, and which he subsequently discovers is worth less than he gave, there is nothing too bad to say concerning his antagonist. it is chiefly by the character of carved work that old pieces can be recognised. there are three classes of pitfalls to avoid. 1. fraudulent pieces throughout, of modern wood and of modern carving. 2. "made-up" pieces which often consist of genuine old pieces of carved wood pieced together ingeniously from fragments of carvings, with modern additions. 3. "restored" pieces which are mainly old and should have received, if admitted to a collection, only the necessary repairs to make them serviceable. with regard to the first class, fraudulent throughout, it is the hope of the writer that enough has already been written in this volume to point the way to the reader and to assist him to follow his natural inclinations in developing the necessary critical taste to readily detect pieces wholly false in character and feeling. "made-up" pieces present a greater difficulty. considerable skill has been exercised in combining certain parts of old furniture into a whole which is, however, mostly inharmonious. in pieces of this nature there is an absence of feeling in style and carving. it is difficult to define the exact meaning of the word "feeling" as applied to art objects, it is a subtle expression of skill and poetry which communicates itself to the lover of art. it is so subtle and elusive that experts will tell one that such and such a piece requires to be "lived with" to test its authenticity. mr. frederick roe, whose volume on "ancient coffers and cupboards" displays a profound knowledge of his subject, writes, "it occasionally happens that pieces are so artfully made up that only living with them will enable the collector to detect the truth. in dealing with pieces of this suspicious kind one often has to fall back on a sort of instinct. with critical collectors of every sort this innate sense plays a very important part." two specimens of "made-up" furniture are reproduced, which will bear close study in order to appreciate the difficulty of collecting old oak. the illustration of the buffet (p. 261) has many points of interest. the general appearance of the piece is not inharmonious. it has been carefully thought out and no less carefully put into effect. the middle portion, consisting of the three drawers and the three cupboards above, up to and including the shelf partition at the top, is the only old part. the handles, locks, and escutcheons of the two drawers are old, but the hinges above are modern copies of old designs, and the handles of the cupboards are modern replicas. [illustration: cabinet of old oak. made up from several pieces of genuine old carved oak.] the massive stand with artistically turned rails in jacobean style, is soft wood artfully fumed and generously beeswaxed. the whole of the top portion has been added and is soft wood very well carved. the carving of the panels is also well executed, and is evidently a copy of some old design. the older portion is a fine piece of early jacobean work, and it is not difficult to distinguish between the feeling of this and the expression conveyed by the modern woodwork. the patina of the wood after two centuries of exposure and polishing has that peculiarly pleasing appearance which accompanies genuine old woodwork. the edges of the carving have lost their sharp angles, and the mellowness of the middle panels are in strong contrast to the harsher tone of those of the upper portion. such a piece as this would not deceive an expert, nor, perhaps, is it intended to, or greater care would have been bestowed upon it, but it is sufficiently harmonious in composition not to offend in a glaring manner, and might easily deceive a tyro. the next piece illustrated (p. 267) is interesting from another point of view. it is a more elaborate attempt to produce a piece of old furniture in which the details themselves have all the mellowness of fine old oak. in fact, with the exception of one portion, some eight inches by three, to which allusion will be made later, the whole of it is genuine old oak. the three panels at the top are finely carved and are jacobean work. the two outside panels at the bottom, though of a later period, are good work. the middle panel at the bottom is evidently a portion of a larger piece of carving, because the pattern abruptly breaks off, and it was most certainly not designed by the old carver to lie on its side in this fashion. the two heads at the top corners have been cut from some old specimen, and artfully laid on. the carving on both sides, running below each head from top to bottom, is of two distinct designs joined in each case in a line level with the upper line of the lower panels. the two uprights on each side of the middle lower panel are exquisite pieces of carved work, but certainly never intended to be upright. they are evidently portions of a long, flowing ornament, as their cut-off appearance too plainly shows. the top panels have done duty elsewhere, as part of the ornamental carving at the top and bottom of each lozenge is lost. the long line of scrolled carving above them is distinctly of interest. on the left hand, from the head to the middle of the panel, a piece of newer carving has been inserted, some eight inches long. the wood, at one time darkened to correspond with the adjacent carving, has become lighter, which is always the case when wood is stained to match other portions. the carving in this new portion follows in every detail the lines of the older design, and is a very pretty piece of "faking." the cross-piece running from left to right, dividing the lower panels from the upper, is in three parts. an examination of the design shows that the last three circles on the right, and the last four on the left, are of smaller size than the others. the design evidently belonged to some other piece of furniture, and has been removed to do service in this "made-up" production. in all probability the two uprights enclosing the top middle panel, and the two uprights on the outside at the bottom were once portions of a carved bedstead, as they are all of the same size and design. it is a notorious trick to slice an old carved bedpost into four pieces, skilfully fitting the pieces into "made-up" furniture. there is a prevalent idea that worm-holes are actually produced in furniture, in order to give a new piece a more realistic appearance. there are traditions of duck-shot having been used, and there is little doubt that holes were drilled by makers who knew their public. but it is improbable that such artifices would be of much use for deceptive purposes nowadays. as a matter of fact, worm-holes are avoided by any one who gives a moment's thought to the matter. to get rid of worm in furniture is no easy task, and they eventually ruin any pieces they tenant. the illustration (p. 274) shows a piece of spanish chestnut badly honeycombed by furniture worms. in chairs, especially, their havoc is almost irreparable, and in the softer woods the legs become too rotten to be repaired or even strengthened. metal plates are often screwed on the sides to prevent the chairs falling to pieces, but they become useless to sit upon without fear of disaster. the insect is really the boring wood-beetle, which is armed with formidable forceps, to enable it to burrow through the wood. the worm, the larva of this beetle, is also provided with boring apparatus, and this insect, whether as beetle or as worm, is a deadly enemy to all furniture. the "death-watch" is also accused of being a depredator of books and of furniture of soft wood. to remove worms from furniture is a costly undertaking, requiring the greatest skill. large pieces of furniture have actually to be taken to pieces and the whole of the damaged parts removed with a chisel. in cases where the legs, or slender supports, have been attacked, the difficulty is one requiring the specialist's most delicate attention. various applications are recommended, but cannot be stated to be reliable. injecting paraffin is said to be the best remedy, and putting the pieces in a chamber where all the openings have been sealed, and lighting pans of sulphur underneath the furniture, allowing the specimens to remain in this fumigating bath for some days is another method resorted to. with regard to chippendale furniture, a word of caution is necessary. it is as impossible for chippendale and his workmen to have produced all the furniture attributed to them as it is for the small factory at lowestoft to have made all the china with which it is credited. as has been shown in the chapter on thomas chippendale, his styles were most extensively copied by his contemporaries all over the country and by many makers after him, and modern makers produce a great quantity of "chippendale" every year. only a careful examination of museum pieces will train the eye of the collector. the fine sense of proportion, at once noticeable in the genuine chippendale chair, is absent in the modern copy, and, above all, the carving in the latter is thin and poor. in the old days the wastage of wood was not a thing which the master had in his mind. in modern copies the curl of the arm, or the swell at the top of the back, shows a regard for economy. there is a thin, flat look about the result, which ought not to be mistaken. scrolls and ribbon-work are often added to later pieces made in the style of chippendale, which have enough wood in their surfaces to bear carving away. an ingenious device is adopted in cases of inlaid pieces of a small nature, such as imitation sheraton clock-cases and knife-boxes and the frames of mirrors. old engravings are procured of scrollwork, usually from the end of some book. the illustration (p. 259) shows the class of engravings selected. these engravings are coated with a very thin layer of vellum, which is boiled down to a liquid, and carefully spread over them. after this treatment they are ready to be glued on to the panels to be "faked," and, when coated over with transparent varnish, they present the appearance of an ivory and ebony inlay. [illustration: design for spurious marquetry work.] the frauds practised in satinwood and painted pieces are many and are exceedingly difficult to detect. much of sheraton's furniture was veneered with finely selected specimens of west india satinwood. these carefully chosen panels were painted by cipriani and others. the modern "faker" has not the material to select from, as the satinwood imported is not so beautiful nor so richly varied in grain as in the old days. he removes a side panel from an old piece, and substitutes another where its obnoxious presence is not so noticeable. to this old panel he affixes a modern coloured print after one of sheraton's artists, which, when carefully varnished over and skilfully treated so as to represent the cracks in the supposed old painting, is ready for insertion in the "made-up" sideboard, to catch the fancy of the unwary collector. finis. [illustration: piece of spanish chestnut showing ravages of worms.] index a adam, the brothers, and their style, 209, 241-256 adam armchair (illustrated), 243 admiralty, screen and gateway, designed by robert adam, 242 anne, queen, furniture of, prices realised at auction, 153 ---insularity of furniture in reign of, 136 ---well-constructed furniture of period of, 145 apsley house, collection of furniture at, 209 armoire, _see_ glossary, 23 ascham, quotation from, 68 ashmolean museum, oxford, chair at, 115 b baroque, _see_ glossary, 23 barrow, sam, name of maker, on queen anne clock, 148 battersea enamel, its use on furniture, 252 bérain, jean, 162 blenheim, chair from, 222 bodleian library, oxford, illustration of chair at, 82 _bombé_, _see_ glossary, 23 bookcase by chippendale, 225, 231 boucher, 182, 195 boule, andré charles, and his marquetry, 160-162 ---cabinet (illustrated), 165 ---_see_ glossary, 23 ---and counter-boule (illustrated), showing difference between, 163 bridal chest (german), 43 bromley-by-bow, "old palace," oak panelling from, 65 brown and bool, messrs., specimens from collection of, 141, 150 buhl work, 160 bureau, _see_ glossary, 24 burr-walnut panels, 139 butter-cupboard, 104 c cabinet, ebony, formerly property of oliver cromwell, 99 cabriole, _see_ glossary, 24 cabriole-leg, introduction of into england, 127 caffieri, 177, 191 cambridge, king's college chapel, woodwork of, 63 cane seats and backs of chairs, adoption of, 117 ---work in chairs, later development of, 122 carolean, _see_ glossary, 25 carving supplanted by cane-work panels, 117 caryatides, _see_ glossary, 24 _cassette_, (strong box) of period of louis xiv., 158 _cassone_, _see_ glossary, 24 ---(marriage coffer), the italian, 42 catherine of braganza, fashions introduced by, 114 cecil, lord burleigh, quotation from, 66 chair, charles i., 93, 95 ---chippendale, 223, 224, 226, 227, 232, 233 ---"cromwellian," 96 ---high-backed, portuguese, 114 ---italian (1620), 94 ---jacobean, made from timber of drake's _golden hind_, 83 ---james i., 87, 89 ---james ii., 123 ---louis xiii. period, 159 ---ribbon-back, 222, 223 ---oliver goldsmith's, 215 ---with arms of first earl of strafford, 93 chairs, test as to age of, 100 ---types of jacobean (illustrated), 97, 100, 105, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124 ---types of queen anne period (illustrated), 143 ---upholstered, adopted in late elizabethan days, 75 chambers, sir william, 216 chardin, picture by, showing ladder-back chair, 245 charles i. furniture, prices realised at auction, 106 ---ii. furniture, prices realised at auction, 129 ---ii., repartee of, 114 charterhouse, specimen at, illustration of, 227 chatsworth, work of grinling gibbons at, 121 chests of drawers, jacobean, 117 china collecting, influence of, on furniture, 127 chinese and japanese cabinets, 148 "chinese" chippendale, 213, 221 chippendale, thomas, and his style, 213-238; his _director_, 215 ---bureau-bookcase, 225, 231 ---furniture, tricks concerning, 272; prices of, 227, 236 cipriani, 249 classic models paramount, 205 claw-and-ball feet adopted by chippendale, 216 ---feet (prior to chippendale), 146 ---foot, introduction of, 127 clock, "grandfather," introduction of, 127 clocks, "grandfather," 147 colbert, the guiding spirit of art under louis xiv., 159 collectors, hints to, 259-274 commode, _see_ glossary, 24 commodes (illustrated), cressent, 171; louis xiv., 173; caffieri, 175; riesener, 197 _contre partie_, _see_ glossary, 24 copeland, designs of, 247 copies of old furniture, 259, 263 ---of fine french pieces, 185, 197 cottage furniture (chippendale style), 232 counter-boule, _see_ glossary, 24 -----boule, 161 court cupboard, 70 cowley, quotation from, 85 cradle, with initials and date, 96 cressent, charles, 177, 178 crispin de passe, chair designed by, 159 cromwellian chair, 96 cromwell's ebony cabinet, 96 cushions for chairs when adopted, 75 d darly, 248 dated pieces- 1593, elizabethan bedstead, 66 1603, mirror, carved oak frame, 71 1603, court cupboard, 73 1616, oak table, 85 1623, chair, 97 1641, cradle, 96 1642, chair, 159 1653, cabinet, _frontispiece_ 1760-69, "bureau du roi," 185 1769, bureau, 196 1810, jewel cabinet, 207 david, 195, 208, 209 derbyshire chairs, 103 diderot, 205 _director_, designs of chair-backs from, 222, 225 drake, sir francis, chair made from timber of _golden hind_, 82 drawers, chests of, jacobean, 117 dressers, normandy, 103 ---"welsh," 100 dublin museum, illustration of oak chest at, 44 dutch art, introduction of, by william of orange, 124 ---house, interior of (illustrated), 111 ---lacquer work, 151 ---marquetry, 128, 146 ---marquetry chair, illustrated, 143 ---marquetry, prices realised at auction, 132 e eassie, walter, illustrations from drawings by, 171, 183 egyptian design, influence of, 247 eighteenth century, early, well-constructed furniture of, 145 ---interior of room (illustrated), 235 elizabethan mansions, some noteworthy, 67 elizabethan woodwork, fine example of, 65 empire style furniture, 202-210 ---its influence on english makers, 209 england, renaissance in, 37, 59-78 f farmhouse furniture, 100 figure in wood, how obtained, 76, 118 fire of london, destruction of furniture by, 120 first empire style, 203-210 flemish wood-carving, its influence on english craftsmen, 49 fontainebleau, illustration of jewel cabinet at, 207 foreign workmen employed in england, 37 fragonard, 182, 195 france, renaissance in, 43 francis i., patron of the new art, 47 frauds perpetrated on collectors, 259-274 french polish, _see_ glossary, 24, 236 french revolution, vandalism during, 204 g gate-leg table, _see_ glossary, 24 ---table, 95 gibbons, grinling, work of, 121 gillow, 248 _golden hind_, chair made from timbers of, 82 goldsmith, oliver, chair of, 215, 216 gothic, _see_ glossary, 25 ---revival, its influence on chippendale, 221 gouthière, pierre, 191, 192, 197 grandfather clock, 147 ---clock, introduction of, 127 great hall at hampton court, 63 grimm, quotation from, 205 grotesque design prevalent in elizabethan furniture, 69 h hall, hampton court, the great, 63 ---middle temple, carved screen at, 65 hampton court, the great hall at, 63 ---court, work of grinling gibbons at, 121 hampton & sons, messrs., pieces from collection of, 59, 95, 99, 115, 120, 121, 135, 143, 147, 148, 250 harrington, sir john, quotation from, 75 henry vii.'s chapel, westminster abbey, 63 ---viii., patron of the new art, 37 heppelwhite, the style of, 241-256 ---chairs (illustrated), 243 herculaneum and pompeii, influence of excavations at, 204, 209 hints to collectors, 259-274 hogarth, william, 246 holbein in england, 37 honey, w. g., esq., specimen from collection of, 151 huygens, dutch lacquer of, 182 i ince & mayhew's designs, 247 india office, specimen at, illustration of, 226 ingenious contrivances of sheraton's furniture, 251 inlay, _see_ glossary, 25 ---in elizabethan pieces, 69 italian art dominates elizabethan fashion, 68 italy, renaissance in, 41 j jacobean, _see_ glossary, 25 ---furniture, its fine simplicity, 104 jacobean furniture, prices realised at auction, 106, 129 james i., chair at knole house, 86 ---ii. furniture, prices realised at auction, 130 japanese and chinese cabinets, 148 japanese lac imitated, 182 jones bequest, illustrations of specimens in, 165, 179, 193 ---inigo, his influence, 93 k kauffman, angelica, 249 kent, eighteenth-century designer, 246 kew gardens, pagoda at, 216 king's college chapel, cambridge, woodwork of, 63 kitchen furniture (chippendale style), 232 knole house, james i. furniture at, 86 l lac, _see_ glossary, 26 ---japanese and chinese imitated, 182 lacquer, _see_ glossary, 26 lancaster & co., messrs. harold g., specimens from collection of, 122, 123, 137, 231, 232, 241, 251 leather work, cut design, portuguese chair-back, 128 le bas, rev. h. v., illustration of specimen in possession of, 210 lebrun, madame, 205 leczinski, stanislas, king of poland, 196 linen pattern, _see_ glossary, 26 lock, matthias, designs of, 247 louis xiii., chair of period of, 159 ---xiv., period of, 157-167 ---xv., period of, 171-187 ---xvi., period of, 191-200 louvre, copy of picture in, 203 ---illustration of portrait in, 209 m macaulay, lord, quotation from, 96, 136 "made-up" pieces, 265 madrid national museum, illustration of specimen at, 52 mahogany period, 34 ---how procured by british captains, 214 ---sir walter raleigh's discovery of, 214 mansions built in elizabethan days, 67 manwaring, designs of, 247 marie antoinette, furniture belonging to, 179, 180, 195 marie louise, jewel cabinet of, 208 marquetry, _see_ glossary, 26 ---dutch, 128 ---dutch, 146 ---elaborate, 180, 182 ---in elizabethan pieces, 69 ---work, spurious, 273 martin, sieur simon etienne (_vernis-martin_), 182 martin's varnish (_vernis-martin_), _see_ glossary, 28 meissonier, inspirer of rococo style, 177 middle temple hall, carved oak screen at, 65 mirrors, arrangement in hampton court galleries, 123 ---at nell gwynne's house, 123 ---chippendale, 229 ---made by french and italian workmen, 124 ---queen anne, 136 ---various forms of, 124 mortise, _see_ glossary, 26 mother-of-pearl inlay, seventeenth century, 116 munich national museum, illustration of specimen at, 39 n naples museum, illustration of table at, 205 napoleon, his influence on art, 208 natoire, 182, 195 needlework decorated cabinet, charles ii. period, 112 netherlands, renaissance in, 49 netscher, caspar, illustration after picture by, 111 normandy dressers, 103 notable examples of sixteenth, century english woodwork, 65 o oak, collectors of, hints to, 103, 118 ---furniture, the collector's polish for, 118 ---period, 34 ---polish, _see_ glossary, 26 oeben, jean françois, 178 old oak, polish for, 118 p parquetry, _see_ glossary, 26 passe crispin de, chair designed by, 159 pater, 192 penshurst place, indo-portuguese furniture at, 115 petworth house, work of grinling gibbons at, 121 _polish_, french, 24; ---oil, 26 pollen, j., hungerford, quotation from, 196 pompeii, influence of excavations at, 204, 208, 247 ponsonby-fane, right hon. sir spencer, specimens in collection of, 101, 224 portuguese furniture, late seventeenth century, in england, 114 q queen anne cabinet (illustrated), 141 ---chairs (illustrated), 143 ---furniture, prices realised at auction, 153 ---mirror frame (illustrated), 137 ---settle (illustrated), 149, 155 r raleigh, sir walter, mahogany first brought home by, 214 récamier, portrait of, by david, 209 reeded, _see_ glossary, 27 renaissance, _see_ glossary, 27 ---in england, 37, 59-78 ---in france, 43 ---in italy, 41 ---in the netherlands, 49 ---in spain, 48 ---on the continent, 33-55 ---origin of, 38, 41 restored, _see_ glossary, 27 ---cupboard showing over-elaboration, 73 "restored" pieces, 265 revolution in france, vandalism during, 204 ribbon-back chair (illustrated), 222 ---ornamentation adapted from france, 64; (illustrated) 60 ---pattern, early use of, by french woodcarvers, 92 riesener, jean françois, 185, 191, 192, 195, 197, 208 robinson, v. j., esq., c.i.e., furniture belonging to, 219 rococo, _see_ glossary, 27 roe, mr. frederick, quotation from, 266 roentgen, david, 182 s sackville, lord, early jacobean furniture in collection of, 86 st. paul's cathedral, work of grinling gibbons at, 121 secret drawers, 114 ---drawers, pieces with, 113, 157, 231 ---drawers, sheraton's love of, 251 ---processes to impart age to spurious pieces, 260 settee, _see_ glossary, 27 ---upholstered, early jacobean, at knole, 90 settle, _see_ glossary, 28, 60 ---queen anne style, 145, 149 sèvres porcelain as decoration to furniture, 191 ---porcelain in harmony with furniture, 181 shattock, esq., t. foster, specimens from collection of, 45 shearer, 248 sheraton, thomas, and his style, 209, 241-256 ---chair (illustrated), 243 ---mechanical contrivances of his furniture, 251 ---poverty of, 248; his opinion of chippendale, 248 sigerson, dr., dublin, specimens from collection of, 157, 206 sixteenth-century woodwork, fine example of, 65 spain, renaissance in, 48 spanish furniture (illustrated), cabinet, 51; chest, 52 spitalfields' velvet for furniture, 147 ---weaving founded by aliens, 122 splat, _see_ glossary, 28 stothard, copy of engraving by, 231, 235 strafford, first earl of, chair with arms of, 94 strapwork, _see_ glossary, 28 ---borrowed from flemish designers, 64; illustrated, 61, 68 ---elizabethan, 69 stretche, esq., t. e. price, specimens from collection of, 75, 78, 97, 139, 140 stretcher, _see_ glossary, 28 ---in chairs, evolution of the, 122 ---wear given to, by feet of sitters, 100 sutton, thomas, founder of charterhouse hospital, 86 symonds, john addington, "the renaissance in italy," quoted, 41 t table, gate-leg, _see_ glossary, 24 tapestry factory established at mortlake, 92 ---in harmony with furniture, 181 tenon, _see_ glossary, 28 terror, reign of, vandalism during, 204 timber split to give figure in surface, 76, 118 transition between gothic and renaissance, 44, 47, 63 turned work, _see_ glossary, 28 u upholstered chairs adopted in late elizabethan days, 75 ---seat (william and mary), 122 v vandyck at the court of charles i., 92 varnish, oil, composition of, not now known, 119 ---spirit, a modern invention, 118 ---_vernis-martin_, _see_ glossary, 28 veneer, _see_ glossary, 28 veneered work, its adoption, 139 veneers, woods used as, _see_ glossary, 29 _vernis-martin_ (martin's varnish), _see_ glossary, 28, 182 versailles, sums spent upon building, 166; vandalism at, 172, 177 w wallace collection, illustrations of specimens, at, 163, 171, 181, 183 walnut period, 34 walnut veneer, queen anne period, 139 walpole, horace, 221 waring, messrs., specimens from collection of, 81, 117, 119, 143, 149, 197 watteau, 192 wedgwood, josiah, 247 wellington, duke of, collection in possession of, 209 welsh dresser, 100 westminster abbey, henry vii.'s chapel, 63 william and mary furniture, prices realised at auction, 130 winckelmann, 205 woods preferred by grinling gibbons, 121 ---used for delicate carving by foreign schools, 116 ---used in furniture, _see_ glossary, 29 ---with fancy names, 29; botanical names of, 196 woodwork, sixteenth century, fine examples of, 65 worms, ravages of furniture, 234, 271, 274 wren, sir christopher, 120 y yorkshire chairs, 103 the gresham press, unwin brothers, limited, woking and london. chats on old copper and brass books for collectors _with frontispieces and many illustrations._ chats on english china. by arthur hayden. chats on old furniture. by arthur hayden. chats on old prints. (how to collect and value old engravings.) by arthur hayden. chats on costume. by g. woolliscroft rhead. chats on old lace and needlework. by e. l. lowes. chats on oriental china. by j. f. blacker. chats on old miniatures. by j. j. foster, f.s.a. chats on english earthenware. (companion volume to "chats on english china.") by arthur hayden. chats on autographs. by a. m. broadley. chats on pewter. by h. j. l. i. massé, m.a. chats on postage stamps. by fred. j. melville. chats on old jewellery and trinkets. by maciver percival. chats on cottage and farmhouse furniture. (companion volume to "chats on old furniture.") by arthur hayden. chats on old coins. by fred. w. burgess. chats on old copper and brass. by fred. w. burgess. chats on household curios. by fred. w. burgess. chats on old silver. by arthur hayden. chats on japanese prints. by arthur davison ficke. chats on military curios. by stanley c. johnson. chats on old clocks and watches. by arthur hayden. chats on royal copenhagen porcelain. by arthur hayden. chats on old sheffield plate. (companion volume to "chats on old silver.") by arthur hayden. chats on old english drawings. by randall davies. chats on wedgwood ware. by harry barnard. bye paths of curio collecting. by arthur hayden. with frontispiece and 72 full page illustrations. london: t. fisher unwin, ltd. new york: f. a. stokes company. [illustration: fig. 1.--fine copper ewer. (_in the victoria and albert museum, south kensington._)] chats on old copper and brass by fred. w. burgess author of "chats on old coins," etc. with frontispiece and illustrations from photographs and wash drawings t. fisher unwin ltd london: adelphi terrace _first published 1914_ _second impression 1925_ (_all rights reserved_) preface the collection of old metal may at first sight appear a somewhat unattractive hobby; a moment's reflection, however, brings to mind the wonderful art treasures of metal in our museums, gathered together from many parts of the world; not necessarily of the precious metals, for many of the most cunningly contrived objects of antiquarian research are of copper in one or more of its numerous forms of alloy. copper is the basis of so many alloys of which metallic curios are formed, that in its combination with other metals it gives the collector an almost inexhaustible field of research. it was the metal of the ancients, which in combination with tin gave them that useful metal with which to fashion weapons of offence and defence, and later, as the bronze age advanced, utilitarian objects of household economy. collectors find the age of metals unfolding as they arrange their collections with orderly sequence, and thereby trace the progress of artificers throughout the periods which have intervened since the first bronze celt was moulded to the present day. although this is the age of iron and the numerous materials which metallurgical research and scientific skill have produced, copper, and brass in its varied forms, are still prominent, and the almost inexhaustible supply of copper with which nature has provided us is still being drawn from. in this work the curios and artistic objects of use and ornament which have come down to us, contributed by craftsmen of many ages and of many countries, are passed in review. the object of so doing has been to awaken still greater interest--if that is possible--in the collection of copper and brass, and to preserve to futurity metal objects from which the utilitarian purpose of their manufacture is fast waning--if not already gone. although the rarest and most costly objects are to be found in museums and the galleries of the wealthy, there are many still in the homes of the people, and there are many who seek and obtain pleasure and delight from the collection of the curious and the beautiful who cannot afford the unique specimens which are so costly. to such this book should appeal, for the descriptions and the illustrations have been drawn from many sources, and their selection has by no means been confined to the rarer types. the illustrations are reproductions of photographs which have been willingly furnished by owners of collections and museum authorities. a large number, too, have been specially drawn for this work by my daughter, miss ethel burgess. i gratefully acknowledge the kindness of those who have allowed me to make use of objects in their collections. i would especially bear testimony to the courtesy of the directors of the british museum who have authorized their printers, the university press, oxford, to furnish blocks of some of the most interesting metal objects in the galleries. the director of the victoria and albert museum has granted facilities for the reproduction of some of the beautiful metal-work at south kensington. my thanks are especially due to mr. guy laking, m.v.o., f.s.a., who, although in the midst of the removal of the london museum from kensington palace to its new home at stafford house, has kindly supplied several photographs of scarce metal objects. special drawings have been made of several representative objects in the guildhall museum, through the courtesy of the curator. permission has been granted to reproduce photographs and illustrations of objects in several of the more important provincial museums, and in several instances some very interesting information has been given by the curators. among others i should like to give the names of mr. f. r. rowley, curator of the royal albert memorial museum at exeter; mr. t. sheppard, f.g.s., f.s.a.scot., curator of the municipal museum, hull; dr. hoyle, director of the national museum of wales, cardiff; mr. j. a. charlton deas, f.r.hist.s., director of the museum and art gallery, sunderland; mr. thos. midgley, f.r.met.s., chadwick museum, bolton; mr. r. rathbun, assistant secretary of the united states national museum, washington; and the town clerk of winchester. i am further indebted to messrs. glendining & co., ltd., who have given me permission to reproduce some beautiful oriental metal-work which has recently passed under the hammer in their london galleries; also to messrs. herbert benham & co., for a drawing of the copper ball and cross of st. paul's; and to mr. amor, of st. james's, s.w., the edward gallery, of king street, s.w., and mr. chas. wayte, of edenbridge, who have given me photographs of rare pieces of art metal-work. i have endeavoured to refrain from technicalities or dry descriptions; but some of the chapters have necessarily a touch of the workshop and the foundry about them. i can assure my readers, however, that the "metallic ring" is inseparable from copper and brass, and that the pleasures of possession will be added to by the better understanding it will impart to those who collect and admire similar objects to those referred to in this work. fred. w. burgess. london, 1914. contents page preface 7 glossary 23 chapter i the metal and its alloys 35 ancient bronze--the bronzes of greece, rome, and eastern nations--copper for enamels--the brass of commerce--bell metal--the sources of copper--the making of brass--copper as an alloy--the characteristics of metal. chapter ii the hunting ground 51 in buried cities--turned up by the plough--among saxon and norman remains--in hidden chambers--in local museums--dealers' shops--the engraver's art. chapter iii prehistoric bronzes. 63 the dawn of progress--london relics--the beauty of ancient art--the useful bronzes, the prototypes of later brasses--the forger at work. chapter iv greek and roman curios 77 grecian bronzes--relics of roman occupation--interesting toilet requisites--artificial lighting--statues and monuments--romano-british art--a well-staged exhibit. chapter v mediæval antiquities 93 domestic brasswork--metal signs and badges--ornamental trinkets--arms and armour. chapter vi later metal-work 111 the influence of the guilds--architectural metal-work--the door knocker--interior metal-work. chapter vii church brasswork 133 candlesticks--altar brasses--metal architectural ornament--memorial brasses. chapter viii domestic utensils 153 the kitchen--the houseplace--chimney and other ornaments--classified arrangement. chapter ix candlesticks and lamps 193 fire-making apparatus--candles and candlesticks--oil lamps and lanterns. chapter x bells and bell-metal castings 215 the founders' secrets--great bells of historic fame--the uses of bells--old mortars. chapter xi civic emblems and weights and measures 229 the ancient horn--the badge of office--weighing instruments--measures in exeter museum--our standards. chapter xii bronzes and their replicas 247 early figure modelling--statues in public places--replicas in miniature. chapter xiii oriental bronzes and brasses 261 countries of origin--how some oriental curios are derived--a wealth of metal on view--various indian wares--chinese and japanese art. chapter xiv idols and temple relics 289 varied shrines and many idols--indian idols--temple vases and ornaments. chapter xv native metal-work 303 outside influences--benin bronzes--other african curios. chapter xvi continental copper and brass 313 italian bronzes--french art--dutch brasswork--german metal-work. chapter xvii sundials, clocks, and brass instruments 327 the mystery of dialling--some old dials--antique clocks--old watches--the weather--scientific instruments. chapter xviii enamels on copper 347 processes of enamelling--chinese and japanese enamels--british enamels. chapter xix miscellaneous metal curios 361 tobacco-boxes and pipe-stoppers--snuff-boxes--handles and handle-plates--horse-trappings--war relics--tiny curios--replicas. chapter xx wrinkles for collectors 385 cleaning copper and brass--lacquering metal--polishing brass--restoring antique finishes--using the burnisher--brass rubbings. index 395 illustrations fig. 1. fine copper ewer _frontispiece_ page 2. (1) bronze buckler from the thames valley 39 3. (2) another buckler from aberystwyth 39 4. part of the hoard of implements of the late bronze age, found in king's co., ireland 55 5. (1) bronze caldron 67 6. (2) urn of the later bronze age 67 7. bronze saucepan with foliated handle 85 8. ewer of hammered copper 85 9. lamp of cast bronze 85 10. lamp of brass inlaid with copper 85 11. brass aquamanile (seventeenth century) 99 12. brass _couvre de feu_, a rare early piece 113 13. copper vane on billingsgate fish market 119 14. the city dragon as a weather-vane 119 15. copper cock vane, one of four on smithfield market 119 16. bronze knocker of the armorial type 129 17. brass drop knocker in the form of a dolphin 129 18. brass well bucket 129 19. curious double candlestick 135 20. venetian candelabrum (one of a pair) 141 21. bronze incense burner and incense boat 145 22. the copper-gilt cross on st. paul's cathedral 149 23. seventeenth-century room in the london museum 157 24. bronze caldron in trinity hospital, leicester 161 25. seventeenth-century brass pan 165 26. brass tripod pot 165 27. caldron of cast brass 165 28. brass cooking vessel with curved handle 165 29. skillet (brass), the handle of which is engraved with the motto "pitty the pore" 169 30 and 31. bronze cooking vessels, attributed to the beginning of the seventeenth century 169 32 and 33. copper water jug and water pot 173 34. copper water jug and cover 173 35. brass two-handled water vessel 173 36. a finely-pierced brass trivet, dated 1668 177 37. brass-topped trivet, with additional leg stay 177 38. brass-topped trivet, with turned wood handle 177 39. copper helmet-shaped coal-box 181 40. brass foot-warmer with bail handle 185 41 and 42. early brass or bronze hand-warmer, shown open and closed 185 43 and 44. brass chimney ornaments (one each of pairs) 189 45. brass horse, a chimney or hob-grate ornament 189 46. a two-tube candle mould 197 47. two types of early pricket candlesticks 197 48. pair of candelabrum of early type (central figure) and two old oil lamps 201 49. group of rare candlesticks, alms-dish, and ewers 205 50. early bronze lamp 209 51. old brass lantern 213 52. bell cast by john pennington at exeter in 1670 223 53. group of bell-metal mortars 223 54. an eighteenth-century flagstaff head of brass, originally gilt 233 55. the winchester moot horn 233 56. the winchester bushel (standard measure) 237 57. old measures based on the winchester standard 237 58. a pint measure of the reign of elizabeth 243 59. a winchester pint of the days of queen anne 243 60. old french weights 243 61. bronze tiger, by antoine louis barye 251 62. bronze lion, by barye 255 63. bronze stag, by barye 259 64. coffee-pot of hammered copper from syria 265 65. saracenic decorated brass basin 269 66. japanese kettle (_yuwakashi_) 275 67. pair of vases of red-brown copper, relieved with black lac, from moradabad 275 68. bronze figure (one of a pair) inlaid with silver and gold 285 69. amida (indian idol) 291 70. a "blue" tara (indian idol) 291 71. amitayus (indian idol) 291 72. vajra dharma (indian idol) 291 73. amitayus (indian idol) 291 74. japanese pricket candlestick in the form of crane and tortoise 295 75. japanese ritual vase 299 76. small two-handled ritual vase 299 77. circular vase on stand 299 78. bronze oviform ewer 315 79. brass ewer with artistic handle 315 80. dutch ornamental brass cistern 323 81. french ewer or tankard with fancy handle 323 82. french ewer with grotesque mouth (sixteenth century) 323 83. early dials--on the left an armillary dial; in the centre pillar dial; and on the right a ring dial 331 84. curious old microscope, made in 1780 331 85. engraved pocket clock 337 86. a handsome bronze barometer 343 87. bowl of the ming period 353 88. box of pekin enamel 353 89. ming bowl 353 90. fine altar set of cloisonné enamels (ch'ien lung period) 359 91. collection of brass amulets (harness brasses) 371 glossary glossary =astrolabe.=--the astrolabe is an instrument which was largely used in taking the altitude of the sun or stars at sea. it was well known to the greeks, and takes its names from two greek words, meaning _a star_ and _to take_. perfected by the arabs, the instrument was introduced into europe about the tenth century. it is said that the most famous examples are to be seen in the museums at madrid and florence. there is one in the british museum, which was made for henry, prince of wales, in 1574. =barrow.=--mounds in which bronze celts, knives, spear-heads, and food receptacles are found along with the remains of chieftains and others of the prehistoric peoples once inhabiting this country. the term "barrow" originally denoted a "little hill." round barrows are the most common form, although some are oval and some of the "long barrow" type. the methods of burial differed, but in most instances implements of stone or bronze as well as vessels of pottery and some trinkets belonging to the dead were usually placed near to the body. =betel-nut boxes.=--the beautifully ornate boxes, chiefly found in india, made for holding the betel-nut and the shell lime used by the natives who chew the leaves and nut of the areca palm. =bidri metal.=--the metal objects known as bidri are made of an alloy of copper-zinc and lead, damascened with silver, showing a peculiarly striking contrast in black and white. the villages round lucknow are famous for this curious and effective inlaid metal work. =brass.=--an alloy of copper and zinc. early brass was copper mixed with calamine melted in a crucible. the ancient form of alloyed metal employed by the romans was copper and tin, which, although frequently termed "brass" is more correctly defined as bronze (see bronze). the greater the proportion of zinc the lighter the colour; but the addition of an extra quantity of zinc reduced the tenacity and ductility of the metal. =brasses.=--the term brasses is applied (in antiquarian and curio metallurgy) to the monumental brasses which as early as the first half of the thirteenth century replaced the older effigies, such as those of the crusaders, which may be seen in the temple church, in london. the brasses, of which many rubbings have been taken, include the large brasses, covering nearly the whole of their tomb flag, and the small brasses on which were engraved emblems, escutcheons, and inscriptions, inset into large slabs of marble or stone, ornamenting rather than constituting the covering of tombs. =brazier.=--primarily a pan for holding burning coals. the brazier was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a domestic appliance for keeping hot dishes for the table, some very interesting examples of an ornamental character, doubtless used for that purpose, being referred to in chapter viii. the brazier, so called to-day, is a tripod open fire chiefly used out of doors in some open space. =bronze.=--the bronze of the ancients consisted chiefly of pure copper and an alloy of tin. in those very early days the compounding and mixing of the metals must have been done largely by experience and "rule of thumb." it was before the days of metallurgical research and before the chemistry of metals was understood. as yet there was no formula. curiously enough the proper nomenclature of metals has never been formulated, and "bronze" is the term still applied in a very haphazard way to various alloys. quite recently a very able lecture was delivered by dr. rosenhain, of the national physical laboratory, on the "nomenclature of alloys" at a meeting of the birmingham section of the institute of metals. every one, he told us, described metals "at his own sweet will," and for the most part by misleading terms. he suggested in reference to copper-bronze alloys that "copper-zinc" might denote an alloy with more copper than zinc in it, and "zinc-copper" when the former metal was present in a greater degree. he thought "tin-copper" would serve as a fairly wide definition of modern bronze. in such bronzes aluminium is now generally added. other scientists have suggested the definition of bronze by chemical numerals, thereby indicating their contents with more exactitude. at present, however, the term bronze is very elastic. =buckler.=--the old english name _bocler_ denoted a shield with a boss. it was worn on the left arm; used in the middle ages to parry blows rather than intended to act as a cover for the body like the larger and more cumbrous shields. =chattie or chatty.=--a porous earthenware vessel used in india for cooling water and other purposes. =chaufferette.=--a spherical metal vessel in the interior of which was a small chain, from which was suspended a cup in which could be placed a piece of red-hot metal or charcoal. it was usually a hand-warmer; some chaufferettes, however, were larger, almost like small stoves. the name is derived from a table stove or small furnace, literally a cylindrical box of sheet-iron, the word coming from the french _chauffer_, to heat. =circe-perdu process.=--the japanese have been wonderfully clever in their manipulation of metals, especially considering the very primitive appliances they used in the early days. some of their most remarkably intricate bronzes were fashioned and modelled in wax, delicately tooled, hardened a little, and then covered over with layers of fine clay until the mould became strong enough. the clay mould when dried was heated until the wax ran out, leaving a smooth and beautifully finished mould in which the bronze metal could be poured, the clay being broken away when it was cold. great skill and at the same time much patience were needed to produce such charming effects. the bronzes of old japan were frequently inlaid with fine and delicate tracery in silver and gold. up to comparatively recent times beautifully modelled ornaments were fashioned by such laborious processes, and even now by more modern methods much labour is expended on their production. =counters.=--counters have been used in card games from quite early times. they were frequently of engraved metal. in the reign of james i., we are told by horace walpole, one nicholas hilliard was licensed for twelve years to engrave card counters on which was the royal portrait. in later reigns similar counters were so engraved. those of the time of queen anne bore a great resemblance to the obverse of the then current coins. sets of counters were frequently supplied in metal boxes, the exteriors of which were often decorated by engravings. it should be clearly understood that metal card-counters--old and modern--are quite distinct from commercial counters or jettons. =couvre de feu.=--the french term, literally, cover of the fire, became the name of the metal shield or cover with which the fire was shut down in the days of the norman kings. from the same root term the english curfew is derived. it was the curfew bell that sounded the signal for the _couvre de feu_ to be brought out and lights and fires to be extinguished. these metal plates, so frequently engraved all over, are among the rarities of domestic curios (see p. 113). =damascene.=--the process of inlaying steel or other metal work with silver or gold beaten into the incised metal. to damascene (also spelled damasken) was a process first emanating from damascus--hence its name. =dialling.=--a dial plate is made by fixing to a flat surface a stile or gnomon, which forms with the horizon an angle equal to the latitude of the place in which it is to be used. when the gnomon is in position a line is drawn upon the surface of the plate so that the shadow of the stile falls exactly upon it at noonday, the plane through the stile and the sun coinciding with the meridian. it cannot be too clearly understood by users of old sundials that dial plates used in any other latitude than that for which they were constructed must necessarily be inaccurate. =ember tongs.=--these little tongs were formerly used to take up the hot embers from among the ashes of a dying fire. they were constantly in use in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many being decorative, the handles often being fashioned to serve the purpose of a pipe stopper. =enamels.=--the enamels applied to copper or brass are glass coloured with oxides of metals, producing blue, green, violet, red, and other shades. these when fused adhere to the metal surface and are very lasting. various processes have been adopted, especially in the fine arts. the principal older processes are champlevé, cloisonné, and limoges. in the first named the spaces to be filled in with enamels are cut into the metal foundation; then, when the enamels have been fired, they are rubbed down and polished. the cloisonné process, chiefly practised in the east, consists of small cells or cloisons formed of wire filled with the requisite colours. limoges enamels, the finest period of which is placed in the sixteenth century, were formed by a ground of enamel painted over, chiefly with classical subjects. opaque enamels on, usually, a convex copper disc or plate, were the work of later craftsmen. at battersea and bilston in england, towards the close of the eighteenth century, many small boxes and trinkets (see p. 356) were produced. the enamels of recent date applied to utilitarian objects and cooking vessels are seldom fixed upon a ground-work of copper--iron or steel being the usual base. in jewelry and small trinkets enamelling on copper is still practised, many such objects being of oriental origin. =fibula.=--a small brooch or buckle. many of the beautifully fashioned fibulæ have been found among the remains of roman london, a large number being on view in the guildhall museum. =gipciere.=--a kind of pouch formerly worn at the girdle, an early type of purse. the name is sometimes spelled _gipser_. =hookah.=--the name given to the bottle through which tobacco smoke is passed. in smoking with a hookah the smoke is cooled by being made to pass through water. =latten.=--the name is primarily derived from the nature of the material--thin sheets. the brass or latten brass was formerly used chiefly for making church utensils. black latten consists of milled sheets of brass, composed of copper and zinc; roll latten, of metal polished on both sides; and white latten of brass and tin. =meander.=--a term applied to the decorations on japanese and other bronzes. to wind, to twist, meandering like the winding river maeander, in phrygia, from which the proverbial term is derived. =mirrors of bronze.=--the bronze mirrors of the romans were given their reflective power by using an alloy of antimony and lead, a combined metal which took a highly reflective polish; the backs, handles, and frames were of bronze. =mortars.=--mortars such as those referred to on p. 226 with accompanying pestles, were commonly in domestic use from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. in later years they were employed chiefly in the preparation of drugs, but more recently they have been superseded by the modern way of preparing spices and other compounds by machinery. the form of the vessel may be described as an inverted bell, the substances therein being pounded or rubbed with the pestle. =patina.=--a term expressive of the colour or encrustation which is imparted to works of art by age. it is used chiefly in reference to the beautiful green formation which covers ancient bronzes, shading from light green to deep brown. this crustation consists of basic copper carbonate, the result of exposure to the air. it is chiefly found on bronzes, the alloy of which is mostly of tin and very little zinc. the patina or patine is also the name given by the romans to a shallow basin used for domestic purposes. =pilgrims' signs.=--the symbols or signs worn by pilgrims when visiting one or other of the famous shrines in this country in mediæval days were distinct from the crests or badges of wealthy patrons which were at one time worn pretty generally as indicating on whose service the journey they were making was being performed. pilgrims' signs were worn on the outward journey chiefly as protective amulets; on the return journey mostly as proof of the pilgrimage, such signs being purchased at or near the shrines to which homage had been paid. the chief shrines in this country were those of st. thomas à becket at canterbury, and walsingham priory in norfolk, where our lady of walsingham was held in high repute. =weather-vane.=--the vane denotes any flat surface attached to an axis and moved by the wind, usually applied to some elevated object for the purpose of telling which way the wind blows. a strip of metal cut to some fanciful form and placed upon a perpendicular axis around which it moves easily. i the metal and its alloys chapter i the metal and its alloys ancient bronze--the bronzes of greece, rome, and eastern nations--copper for enamels--the brass of commerce--bell metal--the sources of copper--the making of brass--copper as an alloy--the characteristics of metals. the coppersmith has taken a prominent place among the craftsmen of all nations, and at all periods, and in not a few instances he has been acknowledged as an artist of no mean order. the material upon which he has worked has been copper and its alloys and compounds. from this metal have been produced many valuable antiques, and among the work of the coppersmith of more recent days there are objects of intense interest and of great beauty. in this work many collectable objects have been classified, and in the different groups of metal-work referred to attention is drawn to these beautiful and sometimes quaint reminders of past generations, and also to some of the most notable non-collectable metal-work which may be seen and admired in museums and art galleries, and to a few of the copper monuments, memorials, and historic relics which are gazed at by the curious, oftentimes without thought of the materials of which they are composed. ancient bronze. the raw material, copper, smelted and beaten or poured from a crucible into moulds, was in more ancient times used in its unalloyed purity--and it is still used in that state. it was, however, soon discovered that copper might be improved for many purposes by mixing with it other metals possessing different properties. the prehistoric peoples who lived in britain, and in other countries within reach, soon added tin, which was found in cornwall quite near to the surface, and was from early times sold to phoenician traders, thereby producing bronze. it is of this metal that most of the much valued curios of the so-called bronze age are made. those who fashioned them were clever manipulators of the alloyed metal, and by processes now little understood were able to temper tools and weapons and to give them keen-cutting edges. our museums are full of spear-heads, celts, axes, and palstaves of bronze, which were cast in moulds of stone cut to the required shapes by those primitive workers in metal, who used simple crucibles in which it was melted. [illustration: fig. 2 (1).--bronze buckler from the thames valley. fig. 3 (2).--another buckler from aberystwyth. (_in the british museum._)] the prehistoric bronzes, some examples of which are referred to in another chapter, are the earliest collectable curios formed of metal. they include implements of war and of the chase and some domestic utensils and cooking vessels. to these useful objects must be added ornaments and trinkets of bronze, so many of which have been found in the barrows and burying-places of prehistoric races. the knowledge of bronze appears to have been widespread. it was understood by those who dwelt in this country, by the inhabitants of european countries, by eastern nations, and by the egyptians, who left such wonderful monuments behind them, giving evidence that they knew how to impart a knife-like edge to their tools of bronze. bronzes of greece and rome and eastern nations. the ancient bronze of prehistoric days must not be confused with the metals or compounds of copper and its alloys which enabled the greeks to produce such wonderful statues. they learned to impart hardness to copper, and wrought much delicate handiwork, much of which has perished; but enough has been spared to confirm classic history and to enable us to realize something of their conceptions of the old gods and personified hopes and aspirations. in like manner the wonderful bronzes of china and old japan were wrought; the metal-worker's art in those countries goes back many centuries. some of the more delicately chiselled figures and groups were first modelled in wax upon an iron core, the mould being then formed of soft clay. when the clay was baked the wax melted, and running away through prepared outlets, left a smooth cavity into which the bronze was afterwards poured. when the metal was cold the clay would easily be broken away, and the object, at the moulding of which we often marvel, made perfect. in course of time such bronzes have been coated over with a beautiful patina of green, that natural finish which age can alone impart. it is in that state so many of the bronzes of grecian sculptors are found, and it is covered with patina of many delightful shades that we buy the metallic curios from china and japan. copper for enamels. in the days when so many beautiful ecclesiastical ornaments were fashioned, copper was the foundation used by mediæval artists as the base of their exquisite enamels. these beautiful objects are especially referred to in chapter xviii, where reference is also made to the enamels of eastern countries, in the making of which brass was frequently used as the foundation. copper has been found suitable as the groundwork upon which super-finishes have given that superiority and attractiveness associated with many of the fine arts. it was suitable for gilding over and for decorating with precious stones. copper was also frequently used by painters, its smooth surface being regarded as an excellent material on which to work. as an example, some of the religious pictures, especially miniatures, were painted on copper, instead of on wood panels. the brass of commerce. many speak of brass as a metal apart from copper, yet the brass of commerce, worked up in many forms, is only a composite metal of which copper is the basis. the popularity of pure copper as the material from which household utensils and many constructional objects of use and ornament were made in the past continued unabated until metallurgical chemists discovered how, by using an alloy of zinc, the metal we call brass could be cast, rolled, and otherwise manipulated. among the advantages claimed for brass is that it has a harder surface and is more resisting than copper. from the days of queen elizabeth onward it was much favoured for domestic vessels, and even at the present time it is used to some extent; there has, however, always been a concurrent use of copper. bell metal and other alloys. there is yet another important alloy, which from its chief use takes the name of bell-metal; its companion alloy is gun-metal. in the mixing of these metals special alloys are aimed at according to the object in view, that is to say, the ingredients vary, but, broadly defined, the copper and its alloy tin used in bell-metal are in the proportion of three to one. the metal was in the past used for those much employed articles of commercial and domestic use, mortars, in addition to the founding of bells. bell-metal was also the material of which weights and measures (especially the standards kept in many of the old cities) were chiefly made (see illustrations and references thereto in chapters x and xi). the sources from which copper is derived. copper seems to have been very widely distributed all over the world, a fact that has contributed to its general use. at one time a local metal employed in a pure state and in conjunction with alloys, chiefly where it was mined, it is now brought to the metal-founder from other parts of the world. although vast quantities of copper are now imported into england, it was from british mines that the supply was drawn in days gone by. the britons understood its use, no doubt finding it out by accident, just as the natives of many other countries have done. copper, as evidenced by the marvellous benin bronzes, was known in central africa long ago. the mines at mansfield, in germany, are the oldest in europe, and there workers have been digging up copper for seven centuries. the collector of old metal objects naturally takes the greater interest in well authenticated specimens known to have been fashioned in districts once famous for their copper mines. unfortunately, the cornish mines produce little ore now. when the romans worked them they obtained copper quite near to the surface; but such easily mined ores have long been cleared. copper smelting was carried on in cumberland and northumberland in days gone by. in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries copper was smelted in yorkshire and lancashire. then we read of the reopening of old cornish mines and of furnaces being erected in bristol. the mines of anglesea are less known, although they were once very active. south wales has for many years past been closely identified with copper smelting, and rolling mills were established in swansea as early as 1720; and although the better knowledge of metallic chemistry enables manufacturers to produce copper more economically than in days gone by, the old principle of crushing, calcining, roasting, and washing the ore, although improved by modern machinery, is still adhered to. as with many other industries, the invention of the steam-engine was a boon to the owners of copper mines in cornwall, many being flooded towards the end of the eighteenth century. with the steam-engine to work them, pumps were put in operation, mines were cleared, and for a time at any rate ore was procured and renewed activity was visible in many british centres. in those days many of the things we now regard as curios were being made. as with many other raw materials the value of copper steadily advanced, for as trade and commerce grew, immense quantities were used up for sheathing ships' bottoms, roofing buildings, for engravers' plates, and for the rolls used in the printing of calicoes. other sources of supply have been found, for the chain extending from land's end to dartmoor no longer serves. the famous parys mines are no more, and it is from foreign countries the supply comes. some of our colonies have proved rich in ores, such, for instance, as south australia, where it is said an early settler examining the burrow of a wombat found the green mineral, that incident leading to the opening of mines yielding vast quantities of copper ore. the making of brass. the brass of commerce, rolled in sheets, drawn in rods and wire, and cast in ingots ready for the founder, is, as it has been stated, a composite metal, very well suited to many purposes. during the sixteenth century much progress was made in metal-founding. the worshipful company of founders was busy. many "battery" works were set up in england, and there brass was hammered or battered into shape. thus brass-workers were engaged in making useful pots and pans, now in their much worn state eagerly sought after by the collector. some worked with the ladle and crucible, others with the hammer and anvil or wood block. the earlier brass was composed of copper mixed with calamine melted in a crucible, a process which continued until the more modern form of melting metallic zinc with copper was understood. champion's process, by which this newer method was carried out, was kept secret for some time, but about the middle of the eighteenth century it was generally understood and the process of stamping brass became a common one in the birmingham district. copper as an alloy. copper, the base of so many alloys, has itself been found a useful alloy of most workable metals, not only in modern times but in years gone by. it is one of the best hardening agents in aluminium, the newer metal which is to some extent displacing copper and brass cooking pots and much ornamental metal-work. according to an expert, aluminium is tasteless, and possesses all the advantages of copper without its drawbacks. that being so, perhaps even vessels of brass, such as may still be seen in kitchens, may soon become obsolete and pass shortly into the rôle of the museum curio. incidentally it may be mentioned that aluminium is not altogether a new metal, neither is its use confined to civilized countries, where metallurgists have proved its advantages; for the natives of the philippines, borneo, and other islands in the pacific have long used it as an independent metal, and also for the purposes of ornamenting other materials. many of the copper and brass curios brought into this country, the products of native smiths, working far from civilized lands, are partly made of aluminium, alloyed chiefly with native copper. the natives of borneo melt it in fireclay crucibles over a coke fire, and are very clever at producing some remarkably fine pieces of metal-work, using different metals for the same object; thus some of their daggers have brass hilts and aluminium blades. the metal-worker has frequently introduced aluminium in the decoration of copper and brass gongs, some of the older examples from japan being extremely decorative. the characteristics of the metals. some collectors very wisely follow up their researches after new treasures by investigating the methods of their production, and they even visit modern works where similar methods, although more advanced, are going on. very interesting indeed is it to watch the molten metal as it is mixed and poured into moulds and made into pigs. to see the great rolling mills through which the bars are passed, and to watch the hammering and drawing by the steam-hammer and powerful machinery, is an education which enhances the interest there is in the possession of finished goods--old and new. it is said the brassfounder's requirements to-day are much the same as they have always been, although perhaps there are more iron moulds used and greater care is taken in their preparation. the mould must have a good surface and be composed of the right kind of iron. the best metal for the purpose appears to be one high in silica and low in combined carbon, thus securing a soft iron which will not crack when the molten metal strikes it. the science of metals is constantly being added to, and the research of chemists of recent years has done much towards improving the skill of present-day artists, most of whom, however, readily give praise to the almost intuitive skill of the artists of olden time. the fashioning of copper and brass follows the preparation of the metal; there are many reasons why copper and its compounds and alloys have been so generally employed, one of the principal being that the ductility of copper has made it welcome wherever the hammer has been brought into play. the possibility of hammering out brass and copper, and especially the latter, is seen in the extreme fineness to which copper wire can be drawn. hood uses the similitude when speaking of how travel improves the mind, and tells of the gradual narrowing of copper and brass as they become finer and finer, likening those who have not travelled to the narrowed metal. collectors of curios show characteristic traits, twofold in application. there are some who get more broad-minded the farther they travel, the more museums they inspect, and the wider their knowledge of the antiquities they admire. others, specialists for the most part, get into very narrow grooves, confining their hobbies to some one class of goods, not always the most interesting in public estimation; then they wonder how it is that their hobbies are not appreciated by their friends! surely the greatest delight is in a representative collection, such as the hobby under review, which shows all the possibilities of copper and brass in their varied treatment. in the examples which have come down to us from the ancients, in those schemes of decoration which mark clearly the work of the artists of some one country or period, and in those general collectable objects which have been brought together from everywhere, there is a liberal education: "some minds improve by travel; others, rather, resemble copper wire, or brass, which gets the narrower by going farther." ii the hunting ground chapter ii the hunting ground in buried cities--turned up by the plough--among saxon and norman remains--in hidden chambers--in local museums--dealers' shops--the engraver's art. the multiplicity of collectable objects needed to supply collectors makes the uninitiated wonder where all these antiques come from. countless numbers of beautiful objects have found their way into the melting-pot in the past, and what once was old has in some new form become once more a useful article, in its turn to be discarded and perhaps melted up and recast. in buried cities. the curios which have been preserved for centuries beneath the soil are often of priceless value, telling of the habits of peoples of whom history has told us little. celts, knives, spear-heads, and food receptacles are discovered on the sites of prehistoric camping-grounds. the delicately tooled bronzes from buried cities like pompeii and herculaneum come to us with almost a living force in this twentieth century. as we gaze at the wonderful beauty of their forms and the charming patina of green with which they are covered, we can almost imagine what they looked like in the hands of patrons of art in the far-off times when they were first fashioned. our own country is full of ruins of ancient cities far below the present roadways. when the romans built bath it was in a hollow much deeper than the level of the modern city, and it is in these lower levels that relics of roman bath are found. there is a ring of sadness in the desolation of such ancient cities as verulamium, cirencester, kenchester, and similarly deserted locations where modern excavations have been going on recently. it seems curious how the very sites of such once famous places have been lost, but not strange when we remember that more recently occupied towns are but grass mounds--to-day explorers are cutting into the turf-covered mounds of old sarum to ascertain where its chief buildings stood. the finds on these ancient sites are varied; many of them are metallic, and although of trifling intrinsic value are prized as being authentic curios. [illustration: fig. 4.--part of the hoard of implements of the late bronze age, found in king's co., ireland. (_in the british museum._)] turned up by the plough. the plough has played an important part in history, and collectors owe much to that useful implement. it has been the means of bringing to light many vessels which have been buried for centuries, for although land has been ploughed many seasons, a deeper ploughshare or more frequent ploughing on the same spot has brought nearer to the surface a copper vessel or an earthen jar, full of antiquarian interest. the field and the forest, and even the deserted mines, have brought to collectors of old metal many interesting relics. until quite recently there was an old bronze caldron on view in the window of a dealer in antiques in chester. it was the prototype of many similar vessels that have been made in later days in different parts of the country, the model on which the more modern pots or camp-kettles of the gipsies and the three-legged pots commonly suspended over the cottage hearth, until comparatively modern times, have been fashioned. it is worthy of note that the principle adopted by those early metal-workers is still observed in the more scientific construction of cooking vessels to-day. the form of the caldron was such that by applying heat under the centre the flames spread and leapt up the sides, curling as they travelled, following the lines fashioned by the coppersmiths, and heating the contents of the vessel equally. such ancient caldrons, sometimes much worn and at others in fairly good condition, have been preserved by mother earth until discovered in modern times. among saxon and norman remains. the saxons and normans used metal, and the brawny arms of the smiths, and later the founders, fashioned the cooking-pots made in their day. many metal curios, much battered by fallen masonry, have been found among the ruins of norman castles and in some cases of the still earlier saxon dwellings. the discoveries of curios of those periods are by no means frequent, and it would appear as if we must now be content with storing carefully those relics already discovered. modern restorations and excavations have brought many valuable antiquities to light, and authorities have been very careful to preserve them in county or local museums. in hidden chambers. the splendour of mediæval days when feasting in the great hall of the baron or overlord has been revealed by many noted finds. the great kitchens of those mansions were full of copper and brass, and it is from such supplies that many of the best authenticated specimens have come. some are historical; even bronze caldrons and more modest-looking saucepans have been made to the order of some mediæval chieftain or baron. the life of the common people of this country varied little between the days of the norman conquest and those of the tudor sovereigns who held court in the houses of the nobility. the dress, costume, and rough splendour of the elizabethan age had its effect, however, on the homes of courtiers and eventually of the common people. when the stormy times of the civil war came there was a rude breaking up of the old order of things, and in cromwellian days some preparation for the new which was to come. after the battlefield came the destruction of stronghold and mansion by order of the parliament. some escaped, and within the last century not a few domestic curios have been found during the restoration and rebuilding of old houses dating from the time of the commonwealth. priests' cells and secret chambers, sliding panels and concealed cupboards, and other hidden places were the rule rather than the exception at the time of the civil war. in some of these long-forgotten places of concealment some very interesting domestic objects in copper and brass have been found during rebuilding and restoration. in local museums. it is a moot point whether the frequent change in the ownership of curios which goes on every day, as evidenced by the auction sales, stirs up the curiosity of the collector and awakens his interest in his hobby to a greater extent than when such curios are placed on view in local museums. the fact remains that, notwithstanding the constant circulation of curios, many find a permanent home in museums. not only do the national collections in the british museum, and the victoria and albert museum at south kensington grow rapidly, but in almost every town of note there are local and great district museums. this latter class is instanced in the welsh national museum at cardiff. there are two typical local museums in london--the guildhall museum and the london museum, which has just found a new home at stafford house. these museums stimulate local collectors, but they do not contribute to their collections. as places of reference they are invaluable, for the wider spread knowledge of antiques secured by the objects shown prevents amateurs from falling into traps and consequently becoming disheartened. dealers' shops. the shops of dealers supplement the auction-rooms. they are partly fed from them and partly by the persistent search ever going on for objects in which their owners have little interest and are willing to part with for a consideration--not always the "top price." the greater popularity of curio-hunting has caused a vigorous search of attic and cellar at the instance of dealers as well as collectors. even the palaces of kings and queens and the houses of the nobility have been ransacked, and treasures from an artistic point of view, as well as from a utilitarian, have been brought to light and the dust of many years wiped away. many delightful examples of the coppersmith's art were until recently condemned by the travelling tinker as being no longer repairable, with the natural consequence that, their value as antiques being unknown, they were eventually sold for an "old song." those pioneers of collecting who had time on their hands and foresaw an accruing value of even old metal went about from town to town examining the marine stores and visiting villages and farmhouses in search of anything old and curious. to-day there are few genuine antiques without some one to value them. nearly every collection belongs to an appreciative owner, and when curios change hands it is generally at a premium instead of at "a bargain price." hitherto reference has been made chiefly to metal curios of british make, and to those objects with which englishmen have become familiar. the collector, however, is cosmopolitan in his aims, and cheerfully searches the world over for objects of interest. his curios come from the far east, from central africa, and from all parts of europe, and to some extent from the american continents. there have been many methods of producing metal-work, yet native workers in all countries have had but two processes upon which they have based their plans, and it is from the smiths who hammered copper and brass into shape, and in later days stamped it, and the founder who cast the metal in moulds, that all our curios come. the engraver's art. this outline of the hunting-ground of the collector would be incomplete without some mention of the products of the graver's tool which has produced so many works of art. the much prized mezzotints, stipples, and line engravings are pictures for the most part printed from copper plates. the metal rolled in sheets and planished becomes a work of art in itself when covered with those beautiful pictures so cleverly wrought upon the metal by the light touch of the graver. perhaps one of the most interesting uses to which copper has been put is that of executing beautiful miniatures--tiny pictures, portraits, and emblematic designs such as were used by traders on their stationery in years gone by. the copper-plate engraver has left his mark, too, in the beautifully quaint and very valued early issues of postage-stamps, some of which were printed from copper plates. just as copper plays an important part in the production of postage-stamps and pictures, so copper in conjunction with its alloys is the common metal of currency. some of the most valuable metallic curios are the ancient coins which have been dug up from where they have been buried for centuries, or discovered in some hidden chamber. such little objects of copper or bronze have an antiquarian value far beyond either their artistic beauty or their age warrants being associated with them. collectors of metals know the value of some of the historic commemorative medallions in bronze, and heroes and warriors show their appreciation of one of the commoner metals in the value they set upon the simple maltese cross inscribed "for valour," for the victoria cross is more coveted than any naval or military award the sovereign of these realms can bestow. its owners regard it as a precious relic, and the reluctance of those left behind to part with it is seen in the large sum which has to be paid for one of these simple bronze crosses when it comes in the market. iii prehistoric bronzes chapter iii prehistoric bronzes the dawn of progress--london relics--the beauty of ancient art--the useful bronzes, the prototypes of later brasses--the forger at work. as it has already been intimated, our older metal curios come to us from the bronze age. in the relics of that period, in which the british museum is so rich, we are able to mark the great difference that must have existed between the people who lived the "simple life" in the stone age, and those who understood how to make and how to use implements of bronze. metal must have revolutionized the habits of the people, fostered development, and marked progress as the age advanced; for with metal appliances there were greater possibilities, and from the fact that while some used bronze others were content with flint, it would appear that then, perhaps, more than at any other time, the more advanced were sharply separated from those who, possessing lesser intelligence and possibly fewer opportunities, stayed behind. the dawn of progress. the more advanced britons and the men of the later bronze age in other countries improved the patterns of their tools, the basis of which was found in flint implements, which in the later neolithic period had become more varied. even then they had hammer, saw, chisel, borer, spear or javelin, and arrow-point. they had also a variety of knives; some of curious sickle-like forms. there are weapons of war and weapons of defence, and some obviously used for the more peaceful arts and domestic purposes. as the collector secures specimens of the rarer types of bronze and metal objects coming to us from those far-off days, we read the story of the evolution of the race, and can picture in our minds the onward march. [illustration: fig. 5 (1).--bronze caldron; and fig. 6 (2).--urn of the later bronze age. (_in the british museum._)] the romans did not find the ancient britons quite savages, and we sigh with regret when we think of the numberless relics of priceless value--of bronze and of even more precious metals--which existed then, but which have perished long ago. the melting-pot has been a terribly fierce enemy to the collector of copper and brass, and it is really wonderful how many rare objects of the bronze age remain--prehistoric only in that we have no authentic records of the happenings of that period. we have, however, abundant evidence of the importance of that age in the bronzes preserved to us for so long by mother earth, and now carefully tended by museum curators and private collectors. among the fine examples we possess in our national collections are the ornamental bucklers of which some have been found in wales and other places. that represented in fig. 2 (1) came from the thames valley, and fig. 3 (2) from the peat bogs near aberystwyth; both may be seen in the british museum. some exceptional hoards have been found in ireland, notably the bronzes which were discovered in 1825 in a part of whigsborough, called derreens, in king's co. it is surmised that although the land is now boggy the soil was at one time under cultivation, and from indications it would appear as if the bronzefounder had worked on the spot. in fig. 4 several representative implements found in that hoard are pictured; their descriptions are as follows: fig. 4 (1 and 3), palstaves; (5, 6, and 7), daggers; (2) a pear-shaped bell; (4 and 8) curved trumpets, all specimens of the latter part of the bronze age or of the beginning of the iron age. many fine bronze vessels, chiefly without feet, have been found in ireland. the two examples shown in figs. 5 and 6 represent the way in which they were made, especially fig. 5 (1), in which the riveting of the plates will be observed. fig. 6 (2) has been designated an urn. both of these late bronzes are in the british museum, along with other irish finds. in the same collection there is a trumpet of horn with rings or bands of studs, the mouthpiece being at the side. it is a curious relic of an irish musician, found some years ago at drimoleague, co. cork. london relics. london has been the site of an important camp, town, or city ever since man lived in the marshes and upon the banks of old father thames, and among the finds in the neighbourhood have been relics of every period of british civilization; and as a natural consequence london possesses representative collections of the bronze age, as well as of later periods. collectors have many opportunities of buying, as well as of inspecting prehistoric bronzes in museums and in less important private collections. some of these antiquities are of good form and possess a beauty of their own. the vivid green, relieved with deeper shades, with which age has painted these ancient relics gives them a peculiar charm, and it would be vandalism indeed to attempt to "clean" the celts and knives which antiquaries handle with such veneration and care. the beauty of ancient art. during the last few years more attention has been given to the beauty of the workmanship of the early objects of brass and copper relics of prehistoric peoples, especially of the people who inhabited this country in pre-roman days. the london museums contain very representative examples. to many the guildhall museum is of special interest, in that every object there has been found within the confines of the city of london. there are implements of the chase and of war and peace. for instance, in the cases containing weapons which may have been used for defence against wild animals, as well as for aggressive campaigns, there are bronze celts, some socketed with loops, side by side with a very fine tool and two small lumps of copper, which were discovered near the celt. these latter represent the unfinished material ready for the crucible and for the alloy which was to turn them into a bronze of special hardness. in the same case there are leaf-shaped swords and daggers of rapier form. there are also spear-heads of slender shapes with sockets extending near to the point of the weapon; and spear shaft-sockets of bronze, some of which were found in fetter lane. of the late celtic period there are examples of personal objects, and it may be noted that duplicates of similar antiquities to those deposited in the museum are on sale in a great number of shops in london, and now and then quite important parcels of these interesting metallic mementoes of peoples unknown come under the hammer. such trinkets include bronze fibulæ, some enamelled, others of plain metal. a very beautiful specimen terminating with a roughly formed snake's head was found on the thames bank near hammersmith, on the site of reputed pile dwellings, some little time ago. in the same locality a bronze bowl and a mount were found soon afterwards. from the river near battersea came a bronze shield, specially interesting in that it was decorated with enamelled ornaments. horse-bits with enamelled rosettes have also been found in london. perhaps one of the most interesting relics of that early age was a british helmet of copper, also decorated with enamels, found near waterloo bridge. in the guildhall museum there is a brooch made with a bow and pin in one piece, and quite a number of other styles of bronze fibulæ. there are bronze hairpins, too, some of the heads being decorated. there are celtic tweezers, armlets of bronze, and many rings. to the inquisitive who like to inquire into the processes of making things and to their sources, the remains of ancient workshops represented by lumps of copper, strips of bronze, and objects partly formed, are of special interest. there are bows, showing another advance in civilization. there are spoons, too, of circular form, hammered into shape. it has been said that bowls and spoons are the earliest signs of domesticity and civilization. our ancestors, who lived on the seashore, made use of large shells, which gave them the cue to the fashioning of a shallow dish, which eventually became a bowl. the wings of the valves of the oyster and the pecten may have given the suggestion of a handle to a primitive spoon. ethnologists have said that the broken cocoanut in the south seas was the bowl of the primitive tribes, and from it vessels in clay were moulded. the useful bronzes, the prototypes of later brasses. the beautiful bronzes of the later part of the bronze age include objects showing the gradual development and progress of the race. not only are the weapons those likely to be used in defence against attacks from wild animals rather than for aggressive purposes, and the domestic bronzes of more civilized forms, but there are in addition implements of husbandry. in ireland some very pronounced sickles and reaping-hooks have been found. there are also musical instruments and sounding horns, among them curved trumpets of bronze. many interesting although isolated finds have been made, such as a curious bronze or brass bucket with corrugated flutes, which was found at weybridge, in surrey, experts placing it among the relics of the early iron age. from faversham, in kent, many bronze mirrors have been secured, some of them being very ornamental, the backs being engraved all over. in the north of england several interesting finds have been made, too. some of especial value were discovered in heathery burn cave, co. durham; they consisted of domestic utensils which were probably used at the extreme end of the bronze age. among frequent finds is the patera or drinking-bowl, which must, of course, be distinguished from the patine, which was a flat dish with a raised rim, used for serving up meat or fish. indeed, it would appear that some of the peoples who dwelt in those far-off ages of which we have no written history were more advanced in civilization and in the arts and crafts than we usually realize. modern research has revealed much that was hitherto unknown, and scientists, explorers, and antiquaries now hold the ancients in much greater respect than formerly--they no longer regard them as "savages," although they may class them with the "barbarians" of more modern europe. professor petrie, the famous egyptologist, when speaking on his wonderful researches some little time ago, said mankind had had a long past. that past leads to the present, and without a knowledge of the present and to some extent of the intermediate ages we cannot fully understand the past. it is the curios of antiquity which help us, and lead up by slow degrees to the present; this is understood by the curio-hunter, and realized more and more as he goes further into the past of nations. the curios of the bronze age are not limited in locality. they are found in continents far removed from western civilization, for in the remains of ancient peruvians there are tools of bronze belonging to their far-off past. the incas were not only adepts at working the precious metals with tools of bronze, but they were clever workers of other raw materials. they possessed beautiful textiles of cotton and wool and were noted agriculturists, having implements of tillage made of bronze. the forger at work. a warning note is often sounded by those who have paid dearly for their experience. it is needed, for there are many pitfalls for the unwary, especially in his researches among the relics of the bronze age and periods which have been much copied by the makers of modern antiques. it is worthy of note that in the middle of the nineteenth century several birmingham firms in making bronzed inkstands, bracket lights, candelabra, and figures supporting lamps, copied the antique very closely, one noted firm announcing on their trade circulars that their designs were "according to greek, roman, and gothic ornaments." examples of such comparatively modern work, when discovered tarnished and neglected, may sometimes have a close resemblance to real antiques, and even the curios of still greater antiquity--especially egyptian curiosities--have been much forged. the forger--or, as he would prefer to be called, the maker of replicas--is still at work. iv greek and roman curios chapter iv greek and roman curios grecian bronzes--relics of roman occupation--interesting toilet requisites--artificial lighting--statues and monuments--romano-british art--a well staged exhibit. it is from the curios in metal and the antiquities in stone which have been discovered, chiefly in comparatively recent years, that we are able to read with understanding the allusions made by classic writers to domestic life as it was in ancient greece and rome. the records of the art of greece become more real when we have gazed upon the beautiful and graceful statues and the furniture of the palace and domain for which the artists and metal-workers of those days were so justly celebrated. even the public school boy takes a greater interest in his studies when he recognizes in the furnishings of his home antiquities from greece or those lands in which that once powerful nation founded colonies. grecian bronzes. in the modern replicas of antiques, and in the fashioning of the common household bronzes of the present day, the craftsman, perhaps unconsciously, gains inspiration from the older race of artists in metals. indeed, the nearer the workman adheres to the form of the statues and domestic decorative metal-work of the ancients, the more likely he is to succeed in imparting refinement to the modern home. ancient greece was the nursery of art and the training ground of the athlete and of the model who served as the type of the goddesses whose perfect forms and attributes were regarded as worthy of the divinities her sons and daughters worshipped. most of the metal objects coming to us from classic days are of bronze, toned and patinated. images of the gods and goddesses worshipped by the ancient greeks were to be found in every house. wealthy patrons employed the artist in metal to produce idols and appointments for the numerous temples they built. it was the worship of many pagan deities that found work for many craftsmen. the very multiplicity of the gods served the purposes of trade, hence the supporters of pagan practices and worship found in the metal-workers and artists who wrought such things powerful allies. we read in biblical accounts of that day that the introduction of christianity caused no small stir amongst them, and incited demetrius, the silversmith, and others to rise up against the "new religion," which gave no immediate promises of employment of metal-workers to compensate them for the loss of trade in idols. it was thus that so much that is beautiful when regarded as merely artistic bronze figures was made. among the favourite deities whose emblematic bronzes have been preserved to us are diana, venus, mercury, and hercules. they rank with the gods of brass of the heathen, and according to their classic beauty are admired with the idols of metal from india and africa (see chapter xiv). in all these treasures from the old world, little known or understood now, there is a blend of the decorative and artistic and the more utilitarian objects of the household. the slaves of the old families often lived luxurious lives, although the goodwill of their patrons and owners might be fickle. they had their duties, and the metal objects they handled and often skilfully manipulated are still preserved in our museums. these were often fashioned with the same grace as the statues which adorned porticoes and halls. the ornamental objects of greek workmanship include useful braziers or bronze tripods which gave heat and also served as purifiers; for into their round brass dishes were thrown perfumes to correct the smell of the coals and charcoal, which were then held to be injurious. such braziers were also used by the romans, and even in the middle ages were not uncommon, pepper and cloves being then burned for fragrance. relics of roman occupation. although many beautiful objects have been imported into this country by collectors and dealers bought in rome itself, and in italian and other continental cities where roman remains have been found, it is the relics of the roman occupation in britain which take first place in our estimation among the valued curios of that great nation. these have been found in many places, often quite unexpectedly. modern london, like modern rome, stands in part on ruins of an older city. hence it is that when foundations are being dug and excavations to some 15 to 20 feet are made, relics of roman london and of saxon and early norman buildings which were built in subsequent ages upon the older ruins come to light. it is amidst these ruins and the debris of old architecture that metal curiosities are often found. copper and brass have not perished to the same extent as iron and more corrosive metals. in london, bath, chester, and cities which were famous many centuries ago, the earliest metal curiosities are unearthed. but many of the most valued have been found where least expected, for it must be remembered that even the sites of many old cities have been lost, and green fields now cover the old foundations. it is a little disappointing at first, when a collection of roman antiquities is under examination, to find that they bear a striking resemblance to modern appliances--especially is that so in the cooking utensils. most of these early vessels are of bronze; some, however, are of pure copper, mostly covered over with green patina. the useful seems to have predominated over the ornamental; possibly it is that the more substantial cooking-pots and pans have remained, although lighter and more ornamental objects have perished. the pots and saucepans are indeed remarkably like those which are now used for similar purposes. this has been remarked by many who have had to do with the uncovering of long buried ruins. a writer describing a roman kitchen attached to the villa of a patrician family of note in the republican era before augustus assumed the purple, which had been uncovered in rome, said, "the culinary utensils found there are much like our own, made of brass, some of them dipped or plated over with silver." they consisted of kettles with feet, with a dome-shaped opening under them, a hollow cylinder which entered into the kettle base so that the fire could penetrate it. many of these utensils, whilst possessing great strength and lasting qualities, were not altogether plain, for they were covered with foliated ornament like the saucepan illustrated in fig. 7. the saucepans without handles were something like a caldron on feet; many, however, were fitted with bail handles, by which they could be hung over the fire by the aid of a tripod. the metal of which these early vessels were made varied, for although some were of bronze, some were made of a yellowish brass, like one found in london near ludgate. the guildhall museum is the best place to find a thoroughly representative collection of roman metal-work. in the cases there are curious saucer-like bowls with and without handles, many spoons of bronze, and a variety of ladles, some of which have long and narrow bowls; and there are some culinary strainers, not unlike the modern colander. there are many ewers and some bowls or basins of bronze. in fig. 8 is shown a ewer of hammered copper, the handle having at the time it was made, or at some later period, been strengthened with brass wire, which is in part flattened and stamped with medallions giving the vessel an exceedingly ornamental appearance. this curious piece is to be seen in the victoria and albert museum. among the more important kitchen accessories which have been discovered on the sites of roman towns are bronze scales not unlike miniatures of the steelyards once common in england, and still used by butchers. then there are brass gridirons, dripping-pans, and cups of bronze. there are also copper pails for cooling wine, and in a few instances bronze stands for the wine amphoræ. it is almost impossible to point out the sites which are likely to yield the explorer the best results, neither is it possible to locate the town where metal-work has been found to the greatest extent, for all old camping-grounds and towns once occupied by roman troops or residential cities during roman occupation contain what has been thrown away as useless or has been buried accidentally. the collector is delighted with the many little objects which can be bought, trifling matters when seen separately, but very interesting when collectively displayed. [illustration: fig. 7.--bronze saucepan with foliated handle.] [illustration: fig. 8.--ewer of hammered copper.] [illustration: fig. 9.--lamp of cast bronze.] [illustration: fig. 10.--lamp of brass inlaid with copper.] interesting toilet requisites. during excavations on the site of the national safe deposit company's premises in walbrook quite a number of beautifully formed small objects were found. indeed, such curios (by no means uncommonly met with on sale in curio shops) are very numerous, and include toilet implements, armlets of twisted copper wire, finger rings of bronze, dress fasteners, pins, fibulæ, tweezers, key rings, bodkins, and needles. the looking-glass is of course a modern invention, but greek and roman maidens learned the art of finishing their toilet in the reflective "glass" of the shining pool, and later by the aid of mirrors of highly polished metal made by the craftsmen of rome; some of which have been preserved. the surface to which this reflective polish was given was of copper alloyed with antimony and lead. such mirrors were sometimes hung to the girdle, a custom not unknown to shakespeare, who frequently makes mention of it. artificial lighting. artificial light has been a necessity to man ever since primeval days. the whole story of the discovery of fire-making and the light it gave is an enchanting romance. the contrivances for procuring and lighting a fire and for the betterment of artificial light have been many, and throughout the ages they have received perhaps greater attention by the inventor than any other requirement of the race. of all the curios of the period under review none have been more prolific than those associated with artificial light. the lamps of ancient rome, of beautiful bronze and brass, contrasted with the clay or terra-cotta lamps of cruder forms which have been found in such quantities. their chased patterns were often modelled on the earlier greek vases, so many of which are to be seen in the british museum among the rarities of the metal collector. no collection of copper and brass would be complete without examples of the arts and crafts of rome, so beautifully exemplified in the charming lamps to be carried in the hand, to stand on pedestals, and for suspension from the ceiling. there was something in their ornamentation which carried them beyond the works of the utilitarian maker. a celebrated historian, referring to the lights of ancient rome, speaks of their matchless grace and simplicity, and says, "they afford traces of decoration showing an elevation in the ornamentation of common articles of every-day use." the roman lamp of bronze was carried everywhere the conquering armies went, and in roman settlements in france, italy, and in northern africa, as well as in britain, the native artificers in copper and bronze saw in them designs to be imitated; and after the empire of rome had fallen, the models which emanated from the imperial city served as the designs for lamps in many countries centuries afterwards. the illustrations shown in figs. 9 and 10 represent bronze lamps--the former, fig. 9, is cast, and is an early example; fig. 10, however, is of a later period, and it is made of brass inlaid with copper. the examples found in this and other countries may be divided into two groups, those distinctly roman and of early date and those of the days when the christian religion was recognized by the emperors and the state. these latter are known by the decorations upon them. statues and monuments. reference has already been made to the beautiful statuettes of greece. there are others, to many grand in their conceptions, the work of roman modellers, many representing apollo, hercules, mars, and mercury having been found. in the british museum there are some wonderfully striking heads of several of the emperors, and other men whose portraits have been handed on to us in monuments of stone, and upon coins and medallions, the die-sinkers of which so faithfully portrayed the men they pictured. the names of many of the most famous artists are known, and collectors rejoice over fresh examples of their handiwork. it is, however, the general characteristics of the roman worker in metal as a whole that connoisseurs recognize and appreciate, and the true connoisseur is always searching for some greater artist's work than he has hitherto been familiar with. he is on the look-out for the very best among art treasures. an amusing story has been told of a modern manufacturer who was very fond of inserting in his advertisements paragraphs calling attention to his modern works of art, which he said were "acknowledged by connoisseurs to be the best." "father," said his little boy one day, "what do you mean by a connoisseur?" "a connoisseur, my boy," answered the manufacturer of copper goods, "is an eminent authority--an authority, in short, who admits that _our_ goods are the best." we are apt to look upon the beautiful brass grilles and copper lock-plates of mediæval days as the earliest examples of these metals in lock-making, the earliest locks found on old doors and muniment chests being chiefly of iron. but when we go back to still earlier times and examine the relics of roman london, we find key-rings and keys of bronze, some very ornamental, too. one beautiful little key found near all hallows church has a bow terminating in a small spur. another bronze key found near st. swithin's, in cannon street, has a ridged annular bow, with a short square stem. other keys are equally decorative; the locks, too, are in many instances ornamental, although in design and workmanship they fall short of the pinnacle of fame reached by the lockmakers in later gothic times. romano-british art. many readers in searching for curios of the romano-british period in this country will recall the fact that the ancient britons possessed bronze; and doubtless we should be doing an injustice to the more enlightened dwellers in britain before roman occupation, and contemporary with it, if we did not admit that possibly some of the relics of that period now dubbed roman belonged to those more entitled to our regard, for albion was their native land. on the thames embankment, facing the houses of parliament, there is that famous bronze group perpetuating the memory of the british queen boadicea in her war chariot. the romans made their famous paved roads as they pushed their outposts and line of camps farther north and west. the wheels of many british war chariots were made of, or hooped with, brass, and possibly the brass or bronze wheels, such as are represented in that group on the embankment once covered by the flowing river, may have rattled over the roads made by the conquerors; such chariots, with their appointments of bronze and ornamental horse trappings, showed much skill in their fashioning. a poet gives voice to their use in the following lines: "on the bright axle turns the bidden wheel of sounding brass, the polish'd axle steel." a well staged exhibit. it is scarcely necessary to remind readers that there is a peculiar attraction in a well staged exhibit--public or private. a case of roman and still earlier bronzes may be made attractive by an arrangement giving a gradation of subject and inclusive of the plainer types with the more delicately formed ornamental trinkets. a very fine example of how to arrange such a collection is seen in one of the rooms in stafford house, the new home of the london museum. the entire collection, representative of various periods of the roman occupation of britain, so carefully mounted, is worthy of close inspection. it includes many rare pieces, one being an early roman lamp, which was found in greenwich and is said to be unique among london curios. indeed, it is probable that none so fine, nor of exactly the same design, has been found in england. this we are able to reproduce (see fig. 50). the newly arranged london museum is likely to be a rendezvous of londoners and their friends from the country, for not only are there early antiquities in copper and brass, but many fascinating curios arranged in historical sequence, showing the development in metal-work as it was fashioned by london smiths and founders, and the progress made by other craftsmen as kings and queens came and went and the london as we know it to-day was being evolved. v mediæval antiquities chapter v mediæval antiquities domestic brasswork--metal signs and badges--ornamental trinkets--arms and armour. as the collector of copper and brass assembles his treasures and arranges them according to the different periods in which they were made, it is always the household utensils which predominate. as time goes on their number increases and the ornamental blends with the useful; but the increase in the variety is only in proportion to the gradual extension of the number of other household curios of contemporary dates. the period under review, for convenience termed mediæval, extends in actual fact from the rougher days of the norman sovereigns to those when bluff king hal held court and elizabeth made so many "grand tours" among the country seats of her people. at the beginning of this period the furniture of even the nobility and wealthy ecclesiastics was very scanty, and when the proud barons moved from one castle to another they carried with them all their household furnishings, even their more treasured culinary utensils of copper and brass. they stowed them away along with their jewels and their other belongings in oak coffers, which in the earliest days were made so that they could be carried on poles by retainers. "in oaken coffers i have stuffed my crowns, in cypress chests my arras counterpoints, pewter and brass, and all things that belong to house or housekeeping." _the taming of the shrew._ domestic brasswork. in mediæval days the metal-work was "home made," that is to say, it was the work of retainers and those who were employed upon an estate. the old smiths not only worked in iron but wrought copper and brass, and the founders were building up a reputation; and their chief men were laying down rules for the guidance of the craftsmen. the influence exerted upon the metal-work of this country by the trade guilds of london is referred to in chapter vi. in their prosperity no doubt the kitchens of the once powerful guilds were filled with cooking vessels indicative of the feasts held by the freemen of the different crafts. some may say there are still evidences of such feasts; but most of the cooking vessels of early days perished in the great fire, although doubtless there are relics of a later period to be found in the kitchens and cellars of the guildhall and some of the lesser halls. some of the companies, if they have lost their treasures, still possess records which are helpful to the antiquary, and we naturally turn to the parchments and books of the worshipful company of founders, and there, appropriately enough, it is written that at one time they had jurisdiction over the manufacture of candlesticks, buckles, spurs, stirrups, straps, lavers, pots, ewers, and basins of brass and latten. the mark of the mystery was early made a ewer, a ewer and two candlesticks being given to the founders in 1590, when they obtained a grant of arms; the motto they adopted was: "god is the only founder." the foundries of the craftsmen, workers, and casters of brass, latten, and kindred alloys in london were chiefly in and near lothbury, among their most noted products being candlesticks and spice mortars--two staples which have become nearly obsolete, although none would say that the founding of metal is as yet an obsolete craft. thus it is change and development are seen everywhere in production. the chief privileges of the founders have gone, although they still take some little part in the stamping of weights and measures; but that, too, has become a government duty. the founders have some interesting pieces of plate, but not much copper. their best example of their own craft is the ancient poor-box of copper which was presented to the company by mr. stephen pilchard in 1653, the year in which he was upper warden. the feeding of man has always been the first duty of those who took charge of domestic arrangements, and we can readily understand that the caldron or cooking-pot was the earliest vessel. its use may be regarded as universal, for it is found to have existed everywhere (see chapter viii). in mediæval england the feasting of the poor and the feeding of scores of retainers in the baronial halls and in the great ecclesiastical buildings, where hospitality and charity were rife, necessitated immense boiling-pots. some of those referred to under "domestic utensils" (chapter viii) seem to some too large for practical purposes. it may, however, be pointed out that there are many large cooking-pots in use even at the present time; and copper caldrons of large size are used in hospitals and infirmaries. quite recently there appeared in the public press photographs of a well-known countess making an irish stew at liberty hall, dublin, stirring round the contents with a wooden stirrer and lading out bowlfuls of soup with a metal scoop; it was food for the sufferers through the strike at that time going on in dublin. it is thus that the poor of all ages have been fed. as kitchen operations were confined to lesser areas and smaller vessels were needed by individual families when patriarchal systems were broken up, they were but replicas in miniature of the larger caldrons and vessels which had become too large. [illustration: fig. 11.--brass aquamanile (seventeenth century). (_in the british museum._)] it is wisely said, "fingers were made before spoons," a fact true enough, but as time went on and the habits and customs of men and women became less rough, although as yet hardly refined, a need sprang up for utensils for personal use. hitherto cooking forks and spoons were used in the kitchen, but the hunting-knife mostly served at table. it is true spoons were in use in very early times and even by the common people. at first of iron or wood, afterwards made of brass and latten, they are found wherever there are remains of mediæval dwellings. a scotchman is said to have declared that "the discovery of hot broth was an epoch in the evolution of man, and that as the ladle is to the pot so is the spoon to the bowl." such brass ewers and basins, known as aquamaniles, mostly of bronze (one of continental make is illustrated in fig. 11) were used for the purpose of washing the hands, over which the water was poured. they were used in connection with bowls. another type of laving ewer is that of the gemellions, made in pairs, one portion being held under a person's hands while water was poured out of the spouted bowl. gemellions seem to have been the somewhat clumsy prototypes of the more convenient jug and bowl of later days. the use of ewers and basin was very necessary both before and after meals when knives and spoons were little used and it was no uncommon thing for two persons to eat out of one dish. in mediæval days even domestic articles were frequently decorated, for english and european metal-workers had caught the figure work of the oriental school. their ornament took the form of hunting and battle scenes. sometimes patrons were eulogized, and flattering inscriptions covered the objects wrought for them by their servile dependents. in fig. 18 there is shown a bucket or bath vessel now in the victoria and albert museum, rather an unusual piece of early metal-work and an interesting mediæval curio. not long ago a similar bucket was dug up in the neighbourhood of weybridge. we are apt to regard with disdain what we term the grandmotherly legislation which tampers with the liberty of the subject. the present day, however, is not alone remarkable for regulations by which the home life of the nation is controlled. the norman law which ordered "lights out" when curfew rang cut short the "overtime" of the worker of that day. so stringent was the enforcement of that law that not a glimmer of light must be seen after the appointed time. to darken or extinguish the dying fire on the hearth the _couvre de feu_ became a feature. such covers of well authenticated antiquity are rare; the one illustrated in fig. 12 is a well-preserved example now in the bolton museum. metal signs and badges. in the early days when serfdom had not long ceased and the retainers of the nobles had not won their full freedom or independence, signs and symbols of their allegiance to some chief or overlord were plentiful. the crusaders brought back with them signs, amulets, and various objects which they wore with more or less superstitious belief. the pilgrims to the most noted shrines in this country followed suit, and all these various purposes and mediæval customs have furnished the curio-hunter with many delightful reminders of the "good old days" when superstition and almost idolatry were rife. old father thames has preserved many of them for centuries, and twentieth-century collectors are richer thereby. in the guildhall museum in london there is a very complete and representative collection of pilgrims' signs. although many of them are made of a soft metal, there are others of good copper and brass. at one time they must have been very plentiful, for very prolific have the finds been in the neighbourhood of london bridge and in and around southwark. these signs or badges were secured and worn by the pilgrims who set out to the chief shrines, notably that of st. thomas à becket at canterbury. chaucer in his _canterbury tales_ has told that there were many traders in pilgrim signs in canterbury city, so that all were enabled to possess themselves of such symbols, many of which they threw upon the shrine, and others retained them as talismans against danger on the return journey. the pilgrims wore a variety of emblems--the more devout, it is said, preferred the cross; others carried with them on their journey little metal figures of st. george, st. katherine, st. christopher, or other saint with his or her symbol. st. agnes was represented by a lamb, st. john by an eagle, and st. dorothy by a basket of fruit. perhaps the most favoured sign purchased in canterbury was an equestrian figure of st. thomas à becket. some of the emblems were worn as protectors against evil, and such signs were almost invariably on horse trappings; indeed, such amulets have been perpetuated almost up to the present day. there are several circular discs in the museum referred to, said to date from the twelfth century, upon these are embossed two horned animals; another badge of a little later date, in copper, has upon it a shield of arms surrounded by three mythical dragons; it was found in ludgate hill. yet another on which is a shield charged with seven stars, said to be of fourteenth-century workmanship, was found some time ago on the site of the old general post office in st martin's-le-grand. the retainers of noblemen wore private badges by which they were known; these were mostly of brass or bronze, and sometimes they were gilded. they were frequently worn when on a journey as a passport. such badges in the form of circles and lozenges were usually furnished with a loop for suspension, and became well known. they served a similar purpose to the distinctive livery of later days. ornamental trinkets. the household ornaments, trinkets, and little articles of personal adornment which have been preserved tell not only of female vanity but of masculine love of ornament. it would appear that the use of bronze lingered on for centuries after it had nominally been displaced by brass; especially was that the case in decorative objects and metal ornament. the metals known as bronze, copper, and brass are, however, much intermixed in their use. the objects which can be collected include brooches, rings, pins, needles, bodkins, and thimbles of brass. buckles are very numerous, and varied in form; some are heart-shaped, others have ends cut out to form a trefoil and are decorated with a pierced fleur-de-lis. the story of the pin, the smallest and yet the most used metal object preserved, is very interesting. at one time it was made by hand from brass wire, the head being twisted round and round until it had the appearance of a solid knob. the pinners were in years gone by an important guild, and in 1376 returned two men to the common council of london. in the reign of henry vii an act of parliament was passed compelling the pinners to solder fast to the shank the head of the pin, and directing that the pin itself should be "smooth, rounded, filed, and sharpened." very laborious indeed must have been the making of pins in those days. there were pins, however, of an earlier date, for it is recorded that on one occasion when the men of athens had gone out to battle only one returned. he was met by an infuriated mob of women, who were so enraged at the loss of their husbands that herodotus tells us they pulled the pins out from their garments and stabbed him to death. there were bronze pins in rome, too, and we are told that even the safety-pin of to-day is by no means new, for among the collectable objects in brass are prehistoric safety-pins. half a century ago, when little girls went to school they carried with them the inevitable pin poppet, some of which receptacles for pins and other similar sundries were of wood, but many were brass; some met with among old metal curios are quite handsomely decorated. another indispensable object is the button, so many of which are of metal, many decorative, some inscribed, and others ornamented with portraits. there are little brass sleeve-links, worn in tudor days, to be met with, and some curious brass studs which were worn by men in the shirt fronts of the early georgian period. there are clasps of purses and books and casket mounts of brass, some of which date back to the fifteenth century. the older mounts of purses, so-called, would be more correctly described as the mounts of gipcieres; the gipciere was a kind of pouch formerly worn at the girdle; the name is also spelled _gipser_: "a _gipser_ all of silk hung at his girdle white as morné silk." chaucer. sometimes the mounts were inscribed with mottoes; one found in brooks' wharf, london, believed to be of fourteenth-century workmanship, is inscribed "creatorem celi et terre et in iesvm." other objects in brass are girdle ends, some of which are shaped like acorns and others are of ivy-leaf design. among ornamental bronzes which can be worn, and in larger sizes hung upon the wall, there are plaques, many of the earliest being copied from antique gems. plaquettes in bronze were common in the sixteenth century. arms and armour. a volume might well be taken up with describing mediæval arms and armour. it is true iron and steel are the chief metals in the making of weapons, but brass and bronze are closely allied with some of the armaments of war. many of the small mediæval cannon were of brass, and not a few of the guns, or "hand cannon," were of that metal. in the days of elizabeth the musketeer carried, in addition to an unwieldy weapon, his flask of powder, touch-box, and burning match. the match-box was a tube of copper pierced with small holes, and in it the lighted match could be conveyed safely. the powder-horn was at first of real horn, but in time it became a copper flask. many of the old flasks were exceedingly ornate, and were often ornamented with hunting scenes worked up in repoussé on the copper sides. the spur-makers were important craftsmen in early days, and under the name of the guild of loriners ranked with the city companies. it is true that the spur rowels of six, eight, or even twelve points were generally of iron, but the collector of metal finds many interesting specimens made entirely of brass. one pair of spurs in the reign of henry viii consist of fourteen brass points, the neck of the rowel being shaped like a peacock and embossed with brass rosettes. our finest collection of armour and of ceremonial metal-work--that splendid collection which dates from quite early times, finding its greatest strength and massive grandeur in late mediæval days and its artistic ornament in the richly damascened armour of lesser weight of the stuarts--is rightly housed in that greatest of english strongholds, the tower of london. it is there that the antiquary and the archæologist love to wander, and in the vast recesses of those dungeons and prison-like towers read history. there is an abundance of metal everywhere. guns and cannon and mortars of historic fame lie about in the open. the bloody tower, nearly opposite the traitors' gate, the middle tower, the byward tower, and many others of equal interest may be seen. to some the regalia with its crowns, swords, and sceptres of state, ampulla, spoon, salt-cellars, maces, and orders of merit, are the greatest attraction. the curio collector, however, finds his way to the museum and admires and perhaps envies the quaint and curious guns, powder-horns, and trophies of war. he is in the midst of the england of the middle ages, with its jousts and tournaments, shut out by the thick walls of the white tower from the hurry and bustle of the traffic and commerce of the twentieth century. the magnificent armour in hertford house--the wallace collection--is a delight to those who love to see in arms and armour the perfection of beauty of ornament and decoration. there are splendid suits which look as bright as the day when they were new. the half-suit of armour of italian workmanship made for alfonso ii, duke of ferrara, inlaid and damascened with gold and silver, is said to be the finest in europe. the staging of this splendid collection was carried out by mr. guy laking, the keeper of the king's armour and custodian of the london museum. a fitting conclusion to this chapter is, surely, a tribute to the armourers and founders and smiths of the middle ages, who worked so conscientiously and made their work lasting. it has retained its beauty and much of its ancient finish, notwithstanding atmospheric influences; indeed, some of it gained added beauty by oxidation. vi later metal-work [illustration: fig. 12.--brass _couvre de feu_, a rare early piece.] (_in the chadwick museum, bolton._) chapter vi later metal-work the influence of the guilds--architectural metal-work--the door knocker--interior metal-work. in all branches of art there seems to be a break between the earlier mediæval and the later art which was the outcome to some extent of the great renaissance or revival which swept over the continent of europe and brought with it such a change in everything appertaining to the beautiful. whilst mediæval metal-workers produced grand examples full of design and ornament, influenced by the touch with eastern nations which the crusaders gave them, the later smiths and founders gradually evolved styles of their own, more english to our ideas. the renaissance with its wealth of ornament did not so much apply to copper and brass as it did to the metal-work of the smith who forged that which was beautiful and ornate in iron on his anvil. yet some of those florid designs were reproduced by the brassfounder. after the restoration the art treasures which had been destroyed during the commonwealth were replaced, as evidenced by the regalia in the tower, where there is so much silver-gilt and gold plate which represents the more decorative art of that period. in that famous collection of national regalia, symbols of office, and vessels used on rare occasions, there is the alms-dish used for the distribution of the king's doles on maundy thursday. it bears the royal cipher of william and mary, and contrasts with the other plate in that it is remarkably plain, typical in its decoration with the earlier metal-work of the days of queen anne and those years which immediately followed her reign. when we walk through some of the once select, although now not much used, thoroughfares in london and admire the stately old houses which may be seen still in some of the metropolitan squares, especially in the open thoroughfare known as queen anne's gate, we are inclined to wonder whether after all "queen anne is dead." that hackneyed expression used in a humorous sense at times is certainly not true in so far as the remarkable developments in building operations and the characteristic decorations of queen anne's day live still not only in the old houses which are still undisturbed, but in the designs and characteristic patterns which were then adopted by metal-workers and others, their beauty and grace being recognized to such an extent that they are to-day among the much copied antiques. the influence of the guilds. it may be convenient here to refer to the influence of the old city guilds, which for so long a time acted beneficially, keeping the craftsmen of their day up to the mark, maintaining the purity of metal and other materials used, and encouraging and fostering the attainment of the highest skill in artistic workmanship. the city companies have long ceased to exercise active control over individual craftsmen; some would say that trade unions have taken their place, and others would point to the altered conditions of manufacture and of trade which exist now. none can deny, however, that the influence of those early pioneers is still felt, and the basis which they laid down as the art of the later period of english craftsmanship, amongst which we find the greater number of our collectable curios, remains to-day the foundation on which modern developments are built up. the braziers' company was once an important guild in connection with metal. many years ago the braziers joined the armourers, claiming, however, a monopoly of all copper and brasswork. by an authority received from james ii the members of the braziers' company were granted the right to search and prove all copper and brasswork wrought with a hammer within the city of london. it is said that their charter is still in force, although their rights and privileges are now sinecures. few members of the old city companies have now any direct connection with the crafts with which their names are associated. they exist, however, and use some of the funds at their disposal for the encouragement and development of the modern crafts which have evolved from the older foundations with which they were associated. now and then important exhibitions are held at which examples of the old and the new are shown, not always redounding to the credit of the antique. some few years ago a very interesting competitive exhibition was held at ironmongers' hall at the instigation of the worshipful company of founders, by whom prizes were given for artistic metal-work made by living craftsmen who had studied antique metal-work and had caught somewhat of the spirit of the old artists in copper and brass. the competition was keen and many of the exhibits very beautiful. the winner of the first prize had modelled a goat from life. the second prize went to the modeller of a calf which was cast in bronze; the third prize being awarded for a splendidly modelled lioness. in another division prizes were given for bells; the first prize was awarded to the founder of a church bell cast in loam, and the second prize to the designer and founder of a bell on which were exceedingly well-modelled representations of the resurrection. in all these examples the influence of the antique was very conspicuous. [illustration: fig. 13.--copper vane on billingsgate fish market.] [illustration: fig. 14.--the city dragon as a weather-vane.] [illustration: fig. 15.--copper cock vane, one of four on smithfield market.] the impetus which has been given to modern copper smithing by the arts and crafts society through its exhibitions has given quite a different conception of the art from that which was formerly held. instead of being a common craft, working in copper and brass has become one of the fine arts, a hobby much practised, and the results appreciated. the late william morris, at one time president of the society, and walter crane, artists of no mean order, exerted a great influence on the work of exhibitors. they have raised the tone of the work done by amateurs and have been the means of guiding modern workers in these metals in their efforts to reproduce the antique. curios and antiques have served a double purpose associated with crafts such as those under review, as they give the present-day artist the foundations upon which to work. they give them evidence of styles and designs which have prevailed in the past and models upon which to build the art of the future. briefly, among the best works of to-day fashioned on the arts and crafts of the coppersmiths of old are the beautiful metal dogs and fire-hearth appointments. there are the copper grilles, exquisite in design and useful for many purposes; copper lanterns and brass lamps of great variety; copper candlesticks, as well as the beaten metal candelabra and electroliers, also overmantel panels and beaten copper roundels, all worthy objects for the craftsmen of the present day to follow. perhaps the most elaborate productions based on the antique are the ecclesiastical brasses of which there is ample choice in the old brasswork in so many cathedrals and parish churches. architectural metal-work. many years ago architects not only designed the main fabric and supervised the building of houses, such as those incidentally referred to being erected in the days of queen anne, but they were deeply interested in the metal-work which acted as exterior ornamentation, and to a large extent contributed to the beauty of their architectural designs. after the great fire of london swept away so much of the ancient residential portion of the old city, and took with it the gothic and early mediæval churches, there was a great revival in building operations. sir christopher wren and his fellow-workers put up more than sixty new churches within the city, and although to some extent the contour of the old streets was observed, the newer buildings must have presented an astonishing transformation scene, for from the few old relics left of london before the fire we can form some slight idea of what the city must have looked like then. the collector of copper and brass takes an interest in metal-work other than that which he can collect, and admires works of art with which the architects of olden times enriched their chief buildings. it is true a considerable portion of the exterior metal-work attached to the freehold, and of the gates and palasades surrounding the more important erections, are of iron. there are enough examples of copper-work, however, to show us the skill of the old craftsmen who worked on years after the charter granted by james ii to the braziers' company had become a dead letter. one of the most conspicuous and at the same time decorative examples of copper-work on the loftier buildings is found in the weather-vanes, which were sometimes gilt, at others painted. in the earlier days the emblems selected had some bearing on the ownership of the building or the purposes for which it was to be used. there were well-known rules, too, governing the type of weather-vane. these are recognizable in the older examples. they have been neglected, however, in later years, and the nondescript designs chosen by builders and modelled according to the whim of the designer at the present day show little regard for the principles laid down by those early builders and metal-workers. the etiquette of the weather-vane was simple enough to observe. on towers, castles, and secular buildings a banner was the correct device, whereas on ecclesiastical edifices it was the barn-door fowl. it is said by an old authority that the cock was the emblem of clerical vigilance, not unassociated with the biblical story of st. peter; others more sceptical as to the origin tell us that the large tail of the barn-door fowl was well suited to turn truly to the wind. from these simple principles evolved established rules which ordered that the coat-of-arms or crest of the owner of a building should be incorporated in the design of the weather-vane, and on ecclesiastical buildings the symbol of the patron saint was to take the place of the weather-cock. as typical examples to be seen in london streets the weather-vanes on the four turrets of the white tower of the tower fly the royal arms in the form of miniature royal standards. in tudor days the emblem was usually represented sitting on a slender pedestal, carrying an upright rod on which the flag or decorated plate of metal which acted as the weather-vane was attached. in the accompanying illustrations three types of symbolical weather-vanes are shown. fig. 13 represents one of the copper vanes on billingsgate fish market, symbolical of the occupation of those who frequent that famous mart. in fig. 14 is seen the fabled dragon of the city of london, and in fig. 15 the copper cock vane, one of the four fixed over smithfield market. there are many ecclesiastical emblems visible during a morning stroll through the streets of london. among those readily seen are the key vane on st. peter's, cornhill, and the emblematic gridiron on st. lawrence's church. on st. michael's church, queenhithe, there is a copper ship, the hull of which holds just one bushel of grain. this vane is interesting in that the emblem has reference to queenhithe, once a famous wharf, rather than to the patron saint. the hithe is interesting in its old associations, in that the tolls of that wharf were given to queen eleanor by henry ii as pin money, subsequent queens of england collecting the revenue for their personal use. the grasshopper on the royal exchange is the same vane that surmounted the more ancient building which preceded the one now standing. the grasshopper was the crest of sir thomas gresham, by whom the first exchange was built in the reign of queen elizabeth. this vane, also of copper, is fully 11 ft. in length, and in miniature was reproduced as the sign of the banking house in lombard street kept by sir thomas gresham. the door knocker. the common door knocker, essentially a piece of metal associated to-day with utilitarian purposes, is not without romantic associations. it has been a much collected object; easily detached, too, for it is said that many of the old knockers, or rappers as they were formerly called, which a few years ago could be bought quite cheaply from the marine store dealers, had been surreptitiously purloined by thieves, who for the sake of a few coppers had taken some risk even on a dark night. some old houses are still rich in antiquarian door knockers, before the days of front door bells and electric pushes more a necessity than they are now. their use was by no means confined to private houses, on which they figured in a variety of forms, but among the earlier examples are ponderous knockers of copper and brass, once regarded as an essential feature on the great oaken doors of cathedrals and churches and other important buildings. in the days when the precincts of certain ecclesiastical edifices were sanctuary, the knocker was the goal sought by the criminal offender who rushed to obtain the protection of sanctuary. one of the most famous historical knockers which has been copied by modern founders, and is seen in collections of so-called antiques and in use as a modern replica on room doors in twentieth-century houses, is the famous knocker which did service for so many years on the sanctuary door of durham cathedral. it is a relic of great antiquity, having been placed on the door prior to the reign of king stephen. detailing its use as sanctuary a contemporary monk wrote: "hereupon their leader violently and repeatedly struck the brass rings which hang outside the door." according to the "rights" of durham all the churchyard and all the circuit thereof was sanctuary for all manner of men whatever their offences had been. it will be remembered that in olden time, still perpetuated by its name, there was sanctuary just outside the abbey of westminster, the right being retained even after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1540. there were similar places of refuge for criminals at the minories, whitefriars, and the old mint in southwark. the durham knocker, around which some interest centres, was in the form of an animal's head, in which are now two empty eye-sockets, behind which it is said lights were placed, although it is probable that they may have been filled with crystal balls. the brass lion knocker of brazenose college, oxford, has won some notoriety, and has been much copied. the legends regarding its ancient association with the college, and the migration of the students to stamford in 1334, and the subsequent return of the knocker to oxford after it had been in other hands for many years, vary, and are not altogether borne out by proven facts. the brass-nosed knocker does not appear to have given the name to the college, notwithstanding the very generally accepted belief. indeed, according to several authorities the name originated in the words _bracinum_, malt, and _house_, a brew-house having been incorporated in the older buildings. the old knocker, however, is still regarded as historic. few collectors of old copper and brass can hope to possess such historical relics, nor yet are they likely to secure any of the massive knockers, some of which are to be seen in the victoria and albert museum at south kensington. they can, however, readily obtain brass knockers dating from the reign of queen anne, and especially the ornate knockers of georgian times, many of them bearing traces of the adams' style and of chippendale influence. some knockers are peculiar in that the design is not always apparent. in fig. 16 is shown a fine knocker of the much favoured armorial style, and in fig. 17 is given a drop knocker in the form of a dolphin. some of the knockers, repeated in great numbers in certain districts, are essentially local, such as a hook and worm pattern, which took its origin in a sussex village. it was the invention of a local smith, an admirer of izaac walton, who it is said frequently passed his smithy door on his way to a fishing stream. technically described by a fisherman, this knocker is said to be "a lobworm of buxom proportions dangling from a hook." there are others, equally interesting examples, to be met with in out-of-the-way places. one of the advantages of collecting these common objects in brass and other metals is that they can still be made to serve a useful purpose on room doors, although the rat-tat of the larger specimens is sometimes startling. "shut, shut the door, good john! fatigued, i said; tie up the _knocker_; say i'm sick, i'm dead." pope. interior metal-work. the collectable brasses (other than domestic kitchen brass and copper-work which is dealt with in chapter viii) belonging to the later period of art, and chiefly associated with the builder's furnishing and cabinetmaker's craft, include quite a variety of interesting objects. in the days before victorian times, when art almost died out, the coppersmith and the brazier produced some beautiful objects for the ornamentation and furnishing of the home, many of which have been handed down to us, and form valuable additions to a collection of metal. this period, as it has been already intimated, has been very much copied, especially just before the artists of the later edwardian days struck out new lines and founded a school which has been called that of the "nouvre art." now and then there have been attempts to blend the old with the new, and the collector of the genuine antique desiring purity of style in his specimens should not neglect any opportunities he may have of examining and comparing the various styles. the arrangements for lighting and heating houses were until quite recently inefficient. there was, however, still greater neglect in providing for the comfort of the attenders at churches, which were frequently cold and chilly. attempts were made by individuals to remedy this, and among the curios associated with heating purposes are hand-warmers and foot-warmers. the earlier types of hand-warmers, or chaufferettes, were spherical metal boxes or balls, in the interior of which, by an arrangement of chains or rings, a cup containing a red-hot ball of metal or a piece of charcoal could be retained in an upright position. these portable warming stoves were also used in many houses and on many occasions. reference is made to such warmers in chapter xv, where a dutch foot-warmer is illustrated. it is said that it was a common practice years ago for a servant man or maid to follow a lady when attending church, carrying a charcoal burner and placing it upon the floor at the lady's feet, then gracefully retiring into some less conspicuous part of the building until the service was over. in the days when streets were badly lighted lanterns were commonly hung outside houses and in entrance halls, some reference to the more portable types being given in chapter ix. [illustration: fig. 16.--bronze knocker of the armorial type.] [illustration: fig. 17.--brass drop knocker in the form of a dolphin.] [illustration: fig. 18.--brass well bucket.] the metal-work of the interior, such as lock plates, hinges, and door knobs, was frequently of brass, and very ornate some of these quaint old fittings are. perhaps the most interesting are those which were much used on the more portable sideboards, corner cupboards, and chests. it would appear that the extravagance in design reached its height when chippendale's influence extended to the metal ornaments on the furniture, as well as to the scrollwork and carving of the woodwork. some of this metal-work gives evidence of chinese influence, or as it was then called, chinese taste, shown in the introduction of the mandarin and the fakir, oriental landscapes, palanquins, and chinese trees and flowers, even in english metal-work. the collector of such things finds a wealth of brass in even escutcheons and handle plates (see chapter xix). there is some very rich brasswork in the frames of the old banner screens, made of beautiful needlework panels, over which so much time must have been spent. a remarkably fine banner holder in the victoria and albert museum is typical of many others. we have only to look round the house and imagine how it looked a century ago to discover that the collectable objects of copper and brass, even when domestic utensils and curios have been removed, included many other objects besides those referred to which may be secured by careful and persistent search among the old shops and builders' odds and ends. vii church brasswork [illustration: fig. 19.--curious double candlestick. (_in the victoria and albert museum._)] chapter vii church brasswork candlesticks--altar brasses--metal architectural ornament--memorial brasses. the admirer of metal-work finds examples of the early brassworker's art in ecclesiastical edifices. although in years gone by there has been spoiliation in many churches, and some of the most valued objects in sacred buildings have been taken for secular uses, there are still many treasured relics which are almost unique specimens of the metal-worker's art. it is a wonder so much has been preserved, for too enthusiastic authorities have often displaced the old and substituted newer objects of no antiquarian value. in the past in restoration work much that would have now been venerated as antique has been destroyed. the collector cannot be advised to bring pressure to bear on the ecclesiastical authorities in order that he may obtain such curios for his museum. oftentimes the brasses in themselves would present no special interest. it is rather in their associations that the antiquary sees much to admire, and to strip brasses from the wall or memorial tablets from tombs is vandalism and sacrilege which cannot be encouraged. there is, however, a peculiar beauty in the metal-work which may be seen and admired in old churches, and the massive grandeur of grilles, railings, and gallery fronts add to the beauty of such buildings as a whole. in addition to these architectural brasses there are many portable antiques, ornate and historical. ecclesiastical brasses may be divided into two groups. first, there are those which have been consecrated to religious purposes, including the sacred vessels of the altar and the metal symbols used in divine worship, and then there are the metal objects which serve the purpose of ornament and to some extent utility. among the more decorative pieces of the first group are processional crosses, many of which are very beautiful, in some cases being ornamented with precious stones and enamels. then there are the crosses on the altar, if anything still more decorative, for in fashioning them, especially for use in connection with the old gothic cathedrals and churches in this country and on the continent in mediæval days, the artists concentrated their best endeavours to produce metal-work worthy of the sacred purpose for which it was to be used. some of the bishops' and archbishops' crooks in the earlier days were made of ivory; then metal-work, richly chased and jewelled, came into vogue, and latterly some of the crooks are fine examples of the metal-workers' art. candlesticks. the ornaments of the altar in christian churches are for the most part simple in design. there are, however, many varieties of candlesticks, varying in size and degree from the larger ones which hold the communion candles to the decorative seven-branched candelabra of light and tasteful design. the more important specimens are the massive candlesticks which are used in the chancel and in some of the larger cathedrals in other parts of the building. such ecclesiastical bronzes are seldom obtainable, although there are some fine examples in the victoria and albert museum in this country, and in the chief continental museums. the donors of such objects spared no expense, and the modellers and founders treated such work very elaborately. flemish and spanish churches are especially rich in large candlesticks, and many of the continental cathedrals possess wonderful examples. the prominence which has been given to candlesticks in public worship dates back to a period long before the foundation of the christian church, for the seven-branched candlestick was an important feature in the jewish ceremonial. when the roman conquerors took possession of jerusalem, among the treasures taken from the temple on the sack of the city, they carried away the golden candlesticks from the altar. so important was this sacred trophy that it was represented on the triumphal arch of titus, preserving to the artists of the future its general characteristics of design. the great bronze candlesticks in st paul's cathedral and in other english churches are to be admired but not collected; nevertheless there are some fine candlesticks in bronze and of polished brass offered for sale in the curio shops, and from time to time brought under the hammer in the london auction rooms. the illustration given in fig. 19 is a remarkable example which may be seen in the victoria and albert museum. a fine venetian bronze candelabrum (one of a pair), now in a private collection, is shown in fig. 20. altar brasses. most of the church plate so-called was of pewter and silver in early times; in more modern days of silver, and sometimes of metal plated with silver. there are, however, examples of metal chalices of bronze, some of which have been found in ireland. the altar brasses in pre-reformation days included brass censers and incense vessels, very interesting examples of which are now in the victoria and albert museum, being illustrated in fig. 21. of vases and other decorative altar brasses there are many. some, probably, took their origin in older customs and were symbolical; the vases nowadays are for the most part used as receptacles for flowers. [illustration: fig. 20.--venetian candelabrum (one of a pair).] bordering on the secular vessels, yet associated with the altar, there are the alms-dishes, of which there are a great number in private collections of metal. they are mostly of brass, some quite plain, others engraved and highly ornamental. some little time ago there was a special display of alms-dishes, two-score or more in number, exhibited at the kelvingrove exhibition at glasgow. some were covered over with scriptural pictorial designs, among the favourite being those illustrating the old story of adam and eve in the garden of eden; the episode of samson and the lion; and the visit of the two spies to the promised land, returning carrying a large bunch of grapes. such alms-dishes vary in size, seldom less than 12 in. in diameter, but ranging up to 20 in. sometimes the collector is puzzled to find what he may regard as inappropriate mottoes on church vessels. on the other hand, it is not an uncommon thing to meet with religious devices or pious mottoes on platters and bowls which were obviously used as domestic vessels. this fact is explained in that at one time there was but little difference between secular and ecclesiastical plate, and the vessels were often used indiscriminately for church purposes and for the use of the household. metal architectural ornament. the lectern is frequently of bronze or brass. the eagle with spread wings or other designs adopted by the metal-workers gave the artist plenty of scope. the altar rail and in a few instances the metal screen and grille are composed of elaborately chased brass or copper-work, sometimes cast, at others hammered. perhaps one of the greatest achievements of the coppersmith in connection with church metal-work is the ball and cross of st. paul's, surmounting the great dome. it was made in the year 1821 by benham and froud, an old firm of coppersmiths. an illustration of this gigantic piece of work is given in fig. 22. when viewed from beneath few would imagine that the cross, although so high up, is 30 ft. in height, and that its weight is upwards of one and a half tons. the occasional gilding of this triumph of the coppersmith's art is in itself a costly procedure. memorial brasses. the visitor to the country church, as well as the larger cathedral, finds much antiquarian interest in the tombs and monuments, and in the memorial tablets of the illustrious dead the history of their lives may often be read. in the older tombs the work of the sculptors in marble is frequently enriched by the addition of appropriate tablets of brass, sometimes inlaid with enamels. one of the most noted tombs is that in the centre of the chapel of henry vii. in westminster abbey, the tomb itself being closely guarded by the massive railings, which are of brass. the visitor to that chapel notes with interest the brass stall plates so rich in enamels, on which are the arms and crests of the knights who in times past occupied those stalls and hung their banners over them. [illustration: fig. 21.--bronze incense burner and incense boat. (_in the victoria and albert museum._)] it may be contended that tombs and monuments cannot be collected, but those who visit such places may fill their notebooks with interesting data, and they may carry away with them accurate records and rubbings of the monumental tablets and the brasses on the tombs (for instructions how to take rubbings, see wrinkles, p. 393). such rubbings of old brasses can be kept in a portfolio or mounted and hung upon walls. they form a record, too, of the engraver's art, which was modified and altered to suit the change which went on in architectural design and to some extent in social and religious customs. the variety of brasses is seen when a good collection of rubbings is classified and arranged according to style, period, or locality. some districts yield prolific returns. throughout the counties of gloucester, somerset, and norfolk many may be obtained, the more interesting specimens being secured from tombs dating from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. from such a series armorial representation as it became less real and of smaller importance can be traced. the costumes of the period, too, are very clearly shown, for in such a collection of brasses the value of armour in war is seen to change. in the earlier examples there is the chain mail of the cross-legged knights as seen on the early brasses of the crusaders, the mediæval armour of the middle ages when it had reached its strength, and the brasses of the stuart days when the ornamental armour of that period had to a large extent lost its utility. the ecclesiastical brasses on the tombs of bishops and other church dignitaries show the change which took place very gradually in the vestments worn, and indicate the alteration in ecclesiastical ritual in the cathedrals and churches at the time of the reformation. the dissolution of the monasteries and the sacrilege which took place in the dismantled churches and religious houses caused valuable relics to be sold for old metal, and it was then that many old monuments and tombs lost their brasses. the influence of book knowledge and the change which came about in the style of script after the introduction of the printing-press is seen in the evolution of the lettering on church brasses. indeed, in some of the older ones the form of the letters is the only indication left of the date of their engraving. [illustration: fig. 22.--the copper-gilt cross on st. paul's cathedral.] the engraver's art progressed with the art of the period in which he lived, and in a collection of rubbings may be seen the gradual training of the eye and hand until from meaningless pictures without background or perspective the artist was able to engrave on metal a beautifully realistic picture of the subject he had chosen. as a guide to a few indications of the period to which brasses belong, it may be mentioned that the decorative canopies on monumental brasses belong chiefly to the ornate period of art. the embattled canopies and the change to the decorative gothic tell of the progress in ecclesiastical architecture until it reached its height between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, later brasses telling of its gradual decadence. of the variety of subject it would be impossible to refer, for at all ages there have been many who would fit into niches between the extremes of the early fighting men amidst the nobles and knights who fell in battle, and those who apparently lived all their lives in the peaceful rural surroundings of some quiet english village, dying within sight of the old church where they had worshipped, and where they were eventually buried. "when some proud son of man returns to earth, unknown to glory, but upheld by birth, the sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of woe, and storied urns record who rests below; when all is done, upon the tomb is seen, not what he was, but what he should have been." byron. viii domestic utensils chapter viii domestic utensils the kitchen--the houseplace--chimney and other ornaments--classified arrangement. a collection of metal-work representative of domestic utensils as they were fashioned in very early times, and as they were made in days so far forgotten as to render the common objects of daily use curios, is regarded, probably, as the most important branch of copper and brass, from a collector's standpoint. the collector may be content with gathering together a few examples of old domestic metal-work and using them as ornamental reminders of olden time, decorating his entrance hall or rooms furnished after the antique with the objects he gathers together, or he may arrange them as in a museum gallery. the display of curios is at all times a matter of taste, but it is one of some importance, especially in a branch of collecting so conspicuous as copper and brass. we can scarcely conceive of any real pleasure being derived from such a hobby, or of such specimens being appreciated by one's friends, when specimens so obviously out of place are shown in a modern dining-room or drawing-room furnished in nouvre art. the keeper of the london museum, now transferred to stafford house from kensington palace, has very appropriately arranged the antiquities of london in their proper historical and chronological sequence, and has grouped them so that the reference they bear to contemporary surroundings can be understood by those who see them for the first time. the photograph which we reproduce in fig. 23 represents a corner in a well made up seventeenth-century room, in which has been gathered together some beautiful old oak furniture of that period. it is panelled with oak which has been procured from old london houses of contemporary date; the doorway is a genuine antique from bromley-by-bow, adding to the appearance of the room, for its hinges and lock furniture are splendid examples of the brasswork of that period. some pieces of cromwellian armour, prominent among which are variously ornamented helmets and breastplates, are arranged round the upper portion of the room. over an old oak chest is a beautiful brass skimmer, and on the wall a seventeenth-century brass bed-warmer, with engraved cover. on the sideboard is a huge key and a brass mortar. the lock furniture and the drop handle on the sideboard, which are of brass, are worthy of note. on the other side of the room there is a fine brass trivet standing in front of the hearth, on which are andirons, and logs ready for the firing; close by is a quaint old candlestick. undoubtedly curios displayed in such a way interest and instruct those who see them, and a room so furnished enthuses collectors with the desire to secure other objects of an appropriate character; this in itself is an advantage in that a representative collection is of more general interest than one containing many objects of a similar character. [illustration: fig. 23.--seventeenth-century room in the london museum.] the kitchen. kitchen utensils and domestic appliances which the housewife of olden time deemed necessary are of peculiar interest in that they help us to recall the habits and customs of former generations. it is not always easy to arrange a model kitchen in that there are many old utensils of copper and brass which must have been used side by side as periods overlapped, although some have a much older origin than others. it is said that the kitchens of well-stocked old family mansions still yield some curios when thoroughly examined, and that it is not at all an uncommon thing to find there utensils the object of which has almost been forgotten. they are relics of an older day, and utensils which a modern cook would not deign to use. such discoveries, however, are few and far between, for the melting-pot and the cupidity of those anxious to clear unnecessary encumbrances and perhaps make a little towards refurnishing, has left but few objects of interest in the kitchen. it is, however, there and in the old houseplace that we may look for something of interest. some will go on using old vessels long after newer utensils have taken their place in the more advanced households, and there are some cooks who use successfully saucepans and kettles of almost antique pattern which the student of the cook's art in the modern schools of cookery would find difficult to manipulate. they have been taught how to make tasty dishes with aluminium vessels and enamelled pans, whereas heavy and clumsy brass and copper utensils served their grandparents. the cook's art is appreciated to-day as it was in the past, and at all periods the domestic workshop has been surrounded with a halo of romance. shakespeare has rendered the caldron of olden time memorable in "macbeth." of the caldron boiling in the dark cave he makes the witches cry: "double, double toil and trouble, fire, burn; and caldron bubble." [illustration: fig. 24.--bronze caldron. (_in trinity hospital, leicester._)] the cooking-pot is the sustainer of life, in that it gives strength to the weary and to the starving. to the poor dumb creatures, however, it is the end of life, and in savagery human life has been sacrificed to the gluttony of fellow-men. wonderful stories are at times told of great feasts and of the magnificence of the kitchens of olden time, where the vessels and the cooking-pots were of extravagant size, making up, perhaps, for the fewer culinary utensils, for in early days the furnishings of the kitchen were few in number although massive and strong. many of the baronial halls of the middle ages, and the homes of wealthy landowners in more recent days, have been the scene of great feasts. merrie england rejoiced on such occasions when the roasting-jack and the spit contributed to the success of the feast, and the caldron or cooking-pot boiled upon the open hearth. in some old kitchens there are preserved ponderous bronze and copper pots, some so large that we can scarcely imagine that they were made for actual use. in the hall of trinity hospital at leicester there is preserved a large caldron of bell metal, holding upwards of sixty gallons, which has been used as the cooking-pot of the institution from its foundation until quite recent times. this quaint old relic, now venerated as a curio, is locally called the duke of lancaster's porridge-pot, for it is said that it was made to the order of henry, duke of lancaster, in 1331 (see fig. 24). not far removed from the corner where the old metal pot is shown to visitors there is a massive nutmeg-grater, a kitchen relic of olden time, which on the occasion of one of her visits to leicester queen elizabeth presented to the hospital. many old castles have relics of the feast to show visitors, and others no doubt could produce equally interesting examples of the coppersmiths' or the founders' art were they to search the vaults and cellars where disused metal-work was in years gone by stowed away. visitors to warwick castle are familiar with "guy's punchbowl," the remarkable metal caldron which is nearly twice the size of that attributed to the duke of lancaster, for it weighs, along with a fork said to have been used to handle the meat, 807 lb. most of these old vessels were cast, but some copper-work was hammered by hand, and those which have been preserved to us testify to the brawny arm of the smith and the strength of his blow when by hammer and hand he wrought them. such copper caldrons were often made in two or more parts, and having been shaped on the block, were afterwards riveted together. it is puzzling at times to understand local and trade terms in that they frequently differ from the commonly accepted names of cooking vessels. thus, these wrought caldrons or pots were frequently designated tripod kettles. a very fine example of such a wrought copper kettle was recovered a short time ago from whittlesey mere and is now in the peterborough museum. a century or more ago the mere was famous in huntingdonshire and many water parties were held there. the kettle recently found is thought to have been a relic of those events, and to have been used on the margin of the lake. the fine caldron of cast brass illustrated in fig. 27 was found during excavations in water lane, in london. it is peculiar in that it has two-eared handles and projecting feet. it is very substantial, and may be regarded as typical of the early metal caldrons, several of which have been found in london. another cooking vessel, smaller in size, having a curved handle and being in good preservation, a domestic relic of the seventeenth century, which was dug up in milton street, cripplegate, is illustrated in fig. 28. [illustration: fig. 25.--seventeenth-century brass pan. fig. 26.--brass tripod pot.] [illustration: fig. 27.--caldron of cast brass. fig. 28.--brass cooking vessel with curved handle.] reference has been made to the baronial halls, and to the numerous relics which have been lost to futurity. there are, however, some well-known castles where, although the kitchens have been replenished from time to time, the older forms of cooking vessels have been perpetuated. until recent days the kitchen arrangements at windsor castle remained much as they had been for many years previous, and even now copper and brass retain a favoured position and are very much in evidence. windsor has been the scene of much feasting, and many great state events have put a strain even upon the domestic resources of that famous royal residence. the great kitchen of the castle is supplemented by a vegetable kitchen, a green kitchen, and a scullery, and around these rooms there is a bright array of copper pans and cooking utensils, mostly bearing the monogram of george iv, for it was in his reign that many new culinary appointments were added. these vessels, large and small, were in constant use during the reign of queen victoria. her late majesty was averse to change. in her days oak out of windsor forest was burned in the grate, and the spits and roasting-jacks and other kitchen accessories were in keeping with the copper and brass pans and kettles. great changes have been made since the accession of george v, for queen mary supervises the management of the royal kitchens, and many modern cooking vessels have been substituted for older ones. the collector of copper and brass culinary utensils has seldom an opportunity of adding the large bronze caldrons and relics of royal kitchens to his collection. he has to be content with exploring lesser domains, and securing wherever possible the smaller cooking vessels of days gone by. these are frequently quite as interesting as those of larger size, and there is a wealth of copper still lying dormant in antique shops, and in some instances in the scrap-heaps of the old metal dealer. without going any further back the saucepans of the seventeenth century well reward the discoverer of such relics. that century was a time when pious mottoes were carved upon the lintel beam and when old coffers and other pieces of massive oak were decorated with such sentiments. the brassfounders followed suit and ornamented pots and pans, and enriched them with mottoes just as they cast such inscriptions on bells and mortars. two very interesting seventeenth-century vessels are illustrated on p. 165. one of these, fig. 25, was discovered some years ago in fetter lane, and is now in the guildhall museum. the other, fig. 26, is a tripod pot, the handle of which has a loop near the bowl. it is probably of early seventeenth or late sixteenth-century workmanship. the brass skillet of seventeenth-century make, illustrated in fig. 29, may be seen by the curious in the british museum. there is no uncertainty about its date, for it is marked 1684, and along the handle is the quaint motto "pitty the pore." collectors may be reminded that inscriptions are sometimes stamped; at others engraved, and they are frequently met with on quite unimportant vessels. the metal used for such utensils was chiefly of brass, but often of latten, an alloy in which there was an admixture of zinc, or of tin in what was known as white latten. as it has been stated already, brass came into vogue late in the sixteenth century, and soon became popular for kitchen utensils; latten, however, was a favourite alloy for spoons and the smaller objects, especially for porringers for mulling wine. concurrent with the use of copper and its modern alloys bronze appears to have been used in this country even as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century, the cooking vessels illustrated in figs. 30 and 31 being bronze of this late type. [illustration: fig. 29.--skillet (brass), the handle of which is engraved with the motto "pitty the pore."] [illustration: figs. 30 and 31.--bronze cooking vessels, attributed to the beginning of the seventeenth century. (_in the british museum._)] the skillet, which continued a favourite vessel, commonly called a saucepan, originally had three short-curved feet, and the handle was curved, too. it was a development of a still earlier cooking vessel; its prototype of the sixteenth century having a globular body with short-curved feet, and frequently two handles. the twentieth-century collector, accustomed as he is to machine-and factory-made goods of uniform finish and of regular shapes, is apt to be a little bit disappointed with the copper curios roughly made and badly formed. it would appear as if most of the collectable copper goods were made after the days when the old guilds so carefully controlled the making of copper and latten in lothbury. when their power of control waned, craftsmen who had been employed by guild members worked for themselves, and there was but little supervision over the metal wares made by the coppersmith, who was often a retailer of his own wares. when the hardware dealer or copper man became an established trader in the eighteenth century he would employ a journeyman coppersmith in his little workshop, who would fashion the utensils with a hammer on a wooden block, and afterwards planish them by hand as he thought fit. in the making of such goods there was great irregularity, and the dealer and his customer, too, were dependent upon the whim of the craftsman. that was before the days of machine-made goods. instead of the brass or copper being pressed and stamped by machinery and carefully finished the utensils were made in a rough and ready way on the wooden block, and simply hammered in the rounded cavities which had been made in it. saucepans, stewpans, and jelly moulds were beaten into shape, and then hollowed and dished. it is said it was a healthful trade, for many of the old coppersmiths had passed their threescore years and ten shaping kettles and deftly fashioning from a sheet of brass even quite ornamental domestic articles of utility; they would decorate by hand a brass chestnut roaster with no other tools but a small hammer and a punch, and with the same simple instruments they would work a fancy pattern on the lid of a warming-pan. some coppersmiths won fame in the fashioning of furnace-pans, better known as washing coppers, and others would undertake the roofing of houses and churches. one notable firm in london, whose copper saucepans and cooking-pots had been sold for a hundred years or more, achieved the zenith of their fame when they produced that enormous piece of copper-work, the ball and cross of st. paul's cathedral, which is referred to and illustrated in another chapter. [illustration: figs. 32 and 33.--copper water jug and water pot.] [illustration: fig. 34.--copper water jug and cover. fig. 35.--brass two-handled water vessel.] there is yet another reason given why so many of the old copper pots and pans are irregular in shape and are often fitted with apparently unsuitable handles. it is that most of these old vessels at one time or another have undergone repairs, and were frequently treated by unskilled workmen. among the street cries of london one of the oldest was: "any pots or pans to mend?" the travelling tinker was a repairing coppersmith, too, and much of his time was occupied in mending the copper and brass cooking utensils used at the farmhouses and in the villages through which he passed. his methods of dealing with the vessels entrusted to him for repairs were not always the best, as museum relics testify. drinking cups, tankards, and flagons constitute another very important section of collectable curios. they were, however, chiefly made of pewter in the days before glass and earthenware became general. some were undoubtedly of copper. this metal, however, was chiefly used for large jugs in which water and other liquids were carried. water vessels vary in shape, although certain characteristics are frequently noticeable. the typical english-made jug and water vessel, such as those shown in figs. 32, 33, 34, and 35, are very graceful in shape, the handles being light and very suitable. they make remarkably welcome additions to a collection of metal, and are appropriate ornaments on an old oak sideboard. the houseplace. it is not a far remove from the kitchen to the houseplace, and it is there that some of the more decorative brasswork of eighteenth-century workmanship is chiefly to be found. just as copper and brass formed a prominent feature in the equipment of the kitchen, so in the old houseplace they were considered the best for ornamental purposes. the polishing of the metal-work throughout the house in the good old days must have been a considerable item in the duties of domestic servants, but no doubt it well repaid the labour, for from the old ornaments and usable curios of the houseplace which have come into the hands of collectors, especially when housed in a reconstructed eighteenth-century room, the effect is excellent. the metal-work of the best parlour was not so extensive, although there were many beautifully polished coal-vases and fender frets. indeed, in both rooms mentioned the chief attraction would appear to have centred on the fireplace. [illustration: fig. 36.--a finely-pierced brass trivet, dated 1668.] [illustration: fig. 37.--brass-topped trivet, with additional leg stay. fig. 38.--brass-topped trivet, with turned wood handle.] the story of the evolution of the grate and the hearth and its appointments is of extreme interest. the grate itself was at times ornate with polished brass beads and canopies. the older type of fireplace was mostly fitted with iron appointments, but even when andirons were upon the hearth and logs of timber crackled as they blazed up the wide old chimney, the dogs or chief ornaments of the hearth were often of brass or bronze. when hob-grates and registers came in fashion, ormolu and brass ornament contrasted with polished steel. a typical parlour hob-grate of the eighteenth century would be ornate with brasses on the hobs, a pierced brass fender on the stone slab, and a polished brass ashes pan in front of the bars to hide the cinders. the trivet or revolving stool, small or large, was in the fender or on the hearth, and massive fire brasses (not irons) filled the empty spaces. the brass trivet, revived in modern times, was originally a three-legged stool made of metal, on which a kettle or similar vessel could be placed near to the fire. the convenience of being able to put the trivet stool quite close up to the bars suggested to the maker of such things the addition of hooks by which the trivet could be hung upon the bar, thereby bringing it nearer to the heat. in later years the trivet developed a handle for the convenience of moving it about, and especially of hanging it upon the bars, and in the latest completed form with turned wood handle, iron legs, and brass fretted top, the trivet was regarded as an essential accompaniment to the fire-grate. from the three-legged stool with hooks or handle there came a minor development in the form of a light portable trivet without legs, which could only be used when hung on the bars. these varieties presented the worker in brass with an excellent opportunity of showing his decorative skill, and brass trivet tops soon became very ornamental. fig. 36 represents a finely-pierced brass trivet, with tall legs and pointed feet and a turned wood handle. on the top of a baluster-shaped device, supported by dolphins, atlas is represented bearing on his shoulders the globe. the date of the trivet is 1668, and on the top is also engraved the owner's monogram. another very interesting example comes from derbyshire, and is shown in fig. 38. yet another example is given in fig. 37, this being a more elaborate design. in the centre of the plate an eagle is represented with outstretched wings. the construction of this trivet is somewhat unusual in that it is strengthened with a cross-bar; the feet are of spear-head shape. all three examples are to be seen at south kensington. there have been many modern replicas of the beautiful old brass helmet-shaped coal-boxes so common half a century ago. the earlier types varied somewhat in shape, but always preserved their helmet-like form, as illustrated in the example shown in fig. 39. in the days when these coal-boxes were fashionable, miniature pipkins were sold for drawing-room use, and a little later oblong and oval boxes of polished brass and copper were in common use; in some places the brass log boxes taking their place, especially where wood was plentiful. [illustration: fig. 39.--copper helmet-shaped coal-box.] it is probable no domestic utensil or appliance has gained greater notoriety than the copper and brass warming-pan, which so long held an honoured place in the chimney corner. it was used nightly in winter for warming beds in the often large and chilly rooms, both in the homes of the wealthy and of the middle classes. one of these pans is represented in fig. 23 on the wall of the seventeenth-century room already mentioned as being on view in the london museum. another very handsome warming-pan, which is in the victoria and albert museum, is very exceptional in style. many of the earlier examples are dated, and sometimes engraved or embossed with pious or loyal sentiments, as was the custom of the times. the royal albert memorial museum at exeter contains several interesting warming-pans; one, which is dated on the lid 1622, is engraved: "i.r. god save king james"; another, with an iron handle, is of still earlier date, being stamped 1616 on the lid. brass foot-warmers were at one time in regular use; a very fine example, shown in fig. 40, is of octagonal shape, covered with repoussé decoration, and fitted with a folding bail handle, facilitating its removal from place to place. there have been many copper foot-warmers, carriage warmers, and the like used in days before modern heating arrangements were known. some years ago little copper muff-warmers were sold in the shops; but they were of no great novelty, for as far back as the seventeenth century what were known as warming boxes were made for keeping the hands warm on journeys when travelling by the very cold and draughty stage coaches. these curious little boxes of brass or copper were heated with a removable mass of iron, which could be lifted out of the box, which hinged in the centre, by means of an iron hook; just in the same way the old box irons were operated. in figs. 41 and 42 one of these early boxes, which may be seen in the guildhall museum, is illustrated. thus in olden time the comfort of travellers was attained. the old inns were welcome retreats after a stormy journey by road, and the older inns of the coaching days often contain many interesting relics of the days when the copper and brass objects we now call curious and old were new. those objects referred to in the previous paragraphs by no means exhaust the list of houseplace curios in metal, but they may serve to point out the great interest which attaches to even common objects of everyday use when a few years have passed by and changes have been brought about in everyday usages. [illustration: fig. 40.--brass foot-warmer with bail handle. (_in the victoria and albert museum._)] [illustration: figs. 41 and 42.--early brass or bronze hand-warmer, shown open and closed. (_in the guildhall museum._)] chimney and other ornaments. as it has been intimated already, the fireplace was a centre of attraction in all old houses. it was customary on a winter's night to draw up close to the fire, and in so doing it was only natural that the chimney piece and those objects which rested thereon would be constantly looked at. this probably gave makers the cue when designing ornamental brasswork which could be used as household decoration. the ornaments of those days were substantial, and the chimney ornaments solid and lasting. it was a common thing to see a row of brass figures or pairs of brass ornaments on the chimney-piece. such designs as those shown in figs. 43 and 44 were popular. our illustrations represent one only of each fashion; the pairs, however, were usually designed opposite hands, looking to right and left. such ornaments were seen on the kitchen mantelpieces of the well-to-do and on the hob-grates of the houseplaces of the middle classes. this was the prevailing custom from fifty to seventy years ago, and still earlier similar ornaments, cruder in design, evidently modelled after the style of the bow pottery figures, were in use. in lancashire and in the manufacturing districts of the black country brass ornaments of similar and more modern types have always been favoured, and they are still sold as ornaments to well-to-do artisans and mechanics. the modern castings are rougher and not so decorative or beautifully designed as the tooled castings of earlier days. the peacock was a favourite bird and shared with the pheasant popularity. these designs are easily recognizable among the genuine antiques. there were larger animals, too, such as the horse, an example of which is given in fig. 45. this favourite beast of burden was oftentimes represented as a dray horse; in more sporting circles as a hack or a hunter. in agricultural districts the wagoner, the huntsman, and dogs and hounds were chiefly favoured. they were generally set on a base or plinth, an exceptionally good country brass of the earlier type representing a shepherd with his typical crook. little statuettes represented politicians and historical and even allegorical figures. among the portrait brasses napoleon was a favourite subject in the days when his name was familiar in every household. izaac walton, the exponent of the gentle art, was often modelled in brass, and even robinson crusoe and his man friday formed the subject of a rare group. the continents of america, africa, and asia are rare and interesting allegorical groups. other brasses show traces of chippendale influence, especially those in miniature which represent familiar household objects, among which are wonderful little models of circular tables and of the oval loo tables, like those then seen in the best parlour. there are also miniature brass trivets and stools and models of grandfather chairs. brass ornaments such as those described are not altogether confined to chimney ornaments, for on a larger scale they were frequently used on the old hob-grates, the polished brass or copper contrasting with the shining blacklead put on with plenty of elbow grease. they were used, too, as door porters and also as sideboard ornaments. the ornaments of the early nineteenth century in metal were, however, almost entirely associated with utilitarian purposes, the artist decorating the commoner objects, giving special attention to the repoussé work and engraving on those portions which would be in view when the dustpan, warming-pan, hearth brush, or other object was hung up. classified arrangement. [illustration: figs. 43 and 44.--brass chimney ornaments (one each of pairs).] [illustration: fig. 45.--brass horse, a chimney or hob-grate ornament.] in addition to those articles mentioned in the foregoing paragraphs there are many domestic utensils highly decorative, such as candlesticks and lighting apparatus, referred to in other chapters in this volume. these all come under the special notice of the collector of copper and brasswork who turns his attention to domestic antiques. such collectable objects as already suggested should be arranged in a room furnished in similar style to that prevailing at a time when these metal curios were in daily use. if such a room is not available an alternative method is to arrange the domestic curios so that by comparison the progress made by makers as each succeeding generation came and went can be seen and appreciated. incidentally that method is very interesting in that it reveals the periods at which art was uppermost, and indicates those times when the utility of domestic copper and brass was in the ascendant rather than their ornate appearance. popular taste was followed by the maker at all times, and the more progressive manufacturers were ever on the look-out for some slight improvement either in design or decoration--seldom, however, making any radical change--so that the progress in metal-work was one of development slowly unfolded. ix candlesticks and lamps chapter ix candlesticks and lamps fire-making apparatus--candles and candlesticks--oil lamps and lanterns. artificial light and heat were among the first scientific discoveries of primeval man. to harness the forces of nature was undoubtedly a great achievement, and at first would be viewed with alarm. the fire which had been kindled from natural causes would be looked upon with awe by the cave men or the dwellers in the forest. when they saw it dying down they would very naturally make some effort to keep the fire burning by adding fresh fuel. the time would come, however, when lighting a fire by artificial means would be resorted to; and the methods adopted in those far-off days involved the use of primitive contrivances, some of which are described on the next page. the fire burning under the camp kettle would in course of time suggest a flaming torch, which could be carried about at will; and from the torch, which burned all too quickly, came the discovery of oil lamps and the candle. at first this was only a rushlight, used side by side with the cresset torch; and then in later days came lamps and lanterns. fire-making apparatus. the collector of copper and brass looks with regret on the early fire-making apparatus in that iron was the chief metal employed. nevertheless there are some objects associated with fire-making manufactured in brass. there are some well-known collectors who have specialized on fire-making appliances and early lamps. among fire-making appliances are those of the percussion type, commencing with iron pyrites, flint, steel, and tinder. some of the earlier tinder boxes were made of brass, although the majority were of wood and tin; many of the pistol-action tinder boxes which immediately followed the earlier form were furnished with stands and candle-sockets, being used for the purpose of lighting an early candle. some of the brass candle-stands and candle-sockets are beautifully engraved, and many of the contrivances which were fired by the priming of gunpowder, the flash igniting the tinder, are highly ornamental. that method, of course, marked an advance. there are pistol-action tinder boxes from japan, highly ornamental, the cases being pierced and in some instances decorated with raised silver and copper relief. from china and central asia come tinder pouches, many of them having decorative brass mounts, some being gilt on copper. tinder was often carried about in tubes of brass and copper, some of the best examples being very elaborately engraved. in some small compartments are found; these were intended for the flint and steel. a later type of mechanical fire-making appliance, introduced by richard lorentz, in 1807, took the form of a patented compression tube or fire syringe, the piston of which was of brass. chemical methods of lighting fires and striking lights have been tried with more or less success, and among the collectable curios are relics of these early attempts to produce fire and light by scientific methods. the collector, while welcoming every curious object, has generally to rely upon the objects which were in common use and made in larger quantities. of these commonly used appliances, however, there are many varieties, and of the more perfected forms of lighting requisites there is an abundant choice. [illustration: fig. 46.--a two-tube candle mould.] [illustration: fig. 47.--two types of early pricket candlesticks.] candles and candlesticks. many are the legends and stories of the days when the flickering light of a candle threw shadows across the ceiling and partly lighted and partly obscured the table and floor. ghostly, too, they seemed as the embers of the fire died on the hearth. the provision of artificial light for use during the long winter evenings has always been one of the domestic cares, and the women of the household were in early days mindful of the coming winter during the summer and autumn months. among their domestic duties was that of gathering and drying rushes and dipping them in fat. the primitive rushlights gave an uncertain glimmer, and the moulding of candles with cotton wicks would be welcomed as an advance. candles were home-made until comparatively modern times, and the candle mould was an essential in every household. it was frequently of brass, and varied in size and in the number of moulds, the one shown in fig. 46 having only two tubes. while the custom of making candles at home continued long in country districts, in towns candle-making became a trade, and, as was the custom in those days, the moulders of candles assembled together in certain well-known thoroughfares. in london, candlewick street, the name of which has since been corrupted into cannon street, was their rendezvous. the store of candles for immediate use was kept close at hand in the candle box, placed against the wall in some convenient position. the boxes were of wood and japanned tin; others were of brass, some being very ornamental and covered over with engravings. such candle boxes are to be found in the curio shops; several fine examples may frequently be seen near st. james's park station in london, where there are several curio dealers who specialize on old copper and brass, the neighbourhood being quite a happy hunting ground for the collector of metal. [illustration: fig. 48.--candelabrum of early type (central figure), and two oil lamps. (_in washington museum._)] the evolution of the candlestick was slow at first. the old rushlight-holders were made by the country smith, and very clumsy they were on their heavy wooden stands. the first idea seems to have been to stick the candle on a spike, oftentimes such spikes being placed conveniently on the wall. then came the "sticks" on stands which could be moved about the room, in some cases with a sliding holder, the height of which could be regulated. gradually, however, the candlestick for table use and the candlestick with the dished base, which became common as the type of the chamber candlestick, came into being. with the progress made and the general acceptance of the two types, the pillar candlestick and the chamber candlestick, the artist in metal began to turn his attention to perfecting their forms and decorating them. many remarkable candlesticks in bronze are met with among ecclesiastical brasses, some of which are referred to in chapter vii. of the domestic candlesticks there are many early examples, some with beautifully twisted columns and later fluted examples. the pricket candlestick--that is, a candlestick with a spike on which a candle was firmly placed--eventually gave way to the more convenient socket, and a flange at the top of the column held any candle grease which might run down the sides of the candle. the pricket candlesticks of early twelfth-century make illustrated in fig. 47 may be referred to as examples of the pricket form, their chief attractions being found in the richly enamelled decoration. in fig. 48 we are able to illustrate a very interesting candelabrum now in the national museum at washington city. it is made up literally of two candlesticks attached to a very simple pillar bracket on which they slide up and down, the addition of a metal reflector suggesting later developments in candlesticks and lamps. in the later days both brass and silver candlesticks, especially the tall lights used on mantelpiece or on sideboard, were ornamented in keeping with the plate of the period, and were eventually classed among the more decorative appointments of the home. when candles were made of tallow the wicks burned black and charred and a constant snuffing was necessary. this brought about the use of snuffers of polished steel and of brass, and a little later of snuffer trays, the snuffers and their accompanying trays forming a most interesting addition to the collection of metal. candlesticks are still used, but the candles are of superior quality and burn steady and bright. some are very decorative, too, especially the painted candlesticks which with their ornamental shades are attached to pianos, and are used as wall lights or as additional lights upon the table. the days of brass candlesticks, snuffers, and trays have, however, long been numbered, and most of these relics of old-world lights have passed into the region of curios. here and there they may be seen in their once accustomed place, but more as ornament than for actual use. in a well-known hotel, at one time an old coaching house famous for its copper and brass wares, the candlesticks in those early days a necessity are now placed in pairs on the bedroom mantelpieces as mementoes of the past. they are not intended for use, for the electric switch is at hand, and the newer light has taken the place of the wax candle (see fig. 49). [illustration: fig. 49.--group of rare candlesticks, alms-dish, and ewers. (_in the victoria and albert museum._)] the lines which some years ago were printed in connection with a concert given in aid of the glasgow candlemakers and tallow workers are appropriate: "the light of other days is faded, the reign of tallow's past; magnesium and the limelight have vanquished 'dips' at last. and the old lamplighter, too, must shortly disappear, making way for electric light, with its garish flash so 'queer.'" oil lamps and lanterns. much might be written of oil lamps and lanterns, of which there are many interesting curios. they are varied, too, for they cover a large field reaching from almost prehistoric times to the present day. many lamps of metal and bronze have survived and are found in our museums side by side with the still earlier examples of terra-cotta and crude pottery. there is a very interesting collection of early lamps in the guildhall museum, one of the most attractive examples being a roman lamp of bronze, a portion of the central oil space being covered. the bronze lamp illustrated in fig. 50 which may be seen in the london museum, is claimed by the authorities to be unique in london finds, and is probably the finest example of a roman lamp discovered in england. the collector finds his most interesting examples in lamps which have been made in this country the outcome of the candle and of the candle lamp which was gradually evolved. many of these early candle lamps were adaptations of old candlesticks; it would appear that the idea of enclosing a candle in a horn lantern and thereby securing greater steadiness on account of its being protected from the wind and draughts, which had already been adopted, suggested a glass cup or protection to the candle on the table. it is quite likely that the first experiments were made with a broken cup of porcelain with the bottom knocked out, for the earliest examples seem to have taken that form, the cup-like vessels being gradually confined more and more at the top and the bottom. the idea of a candle-clock occurred to seventeenth-century candlestick makers, who marked the edges of the lamp on the framework so that as the candles burned low they marked the hours. the burning would be more or less irregular, but the marks on the candle-clocks would be some guide, and served their purpose in days when the time of day was of less moment than it is now. oil, which had early been the chief lighting medium, was once more in the ascendant when in the eighteenth century oil lamps gradually took the place of candles. fig. 48 represents a handsome pair of old oil lamps, their beautifully shaped vase containers being reminiscent of the urns and vases at that time ornamenting the mahogany sideboard. it is said that many such lamps were made in england and sent over to america before the war of independence, and that in the homesteads of the old plantations such relics have been treasured. the examples shown in the accompanying illustrations are now in the united states national museum at washington. in the days when the watchman called the time of the night street-lighting was unknown. lanterns were carried in the hand and the links-boys were in attendance. [illustration: fig. 50.--early bronze lamp. (_the london museum, stafford house._)] in fig 51 is shown a brass lantern (open and closed) which is now the property of the sunderland public libraries and art gallery committee, a very interesting specimen of an eighteenth-century collapsible lantern of brass and horn. it measures 6-1/4 in. high and is 3-3/8 in. square. such lanterns were very common in the eighteenth century, and indeed in still more recent times in country places where they were very necessary before country roads were improved and rural thoroughfares lighted. we must, however, fain pass over street-lighting for the lanterns which have been copied so many times in more recent days. _apropos_ of lanterns of copper carried by the wary traveller and of the copper lightning conductor on the church steeple, an indispensable feature still, the following lines are quoted: "in the olden time, along the street, a glimmering lantern led the feet when on a midnight stroll; but now we catch, when night is night, a piece of lightning from the sky and stick it on a pole." [illustration: fig. 51.--old brass lantern. (_in the sunderland museum._)] x bells and bell-metal castings chapter x bells and bell-metal castings the founders' secrets--great bells of historic fame--the uses of bells--old mortars. the metal of which bells are made differs only from that used for other copper wares in its alloy. the ancients, however, made many mysteries about the constituents of the metal by which they were able to produce such beautiful notes and musical sounds. the modern bellfounder uses about 75 parts of copper and 25 parts of tin, varying it sometimes by a mixture of zinc and lead, and in that he differs little from the bellfounder of old, except that the older craftsman made a secret of his alloy and sometimes added a small quantity of other metals. the theory is that a large percentage of copper gives a deep tone, whereas the greater addition of zinc and tin gives a sharper ring. the founders' secrets. a knowledge of metals and of their qualities is a desirable accomplishment which all metal-workers and founders should possess, and it was doubtless because some of the early bellfounders intuitively, or as the result of accidental experiment, discovered the true properties of the alloys they used that they were able to excel in the craft. there are secrets associated with the mixing of the metal, too, especially that of heating the molten metal to the correct temperature at the most critical moment of running it into the mould. much depends also upon tuning the bells by turning and reducing their thicknesses at the right place in the bell's cone. the accuracy of such details is essential, otherwise those mellow sounds for which many of the old bells are noted would be absent. it is true that the rich mellowness and musical notes so noticeable in some peals are due to some extent to age, the exact influence of which is not fully understood. the bellfounder has always regarded his work from a lofty standard, and has recorded the accomplishment of any great work by the inscriptions he has caused to be cast upon the surface of the bell. such data is often accompanied by the name and trademark of the founder, the bellfounders' arms being frequently added. sometimes such inscriptions are dated; at others the lettering is sufficient to denote the date of the work. the making of great bells was always regarded as an event of some importance. most of those which have obtained historic fame have either been associated with some public use or have been cast for ecclesiastical purposes. such events were often attended by kings and queens and great ecclesiastics, who threw into the melting-pot contributions of silver and gold, inscriptions upon the bells themselves often recording the special object of their manufacture. the difficulties in the way of casting bells a distance away from the tower where they were to be hung often induced the founders to cast them on the spot; indeed, as late as 1762 the clock bell of canterbury was recast in the cathedral yard. great bells of historic fame. there are many great bells of historic fame, and others which have gained notoriety from their great size. the claim to the possession of the largest bell was formerly made by the chinese, but the palm is usually accorded to the great bell of moscow, which measures 19 ft. in height and 64 ft. in circumference. in our own country there are the great bell of st. paul's, weighing five tons; "great tom" of lincoln, of similar weight; "peter" of york, weighing ten tons; and "big ben" of westminster, scaling fourteen tons. some old churches and cathedrals are noted more for their beautiful chimes than for the size and weight of their larger bells. at mechlin there are forty-four bells in the carillon, and in antwerp cathedral the chimes are played on sixty-five bells, the oldest in the set, named "horrida," being dated 1316, but the bell which is said to be the best loved of all by the ringers is stamped "carolas," having been given by charles v. there are bells of lesser size which have gained popularity, some from their former associations; others perhaps, more so because of their present location or ownership. sometimes bells have been removed from old churches and after having changed hands several times have found a resting-place in the possession of laymen; often in museums, it is true, but not always so: as an instance there is the fine old bell in the possession of the grocers' company, cast in 1463 for the church of all hallows, staining, where it hung for many years. the bell illustrated in fig. 52, now in the victoria and albert museum, is of more recent date, having been cast in exeter in 1670 by john pennington. bells have frequently been brought to this country as trophies of war. at the tower there are several fine examples of eastern workmanship, and there are others now in the united service museum at whitehall. the uses of bells. the older bells have seen varied service; they have been hung in church towers and in public places; they have sounded the note of alarm, and given the signal for historic assemblies; they have rung the death-knell of illustrious persons, and in rural england have summoned many generations of worshippers to divine service. the bells, the loud clanging of which can be heard afar, are, however, the outcome of a gradual process of development. the evolution from the handbell to the turret bell was doubtless slow. the simple handbell in its early stages was only a slight advance beyond the bells hung round the necks of the leaders of the flock, which were made by the village smith. such primitive, and not always musical, bells were used from the earliest times to summon servants and workers in the field and tenderers of the flock. the practice dates from biblical days, for it was an early eastern custom for sheiks and patriarchs from their tent doors to summon their followers, or give the danger signal, by means of a bell. bible records tell of bells of gold suspended from the robes of priests, and of their use in temple worship. from that time onward they have been associated with religious ceremonials. in later times the early christians employed bells of copper and brass and consecrated them to their use. thus musical peals, rung collectively or individually, have sounded for all kinds of sacred rites. the bell--a mere handbell--was soon fixed over a doorway, or in some convenient place where it could with greater ease be rung by a cord. then came the suggestion of larger bells, afterwards covered over, and finally hung in steeple or tower, like the campanile (a tower separated from the church) so often met with in italy. the church bell is said to have been introduced here by paulinus, the bishop of mona, in a.d. 400. the next record of importance is the historical account of the venerable bede, who describes bells hung in towers--that was in a.d. 670. some two hundred years after bede's days a peal was rung for the first time in england, in the abbey of crowland. the pioneers of bell-ringing upon bells tuned in harmony were the ringers who produced such charming results with the bells of king's college, cambridge. the bells of churches were rung for ecclesiastical and for national and parochial purposes. there was the vesper bell for evensong, and there was the curfew bell which rang in obedience to the "lights out" enactments of norman days (see _couvre de feu_, p. 113). of the minor uses of bells there are many. in tudor days small bells were familiar objects in hunting. they formed part of the equipment of the hawk or falcon. of these we read in shakespeare's works--of the "'larum bell and of sweet bells jangled out of tune." in _othello_ there is a record of the "snorting citizen with his bell." [illustration: fig. 52.--bell cast by john pennington at exeter in 1670.] [illustration: fig. 53.--group of bell-metal mortars. (_in the british museum._)] bellmen were the heralds of news in country towns, and the importance of their office was made clear by the "oyez! oyez!" by which they prefixed their tale. the ancient watchman clanged his bell and the light in the lantern slung at his waist flickered as he sounded the call. this is mentioned in an old ballad, the first verse of which reads: "time, master, calls your bellman to his task, to see your doors and windows are all fast." numerous examples of curious bells are to be seen in our museums. in the welsh museum at cardiff there is an old celtic bell from llangwynodl, shown side by side with an electrotype of the famous bell of st. patrick. there is rather a sad note in the story of the fate of the old division bell of the irish house of commons, which, when the parliament was abolished, was sold for use in a dublin theatre as a call bell, eventually to be resold as old metal. that curio would at this juncture have been regarded as an historical relic of some value. the restoration of bells sometimes leads to mistakes when it is found that the inscriptions upon them appear to indicate an older date than would be judged to be correct from their appearance. of such restoration work an instance may be given of the peal of twelve bells recently placed in the tower of st. mary's church, which has become the cathedral of the new diocese of chelmsford. the bells were dedicated in the presence of ringers from a large number of towns and villages in essex, a county noted for its bell-towers and bells. the peal of ten replaces one cast in 1777, and the old inscriptions have been placed on the new bells. one reads: "tho' much against us may be said, to speak for ourselves we are not afraid." perhaps one of the most pleasing thoughts associated with bells is that their earliest use has been perpetuated throughout the ages. the sheep bell hung round the neck of the bellwether in eastern lands sounding so sweetly in the days of the psalmist of old, finds its replica on the downlands of the southern counties and on salisbury plain to-day, for there and in many other parts of rural england the tinkling jingle of the sheep bells may be heard. bells are not without their rivals, for gongs have been used in eastern countries for years, and now they are popular elsewhere. they were originally a disc of beaten metal with upturned rim, although in some countries they took the place of drums in warfare, as well as playing a part in religious services. the circular gong is associated with china, japan, and java. the burmese gong is of triangular form, and by way of contrast is made of polished metal, whereas those of the first-mentioned countries usually show hammer marks. many of the old gongs were exceedingly musical, and when struck with a leather-covered wooden mallet were capable of producing a variety of sounds. gongs old and new vary in size and, consequently, in depth of tone and volume of sound. among the eastern curios there are some highly decorative examples, especially among the smaller table gongs, the stands of which were often enriched by decorative ornament with inlays and enamels. old mortars. on account of being made of the same kind of alloy, bronze mortars are referred to in this chapter. they were usually cast by the bellfounders from the metal they used for bells, and many of them when struck give forth sonorous and deep-toned sounds. these mortars were moulded and often decorated with fanciful designs, frequently with the arms or initials of the prospective owners, others being dated. those shown in fig. 53 are representative types. many of the early mortars appear to have been imported into this country. the dutch founders made many in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, some being especially handsome and of large size. others still more ornate were of italian, portuguese, and spanish origin. in course of time the use of bell-metal was discarded, and brass mortars, cast and afterwards turned in a lathe, came into vogue. these gradually became little used, and when pestles and mortars were needed in the domestic kitchen, more modern types of marble and composition were introduced. to-day, these once necessary domestic appliances are relegated to the chimney-piece as honoured ornaments in the kitchen; the older and more valuable bell-metal mortars being given more prominent positions upon sideboard or cabinet. such is the story of the bellfounders, whose art remains among modern crafts. xi civic emblems and weights and measures chapter xi civic emblems and weights and measures the ancient horn--the badge of office--weighing instruments--measures in exeter museum--our standards. the sounding of brass and the tinkling of cymbals have heralded in many state pageants. civic pomp and splendour have been enriched by brilliant uniforms, and the sunlight has flashed on many a thrilling event in national history. in the relics of former glories we find emblems of the doings of the past, and amidst ruined buildings or those halls now shorn of much of their former grandeur--their original purpose forgotten, or, perchance, misunderstood--the collector seeks symbols of office and hoards them when found as mere curios. in this chapter such civic emblems and prosaic weights and measures are grouped. a curious combination some may think. very appropriate, however, when we note the close connection which once existed between those old corporations and guilds who rejoiced in emblems of office and enjoyed the custody of standards of weights and measures, fulfilling the duties which had been thrust upon them by powers and authorities only too willing to depute to private bodies necessary work for which they had no equipment and no organization. the ancient horn. civil authority and even state control could, in days gone by, only be sustained by plenty of pomp and show. the populace were awed by giant insignia and much parade of power to enforce the authority held. in days before there were newspapers to make announcements, and no printing presses to print posters and proclamations, the calling of a public meeting at which declarations could be made or decisions arrived at, was a matter of no small importance. the sounding horn had been used from primitive times to call together the people, and the gatherings of the folk mote were heralded in and assembled by a loud blast on the "moot horn." the moot or meeting of the people of a village or hamlet began in anglo-saxon times, when such assemblies were held in the open air. later came the moot hall, which preceded the guildhall of days when traders and merchants were incorporated into fraternal guilds. the horn was the signal for calling such assemblies commonly in use in old towns, and such relics of the past are now preserved with care--emblems of altered times to those who are familiar with them. in fig. 55 is shown the moot horn of winchester, a beautiful example of ancient metal-work. there is a similar horn at dover, which is sounded still according to custom at the election of the mayor. [illustration: fig. 54.--an eighteenth-century flagstaff head of brass, originally gilt.] [illustration: fig. 55.--the winchester moot horn. (_in the guildhall museum, winchester._)] the moot horn is not quite lost in modern procedure, for the heralds march in royal processions and precede the proclamation of regal and civic state as of yore, on those rare occasions calling a halt from everyday occupations by the trumpet's blast. the badge of office. the mace is with us to-day as the chief emblem of office. without it no civil gathering of importance in london would be complete, and when robbed of its presence no law can be enacted at westminster. the "bauble" cromwell caused to be removed was a symbol of historic and ancient fame, deep-rooted in the minds of even stern puritans. it had to be banished ere the parliament was dissolved! the mace is truly the lineal and direct sign of power and authority, for it was the ancient battle-axe which could deal the deadly blow that was first held up before the sovereign, and in brass or gilt the tawdry symbol took its place and has ever since retained its significance. in lesser degree the staff or stave of office has remained an ensign of authority. the heads of such staves are often decorative and surmounted by some appropriate emblem or well-known sign of office. the flagstaff head shown in fig. 54 is of eighteenth-century date; its very beautiful openwork ornament was probably of gilt. it is an excellent example of english workmanship of that period. weighing instruments. the founders' company exercised an oversight over weighing instruments and weights and had difficulties to contend with, for there were many irregularities and not a few differences in the standards used in various localities. the scales of traders of olden time were far from accurate, and there was abundant need of standard weights and measures such as were kept in some of the old country towns. winchester and exeter are two places where care has been taken of the old standards, and in both of these towns ancient standards may be seen. similar standards formerly kept in other towns have been scattered, and not infrequently old specimens--obviously standards from the inscriptions upon them--are met with in private collections. [illustration: fig. 56.--the winchester bushel (standard measure).] [illustration: fig. 57.--old measures based on the winchester standard. (_sketched by permission of the corporation of the city of winchester._)] those now in the winchester museum extend over a considerable period, ranging in antiquity from the reign of henry iii to elizabeth. the original bushel which became the standard on which other measures were based is still preserved in winchester. in the reign of henry vii, one william nele was commissioned to make further copies, on which the sum of fifty pounds was expended. the transaction was recorded in the state papers of 1486 as follows: "to william nele, gunn founder and brasier of london, upon makyng of diverse measures and weights accordinge to the olde standarde of englande, to be sent into several shires and cities of englande, accordinge to the king's commandment, and by the advice of the counsaal at diverse tymes." the ancient bronze bushel of great historic interest is illustrated in fig. 56. among the other standards kept with the "bushel" in the winchester museum are those shown in fig. 57--all measures based on similar standards. tudor examples are also still in the possession of the local authorities at norwich, salisbury, northampton, southampton, and exeter. fig. 58 is another example of a pint measure, dated 1601, the crowned initials "e.r." upon it, of course, indicating "elizabeth regina." a later winchester pint, dated 1704, is shown in fig. 59. measures in exeter museum. when it was enacted in the reign of henry vii that certain towns should hold copies of the ancient standards, exeter was the city chosen wherein were deposited the standards for the shire of devon. they are now on view in the royal albert memorial museum in exeter, supplemented by other standards legalized by queen elizabeth, and by more recent copies of authorized standards. there are five standards, dated 1799, consisting of the winchester bushel, peck, and half-peck, and standard coal measure of peck and half-peck. a bronze standard of the time of william and mary is engraved "for the citty and covnty of exon 1689;" and a standard gallon, embossed with crown and monogram, is engraved "e.r. elizabeth regina, 1601;". there are also standard wine measures; one engraved on one side "city of exeter 1797" and on the reverse "half pint. wine," and another on the reverse, "gill. wine." an exceptionally interesting piece is a standard ale gallon of the time of the commonwealth, engraved "an ale gallon sized and sealed in the tower of london by me john reynolds of the mynt. ano. 1653." among the standard weights included in this interesting exhibit is a 14 lb. bronze weight of the time of henry vii, embossed with portcullis and rose, and engraved "henric septim." it was found some years ago among old metal at a store in exeter, the manner of its discovery indicating the possibility of further finds of a similar nature in other towns. the little troy weights are exceptionally well preserved; the weights according to their engraving are 32 oz., 64 oz., 128 oz., and 256 oz. on the largest specimen the legend runs: "ano. do. el. reg. xxx. 1588." and on the upper edge, "cclvi.", the smaller weights being similarly indicated. these were all used as the standards at exeter until the year 1824. another interesting specimen is the standard yard and ell bed used in exeter for testing the rods used as cloth measures, the groove on the standard on the engraved side being one yard, that on the reverse one ell (=45 inches). the inscription on the standard yard reads: "civitas exon christopher coke esq. mayor. william bolitho receiver 1693." in the same museum there are also six brass stamping blocks formerly in use at the exeter custom house in connection with old exeter trades. mediæval london yields the collector many choice pieces. beautiful little scale beams of bronze and brass have been found in or near london wall. scales of antiquity, too, have sometimes been in the possession of old families for centuries almost without their knowing or appreciating their value. not long ago some beautiful little scales made of brass, which must have been made more than two hundred years ago, were picked up on an old barrow where the man who bought "odd things" had it for sale and thought it to be one of the almost valueless curios in the remains of sundries he had bought from the caretaker of an empty house. in the guildhall museum there are scales and weights of types usual in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. one of these is decorated with a band of stars, another of triangular shape is stamped with a merchant's mark--that also was found on the site of london wall. another remarkably interesting curio is an octagonal weight evidently answering the purpose of a baker's weight, and perhaps as an advertisement, too, for it is engraved, "weight of a quartern loaf, sold by james bull, 124, leadenhall street." our standards. [illustration: fig. 58.--a pint measure of the reign of elizabeth. fig. 59.--a winchester pint of the days of queen anne.] [illustration: fig 60.--old french weights. (_in the british museum._)] in this connection it may be pointed out that a very pleasing collection can inexpensively be made out of old money changers' weights, both english and foreign. they were chiefly used with the pocket scales at one time carried about by traders as a precaution against the numerous clipped and light-weight coins in circulation. among these little weights are those which were used for testing what are now obsolete gold coins, such as angel, guinea, half-guinea, and seven-shilling piece. some of the old roman bell weights are interesting; they took their shape from more ancient weights in the form of a pagan deity, probably mercury, who was looked upon as a god of scales and weights. in some collections larger continental weights are met with; those illustrated in fig. 60 representing three french weights preserved in the british museum. when examining old weights and measures we often wonder at the origin of such curious tables of weight formulated on somewhat perplexing standards, ridiculed as long obsolete by supporters of the metric systems. they would sweep them away; but to do so would snap one more link with the historic past, and perhaps cause us to forget the very simple origin of so many of our so-called complicated systems, the outcome of a slowly developing commerce--very different now to the days when our standards were formulated. the baseline of our weights and measures is to be found in a single grain of corn, such as would seem to be nature's gift--the staff of life! it was a natural standard for agriculturists, who would be the first to use it, to adopt. not only was the grain of corn the standard of measurement and weight, but a given number gave the weight value to the penny sterling. the grain retained its prominent position in our calculations long after standards had been fixed, for in the reign of henry vii it was enacted that the bushel measure should contain eight gallons of wheat, and that the gallon should weigh eight pounds, the pound to be of twelve ounces troy, each ounce equal to twenty silver pennies, every one of which should be of weight equivalent to thirty-two grains of dry wheat. it will be remembered that a still earlier standard--that of the roman empire--was based on barleycorns, of which there were twenty-four to the ounce, a measurement adopted at troyes, in france, having been brought from cairo during the crusades. thus in this simple story we see the origin of troy weight which in after years was used concurrently with the later _avoirdupois_ (goods by weight), the standard adopted for heavy wares. xii bronzes and their replicas chapter xii bronzes and their replicas early figure modelling--statues in public places--replicas in miniature. the art of sculpture was practised by the ancients, and long before the beautiful bronzes for which the artists of greece and rome were famous carvers of wood, and sculptors of stone and marble, had cut inscribed, and fashioned human figures, animals, and fabulous creatures according to their whims and fancies. in moulds cut in stone the early casters in metal produced the objects which we roughly class as bronze, and they are preserved to-day as reminders of those who lived before history was written. when the early bronze age had passed away and the use of iron was understood, the art of sculpture in stone was practised by the egyptians and by other eastern nations. then came the beautiful metal-work of ancient greece; the statues, trophies, and groups, produced in those days when greece excelled in the fine arts, have acquired a fame which has never been exceeded by sculptors or workers in metals in modern days. the italians of a later period showed their religious emotions in the metallic works of art they produced in early mediæval days; and still later french modellers have excelled in human expression. many of the great works of the old masters in bronze are unique, and they are retained as great treasures in the national museums where they have found lasting homes. for the benefit of connoisseurs of art many of the great works have been copied, and in the victoria and albert museum at south kensington and in other places there are replicas in metal and in other materials, faithful copies of the original bronzes which are so rare. the educational value of a gallery of ancient art, whether expressed in marble, bronze, stone, or other materials, is considerable; it not only tends to the appreciation of modern art as represented by the statues and monuments in our parks and gardens, and in those smaller works which adorn public buildings and private mansions, but it leads to the appreciation of the lesser replicas of great works, such as artistic groups, figures, and bronzes which have been copied in miniature. many of the most important works of the modeller and caster of bronze groups and figures are familiar to students of art and collectors of curios, in that so many of these important studies have been reproduced or copied; sometimes the copies are equally as beautiful as the original, although on a smaller scale, and many of them have quite an antique appearance, for they are by no means modern, such works of art having been reproduced very many years ago. [illustration: fig. 61.--bronze tiger, by antoine louis barye.] early figure modelling. the human figure in its most perfectly known form was early made the model from which artists sculptured stone and moulded figures. even some of the crude attempts of native races have evidently been intended to represent human beings with whom they associated or races they held in fear, but they were not always successful. bronze statues cast in moulds were known in egypt, and throughout later periods most of the civilized races have employed methods by which they have been able with more or less accuracy to reproduce in other substances of a more lasting character the perishable flesh and blood of the human race. in a similar way the personified deities have been perpetuated in bronze and many of them are simply idolized humanity. sometimes these statues have been very large, far beyond what is generally known as life-size. it must be remembered, however, that many of these colossal statues when raised to a great height are by no means out of proportion to the buildings on which they were placed, and assumed a normal size when viewed from below. it is said that one of the most striking colossal figures was that of minerva, crowning the summit of the acropolis. the largest statue seems to be that of nero, which rose 150 ft. in more modern times statues have been brought down to normal size. visitors to rome, however, recognise what a wonderful achievement it must have been to place that immense statue of st. peter in position. the artists of old were indeed clever, and not only have they justly been accorded fame for the size and beautiful proportions of their statues, but many of the ancient bronzes have gained their greatest notoriety from the great beauty with which the sculptors must have idealized their models. many of the antiques are almost perfect in form, and we are forced to wonder what kind of men and women their models were. classic models. the classic bronzes were almost invariably conceptions drawn from imagination, but the beautiful forms of the athletes and greek maidens helped the artist in his estimate of the deities he personified. in those bronzes we see the magic touch of the master hand, and perhaps of the belief in the mystic attributes so cleverly designed. thus we have figures of hercules, mars, venus, and many others, which can be copied, and now and then by some stroke of good luck a genuine antique is added to the collector's museum. statues in public places. [illustration: fig. 62.--bronze lion, by barye.] during the last half-century simple statues erected to the memories of noted politicians and military men in public parks, streets, and open places, have been added to by more realistic groups. it would be beyond the scope of this work to attempt categorical descriptions of such bronzes to be seen in the public places of our great cities, and it would be still more difficult to rightly classify them either in their order of merit or of the appropriateness of their selection. it seems justly fit that those who have been associated with the metallic art should be commemorated in copper and brass. to pittsburg belongs the honour of having remembered the father of the art of hammering into shape the metals. in that city, on a massive pedestal, stands a colossal bronze figure of tubal cain, who, in his brief life's history given in genesis, is spoken of as an "artificer in brass." he fittingly heads the list of metallurgists and scientists, to many of whom monuments have been erected. the use of bronze in monuments is not confined to figures of great men, for bronze and brass ornament often adds to the magnificence of a national memorial. as examples of the use of bronze for that purpose mention may be made of the bronze lions, after landseer, at the four corners of nelson's column in trafalgar square. the use of bronze, as adding to the adornment or appearance of an antiquity in stone, is exemplified in the two bronze sphinxes at the base of cleopatra's needle on the thames embankment. the bronzes of comparatively modern days are mostly the work of the founder, cast after the sculptor has done his work. some of the early examples of etruscan and egyptian art consisted of bronze or brass hammered into form by hand, or made of plates riveted together. others appear to have been beaten or embossed into high relief in a mould. some of the cleverest castings of bronze, however, are found in the work of eastern nations, the best examples being idols and temple ornaments (see chapter xiv). replicas in miniature. the so-called miniatures range from important reproductions for household and gallery ornament to the quite miniature bronzes which adorn the mantelpiece or cabinet. many of the statues and groups of ancient and modern forms have been copied. there is, however, another school of art which to many is very attractive. just as pictures of animal life are appreciated by many, so the sculptures and bronzes of well-known animal artists have been justly appreciated. in france there are the works of antoine louis barye, who was born in paris in 1795. it is said that barye discovered his real bent from watching the wild beasts in the jardin des plantes. some of his great works were exhibited early in the nineteenth century, and his beautiful models have been much copied. three of the most popular are shown in figs. 61, 62, and 63. there is the tiger which he exhibited in 1830, and the lion and the beautifully formed stag. such works of art are worthy of a place in any collection of metal, for they represent an important french school. of men who have made names for themselves there are many whose statues are found in private collections. a very favourite one is that of robert burns, whose colossal statue was erected at ayr on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the poet's birth. burns is reported to have said on his deathbed: "they'll think mair o' me a hundred years after i am dead," a truism none will deny. [illustration: fig. 63.--bronze stag, by barye.] xiii oriental bronzes and brasses chapter xiii oriental bronzes and brasses countries of origin--how some oriental curios are derived--a wealth of metal on view--various indian wares--chinese and japanese art. under the somewhat generic term "oriental" we class those numerous bronzes and other art treasures which come to us from the east and the far east. early in the mediæval days eastern influence dominated the craftsmen of europe, and many of those who took part in the crusades, and later in adventurous journeys into the northern part of africa, bordering upon the great sea, brought back to their western homes curios which were undoubtedly oriental in their design. countries of origin. a collection of copper and brass to be at all representative must be varied and cosmopolitan in selection. such a collection should include vessels of utility and ornamental objects which show the aims of the artist who designed them. incidentally, too, such objects exhibit the sameness of purpose existing in many lands; although the methods of domestic procedure and the ways of living vary until their common origin is scarcely recognizable. in such a collection of domestic curios the influence of saracenic art is seen in the ewers and basins and similar vessels which come from the lands where the wild arab tribes lived for centuries in an almost barbarous state on the edge of the syrian desert. many of these quaint hammered copper vessels are of barbaric beauty, such as, for instance, the coffee-pot shown in fig. 64 and the basin in fig. 65. there are some pleasing customs savouring of patriarchal days still practised by arab races. such, for instance, when the sheik has finished his morning meal he throws a stone into his brass or copper coffee-pot as a sign to his followers to strike camp. "awake, for morning, in the bowl of night, has flung the stone which puts the stars to flight, and, ho! the hunter of the east has caught the sultan's turritt in a noose of light." [illustration: fig. 64.--coffee-pot of hammered copper from syria.] the arab metal-work is generally covered over with characteristic designs and distinctive styles. equally characteristic is the finely engraved ornament on many small brass objects made by arab craftsmen. this is exemplified in the small and beautifully engraved brass writing boxes which were once a feature among the educated scribes of arab fame. one such case is to be seen in the british museum, the work of mahmud, son of souker, of bagdad, made in 1281. the style is said by experts to combine the art motives of mesapotamia and egypt, which in the thirteenth century very naturally met in syria. another distinctive style is noticeable in the art of the metal-workers of the mameluke dynasty of egypt; their arabesques showed more realistic foliage than the arab decorations of an earlier date. antiquaries always turn quite naturally to egypt, that land with such a great past, when seeking for inspiration from the great monuments which are masterpieces of art--in bronze and stone. these they find there it is true, but the more important pieces of metal-work of that early period are found in assyria, from whence came ponderous gates of brass, covered with the remains of delicate tracery and inscriptions. such works of ancient art are rightly given places of prominence in our museums; the private collector, however, is generally content with the lesser bronze antiquities of egypt which he can _collect_. these include mirrors and many small articles for the toilet and some delightful domestic bronzes. among them are charming little ewers with long projecting spouts and curiously wrought curved handles ornamented with masks and shells. the curios which reach us from cairo are mostly in strict accordance with egyptian characteristics. the earlier examples are representative of the art of northern egypt as it was expressed by the metal-workers between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, throughout which there does not appear to have been any great divergence of style, although when objects known to have been made during the earlier part of that period, and others fashioned during the later, the progress and development, although it had been slow, is very noticeable. there are also some traces of outside influences. in fig. 10 there is an early lamp of brass in the form of a bird, inlaid with copper, an example placed in the thirteenth century. quite different is the late example (eighteenth century) given in fig. 64, which is a coffee-pot with a bucket handle and another small handle at the back; the spout is roughly worked with corrugations and quatrefoils, on the five bosses being the marks adopted by the owner of the shop in cairo where it was used. reference has already been made to the influence of saracenic art upon metal-workers in places where the saracens came in contact with the craftsmen. as indicative of this feature the fine large brass basin illustrated in fig. 65 is shown. some portions of the bowl have evidently been filled in with silver. there are other objects such as bowls, dishes, and ewers showing similar decorations, many of which may be seen along with this example in the victoria and albert museum. the saracens seem to have had some influence upon what are usually regarded as european articles; thus in a collection of old bronze mortars there are sometimes examples from countries in the south of europe which show in their designs these characteristics. the mortar had, of course, a very general use, and was needed everywhere in days when so many compounds were prepared by hand labour. [illustration: fig. 65.--saracenic decorated brass basin. (_in the victoria and albert museum._)] persian art is peculiarly specialistic in its treatment. the designs used by the metal-workers in that country from quite early days were emblematic and of an all-over conventional type, often interwoven with scenes. even many of the common vessels, like bowls and covers and saucers of brass, are cleverly chased with hunting scenes and floral attributes, many of the cups being covered with arabesque ornament. some of the brass egg-shaped hooker bases are chased in relief; the mounts of the rose-water ewers--which are often of china, with metal linings for holding ice--are frequently decorative. in many instances the vessels are ornamented with coloured inlays, giving them peculiar colour effects. damascus--always an important seat of metal-work--has supplied collectors from many countries with the beautifully incised ornament produced by filling in the cut spaces with fine gold or silver wire beaten into the brass and then polished. so important has this mode of giving relief become that damascened metal stands alone as an art, seen at its best in the wonderful armour of the later period, when the utility of plate armour was giving way to the ornament which embellished the state armour--the "dress suits" of the regimentals of the stuart days. how some oriental curios are derived. it is useful at times to consider how the curios we collect have gradually accumulated, and thus to ascertain how they have been secured in the past; and from that we are enabled to form some estimate of further supplies, for the law of supply and demand regulates to some extent the market value of curios; it has something to do with the direction taken by curio-hunters. many curios have come into this country as the result of war and loot. wars in the far east have served the collector, and many choice bits of metal-work have changed hands at nominal sums after the return of troops employed in minor wars and punitive expeditions. our vast indian empire, however, supplies many beautiful objects in metal, both ancient and of comparatively recent days, but even those are so quaint and so unlike the common objects of british make with which we are familiar that they are welcomed and find a fitting place among antique copper and brass. to understand the curios which may be bought in eastern bazaars, and more conveniently in the numerous stores and shops where indian curios are sold, it is well to become acquainted with a really good representative collection, such as that which may be examined in the indian museum at south kensington. in several galleries, arranged in cases according to the districts from which the specimens have been gathered, are to be found metal-work ranging from the sixteenth century to the present day. although some of these are exceptional pieces, by far the larger number are helpful to the collector of even modest means in that they represent indian curios which may be collected at trifling cost. such objects, however, are unfortunately too often intermixed with modern castings and copies offered unblushingly by the dealer to the unwary. among such curios from indian bazaars, purchased by travellers to the less frequented districts, are very many cooking utensils. some of these, although not very old, are quaint and unlike modern european vessels, for the native cooks have been slow to accept any change in their methods of cooking and do not take kindly to the use of western types of culinary appliances. the indian cook clings tenaciously to copper vessels, and notwithstanding attempts to introduce vessels of tin, aluminium, and enamelled ware, the old "chattie" is again and again brought out in preference. most of the vessels are of primitive types, but they serve the purpose and the material is good and lasting. the native workers understand the requirements of indian men and women, and can shape and hammer together just what they have for generations regarded as "the best." clever indeed have been the native braziers in the past--and they still are--for they possess in addition to knowledge of coppersmithing an excellent knowledge of the composition and working qualities of the materials they employ. they understand something of the chemistry of metals, and are careful when melting copper in the furnace or over the fire not to overheat it, or to allow the metal to perish in processes of manufacture. a wealth of metal on view. the collection of asiatic metal-work where specimens from different countries, made at various periods, can be compared is, _par excellence_, that in the indian museum (the best examples of richly wrought damascened armour and arms are found in the wallace collection and at the tower). the visitor on entering is at once absorbed in admiring indian curiosities, especially the products of native craftsmen. in the vestibule are many remarkable exhibits, the work of nepal metal-workers. most of them were gifts to king george and queen mary when they visited india on the occasion of the great coronation durbar at delhi. some of the larger pieces were the gift of the maharajah and prime minister of nepal. very wonderful is their workmanship, especially that of the brass groups so true to life. one of these represents a hunting elephant, fully equipped, with attendants; others, too, are associated with sports and hunting scenes. there are emblems of demons and the evil spirits which are so fully believed in by native dwellers on the borders of the forest. temple vessels are abundant, and among them are monsters and other fabulous creatures, and numbers of masks, notably those representing the fierce dragpo fiend tamdin (see chapter xiv). there are some fine temple sets, and two magnificent conventional lions (temple guardians). there is also a very interesting brass group of natives occupied in various ways, one, for instance, carrying a package on his shoulder illustrating the method of relieving the weight of the bundle by a forehead strap, by which means natives are enabled to sustain the strain. [illustration: fig. 66.--japanese kettle (_yuwakashi_).] [illustration: fig. 67.--pair of vases of red-brown copper, relieved with black lac, from moradabad. (_in the author's collection._)] so intricate are many of these cleverly modelled groups that it is not always easy to understand how they have been cast. especially remarkable is the founding of the figure groups produced by the natives of the patan district of nepal. in most cases they accomplished their task by the _circe perdu_ process (see glossary), which enables them to cast even the most delicate groups. some very interesting wares in metal are obtained from moradabad; they are smooth and beautifully finished, made of brass, and partly tinned. the more decorative pieces are of the early nineteenth century, and include such objects as plates, water-jars, tumblers, and sugar-pots and covers. from lucknow some fine trays are secured; and many beautiful brass ewers, bowls, and basins have been obtained from haidarabad, where not only comparatively modern but early eighteenth-century brasswork is to be found. some of these have a pleasing effect when polished, the design or pattern upon them being inlaid with copper on a brass foundation and then polished. various indian wares. there is an indian ware known as _bidri_, beautifully damascened in gold on a brass and copper base, chiefly made in the villages round lucknow and deccan from the seventeenth century onwards. the peculiarity of these objects is that they are distinctly black and white, the metal consisting of an alloy of zinc, copper, and lead afterwards damascened with silver which is finally blackened by pickling. a favourite curio is a betel-nut box and cover; there are also spice boxes and objects intended for the base of a water-pipe. many of the choice curios from kashmir in northern india are mostly of a dark red-brown copper, and are frequently incised and inlaid with lac. among them are domestic vessels, the most commonly met with being the coffee-pot (_kafijosh_). in one famous collection there is a curious boat-shaped alms-bowl of copper, chased with a running ornament, a design frequently employed in the eighteenth century. there are some interesting mogul brasses, among which are washhand basins. in these, too, the decorations are frequently filled in with black lac. very different are the brass and copper objects from the punjab. some of pure copper are inlaid with black lac, others are of copper-gilt, looking in the sunlight like burnished gold. some are of brass; among the older objects of special interest being charcoal burners of fine brass with dome-shaped covers. from the punjab come copper toilet boxes, which are usually fitted with locks terminating in the form of a conventional lotus. one of the most curious treasures in the indian museum secured from that district is a "black" cup, made of a metal composed of quicksilver and copper, a metallic compound supposed to give a digestive virtue to any liquid drank out of it. the variety of metal objects from nepal is considerable. there are articles of home decoration and usefulness, including charming toilet sundries. among the lamps are many weird forms, a favourite being a lamp designed like a peacock's tail supported by a lion. there are inkpots of symbolical forms with figures of ganasa, the hindoo god of wisdom. there are also many decorative water-bottles and vases and beautifully formed tazzas; as well as charming toilet boxes with raised diaper ornament and conventional patterns. from madras come bowls and water-bottles and many delightful trinket boxes, some shaped like fishes, others of bird-like forms. some of these were intended for use as receptacles for antimony salve, which is so much used in india for the eyes. among the more modern curios made during the latter half of the nineteenth century are spun and turned brasswork, especially vases and bowls. travancore is also famous for its artists in metal, and especially for their beautiful decorative brass pots with curious spouts and drinking cups. the little bullock bells are characteristic of many parts of india, some being prettily ornamented and of sweet tinkling sounds. from southern india there are betel-nut cutters of unusual forms, and quite a variety of metal bowls, some being shaped like a pumpkin. from the same district come highly decorative copper plaques and brass salvers as well as water vessels. the lamps from india are of equal interest to those met with among the antiquities of similar types from other countries. those of more recent date, the work of baptized natives, have for the chief ornament emblems of the christian religion instead of those associated with idol worship; although in some instances the cross is flanked on either side with the sun and moon, reminding us of the more ancient pagan religions. many parts of india are noted for beautiful inlaid lac, much of which is extremely decorative; the vases illustrated in fig. 67 came from moradabad; they are of red-brown copper relieved with black lac. haidarabad is also noted for such wares, in some instances red as well as black lac being used in the decorations, which are chiefly of conventional form. the brasswork of benares is well known, and it is still one of the most important features in present-day oriental bazaars and shops. the modern work, however, rarely comes up to the old, for in olden time great care was taken in producing varied forms and correct ornament in decoration, the chief features of the benares brasswork being the series of ten incarnations of vishnu, represented so often on trays, bowls, and smaller vessels, such, for instance, as spice boxes and perfume holders, and receptacles for pulverized sandal-wood. the native princes of india have always been accustomed to state ceremonial, and among the curious objects from that country are symbols of office, some of the maces being beautifully damascened with gold. the ceremonial and state swords formerly carried by the princes are museum curios of value, especially those around which the memories of historical events cluster, such as the gauntlet-sword of brass, the hilt in the form of a tiger's head, which formerly belonged to ruggoneth sookul, who saved captain gordon's life during the indian mutiny in 1857. as it has been suggested wars with oriental potentates and the annexation of lands which had previously been under british protection have from time to time enriched national as well as private collections. many of the trophies of war are unique and do not exist in duplicate. in the indian museum there are many such objects, notably the one-time regalia of the kings of burma; at south kensington, too, there is a massive bowl of brass on which is engraved in picture characters the story of the history of china as related by confucius, and transcribed by his pupil tso, five hundred years before the christian era. lamaistic temple curios are referred to in another chapter. these, however, do not exhaust the metal-work from thibet. indeed, many of the minor objects, especially those of a domestic character, are very pleasing. the vessels used in making tea in thibet differ from those in china--the home of tea-drinking--in that the process of preparing "the cup that cheers but not inebriates" is different. the ladies of thibet take the tea-leaves and grind them dry until they are of the consistency of a fine powder, using a brass mortar for the purpose. they then put the powdered tea into a kettle, and allow it to boil for about five minutes. the liquid is afterwards poured through a strainer into a tea-urn, and a little butter and barley flour are added. this compound, after being vigorously churned up, is poured from the urn of wrought copper into teapots, where it is allowed to settle before it is served up in small brass bowls. ladles are used for the purpose of taking the tea from the urn, for it has no tap, being simply a two-handled jar with a cover. some interesting curios are derived from ceylon, especially those utensils made by the sinhalese, who, it will be remembered, emigrated there from bengal in the sixth century. the chief copper-workers in the island are the veddahs, an aboriginal tribe of the interior closely allied to the sinhalese. their work includes copper and brass on which is very beautiful repoussé decoration. buddhist influence has always been strong in ceylon, and it is conspicuous in much of the decoration of the more important metal-work. ceylon casters have turned out some fine bells and many heavy bronze lamps. the lesser objects, which are varied, include brass boxes in which the lime for betel chewing was kept. some of these are circular, and others are pear-shaped, many being incised and inlaid with the more precious metals. betel-nut cutters, similar to those from other parts of india, are among the collectable curios, those from ceylon being especially interesting, for they frequently take the form of animals or of winged flying females. the objects enumerated do not by any means exhaust the metal curios from india and ceylon, but they are among the chief features observable in a large collection, in the gathering together of which many small trinkets and perhaps unique sundries will be secured. chinese and japanese art. to many the curios from china and japan are more familiar than those from india and british asiatic possessions. the pottery and porcelain of china have long been used in this country, and during recent years other objects of a curious and antiquarian nature have been imported in large quantities from both these ancient countries. in shops and bazaars the metallic wares of china and japan have been much popularized too. that china has a great past and possessed a civilization hundreds of years before similar conditions appertained in europe is well known. collectors of the antique go back in their search after specimens of bronze and other metals to those produced by the artists of china in the han dynasty, which dates from b.c. 216. in records of that period, concurrent with accounts of pottery, there are well authenticated details of the metal cooking vessels then in common use. there were utilitarian bronzes and many beautiful vases, some of almost the same designs as the concurrent pottery. there were cooking utensils not at all unlike the mediæval bronze pots of modern europe; their handles, however, were more decorative, often taking the form of a dragon's head. the feet of these ancient cooking-pots were often like lions' claws or eagles' talons. among other relics of that period are quadrangular wine jars, some of the rarer types being decorated with fishes, in the drawing of which the chinese artists of the han dynasty were very clever. they used such decorations appropriately, too for this was the ornament they chose on fish kettles. a peculiarity of the metal-work of the han period was the dark red copper which seems to have been used concurrently with bronze. when we note that some of the pottery was beautifully formed we can quite understand that the bronzes were equally well shaped, for the metal-workers would not be behind the potters in their craftmanship. some of the rarer bronze tazzas are also well shaped and have been carefully moulded. the chief curios coming into the hands of collectors are of a somewhat later date than the han dynasty; but china moves on slowly, and there does not appear to have been much advance or change for many centuries. the metal-work made during what we term mediæval days in europe was often copied from familiar objects made of other materials. there is a bronze vase made in the sung dynasty, fashioned in imitation of an old jar tied up with rope, the ring handles being technically described as "conventional heads applique"; this vessel measures 14-1/4 in. diameter at the shoulder and stands 9-1/2 in. high. it is difficult to trace where such pieces come from; it is, however, well known that many have been looted from the temples; others, probably imitating older examples, are mainly of nineteenth-century workmanship. [illustration: fig. 68.--bronze figure (one of a pair) inlaid with silver and gold. (_in the author's collection._)] the metal-work which comes from japan has reached us in great variety. there has been no need for the traveller or collector to search the island for curios to bring over to this country, for the commercial instincts of a new race of japanese merchants have poured out a wealth of antiques, collected from the native villages; with these and modern imitations they have gladly supplied the demand of the western world. in this way attention has been called to the products of that country where craftsmen have gone on hammering copper and brass, and inlaying the metal in highly decorated patterns in silver and gold for so many years. reference has already been made to the rare temple pieces and sets which have been looted or purchased from asiatic countries, so many of which are of rare cloissonné enamels. some of these of japanese origin are mentioned in chapter xiv. of the minor bronzes, replicas of temple relics, there are many beautiful koros or incense burners. other bronzes serve the purpose of ornament in the western countries to which they have found their way. in fig. 68 is shown a beautiful bronze. the sacred carp is inlaid with gold and silver and is exceptionally well finished. the pair, of which it is one, came from japan about thirty years ago, and are of much finer workmanship than many of the more modern replicas. household requisites as well as ornamental treasures have been made with care by hammer and engraving tool into things of beauty as well as usefulness. the household requirements of the japanese are limited in number, but in the entertainment of her friends the japanese lady is able to cause envy among her western sisters because of the beauty of her kettles and brazier. the kettle shown in fig. 66 is one of a toilet set of hammered brass, engraved with badges and foliage. it was probably produced early in the nineteenth century, before western commercial ideas began to invade the workshops of old japan. in conjunction with such kettles (the japanese name of a kettle is _yuwakashi_) metal bowls were used, the water being poured over the hands of the fair japanese and her guests by attendants, who also held the bowl to catch the dropping water. in old japan there was much patience as well as skill, and the methods adopted by the artists of those days would be too tedious and expensive now when the merchants buy and sell and compete in western markets. the processes by which the beautiful bronze objects were moulded took time, and the incising and inlays could never be paid for in proper proportion to the labour expended on them. the metals of which japanese bronzes were made consisted of curious alloys, the composition of which was long kept a secret. one of their finest brasses is known as _sinchu_, consisting of ten parts of copper and five of zinc. another very beautiful copper is called _shadko_, in which splendid hues are imparted by the treatment of acids; in this alloy there is one part of gold to ten of copper, to which is attributable the splendid colouring of the so-called bronze. older methods, however, are gradually giving way to more economic production on western plans and formulæ, so that in time perhaps the eastern and oriental influence and characteristics of asiatic bronzes, so charming and so much appreciated by collectors, may diminish if not disappear altogether. xiv idols and temple relics [illustration: indian idols. fig. 69.--amida. fig. 70.--a "blue" tara. fig. 71.--amitayus. fig. 72.--vajra dharma. fig. 73.--amitayus.] chapter xiv idols and temple relics varied shrines and many idols--indian idols--temple vases and ornaments. there are some who hold it to be a wicked thing to loot the temple of a heathen deity, and regard it as sacrilege to ruthlessly tear down the idol from its shrine. others glory in an opportunity of proving the powerlessness of the man-created idol to save the temple from ruin and desecration. yet there are many who recognize in these idols of wood, stone, and metal, emblems and symbols of ancient faiths in which there may be a greater reality, and, for all we can tell, potency, to those who look beyond the mere shrine, than appears at first sight. notwithstanding all that, the multiplicity of gods and the number of so-called deities make many sceptical about the worship of their devotees, and there are few who feel much compunction when adding such objects as metal idols to their curios--when they are able to secure them honestly. varied shrines and many idols. needless to say the faiths of those who worship "unknown gods," from whatever source they may have come, differ. the very uncertainty of the religions, which admit of varied deities, has fostered the increase of ceremonies and the change in rites, which, added to local folk-lore and myths which have gained in the telling, have caused new idols to be set up. it was so in pagan greece and rome, and it is the same in some parts of the world to-day. to these causes we may attribute the number of idols of different types, or the same idols represented with other attributes, which the collector of metal meets with. there is a strange fascination about the stories of pagan and heathen deities and their influence over men, and to obtain the full interest and delight from such a specialized collection the collector must become a student of eastern and other religions and priestcraft. the temples in which religious rites have been, and in some instances are still, observed, vary in importance just as the associations around the cathedrals and ruined abbeys in our own land differ from those almost absent in the more recently erected churches. the wealthy indian, not unnaturally, employed artificers in brass to make models of the great shrines, and some of these rare works of metallic art are to be seen in the indian museum. several are of eighteenth-century workmanship, among them beautifully modelled temples of krishna. incidentally it may be mentioned that secular buildings have been reproduced too; notably there is a very fine model of the palace of the winds at jaypore, rajputana, which was presented by the maharajah of jaypore. [illustration: fig. 74.--japanese pricket candlestick in the form of crane and tortoise. (_in the victoria and albert museum._)] some may regard the collection of idols as a curious hobby; others possibly see in them only art treasures to be valued for their intrinsic worth, for many idols are enriched with precious stones and jewels and are overlaid with gold and silver. such objects occupy a different place from the cruder idols of wood and stone, cut and carved by savage races. we can well understand that the refined worker in metals spared no pains to make his idol or fetish beautiful and something to be admired. indian idols. of indian idols there are many: buddha is so widely held in esteem that it is no wonder that so many representations, varying in size, have been produced. the favourite position, known as the "witness" attitude, is that with which collectors are most familiar. indian idols are of many forms, among the commoner varieties being those of vishnu, lakshmi the wife of vishnu, and siva. many images of copper, afterwards gilt, come from thibet and nepal. the curiosities associated with the lamaist worship have become familiar of late years. one of the representations of amida, holding in her hand the teppattsu, is shown in fig. 69. a "blue" tara is illustrated in fig. 70; amitayus is shown in fig. 71; and fig. 72 represents vajra dharma holding the dorge. in fig. 73 amitayus is again shown holding the reliquary and wearing a jewelled collar. an interesting lamaist altar ornament is a copper skull bowl, used as a receptacle for the sacred beer or wine of life. there are also thibetian holy water jugs, beautifully inlaid with silver. in the victoria and albert museum may be seen a colossal buddha (daibutsu) of sixteenth-century workmanship, which came from a japanese temple. appropriately placed close to it is a massive pair of lanterns of bronze, which were originally a gift to the temple of miyoshino-tenjin by the feudal lord of the district. most of these temple relics--idols and ornaments--were made of a special alloy known in japan as _kara kane_, which means chinese metal, from which it may be inferred that this alloy was known and employed in china before it came into general use in japan. temple vases and ornaments. the mystical beliefs of china are chiefly buddhism, confucianism, and taoism, to which should be added ancestor worship, and in connection with all of them there are special objects of veneration, which we group together under the somewhat generic term of "temple relics." [illustration: fig. 75.--japanese ritual vase. fig. 76.--small two-handled ritual vase. fig. 77.--circular vase on stand.] from japan as well as china we get many fine temple sets. whence come they? some may ask. perhaps they have been discarded because they have been replaced with newer or more elaborate ornaments, although they may have been obtained through the cupidity of some of the temple attendants. from whatever sources they came there are numerous examples in the london curio-shops and in our museums. the crane and tortoise have long been held in veneration in japan. the tortoise especially is frequently found on old chinese pottery and metal-work, as well as being fashioned in corea and japan. in fig. 74 there is a japanese pricket candlestick, in the form of a crane and tortoise, of eighteenth-century workmanship, and it evidently formed one of a set of five altar pieces. some of the altar sets gave special prominence to two flower vases as part of the set, of somewhat later style of decoration to fig. 90; it was probably made early in the nineteenth century. this vase was formerly used in a set in which a figure of buddha occupied the centre. it was a common practice to hang over the buddhist altars lamps, many of which are to be seen in our museums. in fig. 75 is shown a japanese ritual vase, intended for wine (_hu_); it is of square shape, with cover of kwei and dragon pattern, animal feet and bosses on the shoulders, and bird-shaped arris on the lid, the inside of which is inscribed with twelve characters; the patina of this vessel ranges from deep brown to bright malachite-green. fig. 76 is a smaller ritual vessel, with two handles at the shoulder and one meander band and knob. the vase shown in fig. 77, with dragon handles, a beautifully patinated specimen, shading from brown to red with green accretions, is a ritual _tsui_ or vase for offering corn. these remarkable relics formed part of a large collection dispersed recently at a well-known london salesroom. now and then less important pieces come under the hammer, and it is by no means difficult to secure for a small outlay an excellent representative collection of these deeply interesting objects associated with idol worship. xv native metal-work chapter xv native metal-work outside influences--benin bronzes--other african curios. there are few collections of copper and brass without a fair sprinkling of curiously formed and often crude objects which we class under the generic term "native curios." there is much that is of extreme interest in the work of the smiths and founders of races possessing but little apparent touch with civilized nations; for such metal objects are true guides to the state of the advancement of the peoples of the countries from which such curios come. we delight in the art of early eastern nations, and find much to admire in the almost barbaric ornament of asiatic metal-workers of mediæval and even later days, as counted by the progress made by european artists at contemporary dates. the marvellous skill with which the natives of india and other asiatic countries incised and inlaid their metal wares has already been pointed out. there is, however, an especial charm about the metal-work of nations we are apt to class as "savage," or at least untutored, if not uncivilized. and we would not have it otherwise, for it is from these curios--metal and of other materials--that we are enabled to trace the influences of other countries with whom those races or tribes have had dealings in the past. we are to some extent able from these antiquities to connect the links in the chain of nations, and from the characteristics of their art (?) to settle their origin and affinity to other races. outside influences. the ethnological gallery of the british museum is one of the finest instructors. the silent exhibits tell the observant man or woman, boy or girl, much that cannot be learned from book knowledge. in the cases in that gallery are many objects fashioned by peoples who until recently were in their stone age, and had no knowledge of the outer world. there are some who from the curios--old and new--have apparently, until taught their use by travellers and traders from the far-off west, never discovered the value of metals. some of the native races--not a few of them fellow-subjects of the empire--as yet prefer wood, stone, and crude pottery vessels and utensils to metal, judging from the very limited use of the few brass or copper objects they possess, those few, probably, being imported. the ethnology of the race is traced in these relics, especially in the really old ones. in a few instances by way of contrast, metal objects, although so limited, are conspicuous. they are chiefly confined to the native countries brought under the influence of more advanced peoples; as instanced by the work of the sinhalese, the natives of ceylon, who early came into touch with the metal-workers of india. another native race by their wealth of rare metallic curios, the art of producing which they have lost, are shown to be a people with a past; thus it is with the tribes of southern nigeria in and around benin city. on the occasion of its capture by the british in 1897, it was found to possess a remarkable store of wonderful bronzes, evidently of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. in these and other native curios the collector revels, and in their study finds history, geography, and even the folk-lore of nations revealed; for in such curios there are stories in brass of social life, religious functions, ceremonies, and sacrifices. the benin bronzes. a few years ago very many bronzes (nearly pure copper) were sold under the hammer. they were looted from benin city during the war which ended in the country in and around the city being taken by the british troops, and eventually incorporated in southern nigeria. these wonderful bronzes throw a light upon the history of that country, and tell of a powerful nation far advanced in the art of modelling and casting metals long before they had come into close touch with western influence. this remarkable people who possessed so much wealth in copper and in ivory have long gone; their descendants or the tribes occupying their city have no knowledge of the craft, and apparently retained these relics of barbaric splendour with silent awe. the entire series of bronze panels from which the figures so cleverly stand out in bold relief, must have presented a wonderful sight to the british soldiers as they entered benin. the collection in the british museum was sent home to this country by sir ralph moor, k.c.m.g., h.m. commissioner and consul-general for the niger coast protectorate. it is impossible to describe their beauty or the details of the elaborate modelling of the dress, arms, and costumes of the benin king and his chiefs and officers as they existed in the sixteenth century. there is a model of the king's house, his attendant guards, high officials, a sword-bearer, and another bearing a ceremonial axe. some of the bronzes represent musicians playing various instruments, and others performing all kinds of functions. the bronze panels of fishes and animals are very lifelike, especially bulls, crocodiles, and the heads of oxen, even the twisted cords with which the animals were tethered being correctly modelled. the bronzes representing europeans are exceptionally valuable in that from the costumes portrayed the date of those bronzes has been fixed, approximately. the matchlocks and flint-guns are reproduced with the greatest exactitude, as also the egyptian figures, copied presumably from the remains of ancient egypt, with which these metal-workers were evidently familiar. in addition to the panels of copper, which show marks of how they were attached to the walls, were bronze masks or warriors' heads which served as stands for the splendidly carved tusks of ivory also discovered when the expedition visited that country. there are many minor objects in bronze which show that this remarkable civilization, now lost, was far advanced in the arts. as it has been suggested benin relics are not entirely confined to museum specimens, and collectors are not without opportunities of securing pieces. many of the early tribes of africa had knowledge of metal-working, although some have lost or neglected to practice it. other african curios. some metal curios were included in the trophies brought to this country at the time of the ashanti expedition, among the rare regal metal-work being an old brass vase, with repoussé decorations and a copper dragon handle. it was discovered behind the house of king prempeh's aunt, who had been acting as regent. another curio discovered in the same district was a brass box containing gold dust. bells, too, have been brought from ashanti; one in the british museum is the executioner's bell, which was rang prior to an execution. there are many bronzes from southern nigeria, especially some curious ornaments worn by the women. some of these are veritable antiques and were found buried; many are finely patinated and heavy. some of the bangles are beautifully formed and highly decorated with inlaid enamels. some very interesting brass castings come from lagos, not at all unlike the benin modelling, except that they are in brass instead of pure copper. they include figures of natives, some on horseback, others in the act of shooting with guns. there are brass staves of office carried as symbols of authority by the messengers of the oshogbo, a native secret society; and there are spoons, knives and other domestic sundries, as well as armlets and anklets of copper and brass. from north-east central africa we get a little metal-work, some of the head-dress ornaments being enriched with circular brass plates, on which are repoussé decorations. among the curios from this district in the british museum are several exceptional pieces, one being a head-dress or helmet of brass with circular brass ornaments. the knives used in ceremonials are often very handsome. there is a fine executioner's knife from north-east central africa, with brass studs all over the wood handle. another chief's knife, which came from near the stanley falls, is decorated with strips of copper and brass. the metal castings from central sudan, representing ostriches, giraffes, and camels, are cleverly done, and with bangles and anklets make up an interesting group. it is curious how valuable finds are sometimes made many miles from the locality where the object was made. it is the same in our own country, for we dig and find a bronze from ancient rome, brought over by the conquering armies of the romans when britain was brought under the imperial sway. our armies have probably left relics behind them in the past as in the present, for it is no uncommon thing for reminders of the crusaders and others to be found even in africa. one of the most remarkable finds was a large bronze jug and cover now in the british museum; on it are the arms of richard ii of england, and two mottoes in lombardic letters: "he that will not spare when he may, he shall not spend when he would" is one; the other reads: "deem the best in every doubt till the truth be tried out." this splendid jug was found in ashanti; the date of its manufacture was about a.d. 1400. the south african curios in brass are very limited; they consist chiefly of collars and armlets worn by the women of basutoland and bechuanaland, and by the kaffir women who have also girdles of brass cleverly formed. although by no means numerous and of limited variety, a few objects of native workmanship are worth securing if only to compare the way in which natural ingenuity has at different times helped the craftsman and enabled him to work even metals without any instructions from nations more advanced in their use. xvi continental copper and brass [illustration: fig. 78.--bronze oviform ewer.] [illustration: fig. 79.--brass ewer with artistic handle.] chapter xvi continental copper and brass italian bronzes--french art--dutch brasswork--german metal-work. the italian renaissance in art exercised such a wide influence upon manufactured goods in this and other countries that the collector of antiques naturally turns to the achievements of the artists in metal who worked in florence and rome for the highest ideals he can seek. in this he is not disappointed, for just as the connoisseur of ancient art finds his delight in the bronzes of greece and rome, the collector of more modern art sees grace and beauty combined with skilful grouping in italian craftsmanship. european influence has been brought to bear upon the metal-work of the world at different times, but it has not always come from the same country. at different periods the metal-workers of certain localities appear to have made their peculiar characteristics take precedence of others. in most of the european countries quite distinct styles and even unique treatment of metals have been noticeable; so much so that our museums to-day contain groups of metal-work having little or no affinity to one another, although coming, perhaps, from towns not far removed in point of geographical position. the collector recognizes as distinct the bronzes of italy; the screens, candlesticks, and ecclesiastical metal-work of spain; the beaten bronze, champlevé enamels, and the decorative brass of the empire period of france; the eighteenth-century dutch brasswork; the metal forged and cast in germany, and the decorative copper and brass of turkey showing such distinctly oriental influence in saracenic touch. to study all these rival styles at their best the collector, however large his private collection, must perforce visit either one of the more important continental museums or the victoria and albert museum at south kensington, where so many cases are filled with continental works of art in gold, silver, and the baser metals. local museums rarely possess a selection large enough for comparative purposes. the loan exhibits from the national collection, carefully selected as representative specimens, are very helpful, and many such loan cases strengthen local exhibits and add interest to them. in the united states of america public museums are well arranged with the view of showing the metal-work of different countries at varied periods, and many of them are peculiarly rich in exhibits of domestic metal-work which was taken over in the early days from europe. as a guide to curators and others wishful to secure the right kind of exhibits it may be useful to mention the contents of a case on view at a south coast town public library recently. there were some beautiful italian bronzes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a damascened candlestick from venice, a florentine statuette, a handsome cabinet handle chased with foliated ornament, a bronze mask of pan, a table lamp stand with winged lions at the base, and a handsome ewer, the body of which was ornamented with foliage, around it figures representing the triumph of bacchus, a typical seventeenth-century specimen. among the minor objects in that case were vases from many countries, door knockers, and a few examples of dutch metal-work, decorative and artistic. italian bronzes. the metal-workers from the sixth to the tenth centuries, when so many decorative bronzes were being made for st. peter's and italian churches, derived their inspirations from byzantium, hence those early works were often inlaid with silver and gold, and were quite different from those of later date. art developed, and gradually a more distinctive character was given to the bronze gates and candelabra which were made with such consummate skill. one of the greatest triumphs of that period was the great candelabrum in milan cathedral, wrought in the thirteenth century. its height is 14 ft., and it has seven branches for candles, the stem being supported by four winged dragons. it is one mass of marvellous scrollwork, relieved by the introduction of figures, each one of which is perfect in itself--a study of expression and character. casts of these remarkable pieces of metal-work may be seen at south kensington. in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the florentine artists worked. it was then that statues in bronze were sculptured by verrocchio, donatello, and others. a century later the wonderful candlesticks in the certosa, near pavia, and in the cathedral at padua, were made. it was about that time that venetian metal-workers were fashioning so much that was beautiful in domestic utensils and the minor church ornaments. from that time onward collectable brasses were made, and after long years of use they passed into the category of antiques, rendered beautiful by their artistic merits, and possibly by the touch of age. even then there was an oriental look about many of the designs, but it seldom intrudes, and does not spoil the effect of the forms and style so clearly venetian. such vessels were chiefly made for the then wealthy merchants of the city, and often their arms were incorporated into the design. fig. 78 is a bronze oviform ewer made in venice about 1530. another beautiful vase is shown in fig. 79. other objects much favoured were candlesticks, hand-warmers, and perfume sprinklers, to which must be added the more strictly utilitarian. the spanish metal-workers do not appear to have developed a very well-defined school of metallic art of their own. they were especially noted for their highly ornamental jewellery; in the common metals they were influenced by italy, and to some extent germany. it is said that the finest piece of work accomplished in the country was the great sixteenth-century candelabrum or _tenebrarium_ in seville cathedral, the work of bart. morel in 1562. french art. connoisseurs of the fine arts naturally regard enamels of limoges as the greatest achievements of the country (see chapter xviii). there is, however, much to admire in the early unadorned metal-work, especially that made in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries--effigies in beaten copper, some portions of which were usually adorned by coloured "champlevé" enamel. they were afterwards desired by englishmen, and some good examples of "imported" effigies are to be seen, a notable example being one on the tomb of william de valence in westminster abbey, erected about 1296. of domestic metal-work there are not many early pieces. in fig. 82 is shown a cup or ewer of brass with artistic handle and spout ornamented with a grotesque mouth; the date assigned to it is 1570. it may be seen in the victoria and albert museum, where also is deposited a fine seventeenth-century ewer or tankard with plain cylindrical body and a deep and long spout with fancy handle (see fig. 81). there is also a trumpet of brass, dated 1738, in the same gallery; it has upon it the owner's monogram, "s.m.a.," ensigned with a count's coronet and crest. dutch brasswork. the brasswork from holland, largely imported into this country at the commencement of the eighteenth century, although decorative, cannot be claimed as artistic. most of the objects are strictly utilitarian, and the ornament stiff and formal; they were hammered by hand, an effective finish being made by small punches, repoussé work being occasionally added. fig. 80, which represents one of the larger pieces, illustrates a highly ornamental cistern with cover and tap. its shape is semicircular, a dome-shaped back acting as a hanger; that as well as the perforated grille under the cistern being ornamented. the chief ornament consists of star devices, the points of which are united together by curved lines composed of small straight indentations. in the victoria and albert museum there is a dutch foot-warmer, the sides of which are ornamented with repoussé panels of flowers and circular bosses; in the centre of the top, which is slightly curved, is a medallion engraved "i.w.h.m. 1733," surrounded by open-work decoration and floral scrolls arranged in geometrical patterns, on either side of which are birds. [illustration: fig. 80.--dutch ornamental brass cistern.] [illustration: fig. 81.--french ewer or tankard with fancy handle. fig. 82.--french ewer with grotesque mouth (sixteenth century).] the brass milkcans used by modern milk sellers, and the beautifully ornamented churns and milk perambulators seen in some neighbourhoods, are not altogether new or the outcome of modern advertisement. in holland brass ornament has been used on tinware for many years, and some very quaint old milkcans and dairy utensils in shining polished brass are met with by collectors who visit holland. the milkcans of that country, or perhaps more correctly large bowls, in which milk and cream are served have double handles, and make extremely handsome flower-bowls or fern-pots on the table, although perhaps collectors would consider such a desecration an improper use for a genuine antique. many of the chestnut roasters, skimmers, and brass chimney ornaments used in england in the eighteenth century came from holland. the artists of that country were famous for the characteristic dutch scenes engraved on their metal-work, just as they were for their tiles with quaint windmills and pictures of peasants in native costume on them. so famous has the collection of these brasses become that much modern metal-work, copies of genuine antiques, has been sent over for sale in london curio-shops. some of these reproductions are excellent copies; others are "too new" and would scarcely deceive the amateur. caution should be observed, especially when buying "old time" fire-brasses, knockers and trivets. german metal-work. curios, as well as modern antiques "made in germany," are not always labelled as such; there is, however, a distinctly german look about old metal-work from that country. elaborate and massive with its wealth of floral embellishment, some of the german metal-work of early days stands out conspicuously. some elaborate cast bronze gates and door furniture enriched the churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. augsburg and nuremberg have always been famous centres for artistic metal work, and in those towns many objects large and small have been made. among minor works are the very handsome lock plates and cases. the shapes of domestic utensils, especially of ewers, were very quaint. there is a german aquamanile or ewer in the form of an animal, embodying a lion and stag, along with several others equally as curious, in the british museum. nuremberg contributes to our national collection a variety of hand wash-basins in brass; the earlier examples being richly ornamented with engravings typifying different virtues and vices; st. george, the patron saint of england, also figures on some pieces. turkish metal-work includes copper ewers, chased and decorated with enamels, mostly with handles and spouts, some of the sets or pairs consisting of ewer (_ibrik_) and basin (_tisht_). these copper vessels are sometimes embossed with scale ornaments. there are braziers and some vessels of bulbous form, mostly of bronze, and now and then turkish collapsible lanterns of brass with pierced decorations are met with. xvii sundials, clocks, and brass instruments chapter xvii sundials, clocks, and brass instruments the mystery of dialling--some old dials--antique clocks--old watches--the weather--scientific instruments. the modern man can scarcely realize what it must have been in this england of ours when clouds obscured the sun, and thick mists drew a veil over the shadow cast by the gnomon, before clocks were known. the time of day was of less importance when the sundial on the church tower, or on a pillar erected at some convenient place, had to be consulted, when the sun shone it is true, but even then many must have inwardly fretted and rebelled against the uncertainty. reader, have you ever spent a day away from public clocks in the country when the sky was overcast _without a watch in your pocket_? if not, do it now, and the result will be startling. it will create a sympathetic touch with the past, and bring vividly to mind the trials of patience which had to be endured when under such conditions inscriptions on dials were read, but no clear line marked the onward march of sol. the mystery of dialling. dialling is a science which few except experts understand now; the antiquary takes little note of it as he gazes upon the old dial plate and makes out the inscription upon it. the collector gladly buys the brass dial with its quaint lettering and division marks without even knowing where it came from, or what kind of stone column or pillar it originally capped. yet there is far more interest in an old sundial installed in a modern garden amidst reconstructed old-world surroundings when the origin of the relic is known. we have no record of the type of sundial referred to in isaiah xxxviii, 8: "behold, i will bring again the shadow of the degrees which is gone down on the _sun-dial_ of ahaz, ten degrees backward." there are, however, records of the sundial of the chaldean astronomer perosus, who lived about 340 b.c. it consisted of a hollow hemisphere placed with its rim horizontal, having a head or globule fixed so that as long as the sun shone above the horizon the shadow of the head fell on the inside of the hemisphere. in more recent days the making and fixing of the dial with its gnomon was carried out on fixed principles, and there is now no difficulty about such an installation provided that the same astronomical conditions are observed. (for rules governing dialling, see glossary.) [illustration: fig. 83.--early dials--on the left an armillary dial; in the centre pillar dial; and on the right a ring dial. (_in the british museum._)] [illustration: fig. 84.--curious old microscope, made in 1780. (_in the municipal museum, hull._)] some old dials. the pattern known as the garden dial is that commonly met with (for the large dials once fixed on church towers and in public places rarely come into the market); and the old dial plates seen in curio-shops have come from such pillars. charles dickens had a fine old sundial in his garden at gad's hill place, and it has often been copied. the globe dial, set on suitable pillars, has been made frequently for modern antique gardens. an enterprising maker of dials purchased the beautiful balustrades of old kew bridge when it was removed a few years ago, and capping them with replicas of old dials--in some cases with genuine antiques--produced excellent examples of the old type of garden sundial. similar dials, more imposing in size, are met with in curious and yet very suitable places by motorists, cyclists, and others when touring in the country. a charming elizabethan relic is the stone bridge across the river wye in the village of wilton, near ross. on the north wall of the parapet is a stone pillar surmounted by a sundial having four faces--an interesting landmark and often admired; and when the sun shines on it the traveller invariably pulls out his watch and compares it with the shadow of the gnomon. there were once many famous dials _in situ_ in london; most of them are gone; there are some, however, readily seen, like the noted pillar dial in the temple and that on the front of one of the old buildings in lincoln's inn. of other forms of dials, the eccentricities of the horologists they might be called, there are the "goblet" dials in the form of a cup, the hour-lines being engraved on the interior; pillar dials which are cylinders with movable gnomons; the quadrant, in the use of which the altitude of the sun is taken through pierced sights, the time being shown on curved hour-lines by means of a plumb-line hanging from the angle; and the ring dials, which were very popular in england down to the year 1800. in fig. 83 are shown earlier dials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. on the left there is an armillary dial by f. culpeper, of london. in the middle there is a pillar dial dated 1567, and on the right of the figure a ring dial made by humphrey cole in 1575, all three important types. perhaps one of the chief delights of the study of sundial plates is to read and make out the different mottoes and legends on them--most of them relating to the flight of time, some alluding to man's duties which, when neglected, can never be made up, for "time and tide wait for no man." another type of dial is the portable one, in which form dials or pocket clocks, as they were sometimes called, can be collected--and they are generally of brass, some being very decorative. antique clocks. there is no intermediate stage between the general use of clocks and watches and sundials, for their use overlaps. we have but to look at many an old church tower on which is to be seen the dial still operative--for sun and gnomon fail not--and the clock which has told the time for many years. both were probably working before pocket clocks or watches became general and timepieces were to be found on the mantelpiece or sideboard. brass was used from the commencement of clockmaking for wheels and dials; and wonderfully, too, the early clockmakers cut and carved the metal into the required form and gauged the works with accuracy. some may be familiar with that wonderful astronomical clock in wimborne minster, made in 1220 by peter lightfoot, a monk of glastonbury, who also constructed a clock for wells cathedral. in it, according to the early belief that the sun, moon, and stars revolved round the earth, the sun travels its appointed circuit every twenty-four hours, and by its position marks the time. in the evolution of the clock there have been many marked stages. the clock when first devised was a great stride from the sundial, the beautiful plates of which have already been described. progress followed, and in a century or two clocks with wheels and complicated mechanism, which when once set going and wound up periodically told the time with exactitude, enabled the populace to know the time of day even when the sun was not shining. that was the age of decorative art, and many of the brass plates and dials were magnificent in their engravings, glorious in their beautiful old fretwork, and rich in brass cherubims and emblems of old father time. moving figures were in the early days regarded as ideal attractions in clocks. the two old figures which strike the hour and go through some quaint evolutions over the clock which for many years has been a great attraction in cheapside, are typical of the figures which in miniature might have been seen playing on brass gongs and chiming bells in many towns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. they were in abundance in norwich and towns in the eastern counties, seeming to reflect the old flemish cities on the continent, where they are even now fairly common. collectors are very enthusiastic in their search for genuine "cromwell" or lantern clocks. a few years ago they might have been found discarded on the old metal rubbish-heaps of the clockmaker. to-day these clocks, all brass in their construction, are polished bright, set going once more, and treated with care; good specimens changing hands for sums varying from eight to fifteen pounds. originally they were usually placed on a bracket, over which was often a wooden hood to protect the clock. then came a hinged glass door, and in that we have the origin of the "grandfather" with enlarged dial and rich oak or mahogany case reaching down to the ground. [illustration: fig. 85.--engraved pocket clock.] those who wish to study the beautiful dials and engraved faces of clocks and watches in order that they may realize the difference in the products of makers during the last few centuries, should visit the splendid collection in the guildhall museum, loaned by the clockmakers' company. the work of the old clockmakers was that of the very best. it was made to last, and the metal they chose for their operations appears to have been very suitable for the purpose. in evidence of the lasting quality of old brass works, a well-known writer has put forward the interesting story of a chamber clock presented by henry viii to anne boleyn on their wedding day. it found its way into the strawberry hill collection of horace walpole, and at the famous sale of those interesting curios and souvenirs of great persons that noted minister had gathered together, it was purchased for £100 by the late queen victoria. harrison ainsworth says: "this token of endless affection remains the same after three centuries; but four years after it was given, the object of henry's eternal love was sacrificed on the scaffold. the clock still goes, but surely it should have been stopped for ever when anne boleyn died!" the advent of table clocks came with the discovery of the use of a mainspring by the nuremberg clockmakers in the sixteenth century. in the british museum there is a clock in the form of a ship made for the emperor rudolph ii in 1581. there are many other fine examples of curiously designed clocks, including a water clock by finchet, of cheapside, and a french astronomical clock with astrolabe, and others with automatic figures on view there, as well as very remarkable types in the collection of clock dials and watches given to the museum by the late mr. octavius morgan. the early clocks, the dials of which were of brass, had only one finger, for the minute-hand was not known until 1670, and the second finger a much later invention. in fig. 85 is a typical example of a brass engraved watch clock face and dial, which has a perforated hinged cover and is exceptionally well engraved. old watches. watches were costly in the days when so much time was expended on their manufacture. those were the days of good workmanship in which watchmakers excelled. they put much labour into the ornamentation of the works, "watch-clocks," and dial plates, so many of which were beautifully engraved, tooled with great skill, and cleverly perforated. the dials were in early days unprotected, hence the need of a case, often of brass, and when made of some other material were frequently ornamented with brass inlay. it was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that glass or crystal covers were invented; that was about the time, too, when the enamelling of dials came into vogue. the pocket watch brought with it fobs, chains, and watch-keys or winders, mostly of brass, which should not be overlooked. in a representative collection there are crank keys similar to large clock winders, but, of course, made in miniature. then after various developments brass and pinchbeck fob keys came into vogue, and later still ornamental keys with and without the addition of stones, the majority being made in brass. a number of these little objects can still be collected quite cheaply, and nicely mounted make a very interesting addition to the more ornamental side of brass metal-work. forecasting the weather. the weather has found men a subject for discussion and given them opportunities of speaking a pleasant word of comradeship when meeting in the country or in town. to comment upon its fickleness has become as common a mode of salutation as passing the time of day. the topic is an ancient one and the interest in it has been sustained, for to gauge the coming changes has taken the attention of men from the earliest times. to study the fleeting cloud, to note the coming storm by the direction of the wind, or to notice the damp in the air as the mist rises and is wafted over the fields, has always been a favourite occupation. it was so before the day of barometers and scientific instruments, and it is equally so by those who prefer the pronouncement of the weather prophet rather than the barometer gauge. galileo is said to have invented the thermometer, but it was his pupil torricelli, who discovered the barometer. his townsmen in faenza, in the north of italy, some years ago erected a monument to his memory, putting up the biggest barometer known. in common with other scientific instruments the barometer has afforded opportunities to the worker in metal and to the art designer, for like the clock case it has been made a thing of beauty as well as one of use. the very remarkable barometer illustrated in fig. 86 is an elaborate work of the brassfounder and exceedingly ornate. it is a very exceptional piece, but there are other barometers of considerable beauty in the hands of collectors of old bronze and metal-work. some of the old scientific instruments are very clumsy looking when compared with modern workmanship. about them it is true there is a quaint beauty and a silent tribute to the skill and ingenuity of early inventors, those who were but groping, perhaps blindly, in the initial stages of an undeveloped science. scientists always take a delight in the instruments which their predecessors have used, and when they realize by comparison the difficulties the early pioneers had to contend with on account of the inefficient instruments in their possession they wonder at the advance that particular science made in their day. in fig. 84 we illustrate a curious old microscope and case, made about the year 1780. it is on a mahogany stand, in which is a drawer containing four magnifying powers. it formerly belonged to a mr. charles sherborne and is now in the hull museum, where, as the connecting link between the older type and the modern, there is another interesting microscope made some fifty or sixty years ago. the engineer, mechanic, and scientist find much pleasure in the curios which were associated with their professions in former days, and delight in the possession of "old brass" which seems to bring them nearer to the great men who years ago laid the foundations on which present-day advance has been built. [illustration: fig. 86.--a handsome bronze barometer.] engineers have been very skilful in creating models of engines and machinery with which they have been familiar, and in reproducing in miniature replicas of noted engines which have been used for practical purposes. these little models, some of which were made more than a hundred years ago, in days when steam power was but in its infancy, have been very valuable to engineers to-day, in that they provide them with actual models of old-time engines, the details of construction of which might otherwise have been lost. in one of the museums at south kensington there are many of these scientific and mechanical models in brass, some of them working on the penny-in-the-slot principle, so that visitors can by the expenditure of a few coppers set in motion any machine they are interested in, and so judge of the actual effects of old-time inventions as illustrated by models which have been made to scale. in addition to working models of large objects there are some remarkably small models which are stored and treasured by collectors. some are so small and minute, although perfect in every detail, that it is difficult to understand how the worker in brass even if he had been a jeweller and accustomed to fashion the settings of small stones could so accurately have produced such tiny machines. it is said that the smallest engine in the world, a beautiful piece of metal-work, owned by an american collector, stands on a ten-cent piece! yet remarkable as it may seem, when connected with an electric power cable of very small calibre the engine starts off as if it were a full-size horizontal engine. the chief materials used in the construction are copper and brass, although the band of the fly-wheel is of solid gold. so small is this little engine that its measurements are all taken in sixty-fourths of an inch. thus the diameter of the fly-wheel, practically the largest piece of mechanism in the construction of the engine, is 28/64 in., and the fly-wheel band only 7/64 in. the valve rod is only 1/64 in., and the outside diameter of the cylinder 12/64 in.; completed, standing on the small coin referred to, the engine weighs 3 dwt., a truly remarkable work of metallic art. xviii enamels on copper chapter xviii enamels on copper processes of enamelling--chinese and japanese enamels--british enamels. copper has been used frequently as the most suitable metal to coat over with enamels, to be afterwards fired or fixed. even the ancients discovered the art of colouring the metal-work they had wrought by the aid of different enamels more or less translucent. such substances were used in varied forms, often as paste, filling up incised designs, the workmen in some cases rubbing them down smooth when fixed, in others firing them by heat or simply heating until they ran smoothly over the surface of the metal to which they adhered. the enamels which are to be obtained vary in substance, the beauty of their workmanship, and in their rarity and curio values. they cover the entire period of known art and although such enamels are widely distributed, the art of enamelling having been practised in almost all countries where art has flourished, some have won greater fame than others, many of these rare types being easily distinguished by characteristic forms, colours, or designs. among the earlier exponents of enamelling were the egyptians, the early greeks, and to some extent the romans. it would appear that enamelling was understood, too, in england, and was early practised as a british art, but it soon died out, to be restored again in this country under more favourable circumstances in the greater renaissance of mediæval art. the enamels which have attained such great fame, and which are so keenly appreciated by connoisseurs, are those made at limoges in southern france, and again to a lesser extent in italy and the rhenish provinces. two beautiful examples of twelfth-century pricket candlesticks, now in the british museum, are of that early form which, except for ecclesiastical purposes, soon gave way to the socket candlestick, a more convenient form for domestic use. processes of enamelling. the basis of most of the enamels on copper is a fusible silicate, or colourless glass mixed with metallic oxides, reduced to a fine powder, which is applied according to the skill of the artist. the metal, with the enamel powder upon it, is then fired until it is melted and adheres to the metal. the different treatments help the expert to distinguish the period when a specimen under investigation was made, and to some extent the place of its manufacture. there is the translucent enamel, which shows up the design through the vitreous matter, a method originally adopted in italy. another process was that of applying different colours over an incised pattern, the figures or pictures being usually engraved in low relief. coarser lines of engraving were used on the copper basis of the early enamels made at limoges. those of somewhat later date may be distinguished by the surface-painted enamels adopted in the later style, which flourished until about 1630. in this process dark enamel for the shadows was placed over the metal plate, the picture being painted in white with some portions in colour; a thin enamel surface was then given and the whole fired. the later surface-painted enamels were for the most part copies of well-known paintings or engravings, the colour or enamel being afterwards fixed by firing. in the process of enamelling known as champlevé the design was cut into the metal, the pattern or incisions made filled with colours, the enamels being then fused; the basis was nearly always of copper. the cloisonné enamel was generally on a brass basis, and as in the more recent examples from china and japan, the cloisons or tiny cells of metal were filled with the right and appropriate colours; afterwards subjected to heat. in some cases the metal foundation is in the centre and cloisons or cells formed on either side of it. there is something about the _old_ enamels of this type besides the wear and tear of centuries which distinguishes them from the more modern, which, generally speaking, are more brilliant in colouring, cruder and sharper in design, and without that beautiful tone which is so pleasing in the antique. chinese and japanese enamels. the rarer examples of chinese art date back to the beginning of the ming period in 1368, continuing until its close in 1643. the charm of these early examples is at once recognizable when they are compared with others of a later date. fig. 87 represents a large ming bowl florally decorated in rich red, yellow, and white on a background of cobalt blue outside and turquoise blue within. quite a different style of decoration is shown in fig. 88; the design of butterflies and gourd-vine tracery being carried out in pekin enamels in five colours. this remarkably fine box, so charmingly formed, contains a set of nine sweetmeat dishes, each one bordered with bats of cobalt blue on a lighter blue ground, on the cover of the outer box being the shu monogram. another splendid piece, represented in fig. 89, is typical of a different style of decoration. this fine bowl, also of the ming period, is florally enamelled, the inside showing the pattern outlined by wire cloisons upon a white ground, the flowers being worked in five colours. this bowl, which is four inches high, is represented in the illustration as standing on a beautifully carved stand of about equal height. these choice pieces are illustrated by the courtesy of messrs. glendining & co., ltd., at whose well-known london auction rooms they recently changed hands. the second great period of chinese art is that of the ching dynasty, which commenced in 1644 and extended until more recent times. while to some extent the art and the decorative effect of that period was inferior to that of to-day, when judged from the present-day standard of modern art, there was a rare beauty about the old designs. the enamels of the ching dynasty were carefully prepared and placed, and the colouring soft and yet rich. the preparation of coloured matter by experts of that period when the best ceramics of china were made, has always been a subject of admiration and wonder to the potters and enamellers of more recent years. examples of these charming wares are not exceptionally rare, among the collectable pieces being cups and bowls, exquisitely designed kettles, tiers of boxes, water vessels, round and oblong dishes, and incense burners. some of the bowls with covers are of quaint forms, a favourite one being that of a peach. vases of which the base is enamel are often further enriched by ornaments of copper-gilt. among the rarer little curios seen in a representative collection may be mentioned small water droppers, mostly made in the eighteenth century. [illustration: fig. 87.--bowl of the ming period. fig. 89.--ming bowl. fig. 88.--box of pekin enamel.] the ch'ien lung period which followed extended from 1736 to 1796, and included many candlesticks and altar pieces as well as braziers, some of the copper vessels being practically encrusted with enamels, some of the finer ornamentation being attached to the ground-work as additional or supplementary decorative effects. as in the earlier periods much labour was expended on the production of the many fine temple sets which were presented to such uses. the exceptionally fine altar set wrought in cloisonné enamels, illustrated in fig. 90, is of the ch'ien lung period, and consists of a beautifully designed koro, supported on legs in the form of tigers' heads, two candlesticks 18 in. high, and a pair of vases. the style of decoration is very rich, being turquoise blue ground on which are floral designs in red, green, dark blue, yellow, and other bright colours. the pieces stand on brass-gilt foundations, which rest on carved wooden stands, the set forming an extremely interesting group, typical of the highest art of the ch'ien lung period. there are many richly ornamented and extremely valuable specimens of more recent date admired by connoisseurs of art in the galleries and curio-shops; but however beautiful they are the collector of the older curios appraises their values from a modern commercial standpoint, and does not view them as he would antiques. british enamels. it was not until the art of enamelling had been perfected at lillè and other places on the continent of europe, that an attempt was made to produce similar trinkets and a few more important pieces, such as candlesticks and inkstands, in this country. the works established at battersea by mr. s. t. janssen about the middle of the eighteenth century soon gained notoriety, and it was not long before the enamels made there were eagerly sought after. in addition to those articles mentioned, they consisted chiefly of tea-canisters, snuff-boxes, spirit labels, and patchboxes, the copper being coated over with an opaque white enamel, which was coloured over and then decorated with floral and other designs. rose tint afterwards became one of the favourite ground colours at battersea. among the rarer examples may be classed inkstands and writing-table appointments. the inkstands usually include an ink-container, a pen-box, and a sand or pounce pot, for battersea enamel inkstands were made before blotting-paper was invented, and the wet ink, chiefly applied with a quill pen, was dusted over with pounce to prevent blotting, and when dry the surplus was dusted off. the collector finds much to interest in the little patchboxes of enamel, of which there were many varieties. they remained useful when the fashion of wearing patches declined, for then they came in handy for cosmetics, salves, and pomades. these curious little boxes were frequently given by admirers and friends, as may be imagined from the mottoes and sentimental inscriptions upon them. among the commoner varieties seen in a collection are little oval boxes on which are pictured two love-birds, sometimes accompanied by a bird's nest. others will have imitations of needlework pictures, such as the fair ones worked in those days. sometimes a little church is seen in the distance, and in the foreground a boy and girl exchanging love-tokens. "this gift is small, but love is all," is a favourite motto. "virtue fair, manners sweet, together in my fair one meet," are two oft-quoted lines, and another favourite verse is: "if you, my dear, accept of this, reward the giver with a kiss." some boxes, however, have evidently been the gifts of those who could only claim "friendship" or acquaintance with the recipient, for they bear such sentiments as "a token of my respect," "accept this as a token of my esteem," and "esteem the giver." some appear to have been made for sale as place souvenirs, for they are inscribed "a trifle from bath," or other town where they had been procured. battersea portrait placques were made between 1750 and 1760, among the favourite subjects being the then prince of wales (afterwards george iv), the duke of cumberland, and statesmen, among whom horace walpole was evidently one of the most popular. english enamellers in other places, such as bilston, attained some fame, but the battersea works held their own, and not only produced the trinket boxes and other toilet-table appointments referred to, but many useful sundries, such as spirit and wine labels, little trays, and the like. none of these, although beautiful indeed, equalled the french enamels in the delicate miniature paintings and scenes such as those produced by the celebrated french painter, petitot, who gave much attention to the decoration of exquisite toilet boxes and trinket trays. [illustration: fig. 90.--fine altar set of cloisonné enamels (ch'ien lung period).] xix miscellaneous metal curios chapter xix miscellaneous metal curios tobacco-boxes and pipe-stoppers--snuff-boxes--handles and handle-plates--horse trappings--war relics--tiny curios--replicas. the collectable curios in metal include many which cannot be classified. they are isolated specimens of copper and brasswork representing some special household utensil or workshop appliance which, in the course of time, has become obsolete or has been superseded by more modern contrivances of other materials. copper was almost exclusively used in works where acids and other chemicals prevented the use of iron until enamelled wares, aluminium, and zinc were available; but such workshop appliances are not usually very attractive, and seldom come within the scope of the collector except as museum specimens. among the various sundry objects of interest, those mentioned in the following paragraphs are worthy of notice, especially as many of them are quite inexpensive, and can readily be obtained from curio-shops and occasionally picked up cheaply from cottages and farmhouses in out-of-the-way places. tobacco-boxes and pipe-stoppers. smokers' sundries include many objects in brass, especially boxes for storing tobacco. most of the larger receptacles for the storage of tobacco were in olden time of lead or pewter, or, in more recent times, of japanned tin, followed in the present day by pottery and wood. the small boxes in the days before rubber pouches were known were nearly always of brass or other metal, such boxes being often elaborately ornamented. dutch metal-workers produced some very decorative boxes in the seventeenth century. in some instances the sides are made of copper and the covers or lids of brass, the two metals in contrast presenting a very pleasing appearance. several of these boxes are to be seen in the guildhall museum; on one there is the representation of a bear-pit, on another scriptural subjects, a third being more appropriately covered with tavern scenes. needless to say, dutch artists were then--as they have been in after years--famous for their scenic views. the engravers appear to have divided their favours between religious pictures and rural scenes. battles, too, came in for a share of the engraver's skill, and such pictures are noticeable on many of the larger boxes, some of which possibly were not used as tobacco-boxes. the picture scenes were continued until the close of the eighteenth century, and in some instances a few years in the next. then there came a time of undecorated metal-work, and the engraving, if any, was stiff and formal. ornamental borders came into vogue, and the more elaborate boxes were engraved with the crests or monograms of their owners. some show portraits, such as an eighteenth-century box on which is a portrait of frederick the great. the metal-work so freely imported into this country in the reign of william and mary, and on into the times of george iii, of course included many tobacco-boxes, but there are other pieces of those periods, the uses of which are uncertain; some of the long, narrow boxes were probably made for spectacle-cases, and others as cases or boxes for the money-changers' and traders' scales (see chapter xi). ash-trays of copper and brass, among the fanciful smokers' requisites of the present day, are by no means novel, for among the antiques in metal are found curious copper bowls with inverted feet and wooden handles which were used by smokers in the days when "churchwarden" pipes were mostly smoked; they were known as smokers' ashes pans. tobacco-stoppers of metal are of early date, and seem to have been regarded by metal-workers as peculiarly suitable objects on which to display skill in modelling and even engraving. an authentic record of their use in restoration days is met with in a will referring to a bequest of boscobel relics: "the owner of an old oak box, dated 1660, mentioned it as the 'one in which was a brass tobacco-stopper.'" of these curious and interesting stoppers there are many varieties. under dutch influence some striking characters were portrayed as the ornamental heads of these pieces. in the days of william and mary they were chiefly cast, and afterwards tooled and even engraved. james ii was chosen as the model of many; and stoppers with his bust as the handle were, it is said, treasured by jacobean admirers. the human hand in which is seen a "churchwarden" pipe is a favourite type; pugilists, too, figured, and others typified familiar objects of local fame, even animals, birds, and domestic utensils serving the purpose of the designer. in recent days "punch" has appeared, and among the modern replicas of "early types" (_sic_) to be seen in the shops are sets of dickens's characters as tobacco-stoppers. snuff-boxes. there are some of the so-called tobacco-boxes which no doubt were in reality used only for snuff in the days when snuff was taken in larger quantities than it is to-day. a collection of snuff-boxes includes many varieties, among which are some of metal. some of the boxes made of wood and of shagreen are decorated with tiny brass studs, producing a very pleasing effect. the snuff-boxes were shaped according to popular fancy, and some of the more eccentric patterns were local in their use. in scotland the curled-shaped mull was a favourite. in connection with snuff-taking it must be remembered that in the earlier days snuff as prepared now was little known. those addicted to the habit had to prepare their own snuff. for that purpose there came into vogue snuff-rasps of iron enclosed in cases, which, although they were in some instances of boxwood or carved pearwood, were now and then of metal. incidentally this early home preparation of the snuff produced from a small plug or twist of tobacco gave rise to the popular trader's sign of the "crown and rasp" over a tobacco shop. as intimated in another chapter, many of the tobacco and snuff-boxes served a dual purpose, and not infrequently formed part of the tinder box, an essential in early days. handles and handle-plates. the condition of the metal-work upon old furniture and other curios is a factor in its beauty and in its value too. the handles and handle-plates should be of the same period as the antique, and hinges, lock-plates, handles and their plates, ball feet and castors should be _en suite_. indeed, it is better to substantiate a well-made reproduction rather than to admit the use of a later style. the want of harmony in the "brass furniture" of antiques, although all portions appear old, is somewhat puzzling at times. it is explainable in that in early victorian days when much that was then old was repaired the village shopkeeper and even the cabinet-maker had little regard for the preservation of the old style. to restore meant to them to repair, and where necessary to introduce the _then_ prevailing materials notwithstanding their obvious inappropriateness. fortunately, dealers in antiques and restorers have acquired nowadays a genuine love of their work, and have learned how best to please their clients; many of them having quite a store of odd handles and fittings for the curio-hunter and would-be amateur restorer to choose from. to be quite certain about getting a suitable style for the restoration or repairs of old furniture it is desirable to know something of the appropriate styles. the drop handle is a foreign importation, for it is said to have come from japan, being first seen in this country in the oriental lacquer cabinets brought here in the seventeenth century. such handles were at first pear-shaped, but they soon became larger and of a type more adapted for drawers and the heavier furniture then in use. much hand labour was expended upon their manufacture; even in the latter part of the eighteenth century they were filed up by hand. the earliest form of brass handle-plate was the smooth and shiny "willow brass," the edges of which were filed and shaped by hand. later they were distinguished from the newer styles as "queen ann brasses." the handles were fastened to the plates with brass-headed screw bolts (in the commoner types the "plates" were dispensed with). chippendale and his followers used an adaptation of the willow brass, placing over the plain plate a fretwork grille or ornamental plate of thin brass. then came the bail handle and the oval plate with beaded ornamentation, adopted by hepplewhite and adams. in the meantime, however, the drop and the bail were made in a fancy design in keeping with chippendale "shells" and ornament. the rosette and ring handle of the year 1800 and onwards is a feature to be noticed, the round plate being pierced in the centre instead of at the sides as in the bail handle. the ring which formed the handle hung from the central screw. this got over the difficulty of the necessary groove in which the old bail handle had fallen, and allowed for a deeper projection and more ornamental stamping. such handles were in vogue in the empire period. there were heavier handles, too, which often took the form of a lion's head instead of an ornamental pattern, the ring hanging from the mouth of the lion, these being often miniature replicas of the brass door knocker. these beautiful handles and the delightful brass knockers which were used on furniture and doors concurrently gave way to the ugly handles of the victorian age, when wood and glass knobs reigned supreme. it was a sad picture of the decadence of popular taste, for there can be no question as to the more artistic and ornamental decorativeness of the brassfounder's art over that of the wood-turner as exemplified by the products of the nineteenth century. at the time when the different styles in furniture decoration influenced brasswork, including handles, knobs, lock-plates, and hinges, a gradual change was going on in the castors used on furniture. the square legs required a square-socketed castor; then came the cabrioles or brass collars to the castors, very ornamental and suitable to the style of the shaped legs of mahogany furniture ornamented by carving and curiously turned. the runners of the castors were chiefly of brass and generally very substantial. the brass wheels held sway until the invention of the vitrified bowl, which seemed to harmonize better with victorian mahogany. in restoration work the collector should see to it that the castors used are in keeping with the furniture, for if no genuine antiques are available there are modern replicas of all the styles. horse trappings. horse harness is heavily loaded with brass bands, buckles, chains, and "trappings," many of the latter appearing to be quite superfluous and unnecessary. it would seem that the fanciful frets of perforated brass were introduced from purely artistic motives. that, however, is not quite correct, for even the brass ornaments of to-day are chiefly replicas of more ancient trappings, and although their forms may have deviated somewhat, the ancient idea is quite recognizable, and agriculturists and stablemen still demand their retention. such brasses, which now make up so entertaining a collection, have meanings; indeed, in the earlier examples the designs are true to well-understood symbols which may or may not in their use have a beneficial influence. to the superstitious they are not merely trappings; they are charms of real purpose (see fig. 91). [illustration: fig. 91.--collection of brass amulets (harness brasses). (_in the possession of mr. chas. wayte, of edenbridge._)] in all parts of the country there is a lingering superstition which aids and abets the continuance of the use of amulets. indeed, the very general belief in the protective value of symbols, the true history and origin of which may have been forgotten, is truly astonishing. one of the most remarkable indications that old fables and beliefs, antedating in their origin the introduction of the christian religion in this country, have a hold still on rural districts, is seen in the brass harness trappings used by all classes alike. years ago the makers of harness fashioned their brasses with care, and the artists who engraved them and cut them out of solid plates of metal laboured long and tediously in producing exact replicas of similar ornaments which had been used from time immemorial. they rarely deviated from the emblems they copied to any material extent, although new designs were at times added, based possibly on some specific local emblem which was then gaining notoriety. then came the less expensive processes of reproduction by casting and stamping, which multiplied the designs and very often made them grotesque in the eyes of experts and those who had been accustomed to realize and understand a true meaning in the designs they had been familiar with. the ornamental brasses which hung in rows round horses' necks, and conspicuously on the foreheads or chests of the animals, deemed inseparable from a set of harness in olden times, were regarded as charms, protective against danger, accident, and, in wilder times, perils unknown to-day. these very pleasing objects in brass, which look so handsome when polished and arranged on a cloth-covered shield in the harness-room, or, perchance, framed as a trophy for the hall or gun-room, are so varied, and yet for the most part quite distinct, that it is said nearly two hundred designs are collectable. a complete set of brasses, as worn by one horse properly harnessed, includes the face brass already mentioned as the chief ornament on the forehead, ear-brasses hanging behind the ears, three brasses on each side of the shoulders, and ten martingale (a strap passing from the horse's girth between his forelegs) brasses for the breast. to trace their purport and hence their forms it may be pointed out that they are associated with the folk-lore of the districts where they were originally used, and were chiefly intended to keep off the "evil eye" or calamity. they go back a long way into the past, and are nearly all attributable to symbols understood by the saxons, early british, and still older races. their modern exponents are the gypsies, and strange as it may seem, most of them are either buddhist, egyptian, or moorish. the genuine antiques include such well-known emblems as the crescent, the symbol brought back, it is said, by the crusaders from eastern lands. the crescent moon, like the horseshoe brass, is valued. there are others showing the radiated sun's rays indicating the sun worship of our ancestors. conspicuous among the floral emblems may be noticed the iris; the lotus of egypt is a common emblem, often enclosed in a crescent-like form, occasionally met with in a shield-like frame. there are the bull's head with horns and the horse of the saxon banner, both essentially english types. then there are clubs and diamonds, hearts and spades, and many heathen symbols. in a few instances brasses in the shape of crosses are met with, but these are rare; possibly they were introduced in the days of the canterbury pilgrims. in this connection may be related a pretty story of the good luck associated with the horseshoe, which comes from russia, where peasants used to paint a picture of the virgin mary with a golden halo round her head outside their doors to protect them from harm. the snows and the rains washed off the paint, but left the more lasting gilding in the shape of the horseshoe. hence it is said the superstitious legend of the protective power or good luck of the symbolical horseshoe, or the crescent moon, is spread all the world over. another legend tells us how the greeks and romans gave the world the crescent moon as an emblem of good luck, so many thousands of replicas of which have been fashioned in brass and used as horse trappings by horsemen of all races. the crescent moon was to those nations the symbol of their loyalty to the huntress diana, the goddess they worshipped as a protector under many varied conditions. an exceptionally fine early brass of crescent form is seen in south kensington, where there are other early specimens pointing to the ancient and very general acceptance of the belief in the potency of symbolical horse trappings as talismans against evil and dangers of the road, happily unknown now. almost as common is the brass fashioned like the sun god, whose face was so often looked upon with awe by the ancients. side by side with these pagan symbols the emblems adapted by pilgrims in days when christianity had been made the religion of the race can be seen to-day, still adorning the breast of the horse. the amulet or charm is not altogether banished at the present day. it has been worn at the watch chain, round the neck, on a bangle, and suspended from the chatelaine or the girdle. the greater use of the road by motorist and cyclist has once more brought into prominence the amulet or mascot, carried in front of the rider. the river-girl places a mascot on the prow of her boat, and the aviator screws his mascot into position "for luck." why this should be done we cannot tell; the general belief is in some mysterious advantage from the presence of the mascot--an accepted theory by the sceptical man who shakes his head and secretly marvels at the folly of the belief. strange to say many of the present-day mascots in brass--and that is the favourite metal--are modelled upon amulets such as we have referred to as finding their origin in pagan faiths. there are others used by motorists, such as "cæsar," the late king edward's dog, the "chantecler," and the stag's head, which have no mystic meanings; on the other hand, the most favoured are such brasses as the "star and cresent" and the "rising sun" of pagan worship of our ancestors, and "mercury" the greek god. the brass mascot used in every form, large and small, by motorists and worn by many others so extensively is the "swastika" of buddhist fame, traceable in its varied form to egyptian and other early nations. these mascots in brass, made in thousands to-day, are brass curios in the making; possibly in a century or so they may be classed with the oldest brass amulets described in this chapter, and so add to the metal relics to be collected by future curio-hunters! copper sheathing and nails. copper sheathing has been used by boat-builders and made to serve a useful purpose, protecting the ship's bottom and resisting the action of salt water. oftentimes this valuable material--costly when new--has been used over again when vessels have been broken up, and not infrequently it is put to curious uses in old seaport towns. visitors to an old-world village built on the side of a hill near the sea in north cornwall, have looked with admiration upon two remarkable gateposts in front of a cottage house, and admired their quaint carvings. these relics in oak were once the ends of seats in a neighbouring parish church; but either to preserve them from injury from the village children or to give them a longer life as they would be exposed to the weather, the upper portions have been sheathed with copper from the bottom of some broken-up wreck, and large copper nails keep the casing in place. copper and brass nails have been used for ornament as well as to resist acids and other metal-destroying chemicals. old furniture is evidence of this; for at one time the leather covers to the chairs were almost invariably fixed by round-headed brass studs, which from that use became known in the trade as "chair nails." such nails were used to ornament brass bellows and other domestic utensils. they were also used to "decorate" the skin-covered trunks which our ancestors took with them on their rare journeys of pleasure or business, when they travelled by the mail-coach or less expensive stage wagon. nails of brass have been used and are still sometimes used for sadder purposes, for they are a feature in the ornament of cloth-covered coffins. that of king edward vi was decorated (_sic_) with upwards of two thousand brass nails with gilt heads. war relics. what wonderful antiquities are sometimes found among scraps! years of neglect cause indifference to the contents of a scrapheap, and we read occasionally of the dispersal of relics among which, unknown to either sellers or buyers, there may be antiquities of more than passing interest if their original ownership could only be traced, for in the personal relics of great warriors in our national museums there clings a halo of hero-worship, and what to many would be considered fictitious values are attached to such curios. a few years ago the relics from the battlefield of waterloo, which had for some time past been accumulated in a modest looking building at the foot of the lion mound, were dispersed. there were upwards of three thousand pieces, including helmets of brass, plates of shining metal, innumerable buttons and ornaments belonging to different french regiments, including officers' regimentals, and some relics of the british and prussian armies. in old curio-shops many metal relics of battlefields are offered for sale, but they have little or no interest to the buyer, simply because their identity with their original owners has been lost. it is of the greatest importance to future generations of collectors that all records relating to known curios should be chronicled, and that even private collectors should hand on to their successors adequate descriptions which may have been verbally given them, so that private as well as national relics may be identified and the monetary value in such curios increased. even a brass plate on an old gun, bearing the name of a great man, makes it a relic worth securing, whereas had the identity of ownership been missing the weapon would be of little or no value. a visit to the united service museum at westminster is full of interest. there is an abundance of personal relics there--not many of brass, it is true--many of which are of special interest. perhaps the one of greatest historical fame is the much battered copper bugle on which it is said the signal was given for the fatal charge of the light brigade at balaclava, resulting so disastrously to that famous regiment. there are some curious trophies of brass, too, which have been brought home by our troops; one known as "jingling johnny" is of special interest. tiny curios. at one time there was quite a rage for miniatures in metal-work. artists in copper and brass vied with one another in working microscopically. they were very fond of making use of some recognized piece of metal, the size, weight, and substance of which was well understood by the public; hence the difficulties of manipulating the works of art they produced would be realized. thus, out of a copper farthing, a worker in metal would with very tiny hammers and a still smaller soldering-iron and miniature blow-pipe, fashion a complete copper teakettle with a tiny spout out of which liquid could be poured, a loose lid, a correctly formed knob, and a beautifully shaped handle. another would make a similar kettle out of a similar piece of metal, and leave some portion of the farthing, perhaps the date, uninjured as the central ornament on the side of the kettle, or on the top of the handle; others would add a stand, like the then fashionable toddy-kettles and stands. in a similar way other little domestic utensils were made by the worker in copper, who used watchmakers' hammers and tools such as jewellers employed in the setting of precious stones. a collector at one time had in his possession a beautifully shaped coffee boiler of the type used on the open fire when coffee was boiled and afterwards allowed to stand on the hob for some time before it was deemed sufficiently brewed. another charming miniature novelty was a brass stool, perforated, and made to revolve just as the larger toasting stool once common in every fireplace. fenders and fire-brasses were favourite objects for miniature metal ornaments, and the way in which the skilled worker manipulated the copper "sheets" hammered out by hand from small coins showed mastery of the craft and great patience. such little objects were frequently displayed on the "parlour" table under a glass shade, the woodworker being sometimes requisitioned to make a stand, possibly a canopied top, on which to show off to the best advantage these tiny ornaments. in the same way the engraver of brass and copper worked under a strong lens, and sought to produce whole texts of scripture and quite long inscriptions on an almost impossibly small surface. these little pieces of metal were worn as charms, and similar objects were displayed as trophies. many of our readers have seen no doubt the whole of the lord's prayer or the ten commandments engraved on a threepenny-piece or a copper farthing. it is said such microscopic engraving took its rise in the reign of charles ii when thomas simon, a noted engraver of the mint, engraved in double lines on his famous "petition crown" a petition to the king. specimens of the crown are very rare, and are regarded as the scarcest treasures in a numismatic cabinet. replicas. in conclusion, it may be pointed out that there is no branch of curio collecting which has such a close and intimate touch with modern art as that of copper and brass. the tools with which the ancient coppersmiths wrought and fashioned their most beautiful works are still used by the coppersmiths of to-day, for although in the eyes of some the traces of machine-stamped or pressed ornament in the so-called reproductions of the antiques are noticeable blemishes, there are few distinguishing marks between the old and the new. those modern artists who specialize in providing those who furnish their houses in antique style with replicas of the domestic copper-work of a century or two ago, are very careful to produce their "modern antique" by the use of tools which produce precisely similar effects to the hammered-by-hand copper-work of days gone by. in the production of such work the repoussé enrichments are wrought by hand, the anvil still holding sway in the modern coppersmith's shop. rarely is soldering used, the parts being riveted together. in many cases although jardinieres and other vessels have the appearance of being cast in a mould they are really hollowed up under the rim by hammer and block, and are without seam or joining. they are fashioned exactly the same way as the beaten work of old. collectors may be warned against these modern reproductions in that they should be careful to pay a modern price for a modern antique. the styles reproduced are chiefly those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly those of the elizabethan and cromwellian periods. thus electroliers are made to match antique furniture, the difference being that instead of holding electric bulbs the antique would have been fashioned for candles or oil lamps. many of the modern reproductions of copper panels used for letting into mantelpieces are designs, carefully copied, taken from old baronial halls. the very grates of ormolu and brass and the canopies of hammered copper and brass are being made to-day by the same firms who manufactured the metal-work designed by the adam brothers, and who in the eighteenth century had already become famous as makers of coal stoves and hob-grates. then, again, in the utilitarian reproductions of to-day there are the copper and brass fender kerbs, reproducing the eighteenth-century fenders without their bottom plates, and for use with them the modern manufacturer makes fire-dogs and fire-brasses of antique styles. even the builder's brasswork for ornamenting the interiors of houses, such as finger-plates and door handles, are exact copies of the old door-plates and lock-plates found on doors and cupboards in existing houses built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and in their designs and processes of manufacture it is difficult to distinguish the genuine antique from the modern replica. again, the buyer of such things is warned against the unscrupulous dealer who fills his windows with brass and copper-work, almost hot from the birmingham foundry, and labels it "antique." not long ago some of the shop windows were filled with chestnut roasters in brass, with beautifully designed trivets, with door knockers innumerable, and with even pipe-stoppers and tobacco-boxes, all quite recently made in the black country. yet all these objects, sold as modern by the honest dealer, have been and are still not infrequently palmed off as antique, for they have the finish which age in former years was wont to impart, and in design and style they are correct reproductions of the genuine antique. the collection of metal has a peculiar charm, for the objects are so numerous and the different alloys produce such a pleasing variety of colour and appearance. the value of such curios is now more fully recognized than formerly, for greater prominence is being given to them in museums, where in those which have been re-arranged recently such objects may be seen with labels on which their uses are fully described and explained. xx wrinkles for collectors chapter xx wrinkles for collectors cleaning copper and brass--lacquering metal--polishing brass--restoring antique finishes--using the burnisher--brass rubbings. the collector has frequently to decide whether he will entrust the repair of some much battered curio to a local workman or undertake the rôle of an amateur worker and repairer of copper or brass. there are many who prefer the latter course; unless the antique needs expert skill, and then, if a valuable specimen, it should be sent to one whose professional knowledge will enable him to carry out its restoration without injury. there are, however, many minor matters which, with a few simple tools, and recipes which can be prepared quite easily, the collector can very satisfactorily accomplish. before attempting to clean or repair old copper and brass curios or those objects which are made all or in part of either of them or of any of their alloys, it is well to know something of the constituents of the metals usually met with. first on the list comes ancient bronzes composed mainly of copper and tin on no accepted formula, but generally in the proportion of about three to one. modern statuary bronze is made in several proportions; one compound is given by an authority as copper, 83 parts; tin, 5 parts; zinc, 10 parts; and lead, 2 parts; and by another as copper, 91 parts; tin, 9 parts. bronze ornaments are mostly copper, 80 parts; tin, 3 parts; zinc, 15 parts; and lead, 2 parts. gongs are of copper, 80 parts; and tin, 20 parts--some oriental alloys have a little silver added. the ormolu of the brassfounder, used extensively by french metal-workers, has more copper and less zinc than brass. red brass consists of copper, 25 parts; zinc, 5 parts; and bismuth, 1 part. yellow brass is made of copper, 35 parts; and zinc, 15 parts. pinchbeck metal, of which watchcases and jewellery have been made, consists of copper, 10 parts; and of zinc, 2 parts. antimony imparts a rich red to copper. * * * * * in the following paragraphs some very useful "wrinkles" are given: cleaning copper and brass. it is scarcely necessary to warn the collector against over cleaning, for to rub light bronzes which age has toned or encrusted with a beautiful patina would be vandalism indeed. yet there are many objects which require attention when they arrive from the auction mart or curio-shop. ancient bronzes should be washed in soap and water with soft brush or flannel--not scrubbed--and then dried in hot sawdust. if any polishing is necessary, a chamois leather or an old silk handkerchief will be sufficient. the green patina or verdigris of antique metals should _not_ be removed nor its colouring spoiled with cleaning. copper vessels, however, do very frequently require cleaning. when they have turned a bluish green--not the much admired patina--they may be cleaned by making a paste of well powdered chalk and methylated spirit. this preparation should be rubbed on and then left until the spirit has evaporated and the chalk is quite dry, at which stage it can be removed and the copper polished with crocus powder or fine chalk. owing to long neglect there are some metal curios which cannot be thoroughly cleansed without a powerful solvent. a weak solution of oxalic acid may be safely applied with a piece of woollen material; it will remove the tarnish, and then, after well washing, the metal can be polished with fine chalk or whiting. when the brass is spotted with damp but not too deeply marked, chalk and spirits of turpentine will generally effect the purpose just as well. another recipe formerly much favoured by housewives in the days when copper vessels were much in evidence, is to rub them over with half a lemon dipped in salt; then after washing polish with a soft cloth. this is a useful recipe in that it does not injure an antique appearance or patina, but it will remove stains. a somewhat more powerful preparation for metal-work is a cleaning paste made as follows: oxalic acid, 1 oz.; rotten stone, 6 oz; gum arabic, 1/2 oz.; sweet oil, 1 oz.; and then add as much water as necessary. the following recipe is given for the benefit of advanced collectors who wish to avail themselves of modern methods. such will no doubt delight in experimenting on the cleansing of newly acquired curios with a cleaning preparation operated by an electric current. caustic soda, 1/2 lb.; sal soda, 1/2 lb.; resin, 1/4 oz.; and water, 1 gallon; 4 to 8 volts and a current density of 12 amps. the greater the density of the current the quicker the cleaning is performed. a temperature of 120 fahr. is recommended. lacquering metal. when it is desired to lacquer or coat over metal to prevent any future oxidation (not commonly desired by collectors of antiques) the copper or brass article should be pickled for several hours in aqua fortis diluted with water. the acid will rot away a certain portion of the tarnished surface and leave the metal bright. the article should then be put into bran and well shaken until quite dry. it is then ready to be cleaned, and, if desired, polished bright. old brasswork may be relacquered by the amateur with a little experience, practice, and care. first of all it must be cleaned. the liquid which is best suited to the purpose may be made of a strong lye of wood ashes boiled and strengthened with soap lees. this will fetch the old lacquer off. the article should then be dipped in aqua fortis and water to take off the dirt, and immediately removed and cleansed with clean water, and then when dried it is ready to be lacquered. there are two processes in simple lacquering, which may be defined as cold and hot. the cold lacquer is the application of a preparation of brass lacquer, which can be purchased from any oil-shop, chemist, or metal dealer, put on with a camelhair-brush like varnish, and immediately placed in an oven or a hot stove, and exposed to the heat for a few minutes until the lacquer is quite firm and set. a gas-oven such as those in common use in so many kitchens nowadays answers the purpose very well. the second method is the application of lacquer after the article has been heated. the heating may be done in a gas-oven, or by the application of a flat-iron such as is used by laundresses. then lacquer should be applied hot, and if the object lacquered has cooled in the process heat should again be applied as in the first process. it should be clearly understood that cleaning and relacquering old brass and copper-work should be done with very great care and with a full appreciation of the curio value of old finish, and of the marks and evidences of age which are so dear to the collector. the pickling of brasswork in acid and subsequent lacquering should only be resorted to when it is absolutely necessary to effect such restoration, and to make the objects sufficiently presentable so that they may be included in a cabinet or exhibited in the collection of metal curios; for the possession of old copper and brass is nothing without the opportunity of showing it. there are some specialists who devote their attention to the restoration and bronzing of mediæval and early ecclesiastical work. it may on occasion be necessary to consult such a firm before attempting anything which would savour of vandalism and rob the present-day possessor and curio-hunter of the future of what might eventually become a rare antiquity. polishing brass. it may at times be necessary to polish parts of curios which have been subjected to rough wear and are, therefore, badly scratched. a very fine file will remove scratches; fine emery will then make the surface quite smooth, after which it can be polished with rotten stone and oil, some adding a little turpentine. restoring antique finishes. there are many beautiful antiques which have been subjected to rough usage or through some accident have had the oxidation rubbed off in parts. to clean such an antique so as to secure uniformity of appearance would be a mistake. it is better to "restore" the finish and imitate that which age has imparted. the solution required is 60 gr. nitrate of silver and 2-1/2 oz. water, mixed with a solution of 60 gr. nitrate of copper and 2-1/2 oz. water. after the solution has been applied to the parts the object should be heated in a gas-oven until it is sufficiently dark coloured. some time ago an expert in indian antiques, bronzes, and metal-work published in _the times of india_ an account of how oriental bronze and brass which had been soiled and scratched by time and climatic conditions might be restored. the writer went on to describe how the great secret of restoring the dull half-green and half-brown shades had been revealed to him. the remedy he propounded was simple in the extreme. it was that the statue should be washed in beer, which should not be rubbed off but allowed to dry on. using the burnisher. the amateur restorer may frequently with advantage acquire a knowledge of the burnisher, and thereby add much to the beauty of the metal. those who have watched an old coppersmith planishing copper-work, and have noticed the very primitive materials used, will have learnt to realize the value of "elbow grease." crocus powder with oil and soft rags works wonders, and will often bring up the original finish just as the coppersmith converts the rough dull polish of the metal sheets he has fashioned into domestic copper ware and shining pots and pans. brass rubbings. rubbings of church and memorial brasses referred to in chapter vii may be taken with heel-ball, which is a compound of beeswax, and plain white paper. when the brass has been evenly rubbed all over the picture is complete and ready for mounting. it should then be cut out and pasted on a prepared surface of fine canvas or calico, thus giving the rubbing an appearance like tapestry. it can be touched up in colours, if there is any heraldic enamelled work on the original. it can then be sized and stretched on a frame ready for hanging on a wall. index index african curios, 309-311 alms-dishes, 140-143 altar brasses, 142-143 amulets, 33, 373-375 ancient art, 70-72 ancient bronze, 38-41 aquamaniles, 101, 326 arab influence, 267 architectural metal-work, 121-124 arms and armour, 106-109 art influence, 128 ashanti curios, 309 ash-trays, 365 astrolabes, 25 badges of metal, 102 ball and cross of st. paul's, 143-144 barometer of bronze, 341 barrows, ancient, 25 bath, 56 battersea enamels, 31, 357 bell founding, 43 bell-metal, 43, 217-219 bells, 217-226, 282, 309 benares brasswork, 280 benin bronzes, 307-309 betel-nut boxes, 26, 278, 282 betel-nut cutters, 279 bidri ware, 26, 277 bilston enamels, 31 boadicea, queen, 91 boiling-pots, 98-101 bowls, 84 brass (of commerce), 42-43 brass instruments, 340-345 brass making, 45-46 brass rubbings, 393 brasses, 26 brazier, 26 braziers' company, 117 british museum exhibits, 59, 65, 168, 309, 326, 350, 356, 357 bronze, 27 bronze age, 38, 66 bronze alloys, 27 bronze celts, 25 bronze implements, 69 bronze knives, 25 bronze reaping-hooks, 72 bronze saucepans, 283 bronzes and their replicas, 249-258 bronzes, greek, 79-81 bucklers, bronze, 28, 69 buckles, 105 bullock bells, 279 burnishing metal, 293 caldrons, 83, 160, 164 candle clock, 208 candles, 199-204 candlesticks, 139, 140, 195-211, 301, 350 card counters, 29 central africa, curios from, 310, 311 champlevé enamel, 30 chaufferette, 28, 128 chatties, 28 chimney ornaments, 184-188 chinese bronzes, 41, 42, 283-288 chinese enamels, 352-355 chinese influence on art, 131 church brasswork, 137-151 _circe-perdu_ process, 28, 277 cirencester curios, 54 cisterns and taps, 322 city guilds, 116-121 civic emblems, 231-235 classic bronzes, 254 classified arrangement, 188-191 cleaning copper and brass, 388-390 clockmakers' company's collection, 336 clocks, 329, 334-339 cloisonné enamels, 30 coffee-pots, 264, 268 continental copper and brass, 317-326 cooking-pots, 160 copper as alloy, 44-47 copper mining, 44, 45 copper pans, 167 copper sheathing, 377 coppersmith, the, 37 counters of brass, 29 _couvre de feu_, 29, 102 cromwell clocks, 336 crusaders' effigies, 26 crusaders' relics, 311 cups, 271 curfew, 29 daggers, bronze, 69 damascened metals, 29, 277 dialling, 30 domestic brasswork, 96-102 domestic utensils, 155-191 door knockers, 124-127 drinking cups, 175 dutch brasswork, 321 dutch influence, 264 egyptian bronzes, 267 ember tongs, 30 enamels, 30, 42 enamels on copper, 349-358 engraving on copper, 61 exeter museum exhibits, 183, 239 ewers, 277 fibulæ, 31, 71 fire-making apparatus, 87, 196-199 flagons, 175 flagstaff head, 235 foot-warmers, 183, 322 forgeries, 74 founders, 217-219 founders, worshipful company of, 46, 97, 118, 236 french art, 321 gemellions, 101 german metal-work, 325, 326 gipcieres, 31, 106 greek bronzes, 41, 42, 249 greek curios, 79-92 guildhall museum exhibits, 83, 96, 103, 168, 183, 241, 364 guild of loriners, 107 hand basins, 326 handles and handle-plates, 367 hand-warmers, 28, 128 historic bells, 219, 220 hob-grates, 178 hooker bases, 31, 271 horns, 232 horse trappings, 370-371 houseplace, the contents of, 175-184 hull museum exhibits, 342 idols, 80, 293-298 indian bronzes, 272 indian museum exhibits, 274-280, 294 indian vessels, 28 inkstands, 357 italian bronzes, 319 japanese bronzes, 41, 42 japanese enamels, 352-356 japanese metals, 28 kaffir bangles and girdles, 311 kashmir curios, 278 kettles, 83-87, 380 kitchen utensils, 159-175 knockers, 368 lacquering metal, 390-392 lagos brasses, 309 lamaistic temple relics, 281, 297 lamps, 88, 92, 195-211, 278, 279, 282 lanterns, 207-211 later metal-work, 115-132 latten, 31 limoges enamels, 30, 321, 350 local museums, 59 lock plates, 131 log boxes, 180 london museum exhibits, 59, 70, 71, 91, 180, 207 london relics, 69, 70 lucknow curios, 26, 277 mace, 235 mansfield mines, 44 maundy alms-dish, 116 mediæval antiquities, 95-109 memorial brasses, 144-151 metal and its alloys, 37-49 microscopes, 342 microscopic engravings, 381 milk cans, 322 miniature bronzes and models, 257, 258, 345 miscellaneous metal curios, 363, 384 mirrors, 32, 73, 87, 267 monumental brasses, 26 moradabad brasswork, 280 mortars, 32, 226, 268 muff-warmers, 183 national museum, washington, 203 native metal-work, 305-311 nepal metal-work, 274, 278 nomenclature of metals, 27 norman remains, 57 nuremberg clocks, 339 nutmeg graters, 163 oil lamps, 207-211 opaque enamels, 31 oriental bronzes, 265-288 patchboxes, 350 patera, 73 patina, 32 patine, 32 persian metal-work, 271 pilgrims' signs, 32, 103 pins, 105 pipe-stoppers, 30, 364 pipkins, 180 pocket clocks, 334 polishing brass, 392 porridge-pots, 163 portrait placques, 358 pots and pans, 168 prehistoric bronzes, 65-75 pricket candlesticks, 203 processes of enamelling, 350-351 replicas, 381-383 restoring antiques, 392 ritual vases, 301 roasting-jacks, 160, 167 roman bronzes, 41, 249 roman curios, 79-92 romano-british art, 90-91 rushlight holders, 200 saracenic influence, 264 saucepans, 83, 172 saxon remains, 57 scales, 241 sinhalese metal-work, 282 skillets, 170 snuff-boxes, 350, 366 snuffers, 204 snuff-rasps, 366 sources of metals, 43, 44 south african curios, 311 spanish metal-work, 319 spectacle cases, 365 spice-boxes, 278 spirit labels, 356 spits, 160 spurs, 107 stafford house exhibits, 59 standard measures, 236, 239 standard weights, 240 statues, 89 statuettes, 187 sundials, 30, 329-334 tankards, 175 temple vases, 298-301 thibet tea-urns, 281 tinder-boxes, 196 tobacco-boxes, 364 toilet requisites, 86 tower of london exhibits, 107 trinkets, 104-106 trivets, 179 trumpets, 69, 321 turkish metal-work, 226 united service museum exhibits, 220, 379 united states national museum, 210 verulamium curios, 54 victoria & albert museum exhibits, 59, 84, 101, 126, 131, 139, 180, 183, 220, 250, 268, 298, 318, 321, 342, 375 wallace collection exhibits, 109 warming-pans, 180, 183 watches, 339 watchmen's lanterns, 208, 211 water jars, 227 weather-vanes, 33, 123 weighing instruments, 236-239 weights and measures, 242-245 welsh national museum exhibits, 59 winchester bushel, 236 winchester moot horn, 232 winchester museum exhibits, 236 wrinkles for collectors, 387-393 writing boxes, 264 unwin brothers, limited, london and woking transcriber's notes minor punctuation errors have been corrected. there are a few inconsistent hyphens, and these have been left as printed. in the list of the books in series "chats on old miniatures. by j. j. foster, f.s a" has been changed to "f.s.a." p83. "like one round" changed to "found." the illustration and it's companion blank page (p243 and 244) appear between p241 and 242 in the internet archive scan from which this text has been derived. it has been moved to the correct place. p287. a single occurrence of cloissoné has been changed to cloissonné, the spelling found in the rest of the text. p397. (index) "boadicea, queen, 99-91" changed to "boadicea, queen, 91." jewel mysteries [illustration: "he had turned the pistol to his head and blown his brains out." --_page 27_] jewel mysteries from a dealer's note book by max pemberton _author of "the garden of swords," "kronstadt," "the iron pirate," etc., etc._ r. f. fenno & company _9 & 11 east sixteenth street, new york city: 1904_ contents. page the opal of carmalovitch 9 the necklace of green diamonds 33 the comedy of the jeweled links 57 treasure of white creek 79 the accursed gems 109 the watch and the scimitar 133 the seven emeralds 157 the pursuit of the topaz 187 the ripening rubies 217 my lady of the sapphires 245 the opal of carmalovitch. the opal of carmalovitch. dark was falling from a dull and humid sky, and the lamps were beginning to struggle for brightness in piccadilly, when the opal of carmalovitch was first put into my hand. the day had been a sorry one for business: no light, no sun, no stay of the downpour of penetrating mist which had been swept through the city by the driving south wind from the late dawn to the mock of sunset. i had sat in my private office for six long hours, and had not seen a customer. the umbrella-bearing throng which trod the street before my window hurried quickly through the mud and the slush, as people who had no leisure even to gaze upon precious stones they could not buy. i was going home, in fact, as the one sensible proceeding on such an afternoon, and had my hand upon the great safe to shut it, when the mirror above my desk showed me the reflection of a curious-looking man who had entered the outer shop, and stood already at the counter. at the first glance i judged that this man was no ordinary customer. his dress was altogether singular. he had a black coat covering him from his neck to his heels--a coat half-smothered in astrachan, and one which could have been made by no english tailor. but his hands were ungloved, and he wore a low hat, which might have been the hat of an office boy. i could see from the little window of my private room, which gives my eye command of the shop, that he had come on foot, and for lack of any umbrella was pitiably wet. yet there was fine bearing about him, and he was clearly a man given to command, for my assistant mounted to my room with his name at the first bidding. "does he say what he wants?" i asked, reading the large card upon which were the words- "steniloff carmalovitch"; but the man replied,-"only that he must see you immediately. i don't like the look of him at all." "is abel in the shop?" "he's at the door." "very well; let him come to the foot of my stairs, and if i ring as usual, both of you come up." in this profession of jewel-selling--for every calling is a profession nowadays--we are so constantly cheek by jowl with swindlers that the coming of one more or less is of little moment in a day's work. at my own place of business the material and personal precautions are so organized that the cleverest scoundrel living would be troubled to get free of the shop with sixpenny-worth of booty on him. i have two armed men ready at the ring of my bell--abel is one of them--and a private wire to the nearest police-station. from an alcove well hidden on the right hand of the lower room, a man watches by day the large cases where the smaller gems are shown, and by night a couple of special guards have charge of the safe and the premises. i touch a bell twice in my room, and my own detective follows any visitor who gives birth in my mind to the slightest doubt. i ring three times, and any obvious impostor is held prisoner until the police come. these things are done by most jewelers in the west end; there is nothing in them either unusual or fearful. there are so many professed swindlers--so many would-be snappers up of unconsidered and considerable trifles--that precautions such as i have named are the least that common sense and common prudence will allow one to take. and they have saved me from loss, as they have saved others again and again. i had scarce given my instructions to michel, my assistant--a rare reader of intention, and a fine judge of faces--when the shabby-genteel man entered. michel placed a chair for him on the opposite side of my desk, and then left the room. there was no more greeting between the newcomer and myself than a mutual nodding of heads; and he on his part fell at once upon his business. he took a large paper parcel from the inside pocket of his coat and began to unpack it; but there was so much paper, both brown and tissue, that i had some moments of leisure in which to examine him more closely before we got to talk. i set him down in my mind as a man hovering on the boundary line of the middle age, a man with infinite distinction marked in a somewhat worn face, and with some of the oldest clothes under the shielding long coat that i have ever looked upon. these i saw when he unbuttoned the enveloping cape to get at his parcel in the inner pocket; and while he undid it, i could observe that his fingers were thin as the talons of a bird, and that he trembled all over with the mere effort of unloosing the string. the operation lasted some minutes. he spoke no word during that time, but when he had reduced the coil of brown paper to a tiny square of wash-leather, i asked him,-"have you something to show me?" he looked up at me with a pair of intensely, ridiculously blue eyes, and shrugged his shoulders. "should i undo all these papers if i had not?" he responded; and i saw at once that he was a man who, from a verbal point of view, stood objectionably upon the defensive. "what sort of a stone is it?" i went on in a somewhat uninterested tone of voice; "not a ruby, i hope. i have just bought a parcel of rubies." by way of answer he opened the little wash-leather bag, and taking up my jewel-tongs, which lay at his hand, he held up an opal of such prodigious size and quality that i restrained myself with difficulty from crying out at the sight of it. it was a cerwenitza stone, i saw at a glance, almost a perfect circle in shape, and at least four inches in diameter. there was a touch of the oxide in its color which gave it the faintest suspicion of black in the shade of its lights; but for wealth of hue and dazzling richness in its general quality, it surpassed any stone i have ever known, even that in the imperial cabinet at vienna. so brilliant was it, so fascinating in the ever-changing play of its amazing variegations, so perfect in every characteristic of the finest hungarian gem, that for some moments i let the man hold it out to me, and said no word. there was running through my mind the question which must have arisen under such circumstances: where had he got it from? he had stolen it, i concluded at the first thought; and again, at the second, how else could a man who wore rags under an astrachan coat have come to the possession of a gem upon which the most commercial instinct would have hesitated to set a price? i had fully determined that i was face to face with a swindler, when his exclamation reminded me that he expected me to speak. "well," he said, "are you frightened to look at it?" he had been holding out the tongs, in which he gripped the stone lightly, for some seconds, and i had not yet ventured to touch them, sitting, i do not doubt, with surprise written all over my face. but when he spoke, i took the opal from him, and turned my strong glass upon it. "you seem to have brought me a fine thing," i said as carelessly as i could. "is it a stone with a history?" "it has no history--at least, none that i should care to write." "and yet," i continued, "there cannot be three larger opals in europe; do you know the stone at vienna?" "perfectly; but it has not the black of this, and is coarser. this is an older stone, so far as the birth of its discovery goes, by a hundred years." i thought that he was glib with his tale for a man who had such a poor one; and certainly he looked me in the face with amazing readiness. he had not the eyes of a rogue, and his manner was not that of one criminally restless. "if you will allow me," i said, when i had looked at the stone for a few moments, "i will examine this under the brighter light there; perhaps you would like to amuse yourself with this parcel of rubies." this was a favorite little trick of mine. i had two or three parcels of stones to show to any man who came to me laboring under a sorry and palpably poor story; and one of these i then took from my desk and spread upon the table under the eyes of the russian. the stones were all imitation, and worth no more than sixpence apiece. if he were a judge, he would discover the cheat at the first sight of them; if he were a swindler, he would endeavor to steal them. in either case the test was useful. and i took care to turn my back upon him while i examined the opal, to give him every opportunity of filling his pockets should he choose. when i had the jewel under the powerful light of an unshaded incandescent lamp i could see that it merited all the appreciation i had bestowed upon it at first sight. it was flawless, wanting the demerit of a single mark which could be pointed to in depreciation of its price. for play of color and radiating generosity of hues, i have already said that no man has seen its equal. i put it in the scales, called michel to establish my own opinions, tried it by every test that can be applied to a gem so fragile and so readily harmed, and came to the only conclusion possible--that it was a stone which would make a sensation in any market, and call bids from all the courts in europe. it remained for me to learn the history of it, and with that i went back to my desk and resumed the conversation, first glancing at the sham parcel of rubies, to find that the man had not even looked at them. "it is a remarkable opal," i said; "the finest ever put before me. you have come here to sell it, i presume?" "exactly. i want five thousand pounds for it." "and if i make you a bid you are prepared to furnish me with the history both of it and of yourself?" he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. "if you think that i have stolen it we had better close the discussion at once. i am not prepared to tell my history to every tradesman i deal with." "in that case," said i, "you have wasted your time. i buy no jewels that i do not know all about." his superciliousness was almost impertinent. it would have been quite so if it had not been dominated by an absurd and almost grotesque pride, which accounted for his temper. i was sure then that he was either an honest man or the best actor i had ever seen. "think the matter over," i added in a less indifferent tone; "i am certain that you will then acquit me of unreasonableness. call here again in a day or two, and we will have a chat about it." this softer speech availed me as little as the other. he made no sort of answer to it, but packing his opal carefully again, he rose abruptly and left the shop. as he went i touched my bell twice, and abel followed him quietly down piccadilly, while i sent a line to scotland yard informing the commissioners of the presence of such a man as the russian in london, and of the gargantuan jewel which he carried. then i went home through the fog and the humid night; but my way was lighted by a memory of the magnificent gem i had seen, and the hunger for the opal was already upon me. the inquiry at scotland yard proved quite futile. the police telegraphed to paris, to berlin, to st. petersburg, to new york, but got no tidings either of a robbery or of the man whom mere circumstances pointed at as a pretender. this seemed to me the more amazing since i could not conceive that a stone such as this was should not have made a sensation in some place. jewels above all material things do not hide their light under bushels. let there be a great find at kimberley or in the burmese mines; let a fine emerald or a perfect turquoise be brought to europe, and every dealer in the country knows its weight, its color, and its value before three days have passed. if this man, who hugged this small fortune to him, and without it was a beggar, had been a worker at cerwenitza, he would have told me the fact plainly. but he spoke of the opal being older even than the famous and commonly cited specimen at vienna. how came it that he alone had the history of such an ancient gem? there was only one answer to such a question--the history of his possession of it, at any rate, would not bear inquiry. such perplexity was not removed by abel's account of his journey after carmalovitch. he had followed the man from piccadilly to oxford circus; thence, after a long wait in regent's park, where the russian sat for at least an hour on a seat near the botanical gardens entrance, to a small house in boscobel place. this was evidently a lodging-house, offering that fare of shabbiness and dirt which must perforce be attractive to the needy. there was a light burning at the window of the pretentiously poor drawing-room when the man arrived, and a girl, apparently not more than twenty-five years of age, came down into the hall to greet him, the pair afterwards showing at the window for a moment before the blinds were drawn. an inquiry by my man for apartments in the house elicited only a shrill cackle and a negative from a shuffling hag who answered the knock. a tour of the little shops in the neighborhood provided the further clue "that they paid for nothing." this suburban estimation of personal worth was a confirmation of my conclusion drawn from the rags beneath the astrachan coat. the russian was a poor man; except for the possession of the jewel he was near to being a beggar. and yet he had not sought to borrow money of me, and he had put the price of £5,000 upon his property. all these things did not leave my mind for the next week. i was in daily communication with scotland yard, but absolutely to no purpose. their sharpest men handled the case, and confessed that they could make nothing of it. we had the house in boscobel place watched, but, so far as we could learn, carmalovitch, as he called himself, never left it. meanwhile, i began to think that i had betrayed exceedingly poor judgment in raising the question at all. as the days went by i suffered that stone hunger which a student of opals alone can know. i began to believe that i had lost by my folly one of the greatest possessions that could come to a man in my business. i knew that it would be an act of childishness to go to the house and re-open the negotiations, for i could not bid for that which the first telegram from the continent might prove to be feloniously gotten, and the embarkation of such a sum as was asked was a matter not for the spur of the moment, but for the closest deliberation, to say nothing of financial preparation. yet i would have given fifty pounds if the owner of it had walked into my office again; and i never heard a footstep in the outer shop during the week following his visit but i looked up in the hope of seeing him. a fortnight passed, and i thought that i had got to the beginning and the end of the opal mystery, when one morning, the moment after i had entered my office, michel told me that a lady wished to see me. i had scarce time to tell him that i could see no one for an hour when the visitor pushed past him into the den, and sat herself down in the chair before my writing-desk. as in all business, we appreciate, and listen to, impertinence in the jewel trade; and when i observed the magnificent impudence of the young lady, i asked michel to leave us, and waited for her to speak. she was a delicate-looking woman--an italian, i thought, from the dark hue of her skin and the lustrous beauty of her eyes--but she was exceedingly shabbily dressed, and her hands were ungloved. she was not a woman you would have marked in the stalls of a theater as the fit subject for an advertising photographer; but there was great sweetness in her face, and those signs of bodily weakness and want of strength which so often enhance a woman's beauty. when she spoke, although she had little english, her voice was well modulated and remarkably pleasing. "you are monsieur bernard sutton?" she asked, putting one hand upon my table, and the other between the buttons of her bodice. i bowed in answer to her. "you have met my husband--i am madame carmalovitch--he was here, it is fifteen days, to sell you an opal. i have brought it again to you now, for i am sure you wish to buy it." "you will pardon me," i said, "but i am waiting for the history of the jewel which your husband promised me. i rather expected that he would have sent it." "i know! oh, i know so well; and i have asked him many times," she answered; "but you can believe me, he will tell of his past to no one, not even to me. but he is honest and true; there is not such a man in all your city--and he has suffered. you may buy this beautiful thing now, and you will never regret it. i tell you so from all my heart." "but surely, madame," said i, "you must see that i cannot pay such a price as your husband is asking for his property if he will not even tell me who he is, or where he comes from." "yes, that is it--not even to me has he spoken of these things. i was married to him six years now at naples, and he has always had the opal which he offers to you. we were rich then, but we have known suffering, and this alone is left to us. you will buy it of my husband, for you in all this london are the man to buy it. it will give you fame and money; it must give you both, for we ask but four thousand pounds for it." i started at this. here was a drop of a thousand pounds upon the price asked but fifteen days ago. what did it mean? i took up the gem, which the woman had placed upon the table, and saw in a moment. the stone was dimming. it had lost color since i had seen it; it had lost, too, i judged, at least one-third of its value. i had heard the old woman's tales of the capricious changefulness of this remarkable gem, but it was the first time that i had ever witnessed for myself such an unmistakeable depreciation. the woman read the surprise in my eyes, and answered my thoughts, herself thoughtful, and her dark eyes touched with tears. "you see what i see," she said. "the jewel that you have in your hand is the index to my husband's life. he has told me so often. when he is well, it is well; when hope has come to him, the lights which shine there are as the light of his hope. when he is ill, the opal fades; when he dies, it will die too. that is what i believe and he believes; it is what his father told him when he gave him the treasure, nearly all that was left of a great fortune." this tale astounded me; it betrayed absurd superstition, but it was the first ray of coherent explanation which had been thrown upon the case. i took up the thread with avidity and pursued it. "your husband's father was a rich man?" i asked. "is he dead?" she looked up with a start, then dropped her eyes quickly, and mumbled something. her hesitation was so marked that i put her whole story from me as a clever fabrication, and returned again to the theory of robbery. "madame," i said, "unless your husband can add to that which you tell me, i shall be unable to purchase your jewel." "oh, for the love of god don't say that!" she cried; "we are so poor, we have hardly eaten for days! come and see monsieur carmalovitch and he shall tell you all; i implore you, and you will never regret this kindness! my husband is a good friend; he will reward your friendship. you will not refuse me this?" it is hard to deny a pretty woman; it is harder still when she pleads with tears in her voice. i told her that i would go and see her husband on the following evening at nine o'clock, and counseled her to persuade him in the between time to be frank with me, since frankness alone could avail him. she accepted my advice with gratitude, and left as she had come, her pretty face made handsomer by its look of gloom and pensiveness. then i fell to thinking upon the wisdom, or want of wisdom, in the promise i had given. stories of men drugged, or robbed, or murdered by jewel thieves crowded upon my mind, but always with the recollection that i should carry nothing to boscobel place. a man who had no more upon him than a well-worn suit of clothes and a swiss lever watch in a silver case, such as i carry invariably, would scarce be quarry for the most venturesome shop-hawk that the history of knavery has made known to us. i could risk nothing by going to the house, i was sure; but i might get the opal, and for that i longed still with a fever for possession which could only be accounted for by the beauty of the gem. being come to this determination, i left my own house in a hansom-cab on the following evening at half-past eight o'clock, taking abel with me, more after my usual custom than from any prophetic alarm. i had money upon me sufficient only for the payment of the cab; and i took the extreme precaution of putting aside the diamond ring that i had been wearing during the day. as i live in bayswater, it was but a short drive across paddington green and down the marylebone road to boscobel place; and when we reached the house we found it lighted up on the drawing-room floor as abel had seen it at his first going there. but the hall was quite in darkness, and i had to ring twice before the shrill-voiced dame i had heard of answered to my knock. she carried a frowsy candle in her hand; and was so uncanny-looking that i motioned to abel to keep a watch from the outside upon the house before i went upstairs to that which was a typical lodging-house room. there was a "tapestry" sofa against one wall; half a dozen chairs in evident decline stood in hilarious attitudes; some seaweed, protected for no obvious reason by shades of glass, decorated the mantelpiece, and a sampler displayed the obviously aggravating advice to a tenant of such a place, "waste not, want not." but the rickety writing-table was strewn with papers, and there was half a cigar lying upon the edge of it, and a cup of coffee there had grown cold in the dish. the aspect of the place amazed me. i began to regret that i had set out upon any such enterprise, but had no time to draw back before the russian entered. he wore an out-at-elbow velvet coat, and the rest of his dress was shabby enough to suit his surroundings. i noticed, however, that he offered me a seat with a gesture that was superb, and that his manner was less agitated than it had been at our first meeting. "i am glad to see you," he said. "you have come to buy my opal?" "under certain conditions, yes." "that is very good of you; but i am offering you a great bargain. my price for the stone now is £3,000, one thousand less than my wife offered it at yesterday." "it has lost more of its color, then?" "decidedly; or i should not have lowered my claim--but see for yourself." he took the stone from the wash-leather bag, and laid it upon the writing-table. i started with amazement and sorrow at the sight of it. the glorious lights i had admired not twenty days ago were half gone; a dull, salty-red tinge was creeping over the superb green and the scintillating black which had made me covet the jewel with such longing. yet it remained, even in its comparative poverty, the most remarkable gem i have ever put hand upon. "the stone is certainly going off," i said in answer to him. "what guarantee have i that it will not be worthless in a month's time?" "you have my word. it is a tradition of our family that he who owns that heirloom when it begins to fade must sell it or die--and sell it at its worth. if i continue to possess it, the tradition must prove itself, for i shall die of sheer starvation." "and if another has it?" "it will regain its lights, i have no doubt of it, for it has gone like this before when a death has happened amongst us. if you are content to take my word, i will return to you in six months' time and make good any loss you have suffered by it. but i should want some money now, to-night, before an hour--could you let me have it?" "if i bought your stone, you could have the money for it; my man, who is outside, would fetch my check-book." at the word "man," he went to the window, and saw abel standing beneath the gas-lamp. he looked fixedly at the fellow for a moment, and then drew down the blinds in a deliberate way which i did not like at all. "that servant of yours has been set to watch this house for ten days," he said. "was that by your order?" i was so completely taken aback by his discovery that i sat for a moment dumfounded, and gave him no answer. he, however, seemed trembling with passion. "was it by your orders?" he asked again, standing over me and almost hissing out his words. "it was," i answered after a pause; "but, you see, circumstances were suspicious." "suspicious! then you _did_ believe me to be a rogue. i have shot men for less." i attempted to explain, but he would not hear me. he had lost command of himself, stalking up and down the room with great strides until the temper tautened his veins, and his lean hands seemed nothing but wire and bones. at last, he took a revolver from the drawer in his table, and deliberately put cartridges into it. i stood up at the sight of it and made a step towards the window; but he pointed the pistol straight at me, crying,-"sit down, if you wish to live another minute--and say, do you still believe me to be a swindler?" the situation was so dangerous, for the man was obviously but half sane, that i do not know what i said in answer to him; yet he pursued my words fiercely, scarce hearing my reply before he continued,-"you have had my house watched, and, as i know now, you have branded my name before the police as that of a criminal; you shall make atonement here on the spot by buying that opal, or you do not leave the room alive!" it was a desperate trial, and i sat for some minutes as a man on the borderland of death. had i been sensible then and fenced with him in his words i should now possess the opal; but i let out the whole of my thoughts--and the jewel went with them. "i cannot buy your stone," i said, "until i have your history and your father's----" but i said no more, for at the mention of his father he cried out like a wounded beast, and fired the revolver straight at my head. the shot skinned my forehead and the powder behind it blackened my face; but i had no other injury, and i sprang upon him. for some moments the struggle was appalling. i had him gripped about the waist with my left arm, my right clutching the hand wherein he held the pistol. he, in turn, put his left hand upon my throat and threw his right leg round mine with a sinewy strength that amazed me. thus we were, rocking like two trees blown in a gale, now swaying towards the window, now to the door, now crashing against the table, or hurling the papers and the ink and the ornaments in a confused heap, as, fighting the ground foot by foot, we battled for the mastery. but i could not cry out, for his grip about my neck was the grip of a maniac; and as it tightened and tightened, the light grew dim before my eyes and i felt that i was choking. this he knew, and with overpowering fury pressed his fingers upon my throat until he cut me with his nails as with knives. then, at last, i reeled from the agony of it; and we fell with tremendous force under the window, he uppermost. of that lifelong minute that followed, i remember but little. i know only that he knelt upon my chest, still gripping my throat with his left hand, and began to reach out for his revolver, which had dropped beneath the table in our struggle. i had just seen him reach it with his finger-tips, and so draw it inch by inch towards him, when a fearful scream rang out in the room, and his hand was stayed. the scream was from the woman who had come to piccadilly the day before, and it was followed by a terrible paroxysm of weeping, and then by a heavy fall, as the terrified girl fainted. he let me go at this, and stood straight up; but at the first step towards his wife he put his foot upon the great opal, which we had thrown to the ground in our encounter, and he crushed it into a thousand fragments. when he saw what he had done, one cry, and one alone, escaped from him; but before i could raise a hand to stay him, he had turned the pistol to his head, and had blown his brains out. * * * * * the story of the opal of carmalovitch is almost told. a long inquiry after the man's death added these facts to the few i had already gleaned. he was the son of a banker in buda-pesth, a noble russian, who had emigrated to hungary and taken his wealth with him to embark it in his business. he himself had been educated partly in england, partly in france; but at the moment when he should have entered the great firm in buda-pesth, there came the argentine crash, and his father was one of those who succumbed. but he did more than succumb, he helped himself to the money of his partners, and being discovered, was sentenced as a common felon, and is at this moment in a hungarian prison. steniloff, the son, was left to clear up the estate, and got from it, when all was settled, a few thousand pounds, by the generosity of the father's partners. beyond these he had the opal, which the family had possessed for three hundred years, buying it originally in vienna. this possession, however, had been, for the sake of some absurd tradition, always kept a profound secret, and when the great crash came, the man whose death i had witnessed took it as his fortune. for some years he had lived freely at rome, at nice, at naples, where he married; but his money being almost spent, he brought his wife to england, and there attempted to sell the jewel. as he would tell nothing of his history, lest his father's name should suffer, he found no buyer, and dragged on from month to month, going deeper in the byways of poverty until he came to me. the rest i have told you. of the opal which i saw so wofully crushed in the lodging-house in boscobel place, but one large fragment remained. i have had that set in a ring, and have sold it to-day for fifty pounds. the money will go to madame carmalovitch, who has returned to her parents in naples. she has suffered much. the necklace of green diamonds. the necklace of green diamonds. i can remember perfectly well the day upon which i received the order from my eccentric old friend, francis brewer, to make him a necklace of green diamonds. it was the 2d of may in the year 1890, exactly three days after his marriage with the fascinating little singer, eugenie clarville, who had set paris aflame with the piquancy of her acting and her delightful command of a fifth-rate voice some six months after brewer had left london to take up the management of a great banking enterprise in the french capital. he was then well into the forties; but he had skipped through life with scarce a jostle against the venial sins, and was as ignorant as a babe where that mortal septette of vices which the clergy anathematize on the first wednesday in lent was concerned. i have never known a more childish man, or one who held your affection so readily with simplicity. he was large-hearted, trusting, boyish, by no means unintellectual, and in no sense a fool. indeed, his commercial knowledge was highly valuable; and his energy in working up a business was a reproach to those who, like myself, love to sit in arm-chairs and watch the ebb of life from a plate-glass window. when he was married he wrote to me, and i laid his letter upon my table with a whistle. not that he was in any way suited for the celibate state, for his instinct was wholly cast in the marrying mould. had i been called upon to paint him, i should have sat him in an arm-chair by the side of a roaring fire, with a glass of punch to toast a buxom goodwife, and a pipe as long as the stick of my umbrella to make rings of smoke for a new generation at his knee. such a man should, said common sense, have been yoked to an english dame, to one used to the odor of the lemon, and motherly by instinct and by training. i could not imagine him married to a lady from the vaudeville; the contrast between his iron-headed directness and the gauze and tinsel of opera bouffe seemed grotesque almost to incredulity. yet there was the letter, and there were his absurd ravings about a woman he had known distantly for six months, and intimately for three days. "i have married," he said in this memorable communication, "the dearest little soul that god ever brought into the world--fresh as the breeze, bright as the sky, eyes like the night, and temper like an angel. you must come and see her, old boy, the moment we set foot in our house at villemomble. i shan't let you lose an hour; you must learn for yourself what a magnificent benedick i make. why, the days go like flashes of the sun--and there never was a happier man in or out of this jolly city. oh, you slow-goers in london, you poor lame cab-horses, what do you know of life or of woman, or even of the sky above you? come to paris, old man; come, i say, and we'll put you through your paces, and you shall meet her, the very best little wife that ever fell to an old dray-horse in this fair of high-steppers." there was a good deal more of this sort of thing; but the kernel of the letter was in a postscriptum, as was the essence of most of his communications. he told me there that he desired to make some substantial present to the girl he had just married; and he enclosed a rough sketch of a necklace which he thought would be a pretty thing if rare stones were used to decorate it. i fell in with his whim at once; and as it chanced that i had just received from the jägersfontein mine a parcel of twenty very fine greenish diamonds, i determined to use them in the business. i may say that these stones were of a delicious pale green tint, almost the color of the great jewel in the vaults at dresden, and that their fire was amazing. i have known a gem of the hue to be worth nearly a hundred pounds a carat; and as the lot i had averaged two carats apiece, their worth was very considerable. i had not learnt what were brewer's instructions in the matter of expense; but i wrote to him by the next post congratulating him on his marriage and informing him that i would set the green diamonds in a necklace, and sell them for two thousand pounds. he accepted the offer by a cablegram, and on the following day sent a long letter of instruction, the pith of which was the order to engrave on the inner side of the pendant the words, _major lex amor est nobis_. i laughed at his latin, and the amatory exuberance which it betrayed; but fell upon the work, and finished it in the course of three weeks, during which time i had many and irritating requests from him for constant and detailed accounts of its progress. when the trinket reached him, his satisfaction was quite childish. he wrote of his delight, and of "eugy's," and spoilt three sheets of good note-paper telling me of her appearance at the english ball early in june; and of the sensation such an extraordinary bauble caused. then i heard from him no more until august, when i read in an evening paper that he had been returning from veulettes after a short holiday, and had been in a great train smash near rouen. a later telegram gave a list of the dead, in which was the name of his wife; and three days after i received from him the most pitiful letter that it has ever been my misfortune to read. the whole wounded soul of the man seemed laid bare upon the paper; the simplicity of his words was so touching and so expressive of his agony, that i could scarce trust myself to go through the long pages over which he let his sorrow flow. yet one paragraph remained long in my mind, for it was one that recalled the necklace of green diamonds, and it was so astonishing that i did not doubt that brewer was, for the time at any rate, on the high-road to madness. "i have put them round her dear neck," he said, "and they shall cling always to her in her long sleep." at the end of the month he wrote again, mentioning that, despite my sharp remonstrance, he had seen the jewels buried with her, and that his heart was broken. he said that he thought of coming to stay with me, and of retiring from business; but went on in the next paragraph to confess his inability to leave the city in which she was buried, and the places which kept her memory so sharply before him. i wrote an answer, advising him to plunge into work as an antidote to grief, and had posted it but an hour when the mystery of the green diamond necklace began. the circumstances were these. my clerk had left with the letters, and i was sitting at my table examining a few unusually large cat's-eyes which had been offered to me that morning. i heard the shop door open, and saw from the small window near my desk a man in a fur coat, who seemed in something of a hurry when he went to the counter. three minutes afterwards, michel came up to me breathlessly and stammering. he carried in his hand the identical necklace which i had made for my friend brewer, and which he had buried with his wife, as his letter said, not a month before. my amazement at the sight of it was so great that for many minutes i sat clasping and unclasping the snap of the trinket, and reading again that strange inscription, _major lex amor est nobis_, which had caused me so much amusement when i had first ordered it to be cut. then i asked michel,-"who brought this?" "a man in the shop below--the agent of green and sons, who have been offered it by a customer at dieppe." "have they put a price upon it?" "they ask one thousand five hundred pounds for it." "oh, five hundred less than we sold it for; that is curious. ask the man if he will leave it on approval for a week." "i have put the question already. his people are quite willing." "then write out a receipt." he went away to do so, still fumbling and amazed. the thing was so astounding to one who knew the whole of the circumstances, as i did, that i told him nothing more, but examined the necklace minutely at least half a dozen times. was it possible that there could be two sets of matching green diamonds, two infatuated lovers who had chosen the same pattern of ornament, the same strange inscription, and the same tint of stones? such a thing was out of the question. either brewer had made a mistake when he said that the necklace had been buried with his wife--a theory which presupposed his return to his normal common sense--or some scoundrel had stolen it from her coffin. i determined to wire to him at once, and had written out a message when the second mystery in the history of the trinket began to unfold itself. it came to me in the form of a cablegram from brewer himself, who asked me to go to him at paris without delay, as something which troubled him beyond description had happened since he wrote to me. i need not say that at the time when i received this telegram i had no idea that a second mystery had engendered it. i believed that brewer had discovered the loss of the necklace, and had sent for me to trace the thieves. this task i entered upon very willingly; and when i had instructed michel to ask green & co.--with whom we did a large business--to give me as a special and private favor the real name of the seller of the necklace, i took the eight o'clock train from victoria; and was in paris at dawn on the following morning. early as it was, brewer waited for me at the gare du nord, and greeted me with a welcome which was almost hysterical in its effusiveness. this i could not return, for the shock of the sight of him was enough to make any man voiceless. he had aged in look twenty years in as many months. his clothes hung in folds upon a figure that had once been the figure of a robust and finely built man; his face was wan and colorless; there were hollows above his temples, and furrows as of great age in the cheeks, which erstwhile shone with all the healthy coloring that physical vigor can give. his aspect, indeed, was pitiable; but i made a great effort to convince him that i had not noticed it, and said cheerily,-"well, and how is my old friend?" "i am a widower," he answered; and there was more pathos in the simple remark than in any lament i ever heard from him. it was quite evident that his one grief still reigned in his thoughts; and i made no other attempt to conquer it. "you have important news, or you would not have summoned me from london," i said, as we left the station in a fiacre. "won't you give me an idea of it now?" "when we reach my place i will tell you everything and show you everything. it's very kind of you to come, very kind indeed; but i'd sooner speak of such things at my own house." "you are still at villemomble?" "yes; but i have an apartment by the rue de morny, and am staying there now; the old home is not the same. she is dead, you know." i thought this remark very strange, and his manner of giving it no less curious. he nodded his head gravely, and continued to nod it, repeating the words and holding my hand like some great schoolboy who feared to be alone. he was scarcely better when we arrived at his lodging, and he took me to a luxurious apartment which was well worthy of his consummate taste; but the moment he had shut the outer door his manner changed, becoming quick, interested, and distinctly nervous. "bernard," he said, "i brought you to paris because the strangest thing possible has happened. you remember the necklace of green diamonds i gave my poor wife, and buried with her?" "am i likely to forget that folly?" i asked. "well," he continued, "it was stolen from her grave in the little cemetery near raincy----" "i know that," said i. "you know it!" he cried, looking up aghast. "how could you know it?" "because it was offered to me yesterday." "good god!" he exclaimed, "offered to you yesterday! but it could not have been, for my servant bought it in a shabby jeweler's near the rue st. lazarre! look for yourself, and say what do you call that?" he had unlocked a small safe as he spoke, and he threw a jewel case upon the table. i opened it quickly, and it was then my turn to call out as he had done a moment before. the case contained a second necklace of green diamonds exactly resembling the one i had made, and had then in my pocket; and it bore even the memorable inscription--_major lex amor est nobis_. when i made this discovery there seemed something so uncanny and terrible about it that the beads of perspiration stood on my forehead, and my hand shook until i nearly dropped the case. "frank," i said, "there's deeper work here than you think; this is the necklace which you believe you buried with your wife; well, what is this one, then, that i have in my pocket?" i opened the second case and laid the jewels side by side. you could not have told one bauble from the other unless you had possessed such an eye as mine, which will fidget over a sham diamond when it is yet a yard away. he had no doubt that they were identical; and when he saw them together, he began to cry like a frightened woman. "what does it mean?" he asked. "have they robbed my wife's grave? my god!--two necklaces alike down to the very engraving. who has done it? who could do such a thing with a woman who never harmed a living soul? bernard, if i spend every shilling i possess, i will get to the bottom of this thing! oh, my wife, my wife----" his distress would have moved an adamantine heart, and was not a thing to cavil at. the mystery, which had completely unnerved him, had fascinated me so strangely that i determined not to leave paris until the last line of its solution was written. the robbery of the grave i could quite understand, but that there should be two necklaces, one of them with real stones and the other with imitation, was a fact before which my imagination reeled. as for him, he continued to sit in his arm-chair, and to fret like a child; and there i left him while i went to consult the first detective i could run against. the difficulties in getting at the police of paris are proverbial. the officials there hold it such an impertinence for a mere civilian to inform them of anything at all, that the unfortunate pursuer of the criminal comes at last to believe himself guilty of some crime. i put up with some hours, badgering at the nearest bureau, and then having no french but that which is fit for publication, i returned to the rue de morny, getting on the way some glimmer of a plan into my head. i found brewer in the same wandering state as i had left him; and although he listened when i spoke, i felt sure that his mind was in that infantile condition which can neither beget a plan nor realize one. for himself, he had a single idea; and upon that he harped _usque ad nauseam_. "i must send for jules," he kept muttering; "jules knew her well; he was one of her oldest friends; he would help me in a case like this, i feel sure. he always told her that green diamonds were unlucky; i was insane to touch the things, positively insane. jules will come at once, and i will tell him everything, and he will explain things we do not understand. perhaps you will send a letter to him now; robert is in the kitchen and he will take it." "i will send a note with pleasure if you think this man can help us; but who is he, and why have i not heard of him before?" "you must have heard of him," he answered testily; "he was always with us when she lived--always." "do you see him often now?" "yes, often; he was here a week ago; that is his photograph on the cabinet there." the picture was that of a finely built but very typical frenchman, a man with a pointed, well-brushed beard, and a neatly curled mustache. the head was not striking, being cramped above the eyes and bulging behind the ears; but the smile was very pleasant, and the general effect one of geniality. i examined the photograph, and then asked casually: "what is this m. jules? you don't tell me the rest of his name." "jules galimard. i must have mentioned him to you. he is the editor, or something, of _paris et londres_. we will write for him now, and he will come over at once." i sent the letter to please him, asking the man to come across on important business, and then told him of my plan. "the first thing to do," said i, "is to go to raincy, and to ascertain if the grave of your wife has been tampered with--and when. if you will stay here and nurse yourself, i will do that at once?" he seemed to think over the proposition for some minutes; and when he answered me he was calmer. "i will come with you," he said; "if--if any one is to look upon her face again, it shall be me." i could see that a terrible love gave him strength even for such an ordeal as this. he began to be meaningly and even alarmingly calm; and when we set out for raincy he betrayed no emotion whatever. i will not describe anything but the result of that never-to-be-forgotten mission, although the scene haunts my memory to this day. suffice it to say that we found indisputable evidence of a raid upon the vault; and discovered that the necklace had been torn from the body of the woman. when nothing more was to be learnt, i took my friend back to paris. there i found a letter from the office of _paris et londres_ saying that galimard was at dieppe but would be with us in the evening. the mystery had now taken such hold of me that i could not rest. brewer, whose calm was rather dangerous than reassuring, seemed strangely lethargic when he reached his rooms, and began to doze in his arm-chair. this was the best thing he could have done; but i had no intention of dozing myself; and when i had wormed from him the address of the shop where the sham necklace had been purchased--it proved to be in the rue stockholm--i took a fiacre at once and left him to his dreaming. the place was a poor one, though the taste of a frenchman was apparent in the display and arrangement of the few jewels, bronzes, and pictures which were the stock-in-trade of the dealer. he himself was a lifeless creature, who listened to me with great patience, and appeared to be completely astounded when i told him that i desired to have an interview with the vendor of the necklace and the green diamonds. "you could not have come at a more fortunate moment," said he, "the stones were pretty, i confess and i fear to have sold them for much less than they were worth; but my client will be here in half an hour for his money, and if you come at that time you can meet him." this was positive and altogether unlooked-for luck. i spent the thirty minutes' interval in a neighboring _café_, and was back at his shop as the clocks were striking seven. his customer was already there; a man short and thick in figure, with a characteristic french low hat stuck on the side of his head; and an old black cutaway coat which was conspicuously english. he wore gaiters, too--a strange sight in paris; and carried under his arm a rattan cane which was quite ridiculously short. when he turned his head i saw that his hair was cropped quite close, and that he had a great scar down one side of his face, which gave him a hideous appearance. yet he could not have been twenty-five years of age; and he was one of the gayest customers i have ever met. "oh," he said, looking me up and down critically, and with a perky cock of his head, "you're the cove that wants to speak to me about the sparklers, are you? and a damned well-dressed cove, too. i thought you were one of these french hogs." "i wanted to have a chat about such wonderful imitations," i said, "and am english like yourself." at this he raked up the gold which the old dealer had placed upon the counter for him and went to the door rapidly, where he stood with his hands upon his hips, and a wondrous knowing smile in his bit of an eye. "you're a pretty nark, ain't you?" he said, "a fine slap-up piccadilly thick-un, s' help me blazes; and you ain't got no bracelets in your pockets, and there ain't no more of you round the corner. oh, hell! but this is funny!" "i am quite alone," i said quickly, seeing that the game was nearly lost, "and if you tell me what i want to know, i will give you as much money as you have in your hand there, and you have my word that you shall go quite free." "your word!" he replied, looking more knowing than ever; "that's a ripping fine bank of engraving to go on bail on, ain't it? who are you, and how's your family?" "let's stroll down the street, any way you like," said i, "and talk of it. choose your own course, and then you will be sure that i am alone." he looked at me for a minute, walking slowly. then suddenly he stopped abruptly, and put his hand upon a pocket at his waist. "guv'ner," he said, "lay your fingers on that; do you feel it? it's a colt, ain't it? well, if you want to get me in on the bow, i tell you i'll go the whole hog, so you know." "i assure you again that i have no intention of troubling you with anything but a few questions; and i give you my word that anything you tell me shall not be used against you afterwards. it's the other man we want to catch--the man who took the green diamonds which were not shams." this thought was quite an inspiration. he considered it for a moment, standing still under the lamp; but at last he stamped his foot and whistled, saying:-"you want him, do you? well, so do i; and if i could punch his head i'd walk a mile to do it. you come to my room, guv'ner, and i'll take my chance of the rest." the way lay past the chapel of the trinity, and so through many narrow streets to one which seemed the center of a particularly dark and uninviting neighborhood. the man, who told me in quite an affable mood that his name was bob williams, and that he hoped to run against me at auteuil, had a miserable apartment on the "third" of a house in this dingy street; and there he took me, offering me half-a-tumbler of neat whisky, which, he went on to explain, would "knock flies" out of me. for himself, he sat upon a low bed and smoked a clay pipe, while i had an arm-chair, lacking springs; and one of my cigars for obvious reasons. when we were thus accommodated he opened the ball, being no longer nervous or hesitating. "well, old chap,"--i was that already to him--"what can i tell you, and what do you know?" "i know this much," said i; "last month the grave of madame brewer at raincy was rifled. the man who did it stole a necklace of green diamonds, real or sham, but the latter, i am thinking." "as true as gospel--i was the man who took them, and they were sham, and be damned to them!" "well, you're a pretty ruffian," i said. "but what i want to know is, how did you come to find out that the stones were there, and who was the man who got the real necklace i made for madame brewer only a few months ago?" "oh, that's what you want to know, is it? well, it's worth something, that is; i don't know that he ain't a pard of mine; and about no other necklace i ain't heard nothing. you know a blarmed sight too much, it seems to me, guv'ner." "that may be," said i, "but you can add to what i know, and it might be worth fifty pounds to you." "on the cushion?" "i don't understand." "well, on that table then?" "scarcely. twenty-five now, and twenty-five when i find that you have told me the truth." "let's see the shiners." i counted out the money on to the bed--five english bank notes, which he eyed suspiciously. "may, his mark," he said, thumbing the paper. "well, as i'm shifting for newmarket to-morrow that's not much odds, if you're not shoving the queer on me." "do you think they're bad?" "i'll tell you in a moment; i broken, e broken, watermark right; guv'ner, i'll put up with 'em. now, what do you want to know?" "i want to know how you came to learn that the stones were in madame brewer's grave?" "a straight question. well, i was told by a pal." "is he here in paris?" "he ought to be; he told me his name was mougat, but i found out that it ain't. he is a chap that writes for the papers and runs that rag with the rum pictures in it; what do you call it, paris and something or other?" "_paris et londres_," i ventured at hazard. "ay, that's the thing; i don't read much of the lingo myself, but i gave him tips at longchamps last month, and we came back in a dog-cart together. it was then that he put me on to the stones and planted me with a false name." "what did he say?" "said that some mad cove at raincy had buried a necklace worth two thousand pounds with his wife, and that the dullest chap out could get into the vault and lift it. i'd had a bad day, and was almost stony. he kept harping on the thing so, suggesting that a man could get to america with five thousand in his pocket, and no one be a penny the wiser or a penny the worse, that i went off that night and did it, and got a fine heap for my pains. that's what i call a mouldy pal--a pal i wouldn't make a doormat of." "and you sold the booty to the old frenchman in the rue de stockholm?" "exactly! he gave me a tenner for it, and i'm crossing to england to-night. no place like the old shop, guv'ner, when the french hogs are sniffing about you. i guess there's a few of them will want me in parry in a day or two; and that reminds me, you can do the noble if you like, and send the other chips to the elephant hotel at cambridge last post to-morrow." i told him that i would, and left. you may ask why i had any truck with such a complete blackguard, but the answer is obvious: i had guessed from the first that there was something in the mystery of the green diamonds which would not bear exposure from brewer's point of view, and his tale confirmed the opinion. i had learnt from it two obvious facts: one that jules galimard was anything but the friend of my friend; the other, that this man knew perfectly well that a sham diamond necklace was buried with madame brewer. it came to me then, as in a flash, that he, and he alone, must have stolen, or at least have come into possession of, the real necklace which i had made. how to undeceive the good soul who had entrusted me with his case was the remaining difficulty. he had loved this woman so; and yet instinct suggested to me that she had been unworthy of his deep affection. that she had been untrue to him i did not know. galimard might have stolen the jewels from her, and have replaced them with a false set; on the other hand, she might have been a party to the fraud. what, then, should i say, or how much should i dare with the great responsibility before me of crushing a man whose heart was already broken? with such thoughts i re-entered the apartment in the rue de morny. as i did so, the servant put a telegram into my hand, and told me that m. jules galimard was with his master. fate, however, seemed to have given the man another chance, for the cipher said,-"green and co. in error, they should have sent the stones only; necklace not for sale; client's name unknown, acting for paris agents." i walked into the room with this message in my pocket; and when brewer saw me he jumped up with delight, and introduced me to a well-dressed frenchman who had the red rosette in the buttonhole of his faultless frock-coat, and who showed a row of admirable teeth when he smiled to greet me. "here is jules," said brewer, "my friend i have spoken of, m. jules galimard; he has come to help us, as i said he would; there is no one whose advice i would sooner take in this horrible matter." i bowed stiffly to the man, and seated myself on the opposite side of the table to him. as they seemed to wait for me to speak, i took up the question at once. "well," i said, speaking to brewer; but turning round to look at his friend, as i uttered the words, "i have found out who sold the sham necklace to the man in the rue de stockholm; the rogue is a racing tout named bob williams!" galimard turned right round in his chair at this, and put his elbows on the table. brewer said, "god bless me, what a scamp!" "and," i continued, "the extraordinary part of the affair is that this scoundrel was put to the business by a man he met at longchamps last month. it is obvious that this man stole the real necklace, and now desired all traces of his handiwork to be removed from madame brewer's coffin. i have his name," with which direct remark i looked hard at the fellow, and he rose straight up from his chair and clutched at the back of it with his hand. for a moment he seemed speechless; but when he found his tongue, he threw away, with dreadful maladroitness, the opening i had given him. "madame gave me the jewels," he blurted out, "that i will swear before any court." the situation was truly terrible, the man standing gripping his chair, brewer staring at both of us as at lunatics. "what do you say? what's that?" he cried; and the assertion was repeated. "i am no thief!" cried the man, drawing himself up in a way that was grotesquely proud, "she gave me the jewels, your wife, a week after you gave them to her. i had a false set made so that you should not miss them; here is her letter in which she acknowledges the receipt of them." the old man--for he was an old man then in speech, in look, and in the fearful convulsions of his face--sprung from his chair, and struck the rascal who told him the tale full in the mouth with his clenched fist. the fellow rolled backwards, striking his head against the iron of the fender; and lay insensible for many minutes. during that time i called a cab, and when he was capable of being moved, sent him away in it. i saw clearly that for brewer's sake the matter must be hushed at once, blocked out as a page in a life which had been false in its every line. nor did i pay any attention to galimard's raving threat that his friends should call upon me in half an hour; but went upstairs again to find the best soul that ever lived sitting over the fire which had been lighted for him, and chattering with the cackle of the insane. he had the letter, which galimard had thrown down, in his hands, and he read it aloud with hysterical laughter and awful emphasis. i tried to speak to him, to reason with him, to persuade him. he heard nothing i said, but continued to chuckle and to chatter in a way that made my blood run cold. then suddenly he became very calm, sitting bolt upright in his chair, with the letter clutched tightly in his right hand; and i saw that tears were rolling down his cheeks. an hour later the friends of m. jules galimard called. they entered the room noisily, but i hushed them, for the man was dead! the comedy of the jeweled links. the comedy of the jeweled links. i do not know if there be any drug in the pharmacopoeia, or any clearly defined medical treatment, which may ever hope to grapple effectively with the strange disease of jewel-hunger, but if there be not, i have much pleasure in recommending this most singular ill to the notice of a rising generation of physicians. that it is a branch of that mystery of mysteries, _la névrose_, i have no manner of doubt, for i have seen it in all its forms--a malignant growth which makes night of the lives it plays upon; and flourishes to exceeding profit down in the very heart of tragedies. for the matter of that, the flunkies, who study in the kitchen--as the great master has told us--the characters of their governing acquaintances in the boudoir above over a quart pot and the _police news_, get no little insight into the development of the social disaster which treads often upon the heels of jewel-hunger, as they read those extravagantly ornate reports of robbery and of mystery in which a highly moral people revels. these are but gleaners in the field--to them the inner life must remain hidden. no physician hoping to cope with the affection should turn either to gossips or to slanderers for his diagnosis. let him get down into the caves of the trade, give his ear to the truer narrative which the jewel dealer alone can write for him, and he may hope for material and for success. and if he be wise, he will study both the comedy and the tragedy which such an investigation will bring before him, and will by this means alone set himself up as a specialist. it is to such a one that i would recommend perusal of the following case which i record here as one of the comedies of my note-book--a story of meanness, cupidity, and stupid cunning; i doubt if there be any philosophy of medicine which could make pretense of solving it. there were but two principal actors mentioned in the argument, and, indeed, it might fairly be called a one-part play. the chief person concerned, lord harningham, i had known for many years. he was a man of whom a biographer wrote "that his long and unblemished career was a credit to his country," and to whom a book on the decalogue was inscribed as to one _sans peur et sans réproche_. yet they told you in the smoking-rooms that he had starved his first wife, and left his only son as the partner of a horse-coper in melbourne, on the princely allowance of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum. his wealth, said common report, was anything from fifty thousand to a hundred thousand pounds per annum; and in his second childhood, for he was a septuagenarian when this comedy was played, he was suckled on the nourishing food of expiring leases and forfeited improvements until he seemed to exude sovereigns from every pore in his enormous body. a meaner man never lived. all similes in converse were based upon his exploits. "as mean as old harningham" was a phrase you heard every day at the "bachelors." in the countless old stories they put upon him, telling how, at a tenants' lunch in bedfordshire, he had cried, "here's another quart of cider, and hang the expense!" how he had been seen in farringdon market buying his own fish; how he haggled with cabmen innumerable; how he had been stricken with a malignant fever on the day he gave away a sovereign for a shilling--there was but the echo of the general sentiment. the society prints were hilarious at the mere mention of his name. i recollect well his anger when a wag said in one of them, "it is rumored that lord harningham is shortly about to give something away." he was in my office next day--a week rarely passed but what i saw him--and he laid the journal upon my table, beating it flat with a stick, and pointing at it with his ample finger as though his very touch would wither the writer. "please to read that," he said with forced calm but considerable emphasis, "and tell me if the scoundrel doesn't deserve to be hanged. he dares to mention my name, d'ye see! to mention _me_, and speak about my concerns. ha! but i wish i had him under this stick!" "of course you don't know who wrote it," said i. "how should i know?" he gabbled testily. "do i go round to the taverns swilling gin-and-water with such gutter birds? do i hobnob with all the half-starved limners in fleet street? pshaw, you talk like a fool!" i suffered his temper, for he was worth a couple of thousand a year to me. presently he became calmer, and the humor of the thing dawned upon his dull mind. "ha!" he said, snuffing ferociously from the great diamond-studded box he always carried, "i shouldn't wonder if that's master bertie watts--you know my nephew, eh? he owes you something, eh?--well, that's like him, and his scoundrelly impudence--the vagabond!" "did not i read somewhere that he was going to be married?" i remarked at hazard; but the notion tickled him immensely, and he rolled about in his chair, shaking the snuff from his box over his fur coat, and even upon my papers. "yes, you read it," he gasped at last, "a fine tale too. why, what's he got?--four hundred a year in whitehall, and what he can draw out of me--not much, mr. sutton--not much." i had no doubt of that, but i kept my face while he went on to mutter and to chortle; and i showed him a bracelet of rubies, which he desired instantly to purchase. i had put a price of four hundred and twenty pounds upon it, meaning to accept three hundred, so that we haggled for two hours by the clock and had then done business. he took the rubies away with him, while i caused the further sum to be set against him in the ledger, where already there were so many unpaid items under the name. he owed me eight thousand pounds at the least, but i could not press the account, or should have lost him; and while i was often sore troubled for lack of the money, i knew that i should get it at his death, and so aided his jewel-hunger. this was prodigious. all the gems that i sold--watches, necklaces, tiaras, brooches, and breastpins, were conveyed at once to the great safe in his bedroom and there immured. no one ever saw them but himself. his wives, both of whom were dead, had scarce enjoyed the possession of a barmaid's jewelry. the passion of the collector, of the hungerer after stones, alone consumed him. of all his meanness, this was the most contemptible--this hiding of fair treasure from the light it lived upon--this gross hoarding of beautiful things for one man's selfish enjoyment. when he left bond street that day, crying at my door, "so i'm going to give something away, am i?--but i ain't, sutton, i ain't"--and walking off as though he had found satisfaction in the negative thus conveyed to me, i picked up the paper, and read again that young bertie watts was at last engaged to the hon. eva benley, and that the wedding was to be celebrated in a month's time. every one in town said that old harningham would do something for watts when the time for the marriage actually came; and it was gossip in the clubs that her people had given their consent--for they were historically poor--only upon the sincere assurance from their daughter's _fiancé_ that his uncle really was very fond of him, and would present him with a handsome check on the wedding day. but here was the announcement of the wedding, and the old curmudgeon had just said--being readier in speech with me, perhaps, than with any one of his few acquaintances--that he did not mean to give the young people a halfpenny. it did occur to me that possibly he might have bought the ruby bracelet for the exceedingly pretty girl to whom his nephew was engaged; but in this i was mistaken, as you shall presently see; and the interest of the whole problem deepened when i learnt later on in the smoking-room of my club that the marriage was likely to be postponed, and something of a scandal to ensue. bertie watts, they said, was going about like a ravenous beast, seeking what financier he could devour. his opinion of his uncle was expressed in phrases of which the chief ornament was appalling curses and maledictions. he declared he would have the whip-hand of him yet, would make him pay handsomely for all the trouble he had put people to--in short, behaved like a man who was absurdly in love, regardless of that financial prudence which is so dear to the sight of parents and of guardians. even he, however, could not foresee the strange thing about to happen to him, or the very curious opportunity which was shortly to be his. a week passed. there was no definite announcement of any postponement of the arrangements noted by _the hyde park gazette_, nor did such part of society as is represented by the tonguesters, hear that bertie had persuaded his uncle. the thing was a kind of deadlock in its financial aspect, until at last the world of belgravia knew that the young lady's father, lord varnley, had consented to let the wedding be, and to trust to harningham's better sense when the time of the accomplishment came. i saw watts one day driving with his _fiancée_ near the achilles statue, and thought that he looked glum enough; but he came to me on the following morning for a diamond aigrette, and although he couldn't pay for it i let him have it. "it'll be all right in a month, sutton," said he; "you know the old chap's hard enough, but he can't let me marry on nothing a year, can he now?" i said that the thing was possible; and for his own sake ventured to hint that it was even probable, an opinion which he took in no good part, sucking his stick silently for a while, and then laughing with a poor little chuckle that seemed to come from the very top of his head. "well," he exclaimed at last, "it's devilish rough on a fellow to have a relation of that sort, isn't it?--a positive disgrace to the family. i wonder what the old blackguard is going to give me for a wedding present. did he ask you to show him any american tickers, by the way? i shouldn't wonder if he presented me with a brass clock, and eva with a guinea set in jet--he's mean enough." "he bought a ruby bracelet here some days ago," i remarked, as in parenthesis. "did he now?" he exclaimed in a tone of pleasure. "i wonder if it's for the girlie! but, of course, it couldn't be. he'd die to give away anything that once went into his old safe. look here, sutton, couldn't you charge him an extra hundred, and go halves? i feel like something desperate." i told him that that was impossible, and he went away with the aigrette in his pocket, and a very thoughtful expression upon his face. before he did so, however, he had uttered the pious wish that his uncle might die of some tormenting visitation; and that he might be alive to dance on the day of the funeral. i must say that i sympathized with him, for he was a good-looking and kindly-hearted young fellow, who for many years had been led to believe that his relations would do something for him; and who was about to be grievously disappointed. nor could i forget that he was engaged to one of the prettiest girls in town--and for her sake enjoyed a kind of reflected sympathy which was sincere enough on the part of every man who knew him. the date of the wedding was now fixed, being the 21st of january, to be well ahead of lent. i saw watts very frequently during the following ten days, he coming with expectant persistency to ask me if his uncle had yet bought him anything; and remaining disappointed almost to the very eve of his marriage. in fact, the wedding was to take place on the wednesday, and it was only on the previous monday that lord harningham ascended my stairs puffing and blowing, and in a shocking temper, to make his purchase of a present. "sutton," he said, "this is the greatest tomfoolery on earth--that young rascal is going to get married after all, and i suppose i'll have to give him something." "you can scarce do less," i said with a smile. "of course i can do less," he replied garrulously. "i can give him nothing at all, d'ye see; not a brass halfpenny. look at the ass, maudling about the first pretty face he sees over a dinner table when he might marry money twenty times for the asking of it. did i make such a fool of myself when i was his age?" i assured him that he did nothing of the sort. "then what's he want to do it for? thinks he's going to get something out of me, perhaps--out of _me_, but he ain't--not sixpence; not if they hadn't enough to get to the station with. ha, ha! i'm not such a spendthrift as i look." he talked in this strain for some while, and then fell to haggling over a gift. he told me that the custom of giving wedding presents was the insane fashion of an insane age; that he consented to follow it only in view of the fuss that society would make if his card did not lie on lord varnley's table when the other presents were shown. in this bargaining he displayed a meanness which was triumphant even for him. i must have shown him quite a hundred rings, pins, and watches, of all values, from fifty pounds to five hundred, before he could in any way make up his mind, and he did not cease to rebuke me for that which he called my preposterously extravagant insinuation. "fifty sovereigns! a hundred sovereigns!" he kept exclaiming; "why, man alive, do you think i'm made of money? show me something cheap, something that five pounds will buy, d'ye see? any bit of stuff's good enough for a jackanapes like that." "but not for your card on lord varnley's table." "why, what do you mean?" "people who are uncharitable, you know, might say that it was a curiously insufficient present." "d'ye think they'd say that?" "i am sure they would." "pshaw!--so am i; that comes of being thought a rich man when you're as poor as a parson. i'm quite a poor man, you know, sutton." i listened to him patiently, and in the end persuaded him to buy watts an exquisite set of jeweled links. these had a fine diamond in each of them, but their greatest ornament was the superb enameling, worthy of jean toutin or petitot, with which all the gold was covered. i asked one hundred and fifty pounds for these remarkable ornaments; and the old man, struck, like the artist he was, with the perfection of the workmanship, fixed his greedy eyes upon them, and was persuaded. he protested that they were too good, far too good, for such a worthless ingrate as his nephew, and that he ought to keep them in his own collection; but at last he ordered me to send them, with his card, to lord varnley's town house, and went away chafing at his own generosity, and, as he avowed, at his stupidity. i saw no more of him for a week. the wedding had been celebrated, and master bertie watts had conveyed away quietly to folkestone as pretty an english girl as ever flourished in the glare of the west. lord and lady varnley shut up their house during the week after the marriage, having sent the very numerous wedding presents to their bankers; and society would have forgotten the whole business if it had not paused to discuss the important question--how were the young couple to exist in the future on the paltry income of four or five hundred pounds a year? one half of the world may not know how the other half lives, but that is not for lack of effort on its part to find out. it was a matter of club-room news that old lord harningham had not relented--and, beyond what his nephew called "those twopenny-half-penny sleeve links," had not given him a penny. how then, said this same charitable world, will these silly children keep up their position in town when they return from the second-rate hotel they are now staying in at folkestone? curiously enough, i was able myself to answer that question in three days' time--though at the moment i was as ignorant as any of them. the matter came about in this way. on the very morning that lord varnley went to paris, it was known through the daily papers that there had been a robbery at his house in cork street, of a green velvet case, containing a crescent of pearls, turquoises, and diamonds. this was a present from one of the embassies to his daughter, and must, said the reports, have been abstracted from the house during the press and the confusion of the reception. later in the afternoon i received an advice from scotland yard cautioning me against the purchase of such a gem, and inviting immediate communication if it were offered to me. the theft of wedding presents is so common that i gave little heed to the matter; and was already immersed in other business when lord harningham was announced. he seemed rather fidgety in his manner, i thought, and hummed and hawed considerably before he would explain his mission. "it's about those links i gave my nephew," he said at last. "they're far too good for him, sutton--and they're too pretty. i never saw better work in my life, and must have been a fool when i let them go out of my possession--d'ye see?" "well, but you can't get them back now?" i remarked with a smile. he took snuff vigorously at my reply, and then said,-"man, you're wrong, i've got them in my pocket." i must have expressed my astonishment in my look, for he went on quickly,-"yes, here in the green case as you sold them. do i surprise you, eh? well, i'm going to give master bertie a bit of a check and to keep these things; but one of the stones is off color--i noticed it at the wedding--and i must have a new one in, d'ye see?" "i thought that you had already handed them over," i interrupted, quite disregarding his last request. "so i did, so i did; but a man can take his own back again, can't he? well, when i saw them at the house, i concluded it was ridiculous to give a boy like that such treasures, and so----" "you spoke to him?" "hem--that is, of course, man. pshaw! you're too inquisitive for a jeweler: you ought to have been a lady's maid." "have you brought them with you now?" "what should i be here for if i hadn't?" he laid upon my table a green velvet case, of the exact size, color, and shape of that which had contained the links; but when i opened it i gave a start, and put it down quickly. the case held a crescent of pearls, turquoises, and diamonds, which answered exactly to the description of the one stolen from lord varnley's house on the day of his daughter's wedding. "there's some mistake here," said i, "you've evidently left the links at home," with which remark i put the jewels under his very nose for him to see. he looked at them for a moment, the whole of his flabby face wrinkling and reddening; then he seemed almost to choke, and the veins in his forehead swelled until they were as blue threads upon an ashen and colorless countenance. "good god!" he ejaculated, "i've taken the wrong case." "your nephew gave it you, no doubt, but he must have forgotten it, for he's advertised the loss of this crescent at scotland yard, and there are detectives now trying to find it. i am cautioned not to purchase it," i said with a laugh. the effect of these words upon him was so curious that for some moments i thought he had spasm of the heart. starting up in the chair, with wild eyes, and hands clutching at the arms to rest upon them, he made several attempts to speak, but not a word came from his lips. i endeavored to help him with his difficulty, but it was to little purpose. "it seems to me, lord harningham," i suggested, "that you have only to write a line of explanation to your nephew--and there's an end of the matter." "you think so?" he cried eagerly. "why not," said i, "since he returned the jewels to you?" "but he didn't," he interrupted, cringing in the chair at this confession of a lie; "he didn't; and he'd prosecute me; he hates me, and this is his opportunity, d'ye see?" "do you mean to say," i exclaimed, beginning to understand the situation, "that you took the case without his permission?" "yes, yes," he mumbled, "they were so beautiful, such work! you know what work they were. i saw them at the wedding, and was sure that i should not have parted with them. i meant to send him a check against them--and when no one was looking i put what i thought was the case into my pocket, but it was the wrong one. god help me, sutton what shall i do?" now it seemed to me that this was one of the most delightful comedies i had ever assisted at. technically, lord harningham was a thief, and undoubtedly bertie watts could have prosecuted him had he chosen, though the probability of his getting a conviction was small. but it was very evident to me that here was the boy's opportunity, and that in the interest of his pretty wife i should make the best of it. with this intent, i played my first card with necessary boldness. "undoubtedly the case is very serious for you," said i, apparently with sympathy, "and it is made the more serious from the strange relations existing between your nephew and yourself. you know the law, i doubt not, as well as i do; and that once a prosecution has been initiated at scotland yard it is impossible to withdraw without a trial. mr. watts might get into serious trouble for compounding a felony; and i might suffer with him as one in the conspiracy. but i tell you what i will do; i'll write to him to-night and sound him. meanwhile, let me advise you to keep out of the way, for i can't disguise the fact that you might be arrested." he gave a great scream at this, and the perspiration rolled from him, falling in great drops upon the carpet. "oh, lord!" he kept muttering, "oh, that i should have been such a consummate fool!--oh, heaven help me! to think of it--and what it will cost, i could cry, sutton--cry like a child." i calmed him with difficulty, and led him down the back stairs to a cab with a positive assurance that i would not communicate with scotland yard. then i wrote to folkestone a letter, the precise contents of which are immaterial, but the response to which was in the form of a telegram worded as follows:-"am inexpressibly shocked and pained, but the law must take its course." i put this into my pocket without any delay and went over to harningham's house in park lane. he had been up all night, they told me, and the doctor had just left him; but i found him suffering only from an enervating fear, and white as the cloth on the breakfast table before him. "well," he said, "what is it, what does he say? will he prosecute me?" i handed him the telegram for answer, and i thought he would have swooned. he did not know that i had in my pocket another letter from his nephew, in which master bertie informed me that i was the "best chap in the world," and i saw no reason to mention this. indeed, i listened with infinite gravity when the old man told me that he was irretrievably ruined, and that his name would stand in all the clubs as that of a common thief. jewel-hunger plainly accounted for everything he had done; but it was not to my end to console him, and i said in a severe and sufficiently melancholy voice,-"lord harningham, there is only one thing to do, and for your sake i will make myself a criminal participator in the conspiracy. you must go to folkestone with me this afternoon, and take your check book with you." the groan he gave at this would have moved a man of iron. i saw tears standing in his eyes, and his hand shook when i left him so that he could scarce put it into mine. yet he came to the station to meet me in the afternoon, and by six o'clock we were in folkestone at a shabby second-rate hotel, called "the cock and lobster," inquiring for the bride and bridegroom. mr. and mrs. watts, they said, were out on the parade; but we went to look for them, and surprised them coming from the lees, as handsome a couple as you could look upon. she, a pretty, brown-haired english girl, her tresses tossed over her large eyes by the sharp wind that swept in from the sea, was close under the arm of her husband, who, at that stage, fearing to lose her touch, seemed engaged in the impossible attempt to cover her entirely with one of his arms. and in this pursuit privacy came to his aid, for the breeze was fresh from the channel at the beginning of night, banishing all loiterers but those loitering in love; and the lamps flickered and went low in the gusts as though fearing to illumine the roses upon the cheeks of a bride. when master bertie saw us he became as sedate as a methodist minister, and, commanding a solemn tone acted the part to perfection. "uncle," he said, "i would never have believed it of you. but this is too serious a matter to mention here; let us go to the hotel." we returned in silence, but directly we were in the hall the young man called for his bill, and speaking almost in a boisterous tone, cried:-"we're going to change our quarters, uncle, and will begin by moving to the best hotel in the place. that poor girl is moped to death here, and now you're going to pay for our honeymoon--cost doesn't matter, does it, old man?" the old man concerned started at this, his mouth wide open with the surprise of it. "what's that?" he muttered. "what're you going to do?" but i whispered to him to be silent, and in an hour we were sitting down to a superb dinner--which he did not touch, by the bye--in the great saloon of the biggest hotel in the place. during the meal the bride, who scarce seemed able to do anything else than look at her husband, made few remarks, but watts and i talked freely, quite ignoring the old man; and it was not until we were in the private room that the negotiations began. there is no need to describe them. they lasted until midnight, at which hour the nephew of lord harningham had five hundred pounds in his pocket, and an allowance of five hundred a year. from the moment of assenting to these conditions until we entered the train next morning the old man never opened his lips, but he kissed the bride at the door of the hotel, and color came again to his cheeks at the warmth of her lips. when at last we were alone in the carriage he gave a great sigh of relief and said,---"sutton, thank god that's over!" "nearly over, my lord," i replied with emphasis. "what do you mean?" he cried. "do you think that any one will get to hear of it? why, man, what have i half-ruined myself for?" "to keep your nephew quiet," i suggested pleasantly. "and who else knows anything when he's settled with?" he asked angrily. "why," said i quite calmly, "you and i, perhaps." he looked at me as though his glance was all-consuming and would wither me, but i met him with a placid smile and continued,-"it seems to me that i want what mr. stevenson calls 'a good memory for forgetting.' do you know, lord harningham, that if you paid my bill--gave me, say, eight thousand pounds on account, i believe my mind would be quite oblivious to the events of last night." the shot struck home--in the very center of my target. he thought over it for some while, and spoke but once between sevenoaks and charing cross. his remark was more forcible than convincing, for he exclaimed suddenly, and _à propos_ of nothing in particular, "sutton to blazes with all jewels!" then he subsided, and came with me quietly to my rooms, where he wrote a check for eight thousand pounds and signed it with considerable firmness. the ink was hardly dry, however, before he dropped heavily upon the carpet, and lay prone in a fit. the shock of parting with so much money had been too much for him. he is now in madeira seeking a climate. treasure of white creek. treasure of white creek. she was the daughter of colonel kershaw klein, and he was worth a million, as the society papers said. i had danced with her for the first time in the ball-room of the magnificent house her father had rented in grosvenor crescent, on the occasion of her coming of age; and i agreed with the men that she was beyond criticism, an exquisite vision of dark and matured girlhood, so incomparably fascinating that you forget in her company some of her bluntness in speech, and set down the voluptuousness of her glance and mien to the southern luxuriance amidst which she had been reared, and to those "other" notions which prevail in chili, the land of fleeting republics. some part of this perhaps unnecessary adulation may have been due to the fact that i had helped in the production of her perfect picture on the night of which i am speaking. the commercial element will intrude at such times; and i could not help but see that she wore at least eight hundred pounds' worth of my jewels. had the value of them been double, it would have been the same to me, for of her father's stability i had then no doubt. he had been received and made much of in the highest places, accorded the chief seats at the feasts; entrusted--as the old ladies told you--with the most important missions by government; and a share in the western hill diamond mine at south africa was not the least substantial factor in the sum of his income. any and every gem to which he took a fancy i had let him have readily, being assured by an important personage at the embassy that his credit was unquestionable; and it was a pretty pleasure to me when i first met his daughter to observe how well my diamonds sat upon her, and how shapely were her arms clasped in the ruby bracelets which had been amongst the treasures of bond street but three months before. she was, indeed, a sunny child of the south, radiating a warming light about her, tempting you to wait long for a single press of her hand, luring you to follow the sparkle of her eyes even when she looked at you over the shoulder of a dancer who for the moment had the privilege of holding her in the entrancement of the _deux temps_. there was keen contention for her programme, but somehow i found her disposed to favor me, and danced no less than four with her, to the infinite annoyance of the many youths who eyed me angrily from their watching-ground by the door. they said that they had never seen her brighter; and i was ready to believe them, for she kept her tongue going merrily through the waltzes, and leant upon my arm in a languorous way that was completely entrancing. at the end of the dance--the next being some newfangled "barn dance" wherein men scarce put their hands upon their partners--she said that she would sit in the conservatory and eat ices; and for the first time during the long evening i found myself able to talk easily with her. "well," she said, when we had composed ourselves behind a huge fern, and had made a successful attack upon the _meringues glacés_, "well, this is about splendid; don't you think so?" i said that nothing could be more delightful. "and to think that i've never danced with you before; why, you're just perfect," she went on. "i haven't enjoyed myself right along like this since i was in valparaiso." "are the chilians such wonderful dancers then?" i asked, as she looked up at me bewitchingly. "they just make a profession of it between the shooting times," said she; and then changing the subject quickly, she asked, "what do you think of the crystals now i've got them on?" it is not particularly consoling to hear your rubies spoken of as crystals, but her description was accompanied by such a pretty laugh, and she opened her great black eyes so widely, that i smiled when i answered,-"why, they're to be envied in such a setting." "you're the fourth man that has said the same to-night," she exclaimed, putting her glass down and tugging at her glove. "i think that britishers learn their compliments out of copy-books; they're all presents for good girls. let's see if you're cleverer at getting a glove on than at making pretty speeches." the arm that she held out was gloriously white; and as every man knows, the operation of pulling on the glove of a pretty girl is apt to be prolonged. there are fingers to fit, and a little thumb to stroke daintily; while the grip upon the more substantial part of the forearm will bear repetition so long as time serves. i must have occupied myself at least five minutes with her buttons, she finding it necessary to press close to me when i did so; and the task was none the less pleasant when her rich brown hair touched my face, and her dress rustled with her long-drawn breathing. how long the process would have lasted, or what i should have said foolishly in the end, i do not know; but of a sudden she drew her arm away and exclaimed,-"oh, i'd quite forgotten; i wanted to ask you about the bull's-eye." [illustration: "i wanted to ask you about the bull's-eye." --_page 82_] this was her description, i may mention without anger, of the famous white creek diamond, which, as all london knows, i have had in my possession for the last two years. her father, who was reputed to have some commission to buy it for a persian, was then negotiating with me for its purchase for the sum of one hundred and thirty thousand pounds. he waited only, he said, for the coming of his partner from valparaiso, to complete the transaction; and it was owing to the intimacy which the _pour parlers_ brought about that i found myself then in his house. how much his daughter knew of the business, however, i could not tell, and i answered her question by another. "what do you know about the bull's-eye?" "that you're trying to sell it to my father," she replied, "and that he won't promise to give it to me." "have you asked him, then?" "have i asked him--why, look at him; isn't he ten years older since he met you in bond-street?" "he certainly seems to have something on his mind," said i. "that's me; he's got me on his mind," she remarked flippantly; "but i wish he'd buy the bull's-eye, and give it to me for a wedding present." "oh, you're engaged," i ventured dolefully; "you never told me that----" "didn't i?" she answered, "well, of course i am, and here's my partner." she went away on another man's arm; but she left to me a vision of dark eyes and ivory white flesh; and her breath still seemed to blow balmily upon my forehead. her partner was a young man just down from oxford, they told me; seemingly a simple youth, to whom the whole sentence in conversation was as much a mystery as the binomial theorem; but he danced rather well, and i doubt not that she suffered him for that. i watched her through the waltz, and then, after a few words with her father, who promised to call upon me the next day concerning white creek treasure, i said "good night" to her. she give me a glance which was more entrancing than any word; and although she had the habit of looking at a man as though she were dying for love of him, i carried it away with me foolishly into the street, when the dawn had broken with summer haze, and an exalting sweetness was in the air. the invigorating breath of morning somewhat sobered my thoughts; but none the less left the impression of her beauty fermenting in my mind. i turned into hyde park, where the trees were alive with song-birds, and the glowing flowers sparkled with the silver freshness of the dew, and set out to walk to bayswater. in these moments, i forgot the prosaic necessities of forms and customs; and bethought how pleasant it would be if some enchantment could place her at my side, a phyllis of mayfair, freed from the tie of conventionality, to look at me for all time with those eyes she had used so well but an hour ago. i forgot her manners of speech, her unpleasing idioms, even the discordant note that her usually melodious voice was sometimes guilty of; forgot all but her ripe beauty, the softness of her touch, the alluring fascination of her way, the insurpassable play of her mouth, the exquisite perfection of her figure. women's eyes make dreamers of us all; and though i have pride in the thought that i am not a susceptible man, i will confess without hesitation that i was as near to being in love on that summer morning in july as was ever a professor of the single state who has come within hail of his thirty-fifth year with the anti-feminine vow unweakened. at lancaster gate i paused a moment, leaning upon the iron rail of the drive to look back at the london veldt fresh to luxuriance in the dew showers which gave many colors in the play of sunlight. there was stillness under the trees, and the hum of the still sleeping city was hushed, though day was seeking to enter the blind-hid windows, and workmen slouched heavily to their labor. the scene was fresh enough, beautiful as many of the city's scenes are beautiful; but i had scarce time to enjoy when i saw the oxford youth who had last danced with margaret klein coming striding over the grass; a masterful pipe in his mouth; and a very rough ulster wrapped round his almost vanishing shoulders. he gave me a cheery nod for greeting, and to my surprise he seated himself upon the seat beside me; and having offered me a cigar, which i took, he found his tongue so readily that i, who had heard his "haw-hawing" in the ball-room, concluded at once that it was assumed and not natural to him. and in this i was right, as the first exchange of speech with him proved. "i've had a sharp run to catch you," said he, "for this infernal dancing takes it out of you when you're not used to it. i wanted a word with you particularly before this thing goes any further. do you know anything of these people?" "why," said i, "i might ask you that question, since you made yourself so much at home there; don't you know them?" "no, i'm hanged if i do," said he; "but, if i'm not mistaken, i shall be on very good terms with them before the season's out. you haven't sold them any jewels, have you?" this was such an extraordinary question that i turned upon him with an angry reply upon my lips; but the word changed to one of amazement when i saw his face closely in the full sunlight. it was no longer the face of an oxford boy, but of a man of my own age at the least. "whew!" i remarked, as i looked full at him, "you've made rather a quick change, haven't you?" "it's the running," he replied, mopping himself with a handkerchief, and leaving his countenance like a half-washed chess-board, "we're in for another six hours' stew, and my phiz is plastic--i'd better be moving on, lest i meet any of my partners; i might break some hearts, you know; but what i wanted to say was, don't go making a fool of yourself, mr. sutton, over that little witch with the black eyes, and don't, if you love your life, put yourself for a moment in the power of her long-tongued father." this utterly surprising rejoinder was given without a suspicion of concern or bombast. many people would have resented it as an impertinence, and a dishonorable slander upon one whose hospitality we had just enjoyed; but i had not been a dealer in jewels for ten years without learning to recognize instantly the "professional" tongue; and i knew that i was talking to a man from scotland yard. yet i must confess that i laughed inwardly at the absurdity of his fears. few men had come to london with stronger recommendation than kershaw klein, and even the banks had trusted him implicitly. "are you sure that you are making no mistake?" i asked, as he buttoned up his coat and looked about for a hansom. "you gentlemen have been woefully out lately; i can't forget that one of you cautioned me against count hevilick three months ago, and if i'd listened to him i should be worth five thousand less than i am at this moment. if this man is what you think, he's managed to blind a good many big people--and his own embassy into the bargain." he thought for some minutes before he answered me, standing with his hands in his pockets and his cigar pointing upwards from the extreme corner of his mouth. his reply was given with a pitying smile, and was patronizing--as are the replies of men convinced but unable to convince. "well," he said, exhaling tremendous clouds of smoke, "what i know i know; and what i don't know my wits will find out for me. i gave you the tip because you've done me--though you don't know it--a good many services; but whether you take it or leave it, that's your look out. only, and this is my last word, don't come complaining to me if the witch walks off with your goods--and don't write to the _times_ if her father cracks your skull." he had turned on his heel before i could utter another word; and he left me to walk slowly and thoughtfully to bayswater, divided in my musings between the vision of the chilian girl's beauty and the jewels of mine which she wore; but for which her father had not paid. i can only set it down to absurd infatuation; but i admit unhesitatingly that i did not very much care then whether the financial part of the business left me lacking the money or possessed of it. a rash disregard for expense is the surest sign that a woman has interested you; a longing to pay her milliner's bills is a necessary instinct to the disposition for marriage. i was at that time, and in the exhilaration of wish that came of the power of morning, quite ready to let so perfect a creature remain indebted to me for anything; and this was natural since the spice of a little suspicion is often the most attractive flavor in a woman's character. but the question of the treasure of white creek was another matter altogether. the great diamond was not my own, although it lay at that time in my safe in bond street. it was the property of a syndicate, in which i held a third of the shares; but the others looked to me for the safe disposal of the stone, and for the profit of ten thousand pounds which we hoped to get by its sale. my responsibility, then, was no usual one; and the barest suggestion that i was trafficking with a swindler was enough to set me itching with anxiety. i went home in this mood, but not to sleep. a feverish dreaming--chiefly of a seductive girl with black-brown wavy hair and black eyes that searched and fascinated with an inexplicable spell--served me for rest; and at eleven o'clock i was at my office, and the chilian was with me. he was a man of fine presence, a long black beard falling upon his ample chest, and a certain refinement of carriage and bearing giving him a dignity which is not usual in an american. the object of his visit was twofold, to pay the bill he owed me, and to tell me that his partner, hermann rudisic, would reach london from valparaiso in a week's time; when he would bring him to me to complete the purchase of the great stone. he said further that as the season was over he had taken a place near basingstoke, the woodfields it was named; and that he hoped his daughter, who did not do well in an english climate, would benefit by the wealth of pine-trees about the house. he finished by giving me a reference to his london bankers, and also another to one of the best known of the financiers in lombard street. in due course i communicated with both firms, and received answers which set every doubt about the financial position of kershaw klein at rest. the bankers declared that i might trust him unhesitatingly for such a sum as i named. the other replied that the colonel's brother was of great standing and position in chili, and that he himself carried letters which proved his undoubted probity. more complete vindication could not be had; and i went home to laugh consumedly at the gentleman who had found such a mare's nest, and to wonder if my friends would laugh very much if they heard--how little i thought at that time of the old pleasantries with which i had once greeted the tidings of a marriage. i did not hear more of klein for some fifteen days, at the end of which time he wrote saying that hermann rudisic was with him at basingstoke; and that they hoped to call upon me on the following friday. the march of events was from that time quick. on the thursday i read in a daily paper of an accident in berkshire to a chilian visitor, who had been thrown from his carriage and seriously hurt. the account said that his life was despaired of, and that he was then lying at the house of his host, the well-known colonel kershaw klein, who had taken lord aberly's place, the woodfields. on the friday morning i received a long letter from the colonel deploring the accident and the delay, more especially because his commission to purchase the stone extended only to the 10th of august, and it was then the third. he hoped, however, that matters would look brighter at the end of that time; and would bring his partner to london the moment he could travel. now, at the first thought, this intelligence set all the inherent suspicion, which is a part of me, at work once more. suggestions of doubt rose again and again, instantly to be suppressed. had i not satisfied myself completely as to the colonel's standing, his means, his reputation, and his personal character? was he not staying in lord aberly's house? had not he passed most brilliantly through a london season? were there not twenty members of the bachelors' club seeking to pay for the sake of his daughter the fine imposed upon amorous backsliders? if one were to suspect every man with such credentials as these, the sooner one shut one's door, and locked one's safe for good, the better for all hope of doing business. of all this i was certain; and had already come to the determination to put from my mind suspicion both of the count and his daughter, when there came to me by the afternoon delivery another letter concerning the matter; but this was anonymous, and in a hand i did not know. it was a curious scrawl written upon a slip of account paper, and its contents were but these words:-"you will be asked to kershaw klein's house in three days. i told you the other morning not to trust yourself with the man; i say now, accept the invitation." this was plainly from my friend of hyde park; and i confess that his pompous mysteriousness and pretence of knowledge amused me. even he no longer complained of colonel klein's reputation, nor advised me now to avoid him. his letter finally quieted my scruples, and from that moment i resolved to dally with them no longer; and to let no silly fears delay the negotiations for the sale of the treasure of white creek. in this resolution i waited rather anxiously for the coming of klein and his partner, but three days went, and i saw nothing of them; it being on the monday morning at eleven o'clock that the former drove up to bond street in a single brougham, and came with his daughter into my private office. he seemed in a great state of distress, saying that rudisic, although better, was still unable to set foot to the ground: and begging me as the time was so short to take the great jewel to berkshire--his house was just across the line dividing the county from hampshire--and there to settle the matter that very day. i heard him mechanically; my eyes glued on the exquisite picture which his daughter made; her gown of white delaine showing the mature contour of her figure admirably; and her deep brown hair rolling from the shelter of a great straw hat in silken waves upon her shoulders. if she had fascinated me at the dance, the fascination was intensified there. i would cheerfully have risked the best parcel of rubies in the place to have had the pleasure of keeping her in the office even for an hour; and i did not hesitate one moment in accepting klein's offer. "come down to-day," said he, "and bring your man with you in case we don't do business, and you have to return alone. i don't like mailing with big stuff on me; you never know who gets wind of it. i suppose you have somebody you could take." even with the girl's eyes upon me and her laughing threat to "make me tramp at tennis awhile," i had a measure of satisfaction in this request, and thought instantly of abel. "yes," said i, with a light laugh, "i will bring my own detective. he's down below now." "that's right," said klein, "and we'll catch the two-forty from waterloo. i've ordered the carriage to meet that, and there's just time for a snack between whiles. never forget your food, sir--i don't for all the business in europe. i once lost a commission for a railway in venezuela through a sandwich--but there, that's another story, and i'll tell it you over a chop at the criterion. i guess i've got an appetite on, and so's margaret, eh, little girl?" he slapped his chest to signify that a void was there; and we all went off down piccadilly, returning afterwards for the gem which i had placed in a flat-velvet case. i put it into my jewel pocket, cunningly contrived in my vest, and with no more delay we got to waterloo and to our saloon, abel traveling second class, by the bye, and in another compartment. there was a well-turned-out wagonette to meet us when we reached basingstoke; and after a drive of something under an hour through some of that glorious pine scenery of southern berkshire, we entered a short drive edged by thick laurels, and were shortly at the gate of the woodfields. of the exterior of the house i saw nothing, for, as i descended from the wagonette, i chanced to catch the eye of the footman, who had a finger to his lips; and an exclamation almost broke from my lips. notwithstanding his disguise i recognized the man in a moment. he was the "oxford youth" who had given me a cigar in the park on the morning after the dance in grosvenor crescent. the discovery was not a pleasant one. it made discord of all the music of margaret klein's voice--she was quickly babbling to me in the old georgian hall--and forbade my taking considerable notice of the massive oak of the double staircase, or of the exceedingly bright-nosed "ancestors" who smiled upon us from twenty gilt frames. abel had come up to my room with me, i pretending that he invariably acted as my valet; and once inside a very large but very ugly square bedchamber, whose windows overlooked the prim lawn and terrace of flowers, i shut the door and had a word with him. "abel," said i, "that footman who drove us from the station must be one of the scotland yard lot; what's he doing in this house?" abel whistled, and by instinct, i suppose, put his hand upon his pistol pocket. "have you got your revolver with you, sir?" he asked. "of course i have; and i'll take this opportunity to charge all the chambers, but i don't believe for a moment there will be occasion to use it. the man's on a false scent entirely. it's necessary at the same time to act like wise men, and not like fools; and i must count on you to be near me while we're in the place. if there's any knavery afoot, we shan't hear of it until the place is asleep; but come here when i am going to bed, and then we shall know what to do." i sent him off with this to the servants' quarters, and dressed, though an indescribable sense of nervousness had taken hold of me; and i found myself peering into every cupboard and cranny like an old woman looking for a burglar. the situation was either as dangerous as it could be, or i was the victim of farcical fears. yet the very shadows across the immense floor, and the aureola upon the carpet about the dressing table seemed to give gloom to the chamber. so thick were the walls of the old house that no sound reached me from the rooms below; and when the gong struck the hour for dinner its note reverberated as a wave of deadened sound through some curtained chapel or chill vault. what did it mean, i kept asking myself; the illness, was it sham? the man from london, was he on a fool's errand? my visit, was it foolhardy? had i walked into a trap at the bidding of a pretty woman? were all the guarantees i had received in the colonel's favor fraudulent or mistaken? i could not think so. again and again i told myself that the fellow from scotland yard was an absurd crank upon a false scent, and that ninety jewelers of a hundred would have done as i had done, and have brought the stone to berkshire. and with this thought i took a better courage and hastily finished my dressing. i need scarce say that i had the jewel in my pocket when i went to the drawing-room, and that i had already determined that it should not leave me for a moment. i got rid, however, of more of my fears when i entered the artistic and homely room where margaret klein was waiting; and in the brighter scene of light and laughter the absurdity of suspicion again occurred to me. the meal was an excellent one, admirably served; the wine was perfect. i sat at my host's right facing his daughter, who seemed to exert herself unusually to fascinate, making delicate play with her speaking eyes; and promising me all the possibilities of berkshire rest, if i cared to stay with them over the week. to this her father, the colonel, who had the ribbon of an order in his buttonhole, and looked exceedingly handsome, added: "and i hope you will, for you're not seeming as well as you were last week. you people in england live in too narrow a circle. a voyage across the pond makes an epoch in your lives; you are scarce prepared to admit yet that there is any other city but london. if you would enlarge the scope of your actions, you would grumble less--and perhaps, if i may say so, allow that other nations share some of your best boasted qualities. now i am truly cosmopolitan; i regard no city as my home; i would as soon set out on a voyage of three thousand miles as of five. i come to england, and i do it in ten days from land's end to john o' groat's; and when i think i'll rest awhile i ask, where is your pretty county? and i settle for three weeks to explore it." "i hope mr. sutton will do the same," said margaret, following up his invitation. "i want to learn all about the dames who won't know you unless you had a grandfather; and i should like to see a curate who is passing rich on forty pounds a year. i guess we mean to go right in now we're amongst your best folk." "i'll stay a day or two with pleasure if you will pilot me," said i, as she rose to go to the drawing-room; but i little knew that my visit was to terminate abruptly in three hours or less, or what was to happen in the between-time. a lean, lank-looking butler served the colonel and myself with coffee when she had gone; and after that my host took me to the drawing-room, where i found her engaged in the pursuit of trying over a "coster" song. the colonel suggested business at once, saying: "i'll leave you with margaret while i go up to hermann and learn if he's well enough to receive us; i dare say you can amuse yourselves. i shan't be gone five minutes." he was really away for twenty minutes; but i did not count the time. the whole situation seemed so curious--on the one hand a london detective playing footman in the house, on the other a delightful host, and a girl whose every word fascinated and whose every motion drew you instinctively to her--that i gave up any attempt to solve it; and beyond the knowledge that i had reason to be watchful, i put no restraint upon myself; but sat at her side while she played the lightest of music; or occasionally leant back to speak to me, so that her hair brushed my face and her eyes almost looked into mine. "it was good of you to come," she almost whispered in one of these pauses, glancing up timorously, and speaking altogether in the sympathetic tone. "do you miss the excitement of london?" i asked, letting my hand rest for a moment on hers. "i guess not," she replied; "but i miss some one who can talk to me as you talk; you're going to stop awhile, aren't you?" "i'll stop as long as you ask me to." when he was gone she went on playing for some minutes, turning away at last impatiently from the piano, and facing round with a serious, almost alarmed look. what she meant to say or do i cannot tell, for at that moment the colonel came back and told us that his partner was in the dressing-room upstairs, and would be glad to see me at once. "margaret may come too?" he asked me. "she would like to see the great stone." "of course," i replied; "it will be a pleasure to show it to her." i cannot tell you why it was, but as we rose together to leave the room i seemed in a moment to realize that the affair had come to a crisis. in that instant, notwithstanding guarantees, references, margaret klein's fascinations, and the hundred arguments i had so often used to convince myself of the folly of suspicion, there came to me as distinct and clear a warning as though some human voice had given speech to it. the very silence of the others--for they said no word, and a curious hesitation seemed to come upon them--impressed the conviction of the monition. once in the hall, my uneasiness became stronger, for there at a table was the footman i had recognized, and as he glanced at me when i passed him his face was knit up as the face of a man thinking; and he let a glass fall at the very moment we reached the stairs. what he wished to convey i do not know; but although i felt there was danger in leaving the ground floor, another force dragged me on behind the colonel, and kept me advancing unhesitatingly until i had reached the end of the long picture-gallery with him, and he had knocked upon a door in the eastern wing of the rambling mansion. what this force was i do not pretend to explain. it may have been merely the influence of the woman; it may have been my inherent obstinacy and belief in myself; or simple lack of conviction which forbade any public expression of the fears i had fomented. i know only that we waited for some seconds in the passage until a hospital nurse opened the door, and that i found myself at last in a very pretty boudoir, where a pale and sickly-looking man was lying upon a couch, but propped up to greet us. the formalities of introduction were accomplished by the colonel with great suavity and grace; and the nurse having set chairs at the side of the sick man's couch, and placed a table there, she withdrew, and we were ready for the business. that you should understand what happened in the next few minutes it is necessary for me to say a word upon the construction of the boudoir. it was a room hung in pink silk and white, and it had two doors in it, giving off to other rooms, whose size i could not see since they were in darkness. for light, we had a lamp with a white shade upon the invalid's table, and two others upon the mantelshelf; while we were seated in a fashion that allayed any fears i might have had of personal and sudden attack. the colonel lounged in an american rocking-chair, he being nearest to the head of the couch; his daughter leant back against a buhl-work cabinet, she being a little way from the sick man's feet; i had a library-chair, and was alone in an attitude which would allow me to spring to my defence--if that were necessary--without delay. i looked, too, at hermann rudisic, the colonel's partner, and i confess that contempt for his physical powers was my first thought. i was convinced that if it were a question of fight, i could hold the two men until abel, who was in the servants' hall, came to my assistance; and while the others were present i had no fear of any of those wild machinations which are chiefly the property of imaginative fiction-makers. this knowledge gave to me my nerve again, and without more ado i took the case from my pocket and showed the stone. the vision of the glorious gem, rippling on its surface with a myriad lights, white, and golden, and many-colored, in the play of radiating fire, was one that compelled the silence of amazed admiration for many minutes. margaret klein first spoke, her face bent to the diamond so that its waves of color seemed to float up to her ravished eyes; and with a little cry wrung from her satisfaction she said,-"oh, mr. sutton, it's too beautiful to look at!" "i am glad that it does not disappoint," said i. "it could disappoint no one," the invalid said, stretching out a hand which trembled to draw the treasure closer to his eyes. "it's the whitest stone i've seen for three years," the colonel remarked coolly, and then, as with a new thought, he added,-"i believe it's whiter than the brazilian stone in my old ring. i should like to compare them, if you'll let me? the other stuff is in my dressing-room there; margaret, will you get it?" he gave her his keys, and taking a lamp from the shelf, she passed into the chamber which was behind me. in the same moment rudisic asked his host to prop him up higher upon the couch, and the colonel had just begun to place the pillows when i heard margaret's voice crying,-"father, i can't open the drawer--it's stuck; do come and help." it was an act of consummate folly--that i concede you; but i was so completely unaware of any signs of trickery here, and had so forgotten my fears, that i found it the most natural thing in the world to step into the room, and to enjoy helping the girl in her difficulty. i discovered her before an open door--the door of a wardrobe i thought it was for a moment, but i saw at the second look that it gave access to a tiny chamber, whereof the walls were all drawers. margaret klein herself stood within this curiously fashioned safe, built as part of the house, and was still struggling with the refractory drawer; so that i had no hesitation--nor, indeed, thought suspiciously--in going to her side. she laughed slyly as we stood in the semi-dark together, and my hand falling by chance on hers, she pressed it, and put her face very close to mine--so close, that to have resisted kissing her would have been a crime for which a man would have repented until his last day. i cannot tell accurately how long i held her in a passionate embrace, feeling her lips glued upon my own; but suddenly and quickly she pushed me from her with a surprising strength of arm, and before i could regain my balance she had sprung into the room, and the door of the small chamber in which i was left swung to with a clang, striking me backwards as it pressed upon me, and coming nigh to stunning me. so thick was this door, so impenetrable, that its closing was succeeded by the stillness of vault or catacomb. i had scarce realized the whole trick, or the terrible predicament sheer folly had placed me in, when i was plunged into the abyss of utter darkness, shut as it were into the coffin that had been prepared for me. a frightful panic, a hideous terror, an indescribable anger, came upon me from the very first moment of that fearful trial. for some minutes--the first minutes of imprisonment in a room where i could stand my height with difficulty, but whose iron sides my elbows touched as i turned--i think my reason must have been paralyzed. rage, shame of my folly, yet, above all, unsurpassable fear, drove me to beat with my fists upon the door, which gave me back the touch of solid steel; to cry out aloud as a man in the throes of painful death; to grind my teeth until pain shot into my brain; to forget, in fact, that i was from that time helpless, and that others alone could give to me life. when the first great terror had passed, and a mental struggle had left me with some sense, i leant against the steel door, and thought again of my fate. i had little science, yet i knew that the hours of any man, shut in an air-tight chamber such as that room of steel was, could be few. i had heard that asphyxiation was a peaceful death, and think i could have had courage to face it if a little light had been given to me. but i was in utter weighty darkness; i could not even see that dull red light as of one's own soul shining, which may come in the gentler dark of night. there was only upon me that sense of impenetrable blackness, the grim feeling that i had come to my coffin, had slept in it, and arisen to this unspeakable terror. my whole being then seemed to cry aloud for sight, one moment in which living light should again shine upon me. a great craving for air; a sense of terrible effort in the lungs, a rushing of blood to the head--these things succeeded, and as i suffered them flashes of thought came and passed, hope extended a hand to me, processes of reasoning told me that i should be saved, only to convince me the more that i should die. if i could have reasoned sanely i should have seen that my hope was all bound up in abel and the detective in the house. klein, and the invalid, and the girl--they had been gone long since, unless others had put hands upon them. my own servant, i knew, would seek for me first; but even if he came to the safe, how would he open it, how cut through these inches of steel before death had ended it all? it was even possible that the door of the strong room was a concealed door--and so afterwards i proved it to be. in that case, how would they know even of my necessity? these torturing reflections threw at last a glimmer of necessary activity upon my despair. i raised my voice, though i had then the strangest sensation in my veins, and my heart was pumping audibly; and for many minutes i shouted with all my strength. once i thought that i heard, even through the door, some sound from the other room; yet when i cried louder, and beat again upon the steel, there was no signal. i remained unheeded; my voice gradually failed me; i could cry no longer, but began to sink almost into a coma. how long this coma lasted i cannot tell. i was roused from it, after a hideous dream of waiting, by sounds of knocking upon some wall near me; and with a new strength i shouted again, and beat again upon the door of steel. yet, i knew that i was not heard, for the sound of the blows grew fainter and were passing away and life, which had come near again, seemed to pass with them. then was my supreme moment of misery, yet one giving an inspiration which brought me here to write this record. recoiling from the door as the knocks without grew fainter, i struck my back against the iron wall, and my pistol, which i had forgotten, pressed into my flesh. regardless of all thought of consequences, of the path of the bullet, or the effect upon me of the stifling smoke, i fired three rounds from the revolver into the room--and instantly was breathing the densest smoke. then a sudden faintness took me; and i recollect only that i fell forward into a world of light, and there slept. [illustration: "i fired three rounds from the revolver into the door." --_page 104_] * * * * * "the joke, was, seeing you living, mr. sutton, that abel swallowed the wine that butler gave him, and was made as insensibly drunk as a man who takes stage chloroform. i knew all along that the butler was the one to watch; and while i never thought they'd do you mischief in the room--believing they meant to work after midnight--my men in the grounds clapped the bracelets on the lank chap up by the woods there, and he had the diamond on him." "and the colonel and his daughter and the invalid?" i asked, raising myself in the bed of an upper chamber of the woodfields, on the foot of which sat my old friend, the detective of hyde park. "got clear away by a back staircase we'd never heard of, through a cellar and a passage to the lower grounds! they knocked old jimmy, the local policeman, on the head by the spinney, and all they left him was a bump as big as an orange. that girl must have had a liking for you. one of my men nearly took her as she jumped into a dog-cart; but she threw the keys in his face, and he brought them here. i knew nothing about this room, and shouldn't have done except for the ring of your revolver; but the last lord aberly built it to take his famous collection of rubies and emeralds, and that lag klein evidently heard of it, and leased the place furnished on that account." "how do you know that he was a swindler?" "i heard of him in new york when i was there last winter. he was wanted for the great mail robbery near st. louis. a clever scoundrel, too; deceived a heap of folk by forged letters of introduction, and the banks by leaving big deposits with them. he must be worth a pretty pile; but i don't doubt he came over here from america on purpose to steal your diamonds. he was out at the cape nine months ago, and got to hear all about the white creek stone. then he must have known that herbert klein, his supposed brother, and a real rich man of valparaiso, was away yachting in the pacific; and so he claimed him, and traded on his undoubted couple of million. a clever forger, and the other two with him nearly as smart. it was lucky for you that one of the grooms here had heard of a mysterious place in that dressing-room, and led me, when i missed you, to tap the walls. you were nearly done for, and though you don't know, you've been in bed pretty well a week." "and the man's daughter?" i asked, a little anxiously. "his daughter," he replied; "pshaw, she's his wife!--and we'll take the pair of them yet." but he never did, although the lank butler is now our guest at dartmoor. the accursed gems. the accursed gems. the accursed gems lie sedately in the lowest drawer of my strong room, shining from a couple of dozen of prim leather cases, with a light which is full of strange memories. i call them accursed because i cannot sell them; yet there are those with other histories, stones about which the fancy of romance has sported, and the strong hand of tragedy has touched with an indelible brand. it may be that the impulse of sentiment, working deep down in the heart of the ostensibly commercial character, forbids me to cry some of these wares in the market-place with any vigor; it may be that the play of chance moves the mind of the jewel-buyer to a prejudice against them. in any case, they lie in my safe unhonored and unsung--and, lacking that which sewell called the "precious balsam" of reputation, are merely so much carbon or mineral matter giving light to iron walls which give no light again. for the stones which have no history i am not an apologist. some day, those excellent people who now decry them in every salon where jewels are discussed, will give up the hope of attempting to buy them cheaply; and i shall make my profit. everything comes to him who _can_ wait, and i am not in a hurry. as to the others, which have been the pivots of romance or serious story, they may well lie as they are while they serve my memory in the jotting down of some of these mysteries. and that they do serve it i have no measure of doubt. here, for instance, is a little bag of pearls and diamonds. it contains a black pearl from koepang, so rich in silvery lustre, and so perfect in shape, that it should be worth eight hundred pounds in any market in europe; a couple of pink pearls from the bahamas, of fine orient yet pear-shaped, and therefore less valuable as fashion dictates; five old brazilian diamonds averaging two carats each; a number of smaller diamonds for finish; and two great white pearls, which i find at the very bottom of the bag. those stones were bought by the late lord maclaren a month before the date announced for his marriage with the hon. christine king. he had intended them as his gift to her, a handsome and sufficient gift, it must be admitted, yet so did fickle fortune work that his very generosity was the indirect cause of a commotion in the week of the wedding, and of as pretty a social scandal as society has known for a decade. the matter was hushed up of course. for six weeks, as a wag said, it was a nine days' wonder. aged ladies discussed it from every point of view, but could make nothing of it. the society papers lacked enough information to lie about it. the principal actors held their tongues, and in due time the west forgot, for a new scandal arose, and the courts supplied the craving for the doubtful, which is a part of polite education nowadays. yet i do not think that i make a boastful claim, in asserting that i alone, beyond those immediately concerned, became possessed of full knowledge of the occurrence. it was to me first of all that lord maclaren related the history of it, and, despite my advice to the contrary, laid it upon me that i should tell none in his lifetime. he is dead now, and the publication of the story will throw a light upon much that is well worth investigating. it may also help me to sell the pearls, which is infinitely more important, as any unprejudiced person will admit. here then is the story. i had a visit from the chief actor in it towards the end of june in the year 1890. he came to tell me that he was to be married quietly in the middle of the following month to the hon. christine king, the very beautiful sister of lord cantiliffe. she was then staying at the old family place at st. peter's, in kent; and she wished to avoid a public wedding in view of the recent death of her sister, whose beauty was no less remarkable than her own. maclaren's visit was but the prelude to the purchase of a present, and the business was made the easier since he had the simplest notions as to his requirements. he had recently come from america--without a wife _mirabile dictu_--and there had seen a curious anchor bracelet. the wristband of this bauble was formed of a plain gold cable, the anchor itself of pearls and diamonds; the shackle consisted of a small circle of brilliants; the shaft had a pink pearl at either end; the shank had a black pearl at the foot of it, and the flukes were of white pearls with small diamonds round them. i found it to be rather a vulgar ornament; but his heart was set on having it, and it chanced that i had the very pearls necessary. i told him that i would make him a model, and send it down to his hotel at ramsgate within a week; and that, if he then thought the jewel to be over showy, we could refashion it. he left much pleased, returning by the granville express to kent; and within the week he had the model; and i received his instructions to proceed with the work. it is necessary, i think, to say a word here about this curious character. at the time i knew him, maclaren was a man in his fortieth year, though he looked older. he was once vulgarly described in a club smoking-room as being "all hair and teeth," like a buzzard; and his best friend could not have ranked him with the handsome. yet the women liked him--perhaps because it was a tradition that he made love to every pretty girl in town; and it was surprising beyond belief that he reached his fortieth year, and remained single. when he went to america in 1888 the whole of the prophets gave him six months of celibacy; but he cheated them, and returned without a wife. true, a copy of an american society paper was passed round the club, where the men learnt with surprise that new york had believed this elderly don juan to be engaged to evelyn lenox, "the lady of the unlimited dollars," as young barisbroke of the bachelors' called her; and had been very indignant when he took passage by the _teutonic_, and left her people to face the titters of a triumphant rivalry. but for all that he was not married, and could afford to laugh at the malignant scribes who made couplets of his supposed amatory adventures in boston; and dedicated sonnets of apology, "_pro amore mea_," to e---l---and the marrying mothers of new york generally. such a man cared little for the threats of this young lady's brother, or for the common rumor that she was the most dashing girl in new york city, and would make things unpleasant for him. he had twenty thousand a year, and for _fiancée_ one of the prettiest roses in the whole garden of kent. what harm then could a broker's daughter, three thousand miles away, do to him? or how mar his happiness? but i am anticipating, and must hark back to the anchor with the flukes of pearl. i sent the model down on wednesday; on the friday morning i received the order to proceed with the work. early on the following monday, as i read my paper in a cab on the way to bond street, i saw a tremendous headline which announced the "sudden and mysterious disappearance of lord maclaren." the report said that he had left his hotel on the saturday afternoon to walk, as the supposition went, to st. peters. but he had never reached lord cantiliffe's house; and although search had been made by the police and by special coastguard parties, no trace of him had been found. i need scarcely say that the murder theory was set up at once. clever men from town came down to wag their heads with stupid men from canterbury, and to discuss the "only possible theory," of which there were a dozen or more. the police arrested all the drunken men within a radius of ten miles, and looked for bloodstains on their coats. the hon. christine king was spoken of as "distracted," which was possible; and the family of the missing nobleman as "plunged into the most profound grief." nor, as an eloquent special reporter in his best mood explained, was this supposed tragedy made less painful by the knowledge that the unhappy victim of accident or of murder was to have been married within the month. for a whole week the press had no other topic; the police telegraphed to all the capitals; a reward of a thousand pounds was offered for knowledge of lord maclaren, "last seen upon the east cliff at ramsgate at three o'clock on the afternoon of saturday, the fifth of july." a hundred tongues gave you the exact details of an imagined assassination; ten times that number--and these tongues chiefly feminine--told you that he had shirked the marriage upon its very threshold. but the mystery remained unexplained--and as the day for the wedding drew near, the excitement amongst a section of society rose to fever heat. had the body been found? had the detectives a clue? were the strange hints--implying that the missing man had quarrelled with his _fiancée's_ brother, and thrown a glass of wine in his face; that he had a wife in algiers; that he was married a year ago at cyprus; that he was bankrupt--merely the fable of malicious tongues, or had they that germ of truth from which so vast a disease of scandal can grow? i made no pretence to answer the questions--but they interested me, and i watched for the development of the story with the keenness of a hardened novel reader. the day fixed for the wedding now drew near; and when the bridegroom did not appear, the vulgar, who do not believe scandals though they like to hear them, declared that the murder theory was true beyond question. the rest said that he was either bankrupt or bigamist--and having consoled themselves with the reflection, they let the matter go. it is likely that i should have done the same had i not enjoyed a solution of the mystery, which came to me unsought and accidentally. on a day near to that fixed for the wedding i was at victoria station about eight o'clock in the evening when i ran full upon the missing nobleman; and for some while stood speechless with astonishment at the sight of him. his beard was longer than ever, recalling the traditions of killingworthe or of johann mayo; his dundreary whiskers were shaggy and unkempt; he was very pale in the face, and wore a little yachting cap and a blue serge suit which begarbed him ridiculously. he had no luggage with him, not even a valise; and his first remark was given in the voice of a man afraid, and in a measure broken. "ah, sutton, that's you, is it?" he cried. "i'm glad to see you, by jove; have you such a thing as half-a-crown in your pocket?" i offered him half-a-sovereign, still saying nothing; but he continued rapidly,-"you've heard all about it, of course--what are they saying here now? do they think i'm a dead man, eh?--but i won't face them yet. upon my life, i dare not see a soul. come with me to an hotel; there's a good fellow--but let's have a cognac first; i'm shivering like a child with a fever." i gave him some brandy at a bar, and after that we took a four-wheeled cab--he insisting on the privacy--and drove to a private hotel in cecil-street, strand. they did not know him there, and i engaged a room for him and ordered dinner, taking these things upon myself, since he was as helpless as a babe. after the meal he seemed somewhat better, and i telegraphed to ramsgate for his man, though it was impossible that the fellow could be with him until the following morning. in the meantime i found myself doing valet's work for him--but i had his story; and although it was not until some months later that another supplied some of the missing links in it, he telling me the barest outline, i will set it down here plainly as a narrative, and without any of those "says i's" and "says he's," which were the particular abomination of defoe, as they have been of many since his day. the complete explanation of this mystery was one, i think, to astonish most people. it was so utterly unlooked for, that i was led at the first hearing to believe the narrator insane. he told me that at three o'clock on the afternoon of july 5th, he had left his hotel on the east cliff at ramsgate--the day being glorious, and a full sun playing upon the channel and many ships--and had determined to walk over to st. peters, where his _fiancée_ expected him to a tennis party. with this intention, he struck along the cliff towards broadstairs, but had gone only a few paces, when a seaman stopped him, and touching his hat respectfully, said that he had a message for him. "well, my man, what is it?" maclaren asked--i had the dialogue from the seaman himself--being in a hurry as those who walk the ways of love usually are. "my respects to your honor," replied the fellow, "but the ketch _bowery_, moored off the pier-head, 'ud be glad to see your honor if convenient, and if not, maybe to-morrow?" "what the devil does the man mean?" cried his lordship, but the seaman plucking up courage continued,-"an old friend of your honor's for sure he is, my guv'ner, abraham burrow, what you had the acquaintance of in new york city." "well, and why can't he come ashore? i remember the man perfectly--i have every cause to"--a true remark, since abraham burrow then owed the speaker some two thousand pounds; and had shown no unprincipled desire to pay it. "the fact is, my lordship," replied the seaman, whose vocabulary was american and strange, "the fact is he's tidy sick, on his beam ends, i guess with brounchitis; and he won't be detaining you not as long as a bosun's whistle if you go aboard, and be easin' of him." now, although this comparatively juvenile lover was in a mighty hurry to get to st. peter's, there was yet a powerful financial motive to send him to the ship. he had done business with this abraham burrow in america; the man had--we won't say swindled--but been smart enough there to relieve him of a couple of thousand pounds. to hope for the recovery of such a sum seemed as childish as a sigh for the moon. maclaren had not seen burrow for twelve months, and did not know a moment before this meeting whether he was alive or dead. yet here he was in a yacht off ramsgate harbor, desiring to see his creditor, and to see him immediately. the latter reflected that such a visit would not occupy half an hour of his time, that it might lead to the recovery of some part of his money, that he could make his excuses to the pretty girl awaiting him--in short, he went with the seaman; and in a quarter of an hour he stepped on board an exceeding well-kept yacht, which lay beyond the buoy over against the east pier; and all his trouble began. the craft, as i have said, was ketch rigged, and must have been of seventy tons or more. there was a good square saloon aft, and a couple of tiny cabins, the one amidships, the other at the poop. when lord maclaren went aboard, three seamen and a boy were the occupants of the deck; but a king charles spaniel barked at the top of the companion; and a steward came presently and asked the visitor to go below. he descended to the saloon at this; but the sick man, they told him, lay in the fore cabin; and thither he followed his very obsequious guide. i had the account of this episode and of much that follows from two sources, one a man i met in new york last summer, the other, the victim of the singularly american conspiracy. lord maclaren's account was simple--"as there's a heaven above me, sutton," said he, "i'd no sooner put my foot in the hole when the door was slammed behind me, and bolted like a prison gate." the american said, "i guess the old boy had hardly walked right in, before they'd hitched up the latch, and he was shouting glory. then the skipper let the foresail go--for the ketch was only lyin'-to, and in ten minutes he was standing out down the channel. but you never heard such a noise as there was below in all your days. talk about a sheet and pillow-case party in an insane asylum, that's no word for it." the fact that the "illustrious nobleman," as the penny society papers called him, was trapped admitted of no question. he realized it himself in a few moments, and sat down to wonder, "who and why the devil, etc.," in five languages. i need scarcely say that the thing was an utter and inexplicable mystery to him. he thought at first that robbery was the motive, for he had the model of the bracelet upon him; and as he sat alone in the cabin, he really feared personal violence. he told me that he waited to see the door open, and a villain enter, armed with colt or knuckleduster, after the traditional adelphian mood; but a couple of hours passed and no one came, and after that the only interruption to his meditation was the steward's knock upon the cabin door, and his polite desire to know "will my lord take tea?" "my lord" told him to carry his tea to a latitude where high temperatures prevail; and after that, continued to kick lustily at the door, and to make original observations upon the owner of the yacht, and upon her crew, until the light failed. yet no one heeded him; and when it was dark the roll of the yacht to the seas made him sure that they stood well out, and were beating with a stiff breeze. unto this point, temper had dominated him; but now a quiet yet very deep alarm took its place. he began to ask himself more seriously if his position were not one of great danger, if he had not to face some mysterious but very daring enemy--even if he were like to come out of the adventure with his life. yet his mind could not bring to his recollection any deed that had merited vindictive anger on the part of another; nor was he a blamable man as the world goes. he paid his debts--every three years; he was amongst the governors of five fashionable charities, and the only scandalous case which concerned him was arranged between the lawyers on the eve of its coming into court. the matrons told you that he was "a dear delightful rogue"; the men said that he was "a cunning old dog"; and between them agreed that he had read the commandments at least. possibly, however, those hours of solitude in the cabin compelled him to think rather of his vices than of his virtues--and it may be that the fear was so much the more real as his shortcomings were secret. be that as it may, he assured me that he had never suffered so much as he did during that strange imprisonment, and that he cried almost with delight when the door of the cabin opened, and he saw the table of the saloon set for dinner, and light falling upon it from a handsome lamp below the skylight. during one delicious moment he thought himself the victim of a well-meaning practical joker--the next his limbs were limp as cloth, and he sank upon a cushioned seat with a groan which must have been heard by the men above. this scene has been so faithfully described to me that i can see it as clearly as though i myself stood amongst the players. on the one hand, a pretty little american girl, with hands clasped and malicious laughter about her rosy mouth; on the other, a shrinking, craven, abject shadow of a man, cowering upon the cushions of a sofa, in blank astonishment, and hiding his view of her with bony fingers. at a glance you would have said that the girl was not twenty--but she was twenty-three, the picture of youth, with the color of the sea-health upon her cheeks, the spray of the sea-foam glistening in her rich brown hair. she had upon her head a little hat of straw poised daintily; her dress was of white serge with a scarf of yacht-club colors at the throat; but her feet were the tiniest in the world, and the brown shoes which hid them not unfit for an artist's model. and as she stood laughing at the man who had become her guest upon the yacht, her attitude would have made the fortune of half the painters in hampstead. the two faced each other thus silently for a few minutes, but she was the first to speak, her voice overflowing with rippling laughter. "well," she said, "i call this real good of you, my lord, to come on my yacht--when you were just off to the other girl--and your wedding's fixed for the eighteenth of july. my word, you're the kindest-hearted man in europe." he looked up at her, some shame marked in his eyes, and he said,-"evelyn, i--i--never thought it was you!" "then how pleased you must be. oh, i'm right glad, i tell you; i'm just as pleased as you are. to think that we've never met since you left n'york in such a flurry that you hadn't time even to send me a line--but of course you men are so busy and so smart that girls don't count, and i knew you were just dying to see me, and i sent the boat off saying it was old burrow--how you love burrow!--and here you are, my word!" she spoke laboring under a heavy excitement, so that her sentences flowed over one another. but he could scarce find a coherent word, and began to tremble as she went on,-"you'll stay awhile, of course, and--why, you're as pale as spectres, i guess. now if you look like that i shall begin to think that we're not the old friends we were in n'york a year ago, and walk right upstairs to arthur. you remember my brother arthur, of course you do. he was your particular friend, wasn't he?--but how you boys quarrel. they really told me two months ago in the city that arthur was going in the shooting business with you. fancy that now, and at your age." this sentence revealed what was lacking in the character of the girl; it showed that malicious, if rather low and vulgar, cunning which prompted the whole of this adventure; and it betrayed a revenge which was worthy of a frenchwoman. maclaren had but to hear the harsh ring of the voice to know that the girl who had threatened him months ago in new york had met her opportunity, and that she would use it to the last possibility. every word that she uttered with such meaning vehemence cut him like a knife; his hair glistened with the drops of perspiration upon it; his right hand was passed over his forehead as though some heat was tormenting his brain. and as her voice rose shrilly, only to be modulated to the pretence of suavity again, he blurted out,-"evelyn, what are you going to do?" "i--my dear lord maclaren--i am entirely in your hands; you are my guest, i reckon, and even in america we have some idea of what that means. now, would you like to play cards after dinner, or shall we have a little music?" the steward entered the cabin at this moment, and the conversation being interrupted, maclaren chanced to see that the companion was free. a wild idea of appealing to the captain of the yacht came to him, and he made a sudden move to mount the ladder. he had but taken a couple of steps, however, when a lusty young fellow, perhaps of twenty-five years of age, barred the passage, and pushed him with some roughness into the cabin again. the man closed the long, panelled door behind him; and then addressed the unwilling guest. "ah, maclaren, so that's you--devilish good of you to come aboard, i must say." the newcomer was evelyn lenox's brother, the owner of the ketch _bowery_. he acted his part in the comedy with more skill than his sister, having less personal interest in it; indeed, amusement seemed rather to hold him than earnestness. it was perfectly clear to maclaren, however, that he would stand no nonsense; and seeing that a further exhibition of feeling would not help him one jot, the unhappy prisoner succumbed. when the dinner was put upon the table, he found himself sitting down to it mechanically, and as one in a dream. it was an excellent meal to come from a galley; and it was made more appetizing by the wit and sparkle of the girl who presided, and who acted her _rôle_ to such perfection. she seemed to have forgotten her anger, and cloaked her malice with consummate art. she was a well-schooled flirt--and her victim consoled himself with the thought, "they will put me ashore in the morning, and i can make a tale." by ten o'clock he found himself laughing over a glass of whisky and soda. by eleven he was dreaming that he stood at the altar in the church of st. peter's and that two brides walked up the aisle together. * * * * * the next picture that i have to show you of maclaren is one which i am able to sketch from a full report of certain events happening on the evening of his wedding day. the yacht lay becalmed some way out in the bay of the somme; the sea had the luster of a mirror, golden with a flawless sheen of brilliant light which carried the dark shadows of smack-hulls and flapping lug-sails. there was hardly a capful of wind, scarce an intermittent breath of breeze from the land; and the crew of the _bowery_ lay about the deck smoking with righteous vigor, as they netted or stitched, or indulged in those seemingly useless occupations which are the delight of sailors. often however, they stayed their work to listen to the rise and fall of sounds in the saloon aft; and once, when maclaren's voice was heard almost in a scream, one of them, squirting his tobacco juice over the bulwarks, made the sapient remark, "well, the old cove's dander is riz now, anyway." the scene below was played vigorously. evelyn lenox sat upon the sofa, her arms resting upon the cabin table, her bright face positively alight with triumph. maclaren stood before her with clenched hands and gnashing teeth. arthur, the brother, was smoking a pipe and pretending to read a newspaper, leaving the conversation to his guest, who had no lack of words. "good god, evelyn," he said, "you cannot mean to keep me here any longer--to-morrow's my wedding day!" she answered him very slowly. "how interesting! i remember the time, not so long ago, when my wedding day was fixed--and postponed." he did not heed the rebuke, but continued cravenly,-"you do not seem to understand that your brother and yourself have perpetrated upon me an outrage which will make you detested in every country in europe. great heaven! the whole town will laugh at me. i shan't have a friend in the place; i shall be cut at every club, as i'm a living man." the girl listened to him, her eyes sparkling with the excitement of it. "did you never stop to think," said she, "when you left america, like the coward you were, that people would laugh at me, too, and i should never be able to look my friends in the face again? why, even in the newspapers they held me up to ridicule when my heart was breaking. you speak of suffering; well, i have suffered." her mood changed, as the mood of women does--suddenly. the feminine instinct warred against the actress, and prevailed. she began to weep hysterically, burying her head in her arms; and a painful silence fell on the man. he seemed to wait for her to speak; but when she did so, anger had succeeded, and she rose from her place and stamped her foot, while rage seemed to vibrate in her nerves. "why do i waste my time on you?" she cried; "you who are not worth an honest thought. pshaw! 'lord maclaren, illustrious nobleman and great sportsman'"--she was quoting from an american paper--"go and tell them that for ten days you have humbled yourself to me, and have begged my pity on your knees. go and tell them that my crew have held their sides when the parts have been changed, and you have been the woman. oh, they shall know, don't mistake that; your wife shall read it on her wedding tour. i will send it to her myself, i, who have brought the laugh to my side now, scion of a noble house. go, and take the recollection of your picnic here as the best present i can give to you." i was told that maclaren looked at her for some moments in profound astonishment when she pointed to the cabin door. then, without a word, he went on deck, to find the yacht's boat manned and waiting for him. he said himself that many emotions filled him as he stepped off the yacht--anger at the outrage, desire for revenge, but chiefly the emotions of the thought, was there time to reach st. peter's for the wedding ceremony? he did not doubt that lies would save him from the american woman, if things so happened that he could reach england by the morning of the next day. but could he? where was he? where was he to be put ashore? he asked the men at the oars these questions in a breath, standing up for one moment as the boat pushed off to shake his fist at the yacht, and cry, "d--n you all!" but the answer that he got did not reassure him. he was to be put ashore, the seaman said, at crotoy, the little town on a tongue of land in the bay of the somme. there was a steamer thence once a day to saint valery, from which point he could reach boulogne by rail. he realized in a moment that all his hope depended on catching the steamer. if she had not sailed, he would arrive at boulogne before sunset, and, if need were, could get across by the night mail and a special train from folkestone. but if she had sailed! this possibility he dared not contemplate. the men were now rowing rapidly towards the shore, whose sandy dunes and flat outlines were becoming marked above the sea-line. the yacht lay far out, drifting on a glassy mirror of water; the sun was sinking with great play of yellow and red fire in the arc of the west. maclaren had then, however, no thought for nature's pictures, or for seascapes. one burning anxiety alone troubled him--had the steamer sailed? he offered the men ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred pounds if they would catch her. the remark of one of them that she left on the top of the tide begot in him a mad eagerness to learn the hour of high-water; but none of those with him could remember it. he found himself swaying his body in rhythm with the oars as coxswains do; or standing up to look at the white houses shorewards. another half-hour's rowing brought him a sight of the pier; he shouted out with a laugh that might have come from a jackal when he saw that the steamer was moored against it, and that smoke was pouring heavily from her funnels. "men," he said, "if you catch that boat, i'll give you two hundred and fifty pounds!" and later on their lethargy moved him to such disjointed exclamations as "for the love of heaven, get on to it!" "now, then, a little stronger--fine fellows, all of you--a marriage depends upon this." "i'll give you a gold watch apiece, as i'm alive." "by----, she's moving--no, she isn't, there's time yet, if you'll put your backs on to it--time, time--oh, lord, what a crawl, what a cursed crawl!" if one had peered into the faces of the yachtsmen critically, one might have detected the ripples of smirks about their lips; but maclaren could not take his eyes away from the steamer, and the import of the suppressed amusement was lost upon him. the little town of crotoy, with the garish _établissement des bains_, the picturesque church, and the time-wrecked ramparts escarped by the ceaseless play of currents, was then not half a mile away; but a bell was ringing on the pier, and there was all the hurry and the press known in "one packet" or "one train" towns. those who had much to do did it slowly, that they might enjoy leisure to blow whistles or to shout; those who had little atoned by great displays of ineffective activity. some ran wildly to and fro near the steamer; others bawled incomprehensible ejaculations, and incited, both those who were to leave by the ship, and those who were not, to hurry, or they would be late. presently the little passenger steamer whistled with a hoarse and lowing shriek, and cast foam behind her wheels. maclaren observed the motion, and cried out as a man in pain, waving his arms wildly. those on shore mistook as much as they could see of his surprising signals for a parting salute to the vessel; and she left ten minutes after her time--without him. he was hot from the battle of excitement, rivulets of perspiration trickling upon his face; but he had breath to curse the crew of the yacht's boat for five minutes when he stepped ashore; and the request of the coxswain to drink his health stirred up uncounted gifts for oath-making within him. in a quarter of an hour he was raving about the town of crotoy, threatening to do himself injury if a boat were not forthcoming to carry him to st. valery, whence he could get train to boulogne. but the day was nigh gone, and the local seamen were at their homes. few cared for his commission, and the man who took it ultimately set him down just twenty minutes after the last train had left. * * * * * the accounts given in the society papers for the abandonment of the wedding between lord maclaren and the hon. christine king were many. the true one is found in the simple statement that his lordship did not reach england until the evening of the day which had been fixed for the ceremony. so the presents were returned--and i kept the pearls which were to have made the famous anchor bracelet. and when i think the matter over, i cannot wonder at maclaren's hatred of them, or of his wish that i should burn them. "sutton," he said, "i was more than a fool. i ought to have remembered that evelyn lenox was with me when i saw the piece of stuff similar to that i wanted you to make. why, i got the very notion of it from her, and it was only when one of your idiots let a society journalist know what you were doing for me that she heard of the marriage, and of my being at ramsgate." but the rest of his remarks were purely personal. the watch and the scimitar. the watch and the scimitar. the city of algiers, the beautiful el djzaïr, as the guide-book maker calls it, has long ceased to charm the true son of the east, _blasé_ with the nomadic fulness of the ultimate levant, or charged with those imaginary oriental splendors which are nowhere writ so large as in the catalogues and advertisements of the later day upholsterer. this is not the fault of the new icosium, as any student of the moorish town knows well; nor is it to be laid to the account of the french usurpation, and that strange juncture of frank and fatma, which has brought the boulevard to the city of the corsairs and banished mohammed to the shadow of the kasbah. rather, it is the outcome of coupons and of co-operative enthusiasm, which sends the roamer to many lands, of which he learns the names, and amongst many people with whose customs he claims familiarity. to know algiers, something more than a three days' _pension_ in the hôtel de la régence is necessary; though that is the temporal limit for many who return to kensington or mayfair to protest that "it is so french, you know." i can recollect well the monitions and advice which i received two years gone when i ventured a voyage to burmah--in the matter of the ruby interest--and determined to see cairo, tunis, and the city of mosques on my return westward. many told me that i would do better to reach jaffa and jerusalem, others advised the seven churches of asia; many spoke well of rhodes; all agreed, whether they had been there or whether they had not, that algiers was eaten up with chauvinism, and scarce worthy a passing call. barisbroke at the club, who is always vigorous in persuading other people not to do things, summed it up in one of his characteristically inane jokes. "it's had its dey," said he, and buried himself in his paper as though the project ended then and there upon his own _ipse dixit_. this marked and decided consensus of opinion could have had but one result--it sent me to the town of hercules at the first opportunity. if the truth is to be told, the visit was in some part one of pleasure, but in the more part a question of sequins. i had done well in the remoter east, and had sent some fine parcels of rubies, sapphires, and pearls to bond street; but a side-wind of curiosity casting me up upon the shores of tunis, i had bought there, in the house of a very remarkable jew, a bauble whose rival in strange workmanship and splendor of effect i have not yet met with. it was, to describe it simply, the model of a moorish scimitar perhaps four inches long, the sheath exquisitely formed of superb brilliants, the blade itself of platinum, and in the haft not only a strange medley of stones, but a little watch with a thin sheet of very fine pearl for a face, and a superb diamond as the cup of the hands. although the jewels in this were worth perhaps five hundred pounds, the workmanship was so fine, and the whole bauble had such an original look, that i paid eight hundred pounds for it cheerfully, and thought myself lucky to get it at that. what is more to the point, however, is the fact that the hazard which gave me the possession of the scimitar sent me also to algiers to hunt there for like curiosities--and in the end brought me a large knowledge of the moorish town, and nearly cost me my life. i had intended to stay in the town for three days, but on the very evening of my coming to the hôtel d'orleans in the boulevard de la republique, i met a french lieutenant of artillery, a man by name eugene chassaigne; an exceedingly pleasant fellow, and one who had some arabic, but small appreciation of anything beyond the "to-day" of life. he laughed at my notion of buying anything in the upper city, and urged me not to waste time plodding in dirty bazaars and amongst still dirtier dealers. for himself his one idea was to be _dans le mouvement_; but he brought me to know, on the second day of my visit, a singularly docile moor, sidi ben ahmed by name; and told me that if i still persisted in my intention, the fellow would serve well for courier, valet, or in any office i chose to place him. and in this he spoke no more than the truth, as i was very soon to prove. i have always thought when recalling this sheep-like moor to my recollection, that the prophet had done him a very poor turn in locating him so far away from the blessings of company-promotion and rickety building societies. his face would have been his fortune at any public meeting; and as for thoroughness, his love of detail was amazing. before i had been in his hands for twenty-four hours he knew me; being able to tell you precisely how much linen i carried, the number of gold pieces in my purse, my taste in fish and fruits, my object in coming to his country. and this was vexatious; for all the vendors of benares ware fashioned in birmingham, all the sellers of gaudy burnouses, the hucksters of the tawdriest carpets and the most flimsy scimitars, held concert on the steps of the hotel every time i showed my face within twenty paces of the door. sidi alone was immobile, stolid "_nom d'un chien_--they are _blagueurs_ all," said he; and i agreed with him. if these things troubled my man, the jewel i had purchased in tunis troubled him still more. how he learned that i had it heaven alone could tell; but he did not fail to come to me at _déjeuner_ each morning and to repeat with unfailing regularity the monition, "if allah wills, the jewel is stolen." i used to tolerate this at first; but in the end he exasperated me; and upon the seventh morning i showed him the model and said emphatically, "sidi, you will please to observe that allah does not will the loss of the jewel--let us change the subject." he gave me no answer, but on the next morning i had from him the customary greeting--and the laugh was all upon his side, for the scimitar was gone. i say that the laugh was with sidi, but in very truth i do not believe that this worthy fellow ever laughed in his life. he possessed a stolid immobility of countenance that would have remained in repose even at the sound of the last trumpet. the intelligence which i conveyed to him, i doubt not with pathetic anger, and much bad language, moved him no more than the soft south wind moved the statue of the first governor-general out by the mosque there. he examined my ravished bag with a provoking silence; muttered a few pessimistic sentences in arabic; and then fell back upon the koran and the platitudes of his prophet. if he had been an englishman, i should have suspected him without hesitation; but he bore such a character, he had been so long a servant of the hotel, he was by his very stolidity so much above doubt, that this course was impossible; and being unable to accuse him, i bade him take me to the nearest bureau of police, that i might satisfy my conscience with the necessary farce. this he did without a protest, but i saw that he looked upon me with a pitying gaze, as one looks upon a child that is talking nonsense. although i flatter myself that i concealed my annoyance under a placid exterior, this loss affected me more than i cared to tell. for one thing, the jewel was very valuable (i was certain that i could have obtained a thousand pounds for it in bond street); i was convinced, moreover, that i should hardly discover its fellow if i searched europe through. during my stay at the hôtel d'orleans i had kept it locked in a well-contrived leather pouch in my traveling trunk; and as this pouch had been opened with my own keys it was evident that the thief had access to my bedroom during the night--a conclusion which led me to think again of this stolid moor, and to declare that the case against him was singularly convincing. so strong, in fact, were my suspicions that i made it my first care to go to the _maître_ of the hotel and to demand satisfaction from him with all the justifiable indignation which fitted the case. when he heard my tale, his face would have given rembrandt a study. "how?" said he. "monsieur is robbed, and _chez-moi_?" i repeated that i was, and told him that if he did not recover the bauble in twenty-four hours, consequences would follow which would be disastrous to his establishment. then i asked him frankly about the moor sidi; but he protested with tears in his eyes that he would as soon accuse his own mother. he did not deny that some one in his house might know something about it; and presently he had marshaled the whole of his servants in the central court, addressing them with the fierce accusation of a _juge d'instruction_. it is superfluous to add that we made no headway, and that all his "desolation" left me as far from the jewels i had lost as i was at the beginning of it. from the hotel to the bureau of the police was an easy transition, but a very hopeless one. a number of extremely polite, and elaborately braided, officials heard me with interest and pity; and having covered some folios of paper with notes declared that nothing could be done. for themselves, their theory was that the moor sidi had been talking about my treasure, and that some other domestic in the hôtel de la régence had opened my door while i slept and got possession of the ornament with little risk. but that any one should recover the property was in their idea a preposterous assumption. "it is on its way to paris," said one of them as he closed his note-book with a snap, "and there's an end of it. we shall, without doubt, watch the servants of the hotel closely for some time, but that should not encourage you. it is possible that the man mohammed, the porter of the place, may know something of the affair. we shall have his house searched to-day, but, my friend, _ne vous montez pas la tête_, we are not in paris, and the upper town is worse than a beehive. i am afraid that your hope of seeing the thing again is small." i was afraid so, too; but being accustomed to strange losses and to strange recoveries, i determined to venture something in the hazard, and to remain in algiers for a few weeks, at any rate. the most difficult part of my work lay in my ignorance of the city, and in that matter sidi alone could help me. every day we went with measured and expectant tread through that labyrinth of fantastic and half-dark streets, where repulsive hags grin at the wickets below, and dark eyes coquette at the gratings above; every day we delved in booths and bazaars, we haggled with the jewel sellers, we bartered with the gold workers, but to no purpose. i had come to think at last that the loss was not worth further trouble; and had made up my mind to return to london, when i recollected with some self-reproach that i had as yet neglected one of the very simplest means to grapple with the occasion--that i had, in fact, offered no reward for the recovery of the jeweled scimitar, and to this omission owed, i did not doubt, the utter absence of clue or conviction. when i was yet angry with myself at this absurd oversight i had a second thought which was even more useful, and one to which i owed much before i had done with the matter. i remembered that the french police had set down my loss to the loud talk of sidi amongst the others at the hotel. why, then, i asked, should not this man also scatter the tidings that i would give so many hundreds of francs for the recovery of the scimitar? no sooner had i got the idea than i acted upon it. "sidi," said i, when he came to me on the next morning, "i have heard much of your cleverness, but you have not yet found my property; now i will give a thousand francs to the man who brings it here within a week." to my utter surprise he bowed his head with his old gravity, and answered, "if allah wills, the jewel is found." this was amazing, no doubt, and in its way a triumph of impudence. if he could find it with that ease, then he must have known by whom it was stolen. i turned upon him at once with the accusation, but he stood with the gravity of granite and responded to all my threats with the simple greeting, as of a father to a son,-"and upon you be peace." to have argued with such a rogue would have been as useful as a demonstration in theology before a mollah; to have accused him boldly of the theft would have been absurd, even had i not possessed such a wealth of testimony in his favor. i sent him about his business, therefore, and went in search of my friend chassaigne, who had been away since i lost the trinket, but was then at the arsenal again. the lieutenant took the news with edifying calmness, but assured me that i had at last taken the only course which was at all likely to result in success. "our friend the moor," said he, "is the most honorable of his kind in algiers, where all are rogues. i do not believe for a moment that he stole the jewels, although his father, his uncle, or his own brother may have done so. your reward may tempt him to return them if the police set up a hue and cry; but if he suggests that you go up in the old town to receive them, tell him you will do nothing of the sort. there are far too many dark eyes and sharp knives there for an englishman's taste, and a moor still has claims in paradise for every frank he sticks. if you took the other course, and sought your money from this hotel-keeper, he would bring a hundred to swear that you did not lose the stones in the hotel, and you would be where you are. it's annoying to adopt a _laissez aller_ policy, but i fear you can do nothing else." i thought that he was right, but my habitual obstinacy was all upon me, and i found myself as much determined to recover the jewels i had lost as if they had been worth ten thousand pounds. i was quite sure that the police would do nothing, and save that they informed me in a cumbrous document that they had searched the house of mohammed the porter, and of five others, my surmise proved a true one. it was left to sidi, and for sidi i waited on the morning of the ninth day with an expectancy which was unwarrantably large. he came to me at his usual hour, eight o'clock, and when he had salaamed, he said,-"if allah is willing, the jewel is found--but the money is not enough." "not enough!" said i, choking almost with anger, "the money is not enough! why, you brazen-faced blackguard, what do you mean?" he replied with an appeal to the beard of the prophet, and an evident word of contempt for my commercial understanding. the irony of the whole situation was so great, and his immobility so stupendous, that i quickly forbore my anger and said,-"very well, sidi, we will make it fifteen hundred francs." and with that he went off again, and i saw him no more until the next day, when he repeated the _incha alläh_ and the intimation that the price was too low. on this occasion my anger overcame me. i seized him by the throat, and shaking him roughly, said,-"you consummate rascal, i believe you have the jewels all the time; if you don't bring them in an hour, i will take you to the police myself." my anger availed me no more than my forbearance. it did but awaken that inherent dignity before which i cowed; and when i had done with him, he left me and came no more for three days. on the third morning when he returned he looked at me with reproach marked in his deep black eyes; and raising his hands to heaven he protested once more in the old words, and to the old conclusion. i was then so wearied of the very sound of his voice that i took him by the shoulders and held him down upon an ottoman until he would consent to bargain with me, shekel by shekel for the return of my gems; and in the end he consented to make me the longest speech that i had yet had from his lips. "by the beard of my father," said he, "i protest to milord that neither i nor my people have the precious thing he wots of; but the dog of a thief, upon whose head be desolation, is known to me. for money he took the jewel, for money he shall lay it again at milord's feet; yet not here, but in the house of his people, where none shall see and none shall know." a long argument, and some fine bargaining, enabled me to get to the bottom of the whole story; but only under a solemn oath that the keeping of the secret should be shared by no one. with much fine recital and many appeals to the holy marabouts to bear witness, sidi demonstrated that the thief was no other than mohammed the porter, who had the stone hidden with extraordinary cunning, and from whom it was to be got only at my own personal risk. "under the shadow of the kasbah it lies," said he; "under the shadow of the kasbah must you seek it with those i shall send to you, and no others. obey them in all things; be silent when they are silent, speak when they speak, fly and lose not haste when they bid you fly." this was all very vague, but a deeper acquaintance with his purpose made it the more clear. in answer to my question why he could not bring the jewel to the hotel, he said that it would never be surrendered except to a certain force; and with that force he would supply me. he himself seemed to be under an oath to bear no hand to the emprise; and he was emphatic in laying down the condition that i must go absolutely alone; or, said he, "the hand of fatma shall not be passed nor that which you seek come to you." now, the proper spirit in which to have received this suggestion would have been that of an uncompromising negative. chassaigne had cautioned me particularly against going into the old town, and here was i hearkening to a proposition to visit it not only by night, but in the company of those who possibly were honest, but more possibly were cut-throats. i knew well enough what he would say to the venture; and truly i was much disposed to refuse it at the beginning, and to go to london as i had at first intended. this i told sidi, and he gave me for answer a shrug of the shoulders, which implied that if i did, my property, for which i hoped to get a thousand pounds, would certainly remain behind me. nor did threats and entreaties move him one iota from his position, neither on that day nor on the next two; so that i saw in the end that i had better decide quickly, or take ship and fly a city of indolent frenchmen and rascally moors. it would prove tedious to recount to you the various processes of reasoning by which, finally, i found myself of a mind to court this hazard and agreed to sidi's terms. he on his part had vouched for my safety; and after all, the man who ever wraps his life in cotton-wool, as it were, must see little beyond the stuffy box on his own habitation. here was a chance to see the moors _chez-eux_, possibly to risk a broken head with them; in any case, a chance which an adventurous man might be thankful for, and which i took. having once agreed to sidi's terms, he set upon the realization of the project with unusual ardor. the very next evening was chosen for the undertaking, the hour being close upon ten, and the moor himself accompanying me some part of the way. he had advised me to equip myself _en arabe_ for the business; and this i did with some little discomfort, especially in the manipulation of the long burnouse, and in the carriage of appalling headgear which he would not allow me to dispense with. i had put these things on at the hotel; but as it is not unusual for a frank to ape the moor when wishing to explore the upper town at night, i escaped unpleasant curiosity, and arrived at the steep ascent of the rue de la lyre, feeling that i was like, at any rate, to get more excitement out of the old city than nine-tenths of the englishmen who visit her. almost at the top of the street the moor's friends met me. i could see little of their faces, for they covered them as much as possible with their somber-hued cloaks, but they salaamed profoundly on greeting me; and sidi took his leave when he had exchanged a few words in arabic with them. from that time onward they did not speak, but went straight forward into the old quarter, and soon we had entered a narrow way where flights of stairs, frequently recurring, led one up towards the kasbah. here the gables seemed to be exchanging whispered confidences as they craned forwards across the stone-paved ascent; you could see the zenith of the silver sky shot with starlight through the jutting angles of rickety roofs and bulging eaves; the hand of fatma protected the hidden doors of the pole-shored but singularly picturesque houses; the sound of tom-toms and _derboukas_ came from the courts of the kahouaji. the peace of the scene, deriving something from the distant and seductive harmonies, got color from the slanting flood of moonlight which streamed upon the pavement, from the swell of song floating upward from the hidden courts. here and there one imagined that black eyes looked down upon one from the gratings of the shadowed windows above; a biskri, strong of limb and bronzed, lurked now and then in the dark angles of the quaint labyrinth; a few moors passing down to the lower city inclined their heads gravely as we passed them. but for the most part the children of the prophet had gone to their recreations or their sleep; the narrow path of stairs was untenanted, the silence and softness of an african night held sway with all its potent beauty. we must have mounted for ten minutes or more before my guides stopped at a large house in a particularly uninviting looking _cul-de-sac_; and having spoken a few words with an old crone at the wicket, we gained admittance to a large court, and found it packed with a very curious company. it was a picturesque place, gloriously tiled, and surrounded by a gallery supported on slender columns of exquisite shape, terminating in moorish arches and fretwork balustrades. there the women, numbering some score, sat; but i, knowing the danger of betraying the faintest interest in a moor's household, averted my eyes at once, and examined more minutely the strange scene below. here was a dense throng surrounding a dervish who danced until he foamed; a throng of bronzed and bearded arabs sipping coffee and smoking hubble-bubble pipes with profound gravity; a throng which seemed incapable of expressing any sort of emotion, either of pleasure or of pain. at the further end of the court, where many luxuriant palms and jars of gorgeous flowers gave ornament to a raised daïs, musicians squatted upon their haunches, playing upon divers strange instruments, guitars, flutes, and the gourd-like _derbouka_, and sent up a hideous and unbroken wave of discordant harmony which made the teeth chatter and seemed to agitate one's very marrow. it was a strange scene, full of life and color, and above all of activity; and to what it owed its origin i have not learnt to this day. i know only that our coming with such a lack of ceremony did not disconcert either the host or his guests. they paused a moment to give us an "es-salaam âlikoum," to which we returned the expected "oua âlikoum es-salaam;" and with that we sat amongst the company, but in a very conspicuous place, and took coffee with the gravity of the others. i must confess that the surprise of finding myself in such a place was very great. i had gone with the moors to recover a thousand pounds' worth of property, but how the visit brought me nearer to that, or to any purpose whatever, i could not see. i knew that i was the only european in the company, and all tradition as well as common-sense told me of my danger. yet i had gone of my own will, and the moor sidi had encouraged me to the risk, which after all, i thought, was worth bartering for the sight of so strange an entertainment. indeed, it is not in accord with my fatalistic creed to conjure up terrors of the mind in moments of comparative tranquillity; and when i realized that the question of wisdom, or want of wisdom, was no longer under discussion, i fell in with the spirit of this singular festivity--and waited for enlightenment. the feast of performance was now going briskly. a conjurer trod upon the heels of the dervish, and performed a few palpable feats which deceived no one but himself; and after that we had the expected dancing girls, and the ouled-naïls. nor were the latter the central piece, as it were, of our host's program; for presently the moors about me ceased their babbling; there was a restless chatter in the gallery above, the old host whispered something to his attendant, and new musicians, who had relieved the others, struck up a hideous banging of tom-toms, flageolets, and guitars. at that very moment, when i had come to the conclusion that sidi ben ahmed had made a fool of me, and that my errand was to end idly, one of my guides spoke for the first time, putting his mouth close to my ear, and using very passable english. "now," said he, "be ready;" but whether he meant me to prepare for some saltatory display, or for action, he did not condescend to say; and before i could ask him a great applause greeted the advent of a dancing girl, who bounded into the arena with a conventional run, and at once began her amazing gyrations. she was a beautiful girl, not more than eighteen years of age, i should think, and probably a circassian. she had clear-cut features, a complexion bright with the freshness of youth, a figure of fine balance and maturity; but the most striking thing about her was her hair. more abundant or glossier tresses i have never seen. in color, a deep golden-red, this magnificent silky gift was bunched upon her head in a great coil at the back, and fell thence almost to her feet. it covered her when she chose as the burnouses covered the moors who watched her; and she used it in her dancing with a _chic_ and skill unimaginable. in one moment coiling it about her body so that she seemed wrapped in a sheen of gold; in the next cast like an outspread fan behind her, she presented a picture ravishing beyond description, and one which drew shouts of "zorah, zorah!" even from the women in the galleries above. i sat under the spell, enraptured like the rest; and as the girl floated with a dreamy lightness, or pirouetted with amazing agility, or swept past me with a motion that was the very essence of grace, i was ready to declare that the dance was unrivaled by anything i had seen in any of the capitals. now, the girl must have been dancing for a couple of minutes, and the audience was thoroughly held by her prodigious cleverness, when i, engrossed as the others, was suddenly interrupted in my contemplation of her by the action of the moors, my guides. to my utter surprise they all of a sudden stood up on either side of me, and one of them crying to me in english as before to be ready, the other seemed to wait for the girl zorah, who, with streaming hair and body thrown well back, was dancing down towards us. a few of the company near to us turned their heads, and cried out at the interruption; but the girl came on with quick steps, and when she was just upon us, the moor who waited seized her by her hair, and putting his hands in the great coil upon her head, he unrolled it with a strong grasp, and the missing scimitar, to my unutterable surprise, rolled out upon the pavement. i am willing to confess that for one moment the whole action dazed me so completely that i stood like a fool gaping at the jewel, and at the girl, who had begun to cling to the moor and to scream. the thing was so unlooked for, so strange, so incredible, that i could do nothing but ask myself if it were really my bauble that lay upon the floor, or was i the victim of an incomprehensible trick? yet there was the jewel, and there at my elbow were the two moors, now all ready for the action aftermath. scarce, in fact, had one of them picked up my property and crammed it into my hand before the uproar began, the whole roomful of erstwhile sedate-looking men springing to their feet and turning upon us. for an instant, the moor who had snatched the jewel for me kept them back with an harangue in arabic of which i did not understand one word; but his best and only card failed him at the first playing, and it remained to face the danger and to fight it. of the extraordinary scene that followed i remember but little. it seemed to me that i was surrounded in an instant by hungry, gleaming hawk-like eyes which glowed with mischief; that women screamed, that lamps were overturned; that i saw knives flashing on every side of me. had sidi's men then failed him or displayed any craven cunning, i take it that my body might have been hurled from the kasbah within a minute of the recovery of the jewel; but they showed quite an uncommon fidelity and courage. standing on either side of me so that my body was almost wedged between theirs, they suddenly flashed long knives in the air, and cut and parried with wondrous dexterity. for myself, i had only my fists, and these i used with a generous freedom, thinking even in the danger that a moor's face is a substantial one to hit; and that a little boxing goes a long way with him. yet i could not help but realize that the minute was a supreme one, and as the crowd of demoniacal and shouting figures pressed nearer and nearer, threatening to bear us down in the _mêlée_, i heard my heart thumping, and began to grow giddy. as the press became more furious, the two men who had done so well were gradually carried away from me. i found myself at last in the lower corner of the room, surrounded by four burly fellows (the main body of the company swarming round the moors, my guides); and of these but one had a knife in his hand. with this, taking the aggressive, he made a prodigious cut at me, which slit my left arm from the shoulder almost to the elbow; but i had no pain from the wound in the excitement of the moment; and i sent him howling like a dervish with a heavy blow low down upon the chest. of the others, one i hit on the chin, whereupon he cried like a woman; but the remaining two sprang upon me with altogether an unlooked-for activity; and bore me down with a heavy crash upon the pavement. i thought then that the end had come; for not only was i half stunned with the blow, but the man who knelt upon my chest gripped my throat with grim ferocity and threatened to squeeze the life out of me as i lay. in that supreme moment i recollect that the lights of the room danced before my eyes in surprising shapes; that i saw a vision of dark-eyed but screaming women in the gallery above; that the jewel in my vest cut my skin under the pressure of the moor's knee; and that i fell to wondering if i would live one minute or five. then, as a new and violent shouting reached me, even above the singing in my ears, the moor suddenly let go his hold, the light of the scene gave way to utter impenetrable darkness, and i fainted. [illustration: buying the scimitar. --_page 152_] * * * * * next day i took _déjeuner_ at the café apollon with my arm in a sling, and chassaigne's talk to whet my appetite. he had occupied himself during the morning in cross-examining sidi, from whom he had wormed the whole secret of the robbery. "it is as clear as the sun," said he, "the porter mohammed was advised to steal the jewel by the man i unfortunately recommended to you. mohammed, knowing that the police would search his house and watch him, hid the jewel in his wife's hair." "his wife!" said i. "was this dancing girl married to a scamp like that?" "certainly; these circassians don't make great matches, if they make a good many of them. their husbands are generally loafers about the cafés; and this girl was no more fortunate in that way than most of her sisters. you see, the fun of the business is that sidi got two thousand francs from this man for telling him how to steal your jewels, and another two thousand from you for stealing them back again. that's why he did not go with you himself last night. luckily, i went into your hotel at ten o'clock, and learning from the man where you had gone, i followed you with a dozen of my fellows." "you came at a happy time, my dear fellow," said i, "in another five minutes i should have needed only an executor." "that's true; you were nearly dead when i had the pleasure of kicking the man who sat on your head. but it was your own fault, you must admit." "any way," said i, "i got the stones, and that's something." he agreed to this, and when i had thanked him for the great service he had done me, we parted. that night i left algiers, carrying with me the pacific benediction of the admirable moor, sidi, who, despite the fact that i had kicked him down the steps of the hotel in the morning, came with me to the steamer, and patronized me to the end of it. i can hear to this day his last and final salutation:-"blessed be allah, the jewel is found!" the seven emeralds. the seven emeralds. the man stood upon the weir-bridge watching me, a conspicuous man with strange clothes for river-work upon him, and a haunting activity which drove him from the lock to the inn, and again from the inn to the lock with a crazy restlessness which was maddening. i had been for some hours whipping the mill-stream, which lies over against the lockhouse at pangbourne; but meeting with no success amongst the chub, which on this particular july evening were aggravatingly indifferent even to the succulent frog, i had punted to the bushes in the open river; and there lit my pipe and fell to speculation upon him who favored me with so close an attention. i have said that he was a conspicuous man, and to this i owed it that i had seen him. he wore the straw hat of jesus college, cambridge, and a velvet coat which shone brown and greasy in the falling sunlight; but his legs were encased in salmon-pink riding breeches, and he had brown boots reaching to his knees. beyond this, he was singularly handsome, so far as i could judge with the river's breadth between us; and his hair was fair with a ridiculous golden strain quite unlooked for in one who has grown to manhood. why he watched me so closely i could not even conjecture, but the fact was not to be disputed. i had lain by the mill since the forenoon, and since the forenoon he had hugged to the weir-bridge or to the lockhouse, giving no attention to the score of small boats and launches which passed up or down to goring or mapledurham; or even to the many pretty women who basked upon the cushions of punts or pair-oars. i alone was the object of his gaze, and for me he seemed to wait through the afternoon and until the twilight. now, had the man hailed me, i should have gone shorewards at once, for my curiosity had been petted by his attentions until it waxed warm and harassing, but this he did not do; keeping his eyes upon me even when i had rested from casting and sat idling in the punt. it would have been easy, i concede, to have gone up river toward goring and so to have avoided him; but this would have cut short the chance of explanation, and have left ungratified my desire to know who he was, and wherefrom came his embarrassing interest in my failure to ensnare the exasperating chub. so i sat there, in turn wondering if he were honest or a rogue, an adventurer or an idler, a river-man or a fop from piccadilly. and as the problem was beyond me, i left it at last; and taking up my punt-pole i gave three or four vigorous thrusts which sent me immediately to the landing-stage of the swan inn, and thence to my room. it may be urged that this was an indifferent way of dealing with the man in the velvet coat if i wished to know more of him; but i had taken that little parlor of the inn which juts out upon the hard of the boathouse; and i could see from my open windows both the panorama of the lock and that of the open reach away towards the islands. it was now close upon the hour of seven, and the most part of the river lay in cooling shadow. i could hear by no means inharmonious music floating out over the water from a girl's guitar; there were several launches waiting for the lock-gates; and i recall well the face of a very remarkable woman, who presently came to the landing-stage in a gig, the cushions of which were of an aggressive yellow, but one which was a striking contrast to her black hair and ivory-white skin. quite apart, however, from her indisputable beauty, i had reason to watch this conspicuous oarswoman, for no sooner had she come to the landing-stage than the man in the velvet coat went to her assistance, and taking a number of bags and baskets from the boat, accompanied her up the village high street, and so carried her from my view. here then, thought i, is the end of my mystery. the man had been waiting for the return of his wife, when i, with preposterous conceit, plumed myself that he had been looking to speak with me. what creatures of ideas we are! and when i reflected upon it, certainly it was monstrous absurd to think that one man should wish to watch another failing to catch fish through a long summer's afternoon. indeed, i laughed heartily at myself as the maid set my dinner, and i put my creel and rod upon the piano (one puts everything upon the piano in a thames village) before daring the very substantial, if rural, repast served to me. one dines up river, as most people know, in semi-public state. loafers, loiterers, fruit-sellers, boatmen--all these congregate near the open window, and discuss verbally the dishes which the diner discusses more substantially. custom so stales us that this publicity in no way interferes with our pleasure. i have so long learned to tolerate the presence before my casement of oarsman, pedlar, and even the less welcome bargee, that these now are almost as salt to my appetite. and for the matter of that, on the evening of which i am writing, the crowd was less than usual, being composed of one vendor of fruit, three men in obviously cheapside blazers, and an old woman who sold boot-laces and discussed the weather with me through the casement at one and the same time. she was such a merry old soul, and gave me so much of her history and of that of her son, who was "fightin' for his quane and counthry" in a place which she could not mind herself of, that i forgot the ridiculous romance of the velvet-coated man, and even his existence, until of a sudden he presented himself, no longer watching me upon the bridge, but standing at the casement, and asking to be admitted. "i'm most horribly sorry," said he, "to intrude upon you at your dinner, but my train leaves for town in ten minutes, and i particularly want your opinion upon something which they tell me you know more about than any man in england." "by all means," said i. "but your estimate of my opinion is hopelessly flattering; it concerns jewels, i suppose?" "exactly," said he; "and i shall be under very large obligations to you if you will tell me whether two emeralds i have in my pocket are of any value, and if so, where would be the best place to dispose of them?" he took a little paper box from his coat, and laid it near to my plate. i saw that it was a box which had contained tabloids of nitro-glycerine (a drug prescribed for diseases of the heart); and that it had been sold by a chemist of the name of benjamin wain, whose shop was in the high street at reading. these things i observed with my intuitive habit of grasping detail, learnt in long contention with rogues; and then forgot them as the man opened a screw of tissue paper, and i beheld two of the finest emeralds i have seen during my career. the stones were perfectly matched, of a rich velvety, but brilliant color, and came, i did not doubt after my first sight of them, from the upper orinoco or from columbia. their weight i judged to be about five carats each, and i knew that if they were without a flaw, which very few emeralds are, they would be worth fifteen hundred pounds at a very low estimate. all this passed through my mind like a flash; but with admiration of the gems, which brought covetousness in its path, there came at once the other thought--what is this man doing here with these stones, and how comes it that he can carry them and yet be unconscious of their value? but this i endeavored to conceal, and waited for him to speak. "well," said he, after a pause, "do you find much the matter with them?" "i should want my glass to see," said i with caution; "the light is failing, and my eyes are not as good as they were." "you mean a magnifying glass, i suppose?" said he, producing a lens from his pocket. "well, i happen to have one." why it was i cannot tell you, but this trifling circumstance i marked down in my mind as my first sound cause of suspicion against him. perhaps i coupled it with that spontaneous distrust which i felt when first he spoke, for the very softness of his voice was obviously assumed; and now that i saw him near to me, i did not fail to notice that the velvet coat was much worn, and the rowing club tie he wore frayed beyond respectability. but i took his lens, and, having examined the stones long and critically under it, i found them to be without flaw or blemish. then i gave him my opinion. "they are fine stuff," said i; "do you happen to know where they come from?" i looked him full in the face when i spoke, and observed a slight drawing of the lines above his mouth. when he answered me i was sure that he had thought out a lie--and with effort. "i believe they come from salzburg," he stammered; "at least i have heard so." "that could not possibly be," said i; "the worst emeralds we have are the best product of that mine. i fancy they are from venezuela." "ah, that's the place," said he, "i remember it now; but i've a wretched head for geography." while he said this the train to london steamed out of the railway station, which is not a stone's throw from the inn, and he, forgetful of his tale to me, sat watching it unconcernedly. i had discovered him in a second lie, and i waited to entrap him to a third with the practised pleasure of a cross-examiner. "do you sell these stones for yourself or as an agent?" i asked, assuming some authority as i felt surer of him. his hesitation in answering was merely momentary, but it was enough for my purpose. "for myself," said he; and then with clumsy maladroitness he added, "they were left to me by my father, and i have never had the heart to offer them to any one. i'll tell you what, though; if you'll give me a thousand pounds for the pair, you shall keep them." "that's a long price," said i; "and if you don't mind the suggestion, my dinner's getting cold." i had spoken thus with the design of putting him off; but he was undisguisedly an ill-bred man, and i saw that i could have bought the emeralds from him for five hundred pounds. my hint--if such you could call it--fell upon deaf ears; and he, seeming not to hear it, continued to argle-bargle, but betraying himself in every word he said. "come, now," he cried, "you don't want to be hard upon me; give me a check for five hundred, and send the balance to brighton in a week if you find them as good as you think. that's a fair offer, isn't it?" "the offer is fair enough," said i; "but you forget that i did not come here to buy emeralds. i am in pangbourne to catch chub, as you saw this afternoon." "i'm afraid i can't agree to that," he replied with a laugh; "i did not see you catch chub this afternoon--i saw you miss three." "the bait was poor," i said meaningly; "fish are as canny as men, and don't take pretty things if they think there's a hook in them." this i gave him with such a stare that he rose up suddenly from his chair, and, having made a bungling parcel of his jewels, went off by himself. he had to pass my window as he left the inn, and as he crossed the road i called after him, saying-"you'll be losing your train to london." "be d----d to that!" said he; and with such a salute he turned the angle of the road, and i lost sight of him. but i thought much of his emeralds through the night, both in my walk across the old wooden bridge to whitchurch, when the river lay dark and gloomy with the sough of the breeze in the reeds and sedge-grass; and again as i lay in the old wooden "best-bed" of the inn, and contemplated the "sampler" which bore witness to the energy of one jane atkins, whose work it was. by what chance had the man found me out? whence came his seedy clothes and his jewels? who was the pretty woman who had gone up from the hard with him? he had come by the stones fraudulently, of course; had the case been different he would have sent them to london to a house of substance, and there got his price for them. at one time i felt that it lay upon me to advise the police in reading of the offer i had received; at another, there came some regret for the stones, and at the manner of his departure. the season had been one of emeralds. i could have sold the pair he had for some profit, and, as my greed told me, i could have bought them cheap. at the end of it i fell asleep to dream that i rowed to mapledurham in an emerald boat, and that a man with emerald eyes steered me abominably. on the next day, quite early in the morning, i set out in a dog-cart for reading, having a _rendezvous_ with barisbroke at the kennet's mouth, whence we were to start for a day's sport upon that fish-breeding river. my drive took me by the old bath-road, turning to the left midway up the village street; but i had not gone very far upon the reading-road before i saw the handsome woman--the wife, as i assumed, of the velvet-coated man--now dressed with exceeding poorness, and carrying a heavy bag towards the biscuit town. at this point the sun beat early upon the sandy way with a shimmer of white and misty light, which promised great heat of the forenoon; there was scarce a quiver of wind in the woods to the left of me, and i did not doubt that walking was a great labor. yet, when i reined in the cob, and asked the woman, if at least i might not carry her bag to reading and leave it for her, she thanked me somewhat curtly, i thought, and evidently resented any notice of her difficulty. it occurred to me, as i drove on, that the man, who had been with her on the previous day, had really left by the last train for london; but when i came into reading, and was about to cross the high street, to reach earleigh, i saw the name benjamin wain superscribed above a little chemist's shop, and i stopped at once. i know that a country tradesman will gossip like a fishwife; and i asked the man for some preparation which he could not possibly find in the pharmacopoeia, and so began to feel my ground. "you're well ahead of the times here," said i, looking at his show-case, which was wofully destitute of drugs. "i shouldn't have thought that you'd be asked for tabloids in a place like reading." "oh, but we are," said he, readily; "it's a wonderfully advanced town is reading--you won't get much in regent street which is not here. i've lived in reading all my life--and seen changes, sir, indeed i have!" "you know most of the people then?" said i, with a purpose. "ay," said he, "i've born and buried a many, so to speak; seen children grow to men and women, and men and women grow to children--you wouldn't think it perhaps!" "no," said i, "you don't show it; but your reputation, if i may say so, goes beyond this place. i was in pangbourne yesterday, where a tall, yellow-haired man was speaking of you; who is he, i wonder?" "a tall, yellow-haired man!" he exclaimed, putting his finger in the center of his forehead as if in aid of memory; "i didn't know there were such in reading. a tall, yellow--let me see, now----" "you sold him some tabloids of nitro-glycerine; perhaps that will help to his identification?" said i. "ah, now i know you're wrong," said he; "there's only one man within five miles of here who uses that stuff, and he hasn't got yellow hair--ha, ha, he hasn't got any at all." "who is he?" i asked with growing curiosity. "why, old jabez ladd, the miser, out at yore park; he takes that stuff for his heart, sir. wonderful weak heart he has, too; but he hasn't got yellow hair--no, i may say with conviction that he has no hair at all." i had learnt all i needed, for the mere mention of the name jabez ladd was sufficient for me. at the man's words a whole freshet of ideas seemed to rush to my mind. i had known the miser for years as one of the hardest jewel buyers in the country; i had sold him thousands of pounds' worth of stuff; i had heard the strangest traditions of his astounding meanness and self-denial. they even said that he forbade himself a candle after dusk, and that his fare was oatmeal and brown bread; while he lived in a house which would not have been a poor retreat for a millionaire. this i knew, but the words of the apothecary had made other things clear to me--one, that the yellow-haired man had got his emeralds in a box which must have come from ladd's house, since he alone in the neighborhood took tabloids of nitro-glycerine; another, that the man's very shabbiness and obvious shuffling pointed very strongly to the conclusion that he should be watched. of these things was i sure as i met barisbroke, and i turned them over in my mind often during the moderate sport of the forenoon, and after. not that i had any troublesome friendship for ladd, who was no sort of a man to think about; yet i could not forget that he was a buyer, and it seemed both wise and likely to be profitable to warn him. possibly i had reared a fine superstructure of suspicion upon a mere flimsy basis of prejudice; but in any case i could do no harm, i thought, and might even sell the old scoundrel a parcel of jewels in the attempt. his house, as i then knew, lay over by the hills of caversham; and i remembered that i could take it by a circuitous route which would bring me to pangbourne, after i had passed through mapledurham and whitchurch. in the end, i resolved at least to see the old man; and when i had dined at a ridiculously early hour with barisbroke, i crossed the river by the white bridge, and in thirty minutes i was at the gate of yore hall. i am no archæologist, and have an exceedingly poor eye for a building; but my first impression of this hall was a pleasing one. it is true that the wooden gate of the drive was broken down, and the garden-land beyond it nothing but a tangle of swaying grass, thistle, and undergrowth, preparing one for poor things to come; but the house itself was a massive and even a grand attempt at a towered and battlemented structure, built in stout stone with norman windows, and the pretense of a keep, which gave strength to its air of antiquity. when i came near to it, i saw that many of the gargoyles had fallen from the roof of the left wing, which seemed to be unfinished, and the parapet was broken away and decaying above the porch; while--and this was even more singular--there did not seem a single curtain to the house. it was now upon the hour of seven, and a glimmer of sunlight shining redly upon the latticed casements lit up the façade with a greater brilliance than one looks to see out of italy. there were rooks circling and cawing in the great elms by the moat which ran round three sides of the house; i could hear the baying of a hound in the courtyard by the stables--but of man or woman i saw nothing, though i rang the great bell thrice, and birds fled from the eaves at the clatter, and the rabbits that had sported by the thicket disappeared in the warren. some minutes after the third ring, and when i was preparing to drive off and leave jabez ladd to his own affairs, the stable door opened, and a girl came out, dressed, it seemed to me, curiously in a smart white frock; but with untidy hair, though much of it; and an exceedingly pretty face, which had been the prettier for a little scouring. the creature had great dark eyes like a _grisette_ of bordeaux; and when she saw me, stood swaying upon her feet, and laughing as she bit at her apron-strings, as though my advent was an exceedingly humorous thing. then she said,-"is it mr. ladd you're wanting?" i told her that it was. "you'll not be a county man?" she asked. "i'm from london," said i, "and my name is bernard sutton. tell mr. ladd that i'll not keep him five minutes." "there's no need," said she, simpering again; "he's been a-bed since the milk." "in bed!" cried i amazed. "yes," said she, "it's over late for company; but if ye'll write something i'll run up with it; the housekeeper's away sick." she seemed to think that all this was a good joke, and wondered, i doubt not, that i did not simper at her again. i was on the very point of whipping up the nag, and leaving such a curious household, when one of the landing windows went up with a creak, and ladd himself, with a muffler round his throat, was visible. "what d'ye want in my grounds?" he roared. "here, you hussy, what are ye chattering there for?--thought i was asleep did ye--ha!" "good evening, mr. ladd," said i, quietly; "i'm sorry, but i appear to have disturbed you. i've a word for your ear if you'll come down." "hullo," cried he, in his cracked and piercing voice; "why it's you, is it? egad, i thought you were the butcher! what's your business?--i'm biding in bed, as you can see." "i can't shout," said i, "and my business is private." "won't it wait?" he snarled. "you haven't come to sell me anything?" "i don't sell stuff in the street," said i; "come down and i'll talk to you. but if you don't want to hear--well, go to bed." his curiosity got the better of him at this point, and he snapped out the words, "i'm coming down," and then disappeared from the window. but he had no intention of opening the front door, as i found presently when of a sudden he appeared at a casement upon the ground floor, and resumed the conversation. "you're not asking after my health," said he, "but i'll let you know that i'm eat up with cold; can ye have done with it straight off?" "yes," said i, leaning over from the dog-cart to spare my voice. "do you know a tall man with yellow hair who's got two emeralds to sell?" at these words his face whitened in the sunlight, and he opened his great mouth as though to speak, but no sound came. then quickly he drew a small box from his pocket, such as i had seen in the hands of the velvet-coated man, and took a tabloid from it. "i'll be about letting you in," said he, as he went to shut down the casement. but i said, "i think not, there's a drive of five miles to whitchurch before me, and this horse trips." "for the love of god," cried he, suddenly putting off all self-restraint, "don't go till i've heard you--man, my life may depend upon it!" "how's that?" said i. "i'm going to tell you," said he; "and if ye'll stay, we'll crack a bottle of port together." he had whetted my curiosity now, and presently i heard him nagging at the pretty girl who had first greeted me. after that he threw the stable door wide open, and dressed only, as i could see, in a loose dressing-gown and a pair of carpet slippers, he led the horse to a stall that had the half of a roof; crying to the maid to get her down to the house of a man he named, there to beg a feed of corn and the loan of a boy. but while he was doing it, he shivered incessantly, and seemed eaten up with fear. "you appear to think that i'm putting up with you," said i, when i heard his orders; "there's no need to look after the nag--i shan't be here ten minutes." "not ten minutes!" he exclaimed, still with quavering voice. "oh, but you will--when you've heard my talk. would you see me murdered?" i did not answer, being in the main amused at his attempts to get the horse out of the trap, and particularly to unbuckle the very stiff belly-band. the girl had gone tripping off with herself to the village as i thought; but though at that time i had no intention of staying beyond an hour with him, i unshafted the animal myself, and tethered the beast to the rickety manger, throwing my own rug across his loins; then i followed ladd through a black and smoke-washed kitchen to a dingy apartment near the hall, and, the place being shuttered, he kindled a common paraffin lamp, which might have cost a shilling but would have been dear at two. "i'll be getting the port," said he, casting a wistful look at me in the hope, perhaps, that i should decline his invitation to a glass, "you'll not mind refreshment after your drive?" "thanks; you may be sure i won't," said i; and while he was gone fumbling down the passage, i saw that his dining-room had once been a fine apartment, oak-panelled and spacious; and that ancestors, whose rubicund jowls spoke of "two-bottle" men, now seemed to survey the economy below with agony unspeakable. for the rest, there was little in the room but depressing victorian chairs in mahogany, and a piano with a high back, such as our grandmothers played upon. when ladd came back, he had a bottle in his hand. i smiled openly when i saw that it was a pint; but he decanted it with a fine show of generosity, and pushing a glass to me, took up the matter which interested him at once. "where did ye see my nephew?" he asked, while i sipped the wine with satisfaction; "it'll have been in london, perhaps?" "i saw him--if he was your nephew--at pangbourne last night," said i; "he had a pretty woman with him, and wanted to sell me two emeralds." "that must have been the wife he married in san francisco," cried he, "but she has no sinecure; you didn't hear that i paid his passage abroad last spring after he'd robbed me of a thousand----well and it was emeralds he wanted to sell you?" "two of the finest i have ever seen," said i, "and matching perfectly." the import of the emeralds had evidently been lost upon him until this time; but now of a sudden he realized that he might be concerned in the business, and his agitation was renewed. "i wonder what emeralds they were?" he asked as if of himself; then turning to me, he exclaimed, "will you come upstairs with me a minute?" he did not wait for me to answer, but led the way up bare stone steps to a landing off which there led two long passages; and in a big and not uncomfortable bedroom he showed me three safes, one a little one, which he opened, and took therefrom a case containing seven emeralds of a size and quality apparently similar to the two i had seen at pangbourne. but when he gave them to me to examine i saw at once that five of them were genuine and two were false. "well," said he, after i had looked at them long and closely, "how do you like them?" "i like them well enough," said i; "at least, i like five of them, but the other two are glass!" at this he cried, "oh, my god!" and clutched the stones from me with the trembling fingers of a madman. when he had seen them for himself--being judge enough to follow me in my conclusions--he began to roar out oaths and complaints most pitifully, cursing his nephew as i have never heard a man cursed before or since. in my endeavor to calm him, i asked how it could possibly be that this fellow he feared had got access to his safe; but he poured out only an incoherent tale, begging me to send for the police, then not to leave him, then falling to prophecy, and declaring that he would be murdered before the month was out. it was altogether the most moving sight i have ever seen--pointing strongly to the conclusion that the man was mad; and, in fact, where his jewels were concerned, sanity was not his strong point. by and by he got sufficient reason to tell me that he had the administration of some of his nephew's property, and that in his work he had first fallen foul of a man, headstrong, vindictive, by no means honest, and, in some moods, dangerous. yet, even knowing his relative's character and the threats he had urged against him, he could not tell how the safe was broken, or by what means the emeralds had gone. he was not even aware that his nephew was in england; and i had been the first to bring intelligence of his coming. i asked him, naturally, if these two stones represented the whole of his loss, and at that he fell off again to his raving, but took two keys of the larger safes from a secret drawer in the smaller as i could see; and began to pour upon the faded bed-cover a wealth of treasure which might have bought a city. here were rubies of infinite perfection, diamonds set in a hundred shapes, ropes of pearls, boxes of opals, bracelets of every known pattern, rings scarce to be numbered, aigrettes, necklaces--in short, such a stupendous show that the dark and dingy bedroom was lighted with wondrous light, a myriad rays flashing up from the bed, until the whole place seemed touched with a wand, and changed to a chamber of a thousand colors. before the bed of jewels the old man stood chattering and moaning; now bathing, as it were, in the gems, now letting them ripple over his hands, or addressing tender endearments to them; or clutching them with nervous avidity as though he feared even my companionship. in the midst of this strange scene, and while we were both held spellbound by the wondrous vision of wealth, a sudden exclamation drew the miser from his employment. it came from the girl who had been sent to the village, she now standing in the doorway of the bedroom, and crying, "oh, good lord!" as she saw the glitter of the gems. but ladd turned upon her at the words, and grasped her by the wrists, crying out as he had cried when first he knew that he was robbed. "you hussy," he hissed, bending her by the arms backward almost to the floor; "what do you watch me for? what do you mean by coming here? where are the emeralds you have stolen? tell me, wench; do you hear? tell me, or i shall hurt you!" he held her in so firm a grasp that i feared she would suffocate, and went to pull him off; at which action he turned to cry out against me; but the anger had played upon him so that he fainted suddenly all across the bed, and amongst the jewels. the girl, whom he had forced upon the floor, now rose impudently, and said,-"did ye ever see the like of him?--but i'll make him pay for it! oh, you needn't look, he's that way often. he'll come to in a minute; but he won't find me in the house to-morrow--wages or no wages." "do what you like," i cried to her angrily, "but don't chatter. have you got any brandy in the house?" "brandy! and for him!" said she, arranging her dress which he had torn. "is it me that should be running for it? not if i know it; brandy, i like that!" "then leave the room," i exclaimed imperatively; and with that she went off, banging the door behind her, and i was alone with the man and his jewels. i think it was the strangest situation i have ever known. some thousands of pounds' worth of gems lay scattered upon the coverlet, upon the sheets, and even upon the carpet. ladd himself lay like the figure upon a tomb, white and motionless; there was only the light of a common paraffin lamp; and three parts of the room lay in darkness. my first thought was for the man's life, and remembering that i had a flask in my pocket, i forced brandy between his clenched teeth, and laid him flat upon his back. in a few moments there was a perceptible, though very quick beat of his pulse, and after that, when he had taken more of the spirit, he opened his eyes, and endeavored to raise himself; but i forbade him roughly, and gathering up his gems i bundled them in the greater safe, and turned the key upon them. he however, watched me with glazing eyes, scarce being able, for lack of strength, to utter a word; but he motioned for me to give him the key, and this he placed under the pillow of his bed, and fell presently into a gentle sleep, which was of good omen. i should mention that it was now full dark outside, and, as i judged, about the hour of ten. i had got the man's jewels into his safe for him, and he was sleeping; but where the bewitching little hussy was i did not know; or what was the value of the old man's fears about his nephew. it was clear to me, however, that he had been robbed, probably by the immediate agency of the girl who acted as his servant; and it was equally obvious that i had no alternative but to stay by him, even if prospect of probable business in the future had not moved me to do so. an inspection of his room by the flickering light of the lamp disclosed to me a small dressing-room leading from it, this containing a sofa; and when i had quite assured myself that my patient, as i chose to regard him, slept easily, and that his pulse was no longer intermittent nor faint, i took my boots off and lay down upon the hard horsehair antiquity which was to serve me for bed. strange to say, in half an hour i fell into a dreamless sleep, for i was heavy with fatigue, and had walked many hours upon the kennett's bank; but when i awoke, the room was utterly dark, and the screams of a dying man rang in my ears. in moments of emergency one's individuality asserts itself in curious actions. i am somewhat stolid, and a poor subject for panics, and i remember on this particular occasion that my first act was to draw on my boots with deliberation, and even to turn in the tags carefully before i struck a match, and got a sight of the scene which i remember so well though many months have passed since its happening. when i had light, i found ladd standing by the door of his large safe, which was open, but there was a deep crimson stain upon his shirt, and he no longer had the voice to scream. in fact, he was dying then; and presently he fell prone with a deep gasp, and i knew that he was dead. in the same instant a black shadow, as of a man, passed between me and the flicker of the light; and as the match went out the door of the chamber swung upon its hinges, and the assassin passed from the room. now, ladd had scarce fallen before i was in the dark passage, listening with great tension of the ear for a sound of the hiding man's footstep. but the place was as still as the grave; and then there came upon me the horrid thought that the fellow lurked with me about the room's door, and presently would serve me as he had served the other. cold with fear at the possibility, i struck a match, and advanced along the passage, using half a box of lucifers in the attempt. at the corner i came suddenly upon a cranny; and as the light died away, two gleaming eyes shot up glances to mine, and a man sprang out flashing a blade in the air, but rushing past me, and fleeing like the wind towards the southern wing--the unfinished one. so swift did he go that i saw nothing of his face, and it seemed scarce a moment before i heard a door open, and another great cry, followed by a splashing of water and utter silence. [illustration: "two gleaming eyes shot up glances to mine." --_page 179_] this second cry took, i think, what little nerve i had left; and while the echo of it was still in the passages my last match went out. the place was now black with unbroken darkness; every step that i took appeared to reach mysterious stairs and to send me staggering; but at last a sudden patch of moonlight from a corner encouraged me to go on, and i reached the spot where the man had disappeared. at that point a door creaked and banged upon its hinges, but the white light coming through it saved me from the fate of him who had gone before. it showed me at a glance that the door was built in a side of the unfinished wall of the wing, and that the man, who evidently had mistaken it for the entrance to the back staircase, which i saw a few feet farther on, had crashed down fifty feet into the moat below, carrying, as i supposed, his plunder in his hands. then i knew the meaning of the gurgling cry and the horrid thud; and terror seemed to strike me to my very marrow. how i got out of the house i do not know to this day. thrice i made a circuit of winding corridors only to find myself again before the room where ladd's body lay in the circle of moonlight which the window focused upon the safe; thrice i reached doors which seemed to give access to the yard; but led only into gloomy shuttered chambers where curious shapes of the yellow rays came through the dusty crevices. at last, however, i reached the frowsy kitchen, and the yard, and stood a minute to breathe the chill night air, and to think what was to be done; whither first to go; to whom to appeal. the whine of a voice from the stable seemed to answer me. i entered the roofless shanty, and there found the dark-eyed girl sitting upon a rotting garden roller, and quivering in every limb. she too was dressed ready to accompany the man who then lay in the moat, i did not doubt; but at the first sight of me she started up with blanched face, and clinging to me she cried,--"take me away; oh, my god, take me away from it!" and rather incoherently she muttered that she was innocent, and protested it in a score of phrases. i saw a flush of dawn-light upon her babyish face as she spoke, and it occurred to me when i was putting the horse to the dog-cart that she was unmistakably pretty, and that her customary occupation was not that of a housemaid. but i only said to her,-"keep anything you have to say for the police. i am going to fetch them." and with that i drove off, and the last i saw of my lady showed her as she sat moaning on the straw, her hair tumbling upon her shoulders, and her face buried in her hands. * * * * * the trial of this woman, and her acquittal by the jury, are well remembered in caversham; nor is the mystery of jabez ladd's jewels and their disappearance by any means an infrequent topic for alehouses. what became of the precious stones which arthur vernon ladd, the old man's nephew, took from the safe on the night he murdered his uncle, one man alone knows--and that is myself. the people of the town will tell you that the moat was dragged and drained with no result. i myself saw the body of the murderer--the velvet-coated man of pangbourne; but although at least a couple of thousand pounds worth of jewels were missing from the safe, there was not one of them about him, or to be found upon the _concrete_ bottom of the moat into which he had dropped with the blood of ladd fresh upon his hands. in vain the police searched the girl--her name was rachel peters, she said--and her boxes; equally in vain the old house was ransacked from top to bottom. the thing was a black mystery; it was gossip not only for inns and beerhouses, but for the county. the report of it spread even to america, and to this moment it has remained unsolved. the jewels being undiscoverable, and ladd having been murdered to my knowledge by his nephew, the girl, rachel peters, was, as i have said, discharged. she returned to the old house for her boxes, and immediately disappeared from the knowledge of the county. ten months later i saw her dancing on the stage of an opera house in florida, and she was wearing _five of the seven emeralds_ which ladd had lost! the spectacle seemed so amazing to me that i sought her out between the acts, and found her as full of _chic_ and _verve_ as a parisian _soubrette_. nor did she disguise anything from me, telling me everything over a cigarette with a relish and a sparkle which was astounding to see. "yes," said she--but i give her story in plain words, for her way of telling it is not to be written down--"i had known vernon ladd for years. i doubt if there was a worse man in europe; but i was frightened of him, and i entered old ladd's service at his wish to help him to steal the jewels. we got at the emeralds first, because they were in the small safe; but we didn't know where the keys of the other safe were, and we put two sham emeralds in the case to keep the old boy quiet while we worked. that night you came to the house vernon ladd was already inside, concealed behind the old man's bed; and he watched you open the great safe and spread the jewels. the mischief of it was that ladd woke up five minutes too soon, and caught the boy by the throat--you know what he got for that, for you saw it and you know how vernon mistook the door, and went down in a hurry. well, when you'd gone for the police, i ran round to the back of the house, and what should i see but the bag of jewels stuck on a ledge just under the landing window. he'd dropped them as he fell, and there they were lying so plain that one could have seen them a mile off. i just ran up and reached them with my arm, but when i was in the stable again, and thinking of hiding them, i heard you driving up the road, and i slipped the bag in the first thing handy--it was your own fishing creel. "no, you never found them, did you? just because they were hanging up there plain for every one to see. when the judge discharged me at the court, i went again to the house to get my box, never thinking to see the stones; but you'd gone away without the creel, and it was the first thing i touched lying in the straw of the stable. you may be sure it didn't lie there long. i'd saved up enough money for a passage to the states, and when i got here i started as an actress, as i was before, and i sold the things one by one. these emeralds are all that's left--and if you're a brick, you'll buy them!" this was her story. she was a clever woman, and having been discharged on the accusation of robbing the dead miser ladd, could not be sent to her trial again. her invitation for me to buy the emeralds was tempting. i had already purchased two from the unhappy lady of pangbourne, who was married to the velvet-coated vernon ladd, and is now living in seclusion in devonshire. the other five would have made the set of great value. ladd had no heirs; it was altogether a nice point. i debated it. the pursuit of the topaz. the pursuit of the topaz. i was struggling heroically to force my arms through the sleeves of a well-starched shirt, when the man knocked upon the door of my bedroom for the second time. i had heard him faintly five minutes before, when my head was as far in a basin as the limitations of parisian toilet-ware would allow it to go; but now he knocked imperiously, and when i opened to him he stood hesitatingly with a foolish leer upon his face, and that which he meant for discretion upon his lips. "well," said i, "what the devil do you want? can't you see i'm dressing?" at this he looked with obvious pity for me towards the basin, but quickly recovered himself. "dame," said he, with a fine gascon accent, "there is a lady waiting for monsieur in the _salon_." "a lady!" cried i with surprise; "who is she?" "i am but three days in paris," replied he, "and she is a stranger to me. if monsieur prefers it, i will ask her some questions." "you will please do nothing of the sort; did she give her name?" "i seem to remember that she did, but it has escaped me. i shall say that you are engaged, and will see her to-morrow; monsieur leaves paris at nine o'clock _hein_?" he said this with another vulgar leer, but i turned round upon him fiercely, for i had begun to brush what is left of my hair. "you impudent poltroon!" exclaimed i; "leave the room instantly, and tell the lady that i will be with her in five minutes." "ah," said he, "it is like that then? very good; i shall safeguard your interests; trust in me. may i be permitted to light the candles?" he said this with a fine eye to the bill; but i sent him away after some display of temper, and finished my dressing quickly, wondering all the time who the woman was, and what she wanted of me. although i have lived in paris nigh as much as in london, i have cultivated few acquaintances there other than those arising in the path of business. the domestic side of parisian life has never appealed to me; i am equally callous to the vaunted attractions of the dismal halls of light and twaddle with which the foreigner usually boasts acquaintance. it was, therefore, not only with profound surprise, but also with a piquant curiosity, that i fell to speculating upon the identity of my visitor, and the mission which brought her to me. at the time of this occurrence i had been in the french capital for one week, being carried there by the announcement of the sale of the countess boccalini's jewels. after my usual custom, i had engaged rooms in the little hôtel de bard, which is almost the neighbor of the grand hotel, and had passed the week in the haggling and disputation which are the salt of life to a jeweler. the result was the purchase of a superb necklace of brilliants, which subsequently i sold here for nine thousand pounds, and of a quantity of smaller stones, and of chrysoprase, the gem which is now becoming exceedingly fashionable in london. but on the night of which i am writing, my trading was done, and a ridiculous promise to go to the opera ball alone kept me in paris. how the promise came to be given to my friend tussal i cannot remember; but he had assured me that the ball was the event of april, and that my education would remain imperfect until i had gazed upon the spectacle of _calicots_ and _flaneurs_ rioting in the great house which garnier designed and delaunay painted. and so pressing was he, and so largely did i trade with him, that i yielded at last to his solicitations, and agreed to accept a seat in his box. by the terms of his invitation i was to meet him at the grand café at midnight, and thence was to proceed to the opera house at half-past twelve. i had determined to dine quietly at my own hotel, and afterwards to spend the intervening hours at the théâtre de la porte st. martin; for which purpose i dressed at a comparatively early hour; and dressing, received the stiff-necked gascon's message that a lady wished to see me. yet for what purpose she came, or who she might be, i had not an idea; and i turned over a hundred theories in my mind as i descended to the little reception room of the hotel, and there found her sitting by the uncovered table with a railway guide before her, but obviously agitated, and as obviously pretty. when looking back upon the extraordinary mystery of which this childish girl was for me the center, i have often remembered that she was one of the few frenchwomen i have met who had a thoroughly english face. her skin was white and pink, untouched by that olive tint which is so prevalent in paris; her eyes were wondrously blue; she had rich brown hair shot with golden tresses, which gave to the whole a magnificent luster; she was entirely free of that restless gesture which is the despair of a man of nerves. as i first saw her, she wore a captivating apology for a bonnet, which seemed to consist of a spray of jet and a hairpin; but her hands were gloved as only a frenchwoman's hands are, and a long cloak of steel-gray cloth edged with fur, fell about her shoulders, yet permitted one to see an exquisite outline of figure beneath. indeed, she made a perfect little picture, and her exceeding prettiness lost nothing for the rush of color to her cheeks when i spoke to her. "i am bernard sutton," said i; "if it is possible that i can be of any service to you, the privilege is mine----" "thank you, a thousand times," said she, speaking with an accent which added to the charm of her english. "i have heard of you often from madame carmalovitch, whose husband owned the famous opal; you were very kind to her----" "i was exceedingly sorry for her," i replied; "are you a relation of hers?" "oh, no!" she exclaimed; "i am mademoiselle edile bernier, and i live with my mother at 32, rue boissière. you will laugh to hear why i come to you. it is about something you alone can advise me upon, and, of course, you will guess it at once." "i won't waste your time by being ambiguous," said i; "you have come to consult me about some jewels; pray let me see them." there was no one else in the _salon_ at that time, the few people in the hotel being at dinner. the girl had, therefore, no hesitation in opening a bracelet case, which she had carried under her cloak, and showing me a plain band of gold which served as a mount for a small circle of turquoise and an exceedingly large rose-pink topaz, which possessed all the lustre of a diamond. i saw at once that the gem was from brazil, and was large enough and rich enough to be worth a considerable sum, but i have never known hunger for the topaz myself, and when i had taken one look at the bracelet i handed it back to her. "it's exceedingly pretty," said i, "and your stones are very good. there is a little green at the base of the larger turquoises, but you will hardly match the topaz in paris. are you seeking to know the value of it?" "i would never ask that," she answered quickly; "it was a gift from my _fiancé_, monsieur georges barré, whom you may know by name." i vow it was very bewitching to watch the rosy blush which suffused her cheek when she made this confession. yet she spoke with the ring of pride in her voice, and i replied to her encouragingly while she put her treasure beneath her cloak, as though she feared that other eyes than hers should rest even upon the case of it. "monsieur barré is well known to me by name," said i; "his bust of victor hugo from last year's salon is at this moment the chief ornament of my library. i must now congratulate him for the second time." at this she laughed, but the ripples died away quickly upon her face, and the look of haunting fear again troubled her eyes. i observed that she was reticent in speaking plainly to me, and did my best to help her out with it. "you have not yet put to me," said i, "the precise question which brought you here. it concerns the bracelet, of course?" "ye--yes," said she; "but i am very much afraid you will laugh at me. i wanted to ask you if, in your judgment--that is, with your experience--there is any reason why i should not wear my present at the opera ball to-night?" her confusion, when thus she had unburdened herself, was overwhelming. she scarce dared to lift her eyes to mine as she spoke, and one of her hands played restlessly with the railway guide, while the other was closed firmly about her bracelet. nor did i, who know the potency of woman's superstition in the matter of their jewels, feel the touch of a desire to draw amusement from her dilemma. "come," said i, with all the gentleness of voice i could command; "you have been reading something silly. the topaz is the emblem of fidelity, it is also a traditional cure for indigestion. in other words, the ancients were wise enough to know that love and good cooking are not so far apart after all. wear your jewel at the opera by all means, and regard it as an antidote to the _confetti_ you will consume." she heard me thus far with a restrained smile upon her face, and indeed, she half rose as though to end the interview; but the evidence of fear was still about her eyes, and there was the note of unsatisfied questioning in her voice when she said,-"i was sure you would tell me that--but i am keeping you from your dinner, and have already troubled you too much i fear." my answer to this appeal was to close the door of the _salon_, which had been open during our interview, and to draw a chair close to hers. "mademoiselle bernier," said i, "the most important part of the intelligence you meant to bring to me remains unspoken. let me encourage you to tell me everything freely, and be assured that without your express permission nothing you may say will be remembered by me." "thank you, very much," she said quietly, evidently regaining complete confidence; "but i have nothing to conceal. a week ago, monsieur barré gave me this bracelet with the stipulation that i should wear it at the ball to-night. two days ago, i received this letter, which i hesitated to show even to you, lest it should be an injustice to the man i love." she passed, with her words, a dirty scrap of a note to me, the leaf of a sheet of the commonest lined scribbling paper; and i read upon it, written in very bad french, the warning-"mademoiselle. if you wear the topaz bracelet at the opera ball to-night you carry death upon your arm." thrice i read this; and as i repeated the words, the third time aloud, i saw, shaping about the simplicity of the girl, a mystery which seemed as deep, and at first sight as unfathomable, as any as i had known. as for the momentary victim of it she sat watching me while i, all amazed, held the paper still in my hand, and did not hide my surprise, or, indeed, attempt to. "mademoiselle," said i, "you speak to me of very deep matters, i fear. but, of course, you have shown this letter to your relatives?" "i have but one relative in the world," said she, "my mother, who is a paralytic. i dare not mention such a thing to her; she would die of fear." "and you yourself have no suspicion, no faint idea of the cause of such a letter as that?" "i cannot even attempt to guess at it." "there are none of your lady friends who would hazard a joke with you?" "oh, no; they could not think of such a joke as that, and my few friends love me, i believe." i had now begun to pace up and down the room, being in a very whirl of theory and conjecture. and, in truth, the problem presented so many possibilities that it might well have troubled a man whose whole occupation was the solution of mysteries. not that i lacked any clue, for my knowledge, such as it is, of the heartburnings, the jealousies, and the crimes which hover over the possession of precious stones at once compelled me to the conclusion, either that m. georges barré had been the victim of a previous _affaire du coeur_, or that his _fiancée_ had been won only over trampled hopes and vain rivalries. in either case (the case of the woman who resented the man's marriage, or the man who resented the woman's) was there ample warranty for such a letter as mademoiselle bernier had received. yet was i too slow to venture the question with her, and did so at last in sheer pity for her childishness. "tell me," said i, stopping of a sudden before her, "what led you to me?" "madame carmalovitch," said she. "i went to her first, but she knew you were in paris, and would not rest until i had consented to see you. she would have come with me, but is latterly almost always unable to face the night air." "you have no one else you would care to consult in such a case?" "no one," said she. "and if you go to the ball to-night without your bracelet----?" she looked up at me with tears in her eyes when she answered,-"georges would never forgive me." "could you make no excuse to remain at home?" "oh, don't ask me to do that," she exclaimed pitifully, "i have lived for the ball since the beginning of the year!" it was a woman's plea, and not to be resisted. i saw at once that she _would_ go to the dance whatever words fell from me, and i turned from the subject to one more important. "since you are determined to be there to night," said i, "perhaps you will give me monsieur georges barré's address?" "oh, for the love of god, don't tell him!" she cried; "he would never forgive me if i distrusted his present." "my dear lady, i quite understand that. really, you credit me with being a very poor diplomatist. when i see him i doubt if i shall even mention your name to him." "you promise me that?" "i promise you, at least, that he shall never know of your coming to me. but i must exact another promise from you--it is that you will not wear the topaz until you have my permission." "but georges expects me to wear it at the ball." "he would not expect you to risk your life. and there is no reason, so far as i can see, why i should not be able to give you permission, or to refuse it, by eleven o'clock. you do not go to the opera until midnight, i presume?" "monsieur barré has promised to call in the rue boissière at a quarter past twelve. he has an _appartement_ in the hôtel scribe. i can scarce go with him and leave his gift at home." "of course you can't, but i would suggest that, unless you hear from me by midnight, you carry it beneath your cloak as you do now. i shall meet you in the opera house, at any rate. meanwhile, i have one more question to put to you, forgive it from a man who is nearly old enough to be your father. before you became the _fiancée_ of monsieur barré was there--well, was there any other in your thoughts?" she looked at me with frankness shining clearly from her eyes, when she said,-"never for a moment. i was in a convent until last year, and i have not spoken to six men since i left." "that is all i want to know. we will both dine now; but first let me look at your bracelet once more." she handed me the case again; and i, leaving her for a moment to fetch my glass, put the jewel under the strong light of the chandelier, and examined every inch of it within and without. i discovered then that which had escaped me upon first acquaintance with it. in one of the crevices of the clasp there was a blood-stain, unmistakable, even fresh, yet so concealed by the embossment of the jewels that i did not wonder she had remained in ignorance of it. but when i gave it to her again i doubt not that i was very serious, and this she observed, and made comment upon. "you see something now which you did not see ten minutes ago," she cried; "you will surely tell me?" "i see a very pretty pink topaz," said i, forcing a smile, "and a young lady who is missing her dinner. come, have some confidence in me, and put all these thoughts out of your mind until i ask you to remember them again." "i will," said she, "and can never thank you enough; you do not know what a trouble you have taken from my mind." here was the end of our interview, for we had come to the door of the courtyard as we spoke, and i put her at once into the neat little brougham which was waiting for her. there were but two other men, the concierge, and a short, exceedingly dark man in evening dress, about the place at that time; and as the brougham drove away it occurred to me that the latter fellow was watching me rather closely, upon which i had a good look at him; but he turned away sharply to the coffee-room, while i went to my dinner in as fine a state of bewilderment as i have known. never in my long years' work had i come across such a case, or one to which a clue, save on the hypothesis of jealousy, was so completely wanting. yet if jealousy were the motive of the warning, how, i asked, came the bloodstains upon the bracelet? and if the gem had any connection with a previous affair of barré's why did he give it to his _fiancée_? the latter supposition seemed, in itself, sufficient to upset the whole suggestion; nor could i find another; but i determined to call upon the sculptor at once, and to use every device at my command in the interests of the helpless girl who had called upon me. it was now near to ten o'clock, and, having dined hastily, i passed through the courtyard on my way to the hôtel scribe. there i saw, to my surprise, that the ill-visaged italian--for so i judged he was--still loitered about the place; but again appeared to avoid scrutiny. this second appearance of his seemed to me--i knew not why--as the shaping of a story from the air; but i had no courage then to speak to him, and i walked on down the boulevard, perceiving as i went that flambeaus already lighted the great opera house, and that the _canaille_ were preparing for the riot. when at last i came to the hotel, and sent up my card, the answer was that monsieur barré had just left, and was not expected to return until the next morning. how completely this answer undid my purpose i could never set down. the man was my only possible hope. in the haste of my conclusions i had never found time to remember that i might not catch him; that every _flaneur_ was hither and thither like a will-o'-the-wisp on such a night. in vain i asked, nay, implored, for information--they could give me none; and when further importunity was plainly a farce, i had no alternative but to go to the rue boissière, in the ultimate hope that barré's destination was there, and that he had called upon his _fiancée_ before the hour of the appointment. but upon this i was determined, that until i had found him mademoiselle bernier should not wear the bracelet, though i stood at her side from that hour to midnight. my first attempt culminating unfruitfully, i quitted the passage of the hotel, being still bent upon the journey to the rue boissière, and was again upon the pavement before the café, when i saw the italian for the third time. he stood upon the very edge of the curbstone, undisguisedly waiting for me, so that upon a sudden impulse, which had wisdom in it, i walked over to him, and this time he did not turn away. "forgive the question," said i, in my miserable french, "but you are betraying an interest in my movements which is unusual; in fact, you have followed me from my hotel, i think?" "exactly," he replied, having even less of the tongue than i had, though i make no attempt to reproduce the vagaries of his idiom. "i followed you here, as you say----" "for what purpose, may i ask?" "to warn you!" "to warn me!" "certainly, since you carry in your pocket the topaz bracelet." "oh," said i, taken aback at his false conclusion, "it is that, is it? i am much obliged to you, but i don't happen to possess such a thing." "_mon dieu!_" said he; "then she did not sell it to you?" "she certainly did not!" "and she will wear it at the ball to-night?" "of course!" "mother of god! she is a dead woman then." it is often possible to tell from the chord of voice a man strikes in conversation whether he be friend or enemy. i knew from the sympathetic note in this earnest exclamation that i had to do with one who wished well to mademoiselle bernier; but the very sorrow of the words struck me chill with fear. it was plain that i must shape a bold course if i would learn the whole moment of the mystery, and observing that the stranger was a man of much shabbiness and undoubted poverty--if that might be judged by his dress--i played the only possible card at once. "look here," said i, "this is no time for words like this. come into the café with me, and i will pay you fifty pounds for what you know. it shall be worth a hundred if you convince me that you have done a substantial kindness to mademoiselle bernier." he looked at his watch before he made answer. then he said,-"the offer is a fair one, but i do not seek your money. we have two hours in which to save her, but before i go with you, you shall swear to me that anything i may tell you will never be used against me here or in any other country." "of course," said i; "you don't think i am a policeman, do you? i have no other interest but that of the lady." "nor i," said he; and he followed me into the café, but the place was so intolerably full that i bade him come with me to a little wine-shop in the rue lafayette, and there we found a vacant table, and i ordered his absinthe and a glass of coffee for myself. scarcely, however, had he lighted his cigarette before he began to talk of the matter we had come upon. "first," said he, "tell me, did mademoiselle speak of a letter she had received?" "she not only spoke of it, but she gave it to me to read," i replied. "well," said he, "i wrote it." "i gathered that from your words," said i next; "and of course you wrote it for very good reasons?" "you shall hear them," said he, sipping freely of his drink. "that bracelet was last worn at the _mi-carême_ ball in marseilles by a girl named berthe duval. she was carried from the ball-room stabbed horribly, at one o'clock in the morning. she died in my arms, for in one week she was to have been my wife." "and the assassin?" i asked. "was hunted for by the police in vain," he continued. "i myself offered every shilling that i had to find him, but, despite the activity of us all, he was never so much as named. let us go back another year--it is painful enough for me because such a retrogression recalls to me the one passion of my life--a passion beside which the affair at marseilles is not to be spoken of. god knows that the memory of the woman i refer to is at this moment eating out my heart. she was an italian girl, sixteen years old when she died, and i think--why should i not?--that the world has never held a more beautiful creature. well, she wore the bracelet, now about twenty-six months ago, at the _mardi gras_ ball in savona, and she fell dead before my very eyes ten minutes after she had entered the ball-room. she had drunk of poisoned coffee, and no man but one knew by whose hand the death had come to her." "you say no man but one; that one was----" "myself!" "then you knew who killed the other victim at marseilles?" "i knew, as you say; but to know and to arrest are different things." "have you any idea as to the man's whereabouts now?" "every idea; he was in paris three days ago--he was in paris to-day. i should judge it more than likely that he will be at the opera ball to-night." before he could say more i rose from my chair and summoned the head waiter of the place to me. then i wrote an urgent message upon a leaf of my note-book, and despatched it by a cab to 32, rue boissière. the message implored mademoiselle bernier, as she valued her life, to leave the bracelet at home for this night at any rate. "now," said i, "we can talk still at our leisure. you have taken me back to marseilles fourteen months ago; let us have the chapter in your life which precedes that one." he finished off his absinthe, and called for another glass before he would answer me. at last he said,-"you ask me to speak of things which i would well forget. i have sufficient confidence in you, however, to trust my safety in your hands. the story is not a long one. three years ago i was a struggling painter in savona, giving half my life to a study of the pictures in the cathedral--you may know the work of antonio semini there--and the other half to the worship of pauline di chigi, the daughter of a silversmith who lives over against the hotel royal. needless to tell you of my poverty, or of my belief in myself. i lived then in the day-dreams which come at the seed-time of art; they were broken only by the waywardness of the girl, by her womanly fickleness, by the riches of the men who sought her. it would weary you to hear of my long nights of agony following the momentary success of this man or that who wooed her, of my curses upon my own poverty, of my bitterness, and sometimes even of my hopelessness. there is something of this sort in the life of every poor man, but the romance will scarce bear the light of other eyes; it has a place in my story only in so far as it prompted me to steal the topaz, if stealing is the word for the act which gave me its possession. "but _arrivons_! in the end of the january of last year, i, struggling to embrace a career in which i have failed because i have genius and no talent, obtained a commission from the dominican monks to go to the valley of san bernardo, and to take up my residence there while i retouched some of the more modern and more faded pictures in the sanctuary of nostra signora di misericordia. the shrine and village lie in the mountains five miles above savona. the former is now regaining its splendor, though grievously pillaged by the french and by later vandals. the work would have been recreation to me had it not been for pauline, whom i left to the persecution of a fat and soulless trader, and to the solicitations of her father that she would marry him. the new lover loaded her with presents and with the follies of speech which a middle-aged man who is amorous can be guilty of. i could give her nothing but the promise of a future, and that being without market value did not convince her. while she would make pretence of affection for me when we were alone, she did nothing to repulse the other. thus i left savona with her kisses on my lips, and rage of her wantonness in my heart; and for three weeks i labored patiently in the mountain village; and my art lifted me even beyond the spell of the girl. "it was at the end of the third week that my thoughts were ardently recalled to her by a circumstance which cannot fail to appear remarkable to you. i was walking in the late afternoon of the sunday in the path which leads one high amongst the mountains, here rising green and purple, and afar with snowcaps above this lovely spot; and, chancing to turn aside from the road and to plunge into a shrubbery, i sat at last upon the log of a tree perched at the side of as wild a glen as i have seen in italy. below me were rocks of marble-black, yellow, red--all colors; aloe trees flourished abundantly, springing from every cranny of the dell; and though the reign of winter was not done, flowers blossomed everywhere, and multitudinous shrubs were rich in green and buds. here i sat for an hour buried in my musings, and when at last i left it was by an overgrown path across the dingle. i found then that the opposite side of the place was vastly steeper than the one by which i had descended; in fact, i mounted it with difficulty; and when near to the summit, i clung to the saplings and the branches for sheer foothold. this action brought all my trouble, for of a sudden, just as i had come to the top, a shrub to which i was holding gave at the roots, and giving, sent me rolling to the bottom again with a great quantity of soft earth all about me and my bones aching indescribably. "for some minutes i sat, being dizzy and shaken, on the soft grass. when i could look around me i saw a strange thing. in a mound of the mould which had fallen there was a crucifix of gold. thickly covered with the clammy earth as it was, dulled and tarnished with long burial, the value of the thing was unmistakable. rubies were set in the hands for blood, there was a crown of diamonds for thorns; the whole was ornamented with a sprinkling of jewels, whose fire was brilliant even through the pasty clay which clung upon the cross. i need scarce tell you that all the curiosity which is a part of me was whetted at this unexpected sight; and believing that i had come upon a very mine of treasure, i shook the mould off me, and went quickly by the easier path to the hill-top and the place of the landslip. [illustration: "when i could look around me, i saw a strange thing." --_page 206_] "twilight was now rushing through the mountains, and a steely light, soon to turn into darkness, fell upon the ravine; yet i was able still to see clearly enough for my purpose--and for my disappointment. it is true that the slip of the earth from the hillside disclosed a cavernous hole which had been dug, no doubt, many years ago; but of the kind of treasure whose image had leaped into my mind i saw little. the few bright things that lay about in the part of the trough which remained were entirely such vessels as serve priests in the mass. there was a pyx in silver, a paten in gold, and two smaller ones; a monstrance with some exceedingly fine diamonds and the topaz in it, and a gold chalice much indented. i judged at once that these things had been buried either when the french plunderers came to italy, or after the trouble of '70. it was equally clear that they were the property of the dominicans whose house was hard by; and either that their present hiding-place was unknown, or that they had been left in concealment for some reason of diplomacy. in any case, the value of the stones in the monstrance was unquestionable; but i am an italian, as you see, and i believed then, as now, in nothing but omens. for a long while no thought of touching these things, scarce even of handling them--so strong in human flesh is the grain of early superstition--came to me. i sat there gazing at them and watching the light of the topaz sparkling even above the radiance of the smaller diamonds--sat, in fact, until it was quite dark and the miasma rose from the valley. then, in one of those flashes of thought which often mean much to a man, i had it in my mind that both the diamonds and the topaz above them would sit well upon the arms of pauline; i even saw her in my fancy coquetting to me for the present. i began to laugh aloud at the other thoughts, to call them echoes of childish schooling, to handle the chalice and the ring of jewels, and to tell myself that there would be no bigger fool in europe if i did not take them. need i tell you that the reasoning convinced me? and quickly, as the cold of the mist grew more intense, i took the baubles in my hand, still lacking the courage to secure the chalice and the crucifix, and rose to leave the place. "now, for the first time, i think, you are beginning to see the point of my story. the strangest part of it yet remains. i have told you that dark had fallen upon the ravine as i rose up to quit it, and that mists rose thick from the valley with the early night. you will, therefore, easily understand my discomfiture when, reflected upon the white curtain of fog, i saw the dancing light of a lantern. in the next moment a man, young but ragged, with a full-bearded face, and the cape of a priest about his shoulders, stood swinging his lantern before me, and looking down at the tomb of the jewels by our feet. i know not why, but there was something of such power and command writ upon the monk's face that i have never called him by any other name than the christ. with what feelings he inspired me i cannot tell you. terror, human terror, is no word for my experience; my whole being seemed stricken with an apprehension which tortured me and made my brain burn. god! the memory shakes me even now, and i have seen him thrice since, and the fear is greater every time i look upon his face. "thus i stood facing the man when he opened his lips to curse me. i believe now, and shall always believe, that he is nothing but a madman, whose brain has failed from long fasting. be that as it may, his words ring yet in my ears. if you search the world through, read the curse upon barbarossa, and all the volumes of anathema, you will never find such a blasting accusation as the man spoke when he saw the monstrance in my hand. so dreadful was it that i reeled before him; and, losing all command, i struck him down with my stick and fled the place. the next day i quitted the valley of san bernardo, and in a week pauline was wearing the topaz, set by her father as a bracelet, and the diamonds sparkled upon her fingers. she covered me with kisses for the gift, and in her embraces i forgot the madman of the hills, and my melancholy passed. "the rest of my story you know. pauline wore the topaz at the _mardi gras_ ball, and died ten minutes after she had entered the room. a year later, having fled from italy, i became engaged _pour passer le temps_ to berthe duval, at marseilles. a man has many love affairs, but only one passion. i was not in love with her, but she was rich, and troubled herself to get a smattering of art-talk, which amused me. one day she found the topaz in my studio and begged it of me. she died as you have heard; and i, poor as always, and now pursued by the damning curse, came to paris, selling the topaz on my way here to m. georges barré. i have never ceased to regret that which i did; i have lamented it the most since i saw the exquisite creature who is to be his wife. and when, three days ago, i discovered the madman who had cursed me at san bernardo in the very rue boissière where mademoiselle bernier lives, i determined to save her though the deed cost me a confession and my liberty." * * * * * he had ceased to speak, and had drunk off the remainder of his absinthe, while his amazing story, which i could in no way believe, went whirling through my brain, and yet gave to me no shape of reality. at the first i was led to think that he was the madman, and i cracked for sitting there and hearing the extraordinary narration he had contrived; but there was something in his manner which forbade any long continuance of the assumption; and while i had no leisure to bring critical scrutiny upon his tale, it yet impressed me to immediate action. "come," said i, "presuming that your picture is not highly colored, it is quite time we were at the opera; it is striking half-past twelve now. you know what women are. mademoiselle bernier may wear the bracelet in the face of everything i have said; and i am inclined to think with you that it is not wise for her to do so." "god forbid that she should," said he; and with that we went out together. the weather at that time was cold and cheerless; a bleak wind swept round the corners of the streets; and the lights which illumined the peristyle of the great building swayed and flickered with lapping tongues of red and yellow. but once inside, the glow of light and color passed description. here, whirling, shouting, dancing, leaping, the maskers rioted, almost drowning with their clamor the blare of the band; the superb entrance hall was ablaze with the flash of tawdry jewels and shining raiment; kings and queens, knights and courtiers, _calicots_ and clowns, swarmed up the massive staircase, struggling, screaming, pushing, regardless of everything but the madness of the scene within. it was with the greatest difficulty that i reached tussal's box, and therefrom looking down upon the wild carnival, seeing at the first but a medley of form and color, a reckless horde of dancers, grisettes, shepherdesses, over whose heads _confetti_ hurtled, or the _spirales_ which the youths love. what with the dust and the scream of voices, and the chatter of the thousand tongues, and the heroic efforts of the fiddlers, it was almost impossible to locate anything or any one; but the italian, readier than i, pointed out to me at last the one we sought; and i observed her sitting in a box quite close to us, where she seemed to talk with all a girl's _esprit_ to the young sculptor at her side. a fairer spectacle never was than that of this childish creature, quaintly dressed in a simple gown of white and black, with a necklace of pearls about her throat, and a bouquet of roses in her hand; but the very sight of her turned me sick with fear, for she wore upon her arm the cursed topaz, and you could see the light of it half over the house. the italian and i perceived the thing at the one time; indeed, we rose from our seats together. "for the love of heaven go to her!" said he; "tell the whole story to both of them; she may not have ten minutes to live." he had need to say no more, for i was in the _foyer_ as he spoke; but scarce had i opened the door of barré's box--which was upon the ground floor, almost at the level of the dancers--when an appalling scream rose up even above the clamor of the throng. for one moment, as i stood quaking with my fears, and sore tempted to draw back, i saw nothing but a haze of white smoke, a vision of lurid faces and black forms, and sharper than them all, the figure of barré himself bending over the body of the insensible girl. then, amidst the babbling of voices, and the sobbing of women, and the cry of the man, which was the most bitter cry imaginable, i heard the words, "stop the student in the black cloak--he has shot mademoiselle!" but the girl lay dead, with a bullet through her heart. * * * * * the tragedy at the opera house was talk for many days in paris; but the assassin was never taken, nor indeed, heard of. the police inclined to the theory that some masquerader had discharged a pistol by accident in the heat of the riot; and to this theory most people inclined. but there was a large sympathy for m. georges barré, who lay near to death for many weeks after the shock, and who quitted the capital subsequently to take up his residence in london. i told him the story the italian had narrated to me so soon as he was well enough to hear it; but, like the police of paris who had it also, i could see that he did not believe a word of it. he sold me the topaz bracelet, however, and i have it to this day, for i want the courage to sell it. of the italian i never heard again. i saw him last immediately after the drama of the ball, when he lurched away from me, wringing his hands pitifully, begging me to tell his story to the police, and crying that a curse was upon him. but i take it, in conjunction with his confession, as a little curious that a madman, described as an ecclesiastic of savona, should have thrown himself before a train in the gare du nord two days after the death of mademoiselle bernier. the ripening rubies. the ripening rubies. "the plain fact is," said lady faber, "we are entertaining thieves. it positively makes me shudder to look at my own guests, and to think that some of them are criminals." we stood together in the conservatory of her house in portman square, looking down upon a brilliant ball-room, upon a glow of color, and the radiance of unnumbered gems. she had taken me aside after the fourth waltz to tell me that her famous belt of rubies had been shorn of one of its finest pendants; and she showed me beyond possibility of dispute that the loss was no accident, but another of those amazing thefts which startled london so frequently during the season of 1893. nor was hers the only case. though i had been in her house but an hour, complaints from other sources had reached me. the countess of dunholm had lost a crescent brooch of brilliants; mrs. kenningham-hardy had missed a spray of pearls and turquoise; lady hallingham made mention of an emerald locket which was gone, as she thought, from her necklace; though, as she confessed with a truly feminine doubt, she was not positive that her maid had given it to her. and these misfortunes, being capped by the abstraction of lady faber's pendant, compelled me to believe that of all the startling stories of thefts which the season had known the story of this dance would be the most remarkable. these things and many more came to my mind as i held the mutilated belt in my hand and examined the fracture, while my hostess stood, with an angry flush upon her face, waiting for my verdict. a moment's inspection of the bauble revealed to me at once its exceeding value, and the means whereby a pendant of it had been snatched. "if you will look closely," said i, "you will see that the gold chain here has been cut with a pair of scissors. as we don't know the name of the person who used them, we may describe them as pickpocket's scissors." "which means that i am entertaining a pickpocket," said she, flushing again at the thought. "or a person in possession of a pickpocket's implements," i suggested. "how dreadful," she cried, "not for myself, though the rubies are very valuable, but for the others. this is the third dance during the week at which people's jewels have been stolen. when will it end?" "the end of it will come," said i, "directly that you, and others with your power to lead, call in the police. it is very evident by this time that some person is socially engaged in a campaign of wholesale robbery. while a silly delicacy forbids us to permit our guests to be suspected or in any way watched, the person we mention may consider himself in a terrestrial paradise, which is very near the seventh heaven of delight. he will continue to rob with impunity, and to offer up his thanks for that generosity of conduct which refuses us a glimpse of his hat, or even an inspection of the boots in which he may place his plunder." "you speak very lightly of it," she interrupted, as i still held her belt in my hands. "do you know that my husband values the rubies in each of those pendants at eight hundred pounds?" "i can quite believe it," said i; "some of them are white as these are, i presume; but i want you to describe it for me, and as accurately as your memory will let you." "how will that help to its recovery?" she asked, looking at me questioningly. "possibly not at all," i replied; "but it might be offered for sale at my place, and i should be glad if i had the means of restoring it to you. stranger things have happened." "i believe," said she sharply, "you would like to find out the thief yourself." "i should not have the smallest objection," i exclaimed frankly; "if these robberies continue, no woman in london will wear real stones; and i shall be the loser." "i have thought of that," said she; "but, you know, you are not to make the slightest attempt to expose any guest in my house; what you do outside is no concern of mine." "exactly," said i, "and for the matter of that i am likely to do very little in either case; we are working against clever heads; and if my judgment be correct, there is a whole gang to cope with. but tell me about the rubies." "well," said she, "the stolen pendant is in the shape of a rose. the belt, as you know, was brought by lord faber from burmah. besides the ring of rubies, which each drop has, the missing star includes four yellow stones, which the natives declare are ripening rubies. it is only a superstition, of course; but the gems are full of fire, and as brilliant as diamonds." "i know the stones well," said i; "the burmese will sell you rubies of all colors if you will buy them, though the blue variety is nothing more than the sapphire. and how long is it since you missed the pendant?" "not ten minutes ago," she answered. "which means that your next partner might be the thief?" i suggested. "really, a dance is becoming a capital entertainment." "my next partner is my husband," said she, laughing for the first time, "and whatever you do, don't say a word to him. he would never forgive me for losing the rubies." when she was gone, i, who had come to her dance solely in the hope that a word or a face there would cast light upon the amazing mystery of the season's thefts, went down again where the press was and stood while the dancers were pursuing the dreary paths of a "square." there before me were the hundred types one sees in a london ball-room--types of character and of want of character, of age aping youth, and of youth aping age, of well-dressed women and ill-dressed women, of dandies and of the bored, of fresh girlhood and worn maturity. mixed in the dazzling _mêlée_, or swaying to the rhythm of a music-hall melody, you saw the lean forms of boys; the robust forms of men; the pretty figures of the girls just out; the figures, not so pretty of the matrons, who, for the sake of the picturesque, should long ago have been in. as the picture changed quickly, and fair faces succeeded to dark faces, and the coquetting eyes of pretty women passed by with a glance to give place to the uninteresting eyes of the dancing man, i asked myself what hope would the astutest spy have of getting a clue to the mysteries in such a room; how could he look for a moment to name one man or one woman who had part or lot in the astounding robberies which were the wonder of the town? yet i knew that if nothing were done, the sale of jewels in london would come to the lowest ebb the trade had known, and that i, personally, should suffer loss to an extent which i did not care to think about. i have said often, in jotting down from my book a few of the most interesting cases which have come to my notice, that i am no detective, nor do i pretend to the smallest gift of foresight above my fellow man. whenever i have busied myself about some trouble it has been from a personal motive which drove me on, or in the hope of serving some one who henceforth should serve me. and never have i brought to my aid other weapon than a certain measure of common sense. in many instances the purest good chance has given to me my only clue; the merest accident has set me straight when a hundred roads lay before me. i had come to lady faber's house hoping that the sight of some stranger, a chance word, or even an impulse might cast light upon the darkness in which we had walked for many weeks. yet the longer i stayed in the ball-room the more futile did the whole thing seem. though i knew that a nimble-fingered gentleman might be at my very elbow, that half-a-dozen others might be dancing cheerfully about me in that way of life to which their rascality had called them, i had not so much as a hand-breadth of suspicion; saw no face that was not the face of the dancing ass, or the smart man about town; did not observe a single creature who led me to hazard a question. and so profound at last was my disgust that i elbowed my way from the ball-room in despair; and went again to the conservatory where the palms waved seductively, and the flying corks of the champagne bottles made music harmonious to hear. there were few people in this room at the moment--old general sharard, who was never yet known to leave a refreshment table until the supper table was set; the rev. arthur mellbank, the curate of st. peter's, sipping tea; a lean youth who ate an ice with the relish of a schoolboy; and the ubiquitous sibyl kavanagh, who has been vulgarly described as a garrison hack. she was a woman of many partialties, whom every one saw at every dance, and then asked how she got there--a woman with sufficient personal attraction left to remind you that she was _passé_, and sufficient wit to make an interval tolerable. i, as a rule, had danced once with her, and then avoided both her program and her chatter; but now that i came suddenly upon her, she cried out with a delicious pretence of artlessness, and ostentatiously made room for me at her side. "_do_ get me another cup of tea," she said; "i've been talking for ten minutes to colonel harner, who has just come from the great thirst land, and i've caught it." "you'll ruin your nerves," said i, as i fetched her the cup, "and you'll miss the next dance." "i'll sit it out with you," she cried gushingly; "and as for nerves, i haven't got any. i must have shed them with my first teeth. but i want to talk to you--you've heard the news, of course! isn't it dreadful?" she said this with a beautiful look of sadness, and for a moment i did not know to what she referred. then it dawned upon my mind that she had heard of lady faber's loss. "yes," said i, "it's the profoundest mystery i have ever known." "and can't you think of any explanation at all?" she asked, as she drank her tea at a draught. "isn't it possible to suspect some one just to pass the time?" "if you can suggest any one," said i, "we will begin with pleasure." "well, there's no one in this room to think of, is there?" she asked with her limpid laugh; "of course you couldn't search the curate's pockets, unless sermons were missing instead of rubies?" "this is a case of 'sermons in stones,'" i replied, "and a very serious case. i wonder you have escaped with all those pretty brilliants on your sleeves." "but i haven't escaped," she cried; "why, you're not up to date. don't you know that i lost a marquise brooch at the hayes's dance the other evening? i have never heard the last of it from my husband, who will not believe for a minute that i did not lose it in the crowd." "and you yourself believe----" "that it was stolen, of course. i pin my brooches too well to lose them--some one took it in the same cruel way that lady faber's rubies have been taken. isn't it really awful to think that at every party we go to thieves go with us? it's enough to make one emigrate to the shires." she fell to the flippant mood again, for nothing could keep her from that; and as there was obviously nothing to be learnt from her, i listened to her chatter sufferingly. "but we were going to suspect people," she continued suddenly, "and we have not done it. as we can't begin with the curate, let's take the slim young man opposite. hasn't he what sheridan calls--but there, i mustn't say it; you know--a something disinheriting countenance?" "he eats too many jam tarts and drinks too much lemonade to be a criminal," i replied; "besides, he is not occupied, you'll have to look in the ball-room." "i can just see the top of the men's heads," said she, craning her neck forward in the effort. "have you noticed that when a man is dancing, either he star-gazes in ecstasy, as though he were in heaven, or looks down to his boots--well, as if it were the other thing?" "possibly," said i; "but you're not going to constitute yourself a _vehmgericht_ from seeing the top of people's heads." "indeed," she cried, "that shows how little you know; there is more character in the crown of an old man's head than is dreamt of in your philosophy, as what's-his-name says. look at that shining roof bobbing up there, for instance; that is the halo of port and honesty--and a difficulty in dancing the polka. oh! that mine enemy would dance the polka--especially if he were stout." "do you really possess an enemy?" i asked, as she fell into a vulgar burst of laughter at her own humor; but she said,-"do i possess one? go and discuss me with the other women--that's what i tell all my partners to do; and they come back and report to me. it's as good as a play!" "it must be," said i, "a complete extravaganza. but your enemy has finished his exercise, and they are going to play a waltz. shall i take you down?" "yes," she cried, "and don't forget to discuss me. oh, these crushes!" she said this as we came to the press upon the corner of the stairs leading to the ball-room, a corner where she was pushed desperately against the banisters. the vigor of the polka had sent an army of dancers to the conservatory, and for some minutes we could neither descend nor go back; but when the press was somewhat relieved, and she made an effort to progress, her dress caught in a spike of the iron-work, and the top of a panel of silk which went down one side of it was ripped open and left hanging. for a minute she did not notice the mishap; but as the torn panel of silk fell away slightly from the more substantial portion of her dress, i observed, pinned to the inner side of it, a large crescent brooch of diamonds. in the same instant she turned with indescribable quickness, and made good the damage. but her face was scarlet in the flush of its color; and she looked at me with questioning eyes. "what a miserable accident," she said. "i have spoilt my gown." "have you?" said i sympathetically, "i hope it was not my clumsiness--but really there doesn't seem much damage done. did you tear it in front?" there was need of very great restraint in saying this. though i stood simply palpitating with amazement, and had to make some show of examining her gown, i knew that even an ill-judged word might undo the whole good of the amazing discovery, and deprive me of that which appeared to be one of the most astounding stories of the year. to put an end to the interview, i asked her laughingly if she would not care to see one of the maids upstairs; and she jumped at the excuse, leaving me upon the landing to watch her hurriedly mounting to the bedroom story above. when she was gone, i went back to the conservatory and drank a cup of tea, always the best promoter of clear thought; and for some ten minutes i turned the thing over in my mind. who was mrs. sibyl kavanagh, and why had she sewn a brooch of brilliants to the inside of a panel of her gown--sewn it in a place where it was as safely hid from sight as though buried in the thames? a child could have given the answer--but a child would have overlooked many things which were vital to the development of the unavoidable conclusion of the discovery. the brooch that i had seen corresponded perfectly with the crescent of which lady dunholme was robbed--yet it was a brooch which a hundred women might have possessed; and if i had simply stepped down and told lady faber, "the thief you are entertaining is mrs. sibyl kavanagh," a slander action with damages had trodden upon the heels of the folly. yet i would have given a hundred pounds to have been allowed full inspection of the whole panel of the woman's dress--and i would have staked an equal sum that there had been found in it the pendant of the ripening rubies; a pendant which seemed to me the one certain clue that would end the series of jewel robberies, and the colossal mystery of the year. now, however, the woman had gone upstairs to hide in another place whatever she had to hide; and for the time it was unlikely that a sudden searching of her dress would add to my knowledge. a second cup of tea helped me still further on my path. it made quite clear to me the fact that the woman was the recipient of the stolen jewels, rather than the actual taker of them. she, clearly, could not use the scissors which had severed lady faber's pendant from the ruby belt. a skilful man had in all probability done that--but which man, or perhaps men? i had long felt that the season's robberies were the work of many hands. chance had now marked for me one pair; but it was vastly more important to know the others. the punishment of the woman would scarce stop the widespread conspiracy; the arrest of her for the possession of a crescent brooch, hid suspiciously it is true, but a brooch of a pattern which abounded in every jeweler's shop from kensington to temple bar, would have been consummate lunacy. of course, i could have taken cab to scotland yard, and have told my tale; but with no other support, how far would that have availed me? if the history of the surpassingly strange case were to be written, i knew that i must write it, and lose no moment in the work. i had now got a sufficient grip upon the whole situation to act decisively, and my first step was to re-enter the ball-room, and to take a partner for the next waltz. we had made some turns before i discovered that mrs. kavanagh was again in the room, dancing with her usual dash, and seemingly in no way moved by the mishap. as we passed in the press, she even smiled at me, saying, "i've set full sail again;" and her whole bearing convinced me of her belief that i had seen nothing. at the end of my dance my own partner, a pretty little girl in pink, left me with the remark, "you're awfully stupid to-night! i ask you if you've seen _manon lescaut_, and the only thing you say is, 'the panel buttons up, i thought so.'" this convinced me that it was dangerous to dance again, and i waited in the room only until the supper was ready, and mrs. kavanagh passed me, making for the dining-room, on the arm of general sharard. i had loitered to see what jewels she wore upon her dress; and when i had made a note of them, i slipped from the front door of the house unobserved, and took a hansom to my place in bond street. at the second ring of the bell my watchman opened the door to me; and while he stood staring with profound surprise, i walked straight to one of the jewel cases in which our cheaper jewels are kept, and took therefrom a spray of diamonds, and hooked it to the inside of my coat. then i sent the man upstairs to awaken abel, and in five minutes my servant was with me, though he wore only his trousers and his shirt. "abel," said i, "there's good news for you. i'm on the path of the gang we're wanting." "good god, sir!" cried he, "you don't mean that!" "yes," said i, "there's a woman named sibyl kavanagh in it to begin with, and she's helped herself to a couple of diamond sprays, and a pendant of rubies at lady faber's to-night. one of the sprays i know she's got; if i could trace the pendant to her, the case would begin to look complete." "whew!" he ejaculated, brightening up at the prospect of business. "i knew there was a woman in it all along--but this one, why, she's a regular flier, ain't she, sir?" "we'll find out her history presently. i'm going straight back to portman square now. follow me in a hansom, and when you get to the house, wait inside my brougham until i come. but before you do that, run round to marlborough street police-station and ask them if we can have ten or a dozen men ready to mark a house in bayswater some time between this and six o'clock to-morrow morning." "you're going to follow her home then?" "exactly, and if my wits can find a way i'm going to be her guest for ten minutes after she quits lady faber's. they're sure to let you have the men either at marlborough street or at the harrow road station. this business has been a disgrace to them quite long enough." "that's so, sir; king told me yesterday that he'd bury his head in the sand if something didn't turn up soon. you haven't given me the exact address though." "because i haven't got it. i only know that the woman lives somewhere near st. stephen's church--she sits under, or on, one of the curates there. if you can get her address from her coachman, do so. but go and dress and be in portman square at the earliest possible moment." it was now very near one o'clock, indeed the hour struck as i passed the chapel in orchard street; and when i came into the square i found my own coachman waiting with the brougham at the corner by baker street. i told him, before i entered the house, to expect abel; and not by any chance to draw up at lady faber's. then i made my way quietly to the ball-room and observed mrs. kavanagh--i will not say dancing, but hurling herself through the last figure of the lancers. it was evident that she did not intend to quit yet awhile; and i left her to get some supper, choosing a seat near to the door of the dining-room, so that any one passing must be seen by me. to my surprise, i had not been in the room ten minutes when she suddenly appeared in the hall, unattended, and her cloak wrapped round her; but she passed without perceiving me; and i, waiting until i heard the hall door close, went out instantly and got my wraps. many of the guests had left already, but a few carriages and cabs were in the square, and a linkman seemed busy in the distribution of unlimited potations. it occurred to me that if abel had not got the woman's address, this man might give it to me, and i put the plain question to him. "that lady who just left," said i, "did she have a carriage or a cab?" "oh, you mean mrs. kevenner," he answered thickly, "she's a keb, she is, allus takes a hansom, sir; 192, westbourne park; i don't want to ask when i see her, sir." "thank you," said i, "she has dropped a piece of jewelry in the hall, and i thought i would drive round and return it to her." he looked surprised, at the notion, perhaps, of any one returning anything found in a london ball-room but i left him with his astonishment and entered my carriage. there i found abel crouching down under the front seat, and he met me with a piteous plea that the woman had no coachman, and that he had failed to obtain her address. "never mind that," said i, as we drove off sharply, "what did they say at the station?" "they wanted to bring a force of police round, and arrest every one in the house, sir. i had trouble enough to hold them in, i'm sure. but i said that we'd sit down and watch if they made any fuss, and then they gave in. it's agreed now that a dozen men will be at the harrow road station at your call till morning. they've a wonderful confidence in you, sir." "it's a pity they haven't more confidence in themselves--but, anyway, we are in luck. the woman's address is 192, westbourne park, and i seem to remember that it is a square." "i'm sure of it," said he; "it's a round square in the shape of an oblong, and one hundred and ninety two is at the side near durham something or other; we can watch it easily from the palings." after this, ten minutes' drive brought us to the place, and i found it as he had said, the "square" being really a triangle. number one hundred and ninety two was a big house, its outer points gone much to decay, but lighted on its second and third floors; though so far as i could see, for the blinds of the drawing-room were up, no one was moving. this did not deter me, however, and, taking my stand with abel at the corner where two great trees gave us perfect shelter, we waited silently for many minutes, to the astonishment of the constable upon the beat, with whom i soon settled; and to his satisfaction. "ah," said he, "i knew they was rum 'uns all along; they owe fourteen pounds for milk, and their butcher ain't paid; young men going in all night, too--why, there's one of them there now." i looked through the trees at his words, and saw that he was right. a youth in an opera hat and a black coat was upon the doorstep of the house; and as the light of a street lamp fell upon his face, i recognized him. he was the boy who had eaten of the jam-tarts so plentifully at lady faber's--the youth with whom sibyl kavanagh had pretended to have no acquaintance when she talked to me in the conservatory. and at the sight of him, i knew that the moment had come. "abel," i said, "it's time you went. tell the men to bring a short ladder with them. they'll have to come in by the balcony--but only when i make a sign. the signal will be the cracking of the glass of that lamp you can see upon the table there. did you bring my pistol?" "would i forget that?" he asked; "i brought you two, and look out! for you may want them." "i know that," said i, "but i depend upon you. get back at the earliest possible moment, and don't act until i give the signal. it will mean that the clue is complete." he nodded his head, and disappeared quickly in the direction where the carriage was; but i went straight up to the house, and knocked loudly upon the door. to my surprise, it was opened at once by a thick-set man in livery, who did not appear at all astonished to see me. "they're upstairs, sir, will you go up?" said he. "certainly," said i, taking him at his word. "lead the way." this request made him hesitate. "i beg your pardon," said he, "i think i have made a mistake--i'll speak to mrs. kavanagh." before i could answer he had run up the stairs nimbly; but i was quick after him; and when i came upon the landing, i could see into the front drawing, room, where there sat the woman herself, a small and oldish man with long black whiskers, and the youth who had just come into the room, but the back room which gave off from the other with folding-doors, was empty; and there was no light in it. all this i perceived in a momentary glance, for no sooner had the servingman spoken to the woman, than she pushed the youth out upon the balcony, and came hurriedly to the landing, closing the door behind her. "why, mr. sutton," she cried, when she saw me, "this is a surprise; i was just going to bed." "i was afraid you would have been already gone," said i with the simplest smile possible, "but i found a diamond spray in lady faber's hall just after you had left. the footman said it must be yours, and as i am going out of town to-morrow, i thought i would risk leaving it to-night." i handed to her as i spoke the spray of diamonds i had taken from my own show-case in bond street; but while she examined it she shot up at me a quick searching glance from her bright eyes, and her thick sensual lips were closed hard upon each other. yet, in the next instant, she laughed again, and handed me back the jewel. "i'm indeed very grateful to you," she exclaimed, "but i've just put my spray in its case; you want to give me some one else's property." "then it isn't yours?" said i, affecting disappointment. "i'm really very sorry for having troubled you." "it is i that should be sorry for having brought you here," she cried. "won't you have a brandy and seltzer or something before you go?" "nothing whatever, thanks," said i. "let me apologize again for having disturbed you--and wish you 'good-night.'" she held out her hand to me, seemingly much reassured; and as i began to descend the stairs, she re-entered the drawing-room for the purpose, i did not doubt, of getting the man off the balcony. the substantial lackey was then waiting in the hall to open the door for me; but i went down very slowly, for in the truth the whole of my plan appeared to have failed; and at that moment i was without the veriest rag of an idea. my object in coming to the house had been to trace, and if possible to lay hands upon the woman's associates, taking her, as i hoped, somewhat by surprise; yet though i had made my chain more complete, vital links were missing; and i stood no nearer to the forging of them. that which i had to ask myself, and to answer in the space of ten seconds, was the question, "now, or to-morrow?"--whether i should leave the house without effort, and wait until the gang betrayed itself again; or make some bold stroke which would end the matter there and then. the latter course was the one i chose. the morrow, said i, may find these people in paris or in belgium; there never may be such a clue again as that of the ruby pendant--there never may be a similar opportunity of taking at least three of those for whom we had so long hunted. and with this thought a whole plan of action suddenly leaped up in my mind; and i acted upon it, silently and swiftly and with a readiness which to this day i wonder at. i now stood at the hall-door, which the lackey held open. one searching look at the man convinced me that my design was a sound one. he was obtuse, patronizing,--but probably honest. as we faced each other i suddenly took the door-handle from him, and banged the door loudly, remaining in the hall. then i clapped my pistol to his head (though for this offence i surmise that a judge might have given me a month), and i whispered fiercely to him:-"this house is surrounded by police; if you say a word i'll give you seven years as an accomplice of the woman upstairs, whom we are going to arrest. when she calls out, answer that i'm gone, and then come back to me for instructions. if you do as i tell you, you shall not be charged--otherwise, you go to jail." at this speech the poor wretch paled before me, and shook so that i could feel the tremor all down the arm of his which i held. "i--i won't speak, sir," he gasped. "i won't, i do assure you--to think as i should have served such folk." "then hide me, and be quick about it--in this room here, it seems dark. now run upstairs and say i'm gone." i had stepped into a little breakfast-room at the back of the dining-room, and there had gone unhesitatingly under a round table. the place was absolutely dark, and was a vantage ground, since i could see therefrom the whole of the staircase; but before the footman could mount the stairs, the woman came half-way down them, and, looking over the hall, she asked him,-"is that gentleman gone?" "just left, mum," he replied. "then go to bed, and never let me see you admit a stranger like that again." she went up again at this, and he turned to me, asking,-"what shall i do now, sir? i'll do anything if you'll speak for me, sir; i've got twenty years' kerecter from lord walley; to think as she's a bad 'un--it's hardly creditable." "i shall speak for you," said i, "if you do exactly what i tell you. are any more men expected now?" "yes, there's two more; the capting and the clergymin, pretty clergymin he must be, too." "never mind that; wait and let them in. then go upstairs and turn the light out on the staircase as if by accident. after that you can go to bed." "did you say the police was 'ere?" he asked in his hoarse whisper; and i said,-"yes, they're everywhere, on the roof, and in the street, and on the balcony. if there's the least resistance, the house will swarm with them." what he would have said to this i cannot tell, for at that moment there was another knock upon the front door, and he opened it instantly. two men, one in clerical dress, and one, a very powerful man, in a newmarket coat, went quickly upstairs, and the butler followed them. a moment later the gas went out on the stairs; and there was no sound but the echo of the talk in the front drawing-room. the critical moment in my night's work had now come. taking off my boots, and putting my revolver at the half-cock, i crawled up the stairs with the step of a cat, and entered the back drawing-room. one of the folding doors of this was ajar, so that a false step would probably have cost me my life--and i could not possibly tell if the police were really in the street, or only upon their way. but it was my good luck that the men talked loudly, and seemed actually to be disputing. the first thing i observed on looking through the open door was that the woman had left the four to themselves. three of them stood about the table whereon the lamp was; the dumpy man with the black whiskers sat in his arm-chair. but the most pleasing sight of all was that of a large piece of cotton-wool spread upon the table, and almost covered with brooches, lockets, and sprays of diamonds; and to my infinite satisfaction i saw lady faber's pendant of rubies lying conspicuous even amongst the wealth of jewels which the light showed. there then was the clue; but how was it to be used? it came to me suddenly that four consummate rogues such as these were would not be unarmed. did i step into the room, they might shoot me at the first sound: and if the police had not come, that would be the end of it. had opportunity been permitted to me, i would, undoubtedly, have waited five or ten minutes to assure myself that abel was in the street without. but this was not to be. even as i debated the point, a candle's light shone upon the staircase; and in another moment mrs. kavanagh herself stood in the doorway watching me. for one instant she stood, but it served my purpose; and as a scream rose upon her lips, and i felt my heart thudding against my ribs, i threw open the folding doors, and deliberately shot down the glass of the lamp which had cast the aureola of light upon the stolen jewels. as the glass flew, for my reputation as a pistol shot was not belied in this critical moment, mrs. kavanagh ran in a wild fit of hysterical screaming to her bedroom above--but the four men turned with loud cries to the door where they had seen me; and as i saw them coming, i prayed that abel might be there. this thought need not have occurred to me. scarce had the men taken two steps when the glass of the balcony windows was burst in with a crash, and the whole room seemed to fill with police. * * * * * i cannot now remember precisely the sentences which were passed upon the great gang (known to police history as the westbourne park gang) of jewel thieves; but the history of that case is curious enough to be worthy of mention. the husband of the woman kavanagh--he of the black whiskers--was a man of the name of whyte, formerly a manager in the house of james thorndike, the universal provider near the tottenham court road. whyte's business had been to provide all things needful for dances; and, though it astonishes me to write it, he had even found dancing men for many ladies whose range of acquaintance was narrow. in the course of business, he set up for himself eventually; and as he worked, the bright idea came to him, why not find as guests men who may snap up, in the heat and the security of the dance, such unconsidered trifles as sprays, pendants, and lockets. to this end he married, and his wife being a clever woman who fell in with his idea, she--under the name of kavanagh--made the acquaintance of a number of youths whose business it was to dance; and eventually wormed herself into many good houses. the trial brought to light the extraordinary fact that no less than twenty-three men and eight women were bound in this amazing conspiracy, and that kavanagh acted as the buyer of the property they stole, giving them a third of the profits, and swindling them outrageously. he, i believe, is now taking the air at portland; and the other young men are finding in the exemplary exercise of picking oakum, work for idle hands to do. as for mrs. kavanagh, she was dramatic to the end of it; and, as i learnt from king, she insisted on being arrested in bed. my lady of the sapphires. my lady of the sapphires. a photograph of my lady of the sapphires is hung immediately opposite to the writing-table in my private office. it is there much on the principle which compels a monk to set a skull upon his praying-stool, or a son of mohammed to ejaculate pious phrases at the call of the muezzin. "_nemo solus sapit_," wrote plautus. had fate cast him in the mould of a jeweler, rather than that of a playwright, he would have set down a stronger phrase. i first saw my lady two years ago, though it was only upon the day of my introduction that i learnt her name. she had then, though i knew it not, been before the town for many weeks as a physiognomist, a mistress of the stars, a reader of faces, and in many other capacities interesting to the idle and the credulous. society, which laughed at her predictions, paid innumerable guineas for the possession of them; great dames sat in her boudoir and discussed amatory possibilities; even the youth of the city, drawn by the prettiness of her manner and her unquestionable good looks, came cheerfully to hear that they would have money "from two sources," or had passed through the uninteresting complaints of infancy without harm. in her way, she was the event of the season. dowagers scolded her, but came again and again to probe family secrets, and learn the hidden things about their husbands; men flocked to her to know what possibility there was of an early return to the bliss of single life; mere boys ventured upon the hazard of a little mild flirtation--and were at once shown the door by a formidable lackey. throughout her career scandal never lifted its voice against her. she was engaged ultimately to jack lucas, and her marriage was as brilliant as her career had been fortunate. when a curious chance and combination of events first brought me to acquaintance with her she was in the very height of her practice. carriages crowded daily in dover street where, with her mother, she had rooms--and it was the thing to consult her. yet, until i dined casually one night with colonel oldfield, the collector of cat's-eyes, and bracebridge, at the bohemian club, hard by her house, i had never heard of her. the conversation turned during the soup--when talk is always watery--upon the press of broughams in the street without, and oldfield mentioned her history to me, and the surprising nature of many things she had told him. "it is easy enough," said he, "to look at a man's hand and deduce scarlet-fever and measles somewhere between two and twelve years of age; but when a woman tells you calmly that you were ready to die for two other women at the age of one-and-twenty, it's a thing to make you pause." "which i hope you did," exclaimed bracebridge. "love is distinctly a matter for specialization." "i did pause, sir," said the colonel severely, "and that's where her cleverness comes in. she told me that neither of the women cared the snap of a finger for me, and i have really come to the conclusion that she was right. years put a glamour upon most things, but it is hard, even at fifty, to recall a woman's 'no' of thirty years ago." "memory is a dangerous vice which should be controlled," said bracebridge; "if you want peace, you must learn to forget. there should be no yesterday for the man of the world. but i know the morbid kind of recollection you speak about. there was a fellow here only the other night who kept a proposal book. he put the 'noes' on one side, and the 'ayes' on the other, and balanced the columns every christmas. one day he left the book in a cab, and has spent his time since going to scotland yard for it. that comes of reminiscences!" "i agree with you in the main," said the colonel! "there is very little in any man's private life which is of concern to any one but himself. the lady we are speaking of knows this, and makes her fortune by her knowledge. the truth is that we all love a little plain-spokenness. there is far too much praise about. tell a fool that he is not a clever man discreetly, and you flatter him; inform him that he is a brainless ass, and he will kick you. but when you put a black cap on your head, and take a wand in your hand, and charge a guinea for the spectacle, the fool will hear of his folly cheerfully." "then the girl you mention is a mere vulgar fortune-teller," said i, intervening for the first time. "it's astonishing how little difference there is, when you come to reckon it up, between the tastes of a grand dame and the tastes of her cook. the one goes in at the front door to get her hand read for a guinea; the other goes out of the back to have an equally plausible delineation for sixpence. credulity does not know any distinction of class; in the case i mention rank is represented by one pound odd. those of us who have no particular objection to spill salt, shiver to see the new moon through glass. that man alone who tells you frankly that he believes in all superstitions is free from the blemish. but common fortune-telling, i confess, leaves me unmoved." "if it began and ended in the mere vulgar allotment of tragedy and of marriage, i should agree with you," said bracebridge, speaking with unusual seriousness; "but i am inclined to think that this is a case of noteworthy cleverness, or at least of uncommon wit. the girl, possibly, is a charlatan: but if one half said of her be true, she is the _best_ at the profession we have known. and after all, it's an achievement to be _the_ best at some occupation, if it's only that of picking pockets." "speaking of that," said oldfield, "i once knew a man in the '60th' who was proud because a society paper described him as the finest idler in europe. that was a negative distinction of surpassing beauty, you must admit. in the lady's case, however, there is something substantial to praise. she can talk of things of which i would not attempt to spell the name, with a fluency which is charming, if it is not accurate; she has a room full of unreadable books; and i believe there are a dozen men in town who will swear that she has made diamonds before their very eyes. that should interest you, sutton. a woman who is the possessor of what she calls the 'alkahest' or universal solvent, is not to be interviewed for a guinea every day. besides, she might give you some useful hints." "and who knows," said bracebridge, "what might come of it. i presume you pay three pounds odd an ounce for the genuine metal to-day. under certain contingencies, you might get it for threepence, and a wife into the bargain." i listened to their banter with amusement for some minutes, and then cut in a little seriously. "i did not know," said i, "that physiognomy and alchemy usually ran well in double harness, but i must take your word for it. anything of this sort is always amusing to a jeweler, though he is apt to get a little too much of it. the last gold maker who came to me began by promising to make a million in six months, and ended by wanting to borrow half-a-crown. i've seen scores of that sort." "you may laugh at her as much as you please," said oldfield; "but of one thing be assured. if i am any judge of precious stones at all, she can make rubies, and good ones too. she cast one for me when i was last at her place, and i offered her fifty pounds upon the spot for it. a quack would have taken the money, but she refused it; you couldn't want any better proof of her _bona fides_ than that." "pardon me," i interrupted, "but i can't accept the conclusion. probably the ruby you thought she made was the only one in the place. it was like the stock knife of the cheap jack. you couldn't expect her to part with it." "certainly i did. if she had made only one stone, i should have jumped to your opinion; but she turned them out by the dozen. most of them were small; some were altogether too insignificant to notice. one only, as i say, was substantial; and in explanation of that, she admitted her want of control over the action of the crystals in the crucible. sometimes they will prove worth money; more often they are quite without value. but she has hopes that the day will come when she will complete a discovery which will astonish the universe." "they all hope that," said i; "but the universe remains unmoved." "and, of course, you don't believe a word of it," cried bracebridge, as he helped himself to salad. "well, it's part of your business, i suppose, to believe only in what you see, and not altogether in that. but the colonel's right about the girl, and i can second every word he says. she made a piece of gold as big as your thumbnail before my very eyes. there was no pretense or humbug about it; and i may tell you that she'll only do this sort of thing for those she knows well. if you went to her to-morrow, and said, 'i want to see your experiments,' she'd laugh at you, and send you away feeling like a fool." "and seriously," said i, beginning to experience a glimmer of interest, "you believe that she has discovered something of importance?" "seriously i do; and if you went to her house you would swear by her for the next month, possibly for two." "you don't convince me at all," i replied, trying to look utterly unconcerned. "i have known too many gold-makers for that. some of them are now in workhouses; others are in prison. one of the last got three months for stealing an overcoat, which was ridiculously unromantic." "not at all," said the colonel; "theft is a complex subject capable of analysis. a thief is a man who buys in the cheapest market. we all try to do that in our way. there is no earthly reason why a _savant_, who is near to possessing the philosopher's stone, should not be charged before a magistrate with stealing a red herring. life is all contrast, and the contrast we speak of is a very pretty one. go and see her at your earliest opportunity." "that's my advice too," said bracebridge; "and if you've a fancy to watch her at the crucible, i'll speak for you. what's more, i'll bet you an even hundred pounds that you admit my conclusions." "which are?" i asked. "that she has come nearer to the solution of the diamond problem than any man or woman living or dead." "i don't bet on certainties," said i; "but if you care to trouble the lady to burn her doubtlessly pretty hands on my account, well, let's have the interview by all means. if she convinces me that she can make any sort of precious stone worth selling in the market, i'll give a hundred pounds to a children's hospital--the colonel can name it." "is it a serious offer?" asked the colonel, looking, as i thought, a little meaningly at bracebridge, but i said,-"i was never more serious, and town will be quite dismal enough after this week" (it was the week of goodwood). "fix it up as early as you can; and conjure the lady, whose name i have not yet had the pleasure of hearing, to take care of your reputation. if she can cast me a ruby or a sapphire worth looking at, i will set it in diamonds and make her a present of it. you may tell her so from me." "i'll give her your message undiluted," said bracebridge, with a great deal of content, "but i'll warrant that she'll have the laugh of you, and so shall we." they said no more upon the matter until the end of the dinner, and it was not referred to in the smoking room after. we quitted the club at an early hour to hear a song at a music-hall which the colonel raved about; and after that i left them and returned to bayswater, with the recollection of my rash promise gone clean out of my head. i did not even recall it on the following morning, and it was some three days after that i received a note from the colonel saying that he had, during bracebridge's absence from town, made an appointment for me with miss jessie fleming--for such was the fair alchemist's name--and that she would be glad to tell me anything she could about her work on the following afternoon at half-past two o'clock. the letter at once brought to my mind the whole of the conversation, at the club. i remembered with a smile of contempt that the lady was to show me, during a short interview, how the whole of a jeweler's occupation was soon to be done with; how diamonds and sapphires and even the precious metal itself, were presently to be as common as pebbles in a brook; and i concluded with easy assurance that if any children's hospital depended upon my being convinced, it would have to close its doors at an early date. i had seen so much of this sort of thing; so many stories of fortunes lying in a metal pot had been whispered into my ear; this could be but an addition to the list; it remained to see if it would be an amusing addition. i will confess readily that if the pretender had been a man, i would have declined curtly to see him. the whole of those who had come to me hitherto with a pretended insight into the arcana of metals were men--mostly half-pay officers--whose wits were half gone with their money. here, however, was, by all accounts, a charming professor of the lost art. the season was beginning to be dull; there were no more "at homes"; possibly she would amuse me. i had given my promise to the men--and to put it briefly i found myself at miss jessie fleming's door on the following day, not a little expectant, disdainfully incredulous, and exceedingly anxious to prove for myself if the physiognomist's personal attractions were even a tithe of those which had been claimed for her by so many long headed and usually sensible men. my knock at the modest-looking portal was answered by a formidable flunky, who did not wait to hear my name, but conducted me up a staircase draped almost to darkness with heavy curtains, and so to a well-furnished waiting-room on the first floor. here three women, all well known in society, were engaged in an heroic effort to appear absorbed in the illustrated papers; but they were obviously uncomfortable at my presence, and cast furtive looks over the pages as though in appeal to me to make no mention of anything i had seen. i had no opportunity, however, to abate their fear of publicity; for scarce was i come into the room when the flunky appeared again at the folding-doors which cut it off from the sanctum of my lady, and beckoned me to follow him. i had come out on this expedition purely, as i have said, to be amused. when i found myself at last before the new pythia of london, enthroned as she was for the immediate interpretation of the oracle, i confess that i did not foresee any disappointment of the venture. the room was half in darkness, but there was light enough by which to observe many fine pieces of china and delicate sketches upon its gold and green walls; and to note the quaint conceits of the whole scheme of decoration. a lamp of eastern shape spread a soft red glow upon sofas and seductive lounges; a conservatory, heaped up with shade-suggesting palms, gave off at one end of it through doors of exquisitely colored glass; there was a strange tripod of brass before the fireplace; and flowers everywhere, seeming to grow from the very grate, to flourish in all the crannies, to cover tables and bookcases, and even to decorate the dress of the young girl who now stood to receive me, and welcomed me with cordiality. my first impression of the physiognomist--an impression which remains with me--was the outcome of her extremely youthful appearance. i am certain that whatever age she might have been she did not look it. youth in rich generosity was stamped upon her slightest action and her most serious word. it flashed from her eyes, was seen in the unsurpassable freshness of her complexion, in the golden sheen of her hair, in the rotundity of her arms, and the development of her slight but well-formed figure. if she had any serious mood, it was not apparent when first i spoke to her; nor did a rapid analysis of her face tell me of any uncommon mental power. her chin was a firm one, it is true; but i noticed that she had little height of head above her ears, and that there was even something of weakness in her forehead. at the same time there could not be two opinions of the general charm of her manner; and she possessed in a very large degree that magnetic power of attracting sympathy and admiration which is peculiarly the attribute of women. directly i had come into the pretentious chamber of audience, and the flunky had closed the folding-doors behind me, this fascinating little prophetess began to talk, her words rippling over one another like the waves of a river; her natural excitement betraying itself in the obvious restraint of her gestures. "i'm so glad it's you!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands together, as though in ecstasy. "those old women bother me to death, and there have been twelve of them here this morning. colonel oldfield told me all about you yesterday, and i was interested at once. we must have a good long talk. oh, do listen to that dreadful creature; she talks in scales beginning at the lower c and going up to no possible note in the music of heaven or earth. i suppose she won't go away." her remark, and the clapping of her little hands to equally little ears, followed upon the sound of altercation between one of the ladies in the waiting-room and the flunky of formidable mien. apparently the lady would not depart without a _séance_, and the footman was compelling her. in the end she went, declaring the whole thing a cheat, and "that chit of a girl" a particular imposture. when the sound of her voice had died away upon the stairs, my lady took up the thread of her remarks. "now," said she, "i want to have a good look at you, and you must have a good look at me. people like ourselves should know each other to begin with. don't think i'm going to bore you with the nonsense i trade in--you are far too clever for that, and would find me out in a minute. you see, i'm like a man with a good cellar: i keep the old wine for the old birds who are not caught with chaff. that's a delightfully mixed metaphor, isn't it? and not very polite, when i think of it. but come and sit down near the light, where i can see you." she spoke so quickly that i did not pretend to hear half of that which she said, or to answer her; but i seated myself upon the ottoman near the entrance to the conservatory; and when she had thrown open the glass doors, she herself took the low arm-chair facing me. i saw then that she wore a strange dress in the egyptian fashion, and that her breast was all covered with jingling gold medals, while her hair was similarly ornamented. "come," she said, resting her head upon her hand, "i want to know from you _why_ you are here. it is not for me to tell you about your life, is it?" "i will be frank," i replied; "it is not. my life has already spoken a good deal for itself. what i did come here to see was the making of diamonds. they tell me you possess the philosopher's stone, or something near to it." she looked at me with a penetrating gaze, and then laughed a little hardly. "and you believed it?" she asked presently. "not for a moment," said i; "but i thought it was not unlikely that you had some amusing trick which you would not mind showing me. i am very much interested in jewels, you know." "so am i," she exclaimed, but with the air of one whose mind is away from the words--"there is nothing more beautiful or more mysterious on earth than a diamond. it just seems to be a prison for lovely things of which it gives us the lights when we treat it well. and you thought i might amuse you with a trick? that was a poor compliment, wasn't it?" the thing was said with a swift reversion of her mind to the subject, as i could see; and there was a world of humor in her eyes when she turned them on me. "it was no poor compliment," said i, "since you have convinced such a man as colonel oldfield that you can make rubies. he is a judge of jewels, too." "and a very good one," she replied; "but really there was nothing in my experiment. what i do has been done by french chemists for twenty years past. the colonel came here with an open mind--but you, you closed the doors of yours as you came upstairs." i protested feebly, but she did not listen to my answer. "yes," she exclaimed, speaking very rapidly, "i have been thinking about you as you sat there, and i am sure that i know you now. you are a man so well accustomed to steer in the shallows of your business that you never look beyond them. you make a gospel of distrust, and you consider confidence the sign of a weak intellect. you have been often deceived, for your breadth of view is not large; and you will be often deceived again. it is impossible for you to conceive beauty which is not saleable; and for romance you have no place in your heart. you have come here, saying all the way, 'i am going to interview an impostor; she will not amuse me--most possibly she will bore me. it is ten thousand to one that her experiments are all rubbish, but i will take the ten thousandth chance, in the hope that she might have found out something which i can sell--sell--sell.' yet you are honest in a measure, since you ask me for a trick, knowing well that a trick is all you can reasonably expect from me. you are, in short, not very far removed from that dreadful person 'the pure man of business'; and you feel wofully strange already in the presence of one whose occupation is romance, and whose profession is undisguisedly practised in the offices of mystery. do i speak the truth?" she bent forward so that i could look straight into her eyes as she finished the excited sketch of character; and while with any other speaker my vanity had been sore wounded, i listened to her with no other feeling than those of growing admiration. the potency of her personality was beyond description; i have never met a woman who could communicate her own magnetism so quickly when she chose to talk seriously. and beyond this, i had already corrected my assumption that she was not clever. she had, indeed, one of the quickest brains i have ever dealt with. "you are very hard on me," said i, as she waited for me to speak, "but i cannot say that you do not get to the bottom of the affair. you do me an injustice, however, when you say that my visit is purely commercial. no one in london would be more unselfishly interested than myself if any progress were made with the thousand attempts to manufacture jewels. if you have succeeded, even in a small degree, your fortune is made." "do you think that?" she cried. "well, a word from mr. bernard sutton is a word indeed; but we shall see. meanwhile, we are going to have some fruit and wine. don't you find it fearfully close in here?--that's the heat from my furnace in the conservatory there. i've had a little one put up especially for my experiments. as you were coming, we had to get the metal melted; and we've had a fire there since last night." "you will experiment for me, then?" said i, with considerable interest. "if you are very good," she replied, "i may show you something; but first you must taste my sherbet, and tell me all about the diamonds which i have bought and not made. you've heard, perhaps, that i waste all my money on jewelry." i told her that i had not, but the flunky appearing at that moment, she did not pursue the subject, occupying herself in mixing me an effervescing draught in a great crystal goblet. the drink was gratifying on the hot day; and when i had taken it there was a warm coursing of blood through my veins as though i had drunk of rich burgundy. "now," said she, when the man had gone, but had left the little table piled up with fruit--"now we can talk seriously. let us carry the liquid with us--that's what jack lucas always calls it; he gets me that sherbet from some place in the east with an unpronounceable name. i am going to put you into an arm-chair, and you are not to ask a single question until i have finished. have you got any cigarettes with you?--you may smoke if you are very good." we went into the conservatory, which was ridiculously small, and close almost to suffocation, and there i saw many evidences of her attempt to fathom the unfathomable mysteries. there were racks with bottles round three sides of the apartment, and in the corner of the other side there stood a common little furnace such as smiths use. these, with a number of brass plates covered with hieroglyphics, some presses in steel, a basket containing strips of metal and a quantity of crystals, were her whole equipment for the business before her; but there was a low arm-chair in the shape of those used for dental horrors; and there she asked me to sit while she herself prepared for the undertaking. "the first thing for you to do," said she, "is to make yourself comfortable. a man who is ill at ease is in the worst possible mental state, for he cannot concentrate himself. just at present i want you to concentrate yourself on that cigarette and the fizzing stuff. when everything is ready i shall call out." with this said, she set the fruit and the cup at the side of my chair, and then rolled up the sleeves of her dress quickly, putting on an apron which covered her finery; and she looked for all the world like an unusually pretty housemaid. i watched her with even a larger interest than i had done; and i remember thinking, as i settled in the great lounge, that whatever her mental claims might be upon the admiration of the city, her personal qualities were undeniable. these were especially to be observed when she began to busy herself with the furnace and the tiny crucibles upon it, the glow of soft light seeming to emphasize the youthfulness of her perfect face, and to converge upon it as light focussed upon a picture. she had now fallen into a very serious mood, and after she had used the bellows vigorously at her fire, and placed the smallest of the crucibles upon it again, she sat herself upon a stool at the side of my chair, and resting her head upon her open hand--her favorite attitude--she spoke with evident earnestness. "the mysteries of jewels," she exclaimed, "and the mysteries of gold have eaten the heart out of many a clever man, from gebir to sir isaac newton. if you will read the history of the philosophers, even of some in the story of that which we call the modern ages, you will find amongst the greatest the names of those who sought for an 'alkahest' or universal solvent. even the wisest of men have hoped for a full knowledge of the arcana of metals. paracelsus himself believed in the fifth, or the quintessence of creation. roger bacon, to whom death came out of neglect, prescribed as the elixir of life gold dissolved in nitro-hydrochloric acid. why should i tell you how science now laughs at these old philosophers, and lumps them together as little better than maniacs? yet does she laugh at them with good reason? is it not just possible that she will be ultimately the means of turning the laugh upon herself? in our day she has come very near to knowing of the transmutability of metals. allotropy has turned the eyes of many back to the remoter past. the chemist is beginning to ask himself, were these men such fools? the near future may cast a light upon long centuries of darkness. but those only will reap who come to the work with open minds, with the certain conviction that in all pertaining to this vast science we are still children. do you follow me in this?" "perfectly," i replied; and assuredly a prettier lecture was never given. the girl's eyes seemed to flash lights as she warmed to her subject; her enthusiasm was so contagious that i found myself softening before it. she was earnest, at any rate; and most of her kind were quacks. "if you grant this long premiss, and do not consider that all inquiry is necessarily useless," she continued, "you solve the greater difficulties which surround my conceptions. it remains to ask, what steps must the chemist follow who would seek to turn from his crucible the perfect jewel? let us take the sapphire as an instance. it is my favorite stone, one compelling, as the ancients declare, the wearer to all good works. well, the sapphire in all its beautiful tints is only a variety of corundum, colored by metallic oxide. it is a common crystal, a six-sided prism terminated in a six-sided pyramid. it is taken from gneiss, and we know to-day that alumina is the basis of it, as it is the basis of so many precious stones. granted this, what is the work before the chemist? is it not simply to cast in his crucible the crystals of the base, to color them with the metallic oxide, if he can and to harden them so that they will bear the test? the process is a long one--it needs days to bring it to perfection: the annealing, the polishing, the setting--these are not work for an hour. what i have to show you now are but the stages of it. these you shall see and judge for yourself; but i ask you very sincerely to weigh up this great question for yourself, not to be led by the incredulity of the fanatic, and to believe with me that we are on the brink of a discovery which shall pour jewels on the world as the sea casts pebbles upon a beach." i said nothing in answer to this remarkable delivery, for the truth was that i watched the girl rather than heard her words. her earnestness, nay, her enthusiasm, was so pretty to see that all my interest seemed absorbed in her; and now, when she rose swiftly and drew the curtains over the windows, leaving the place illuminated only by one rose-colored lamp, i followed all her actions as one follows the change of a picture. "let us keep away the daylight," said she, "and then we can see the crystals forming. by-and-by i will show you the perfect jewel. now look." what she did in the next few minutes i am quite unable to say, so swift were her movements and so hurried her talk. but i remember that she opened the furnace door, allowing soft rays of deep yellow light to flood the room; and then quickly she cast a dozen crystals upon the table from the glowing crucible; and from a press near to her hand she took three more and laid them on the plate. the largest of the crystals, which was blue as a sapphire, and possessed little light at a distance, she presently picked up with tiny tongs, and coming over to me, she knelt at my side, holding the jewel before my eyes, and clasping my left hand in hers. and then she cried with the wildest excitement in her voice, and her breast heaving with her emotion,-"oh, look at it! is there anything more beautiful on earth than a perfect sapphire? and i made it, it is all my work, all my own!" while she cried thus she held my hand firmly, and the pressure of her own was hot as fire, but this i only remembered afterwards, for gradually, as i looked at the jewel critically, it took the color and the shape of a perfect gem. it was not a large stone, perhaps one of three carats, but the longer i looked upon it the more brilliant and beautiful did it appear to be. never had i seen more perfect shape or promise of light when set; and with the realization of the discovery my head reeled as the possibility that this mere girl had succeeded where so many had failed loomed at last before me. it was true, then, as oldfield said, that she could manufacture a perfect jewel before his eyes. here was one which, if well cut, i could sell for a hundred pounds. she had made that, as i could swear: why should she not make a hundred, a thousand? my heart leaped at the conclusion. "tell me," said i, "you had no help in this work?" "you saw that i had none," she cried. "look at the other crystals; there are five of them. you have seen them come straight from the crucible--and you know that i have succeeded. will you buy my sapphire? buy it in proof that i have conquered you. when you return to-morrow i will tell you everything. i am exhausted now. the work always excites me terribly. my nerves are all unstrung; i can do no more to-day." "if you will sell me the stone you hold in those tongs, i will give you fifty pounds for it," i said, concluding that, even had i been tricked, a real jewel, and a very good one, was before my eyes. but at this promise she cried out with joy, and putting the stone in a little box with lightning speed, she handed it to me. "pay me to-morrow, any time," she said. "it was good of you to come here, and to listen to me. i am very grateful. when you come again you shall know all my secret. only think well of me and be my friend." with this she led the way quickly into her own room, and the lackey appeared in answer to her ring. the interview was at an end, abruptly as it seemed to me, and i left her with a strange feeling of dizziness, and my head burning with excitement--but her sapphire was in my pocket. * * * * * when i met bracebridge, who was waiting in my room for me, he had an ugly leer upon his face. "well," said he, "i fancy my hundred's all right?" "what hundred?" "with oldfield," said he. "i bet him a hundred she'd sell you a piece of glass for a sapphire; and i don't suppose you'll deny that she did it?" "i'm not going to deny anything of the sort," said i; "she did sell me glass, and of the commonest kind. i am now seeking an undiscovered superlative. the biggest fool in london is no designation for me." "ah," said he, "you should take it quietly. she's done a complete dozen of us at the game. that paraphernalia which jack lucas rigged up in her conservatory for her is the medium, i fancy. lucas, you know, is a professor or something at emmanuel, cambridge. he taught her all that jargon about crystals." "but," said i, as i pitched her glass into the fireplace, "what i want to know is, how did i come to think that the stuff was real? i could have sworn to it." "so could we all," he replied, with a great burst of laughter; "but i'll tell you in a word--she hypnotized you. i always said you were a grand subject." i looked him in the face for a minute, during which he made an heroic attempt to be serious. but it was too much for him. presently he gave one great shout of hilarity which you could have heard half-way down the street, and then rolled about in his chair uncontrollably. "you seem to find it amusing," said i, "but i fail to catch the point." "you'll be seeing it by-and-by," said he, and at that he went off to the club to be first with it. the end. * * * * * _shortest route._ _beautiful scenery._ via lookout mountain between cincinnati asheville chattanooga columbia birmingham savannah new orleans jacksonville shreveport miami texas and california points _beautiful illustrated battlefield folder sent on application._ for rates, etc., address w. c. rinearson general passenger agent cincinnati, o. "down where the living waters flow." hot springs, arkansas. the best patronized winter resort in the united states. all the hotels now open. golf, lawn tennis, cricket, base ball, the best of saddle and driving horses, and other outdoor sports. the iron mountain route is the old reliable and most direct line. less than twelve hours from st. louis and twenty-one hours from chicago, with through compartment and standard sleeping cars and free reclining chair cars. pamphlets telling all about it from any agent of the company. w. e. hoyt g. e. p. agent, 335 broadway new york, n. y. h. c. townsend, general passenger and ticket agent st. louis, mo. * * * * * [transcriber's notes: italic typeface in the original book is indicated with _underscores_. minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and intent. page 38, changed "a" to "at" ("a customer at dieppe"). page 140, changed "absense" to "absence" ("the utter absence of clue"). page 150, added the word "all" ("they all of a sudden"). page 217, changed "colour" to "color" ("upon a glow of color"). page 267, changed "conversatory" to "conservatory" ("rigged up in her conservatory"). the following spelling variants have been retained as printed: "dunholm" and "dunholme" "kennet" and "kennett"] generously made available by the internet archive.) this is a copy of the first edition of this book. it is published in the united states by messrs dodd, mead & company, new york; but, in deference to the wishes of collectors, the original london imprint is retained. erratum. page 192, for _anderton_ read _anderson_. the confessions of a collector by william carew hazlitt author of 'four generations of a literary family,' etc. london ward & downey _limited_ 12 york buildings, adelphi, w.c. 1897 contents page chapter i my antecedents--how and whence the passion came to me--my father's people--and my mother's--my uncle--his genuine feeling for what was old and curious--a disciple of charles lamb--books my first love--my courtship of them under my father's roof--my clandestine acquisitions--a small bibliographical romance--my uncle as a collector--some of his treasures--his choice, and how he differed from my father--an adventure of the latter at a bookstall- bargains--the author moralises upon them--a new view--i begin to be a bibliographer--venice strikes my fancy as a subject for treatment--my want of acquaintance with it--mr quaritch and mr ruskin do not encourage me--i resolve to proceed--i teach myself what was requisite to enable me to do so--some of my experiences--molini the elder--the london library forty years ago--what became of my collections for the work--preparing for another and greater scheme, 1 chapter ii i survey the ground before i start--i contemplate a new british bibliography--richard heber--his extraordinary acquirements--his vast library--his manuscript notes in the books--a high estimate of heber as a scholar and a reader- he eclipses all other collectors at home and abroad--a sample or so of his flyleaf memoranda--a few very interesting books noticed--a _historiette_--anecdotes of some bargains and discoveries by him and his contemporaries--the _phoenix nest_ at sion college- marlowe's _dido_--mystery connected with the library at lee priory--the oldest collections of english plays--a little note about lovelace--heber's generosity as a lender--his kindness to dyce--fate of his rarest books--how he obtained some of them--the daniel ballads and their true history- result of a study of _heber's catalogue_ and other sources of knowledge--the _handbook_ appears--mr frederick harrison and sir walter besant pay me compliments, 19 chapter iii the _handbook_ of 1867 and its fruits--mr henry huth--his beneficial influence on my bibliographical labours--he invites me to co-operate in the formation of his library--i edit books for him--he declines to entertain the notion of a librarian--my advantages and risks--a few heavy plunges- a _barnaby's journal_--a _book of hours of the virgin_--the butler mss.--archbishop laud--montaigne--mr huth answerable for my conversion into a speculator--the immense value of the departure to my progress as a bibliographer--a caxton from the country--why i had to pay so much for it--mr huth's preferences--his _americana_--deficiencies of his library gradually supplied--his dramatic series--beaumont and fletcher and ben jonson--mr huth a linguist and a scholar--his first important purchase--contrasted with heber--the drawer at mr quaritch's kept for mr huth--his uncertainty or caprice explained by himself--his failing health becomes an obstacle--the fancy a personal one, 41 chapter iv literary results of my acquaintance with mr huth--the new _bibliography_ in progress, and the 1867 book gradually superseded--some other literary acquaintances--george daniel--john payne collier and frederic ouvry, his son-in-law--the millers of craigentinny--'inch-rule' miller--he purchases at the heber sale by cartloads--my efforts to procure particulars of all the rare books at britwell--i let mr christie-miller have one or two items- an anecdote--mr miller's london house formerly samuel rogers's--his son--where they are all buried--the rev. thomas corser--his fine library--what it cost and what it fetched--his difficulties in forming it--whither much of it went--my exploits at the sale--description of the house where the books were kept--mr corser's peculiar interest in my eyes--his personal character--the sad change in the book market since corser's day--mr samuel sanders--a curious incident--mr cosens, mr turner and mr lawrence--their characteristics--some account of mr cosens as he gave it to me--his line of collecting--my assistance requested--a few of his principal acquisitions and their subsequent fortunes--frederic locker--his idiosyncrasies--his want of judgment--his _confidences_, 57 chapter v mr henry pyne--his ideas as a collector, and my intercourse with him--his office one of my regular lounges--his willingness to part with certain books--i buy a pig in a poke, and it turns out well--mr pyne's sale--a frost--i buy all the best lots for a trifle--the volume of _occasional forms of prayer_ and its history--pyne's personal career and relations--his investigation of the affairs of a noble family--the booksellers--joseph lily--his sale--his services to mr huth--the daniel books in 1864--daniel's flyleaf fibs--the event an extraordinary _coup_--the napier first folio shakespear knocked down and out at £151--why some books are dear without being very rare--f. s. ellis and the corser sale--my successful tactics--he lends me sir f. freeling's interleaved _bibliotheca anglo-poetica_ 73 chapter vi my transactions with mr ellis--rarities which came from him, and how he got them--riviere the bookbinder--how he cleaned a valuable volume for me--his irritability--a strange tale about an unique tract--the old gentleman and the immoral publication--dryden's copy of spenser--the unlucky _contretemps_ at ellis's--a second somewhere else- mr b. m. pickering--our pleasant and profitable relations- thomas fuller's mss. epigrams--charles cotton's copy of taylor the water-poet's works--a second one, which pickering had, and sold to me--he has a first edition of _paradise lost_ from me for two guineas and a half- taylor's thumb bible, 93 chapter vii mr john pearson--origin of our connection--his appreciable value to me--he assists, through me, in completing the huth library--lovelace's _lucasta_--the turbervile--the imperfect chaucer--the copy of ruskin's poems at reading- the walton's _angler_--locker and pearson--james toovey- curious incident in connection with sir thomas phillipps- willis & sotheran--two unique cookery books--only just in time--the caxton's _game and play of the chess_--a valuable haul from the west of england--a reverend gentleman's mss. _diaries of travel_--the wallers--lamb's _tales from shakespear_, 1807--the folio ms. of edmond waller's poems- an unique book of verse--a rare american item--the rimells--i take from them and sell to them--some notable _americana_--the walfords--an unique tract by taylor the water poet--john russell smith and his son--my numerous transactions with the latter--another unknown taylor--john camden hotten--i sift his stores in piccadilly--the bunyan volume from cornwall--john salkeld--my expedition to his shop on a sunday night, and its fruit--a rather ticklish adventure or two--messrs jarvis & son--my finds there--king james i.'s copy of charron, dedicated to prince henry--the unknown fishmongers' pageant for 1590--the long-lost english version of henryson's _æsop_, 1577, 108 chapter viii messrs reeves & turner--my literary work for the firm--my advantageous acquisitions here--cheap rates at which rare books were formerly obtainable--the large turn-over of the business--wake of cockermouth--an unique wynkyn de worde--a supposed undescribed shakespear in a house-sale at bognor- tom arthur--the wynkyn de worde, which i secured for another shilling--arthur and sir thomas phillipps of middle hill--the bristol book shops--lodge's _rosalynd_, 1592--mr elliot stock--my literary work for him--one volume unexpectedly productive--mr henry stopes--my recovery for him of a sarum breviary, which belonged to an ancestor in queen mary's days--his wife's family and sir walter scott- a canterbury correspondent and his benefits--two more uniques--a singular recovery from new york--casual strokes of good luck in the provinces--the wynkyn de worde at wrexham--a _trouvaille_ in the haymarket--books with autographs and inscriptions--a few words about booksellers and publishers, 128 chapter ix at the auction-rooms--their changeable temperature--my finds in wellington street--certain conclusions as to the rarity of old english books--curiosities of cataloguing and stray lots--a little ipswich recovery--a narrow escape for some very rare volumes in 1865--a few remarkable instances of good fortune for me--not for others--three very severe 'frosts'--a great boom--sir john fenn's wonderful books at last brought to light--an odd circumstance about one of them--the writer moralises--a couple of imperfect caxtons bring £2900--the gentlemen behind the scene and those at the table--books converted into _vertu_--my intervention on one or two occasions--the auctioneers' world--the 'settlement' principle--my confidence in sotheby's as commission agents--my three _sir richard whittingtons_--_a reductio ad absurdum_--the house in leicester square and its benefactions in my favour--change from the old days- unique a.b.c.'s and other early school books--the somers tracts--mr quaritch and his bibliographical services to me--his independence of character--the british museum--my resort to it for my venetian studies forty years ago--the sources of supply in the printed book department--my later attitude toward it as a bibliographer--the vellum monstrelet and its true history--bookbinders--leighton, riviere, bedford, pratt--horrible sight which i witnessed at a binder's--my publishers--dodsley's old plays--my book on the livery companies of london--presentation-copies, 150 chapter x as an amateur--old china--dr diamond of twickenham- unfavourable results of his tutorship--my adventure at lowestoft--alderman rose--i turn over a new leaf--morgan- his sale to me of various objects--the seventeenth century dishes--the sèvres tray of 1773--the pair of japanese dishes--blue and white--hawthorn--the odd vase--my finds at hammersmith--mr sanders of chiswick and his chelsea china- gale--the ruby-backed eggshell--a recollection of ralph bernal--buen retiro and capo di monte--reynolds of hart street--the wedgewood teapot--the _rose du barri_ vases--my bowls--an eccentric character and his treasures- reminiscences of midhurst and up park--the zurich jug and my zurich visitor--the diamond sale, 188 chapter xi the stamp book--a passing taste--dr diamond again--an establishment in the strand--my partiality for lounging- one of my haunts and its other visitors--our entertainer himself--his principals abroad--the _cinque cento_ medal- canon greenwell--mr montagu--story of a dutch priest--my experience of pictures--the stray portrait recovered after many years--the two wilson landscapes--sir joshua's portrait of richard burke--hazlitt's likeness of lamb--the picture market and some of its incidence--story of a painting--plate--the rat-tailed spoon--dr diamond smitten- the hogarth salver--the edmund bury godfrey and blacksmiths' cups--irish plate--danger of repairing or cleaning old silver--the city companies' plate, 215 chapter xii coins--origin of my feeling for them--humble commencement- groping in the dark--my scanty means and equally scanty knowledge, but immense enthusiasm and inflexibility of purpose--the maiden acquisition sold for sixteenpence--the two earliest pieces of the new departure--to whom i first went--continuity of purchases in all classes--visit to italy (1883)--my eyes gradually opened--count papadopoli and other numismatic authorities--my sketch of the coins of venice published (1884)--casual additions to the collection and curious adventures--singular illusions of the inexperienced--anecdotes of a relative--two wild money-changers tamed--captain hudson--the auction-thief--a small joke to be pardoned, 235 chapter xiii my principal furnishers--influence of early training on my taste--rejection of inferior examples an invaluable safeguard--i outgrow my first instructors--necessity for emancipation from a single source of supply--mr schulman of amersfoort--his influential share in amplifying my numismatic stores--my visit to him--the rare _daalder_ of louis napoleon, king of holland--my adventures at utrecht and brussels--flattering confidence--in the open market- schulman's catalogues--mm. rollin & feuardent--their english representative--courtesy and kindness to the writer--occasional purchases--the late mr montagu- discussion about an athenian gold _stater_--an atmospheric experiment--my manifold obligations to mr whelan--mr cockburn of richmond allows me to select from his english collection--i forestall mr montagu--messrs spink & son- their prominent rank and cordial espousal of my interests and wants--development of my cabinet under their auspices- my agreeable relations with them--their business-like policy, liberality and independence--the prince of naples- we give and take a little--the monthly _numismatic circular_--the clerical client, 257 chapter xiv the coin sales--my stealthy accumulations from some of them--comparative advantages of large and small sales--the disappointment over one at genoa--the boyne sale--its meagre proportion of fine pieces--my comfort, and what came to me--narrow escape of the collection from sacrifice to a foreign combination--trade sales abroad--a new departure- considerations on poorly-preserved coins--i resign them to the learned--i have to classify by countries and their divisions--my personal appurtenances--suggestions which may be useful to others--the great bactrian discovery--extent of representative collections of ancient money--antony and cleopatra--adherence to my own fixed and deliberate plan- the argument to be used by any one following in my footsteps--advice of an old collector to a new one, 284 chapter xv literary direction given to my numismatic studies and choice--the wallenstein thaler--the good caliph haroun el reschid--some of the twelve peers of france who struck money--lorenzo de' medici, called _the magnificent_--robert the devil--alfred the great--harold--the empress matilda- marino faliero--massaniello--the technist thinks poorly of me--my plea for the human, educating interest in coins--the penny box now and then makes a real collector--how i threw myself _in medias res_--first impressions of the greek series--my difficulty in apprehending facts--early illusions gradually dissipated--what constitutes a typical greek and roman cabinet--and what renders great collections great--redundance in certain cases defended--official authorities except to my treatment of the subject--tom tidler's ground--the technical _versus_ the vital and substantial interest in coins--my width of sympathy beneficial to myself and likely to prove so to my followers--outline and distribution of my collection- autotype replicas and forgeries--romantic evolution of bactrian coinage and history--caution to my fellow-collectors against excessive prices for greek coins--wait and watch--mr hyman montagu and his roman gold, and the moral--the best coins not the dearest--our national series--its susceptibility to eclectic treatment--a whimsical speculation--an untechnical method of looking at a coin--a burst bubble--the continental currencies--their clear superiority of interest and instructive power--the writer's attitude toward them, 304 chapter xvi the question of condition considered more at large--how one most forcibly realises its importance and value--limited survival of ancient coins in fine state--practical tests at home and abroad--lower standard in public institutions and the cause--only three collectors on my lines besides myself--the romance of the shepherd sale--its confirmation of my views--small proportion of genuine amateurs in the coin-market--fastidious buyers not very serviceable to the trade--an anecdote by the way--the eye for state more educated in england than abroad--american feeling and culture--what will rare old coins bring, when the knowledge of them is more developed?--the ladies stop the way- continental indifference to condition--difficulties attendant on ordering from foreign catalogues--contrast between them and our own--_d'une beauté excessive_- condition a relative term--its dependence on circumstances--words of counsel--final conclusions--do i regret having become a collector?--my mistakes, 331 confessions of a collector chapter i my antecedents--how and whence the passion came to me--my father's people--and my mother's--my uncle--his genuine feeling for what was old and curious--a disciple of charles lamb--books my first love--my courtship of them under my father's roof--my clandestine acquisitions--a small bibliographical romance--my uncle as a collector--some of his treasures--his choice, and how he differed from my father--an adventure of the latter at a bookstall--bargains--the author moralises upon them--a new view--i begin to be a bibliographer--venice strikes my fancy as a subject for treatment--my want of acquaintance with it--mr quaritch and mr ruskin do not encourage me--i resolve to proceed--i teach myself what was requisite to enable me to do so--some of my experiences--molini the elder--the london library forty years ago--what became of my collections for the work--preparing for another and greater scheme. when one makes in later life some sort of figure as a collector, it may become natural to consider to what favouring circumstances the entrance on the pursuit or pursuits was due. in the present case those circumstances were slight and trivial enough. although i belonged to a literary family, none of my ancestors had been smitten by the bibliomania or other cognate passion, simply because at first our resources were of the most limited character, and my grandfather was a man of letters and nothing more. he was without that strange, inexplicable cacoethes, which leads so many to gather together objects of art and curiosities on no definite principle or plea throughout their lives, to be scattered again when they depart, and taken up into their bookcases or cabinets by a new generation. this process, broadly speaking, has been in operation thousands of years. it is an inborn and indestructible human trait. the earliest vestige of a feeling for books among us is unconnected with collecting as a passion. my great-grandfather, the presbyterian or congregational minister, had his shelf or two of volumes, mostly of a professional cast. we hear of the _fratres poloni_, five stupendous folios, brimful of erudition--books which seem, to our more frivolous and superficial and hurrying age, better suited to occupy a niche in a museum as a monumental testimony to departed scholarship--books, alas! which those blind instruments of the revolutionary spirit of change, the paper mill and the fire, draw day by day nearer to canonisation in a few inviolable resting-places, as in sanctuaries dedicated to the holy dead. they will enter on a new and more odorous life: we shall look awfully upon them as upon literary petrifactions, which to bygone ages were living and speaking things. the rev. w. hazlitt was, nevertheless, a man of unusually generous sympathies for his time and his cloth; he could relish secular as well as sacred literature, and his distinguished son thought better of him as a letter-writer than as a preacher. but neither engaged in the pursuit of books otherwise than as practical objects of study or entertainment. there was nothing 'hobby-horsical,' to borrow coleridge's expression, about the matter. hazlitt himself secured, as he tells us, stall copies of favourite books or pamphlets, devoured the contents, and then probably cast them aside. this i take to have been shakespear's plan. i cannot believe the great poet to have been a bibliophile like jonson. he merely recognised in other men's work material or suggestion for his own. i conclude that with my father and the scotish blood of his maternal progenitors, the stoddarts and moncrieffs, a certain share of taste for antiquities, or, at any rate, for memorials of the past in a literary shape, was inherited by the hazlitts. my immediate paternal ancestor, the late mr registrar hazlitt, undoubtedly possessed a strong instinctive disposition to form around him a collection of books. he was emphatically acquisitive almost to the last; and had he been a richer man, he would probably have left behind him a fairly good and extensive library. my father was deficient in knowledge and insight--i might add, in judgment. he bought the wrong copies, or he allowed the right ones to be massacred by a pagan binder; but he was a book-lover. the nucleus of his collection had been a set of hazlitt's works, a few volumes given to him by miss lamb and others, and, of course, his own publications. his alliance by marriage to the reynells introduced another stage in our bibliographical evolution. my mother's brother, mr charles weatherby reynell, of whom i have so much to say elsewhere, was not only a book-buyer on a modest scale, but a gentleman with a vague, undefined liking for anything which struck him as quaint and curious--a coin, a piece of china, a picture, a bit of old painted glass, a chippendale chair--it hardly signified what it was; but books had the first place, i think, in his heart, and he knew a good deal about such as he had purchased, and thought a good deal about them too, albeit they were, as copies, hardly calculated for the meridian of the fastidious connoisseur. in short, my relative was a disciple of the lamb school; he selected for merit rather than condition, and his _petite bibliothéque_ was part of his very being. my father and mr reynell may be regarded as my bibliographical and archæological sponsors, and they have to answer for a good deal. instead of becoming a distinguished civil servant, a prosperous trader, or a successful professional man, they contributed, i maintain, to mould me into what i was and am--a bibliographer, a collector, an antiquary. books, as they were my father's only, and my uncle's chief, paramours, were my first love. my father often laid out money on them, when i am now sure that he could ill afford it, and when the hour of pressure arrived, it was the books to which we had to bid farewell. how many i have seen come and go, while i was a boy under my father's roof--successive copies of the same favourite work, or little lots of different volumes. stibbs's, opposite somerset house, and next door to the _morning chronicle_ office, is almost the earliest shop of the kind which i remember; a second was william brown's, originally on the same premises. these two establishments witnessed the flux and reflux of many a brown paper parcel sent home in a moment of impulse, and launched on its backward voyage at a lower quotation in some financial dilemma--a contingency too frequent in the days before relief arrived in the shape of an official post. i am haunted in all my maturer life by a feeling of remorse, that on two or three occasions i was betrayed into making foolish investments on my own authority, when neither my father nor myself could properly defray the expense. but the _lues_ which was, in due course, to assume such enlarged dominion over me, and to branch into so many channels, was already an active agency; and my visits to the shop in the strand, kept by mr brown, bore mischievous fruit in one instance at all events, when i secured for 24s. a set of singer's _select early english poets_, in boards, uncut. my father was terribly concerned, not knowing where this sort of fancy was likely to end; but he recognised, perhaps, his own teaching, and eventually the singer was bound by leighton in half-blue morocco. it was a beautiful little set, i thought, and brand-new in its fresh livery. the day came when we had to say good-bye to it--not to it alone; and i should have wished never to behold it again. i did, however; i met with it at an auction; it was faded, thumbed, disreputable. i had not the courage to touch it; it was no longer mine. i mused as i left the place upon its career and its destiny, and it made me really sad. i have spoken of mr reynell as one of my teachers or masters. he was a person who had a genuine love for our older literature, and enjoyed even better opportunities than my father of indulging it. but his purchases were sparing and desultory, and he never attained any distinction as a collector. he had not studied the subject, and he never became wealthy enough to secure the services of competent advisers. in fact, his want of knowledge rendered him distrustful of counsel. the result was that he accumulated, during a very prolonged life, a singular assemblage of nondescript property, of which the really valuable proportion was infinitesimal. it was perfectly fortuitous, that he had picked up an exceedingly rare _psalter_, in rather ragged state, for 25s., which at his sale, a year or two back, mr quaritch deemed worth £24, and a folio _roman de la rose_, which fetched a good price, and cost him the same moderate sum. as a rule, he invariably, from want of training and fine instinct, bought the wrong article, or, if the right one, in the wrong condition. he had not the eye of george daniel, r. s. turner, or henry huth, for form and fitness. yet he was my instructor in a degree and a sense, and many delightful talks we have had about old books, which one or the other of us had seen or admired. he always listened with interest to my stories of adventures up and down the book-world, of which some are reserved for a future chapter; but he felt his inability, i concluded, to enter into the field with stronger competitors, and he usually returned to the contemplation of his own humble appurtenances with a sense of contentment, if not of superiority. he was totally different from my father in his ideas about books. he did not, in general, care for the modern side, unless it was a first edition of his life-long friend leigh hunt, of hazlitt, or of some other author to whom he was personally attached. on the contrary, my father never cultivated the older editions or original copies. the best standard text was his line. i had from him a little anecdote which shews him in the light of a book-hunter; but then it was for an immediate and isolated literary purpose. while he was engaged about 1840 in editing the works of defoe, he tried to procure a copy of the _account of the apparition of mrs veal_, and went, among other likely resorts, to baker of old street, st luke's. that individual derided the notion of finding such a rarity; and my father, turning away, cast an eye on baker's twopenny box outside. there what should he disinter but the identical pamphlet, and he takes twopence out of his pocket, which he hands to the boy, and puts the prize into it, which he carries home in triumph. it was the only bargain of which i ever heard him speak. he was not that way built. i sometimes wish that my experiences had not been infinitely more numerous. the seeking and winning of bargains constitute an attractive pursuit and an equally attractive topic. you have the power of regaling your less fortunate or unpractical acquaintances with the strange chances, which enabled you to become the master for a trifle of such and such treasures and you gain confidence in your continued good fortune,- 'when a fool finds a horse-shoe, he thinks aye the like to do.' it has sometimes appeared to me, however, that the general public looks with modified respect on this class of venture, more especially as it does not share the profits; and what is absolutely certain is, that the whole system of treating literature from a commercial point of view is narrowing and lowering, and tends to harden, if not to extinguish, that fine sensibility which is proper to the bibliophile. since i was led by a union of circumstances to look upon rare books as a source of advantage, i have grown sensible of a change for the worse in my nature; yet, i think, only so far as the bare ownership is concerned. the volumes which i loved as a younger man are still dear to me; i keep them in my mind's eye; they stand in no peril at my hands of being degraded into _goods_ or _stuff_; i do not hold them, because the outlay or capital which they represent is far more than i can afford to lock up; and in the nature of things i have to content myself with being the recipient of the difference, if not of feeling, that i appreciate the book and know its history better than the man to whom it passes from me. i should be truly ashamed if i had to confess that with the actual proprietary interest in the literary or bibliographical rarities which i have had through my hands during the last forty years my substantial affection for the subject-matter and the authors began and ended. thousands of precious volumes, which might be mine, if i had been otherwise situated, are merely as a question of form and pecuniary arrangement in the british museum, in the bodleian, or in some private library; they are one and all before me at any moment, when i choose to summon them. i remember how they are bound, and the story which each tells; but they are in the keeping of others. should i be happier, were they in mine? my father was one of the oldest members of the london library in st james's square, and i long availed myself of his ticket to frequent and use that highly valuable institution. i consider that this circumstance tended importantly to stimulate and confirm my natural bookish propensity. for whatever besides i have been and am, my central interest, as well as claim to public consideration, is associable with the cause of our earlier vernacular literature. i shall be able to demonstrate with tolerable clearness by-and-by that i have through my quiet, and in a manner uneventful, career busied myself with several other topics, not to mention those which lie outside such an undertaking as the present; but my friends seem to have agreed that it is as a bibliographer that i most distinctly and emphatically pose. i shall argue that point no further. what is more relevant is that at the london library i met with smedley's _sketches from venetian history_, which i perused with enjoyment as a novice, and that this acquaintance led to others and to an exchange of ideas with people about the subject and its position in english literature. with no resources of my own, and with very slight aid from my father, i set to work and collected material. my imperfect knowledge of languages was a stumbling block. when i waited on mr quaritch in castle street and laid bare my ignorance of italian by asking for cicognara's work on _fabrics_ instead of _buildings_, that distinguished personage tellingly reproved me by suggesting that the first thing for me to do was to learn italian. my perseverance, however, was indomitable. i had set my heart on writing about venice. it was enough. i did not, as mr quaritch observed, know much about italian. i had never seen the place. when i wrote to mr ruskin respectfully soliciting helpful suggestions, he left my letter unanswered. what could be done? why, i borrowed the few works which were to be found at our library, bought some which were not, and for others i sent to italy through molini. i taught myself french and italian, and the venetian dialect. i studied all the views of the city which i could find, and i brought out my first rough draft in 1857, when i was three-and-twenty. an amusing illustration of my early faculty of inspiring confidence in the minds of those with whom i dealt was afforded by the perfect trust of molini in my solvency and his unwillingness to allow my father any credit, while the latter actually discharged both my obligations and his own. the elder molini was himself of venetian origin, and of a family which gave more than one doge to the republic; he always impressed my fancy as the ideal of a decayed italian grandee. not only his appearance, but his deportment, was that of a gentleman. he served me excellently well; but true it is that, in spite of his ducal ancestry and exalted traditions, there was the lombard beneath and not far from the surface. the representative of doges, this sovereign prince by inheritance and blood, was the only man who ever charged me interest on an overdue account. as to my book, it is familiar enough that it was reprinted in 1860 by messrs smith, elder & co., and is viewed as the standard english work on the subject, so far as it goes. but i contemplate a third and greatly improved edition, which will carry the narrative to the end. my collections for the task are now in the library, to which i partly gave, and partly sold, them a generation since. they included a copy of the much overestimated _squittinio della liberta veneta_, published at mirandola in 1612. there are very few now living who recollect, as i do, the library as it originally appeared, when mr cochrane was curator, and the institution occupied only the upper part of the house in the square. i was not a personal subscriber till 1869; but i had the complete range of the shelves _jure patris_, and my loan of an unlimited number of books for an unlimited term was never called in question. i have kept volumes at our house for three years uninterruptedly. in those days there were fewer members, and the demand for the class of publications which i required was extremely limited. one of the staff at the library, a subordinate dignitary, used to dabble a little in books on his own account, and occasionally offered me his purchases. i think that his more distinguished colleagues gradually learned to do the same. but the first-indicated individual, i remember very well, once had on sale a set of fourteen volumes of some neglected publication, for which he submitted a proposal of eighteenpence. he resided at hammersmith, while i was at kensington, and i am sure that i do not exaggerate when i say that he carried this merchandise half a dozen times between his abode and st james's square before i agreed to take the lot off his hands. i thought of corporal nym and the lute-case. i was even now beginning to be multifarious and polygonal. i have sketched out in my _four generations of a literary family_ my apprenticeship to bibliography. the starting-point was about 1857, when mr bohn produced his revision of the _manual_ of lowndes, 1834, of which mr f. s. ellis used to speak as a very creditable performance for a drunken bookseller. my haunt in st james's square again befriended me. i met with the heber catalogue, herbert's _typographical antiquities_, and such like. i was unconsciously shifting my ground; yet it was to be long enough before the new departure took form. i allowed myself ample time to ruminate over the matter, to reconnoitre, and to make notes. a copy of the augmented and revised lowndes became my memorandum book. the original meagre sketch of the venetian work had introduced me to mr russell smith the publisher, who undertook it on my father agreeing to contribute to the cost. i acquired the habit of frequenting smith's shop in soho square; i bought a few trifles from him, and in 1858 he took my commission for a book at the bliss sale--lord westmoreland's _otia sacra_, 1648--for which my father, to his consternation, learned that i had to give nearly £9. the copy was in the original calf binding, and was one of the very few which were entirely perfect. it was my earliest purchase at an auction. 1858-9-60 passed away--the second edition of the _venetian history_ appeared--and i, after sundry experiments, finally resolved to cast my lot in with antiquarian literature as an editor and a bibliographer. it is not my present mission to enter into detail respecting my innumerable experiences of a normal character in connection with publishers and booksellers. these are matters of no permanent value or interest to anyone. i have had, in common with the majority of folks similarly situated, my sorrows, my disappointments, my wrongs and my triumphs. _luctor et emergo._ i have known what it has been to be unfairly abused and perhaps unfairly commended. i have kept myself proudly and wilfully apart, and under circumstances, of which no other person has ever comprehended or measured the difficulties, i have held my ground, although once or twice the keel of my dingy has grazed the rocks. chapter ii i survey the ground before i start--i contemplate a new british bibliography--richard heber--his extraordinary acquirements--his vast library--his manuscript notes in the books--a high estimate of heber as a scholar and a reader--he eclipses all other collectors at home and abroad--a sample or so of his flyleaf memoranda--a few very interesting books noticed--a _historiette_--anecdotes of some bargains and discoveries by him and his contemporaries--the _phoenix nest_ at sion college--marlowe's _dido_--mystery connected with the library at lee priory--the oldest collections of english plays--a little note about lovelace--heber's generosity as a lender--his kindness to dyce--fate of his rarest books--how he obtained some of them--the daniel ballads and their true history--result of a study of _heber's catalogue_ and other sources of knowledge--the _handbook_ appears--mr frederick harrison and sir walter besant pay me compliments. i soon learned to divide into two camps, as it were, the authorities available to a student of our earlier literature. there were books like those of dibdin, brydges, park, beloe, hartshorne and lowndes, and the auction catalogues, on the one hand, and on the other there were herbert's _ames_, ritson's _bibliographia poetica_, and collier's _bibliographical catalogue_, to be reinforced presently by corser's _collectanea anglo-poetica_. these two classes were widely different and immensely unequal. i began by drawing a line of distinction, and by depending for my statements on the second group and type rather than the first. but as i discerned by degrees the difference in too many instances between the books themselves and the account of them in works of reference, and as i studied more and more, at my leisure from other employments, the heber and a few more capital catalogues, revealing to me the imperfections in the treatment of the whole subject, i commenced, just in the same way as i had done in the case of venice, revolving in my thought the practicability of improving our bibliographical system, and placing it on a broader and sounder basis. the london library copy of the _heber catalogue_ bears unmistakeable traces of my industrious manipulation in years gone by. i conceived a strong regard for that extraordinary, that unique collection and its accomplished owner. of his private history i have heard certain anecdotes, which indicate that his life was not a very happy one, nor the end of it very comfortable; but as a scholar, as a bibliographer, and as a benefactor to the cause which he so zealously espoused and on which he lavished a noble fortune, he was a man to whose equal i am unable to refer. i turn again and again to his sale catalogue, and amid much that is dry and monotonous enough i am never weary of perusing the notes, chiefly from his own pen, where he places on permanent record the circumstances, often romantic and fascinating, under which he gained possession of this or that volume. remarks or memoranda by mr payne collier and others are interspersed; but the interest seems to centre in those of the possessor, which make his personality agreeably conspicuous, and have always struck me as elevating him above the ordinary standard as a collector, if not as entitling him to the highest rank among those of this or any other country. for when we compare his stupendous accumulations of literary memorials of all ages and regions, in print and in manuscript, with those of harley, grenville, miller, beckford, spencer, huth and others, and then set side by side his conversance with the subject-matter in so many cases, and the purely amateurish feeling and grasp of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors in a vast preponderance of instances, how can we fail to perceive, and forbear to acknowledge, his claim to the first place? i have mentioned elsewhere that heber was partly instrumental in saving the library of george iii. from being sold by the prince regent to the czar. the _bibliotheca heberiana_, in thirteen parts, is a work which it is impossible to open at any page without encountering some point of interest or instruction; but undoubtedly the second, fourth and eighth portions contain the notices and information likely to be most attractive to english and english-speaking persons, and it entered not immaterially into my earlier life to study and utilise what i found here. no class of anecdote can be more enduringly valuable in the eyes of the bibliophile than those with which the work under consideration is so unstintingly enriched, and i may not be blamed for exemplifying and justifying by some typical specimens my estimate of heber's scholarship and energy. if there is a less agreeable side to the question, it is the feeling of regret, in examining the catalogue, that he should not have restricted himself to some range, instead of embracing the entire world of letters, instead of aiming at centralising universality. in heber book-collecting was not a taste, but a voracious passion. his incomparable library, to a private individual deficient, as he was, in method and arrangement, was of indifferent value; as a public one, if he had chosen to dedicate it to that object, it would have proved a splendid monument to his name for all time, especially if the very numerous duplicates had been exchanged for remaining _desiderata_. my jottings in corroboration of my view are, however, almost exclusively derived from those sections of the catalogue devoted to an account of the early english literature, in which the collection was so marvellously rich. since this is merely a sort of introductory feature in my little undertaking, and i was desirous of affording some samples of one of my bibliographical primers, i do not deal with technical detail, but limit myself to literary _adversaria_, and to heber's own personal remarks about his possessions, as distinguished from those of the compilers of the catalogue. under 'bevis of hampton,' heber notes, 'for an account of the romance of bevis see ritson's _dissertation_, prefixed to his _metrical romances_,' and he copies out what is found there. to his copy of the edition of _boethius_ in english, printed at the exempt monastery of tavistock in 1525, he appends a long memorandum, stating that he had bought it at forster's sale in 1806 for £7, 17s. 6d., imperfect and ill-bound, and had afterward completed it from a second, which had belonged to ratcliff and gough. he refers us to robert of gloucester, the _harleian catalogue_, and other authorities, states that lord bute gave £17, in 1798, for mason's copy, and estimates his own at about £50. it fetched £63. it might now be worth £250. on churchyard's _discourse of the queenes maiesties entertainment in suffolk and norfolk_, there is this commentary: 'this must have been printed in 1577-8, because frobisher returned from his last journey while this book was printing. i have another copy of this tract, corresponding minutely throughout with the present, except in the dedication.... the address to the reader differs also, but merely in the typography.' of dekker's _bellman of london_, 1608, he says, 'i have compared this edition with that of 1612, which corresponds exactly, except that six pages of introductory matter are prefixed, and four pages of canting terms are subjoined, entitled "operis peroratio."' to the 'o per se o' of the same writer he has attached a still more elaborate account of the readings of various impressions. he appears to have compared all the editions in his hands with remarkable attention and interest. when we come to gascoigne's _posies_, 1575, there is a historiette which seems well deserving of reproduction: 'this interesting copy of g. gascoigne's poems, diligently read and copiously be-noted by his contemporary, gabriel harvey, came from the ancient and curious library of the parkers of browsholme, hereditary bow-bearers of bolland forest under the dukes of buccleuch. in the first instance, my friend, thomas lyster parker, merely proposed to arrange, beautify and enlarge the family collection, for which purpose he called in ford the bookseller to his assistance, who gave the greater part of the volumes new manchester liveries instead of their old, time-worn coats, in which they had weathered centuries under the domicile of their protectors. subsequent events induced mr p. to dispose of the whole; a few of the caxtons were distributed in london to lord spencer and others at considerable prices; but the bulk was sold to ford, from whom i purchased the present and several more. the manchester shears have, i fear, somewhat abridged the margins. i prize the volume as no ordinary rarity--it affords a curious average sample of the manner in which g. h. recorded his studies in the margins of his books, his neat handwriting, his various learning, his quaintness, his pedantry, and above all his self-satisfied perseverance.' gascoigne's works, 1587, heber made a receptacle for collations with other texts, and i may be pardoned for breaking through my own rule by appending a remark by a former owner, george steevens, 'this volume of gascoigne's works was bought for £1, 1s. at mr mallet's, _alias_ mallock's, _alias_ m'gregor's sale, march 14, 1766. he was the only scotchman who died in my memory unlamented by an individual of his own nation. on the flyleaf of googe's _eglogs_, 1563, is a composite note by steevens, heber and the cataloguer. heber, alluding to steevens's remarks, says, 'mr steevens had never looked into thomas rawlinson's cat., part vii., sold at london house, march 1726, where a copy occurs (perhaps indeed the present one) among the poetæ in 8vo. see also ballard's cat. of mr t. britton, small-coal man, 1714-15, no. 353.' the _temple of glass_, by lydgate, evoked the following: 'i believe there are three editions of this tract--i. the present in caxton's types; ii. an edition by wynkyn de worde; iii. an edition by berthelet, of which there was a copy in pearson's collection, bought by malone, and left by him to bindley, at whose sale it was bought by james boswell.' just below occurs the entry of berthelet's impression, with a memorandum by boswell, 'the price, £4, 18s. 0d., which this volume had been previously sold for, is marked above. on the 21st of jan., 1819, i purchased it for £40, 10s.!!!' but as it had been left as a legacy by mr malone to mr bindley, at whose sale i bought it, i scarcely know how to estimate the _pretium affectionis_ of a book which was at once a memorial of two such dear and respected friends. at heber's sale the copy fetched £14. a singular assemblage of _penny merriments_, published between 1621 and 1675 (heber cat. iv., 1743) bears this interesting note of _provenance_, 'this curious collection belonged originally to narcissus luttrell, and passed with the rest of his valuable library to mr edward wynne of chelsea, on whose decease it was sold by auction at leigh & sotheby's, march, 1786 (see cat., lot 23). mr baynes was the purchaser for £3, 8s. 0d., and bequeathed the poetical and romantic portion of his library to mr ritson, at whose sale i bought it.' we enter on a different atmosphere and line of culture, when we scan heber's note on a small metrical tract by 'playne piers' on the clergy, printed secretly in the time of henry viii., and mis-described by some authorities as in prose: 'if maunsell had examined it with due attention, he must have perceived that a large portion of the text (though not the whole) is written in verse, and runs into loosely-accentuated rhyming stanzas and couplets. to say the truth, i am more than half-disposed to ascribe the authorship to the famous w. roy, of whose poem, _rede me and be not wroth_, the present composition reminds me both in sentiment and measure. it is worthy of remark that g. steevens's copy of the first edition of that poem (now in my possession) is bound exactly uniform, and being of precisely the same dimensions, they probably were united in one cover till he separated them. it is plain that he attached equal and considerable importance to both, having bestowed on each his best russia binding, with his initials on the sides, and inscribed his autograph on the back of title and at the foot of the last leaf--infallible signs of his especial favour.' in the case of a caxton of extraordinary beauty, the _hoole lyf of jason_, heber gives an account of the copies known to him, and concludes that his own, in the original binding of oak covered with calf, and with many rough leaves, is the finest. it had been watson taylor's. another very beautiful one occurred at the selsey sale in 1871, and fetched £670, mr walford desiring to see how far mr quaritch would go and seeing accordingly. he was fortunate enough, however, to have it taken off his hands by mr ellis, who sold it to an american, i believe, for £800. heber, as we all know, was a general scholar, and was at home in foreign no less than in english books. he observes of a very early _roman de la rose_: 'this edition is executed in the characters of ulric gering, the earliest parisian printer, and is very scarce. there is said to be a copy in the public library at lyons. see delandine's catalogue. gering exercised his art from 1470 to 1520, in which year he died. the present is neither one of the earliest nor latest efforts of his press--perhaps about 1480. it has signatures, but neither catchwords nor numerals. it has also many grotesque woodcuts. the execution and presswork very clear and beautiful.' of the romantic accident which threw robinson's _golden mirrour_, 1589, into heber's hands, i give an account in the handbook, where i also shew that the author belonged to alton in cheshire. briefly, rodd the bookseller found the volume of elizabethan tracts, this included, at a marine store dealer's on saffron hill about 1830, and being put into the scales it was found to be worth _fourpence threefarthings_. rodd sold it to heber for £50. it was a glorious haul, yet not so good as that of warton the historian, who picked off a broker's board at salisbury for sixpence the 1596 edition of _venus and adonis_, bound up with several other pieces of equal or even greater rarity. those were halcyon days, were they not? but how much the cost governs the appreciation! what comes to us cheap, because no one else wants it, we hold cheap, and that is the history of many of the early bargains. the _phoenix nest_, 1593, contains the ensuing flyleaf matter: 'i gave mr isaac reed five guineas for this very scarce book in the summer of 1802.--r. h....' heber enters into very careful detail as to the authors of the several poems, and where some of them appear in other books. the copy was uncut, and sold at his sale for £31, 10s. i accidentally discovered another very fine one at sion college, bound up at the end of a common volume, and pointed it out to the librarian, the reverend mr milman, who did not seem to be very strongly impressed by the communication. had it been a sermon worth twopence, he might have felt otherwise. of _pierceforest_, of which he possessed the edition by giles gourmont, 1531-2, in folio, heber speaks as follows: 'this is a romance of great character, value and merit. mr warton, upon whatever authority, asserts it to have been originally written in verse about 1220, and not till many years afterwards translated into prose, an assertion which cannot be confirmed; no ms. of any metrical romance under that title appearing to be anywhere extant, and indeed it is probable that he confounded _pierceforest_ with _perceval_. it is, however, believed to be one of the oldest prose romances extant, and is mentioned by caxton in his _book of the ordre of chyvalry_.' a volume by spenser receives this perhaps somewhat out-of-date notice; but it demonstrates the habit of heber in regard to all classes of works of importance in his possession: 'this is the first edition of spenser's _shepheard's calendar_, and _of extraordinary rarity, not to be found in the most distinguished libraries_. mr todd was obliged to take a journey to cambridge to obtain a sight of a copy. the subsequent editions in 4to are rare and valuable, but far less so than the present....' we have to go back a long way, and cross the sea, before we reach the _patria_ of the next sample, the _historia naturalis_ of pliny, printed by jenson in 1469, in rich old blue morocco, from the library of camus de limari, at whose sale in 1783 it fetched 3000 livres. heber has inscribed a ms. note on the flyleaf to this effect. the book sold at his sale for £31, 10s. we return home at the next specimen, which is gosson's _playes confuted in five actions_ in the same volume with lodge's _reply to gosson_, and a third tract relating to the theatre. mr heber notes: 'the present vol. contains only 3 out of a remarkably curious collection of 8 pieces, bound together soon after the publication of the latest, somewhere about 1580. this may be ascertained by the antiquity of the handwriting, which exactly records them all, on the reverse of the title-page of _playes confuted_. so late as 1781 they all remained together in mr beauclerc's collection (see cat., 4137), with the exception of gascoigne's _delicate diet for drunkards_. they seem afterwards to have passed into mr nassau's library, who divided them into 5 different vols., which are now all in my possession. 'as to gascoigne's _delicate diet_, it is, i apprehend, the same copy contained in g. steevens's collection of gascoigne's works, now in my possession--in fact, no other is known.' it was on that account, presumably, that the copy sold at heber's sale for £27, 16s. 6d. the history of marlowe's _dido_, 1594, must not be repeated here, as it is already printed in the _handbook_. nobody has ever seen the elegy by nash on marlowe, mentioned by warton. the copy of _dido_ given by isaac reed to george steevens, and bought at steevens's sale in 1800 by sir egerton brydges, was transferred by the latter to heber, at whose sale it produced £39. the duke of devonshire's, which had previously been kemble's, cost henderson the actor _fourpence_. a good deal of mystery surrounds the lee priory collection, which seems to have at one time contained many dramatic rarities of the first order, most, if not all, of which eventually found their way to heber. henry oxenden of barham, near canterbury, is known to have owned in 1647 an extraordinary assemblage of old english plays, bound together in six volumes, and comprising the _taming of a shrew_ (not shakespear's), 1594, _ralph roister doister_, _hamlet_ (1603), and other precious remains. what became of them, there is no record; but it has sometimes occurred to me that they might have gone to lee priory. at lord mostyn's, at gloddaeth in carnarvonshire, there is a second series of volumes; but of the contents i have no personal knowledge. to return to the heber _dido_ for a moment, it may be permissible to transcribe steevens's note: 'this copy was given me by mr reed. such liberality in a collector of old plays is at least as rare as the rarest of our dramatic pieces.--g. s.' now and again, of course, heber is misinformed, or his information has been superseded, as where he alludes to shakespear's henry the fourth, 1608, as a first-rate rarity. his copy sold for £12, 12s. in the note about it he takes occasion to mention that steevens bought many of the books of the rev. j. bowle, whom gifford called 'the stupidest of two-legged creatures,' but who had a very curious library, of white. but heber's insight into the contents and merits of his books is admirable. in his copy of tatham's _ostella_, 1650, he draws our attention to the author's ode to lovelace on his journey into holland, and adds, 'it must have been written before his marriage. the prologue on the removal of the cockpit has not been hitherto noticed, and on the next page is a mention of a play called "the whisperer; or, what you please," of which this is the only record.' these extracts might be indefinitely extended; but in a volume not intended for merely bibliographical purposes the foregoing citations may suffice to establish heber's intelligent and painstaking treatment of his books and to explain the stress which i laid on his _catalogue_ in my younger days as one of the leading resources in an attempt to remodel, on an improved and enlarged plan, our national stores. so long as the original gatherer lived, his books were at the service of all who approached him with a legitimate aim, and more particularly at that of the scholar and the editor. we repeatedly hear from mr dyce how greatly he was indebted to heber for the means of completing his texts of the early dramatists and poets, of whose works the original copies were often nowhere else to be found. heber was the warm friend and helper of the men of letters of his time, and deserves to be classed among them. many of his rarest volumes unfortunately passed into hands where they still remain, and where they are not so readily available. i am thinking of the britwell and other closed private libraries, of which the proprietors are indifferent to literature or jealous of intrusion. the zealous bibliographer blesses them both, and prays for the music of the hammer. a careful survey of the _heber catalogue_ leads to the conclusion, from the immense number of rarities there offered for sale for the first time, that the owner succeeded in obtaining a notable proportion of his early books direct from the trade or from private sources by that most powerful of inducements--the known willingness to pay promptly and well for everything brought to him. the note to thorpe the bookseller, enclosing an order on his bankers for £200 for the ballads, of which the daniel volume was merely a selection, is still extant; the money seems to have reached thorpe's hands before the purchase left them, in consequence of heber being from home; even he speaks there of being ashamed of himself for his extravagance, and he asks the vendor whether it was the inheritance of the stationers' company. he was not aware that the lot came from helmingham hall through fitch of ipswich, and that it had been milked by daniel. my association with the london library and gradual contact with the british museum, with collectors, and with the book trade, tended to stimulate a natural affection for old books, while it gradually and, at first, unconsciously gave to the movement a bibliographical and commercial direction. i conceived in my mind, apart from any collateral matters, a grand literary scheme. i saw before me all that former men, heber included, had achieved toward a british bibliography; and i determined to combine and collate the whole, and make it the nucleus of a new work. the result was the appearance in 1867 of the _handbook of early english literature_. i made not only the british museum, and the oxford and cambridge libraries, but sion college, south kensington, and lambeth, pay me toll. i did not at first attend personally at lambeth; but the present bishop of oxford, who was then librarian, copied such titles as i indicated to him, and his lordship, i have to say, was very accurate, and wrote a very clear hand. i always found dr stubbs extremely kind and obliging in this way. maitland was before my time. i did not consider at the time that i had much ground for being ashamed of this performance; it was undeniably a long advance on my precursors; that i had a great deal to learn and unlearn was an experience to be gained by degrees, and at more or less casual opportunities; and it will become necessary to enter into some particulars of the circumstances which led and enabled me to undo piecemeal my maiden essay, and to build up from the ruins such a colossal structure as, on its near completion, no other civilised country can boast of possessing. thirty years have passed away. the handbook has become only one of a series. in the _hazlitt memoirs_ i judged it to be high time to expose the ingenious strategy of the rev. canon ainger and mr alexander ireland in respect to my lamb and hazlitt labours. i have been, as a rule, fairly reticent and forbearing in these cases, and have refrained from appealing to the press. but i procured the insertion in two journals of protests against the assumption of mr frederic harrison that a bibliography of english history was a novel project, and the apparent claim of sir walter besant, as i infer from a paragraph in the _globe_, to the rectification of the whittington legend. i ought to be pleased that so illustrious a personage as sir walter thinks so humble an one as myself worth such flattering recognition. peradventure, if i should reproduce my work, i shall be charged with having borrowed my statements from a great author and scholar. chapter iii the _handbook_ of 1867 and its fruits--mr henry huth--his beneficial influence on my bibliographical labours--he invites me to co-operate in the formation of his library--i edit books for him--he declines to entertain the notion of a librarian--my advantages and risks--a few heavy plunges--a _barnaby's journal_--a _book of hours of the virgin_--the butler mss.--archbishop laud--montaigne--mr huth answerable for my conversion into a speculator--the immense value of the departure to my progress as a bibliographer--a caxton from the country--why i had to pay so much for it--mr huth's preferences--his _americana_--deficiencies of his library gradually supplied--his dramatic series--beaumont and fletcher and ben jonson--mr huth a linguist and a scholar--his first important purchase--contrasted with heber--the drawer at mr quaritch's kept for mr huth--his uncertainty or caprice explained by himself--his failing health becomes an obstacle--the fancy a personal one. the appearance of the _handbook_ introduced me to the late mr henry huth, and gave me the free range for years of his fine library, with the incidental advantage of assisting in its enlargement, and in the preparation of the catalogue. i had written to mr huth in the winter of 1866, soliciting the title and collation of a unique book in his hands, and he wrote back, furnishing the information not quite correctly, but stating that he was always, when in town, at home on sunday afternoons. this slight incident produced a ten years' intimacy, and was instrumental in inaugurating a new era in my bibliographical career. it was when i had reached the letter k in the alphabet that i added mr huth to my acquaintance, and thenceforward my book, as it appeared in parts, reflected in its pages the beneficial fruit of weekly visits to that gentleman's house, and his friendly co-operation in an enterprise which more or less interested him personally. our constant intercourse and my widening knowledge of certain classes of books, for which we had a common liking, naturally led to mr huth, in the most delicate manner, suggesting after a while, that he should be obliged if i would let him hear of any with which i might meet; and during many years i was in the habit of sending to him single volumes or parcels which fell in my way, and which he had the option of rejecting if he did not care for them, or they happened to be duplicates. i very soon, too, persuaded him to allow me to carry out small literary undertakings for him, for the sake of distributing the very limited number of copies printed among his friends and my own. i became sensible of the inconvenience and awkwardness attendant on the completion of his library, as it involved commercial relations distasteful to us both, and i ventured, as soon as i could, to propose to him a yearly allowance for my help and advice. this idea he was unwilling to entertain, however, because he thought that it would involve something like my domestication on the premises, and the library, as usual, was almost personal to himself. i therefore most reluctantly continued to add to his collection on my own terms, and, with the books which i edited for him and for the publishers, and the general exercise of my bibliographical experience elsewhere, i was in a position to develop by steady degrees my large, yet still rather loosely-defined, project for a general catalogue of early english literature. my _handbook_ was brought to an end in 1867, about a twelvemonth subsequent to the fortuitous meeting with mr huth. but every day, when the more powerful motive for book-hunting existed, seemed to do its part in opening my eyes to the illimitable magnitude of the field on which i had entered, and in compelling me to pass my pen through some article which i had been tempted to borrow from a secondary authority. in other words, the _handbook_ was no sooner bound, than i began to convert a considerable proportion of it into waste-paper. my relations with mr huth were, on the whole, as agreeable as they were advantageous. many and many a rarity in his catalogue passed through my hands, and even when he acquired books elsewhere, he grew into the habit of asking me to go and look through them before they were sent home. my improving familiarity with his tastes and wants placed me in a favoured position, when i stumbled on items in the book-shops and the sale-rooms. sometimes i had to incur rather formidable risks, and to buy for the library very expensive works, subject to them being approved, and merely on the certainty that they were not duplicates, and were clear _desiderata_. such was the case with the extraordinary copy of george turbervile's _poems_, 1570, in the original sheep binding, as clean and spotless as when it left the first vendor three centuries prior, and nearly the only one known. john pearson, of york street, covent garden, had obtained it of a retired dealer at shrewsbury for £30, and he asked me £105, with the proviso that it was not returnable as imperfect. i collated it on the spot, and f. s. ellis very kindly and liberally lent me the money to pay for it. luckily mr huth took to it, and gave me fifty guineas for my trouble. it is one of the chief elizabethan gems in a library abounding in them. i remember being in boone's shop, in bond street, one day, and seeing there a marvellous and matchless copy of brathwaite's _barnaby's journal_, almost uncut, and beautifully bound in red morocco. boone demanded £18, 18s. for it. i put it in my pocket. the following sunday i saw mr huth, and inquired what sort of a copy of barnaby he had. he replied that his was as good an one as could be desired, and he opened the case where it lay, and handed it to me. i took mine out, and handed it to him. he smiled. of course, there was no comparison. his went as a duplicate to lilly. he did not judge boone's dear at twenty-five guineas; it would bring twice that sum now. i was so much accustomed to frequent the booksellers, and i was so well known and trusted that i overlooked the circumstance, in my earlier visits to bond street, that i had not dealt quite so regularly or largely there as elsewhere, and one day when boone shewed me a fine _book of hours_, of which the price was £150, i coolly placed it under my arm, and walked out of the place, with an intimation that i should like to have it. i suppose that the firm was reassured when i called, a day or so after, and gave them my cheque for the amount. we became very good friends, and i took several things off boone's hands for mr huth. the _hours_ i have just mentioned was bound in old velvet; and the owner rather unwisely, as i thought, let bedford give it a new morocco livery. one offer on the part of this house to me i was unable to entertain--the butler mss. formerly in the hands of the poet's editor, thyer, and containing matter not printed by him. boone spoke of £250; but i declined. what became of them, i never heard; they were not sold with his stock. his retirement destroyed a link between the old school and the new. he had many curious stories to relate about those whom his uncle and himself had known--about libri and dibdin. he (the younger b.) was fairly shrewd and experienced, but thoroughly straightforward. i recollect picking off his shelf one morning an old tract of no particular value, but, as it happened, not in the british museum, to which i transferred it, bearing on the title the unrecognised autograph, _w. bathon_; it was the copy which belonged to archbishop laud, when he occupied the see of bath and wells. there was a somewhat parallel incident at the sale of lord selsey's books at sotheby's in 1871. i took down from a shelf at random an old italian book, and perceived at the foot of the title the signature of montaigne the essayist. i instantaneously closed it, and put it back, for i saw mr toovey approach. i waited to see it sold; it fell to me at 2s. f. s. ellis came into the room a moment after, and heard of the find. he explained to me that he had a montaigne client, and wished me to let him have my bargain, which i surrendered for a consideration. i consider mr huth answerable for my conversion from a pure amateur into a commercial speculator in books. he was the prime mover in producing the change in my views and arrangements--one which certainly responded to my convenience in working out my great project as a bibliographer, by supplying me in the interval, where the direct practical result was _nil_, with ways and means, rather than to my natural feeling, which would have kept me outside the market as a buyer and seller. my unconquerable and boundless ambition to become the creator of an entirely new bibliographical system, so far as the early literature of great britain and ireland was concerned, reconciled me, to some extent, to the unwelcome, though profitable, labour of utilising for my own purposes the stores which i accumulated and distributed from year to year, commencing with that which immediately succeeded my introduction to mr huth. i had already fulfilled that gentleman's own express desire, that i should co-operate in the extension of his library in the direction which i was beginning to study in earnest; but my first notable achievement was a purchase which found another destination. jeffreys of bristol sent me up, in the winter of 1868, a beautiful copy of caxton's _golden legend_, wanting sixteen leaves, which were supplied from one by wynkyn de worde. it was an edition of which the althorp copy was the only perfect one known. the owner asked £85. i hardly understood why he sent it to me, as i had never had any transaction with him. it was on a friday. i called at b. m. pickering's the next morning, and casually stated that i had had such a book offered to me, and that i intended, on the sunday, to name the matter to mr huth, who did not then possess the volume. pickering begged to see it first; he came down to my house the same evening, and took it away under his arm at £150. if it had not been for john pearson persuading jeffrey to raise his price, i should have had it £40 cheaper. mr huth subsequently procured another imperfect copy, and at my request lord spencer very kindly forwarded his own to london to enable a facsimilist to complete both. mr huth had some very strong preferences--favourite authors and topics. anything by wither or quarles, with curious woodcuts, on an educational theme, or in exceptionally fine state, was sure game. he did not care for theology, unless it was by such a man as fuller or jeremy taylor; and of folios he was shy, in the absence of a valid reason; there were so many which it was imperative to tolerate, commencing with the four shakespears. to _americana_ he became at last a convert, but i knew him when he put the question--a pertinent question, too--what he had to do with that sort of book? henry stevens, however, and then others, made the interest clearer to him, and he gave way till, in the end, he was master of a fairly good collection, including such capital features as hariot's _virginia_, 1588, and such unique _morçeaux_ as rich's _news from virginia_, 1610. i was fortunate enough to enter on the scene, when in numerous respects his shelves were very deficient, and when some of the leading poets of the seventeenth century were conspicuous by their absence. he had not, at the time i refer to, even beaumont and fletcher, or jonson, or carew, or lovelace, by way of example. as i run through his catalogue, i notice hundreds and hundreds of volumes which he had been quietly and patiently waiting to receive from someone, as he never went in quest of anything in his life, beyond calling at lilly's, ellis's, or quaritch's, on his way home; and nearly all his dramatic acquisitions, except the quarto shakespears and other rarities from the daniel and charlemont sales in 1864-5, were late additions, obtained for him by myself, as scarcely a second individual would have dreamed of him not having them, or being willing to take them. all his shirleys, massingers, fords, and the rest, came to him at prices which, compared with current figures, make them appear almost nominal. massinger's _virgin martyr_, 1622, cost him most; for b. m. pickering charged me £7, 7s. for the copy, and i have not met with another since that time. his beaumont and fletcher, 1647, which has been lately trotted up to a startling figure by the americans, cost me 30s. and is one of the finest i ever saw; one leaf was torn, and a second copy was bought for £1 to make the defect good. in the same way his ben jonson, 1616-31, the most complete one in existence, with a duplicate title and a cancel leaf, was obtained from stibbs for 36s. it had been colonel cunningham's, and was spotless in the original calf binding. mr huth was not a heber; but he liked to look into his books, and of many he had a fair knowledge. he was a linguist and a scholar, and was led by the circumstances of his origin (his father being a german and his mother a spaniard) to contract a partiality for the literature of those two countries. the ancient spanish romance, the early german book with woodcuts, were well represented. one of the former, in its pristine stamped livery, was among his earliest purchases, when he frequented payne & foss's establishment with his brother louis, just toward the close of the career of that distinguished firm, which supplied heber and his contemporaries--grenville, hibbert, the freelings, and others--and the price was £8. it might at present be £80, if mr quaritch were in the right cue. although mr huth cannot be said to have been a mere amasser of old books, without an interest in their characteristics and literary value, it is curious that he never, so far as i am aware, inserted a ms. note of any kind in a volume, or his autograph, or a bookplate or _ex libris_. he seemed to shrink from asserting his personality in these respects, and was so far the reverse of heber, whose memoranda accompanied thousands of the items in his immense library, and manifested his earnestness and indefatigability in obtaining and perpetuating information--nothing else. of conceit or pedantry no one ever had less. toward the last, while the catalogue was in course of preparation by mr f. s. ellis and myself, an unpleasant _contretemps_ produced a coolness between mr huth and the writer, and i saw nothing farther of him, although we occasionally corresponded down to the period of his death in 1878, the melancholy circumstances of which i have narrated in my _four generations of a literary family_. he made additions to his library rather languidly in later years; but he bought here and there to fill up gaps or otherwise, and some of the entries belonging to the earlier letters of the alphabet form an appendix to the above-mentioned work. there used to be a little drawer at quaritch's, where any book thought to be acceptable to mr huth was deposited day by day against his arrival about five in the afternoon. once it was an unique tract of _king edward the fourth and the tanner of tamworth_, for which he was asked £16, 16s., and he held it up between two fingers, and exhibited it to an acquaintance with him as rather a dear pennyworth. but he took it, and at the same time he rejected an equally unique and far more curious metrical account of the martyrdom of two churchmen in the time of henry viii., which the british museum was glad enough to secure. as he has said to me frankly enough, it was a toss up, whether he bought or did not buy; of course it was a mere fancy, and it is only a piece of history at present that one or two of the booksellers, acquainted with his peculiarity, passed on volumes now and then from one to the other, and what had not pleased in king street, caught the fish in garrick street at an advanced quotation. mr huth was not only vacillating in his pursuit of books, and so missed many which he ought to have secured, but his health began to fail some time prior to his decease, and he was either abroad or in a frame of mind unequal to the discussion of literary questions and the transaction of unnecessary business. his library, as it appears from the printed catalogue, is a very different monument from that which he might have left, had he been more consistent or been more willing to repose confidence in others. the precious volumes, which went elsewhere through his periodical apathy or indisposition, are barely numerable, and it was the more to be regretted, since the outlay was immaterial and the grand _nucleus_ was there. i suspect that the cause of wavering was one which is common to so many collectors in all departments, and leads in a majority of instances to the abrupt dispersion of the property. i allude to the almost ostentatious indifference of relatives and friends to the treasures, unless, perhaps, they are pictures or china, which a man gathers round him. in this instance £120,000 had been expended in books, mss., drawings and prints, and the worthy folks who came to the house, what did they know about them? what did they care? a man might well hesitate and wonder whether there was any good in persevering with a hobby personal to himself. i do not know whether mr huth suspected me of extravagance in the purchase of curiosities, but i remember that he one day, at prince's gate, when we were together, rather gravely, yet with his usual gentleness, observed that it was very important to husband one's resources--to use his own phrase. he entered more with me than with any other stranger into trivial and ordinary matters; and apropos of expenditure i recall his allusion to the habit of some of his clerks in the city laying out a larger sum on their luncheons than he did. possibly they went home, not to dinner, but to tea. i have mentioned in _four generations of a literary family_ farther particulars of mr huth, which i of course do not here reproduce. i recollect being at prince's gate one sunday, when professor ---called, and began to eulogise the palatial residence, the splendid book-room, the noble cases, and so forth; and i at once saw that he was making our host rather uncomfortable by his _gaucherie_. on some pretext i induced the professor to accompany me, when i took my leave, and i am sure that mr huth was grateful. i do not know that i grudged huth anything, for he was worthy of his fortune. perhaps i was a little envious of his knowledge of the notes of birds, which he told me that he possessed, and of which i have the most imperfect and inaccurate idea. i judge that he was reticent even to his family about his affairs, for, after his sudden death, his widow, to whom he left everything, found to her surprise, i was told, that there was more even than she had expected. so that he had acted up to his own maxim. a man may be frugal with £100,000 a year as he may be with the thousandth part of it--more so indeed, as there is a so much wider margin. chapter iv literary results of my acquaintance with mr huth--the new _bibliography_ in progress, and the 1867 book gradually superseded--some other literary acquaintances--george daniel--john payne collier and frederic ouvry, his son-in-law--the millers of craigentinny--'inch-rule' miller--he purchases at the heber sale by cartloads--my efforts to procure particulars of all the rare books at britwell--i let mr christie-miller have one or two items--an anecdote--mr miller's london house formerly samuel rogers's--his son--where they are all buried--the rev. thomas corser--his fine library--what it cost and what it fetched--his difficulties in forming it--whither much of it went--my exploits at the sale--description of the house where the books were kept--mr corser's peculiar interest in my eyes--his personal character--the sad change in the book market since corser's day--mr samuel sanders--a curious incident--mr cosens, mr turner and mr lawrence--their characteristics--some account of mr cosens as he gave it to me--his line of collecting--my assistance requested--a few of his principal acquisitions and their subsequent fortunes--frederic locker--his idiosyncrasies--his want of judgment--his _confidences_. my bibliographical pursuits and exigencies, setting aside my concurrent literary ventures, themselves sufficiently numerous and onerous to have employed a person of average application, had the inevitable effect of making me more or less intimately known to most of the persons who in my time have studied or possessed books. my commerce was with the holders as well as with the buyers and sellers of them. on the one hand i had to face the problem of life, and on the other that of title-taking. of my purely literary work, which is not unknown to a few, i may say that the proportion of _pot-boilers_ is not unreasonably large; it might have been larger, had i not chosen as an alternative to turn to account my conversance with old books as a _moyen de parvenir_, but during all the term of my relationship with mr huth i was incessantly engaged in storing up notes on the volumes, which came and which went, against an opportunity for publication. that aim and my contributions to literature, such as the _venetian history_, the warton, the dodsley, the blount's _tenures_, united to constitute my compensation for the rather distasteful ordeal of espousing the commercial side. the bibliographical toil was enormous, for the few hundreds of articles, which mr huth and others acquired, were a mere handful in comparison with the mass which i gradually digested into my system, and reduced to form and method. i judge it to be the most intelligible plan, with a view to tracing my somewhat peculiar and anomalous career in connection with books, china, coins and other objects of general interest, to proceed, after furnishing the previous sketch of mr huth and my participation in his experiences as a collector, with some account of certain other individuals who influenced me and proved more or less valuable as instruments for carrying out my central and cardinal policy. george daniel of canonbury and john payne collier were practically before my time; but i corresponded with the latter on literary subjects, and daniel i occasionally met in the street or in the sale-room. with collier's relative, frederic ouvry the solicitor, i had some transactions; but i found him an undecided and capricious sort of person, who had evidently imbibed from collier a tincture of feeling for the older literature without having any solid convictions of his own. the best part of his library consisted of books which he had purchased from his connexion by marriage, and which the latter had obtained more or less accidentally in the course of his prolonged career. ouvry, however, did not get all. for in a note to myself, collier expressly says that his unique copy of constable's _diana_, 1592, was exchanged by him with heber for 'books he more wanted.' it was he who lent me the fragment of _adam bel_, _clym of the clough_ and _william of cloudisle_, more ancient and correct than copland's text in the british museum, for my _early popular poetry_, 1864, before i met with the second and yet more curious and valuable one of 1536 in the hands of the late mr henry bradshaw, which i collated for my _early popular poetry of scotland and the northern border_, 1896. the name most directly and intimately associated with that of mr heber, in a bibliographical sense, is that of mr william henry miller of craigentinny, near edinburgh, a gentleman who amassed a fortune by occupations outside his profession as a solicitor, and whom we find bidding at least as early as 1819 for books of price against all comers. mr miller made it his speciality to take only the finest and tallest copies, and he thence gained the sobriquet of _inch-rule_ or _measure_ miller, because he invariably carried with him the means of comparing the height of any book with which he met against his own; and if the new one had a superior altitude, out went the shorter specimen to make room for the more millerian example. at the heber sale, this gentleman saw his opportunity, and used it well. the bibliophobia had set in; prices were depressed, so far as the early english poetry was concerned, and thorpe the bookseller, under his instructions, swept the field--the drama, the classics, and the miscellanea he left to others. nearly the whole of the rarities in that particular division, set forth in the second, fourth, sixth and eighth parts of the catalogue, fell to mr miller; and of many no duplicates have since occurred. the purchaser must have laid out thousands, and have added to his collection positive cartloads. he died in 1849. of his successor, mr samuel christy, the hatter of piccadilly, who assumed the name of christie-miller, i saw comparatively little; but i used to hear odd things about him from david laing and from riviere the bookbinder. in my ardour for organising my own _bibliography_ on an enlarged and exhaustive footing, i jesuitically availed myself of the periodical consignments of books to riviere for binding; and, with the leave of the latter, took notes of everything in his hands. mr christie-miller himself vouchsafed me a certain amount of information, and from david laing i derived many other particulars about the britwell library, so that with these channels of help and light, and others in the shape of occurrences of duplicate copies of recent years, i flatter myself that there is very little in that rather jealously-guarded repository which i have not put on record in print or in ms. i have been guilty of extending the miller library only in two or three instances. the late proprietor coveted more than one volume which he saw in my possession; but i always gave mr huth the preference, and as a rule that gentleman never let a good thing go begging. i must relate an amusing episode, which happened in connection with mr christie-miller about 1872. i had called at john pearson's in york street, and found him from home; but i waited for him on the doorstep, and presently he arrived with two folio volumes under his arm. i asked him what he had got there. 'why,' said he, 'two lots which were sold separately to-day at sotheby's as "old newspapers, etc."' and he handed them to me, as i stood by him outside his shop. i glanced at the contents, and inquired how much he expected for his purchase. he said, 'if you will take the volumes now as they are, twelve guineas.' i did. riviere broke them up, bound the seventy black-letter ballads in a volume, which i sold to mr miller for £42, and returned me the residue, a collection of penny _garlands_, which went to the british museum, and some rubbish, which dropped into my waste-paper basket. christie-miller owned the house in st james's place which had once been classic ground as the residence of samuel rogers. i went there two or three times, and met his (miller's) wife and son. the latter was a mild youth, who had been educated at high-class schools and a university, and who had (like his father) an imperfect acquaintance not only with literature but with grammar. he was phenomenally ignorant and dull, like his parent. all three at present lie seventy feet beneath the ground, near holyrood, where a monument has been erected to their memory. if the ferocious socialist hereafter disinters the remains of haughty and purse-proud book-collectors of former times, he will probably not dig down low enough to find the bones of the millers. a personage far more in sympathy with mr heber was the reverend thomas corser, of stand, near manchester, whose acquaintance it was my honour to enjoy from about 1862 to the time of his death. i have taken occasion elsewhere to explain how it was that mr corser and myself were bound together in a measure by a community of interest apart from books. while he was as zealous and genuine an enthusiast as heber, and regarded his acquisitions as something better than shelf-furniture, he was in one important respect totally different from his great predecessor who, as a man of large fortune, had only to decide on purchases and to refer the vendors to his bankers. mr corser, on the contrary, was a man of very limited resources, and found it a difficult task now and then to keep pace with the _desiderata_ submitted to his notice by the booksellers and auctioneers. i know as a fact that at the bright sale in 1845, which must have marked a comparatively early stage in his bibliographical career, he was obliged to pay five per cent to the agent (thorpe or rodd), who bought for him; and his bill was not far from £1000. altogether his fine and interesting library cost him, as he told me, £9000; and it realised about £20,000, chiefly owing to the competition of the british museum, mr huth, and mr miller. the national collection made a splendid haul--far better than it would have done, had mr huth been better advised. as it was, i secured at my own risk a large number of lots at very high prices, which his agent lilly had overlooked, or did not duly appreciate. i bought personally, as well as through f. s. ellis, to the value altogether of £2000 or £3000, and ellis subsequently congratulated me on my dexterity in giving my commissions to him, and thus removing one of my most formidable competitors. he instanced one lot, which thus went to him at 2s., and for which he would have given £3, 3s. the rectory at stand was a small, detached house near the church, and had no suitable accommodation for such an assemblage of treasures as mr corser gradually accumulated within its walls. nearly all the bedrooms, as well as reception-rooms, had book-cases or cupboards crammed with volumes. i paid repeated visits here, and enjoyed the free range of everything which i desired to examine, provided that my excellent friend could put his hand on it. he had to light a candle on one occasion to hunt for a caxton in a bedroom cupboard; and latterly, when he was disabled by paralysis, poor fellow! and unable to help me, i had to search as best i could for this or that book or tract, of which very possibly no second copy was to be seen anywhere in the whole world except in that secluded parsonage. i cherish, with a gratification never to be lessened or forgotten, the memory of this delightful intercourse with one whose people had known my people in the days gone by, and who, besides being a collector of old books, had made himself a master, like heber, of the contents; and who, as a younger man, enjoyed the genteel recreation of angling, and in his maturer life relished good wine and good talk. when i think of the rector of stand, and look at most of the circle which at present constitutes the book-collecting world, and governs the market, i perceive the difference and the fall! and just at this moment the almighty-dollar type rules the roost, and makes its caterers and agents look big and reckless at sales, and the disciples of the old-fashioned school, to which mr corser belonged, button up their pockets and retire. one of the last men who collected books for their own sake, and not from mere ostentation and purse-pride, was the late mr samuel sanders, who, as he informed me, had been a buyer from his youth, and who bequeathed his extensive collections to one of the colleges. i knew him very slightly. but, not long before his death, i was in the room at sotheby's and expressed to a stranger my regret at having missed the day before an unique wynkyn de worde, of which i lacked the true particulars. it was mr sanders, and he apprised me that he was the purchaser through mr quaritch, and would bring up the volume for my inspection next day, which he accordingly did. my gallery of bibliographical acquaintances is not deficient in variety. during a more or less brief period, i saw a good deal from time to time of mr f. w. cosens, mr r. s. turner and mr edwin lawrence. of the two latter i have little more to say than i have noted down in another publication. i used to meet mr turner at mr huth's. his line of collecting was, on the whole, a little outside my speciality or specialities, and mr lawrence was mainly associated in my mind as a member of a literary club to which i sometimes went as my father's guest. he was a subscriber to some of my literary enterprises, and i thence learned that he was f.s.a., as those letters accompanied his signature not only in his communications, but in his cheques. he was, like turner, an ill-hung man; but i have understood that he was very kind and generous, and i know that he was a first-rate judge (like turner again) of what was the right article, both in books and in other cognate matters. mr cosens was altogether different. he was self-educated and self-helped. his practical conversance with literary affairs was almost _nil_; but he was willing to take a good deal on credit, and had a natural leaning toward letters and art. he introduced himself to me, as lawrence indeed had done, and invited me to assist him in a scheme which he had rather vaguely formed for collecting together the mss. remains of our early poets and verse-writers. i was instrumental in procuring for him a tolerably voluminous body of this sort of material, as mr huth was indifferent to it, and among much that was of inferior account, from the incessant absorption of valuable mss. by public libraries, mr cosens succeeded in obtaining a fair number of interesting and even important items, particularly an ancient codex on vellum of the _prick of conscience_, and a volume of elizabethan lyrics, which i bought at an auction, unbound, and for which mr christie-miller gave me some roman parchment to enable riviere to clothe it in a becoming style. this book contained _amoris lachrymæ_ and other poems by nicholas breton, printed in his _bower of delights_, 1591. boone valued it at £60, but i gave £16 under the hammer, and i thought £45, under the circumstances, not extravagant. its subsequent history is curious enough. when the cosens mss. were sold by sotheby, the cataloguing was so well done that what i had got for £16 i had knocked down to me for as many shillings, and the lot is now, i believe, in great russell street. again, thanks to the auctioneer's clever manipulation, the old vellum ms. bought at the corser sale by ellis for £70, sold by him to me for £105, and by me to cosens for £157, 10s., fell to me at £24. it has found its probably final resting-place in the bodleian. frederick locker, or, as he subsequently became, locker-lampson, was a gentleman to whose bibliographical side i have devoted a fair share of space in the _four generations of a literary family_. during a few years, and prior to the preparation and issue of his privately-printed catalogue, i saw a good deal of him, and he became the channel for some of my acquisitions which mr huth did not require, or when the latter was in a less eager humour for buying. locker was very partial to certain books. he aimed at getting all four editions of davison's _poetical rhapsody_, and he succeeded. over the first one of 1602 he made a tactical blunder by letting one bookseller understand that he wanted the volume when it accidentally occurred, and giving his commission to another. it was a very poor copy indeed, and cost him £60, plus ten per cent. that of 1611 came to him dear enough, too. i had changed mr huth's copy, which was not satisfactory, for a beautiful one in the original vellum wrapper, and had the duplicate at £6. i sold it to ellis for £12, and he charged locker £21. the latter upbraided me, who had no knowledge of his views, with making him pay £9 more than was necessary! he always struck me as a most unfortunate purchaser; and there was about him a flaccidity, which made him appear inconsistent and insincere. he gave an exorbitant price for a most wretched imperfect copy of barnfield's poems, 1598, and he actually paid highly for two copies of _england's helicon_, 1600, both wanting the last leaf, and both otherwise indifferent. surely these old books, to be interesting and desirable, should be fine and complete. the mere text, where there is no extrinsic feature, such as a signature or a bookplate, you can have in a five shilling or a fivepenny re-issue. yet locker found some one to sing the praises of the rowfant books in strains--well, significant of a _quid pro quo_ for recent experience of friendly hospitality. this gentleman, however, was in his best days as a collector a genuine enthusiast, and might have been occasionally seen at an early hour walking up and down on the pavement, awaiting the arrival of some bookseller, in whose brand-new catalogue had appeared a nugget to his taste. this phase of the book-fancier's career, by the way, has its curious side. such a thing has been known as for the publisher of a list of old books to lard and season it with a few excruciating rarities which had yet to be acquired, and to bring to his door fasting all the competitors for such matters within a radius or telegrams from the more remote--with a common result. locker's _confidences_, which he made almost a parade, in referring to their future appearance, in characterising as a publication of absolute necessity posthumous, was, if one may compare small things with great, as perfect a disappointment as the talleyrand _memoirs_, so anxiously looked for, and at last printed, only to create a murmur of surprise at the almost total absence of interest and point. the contents of the locker volume might have been imparted to the public with the most complete immunity from consequences in the writer's life-time--they are phenomenally mild and neutral. from my personal impression of the distinguished individuals with whom the author of _london lyrics_ was connected or associated, i should not have dreamed of him so thoroughly missing the mark, and leaving us a legacy so flat and commonplace. chapter v mr henry pyne--his ideas as a collector, and my intercourse with him--his office one of my regular lounges--his willingness to part with certain books--i buy a pig in a poke, and it turns out well--mr pyne's sale--a frost--i buy all the best lots for a trifle--the volume of _occasional forms of prayer_ and its history--pyne's personal career and relations--his investigation of the affairs of a noble family--the booksellers--joseph lilly--his sale--his services to mr huth--the daniel books in 1864--daniel's flyleaf fibs--the event an extraordinary _coup_--the napier first folio shakespear knocked down and out at £151--why some books are dear without being very rare--f. s. ellis and the corser sale--my successful tactics--he lends me sir f. freeling's interleaved _bibliotheca anglo-poetica_. at a lower level than the individuals above mentioned, yet still on a basis which made it possible for me to render them subservient to my all-engrossing design, were mr henry pyne, assistant commissioner of tithes, and two or three minor characters, with whom my contact was transient. mr pyne entered far more conspicuously and materially into my bibliographical and personal history than any person save mr huth. i formed his acquaintance while the _handbook_ was on the stocks, and he assisted me to the extent of his power by placing at my disposal his collection of english books, printed not later than the year 1600. he had begun by adopting a wider range; but circumstances led him to restrict himself to the limit laid down by maitland in his _lambeth catalogue_. i worked very hard at mr pyne's office in st james's square, and at his private house, at the stores he had brought together on this rather hard-and-fast principle; to me, as a bibliographer, the extrinsic merits of the copies were immaterial, and i owed to my estimable and thenceforward life-long acquaintance the means of rendering my introductory experiment of 1867 less empirical and secondary than it would otherwise have been. i cannot turn over the leaves of the volume without identifying many and many an entry with mr pyne and his unwearied kindness and sympathy, and in all cases where the book was eminently rare i have cited him as the owner of the copy which i used. our relationship grew into intimacy, and as his official functions appeared to be light and unexacting, his spacious room at the tithe office was my habitual halting-place on my way home from town. he shewed me any fresh purchase, spoke of what he had seen or heard, and discussed with me points connected with my current literary affairs. i thoroughly appreciated our intercourse, which was less constrained and formal than that with mr huth, and i regarded mr pyne as my benefactor in his way to an equal extent. the financial strength of the former placed him in a position which was not altogether natural, although i am far from thinking that he failed to fill the rank, to which his wealth entitled him, with dignity and judgment. it was, indeed, due to mr huth's half involuntary self-assertion, as a man of great fortune, that we at last fell out, as it was not my cue to yield even to him beyond a certain point, and i had had reason to complain of the mode in which he conducted the editorship of his catalogue, a proceeding whereby he was the sole loser. with mr pyne i was at my ease. we never had a word of difference or the shadow of a rupture all the years i knew him. i have noticed mr pyne's law made for himself in regard to his choice of books; but he had kept some of those which lay outside the strict chronological barrier, and they were long under the charge of a bookseller in king william street, strand. it was in the full flood of mr huth's collecting fancy, and it occurred to me one day to ascertain from mr pyne, if possible, how it stood with the property. he said that he was meditating the sale of the boxful to someone. what did it contain? he could not recollect exactly, but there were civil war tracts, some pieces of earlier date, and so on. how much did he propose to get for them? this he also could not resolve. i had no conception whatever of the nature and extent of the parcel, but i offered him at a venture £15, 15s., and he accepted the sum. it was a downright little find. sixty rare pamphlets went to mr huth at as many guineas; the british museum purchased several; and a literary coal merchant, who had just then been providentially inspired with an ardour for the monuments of the civil war period, gave me £20 for the refuse. but mr pyne was once or twice tempted by my offers for books in his own series, and i had from him, among others, _the prayer and complaint of the ploughman unto christ_, 1531, and gervase markham's _discourse of horsemanship_, 1593. i gave him £21 for the first, just double what it had cost him. they were both for mr huth. pyne informed me one morning at his office, when i called as usual, that at a shop in marylebone lane he had seen cocker's _decimal arithmetic_, 1685 (first edition), marked eighteenpence. i went, and bought it. it was a very fine copy. the portrait belongs to the _vulgar arithmetic_. the anti-climax was reached when mr pyne's library came to the hammer some years since. it was a two days' sale at sotheby's; the books were poorly described, the trade was not eager for them, and the british museum had no funds. my own hands were rather tied by a temporary circumstance; but the opportunity was not one to be thrown away. i gave a long string of commissions to a bookseller whom i thought that i could trust, and he got me at nominal prices all the rarest lots, comprising a few of the gems in the english historical series, and some absolutely unique. i cannot divine how it so chanced; but about £16 placed me in possession of all i wanted. one item my agent missed, and i had to hunt down the acquirer, who gave it up to me at a trifling advance. the museum soon afterward came into the usual grant, and gave me £116 for what they wanted--nearly everything. i met professor arber at the institution in great russell street just after the transfer, and he deplored the loss which the national library had sustained by not bidding for such desiderata. he did not hear from me at that time that they were all in the building. perhaps he discovered the fact subsequently. there was one article in the pyne auction, of which the simple-minded cataloguer had as correct an estimate as messrs reeves & turner, who sold it to my friend. i had seen it in the booksellers' list at £10, described as a quarto volume, two and a-half inches thick, in vellum; but i was not just then in a buying humour; and it passed into other hands. but it was the identical collection of _occasional forms of prayer_ of the time of elizabeth, in spotless state, with the autograph of humphrey dyson on nearly every title-page, which had been missing ever since dyson's time, and which reeves had picked up somewhere in essex. i sent a commission of twenty-five guineas for it, and obtained it for £4, 6s. the present was one of my most striking experiences. where the leading buyers were on those eventful days i cannot even dream. mr pyne used to say that there were three prices for old books--the market, the fancy, and the drop one--and i imagine that his taste, if not his resources, led him to espouse the last in great measure, so that he never became master of many volumes of first-rate consequence. he told me that the rise in the figures for rare early literature at the bright sale in 1845 drove some of the existing collectors out of the market. what would they think, if they were now among us, and witnessed £2900 given for two imperfect copies of caxton's chaucer? pyne had had varied experiences. as a young man, he resided at gibraltar, and he told me that he had there an intrigue with a spanish beauty, the unexpected advent or return of whose husband necessitated her lover's desperate leap out of the window. one of his daughters married our resident in cashmere, and she was, when i met her in london, regretting the rule by which all presents from the native princes had to be given up to government, as once, on her return home, the rajah sent a messenger to meet her with an oblation of a gold teapot. my old acquaintance had gone into the intricate affairs of the mostyn family of mostyn and gloddaeth, and declared that he found them hopeless. lord mostyn owned the moor on which the town of llandudno was subsequently built; and i have mentioned that he owned a splendid library and collection of antiquities. but when i was last at gloddaeth, even the flower-garden was farmed. his lordship borrowed £400 of my father-in-law, and repaid him in garden tools. it always impressed me as a curious trait in pyne that he possessed so slight a knowledge of the world. he gravely informed me one day, when we were together, that he had gone to a saleroom in quest of an additional book-case, and that a dealer approached him with an offer of his services. he explained his object, and pointed to the article he had come to view. the dealer begged to know his pleasure touching the price, and he named six guineas; and he said to me with affecting simplicity: 'a most extraordinary coincidence! the thing fetched just the money.' of course it did. there have been very few book-buyers of the last and present generation of whom i have not known something, but our correspondence was, as a rule, purely bibliographical or incidental. of the booksellers with whom i have mixed i have already specified the boones. the other principal houses were those of joseph lilly, bernard quaritch, f. s. ellis, b. m. pickering, john pearson and his successors, messrs j. pearson & co., and willis & sotheran. my transactions with the wallers, the rimells, the walfords, reeves & turner, edward stibbs, john salkeld, and some of the provincial dealers, have also been a source of combined pleasure and profit. i may affirm one thing with confidence, that if i have been asked a price for an article, i have always paid it, and that i should not be accused of procuring books or mss. below their value, because i happened, perhaps, to have gained a wrinkle more about them than the vendor. when i first encountered lilly it was as a simple amateur. i was at that time--about 1863 or 1864--purchasing rare old books, for which my late father unexpectedly discovered that he had to pay; i made my _début_ in this charlatan-like course at a shop in lombard street, kept by a mr elkins; but i never offended again. lilly then had a place of business in bedford street, and when i contracted my humble liability with him, and accidentally brushed elbows with mr huth once or twice, neither of them foresaw how strongly i should influence the library of the latter, or how i should find it practicable to select from lilly's shelves many scores of rare volumes with a view to their translation to his own particular client through me. for, apart from mr huth, i do not think that in his later years lilly had a large circle of customers, and i know that more than once he has begged mr pyne on a saturday afternoon to buy something of him, as he had not sold a single volume during the week. this might have been a joke; but there are not many jokes without a substratum of truth. lilly was a bluff, plain-spoken, imperfectly-bred man; but i always found him civil and obliging, and he lent me any book which i required for editorial or other purposes without hesitation. he compiled his catalogues with no ordinary care, and would often take a pleasure in pointing out some little discovery which he had made about an edition or copy of an old writer. he presented me in 1869 with a bound collection of these, and they contain a variety of useful notices. he was no scholar or linguist, yet it was said of him that, if he had a hebrew or sanscrit book, he seemed to know whether it possessed value or not. he left behind him a large stock, which was publicly sold, and of which i was a purchaser here and there. it struck me as a curious trait in a man who had much natural shrewdness that he allowed many volumes of the rarest character to remain on his shelves, when they might have been with very slight trouble converted into money. under the hammer they commanded prices which paid homage to the departed owner's supposed capability of placing everything to the best advantage; the trade hung off a good deal; and lilly was not popular, besides. the british museum wanted nearly all that i bought. there was one very early volume of prayers, printed on vellum, for which lilly had asked £12, 12s.; it came to me at £4, 12s., and i might, if john pearson had not suspected it to be something valuable, have had it for half that amount. but the odd feature about the matter was that, although i submitted it to mr blades, and to everyone else likely to be able to tell me, no one could say where it was printed. the museum gladly gave me the sum which its former proprietor had justly deemed it worth without finding anybody to agree with him. the daniel sale in 1864 and the corser one, the latter spread over two or three seasons (1868-70), represented the most profitable and conspicuous incidents in lilly's career, as they supplied the material, each in its way, which most largely helped to raise the library of his principal, mr huth, to the rank which it occupied, and still occupies in the hands of a son. the daniel books had been collected under specially favourable circumstances. they were selected at leisure during a period of over thirty years from auction-room and book-shop, whenever an item, which struck their proprietor's practical instinct as a safe and desirable investment, occurred; and some of the most important--the quarto shakespears, the unique chapbooks, and the elizabethan poetry, were secured just when a marked depression had set in--dibdin's bibliophobia, which was to the bibliomania what the anti-cyclone is to the whirlwind; while not a few highly remarkable lots- the ballads the quarto edition of the _book of st. albans_ the _lucrece_, 1594, the chester's _love's martyr_, 1601, besides others, no doubt, were obtained _sub rosâ_ by a mysterious strategy, at which daniel would darkly hint in conversation with you, but of which you were left to surmise for yourself the whole truth. the general opinion is, that he procured them through fitch of ipswich, whose wife had been a housekeeper or confidential servant of the tollemaches, from helmingham hall, bentley, the suffolk seat of that ancient family. but when i consider the numberless precious volumes, which have dropped, so to speak, into my hands, coming, as i of course did, at a far less auspicious juncture, i arrive at the conclusion, not that daniel bought freely everything really valuable and cheap, but that he must have had abundant opportunities, as a person of leisure and means, of becoming the master of thousands of other literary curiosities, which would have brought him or his estate a handsome profit by waiting for the return of the tide. this gentleman improved the occasion, however, so far as his acquisitions went, by making flyleaves the receptacles of a larger crop of misleading statements than i ever remember to have seen from the hand of a single individual; let us charitably suppose that he knew no better; and the compiler of his catalogue must be debited with a similar amount of ignorance or credulity, since there probably never was one circulated with so many unfounded or hyperbolical assertions, from the time that messrs sotheby & co. first started in business. if the means are justified by the end, however, the retired accountant had calculated well; the bait, which he had laid, was greedily swallowed; and the prices were stupendous. it was a battle _à l'outrance_ between the british museum, mr huth, sir william tite, and one or two more. but the national library and mr huth divided the _spolia opima_, and doubtless the lion's share fell to the latter. the museum authorities can always wait. mr huth did not want the first folio shakespear, 1623, as he had acquired at the gardner sale in 1854 a very good one in an eighteenth-century russia binding, not very tall, but very sound and fine. the daniel one, which went to lady coutts at over £700, came from william pickering, and cost about £200, as i was informed by a member of the daniel family. it thoroughly jumped with the owner's idiosyncrasy to pronounce his copy, whenever he spoke of it, as the finest in existence, which it neither was nor is. one of the best which i have seen was that sold at sotheby's for miss napier of edinburgh through the recommendation of mr pyne aforesaid, who admonished the lady to put a reserve of £100 on it. this was wholesome advice, for it was put in at that figure, and the only advance was £1 from a member of a solid ring opposite to myself, who had looked in from curiosity to see how the bidding went. at £101 it would have fallen a prey to the junto; it was in the old binding; it only wanted the verses; the condition was large, crisp, and clean, the title-page (which had been shifted to the middle for some reason, and was said in the catalogue to be deficient) immaculate; and i was prompted to say £151. angry and disconcerted looks met me from the enemy's line, and i weighed the utility of pursuing the matter. at £151 it became the property of six or eight gentlemen, and i understood that the ultimate price left £400 behind it. but the volume even in perfect state is not very rare. it is merely that, in common with the first editions of walton's _angler_, the _faëry queene_, the _pilgrim's progress_, _paradise lost_, burns, and a few more, everybody desires it. the auctioneers have a stereotyped note to the effect that the first shakespear is yearly becoming more difficult to procure, which may be so, but simply because, although fresh copies periodically occur, the competition more than proportionately increases. there is a steadfast run on capital books, not only in english, but in all languages--ay, let them be even in irish, welsh, manx, or indian hieroglyphics. i personally attended the corser sales, although mr ellis held my commissions for all that i particularly coveted. i was therefore a spectator rather than an actor in that busy and memorable scene; i now and then intervened, if i felt that there was a lot worth securing on second thoughts, not comprised in my instructions to my representative. the glut of rarities was so bewildering, that i got nearly everything which i had marked. it was before the day, when mr quaritch asserted himself so emphatically and so irrepressibly, and john pearson was not yet very pronounced in his opposition. i had therefore to count only on lilly and ellis, apart from the orders of the british museum through boone. by employing ellis i substantially narrowed the hostile competition to two, and lilly was not very formidable beyond those lots which mr huth had singled out, nor boone, save for such as he was instructed to buy for the nation at a price--not generally a very high one. the britwell library just nibbled here and there at a _desideratum_, and had to pay very smartly for it, when it traversed me. lilly, ellis and myself (when i was there) usually sat side by side; neither of them knew what my views were till some time afterward. but i occasionally stood behind. there was an amusing little episode in relation to a large-paper copy in the old calf binding of samuel daniel's _civil wars_, 1595, with the autograph of lucy, lady lyttelton. two copies occurred in successive lots, the large paper first; the others did not notice the difference in size, till i had bought the rare variety, and then lilly, holding the usual sort of copy in his hand, and turning round to the porter, asked him to bring the other. but he was of course too late in his discovery. mr corser had given £20 for the book, which was knocked down to me under such circumstances at £4, 6s., and at the higher rate, one endorsed by the excellent judgment of the late proprietor, it passed in due course to mr huth. one of my direct acquisitions at this sale was the exceedingly rare volume of poems by james yates, 1582; there were two copies in successive lots; and i suggested that they should be sold together. the price was £31; but most unfortunately they both proved imperfect, so that my hope of obtaining a rich prize for my friend's library was frustrated. by the way, the copy given by mr reynardson to the public library at hillingdon about 1720 has long gone astray. lilly did not actively interfere in the book-market subsequently to the dispersion of the corser treasures. i confess that, if i had had a free hand, i should have bought far more than he did; and if it had not been for my personal offices, the huth collection would have missed many undeniably desirable and almost unique features in the catalogue, as it stands. mr huth himself was not very conversant with these matters, and his leading counsellor had much to learn. i retain to this hour a foolish regret, that i permitted mr christie-miller to carry off anything, but i am sufficiently patriotic to be glad, that the british museum was so successful. i have in my mind's eye the long rows of old quarto tracts as they lay together, while mr rye, the then keeper, was looking through them preparatorily to their consignment to a cataloguer; and i felt some remorse at having been directly instrumental without his knowledge in making many of them costlier. poor mr huth was not prosperous as an utterer of _bons-mots_. the only one i ever heard him deliver--and it was weak to excess--was that he had bought at the corser auction a good dish of greenes. i apprehend that it was not so very long prior to this signal event in my bibliographical history, that i had regular dealings with f. s. ellis, then in king street, covent garden. i invariably found him most well-informed, most obliging, and most liberal. while i was finishing my _handbook_, he volunteered (as i have said) the loan of sir francis freeling's interleaved _bibliotheca anglo-poetica_, on the blank pages of which freeling had often recorded the sources, whence he procured his rare books at a very different tariff from that prevailing in longman & co.'s catalogue. it may not be generally known that this eminent collector, whose curious library was sold in 1836, enjoyed through his official position at the general post office peculiar facilities for establishing a system of communication with the authorities in the country towns, and he certainly owed to this accident quite a number of bargains (as we should now esteem them) from dick of bury st edmunds. i must not repeat myself, and i have already transcribed from the volume above-mentioned several of freeling's memoranda in my own publication of 1867. chapter vi my transactions with mr ellis--rarities which came from him, and how he got them--riviere the bookbinder--how he cleaned a valuable volume for me--his irritability--a strange tale about an unique tract--the old gentleman and the immoral publication--dryden's copy of spenser--the unlucky _contretemps_ at ellis's--a second somewhere else--mr b. m. pickering--our pleasant and profitable relations--thomas fuller's mss. epigrams--charles cotton's copy of taylor the water-poet's works--a second one, which pickering had, and sold to me--he has a first edition of _paradise lost_ from me for two guineas and a half--taylor's thumb bible. ellis after a while penetrated my pharisaical duplicity in acquiring from him and others, to keep my pot boiling at home, while i amassed material for my barren bibliographical enterprise, every item calculated to fit my purpose; he now and then resisted my overtures; but as a rule he gave way on my undertaking to pay his price. i owed to him a large number of eminently rare volumes, of which he did not always appreciate the full significance. i could specify scores of unique or all but unique entries in the huth catalogue, which filtered through me from this source, and ministered to my leading aim--not the earning of money so much as the advancement of bibliographical knowledge. some of these prizes came to hand in a strange and romantic manner enough. two young oxonians brought into the shop in king street the copy of withals' _dictionary_, 1553, which was not only unique and in the finest condition, but which settled the question as to the book having been printed, as the older bibliographers declared, by caxton. a correspondent at aberdeen offered sir david lyndsay's _squire meldrum_, 1594, and verstegan's _odes_, 1601, both books of the highest rarity, and the lyndsay unexceptionable, but the other horribly oil-stained. i exchanged the withals for twenty guineas, and the remaining two for thirty more. the first was in the original binding, and it was not for me to disturb it; but the scotish book and the _odes_ i committed to riviere. he made a grimace, when he examined the latter, and asked me if i was aware how much it would cost to clean it. i assured him that that was a point which i entirely left to him, and he restored it to me after a season in morocco with scarcely a vestige of the blemish. he informed me that he had _boiled the leaves in oil_--a species of homoeopathic prescription; and i cheerfully paid him seven guineas for his skill and care. he was a capital old fellow, originally a bookseller at bath, and was constantly employed by christie-miller and ouvry. he was ambidexter; for he executed a vast amount of modern binding for the trade, and was famous for his tree-marbled calf, which i have frequently watched in its various stages in his workshop. he was a trifle irritable at times. i had given him an elizabethan tract to bind, and on inquiring after a reasonable interval it was not merely not done, but could not be found. i called two or three times, and riviere at last exclaimed: 'damn the thing; what do you want for it?'--pulling out his cheque-book. i replied that i wanted nothing but my property, bound as ordered; and he was so far impressed by my composure, that he said no more, and eventually brought the stray to light. at the donnington sale in leicestershire, when the old library removed from moira house, armagh, was brought to the hammer, there was in a bundle a particular pamphlet entitled _the eighth day_, 1661, an ephemeral poem on the restoration by richard beling, of which sir james ware had descended to the grave without beholding a copy. in fact, no one else had. this precious _morçeau_ found its way to a stall-keeper in london, who confidently appraised it at one shilling. he had occasional proposals for it, but they never topped the moiety; and he at last carried it to edward stibbs in museum street, and told him that, if he could not get his price, he would burn it. stibbs behaved in a truly princely manner by handing him half-a-crown. in a day or two ellis called, saw the prize, and gave £2, 2s. for it. i happened to catch sight of it on his counter, and he forced me to rise to £12, 12s.--it was intended as a prohibitive demand; but i was not to be intimidated or gainsaid. mr huth did not offer a remark, when i sent it to him in the usual way (with other recent finds) at £21. what is its true value? an odd adventure once befell ellis without directly affecting me. he mentioned to me that an old gentleman had called one day, and had bought a copy of cleveland's poems at six shillings. he paid for it; and shortly after he returned, and beckoning ellis aside, as there was a third party present, he demanded of him with a very grave air whether he was acquainted with the nature of the publication, which he had sold to him. as ellis hardly collected his drift, and seemed to await a farther disclosure, he added, 'that is a most indecent book, sir.' ellis expressed his sorrow, and engaged to take it back, and reimburse him. 'nothing of the kind, sir,' rejoined his visitor; 'i shall carefully consider the proper course to pursue;' and he quitted the premises. when he reappeared, it was to announce that after the most anxious deliberation he had burned the immoral volume! samuel addington of st. martin's lane, of whom there is some account in _four generations of a literary family_, formed his collections, as a rule, wholly from direct purchases under the hammer. he had no confidence in his own knowledge of values, and liked to watch the course of competition. it was his way, and not altogether a bad one, of gauging the market, and supplying his own deficiencies at other people's expense. but addington occasionally bought prints of his friend mrs noseda, on whose judgment he implicitly relied, and now and then he took a book or so of ellis. i was in the shop in king street one day when he was there, and ellis succeeded in fixing him with £150's worth of mss. of course, it was all whim; and the money was a secondary matter. he pulled out his cheque-book on the spot, and paid for the purchase. we had many a chat together, and he was obliging enough in one or two instances to lend me something in his possession for myself or a friend. i never heard the origin of his career as a collector. he was somewhat before my time. but i ascribed his peculiarly fitful method of buying to uncertainty as to the commercial aspect and expediency of a transaction; for of real feeling for art or literature i do not believe that he had a tittle. when i was talking to ellis in king street one day, an individual strongly pitted with small-pox presented himself, and asked for a catalogue. he said in a tone, which suggested the presence of a pebble in his mouth, that he was 'mr murray re-printer.' this person was the predecessor of professor arber in his scheme for bringing our earlier literature within the reach of the general reader, who as a rule does not care a jot for it. of course it would be idle to pretend that i monopolised the innumerable curiosities, which ellis was continually having through his hands. i did not even see the copy of spenser's works, 1679, dryden's mss. notes, which he sold for £35 to trinity college, cambridge, having got it at an auction for £1, where it was entered in the catalogue without a word; nor did i venture to stand between mr huth and him in the case of the miraculously fine copy in the original binding of the romance of _palmendos_, 1589, which mason of barnard's inn brought in by chance. mr huth unfortunately re-clothed both that and the withals in modern russia. mason unwisely relinquished his employment as a brewer's actuary for the book-trade, and that, again, for a yet worse one--drink. many valuable volumes passed through his hands, and he afforded me the opportunity of taking notes of some of them. i was once--once, only i think--so unhappy and so _gauche_ as to incur the serious displeasure of my estimable acquaintance, and it was thus. dr furnivall happened to enter the place of business with a volume in his hand, which he was going to offer to the british museum on behalf of the owner, mr peacock of bottesford manor, and without reflection i tried, standing on tom tiddler's ground, to dissuade him from his project in the hearing of ellis, and to let me have the refusal for mr huth. it was a beautiful little book, _the school of virtue_, the second part, 1619, and unique. to the museum it went surely enough; and i was upbraided by ellis, perhaps not undeservedly, with having thwarted him in his own intended effort to intercept the article _in transitu_ with the same view as myself; and i apologised. he was terribly ruffled at my indiscretion; and i was sorry that i had perpetrated it. dr furnivall is my nearly forty years' old friend. he is associated in my recollection only with two transactions, both alike unfortunate: the one just narrated, and a second, which was more ludicrous than anything else. i had seen on his table at his own house a remarkably good copy of brathwaite's _complete gentlewoman_, 1631, and i thought of mr huth. i knew furnivall to be no collector, and i suggested to him that, if he did not urgently require the brathwaite, for which he had given 6s., i would gladly pay him a guinea for it, and find him a working copy into the bargain. he pleasantly declined, and i was astonished the next morning to receive from him a fierce epistle enjoining me to restore to him instantly the book, which i had taken. i contented myself with writing him a line, to intimate that i had not the volume, and that i thought when he found it, he would be sorry that he had expressed his views in such a manner. i heard no more from him, till, a few days subsequently in my absence, he called on me, and asked to see my wife, and to her he declared his extreme regret at what had occurred, and announced the discovery of the lost treasure underneath a pile of papers, where he had probably put it himself. the affair was not exactly a joke; but it was just the kind of impulsive thoughtlessness, which distinguishes my eminent contemporary, and to which i dare say that he would readily plead guilty. i made no secret of the business; and it produced no substantial difference in our relations. i understood, rightly or wrongly, that he had gone so far as to advertise the supposed larceny; but i treated the matter with stoical indifference, and i believe that we have shaken hands over it years upon years. i used to see at ellis's the late william morris. he was then in the prime of life, and i recollect his long curly black hair. i do not think that he had yet imbibed those socialistic ideas, which afterward distinguished him, and which one is surprised to find in a person of considerable worldly resources--in other words, with something to lose. i bought a copy of his _earthly paradise_, when it first came out; but beyond the smooth versification, and correct phraseology i failed to discern much in it. i have often seen morris stalking along with his rod and bag in the vicinity of barnes. of his typographical and artistic styles i own that i had a very indifferent opinion, for they seemed to me to be incongruous and unsympathetic. they did not appeal to my appreciation of true work. i regarded them as bastard and empirical; they might do very well for wall-papers. i must not be too sure; but i should imagine that any one, who is familiar with the early printed books illustrated by engravings of whatever kind, would be apt to take the same view. the graphic portion of morris's publications is intelligible, however, and sane; one can see what is meant, if one does not agree with the treatment. it is not so utterly outrageous as mr beardsley's performances. there were two other personages, with little in common between them, whom i met in king street--george cruikshank and mr a. c. swinburne. i have come across the latter elsewhere; but cruikshank whom my grandfather had known so well, a short, square-set figure, who once entered the shop, while i was there, it was not my fortune to behold on more than that single occasion. i had started as a bookman nearly soon enough to meet william pickering himself; but with his son, b. m. pickering, when he opened a small shop in piccadilly, my intercourse was prompt and continuous. he was a man of rather phlegmatic and unimpressionable temperament, but thoroughly honourable and trustworthy. my earliest dealings with him were on my own personal account, while i cherished the idea, that i might take my place among the collectors of the day, and i obtained from him a few very rare volumes, including a copy of _england's helicon_, quarto, 1600, which he had found in a bundle at sotheby's in 1857, shortly after the realisation of £31 at the same rooms for one at the wolfreston sale. he gave £1 for this but it was not very fine, and like the wolfreston and every other known copy, except malone's in the bodleian, wanted, as i subsequently discovered, the last leaf. pickering had it washed and bound in brown morocco by bedford, and charged me £18, 18s. for it. perhaps the most remarkable purchase which i ever made in this direction was a copy of richard crashaw's poems, in which an early owner had inserted a ms. text of upward of fifty otherwise unknown epigrams by thomas fuller. pickering marked the volume 15s., and said nothing about the unique feature. dr grosart printed the collection from this source. my relations with the younger pickering were almost equally divided in point of time into two epochs: from 1857 to 1865, when i bought for myself, and thenceforward till the date of his death, when i added him to the number of those who assisted me in carrying out, through mr huth and a few others, my interminable task of cataloguing the entire _corpus_, with very slight reservations, of our early national literature. pickering never objected to let me become the medium for filling up gaps in the huth library from his periodical acquisitions; i paid him his price; and i paid it promptly, as i did all round. our maiden transaction was a very humble one. it was a copy of a little tract called _a caution to keep money_, 1642, and it was a sort of experiment. i had to give 5s. for it, and at the same not very extravagant figure it went to my acquaintance. he eyed it rather wistfully; the low price was somewhat against it; but he accepted it, and fortunately or otherwise he did not take its counsel practically to heart. but i discovered the futility of allowing cheapness to appear as a recommendation in the case of one, who knew comparatively little of the selling value, and to whom cheapness was not the slightest object. the pamphlet in question was the pioneer of many scores of articles of the highest rarity and interest, which found their way through the same channel to the ultimate possessor. among them was a curious copy in the original calf binding with many uncut leaves of taylor the water poet's works, 1630, formerly belonging to charles cotton the angler; it had come from the hastings library at donnington, and i paid pickering £30 for it. a second one, which i had of him, was the only example containing anything in the nature of a presentation from the author, whose autograph is of the rarest occurrence; but unfortunately in this case the memorandum was written by the recipient. the folio taylor is one of those books, which has unaccountably fallen in price of late years; and certainly it is by no means uncommon. i was almost invariably on the acquiring side. once i sold pickering, as i have already related, a caxton, and at another time a first edition of _paradise lost_, 1669, in the original sheep cover. i had seen the latter at a shop in great russell street, of which the rather impetuous master, when i put some query to him, seemed undecided, whether he would let me have the book after all for £2, 2s., or throw it at my head. he did the former, and an american agent begged me as a favour to let him pay me double the money, which, as i thought him to be in jest, i declined. i subsequently parted with it to pickering for £2, 12s. 6d., which was about the prevailing tariff thirty years since. i may take the present opportunity of mentioning that it was at the same emporium in bloomsbury, that a later occupant apologised to me, in tendering me a beautiful uncut copy in sheep of taylor the water poet's _thumb bible_, for being so unreasonable as to want 14s. for the jeremy taylor, as he took it to be. i forgave him, and mr huth was very pleased to have the volume. pickering had, like his father, a singular weakness for accumulating stock, and laying up imperfect copies of rare books in the distant hope of completing them. yet he held his ground, and gradually enlarged his premises, till they were among the most spacious at the west end. poor fellow! he lost all his belongings in an epidemic, and never recovered from the shock. chapter vii mr john pearson--origin of our connection--his appreciable value to me--he assists, through me, in completing the huth library--lovelace's _lucasta_--the turbervile--the imperfect chaucer--the copy of ruskin's poems at reading--the walton's _angler_--locker and pearson--james toovey--curious incident in connection with sir thomas phillipps--willis & sotheran--two unique cookery books--only just in time--the caxton's _game and play of the chess_--a valuable haul from the west of england--a reverend gentleman's mss. _diaries of travel_--the wallers--lamb's _tales from shakespear_, 1807--the folio ms. of edmond waller's poems--an unique book of verse--a rare american item--the rimells--i take from them and sell to them--some notable _americana_--the walfords--an unique tract by taylor the water poet--john russell smith and his son--my numerous transactions with the latter--another unknown taylor--john camden hotten--i sift his stores in piccadilly--the bunyan volume from cornwall--john salkeld--my expedition to his shop on a sunday night, and its fruit--a rather ticklish adventure or two--messrs jarvis & son--my finds there--king james i.'s copy of charron, dedicated to prince henry--the unknown fishmongers' pageant for 1590--the long-lost english version of henryson's _æsop_, 1577. i first met with john pearson, if i remember rightly, when he had a room at noble's in the strand. he had sent me his catalogue, and i went to buy a small london tract, for which he demanded £3, 3s., because it had all the three blank leaves; it was in fact a speech delivered to king james i. on his entry into the city in 1603 by richard martin of the middle temple. mr huth sent it to bedford, who removed the leaves, which constituted the feature; but i did not see the mischief, till it fell to my lot to catalogue the piece years afterward. my good friend was very tiresome and difficult in these small matters, which in bibliography are apt to become great ones. i obtained for him a bipartite volume by ben jonson, comprising the description of james i.'s reception in london and his previous entertainment at althorp, in 1603-4, at two different points, and explained to him the desirability of having them bound together, as the latter portion was named on the first title. they went to bedford, i suppose, without a word, and were clothed in separate jackets. pearson became another of my coadjutors. his intelligence, energy, and good fortune did me excellent service. he dealt of course with many other persons, both here and in america; but a handsome proportion of his prizes passed through me to mr huth. the latter at that period--in the seventies--still lacked some of the most ordinary _desiderata_ of a collection, which was beginning under my auspices to assume a more general character than it possessed, when i entered on the scene in 1866. even lovelace's _lucasta_, of which i purchased of pearson george daniel's copy for £3, 3s., carew's poems, 1640, of which i met with a beautiful specimen on thick paper in the original binding for 21s., and many others, were absent. it was pearson's object to come to the front, and i perhaps did my part in making him known to my patron, who eventually added his shop to his places of call, and inspected the articles, which the proprietor and i had agreed to lay before him as suitable and deficient. the turbervile above noticed was my most signal gain from this quarter. i shall never forget pearson's exultation, when i acceded to his proposal; he seemed, as he cried, 'i have made £75 by it,' as if he would have leapt over the counter. his commercial transactions became sufficiently wide and lucrative, and all my purchases of him did not go to mr huth. a curious little piece of luck befel me in the case of a chaucer wanting the end, which he had kept for years, and at length sold to me in despair. the next week reeves & turner obtained a second of the same impression by thomas petyt, _wanting the commencement_. reeves let me take out the leaves i required for a trifle. i never experienced from pearson any deficiency of straightforwardness, except that once mrs noseda and he had, i think, a joint hand in passing off a facsimile frontispiece of taylor the water-poet's works, and i was the victim. i said nothing, but, like the frenchman's jackdaw, thought the more. he was an exceptionally shrewd and vigilant character, and nearly broke lovejoy of reading's heart by getting from his assistant an uncut copy of ruskin's poems for a shilling during lovejoy's absence. but pearson paid the price, which the fellow asked. i was in the shop, when he had just received through a third party a lovely copy of walton's _angler_, 1653, in the pristine binding for £14 plus £3, 10s. to the bringer. the last copy in the market in precisely the same condition brought successively £310 and £415. someone tells me that in both cases the buyer and the seller was one and the same party. poor walton! like chaucer, spenser, shakespear, and our other great ones, he has been converted into _bric-à-brac_. to your millionaire amateur it does not signify whether it is a book or a tea-pot or a violin, if the price is high enough--better still, if it is higher than was ever given before. that is his intelligent seeing-point. in the present instance the holder of the walton, if the above-named view be correct, did not meet with a customer so enthusiastic as himself. he was a trifle too much _in excelsis_. pearson was almost the introducer of those stupendous prices for really first-rate books or rarities in book-form, which have now gone on ascending, till it is hard to tell where they will stop. frederic locker told me that he had asked him fifty guineas for a prose tract by southwell a few years anterior in date to any recorded. why not five hundred? with pearson's successors i have had many years' pleasant acquaintance. _verbum sap._ the volumes, which have changed hands on that ground, would form a library and a fine one. with the late james toovey i never had a single transaction. but mr huth often spoke of him and of the _temple of leather and literature_, as his place of business in piccadilly was jocularly called from toovey's predilection for old morocco bindings. i do not pretend to know what was the exact nature of this business; but it must have been a very profitable one. ordinary bookselling made only a small part of it. i always took toovey to be a jew, till i found that he was a catholic; and it was a laughable circumstance that, when the library of sir thomas phillipps of middle-hill had to be valued, he was the very person selected to perform the task, although phillipps had laid down in his will that the house should never be entered, nor the books examined, _by mr halliwell or a papist_. willis & sotheran's in the strand was known to me by tradition. my father had bought books of willis in early times, when the latter was in prince's street and in the piazza, before he joined mr sotheran. the shop in the strand united with pickering's and one or two more to supply me with a handful or so of curiosities, while i remained what is termed an _amateur_. later, it was one of the marts, to which i regularly resorted with advantage in quest of the wants of mr huth or the british museum. an old-established business, it mechanically attracted year by year an endless succession of private parcels and single lots, which generally rendered the monthly catalogues remunerative reading. it is more than a quarter of a century ago, since i received one of these lists at kensington, and spied out two unique items in the shape of _cookery books_ of the elizabethan period at 10s. 6d. each. i was on the top of the next omnibus going londonward, and entered the premises with a nervous uncertainty not legible on my countenance. i applied for the lots; _they brought them to me_; they were in splendid state; i clapped them in my pocket, and i left the place with a lightened heart. i met some of my friends, who were coming in, as i walked out, and i guessed their mission. how sorry i was for them! mr pyne was one. there came into my thoughts a saying of mr huth's elucidatory of the success of his firm: 'we do not profess,' quoth he, 'to be cleverer than other folks; but we get up earlier in the morning.' mr huth owed his copy of caxton's _game of chess_ to willis & sotheran. an individual brought it into the shop, and offered it for sale. it was in vellum, but wanted a i. and a viii., the former a blank leaf. what the firm gave, i never heard; but when lilly approached them on behalf of mr huth, the demand was £1000. it is always wise to start with a margin. the ultimate figure was £300. it was the second edition, of which trinity college, cambridge, the duke of devonshire, and lord tollemache, have perfect copies. it was the buyer (francis), whom willis & sotheran employed about 1860, to whom we were all indebted for discovering at or near plymouth the unique tragedy of _orestes_, 1567, which went to the museum, and for a duplicate of which payne collier safely offered at the time fifty guineas, and the equally rare copy of drayton's _harmony of the church_, 1610, which was acquired by mr corser, and at his sale by mr christie-miller. i have not heard that the west of england has of recent years yielded many such finds as it formerly did. it was long a profitable hunting ground. speaking of drayton, of whose early editions it has fallen to my lot to secure several at different times, i am reminded that in willis & sotheran's 1862 catalogue appeared that eminent writer's _tragical legend of robert duke of normandy_, 1596, of which only three copies are known; the volume turned out on examination to want a leaf; but luckily in another list issued by the firm there was a second example misdescribed as _drayton's poems_, which, though elsewhere imperfect, supplied the immediate deficiency; and the duplicate, which had served me so well, was wasted. i had been about the same time disappointed by missing at a shop in old bond street (not boone's) the _english ape_, 1588, in the original binding at £2, 12s. 6d.; and curiously enough the house in the strand purchased it, bound it in red morocco, and put it in a subsequent monthly circular at £5, 5s. i had to stretch my purse-strings, and go to the higher figure. i have elsewhere given willis himself credit for introducing me to a small literary commission, which if it did not yield much money, did not entail much labour. the only other experience of the same class afforded me the labour without any result. it was a parson of independent fortune, who called me in for my opinion on certain _diaries of travel_, which he had written, and which he thought (most correctly) in need of editorship. the negotiation came to nothing, and so did my fee. it was not my province to inform the reverend gentleman that his mss. were waste-paper, nor would the mention of his name be of any utility. he was unconsciously one of those sempiternal caterers for the paper-mill, whose unprinted effusions generally figure in the auctions among the bundles in the wane of the season, and they resemble in their inevitable doom the processions through the streets of the drover's charges on their way to our shambles. let us pray that from the pulp of this holy man's _derelicta_, swept out by his executors, something worthier and more durable may evolve. there is quite a group of minor or secondary dealers, whose absolute rank to me was indifferent, and from whom it has been my fortune in the course of my career as a bibliographical huntsman to bring away spoils of the chase neither few nor unimportant. an odd case of rather shallow misrepresentation occurred, when i went to an emporium in conduit street in search of a copy of stapylton's _musoeus_, 1647. it was marked 5s. 6d. in the catalogue, but, said the owner, 'that is a misprint for 15s.' i put down the larger sum, merely inquiring how the odd sixpence crept in! the wallers of fleet street, originally next to saint dunstan's church, subsequently higher up, had known my grandfather. the younger was my more particular acquaintance, and helped me to many choice items. i recollect that i refused a spotless copy of lamb's _tales from shakespear_, in old sheep, 1807, for 7s. 6d., which waller assured me that mr george daniel had seen, and estimated at a guinea; and i regret this more than i congratulate myself on the acquisition of an unique folio ms. of edmond waller's poems, which his namesake had got from a furniture sale for one shilling, and let me have for fifty, of an unknown impression of _a description of love_, 1629, tenderly and mercifully swaddled between two imperfect books in a volume, and itself (the sole thing of value) as clean as a new penny, and several other ungratefully forgotten blessings. it was to the waller volume that the last editor of the poet was indebted for the unprinted and otherwise undescribed dedication to queen henrietta maria, of which i furnished the earliest notice an age since to _notes and queries_. by the way, i must not overlook the matchless copy in boards uncut of the _papers relating to the colony of massachusetts bay_, published at boston, 1769, for which i tendered waller 5s., and for which an american house gave £8. i had not much to do with the rimells and the walfords. the former put in my way two or three rarities, and i furnished them with a couple of valuable _americana_ for the carter-brown library at new york. the books which i associate with this firm are philipot's elegies on the death of william glover, esquire of shalston in buckinghamshire, 1641, which cost me 4s., and gardyne's _theatre of the scottish kings_, 1709, both alike scarce to excess. of neither are more than two copies known, and the grenville one of the second is mutilated. mr christie-miller would have been glad to possess the philipot; but it went to the national library; the gardyne passed into the huth collection. the walfords were instrumental in enabling me to track out a pamphlet by taylor the water poet relative to a murder at ewell in 1620, of which i had been on the scent for years, and of which a copy at last occurred in a huge pile of miscellanies at sotheby's tied up together at the close of a season. i found that walford was the buyer; and when i waited on him, it turned out that it was a commission. for whom? well, a customer in scotland. but he did not want the account of a transaction at ewell! well; he would write, if i would name my price. i offered 10s. the tract came up; i took all the particulars; and the museum relieved me of it at £4, 4s. no duplicate has ever been seen, i believe. john russell smith was one of my earliest publishers. i became acquainted with him in 1857 in that capacity, and continued to do literary work on his behalf down to 1869. i subsequently purchased a large number of old books of him and of his son, alfred russell smith, through whose hands passed some very rare articles less highly appreciated by him than by myself. which was the truer estimation, i do not know; but smith now and then ingenuously stated to me that a lot in the catalogue, which i selected, had been ordered over and over again. such was the case with the _book of measuring of land_, by sir richard de benese, canon of merton abbey, printed at southwark about 1536 by james nicholson, priced 15s. in the original stamped binding, and henry vaughan the silurist's _thalia rediviva_, marked 25s. smith said one morning that a party had sent him three tracts, which he shewed me, and wanted 25s. for the lot; and he should expect 5s. for his trouble, if they would suit me. 'very well,' said i. but the party advanced to 30s. and smith by consequence to 35s. still i was agreeable; and at that figure they became mine. two of them were by taylor the water poet, one unique--the original narrative of his journey to bohemia, 1620; and it was, as so many of these exceedingly rare items often are, in a perfect state of preservation. i once went through hotten's stores in piccadilly, and found nothing but the copy which mr huth had, of wither's _psalms_, printed in the netherlands, 1632, in unusually fine condition, and marked 15s. hotten had from cornwall, in a volume, cowley's poems set to music by w. king, 1668, and bunyan's _profitable meditations_, the latter unique, and now in the british museum. i somehow missed that; but i bought the cowley; it is the identical one described in the huth catalogue. hotten had a curious propensity for marking his old books at figures, which might denote the exiguity of his profit--or the reverse. he would not ask 18s. or a guinea, but 19s. 6d. there was a constitutional and aggravating proneness on his part as a publisher to the pursuit of a tortuous path in preference to a straight one; and i am afraid that he took a certain pride in trying to outwit or overreach his client. most unwillingly i had in the case of a small book, which he took, to involve him in two bills of costs from his sheer perversity in regard to his engagements; and the curious, but unfortunate sequel was that his successors, in taking over the interest, repudiated their balance of liability, and exposed themselves to a farther superfluous outlay. what was a poor author to do? when he was in orange street, red lion square, i saw a good deal of john salkeld, a north-countryman, whom i always found perfectly satisfactory and reliable. he never had occasion to carry out the practice on me, as i was a most exemplary paymaster, especially in those cases, when i thought that the money was at once an object and an encouragement; but salkeld often spoke to me of less punctual clients at a distance, whom he should like to _hug_. my most notable adventure in connection with him was the result of a catalogue, which he sent to me, so that i got it the last thing on a saturday night. there was a wither's _emblems_, daniel's _works_ and _panegyrick_ in a volume on large paper, and one or two other matters. they were not very cheap; but they were worth having, thought i. i knew that salkeld resided over his shop, and on the sunday evening i walked up to town from kensington, proceeded to orange street, found my man at home, and carried off my plunder in triumph. what charming books they were! for no better a copy of the wither mr huth had paid toovey £40. both wanted the pointers to the dial. like so many other of my doings in the book-market, the solitary experience which i had of a person named noble was with an immediate eye to mr huth. he (noble) had come into possession of a handful of scarce old english tracts, including a volume containing several by lady eleanor audley, a very rare item in the series of george chapman's poetical works--his _epicede on prince henry_, 1612, absolutely complete with the folded engraving, and joshua sylvester's elegy on the same personage, so difficult to procure in such condition as mr huth always desired. these treasures i converted for noble into cash, and was immediately afterward favoured with a casual suggestion elsewhere, which led me to take them to riviere to be measured for new coats, except the lady audley volume, which i deposited at great russell street. i had paid noble £2 for it, thinking it must be worth £3; but before i reached bloomsbury, i thought that it might not be too dear at £7, 7s. the only other misadventure of the kind--if it may be so termed, as no unpleasant consequences ensued--was in connection with a book, which some one stole from stibbs in museum street, and sold to salkeld, who sold it to me. i was apprised by the original owner that he had traced it to my hands; but i pointed out that i had purchased it in good faith in open market, and for the rest i referred him to the trustees of the national library, where it had found a resting-place. messrs jarvis & son succeeded during my acquaintance with them in stumbling upon a variety of bargains and prizes, which i usually appropriated. one was a splendid copy of greene's _pandosto_, 1592, the only known one of that of 1588 in the museum being imperfect. a second acquisition was the copy, which had belonged to james i. of the long-lost first edition of lennard's translation of charron _de la sagesse_, dedicated to prince henry; and a third was a singular metrical tract by john mardelay, clerk of the mint to henry viii. called _a rueful complaint of the public weal to england_, printed under edward vi., and completely unknown. there was a remarkable coincidence between this mardelay piece and an equally unique little volume by thomas nelson, 1590, which i purchased elsewhere about the same time, that both were folded in a precisely similar manner, as if the old owner grudged the space, which they occupied in a drawer or a box. they were perfectly clean and very much as they had left the printer's hands. the nelson was the hitherto undiscovered pageant of the fishmongers under the mayoralty of john allot, lord mayor of london, and mayor of the staple, and was six-and-twenty years anterior to any of which the company was aware. it was not published, but privately issued to members. i held this to be a great find, and i reproduced the text in the _antiquary_, before i parted with the original to the museum. the printer could not make out the meaning of _staple_, and in the first proof put _steeple_. there was one more striking episode in my temporary contact with jarvis & son. i saw in a catalogue of miscellaneous books sold at sotheby's in 1890 a lot, which fixed my attention as a bibliographer. it was the english or anglicised version of henryson's _æsop_, printed at london in 1577, and of which david laing, in his edition of the old scotish poet, 1865, speaks as having been seen by him in the library of sion college, when he visited that institution about 1830. he mentions that he wished to verify something at a later date, and that the volume had disappeared. i found on inspection that this was the identical book, no other being known anywhere, and i bought it under the hammer for £6, and let jarvis & son have it for £12, 12s. they sold it to lord rosebery. it had probably been a wanderer above half a century, since it quitted the college in the pocket of some divine of elastic conscience or short memory. chapter viii messrs reeves & turner--my literary work for the firm--my advantageous acquisitions here--cheap rates at which rare books were formerly obtainable--the large turn-over of the business--wake of cockermouth--an unique wynkyn de worde--a supposed undescribed shakespear in a house-sale at bognor--tom arthur--the wynkyn de worde, which i secured for another shilling--arthur and sir thomas phillipps of middle hill--the bristol book shops--lodge's _rosalynd_, 1592--mr elliot stock--my literary work for him--one volume unexpectedly productive--mr henry stopes--my recovery for him of a sarum breviary, which belonged to an ancestor in queen mary's days--his wife's family and sir walter scott--a canterbury correspondent and his benefits--two more uniques--a singular recovery from new york--casual strokes of good luck in the provinces--the wynkyn de worde at wrexham--a _trouvaille_ in the haymarket--books with autographs and inscriptions--a few words about booksellers and publishers. my much-respected publisher and acquaintance, mr reeves, of the firm of reeves & turner, was in business in st clement's churchyard, when i first met with him about 1873. he succeeded mr russell smith as my publisher, and acted as my agent for some books, while others he entrusted to my editorship. the most important in the latter category were the dodsley and the montaigne, to the latter of which i contributed only the introduction, my father revising the text for me, and seeing the proofs, as i was at this juncture extremely busy with all sorts of ventures, and was, above everything else, intent on a new bibliographical departure. thousands of volumes had been in my hands during the last few years, had answered my questions, and had gone on their way, leaving me wiser and not poorer. the toll, which they paid me, had placed me in a position to pursue a vast quixotic undertaking; and i had no other means of executing it. messrs reeves & turner's premises were a favourite haunt of bargain-hunters in days gone by. mr reeves frequently attended outside and country sales, and bought many private lots; and every morning certain members of the trade made the place their first destination. i am not going to allege that i never participated in the advantages myself; but my gains were occasional and accidental; although i was long an habitual caller at the shop, the necessity for consulting mr reeves about some current literary affair making such visits imperative. i have noticed the somewhat strange absence of perception and training which led reeves to sacrifice an incalculable amount of valuable property, constantly passing through his hands in former years, and often going to others, who knew better how to turn it to account, where i describe the unique collection of _occasional forms of prayer_ of the reign of queen elizabeth, and the statement of the sagacious cataloguer that the volume containing them was so many inches thick. but it was ever so. there was no discrimination. at one time i bought an important first edition of heywood, 1605, for half-a-guinea, and a theological tract worth a couple of shillings was marked at the same price. they had only just come in, and not to draw undue attention to the heywood, i tendered a guinea for the two. on another occasion, a lovely little copy of donatus _de octo partibus orationis_, an unknown ancient impression, four leaves, octavo, fell to me here at 4s. but i should make too long a story, if i were to set down all the _trouvailles_, which i owed to my excellent friend's omission to employ a capable assistant, or to look into these details himself, i might grow monotonous, unless the circumstances happened to be salient or peculiar. reeves, when he was in business in st clement's churchyard, must have for some years done an enormous volume of trade, for he shewed me one day in the early eighties his bank-book, where it appeared that in a year he had paid in £21,000, exclusively of small amounts, which were used as cash. yet sadly too little came of all this exhausting labour. he parted at too trivial a profit; he was too eager to turn over; and his assistants have told me that he often sold out of the open window for sixpence, items which had cost a couple of shillings. the auction-room in chancery lane did not, it is to be feared, contribute to his welfare. no man, however, was more honourable or trustworthy. he once remitted £50 to a person, of whom he had purchased a lot of books, on finding them more profitable than he had expected. someone spoke of him to me as 'a nobleman who dealt in books'--an improvement on johnson's definition of tom davies. wake of cockermouth, a member of the society of friends, who deals in every conceivable and inconceivable object of curiosity, but is a highly deserving and industrious man, sent me on one occasion at £4, 10s. a tract of six leaves from the press of wynkyn de worde--the _stans puer ad mensam_ of sulpitius. it was an edition of 1515, earlier than any on record, and the british museum paid me £12, 12s. for it. the curious part was that some months later reeves had a very bad copy of the grammar of the same author from the same press--a thick volume in quarto, marked £6, 6s., and i took a note of it, and left it. wake, shrewdly calculating that as i had given £4, 10s. for the little tract of six leaves, i could not hesitate to take this one of at least sixty at £10, 10s., bought the lot on speculation, and reported it to me. i returned him my thanks. his deduction was arithmetically, but not bibliographically, accurate. i had put into my hands at reeves's one day the catalogue of a house-sale at bognor, there was a single lot in it: 'shakespeare's poems, 8º, 1609.' no such book was known; yet it was perfectly possible that it might have been printed. reeves thought that it might be worth my while to go down, and inspect it. i did, and had a day at the seaside. the volume was a lintot! the auctioneer apologised; but he did not offer to defray my travelling expenses. there are many among us, who remember arthur in holywell street. he was a singular character, and had been a porter, i think, at one of the auction-rooms. my purchases of him were very numerous; and they were always right and reasonable, or i should not have been his client. he left £400 to mr ridler his assistant, who, called in reeves to appraise the stock, and obtained it within that amount. while arthur was in business, there was a grammatical tract in english printed by de worde in his catalogue at £3, 3s. i went in to ask for it, and ridler said that i could not have it. 'is it out of the house?' i enquired. 'no,' said he; 'but it is put aside for a gentleman, who always gives me something for myself.' 'what does he give you?' said i. 'a shilling,' quoth he. 'i will give you two.' the lot left the shop in my pocket. i acquired several curious articles from ridler himself. he was, as a rule, reluctant to sell anything except through the catalogue. but he made an exception in my favour by pulling out of a drawer on one occasion a very fine copy of the very book which wake of cockermouth had previously offered me; and i agreed to give £8, 18s. 6d. for it. it is now in the museum. in a second case he sold me, with a stern proviso that it was not returnable on any account whatever, a defective copy of john constable's poems, printed by pynson, 1520, which nearly completed the museum one--only two copies, both imperfect, being known! the constable was bound up with a foreign tract of no value in such a manner as to mystify our good friend. he no longer honours me with his catalogue. i ceased to find much in my way, and perhaps i was not worth the postage. ridler it was, who once signalised a volume as 'difficult of procuration.' it was arthur who had the only copy ever been with the colophon of slatyer's _paloealbion_, 1621; he got it for a few shillings of lazarus in the same street, and sold it to sir thomas phillipps of middle hill for £15, as ridler informed me many years ago. the last mad freak of phillipps was the transmission of an order to arthur to send him one of his catalogues _en bloc_. some of the lots had been sold; but the remainder was duly shipped to the broadway, worcestershire; and a pretty parcel of rubbish it must have been! this is _book-scavengering_. you only require a besom and a purse, and a block of warehouses. with the exception of jeffreys and george of bristol and wake above named, i have not known much of the provincial dealers. jeffreys sent me the _golden legend_ by caxton, as i have said, and a few other rare things, and with george my transactions were limited to just one. mr pyne had returned from these parts, and had seen at jeffreys' or lasbury's (as he thought) lodge's _rosalynd_, 1592, at £3, 10s., bound up with an imperfect copy of lyly's _euphues_. _he declined it_, but on his arrival home he reconsidered the matter, and wrote to the wrong man. i dropped in, just as he was deliberating whether it was worth while to write to the right one; but he concluded by giving up the volume to me. i had to pay £5 for it, george stating that a party had assured him it was quite worth the higher sum. i did not dare to dispute the point; i bound the lodge, for which mr huth gave me £42, and let mr pyne have the lyly. the only other copy known of the _rosalynd_ is in the bodleian, and the single antecedent impression (1590) exists in an unique and imperfect one. the book, as it is familiar to most people, has the foundation-story of _as you like it_. the mention of that drama reminds me that rosalind and rosaline were rather favourite names with our early poets. spenser introduces rose daniel, the writer's sister, into his _faëry queen_ under that designation, as he had done another lady in his _shepherd's calendar_. shakespear himself has rosaline in _love's labours lost_ and _romeo and juliet_, and thomas newton wrote a poem no longer known beyond its registration in 1604, entitled: _a pleasant new history; or, a fragrant posie, made of three flowers: rosa, rosalynd, and rosemary_. i edited a few small books for mr elliot stock, and had the opportunity of taking notes of one or two very rare volumes in that gentleman's private library. i met in the shop one day my friend m----, who told me that he had come to buy the new english translation of the _imitatio christi_. i expressed surprise. he explained that it was to give away. i still expressed surprise. 'well,' said he, 'you see it is the fine style.' i had thought that that lay in the original latin; but i scarcely presumed to hint such a thing. i passed for one who had long laboured under a very grave misapprehension, and who was at length undeceived. i did not grow very rich out of mr stock's commissions; they were, as i have mentioned, little undertakings; perhaps they did not sell very well--i fancy that the general editor of the series gave me to understand that his own contributions were the only ones which did. but one of them--the _old cookery books_, introduced me to a city gentleman, whose library i assisted in completing. he was a very good fellow, who had been spoiled by companies and company-mongers. he had conceived, before i met him, the design of collecting everything in all languages relative to fermented liquors and the processes of their manufacture. he was not fastidious as to condition, though he preferred a good copy to a bad one; and i left his shelves fuller than i found them. he unconsciously made up the deficiency in mr stock's cheque; and my researches on his behalf were bibliographically useful to me, as they brought under my notice a variety of pamphlets and other ephemerides illustrative of a by no means uninteresting topic. besides, he threw in my way editorial work worth £700 or more. a rather curious incident evolved from our temporary acquaintance. quaritch had in his catalogue just then a sarum service-book, which purported to have belonged in queen mary's days to one _l. stokes_; i looked at it; and i saw that the name was _stopes_, and i concluded that the old proprietor was the same leonard stopes who printed an _ave maria_ to the queen in or about 1555. the book also bore the signature of his brother, james stopes. leonard was of st john's college, oxford. the point was, that my casual correspondent was henry stopes, and was a descendant of leonard or james. he was hugely delighted by the discovery; and he purchased the _breviary_. it was his wife, a very pleasant and accomplished scotish lady, daughter of mr carmichael, clerk to sir walter scott as sheriff-depute, who wrote the almost superfluous confutation of the claims set up on behalf of bacon to the authorship of shakespear's plays. had it not been for my intuitive surmise, that the inscription in the volume was mis-rendered, a piece of family history, valuable at least in somebody's eyes, might have been overlooked. bohn of canterbury helped me to a good thing or two. that is a neighbourhood formerly most rich in early english books; and a good deal of obscurity hangs over certain incidents connected with the books once belonging to henry oxenden of barham and to lee warly, and to the hand, which sir egerton brydges seems to have had in obtaining some of the rarest for the library at lee priory. a sale of the residual portion of the lee warly collection took place _in situ_ many years ago, and a few remarkable items found their way to mr huth, particularly oxenden of barham's ms. _commonplace book_, 1647, in which the original proprietor had written a list of his old plays bound up together in six volumes. i copied out this inventory for the huth catalogue; but it was one of the numerous omissions made by mr ellis _to save space_. bohn met with a fair number of curious tracts, some of which he sold to me. two of them were _the metynge of doctor barons and doctor powell at paradise gate_, printed early in the reign of edward vi. and in verse, and the _history of king edward the fourth and the tanner of tamworth_, a black-letter ballad in pamphlet form with woodcuts, both unique. mr huth declined the former, god knows why, but took the latter. through the late mr sabin i once sent a couple of commissions to new york for as many unique items, which had been sold at sotheby's in 1856, a little before my time, among the wolfreston books. they were the _cruel uncle_, 1670, the story of richard iii. and his nephews, and _a map of merry conceits_, by lawrence price, 1656. i secured the latter only for £5, 5s., and it went to the national library. this was my sole transatlantic experience in the way of purchases. i have now and then of course laid my hand on a stray volume or so in some unexpected corner, as when i was in conway in 1869, i ran through a local stationer's humble stock, and discovered paul festeau's _french grammar_, 1685, a phenomenally rare book, of which i never saw more than two copies, and those of different editions. it cost me sixpence and the labour. the author was a native of blois, where, says he, 'the true tone of the french tongue is to be found by the unanimous consent of all frenchmen.' at another time, a bookseller at wrexham had attended the house-sale of the rev. mr luxmoore's effects in the vicinity, and among the lots was richard whitford's _work for householders_, printed by wynkyn de worde in 1533--the unique copy which had been sir francis freeling's. the buyer had marked this £3, 3s., without finding a customer; i basely offered him £2, and he accepted the amount. it is the copy described in the huth catalogue. it reached mr huth through ellis, who estimated it to me at £12. the luxmoore books were represented to me as having been thrown out on a lawn, and sold at random; and the same story was related of a second haul, which i once made of a mr fennell in whitefriars, including an unique copy of chamberlain's _nocturnal lucubrations_, 1652. i have never been a stall-hunter. i do not rise sufficiently early; and, sooth to say, it has grown by report a barren quest. at brooks's in hammersmith, which i mention more particularly below, i would turn over dreary lots of volumes which he had carted away from some house-sale for a song; but i never laid out anything there or elsewhere. i always found the cheapest books were to be obtained at the auctions, or at mr quaritch's, or at mr ellis's. to be sure, brooks once had uncut cloth copies of the first editions of tennyson's _in memoriam_, _maud_, and _princess_ at ninepence each, or two shillings the three; but i passed them. a sensible proportion of my discoveries was thus turned to good account; but such was not invariably the case. i have, on the contrary, now and then ordered a book or books from a country catalogue, simply because it or they were undescribed by me, and when i had done with them, i was often obliged to be satisfied with reimbursing myself. again, it sometimes occurred that i transcribed the full particulars in a shop, and went no farther. one of my latest adventures in this latter way was at messrs pickering & chatto's in the haymarket, where i have always met with the greatest kindness and consideration. on information received, as the policeman says, i proceeded to the premises, and there, surely enough, i found a dilapidated and imperfect copy, yet still a copy, of the first part of the first edition of johnson's _seven champions of christendom_, 1596. the second part, 1597, was in the heber sale from isaac reed's collection, where it fetched 17s. but no trace of the first was discoverable, till this one turned up, dog's eared, torn, and deficient of three leaves at the end. it was in the original vellum wrapper, and must have been reduced to its actual degradation by excess of affection or of neglect. it has been my fortune to rescue from oblivion many and many an item in our early literature, of which only just so much survived as was absolutely needed to make out the story; and i have known cases, in which it has been requisite to employ two or even three copies, all defective, to accomplish this. so far i have presented a sketch of my life-long touch with the collectors of books and the dealers in them, and have shown that to a certain extent i am entitled to rank in both categories, my own share in the commercial side being due to the exigencies, to which i have adverted, rather than to choice. i think it not improbable that during the period from 1868 to 1878 the regular trade might have been prepared to raise a handsome subscription to send me and my family to a distant colony. yet i exercised an influence beneficial rather than the reverse on their businesses, since i paid them their prices, and relieved them of large numbers of volumes, which they might have kept on their shelves. there was a jealousy, however, and a natural one. of books with autographs and inscriptions i have published in more than one periodical rather copious particulars and varied examples, ranging in date from the monastic era to our own days. i have generally found no difficulty in judging as to the character of entries in books by private owners; and considering the large number of surviving volumes which contain matter of this kind, fabrications are certainly uncommon, as well as fairly self-convicting. yet it cannot be a source of surprise, that the less experienced book-hunter falls into occasional traps. it is so pleasant and so tempting to be master of some copy which has once been consecrated by the fingers of a king or a queen, or a king's lady, or a queen's favourite, or a renowned soldier, poet, or whatever it may be, that we do not always pause to weigh the decent probabilities, do we? the worst thing of all to do is to trust to ordinary catalogues and dealers of the commoner type. the latter have constantly by them specimens of the libraries of queen elizabeth, mary of scotland, james i., with imposing lateral, if not dorsal, blazons, and autograph attestations of proprietorship or gift. an eminent member of the trade once offered me a copy of may's _lucan_, in which the translator, quoth he, had written, 'ben jonson, from thomas may.' i recollect an early chaucer with _thomas randolph_ on the title; of course the vendor avouched it to be the signature of the poet. joseph lilly had a black-letter tome with the name _george gascoigne_ attached to it, and advertised it as a _souvenir_ of that distinguished elizabethan writer; but unluckily the writer died, before the book was printed. there was similarly more than a single w. shakespear just about the same period of time; but we have not come across any sample of his cunning in caligraphy. perhaps he _wrote_ better than the dramatist. that excessively interesting _florio's montaigne_, 1603, in the british museum carries the impress of former appurtenance to our great bard, and its history is much in its favour; but some question it (do not some question everything?), not that the inscription belongs to a namesake, but that it does so to a disciple of mr ireland junior. as an illustration of the manner, in which one may be misled without remedy by an auctioneer's catalogue, a copy of cranmer's bible, 1549, was offered for sale a few years since, and, says the cataloguer, 'on the second leaf occurs "tho. cranmer" in contemporary handwriting.' in fact, some one at the time under the line of dedication to the archbishop of canterbury had inserted his name, to shew who he was. but there was no unwillingness on the part of the auctioneer's assistant--or the auctioneer himself--to catch a flat. alas! that the world should be so full of guile! henry holl and myself were once parties to a mild practical joke on a fashionable bookseller and stationer named westerton near hyde park corner, who engaged to procure for his clients at the shortest notice any books required. we drew up between us a list of some of the rarest volumes in the english language, and one or the other took it to westerton's, desiring the latter to let him have them punctually the following day. we did not go near the shop for some time after that, i remember. of course we never heard anything of our _desiderata_. the fellow woke up probably to the hoax. there is not the slightest wish on my part to disparage the qualifications of the bookseller as a type; but it has always struck me as unreasonable, looking at the large number of persons, whose subsistence is wholly derived from this pursuit--and often a very good one, too--to represent the calling as an indifferent and an uncommercial line of industry. for there must be thousands earning livelihoods by it, although very few realise the el dorado of £500 a year, which i have heard mr quaritch cite as a kind of minimum, which it is in the power of any poor creature to make out of books. moreover, it is to be recollected that many and many, who have chosen the employment, would scarcely be capable of discharging the duties of any other; it is recommendable for variety and liberty; and it brings those engaged in it into contact with celebrated people and interesting incidence. _imprimis_, as of every other calling, there are too many booksellers. within my memory their ranks have sensibly increased. they are not dealers in the sense in which mr quaritch is one; their training has been slight and superficial; and their stocks are of the thinnest and poorest quality. still, in town and country alike, they maintain a sort of ground, and when you pass and repass their places of business, you wonder how they live, and conclude that the occupation must be profitable even on the smallest scale. for the bargain-hunter--from his point of view--there is nothing to be got out of these outlying or minor emporia nowadays; the whole actual traffic in valuable commodities centres in two or three london auction-rooms and half-a-dozen west-end houses. for all the rest it is a scramble and a pittance. i have almost ceased to look at ordinary shop catalogues; and the stall was a thing of the past before my day. if i wanted a cheap book, i should go to mr quaritch or to a sale-room. your suburban and provincial merchant in all kinds of second-hand property is desiccated. much the same appears to be at present predicable of the publisher. he tells you that it is a poor vocation, a slender margin for himself, yet the number of houses devoted to the business was never greater, and of some the experience and capital must be equally limited, as the printer and paper-maker can tell you. a curious, almost comic, side in the question of literary earnings, is the habitual propensity for embracing one of two extremes. a. is coining money; his publishers are all that a man could desire or expect; he has taken so much in such and such a time from them on account of his last book. you listen to his tale with jesuitical reticence; you have just parted from a member of the firm, who has told you exactly how many copies have been sold, and you can do the rest for yourself. b., on the contrary, never makes any appreciable sum by his efforts; all publishers are rogues; and the public is an ass. how much in both these views has to be allowed for temperament and imagination? perhaps b. does nearly as well as a. chapter ix at the auction-rooms--their changeable temperature--my finds in wellington street--certain conclusions as to the rarity of old english books--curiosities of cataloguing and stray lots--a little ipswich recovery--a narrow escape for some very rare volumes in 1865--a few remarkable instances of good fortune for me--not for others--three very severe 'frosts'--a great boom--sir john fenn's wonderful books at last brought to light--an odd circumstance about one of them--the writer moralises--a couple of imperfect caxtons bring £2900--the gentlemen behind the scene and those at the table--books converted into _vertu_--my intervention on one or two occasions--the auctioneers' world--the 'settlement' principle--my confidence in sotheby's as commission-agents--my three _sir richard whittingtons_.--_a reductio ad absurdum_--the house in leicester square and its benefactions in my favour--change from the old days--unique a.b.c.'s and other early school-books--the somers tracts--mr quaritch and his bibliographical services to me--his independence of character--the british museum--my resort to it for my venetian studies forty years ago--the sources of supply in the printed book department--my later attitude toward it as a bibliographer--the vellum monstrelet and its true history--bookbinders--leighton, riviere, bedford, pratt--horrible sight which i witnessed at a binder's--my publishers--dodsley's old plays--my book on the livery companies of london--presentation-copies. i now proceed to speak a few words about the two auctions, with which i have been familiar--sotheby's and puttick & simpson's. both these distributing agencies repay careful study. you must consider the circumstances, and bear in mind selden's maxim, _distingue tempora_. the rooms are very variable in their temperature. now it is high, now low. it is not always necessarily what is being sold, but what is being asked for. for instance, just at the present moment there is a desperate run on sixteenth and seventeenth century english books and on _capital_ productions, because a few americans have taken the infection; they know nothing of values, so long as the article is right; and therefore the price is no object. it is merely necessary to satisfy yourself that your client wants the book or books, and you may without grave risk pose at the sale-room table and in the papers as a model of intrepidity. but the game does not usually last very long; the wily american soon grows weary or distrustful; and the call for these treasures subsides, and with it the courage of the bidders. the market resumes its normal tranquillity, till a fresh fad is set afloat with similar results. no prudent buyer loses himself in these whirlpools. he watches his opportunities, and they periodically recur amid all the feverish competition arising from temporary causes. at sotheby's my finds have been endless. it is in those rooms that ever since 1861, when i made notes at the bandinel sale, i have figured as an inevitable feature in the scene, when anything remarkable, either bibliographically or commercially, has been submitted to the hammer; and i have not often had reason to lament oversights on one score or the other. when i have missed a lot, of which i desired the particulars for my collections, it has illustrated my conviction of the immense unsuspected rarity of a preponderance of the national fugitive literature. this accident occurred in the case of a tract called _the declaration of the duke of brabant_ (philip iii. of spain) _proffering a truce with the netherlands_, 1607, and i have not since met with a second copy. it is over twenty years ago. i have occasionally registered the title of a piece, which i have found in the warehouse in the hands of a cataloguer; and it was fortunate that i did so as regarded _a farewell to captain_ (afterward sir walter) _gray_, on his departure for holland, 1605, as the article was never again seen. there has been a good deal of this sort of miscarriage. quite at the outset of my bibliographical career, the most ancient printed english music-book, 1530, was bought for the british museum at the price of £80; it was only the _bassus_ part with that to _triplex_ bound up at the end; and the cataloguer _had put it into a bundle_. attention was drawn to the mistake in time, and the lot was re-entered with full honours. on the other hand, i have been repeatedly indebted to sotheby's staff for useful and valuable help. mr john bohn never failed to point out whatever he supposed to be of service, and in 1891 mr a. r. smith shewed me a small volume printed at ipswich by john owen about 1550, entitled _an invective against drunkenness_, so far known only from maunsell's catalogue, 1598. in quite the earlier portion of my experience here occurred the disastrous and destructive fire of 1865, which made a holocaust of the offor library, and proved fatal to much of lord charlemont's. it was a most fortunate circumstance that just at the moment halliwell-phillipps had some of the rarest of the charlemont books on loan from the auctioneers at his private house in old brompton, and they were thus saved. i was away, when mr bolton corney's books were sold at sotheby's, and did not see them. but one was returned by the buyer as imperfect; it was drayton's _odes and eglogs_ (1605), and was said to want two leaves. i examined it, and found that it was complete, and had two duplicate leaves with variations in the text. i bought it for £1, 11s., and sold it to john pearson on my way home for £8. 8s. a somewhat analogous incident befel me at the burton-constable auction in 1889, where a volume containing the _theatre of fine devices_, 1614, the only copy known, and several other rare pieces in the finest state, was sold with all faults, because a copy of wither's _motto_, 1621, at the end, was slightly cropped. i left a commission of £8, 8s. for this, and saw it knocked down for £1, 12s. i put the wither in the waste-paper basket, and divided the rest between the british museum and messrs pearson & co. there were two other dispersions of curious old books, which i may exemplify. at the auchinleck sale the prices were not low, but were extremely moderate, considering the character of many of the early scotish tracts there offered; but the other instance, where a gentleman had with the assistance of john pearson and others formed a collection of early english poetry, making the _bibliotheca anglo-poetica_ the nucleus, was a deplorable fiasco. books went for fewer shillings than they were worth pounds. i bought drayton's _mortimeriados_, 1596, _clean and uncut_, which mr quaritch had acquired for the late owner for £17, for 16s. no one particularly wanted that class of books just at the moment, and the field was open to the opportunist. the proprietor, who was living, must have been gratified. i never witnessed a more thorough frost than this except at the pyne sale already described and at those of the dramatic libraries of mr kershaw and dr rimbault, although i believe that the firm is steadfastly persuaded that the most signal collapse, in recent times at least, was the two-days' auction of prince lucien bonaparte's philological stores, which realised £70! the kershaw and rimbault affairs were rather notable as yielding a large crop between them of old english plays, which were not in the huth library, and which dropped to myself at nominal prices. the slaughter of rimbault's property took place on a saturday afternoon. i recollect the buzz in the room, when shirley's _lady of pleasure_ was carried to 14s. i bought nearly everything worth buying. then there was the other side of the picture, as when the frere, or rather fenn, books came to the hammer at sotheby's in 1896. as nothing in the before-mentioned auctions seemed too low, so nothing here seemed to be too extravagant. there was a kind of mysterious halo round the affair. people had heard of such books being in existence, and longed to put the report to a practical test. herbert, in his revision of ames, had quoted sir john fenn, the john fenn esquire of his day, as the owner of certain rarities, of which nothing absolutely reliable was known. but the items really material to myself amounted to no more than twenty, of which several were mere verifications. mr quaritch was in great form. he made himself master of all the principal lots, as any one can do by bidding long enough. a copy of herbert's _typographical antiquities_ with an extra volume of original specimens, of which the chief portion was of very slight significance, produced £255. a volume of tracts, of which nearly all the title-pages had been mutilated by fenn for the sake of the printer's marks, and of which the central interest lay in the first edition of greene's _groatsworth of wit_, 1592, fetched £80. the first might have been worth £40 and the second (with the defects indicated) £15. a really valuable lot, which belonged to sir john fenn, and which had gone somehow equally astray, was subsequently offered for sale at another room, and brought £81. it was nicholas breton's _works of a young wit_ (1577), and was one of my bibliographical _desiderata_. i took a full note of it of course, and should have willingly gone to £42 as a matter of purchase. mr quaritch trusted to the prevailing american boom, and was there to win the day against all comers with the feeling that those who opposed him had with him only a common market. failing one or two wealthy enthusiasts, the volume might lie on his shelves, so long as he lived, at that figure. this is what mr quaritch himself has characterised as a species of gambling. what is to be said or thought of the two imperfect copies of caxton's first edition of the _canterbury tales_ bringing in 1895-6 £1020 and £1880 respectively? all that can be argued is, that the worth is positively artificial, and that to the individuals, for whom mr quaritch destines them, money is a drug or a form of speaking. then there was the second folio shakespear which fetched the unheard-of price of £540, and the third, to which i presently advert. the disregard of precedents in such cases brings a certain type of early literature within the magical circle of _objets de vertu_, when economic laws cease to operate, and books seem to lose their true dignity in the hands of the virtuoso. beyond a certain financial altitude there are no _bonâ fide_ bookmen. a sale, which might in its way deserve to be classed with the frere-fenn one at sotheby's, fell to the lot of the leicester square house in 1894. it was bipartite, and rather on the incongruous principle discountenanced in the horatian _epistle to the pisos_. for the first division consisted of mss. and printed books formerly belonging to thomas astle the antiquary, and chiefly relating to suffolk, the tower, and america; while the second was a series of autograph letters, particularly a small parcel addressed by mottley the historian to prince bismarck between 1862 and 1872. the auctioneers looked on the day's sale as worth £150; it realised four times as much. a single lot of _americana_ brought £216. the mottley correspondence was highly interesting, and indeed important, and some of the allusions were almost droll from their homely familiarity. the nine letters were knocked down _en bloc_ for £60. the first item in this remarkable series, written from vienna, the hague, and london, found the prussian statesman at a watering-place in the south of france, and at that time the two men appear to have been well known to each other; for mottley subscribes himself 'always most sincerely your old friend;' and the next of 1864 starts with 'my dear old bismarck.' there was evidently much cordiality and sympathy. a good deal of pleasantry arises out of some photographs of the great german's family and himself, which were a long time in arriving. but a singular interest centres in a letter of 1870, urging the desirability of mediation between the two then belligerent powers; it is marked _private and confidential_; and i do not imagine that anything came of it. the day's sale embraced another lot of a somewhat mysterious character, as regarded a portion of the contents. i refer to two letters from sir christopher hatton in his own hand to a lady, couched in most familiar and affectionate terms, and subscribed with the same fictitious signature as hatton employed in corresponding with the queen herself. it is so usual to associate the ownership of a library in middle-class hands with a single generation--scarcely that very often--that events like the auchinleck, astle, and frere sales strike and impress us, and often, indeed generally, produce results gratifying to the beneficiaries; and so it was with the berners street and way affairs. volumes, which were known to exist somewhere, at last emerged from their places of concealment. mr swainson had bought many of his books at the sale of george steevens in 1800; the way lot belonged to about the same date. among the latter were such prizes as the original editions of _arthur of little britain_ and _england's helicon_. the berners street business took place on the premises; there was of course a settlement; and john payne collier, who looked in, could get nothing. i was offered, some time after, a rare little treatise, which i declined; and i subsequently heard a queer story about a copy of it (? the same) having been removed from joseph lilly's tail-pocket, while he was attending the auction. i put this and that together. it was certainly much the same thing at the osterley park, beckford, and fountaine sales. the quotations are suggestive of lunacy, not on the part of the immediate purchasers, who are middlemen, but on that of the ulterior acquirer behind the scenes. what could be more childishly extravagant or absurd than 610 guineas for henry viii.'s _prayer book_ on vellum, 1544, with mss. notes by the king and members of his family? what could be indeed? why, the £435 paid for a third folio shakespear, 1663-4, with both titles--a book which has been repeatedly sold for £60 or £70, and which the auctioneers misdescribed, as if it had been something unique and unknown. the beckford books realised perfectly insane prices, and were afterward resold for a sixth or even tenth of the amount to the serious loss of somebody, when the barometer had fallen. the thuanus copy of buchanan's poems, 1579, which was carried to £54, was offered to me in october, 1886, for £15. of course there have always been inflations of value for special articles or under particular circumstances here and elsewhere; and i must confess to an instance of _malice prepense_ at one of the corser sales at sotheby's, when i made ellis pay £100 for warren's _nursery of names_, 1581, by sitting next to addington at the table, and whispering in his ear the praises of the book and its fabulous rarity. he left it at £99. there was no other competitor within a fifty-pound note's distance. the museum could not have gone beyond £30 or £35. i stood behind quaritch at sir john simeon's sale in wellington street, and when it came to two lots, the first being the _history of oliver of castile_, printed at york in 1695, and the second one of david laing's publications, i told him that if he would let me have the first, i would not bid on the second. he was so amiable as to assent, and the almost unique little volume fell to me at 7s. unhappily some one else opposed him for the laing, which realised its normal value. i looked as grieved as i could, when he good-humouredly turned round to inquire what he had got. i have said that 1861 marked the date, when i graduated at sotheby's as a bibliographer. as a private buyer to a sparing and experimental extent i had known that house since 1857, when i was baulked, as i have elsewhere related, in my attempt to obtain an unique copy of the earl of surrey's english version of the _fourth book of virgil's æneid_, which was unique in a second sense--in being the only lot of value among a mass of rubbish. the auctioneer's world is classifiable into two sections: buyers and sellers. if you do not belong to one of these divisions, the profession scarcely knows where you come in in the economy of nature. you enter into the nondescript species. the man with the hammer views his commission as the elixir of life, as the sole object, for which men and women are born and exist; he has no other motive or seeing-point; and he does not expect others to have it. your friends, as a rule, estimate you according to the house, in which you live, and the undertaker by the order, which he gets for your funeral; but the auctioneer appraises you by your value to him as a bidder at his table and by the marketable quality of the property, which you leave behind. if it happens that you are only a scholar, occasionally picking up a cheap lot, or a bibliographer, taking notes for the benefit of others without profit and without thanks, he eyes you with a mixture of commiseration and surprise, and has a private feeling, perhaps, that there is a percentage somewhere. and so there is--in fame, for which he cares nothing except as an advertisement for his business; and it is natural enough, that the staff takes its cue from the principal, and unless you distribute _largesse_, sets you down as a troublesome nondescript. i think that i am right in saying that it was the member of the firm of walford brothers, who attended the sales, who was referring at the table to the knock-out system, and mr hodge, who was in the rostrum, disclaimed any knowledge of such a thing, whereupon says mr walford to him, 'you are the only person who does not know about it, then.' the other day at the sale of the boyne coins nine continental dealers were counted--_confrères_ indeed. had it not been for the english competition, the result would have been absolutely disastrous. thus much may be confidently affirmed of sotheby's. as commission-agents they are implicitly trustworthy. i have had a long and large experience, and where i have not been able, or have not deemed it politic, to attend in person, i have found that i could depend on the discretion of the auctioneer. let one instance suffice. in 1882 there appeared in a catalogue published by the firm _the famous and remarkable history of sir richard whittington_, octavo, 1656, a mediocre copy, but twenty years earlier than any on record. i left a commission of five guineas, and the lot fell to me at as many shillings. only three copies are known, all of different issues: and every one has been in turn mine. two are now in the british museum; the other, from the daniel sale, is in the huth library. there was an imperfect copy of the first edition of the _paradise of dainty devices_, 1576, in a catalogue issued by the firm in 1889. it was described as probably unique, as wanting a 4, which had been supplied from the next earliest edition in the british museum, and as bound by f. bedford; it was further stated, that every possible search had been made for a second copy without success. this was a tissue of romantic inventions on the part, not of the auctioneer, i apprehend, but on that of the ingenious and candid owner, who was rewarded for his pains by seeing his property fetch £100! some time before, mr burt the facsimilist came up to me at the museum, and shewed me the copy, asking me whether i could refer him to another, whence the missing leaf might be supplied. i did so; but he eventually took it, not from the next earliest issue, which was not in the library, but from that of 1596. bedford was dead, when the volume was bound. i leave the _judicial_ reader to sum up! at one of the scotish sales at sotheby's--david laing's, i think--kerr & richardson of glasgow bought against quaritch at an utterly extravagant price some specimens of old scotish binding, but thought better of it afterward, and the next morning richardson went to piccadilly, and offered to lose the last bid, if quaritch liked to have the book. 'no,' replied the other; 'i thank you; i was mad yesterday; but now i have come to my senses again.' i have recorded in a previous page an anecdote connected with the simeon sale at sotheby's. i may take the present opportunity of adding that sir john simeon was a resident in the isle of wight, and a friend of tennyson, who met longfellow under that roof. there is a curious story of wilberforce, when he was at winchester, making one of a picnic party at simeon's, and, the guests strolling about, as they pleased, the bishop was discovered sitting down in a field alone, with a handkerchief over his head as a sunshade, one foot in a rabbit-hole, and in his hand a bottle of champagne. to the house in leicester square i feel myself under considerable obligations for acts of courtesy and kindness. in former years i bought there rather largely; and it was very possible, even in a full room, to obtain bargains, such as do not go many to the sovereign. i remember that it was here that i got the fishmongers' pageant for 1590, a tract of the utmost rarity, the _merry devil of edmonton_, 1631, a prose version of the story far scarcer than the play, and mistaken by some of those present for it, till it was knocked down to me, and a volume of early pieces relating to murders, accidents, and other cognate matters in the finest state. there seemed to be no voice lifted up for them beyond a bid, which i could easily cap. one of the most remarkable early grammars in the british museum occurred here, and fetched only 44s. although it was in the highest preservation and wholly undescribed. another work of this class, which led to a certain amount of inquiry, was an _a b c_ printed on paper like linen at riga in russian poland for the use of the german children there, who preponderate in number, about 1700--perhaps the oldest example of the kind. it was very appropriately lotted with thomas morton's _treatise of the nature of god_, 1599! the two did not bring more than 12s. the riga primer was, i conclude, a find, as the british museum sent down an individual to my house to procure information about it and similar productions in connection with some task which he had before him. there was a singular little upheaval, so to speak, at puttick & simpson's a few years ago, when certain tracts, so far known only from report or the stationers' register, occurred. i took memoranda of them all, but somehow omitted to bid for them. what became of the others, i do not know; but an extraordinarily rare elizabethan pamphlet respecting edward glemham, 1591, fell to mr quaritch, and from him passed to me at 36s. my intimacy with the market-value of these relics inspired my eminent acquaintance by degrees with a distrust of me, and led to a cessation of his catalogues. i own that i should have looked from such a quarter for greater magnanimity. he sold me a small piece by ralph birchensha on irish affairs, 1602, for £6, 6s., less ten per cent. for cash, and subsequently wrote to demand for what consideration i was willing to surrender it. but both purchases were bespoken: the former for the british museum, the latter for mr huth. it was on this ground that i had the bad luck to fall into a trap laid by myself. in some sale a copy of dekker's _belman of london_, 1608, occurred in a volume in old vellum with the same author's _lanthorn and candlelight_, bearing the same date as the first piece, and so far known only in a re-issue of 1609. i committed the stupid and double blunder of fancying that it was the former and less important article, which was imperfect, and of suggesting to the auctioneers, that the book should be sold with all faults. even then i had to give £5, 2s. 6d. for it, and it turned out that the missing sheet in the middle was in the _lanthorn and candlelight_. i separated the two pieces, and sold the _belman_ to smith; and the other, when i had kept it a twelvemonth or so in the vain hope of completion, i handed over to the museum. i just saved myself. nothing is much more remarkable than the jetsam, which chance brings up to the surface here and in wellington street alike. some of the rarest books and pamphlets in our early literature have fallen under my eyes in leicester square. once it was a parcel, i recollect, including, among others, drayton's _shepheard's garland_, 1593; but the lots were uniformly, in point of condition, hopeless; and i had to leave them to others. but the most signal acquisition on my part was the series of the somers tracts in thirty folio volumes, which had belonged to the famous chancellor, and had passed through several hands, but were still in the original calf binding. this set of books and tracts comprised some of the rarest _americana_, especially the _laws of new york_, printed there in 1693-4, and probably one of the earliest specimens of local typography. i forget what i left with the auctioneers; but the price, at which the hammer fell, was £61. a single item was worth double that sum; and there were hundreds and hundreds. i spoke to mr quaritch after the sale, and begged him to say why he had not bidden for the article. i apprehend that he overlooked it--at all events its peculiar importance. what a lottery! now alike in wellington street and here all is changed. a new school has arisen, and every article of the slightest consequence is carried to the last shilling--and beyond. the highest bidder never despairs of finding, when he gets home, somebody more enthusiastic or more foolish than himself. i sometimes look round, while a sale is proceeding, and nearly all the faces are strange. they are those of young men, who represent firms, or who speculate on their own account. there are no cheap lots, save to the preternaturally knowing or lucky. i have reserved to the last the name, which should by right, perhaps, have come first in order--that of mr quaritch, because he co-operated with me in the enterprise, which constituted throughout my motive for mingling in the commercial circle, and has enabled me to preserve from the risk of destruction a vast body of original matter. mr quaritch cannot have realised any appreciable advantage from publishing my _bibliographical collections_ from 1882 to 1892; and he left me a perfectly free hand with the printer, saying that his share of the business was to pay the bill and sell the books. i waxed tired of the practical side, when i lost £140 by a single volume of the series. but, while he associated himself with me in a variety of ways, some more mutually profitable than this one, our practical transactions were, comparatively speaking, not so important or heavy as might have been expected. mr quaritch used at one time to have cheap books as well as dear; and i suppose that i gave the preference to the former. i saw a copy of _fortunatus_ in english in his window one day, marked 12s., and i went in to buy it. he was just by the door, and when he learned my object, 'ah,' said he, 'i have kept that book so long, that it is 15s. if you want it,' and the higher figure i had to pay. there was never any remarkable event in my life immediately identifiable with these classic premises. i fear that i was suspected of knowing too much. i was not like the good folks, to whom, when he had bought the first copy of the mazarin bible, he exhibited an ordinary early printed specimen on their application for leave to inspect the real article. they were just as happy and just as wise. how many thumbs it saved! i shall always cherish a sentiment of gratitude toward mr quaritch for his valuable aid during a whole decade in putting it in my power to present in instalments the fruit of my labour at the auction-rooms and elsewhere, and in agreeing to defray the entire cost of the _general index_ to a large portion of it. i look forward to the possibility of carrying on the task piecemeal, till it embraces the entire _corpus_ of our earlier national literature in all its branches, each item derived from the printed original, and illustrated by such notes as may appear desirable and appropriate. thousands of new titles await the printer. it was through this medium that lord crawford was pleased to honour me with a proof of his lordship's catalogue of _proclamations_, thinking that it might be of service; but i had to return the copy with a message by the same channel that the descriptions were drawn up on a different principle from mine, and that i never accepted information at second-hand, if i could possibly avoid it. after what i had seen of lord crawford's bibliographical discernment, i was rather distressed to hear that his lordship is regarded as one of the best-informed men on the board of trustees in great russell street. but the qualifications of an _ex-officio_ member cannot be always satisfactory. i conclude that it is, except among the general public, an open secret that mr quaritch has been during quite a long series of years eminently indebted for his success to the varied and extraordinary erudition of his adviser, mr michael kerny. mr quaritch was accustomed to say to me: 'i am a shopkeeper; mr kerny is a gentleman;' and there was a degree of truth in this remark. yet the former is something more than _le grand marchand_; his enterprise and pluck are marvellous; and they are the outcome, for the most part, not of foolhardihood, but of genius. a man, who buys blindly, soon reaches the end of his tether. that mr quaritch for divers reasons has often made unwise purchases, and has missed his mark, may be perfectly the fact; but in the main he has obviously struck the right vein; and he pursues his policy season after season, witnessing the departure of old clients (or, as he would rather put it, customers) and the advent of new ones. he despises popularity, and has ere this given umbrage by his _brusquerie_ to supporters of long standing and high position; and he leaves them to do as they please to seek other pastures or to return to their former allegiance. he is a striking example--the most striking i have ever seen--of a man, who knows how to accommodate unusual independence of character and conduct to commercial life. the successive authorities in the printed book department of the british museum have earned my cordial gratitude by their uniform deference to my somewhat peculiar and somewhat exacting requirements. they soon formed the habit, when it was found that i was an earnest and genuine worker, of waiving in my favour, so far as it was consistent with reason and propriety, the hard and fast rule of the establishment, and even under the now rather remote and quasi-historical keepership of mr watts. it was as a simple student that i in the first place sought the british museum, and in the old reading-room initiated myself in the learning requisite to qualify me, as i imagined, for becoming the english historian of venice. i was self-complacently happy in the unconsciousness of my own intense ignorance of the magnitude of the task and of the fact that, at a distance of forty years, i should still have merely reached a more advanced stage of my labours. it at any rate speaks for my perseverance and resolution, that my interest in the topic is unabated, and my desire and intention, to see the project of my youth completed on a suitable and satisfactory scale inflexible. i ventured into type in 1858 and 1860, and since then i have printed farther instalments destined to fall into their places, when the time arrives. but accident directed my steps and thoughts about the same time into a different groove, and i turned my attention to book-collecting and bibliography, at first vaguely and desultorily, and by degrees on a more systematic principle; and cogent circumstances--that necessity for living, which dr johnson ignored--finally drove me into the market as a speculator. my conversance with old books was very special and defective; of many classes i knew next to nothing; but i gradually gained a fair insight into the value of those, for which i had contracted a personal liking--the early poetry and romances--and i tried my hand as a hunter for specialities. i naturally turned to the museum as a channel; for i was not acquainted with many of the booksellers, and i had yet to meet with mr huth. it may not be, indeed is not, generally known, how wide a diversity of persons offer their possessions or acquisitions to the national library. there are great differences of opinion respecting the questions of rarity and value, and the authorities are most unconscionably plagued by a host of individuals of imperfect bibliographical attainments, who shoot parcels of old volumes in great russell street in the expectation of a more or less rich harvest, in which they are apt to be more or less disappointed. here and there a real treasure is netted. the bishop of bath and wells brought a small octavo volume from ickworth, comprising the _prophete jonas_ and other tracts of singular scarcity and importance. a gentleman from woolwich introduced a quarto volume in old vellum of poetical compositions of the middle of the sixteenth century, including the _scholehouse of women_, the _defence of women_, the _seven sorrows that women have when their husbands be dead_, etc., with the autograph on a flyleaf of 'john hodge, of the six clerks' office 1682.' such prizes atone for a vast amount of annoyance and rubbish. but mr maskell, mr halliwell, mr henry stevens, and myself have probably, apart from purchases made direct from the sales and the shops, contributed of late years most largely to supply _lacunæ_ in the early english department, and supersede the three-volume catalogue. at the bodleian the late dr coxe and the rev. mr madan have always done their best to help me, and at cambridge the late mr henry bradshaw was a host in himself. these relations, however, were purely bibliographical; while those with the museum were of a more mingled yarn, and my connection with that institution, both as regarded printed literature and manuscripts, was in fact part of the system, which i have above fully explained. i did a good deal _con amore_. a strange story reached me about a copy of monstrelet's chronicles in french, printed on vellum, for which mr quaritch was not willing to give as much as the owner desired, in fact throwing discredit on the genuineness of the book. whereupon it was carried to great russell street, duly inspected, and as to the price--the authorities were prepared to hand over all the cash in hand, about £700. mr quaritch was stated to have been very wroth, when he found that he had missed the lot, and declared that his ground for scepticism was the fact that the only copy in the market or likely to occur for sale was in russia; and he then learned for the first time, that the present one had been obtained at st petersburg. i called on mr garnett, and inquired what were the actual circumstances, so far as the museum was concerned; and it appeared that the book did come from russia, and consisted only of vols. 2 and 3; but the library already possessed vol. 1 (wanting one leaf only) in an incomplete set formerly belonging to king henry vii.; and the purchase was arranged. the keeper referred to the accounts, and found that the transaction took place in 1886, and that the sum given was £375. my experiences of bookbinders have been tolerably manifold, and not exempt from the sorrows, with which the employers of this class of skilled labour are bound to become familiar. the earliest of my acquaintances was mr leighton, who executed a great deal of work for sir william stirling-maxwell--in those days known as william stirling of keir. there was a stupendous copy of maxwell's _cloister-life of charles v._, published at a few shillings, which i understood leighton to say had cost with the illustrations and elaborate spanish binding about £1000. i saw the book in brewer street, but not the value. leighton's speciality was spanish calf, as riviere's was the tree-marbled pattern. i had a considerable amount of work done for me here, while i filled the _rôle_ of a collector on my own account in a humble degree. but when i had occasion, at a later period, to put volumes into new liveries, and their condition demanded nice handling, i employed riviere, whom i found very satisfactory and punctual. his place of business in piccadilly adjoining pickering's shop was during years one of my not least agreeable resorts, and i profited, with the concurrence of the principal, by the constant presence on the premises of undescribed books or editions consigned for binding. of bedford i saw very little. he was a true artist, and a very unassuming, pleasant fellow, whom i occasionally visited at his address in or near york street, westminster. my first call was in consequence of mr huth having given me leave to take notes of some rare volumes, which were in course of treatment. bedford was more reliable than riviere, who could bind well, if he liked; but he sometimes left too much to subordinates. pratt, who had been a workman at bedford's, was a respectable binder, but an indifferent cleaner and mender, two very essential features, where the slightest neglect or oversight may prove disastrous. it is trying to look in casually, and perceive that the tender title-page of a quarto shakespear has parted with one of the letters of the poet's name or a figure of the date, and that one of these is floating on the surface of a tub of water; and such thrilling episodes have occurred. if it is in some cases an advantage to take your acquisitions to a binder, and have them separately clothed, it is in others, and perhaps for the most part, one to buy ready-bound. it saves expense, delay, and annoyance. of my publishers i am scarcely entitled to speak in a volume devoted to the collecting side beyond such works as directly arose from my pursuit as a book-lover pure and simple between 1857 and 1867. but, when i look closely at my professedly literary undertakings, i discern more or less in nearly all of them a bibliographical spirit and training. my venetian labours included the formation of a fair representative collection of books relating to the subject and a study of the mss. within my reach. my pronounced taste for method and minutiæ in early english literature extended to italy, when i was endeavouring to concentrate on the history of the republic all the direct and collateral light, which i was enabled to gather from various sources; and the same thing may be truly predicated of the commissions, which i executed for several publishers, beginning with russell smith and reeves & turner. mine have been chiefly enterprises, where a knowledge of detail and a familiarity with extant or available material were apt to prove of eminent service; and such was especially the case with the _early popular poetry_ and the _dodsley_. disciples of the _belles-lettres_, who entertain less respect for the extrinsic side or part of their tasks, may be wiser than myself; but it strikes me, that it is difficult to do justice to a subject without surveying the entire ground occupied by it. two very mortifying illustrations of the soundness of this view occurred to me at different times. in my collected edition of randolph, i collated everything with the original editions except the _aristippus_ and had the satisfaction of discovering, when it was too late, that all but the first issue were incomplete in many places, in one to the extent of omitting a line. in my reconstructed and enlarged dodsley, _in fifteen thick octavo volumes, containing eighty-four dramas_, i have a table of _errata_ of _thirty-six items_, many very trivial and even dubious; and of this total _five-and-twenty_ occur in one play, which i neglected to compare with the old copy deposited in an inconvenient locality, and gave from the shakespear society's text. i attach greater blame to myself, that i should have forgotten, when i reprinted in 1892 my suckling of 1874, to set right the stupid mistake in the song from 'the sad one,' of _dawn_ for _down_. i shall remain highly pleased, that i succeeded, in the volume entitled _tales and legends_, in putting in type my long-cherished ideas about robin hood and faustus; and i adopted a sort of old-fashioned, vernacular style throughout the book, apparently not unsuitable to the nature of the topics treated. both the stories just mentioned were there for the first time presented in an english form and text agreeably to my view and estimate of the facts relative to two of the most remarkable characters in romance. the accumulation of absurdities round those heroes of the closet and the stage prompted me, years and years since, to endeavour to reduce the legends to a shape more compatible with evidence and probability. yet i am informed that some of the critics wondered, what the aim of the volume was. it struck others, as well as myself, as fairly clear; indeed the undertaking was strictly on recognised lines. but i had unfortunately omitted to graduate as a specialist and to add myself to the roll of the faithful. another venture, which involved the writer in a slight temporary _imbroglio_, was the monograph on the _livery companies of london_. i was most unhappy in the season and circumstances of launching this work. it was a tolerably hard six months' task, and i hurried it forward, inasmuch as i knew that a rival scheme was on the stocks. considering that it is a big book with numerous illustrations supplied by the editor, it is perhaps not much worse than it might have been, had it proceeded from a pen writing _superiorum approbatione_. the rumour arose that, as soon as the real work on the subject appeared, the attempt of an outsider would sink into merited oblivion; but the real work did not appear, and its proposed author had to content himself, in the presence of his disappointment, with sending me an anonymous communication, based on erroneous intelligence, that the word _gild_ ought to be spelled with a _u_, as it is in _guildhall_, _gild_ signifying _to face with gold_. a far more serious misadventure, however, was occasioned by an unlucky clerical oversight. in the account of the cutlers' company i stated that there had been, many years before, a defalcation by the clerk, whereas i should have said 'by a clerk;' the wrong article and the capital letter drew down on me the ire of the party, who still occupied the position of clerk to the gild, and who pleaded damage to his reputation by the misprint, pointed out to him by the frustrated compiler aforesaid. there could be no sustainable plea of injury, and the large amount lost rendered it obvious that there must have been neglect by superiors; but the publishers thought it better to agree to cancel the leaf, which was done in all copies unsold or recoverable. the clerk was in fact the responsible officer, and although he might have had no hand in the misappropriation, he must have exercised a very imperfect control over the accounts, to render such a thing possible. owing to the unlucky retention in my agreement for the livery companies' book of certain clauses, i involved myself in an unpleasantness, which made me anxious to get rid of the entire business. accordingly, the moment that i was advised by the firm, that they had (without previous consultation with me as a royalty-holder) converted themselves into a limited company, i solicited a cheque in settlement of all claims, and obtained it. i have very possibly set a precedent, by which others might not do ill to profit. i know that to my more recent acquaintances and auxiliaries i must have appeared rather niggard of presentation copies of my publications. but i used to be generous enough in distributing such things, till i was thoroughly disheartened and disgusted. some stopped short of acknowledgment; others might without much disadvantage have done the same. i sent a privately-printed volume worth several pounds as a gift to a reverend professor at cambridge, and he wrote back on a card: 'thanks. curious.' my former schoolmaster at merchant taylors had only to say that i had left out a greek accent in a quotation, and a female relative, after two years' deliberation, apprised me that i was guilty of printing the wrong article in a french maxim. when i forwarded to mr william chappell direct as from myself an important volume edited for mr huth, he pointed out to the latter, leaving me unrecognised, that i had made a slip in a particular place. an official at the british museum, who solicited one of my books as a memorial, which would be cherished as an heirloom in his family, forthwith passed it on to a bookseller, who priced it in his catalogue at £12, 12s., and mr huth, till i explained the circumstances, imagined that i was the culprit. chapter x as an amateur--old china--dr diamond of twickenham--unfavourable results of his tutorship--my adventure at lowestoft--alderman rose--i turn over a new leaf--morgan--his sale to me of various objects--the seventeenth century dishes--the sèvres tray of 1773--the pair of japanese dishes--blue and white--hawthorn--the odd vase--my finds at hammersmith--mr sanders of chiswick and his chelsea china--gale--the ruby-backed eggshell--a recollection of ralph bernal--buen retiro and capo di monte--reynolds of hart street--the wedgewood teapot--the _rose du barri_ vases--my bowls--an eccentric character and his treasures--reminiscences of midhurst and up park--the zurich jug and my zurich visitor--the diamond sale. in crossing over from the literary to other fields, where i have instructed and amused myself and a few others by my studies, i pass to ground, where i occupy a somewhat different position--that of an absolute, incorruptible amateur. i see clearly enough that, whatever advantage may attach itself to the commercial side in these matters, the genuine pleasure lies in purchasing for oneself, even if the price is here and there such as to ensure loss on realisation; for there is the sense of patronage and superiority. i never descended to petty transactions; but where an appreciable amount was involved; i would far liefer have stood aloof, or have acquired for myself. there was only the sovereign motive in the background, which conquered my instinctive repugnance to the conversion of literary monuments into a commodity and of my hardly-acquired knowledge into a mint. outside books, i have conceived, as i proceeded, and as i mingled with other hobby-riders, an interest in such matters of secondary human concernment as china, coins, plate, postage stamps, pictures, and furniture. the two former have occupied in my thought a station not much less prominent than that of literature; and as i abandoned the practical inquiry into the first subject after ten years' devotion to it, i shall commence by giving some account of my observations and experiences in that particular market, which, like all others, offers its peculiarities and idiosyncrasies. there is hardly a triter remark than that we are slaves to our passions; and the genuine collector certainly is unto his, whatever his line may be. where there are ample resources, it signifies less; but the servitude presses very heavily on the more necessitous or more moderately endowed. it is in vain to say that a man ought not to buy luxuries, if he cannot afford them; he will have them, as another will drink alcohol or chew opium. to secure something which he covets he is capable of pawning his coat or 'dining with duke humphrey.' had i been exempt from fancies, i might have spared myself the ordeal of going into the highways and byways in quest of that doubtful benefactor a publisher; i might have dispensed with ingratiating myself with booksellers and bookbuyers; i might have enjoyed the pleasures of reading and thinking amid some sort of _paterna rura_. but as a citizen, who leaves london only for the sake of the satisfaction which it yields to return to it (for your londoner, if he likes to see and _feel_ the country must _live in urbe_), i naturally contracted certain pleasant and costly vices incidental to a metropolis, and became an unthrift and through my unthriftiness a hireling. i often resolve to break my fetters; but i lack the courage. the tastes, in which i have graduated, have sweetened my life, and enlarged my vision, if they have trenched a little on my freedom; and i even think that they have tended to humanise me, and subdue a not too tractable temper to the harder and sterner uses of the world. i have not the least objection to avow that, when i accidentally acquired in 1869 at llandudno an example or two of oriental ceramic art, i was deplorably ignorant of the bearings and merits of the pursuit, and had, as usual, no idea that i had embarked in one. a good-natured and well-informed relative, who was always ready and pleased to serve and flatter me, suggested that my eastern porcelain was _brom'ichham_. of course an english factory could not, in the first place, have produced the things at the price. i received a good deal of encouragement and sympathy from those near and dear to me just about this time; my extravagance was censured; and my early insolvency considered probable. through my father i became acquainted about that time with dr diamond of twickenham house, the possessor of one of the most extensive and miscellaneous assemblages of porcelain and pottery of all ages and countries ever formed in this country. who had first bitten the doctor, i never heard; i found him, on my first introduction, the owner of a mass of examples, good, bad and indifferent, of all of which, however insignificant and obscure, he could tell you the pedigree and place of origin. he had many other tastes; he was curious about photography, books, pictures, prints, coins, and plate; his house was a museum, of which he was the curator and showman; but i think that during the last years of his life old china and plate kept the ascendancy. my personal progress was at first leisurely, for i do not recollect that i made any farther investments till 1872 when, happening to be at lowestoft where alderman rose, brother of james anderson rose, also a collector, was then staying, he and i were equally seduced by the attractions of a shop kept by a person named burwood. it was extremely fortunate for the latter that rose and myself had nearly all our knowledge to learn; we bought largely and not too well, and burwood was so exhausted by the drain on his stock, that he announced his intention of travelling down into herefordshire, in order to buy some very valuable bits reported to him from a farmhouse in that rather distant shire. there was a second depôt in the same watering-place, kept by an old man and his wife, with whom it was a favourite phrase, when their stock ran low, to say that they must 'take a journey.' in short, i amassed a large hamper of ware on this occasion, and brought it home. diamond, as soon as he was apprised of my new foible, exclaimed, 'god help him!' and i suspected that there must be something in it, when i called at a place in orange street, red lion square, and ascertained that that and the herefordshire farmhouse were one. i soon made a second discovery, which almost discouraged me from prosecuting the fancy any farther. diamond had knowledge and feeling; but i now saw that he was deficient in taste. i had naturally modelled my small collection on his plan or want of plan; i fell in with one or two dealers, who opened my eyes; and the lowestoft cargo was thrown overboard. a jew named moss had a whole tableful of crockery in exchange for a good plaque of limoges enamel of the earlier epoch. he once let me have at a moderate price an old sèvres plate painted with a pastoral scene, and with a rich amethyst blue and gold festooned border. i continue to think favourably of it. he brought it and a number of other pieces, all rubbish, in company with a co-religionist, to my house at kensington in the evening. he was so discouraged by my frugal selection, that i lost sight of him. he was not miserly in his warnings against his professional contemporaries. this is a common trait. i began to work on a new principle--to buy fewer and better things, studying condition, to which the doctor was more or less insensible; and i found myself about 1880 the owner, even on such a basis, of a multitude of wares which threatened to compete in the early future with the twickenham prototype. this was all the more serious, so to speak, inasmuch as while i drew from very few sources, the doctor was a mark for everybody, while he continued to buy with zest and avidity. all sorts of people came to the high iron gates, bringing every variety of article for sale; and few carried their freights back. even those who were on the list of private guests occasionally shewed their good taste by drawing out of their breast-pockets at dessert some object for diamond's approval and purchase. there was major ----, one of her majesty's messengers, who was an habitual offender (as i thought) in such a way. but in the eyes of our common host the end in those days justified the means. it was all fish. i dealt in chief measure with a house in hanway street (morgan), gale in holborn, brooks at hammersmith, and reynolds of hart street, bloomsbury. i seldom left these tracks, and met there with only too much to tempt me. morgan sold me a few pieces of sèvres and some very fine oriental. it was curious that, just after my purchase of three or four large porcelain dishes, the 'china earth' of the stuart era, a gentleman of old family from newcastle-on-tyne looked in at morgan's, and observing a broken specimen of the same lot, mentioned that at home he had some precisely similar, which had belonged to his predecessors since 1650. a very beautiful sèvres tea-stand of small dimensions, with a circumference representing a tressure of six curves, has the marks of the maker, the painter, and the gilder, and belongs to 1773; i gave him £23 for it; morgan tried to get the companion cup and saucer; but it brought £86; and was bought, i think, by the late mr lawrence, f.s.a. he had a rather prolonged and troublesome negotiation in one instance on my behalf. the executors of some gentleman offered him a pair of superb japanese dishes, 24 inches in diameter and of a rare pattern and shape, for £140. i declined them at that figure, and heard no more of the matter, till he informed me that his correspondents had modified their views, so as to make it possible for me to possess the lot for £85. i took them; and the vendor has repeatedly applied to me, asking if i have the dishes still, and care to part. he sold me a few other rather costly articles--costly in my eyes. morgan initiated me in the true facts about blue and white, and helped me to steer clear of the blunders, which many of my contemporaries perpetrated over that craze. i have a small cylindrical bottle, white and ultramarine, which illustrates the matter as well as a dearer example, and shews the pains which the chinese took to prepare their paste and pigments during the best period--the seventeenth century. both are most brilliant, and it is alike the case with chinese and japanese ware of this class, that the ancient appears to a superficial or inexperienced observer more modern than that made in our own time, of which the ground and the decoration are faded and weak. i likewise gained an insight from the same source into the mysteries of hawthorn, which seems to be rather plum-blossom. i handled a goodly number of specimens; but i encountered scarcely any, which awakened a very strong interest. really fine examples are of the rarest occurrence, and it is still more difficult to obtain pairs of vases or jars with the genuine covers or lids. they are generally false or wooden. odd pieces are not wanted. you must have either a couple or a set of two, three, five, six, according to circumstances. a collector had long cast a longing eye on a very beautiful vase in a london shop, but would not have it, because it was odd. he kept a sharp look-out for the companion, and at last he found it to his immense satisfaction at newcastle, and brought it up to town. on inquiry at the dealer's there, he found that the latter, despairing of getting rid of his piece, had consigned it to a friend at newcastle in the hope of meeting with a customer. this was agreeable to the circular system, by which curiosities go the round of the watering-places and spas in quest of homes. i saw a worcester jug at bournemouth, which had visited nearly every resort in the kingdom, and still awaited an admirer. i very soon abandoned the idea about lowestoft porcelain. gillingwater in his _history_ of the place (1790) merely mentions that they had clay, suitable for making pottery, in the neighbourhood; but there was no material for fine china. very possibly certain pieces of oriental were shipped thither in the white, and locally decorated. but i have yet to see an important example of so-called lowestoft, which was not really of chinese origin. at the place of business long kept by brooks i was an habitual caller, and used to meet mr sanders of chiswick, whose collection of chelsea porcelain was probably one of the finest ever brought together. it comprised many large examples in figures and _nefs_ seldom seen and of great importance. it was sanders, who related to me the anecdote of a singular find at antwerp of chelsea figures in a confectioner's establishment. the proprietor or his family once belonged to chelsea, and had taken these pieces with them as part of their trade fittings or decorations; and he willingly exchanged them for others on payment of a reasonable difference. sanders and myself occasionally met also at sotheby's. he must have been a person of no mean resources; but his ways were mysterious, and his home, i fear, uncomfortable. perhaps he found the neighbouring sign of the hoppoles more congenial for this reason; he found it, poor fellow, only too much so. i possess numerous memorials of my transactions with brooks. he had, besides china, occasional pictures on which i may have sometimes looked with extravagant distrust; and he was in fact an omnivorous buyer and not an injudicious one. i recall a tall chelsea cup and saucer with a stalk handle, painted with fruit, and marked in puce, which my good acquaintance had obtained from a small house-sale in chiswick--the sole treasure of the establishment. it was in the finest state. 'they thought me a fool,' remarked brooks, 'because i gave £10, 10s. for it.' 'and what would they say of the person,' i put to him, 'who took it of you at a profit?' he grinned, and informed me that a medical man in the neighbourhood would jump at it. this frightened me, and i closed with him at £14. i owed many another prize to the same agency, particularly, in a small way perhaps, an old dresden plate with a crimson and gold border, painted with a bird and foliage, the prototype of the chelsea pattern, of which examples have fetched £35. brooks had this lying in a drawer, and one day i disinterred it, and took it home at 25s. my hammersmith man was not invariably so discreet in his consumption of liquor as he ought to have been; and i have to confess with some shame and contrition, that i priced, not for the first time, a very fine cambrian ware mug marked (as usual) in gold, when he was a trifle festive, and he let me have it for 35s. he had two; the other was badly cracked; and i saw it in another shop some time after, valued at £7, 15s. there were two examples of ceramic ware in his hands at different times, protected and (as i thought) disguised by old black frames. i asked him to take them out for me, that i might be satisfied as to their condition, which he did. one was a wedgwood plaque, light blue, with figures in relief; the other an original capo di monte one, literally hidden under accumulated dirt. it was of the second period, in the _alto relievo_ style, and represents the bath of diana, i believe. the sharpness of the impression was a strong contrast to the modern copies from the moulds. brooks asked £6 for it; i took both. he was _ultimus romanorum_ in the sense that he left no successor in hammersmith with a stock of the kind worth regarding. brooks was an odd-looking small man, and he and his wife resembled mr and mrs johnson in the vauxhall song. i once spoke to him of his _confrères_ in the trade, and as to his relations with them, more particularly in the old china line, and his less explanatory than sententious rejoinder was: 'i knows them, and they knows me.' gale, who lived in holborn, where i regularly visited him, was the brother of the county court judge. he was an intelligent fellow, but not very speculative, nor did i ever, save once, carry away from him anything very notable. he set before me, however, on one occasion a splendid pair of ruby-backed eggshell plates painted with quails, and said that the price was £6. i felt slightly nervous, lest he should have made a mistake; but i agreed to his terms, asked him to pack the things up, and departed. i nearly broke them by a collision on the pavement, but eventually landed them in safety, calling _en route_ at reynolds's in hart street, who told me that a customer would give him £60 for them, if i would let him have them at a figure below that. they are as thin and transparent as paper. it may be just worth noting that a cup and saucer of capo di monte of the first type, the paste opaque and the decoration spanish, was sold to me by gale as buen retiro. it is painted in the same taste, and has the same mark--_m_ for madrid; but i have always regarded it as of italian origin, and as the work of the operatives who migrated from the neighbourhood of madrid to capo di monte. the real buen retiro resembles eggshell. ralph bernal had formerly dealt with gale, who was fond of narrating anecdotes of the great collector's hesitation and nearness. there was a particular sèvres cup and saucer, which brought a heavy sum in his sale, and which he got for £5, 5s., after a palaver with the holder of some months' duration. reynolds allowed me to make his premises in bloomsbury one of my regular lounges. i did not altogether take a great deal off his hands, as he paid attention to wedgwood, bronzes, ivories, and jade, rather than to china; and as i grew wiser, i also grew more exclusive, from a persuasion that one or two subjects are amply sufficient for any single madman, especially a rather poor one. i have stated that my range of sources of supply was limited. i was now and then attracted by an object in a strange window, and might go in, and demand the figure expected. it was the height of the run upon chelsea, when i did so in holborn, and the owner, in response to my appeal, proceeded to disengage from a hook an old chelsea plate valued by him at £14, 14s. unfortunately the poor fellow lost his balance, and let the plate go; it was broken into i know not how many fragments. i shall never forget his astonishment and dismay. what could i do? a neighbour of his once fixed me with a nantgarw plate, and was lavish in his eulogy. 'why,' he exclaimed, allusively to its lustrous brilliance, 'it laughs at you.' my acquisitions at public sales have in thirty or more years been limited to two: a derby mug painted with a military subject, which i gave away, and a large dresden plaque in a rich frame, which occurred at sotheby's ever so long ago, when sales were occasionally held in the warehouse downstairs. the piece was an exquisite copy of the painting by rubens of his second wife and their child on her knee. although there was no picture or china buyer present, it fetched £12, 12s., and f. s. ellis pronounced it a bargain at that figure. i verily trust it may be so (ellis named such an amount as £50); for it has hung in my study ever since, and owes me some interest. time was, when the bijou tea-pot held me in bondage. i have two of that very soft paste made at mennecy in the department of the seine, and a third of the finest dresden porcelain, painted with landscapes (even on the lid), and with the spout richly gilt. i was tempted, side by side with the mennecy pieces, by a milk-jug with a silver hinge of sceaux-penthièvre, of which the paste is also remarkable for its softness. it was a factory conducted under the patronage of the duc de penthièvre. its products are very rare. a welsh clergyman obliged me with a present of a few specimens of china, including a small octagon blue and white dish with _salopian_ impressed in large characters on the bottom. i value it the more, because the authentic early salopian is most difficult to procure, and it is the fashion to ascribe to this manufactory the worcester marked with an _s_. i look upon the nantgarw, of which i relate a trivial anecdote, the swansea, and the colebrooke dale groups, as rather cold, insipid, and tawdry. the first-named is common enough in plates, dishes, and shaped pieces; but i possess a cup and saucer most exquisitely painted in roses with their stalks and leaves, but without a mark, which i have always attributed to this source. i never saw another similar. but i did take from reynolds from time to time a few articles: a wedgwood tea-pot of solid green jasper, a small chelsea dish of the vernon service with exotic birds and the gold anchor, a pair of _rose du barri_ tulip-lipped sèvres vases, 6 inches high, painted with cupids, and so on. i deemed the tea-pot dear at £7; but the vendor, who had studied the particular branch of the subject, reassured me by offering to buy it back at any time at the same price; and he put this in the receipt--not to great purpose; for he died years ago. for the vernon dish he asked £20, and took £11. the pair of _rose du barri_ vases, which belong to the louis xvi. epoch, he picked up at a lombard's for a trifle, and paid me the compliment of charging me £10 for them. but their quality was excellent, and in their gilding there was that free hand, which distinguishes the early work, and is charming from its very informality. the rich gold scrolls and foliage on either side do not correspond, as they would in pieces of modern fabric. i appear, as i look back, to have been thrown from my early manhood among curiosity hunters and dealers. i was once very dead on the bowl, when it offered special attractions of any kind. i have one, which is _jewelled_ round the border inside and out, but of which the drawback is that it has in the heel an extremely unconventional painting. the jewelling is in the manufacturing process, and was imitated at sèvres. a second came from scotland, and is remarkable for the presence of a christian legend in the base of the interior, derived from the teaching of the jesuits in china. i negotiated it at a marine-store dealer's at north end; but he thought so well of it or of me, that he would not surrender it under £3, 3s. the most expensive specimen i possess cost me £9. it has a turquoise ground, is very richly decorated inside and out, is of large size, and of course absolutely perfect. but i was vouchsafed the sight of one at deal in the hands of a private owner, for which a matter of £50 was expected. i preferred my own. the palissy, henri deux, and other costly _faïence_ i never acquired. there was a fellow at hammersmith, named glendinning, who had on sale during countless years a specimen of palissy, for which he suggested a cheque for £250, and which was a palpable copy. this strange character, who was a sort of commercial munchausen, never wearied of spinning the most outrageous yarns about the goods, which he had, or had had, for sale, and would repeat conversations between the 'prim'er' (gladstone) and himself, no doubt as thoroughly _bonâ fide_ as everything else about him. the works of correggio were to be seen only on his first floor; but you might inspect copies in trafalgar square and the louvre. there was a pair of modern french decorative vases at this establishment, said by the proprietor to have been obtained by him at the sale of the effects of a great lady in hyde park, a _chère amie_ of his majesty napoleon iii. his majesty, quoth my friend, paid eighty guineas for the objects, which were manufactured expressly for his lady friend in 1869. the vendor judged his purchase with all this imposing provenance rather reasonable at thirty guineas; nor did i contradict him. i did not order the vases to be sent home; but they arrived on approval; and there they remained. i repeatedly invited him to fetch them away, as, however cheap, they would not suit me at the price. he eventually sacrificed them and himself, and his family, by accepting £7, 10s. when i was at midhurst in 1877, i had a glimpse of the splendid collection of porcelain formed by the late mr fisher. i had arranged with a common friend to go to up park, harting, not far off, to view the sèvres purchased in or about 1810 by the featherstonhaughs for £10,000, and which is shortly to be dispersed under the hammer, because the heir is obliged to strip the house to enable him to keep it up. besides the china, they had a great deal of plate, which was allowed, till the family was warned, to lie about the house, and superb antique furniture. one of the rothschilds offered, i was told, £1500 for a single florentine table. it was something of the same kind, which a west end dealer found in a lodging-house at hastings, whither he had taken his family for the air, and purchased for £500 after a prolonged negotiation with the landlady. he sold it for £300 more. i once obtained of brooks a 4-inch vase with a _gros bleu_ ground and painted with birds, without a mark, and sold to me as worcester. i took it to be sèvres from the peculiar unctuous appearance of the paste and the method of treatment; and i remain of the same opinion. mortlock shewed me two cups, asking me not to look at the marks, and to tell him what they were. one was sèvres and the other a staffordshire copy. the paste and the bird on the latter betrayed its origin. it seems strange that the sèvres of a certain epoch should be valuable beyond all comparison with other porcelain, that of france included, and that the modern manufacture, indeed the whole of this century's work, should be so slightly esteemed. but the skill and taste lavished on that of the louis quinze, or even seize, period are immense. it is different with chelsea, derby, and worcester, of all of which you may have examples of early date of poor, as well as of fine, quality. the sèvres and vincennes seem to have been more especially destined for rich patrons. brooks was an excellent judge of china, and fairly reasonable. but he sometimes, like most of us, committed mistakes, and sometimes overshot the mark as to price and value. he long had on view a cup and saucer with the gold anchor, which he had probably bought as chelsea, and for which he demanded £12. it was a _contrefaçon_ by the wily flemings of tournay. i eyed with much longing a beautiful jug of plymouth ware, but unsigned, which he estimated at the same figure; but i deemed it too high, and brooks was not the man to give way as a rule. after his death, reynolds of hart street obtained the piece, and sold it to me for a third of the amount. with respect to chelsea, derby, and worcester china it is necessary, as i have just hinted, to be aware that much of the early work is of poor paste and decoration, and that the date is not a guarantee or criterion. of all these factories there are abundant specimens of coarse execution and cheap fabric, though undoubtedly of original and genuine character. the chelsea figure of justice, 12 inches in height, is, for instance, of two distinct types: the first very inferior to the later, which exhibits the result of the introduction of italian, perhaps venetian, workmen. the mark on this porcelain seems to be borrowed from venice, and is common to the ware made in that city. somehow--perhaps in exchange--mr quaritch had on sale in the seventies a fine pair of old cylindrical japanese jars, such as in the common modern ware they use as stick or umbrella stands; i cast amorous glances at them; but the holder demanded sixty sovereigns; and i retired. they were the only objects of interest and value in the lot. her britannic majesty's consul at zurich had been advised by some one, that i was in possession of an old zurich jug mounted in silver, and solicited leave to inspect it, as he was engaged on a history of the porcelain factory at that place. i let him see my piece, which was not silver-mounted, but was far more interesting and important, because it had the original china hinge. my visitor averred that he had never met with any similar example, and expressed his anxiety, if i cared to part with it at any time, to become the purchaser. i mentioned that i had been foolish enough twenty years before to give £6, 10s. for it. he stated his readiness to pay £10, and would, i dare say, have doubled the offer; but i declined. while waller the bookseller was still in fleet street, knowing me to be interested in old china, he shewed me one day upstairs in his private apartments a french cup and saucer, which had been given to him in paris, and which, according to the donor, had formerly belonged to that misconstrued enthusiast robespierre. it struck me, i own, as of somewhat later date; it was uninscribed; and of course relics of this class are unlike books in not carrying on their face any valid or satisfactory evidence of their origin and prior fortunes. waller meant kindly in letting me see his curiosity, and i offered no comment. credentials i discerned none. an unhappy acquisition here was one, which i owed to my indiscreet interference with things, which i did not understand. i bought of waller for £5 a series of plaister casts of medals in a box, and subsequently parted with the lot for precisely as many shillings. i fared nearly as ill in a case, where i took of stibbs of museum street a worm-eaten xylographic block, which placed it in my power to convert five guineas into two; and i fear that the buyer at the lower figure did not bless me. it was some modern fabrication ingeniously executed on a riddled square of ancient wood. i saw the last of the diamond collection, when it was offered at sotheby's. there was a considerable attendance; but the company was not a strong one, nor was the property. the doctor had preferred _multa_ to _multum_. there was a large mass of specimens, curious and quaint, and a few handsome pieces, but nothing capital, no productions, which bore accentuation. the affair was the converse of the fountaine one, where the quantity was limited, the quality magnificent, princely. naturally the quotations corresponded. the best price was obtained for a lot, which was not in the category of porcelain or pottery. it consisted of a couple of gothic crowns of victoria, 1847, which, as diamond told me, had been presented by wyon to him, and which were in the original case. they were proofs, but of the ordinary type, and they realised eighteen guineas. if they had belonged to one of the rare varieties, that of 1847 with the _décolletée_ bust, or the one dated 1853, they would have still been extravagantly dear. i remember cockburn the richmond silversmith mentioning to me that a customer, who owed him £6, begged him as a favour to take the amount in gothic crowns, of which he handed him twenty-four unused. there was a ridiculous notion, that the _graceless_ florin was rare, and diamond inquired about it of hugh owen, author of the monograph on bristol china, and cashier of the great western railway. the following sunday owen came down to twickenham with a small cargo of them. chapter xi the stamp book--a passing taste--dr diamond again--an establishment in the strand--my partiality for lounging--one of my haunts and its other visitors--our entertainer himself--his principals abroad--the _cinque cento_ medal--canon greenwell--mr montagu--story of a dutch priest--my experience of pictures--the stray portrait recovered after many years--the two wilson landscapes--sir joshua's portrait of richard burke--hazlitt's likeness of lamb--the picture market and some of its incidence--story of a painting--plate--the rat-tailed spoon--dr diamond smitten--the hogarth salver--the edmund bury godfrey and blacksmiths' cups--irish plate--danger of repairing or cleaning old silver--the city companies' plate. i have to retrace my steps to reynolds, because he was quite fortuitously instrumental in inoculating me with a new weakness--the postage stamp. he was a man in very indifferent health, and during two years or so was laid up, so that he was unable to attend to his regular business, and beguiled his leisure with a study of wedgwood and philately. the former proved sufficiently profitable to him, as soon as he was strong enough to attend to work; the latter was a mere passing amusement, and fructified only to the extent of placing him in possession of an album, formed by the consolidation of a number of others purchased and broken up. this he had by him, and did not propose to sell. i remarked it on a shelf once or twice; the topic was beginning to awaken interest; and i elicited from the owner, that he might be tempted by £50. he was ultimately tempted by £16. there were about 3500 stamps; and the collection has since been greatly enlarged and entirely rearranged. i relinquished the pursuit, because i was advised that the liability to deception was excessive, and there my book lies, a record of a foolish passion. i sincerely believe, that diamond had a finger in drawing my attention to stamps; for he had an important collection, which he shewed to me at twickenham and which he sold, i understood, to a public institution for £70. the frequenters of the strand, where it is a gorge toward st clement's, must recollect the morality in metal-work over the premises of a stamp-merchant there. it represented a deadly combat between him and a figure of more stalwart proportions personifying the evil genius of the collector--the stamp-forger. this ingenious and impressive piece of mechanism was illuminated at night, and attracted the attention, which it so well deserved. but the police inconsiderately suppressed the spectacle, merely because it blocked the traffic at a difficult point, endangered human life, and was misconstrued into an advertisement. i am persuaded that the sole chance of securing certain old issues in a few series is the acquisition of a genuine collection, as it stands, and the sale of the _residuum_. i made an effort in this direction one day some time since at puttick's; but the album contained a good deal that i did not want, and some forgeries; and it fetched £66. i mention it as a flattering mark of confidence on the part of messrs sotheby & co., that a very valuable album, which was to be sold in a few days, was lent by them to me for the purpose of examination at my own house. but i did not bid for it, after all. my varied tastes necessarily brought me into relations with many individuals, to whose superior training and experience i have been indebted for much useful information and much entertaining anecdote. i have during too large a proportion of my life played the part of a lounger and a gossip. how much i should have to deduct from my career, if i were to leave out of the reckoning the time spent in curiosity-shops! spent, yet not wholly wasted; for i hang the fruit to ripen, and it has rendered some of my pages less dull and some of my statements less imperfect than they might have been. instead of being dependent on book-learning, i have handled the objects, into which i proposed to inquire, and have mixed with the wise men of the west, who had grown up amid them. at the english agency of rollin & feuardent of paris i have passed, i should think, months in the aggregate. i have had opportunities of examining there antique jewellery, gems, bronzes, porcelain, medals, coins; and there i have met men, who sympathise in my predilections, and whom i have been enabled to emulate only at a distance--canon greenwell, sir john evans, mr murdoch, mr montagu, lord grantley, and more. i have seen a duke enter the room, hat in hand, to sell a bronze to the firm. i have seen the _soi-disant_ representative of the gonzagas of mantua come to arrange a small pecuniary transaction. i have passed on the stair a turkish gentleman, who might have been mistaken for the grand signior, on his way down from turning something or other into currency. it was on those very boards that ruskin knelt to examine the cypriot antiquities of cesnola. the effect and success of the great montagu sale, now nearly completed, were rather spoiled by the aim of the late owner at exhaustiveness; and the result was that numerous lots occurred, containing coins in poor state, which had been acquired for the sake of rare mint-marks. they not only fetched, as a rule, little themselves, but exercised an unfavourable influence even on other items, which happened to be in their neighbourhood. if the collection had been restricted to fine examples, the prices would have been much higher. how often and how long will it be necessary to reiterate the warning that coin-fanciers cannot fall into a more serious and costly error than the sacrifice of other considerations to technical _minutiæ_, which do not strictly concern them in the way of ownership? montagu was rather weak or incomplete in british and saxon, till he bought addington's collection _en bloc_. mr whelan mentioned to him one day, that he ought to strengthen himself in this direction, and he spoke of addington. 'but,' said m. 'he would not sell, would he?' whelan asked his leave to put the inquiry; a. agreed; and the price was £7000, on which w. took five per cent., and the vendor made him a present of £100. montagu subsequently parted with the scotish portion to mr richardson for £2000. canon greenwell most powerfully and favourably impressed me. he was a churchman with the most liberal views and a scholarly archæologist. he was very intimate with mr whelan, and stayed with him, when in town. we had good talk over the topics, which interested us in common; but with mr whelan himself my intercourse, spreading over many years, has been most regular, as it has been most agreeable and instructive. he was born in the business, and has been largely employed by the british museum and by the auctioneers as an expert. he of course attended some of the country sales, and his experience could not fail to be singular. i called on his return from staffordshire. he had been unlucky on a visit to the same neighbourhood; all the world was there, and heavy prices ruled. undaunted, he made a second attempt, and got an extraordinary haul of _cinque cento_ bronze medals, which went for about 30s. each. the auctioneer knew nothing about them, and whelan drew up an _extempore_ catalogue, by which they were sold--mainly to him. his principals struck me at first, i confess, as rather _laisser aller_ folks; but while they do not disdain petty traffic, their profits chiefly arise from transactions, where there is a nabobish margin of £1500 or £2000. it comes to what f. s. ellis used to say, that it is of no use to clear 100 per cent., if the amount is only eighteenpence; nor is it a great deal better to do as mr quaritch has ere now done, to lay out nearly £3000 on a volume, keep it a year or two, and then sell it at £25 advance. whelan told me a funny story of a dutch priest, who once smuggled 600 cigars into london. he related the affair to whelan in this way in his broken english. 'i bring over six hundred cigar. they ask me in english at custom house, "you have any thing to declare?" i shrug the shoulder. they ask me in french same thing. i shrug the shoulder. they ask me in jarman. i shrug the shoulder. they ask me in hollands. i do same. then they hold up board with writing in six language. i shrug the shoulder again. "what devil language," they say, "do this man talk?" and i go forth on my way.' a few family portraits and miniatures descended to me by reason of two of my foregoers having been artists; and one of the former, a likeness of hazlitt in oils by himself, met with a curious adventure. before the exhibition of 1851 a sculptor borrowed it of my father on the plea that he desired to execute a bust for that great event; and we lost sight equally of him and it, till i received one day from mr frederick locker a catalogue of a sale at christie's, where our long-lost picture formed a lot, against which locker had placed a mark, to draw my attention. i represented the circumstances to the auctioneers, but finally bought back the property. i once purchased a couple of richard wilson landscapes in the original frames, with the painter's initials and the date 1755; and i have dabbled a little in water colours. but, on the whole, i have been only an onlooker, with an hereditary feeling for art and a consciousness of total incapacity for it. i was at althorp in 1868, just when lord spencer had acquired the portrait by sir joshua of richard burke for £100; and i happened to be in conversation with mr christie-miller at st james's place, when some one delivered at the door as a present (i believe) an original drawing of the right honourable thomas grenville. without being aware that the national portrait gallery possessed the real likeness of charles lamb by hazlitt, which had been purchased for £105, i was led a few years since to go to hodgson's rooms in chancery lane by the entry in a catalogue of what was alleged to be the lamb painting. my father approved, subject to my opinion, of the purchase at £50 or so. i at once dismissed the notion of bidding, because i felt sure, that there was something wrong; and the late mr macmillan became its possessor at £60. a visit to south kensington and an interview with the curator of the gallery, where i beheld the fine, if rather bizarre, work itself, confirmed my judgment and my distrust. it is notorious enough, that the picture-market is a man-trap of the most signal and treacherous character. whatever may be true of books, manuscripts, coins, or stamps, paintings and prints are the greatest snare and pitfall of all. i have frequently gazed with private misgivings, which i might have found it difficult to explain or justify, at a portrait in a broker's shop, and as i passed and re-passed the place have speculated on the real history of the production. i know full well that the preposterous sums realised for the artist in fashion--at present it is romney--are explainable on principles, which would make me hesitate to enter the field as a competitor under any circumstances. at sotheby's, many years ago, they had to put into an auction a portrait, to which a curious misadventure had occurred. it was a likeness of charles the second in the first instance; but an ingenious person, judging that the martyred monarch was more negotiable than the merry one, and unwittingly oblivious of the discordant costume, had painted in a head of charles the first. brooks of hammersmith once bought a portrait by sir francis grant, p.r.a., which he could sell--not to me--at 50s. it was not long after grant's death. the president, when some one mentioned to him the name of hazlitt as an art critic, declared that he had never heard of him. whose fault was that? i was told a neat anecdote of a celebrated and prosperous adventurer in this particular field of activity, where for the right sort of things the margins of profit are far better than in books or even in china. a party came into his shop, and wished to know if he would buy a picture by so-and-so. he intimated indifference, but on second thoughts asked the price. £100. the work of art changed hands, and was laid on an easel. client appeared. what a charming picture! yes, just bought it. price? £750. work of art changes hands again. client reappears. no wall-room; most unfortunate. oh, no matter; cheque for the amount; picture fetched back, and reinstated on easel. second client enters. his eye catches the object, placed at the point most likely to accomplish that effect. he demands the figure. the actual cost; the vendor has not long left the premises with a cheque for £750; and, well, ten per cent. commission. could anything be more moderate? clever! a sort of commercial legerdemain. the unsceptical acquiescence of the less experienced west-end picture dealer in the appropriation of an anonymous work of art is perhaps more particularly characteristic of the leicester square expert. my uncle reynell was, i remember, passing a shop in that vicinity, and noticing a portrait suspended near the entrance, with a humble assessment in chalk, said to himself, but in the hearing of the proprietor, 'rather like so-and-so.' the next time he passed, he observed the addition of a ticket, on which was paraded his _sotto voce_ suggestion in an amplified form--'a very fine portrait of so-and-so (i forget the name which mr reynell mentioned) by so-and-so, price £2.' the enterprising shopkeeper had found an artist to go with a casual passer-by's speculative identification of the sitter, and had readjusted the figures accordingly. i am unable to plead that i never went in for prints or drawings. for i looked on, an age since, at sotheby's, and saw a lot going for 5s. the firm was not quite so proud at that time, as it has since become, and accepted sixpenny bids. i offered 5s. 6d., and was dismayed when the property fell to me; for it was a bulky portfolio, containing sketches in sepia and water-colour and other matters. there were some signed examples, however, by stanfield, sandby, nasmyth, and varley, and so i bore up against my fate. _apropos_ of sixpenny bids, i once wanted a copy of bacon's _sylva sylvarum_ to cut up for a literary purpose, and offered that amount to mr hodge, who insisted on having a shilling at one bound. i refused, and had to go round the corner, and buy another copy for double the higher figure. i tried to punish the auctioneer's pride, and punished my own folly. i have never personally (for the best of all reasons) trodden the somewhat insidious and evidently very seductive path which leads to the conversion of a share of your estate into ancient gold and silver plate. but i have lived side by side with more than one enthusiast of this type. diamond contracted in later days a fancy for queen anne silver, and grew enamoured of the rat-tailed spoon; and a second friend, whose employments took him all over the country and into provincial towns, before the great change occurred, and everything gravitated to london, has related to me a series of stories of his fortunes as an occasional collector. in the case of the doctor, the old textbooks on porcelain and pottery became of secondary account, and his little lot of early and curious volumes was consigned to an american agent for disposal in the states; but i think that i stumbled on them shortly after at an auction in leicester square. chaffers on _hall-marks_ superseded chaffers on the less favoured topic, and cockburn's shop in richmond and other depôts supplied the material for gratifying the new taste. when one went to twickenham house (now no more), one was introduced, not to a fresh dish, or cup and saucer, or ceramic knick-knack, but to a rat-tailed spoon of special merit, or a silver mug with an inedited mark. it was growing toward the close of the scene; whatever the plea might have been for the prior line, it was at any rate pursued with ardour and consistency; the owner's heart and soul were in it; it was a sort of religion with him; he believed in it, as his associates believed in him, and identified him and his name, and his home, with the subject. but the more recent foible was deficient in depth and sincerity; his set had been educated--educated by him--in a different school; and they looked wistfully and languidly at the objects, which their entertainer submitted for their criticism or approbation. it was in truth a passing whim, an old man's infection with the prevailing epidemic for what can scarcely be of real interest or importance to private individuals except where there is hereditary association or in the shape of works of reference. friends noted an abatement in the enthusiasm; pieces mysteriously disappeared; nearly the whole accumulation, never a very large one, melted away; and the master was not long in following. my remaining friend was imbued with a liking for old silver rather because he was fond of seeing it about him and on his table than in connection with any systematic plan. he was not guiltless of an affection for bargains, and never, i believe, went higher than 10s. an ounce. in the old days--in the forties and fifties--some tolerable examples were procurable at that rate, especially in the provinces; but latterly he found the market too stiff for him--not for his purse, but for his views. many a desirable lot he has missed for sixpence in the ounce. a large salver engraved with masks by hogarth, which lazarus the dealer offered him at 7s. 6d., he lost, because he remained immoveable at 7s., and had the satisfaction of hearing that it eventually brought about four times the money, passing from hand to hand. my friend acted on a different principle from that, which i should have followed with ample funds at my command. i would have secured a few first-rate examples, as he did, to some extent, in china. he had bought chelsea figures, when they were at reasonable prices, and he gave only £3, 10s. for a set of four (out of five) beakers of the same porcelain, painted with exotic birds on a dark blue ground. benjamin bade him £50 for them; but he quietly remarked: 'if they are worth that to you, they are worth as much to me.' this was a favourite saying of his; he would draw out the expert, and then shut him up so. he never ceased to lament the lazarus salver. at a sale at christie's a young man present heard a valuable piece of plate going for 15s. (as he thought), and it struck him that it would be a nice present for a young woman of his acquaintance; and at 16s. it was his. the auctioneer's clerk forthwith solicited a deposit of £20. there was a gesture of impatience from the salesman, accompanied by a general titter, and the lot was put up again. £10 per ounce may be regarded as a maximum figure even for fine early work; but this limit is constantly exceeded; it was the other day, when some _cinque cento_ example reached £22. the edmund bury godfrey tankard realised £525 in 1895, and weighed only 35 oz. 18 dwt. the blacksmiths' cup, once belonging to that gild, has been more than once sold under the hammer. it was bought by ralph bernal about sixty years since at £1 per ounce; but on the last occasion it exceeded £10. the cup weighs 35 oz. the irish collection of mr robert day, of cork, dispersed at two intervals, the last in 1894, eclipsed the normal standard of value, as it embraced some of the finest extant specimens of the workmanship of the silversmiths or hammerers of cork, youghal, and other irish localities. antiquities in metal-work have their share of romance. bargains fall to the vigilant or the experienced seeker. we have all heard of the solid silver picture frames at beddington, the seat of the carews, as black as ink, and bought by the jews at the price of ordinary material; and not so long since there was a house-sale at wimbledon, where the trade acquired among them ornamental objects of solid gold, described in the auctioneer's catalogue as silver-gilt. there is no problem in commerce or in morality more difficult of solution than that, which is involved in the question of right on the part of persons, who in the first place make it their study, and in the second their livelihood, to outstrip and outwit the rest of the world in a particular sphere of industry, to combine together for their own profit and the defeat of what is termed legitimate competition. the contention on the other side is that these specialists are to waive their superior information for the benefit of proprietors, in whom they have no interest, and to whom they are under no obligation. it awakened my personal attention to the cogent need of exercising the utmost care in sending plate to the cleaner and repairer, when a tankard of the george i. period returned home to me with part of the hall-mark obliterated. the piece had at one time been in daily use, and was slightly dented; and in straightening it the maker's symbol suffered from encroachment. sending your treasures of this class to the doctor's is as parlous as committing a book or tract in old parchment or sheep to the mercy of the uncanny bibliopegist or a piece of unblemished porcelain to the duster of a charwoman. the marks in the works by chaffers and cripps are not implicitly reliable, and a _manual_ furnishing actual facsimiles of them is still a deficiency. the same criticism applies to the monograph of chaffers on porcelain and pottery. i was led to look into the question of hall-marks on old silver plate by seeing a spoon of henry viii.'s time with the leopard's head, the animal's mouth open, and the tongue protruding. this was also a mint-mark on some of the anglo-gallic money and on the groats of henry vii. with the full-faced portrait. my volume on the livery companies of london laid on me, among innumerable other duties, that of making the circuit of the companies' halls, and of studying the admirable monograph of mr cripps. i had an opportunity, owing to an old friend being a past master, of reproducing the illustrations from the clockmakers' book of the plate belonging to that gild; and i followed the same course with one or two others in a more limited measure. when i was dining at merchant taylors' hall one evening, i observed immediately in front of me at table a large silver salver, which i felt sure i had recently seen somewhere; but i only regained the clue, when i remembered that it was one of the examples engraved in my own work. chapter xii coins--origin of my feeling for them--humble commencement--groping in the dark--my scanty means and equally scanty knowledge, but immense enthusiasm and inflexibility of purpose--the maiden acquisition sold for sixteenpence--the two earliest pieces of the new departure--to whom i first went--continuity of purchases in all classes--visit to italy (1883)--my eyes gradually opened--count papadopoli and other numismatic authorities--my sketch of the coins of venice published (1884)--casual additions to the collection and curious adventures--singular illusions of the inexperienced--anecdotes of a relative--two wild money-changers tamed--captain hudson--the auction-thief--a small joke to be pardoned. i started as a numismatist by the merest accident in 1878, at the precise juncture when, owing to the sudden death of mr huth, i was concluded by my well-wishers to be on the brink of ruin. my son, who was then quite a little fellow, had had a first-brass roman coin presented to him by a gentleman, whose intentions were excellent; and shortly after a relative, who had kept by him in a bag a number of 'butcher's' pennies of george iii. and a few other miscellaneous pieces, and who was profoundly anxious to throw them away, made a free gift of the whole collection to the same recipient. i was naturally led to examine our _treasure trove_, not by the light of experience of coins, of which i had absolutely not a tittle, but by that of my knowledge of collateral and analogous matters, in which several years' training had developed certain conclusions; and i soon formed a private estimate of the twofold donation unfavourable to the judgment of the late proprietors. the youthful owner himself was not the master of any definite views on the subject. there was the bag and there its contents; and they remained for some time inviolate, while i was deliberating and instituting inquiries at intervals, myself a sheer tyro. i believe that in my strolls about the suburbs i added to the cabinet without greatly improving it. mr huth was no more; and the future was not reassuring. my early acquisitions went many to the shilling. i was not more than a lesson or so ahead so far of my boy and his kind friends. of works of reference, despite my acquaintance with books, i knew nothing. of those, who could have put me on the right track, i was equally ignorant. i do not think that i had heard of such an institution as the numismatic society. it was new ground, and i stood on the edge of it contemplatively, bag in hand--the bag not even strictly my own--with a wavering sentiment and with decreased resources--resources likely to decrease yet more. one morning chance led me, as i passed, to linger at the window of messrs lincoln & son in new oxford street; and after a pause i went in. the result was momentous in this sense, that i saw at the shop mentioned a 'butcher's' penny, which bore the same relation to the inmates of the bag as an immaculate copy of a book or a faultless piece of china bears to the most indifferent specimens imaginable; and i handed half-a-crown to lincoln for his coin, which i took home with a rather full heart. we compared notes, and i privately meditated a _coup_. a few days after, our sixteen 'butcher's' pennies and sundries just realised what i had given for the cornerstone of a new collection; and i may say that at a distance of nearly twenty years i yet keep that piece, which has become a very difficult one to procure in unexceptionable state--far more so than the twopence of the same type and date. my son and i thus acquired an assemblage of numismatic monuments represented only by an unit. but it was not very long, before i revisited lincoln's, and doubled the collection at one bound by buying a half-crown of queen anne for eight shillings and sixpence. these two were my earliest investments, when i seriously began; but i must explain that i was not only fettered by lack of courage and the apprehension of contracted means, but by the fact of being in partnership with my son in the venture. his pocket-money and savings partly contributed to the revised and enlarged scheme; and in the earlier stages i am sure that progress was hesitating and slow. in the end, the estate of my partner was swallowed up; and whatever funds were required came from the other member of the firm. in the case of what was a pure hobby at first and long after its original commencement, it is impossible to lay down the exact chronological lines or the order, in which certain coins or series were acquired. the english and roman long united to monopolise my attention; my son ceased, as he grew older, to manifest an interest in the subject; and i found myself invested with a paramount discretion, held in check only by very slender means of exercising it. i may as well add here, that i deemed it best, under the circumstances, to return the amount, which the retiring sharer in the concern had sunk in purchases; and i was thus at liberty to do as i pleased. i am speaking of a period, which seems nearly prehistoric. it was about fifteen years since, that i took over the entire responsibility in this affair, and found myself in possession of coins of various kinds, chiefly selected at the emporium in new oxford street, and representing a considerable outlay. i had discerned the errors of others in collecting, but i had not failed to commit one or two myself. i conclude that it is a very usual oversight on the part of the novice to neglect to measure his ground, and lay his plan, beforehand; it was so with me; i bought rather at random coins, medals, and tokens; and even under these wide conditions i vaguely calculated that from £150 to £200 would place me in possession of a cabinet, capable of vying with most of those in existence. it has been from no wish to exaggerate the importance of the initiative taken in 1878 under a casual impulse, that i have written down the foregoing particulars. but as i have uninterruptedly persevered from that date to the present in enlarging and improving the collection, and in communicating the fruits of my researches to the public, it appeared worth while to put on record the facts connected with the formation and development of the new taste. there have been men, who have gained a rank as numismatists far higher than any to which i can aspire or pretend, whose beginnings at least were not less humble and not less fortuitous. when i affirm that a single season suffices to exhaust the patience or enthusiasm of many an amateur, it will supply some indication of my earnestness, when i state that at the end of three years i had barely emerged from my novitiate. i still retained my loyalty to lincoln, but i made occasional investments elsewhere. i had abandoned the ambitious notion of comprising medals and tokens in my range, but on the other hand, through the miscellaneous nature of lincoln's stock and his large assortment on sale of foreign coins, i conceived the possibility of admitting a few chosen specimens of the various continental series. i resembled a ship without a compass; i had never had under my eyes any guide to this family of monuments, and i could only estimate its extent and cost from the selection put before me. how necessarily imperfect, nay fragmentary, that was, i did not learn till long afterward. the foreign section of the new oxford street stores constituted my continental side in its first state, not so much as regarded condition, as variety and completeness. for somehow my furnishers began to understand my views touching character and preservation, and although i have throughout my career felt bound to change specimens from time to time, i apprehend that the preference for fine coins set in with me unusually early, and saved me from a good deal of loss and annoyance. under the auspices of the same firm i extended my lines to greek coins. lincoln happened to have placed on view about 2000 pieces in silver, and i took all that struck me as being within my standard--i forget how few. about the same time i added to them some in gold and copper. i thenceforward, during many years, was in the habit of selecting from the series immediately in hand whatever interested me, and this is another way of saying that my possessions were growing considerable. my grand safeguard was my peremptory principle of rejecting everything, no matter how rare or otherwise valuable, which did not rise to my fastidious qualification; and the greater the choice submitted to me, the more stringent became my application of the rule. it was in pure self-defence. my pocket-money, so to speak, was extremely limited; and i thus closed the door against a deluge of rubbish or of mediocre property. i laid down for my own government the paradoxical maxim, that if a poor man buys at all, he can afford to buy only the finest things. that is to say, he should never acquire what does not represent the outlay or, if possible, a profit on it. i felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into a quicksand, and i saw no other practicable outlet in the event of realisation. i farther satisfied myself that it was highly imprudent to engage in the purchase of greek and roman coins at inflated quotations, especially greek silver and roman second and third brass, in the face of the continual finds, which forced the prices downward, and reduced a specimen, perhaps, from £20 to £2 at a jump. there is absolutely no security for the buyer within these lines, and i make it my policy to wait, and complacently look on, while lots are adjudged to others at figures beyond my estimate. in the greek copper and the roman first brass in fine patinated state, one is tolerably safe. of all the series i am fondest of the former, and indeed any early money in that metal, whether classical or continental, is my weak point, provided that it is as nearly _fleur de coin_ as may be. an immaculate first brass of one of the more interesting augusti or (better yet) _augustæ_, with a picturesque reverse, rejoices the eye; and it is no prejudice to it, if it is rare! i remember that it was not long, before i rebelled in my own mind against the not uncommon practice of placing the greek and roman money on a footing of equality, and appreciated the discernment of those, who limited their researches to the former. for it struck me that, if you take out of the reckoning the republican series, which is really hellenic in its origin and style, and a few early aurei and first and second brass recommendable by their personality or their interesting reverses, there is not such a great _residuum_ of solid importance left behind. the mere rarities of the later period i do not count; they correspond to the greek coinages, when the latter merge in the asiatic types. but of the greek of the fine and finest epochs alone there is more than enough to satisfy and impoverish half a dozen such collectors as myself, if we merely selected our favourites. i had added to my cabinet a tolerably large number of foreign specimens, when i paid a short visit to italy in 1883. five years had passed since the episode of the butcher's pennies, and since the day when i made my maiden purchase of lincoln, and he with commendable discretion extended his hand for the money, before he surrendered the coin. we have learned to understand each other a little better, and he does not object to a running account. i did not enjoy the opportunity of making exhaustive researches; but the localities, of which i gained experience, yielded little enough for my numismatic purposes. the italian impressed one with the notion, that he not merely laid no stress on preservation, but did not comprehend to the full extent what it signified. i have a remembrance of having recrossed the channel with a handful of examples, which i might better have left behind me, and which i have long since renounced. some came from milan, where i met with a most urbane individual, whose stock was principally milanese, and very poor milanese, too. at venice i ascended a very dark and mysterious staircase leading out of the piazza, with the highly unpleasant sensation that a poniard or a trap-door might be in reserve for me, when i was ushered by my conductor into an apartment, where i was invited to sit down and inspect sundry trays of gold coins. but the light was so dim, that i could not distinguish the state, hardly the type, and i ignominiously retired, putting down two _lire_, by way of footing, for a silver _teston_ of henry iv. of france. otherwise there was exceedingly little of any note, so far as my observation went. i obtained a coin or two at a depôt on the piazza and one or two knick-knacks at another, where there was the usual apocrypha about the total ruin of the seller by the acceptance of rather less than a moiety of the original demand. venice is in this respect slightly oriental. sir robert hamilton gave me an entertaining account of his experiences at constantinople, where he was asked the equivalent of a guinea for something, and at the conclusion of a protracted negotiation, crowned by a cup of coffee, the price descended to the clown's ninepence. it was three-and-twenty years, since i had posed as the historian of the republic, and the sparing degree, in which i had been in the meantime enabled to secure specimens of its coinage, partly prepared me for the apparent difficulty of procuring this class of money in good state. i brought away from venice itself absolutely nothing beyond a silver _soldino_ of the fourteenth century doge giovanni dolfino; but at milan and bologna i succeeded in finding a couple of early gold ducats. i did not visit the museum, nor was i so fortunate as to find count nicoló papadopoli at home. i scarcely recollect how it happened; but i had heard of the count as a prominent venetian numismatist, and i threaded some of the less agreeable thoroughfares of the city, including the clothes-market, in search of his palatial residence on the grand canal. both the cavaliere his secretary and himself were absent; but i left my address, and ever since he has honoured me with his interesting and valuable publications on the theme, which he so well loves. a jeweller in bologna, of whom i took two or three pieces, offered me a double gold crown (_doppio di oro_) of giovanni bentivoglio ii., the type without the portrait, for 150 _lire_. it seemed to me too dear. i was right. a year or two after, i got it in piccadilly for less than half. some one referred me to schweitzer's exhaustive work on the coins of venice, and, count papadopoli sending me periodically his numismatic labours, i was encouraged to draw up the sketch of the 'coins of venice,' which appeared in the _antiquary_ in 1884, as part of a scheme for reproducing my history on an improved basis. the advance of the subject by stealthy degrees to the foreground and to a conspicuous place in my studies and employments, had its agreeable and its serious aspect. it was a pursuit, which consumed time, and while it entailed endless outlay, yielded no return. still i had such a genuine relish for it, that i did not allow myself to be disheartened. it may give some idea of my disinterested, perhaps enviable, ardour, if i mention that i revisited milan, at the expense of a long detour, to get a silver coin of one of the medici, which i considered on second thoughts worth having at nine _lire_. it served me a good turn, for when a london dealer seemed disposed to shed tears on discovering that an assistant had sold me a similar piece for the same money (7s. 6d.), i exhibited my prior purchase, and he was consoled. it exemplifies the singular nicety of appreciation among the experts, that a third and fourth came to me at a subsequent date at 8s. each. with others i have not been quite so happily placed. a party bought a _scudo_ of ferdinando i. dé medici, 1587, in his cardinal's dress, in a lot at a sale, and gave it up to me as a favour for 15s., which made him a present of the residue; i was the obliged, and said not a word. he assured me that the other items were worthless, yet he did not throw them in. i bowed and withdrew. i have ever found it so. all my successive departures in this as in other doings have depended on chance. both at home and abroad i have often stumbled unexpectedly on the means of filling a gap, and have quite as often congratulated myself on the command of just knowledge enough to avoid mistakes and snares. not always. for i once found myself at st peter's, guernsey, with nothing to do, and visited so often the only place in the town, where there was any semblance of coins, that i felt bound to pay my footing, and gave 10s. for a silver london penny of ethelred ii.--a very fine specimen, but a very common piece. i subsequently bought another of a different mint in london for 4s. i added the guernsey acquisition to my travelling expenses, with a private determination to avoid for the future these pitfalls. i never committed myself very seriously. at brighton, strolling about i fell in with a jew, who had a very fine early rupee, which on reference to his scales he estimated at eighteenpence. i bought elsewhere a greater rarity--a double rupee of the last century--for four shillings. one of the finest anne farthings of the common britannia type, 1714, which i have seen, was the fruit of a visit to a depôt in hastings, and the demand for it was not unreasonable--twelve shillings. at a corner shop in bournemouth, the hebrew proprietor was from home; but his consort waited on me. 'any old coins, madam?' 'well, no,' she thought not--yet, stay, she would _shew_ me a shekel or two--family relics, and not for sale. she retired, and presently produced them. i told her that they must be of great and peculiar interest to her and her husband, and i disappointed her, i think, by not seeming eager to possess them. she muttered something _sotto voce_ about seven guineas; whether that was a figure at which she would risk mr ----'s displeasure by parting with each or all of the heirlooms, i do not know. they were all false. the shekel, which belongs to my collection, once had a rather startling adventure. an acquaintance, a clergyman of the establishment and an university man, asked leave to see it. i handed it to him, and as if he had cabman's blood in his veins, he instantaneously placed it between his teeth. a significant gesture from me arrested his action. on taking his farewell he mentioned that he should shortly send one of his sons to look through my coins. i bowed, and i subsequently declined the proposed honour in writing. how could i tell that the teeth of the offspring might not be sharper than those of his intelligent papa? the ignorance of the average man in everything, which does not concern his immediate calling, is well-nigh inconceivable. i held in my pocket an unusually well-preserved example of a bell-metal piece of the first french revolution, when i was calling on a friend, who by training and descent should have acquired a tincture of conversance with such matters. he paid me the compliment of begging to be permitted to see the coin, eyed it for a moment, and then threw it across the table to me. a relative, who was distinguished by his fulness and variety of information, and who, if he sinned, did so in the direction of not under-estimating the few relics which he personally owned, used to be fond of telling me, that he possessed a complete numismatic history of the revolution in france, and when i appeared in the first instance curious on the subject, he displayed a handful of defaced copper or bell-metal pieces which, had they been better, represented only an instalment of a very large series. the same gentleman had similarly acquired in the vicinity of leicester square at prices, which struck him as favourable to the buyer, some very rare and desirable examples of greek numismatic art, including a syracusan medallion or dekadrachm. on being informed with suitable delicacy that his purchases were forgeries, he was almost equally balanced between a sentiment of wrath against the vulgar broker, who had swindled him and a stealthy suspicion that his informant desired to wheedle him out of really valuable possessions. he cherished some old halfpence of the early georges, which he found in his boyhood in a hollow tree in kensington gardens. so far, so good. they were not coins; it was a strictly personal association. the interest died with him. but two of the drollest accidents, which ever happened to me, succeeded each other on the same morning. i entered a money-changer's in coventry street, and inquired for old coins. the bureaucrat was as short in his address as he was in his stature. 'what did i want?' 'i did not know till i saw them.' 'he had no time to waste on such matters.' i apologised for my intrusion; he looked at me, and then he pushed a bowl of money toward me. in a minute or so he joined me in a search, and we somehow entered into conversation. he found that i was literary. 'had i ever heard of hazlitt's _life of napoleon_? it was his favourite book.' i handed him ninepence, shook hands with him on the strength of his revelation, and departed, labouring to look grave. i had no sooner emerged from that singular experience, than i encountered another. a party in wardour street had a similar inquiry put to him, and he laid before me an assortment of metallic monuments, which i investigated for some time without meeting with a solitary item worth pricing. on intimating so much in a polite manner, the owner impressed me with a persuasion that he intended to spring over the counter, and seize me by the throat; but i met the crisis by demonstrating the impossibility of purchasing duplicates and of always finding _desiderata_ even in the choicest stocks; and his phrensy began to abate. he seemed a decent fellow--a watchmaker by his calling; and i pulled out my watch, and invited him to examine it. it required cleaning and regulating. 'clean it, and regulate it, then,' said i, 'and i will call for it in ten days.' we parted on the best terms. i have certainly obtained in the by-ways here and there, at home and abroad, occasional plums. i owed to a silversmith in london my £5 piece of victoria, 1839, with a plain edge, without the garter, and with the original reading. it cost me £8. 5s. but i have slowly arrived at the conclusion that the orthodox merchant is the most satisfactory on the whole--the safest and the cheapest. when i was a boy, the kenneys introduced me to captain hudson, a retired east india commander, who resided in one of the best houses at notting hill, while that locality was sufficiently agreeable and select. hudson stands out in my retrospective view as the donor of some very special guava jelly, and as the proprietor of a £5 piece of victoria--of course of 1839. he shewed it to me as a great compliment one day, and it made me look upon him as a personage of unbounded wealth. yes; it was very good on his part to let a little lad like me take it in his hand. i often think of captain hudson, and wonder, whether my specimen and his are the same. the auction-thief is only too familiar a feature in the sale-rooms, where portable objects of value are exhibited. at one establishment there is a standing notice, inviting information as to more or less recent larcenies of property, which it becomes the privilege of the auctioneer to make good at a fair assessment. books are perhaps the commonest and safest game, as the room is more frequently, prior to the commencement of the sale, left to take care of itself. but coins have been occasionally appropriated by enthusiasts, whose impatience precluded them from waiting, till the time came. one person used, during quite a lengthened period, to select with unerring judgment from every sale in wellington street the best lot, and when he was at last detected, his genuine ardour was shown by the fact, that the whole of his selections were found at his residence intact. it was really hard on the offender to place before him treasures, for which he might on demand have been prepared to sacrifice his little finger, and expect him to incur the risk of some one else carrying them off, unless he secured them beforehand. the firm dealt tenderly with him--no doubt, on this ground, and merely offered him a piece of advice, which was that he should not throw himself again in the way of temptation. the delicacy of the circumstances was appreciated by messrs sotheby and co. at one of the coin-sales in wellington street four successive lots were purchased by lincoln, rollin, and _money_, the last a term applied, where cash is paid down at the time. lincoln bought the second as well as the first, and in the catalogue the entry was _do._ some one reconstructed the sequence, and made it run: _lincoln do roll in money._ i crave pardon for this undoubted ineptitude. chapter xiii my principal furnishers--influence of early training on my taste--rejection of inferior examples an invaluable safeguard--i outgrow my first instructors--necessity for emancipation from a single source of supply--mr schulman of amersfoort--his influential share in amplifying my numismatic stores--my visit to him--the rare _daalder_ of louis napoleon, king of holland--my adventures at utrecht and brussels--flattering confidence--in the open market--schulman's catalogues--mm. rollin & feuardent--their english representative--courtesy and kindness to the writer--occasional purchases--the late mr montagu--discussion about an athenian gold _stater_--an atmospheric experiment--my manifold obligations to mr whelan--mr cockburn of richmond allows me to select from his english collection--i forestall mr montagu--messrs spink & son--their prominent rank and cordial espousal of my interests and wants--development of my cabinet under their auspices--my agreeable relations with them--their business-like policy, liberality and independence--the prince of naples--we give and take a little--the monthly _numismatic circular_--the clerical client. my numismatic haunts and providers have not, especially of late, been numerous. i once took a small lot of a house in rathbone place--a silver medaglia of marguerite de foix, marchioness of saluzzo, 1516, which came from lyons, and a bronze piece of ragusa in sicily, found in the island of sardinia, with others. but messrs lincoln & son were my earliest furnishers, and they, with mm. rollin & feuardent of paris, messrs spink & son of london, and mr schulman, of amersfoort, have mainly contributed to build up my unpretending cabinet. the influence of messrs lincoln & son in forming my taste was more or less considerable. their stock was miscellaneous, and i perhaps incautiously suffered it to reflect itself in my collection. the firm indeed, after a while, thought that my lines were too general, for whatever series they put on view from time to time gave up its choicer elements to me; and eventually my good friends perceived that, although i was certainly not a specialist in one sense, i was in another. i took only the best; and this proved an invaluable safeguard. for, by making a hard and fast rule, that no coin whatever shall be admissible in the presence of a defect or of imperfect condition, one shuts out the bulk of the objects submitted to notice. a thousand average lots in a dealer's hands are not apt to yield above five per cent. of eligible purchases, which are not duplicates. in a continental stock the proportion would be much lower. the gold coins do not so signally fail; it is in the inferior metals, especially the billon and copper, that the difficulty lies. i emerged, it is fair to own, from my researches and selections at the lincoln establishment without serious damage or trouble, considering that i entered into relations with the house as a perfect stranger, and was in my numismatic infancy. they began, as time went on, to see that i was in earnest, and would at length scarcely allow me to buy any article likely to appear on farther examination unsatisfactory; and by a few exchanges of early acquisitions, on which they were generous enough to let me lose nothing, i stood in the end better than i perhaps deserved. mr lincoln has told me that he started on his numismatic career by advertising on the back page of the catalogues of his father, who was a book seller, a short list of coins on sale by him at the same address. the strength and spirit, which the father infuses into his child, the latter is now and then prone to use against the giver; and i am afraid that i have appeared ungrateful to my original source of supply--in fact, my dry-nurses--inasmuch as i outgrew by insensible degrees their power of satisfying my wants, and directed my attention elsewhere. messrs lincoln & son filled in the groundwork of my scheme, and continue to fill up gaps at intervals; but it was impossible for me to shut my eyes to the fact, that the rate of progress, which my numismatic studies were attaining, rendered a restriction to a single firm out of the question. i could never have committed to writing my notes, imperfect as they may be, on the coins of all countries and periods with certain exceptions, had i not left the original groove, and entered the market, prepared to avail myself of every particular, which was to be gleaned both at home and abroad, alike in the shape of information, correction, and addition. it was through the lincolns i became acquainted with mr atkins, author of the two works on tokens and colonial coins, and he introduced to me the name of schulman of amersfoort. this was about ten years since; and the result was that schulman thenceforward sent me periodical consignments for selection and his well-compiled catalogues. from this quarter i derived, rather contrary to the expectation which i had been led to form, a highly valuable assortment of coins at fair prices. i surmise that a considerable proportion of my correspondent's picked acquisitions has found its way to me. his parcels from season to season embraced an alarming and chronic percentage of hopeless specimens, notwithstanding my exhortations to him to be more select; and i am persuaded that this circumstance proceeded from the sender's inability, in common with all the continental dealers, to distinguish and appreciate condition, as he has often offered a proof at a slight advance on the figure asked for an ordinary and mediocre example. schulman has been during his career in the constant habit of falling in with a variety of continental coins, which are scarcely ever seen in england; and as a rule his tariff is moderate enough--not quite so moderate, perhaps, as it used to be, especially the fine early copper, since he discovered my partiality for it. but i feel nevertheless that my collection owes a great deal to my amersfoort correspondent. our business has been necessarily conducted by letter. in 1889 i was at utrecht, and went over to his place. i had previously called, when i was at amsterdam, at bom's, and there i was shown the priced catalogue of a quite recent local auction. against a silver daalder of louis napoleon, king of holland, of an excessively rare type, i observed my friend's name as the purchaser for 105 gulden, and the first object which met my eyes in schulman's room was this very piece. i took it in my hand. 'ah!' cried he, 'that won't suit you; i want 150 gulden for it.' i laid it down again, implying in my manner a sort of apology. i made a few purchases, and left him. he subsequently inserted the _daalder_ in a catalogue at 135 gulden. he had tried the higher sum without success. i did not take any notice, and forgot all about it, till in a parcel sent on approval this was one of the items, the price 100 gulden. allowing the usual discount, the piece remained with me at 90. i always cherished a suspicion that it was put into the sale in the spuistraat by master schulman himself, and bought in. my good friend acquired for me at amsterdam a 1/4 _stuiver_ of batavia, 1644 which he reported to me as _beau_. when it reached my hands, i was not altogether satisfied, nor did he reassure me, when he stated that my specimen was far finer than those in the museums at the hague and at batavia. the 1/4 is considerably rarer than the 1/2. schulman once advertised an example of the former at 10 gulden or 16s. 8d., describing it as '_de toute beautè_'; but i missed it. i have had repeated arguments both with schulman and bom on the subject of a rather numerous and important class of dutch coins, which almost habitually present themselves _fleur de coin_. i used to contend that these are re-strikes; but i have been assured over and over again that the netherlands government will not suffer any of the ancient dies to be employed for this purpose, and that they are jealously guarded at utrecht. schulman added, that he had endeavoured in vain to prevail on the authorities to allow him to take a few impressions of certain patterns of louis napoleon, which were never issued, and are almost unknown. like many of his foreign _confrères_, schulman undertakes the compilation and conduct of sales by auction, and favours his clients with the catalogues. i have taken the line, under these somewhat delicate circumstances, of simply mentioning that if such or such a lot answers the printed description, and fetches so much or thereabout, i shall not object to it. i put no questions as to ownership; they do not concern me at all. i listen to a variety of tales about artificial sales and fictitious names; but the grand point is, that a coin is a coin, and if it is sold under unpropitious surroundings, it is likely to prove cheaper, and where it is misdescribed, it returns whence it came. it was while i was at utrecht, that i hunted through a huge mass of rubbish in the shape of obsolete currencies, and found at the conclusion that my bill only came to three-halfpence for a most beautiful _double liard_ of maria theresa, struck for the austrian netherlands in 1749. i had an interview at brussels with a very pleasant fellow, who keeps, or at least kept, a curiosity-shop near ste. gudule. he had a few patterns and other pieces belonging to the first french revolutionary era, which i was glad to secure, and some bracteates, for which he asked £5, and as to which my courage failed me a little. i feared that they were too dear. he wrapped them up carefully, and said, 'take them with you, and if you do not care for them, let me have them back again.' i had to return them with my acknowledgments, which were sincere. my misgivings were correct. once for all, it is well to explain that any ostensibly egotistical details, which are here given, have for their motive the guidance and enlightenment of new enterers on the scene, with which the writer has during nearly twenty years been agreeably and profitably familiar. if i had not exercised discretion in my relationship with foreign houses, i might have been overwhelmed by an avalanche of worthless rubbish, the refuse of the auctions. but by keeping a watchful eye and a tight hand over myself, as it were, i have retained only a limited _residuum_, which answers my purpose best on every account. the plan affords me illustrations in the best state of all the european schools of numismatic art, ancient, mediæval, and modern, no less than medallic portraits of the most celebrated men and women of all ages; and i ask the question advisedly: what advantage accrues to a private collector from possessing every minute variety of type, every mint-mark, and every date? the idea is surely a fallacy. the mint and other public institutions may fitly preserve them for reference and record; but for individuals they appear to be surplusage. schulman obliged me with a set of his catalogues, about thirty in number, issued between 1880 and the present time, and i found them fruitful in suggestions. they are not bare lists, but, where it is needful, carefully annotated; and in the unavoidable absence of some originals i have experienced from them and other similar compilations the greatest assistance. the method, which the continental houses pursue in drawing up their accounts of the property on sale by auction or otherwise, constitutes the result a work of permanent reference and authority. such is especially the case with those specified in the bibliography to the _coin collector_, 1896. they are of course secondary evidences; but where one cannot describe a coin from the coin they are admirable, and in general trustworthy, substitutes. our english numismatic catalogues are improving, but still lack the profuse and laborious detail, which is extended on the continent even to lots of minor significance. i was brought into contact with the english representative of the paris firm of rollin & feuardent in a perfectly accidental way. i had detected in a forthcoming sale at sotheby's, among a heap of miscellanies in a bag, a well-preserved _double_ in piedfort of henry iii. of france. i pointed it out to lincoln; but he missed it, and mr whelan was the acquirer. it was destined for a client, and i did not secure it; but the matter made mr whelan and myself acquainted, and we have been very pleasantly so ever since. his father was in the same line of business before him, and knew edward wigan and other men of that generation. i have already observed that the agency in bloomsbury is the resort of well-nigh all the most eminent hunters, not only for coins and medals, but for antiquities of every description. it is not that i am able to speak of myself as a conspicuous figure in the circle, which frequents this spot, or as an appreciable element in the large mercantile transactions, which are conducted here and at headquarters. but i am indulgently tolerated, and now and then i find a trifle or two to my liking. mr whelan stands in due awe of my excruciating and almost outrageous passion for _state_, and looks upon me (with much good-nature) as a most difficult party to please and to fit. he is fully aware, how narrow my means are, and seldom tenders me, except as a compliment or for numismatic purposes, his grander _bijoux_. yet in all my series there are some few, which i highly prize, and which came to me thence; and i may particularise a very rare british copper coin of cunobeline, which brought £7, 17s. 6d. at the montagu sale, but cost its former possessor £40, 10s. this fact did not appear in the catalogue. the last time i met mr montagu was at mr whelan's. i shewed him two pieces which i happened to have just had from schulman; one was the campen imitation of the gold sovereign of mary i. of england, and far scarcer than the original; and montagu admired them both. a few weeks, and he was no more. we had met at the numismatic society's rooms, where i attended a meeting as a guest; and i recollect montagu pulling out of his pocket for my inspection a coin he had exhibited that evening to the members and others present. it was the unique _half george noble_ of henry viii. discovered by curt the dealer at paris, sold by him to the rev. mr shepherd for £90, and at the shepherd sale in 1885 acquired by its late owner for £255. the montagu cabinet was naturally rich in pedigree coins, and had, i believe, all the english, although not all the greek, rarities. it even possessed the five-broad piece of charles i. by rawlins, which fetched the extraordinary sum of £770. spink & son secured it at that price, and sold it to the british museum for 10 per cent. profit. i was tempted by the edward vi. half-crown and threepence, and by the james i. silver crown of the _quæ deus_ type, which had been bergne's and bryce's, and which i preferred to the _exurgat_ one as superior in tone, while it was nearly equal in preservation. the five-broad piece is said to have been given by the king on the scaffold to archbishop juxon; it is a pattern, and apparently unique. the type resembles that of the ordinary broad, of which there are impressions in silver. i have one of unusually medallic fabric. i heard an odd story of a f.n.s. to whom some ignorant correspondent offered the _noble_ itself--a piece of great value--and who pronounced it worth 6s. 8d.--the current rate at the time of issue, about 1528. the forster example in 1868 fetched £17, 17s. a rather distressing incident occurred to 'pedigree' wells of piccadilly during his absence one day from business. he had in his window a coin advertised as 'a three-pound piece of charles i.' to which the astute owner attached no price, leaving that detail to be regulated by the circumstances. a person entered the shop, and saw mrs wells, who was unversed in numismatic subtleties, and laying down £3, said, 'i will take that coin in the window,' which accordingly he did, greatly to wells's satisfaction, no doubt, and to the promotion of domestic harmony. the hero of this small anecdote owed his _sobriquet_ to his fertility of resource in providing his fine-art acquisitions with a genealogical tree. we had a controversy in bloomsbury on one occasion about a gold athenian _stater_ sent to me on approval. all gold athenian _staters_ are _ipso facto_ doubtful. whelan condemned it. canon greenwell, who was present, was not sure. i shewed it to dr head; and he supported whelan. the coin was returned. at another time i obtained from a dealer who avouched, and still avouches, it to be absolutely genuine, a gold [greek: êmiekton] of the same state; and at this whelan equally shook his head. but i took it to be right, and retained it. the fact is, that the athenians struck gold very sparingly, and there have been modern attempts to supply the deficiency. one leading inducement to fabricate pieces lacking in series or of signal rarity has been the cheapness of labour and the more limited conversance with the discrepancies between originals and copies or absolutely fictitious examples, partly arising from the absence of means of communication among numismatists in various countries. these inventions or _contrefaçons_ were calculated, again, for different markets. the false gold _staters_ of nicomedes ii. of bithynia, which are executed with unusual skill, and the far less clever imitations of the athenian gold, could only answer the purpose, where they found an english or french customer able to pay a handsome price for the means of supplying a hopeless or almost hopeless lacuna in his greek cabinet. but those of such common coins as the tetradrachms of athens or alexander the great appealed rather to still more inexperienced buyers, whom a low figure was apt to tempt; and these even occur plated or washed with silver. whelan once amused me and himself by submitting to atmospheric treatment a large copper coin of the two sicilies--a 10-grana piece of ferdinand iv. 1815. he offered it to me, and i declined it, because the surface was unsatisfactory in my eyes. he said nothing; but about three months later he brought it to me from a window sill, where it had been taking an aërial bath of rather prolonged duration; and the effect was certainly surprising. all the repellent aspect of the superficies had vanished. i took it, and laughed, when he told me that there was only a shilling to pay for a quarter's incessant scientific manipulation. i have been studiously frugal in my adoption of oriental coins, because, frankly speaking, i have no faith in them as an investment. but i have retained a few early acquisitions, including a square gold _mohur_ of the emperor of hindostan, the famous akbar, and a _dinar_ in the same metal of the good caliph, haroun el reschid. whelan helped me to both these. the latter formed part of a parcel of such pieces, the property of a parsee at calcutta, and sold in london. the _dinars_ of el reschid were rather numerous, and were not recognised. the british museum got several, and i got the finest. how were the public to guess that they were connected with so celebrated a personage, when the catalogue described them as of _el reschid_? there also remains with me a gold _dinar_ of the 13th century, of the last caliph of bagdad. my learned friend, mr michael kerny, deciphered for me many years ago the inscriptions in the older arabic character in the inner circle on either side. they read: _praise to god mohammed the apostle of god god bless him and protect the iman there is no god but god only he has no peer al mustansir b--illah prince of the faithful by the grace of god_. an ill-starred swede visited england, or rather london, several years ago, and endeavoured to find a customer for a rather weighty package of old currency of the northern kingdoms, which he had borne with him across the sea, and after fruitless essays elsewhere he tried whelan. the latter did not see his way, and the stranger re-embarked for his native country with his burden, so to speak, on his back. on the floor in bloomsbury street, however, he left two small pieces (_schillings_ of christian iv. 1621 and 1622), which, as whelan had no idea who he was, or what his address, he presented to me. he gave me, too, a fine 5-_lire_ piece of napoleon i. 1808, struck at milan. what a gain it is to be thought poor and deserving! many have been the good turns, many the valuable hints and items of information, and many, again, the pleasant hours, which i have spent in bloomsbury street. there is a huge black cat there, which is very friendly with habitual visitors; it used to make a practice of squeezing itself into sir john evans's bag, and remaining there, while he stayed. at bloomsbury street is one of my numismatic libraries of reference, to which i have long enjoyed free access. the custodian is not only well versed in coins and other curiosities, but is a reader and a repository of much entertaining literary and theatrical anecdote. i know that i take more than i give; but whelan now and again consults me about an old book or a continental coin, which he does not happen to have seen. i owed to my excellent acquaintance my introduction to lord grantley, whom i first met under his roof and from whom i have received kind help in my work and otherwise. his lordship, however, does not quite follow the same lines as i do. he is understood to be engaged in deciphering and elucidating the merovingian or merwing series--one, about which we have learned a good deal of recent years, and have a good deal more, i apprehend, to discover. i knew the late mr cockburn of richmond in consequence of having met him at dr diamond's at twickenham house. he was a fellow of the numismatic society, and when i first became acquainted with him possessed a small cabinet. he hinted at an intention of discontinuing the pursuit, and even of realising. he next offered me the collection for £800. i had to let him understand that i had not so much money to spare; but i ascertained that he had been a buyer in bygone years, and had certain desirable items in his hands. i timidly inquired whether it would be possible to select a few _desiderata_, and mr cockburn agreed to that proposal. he had many coins in poor state, and many which were duplicates; and by concentrating my strength, such as it was, on the best things, i procured for about £70 nearly all that i wanted. two anglo-saxon pennies which puzzled me a little, and as to which the british museum authorities did not give me a reassuring opinion, i unfortunately missed. the residue cockburn sold _en bloc_ to montagu, and when the latter parted with the said two pennies in a sale of duplicates, i had the satisfaction of seeing them printed in the catalogue in capital letters! they might have come to me at £2 the couple. i thanked the british museum, and applauded its discrimination. it appears, by the way, to be almost going too far to say that the portrait on the later groat and on the shilling of henry vii. is the earliest resemblance of an english king as distinguished from a conventional representation; for surely the bust on the groats of richard iii. makes a distinct movement in the same direction; and even on the money of edward iv. there is discernible a commencing tendency to realism. apart from the english coins, cockburn had purchased in the course of time about eighty roman second brass, which he insisted on selling in the lump, although i frankly told him, that very few would suit me. i gave him £5 for them, selected a dozen or so of the finest, and let lincoln have the remainder for £4, 7s. 6d.--his own valuation. cockburn did not seem to sell for profit, and i admired his independence. he professed to pass on to me at cost price. for the sovereign of edward vi. (4th year) he had paid £5 to lincoln; it was f.d.c.; and for an equally fine biga farthing of anne he charged me on the same principle 26s. other pieces, as the half-groat of mary i. at £8 and the pattern shilling and sixpence of the commonwealth by blondeau at £16, struck me as dear enough. for eight varied _cunetti_ in mint-state he charged 16s. his anglo-saxon pennies were not unreasonable; harthacanut at £3 was the highest; a halfpenny of edmund of east anglia was judged to be worth £1. had not montagu swooped down on the quarry, i might have left yet less behind me in a few weeks. i was snugly nibbling at it. the name, which deserves on some grounds the greatest prominence in these numismatic memorials--that of spink & son--not inappropriately crowns the list of my auxiliaries and caterers. i cannot recollect the precise circumstances, under which i first approached the firm--then in gracechurch street only; but i quickly discovered its enterprising spirit and friendly sentiment. it was a house, which had not at that period--about 1886--long devoted special attention to the numismatic side; and through the possession of capital it rapidly came to the front. the stock of coins of all kinds grew in a marvellously short time only too varied and abundant, and under the auspices of spink & son, who behaved toward me as a person in humble circumstances with the utmost generosity and kindness, my collection developed in such a degree as to become almost serious, considering that this was another new outlet for my limited funds, and the largest of all. i had originally conceived the notion, which soon enough proved itself a chimerical one, that by investing my pocket-money to the extent of £150 or so over a course of years in these instructive relics of the past i should satisfy all reasonable requirements, and pose as the owner of a rather conspicuous cabinet. my riper conclusions pointed to £4000 as the _minimum_, under the most advantageous and careful management, for a representative gathering like mine in first-rate state, an amount equivalent with good husbandry to £10,000 under normal conditions, where folks exercise too little circumspection, or are in too great a hurry. the moral may be, that no man should mount a hobby in the dark. i have persevered, where many would have, i am sure, despaired. but i imagine that the motive for early relinquishment is not by any means the unexpected outlay so often as the distaste arising from errors of judgment and the annoying sense of imposition. the cost to myself in labour and thought has been quite equal to that in cash; but i have thus steered clear of the dangers, which beset inexperienced and desultory collectors. if you lean upon other people's knowledge, you have to buy two articles instead of one. this thesis has no immediate bearing on spink & son, who never urged me to purchase anything against my judgment, and were always prepared to exchange a coin, if i altered my mind about it. they certainly put aside all pieces likely to be of interest to me, but the interest was not invariably commercial. it might be an example, which i desired to register, just as i was in the habit of doing with early english books; and when i had taken my note, and did not care to invest, the bargain was open to the next comer. a signal feature and facility in transactions here i have found to be the prompt exhibition with the marked price of every purchase and all purchases within the briefest possible interval. coins are no sooner acquired, than they are placed on view with the exception of certain specialities, which are temporarily laid aside, till one or two clients have had the opportunity of seeing them. i have long rather undeservedly been on this favoured list; and i believe that no coin, thought to be in my way, has been sold during some years past, till i have refused it. i had the unexpected good fortune to meet here with the thaler of nicholas schinner, bishop of sion, 1498, absolutely f.d.c., and the kelch thaler of zurich, 1526, nearly as fine. the zurich thaler of 1512, with the three decapitated martyrs, was reported from germany, and alleged to be in mint state; but when it arrived, i identified it with the indifferent example in the boyne sale, and of course rejected it accordingly. such coins as these have a future. i had put in my pocket, and taken home, just prior to the issue of the monthly catalogue, a gold russian coin attributed to the reign of ivan the terrible, one of the numerous suitors of our queen elizabeth; but it was a century later. still i might have liked it, had not a telegram from russia arrived, and induced me to surrender the piece to some one, who evidently felt a peculiar interest in it. i was less considerate to the prince of naples, who is forming a private cabinet, and who ordered a rare _grosso_ of the roman republican era (13th century), which i had forestalled. it was _fleur de coin_, and i could not make up my mind to let it go, even to so exalted a personage. the most striking point is, that i had merely signified my wish to have the coin, and that spink & son might have sent it to the prince, on the plea that i had not actually bought it. i occasionally have the pleasure of making my good friends a slight return for their consideration. they had obtained at a sale for fifty shillings in a lot two examples of the very rare _mezzo scudo_ struck in 1530 in the name of the florentine republic with the monogram of the standard-bearer for the year, just prior to the establishment of the medici family in power. they shewed both to me, and permitted me to select the better for 30s. i then pointed out that at the rossi sale in 1880 one had fetched £10, 5s., and recommended them to mark the remaining specimen £7, 10s., at which figure a foreign dealer jumped at it. at the boyne sale in 1896 a third was carried to £8, 10s. by the same individual. the piece is remarkable as the heaviest denomination so far struck in florence in silver. piccadilly, to which the coin and medal department has been transferred, constitutes my second library of reference, as spink & son have spared no cost to bring together all the most valuable and important numismatic books and catalogues in all languages. this has formed a largely serviceable and welcome element in my connection with the firm, and has conferred on me without the slightest expense all the advantages attendant on the personal possession of the volumes. the english collector of foreign coins has, as a rule, as slight an acquaintance with these rich sources of information as i should have had in the absence of such facilities. the monthly _numismatic circular_ has tended in a direct and an indirect manner to draw spink & son into closer touch with holders and purchasers of coins everywhere; and the prospect of being able to examine, if not to acquire in all cases, an incessant volume of these interesting monuments seems to me likely to go on improving. i shall return to the subject of the circular in a succeeding chapter. a characteristic injustice was perpetrated on this firm by a divine, who honoured it with an order for a certain early english silver penny, and to whom, though a stranger and in the country, the coin was sent, packed up in the customary manner, on approval. the reverend gentleman reported in due course that it arrived at his address broken in half, and declined to pay for it. there was no absolute plea of negligence in the method of enclosure; the client authorised its transmission to him; and he did not even propose to defray the cost or part of it. the dealers took him before the magistrate, and the latter decided in favour of the client on the ground that the coin was a very old one, and had lasted long enough. verily, as there are land thieves and water thieves, there are paid magisterial owls as well as unpaid. chapter xiv the coin sales--my stealthy accumulations from some of them--comparative advantages of large and small sales--the disappointment over one at genoa--the boyne sale--its meagre proportion of fine pieces--my comfort, and what came to me--narrow escape of the collection from sacrifice to a foreign combination--trade sales abroad--a new departure--considerations on poorly-preserved coins--i resign them to the learned--i have to classify by countries and their divisions--my personal appurtenances--suggestions which may be useful to others--the great bactrian discovery--extent of representative collections of ancient money--antony and cleopatra--adherence to my own fixed and deliberate plan--the argument to be used by any one following in my footsteps--advice of an old collector to a new one. from the very limited nature of my resources i have been forced to content myself with being a casual buyer. i have witnessed the dispersion of all the finest assemblages of coins, which have come to the hammer or into the market in the course of nearly twenty years, and have involuntarily played the part of a spectator and note-maker, where it would have delighted me to compete for the best with the best. i have not attended auctions as a buyer either of china or of coins save in one or two instances at the outset, and i have subsequently rejected these acquisitions as indiscreet. the principal sales, which have fallen under my observation, were those of lake price, shepherd, whithall, marsham, rostron, webb, carfrae, ashburnham, montagu, and bunbury, 1884-96; these were limited to the english, greek, and roman series; and i presume that some filtered unrecognised into my cabinet. of the foreign collections, or those into which the continental element entered, i took more particular note and more direct cognisance. there were the rossi, remedi, ingram, leyster, dillon, samuel smith, united service institution, boyne, and durazzo, between the year 1880 and the present time. the latter group immediately or eventually contributed a really large body of additions. from the ingram sale came the double gold _scudo_ of pope julius ii. by francia, which i mention only, because it was, i think, my earliest heavy purchase of the kind. the leyster affair was antecedent to the serious competition of spink & son for such property; and the bulk went abroad. from such purchases as lincoln & son effected i took anything, which passed my standard; but too many of the lots were poor, and not a few were fabrications. it was a vast collection formed by a gentleman in ireland at a distance from any centre and without much apparent taste or discretion; and the german houses very probably did well over it. lord dillon's coins yielded a few items, which i was glad to get--one or two polish gold pieces, a venetian 12-ducat one, and so forth; and among the silver there was a half _dick-thaler_ of sigismund, archduke of austria, for the tyrol, 1484, which mr schulman assured me did not exist, and which i engraved in my _coins of europe_, 1893. i have since met with a second. it is hard to determine which is the superior market, a big sale or a small one. at the former items may be overlooked; the latter does not attract buyers so freely. to mr samuel smith of liverpool i was indebted, when he parted with his comparatively limited acquisitions, for the finest specimens which i have seen of the bern thaler of 1494, and the lorraine one of 1603, at a far more moderate tariff than inferior examples have brought before or since. then in the entire sale not more than three items altogether excited any interest on my part. it was just the same when the royal united service institution submitted its numismatic property to public competition. it was in the main a mass of rubbish; i picked out one or two silver pieces and a lot of about thirty _selected_ copper, of the latter of which i kept less than half. the unselected copper numbered 3000 or so, and were only eligible for the melting-pot. the durazzo collection, sold at genoa, was a singular disappointment. the catalogue was rather sumptuous and very detailed. a rumour prevailed at the time that the alleged _provenance_ of the collection was not strictly veracious, and that the property actually belonged to vitalini the italian dealer. as a numismatic amateur during almost a score of years i have experienced a good deal of this kind of personation; but i argue that it matters little whence a coin comes to one, so long as the character and state are right, with the added advantage that in passing from an inferior to possibly a better atmosphere the purchase improves in value. there were about 6500 lots, of which the majority consisted of roman and greek; the remainder was continental. many of the italian rarities were included; and genoa and monaco were very strongly represented. i knew that spink & son had sent commissions, and i augured well for the result; but i had not indicated my views personally, and indeed the catalogue did not reach my hands, till it was too late for me to intervene. i had never before known such a series of the money of monaco to be offered simultaneously. when no news in any shape came to my ears, it transpired on inquiry that a few papal coins, recently acquired by me, belonged to the collection, and that the prevailing feature of the latter was a state of preservation so utterly hopeless, that some of the company retired after the first day. the actual metallic records were there, i presume; but they did not harmonise with the estimates of the too romantic cataloguer. even now, after the event, who ought to feel surprise, if whatever there may have been of any merit, should ultimately drift to these hospitable shores, and--? the dispersion of the cabinet of the late william boyne in london interested me uniquely, for it was particularly rich in the italian series, and the incident differed from those, which had preceded it within my remembrance, inasmuch as the property was brought within reach of inspection, and one could sit at a table in wellington street, prior to the commencement of operations, and examine the coins, catalogue in hand. it was a ten-days' affair, and it was computed that there were 25,000 items. still i resolved to go through with my project for seeing every lot, which i had marked, and judging whether it was a desirable acquisition. i read between the lines of the catalogue with the aid of one or two of my numismatic acquaintances, who warned me against expecting too much; for they were familiar with my idiosyncrasies. taking tray by tray, i actually saw far more than i contemplated; nearly the whole property passed before me in review; and i was grievously disappointed. it was an indiscriminate assemblage of coins of all sorts, evidently bought at random or _en bloc_, and poverty of condition preponderated in a lamentable measure. there was one consolation. i was enabled to concentrate all my pecuniary forces on the few objects, which struck me as exceptional; and i succeeded in making myself master of nearly all the specialities among the italians, which i coveted, and several _desiderata_ elsewhere. the competition was sensibly mitigated by an _entente cordiale_ among a portion of the company, and the bulk returned to the continent. had the collection been equally attractive and important to myself from a numismatic and a commercial point of view, i should have found much more than i could have possibly grasped; but the prevalent state conformed to the normal continental definition of _beau_, which in english signifies _crucible_. there was little enough in the boyne catalogue, which i had not learned from a careful previous study of those of all the great italian, german, and french collections, which had been published or privately printed. but the occasion supplied me with a precious opportunity of holding in my hands coins, which, whatever might be their value or want of value as possessions, were and are in many instances of immense rarity, and seemed, when in direct contact, additionally substantial and authentic. four or five bidders saved the issue from being a _fiasco_ in a financial sense. but the selection of london as the scene may tend to accelerate a little the recognition in great britain of the ancient money of the continent as at all events an appropriate chronological sequel to that of greece and rome, while it represents in itself a body of material of inexhaustible curiosity and value to the historian and the artist. i purposely abstain from classing with the sales of explicit or professed private properties those, which, as season succeeds season, are dedicated by the trade everywhere to the object of converting their surplus or unrealised stock into money. one feels an almost painful delicacy in handling this part of the subject; and i propose to restrict myself to the criticism that it is possible to secure many absolute bargains at a reduced price by making an offer to the party who, for anything one knows, may be a kind of trinity in unity--owner, cataloguer, and auctioneer. coins are speculative goods; and if a lot or so misses certain expected channels, it is sometimes a lodger with the proprietor long enough to make him tired of looking at it. then, when he is in his most despondent vein, comes the moment for the opportunist, and there are twenty-four pence in every shilling. the auction-rooms among ourselves and abroad, wherever there is a volume of business in coins (and in other second-hand commodities), appear to be vehicles, however, more and more for a systematic organisation, by which the dealer sells his goods under the hammer instead of over the counter. foragers are observed collecting in one market by virtue of their special knowledge lots suitable for disposal in this way in another or others; and they have a machinery adapted to their peculiar requirements. their stock is always a floating one. thousands of pounds pass through their hands in a season. there are not many in the line, for it demands some capital, some credit, and some courage. there is one house, which avers that it carries on this system for the public good--in order to diffuse a conversance with numismatic science. we have more heroes and philanthropists than we dream of, have we not? as i mentally or otherwise glance through my at length not so very inconsiderable accumulation of ancient or obsolete currencies, i strive to think how my own experience is capable of serving those, who have the starting-point nearer within view. it seems at first sight to be regretted, that not merely such large sums of money, but so much time and labour, should be expended in perpetuity in the stereotyped process of gathering up the wrong things, gradually detecting their character, and retrieving the error by casting overboard the original lot, and beginning anew on a truer basis. the cause of numismatic archæology of course imperatively demands the preservation of every item of every mint, no matter how degraded may be its state, or how insignificant its individuality, so long as it is of that high degree of scarcity, which entitles it to monumental regard. i may more emphatically specify, as falling within such a definition, the examples engraved and described by my correspondent, count nicolò papadopoli, in his _monete italiane inedite_, 1893, the major part of which come very far short of my personal ideas of works of art, but of which the affectionate custody by posterity becomes a duty on historical grounds. at the same time, as my aim has been necessarily a narrow one, and as i elected at a very early stage in my experience to figure as one of the apostles of condition, i cheerfully resign these records to others, and am quite satisfied with engraved reproductions of them. on that precaution i lay the utmost stress. in my first apprenticeship to numismatics i believe that i was unusually ignorant of a subject, which the works of reference introduced since my school-days have rendered so much more accessible and intelligible. but i was industrious and observant, and was not deficient in taste. i began to collect at a period of life, when i was able to discern the fallacy of the penny-box principle; my level was never very low, if it was not in the earlier years so high as it ultimately grew; and i no sooner perceived a mistake, than i hastened to rectify it. an appreciable interval elapsed, however, before i found myself in possession of a sufficient body of coins to make a distribution into countries or sections of any service. there were so many specimens; the metals were unequally represented; and i recollect that gold resembled the plums in a school pudding. it was a gala day, when i received my first cabinet home, and entered into a rudimentary and tentative phase of classification; and it was then, too, that not my opulence, but my excessive poverty and humility, as a collector was revealed to me. providentially, these shocks are generally broken by some circumstance, and in my case it was my still most empirical acquirement of the full bearings and scope of my adventurous enterprise. the cabinet stood half empty; i felt the reproach; and i proceeded not only to fill it, but to gather tenants for a second--and a third, with an overflow capable of furnishing one or two more. such a development might have had comparatively slight significance, because a coin, which is worth a penny, may occupy a larger space than one, which is worth £10; but in a parallel ratio with the increase in number was the rise in the qualifying standard, or, in other words, i was constantly and heavily adding to my stores, and putting in rigorous force the principle of exclusion. there could be only one result. now, in the hope, that certain general particulars, which have cost the writer an infinite amount of trouble to collect for his own benefit and instruction during a series of years, may be acceptable and useful to others, proposing to embark in the same undertaking, i shall reduce the fruit of my own efforts to a summary, indicative of what has seemed to me, after long and deliberate consideration, to be adequate to the purposes of anyone of moderate views, who seeks to assemble together a fairly representative _corpus_ of the various chronological monuments of european rulers and regions and of the successive schools of numismatic art. completeness in any given series is by no means essential to the mastery of a competent idea of its character and merits from all ways of looking; and the study of mints and mint-marks is a mere technical detail, which owes its leading interest to its incidental illustrations of topography and of the careers of engravers--many of them otherwise distinguished. many persons start with the greek or roman, or perhaps both, from a belief that they are the most ancient and the most instructive. my first roman coin was a most disreputable specimen of a very common first brass of hadrian, handsomely presented to my son by a captain at a watering-place, and my first greek a forgery of one of the numberless tetradrachms of alexander the great. i was in the _berceaunette_ stage; but i was not quite so long in it as some are. i am indebted to lincoln & son for having conferred on me the rudiments (if not something more) of my education in these two very important divisions of every cabinet of any pretensions whatever; and i may at last presume to offer myself as a counsellor of others, who may be situated as i was in my nonage. it entirely depends on the breadth of a new collector's plan, which is usually influenced by his resources, how far he proceeds in his selection of the greek coinage, for under any circumstances a selection it must be. no individual, no public institution, can boast of possessing a complete series in all metals. i resorted to the principle of choosing under each coin-striking region of ancient hellas a sufficient number of pieces in electrum, gold, silver, and copper or bronze to represent a chronological succession of its products, and i also observed the rule of comprising, if possible, all such as exhibited the portraitures, or at least titles, of rulers of personal eminence. a numismatist pure and simple attaches, very justly attaches from his special point of view, emphatic weight to many examples, of which the sole attraction and value are their accidental rarity without regard to their intrinsic interest; this is not a wise policy for the private amateur, whatever his fortune may be. such relics ought to find their resting-place in a public repository, and a full record of them should be preserved in one of the learned transactions for general reference. how immensely one was pleased to learn that sir wollaston franks had fallen in with a bactrian dekadrachm; and the satisfaction, so far as i was concerned, was augmented by the news, that he had presented it to the british museum. if it had been submitted as a purchase or even gift to myself, i should have declined it, as it fails to respond to my postulates. it is merely a voucher. it is my impression, based on a long experience, that about three hundred greek coins of all varieties and types will be found to embrace everything of real note, and will provide the possessor with numismatic specimens in all metals, of every region, of every period and style, of each denomination, and of all such great personalities as are known to have struck money, not only within the limits of european greece, but in the countries and colonies subject to its sovereigns in their varied degrees of power and prosperity or by its cities from their first rude development to their zenith in political influence and commercial wealth. a proportion of gold is highly desirable, particularly the athenian, syracusan, and egyptian; the copper must be very fine and patinated; the silver is the easiest to find, except in certain series. i succeeded in furnishing myself with the majority of typical examples alike in silver and bronze, and indeed (except under attica) in the most precious metal. i could never meet with more than a single athenian specimen--a [greek: êmiekton]; but the most beautiful and fascinating productions are the gold tetradrachms and octodrachms of the ptolemies, so rich in their portraiture, costume, and design. three or four of these gems suffice for a moderate programme. i found fifty pounds inadequate to the purchase of even three. there is a particularly charming one of ptolemy iii., and no one must forget that great, if not very good, lady, the cleopatra of history, whose portrait appears both on her brother's and her own coins in egypt and on those of mark antony in the roman consular series. to any collector aiming at the not unreasonable object of securing her likeness it may be useful to mention, that her veiled or deified bust accompanies certain bronze pieces of moderate price and excellent quality. the writer has attentively scrutinised the catalogues of all the sales of greek and roman money, which have taken place in his time, and the conclusion to be drawn from the descriptive accounts and the realised figures is so far a consolatory one for the great majority, who cannot afford to go beyond a comparatively low figure. for it becomes clearly apparent that the costliest pieces are not the most powerful in their appeal to us on historical or artistic grounds. remember that we have to take into account these points of interest: history, with which is closely embodied religious cult, biography, topography, and art. a thoroughly well-meaning dealer exclaims, if you challenge the quotation for some indifferent specimen of a not too remarkably executed _tetradrachm_ or _drachma_:--'but look at the rarity! the last one sold for so much.' and i am sorry to say, that this plea too frequently prevails. i have always turned a deaf ear to all attempts to induce me to acquire on any terms coins, which were not highly preserved, whatever their scarcity of occurrence might be. i preferred to examine them in other hands, or even to contemplate engravings derived from superior examples. let a person in my position lay down for himself this principle for his guidance:--my space is limited; my means are the same; the material or means of supply, as time goes on, is infinite and inexhaustible; no collection in the universe is complete; therefore, incompleteness being a relative expression, i will take here and there, from this sale or that, from this or that place of business, just as many coins as serve to gratify my love of the beautiful, my reverence for great names, my curiosity to hold in my hand pieces of currency which, alike in the case of greece and rome, united with their monetary import and use symbols of an earnest religious faith and proud records of national achievements by sea and land. to possess an even extensive assemblage of such monuments i found in my own experience, and others may do the same, that a man has not to be quite a croesus; nor in truth is it peremptory to insist in such extreme measure as i have on faultless beauty of state. i may have been too luxurious, too dainty. at any rate, all which contributes to render coins of all periods and kinds serviceable and agreeable is within the reach of individuals of very straitened purchasing powers. but it is necessary to guard against disproportion, which is very likely to arise in all sections from the occurrence of the products of _trouvailles_ in tempting condition at a modest tariff. my recommendation is to avoid even the semblance of duplicates, where the sole difference is the date or the mint-mark, or possibly a slight variation in the legend. my natural sympathy is with the poorer collector, who has perchance to exercise a little self-denial to enable him to carry out successfully and profitably his hobby; the rich have only to buy and to pay; and those, who may choose to follow in my footsteps more or less, will soon discover, as i did, that to arrive at a satisfactory result under pecuniary disadvantages is a task demanding knowledge, discretion, and patience. of the passions of the human mind that which directs us to a certain object or aim, if not to more than one, with irresistible vehemence, and holds us bound within its range as by a spell, is one of the strongest, most ancient, and most unreasoning. my own life during the past thirty or forty years, or in other words the best part of my career, has been mainly engrossed by the pursuit of two or three fancies; the serious business of existence seems to have been a secondary question; and the most substantial testimony to my earnestness of purpose and (i have to own) my thorough subjection to the influence of the taste, is to be found in my irresponsive surroundings and my sacrifice of other interests to what my less sentimental friends would call an _ignis fatuus_. chapter xv literary direction given to my numismatic studies and choice--the wallenstein thaler--the good caliph haroun el reschid--some of the twelve peers of france who struck money--lorenzo de' medici, called _the magnificent_--robert the devil--alfred the great--harold--the empress matilda--marino faliero--massaniello--the technist thinks poorly of me--my plea for the human, educating interest in coins--the penny box now and then makes a real collector--how i threw myself _in medias res_--first impressions of the greek series--my difficulty in apprehending facts--early illusions gradually dissipated--what constitutes a typical greek and roman cabinet--and what renders great collections great--redundance in certain cases defended--official authorities except to my treatment of the subject--tom tidler's ground--the technical _versus_ the vital and substantial interest in coins--my width of sympathy beneficial to myself and likely to prove so to my followers--outline and distribution of my collection--autotype replicas and forgeries--romantic evolution of bactrian coinage and history--caution to my fellow-collectors against excessive prices for greek coins--wait and watch--mr hyman montagu and his roman gold, and the moral--the best coins not the dearest--our national series--its susceptibility to eclectic treatment--a whimsical speculation--an untechnical method of looking at a coin--a burst bubble--the continental currencies--their clear superiority of interest and instructive power--the writer's attitude toward them. my own sectional arrangement obeyed my doubtless peculiar training as a man of letters rather than a numismatist, and side by side with my peremptory instruction to myself as to quality i kept steadily in view the importance and charm, as it seemed to me, of comprising in my plan all those coins, which existed in the various series relating to celebrated historical personages and events. the dealers ignore this aspect of the question; they merely concern themselves with what is rare or common, dear or cheap. i negotiated a thaler of wallenstein; the price was rather high; but i agreed to take it on account of the celebrity of the man. the vendor had never heard of him; he knew it only as an uncommon piece! you purchase a small gold coin of 'el reschid'; the hand, which is held out to receive the money for it--not so much over the metal--is not conscious that it may have been actually through those of the striker, the hero of the _arabian nights_, nor forsooth does he care. no one will probably offer a shilling more for it for such a reason. it may occur that an insignificant, ill-struck coin of base metal appertains to milon of narbonne, or roland, nephew of charlemagne and the orlando of the poets, or to richard of the lion heart; one examines its credentials, and yields it a place of honour. i obtained in a lot of italian copper a small quattrino, as it is called, with _lav. medices dux_ on one side and _pisavr_ on the other: what was it but money issued in 1516--and that year alone--by lorenzo de' medici, called the _magnificent_, as duke of pesaro? it may be equally predicated of arthur of bretagne, the possible prototype of the hero of romance, arthur of little britain, and of robert of normandy, called _le diable_, that their personal surpasses their numismatic distinction; for in the latter way they survive only in monuments of the poorest material, aspect, and style. nor is it very different with the coins of alfred the great, of harold, who fell at hastings, of henry beauclerc, of stephen, of the empress matilda, in the english series, and with such continental celebrities as the hero-doges of venice, enrico dandolo, marino faliero, and francesco foscari; or as king robert of sicily, gaston de foix, joanna of naples, massaniello. yet, on the contrary, there are splendid medallic evidences of others both in ancient and modern times; and it appears to redeem a cabinet from the imputation of being a portrait-gallery of illustrious obscure, if we leaven its contents with the effigies of men and women, whose names are familiar to all fairly educated people. this principle, then, collaterally influenced me in my selection, and made me anxious to omit no record of consequence illustrating a historical individual or incident. i aimed at approximating to a collection of medals, as far as the coin would permit. i also affected the earliest examples of each country, bearing a note of the year of issue and of the current value; and altogether my project became quite powerfully tinctured by my prepossessions and lessons as a book-student. i looked with comparative lukewarmth at the technical side, and i apprehend that i enjoy an indifferent repute among my more learned contemporaries, who pride themselves on their familiarity with mechanical and official details. all these points are excessively important and interesting in their way; and i have entered into them a good deal in my two numismatic publications. i was disposed in my private capacity to regard the human constituents of these remains of former ages; and i promise that it will repay the trouble of investigating the illustrated works of reference, in default of possessing the objects themselves, by shewing how similar motives have swayed rulers and states from the outset in regulating the costume of their coinage, how they have habitually made it a political vehicle, and how the annals and fortunes of the country are to be read on its changing and varying face as in the pages of a volume. it is the more to be lamented on that account, since it may not suit everybody to collect coins, that the pictorial feature in nearly all numismatic undertakings is the most imperfect and misleading and in the old-fashioned or cheap books amounts to little better than caricature. i grant that there is the proud lust of ownership; but the discs of metal are of no real relevance outside the story, which they are able to tell us, if or when we are qualified to read it. all the rest, in a high sense, is but bullion, is it not?--and the criticism emphatically applies to heterogeneous assemblages of obsolete currencies, formed without taste, and held without fruit. this feeling, and the persuasion that the most extensive and long-established collections in the world are more or less incomplete, actuated me, so soon as i had graduated far enough to lay down regulations for my own use and to decide once for all on treating condition as primary, and historical and personal interest as covetable _succeedanea_, which lightened and seasoned the rest. most of us have heard, among the famous greeks and romans, of philip and alexander of macedon, darius of persia, pyrrhus, cleopatra, julius cæsar, mark antony, augustus, nero, and the antonines; and it is customary for school-boys to explore the recesses of the penny box in shop or on stall in quest of pieces of bronze bearing the effigies of these ancient celebrities. school-boys have done this during centuries, and many of them have done nothing more. but here and there the child is father to the man, and the proprietor of a celebrated cabinet has it in his power to range over a life-long past wealthy in profitable and pleasant recollections, and to exhibit to his friends as a curiosity the humble piece, which first seduced him. in the present case the pursuit dated from a maturer period, and i was debarred from such a privilege. i have learned much from coins; but i came to the study with a fair tincture of preparatory knowledge, and while i entertained becoming reverence for the great names of antiquity and of the renaissance associated with it, i was old enough to be aware how many other claims it had on our attention and regard. i turned to the ancient greek series, i recollect, with the vague impression that it consisted of objects, which appealed to all persons of taste--an impression, which had been experienced by thousands before me, and which is perhaps generally due to conversation with more erudite acquaintance rather than to books. works of reference come later. they did so with me. i had overheard talk of the grandeur and charm of design, the antiquity, the familiar names and myths; and perhaps someone let me see one or two, which struck me as curious, or some engravings of the school, which preceded autotype and other allied processes. the end of it was that i bought a few inexpensive examples of lincoln, and afterward, when it came to the turn of the roman money, i was attracted by the beauty and cheapness of the family or consular series and by the ease, with which the second and third brass were obtainable. but it demanded a longer time than i care to own to enable me to perceive the affinity between the republican silver _denarii_ and the productions of the professedly hellenic school. if i had mingled with collectors, or consulted books or experts, i should have learned far more quickly and perfectly my self-set lesson. but i have never been gregarious or clubable; and i pursued my own way with the result that i committed an abundance of mistakes, yet not half so many as i deserved from my unbending persistence in depending on my personal researches and judgment. this dogged opinionativeness and hard tone of mind have proved disadvantageous through life. i quitted school much more ignorant, i dare say, than i needed to have done, because it was not my cue or bent to comprehend what the teachers delivered, or to relish the methods, which they pursued; and the single point, which i brought away from my attendance at a twelve months' course of lectures on law and jurisprudence at the inner temple, was the persuasion that in a particular line of argument, in which i happened to follow the lecturer, he was wrong. i hold a very kind note from dr phillimore, thanking me for my correction. one of my numismatic illusions was the uniform low rate, at which the roman consular _denarii_ and other coins of that class, as well as the imperial currencies, could be secured in course of time. i soon found that a piece had only to be rare, or in gold, or rather exquisitely patinated, to stand out in high relief, and make a serious inroad on one's resources. i have been fairly watchful and enterprising during the best part of twenty years, and my greek and roman collections still await several clear _desiderata_, not because those _desiderata_ are scarce and expensive, but because they are typical. i possess about 400 pieces, perhaps, in all metals; five-and-twenty more would render my two series substantially representative. i shall get what i want by waiting. what i have suffices meanwhile to gratify my sense of that artistic and ideal genius, for which my elders had prepared me, so far as the greek and roman consular go, and my feeling for all that rome has left behind it in grand personalities, splendid achievement, and records of thought and custom. it cannot be fruitless or irrelevant to repeat that the magnitude of the most famous collections is chiefly owing to the presence of numberless varieties and sub-varieties of coins--even of unimportant ones. a man makes a principle of accumulating every year of the bronze money of the present reign, or farthings of every conceivable description, or maundy money. _cui bono?_ this is a course of policy which should be reserved for the public institution and the numismatic chronicler. i have a gold _stater_, perhaps of philip of macedon, an electrum one of cyzicus or lampsacus, a silver tetradrachm of alexander the great, and another of the athenian republic; i do not covet all the more or less slightly variant examples, which may exist. it is different, where the coin is remarkable in itself, and the type is distinct, as, for instance, in the contemporary and posthumous money of alexander of macedon, in the progressive improvement in the currency of athens, in the specimens of syracusan medallic art, which shew the stages, through which it passed; and in the pieces, which have preserved to us the likeness of such celebrities as cleopatra, julius cæsar, mark antony, and which vary in certain physiognomical details. here there is a more or less intelligible plea for repetition or redundancy. but in avoiding the admittance of practical duplicates i flatter myself that i have avoided a troublesome and costly error, which punishes you in two ways--when you acquire and when you realise. i have sometimes speculated why it is that _i_, for one, shut up books on coins after a short consultation and turn to the things themselves--the tangible realities. there must be somehow a cross with the magpie in one's blood. the only kind of publication of a numismatic complexion, which strikes me as endurable, is that which is written on sympathetic lines, in a broadly appreciative temper and spirit. the dry calendars compiled by official experts, and the catalogues of auctions, are hard reading. they are mere lexicons or printed transfers. yet when i endeavoured to follow in the footsteps of one or two earlier writers, who gave wise prominence (as i thought) to the human and living interest resident in coins of all ages and countries in former times, i was reproved by the learned as too _literary_ in my style, although in my larger book i afforded ample scope to the technical aspect of the question, and merely asserted my view by making it an independent section in distinct type. but the true cause of offence or disagreement was and is my presumption as a layman in trespassing on the preserves of tom tiddler. it has been objected to my unusual width of range that it precludes full justice, as it is the fashion to call it, to any of the series. the reply to this, however, is obvious, and has already in fact been given. unless a private cabinet is formed with a special eye to the official study of a group of coins or of the monetary products of a region, the object should be, not exhaustive treatment, which in the first place is impossible, but eclectic, which tends to familiarise the holder with the policy and progress of all nationalities in all parts of the globe from time to time in rendering _media_ of exchange objects of interest, instruction and beauty, as well as of use. a man emerges from the latter plan with a clearer and broader appreciation of the subject and its manifold bearings than he does, if he draws the line at a country, at a period, or at a type. it may be a just source of pride to be able to say that you are the existing repository of so many examples or varieties, of which no one else can boast the ownership; but, looking at the ultimate aim, it is not clear where the solid advantage lies. my appurtenances in this direction embrace: 1. greek and roman; 2. continental; 3. english and scotish; 4. american; 5. oriental. the last-named occupy a space proportionate to the narrowness of their appeal to my sympathy. the money of the ancients, more especially that of greece, when one casts one's eyes on its portraiture, symbols, legends, fabric, and costume, i treasure as everlastingly impressive testimony to the force of soil, climate, and social and religious conditions, and as the basis of every essay of any pretensions in collecting. the difficulties and dangers are unusually great, as the disparities of estimated value are great; and the liability to error and deception are manifold. the wholesale official system at home of multiplying autotype copies of rare and valuable pieces originated in a sound idea; but has been carried too far, and forms an inducement to impose reproductions on inexperienced persons already perplexed by encountering casts and other forgeries; and then, again, the greek and roman series are a constant mark for the ingenious foreigner, who has busied himself, as we have all heard, ever so long since in fabricating for enthusiastic admirers of the antique the almost unfailing _lacunæ_ in their cabinets. some classes of coins are more subject to falsification than others. the athenian gold and the bactrian silver are very favourite game for the gentile, the jew, and the mahometan alike. they forget their religious antagonism in a fraternal community of aim. i have referred to the bactrian coinage as having been extensively forged. but there has strangely accumulated, since those days, when the surviving number was almost computable on the fingers, a vast chronological monument, disclosing to our eyes a marvellous oriental legend of mighty rulers and long, prosperous reigns, coins their only historians. i was favoured by the museum authorities with an early glance at the magnificent purchase from general cunningham of his bactrian numismatic collection for £3000, by virtue of a special parliamentary grant; and this has at once placed our national cabinet in a most satisfactory and enviable position in this respect. of the money of upward of thirty kings of this region--the ancient affghanistan--the silver is now copiously represented, but not so the gold or the copper. i tell the story of the 20-_stater_ piece, in the most precious metal, of eukratides, king of bactria, in my _coin-collector_. of the copper or bronze i have long owned a very beautiful example, probably of heliocles; in _my_ state these latter productions are peculiarly rare. never was such a case of time drawing truth out of a well; and we have not reached the end of the matter yet. there will be further discoveries. here is a conspicuous instance of the peril attendant on giving extravagant prices for coins of supposed rarity. there are among the bactrians silver tetradrachms and smaller denominations, which can be bought for fewer shillings than they once commanded sovereigns. my obolos of demetrius, for example, cost 15s.; it is valued by mionnet at £16. but you must exercise particular caution in this direction for the reason, which i have assigned. i shall be entirely satisfied, if i succeed in procuring a selection affording a competent idea of the prevailing character and costume of the whole, of which the earlier reigns are immeasurably the more desirable; a complete sequence is out of the question; even the british museum under the most favourable conditions does not possess it--perhaps never will. i really think that with the poorer coin-collector it is the same as with his analogue in the book market. the most beautiful and most interesting objects in the greek and roman coinages are well within his means of attainment, if he chooses to wait and watch, provided that he cares to do what the present deponent did, do his best to eke out his deficiency of resources with acquired knowledge and discrimination. in that case he may rise one morning the owner of an assemblage of these delightful and educating remains, and may ask himself the question, in what manner and degree it differs from those most famous and most frequently quoted in our numismatic records. he will find that what he lacks in common with all, who have not bottomless purses, are just the rare denominations or values, or types, of which he may probably possess examples substantially identical--perhaps in superior condition. take the roman gold of the late mr hyman montagu. that gentleman suddenly conceived it to be his mission to become master, not merely of all the really interesting coins in that metal and series; but it was peremptory that he should outdo everybody else, and be able to proclaim that he had every gold piece struck by every obscure and insignificant ruler down to the fall of the empire; and i believe that he was gratified. he could plead nothing for his project beyond its completeness; and that very feature was its weak point. think how infinitely preferable it is to select the best; they are to be had at moderate prices; they appeal to everyone, who has a fair degree of culture; and they occupy less room. the rarities are usually of poor work and fabric as well as of princes, who reigned just long enough to stamp their names and effigies on a circular disc of gold. mr montagu, however, felt bound to draw a broad line of distinction between humbler aspirants and himself; and he erected this monument to his memory. it is much the same thing with the greek in all its varieties and ramifications, of which, no less than of the roman, i furnish a comprehensive sketch in my _coin-collector_. the money of ephemeral rulers and governments, or high and unusual denominations, like the syracusan medallion or 10-drachma piece form the trying part and aspect of an undertaking. i soon discovered that i could command even with a slender purchasing power all that was essential to enable me to comprehend the monetary story of the most remarkable, and one of the greatest, empires of the ancient world. when i turned over the pages of the carfrae, ashburnham, montagu and bunbury catalogues, it was easy to perceive how these grand collections assumed such bewildering and fatiguing proportions; and i saw to my surprise that, rather than forego a particular item, condition was often waived. i thought that i discerned, for private connoisseurs as distinguished from great institutions like the british museum, a radical error of judgment and policy here, and i congratulate myself on having avoided it. condition, on which i shall have something more to say by-and-by, i could and can understand; and as i have never regretted losing a dear coin, i have never regretted letting a poor one pass. but i have seen with complacency my rich friends snatch out of my hands some things, which i should have been content to have at my estimate; and if i am patient they will fall to me another day. i take what comes, and am thankful. at one of the numerous montagu sales a piece realised £2, 10s. i dare say that it passed through one or two hands; but it became mine at last for half-a-sovereign. i must change the scene. i was never led away in respect to the money of the united kingdom, not even by patriotism, so far as to find funds and accommodation for every constituent part of every series within these lines. if i were not an englishman, i should declare unreservedly that a less interesting, more monotonous, and worse executed body of material than the coinages of england, scotland, ireland, and their dependencies, with certain emphatic exceptions, does not exist. it has asked all my loyalty to overcome an instinctive repugnance to the uncouth abortions struck as currency by our british, anglo-saxon, and many of our anglo-norman, progenitors. you may contemplate the entire gallery and succession in numismatic books, with autotype reproductions of these caricatures. a heavy proportion of them are barbarous and feeble imitations of greek, roman, and mediæval patterns. perhaps in art and style they resemble most closely the gaulish and visigothic series. if we reserve one or two types of offa of mercia and alfred the great, the commonest are the best, because they were struck under the authority of sovereigns, whose power was established. i put to myself the question at a very early stage, how many representatives was it necessary for me to assemble before me of these classes or schools of production? the answer is readable in the presence of fifty or sixty britons, saxons, danes, and normans; and i have no courage to swell their ranks. when i look at them, i can find nothing to justify the cost of their maintenance but the weak little sentiment, that these pieces of gold, silver, copper, or tin passed from hand to hand, when the part, where i am a dweller, was a dark, swampy forest, with a few squalid huts dotted here and there, and that one or two of these bits of money may have been in the pouch of cymbeline, or krause (_vulgo_ carausius) or alfred. in fact, i have a silver penny of the royal cake-burner, which weighs two grains more than any other known; it was colonel murchison's; but possibly it had previously belonged to the king himself! seriously speaking, our native currencies acquired their value and rank only, when the french and low country types began to attract notice and emulation; and i should be satisfied with drawing the line at edward iii. as a commencing point and at anne as a finishing one. the view is by no means original; i have met with several, who averted their eyes from the peculiarly humble and uncouth beginnings of the british people in this way; and the late mr montagu parted long before his death, on the ground of their dearth of interest, with the whole of his hanoverian collections. between these extremities there is undeniably a rich field for choice. numismatists have always, i apprehend, regarded me as a heretic, for the simple reason that i attached, in the absence of some specific ground, no importance to mint-marks or to minor differences. i have accustomed myself to take a coin in my hand, and estimate it on its merits. i am able to see what ruler or state it represents, its period, its style, its value. it may bear on its face a striking portrait of some illustrious personage--a potent sovereign, a distinguished soldier, a great lady--of whom the lineaments are nowhere else extant. it may be money of necessity, narrating to us, as fully as it can, a tragic or a noble story. it may be the first piece which was struck by a famous individual or place, or the last--perchance out of church or college plate with the original border of a dish remaining to commemorate a crisis. all these and other similar characteristics are broad and clear. but i have always been impatient of the stress laid by experts on an inverted letter in the legend, an added or omitted dot, or some such fantastic and puerile refinement. these _minutiæ_ do not constitute the primary use and significance of the coin as a source of study and instruction. a cabinet formed on a practical principle yields the best and most lasting fruit. you have only to scan the pages of the numberless printed works of reference to become aware that in the english and scotish series the slight variations among products of the same issue are interminable, and individuals are found to enter with avidity and at a lavish outlay into such trivialities. not i. from the remotest period of our own history we have coined in england itself only seventy denominations in all metals; and i computed in my _coin-collector_ that about 1530 pieces would substantially represent all the different reigns and clearly distinct types of the united kingdom, not including the anglo-gallic money which is not very voluminous. whatever may be thought of the practice of acquiring virtual duplicates in the more ancient currencies, its extension to the georgian and victorian eras is absolutely unreasoning and futile. there is no plea for it on the score of art, history, or curiosity. it is only the other day, that patterns and proofs of george iii. and iv., william iv. and her present majesty were carried to prices, which would have secured in the aggregate some of the finest and costliest examples of greek workmanship or the great rarities and _desiderata_ in the english series itself--the oxford and petition crowns, the florin of edward iii., the triple sovereign of edward vi., or even the half george noble of henry viii. but the bladder has been pricked, and the nonsensical craze has visibly subsided. it had its rise, no doubt, in competition among two or three wealthy, but poorly informed, gentlemen, who soon grew tired of a desperately expensive and foolish amusement. naturally the artificial quotations brought to light hoarded specimens; and supply and demand changed places. my british division follows the same system as the others. the chief part, requisite for my plan, is in hand; a small residuum has yet to come; and i must wait for it. that side which took, and has held, my fancy more powerfully, was the continental. what impressed me was its infinite interest, diversity, and curiosity; what recommended it was its unfamiliarity and comparative cheapness even in the choicest condition. there was a time, when the foreign dealers, and some of our own, were prepared to part with nearly all the coins in the respective metals at a tariff, which was far more consonant with my means than the tall figures ruling elsewhere through the generous rivalry of my affluent contemporaries; and a five-pound note still stands one in better stead on this ground than on the english and scotish; but i hold a certificate of approbation in the shape of a slowly upward tendency on my own special lines, and i rejoice that my wants grow fewer. between the relative merits of the british coinage and that of the european continent there is no actual standard of comparison, especially when it is borne in mind, that some of the best of our native examples were produced by foreign engravers. i confidently anticipate that in the early future the money of the various political divisions of europe will appreciably usurp the position at present almost monopolised among ourselves by our own money or that of the ancients. i hear it objected, that the continental class is so immense and so fathomless. true, it is; but when you regard condition, that difficulty ceases to operate, for you have only to stand by, and pick the best, and you will find that about 1 in 50 is the proportion of pieces worth having. the total in the boyne sale (1896) was estimated at 25,000; and i doubt whether there were 250 real prizes (duplicates excepted) from beginning to end. the coins in the two superior metals laid side by side with those of great britain of the same period almost invariably excel ours in every respect, and there is an abundance of high denominations both in gold and silver, which the continental houses know fairly well how to appraise: grand old pieces of 5 and 10 thalers in silver and of 10, 20, 40, and 100 ducats in gold. i have generally viewed these _bijoux_ from a respectful distance. but as a beginner i was forcibly struck by the magnificent copper coins of early date and careful execution, which now and then occur in irreproachable state at rates, of which no one can reasonably complain. at the price, which was commonly demanded a short while since for a pattern halfpenny of george iii., you might have half a hundred of them in course of time. i have personally experienced a far larger measure of trouble in meeting with satisfactory specimens of all epochs than in the english or even scotish sections; but it is such a much vaster field, and some countries are more difficult than others. where expense is not a consideration, a system of correspondence with all the leading centres and occasional visits in person are to be recommended; but consignments on approval form a tolerable substitute, and are rather exciting--with a tendency, i have found, to disappointment. the happiest moments are apt to be between the receipt of the parcel and the disclosure of the contents. yet i have to confess myself very greatly indebted to mr schulman of amersfoort for his supplies. london is of very slight use; you must keep in touch with the continent; and unhappily, within the last few years, the continent has grown sensibly dearer for fine copper. the quality of indifferent stock held by the trade everywhere must be incalculable--i must have waded through a ton or so. the italian copper series, taking up the thread, as it were, where the roman and ostrogothic rulers let it fall, is customarily regarded with special tenderness and respect, and is certainly entitled to rank high, as the work, during the finest period of art, of celebrated engravers. but the other sections set before us very persuasively their claims to attention; and it was this rather perplexing competition for notice and choice, which led me--which leads me to-day--to accord admission only to the bearers of the highest testimonials. that is a very drastic method of exclusion. chapter xvi the question of condition considered more at large--how one most forcibly realises its importance and value--limited survival of ancient coins in fine state--practical tests at home and abroad--lower standard in public institutions and the cause--only three collectors on my lines besides myself--the romance of the shepherd sale--its confirmation of my views--small proportion of genuine amateurs in the coin-market--fastidious buyers not very serviceable to the trade--an anecdote by the way--the eye for state more educated in england than abroad--american feeling and culture--what will rare old coins bring, when the knowledge of them is more developed?--the ladies stop the way--continental indifference to condition--difficulties attendant on ordering from foreign catalogues--contrast between them and our own--_d'une beauté excessive_--condition a relative term--its dependence on circumstances--words of counsel--final conclusions--do i regret having become a collector?--my mistakes. _condition_, with the majority of coin-collectors, does not rule at all. a man wants a particular piece for the sake of study or of possession; and so long as the type is there, he is satisfied. that is the general religion of amateurs. with a second section this quality becomes a merit; if the coin is a good one, so much the better, if it is not too dear. with half-a-dozen perchance in each generation, if with so many, the state is a postulate; the purchaser of the item depends on that above everything else; and the price is secondary. i have known very few persons in my time, who seemed thoroughly to understand what a fine coin was. it is not sufficient that it is well-preserved or even _fleur de coin_; for it may have been badly struck, or it may be damaged by a flaw or by the cleaner. it should be well struck, perfectly preserved, and unsophisticated. if there is a tone or _patina_, that should be pure and uniform. the value and force of condition in coins are not fully recognisable, till one is fortunate enough to accumulate a body similar in style and rank. in a collection of first-rate examples each new-comer enhances the rest, and is enhanced by them, and the converse is true of the presence of inferior productions, which demoralise and deteriorate their companions. it seemed to me that this was signally demonstrated, where at sotheby's rooms a ten-shilling piece in silver of the oxford declaration type, 1643, occurred among an assortment of poor material, and brought £14. it was in mint-state, and in a sale with others of similar stamp would have doubtless attracted wider attention, and commanded at all events twice the money. i exchanged it with lincoln for an indifferent one in my possession, which had cost me five guineas, and for which he allowed me eight, so that it came to me at about ten per cent. on the auction price. my undeviating experience is that the survival of really fine old coins, except in the greek and roman series, where continual finds operate to shake values, so far as all but the roman first brass and the greek copper are concerned, is very small. i have repeatedly put this point to a practical test. mr whelan once overhauled on my behalf at paris some 3000 coins, and brought over with him _sixteen_, of which i rejected _eight_. messrs lincoln & son several years since placed on view about 2000 greek silver pieces; of course many were duplicate specimens; but i failed to discover more than about a score within my rather exacting and trying lines. at the sale of the united service institution in 1895 there were fully 3000 copper coins; from these thirty or so were selected as likely to suit me; and i reduced the number on a final scrutiny to half. when the boyne cabinet of old continental money was offered for sale, the series being so peculiarly on my lines, i carefully marked the catalogue, and in due course examined the collection. there were by estimation 25,000 pieces, more or less; it was a heavy task; but my object was numismatic as well as commercial. i aimed at taking notes no less than at venturing on a few purchases; and i found the same thing. the items had been over-described as regarded condition; and i could not see more than twenty or thirty, which were likely to be of advantage to me in augmenting my small gathering without detriment to the prevailing quality. even in the montagu sales of greek silver, where such high prices ruled, and of which so much was made in the papers, the proportion of first-rate pieces was inconsiderable. i went through the whole; and the apology tendered by the exhibitor before the auction was that many of them were so rare. this plea may hold very good for a public repository like the british museum, which is supposed to possess an example of every existing piece of ancient currency (by the way, it by no means does); but i maintain that it is no argument for a private collector, unless it happens that he is closely studying a particular section of numismatics. under ordinary circumstances, the coin, and for that matter the medal also, is to be treated as a work of art or as a curiosity by its owner or seeker, and it appears to be inconsistent with the nature of the case to amass a huge assemblage of numismatic monuments, which are not required for use, and which are not suitable as ornaments or _chefs d'oeuvre_. the prevailing standard in our own and in foreign public institutions is not usually high, because they have been largely indebted to gifts and legacies in days when preservation was not even so much regarded as at present. i am persuaded that a fine sense of the constituent features of a good coin has always been, and remains, a signal exception to the general rule. i cannot remember in the course of the eighteen years, which i have dedicated in partial measure to these interesting objects of inquiry and regard, more than three instances, in which my _beau ideal_ of a cabinet has been fulfilled. but i must be careful not to omit to note that i did not see the montagu collection of english coins so largely derived from those of mr addington and mr bryce. the cases, to which i refer, were those of mr lake price, mr shepherd and mr rostron, who observed the principle recommended by me, and carried out most scrupulously in my own selection. the result in all instances was that high, and even extraordinary, prices were obtained. the quality was uniform; there was _bona fides_; and the names helped. there was, of course, nothing strange or singular in the realisation of £255 for a _half george noble_ of henry viii.; but what illustrated, as well as any example, the force of a favourable prejudice, was the advance of a shilling of charles ii. of 1673 (a common date) to £11, because it was marvellously fine, and was in that atmosphere. i procured an exact duplicate the same day for 14s. the shepherd cabinet was remarkable for beautifully struck anglo-norman halfpennies and farthings in silver, some of them of the highest rarity, if not unique; and, then, mr montagu was in the field. everything concurred to render the shepherd affair a great success. i had not waited for this notable event (it took place in 1885) to come to the conclusion, that quality was to be preferred to quantity. at an early stage in my numismatic career, i began to follow exactly the same rule at a distance--that is, so far as my resources would allow me; and i vexed the spirit of one at least of the firms, with which i chiefly dealt, by making it the shoot for my inferior duplicates. i must in this way have weeded my trays of hundreds of pieces, which satisfied me at the outset, tolerably fastidious as i was; and i feel the relief and the benefit. but how completely a hobby of this or any other kind, when it is pursued as a serious business, engrosses time and attention, and becomes part of one's life--perchance the greater part, i did not realise for some time after my entrance into the arena, or i should have hesitated to proceed. a sensible proportion--almost a preponderant one--of collectors resemble windfalls; they never arrive at maturity; they commit mistakes, which dishearten them, or they discover the hopeless magnitude of the scheme, and abandon it after a season or two, nay, after a single transaction, over which they chew the cud, with the result that the lot returns to the vendor at a reduced figure. the members of the trade are fully aware, that those who are genuine amateurs, and who never swerve from their undertaking during life, may be counted on the fingers. the bookseller may have a large number of customers; but he lives by a very small one; and it is so with all dealers in luxuries and fancies. the student of condition in coins and medals is by no means the frequenter of his premises, whom the numismatic expert most delights to see, although he may be of the private opinion, that his policy is the right one, for he is necessarily a difficult person to suit and to please; the man, who wants the coin, so long as it is authentic and legible, is the more welcome visitor. he acquires at lower quotations; yet the attendant profit to the vendor is probably more, because for mediocre property the competition is so much less severe. of all clients in the world, those, who are content to take examples otherwise with no future before them but the crucible, are the most valuable; they deserve to be bowed in and out. the rare phenomenon, who knows more than the master of the shop, and touches nothing but what the foreigner calls _pijoux_, is a questionable god-send, for he has too keen a nose for rarities, and only carries away what is sure money and has no determinable value. a vexatious incident happened to a leading house in this sort of way. doubtless every dealer has had his experience of letting prizes go without being aware of it; and it is a distasteful aggravation of the annoyance to notify a great bargain to the party concerned. in a window in new oxford street the story goes, that a foreign silver coin was exhibited for sale, the price 15s. a gentleman of continental origin went in, and asked to see it. 'was that the lowest price?' 'yes.' 'ah! well, it was a nice coin, but rather dear. say twelve shillings. no, fifteen it must be.' but the proposed buyer continued to look at the piece, and to lament the impossibility of securing it at so high a tariff, till the owner, impatient at the loss of his time, agreed to accept the reduction. our friend put his purchase in his pocket, and laid down the amount and then, as he turned to leave the shop, he held up his finger, and with a pleasant smile observed, 'that co-in worth one hundred pound.' the feelings of the victim were probably homicidal. he scarcely forgave me, i fear, for purchasing for £3, 10s. a very fine thaler of wallenstein, 1632, of which an inferior example just afterward realised a far higher figure, but which was itself one in a lot sold under the hammer for £1, 14s. it is true that it was badly catalogued. the english dealers have certainly a superior eye to those abroad for what i term _state_. there may not be many, who lay so great a stress on this aspect of the matter as those, whose collections realised in consequence abnormal prices, and enjoy a classical celebrity; but the mean average among us is, no doubt, higher than it is either in america or on the continent. the american coin-market is in a totally different stage of development from that in books; our transatlantic cousins have not that local and technical experience so essential in the study of numismatics; and they can scarcely be said to compete seriously so far for the rarer and more important objects. they have in the course of the last fifty years made very considerable progress, as we all know, in literary antiquities and in works of art. but the coin and medal have their turn to come. there is not, perhaps, any one living, who will witness the vast revolution in prices, when the wealthier citizens of the united states become our rivals for what is finest and scarcest in this remaining field. one obstacle in the way of coins coming to the front is the inherent necessity for keeping them out of view; they are not so showy as pictures, china, furniture, or even books; and they demand on the part of an amateur, desirous of accomplishing equally satisfactory results, a larger amount of study and caution. the ladies frequently influence these things: they prefer ornaments, which set off their _salons_ and corridors to advantage; and the numismatist meets with discouragement, unless he is unusually resolute or impassioned. nay, it is so in the old country, where tradition looks farther back, and is more deeply rooted; and the dealer never cares to see a client enter, accompanied by his wife or daughter. they operate as refrigerators. on the continent with its past infinitely remote, and with its immense area abounding with centres of culture and inquiry, the general feeling for high preservation in coins is certainly not so pronounced as among ourselves. setting aside, as mere commercial parlance, the phrases employed by the foreign houses to denote condition, collectors themselves are comparatively insensible or indifferent to the matter. i have had frequent occasion to return with a feeling of disappointment specimens sent me on approval from abroad, and even purchased on commission, where my agent was the cataloguer, and in my judgment misdescribed the lot; and a new snare has been prepared for the unwary in the form of illustrated lists, where, if you select an item which has been engraved, the auctioneer seeks to hold you to your bargain on the plea that you have had an opportunity of seeing the coin in the plate. but the fact is that the coin and the representation of it even by some photographic process are not necessarily identical, and i should recommend any amateur giving his orders to a continental establishment to ignore the illustrations as tests or _criteria_. several articles in a paris sale, which appeared very fair in the letterpress account and in the _planches_ accompanying it, came over to me; and i peremptorily refused to take them as being at variance with the catalogue, to which the agent stood at once in the relation of compiler and owner. the foreign houses court english support, and although they are fully aware that their clients at a distance wholly depend on trustworthy descriptions, they habitually misrepresent the circumstances, and expect the buyer to bear the brunt of their want of care or faith. on the other hand, the neglect to convey the full or exact truth may often arise from ignorance or absence of taste and judgment. for i have observed the relative valuation of poor, tolerable, fine, and superb examples of a particular coin in the hands of this or that dealer. an english house would be glad to get rid of the former two categories at any figure, or would melt them; the third he would expect to reimburse him for the first and second; and the _fleur de coin_ or proof he would hardly know how to estimate too highly. his foreign contemporary acts very differently; he has a scale, it is true; but between the worst and the best the financial distance is surprisingly small. for a distinctly bad example he asks you a _franc_, for a finer one, two, for a really first-rate specimen, four, and for a proof, six. in the case of one of the english sources of supply, the difference would be, that for the fine piece you would have to pay ten _francs_ or their equivalent and for the proof not impossibly five-and-twenty. this corroborates my statement, inasmuch as it shews that condition does not form so influential a factor abroad in determining values, as it does at home. the 'numismatiste et antiquaire' complacently schedules his property as _assez beau_, _beau_, _très beau_; all these notations are practically worthless; the experienced buyer knows beforehand what he will get, if he sends for the items; and it is wise to limit oneself to such prodigies of excellence as are shadowed under the terms _f.d.c._, _superbe_, and _d'une beauté excessive_. when you receive your parcel, you find that you have what lincoln or spink would offer as a fine coin. schulman of amersfoort had my commission in the sale of the local find a year or so since to obtain for me a gold _zecchino_ of ercole i., duke of ferrara, which the aforesaid averred to be '_d'une beauté excessive_;' but a representative of the british museum attended in person, and bought it over me. i afterward examined it in great russell street, was very glad that i had missed it, and procured a better one in the boyne sale for less money. condition is, after all, a relative term. it depends, 1. on the metal; 2. on the fabric. gold and electrum are subject to ordinary wear and tear in common with the inferior materials used for coinage, and are more liable to clipping and sweating for the sake of the intrinsic value; but these products do not suffer corrosion; the only superficial injury which is noticeable has arisen from their deposit in certain soils, as in the sand of egypt, where the effect is to blister or speckle the surface. the russian platinum series appears to be sensitive to nothing but friction and use, and as it has not been an ordinary circulating medium, it occurs as a rule unworn. as regards the lower metals, silver, copper, lead and tin, the money struck in these naturally follows the laws, to which they submit; but it also exhibits the results of imperfect preparation and alloy. the finer the silver, the less difficult it becomes to procure specimens in a satisfactory state; but scarcely any are exempt from oxidisation, which is apt in course of time to destroy the surface and the type. a peculiar tarnish, which it is not easy to remove, is found on particular coins--for example, shillings and sixpences of george iii. 1816--and in metal of low standard an expectation of improvement from cleaning processes is generally illusory. the presence of chemical decomposition in copper, lead or tin pieces ought to be sufficient to deter the fastidious collector from entertaining them as purchases. copper is heir to all sorts of ills: verdegris, rust, corrosion, and blisters, and where the defect has been of long duration, there is no really effectual remedy, as the recognised appliances may not succeed or, which is almost worse, may succeed only in part. then, secondly, the circumstances of issue, as in obsidional pieces and other money of necessity, have been so hurried and incomplete, that the discovery of a faultless specimen is impossible, and it is for the seeker to decide whether he will tolerate a flaw, which is inseparable from the acquisition, or dispense with it. i do not of course allude to the vendor's expression, 'fine for the coin,' but to certain cases, where a real difficulty exists in every series, especially where _billon_ prevails in currencies. so much depends, first, on the skill or care, with which the amalgam was originally made, and, again, on the subsequent treatment of the example in passing from hand to hand. the coating of white solution in the older pieces has almost invariably disappeared; it is something, if the type is irreproachable. there is a perpetual confusion in the catalogues between copper and mixed metal from the failure of the plating operation; but the value is an almost sure clue. for this reason the 12-_grossi_ piece or _fiorino_ of monaco, 1640, should not have been sold in the boyne auction, 1896, as copper. but certainly the cataloguer misinterpreted the _g. xii._ on the piece into 12 grana. that august government was not in the habit of giving four shillings for sixpence. these plated currencies are a terrible plague to the numismatist, as 99 specimens out of 100 have parted with their white coats. where a really valuable and important coin is concerned, it is a subject for careful deliberation, whether it is best to let it pass, to keep it as it is, or to restore it. if the foreign matter is merely a loose incrustation or _stratum_, there is no great uncertainty or danger; where the mischief is more deeply seated, the risk of failure grows fearfully. i have a silver crown of queen elizabeth in almost perfect state, but as black as ink; i shrink from touching it. i applied ammonia to a first brass of one of the roman emperors, and spoiled it, although the dirt seemed to be recent and tractable. a _testone_ of one of the medici of florence was perfectly discoloured and disfigured; the most simple of all remedies acted like an enchantment; it emerged _fleur de coin_; and whatever objection may be said to exist to these experiments, the forbearance from employing chemicals, and the natural action of the atmosphere, gradually bring back the tone and the age. where one is able to meet with early _billon_ money, which has miraculously escaped all deteriorating agencies, it is a real pleasure to contemplate the mixture of bloom and _patina_, which time has lent to a piece. but this can hardly occur, unless the proportion of fine metal is sensible. in the greek and roman series, as well as in those of more modern days, there are various forms of deception and danger, against which i have had occasion to guard. of course no one, who is out of leading strings, buys a roman first or second brass, which has been polished with brick-dust, a lot which had befallen an entire cabinet sold at an auction within my remembrance. but there are less obvious sources of degradation due to various causes and motives, amongst which tooling for the purpose of creating an artificial bloom or _patina_, and plugging in order to disguise a bore or piercing, are the most usual. the strangest feature about sophistication and forgery seems to be the elaborate trouble, which it must have cost to spoil a genuine coin or to fabricate a false one, where the original in good state is not difficult to procure. this may be ascribed to perverted ingenuity; but it is literally vain to attempt to trace to their parentage these phenomena. the systematic manufacture of roman money is more understandable, because it flourished just when that money was most eagerly sought. after all, the perils which beset the path of the collector, lend a fillip to the pursuit. were there not such occasional contingencies, a career would be really deficient in anecdote and excitement, just as, without its rocks, quicksands, and sharks the sea would be less adventurous and less interesting. * * * * * i have personally come, and i trust that i may have been so fortunate as to bring some of the perusers of this small book, to the threefold conclusion under all the heads which i have discussed: 1. that for all ordinary buyers for their own pleasure and instruction the eclectic principle is the best; 2. that condition is a primary requirement; 3. that it is thoroughly practicable for an individual of very moderate fortune by persevering study--in itself a recreation--to form an extensive and valuable assemblage of whatever description of artistic property he prefers on terms, which will secure on realisation the return of the capital with interest. this appears to be the only aspect of the collecting question worth considering. wealthy men, who indulge a taste for books, pictures, china, coins, or plate, do not commonly sympathise with the poorer sort, who have to deliberate over a heavier purchase, and to wait years, perhaps, for a dearly-coveted acquisition; and i pique myself a little on having achieved under serious drawbacks a creditable degree of success in the matter of coins. if i had attempted the same task in other directions--almost in any other direction, i should have failed, inasmuch as books, pictures, plate, and china of an equal or parallel quality go too few to the £1000 to have suited me; and even postage stamps are in an unreachable altitude for a different reason--it is one of the enterprises, where exhaustive treatment seems to be an essential feature in the programme; while the interest is serial and concrete, rather than individual. one misses the perspective, the art, the sentiment, so omnipresent in genuine antiquities. as a sort of grown-up child's hobby-horse it might be well enough, i thought; but when it acquires its own literature and society, and, before you can see completeness in the near distance, locks up the purchase-money of a considerable estate, that fantasy and myself take different turnings. so that the coin, rather even than the book--not looking, of course, at the practical side--is the most manageable species of property, for supposing outlay to be a governing principle, all the other classes of objects of art are more or less _vertu_; and certain books have of late become so through the entrance into the field of the fortunatus type of _bibliophile_. the diversity of paths is wonderfully great, whether the means of acquisition are abundant or scanty; and for either contingency, as regards extent, there is a plea and a defence. the man, who possesses a miniature cabinet with a few hundred samples is apt to wax tired of surveying his property, even if they are all favourites with little histories of their own; and his friends share his tendency to indifference and defection. on the contrary, when the collection is very extensive and constantly growing, the personal attachment is transferred to the newest comers. it is like the mother with her last child; and the owner of a really large assemblage of coins resembles that of a great estate, who does not see portions of it from year's end to year's end. he occupies a parallel position to the master of a grand library, and is a curator with the power of sale rather than a proprietor and _an intimate_. my personal tastes are fairly steadfast, and i have never been enabled to soar into the regions, where some of my distinguished and opulent acquaintances, such as captain p---and lord g----, disburse more in a twelvemonth than i have done in a lifetime. but i have been truer on the other hand, to the plan, with which i set out. i felt certain that i should have to exercise a great deal of self-restraint and self-denial; i turned away with a sigh from many a prize, which might have been mine; and there has been this recompense--if it is one--that i have seen those coveted objects change hands more than once in several cases, while i pursue year after year--nay, decade after decade--my humbler programme and flight, till ultimately i may perhaps succeed, just as i am making my bow, in the part of the tortoise in the fable. some people are supremely happy without books, except the family bible, the _london directory_, bradshaw, and a handful of cheap printed paper in book-form, without china, without coins, without anything except tables and chairs. do i wish i were as these? not, as i now look at life, but perhaps, if i had, like them, been an eight-days' puppy-dog--then, well, yes. one of the huths, with whom i was debating this point, agreed with me that tables and chairs were very excellent things, but something more was to be desired, to be cultivated, if possible. but it is as human to go to extremes, as it is to err in other ways; and some men (i know one myself) make what ought to be the secondary consideration the first. i do not mean that i sit on the floor, and eat my food with my fingers; but the little _additamenta_ to a home preponderate and overflow somewhat; one must take warning in time from gentlemen, one's predecessors, who at last could barely find their tables and chairs. seeing that i have been up and down the market during a decently long succession of years, i am perhaps entitled to pay myself a few compliments on the singular rarity of occasions, which have found me on the losing and victimised side. thrice have i suffered for my sins; for it was always my own fault. i handled things, which i did not understand; it is an error, against which i should urge every one to guard most strenuously. if you engage in the purchase of a strange commodity lying outside your own experience, it is marvellous in how many a way you are liable to the trumper. it is provoking to note the studious politeness, the almost brotherly interest, with which your friends will point out to you your sad mistake, when you have made it. for mysteries, to which you lack the key, _noli tangere_ is the maxim. there are plenty of objects always in the market, which are fair to the eye, but bitter in the proof. how grateful i was to the enthusiast in his teens, who, when i had wasted a five-pound note on a worm-eaten xylographic block, put down a couple of guineas for it, and left me only poorer by the difference! index a addington, samuel, 97-8, 162, 219-20, 336 æsop, 126 ainger, canon, 39 akbar, the emperor, 272 alexander the great, 313 alfred the great, 306, 323 allot, john, 125 anne, queen, 277 antonius, marcus, 299, 313 arthur of little britain, 306 arthur, thomas, 132, 134 ashburnham, earl of, 321 astle, thomas, f.r.s., 158 atkins, mr, 260 auchinleck sale, 160 audley, lady eleanor, 123 b bacon, francis, 138, 227 baker of old street, 9 barnes, robert, 139 baynes, john, 28 beauclerc, topham, 33 beaumont and fletcher, 50 beckford, w., 161 bedford, f., 165-6, 180-1 beling, richard, 96 beloe, william, 19 benjamin, 230 bentivoglio, gio., 247 bernal, ralph, 202, 231 besant, sir walter, 40 bindley, james, 27 birchensha, ralph, 169 bismarck, prince, 159 blondeau, pierre, 277 boethius, 24 bohn, h. g., 16 ----, john, 153 ----, john, of canterbury, 139 bolland forest, 25 bom of amsterdam, 262-3 bonaparte, lucien, 155 boones, the, 45-7 boswell, james, 27 boyne, w., 164, 289-91, 334, 345, 347 bradshaw, henry, 60 brathwaite, richard, 45, 100 breton, n., 69, 157 bright, b. h., 64 britton, thomas, 27 brooks, w., 195, 199-201, 209-10, 224 brown, william, 6 browsholme, 25 bryce collection, 336 brydges, sir egerton, 9, 33-4, 139 buccleuch, dukes of, 25 buchanan, george, 161 bunbury, sir h., 321 bunyan, john, 121 burke, richard, 223 burton-constable sale, 154 burwood, 192 burt, a. a., 166 butler, samuel, 46 c camus de limari, 33 carausius of britain, 323 carew, thomas, 50 carfrae collection, 321 carmichael, mr, 138 caxton, william, 27, 29, 32, 48, 66, 106 cesnola, 219 chaffers, w., 228, 233 chapman, george, 124 chappell, w., 187 charlemagne, 306 charlemont, lord, 50, 153 charles, i., 224, 269 ---ii., 224, 336 charron, pierre, 125 chaucer, geoffrey, 111-12, 145, 157-8 chester, robert, 85 churchyard, t., 24 cicognara, 13 cleopatra, 299, 313 cleveland, john, 96 cockburn, john, 214, 275 cocker's _decimal arithmetic_, 77 cockpit, the, 36 coleridge, s. t., 3 collier, j. p., 19, 21, 59, 160 constable, henry, 60 ----, john, 134 corney, bolton, 154 corser, rev. t., 20, 64-7, 88-91, 162 cosens, f. w., 67-9 cotton, charles, 105 coutts, lady, 87 cowley, abraham, 121 coxe, dr, 178 cranmer, archbp., 146 crashaw, richard, 104 crawford, lord, 173-4 cripps, mr, 233 cruikshank, george, 103 cunningham, colonel, 51 ----, general, 317 cutlers' company, 185-6 cymbeline or cunobeline, 323 czar, the, 22 d dandolo, enrico, 306 daniel, george, 8, 37-8, 50, 59, 84-6, 110 ----, rose, 136 ----, samuel, 89, 123 davies, thomas, 131 davison, f., 70-1 day, robert, 231 defoe, d., 9 dekker, thomas, 24-5, 169-70 demetrius of bactria, 318 devonshire, duke of, 34 diamond, dr, 191, 193-4, 213-14, 216, 227-9 dibdin, t. f., 19, 46 dillon, lord, 286 dodsley, robert, 129, 182-3 dolfino, gio., 246 donatus, ælius, 130 drayton, michael, 115-16, 154, 170 dryden, john, 99 durazzo collection, 287 dyce, rev. a., 36 dyson, humphrey, 78 e edmund of east anglia, 277 edward iii., 324, 326 ---iv., 140, 276 ---vi., 326 elizabeth, queen, 130, 160, 281 elkins of lombard street, 82 ellis, f. s., 16, 45, 47, 50, 53, 65, 71, 88, 91-103, 141-2, 162, 204 ercole i. of ferrara, 344-5 ethelred ii., 247 eukratides of bactria, 318 evans, sir john, 218 f faliero, marino, 306 faustus, 183 featherstonhaughs, the, 208 fenn, sir john, 156-7 fennell, mr, 140 ferdinand iv. of sicily, 272 festeau, paul, 140 fisher of midhurst, 208 fishmongers' company, 125, 167 fitch of ipswich, 38 ford of manchester, 26 ford, john, 51 foscari, francesco, 306 fountaine, sir a., 161, 213 francia, 285 franks, sir wollaston, 298 freelings, the, 52, 92 freres, the, 156-7-8 fuller, thomas, 49, 104 furnivall, f. j., 99-101 g gale, richard, 195, 201-2 gardyne, alexander, 119 garnett, richard, 179 gascoigne, george, 25-6, 33, 145 gaston de foix, 306 george iii., 22, 326, 346 ---iv., 326 ----, w., 135 gering, ulric, 30 gladstone, w. e., 208 glemham, edward, 168 glendinning, john, 207-8 gloddaeth, 35 glover, william, 119 godfrey, edmund berry, 231 gosson, stephen, 33 gourmont, giles, 32 grant, sir f., 224 grantley, lord, 218, 274-5, 353 gray, sir walter, 153 greene, robert, 125, 157 greenwell, canon, 218, 220, 270 grenville, thomas, 52, 223 grosart, dr, 104 h halliwell-phillipps, j. o., 113, 154, 178 hamilton, sir robert, 245 hariot, thomas, 50 harold ii., 306 haroun el reschid, 272, 305 harrison, f., 40 harthacanute, 277 hartshorne, c. h., 19 harvey, gabriel, 25-6 hastings, marquis of, 95-6, 105 hatton, sir chris., 160 hazlitt, rev. w., 2-3 ----, w. 222-3-5 ----, mr registrar, 2-9, 12, 68 head, dr, 270 heber, richard, 20-38, 51, 66 heliocles of bactria, 318 henderson, john, 34 henrietta maria, 119 henry i. of england, 306 ---iv. of england, 276 ---vii. of england, 179 ---viii. of england, 161, 268, 326, 336 ---iii. of france, 207 ---iv. of france, 245 henry, prince, 125 henryson, robert, 126 herbert, w., 16, 19, 156 heywood, thomas, 130 hibbert, george, 52 hodge, john, 178 hogarth, w., 230 holl, henry, 146 hotten, john camden, 121-2 hudson, captain, 254 huth, henry, 8, 41 _et seq._, 65, 70, 75-6, 86, 99-100, 104-5, 109, 113-14-15, 123, 135, 139-40, 155, 165, 169, 177, 180, 187, 235-6 i ireland, a., 39 ivan the terrible, 281 j jarvis & son, 125-6 jeffreys of bristol, 48, 135 jenson, n., 33 joanna of naples, 306 johnson, richard, 142-3 ----, samuel, 176 jonson, benj. 50, 145 julius cæsar, 313 julius ii., 285 juxon, archbp., 269 k kemble, j. p., 34 kenneys, the, 254 kerny, michael, 174, 273 kerr & richardson, 166 kershaw, mr, 155 l laing, david, 61-2, 126, 162 lamb, charles, 5, 39, 118, 223 ----, mary, 4 lasbury of bristol, 135 laud, archbp., 47 lawrence, edwin, 67, 195 lazarus of holywell street, 134 ---(silversmith), 230 lee priory, 33-4 leighton, mr, 7, 179-80 libri, g., 46 lilly, joseph, 50, 65, 81-3, 89, 145, 161 lincoln & son, 237-41, 256, 258-60, 333, 339, 344 locker-lampson, f., 70, 112, 222 lodge, thomas, 135 london library, 12-13, 15-16, 20 louis xv. and xvi., 209 lovejoy of reading, 111 lovelace, richard, 35-6, 50 lowndes, w. t., 16, 19 luttrell, narcissus, 28 luxmore, rev. mr, 141 lydgate, john, 27 lyly, john, 135 lyndsay, sir d., 94 lyttleton, lady, 89 m macmillan, a., 223 madan, rev. mr, 178 mallet, mr, 26 malone, edmond, 27 maria theresa, 264 mardelay, john, 125 marguerite de foix, 257 marlowe, c., 34-5 martin, richard, 109 mary, queen, 138 maskell, w., 178 mason of barnard's inn, 99 massaniello, 306 massinger, philip, 51 matilda, empress, 306 maunsell, andrew, 28, 153 may, thomas, 145 medici family, 248, 281, 306, 348 millers of craigentinny, 60-3, 65, 69, 91, 119, 223 milman, rev. mr, 31 milon of narbonne, 306 milton, john, 106 molini, 13-14 moncrieffs, the, 4 monstrelet, 178 montagu, h., 218-20, 268-9, 276-7, 319-20-1-4, 334, 336 montaigne, 47, 129, 145 morgan, 195-7 morris, william, 102 mortlock, 209 morton, thomas, 168 mostyn, lord, 35, 80 mottley, j. l., 159 murchison, colonel, 324 murdoch, mr, 218 n napier, miss, 87 naples, prince of, 281 napoleon, i., 274 napoleon, louis, king of holland, 262-3 nash, thomas, 34 nasmyth, 227 nelson, thomas, 125 newton, thomas, 136 nicomedes ii. of bithynia, 271 noble, mr, 109, 123-4 noseda, mrs, 97, 111 nym, corporal, 16 o offa of mercia, 323 offor, george, 153 orlando, 306 ouvry, f., 59 owen, hugh, 214 owen or oswen, john, 153 oxenden, henry, 34, 139 oxford, bishop of, 38-9 p papadopoli, count n., 246-7, 293 park, thomas, 19 parkers of browsholme, 25 peacham, henry, 105 peacock of bottesford manor, mr, 100 pearson, john, 45, 49, 62, 89, 108-12, 155 pearson & co., 112, 154 perceval le gallois, 32 petyt, thomas, 111 philip iii. of spain, 152 philip of macedon, 313 phillipps, sir thomas, 113, 134 philipot, thomas, 119 phillimore, dr, 312 pickering, b. m., 49, 51, 105-7 ----, w., 87, 103 pickering & chatto, 142 pierceforest, 32 pliny, 33 powell, dr, 139 price, lake, 336 ----, lawrence, 140 ptolemy iii., 299 puttick & simpson, 151, 167-71 pyne, henry, 73-80, 82, 87, 114, 135, 155 pynson, richard, 134 q quaritch, b., 8, 13, 29, 50, 52-3, 67, 89, 142, 147-8, 155-7, 162, 166, 171-5, 178-9, 211, 221 quarles, f., 49 r randolph, thomas, 145 rawlins, thomas, 269 rawlinson, thomas, 27 reed, isaac, 31, 34-35 reeves & turner, 78, 111, 128-33, 182 reynardson, mr, 90 reynell, c. w., 4, 7, 226 reynolds, sir joshua, 223 reynolds of hart street, 195, 202-3, 205-6, 210, 215-16 richard, coeur-de-lion, 306 richard iii., 140, 276 richard de benese, 121 richardson, mr, 220 rich's news from virginia, 50 ridler, w., 132-3-4 rimbault, dr, 155-6 rimells, the, 119 riviere, robert, 61, 94-5, 124, 180 ritson, joseph, 19, 27, 28 robert le diable, 306 ---of sicily, 306 robespierre, 212 robin hood, 183 robinson, richard, 30 rodd, thomas, 30, 64 rogers, samuel, 63 roland, 306 rollin & feuardent, 218, 221, 256 rose, james anderson, 192 ----, sir w., 192 rosebery, lord, 126 rostron collection, 336 roy, william, 29 ruskin, john, 13, 111, 219 s sabin, mr., 140 salkeld, john, 122-3-4 sandby, p., 227 sanders, samuel, 67 ----, mr, of chiswick, 198-9 schinner, nicolas, bp. of sion, 280 schulman, j., 261-4, 286, 330, 344 scott, sir walter, 138 selsey, lord, 47 shakespear, w., 3, 31, 34-5, 49-50, 85-8, 112, 132, 136, 138, 145, 158, 181 shepherd collection, 336 shirley, james, 51, 156 simeon, sir john, 162 singer, s. w., 7 sion college, 31 slatyer, w., 134 smith, a. r., 120-1, 153 ----, j. r., 17, 120-1, 182 ----, samuel, 286 somers, lord, 170-1 sotheby & co., 86, 151-2-67, 226-7, 255-6, 289 southwell, robert, 112 spencer, lord, 49, 223 spenser, edmund, 32, 99, 112, 136 spink & son, 277-83, 288, 344 stanfield, 227 steevens, george, 26-7, 29, 34-5, 160 stevens, henry, 178 stibbs, edward, 6, 51, 96, 124, 213 stirling-maxwell, sir w., 180 stock, elliot, 136-7 stoddarts, the, 4 stopes, henry, 137-8 ----, james, 138 ----, leonard, 138 ----, mrs, 138 stubbs, dr, 38-9 suckling, sir john, 183 surrey, earl of, 163 swainson, mr, 160 swinburne, a. c., 103 sylvester, joshua, 124 t tatham, john, 35 taylor, jeremy, 49, 107 ----, john, 105-7, 111, 119-21 thorpe, thomas, 37, 64 thuanus, 161 todd, rev. h. j., 32 tollemaches, the, 38, 85 toovey, james, 47, 113, 123 turbervile, george, 44, 111 turner, r. s., 8, 67 v varley, 227 vaughan, henry, 121 verstegan, richard, 94-5 virgil, 163 vitalini, 287 w wake, henry, 131-2, 134-5 walfords, the, 29, 119-20, 164 wallenstein, 305, 340 waller, edmond, 118 wallers, the, 118-19, 212 walton, isaak, 88, 111-12 ware, sir james, 96 warly, lee, 139 warren, w., 162 warton, thomas, 31, 34 watson-taylor, 29 watts, thomas, 175 way, g. w., 160 wells, _pedigree_, 270 westerton, charles, 146 westmoreland, earl of, 17 whelan, f., 218-21, 267-74, 333 _whisperer, the_, a play,36 whittington, sir richard, 40, 165 wigan, edward, 267 william iv., 324 willis & sotheran, 113 withals, john, 94, 99 wither, george, 49, 123, 154 wolfrestons, the, 104, 140 wynkyn de worde, 27, 48, 132-4, 141 wynne, edward, of chelsea, 28 wyon, w., 213 y yates, james, 90 _colston & coy. limited, printers, edinburgh._ transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. the original text contains a letter with a diacritical mark that is not represented in this text version. the original text includes greek characters that have been replaced with transliterations in this text version. bibliomania in the middle ages by f. somner merryweather _with an introduction by_ charles orr librarian of case library new york meyer brothers & company 1900 copyright, 1900 by meyer bros. & co. louis weiss & co. printers.... 118 fulton street ... new york bibliomania in the middle ages or sketches of bookworms, collectors, bible students, scribes and illuminators _from the anglo-saxon and norman periods to the introduction of printing into england, with anecdotes illustrating the history of the monastic libraries of great britain in the olden time by_ f. somner merryweather, _with an introduction by_ charles orr, _librarian of case library._ introduction. in every century for more than two thousand years, many men have owed their chief enjoyment of life to books. the bibliomaniac of today had his prototype in ancient rome, where book collecting was fashionable as early as the first century of the christian era. four centuries earlier there was an active trade in books at athens, then the center of the book production of the world. this center of literary activity shifted to alexandria during the third century b. c. through the patronage of ptolemy soter, the founder of the alexandrian museum, and of his son, ptolemy philadelphus; and later to rome, where it remained for many centuries, and where bibliophiles and bibliomaniacs were gradually evolved, and from whence in time other countries were invaded. for the purposes of the present work the middle ages cover the period beginning with the seventh century and ending with the time of the invention of printing, or about seven hundred years, though they are more accurately bounded by the years 500 and 1500 a. d. it matters little, however, since there is no attempt at chronological arrangement. about the middle of the present century there began to be a disposition to grant to mediæval times their proper place in the history of the preservation and dissemination of books, and merryweather's _bibliomania in the middle ages_ was one of the earliest works in english devoted to the subject. previous to that time, those ten centuries lying between the fall of the roman empire and the revival of learning were generally referred to as the dark ages, and historians and other writers were wont to treat them as having been without learning or scholarship of any kind. even mr. hallam,[1] with all that judicial temperament and patient research to which we owe so much, could find no good to say of the church or its institutions, characterizing the early university as the abode of "indigent vagabonds withdrawn from usual labor," and all monks as positive enemies of learning. the gloomy survey of mr. hallam, clouded no doubt by his antipathy to all things ecclesiastical, served, however, to arouse the interest of the period, which led to other studies with different results, and later writers were able to discern below the surface of religious fanaticism and superstition so characteristic of those centuries, much of interest in the history of literature; to show that every age produced learned and inquisitive men by whom books were highly prized and industriously collected for their own sakes; in short, to rescue the period from the stigma of absolute illiteracy. if the reader cares to pursue the subject further, after going through the fervid defense of the love of books in the middle ages, of which this is the introduction, he will find outside of its chapters abundant evidence that the production and care of books was a matter of great concern. in the pages of _mores catholici; or ages of faith_, by mr. kenelm digby,[2] or of _the dark ages_, by dr. s. r. maitland,[3] or of that great work of recent years, _books and their makers during the middle ages_, by mr. george haven putnam,[4] he will see vivid and interesting portraits of a great multitude of mediæval worthies who were almost lifelong lovers of learning and books, and zealous laborers in preserving, increasing and transmitting them. and though little of the mass that has come down to us was worthy of preservation on its own account as literature, it is exceedingly interesting as a record of centuries of industry in the face of such difficulties that to workers of a later period might have seemed insurmountable. a further fact worthy of mention is that book production was from the art point of view fully abreast of the other arts during the period, as must be apparent to any one who examines the collections in some of the libraries of europe. much of this beauty was wrought for the love of the art itself. in the earlier centuries religious institutions absorbed nearly all the social intellectual movements as well as the possession of material riches and land. kings and princes were occupied with distant wars which impoverished them and deprived literature and art of that patronage accorded to it in later times. there is occasional mention, however, of wealthy laymen, whose religious zeal induced them to give large sums of money for the copying and ornamentation of books; and there were in the abbeys and convents lay brothers whose fervent spirits, burning with poetical imagination, sought in these monastic retreats and the labor of writing, redemption from their past sins. these men of faith were happy to consecrate their whole existence to the ornamentation of a single sacred book, dedicated to the community, which gave them in exchange the necessaries of life. the labor of transcribing was held, in the monasteries, to be a full equivalent of manual labor in the field. the rule of st. ferreol, written in the sixth century, says that, "he who does not turn up the earth with the plough ought to write the parchment with his fingers." mention has been made of the difficulties under which books were produced; and this is a matter which we who enjoy the conveniences of modern writing and printing can little understand. the hardships of the _scriptorium_ were greatest, of course, in winter. there were no fires in the often damp and ill-lighted cells, and the cold in some of the parts of europe where books were produced must have been very severe. parchment, the material generally used for writing upon after the seventh century, was at some periods so scarce that copyists were compelled to resort to the expedient of effacing the writing on old and less esteemed manuscripts.[5] the form of writing was stiff and regular and therefore exceedingly slow and irksome. in some of the monasteries the _scriptorium_ was at least at a later period, conducted more as a matter of commerce, and making of books became in time very profitable. the church continued to hold the keys of knowledge and to control the means of productions; but the cloistered cell, where the monk or the layman, who had a penance to work off for a grave sin, had worked in solitude, gave way to the apartment specially set aside, where many persons could work together, usually under the direction of a _librarius_ or chief scribe. in the more carefully constructed monasteries this apartment was so placed as to adjoin the calefactory, which allowed the introduction of hot air, when needed. the seriousness with which the business of copying was considered is well illustrated by the consecration of the _scriptorium_ which was often done in words which may be thus translated: "vouchsafe, o lord, to bless this work-room of thy servants, that all which they write therein may be comprehended by their intelligence and realized in their work." while the work of the scribes was largely that of copying the scriptures, gospels, and books of devotion required for the service of the church, there was a considerable trade in books of a more secular kind. particularly was this so in england. the large measure of attention given to the production of books of legends and romances was a distinguishing feature of the literature of england at least three centuries previous to the invention of printing. at about the twelfth century and after, there was a very large production and sale of books under such headings as chronicles, satires, sermons, works of science and medicine, treatises on style, prose romances and epics in verse. of course a large proportion of these were written in or translated from the latin, the former indicating a pretty general knowledge of that language among those who could buy or read books at all. that this familiarity with the latin tongue was not confined to any particular country is abundantly shown by various authorities. mr. merryweather, whose book, as has been intimated, is only a defense of bibliomania itself as it actually existed in the middle ages, gives the reader but scant information as to processes of book-making at that time. but thanks to the painstaking research of others, these details are now a part of the general knowledge of the development of the book. the following, taken from mr. theodore de vinne's _invention of printing_, will, we think, be found interesting: "the size most in fashion was that now known as the demy folio, of which the leaf is about ten inches wide and fifteen inches long, but smaller sizes were often made. the space to be occupied by the written text was mapped out with faint lines, so that the writer could keep his letters on a line, at even distance from each other and within the prescribed margin. each letter was carefully drawn, and filled in or painted with repeated touches of the pen. with good taste, black ink was most frequently selected for the text; red ink was used only for the more prominent words, and the catch-letters, then known as the rubricated letters. sometimes texts were written in blue, green, purple, gold or silver inks, but it was soon discovered that texts in bright color were not so readable as texts in black. "when the copyist had finished his sheet he passed it to the designer, who sketched the border, pictures and initials. the sheet was then given to the illuminator, who painted it. the ornamentation of a mediæval book of the first class is beyond description by words or by wood cuts. every inch of space was used. its broad margins were filled with quaint ornaments, sometimes of high merit, admirably painted in vivid colors. grotesque initials, which, with their flourishes, often spanned the full height of the page, or broad bands of floriated tracery that occupied its entire width, were the only indications of changes of chapter or subject. in printer's phrase the composition was "close-up and solid" to the extreme degree of compactness. the uncommonly free use of red ink for the smaller initials was not altogether a matter of taste; if the page had been written entirely in black ink it would have been unreadable through its blackness. this nicety in writing consumed much time, but the mediæval copyist was seldom governed by considerations of time or expense. it was of little consequence whether the book he transcribed would be finished in one or in ten years. it was required only that he should keep at his work steadily and do his best. his skill is more to be commended than his taste. many of his initials and borders were outrageously inappropriate for the text for which they were designed. the gravest truths were hedged in the most childish conceits. angels, butterflies, goblins, clowns, birds, snails and monkeys, sometimes in artistic, but much oftener in grotesque and sometimes in highly offensive positions are to be found in the illuminated borders of copies of the gospels and writings of the fathers. "the book was bound by the forwarder, who sewed the leaves and put them in a cover of leather or velvet; by the finisher, who ornamented the cover with gilding and enamel. the illustration of book binding, published by amman in his book of trades, puts before us many of the implements still in use. the forwarder, with his customary apron of leather, is in the foreground, making use of a plow-knife for trimming the edges of a book. the lying press, which rests obliquely against the block before him, contains a book that has received the operation of backing-up from a queer shaped hammer lying upon the floor. the workman at the end of the room is sewing together the sections of a book, for sewing was properly regarded as a man's work, and a scientific operation altogether beyond the capacity of the raw seamstress. the work of the finisher is not represented, but the brushes, the burnishers, the sprinklers and the wheel-shaped gilding tools hanging against the wall leave us no doubt as to their use. there is an air of antiquity about everything connected with this bookbindery which suggests the thought that its tools and usages are much older than those of printing. chevillier says that seventeen professional bookbinders found regular employment in making up books for the university of paris, as early as 1292. wherever books were produced in quantities, bookbinding was set apart as a business distinct from that of copying. "the poor students who copied books for their own use were also obliged to bind them, which they did in a simple but efficient manner by sewing together the folded sheets, attaching them to narrow parchment bands, the ends of which were made to pass through a cover of stout parchment at the joint near the back. the ends of the bands were then pasted down under the stiffening sheet of the cover, and the book was pressed. sometimes the cover was made flexible by the omission of the stiffening sheet; sometimes the edges of the leaves were protected by flexible and overhanging flaps which were made to project over the covers; or by the insertion in the covers of stout leather strings with which the two covers were tied together. ornamentation was entirely neglected, for a book of this character was made for use and not for show. these methods of binding were mostly applied to small books intended for the pocket; the workmanship was rough, but the binding was strong and serviceable." the book of mr. merryweather, here reprinted, is thought worthy of preservation in a series designed for the library of the booklover. its publication followed shortly after that of the works of digby and maitland, but shows much original research and familiarity with early authorities; and it is much more than either of these, or of any book with which we are acquainted, a plea in defense of bibliomania in the middle ages. indeed the charm of the book may be said to rest largely upon the earnestness with which he takes up his self-imposed task. one may fancy that after all he found it not an easy one; in fact his "conclusion" is a kind of apology for not having made out a better case. but this he believes he has proven, "that with all their superstition, with all their ignorance, their blindness to philosophic light--the monks of old were hearty lovers of books; that they encouraged learning, fostered it, and transcribed repeatedly the books which they had rescued from the destruction of war and time; and so kindly cherished and husbanded them as intellectual food for posterity. such being the case, let our hearts look charitably upon them; and whilst we pity them for their superstition, or blame them for their pious frauds, love them as brother men and workers in the mines of literature." of the author himself little can be learned. a diligent search revealed little more than the entry in the london directory which, in various years from 1840 to 1850, gives his occupation as that of bookseller, at 14 king street, holborn. indeed this is shown by the imprint of the title-page of _bibliomania_, which was published in 1849. he published during the same year _dies dominicæ_, and in 1850 _glimmerings in the dark_, and _lives and anecdotes of misers_. the latter has been immortalized by charles dickens as one of the books bought at the bookseller's shop by boffin, the golden dustman, and which was read to him by the redoubtable silas wegg during sunday evenings at "boffin's bower."[6] footnotes: [1] hallam, henry. "introduction to the literature of europe." 4 vols. london. [2] digby, kenelm. "mores catholici; or ages of faith." 3 vols. london, 1848. [3] maitland, s. r. "the dark ages; a series of essays intended to illustrate the state of religion and literature in the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries." london, 1845. [4] putnam, george haven. "books and their makers during the middle ages; a study of the conditions of the production and distribution of literature from the fall of the roman empire to the close of the seventeenth century." [5] lacroix, paul. "arts of the middle ages." our author, however (_vide_ page 58, _note_), quotes the accounts of the church of norwich to show that parchments sold late in the thirteenth century at about 1 d. per sheet; but putnam and other writers state that up to that time it was a very costly commodity. [6] dickens's mutual friend. chapter i. _introductory remarks--monachism--book destroyers--effects of the reformation on monkish learning, etc._ in recent times, in spite of all those outcries which have been so repeatedly raised against the illiterate state of the dark ages, many and valuable efforts have been made towards a just elucidation of those monkish days. these labors have produced evidence of what few anticipated, and some even now deny, viz., that here and there great glimmerings of learning are perceivable; and although debased, and often barbarous too, they were not quite so bad as historians have usually proclaimed them. it may surprise some, however, that an attempt should be made to prove that, in the olden time in "merrie englande," a passion which dibdin has christened bibliomania, existed then, and that there were many cloistered bibliophiles as warm and enthusiastic in book collecting as the doctor himself. but i must here crave the patience of the reader, and ask him to refrain from denouncing what he may deem a rash and futile attempt, till he has perused the volume and thought well upon the many facts contained therein. i am aware that many of these facts are known to all, but some, i believe, are familiar only to the antiquary--the lover of musty parchments and the cobwebbed chronicles of a monastic age. i have endeavored to bring these facts together--to connect and string them into a continuous narrative, and to extract from them some light to guide us in forming an opinion on the state of literature in those ages of darkness and obscurity; and here let it be understood that i merely wish to give a fact as history records it. i will not commence by saying the middle ages were dark and miserably ignorant, and search for some poor isolated circumstance to prove it; i will not affirm that this was pre-eminently the age in which real piety flourished and literature was fondly cherished, and strive to find all those facts which show its learning, purposely neglecting those which display its unlettered ignorance: nor let it be deemed ostentation when i say that the literary anecdotes and bookish memoranda now submitted to the reader have been taken, where such a course was practicable, from the original sources, and the references to the authorities from whence they are derived have been personally consulted and compared. that the learning of the middle ages has been carelessly represented there can be little doubt: our finest writers in the paths of history have employed their pens in denouncing it; some have allowed difference of opinion as regards ecclesiastical policy to influence their conclusions; and because the poor scribes were monks, the most licentious principles, the most dismal ignorance and the most repulsive crimes have been attributed to them. if the monks deserved such reproaches from posterity, they have received no quarter; if they possessed virtues as christians, and honorable sentiments as men, they have met with no reward in the praise or respect of this liberal age: they were monks! superstitious priests and followers of rome! what good could come of them? it cannot be denied that there were crimes perpetrated by men aspiring to a state of holy sanctity; there are instances to be met with of priests violating the rules of decorum and morality; of monks revelling in the dissipating pleasures of sensual enjoyments, and of nuns whose frail humanity could not maintain the purity of their virgin vows. but these instances are too rare to warrant the slanders and scurrility that historians have heaped upon them. and when we talk of the sensuality of the monks, of their gross indulgences and corporeal ease, we surely do so without discrimination; for when we speak of the middle ages thus, our thoughts are dwelling on the sixteenth century, its mocking piety and superstitious absurdity; but in the olden time of monastic rule, before monachism had burst its ancient boundaries, there was surely nothing physically attractive in the austere and dull monotony of a cloistered life. look at the monk; mark his hard, dry studies, and his midnight prayers, his painful fasting and mortifying of the flesh; what can we find in this to tempt the epicure or the lover of indolence and sloth? they were fanatics, blind and credulous--i grant it. they read gross legends, and put faith in traditionary lies--i grant it; but do not say, for history will not prove it, that in the middle ages the monks were wine bibbers and slothful gluttons. but let not the protestant reader be too hastily shocked. i am not defending the monastic system, or the corruption of the cloister--far from it. i would see the usefulness of man made manifest to the world; but the measure of my faith teaches charity and forgiveness, and i can find in the functions of the monk much that must have been useful in those dark days of feudal tyranny and lordly despotism. we much mistake the influence of the monks by mistaking their position; we regard them as a class, but forget from whence they sprang; there was nothing aristocratic about them, as their constituent parts sufficiently testify; they were, perhaps, the best representatives of the people that could be named, being derived from all classes of society. thus offa, the saxon king, and cædman, the rustic herdsman, were both monks. these are examples by no means rare, and could easily be multiplied. such being the case, could not the monks more readily feel and sympathize with all, and more clearly discern the frailties of their brother man, and by kind admonition or stern reproof, mellow down the ferocity of a saxon nature, or the proud heart of a norman tyrant? but our object is not to analyze the social influence of monachism in the middle ages: much might be said against it, and many evils traced to the sad workings of its evil spirit, but still withal something may be said in favor of it, and those who regard its influence in _those days alone_ may find more to admire and defend than they expected, or their protestant prejudices like to own. but, leaving these things, i have only to deal with such remains as relate to the love of books in those times. i would show the means then in existence of acquiring knowledge, the scarcity or plentitude of books, the extent of their libraries, and the rules regulating them; and bring forward those facts which tend to display the general routine of a literary monk, or the prevalence of bibliomania in those days. it is well known that the great national and private libraries of europe possess immense collections of manuscripts, which were produced and transcribed in the monasteries, during the middle ages, thousands there are in the rich alcoves of the vatican at rome, unknown save to a choice and favored few; thousands there are in the royal library of france, and thousands too reposing on the dusty shelves of the bodleian and cottonian libraries in england; and yet, these numbers are but a small portion--a mere relic--of the intellectual productions of a past and obscure age.[7] the barbarians, who so frequently convulsed the more civilized portions of europe, found a morbid pleasure in destroying those works which bore evidence to the mental superiority of their enemies. in england, the saxons, the danes, and the normans were each successively the destroyers of literary productions. the saxon chronicle, that invaluable repository of the events of so many years, bears ample testimony to numerous instances of the loss of libraries and works of art, from fire, or by the malice of designing foes. at some periods, so general was this destruction, so unquenchable the rapacity of those who caused it, that instead of feeling surprised at the manuscripts of those ages being so few and scanty, we have cause rather to wonder that so many have been preserved. for even the numbers which escaped the hands of the early and unlettered barbarians met with an equally ignominious fate from those for whom it would be impossible to hold up the darkness of their age as a plausible excuse for the commission of this egregious folly. these men over whose sad deeds the bibliophile sighs with mournful regret, were those who carried out the reformation, so glorious in its results; but the righteousness of the means by which those results were effected are very equivocal indeed. when men form themselves into a faction and strive for the accomplishment of one purpose, criminal deeds are perpetrated with impunity, which, individually they would blush and scorn to do; they feel no direct responsibility, no personal restraint; and, such as possess fierce passions, under the cloak of an organized body, give them vent and gratification; and those whose better feelings lead them to contemplate upon these things content themselves with the conclusion, that out of evil cometh good. the noble art of printing was unable, with all its rapid movements, to rescue from destruction the treasures of the monkish age; the advocates of the reformation eagerly sought for and as eagerly destroyed those old popish volumes, doubtless there was much folly, much exaggerated superstition pervading them; but there was also some truth, a few facts worth knowing, and perhaps a little true piety also, and it would have been no difficult matter to have discriminated between the good and the bad. but the careless grants of a licentious monarch conferred a monastery on a court favorite or political partizan without one thought for the preservation of its contents. it is true a few years after the dissolution of these houses, the industrious leland was appointed to search and rummage over their libraries and to preserve any relic worthy of such an honor; but it was too late, less learned hands had rifled those parchment collections long ago, mutilated their finest volumes by cutting out with childish pleasure the illuminations with which they were adorned; tearing off the bindings for the gold claps which protected the treasures within,[8] and chopping up huge folios as fuel for their blazing hearths, and immense collections were sold as waste paper. bale, a strenuous opponent of the monks, thus deplores the loss of their books: "never had we bene offended for the losse of our lybraryes beynge so many in nombre and in so desolate places for the moste parte, yf the chief monuments and moste notable workes of our excellent wryters had bene reserved, yf there had bene in every shyre of englande but one solemyne library to the preservacyon of those noble workers, and preferrement of good learnynges in oure posteryte it had bene yet somewhat. but to destroye all without consyderacion, is and wyll be unto englande for ever a most horryble infamy amonge the grave senyours of other nations. a grete nombre of them whych purchased those superstycyose mansyons reserved of those lybrarye bokes, some to serve theyr jakes, some to scoure theyr candelstyckes, and some to rubbe theyr bootes; some they solde to the grossers and sope sellers, and some they sent over see to the bokebynders,[9] not in small nombre, but at tymes _whole shippes ful_. i know a merchant man, whyche shall at thys tyme be nameless, that boughte the contents of two noble lybraryes for xl shyllyngs pryce, a shame is it to be spoken. thys stuffe hathe he occupyed in the stide of graye paper for the space of more than these ten years, and yet hath store ynough for as many years to come. a prodyguose example is this, and to be abhorred of all men who love theyr natyon as they shoulde do."[10] however pernicious the roman religion might have been in its practice, it argues little to the honor of the reformers to have used such means as this to effect its cure; had they merely destroyed those productions connected with the controversies of the day, we might perhaps have excused it, on the score of party feeling; but those who were commissioned to visit the public libraries of the kingdom were often men of prejudiced intellects and shortsighted wisdom, and it frequently happened that an ignorant and excited mob became the executioners of whole collections.[11] it would be impossible now to estimate the loss. manuscripts of ancient and classic date would in their hands receive no more respect than some dry husky folio on ecclesiastical policy; indeed, they often destroyed the works of their own party through sheer ignorance. in a letter sent by dr. cox to william paget, secretary, he writes that the proclamation for burning books had been the occasion of much hurt. "for new testaments and bibles (not condemned by proclamation) have been burned, and that, out of parish churches and good men's houses. they have burned innumerable of the king's majesties books concerning our religion lately set forth."[12] the ignorant thus delighted to destroy that which they did not understand, and the factional spirit of the more enlightened would not allow them to make one effort for the preservation of those valuable relics of early english literature, which crowded the shelves of the monastic libraries; the sign of the cross, the use of red letters on the title page, the illuminations representing saints, or the diagrams and circles of a mathematical nature, were at all times deemed sufficient evidence of their popish origin and fitness for the flames.[13] when we consider the immense number of mss. thus destroyed, we cannot help suspecting that, if they had been carefully preserved and examined, many valuable and original records would have been discovered. the catalogues of old monastic establishments, although containing a great proportion of works on divine and ecclesiastical learning, testify that the monks did not confine their studies exclusively to legendary tales or superstitious missals, but that they also cultivated a taste for classical and general learning. doubtless, in the ruin of the sixteenth century, many original works of monkish authors perished, and the splendor of the transcript rendered it still more liable to destruction; but i confess, as old fuller quaintly says, that "there were many volumes full fraught with superstition which, notwithstanding, might be useful to learned men, except any will deny apothecaries the privilege of keeping poison in their shops, when they can make antidotes of them. but besides this, what beautiful bibles! rare fathers! subtle schoolmen! useful historians! ancient! middle! modern! what painful comments were here amongst them! what monuments of mathematics all massacred together!"[14] more than a cart load of manuscripts were taken away from merton college and destroyed, and a vast number from the baliol and new colleges, oxford;[15] but these instances might be infinitely multiplied, so terrible were those intemperate outrages. all this tends to enforce upon us the necessity of using considerable caution in forming an opinion of the nature and extent of learning prevalent during those ages which preceded the discovery of the art of printing. footnotes: [7] the sad page in the annals of literary history recording the destruction of books and mss. fully prove this assertion. in france, in the year 1790, 4,194,000 volumes were burnt belonging to the suppressed monasteries, about 25,000 of these were manuscripts. [8] "about this time (feb. 25, 1550) the council book mentions the king's sending a letter for the purging his library at westminster. the persons are not named, but the business was to cull out all superstitious books, as missals, legends, and such like, and to deliver the garniture of the books, being either gold or silver, to sir anthony aucher. these books were many of them plated with gold and silver and curiously embossed. this, as far as we can collect, was the superstition that destroyed them. here avarice had a very thin disguise, and the courtiers discovered of what spirit they were to a remarkable degree."--collier's eccle. history, vol. ii. p. 307. [9] any one who can inspect a library of ancient books will find proof of this. a collection of vellum scraps which i have derived from these sources are very exciting to a bibliomaniac, a choice line so abruptly broken, a monkish or classical verse so cruelly mutilated! render an inspection of this odd collection, a tantalizing amusement. [10] bale's leland's laboryouse journey, preface. [11] the works of the schoolmen, viz.: of p. lombard, t. aquinas, scotus and his followers and critics also, and such that had popish scholars in them they cast out of all college libraries and private studies.--_wood's hist. oxon._, vol. i. b. 1. p. 108. and "least their impiety and foolishness in this act should be further wanting, they brought it to pass that certain rude young men should carry this great spoil of books about the city on biers, which being so done, to set them down in the common market place, and then burn them, to the sorrow of many, as well as of the protestants as of the other party. this was by them styled 'the funeral of scotus the scotists.' so that at this time and all this king's reign was seldom seen anything in the universities but books of poetry, grammar, idle songs, and frivolous stuff."--_ibid., wood is referring to the reign of edward vi._ [12] wood's hist. oxon, b. i. p. 81. [13] "gutch has printed in his 'collectiana' an order from the queen's commissioners to destroy all capes, vestments, albes, missals, books, crosses, and such other idolatrous and superstitious monuments whatsoever.'--vol. ii. p. 280." [14] fuller's church history, b. vi. p. 335. [15] wood's oxon, vol. i. b. i. p. 107 chapter ii. _duties of the monkish librarian.--rules of the library.--lending books.--books allowed the monks for private reading.--ridiculous signs for books.--how the libraries were supported.--a monkish blessing on books, etc._ in this chapter i shall proceed to inquire into the duties of the monkish amanuensis, and show by what laws and regulations the monastic libraries were governed. the monotonous habits of a cloistered bibliophile will, perhaps, appear dry and fastidious, but still it is curious and interesting to observe how carefully the monks regarded their vellum tomes, how indefatigably they worked to increase their stores, and how eagerly they sought for books. but besides being regarded as a literary curiosity, the subject derives importance by the light it throws on the state of learning in those dark and "bookless" days, and the illustrations gleaned in this way fully compensate for the tediousness of the research. as a bibliophile it is somewhat pleasing to trace a deep book passion growing up in the barrenness of the cloister, and to find in some cowled monk a bibliomaniac as warm and enthusiastic in his way as the renowned "atticus," or the noble roxburghe, of more recent times. it is true we can draw no comparison between the result of their respective labors. the hundreds, which in the old time were deemed a respectable if not an extensive collection, would look insignificant beside the ostentatious array of modern libraries. but the very tenor of a monastic life compelled the monk to seek the sweet yet silent companionship of books; the rules of his order and the regulations of his fraternity enforced the strictest silence in the execution of his daily and never-ceasing duties. attending mass, singing psalms, and midnight prayers, were succeeded by mass, psalms and prayers in one long undeviating round of yearly obligations; the hours intervening between these holy exercises were dull and tediously insupportable if unoccupied. conversation forbidden, secular amusements denounced, yet idleness reproached, what could the poor monk seek as a relief in this distress but the friendly book; the willing and obedient companion of every one doomed to lonely hours and dismal solitude? the pride and glory of a monastery was a well stored library, which was committed to the care of the armarian, and with him rested all the responsibility of its preservation. according to the consuetudines canonicorum regularium, it was his duty to have all the books of the monastery in his keeping catalogued and separately marked with their proper names.[16] some of these old catalogues have been preserved, and, viewed as bibliographical remains of the middle ages, are of considerable importance; indeed, we cannot form a correct idea of the literature of those remote times without them. many productions of authors are recorded in these brief catalogues whose former existence is only known to us by these means. there is one circumstance in connexion with them that must not be forgotten: instead of enumerating all the works which each volume contained, they merely specified the first, so that a catalogue of fifty or a hundred volumes might probably have contained nearly double that number of distinct works. i have seen mss. formerly belonging to monasteries, which have been catalogued in this way, containing four or five others, besides the one mentioned. designed rather to identify the book than to describe the contents of each volume, they wrote down the first word or two of the second leaf--this was the most prevalent usage; but they often adopted other means, sometimes giving a slight notice of the works which a volume contained; others took the precaution of noting down the last word of the last leaf but one,[17] a great advantage, as the monkish student could more easily detect at a glance whether the volume was perfect. the armarian was, moreover, particularly enjoined to inspect with scrupulous care the more ancient volumes, lest the moth-worms should have got at them, or they had become corrupt or mutilated, and, if such were the case, he was with great care to restore them. probably the armarian was also the bookbinder to the monastery in ordinary cases, for he is here directed to cover the volumes with tablets of wood, that the inside may be preserved from moisture, and the parchment from the injurious effects of dampness. the different orders of books were to be kept separate from one another, and conveniently arranged; not squeezed too tight, lest it should injure or confuse them, but so placed that they might be easily distinguished, and those who sought them might find them without delay or impediment.[18] bibliomaniacs have not been remarkable for their memory or punctuality, and in the early times the borrower was often forgetful to return the volume within the specified time. to guard against this, many rules were framed, nor was the armarian allowed to lend the books, even to neighboring monasteries, unless he received a bond or promise to restore them within a certain time, and if the person was entirely unknown, a book of equal value was required as a security for its safe return. in all cases the armarian was instructed to make a short memorandum of the name of the book which he had lent or received. the "great and precious books" were subject to still more stringent rules, and although under the conservation of the librarian, he had not the privilege of lending them to any one without the distinct permission of the abbot.[19] this was, doubtless, practised by all the monastic libraries, for all generously lent one another their books. in a collection of chapter orders of the prior and convent of durham, bearing date 1235, it is evident that a similar rule was observed there, which they were not to depart from except at the desire of the bishop.[20] according to the constitutions for the government of the abingdon monastery, the library was under the care of the cantor, and all the writings of the church were consigned to his keeping. he was not allowed to part with the books or lend them without a sufficient deposit as a pledge for their safe return, except to persons of consequence and repute.[21] this was the practice at a much later period. when that renowned bibliomaniac, richard de bury, wrote his delightful little book called _philobiblon_, the same rules were strictly in force. with respect to the lending of books, his own directions are that, if any one apply for a particular volume, the librarian was to carefully consider whether the library contained another copy of it; if so, he was at liberty to lend the book, taking care, however, that he obtained a security which was to exceed the value of the loan; they were at the same time to make a memorandum in writing of the name of the book, and the nature of the security deposited for it, with the name of the party to whom it was lent, with that of the officer or librarian who delivered it.[22] we learn by the canons before referred to, that the superintendence of all the writing and transcribing, whether in or out of the monastery, belonged to the office of the armarian, and that it was his duty to provide the scribes with parchment and all things necessary for their work, and to agree upon the price with those whom he employed. the monks who were appointed to write in the cloisters he supplied with copies for transcription; and that no time might be wasted, he was to see that a good supply was kept up. no one was to give to another what he himself had been ordered to write, or presume to do anything by his own will or inclination. nor was it seemly that the armarian even should give any orders for transcripts to be made without first receiving the permission of his superior.[23] we here catch a glimpse of the quiet life of a monkish student, who labored with this monotonous regularity to amass his little library. if we dwell on these scraps of information, we shall discover some marks of a love of learning among them, and the liberality they displayed in lending their books to each other is a pleasing trait to dwell upon. they unhesitatingly imparted to others the knowledge they acquired by their own study with a brotherly frankness and generosity well becoming the spirit of a student. this they did by extensive correspondence and the temporary exchange of their books. the system of loan, which they in this manner carried on to a considerable extent, is an important feature in connection with our subject; innumerable and interesting instances of this may be found in the monastic registers, and the private letters of the times. the cheapness of literary productions of the present age render it an absolute waste of time to transcribe a whole volume, and except with books of great scarcity we seldom think of borrowing or lending one; having finished its perusal we place it on the shelf and in future regard it as a book of reference; but in those days one volume did the work of twenty. it was lent to a neighboring monastery, and this constituted its publication; for each monastery thus favored, by the aid perhaps of some half dozen scribes, added a copy to their own library, and it was often stipulated that on the return of the original a correct duplicate should accompany it, as a remuneration to its author. nor was the volume allowed to remain unread; it was recited aloud at meals, or when otherwise met together, to the whole community. we shall do well to bear this in mind, and not hastily judge of the number of students by a comparison with the number of their books. but it was not always a mere single volume that the monks lent from their library. hunter has printed[24] a list of books lent by the convent of henton, a. d. 1343, to a neighboring monastery, containing twenty volumes. the engagement to restore these books was formally drawn up and sealed. in the monasteries the first consideration was to see that the library was well stored with those books necessary for the performance of the various offices of the church, but besides these the library ought, according to established rules, to contain for the "edification of the brothers" such as were fit and needful to be consulted in common study. the bible and great expositors; _bibliothecæ et majores expositores_, books of martyrs, lives of saints, homilies, etc.;[25] these and other large books the monks were allowed to take and study in private, but the smaller ones they could only study in the library, lest they should be lost or mislaid. this was also the case with respect to the rare and choice volumes. when the armarian gave out books to the monks he made a note of their nature, and took an exact account of their number, so that he might know in a moment which of the brothers had it for perusal.[26] those who studied together were to receive what books they choose; but when they had satisfied themselves, they were particularly directed to restore them to their assigned places; and when they at any time received from the armarian a book for their private reading, they were not allowed to lend it to any one else, or to use it in common, but to reserve it especially for his own private reading. the same rule extended to the singers, who if they required books for their studies, were to apply to the abbot.[27] the sick brothers were also entitled to the privilege of receiving from the armarian books for their solace and comfort; but as soon as the lamps were lighted in the infirmary the books were put away till the morning, and if not finished, were again given out from the library.[28] in the more ancient monasteries a similar case was observed with respect to their books. the rule of st. pacome directed that the utmost attention should be paid to their preservation, and that when the monks went to the refectory they were not to leave their books open, but to carefully close and put them in their assigned places. the monastery of st. pacome contained a vast number of monks; every house, says mabillon, was composed of not less than forty monks, and the monastery embraced thirty or forty houses. each monk, he adds, possessed his book, and few rested without forming a library; by which we may infer that the number of books was considerable.[29] indeed, it was quite a common practice in those days, scarce as books were, to allow each of the monks one or more for his private study, besides granting them access to the library. the constitutions of lanfranc, in the year 1072, directed the librarian, at the commencement of lent, to deliver a book to each of the monks for their private reading, allowing them a whole year for its perusal.[30] there is one circumstance connected with the affairs of the library quite characteristic of monkish superstition, and bearing painful testimony to their mistaken ideas of what constituted "good works." in martene's book there is a chapter, _de scientia et signis_--degrading and sad; there is something withal curious to be found in it. after enjoining the most scrupulous silence in the church, in the refectory, in the cloister, and in the dormitory, at all times, and in all seasons; transforming those men into perpetual mutes, and even when "actually necessary," permitting only a whisper to be articulated "in a low voice in the ear," _submissa voce in aure_, it then proceeds to describe a series of fantastic grimaces which the monks were to perform on applying to the armarian for books. the general sign for a book, _generali signi libri_, was to "extend the hand and make a movement as if turning over the leaves of a book." for a missal the monk was to make a similar movement with a sign of the cross; for the gospels the sign of the cross on the forehead; for an antiphon or book of responses he was to strike the thumb and little finger of the other hand together; for a book of offices or gradale to make the sign of a cross and kiss the fingers; for a tract lay the hand on the abdomen and apply the other hand to the mouth; for a capitulary make the general sign and extend the clasped hands to heaven; for a psalter place the hands upon the head in the form of a crown, such as the king is wont to wear.[31] religious intolerance was rampant when this rule was framed; hot and rancorous denunciation was lavished with amazing prodigality against works of loose morality or heathen origin; nor did the monks feel much compassion--although they loved to read them--for the old authors of antiquity. pagans they were, and therefore fit only to be named as infidels and dogs, so the monk was directed for a secular book, "which some pagan wrote after making the general sign to scratch his ear with his hand, just as a dog itching would do with his feet, because infidels are not unjustly compared to such creatures--_quia nec immerito infideles tali animanti contparantur_."[32] wretched bigotry and puny malice! yet what a sad reflection it is, that with all the foul and heartburning examples which those dark ages of the monks afford, posterity have failed to profit by them--religious intolerance, with all its vain-glory and malice, flourishes still, the cankering worm of many a christian blossom! besides the duties which we have enumerated, there were others which it was the province of the armarian to fulfil. he was particularly to inspect and collate those books which, according to the decrees of the church, it was unlawful to possess different from the authorized copies; these were the bible, the gospels, missals, epistles, collects graduales, antiphons, hymns, psalters, lessions, and the monastic rules; these were always to be alike even in the most minute point.[33] he was moreover directed to prepare for the use of the brothers short tables respecting the times mentioned in the capitulary for the various offices of the church, to make notes upon the matins, the mass, and upon the different orders.[34] in fact, the monkish amanuensis was expected to undertake all those matters which required care and learning combined. he wrote the letters of the monastery, and often filled the office of secretary to my lord abbot. in the monasteries of course the services of the librarian were unrequited by any pecuniary remuneration, but in the cathedral libraries a certain salary was sometimes allowed them. thus we learn that the amanuensis of the conventual church of ely received in the year 1372 forty-three shillings and fourpence for his annual duties;[35] and oswald, bishop of worcester, in the tenth century, gave considerable landed possessions to a monk of that church as a recompense for his services as librarian.[36] in some monasteries, in the twelfth century, if not earlier, they levied a tax on all the members of the community, who paid a yearly sum to the librarian for binding, preserving, and purchasing copies for the library. one of these rules, bearing date 1145, was made by udon, abbot of st. père en vallée à chantres, and that it might be more plausibly received, he taxed himself as well as all the members of his own house.[37] the librarian sometimes, in addition to his regular duties, combined the office of precentor to the monastery.[38] some of their account-books have been preserved, and by an inspection of them, we may occasionally gather some interesting and curious hints, as to the cost of books and writing materials in those times. as may be supposed, the monkish librarians often became great bibliophiles, for being in constant communication with choice manuscripts, they soon acquired a great mania for them. posterity are also particularly indebted to the pens of these book conservators of the middle ages; for some of the best chroniclers and writers of those times were humble librarians to some religious house. not only did the bibliophiles of old exercise the utmost care in the preservation of their darling books, but the religious basis of their education and learning prompted them to supplicate the blessing of god upon their goodly tomes. although i might easily produce other instances, one will suffice to give an idea of their nature: "o lord, send the virtue of thy holy spirit upon these our books; that cleansing them from all earthly things, by thy holy blessing, they may mercifully enlighten our hearts and give us true understanding; and grant that by thy teaching, they may brightly preserve and make full an abundance of good works according to thy will."[39] footnotes: [16] cap. xxi. martene de antiquis ecclesiæ ritibus, tom. iii. p. 262. [17] see catalogue of hulne abbey, library ms. harleian. no. 3897. [18] martene de antiq. eccle. rit., tom. iii. p. 263. [19] _ibid._ ingulphus tells us that the same rule was observed in croyland abbey.--_apud gale_, p. 104. [20] marked b. iv. 26. surtee publications, vol. i. p. 121. [21] const. admiss. abbat, et gubernatione monast. abendum cottonian m.s. claudius, b. vi. p. 194. [22] philobiblon, 4to. _oxon_, 1599, chap. xix. [23] martene de ant. eccl. ribibus, tom. iii. p. 263. for an inattention to this the council of soissons, in 1121, ordered some transcripts of abelard's works to be burnt, and severely reproved the author for his unpardonable neglect.--_histoire littéraire de la france_, tom. ix. p. 28. [24] catalogues of monastic libraries, pp. 16, 17. [25] const. canon. reg. ap. martene, tom. iii. p. 263. [26] _ibid._ [27] _ibid._, tom. iii. cap. xxxvi. pp. 269, 270. [28] martene, tom. iii. p. 331. for a list of some books applied to their use, see ms. cot. galba, c. iv. fo. 128. [29] mabillon, traité des etudes monastiques, 4to. _paris_ 1691, cap. vi. p. 34. [30] wilkin's concil. tom. i. p. 332. [31] stat. pro reform. ordin. grandimont. ap. martene cap. x. [32] _ibid._, tom. iv. pp. 289, 339. [33] const. canon. reg. ap. martene, tom. iii. p. 263. [34] _ibid._, cap. xxi. p. 263. [35] stevenson's supple. to bentham's hist. of the church of ely, p. 51. [36] thomas' survey of the church of worcester, p. 45. [37] mabillon. annal. tom. vi. pp. 651 and 652. hist. litt. de la france, ix. p. 140. [38] they managed the pecuniary matters of the fraternity. william of malmsbury was precentor as well as librarian to his monastery. [39] martene de antiq. eccl. ritibus ii. p. 302. chapter iii. _scriptoria and the scribes.--care in copying.--bible reading among the monks.--booksellers in the middle ages.--circulating libraries.--calligraphic art, etc._ as the monasteries were the schools of learning, so their occupants were the preservers of literature, and, as herault observes, had they not taken the trouble to transcribe books, the ancients had been lost to us for ever; to them, therefore, we owe much. but there are many, however, who suppose that the monastic establishments were hotbeds of superstition and fanaticism, from whence nothing of a useful or elevated nature could possibly emanate. they are too apt to suppose that the human intellect must be altogether weak and impotent when confined within such narrow limits; but truth and knowledge can exist even in the dark cells of a gloomy cloister, and inspire the soul with a fire that can shed a light far beyond its narrow precincts. indeed, i scarce know whether to regret, as some appear to do, that the literature and learning of those rude times was preserved and fostered by the christian church; it is said, that their strict devotion and religious zeal prompted them to disregard all things but a knowledge of those divine, but such is not the case; at least, i have not found it so; it is true, as churchmen, they were principally devoted to the study of divine and ecclesiastical lore; but it is also certain that in that capacity they gradually infused the mild spirit of their master among the darkened society over which they presided, and among whom they shone as beacons of light in a dreary desert. but the church did more than this. she preserved to posterity the profane learnings of old greece and rome; copied it, multiplied it, and spread it. she recorded to after generations in plain, simple language, the ecclesiastical and civil events of the past, for it is from the terse chronicles of the monkish churchmen that we learn now the history of what happened then. much as we may dislike the monastic system, the cold, heartless, gloomy ascetic atmosphere of the cloister, and much as we may deplore the mental dissipation of man's best attributes, which the system of those old monks engendered, we must exercise a cool and impartial judgment, and remember that what now would be intolerable and monstrously inconsistent with our present state of intellectuality, might at some remote period, in the ages of darkness and comparative barbarism, have had its virtues and beneficial influences. as for myself, it would be difficult to convince me, with all those fine relics of their deeds before me, those beauteous fanes dedicated to piety and god, those libraries so crowded with their vellum tomes, so gorgeously adorned, and the abundant evidence which history bears to their known charity and hospitable love, that these monks and their system was a scheme of dismal barbarism; it may be so, but my reading has taught me different; but, on the other hand, although the monks possessed many excellent qualities, being the encouragers of literature, the preservers of books, and promulgators of civilization, we must not hide their numerous and palpable faults, or overlook the poison which their system of monachism _ultimately_ infused into the very vitals of society. in the early centuries, before the absurdities of romanism were introduced, the influence of the monastic orders was highly beneficial to our saxon ancestors, but in after ages the church of england was degraded by the influence of the fast growing abominations of popedom. she drank copiously of the deadly potion, and became the blighted and ghostly shadow of her former self. forgetting the humility of her divine lord, she sought rather to imitate the worldly splendor and arrogance of her sovereign pontiff. the evils too obviously existed to be overlooked; but it is not my place to further expose them; a more pleasing duty guides my pen; others have done all this, lashing them painfully for their oft-told sins. frail humanity glories in chastizing the frailty of brother man. but we will not denounce them here, for did not the day of retribution come? and was not justice satisfied? having made these few preliminary remarks, let us, in a brief manner, inquire into the system observed in the cloisters by the monks for the preservation and transcription of manuscripts. let us peep into the quiet cells of those old monks, and see whether history warrants the unqualified contempt which their efforts in this department have met with. in most monasteries there were two kinds of scriptoria, or writing offices; for in addition to the large and general apartment used for the transcription of church books and manuscripts for the library, there were also several smaller ones occupied by the superiors and the more learned members of the community, as closets for private devotion and study. thus we read, that in the cistercian orders there were places set apart for the transcription of books called scriptoria, or cells assigned to the scribes, "separate from each other," where the books might be transcribed in the strictest silence, according to the holy rules of their founders.[40] these little cells were usually situated in the most retired part of the monastery, and were probably incapable of accommodating more than one or two persons;[41] dull and comfortless places, no doubt, yet they were deemed great luxuries, and the use of them only granted to such as became distinguished for their piety, or erudition. we read that when david went to the isle of wight, to paulinus, to receive his education, he used to sup in the refectory, but had a scriptorium, or study, in his cell, being a famous scribe.[42] the aged monks, who often lived in these little offices, separate from the rest of the scribes, were not expected to work so arduously as the rest. their employment was comparatively easy; nor were they compelled to work so long as those in the cloister.[43] there is a curious passage in tangmar's life of st. bernward, which would lead us to suspect that private individuals possessed scriptoria; for, says he, there are scriptoria, not only in the monasteries, but in other places, in which are conceived books equal to the divine works of the philosophers.[44] the scriptorium of the monastery in which the general business of a literary nature was transacted, was an apartment far more extensive and commodious, fitted up with forms and desks methodically arranged, so as to contain conveniently a great number of copyists. in some of the monasteries and cathedrals, they had long ranges of seats one after another, at which were seated the scribes, one well versed in the subject on which the book treated, recited from the copy whilst they wrote; so that, on a word being given out by him, it was copied by all.[45] the multiplication of manuscripts, under such a system as this, must have been immense; but they did not always make books, _fecit libros_, as they called it, in this wholesale manner, but each monk diligently labored at the transcription of a separate work. the amount of labor carried on in the scriptorium, of course, in many cases depended upon the revenues of the abbey, and the disposition of the abbot; but this was not always the case, as in some monasteries they undertook the transcription of books as a matter of commerce, and added broad lands to their house by the industry of their pens. but the scriptorium was frequently supported by resources solely applicable to its use. laymen, who had a taste for literature, or who entertained an esteem for it in others, often at their death bequeathed estates for the support of the monastic scriptoria. robert, one of the norman leaders, gave two parts of the tythes of hatfield, and the tythes of redburn, for the support of the scriptorium of st. alban's.[46] the one belonging to the monastery of st. edmundsbury was endowed with two mills,[47] and in the church of ely there is a charter of bishof nigellus, granting to the scriptorium of the monastery the tythes of wythessey and impitor, two parts of the tythes of the lordship of pampesward, with 2s. 2d., and a messuage in ely _ad faciendos et emandandos libros_.[48] the abbot superintended the management of the scriptorium, and decided upon the hours for their labor, during which time they were ordered to work with unremitting diligence, "not leaving to go and wander in idleness," but to attend solely to the business of transcribing. to prevent detraction or interruption, no one was allowed to enter except the abbot, the prior, the sub-prior, and the armarian,[49] as the latter took charge of all the materials and implements used by the transcribers, it was his duty to prepare and give them out when required; he made the ink and cut the parchment ready for use. he was strictly enjoined, however, to exercise the greatest economy in supplying these precious materials, and not to give more copies "nec artavos, nec cultellos, nec scarpellæ, nec membranes," than was actually necessary, or than he had computed as sufficient for the work; and what the armarian gave them the monks were to receive without contradiction or contention.[50] the utmost silence prevailed in the scriptorium; rules were framed, and written admonitions hung on the walls, to enforce the greatest care and diligence in copying exactly from the originals. in alcuin's works we find one of these preserved; it is a piece inscribed "_ad musæum libros scribentium_;" the lines are as follows: "hic sideant sacræ scribentes famina legis, nec non sanctorum dicta sacrata patrum, hæc interserere caveant sua frivola verbis, frivola nec propter erret et ipsa manus: correctosque sibi quærant studiose libellos, tramite quo recto penna volantis eat. per cola distinquant proprios, et commata sensus, et punctos ponant ordine quosque suo. ne vel falsa legat, taceat vel forte repente, ante pios fratres, lector in ecclesia. est opus egregium sacros jam scribete libros, nec mercede sua scriptor et ipse caret. fodere quam vites, melius est scribere libros, ille suo ventri serviet, iste animæ. vel nova, vel vetera poterit proferre magister plurima, quisque legit dicta sacrata patrum."[51] other means were resorted to besides these to preserve the text of their books immaculate, it was a common practice for the scribe at the end of his copy, to adjure all who transcribed from it to use the greatest care, and to refrain from the least alteration of word or sense. authors more especially followed this course, thus at the end of some we find such injunctions as this. "i adjure you who shall transcribe this book, by our lord jesus christ and by his glorious coming, who will come to judge the quick and the dead, that you compare what you transcribe and diligently correct it by the copy from which you transcribe it--this adjuration also--and insert it in your copy."[52] the consuetudines canonicorum, before referred to, also particularly impressed this upon the monks, and directed that all the brothers who were engaged as scribes, were not to alter any writing, although in their own mind they might think it proper, without first receiving the sanction of the abbot, "_on no account were they to commit so great a presumption_."[53] but notwithstanding that the scribes were thus enjoined to use the utmost care in copying books, doubtless an occasional error crept in, which many causes might have produced, such as bad light, haste, a little drowsiness, imperfect sight, or even a flickering lamp was sufficient to produce some trivial error; but in works of importance the smallest error is of consequence, as some future scribe puzzled by the blunder, might, in an attempt to correct, still more augment the imperfection; to guard against this, with respect to the scriptures, the most critical care was enforced. monks advanced in age were alone allowed to transcribe them, and after their completion they were read--revised--and reread again, and it is by that means that so uniform a reading has been preserved, and although slight differences may here and there occur, there are no books which have traversed through the shadows of the dark ages, that preserve their original text so pure and uncorrupt as the copies of the scriptures, the fathers of the church, and the ancient writings of the classic authors; sometimes, it is true, a manuscript of the last order is discovered possessing a very different reading in some particular passage; but these appear rather as futile emendations or interpolations of the scribe than as the result of a downright blunder, and are easily perceivable, for when the monkish churchmen tampered with ancient copies, it generally originated in a desire to smooth over the indecencies of the heathen authors, and so render them less liable to corrupt the holy contemplations of the devotee; and while we blame the pious fraud, we cannot but respect the motive that dictated it. but as regards the scriptures, we talk of the carelessness of the monks and the interpolations of the scribes as if these were faults peculiar to the monastic ages alone; alas! the history of biblical transmission tells us differently, the gross perversions, omissions, and errors wrought in the holy text, proclaim how prevalent these same faults have been in the ages of _printed literature_, and which appear more palpable by being produced amidst deep scholars, and surrounded with all the critical acumen of a learned age. five or six thousand of these gross blunders, or these wilful mutilations, protest the unpleasant fact, and show how much of human grossness it has acquired, and how besmeared with corruption those sacred pages have become in passing through the hands of man, and the "revisings" of sectarian minds. i am tempted to illustrate this by an anecdote related by sir nicholas l'estrange of hunstanton, and preserved in a ms. in the harlein collection.--"dr. usher, bish. of armath, being to preach at paules crosse and passing hastily by one of the stationers, called for a bible, and had a little one of the london edition given him out, but when he came to looke for his text, that very verse was omitted in the print: which gave the first occasion of complaint to the king of the insufferable negligence, and insufficience of the london printers and presse, and bredde that great contest that followed, betwixt the univers. of cambridge and london stationers, about printing of the bibles."[54] gross and numerous indeed were the errors of the corrupt bible text of that age, and far exceeding even the blunders of monkish pens, and certainly much less excusable, for in those times they seldom had a large collection of codices to compare, so that by studying their various readings, they could arrive at a more certain and authentic version. the paucity of the sacred volume, if it rendered their pens more liable to err, served to enforce upon them the necessity of still greater scrutiny. on looking over a monastic catalogue, the first volume that i search for is the bible; and, i feel far more disappointment if i find it not there, than i do at the absence of horace or ovid--there is something so desolate in the idea of a christian priest without the book of life--of a minister of god without the fountain of truth--that however favorably we may be prone to regard them, a thought will arise that the absence of this sacred book may perhaps be referred to the indolence of the monkish pen, or to the laxity of priestly piety. but such i am glad to say was not often the case; the bible it is true was an expensive book, but can scarcely be regarded as a rare one; the monastery was indeed poor that had it not, and when once obtained the monks took care to speedily transcribe it. sometimes they only possessed detached portions, but when this was the case they generally borrowed of some neighboring and more fortunate monastery, the missing parts to transcribe, and so complete their own copies. but all this did not make the bible less loved among them, or less anxiously and ardently studied, they devoted their days, and the long hours of the night, to the perusal of those pages of inspired truth,[55] and it is a calumny without a shadow of foundation to declare that the monks were careless of scripture reading; it is true they did not apply that vigor of thought, and unrestrained reflection upon it which mark the labors of the more modern student, nor did they often venture to interpret the hidden meaning of the holy mysteries by the powers of their own mind, but were guided in this important matter by the works of the fathers. but hence arose a circumstance which gave full exercise to their mental powers and compelled the monk in spite of his timidity to think a little for himself. unfortunately the fathers, venerable and venerated as they were, after all were but men, with many of the frailties and all the fallabilities of poor human nature; the pope might canonize them, and the priesthood bow submissively to their spiritual guidance, still they remained for all that but mortals of dust and clay, and their bulky tomes yet retain the swarthiness of the tomb about them, the withering impress of humanity. such being the case we, who do not regard them quite so infallible, feel no surprise at a circumstance which sorely perplexed the monks of old, they unchained and unclasped their cumbrous "works of the fathers," and pored over those massy expositions with increasing wonder; surrounded by these holy guides, these fathers of infallibility, they were like strangers in a foreign land, did they follow this holy saint they seemed about to forsake the spiritual direction of one having equal claims to their obedience and respect; alas! for poor old weak tradition, those fabrications of man's faulty reason were found, with all their orthodoxy, to clash woefully in scriptural interpretation. here was a dilemma for the monkish student! whose vow of obedience to patristical guidance was thus sorely perplexed; he read and re-read, analyzed passage after passage, interpreted word after word; and yet, poor man, his laborious study was fruitless and unprofitable! what bible student can refrain from sympathizing with him amidst these torturing doubts and this crowd of contradiction, but after all we cannot regret this, for we owe to it more than my feeble pen can write, so immeasurable have been the fruits of this little unheeded circumstance. it gave birth to many a bright independent declaration, involving pure lines of scripture interpretation, which appear in the darkness of those times like fixed stars before us; to this, in saxon days, we are indebted for the labors of ælfric and his anti-roman doctrines, whose soul also sympathized with a later age by translating portions of the bible into the vulgar tongue, thus making it accessible to all classes of the people. to this we are indebted for all the good that resulted from those various heterodoxies and heresies, which sometimes disturbed the church during the dark ages; but which wrought much ultimate good by compelling the thoughts of men to dwell on these important matters. indeed, to the instability of the fathers, as a sure guide, we may trace the origin of all those efforts of the human mind, which cleared the way for the reformation, and relieved man from the shackles of these spiritual guides of the monks. but there were many cloistered christians who studied the bible undisturbed by these shadows and doubts, and who, heedless of patristical lore and saintly wisdom, devoured the spiritual food in its pure and uncontaminating simplicity--such students, humble, patient, devoted, will be found crowding the monastic annals, and yielding good evidence of the same by the holy tenor of their sinless lives, their christian charity and love. but while so many obtained the good title of an "_amator scripturarum_," as the bible student was called in those monkish days, i do not pretend to say that the bible was a common book among them, or that every monk possessed one--far different indeed was the case--a copy of the old and new testament often supplied the wants of an entire monastery, and in others, as i have said before, only some detached portions were to be found in their libraries. sometimes they were more plentiful, and the monastery could boast of two or three copies, besides a few separate portions, and occasionally i have met with instances where besides several _biblia optima_, they enjoyed hebrew codices and translations, with numerous copies of the gospels. we must not forget, however, that the transcription of a bible was a work of time, and required the outlay of much industry and wealth. "brother tedynton," a monk of ely, commenced a bible in 1396, and was several years before he completed it. the magnitude of the undertaking can scarcely be imagined by those unpractised in the art of copying, but when the monk saw the long labor of his pen before him, and looked upon the well bound strong clasped volumes, with their clean vellum folios and fine illuminations, he seemed well repaid for his years of toil and tedious labor, and felt a glow of pious pleasure as he contemplated his happy acquisition, and the comfort and solace which he should hereafter derive from its holy pages! we are not surprised then, that a bible in those days should be esteemed so valuable, and capable of realizing a considerable sum. the monk, independent of its spiritual value, regarded it as a great possession, worthy of being bestowed at his death, with all the solemnity of a testamentary process, and of being gratefully acknowledged by the fervent prayers of the monkish brethren. kings and nobles offered it as an appropriate and generous gift, and bishops were deemed benefactors to their church by adding it to the library. on its covers were written earnest exhortations to the bible student, admonishing the greatest care in its use, and leveling anathemas and excommunications upon any one who should dare to purloin it. for its greater security it was frequently chained to a reading desk, and if a duplicate copy was lent to a neighboring monastery they required a large deposit, or a formal bond for its safe return.[56] these facts, while they show its value, also prove how highly it was esteemed among them, and how much the monks loved the book of life. but how different is the picture now--how opposite all this appears to the aspect of bible propagation in our own time. thanks to the printing-press, to bible societies, and to the benevolence of god, we cannot enter the humblest cottage of the poorest peasant without observing the scriptures on his little shelf--not always read, it is true--nor always held in veneration as in the old days before us--its very plentitude and cheapness takes off its attraction to irreligious and indifferent readers, but to poor and needy christians what words can express the fulness of the blessing. yet while we thank god for this great boon, let us refrain from casting uncharitable reflections upon the monks for its comparative paucity among them. if its possession was not so easily acquired, they were nevertheless true lovers of the bible, and preserved and multiplied it in dark and troublous times. our remarks have hitherto applied to the monastic scribes alone; but it is necessary here to speak of the secular copyists, who were an important class during the middle ages, and supplied the functions of the bibliopole of the ancients. but the transcribing trade numbered three or four distinct branches. there were the librarii antiquarii, notarii, and the illuminators--occasionally these professions were all united in one--where perseverance or talent had acquired a knowledge of these various arts. there appears to have been considerable competition between these contending bodies. the notarii were jealous of the librarii, and the librarii in their turn were envious of the antiquarii, who devoted their ingenuity to the transcription and repairing of old books especially, rewriting such parts as were defective or erased, and restoring the dilapidations of the binding. being learned in old writings they corrected and revised the copies of ancient codices; of this class we find mention as far back as the time of cassiodorus and isidore.[57] "they deprived," says astle, "the poor librarii, or common scriptores, of great part of their business, so that they found it difficult to gain a subsistence for themselves and their families. this put them about finding out more expeditious methods of transcribing books. they formed the letters smaller, and made use of more conjugations and abbreviations than had been usual. they proceeded in this manner till the letters became exceedingly small and extremely difficult to be read."[58] the fact of there existing a class of men, whose fixed employment or profession was solely confined to the transcription of ancient writings and to the repairing of tattered copies, in contradistinction to the common scribes, and depending entirely upon the exercise of their art as a means of obtaining a subsistence, leads us to the conclusion that ancient manuscripts were by no means so very scarce in those days; for how absurd and useless it would have been for men to qualify themselves for transcribing these antiquated and venerable codices, if there had been no probability of obtaining them to transcribe. the fact too of its becoming the subject of so much competition proves how great was the demand for their labor.[59] we are unable, with any positive result, to discover the exact origin of the secular scribes, though their existence may probably be referred to a very remote period. the monks seem to have monopolized for some ages the "_commercium librorum_,"[60] and sold and bartered copies to a considerable extent among each other. we may with some reasonable grounds, however, conjecture that the profession was flourishing in saxon times; for we find several eminent names in the seventh and eighth centuries who, in their epistolary correspondence, beg their friends to procure transcripts for them. benedict, bishop of wearmouth, purchased most of his book treasures at rome, which was even at that early period probably a famous mart for such luxuries, as he appears to have journeyed there for that express purpose. some of the books which he collected were presents from his foreign friends; but most of them, as bede tells us, were _bought_ by himself, or in accordance with his instructions, by his friends.[61] boniface, the saxon missionary, continually writes for books to his associates in all parts of europe. at a subsequent period the extent and importance of the profession grew amazingly; and in italy its followers were particularly numerous in the tenth century, as we learn from the letters of gerbert, afterwards silvester ii., who constantly writes, with the cravings of a bibliomaniac, to his friends for books, and begs them to get the scribes, who, he adds, in one of his letters, may be found in all parts of italy,[62] both in town and in the country, to make transcripts of certain books for him, and he promises to reimburse his correspondent all that he expends for the same. these public scribes derived their principal employment from the monks and the lawyers; from the former in transcribing their manuscripts, and by the latter in drawing up their legal instruments. they carried on their avocation at their own homes like other artisans; but sometimes when employed by the monks executed their transcripts within the cloister, where they were boarded, lodged, and received their wages till their work was done. this was especially the case when some great book was to be copied, of rarity and price; thus we read of paulinus, of st. albans, sending into distant parts to obtain proficient workmen, who were paid so much per diem for their labor; their wages were generously supplied by the lord of redburn.[63] the increase of knowledge and the foundation of the universities gave birth to the booksellers. their occupation as a distinct trade originated at a period coeval with the foundation of these public seminaries, although the first mention that i am aware of is made by peter of blois, about the year 1170. i shall have occasion to speak more hereafter of this celebrated scholar, but i may be excused for giving the anecdote here, as it is so applicable to my subject. it appears, then, that whilst remaining in paris to transact some important matter for the king of england, he entered the shop of "a public dealer in books"--for be it known that the archdeacon was always on the search, and seldom missed an opportunity of adding to his library--the bookseller, peter tells us, offered him a tempting collection on jurisprudence; but although his knowledge of such matters was so great that he did not require them for his own use, he thought they might be serviceable to his nephew, and after bargaining a little about the price he counted down the money agreed upon and left the stall; but no sooner was his back turned than the provost of sexeburgh came in to look over the literary stores of the stationer, and his eye meeting the recently sold volume, he became inspired with a wish to possess it; nor could he, on hearing it was bought and paid for by another, suppress his anxiety to obtain the treasure; but, offering more money, actually took the volume away by force. as may be supposed, archdeacon peter was sorely annoyed at this behavior; and "to his dearest companion and friend master arnold of blois, peter of blois archdeacon of bath sent greeting," a long and learned letter, displaying his great knowledge of civil law, and maintaining the illegality of the provost's conduct.[64] the casual way in which this is mentioned make it evident that the "_publico mangone librorum_" was no unusual personage in those days, but belonged to a common and recognized profession. the vast number of students who, by the foundation of universities, were congregated together, generated of course a proportionate demand for books, which necessity or luxury prompted them eagerly to purchase: but there were poor as well as rich students educated in these great seminaries of learning, whose pecuniary means debarred them from the acquisition of such costly luxuries; and for this and other cogent reasons the universities deemed it advantageous, and perhaps expedient, to frame a code of laws and regulations to provide alike for the literary wants of all classes and degrees. to effect this they obtained royal sanction to take the trade entirely under their protection, and eventually monopolized a sole legislative power over the _librarii_. in the college of navarre a great quantity of ancient documents are preserved, many of which relate to this curious subject. they were deposited there by m. jean aubert in 1623, accompanied by an inventory of them, divided into four parts by the first four letters of the alphabet. in the fourth, under d. 18, there is a chapter entitled "des libraires appretiateurs, jurez et enlumineurs," which contains much interesting matter relating to the early history of bookselling.[65] these ancient statutes, collected and printed by the university in the year 1652,[66] made at various times, and ranging between the years 1275 and 1403, give us a clear insight into the matter. the nature of a bookseller's business in those days required no ordinary capacity, and no shallow store of critical acumen; the purchasing of manuscripts, the work of transcription, the careful revisal, the preparation of materials, the tasteful illuminations, and the process of binding, were each employments requiring some talent and discrimination, and we are not surprised, therefore, that the avocation of a dealer and fabricator of these treasures should be highly regarded, and dignified into a profession, whose followers were invested with all the privileges, freedoms and exemptions, which the masters and students of the university enjoyed.[67] but it required these conciliations to render the restrictive and somewhat severe measures, which she imposed on the bookselling trade, to be received with any degree of favor or submission. for whilst the university of paris, by whom these statutes were framed, encouraged and elevated the profession of the librarii, she required, on the other hand, a guarantee of their wealth and mental capacity, to maintain and to appreciate these important concessions; the bookseller was expected indeed to be well versed in all branches of science, and to be thoroughly imbued with a knowledge of those subjects and works of which he undertook to produce transcripts.[68] she moreover required of him testimonials to his good character, and efficient security, ratified by a solemn oath of allegiance,[69] and a promise to observe and submit to all the present and future laws and regulations of the university. in some cases, it appears that she restricted the number of librarii, though this fell into disuse as the wants of the students increased. twenty-four seems to have been the original number,[70] which is sufficiently great to lead to the conclusion that bookselling was a flourishing trade in those old days. by the statutes of the university, the bookseller was not allowed to expose his transcripts for sale, without first submitting them to the inspection of certain officers appointed by the university, and if an error was discovered, the copies were ordered to be burnt or a fine levied on them, proportionate to their inaccuracy. harsh and stringent as this may appear at first sight, we shall modify our opinion, on recollecting that the student was in a great degree dependent upon the care of the transcribers for the fidelity of his copies, which rendered a rule of this nature almost indispensable; nor should we forget the great service it bestowed in maintaining the primitive accuracy of ancient writers, and in transmitting them to us through those ages in their original purity.[71] in these times of free trade and unrestrained commercial policy, we shall regard less favorably a regulation which they enforced at paris, depriving the bookseller of the power of fixing a price upon his own goods. four booksellers were appointed and sworn in to superintend this department, and when a new transcript was finished, it was brought by the bookseller, and they discussed its merits and fixed its value, which formed the amount the bookseller was compelled to ask for it; if he demanded of his customer a larger sum, it was deemed a fraudulent imposition, and punishable as such. moreover, as an advantage to the students, the bookseller was expected to make a considerable reduction in his profits in supplying them with books; by one of the laws of the university, his profit on each volume was confined to four deniers to student, and six deniers to a common purchaser. the librarii were still further restricted in the economy of their trade, by a rule which forbade any one of them to dispose of his entire stock of books without the consent of the university; but this, i suspect, implied the disposal of the stock and trade together, and was intended to intimate that the introduction of the purchaser would not be allowed, without the cognizance and sanction of the university.[72] nor was the bookseller able to purchase books without her consent, lest they should be of an immoral or heretical tendency; and they were absolutely forbidden to buy any of the students, without the permission of the rector. but restricted as they thus were, the book merchants nevertheless grew opulent, and transacted an important and extensive trade; sometimes they purchased parts and sometimes they had whole libraries to sell.[73] their dealings were conducted with unusual care, and when a volume of peculiar rarity or interest was to be sold, a deed of conveyance was drawn up with legal precision, in the presence of authorized witnesses. in those days of high prices and book scarcity, the poor student was sorely impeded in his progress; to provide against these disadvantages, they framed a law in 1342, at paris, compelling all public booksellers to keep books to lend out on hire. the reader will be surprised at the idea of a circulating library in the middle ages! but there can be no doubt of the fact, they were established at paris, toulouse, vienna, and bologne. these public librarians, too, were obliged to write out regular catalogues of their books and hang them up in their shops, with the prices affixed, so that the student might know beforehand what he had to pay for reading them. i am tempted to give a few extracts from these lists: st. gregory's commentaries upon job, for reading 100 pages, 8 sous. st. gregory's book of homilies, 28 pages for 12 deniers. isidore's de summa bona, 24 pages, 12 deniers. anselm's de veritate de libertate arbitrii, 40 pages, 2 sous. peter lombard's book of sentences, 3 sous. scholastic history, 3 sous. augustine's confessions, 21 pages, 4 deniers. gloss on matthew, by brother thomas aquinas, 57 pages, 3 sous. bible concordance, 9 sous. bible, 10 sous.[74] this rate of charge was also fixed by the university, and the students borrowing these books were privileged to transcribe them if they chose; if any of them proved imperfect or faulty, they were denounced by the university, and a fine imposed upon the bookseller who had lent out the volume. this potent influence exercised by the universities over booksellers became, in time, much abused, and in addition to these commercial restraints, they assumed a still less warrantable power over the original productions of authors; and became virtually the public censors of books, and had the power of burning or prohibiting any work of questionable orthodoxy. in the time of henry the second, a book was published by being read over for two or three successive days, before one of the universities, and if they approved of its doctrines and bestowed upon it their approbation, it was allowed to be copied extensively for sale. stringent as the university rules were, as regards the bookselling trade, they were, nevertheless, sometimes disregarded or infringed; some ventured to take more for a book than the sum allowed, and, by prevarication and secret contracts, eluded the vigilance of the laws.[75] some were still bolder, and openly practised the art of a scribe and the profession of a bookseller, without knowledge or sanction of the university. this gave rise to much jealousy, and in the university of oxford, in the year 1373, they made a decree forbidding any person exposing books for sale without her licence.[76] now, considering all these usages of early bookselling, their numbers, their opulence, and above all, the circulating libraries which the librarii established, can we still retain the opinion that books were so inaccessible in those ante-printing days, when we know that for a few sous the booklover could obtain good and authenticated copies to peruse, or transcribe? it may be advanced that these facts solely relate to universities, and were intended merely to insure a supply of the necessary books in constant requisition by the students, but such was not the case; the librarii were essentially public _librorum venditores_, and were glad to dispose of their goods to any who could pay for them. indeed, the early bibliomaniacs usually flocked to these book marts to rummage over the stalls, and to collect their choice volumes. richard de bury obtained many in this way, both at paris and at rome. of the exact pecuniary value of books during the middle ages, we have no means of judging. the few instances that have accidentally been recorded are totally inadequate to enable us to form an opinion. the extravagant estimate given by some as to the value of books in those days is merely conjectural, as it necessarily must be, when we remember that the price was guided by the accuracy of the transcription, the splendor of the binding, which was often gorgeous to excess, and by the beauty and richness of the illuminations.[77] many of the manuscripts of the middle ages are magnificent in the extreme. sometimes they inscribed the gospels and the venerated writings of the fathers with liquid gold, on parchment of the richest purple,[78] and adorned its brilliant pages with illuminations of exquisite workmanship. the first specimens we have of an attempt to embellish manuscripts are egyptian. it was a common practice among them at first to color the initial letter of each chapter or division of their work, and afterwards to introduce objects of various kinds into the body of the manuscript. the splendor of the ancient calligraphical productions of greece,[79] and the still later ones of rome, bear repeated testimony that the practice of this art had spread during the sixth century, if not earlier, to these powerful empires. england was not tardy in embracing this elegant art. we have many relics of remote antiquity and exquisite workmanship existing now, which prove the talent and assiduity of our early saxon forefathers. in ireland the illuminating art was profusely practised at a period as early as the commencement of the seventh century, and in the eighth we find it holding forth eminent claims to our respect by the beauty of their workmanship, and the chastity of their designs. those well versed in the study of these ancient manuscripts have been enabled, by extensive but minute observation, to point out their different characteristics in various ages, and even to decide upon the school in which a particular manuscript was produced. these illuminations, which render the early manuscripts of the monkish ages so attractive, generally exemplify the rude ideas and tastes of the time. in perspective they are wofully deficient, and manifest but little idea of the picturesque or sublime; but here and there we find quite a gem of art, and, it must be owned, we are seldom tired by monotony of coloring, or paucity of invention. a study of these parchment illustrations afford considerable instruction. not only do they indicate the state of the pictorial art in the middle ages, but also give us a comprehensive insight into the scriptural ideas entertained in those times; and the bible student may learn much from pondering on these glittering pages; to the historical student, and to the lover of antiquities, they offer a verdant field of research, and he may obtain in this way many a glimpse of the manners and customs of those old times which the pages of the monkish chroniclers have failed to record. but all this prodigal decoration greatly enhanced the price of books, and enabled them to produce a sum, which now to us sounds enormously extravagant. moreover, it is supposed that the scarcity of parchment limited the number of books materially, and prevented their increase to any extent; but i am prone to doubt this assertion, for my own observations do not help to prove it. mr. hallam says, that in consequence of this, "an unfortunate practice gained ground of erasing a manuscript in order to substitute another on the same skin. this occasioned, probably, the loss of many ancient authors who have made way for the legends of saints, or other ecclesiastical rubbish."[80] but we may reasonably question this opinion, when we consider the value of books in the middle ages, and with what esteem the monks regarded, in spite of all their paganism, those "heathen dogs" of the ancient world. a doubt has often forced itself upon my mind when turning over the "crackling leaves" of many ancient mss., whether the peculiarity mentioned by montfaucon, and described as parchment from which former writing had been erased, may not be owing, in many cases, to its mode of preparation. it is true, a great proportion of the membrane on which the writings of the middle ages are inscribed, appear rough and uneven, but i could not detect, through many manuscripts of a hundred folios--all of which evinced this roughness--the unobliterated remains of a single letter. and when i have met with instances, they appear to have been short writings--perhaps epistles; for the monks were great correspondents, and, i suspect, kept economy in view, and often carried on an epistolary intercourse, for a considerable time, with a very limited amount of parchment, by erasing the letter to make room for the answer. this, probably, was usual where the matter of their correspondence was of no especial importance; so that, what our modern critics, being emboldened by these faint traces of former writing, have declared to possess the classic appearance of hoary antiquity, may be nothing more than a complimentary note, or the worthless accounts of some monastic expenditure. but, careful as they were, what would these monks have thought of "paper-sparing pope," who wrote his iliad on small pieces of refuse paper? one of the finest passages in that translation, which describes the parting of hector and andromache, is written on part of a letter which addison had franked, and is now preserved in the british museum. surely he could afford, these old monks would have said, to expend some few shillings for paper, on which to inscribe that for which he was to receive his thousand pounds. but far from the monastic manuscripts displaying a scantiness of parchment, we almost invariably find an abundant margin, and a space between each line almost amounting to prodigality; and to say that the "vellum was considered more precious than the genius of the author,"[81] is absurd, when we know that, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a dozen skins of parchment could be bought for sixpence; whilst that quantity written upon, if the subject possessed any interest at all, would fetch considerably more, there always being a demand and ready sale for books.[82] the supposition, therefore, that the monastic scribes erased _classical_ manuscripts for the sake of the material, seems altogether improbable, and certainly destitute of proof. it is true, many of the classics, as we have them now, are but mere fragments of the original work. for this, however, we have not to blame the monks, but barbarous invaders, ravaging flames, and the petty animosities of civil and religious warfare for the loss of many valuable works of the classics. by these means, one hundred and five books of livy have been lost to us, probably forever. for the thirty which have been preserved, our thanks are certainly due to the monks. it was from their unpretending and long-forgotten libraries that many such treasures were brought forth at the revival of learning, in the fifteenth century, to receive the admiration of the curious, and the study of the erudite scholar. in this way poggio bracciolini discovered many inestimable manuscripts. leonardo aretino writes in rapturous terms on poggio's discovery of a perfect copy of quintillian. "what a precious acquisition!" he exclaims, "what unthought of pleasure to behold quintillian perfect and entire!"[83] in the same letter we learn that poggio had discovered asconius and flaccus in the monastery of st. gall, whose inhabitants regarded them without much esteem. in the monastery of langres, his researches were rewarded by a copy of cicero's oration for cæcina. with the assistance of bartolomeo di montepulciano, he discovered silius italicus, lactantius, vegetius, nonius marcellus, ammianus marcellus, lucretius, and columella, and he found in a monastery at rome a complete copy of turtullian.[84] in the fine old monastery of casino, so renowned for its classical library in former days, he met with julius frontinus and firmicus, and transcribed them with his own hand. at cologne he obtained a copy of petronius arbiter. but to these we may add calpurnius's bucolic,[85] manilius, lucius septimus, coper, eutychius, and probus. he had anxious hopes of adding a perfect livy to the list, which he had been told then existed in a cistercian monastery in hungary, but, unfortunately, he did not prosecute his researches in this instance with his usual energy. the scholar has equally to regret the loss of a perfect tacitus, which poggio had expectations of from the hands of a german monk. we may still more deplore this, as there is every probability that the monks actually possessed the precious volume.[86] nicolas of treves, a contemporary and friend of poggio's, and who was infected, though in a slight degree, with the same passionate ardor for collecting ancient manuscripts, discovered, whilst exploring the german monasteries, twelve comedies of plautus, and a fragment of aulus gellius.[87] had it not been for the timely aid of these great men, many would have been irretrievably lost in the many revolutions and contentions that followed; and, had such been the case, the monks, of course, would have received the odium, and on their heads the spleen of the disappointed student would have been prodigally showered. footnotes: [40] martene thesaurus novus anecdot. tom. iv. col. 1462. [41] see du cange in voc., vol. vi. p. 264. [42] anglia sacra, ii. 635. fosbrooke brit. monach., p. 15. [43] martene thes. nov. anec. tom. iv. col. 1462. stat. ord. cistere, anni 1278, they were allowed for "_studendum vel recreandum_." [44] hildesh. episc apud leibuit., tom. i. script. brunsvic, p. 444. i am indebted to du cange for this reference. [45] king's munimenta antiqua. stevenson's suppl. to bentham, p. 64. [46] matt paris, p. 51. [47] warton's hist. eng. poetry, p. cxiv. regest. nig. st. edmund. abbat. [48] stevenson's sup. to bentham's church of norwich, 4to. 1817, p. 51. [49] martene de ant. eccl. ritib., cap. xxi. tom. iii. p. 263. [50] _ibid._ [51] alcuini opera, tom. ii. vol. i. p. 211. carmin xvii. [52] preface to ælfric's homilies ms. lansdowne, no. 373, vol. iv. in the british museum. [53] const. can. reg. ap. martene, tom. iii. p. 263. [54] ms. harl. 6395, anecdote 348.--i am indebted to d'israeli for the reference, but not for the extract. [55] the monks were strictly enjoined by the monastic rules to study the bible unceasingly. the statutes of the dominican order are particularly impressive on this point, and enforce a constant reading and critical study of the sacred volume, so as to fortify themselves for disputation; they were to peruse it continually, and apply to it before all other reading _semper ante aliam lectionem_. _martene thesan. nov. anecdot._, tom. iv. col. 1932. see also cols. 1789, 1836, 1912, 1917, 1934. [56] about the year 1225 roger de insula, dean of york, gave several copies of the bible to the university of oxford, and ordered that those who borrowed them for perusal should deposit property of equal value as a security for their safe return.--_wood's hist. antiq. oxon._ ii. 48. [57] muratori dissert. quadragesima tertia, vol. iii. column 849. [58] astle's origin of writing, p. 193.--see also montfaucon palæographia græca, lib. iv. p. 263 et 319. [59] in the year 1300 the pay of a common scribe was about one half-penny a day, see stevenson's supple. to bentham's hist. of the church of ely. p. 51. [60] in some orders the monks were not allowed to sell their books without the express permission of their superiors. according to a statute of the year 1264 the dominicans were strictly prohibited from selling their books or the rules of their order.--_martene thesaur. nov. anecdot._ tom. iv. col. 1741, et col. 1918. [61] vita abbat. wear. ed. ware, p. 26. his fine copy of the cosmographers he bought at rome.--_roma benedictus emerat._ [62] nosti quot scriptores in urbibus aut in agris italiæ passim habeantur.--ep. cxxx. see also ep. xliv. where he speaks of having purchased books in italy, germany and belgium, at considerable cost. it is the most interesting bibliomanical letter in the whole collection. [63] cottonian ms. in the brit. mus.--_claudius_, e. iv. fo. 105, b. [64] epist. lxxi. p. 124, edit. 4to. his words are--"cum dominus rex anglorum me nuper ad dominum regum francorum nuntium distinasset, libri legum venales parisius oblati sunt mihi ab illo b. publico mangone librorum: qui cum ad opus cujusdam mei nepotis idoner viderentur conveni cum eo de pretio et eos apud venditorem dismittens, ei pretium numeravi; superveniente vero c. sexburgensi præposito sicut audini, plus oblulit et licitatione vincens libros de domo venditories per violentiam absportauit." [65] chevillier, origines de l'imprimerie de paris, 4to. 1694, p. 301. [66] "actes concernant le pouvoir et la direction de l'université de paris sur les ecrivains de livres et les imprimeurs qui leur ont succédé comme aussi sur les libraires relieurs et enlumineurs," 4to. 1652, p. 44. it is very rare, a copy was in biblioth. teller, no. 132, p. 428. a statute of 1275 is given by lambecii comment. de augus. biblioth. cæsarea vendobon, vol. ii. pp. 252-267. the booksellers are called "stationarii or librarii;" _de stationariis, sive librariis ut stationarus, qui vulgo appellantur_, etc. see also _du cange_, vol. vi. col. 716. [67] chevillier, p. 301, to whom i am deeply indebted in this branch of my inquiry. [68] hist. lit. de la france, tom. ix. p. 84. chevillier, p. 302. [69] the form of oath is given in full in the statute of 1323, and in that of 1342, chevillier. [70] du breuil, le théâtre des antiq. de paris, 4to. 1612, p. 608. [71] _ibid._, hist. lit. de la france, tom. ix. p. 84. [72] chevillier, p. 303. [73] martene anecd. tom. i. p. 502. hist. lit. de la france, ix. p. 142. [74] chevillier, 319, who gives a long list, printed from an old register of the university. [75] chevillier, 303. [76] vet. stat. universit. oxoniæ, d. fol. 75. archiv. bodl. [77] the church of norwich paid £22, 9s. for illuminating a graduale and consuetudinary in 1374. [78] isidore orig., cap. ii.--jerome, in his preface to job, writes, "_habeant qui volunt veteres libros, vel in membranes purpurus auro argentique colore purpuros aurum liquiscit in literis._" eddius stephanus in his life of st. wilfrid, cap xvi., speaks of "quatuor evangeliæ de auro purissimo in membranis de purpuratis coloratis pro animæ suæ remidis scribere jusset." du cange, vol. iv. p. 654. see also mabillon act. sanct., tom. v. p. 110, who is of opinion that these purple mss. were only designed for princes; see nouveau traité de diplomatique, and montfaucon palæog. græc., pp. 45, 218, 226, for more on this subject. [79] see a fragment in the brit. mus. engraved in shaw's illuminated ornaments, plate 1. [80] middle ages, vol. ii. p. 437. mr. maitland, in his "dark ages," enters into a consideration of this matter with much critical learning and ingenuity. [81] d'israeli amenities of lit., vol. i. p. 358. [82] the precentor's accounts of the church of norwich contain the following items:--1300, 5 _dozen parchment_, 2_s._ 6_d._, 40 lbs. of ink, 4_s._ 4_d._, 1 gallon of vini decrili, 3_s._, 4 lbs. of corporase, 4 lbs. of galls, 2 lbs. of gum arab, 3_s._ 4_d._, to make ink. i dismiss these facts with the simple question they naturally excite: that if parchment was so _very scarce_, what on earth did the monk want with all this ink? [83] leonardi aretini epist. 1. iv. ep. v. [84] mehi præfatio ad vit ambrosii traversarii, p. xxxix. [85] mehi præf., pp. xlviii.--xlix. [86] a ms. containing five books of tacitus which had been deemed lost was found in germany during the pontificate of leo x., and deposited in the laurentian library at florence.--_mehi præf._ p. xlvii. see shepard's life of poggio, p. 104, to whom i am much indebted for these curious facts. [87] shepard's life of poggio, p. 101. chapter iv. _canterbury monastery.--theodore of tarsus.--tatwine.--nothelm.--st. dunstan.--ælfric.--lanfranc.--anselm.--st. augustine's books.--henry de estria and his catalogue.--chiclely.--sellinge.--rochester.--gundulph, a bible student.--radulphus.--ascelin of dover.--glanvill, etc._ in the foregoing chapters i have endeavored to give the reader an insight into the means by which the monks multiplied their books, the opportunities they had of obtaining them, the rules of their libraries and scriptoria, and the duties of a monkish librarian. i now proceed to notice some of the english monastic libraries of the middle ages, and by early records and old manuscripts inquire into their extent, and revel for a time among the bibliomaniacs of the cloisters. on the spot where christianity--more than twelve hundred years ago--first obtained a permanent footing in britain, stands the proud metropolitan cathedral of canterbury--a venerable and lasting monument of ancient piety and monkish zeal. st. augustine, who brought over the glad tidings of the christian faith in the year 596, founded that noble structure on the remains of a church which roman christians in remote times had built there. to write the literary history of its old monastery would spread over more pages than this volume contains, so many learned and bookish abbots are mentioned in its monkish annals. such, however, is beyond the scope of my present design, and i have only to turn over those ancient chronicles to find how the love of books flourished in monkish days; so that, whilst i may here and there pass unnoticed some ingenious author, or only casually remark upon his talents, all that relate to libraries or book-collecting, to bibliophiles or scribes, i shall carefully record; and, i think, from the notes now lying before me, and which i am about to arrange in something like order, the reader will form a very different idea of monkish libraries than he previously entertained. the name that first attracts our attention in the early history of canterbury church is that of theodore of tarsus, the father of anglo-saxon literature, and certainly the first who introduced bibliomania into this island; for when he came on his mission from rome in the year 668 he brought with him an extensive library, containing many greek and latin authors, in a knowledge of which he was thoroughly initiated. bede tells us that he was well skilled in metrical art, astronomy, arithmetic, church music, and the greek and latin languages.[88] at his death[89] the library of christ church monastery was enriched by his valuable books, and in the time of old lambarde some of them still remained. he says, in his quaint way, "the reverend father mathew, nowe archbishop of canterburie, whose care for the conservation of learned monuments can never be sufficiently commended, shewed me, not long since, the psalter of david, and sundrie homilies in greek; homer also and some other greeke authors beautifully wrytten on thicke paper, with the name of this theodore prefixed in the fronte, to whose librarie he reasonably thought, being thereto led by shew of great antiquitie that they sometimes belonged."[90] tatwine was a great book lover, if not a bibliomaniac. "he was renowned for religious wisdom, and notably learned in sacred writ."[91] if he wrote the many pieces attributed to him, his pen must have been prolific and his reading curious and diversified. he is said to have composed on profane and sacred subjects, but his works were unfortunately destroyed by the danish invaders, and a book of poems and one of enigmas are all that have escaped their ravages. the latter work, preserved in our national library, contains many curious hints, illustrative of the manners of those remote days.[92] nothelm, or the bold helm, succeeded this interesting author; he was a learned and pious priest of london. the bibliomaniac will somewhat envy the avocation of this worthy monk whilst searching over the rich treasures of the roman archives, from whence he gleaned much valuable information to aid bede in compiling his history of the english church.[93] not only was he an industrious scribe but also a talented author, if we are to believe pits, who ascribes to him several works, with a life of st. augustine.[94] it is well known that st. dunstan was an ingenious scribe, and so passionately fond of books, that we may unhesitatingly proclaim him a bibliomaniac. he was a native of wessex, and resided with his father near glastonbury abbey, which holy spot many a legendary tale rendered dear to his youthful heart. he entered the abbey, and devoted his whole time to reading the wondrous lives and miracles of ascetic men till his mind became excited to a state of insanity by the many marvels and prodigies which they unfolded; so that he acquired among the simple monks the reputation of one holding constant and familiar intercourse with the beings of another world. on his presentation to the king, which was effected by the influence of his uncle athelm, archbishop of canterbury, he soon became a great favorite, but excited so much jealousy there, that evil reports were industriously spread respecting him. he was accused of practising magical arts and intriguing with the devil. this induced him to retire again into the seclusion of a monastic cell, which he constructed so low that he could scarcely stand upright in it. it was large enough, however, to hold his forge and other apparatus, for he was a proficient worker in metals, and made ornaments, and bells for his church. he was very fond of music, and played with exquisite skill upon the harp.[95] but what is more to our purpose, his biographer tells us that he was remarkably skilful in writing and illuminating, and transcribed many books, adorning them with beautiful paintings, whilst in this little cell.[96] one of them is preserved in the bodleian library at oxford. on the front is a painting of st. dunstan kneeling before our saviour, and at the top is written "_pictura et scriptura hujus pagine subtas visi est de propria manu sei dunstani_."[97] but in the midst of these ingenious pursuits he did not forget to devote many hours to the study of the holy scriptures, as also to the diligent transcription and correction of copies of them,[98] and thus arming himself with the sacred word, he was enabled to withstand the numerous temptations which surrounded him. sometimes the devil appeared as a man, and at other times he was still more severely tempted by the visitations of a beautiful woman, who strove by the most alluring blandishments to draw that holy man from the paths of christian rectitude. in the tenth century such eminent virtues could not pass unrewarded, and he was advanced to the archbishopric of canterbury in the year 961, but his after life is that of a saintly politician, and displays nothing that need be mentioned here. in the year 969,[99] ælfric, abbot of st. alban's, was elected archbishop of canterbury. his identity is involved in considerable doubt by the many contemporaries who bore that name, some of whom, like him, were celebrated for their talent and erudition; but, leaving the solution of this difficulty to the antiquarian, we are justified in saying that he was of noble family, and received his education under ethelwold, at abingdon, about the year 960. he accompanied his master to winchester, and elphegus, bishop of that see, entertained so high an opinion of ælfric's learning and capacity, that he sent him to superintend the recently founded monastery of cerne, in devonshire. he there spent all his hours, unoccupied by the duties of his abbatical office, in the transcription of books and the nobler avocations of an author. he composed a latin grammar, a work which has won for him the title of "_the grammarian_," and he greatly helped to maintain the purity of the christian church by composing a large collection of homilies, which became exceedingly popular during the succeeding century, and are yet in existence. the preface to these homilies contain several very curious passages illustrative of the mode of publication resorted to by the monkish authors, and on that account i am tempted to make the following extracts: "i, ælfric, the scholar of ethelwold, to the courteous and venerable bishop sigeric, in the lord. "although it may appear to be an attempt of some rashness and presumption, yet have i ventured to translate this book out of the latin writers, especially those of the 'holy scriptures,' into our common language; for the edification of the ignorant, who only understand this language when it is either read or heard. wherefore i have not used obscure or unintelligible words, but given the plain english. by which means the hearts, both of the readers and of the hearers, may be reached more easily; because they are incapable of being otherwise instructed, than in their native tongue. indeed, in our translation, we have not ever been so studious to render word for word, as to give the true sense and meaning of our authors. nevertheless, we have used all diligent caution against deceitful errors, that we may not be found seduced by any heresy, nor blinded by any deceit. for we have followed these authors in this translation, namely, st. austin of hippo, st. jerome, bede, gregory, smaragdus, and sometimes haymo, whose authority is admitted to be of great weight with all the faithful. nor have we only expounded the treatise of the gospels;... but have also described the passions and lives of the saints, for the use of the unlearned of this nation. we have placed forty discourses in this volume, believing this will be sufficient for one year, if they be recited entirely to the faithful, by the ministers of the lord. but the other book which we have now taken in hand to compose will contain those passions or treatises which are omitted in this volume." ... "now, if any one find fault with our translation, that we have not always given word for word, or that this translation is not so full as the treatise of the authors themselves, or that in handling of the gospels we have run them over in a method not exactly conformable to the order appointed in the church, let him compose a book of his own; by an interpretation of deeper learning, as shall best agree with his understanding, this only i beseech him, that he may not pervert this version of mine, which i hope, by the grace of god, without any boasting, i have, according to the best of my skill, performed with all diligence. now, i most earnestly entreat your goodness, my most gentle father sigeric, that you will vouchsafe to correct, by your care, whatever blemishes of malignant heresy, or of dark deceit, you shall meet with in my translation, and then permit this little book to be ascribed to your authority, and not to the meanness of a person of my unworthy character. farewell in the almighty god continually. amen."[100] i have before alluded to the care observed by the scribes in copying their manuscripts, and the moderns may deem themselves fortunate that they did so; for although many interpolations, or emendations, as they called them, occur in monkish transcripts, on the whole, their integrity, in this respect, forms a redeeming quality in connexion with their learning. in another preface, affixed to the second collection of his homilies, ælfric thus explains his design in translating them: "ælfric, a monk and priest, although a man of less abilities than are requisite for one in such orders, was sent, in the days of king æthelred, from alphege, the bishop and successor of æthelwold, to a monastery which is called cernel, at the desire of æthelmer, the thane, whose noble birth and goodness is everywhere known. then ran it in my mind, i trust, through the grace of god, that i ought to translate this book out of the latin tongue into the english language not upon presumption of great learning, but because i saw and heard much error in many english books, which ignorant men, through their simplicity, esteemed great wisdom, and because it grieved me that they neither knew, nor had the gospel learning in their writing, except from those men that understood latin, and those books which are to be had of king alfred's, which he skilfully translated from latin into english."[101] from these extracts we may gain some idea of the state of learning in those days, and they would seem, in some measure, to justify the opinion, that the laity paid but little attention to such matters, and i more anxiously present the reader with these scraps, because they depict the state of literature in those times far better than a volume of conjecture could do. it is not consistent with my design to enter into an analysis of these homilies. let the reader, however, draw some idea of their nature from the one written for easter sunday, which has been deemed sufficient proof that the saxon church ever denied the romish doctrine of transubstantiation; for he there expressly states, in terms so plain that all the sophistry of the roman catholic writers cannot pervert its obvious meaning, that the bread and wine is only typical of the body and blood of our saviour. to one who has spent much time in reading the lives and writings of the monkish theologians, how refreshing is such a character as that of ælfric's. often, indeed, will the student close the volumes of those old monastic writers with a sad, depressed, and almost broken heart; so often will he find men who seem capable of better things, who here and there breathe forth all the warm aspirations of a devout and christian heart, bowed down and grovelling in the dust, as it were, to prove their blind submission to the pope, thinking, poor fellows!--for from my very heart i pity them--that by so doing they were preaching that humility so acceptable to the lord. cheering then, to the heart it is to find this monotony broken by such an instance, and although we find ælfric occasionally diverging into the paths of papistical error, he spreads a ray of light over the gloom of those saxon days, and offers pleasing evidence that christ never forsook his church; that even amidst the peril and darkness of those monkish ages there were some who mourned, though it might have been in a monastery, submissive to a roman pontiff, the depravity and corruption with which the heart of man had marred it. to still better maintain the discipline of the church, he wrote a set of canons, which he addressed to wulfin, or wulfsine, bishop of sherbourne. with many of the doctrines advocated therein, the protestant will not agree; but the bibliophile will admit that he gave an indication of his love of books by the 21st canon, which directs that, "before a priest can be ordained, he must be armed with the sacred books, for the spiritual battle, namely, a psalter, book of epistles, book of gospels, the missal book, books of hymns, the manual, or euchiridion, the gerim, the passional, the pænitential, and the lectionary, or reading book; these the diligent priest requires, and let him be careful that they are all accurately written, and free from faults."[102] about the same time, ælfric wrote a treatise on the old and new testaments, and in it we find an account of his labors in biblical literature. he did more in laying open the holy mysteries of the gospel to the perusal of the laity, by translating them into the saxon tongue, than any other before him. he gave them, in a vernacular version, the pentateuch, joshua, judges, esther, job, judith, two books of maccabees, and a portion of the book of kings, and it is for these labors, above all others, that the bible student will venerate his name, but he will look, perhaps, anxiously, hopefully, to these early attempts at bible propagation, and expect to observe the ecclesiastical orders, at least, shake off a little of their absurd dependence on secondary sources for biblical instruction. but, no; they still sadly clung to traditional interpretation; they read the word of god mystified by the fathers, good men, many of them, devout and holy saints, but why approach god through man, when we have his own prescription, in sweet encouraging words, to come, however humble or lowly we may be, to his throne, and ask with our own lips for those blessings so needful for the soul. ælfric, in a letter addressed to sigwerd, prefixed to his treatise on the old and new testament, thus speaks of his biblical labors: "abbot elfricke greeteth friendly, sigwerd at last heolon. true it is i tell thee that very wise is he who speaketh by his doings; and well proceedeth he doth with god and the world who furnisheth himselfe with good works. and very plaine it is in holy scripture, that holy men employed in well doing were in this world held in good reputation, and as saints now enjoy the kingdom of heaven, and the remembrance of them continueth for ever, because of their consent with god and relying on him, carelesse men who lead their life in all idleness and so end it, the memory of them is forgotten in holy writ, saving that the old testament records their ill deeds and how they were therefore comdemned. thou hast oft entreated me for english scripture .... and when i was with thee great mone thou madest that thou couldst get none of my writings. now will i that thou have at least this little, since knowledge is so acceptable to thee, and thou wilt have it rather than be altogether without my books...... god bestoweth sevenfold grace on mankind, (whereof i have already written in another english treatise,) as the prophet isaiah hath recorded in the book of his prophesie." in speaking of the remaining books of the pentateuch, he does so in a cursory manner, and excuses himself because he had "written thereof more at large." "the book which moses wrote, called the book of joshua, sheweth how he went with the people of israel unto abraham's country, and how he won it, and how the sun stood still while he got the victory, and how he divided the land; this book also i turned into english for prince ethelverd, wherein a man may behold the great wonders of god really fulfilled." ...... "after him known it is that there were in the land certaine judges over israel, who guided the people as it is written in the book of judges ..... of this whoso hath desire to hear further, may read it in that english book which i translated concerning the same." ..... "of the book of kings, i have translated also some part into english," "the book of esther, i briefly after my manner translated into english," and "the widow judith who overcame holophernes, the syrian general, hath her book also, among these, concerning her own victory and _englished according to my skill for your example_, that ye men may also defend your country by force of arms, against the invasion of a foreign host." "two books of machabeus, to the glory of god, i have turned also into english, and so read them, you may if you please, for your instruction." and at the end we find him again admonishing the scribes to use the pen with faithfulness. "whosoever," says he, "shall write out this book, let him write it according to the copy, and for god's love correct it, that it be not faulty, less he thereby be discredited, and i shent."[103] this learned prelate died on the 16th of november, 1006, after a life spent thus in the service of christ and the cause of learning; by his will he bequeathed to the abbey of st. alban's, besides some landed possessions, his little library of books;[104] he was honorably buried at abingdon, but during the reign of canute, his bones were removed to canterbury. passing on a few years, we come to that period when a new light shone upon the lethargy of the saxons; the learning and erudition which had been fostering in the snug monasteries of normandy, hitherto silent--buried as it were--but yet fast growing to maturity, accompanied the sword of the norman duke, and added to the glory of the conquering hero, by their splendid intellectual endowments. all this emulated and roused the saxons from their slumber; and, rubbing their laziness away, they again grasped the pen with the full nerve and energy of their nature; a reaction ensued, literature was respected, learning prospered, and copious work flowed in upon the scribes; the crackling of parchment, and the din of controversy bespoke the presence of this revival in the cloisters of the english monasteries; books, the weapons spiritual of the monks, libraries, the magazines of the church militant were preserved, amassed, and at last deemed indispensable.[105] such was the effect on our national literature of that gushing in of the norman conquerors, so deeply imbued with learning, so polished, and withal so armed with classical and patristic lore were they. foremost in the rank we find the learned lanfranc, that patron of literature, that indefatigable scribe and anxious book collector, who was endowed with an erudition far more deep and comprehensive than any other of his day. he was born at pavia, in 1005, and received there the first elements of his education;[106] he afterwards went to bologna, and from thence to avranches, where he undertook the education of many celebrated scholars of that century, and instructed them in sacred and secular learning, _in sacris et secularibus erudivi literis_.[107] whilst proceeding on a journey to rome he was attacked by some robbers, who maltreated and left him almost dead; in this condition he was found by some peasants who conveyed him to the monastery of bec; the monks with their usual hospitable charity tended and so assiduously nourished him in his sickness, that on his recovery he became one of their fraternity. a few years after, he was appointed prior and founded a school there, which did immense service to literature and science; he also collected a great library which was renowned and esteemed in his day,[108] and he increased their value by a critical revisal of their text. he was well aware that in works so voluminous as those of the fathers, the scribes through so many generations could not be expected to observe an unanimous infallibility; but knowing too that even the most essential doctrines of the holy and catholic church were founded on patristical authority, he was deeply impressed with the necessity of keeping their writings in all their primitive integrity; an end so desirable, well repaid the tediousness of the undertaking, and he cheerfully spent much time in collecting and comparing codices, in studying their various readings or erasing the spurious interpolations, engendered by the carelessness or the pious frauds of monkish scribes.[109] he lavished his care in a similar manner on the bible: considering the far distant period from which that holy volume has descended to us, it is astounding that the vicissitudes, the perils, the darkness of near eighteen hundred years, have failed to mar the divinity of that sacred book; not all the blunders of nodding scribes could do it, not all the monkish interpolations, or the cunning of sectarian pens could do it, for in all times the faithful church of christ watched over it with a jealous care, supplied each erasure and expelled each false addition. lanfranc was one of the most vigilant of these scripture guards, and his own industry blest his church with the bible text, purified from the gross handmarks of human meddling. i learn, from the benedictines of st. maur, that there is still preserved in the abbey of st. martin de sécz, the first ten conferences of cassian corrected by the efficient hand of this great critical student, at the end of the manuscript these words are written, "_hucusque ago lanfrancus correxi_."[110] the works of st. ambrose, on which he bestowed similar care, are preserved in the library of st. vincent du mans.[111] when he was promoted to the see of canterbury, he brought with him a copious supply of books, and spread the influence of his learning over the english monasteries; but with all the cares inseparably connected with the dignity of primate of england, he still found time to gratify his bookloving propensities, and to continue his critical labors; indeed he worked day and night in the service of the church, _servitio ecclesiæ_, and in correcting the books which the scribes had written.[112] from the profusion of his library he was enabled to lend many volumes to the monks, so that by making transcripts, they might add to their own stores--thus we know that he lent to paulen, abbot of st. albans, a great number, who kept his scribes hard at work transcribing them, and built a scriptorium for the transaction of these pleasing labors; but more of this hereafter. anselm, too, was a renowned and book-loving prelate, and if his pride and haughtiness wrought warm dissensions and ruptures in the church, he often stole away to forget them in the pages of his book. at an early age he acquired this fondness for reading, and whilst engaged as a monkish student, he applied his mind to the perusal of books with wonderful perseverance, and when some favorite volume absorbed his attention, he could scarce leave it night or day.[113] industry so indefatigable ensured a certain success, and he became eminent for his deep and comprehensive learning; his epistles bear ample testimony to his extensive reading and intimate acquaintance with the authors of antiquity;[114] in one of his letters he praises a monk named maurice, for his success in study, who was learning _virgil_ and some other old writers, under arnulph the grammarian. all day long anselm was occupied in giving wise counsel to those that needed it; and a great part of the night _pars maxima noctis_ he spent in correcting his darling volumes, and freeing them from the inaccuracies of the scribes.[115] the oil in the lamp burnt low, still that bibliomaniac studiously pursued his favorite avocation. so great was the love of book-collecting engrafted into his mind, that he omitted no opportunity of obtaining them--numerous instances occur in his epistles of his begging the loan of some volume for transcription;[116] in more than one, i think, he asks for portions of the holy scriptures which he was always anxious to obtain to compare their various readings, and to enable him with greater confidence to correct his own copies. in the early part of the twelfth century, the monks of canterbury transcribed a vast number of valuable manuscripts, in which they were greatly assisted by monk edwine, who had arrived at considerable proficiency in the calligraphical art, as a volume of his transcribing, in trinity college, cambridge, informs us;[117] it is a latin psalter, with a saxon gloss, beautifully illuminated in gold and colors; at the end appears the figure of the monkish scribe, holding the pen in his hand to indicate his avocation, and an inscription extols his ingenuity in the art.[118] succeeding archbishops greatly enriched the library at canterbury. hubert walter, who was appointed primate in 1191, gave the proceeds of the church of halgast to furnish books for the library;[119] and robert kildwardly, archbishop in 1272, a man of great learning and wisdom, a remarkable orator and grammarian, wrote a great number of books, and was passionately fond of collecting them.[120] i learn from wanley, that there is a large folio manuscript in the library of trinity hall, cambridge, written about the time of henry v. by a monk of st. augustine's abbey, canterbury, containing the history of christ church; this volume proves its author to have been something of a bibliophile, and that is why i mention it, for he gives an account of some books then preserved, which were sent over by pope gregory to st. augustine; these precious volumes consisted of a bible in two volumes, called "biblia gregorian," beautifully written, with some of the leaves tinted with purple and rose-color, and the capital letters rubricated. this interesting and venerable ms. so immediately connected with the first ages of the christian church of britain, was in existence in the time of james i., as we learn by a passage in a scarce tract entitled "a petition apologetical," addressed by the catholics to his majesty, where, as a proof that we derive our knowledge of scripture originally from the church of rome; they say, "the very original bible, the self-same _numero_ which st. gregory sent in with our apostle, st. augustine, being as yet reserved by god's special providence, as testimony that what scriptures we have, we had them from rome."[121] he next mentions two psalters, one of which i have seen; it is among the manuscripts in the cotton collection,[122] and bears full evidence of its great antiquity. this early gem of biblical literature numbers 160 folios; it contains the roman psalter, with a saxon interlinear translation, written on stout vellum, in a clear, bold hand. on opening the volume, we find the first page enriched with a dazzling specimen of monkish skill--it is a painting of our saviour pointing with his right hand to heaven, and in his left holding the sacred book; the corners are occupied with figures of animals, and the whole wrought on a glittering ground work, is rendered still more gorgeous by the contrast which the purple robes of jesus display; on the reverse of this fine illumination there is a beautiful tesselated ornament, interwoven with animals, flowers, and grotesque figures, around which are miniatures of our saviour, david, and some of the apostles. in a line at the bottom the word catvsvir is inscribed. very much inferior to this in point of art is the illumination, at folio 31, representing david playing his harp, surrounded by a musical coterie; it is probably the workmanship of a more modern, but less skilful scribe of the saxon school. the smaller ornaments and initial letters throughout the manuscript display great intricacy of design. the writer next describes two copies of the gospels, both now in the bodleian collection at oxford. a passionarium sanctorum, a book for the altar, on one side of which was the image of our saviour wrought in gold, and lastly, an exposition of the epistles and gospels; the monkish bookworm tells us that these membraneous treasures were the most ancient books in all the churches of england.[123] a good and liberal monk, named henry de estria, who was elected prior in the year 1285, devoted both his time and wealth to the interests of his monastery, and is said to have expended £900 in repairing the choir and chapter-house.[124] he wrote a book beginning, "_memoriale henerici prioris monasteri xpi cantuariæ_,"[125] now preserved in the cotton collection; it contains the most extensive monastic catalogue i had ever seen, and sufficiently proves how bibliomania flourished in that noble monastery. it occupies no less than thirty-eight treble-columned folio pages, and contains the titles of more than three thousand works. to attempt to convey to the reader an idea of this curious and sumptuous library, without transcribing a large proportion of its catalogue, i am afraid will be a futile labor; but as that would occupy too much space, and to many of my readers be, after all, dry and uninteresting, i shall merely give the names of some of the most conspicuous. years indeed it must have required to have amassed a collection so brilliant and superb in those days of book scarcity. surprise and wonder almost surpass the admiration we feel at beholding this proud testimonial of monkish industry and early bibliomania. many a choice scribe, and many an _amator librorum_ must have devoted his pen and purse to effect so noble an acquisition. like most of the monastic libraries, it possessed a great proportion of biblical literature--copies of the bible whole and in parts, commentaries on the same, and numerous glossaries and concordances show how much care the monks bestowed on the sacred writings, and how deeply they were studied in those old days. in patristic learning the library was unusually rich, embracing the most eminent and valuable writings of the fathers, as may be seen by the following names, of whose works the catalogue enumerates many volumes: augustine. ambroise. anselm. alcuin. aldelm. benedict. bernard. bede. beranger. chrysostom. eusebius. fulgentius. gregory. hillarius. isidore. jerome. lanfranc. origen. much as we may respect them for all this, our gratitude will materially increase when we learn how serviceable the monks of canterbury were in preserving the old dead authors of greece and rome. we do not, from the very nature of their lives being so devoted to religion and piety, expect this; and knowing, too, what "heathen dogs" the monks thought these authors of idolatry, combined with our notion, that they, far from being the conservers, were the destroyers, of classic mss., for the sake, as some tell us, of the parchment on which they were inscribed, we are somewhat staggered in our opinion to find in their library the following brilliant array of the wise men of the ancient world: aristotle, boethius, cicero, cassiodorus, donatus, euclid, galen, justin, josephus, lucan, martial, marcianus, macrobius, orosius, plato, priscian, prosper, prudentius, suetonius, sedulus, seneca, terence, virgil, etc., etc. nor were they mere fragments of these authors, but, in many cases, considerable collections; of aristotle, for instance, they possessed numerous works, with many commentaries upon him. of seneca a still more extensive and valuable one; and in the works of the eloquent tully, they were also equally rich. of his _paradoxa, de senectute, de amiticia_, etc., and _his offices_, they had more copies than one, a proof of the respect and esteem with which he was regarded. in miscellaneous literature, and in the productions of the middle age writers, the catalogue teems with an abundant supply, and includes: rabanus maurus, thomas aquinas, peter lombard, athelard, william of malmsbury, john of salisbury, girald barry, thomas baldwin, brutus, robert grosetete, gerlandus, gregory nazianzen, history of england, gesti alexandri magni, hystoria longobardos, hystoriæ scholasticæ, chronicles _latine et anglice_, chronographia necephori. but i trust the reader will not rest satisfied with these few samples of the goodly store, but inspect the catalogue for himself. it would occupy, as i said before, too much space to enumerate even a small proportion of its many treasures, which treat of all branches of literature and science, natural history, medicine, ethics, philosophy, rhetoric, grammar, poetry, and music; each shared the studious attention of the monks, and a curious "_liber de astronomia_" taught them the rudiments of that sublime science, but which they were too apt to confound with its offspring, astrology, as we may infer, was the case with the monks of canterbury, for their library contained a "_liber de astroloebus_," and the "prophesies of merlin." many hints connected with the literary portion of a monastic life may sometimes be found in these catalogues. it was evidently usual at christ church monastery to keep apart a number of books for the private study of the monks in the cloister, which i imagine they were at liberty to use at any time.[126] a portion of the catalogue of monk henry is headed "_lib. de armariole claustre_,"[127] under which it is pleasing to observe a bible, in two volumes, specified as for the use of the infirmary, with devotional books, lives of the fathers, a history of england, the works of bede, isidore, boethius, rabanus maurus, cassiodorus, and many others of equal celebrity. in another portion of the manuscript, we find a list of their church books, written at the same time;[128] it affords a brilliant proof of the plentitude of the gospels among them; for no less than twenty-five copies are described. we may judge to what height the art of bookbinding had arrived by the account here given of these precious volumes. some were in a splendid coopertoria of gold and silver, and others exquisitely ornamented with figures of our saviour and the four evangelists.[129] but this extravagant costliness rendered them attractive objects to pilfering hands, and somewhat accounts for the lament of the industrious somner, who says that the library was "shamefully robbed and spoiled of them all."[130] our remarks on the monastic library at canterbury are drawing to a close. henry chiclely, archbishop in 1413, an excellent man, and a great promoter of learning, rebuilt the library of the church, and furnished it with many a choice tome.[131] his esteem for literature was so great, that he built two colleges at oxford.[132] william sellinge, who was a man of erudition, and deeply imbued with the book-loving mania, was elected prior in 1472. he is said to have studied at bonania, in italy; and, during his travels, he gathered together "all the ancient authors, both greek and latine, he could get," and returned laden with them to his own country. many of them were of great rarity, and it is said that a tully _de republica_ was among them. unfortunately, they were all burnt by a fire in the monastery.[133] i have said enough, i think, to show that books were eagerly sought after, and deeply appreciated, in canterbury cloisters during the middle ages, and when the reader considers that these facts have been preserved from sheer accident, and, therefore, only enable us to obtain a partial glimpse of the actual state of their library, he will be ready to admit that bibliomania existed then, and will feel thankful, too, that it did, for to its influence, surely, we are indebted for the preservation of much that is valuable and instructive in history and general literature.[134] we can scarcely leave kent without a word or two respecting the church of the rochester monks. it was founded by king ethelbert, who conferred upon it the dignities of an episcopal see, in the year 600; and, dedicating it to st. andrew, completed the good work by many donations and emoluments. the revenues of the see were always limited, and it is said that its poverty caused it to be treated with kind forbearance by the ecclesiastical commissioners at the period of the reformation. i have not been able to meet with any catalogue of its monastic library, and the only hints i can obtain relative to their books are such as may be gathered from the recorded donations of its learned prelates and monks. in the year 1077, gundulph, a norman bishop, who is justly celebrated for his architectural talents, rebuilt the cathedral, and considerable remains of this structure are still to be seen in the nave and west front, and display that profuse decoration united with ponderous stability, for which the norman buildings are so remarkable. this munificent prelate also enriched the church with numerous and costly ornaments; the encouragement he gave to learning calls for some notice here. trained in one of the most flourishing of the norman schools, we are not surprised that in his early youth he was so studious and inquisitive after knowledge as to merit the especial commendation of his biographer.[135] william of malmsbury, too, highly extols him "for his abundant piety," and tells us that he was not inexperienced in literary avocations; he was polished and courageous in the management of judicial affairs, and a close, devoted student of the divine writings;[136] as a scribe he was industrious and critical, and the great purpose to which he applied his patience and erudition was a careful revisal of the holy scriptures. he purged the sacred volume of the inadvertencies of the scribes, and restored the purity of the text; for transcribing after transcribing had caused some errors and diversity of readings to occur, between the english and foreign codices, in spite of all the pious care of the monastic copyists; this was perplexing, an uniformity was essential and he undertook the task;[137] labors so valuable deserve the highest praise, and we bestow it more liberally upon him for this good work than we should have done had he been the compiler of crude homilies or the marvellous legends of saints. the high veneration in which gundulph held the patristic writings induced him to bestow his attention in a similar manner upon them, he compared copies, studied their various readings and set to work to correct them. the books necessary for these critical researches he obtained from the libraries of his former master, bishop lanfranc, st. anselm, his schoolfellow, and many others who were studying at bec, but besides this, he corrected many other authors, and by comparing them with ancient manuscripts, restored them to their primitive beauty. fabricius[138] notices a fine volume, which bore ample testimony to his critical erudition and dexterity as a scribe. it is described as a large bible on parchment, written in most beautiful characters, it was proved to be his work by this inscription on its title page, "_prima pars bibliæ per bona memoriæ gundulphum rossensem episcopum_." this interesting manuscript, formerly in the library of the monks of rochester, was regarded as one of their most precious volumes. an idea of the great value of a bible in those times may be derived from the curious fact that the bishop made a decree directing "excommunication to be pronounced against whosoever should take away or conceal this volume, or who should even dare to conceal the inscription on the front, which indicated the volume to be the property of the church of rochester." but we must bear in mind that this was no ordinary copy, it was transcribed by gundulph's own pen, and rendered pure in its text by his critical labors. but the time came when anathemas availed nought, and excommunication was divested of all terror. "henry the eighth," the "defender of the faith," frowned destruction upon the monks, and in the tumult that ensued, this treasure was carried away, anathema and all. somehow or other it got to amsterdam, perhaps sent over in one of those "shippes full," to the bookbinders, and having passed through many hands, at last found its way into the possession of herman van de wal, burgomaster of amsterdam; since then it was sold by public auction, but has now i believe been lost sight of.[139] among the numerous treasures which gundulph gave to his church, he included a copy of the gospels, two missals and a book of epistles.[140] similar books were given by succeeding prelates; radolphus, a norman bishop in 1108, gave the monks several copies of the gospels beautifully adorned.[141] earnulphus, in the year 1115, was likewise a benefactor in this way; he bestowed upon them, besides many gold and silver utensils for the church, a copy of the gospels, lessons for the principal days, a benedictional, or book of blessings, a missal, handsomely bound, and a capitular.[142] ascelin, formerly prior of dover, and made bishop of rochester, in the year 1142, gave them a psalter and the epistles of st. paul, with a gloss.[143] he was a learned man, and excessively fond of books; a passion which he had acquired no doubt in his monastery of dover which possessed a library of no mean extent.[144] he wrote a commentary on isaiah, and gave it to the monastery; walter, archdeacon of canterbury, who succeeded ascelin, gave a copy of the gospels bound in gold, to the church;[145] and waleran, elected bishop in the year 1182, presented them with a glossed psalter, the epistles of paul, and the sermons of peter.[146] glanvill, bishop in the year 1184, endeavored to deprive the monks of the land which gundulph had bestowed upon them; this gave to rise to many quarrels[147] which the monks never forgave; it is said that he died without regret, and was buried without ceremony; yet the curious may still inspect his tomb on the north side of the altar, with his effigies and mitre lying at length upon it.[148] glanvill probably repented of his conduct, and he strove to banish all animosity by many donations; and among other treasures, he gave the monks the five books of moses and other volumes.[149] osbern of shepey, who was prior in the year 1189, was a great scribe and wrote many volumes for the library; he finished the commentary of ascelin, transcribed a history of peter, a breviary for the chapel, a book called _de claustra animæ_, and wrote the great psalter which is chained to the choir and window of st. peter's altar.[150] ralph de ross, and heymer de tunebregge,[151] also bestowed gifts of a similar nature upon the monks; but the book anecdotes connected with this monastic fraternity are remarkably few, barren of interest, and present no very exalted idea of their learning.[152] footnotes: [88] bede, iv. cap. ii. [89] he died in 690, and was succeeded by bertwold, abbot of reculver, _saxon chronicle, ingram_, p. 57. bede speaks of bertwold as "well learned in scripture and ecclesiastical literature."--_eccl. hist._ b. v. c. viii. [90] preambulation of kent, 4to. 1576, p. 233. parker's ant. brit. p. 80. [91] he was consecrated on the 10th of june, 731, bede, v. c. xxiii. [92] m.s. reg. 12, c. xxiii. i know of no other copy. leland says that he saw a copy at glastonbury. [93] bede's eccl. hist. prologue. [94] pitseus angliæ scrip. 1619, p. 141. dart's hist. canterbury, p. 102. [95] cottonian ms. cleopatra, b. xiii. fo. 70. [96] w. malm, de vita, dunst. ap. leland, script. tom. 1. p. 162. cotton. ms. fanstin, b. 13. [97] strutt's saxon. antiq. vol. 1, p. 105, plate xviii. see also hicke's saxon grammar, p. 104. [98] ms. cotton., cleop. b. xiii. fo. 69. mabd. acta sancto. vii. 663. [99] saxon chron. by ingram, 171. [100] landsdowne ms. in brit. mus. 373, vol. iv. [101] landsdowne ms. in brit. mus. 373, vol. iv. [102] can. 21, p. 577, vol. i. [103] lisle's divers ancient monuments in the saxon tongue, 4to. lond. 1638, p. 43. [104] ms. cottonian claudius, b. vi. p. 103; dart's hist. of cant. p. 112.; dugdale's monast., vol. i. p. 517. [105] there was an old saying, and a true one, prevalent in those days, that a monastery without a library was like a castle without an armory, _clastrum sine armario, quasi castrum sine armamentario_. see letter of gaufredi of st. barbary to peter mangot, _martene thes. nov. anecd._, tom. i. col. 511. [106] mabillon, act. s., tom. ix. p. 659. [107] ep. i. ad papæ alex. [108] vita lanfr., c. vi. "_effulsit eo majistro, obedientia coactu, philosophicarum ac divinarum litterarum bibliotheca, etc._" opera p. 8. edit. folio, 1648. [109] "et quia scripturæ scriptorum vitio erant ninium corruptæ, omnes tam veteris, quam novi testamenti libros; necnon etiam scriptæ sanctorum patrum secundum orthodoxam fidem studuit corrigere." vita lanfr. cap. 15, ap. opera, p. 15. [110] hist. litt. de la france, vol. vii. p. 117. [111] _ibid._ "il rendit de même service à trois écrits de s. ambrose l'hexameron, l'apologie de david et le traité des sacrements, tels qu'on les voit à la bibliothèque de st. vincent du mans." [112] _ibid._ [113] malmsb. de gest. pontif. b. i. p. 216. [114] see epist. 16. lib. i. [115] edmer. vit. anselm, apud anselm opera.--_edit. benedict_, 1721, b. i. p. 4. [116] epp. 10-20, lib. i. and 24 b. ii. [117] codic. fol. first class, a dextr. sc. med. 5. [118] warton's hist. eng. poetry. dissert, ii. [119] dart's canterb. p. 132. dugdale's monast. vol. i. p. 85. [120] there is, or was, in st. peter's college, cambridge, a ms. volume of 21 books, which formerly belonged to this worthy bibliophile.--_dart_, p. 137. [121] petition apol. 4to. 1604, p. 17. [122] brit. mus. vesp. a. i. [123] wanley librorum vett septentrionalium fol. oxon, 1705, p. 172. [124] dugdale's monast. angl. vol. i. p. 112. [125] ms. cot. galba. e. iv. [126] see what has been said on this subject in the previous chapter. [127] ms. galla, e. iv. fol. 133. [128] ms. fol. 122. [129] _textus magnus auro coopertus et gemmis ornatus, cum majistate in media, et 4 evangelistis in 4 angulis. ibid._ [130] somner antiq. cant. 4to. 1640, p. 174, he is speaking of books in general. [131] duck vita chich. p. 104. [132] dugdale, vol. i. p. 86. dart, p. 158, and somner ant. cant. 174. [133] somner, 294 and 295; see also leland scriptor. he was well versed in the greek language, and his monument bears the following line: "doctor theologus selling græca atque latina, linqua perdoctus."--see warton's hist. poet., ii. p. 425. [134] there is a catalogue written in the sixteenth century, preserved among the cotton ms., containing the titles of seventy books belonging to canterbury library. it is printed in leland collect. vol. iv. p. 120, and in dart's hist. cant. cath.; but they differ slightly from the cott. ms. julius, c. vi. 4, fol. 99. [135] monachus roffensis de vita gundulphi, 274. [136] will. malms. de gest. pont. ang. ap rerum. ang. script, 133. [137] histoire littéraire de fr., tom. vii. p. 118. [138] biblioth. latine, b. vii. p. 519. [139] hist. litt. de fr., tom. ix. p. 373. [140] thorpe regist. roffens, fol. 1769, p. 118. [141] wharton angl. sacr., tom. 1, p. 342. [142] thorpe regist. rof., p. 120. dugdale's monast., vol. 1, p. 157. [143] thorpe reg. rof., p. 121. [144] a catalogue of this library is preserved among the bodleian mss. no. 920, containing many fine old volumes. i am not aware that it has been ever printed. [145] "textum evangeliorum aureum." reg. rof., p. 121. [146] _ibid._, p. 121. [147] dugdale's monasticon, vol. 1, p. 156. [148] wharton's ang. sac, tom. 1, p. 346. [149] thorpe reg. rof., p. 121. [150] thorpe reg. rof., 121. dugdale's monast., vol. i. p. 158. [151] reg. rof., pp. 122, 123. [152] in a long list of gifts by robert de hecham, i find "librum ysidore ethimologiarum possuit in armarium claustri et alia plura fecit."--_thorpe reg. rof._, p. 123. chapter v. _lindesfarne.--st. cuthbert's gospels.--destruction of the monastery.--alcuin's letter on the occasion.--removal to durham.--carelepho.--catalogue of durham library.--hugh de pusar.--anthony bek.--richard de bury and his philobiblon, etc._ the benedictine monastery of lindesfarne, or the holy island, as it was called, was founded through the instrumentality of oswald, the son of ethelfrith, king of northumberland, who was anxious for the promulgation of the christian faith within his dominions. aidan, the first bishop of whom we have any distinct account, was appointed about the year 635. bede tells us that he used frequently to retire to the isle of farne, that he might pray in private and be undisturbed.[153] this small island, distant about nine miles from the church of lindesfarne, obtained great celebrity from st. cuthbert, who sought that quiet spot and led there a lonely existence in great continence of mind and body.[154] in 685 he was appointed to the see of lindesfarne, where, by his pious example and regular life, he instructed many in their religious duties. the name of this illustrious saint is intimately connected with a most magnificent specimen of calligraphical art of the eighth century, preserved in the british museum,[155] and well known by the name of the durham book, or saint cuthbert's gospels; it was written some years after the death of that saint, in honor of his memory, by egfrith, a monk of lindesfarne, who was made bishop of that see in the year 698. at egfrith's death in 721, his successor, æthilwald, most beautifully bound it in gold and precious stones, and bilfrid, a hermit, richly illuminated it by prefixing to each gospel a beautiful painting representing one of the evangelists, and a tesselated cross, executed in a most elaborate manner. he also displayed great skill by illuminating the large capital letters at the commencement of each gospel.[156] doubtless, the hermit bilfrid was an eminent artist in his day. aldred, the glossator, a priest of durham, about the year 950, still more enriched this precious volume by interlining it with a saxon gloss, or version of the latin text of st. jerome, of which the original manuscript is a copy.[157] it is therefore, one of the most venerable of those early attempts to render the holy scriptures into the vernacular tongue, and is on that account an interesting relic to the christian reader, and, no doubt, formed the choicest volume in the library of lindesfarne.[158] but imperfectly, indeed, have i described the splendid manuscript which is now lying, in all its charms, before me. and as i mark its fine old illuminations, so bright in color, and so chaste in execution, the accuracy of its transcription, and the uniform beauty of its calligraphy, my imagination carries me back to the quiet cloister of the old saxon scribe who wrote it, and i can see in egfrith, a bibliomaniac, of no mean pretensions, and in bilfrid, a monkish illuminator, well initiated in the mysteries of his art. the manuscript contains 258 double columned folio pages, and the paintings of the evangelists each occupy an entire page. we learn the history of its production from a very long note at the end of the manuscript, written by the hand of the glossator.[159] but sad misfortunes were in store for the holy monks, for about 793, or a little earlier, when highbald was abbot, the danes burnt down the monastery and murdered the ecclesiastics; "most dreadful lightnings and other prodigies," says simeon of durham, "are said to have portended the impending ruin of this place; on the 7th of june they came to the church of lindesfarne, miserably plundered all places, overthrew the altars, and carried away all the treasures of the church, some of the monks they slew, some they carried away captives, some they drowned in the sea, and others much afflicted and abused they turned away naked."[160] fortunately some of the poor monks escaped, and after a short time returned to their old spot, and with religious zeal set about repairing the damage which the sacred edifice had sustained; after its restoration they continued comparatively quiet till the time of eardulfus, when the danes in the year 875, again invaded england and burned down the monastery of lindesfarne. the monks obtained some knowledge of their coming and managed to effect their escape, taking with them the body of st. cuthbert, which they highly venerated, with many other honored relics; they then set out with the bishop eardulfus and the abbot eadrid at their head on a sort of pilgrimage to discover some suitable resting place for the remains of their saint; but finding no safe locality, and becoming fatigued by the irksomeness of the journey, they as a last resource resolved to pass over to ireland. for this purpose they proceeded to the sea, but no sooner were they on board the ship than a terrific storm arose, and had it not been for the fond care of their patron saint, a watery grave would have been forever their resting place; but, as it was, their lives were spared, and the holy bones preserved to bless mankind, and work wondrous miracles in the old church of the saxon monks. nevertheless, considerable damage was sustained, and the fury of the angry waves forced them back again to the shore. the monks deeming this an indication of god's will that they should remain, decided upon doing so, and leaving the ship, they agreed to proceed on their way rejoicing, and place still greater trust in the mercy of god and the miraculous influence of st. cuthbert's holy bones; but some whose reliance on divine providence appears not so conspicuous, became dissatisfied, and separated from the rest till at last only seven monks were left besides their bishop and abbot. their relics were too numerous and too cumbersome to be conveyed by so small a number, and they knew not how to proceed; but one of the seven whose name was hanred had a vision, wherein he was told that they should repair to the sea, where they would find a book of gospels adorned with gold and precious stones, which had been lost out of the ship when they were in the storm; and that after that he should see a bridle hanging on a tree, which he should take down and put upon a horse that would come to him, which horse he should put to a cart he would also find, to carry the holy body, which would be an ease to them. all these things happening accordingly, they travelled with more comfort, following the horse, which way soever he should lead. the book above mentioned was no ways damaged by the water, and is still preserved in the library at durham,[161] where it remained till the reformation, when it was stript of its jewelled covering, and after passing through many hands, ultimately came into the possession of sir robert cotton, in whose collection, as we have said before, it is now preserved in the british museum. i cannot refrain, even at the risk of incurring some blame for my digression, presenting the reader with a part of a letter full of fraternal love, which alcuin addressed to the monks of lindesfarne on this sad occasion. "your dearest fraternity," says he, "was wont to afford me much joy. but now how different! though absent, i deeply lament the more your tribulations and calamities; the manner in which the pagans contaminate the sanctuaries of god, and shed the blood of saints around the altar, devastating the joy of our house, and trampling on the bodies of holy men in the temple of god, as though they were treading on a dunghill in the street. but of what effect is our wailing unless we come before the altars of christ and cry, 'spare me, o lord! spare thy people, and take not thine inheritance from them;' nor let the pagans say, 'where is the god of the christians?' besides who is to pacify the churches of britain, if st. cuthbert cannot defend them with so great a number of saints? nevertheless do not trouble the mind about these things, for god chasteneth all the sons whom he receiveth, and therefore perhaps afflicts you the more, because he the more loveth you. jerusalem, the delightful city of god, was lost by the chaldean scourge; and rome, the city of the holy apostles and innumerable martyrs, was surrounded by the pagans and devastated. well nigh the whole of europe is evacuated by the scourging sword of the goths or the huns. but in the same manner in which god preserved the stars to illuminate the heavens, so will he preserve the churches to ornament, and in their office to strengthen and increase the christian religion."[162] thus it came to pass that eardulphus was the last bishop of lindesfarne and the first of cunecacestre, or chester-upon-the-street, to which place his see was removed previous to its final settlement at durham. after a succession of many bishops, some recorded as learned and bookish by monkish annalists, and nearly all benefactors in some way to their church, we arrive at the period when aldwine was consecrated bishop of that see in the year 990. the commotions of his time made his presidency a troubled and harassing one. sweyn, king of denmark, and olauis, king of norway, invaded england, and spreading themselves in bodies over the kingdom, committed many and cruel depredations; a strong body of these infested the northern coast, and approached the vicinity of chester-on-the-street. this so alarmed aldwine, that he resolved to quit his church--for the great riches and numerous relics of that holy place were attractive objects to the plundering propensities of the invaders. carrying, therefore, the bones of st. cuthbert with them--for that box of mortal dust was ever precious in the sight of those old monks--and the costly treasures of the church, not forgetting their books, the monks fled to ripon, and the see, which after similar adversities their predecessors one hundred and thirteen years ago had settled at chester, was forever removed. it is true three or four months after, as symeon of durham tells us, they attempted to return, but when they reached a place called werdelan, "on the east and near unto durham," they could not move the bier on which the body of st. cuthbert was carried, although they applied their united strength to effect it. the superstition, or perhaps simplicity, of the monks instantly interpreted this into a manifestation of divine interference, and they resolved not to return again to their old spot. and we are further told that after three days' fasting and prayer, the lord vouchsafed to reveal to them that they should bear the saintly burden to durham, a command which they piously and cheerfully obeyed. having arrived there, they fixed on a wild and uncultivated site, and making a simple oratory of wattles for the temporary reception of their relics, they set zealously to work--for these old monks well knew what labor was--to cut down wood, to clear the ground, and build an habitation for themselves. shortly after, in the wilderness of that neglected spot, the worthy bishop aldwine erected a goodly church of stone to the honor of god, and as a humble tribute of gratitude and love; and so it was that aldwine, the last bishop of chester-on-the-street, was the first of durham. when william carelepho, a norman monk, was consecrated bishop, the church had so increased in wealth and usefulness, that fresh wants arose, more space was requisite, and a grander structure would be preferable; the bishop thereupon pulled the old church of aldwine down and commenced the erection of a more magnificent one in its place, as the beauty of durham cathedral sufficiently testifies even now; and will not the lover of artistic beauty award his praise to the norman bishop--those massive columns and stupendous arches excite the admiring wonder of all; built on a rocky eminence and surrounded by all the charms of a romantic scenery, it is one of the finest specimens of architecture which the enthusiasm of monkish days dedicated to piety and to god. its liberal founder however did not live to see it finished, for he died in the year 1095, two years after laying its foundation stone. his bookloving propensities have been honorably recorded, and not only was he fond of reading, but kept the pens of the scribes in constant motion, and used himself to superintend the transcription of manuscripts, as the colophon of a folio volume in durham library fully proves.[163] the monkish bibliophiles of his church received from him a precious gift of about 40 volumes, containing among other valuable books prosper, pompeii, tertullian, and a great bible in two volumes.[164] it would have been difficult perhaps to have found in those days a body of monks so "bookish" as those of durham; not only did they transcribe with astonishing rapidity, proving that there was no want of vellum there, but they must have bought or otherwise collected a great number of books; for the see of durham, in the early part of the 12th century, could show a library embracing nearly 300 volumes.[165] nor let the reader imagine that the collection possessed no merit in a literary point of view, or that the monks cared for little else save legends of saints or the literature of the church; the catalogue proves them to have enjoyed a more liberal and a more refined taste, and again display the cloistered students of the middle ages as the preservers of classic learning. this is a point worth observing on looking over the old parchment catalogues of the monks; for as by their epistles we obtain a knowledge of their intimacy with the old writers, and the use they made of them, so by their catalogues we catch a glimpse of the means they possessed of becoming personally acquainted with their beauties; by the process much light may be thrown on the gloom of those long past times, and perhaps we shall gain too a better view of the state of learning existing then. but that the reader may judge for himself, i extract the names of some of the writers whom the monks of durham preserved and read: alcuin. ambrose. aratores. anselm. augustine. aviany. bede. boethius. bernard. cassian. cassiodorus. claudius. cyprian. donatus. esop. eutropius. galen. gregory. haimo. horace. homer. hugo. juvenal. isidore. josephus. lucan. marcianus. maximian. orosius. ovid. prudentius. prosper. persius. priscian. peter lombard. plato. pompeius trogus. quintilian. rabanus. solinus. servius. statius. terence. tully. theodulus. virgil. gesta anglorum. gesta normanorum. hugh de pussar,[166] consecrated bishop in 1153, is the next who attracts our attention by his bibliomanical renown. he possessed perhaps the finest copy of the holy scriptures of any private collector; and he doubtless regarded his "_unam bibliam in_ iv. _magnis voluminibus_," with the veneration of a divine and the fondness of a student. he collected what in those times was deemed a respectable library, and bequeathed no less than sixty or seventy volumes to the durham monks, including his great bible, which has ever since been preserved with religious care; from a catalogue of them we learn his partiality for classical literature; a tully, sedulus, priscian, and claudius, are mentioned among them.[167] anthony bek, who was appointed to the see in the year 1283, was a most ambitious and haughty prelate, and caused great dissensions in his church. history proves how little he was adapted for the responsible duties of a bishop, and points to the field of battle or civil pomp as most congenial to his disposition. he ostentatiously displayed the splendor of a palatine prince, when he contributed his powerful aid to the cause of his sovereign, in the scottish war, by a retinue of 500 horse, 1000 foot, 140 knights, and 26 standard bearers,[168] rendered doubly imposing in those days of saintly worship and credulity, by the patronage of st. cuthbert, under whole holy banner they marched against a brave and noble foe. his arbitrary temper caused sad quarrels in the cloister, which ultimately gave rise to a tedious law proceeding between him and the prior about the year 1300;[169] from a record of this affair we learn that the bishop had borrowed some books from the library which afterwards he refused to return; there was among them a decretal, a history of england, a missal, and a volume called "the book of st. cuthbert, in which the secrets of the monastery are written," which was alone valued at £200,[170] probably in consideration of the important and delicate matters contained therein. these proceedings were instituted by prior hoton, who was fond of books, and had a great esteem for learning; he founded a college at oxford for the monkish students of his church.[171] on more than one occasion he sent parcels of books to oxford; in a list of an early date it appears that the monks of durham sent at one time twenty volumes, and shortly after fifteen more, consisting principally of church books and lives of saints.[172] the numbers thus taken from their library the monks, with that love of learning for which they were so remarkable, anxiously replaced, by purchasing about twenty volumes, many of which contained a great number of small but choice pieces.[173] robert de graystane, a monk of durham, was elected bishop by the prior and chapter, and confirmed on the 10th of november, 1333, but the king, edward iii., wishing to advance his treasurer to that see, refused his sanction to the proceeding; monk robert was accordingly deposed, and richard angraville received the mitre in his stead. he was consecrated on the 19th of december in the same year, by john stratford, archbishop of canterbury, and installed by proxy on the 10th of january, 1334. angraville, aungerville, or as he is more commonly called richard de bury, is a name which every bibliophile will honor and esteem; he was indeed a bibliomaniac of the first order, and a sketch of his life is not only indispensable here, but cannot fail to interest the book-loving reader. but before entering more at large into his bookish propensities and talents, it will be necessary to say something of his early days and the illustrious career which attended his political and ecclesiastical life. richard de bury, the son of sir richard angraville, was born, as his name implies, at bury st. edmunds, in suffolk, in the year 1287.[174] great attention was paid to the instruction of his youthful mind by his maternal uncle, john de willowby, a priest, previous to his removal to oxford. at the university he obtained honorable distinction, as much for his erudition and love of books as for the moral rectitude of his behavior. these pleasing traits were the stepping stones to his future greatness, and on the strength of them he was selected as one fully competent to undertake the education of edward prince of wales, afterwards the third king of that name; and to richard de bury "may be traced the love for literature and the arts displayed by his pupil when on the throne. he was rewarded with the lucrative appointment of treasurer of gascony."[175] when edward, the prince of wales, was sent to paris to assume the dominion of guienne, which the king had resigned in his favor, he was accompanied by queen isabella, his mother, whose criminal frailty, and afterwards conspiracy, with mortimer, aroused the just indignation of her royal husband; and commenced those civil dissensions which rendered the reign of edward ii. so disastrous and turbulent. it was during these commotions that richard de bury became a zealous partizan of the queen, to whom he fled, and ventured to supply her pecuniary necessities from the royal revenues; for this, however, he was surrounded with imminent danger; for the king, instituting an inquiry into these proceedings, attempted his capture, which he narrowly escaped by secreting himself in the belfry of the convent of brothers minor at paris.[176] when the "most invincible and most magnificent king" edward iii. was firmly seated upon the throne, dignity and power was lavishly bestowed on this early bibliomaniac. in an almost incredible space of time he was appointed cofferer to the king, treasurer of the wardrobe, archdeacon of northampton, prebendary of lincoln, sarum, litchfield, and shortly afterwards keeper of the privy seal, which office he held for five years. during this time he twice undertook a visit to italy, on a mission to the supreme pontiff, john xxii., who not only entertained him with honor and distinction, but appointed him chaplain to his principal chapel, and gave him a bull, nominating him to the first vacant see in england. he acquired whilst there an honor which reflected more credit than even the smiles of his holiness--the brightest of the italian poets, petrarch of never dying fame--bestowed upon him his acquaintance and lasting friendship. de bury entered avignon for the first time in the same year that petrarch took up his residence there, in the house of colonna, bishop of lombes: two such enlightened scholars and indefatigable book collectors, sojourning in the same city, soon formed an intimacy.[177] how interesting must their friendly meetings have been, and how delightful the hours spent in petrarch's library, which was one of great extent and rarity; and it is probable too that de bury obtained from the poet a few treasures to enrich his own stores; for the generosity of petrarch was so excessive, that he could scarcely withhold what he knew was so dearly coveted. his benevolence on one occasion deprived him and posterity of an inestimable volume; he lent some manuscripts of the classics to his old master, who, needing pecuniary aid, pawned them, and cicero's books, _de gloria_, were in this manner irrecoverably lost.[178] petrarch acted like a true lover of learning; for when the shadows of old age approached, he presented his library, full of rare and ancient manuscripts, many of them enriched by his own notes, to the venetian senate, and thus laid the foundation of the library of saint-marc; he always employed a number of transcribers, who invariably accompanied him on his journeys, and he kept horses to carry his books.[179] his love of reading was intense. "whether," he writes in one of his epistles, "i am being shaved, or having my hair cut, whether i am riding on horseback or taking my meals, i either read myself or get some one to read to me; on the table where i dine, and by the side of my bed, i have all the materials for writing."[180] with the friendship of such a student, how charming must have been the visit of the english ambassador, and how much valuable and interesting information must he have gleaned by his intercourse with petrarch and his books. at rome richard de bury obtained many choice volumes and rare old manuscripts of the classics; for at rome indeed, at that time, books had become an important article of commerce, and many foreign collectors besides the english bibliomaniac resorted there for these treasures: to such an extend was this carried on, that the jealousy of petrarch was aroused, who, in addressing the romans, exclaims: "are you not ashamed that the wrecks of your ancient grandeur, spared by the inundation of the barbarians, are daily sold by your miscalculating avarice to foreigners? and that rome is no where less known and less loved than at rome?"[181] the immense ecclesiastical and civil revenues which aungraville enjoyed, enabled him whilst in italy to maintain a most costly and sumptuous establishment: in his last visit alone he is said to have expended 5,000 marks, and he never appeared in public without a numerous retinue of twenty clerks and thirty-six esquires; an appearance which better became the dignity of his civil office, than the christian humility of his ecclesiastical functions. on his return from this distinguished sojourn, he was appointed, as we have said before, through the instrumentality of edward iii., to the bishopric of durham. but not content with these high preferments, his royal master advanced him to still greater honor, and on the 28th of september, 1334, he was made lord chancellor of england, which office he filled till the 5th of june, 1335, when he exchanged it for that of high treasurer. he was twice appointed ambassador to the king of france, respecting the claims of edward of england to the crown of that country. de bury, whilst negociating this affair, visited antwerp and brabant for the furtherance of the object of his mission, and he fully embraced this rare opportunity of adding to his literary stores, and returned to his fatherland well laden with many choice and costly manuscripts; for in all his perilous missions he carried about with him, as he tells us, that love of books which many waters could not extinguish, but which greatly sweetened the bitterness of peregrination. whilst at paris he was especially assiduous in collecting, and he relates with intense rapture, how many choice libraries he found there full of all kinds of books, which tempted him to spend his money freely; and with a gladsome heart he gave his dirty lucre for treasures so inestimable to the bibliomaniac. before the commencement of the war which arose from the disputed claims of edward, richard de bury returned to enjoy in sweet seclusion his bibliomanical propensities. the modern bibliophiles who know what it is to revel in the enjoyment of a goodly library, luxuriant in costly bindings and rich in bibliographical rarities, who are fully susceptible to the delights and exquisite sensibilities of that sweet madness called bibliomania, will readily comprehend the multiplied pleasures of that early and illustrious bibliophile in the seclusion of auckland palace; he there ardently applied his energies and wealth to the accumulation of books; and whilst engaged in this pleasing avocation, let us endeavor to catch a glimpse of him. chambre, to whom we are indebted for many of the above particulars, tells us that richard de bury was learned in the governing of his house, hospitable to strangers, of great charity, and fond of disputation with the learned, but he principally delighted in a multitude of books, _iste summe delectabatur multitudine librorum_,[182] and possessed more books than all the bishops put together, an assertion which requires some modification, and must not be too strictly regarded, for book collecting at that time was becoming a favorite pursuit; still the language of chambre is expressive, and clearly proves how extensive must have been his libraries, one of which he formed in each of his various palaces, _diversis maneriis_. so engrossed was that worthy bishop with the passion of book collecting, that his dormitory was strewed _jucebant_ with them, in every nook and corner choice volumes were scattered, so that it was almost impossible for any person to enter without placing his feet upon some book.[183] he kept in regular employment no small assemblage of antiquaries, scribes, bookbinders, correctors, illuminators, and all such persons who were capable of being useful in the service of books, _librorum servitiis utiliter_.[184] during his retirement he wrote a book, from the perusal of which the bibliomaniac will obtain a full measure of delight and instruction. it is a faithful record of the life and experience of this bibliophile of the olden time. he tells us how he collected his vellum treasures--his "crackling tomes" so rich in illuminations and calligraphic art!--how he preserved them, and how he would have others read them. costly indeed must have been the book gems he amassed together; for foreign countries, as well as the scribes at home, yielded ample means to augment his stores, and were incessantly employed in searching for rarities which his heart yearned to possess. he completed his philobiblon at his palace at auckland on the 24th of january, 1344.[185] we learn from the prologue to this rare and charming little volume how true and genuine a bibliomaniac was richard de bury, for he tells us there, that a vehement love _amor excitet_ of books had so powerfully seized all the faculties of his mind, that dismissing all other avocations, he had applied the ardor of his thoughts to the acquisition of books. expense to him was quite an afterthought, and he begrudged no amount to possess a volume of rarity or antiquity. wisdom, he says, is an infinite treasure _infinitus thesaurus_, the value of which, in his opinion, was beyond all things; for how, he asks, can the sum be too great which purchases such vast delight. we cannot admire the purity of his latin so much as the enthusiasm which pervades it; but in the eyes of the bibliophile this will amply compensate for his minor imperfections. when expatiating on the value of his books he appears to unbosom, as it were, all the inward rapture of love. a very _helluo librorum_--a very maliabechi of a collector, yet he encouraged no selfish feeling to alloy his pleasure or to mingle bitterness with the sweets of his avocation. his knowledge he freely imparted to others, and his books he gladly lent. this is apparent in the philobiblon; and his generous spirit warms his diction--not always chaste--into a fluent eloquence. his composition overflows with figurative expressions, yet the rude, ungainly form on which they are moulded deprive them of all claim to elegance or chastity; but while the homeliness of his diction fails to impress us with an idea of his versatility as a writer, his chatty anecdotal style rivets and keeps the mind amused, so that we rise from the little book with the consciousness of having obtained much profit and satisfaction from its perusal. nor is it only the bibliomaniac who may hope to taste this pleasure in devouring the sweet contents of the philobiblon; for there are many hints, many wise sayings, and many singular ideas scattered over its pages, which will amuse or instruct the general reader and the lover of olden literature. we observe too that richard de bury, as a writer, was far in advance of his age, and his work manifests an unusual freedom and independence of mind in its author; for although living in monkish days, when the ecclesiastics were almost supreme in power and wealth, he was fully sensible of the vile corruptions and abominations which were spreading about that time so fearfully among some of the cloistered devotees--the spotless purity of the primitive times was scarce known then--and the dark periods of the middle ages were bright and holy, when compared with the looseness and carnality of those turbulent days. richard de bury dipped his pen in gall when he spoke of these sad things, and doubtless many a revelling monk winced under the lashing words he applied to them; not only does he upbraid them for their carelessness in religion, but severely reprimands their inattention to literature and learning. "the monks," he says, "in the present day seem to be occupied in emptying cups, not in correcting codices, _calicibus epotandis, non codicibus emendandis_, which they mingle with the lascivious music of timotheus, and emulate his immodest manners, so that the sportive song _cantus ludentis_, and not the plaintive hymn, proceeds from the cells of the monks. flocks and fleeces, grain and granaries, gardens and olives, potions and goblets, are in this day lessons and studies of the monks, except some chosen few."[186] he speaks in equally harsh terms of the religious mendicants. he accuses them of forgetting the words and admonitions of their holy founder, who was a great lover of books. he wishes them to imitate the ancient members of that fraternity, who were poor in spirit, but most rich in faith. but it must be remembered, that about this time the mendicant friars were treated with undeserved contempt, and much ill feeling rose against them among the clergy, but the clergy were somewhat prejudiced in their judgment. the order of st. dominic, which a century before gloried in the approbation of the pope, and in the enjoyment of his potential bulls, now winced under gloomy and foreboding frowns. the sovereign pontiff honorius iii. gratefully embraced the service of these friars, and confirmed their order with important privileges. his successor, gregory ix., ratified these favors to gain their useful aid in propping up the papal power, and commanded the ecclesiastics by a bull to receive these "well-beloved children and preaching friars" of his, with hospitality and respect. thus established, they were able to bear the tossings to and fro which succeeding years produced; but in richard de bury's time darker clouds were gathering--great men had severely chastized them with their pens and denounced them in their preachings. soon after a host of others sprang up--among the most remarkable of whom were johannes poliaco, and fitzralph, archbishop of armagh, who was a dear friend and chaplain of richard de bury's and many learned disputations were carried on between them.[187] the celebrated oration of fitzralph's, cited in the presence of the pope, was a powerful blow to the mendicant friars--an examination of the matter has rather perplexed than cleared the subject, and i find it difficult which side to favor, the clergy seem to denounce the begging friars more from envy and interested motives, for they looked with extreme jealousy at the encroachments they had made upon their ecclesiastical functions of confession, absolution, etc., so profitable to the church in those days. in these matters the church had hitherto reserved a sole monopoly, and the clergy now determined to protect it with all the powers of oratorial denunciation; but, looking beyond this veil of prejudice, i am prone to regard them favorably, for their intense love of books, which they sought for and bought up with passionate eagerness. fitzralph, quite unintentionally, bestows a bright compliment upon them, and as it bears upon our subject and illustrates the learning of the time, i am tempted to give a few extracts; he sorely laments the decrease of the number of students in the university of oxford; "so," says he, "that yet in my tyme, in the universitie of oxenford, were thirty thousand scolers at ones; and now beth unnethe[188] sixe thousand."[189] all the blame of this he lays to the friars, and accuses them of doing "more grete damage to learning." "for these orders of beggers, for endeless wynnynges that thei geteth by beggyng of the forseide pryvyleges of schriftes and sepultures and othere, thei beth now so multiplyed in conventes and in persons. that many men tellith that in general studies unnethe, is it founde to sillynge a profitable book of ye faculte of art, of dyvynyte, of lawe canon, of phisik, other of lawe civil, but alle bookes beth y-bougt of freres, so that en ech convent of freres is a noble librarye and a grete,[190] and so that ene rech frere that hath state in scole, siche as thei beth nowe, hath an hughe librarye. and also y-sent of my sugettes[191] to scole thre other foure persons, and hit is said me that some of them beth come home azen for thei myst nougt[192] finde to selle ovn goode bible; nother othere couenable[193] books." this strange accusation proves how industriously the friars collected books, and we cannot help regarding them with much esteem for doing so. richard de bury fully admits his obligations to the mendicants, from whom he obtained many choice transcripts. "when indeed," says he, "we happened to turn aside to the towns and places where the aforesaid paupers had convents, we were not slack in visiting their chests and other repositories of books, for there, amidst the deepest poverty, we found the most exalted riches treasured up; there, in their satchells and baskets, we discovered not only the crumbs that fell from the master's table for the little dogs, but indeed the shew bread without leaven, the bread of angels, containing in itself all that is delectable;" and moreover, he says, that he found these friars "not selfish hoarders, but meet professors of enlightened knowledge."[194] in the seventh chapter of his work, he deplores the sad destruction of books by war and fire, and laments the loss of the 700,000 volumes, which happened in the alexandrian expedition; but the eighth chapter is the one which the bibliomaniac will regard with the greatest interest, for richard de bury tells us there how he collected together his rich and ample library. "for although," he writes, "from our youth we have ever been delighted to hold special and social communion with literary men and lovers of books, yet prosperity attending us, having obtained the notice of his majesty the king, and being received into his own family, we acquired a most ample facility of visiting at pleasure and of hunting, as it were, some of the most delightful covers, the public and private libraries _privatas tum communes_, both of the regulars and seculars. indeed, while we performed the duties of chancellor and treasurer of the most invincible and ever magnificently triumphant king of england, edward iii., of that name after the conquest, whose days may the most high long and tranquilly deign to preserve. after first inquiring into the things that concerned his court, and then the public affairs of his kingdom, an easy opening was afforded us, under the countenance of royal favor, for freely searching the hiding places of books. for the flying fame of our love had already spread in all directions, and it was reported not only that we had a longing desire for books, and _especially for old ones_, but that any one could more easily obtain our favors by quartos than by money.[195] wherefore, when supported by the bounty of the aforesaid prince of worthy memory, we were enabled to oppose or advance, to appoint or discharge; crazy quartos and tottering folios, precious however in our sight as well as in our affections, flowed in most rapidly from the great and the small, instead of new year's gift and remunerations, and instead of presents and jewels. then the cabinets of the most noble monasteries _tunc nobilissimos monasterios_ were opened, cases were unlocked, caskets were unclasped and sleeping volumes _soporata volumina_ which had slumbered for long ages in their sepulchres were roused up, and those that lay hid in dark places _in locis tenebrosis_ were overwhelmed with the rays of a new light. books heretofore most delicate now become corrupted and abominable, lay lifeless, covered indeed with the excrements of mice and pierced through with the gnawing of worms; and those that were formerly clothed with purple and fine linen were now seen reposing in dust and ashes, given over to oblivion and the abode of moths. amongst these, nevertheless, as time served, we sat down more voluptuously than the delicate physician could do amidst his stores of aromatics, and where we found an object of love, we found also an assuagement. thus the sacred vessel of science came into the power of our disposal, some being given, some sold, and not a few lent for a time. without doubt many who perceived us to be contented with gifts of this kind, studied to contribute these things freely to our use, which they could most conveniently do without themselves. we took care, however, to conduct the business of such so favorably, that the profit might accrue to them; justice suffered therefore no detriment." of this, however, a doubt will intrude itself upon our minds, in defiance of the affirmation of my lord chancellor; indeed, the paragraph altogether is unfavorable to the character of so great a man, and fully proves the laxity of opinion, in those days of monkish supremacy, on judicial matters; but we must be generous, and allow something for the corrupt usages of the age, but i cannot omit a circumstance clearly illustrative of this point, which occurred between the bibliomanical chancellor and the abbot of st. alban's, the affair is recorded in the chronicle of the abbey, and transpired during the time richard de bury held the privy seal; in that office he appears to have favored the monks of the abbey in their disputes with the townspeople of st. alban's respecting some possessions to which the monks tenaciously adhered and defended as their rightful property. richard de wallingford, who was then abbot, convoked the elder monks _convocatis senioribus_, and discussed with them, as to the most effectual way to obtain the goodwill and favor of de bury; after due consideration it was decided that no gift was likely to prove so acceptable to that father of english bibliomania as a present of some of their choice books, and it was at last agreed to send four volumes, "that is to say terence, a virgil, a quintilian, and jerome against ruffinus," and to sell him many others from their library; this they sent him intimation of, and a purchase was ultimately agreed upon between them. the monks sold to that rare collector, thirty-two choice tomes _triginta duos libros_, for the sum of fifty pounds of silver _quinginta libris argenti_.[196] but there were other bibliophiles and bookworms than richard de bury in old england then; for many of the brothers of st. alban's who had nothing to do with this transaction, cried out loudly against it, and denounced rather openly the policy of sacrificing their mental treasures for the acquisition of pecuniary gain, but fortunately the loss was only a temporary one, for on the death of richard de bury many of these volumes were restored to the monks, who in return became the purchasers from his executors of many a rare old volume from the bishop's library.[197] to resume our extracts from the philobiblon, de bury proceeds to further particulars relative to his book-collecting career, and becomes quite eloquent in detailing these circumstances; but from the eighth chapter we shall content ourselves with one more paragraph. "moreover," says he, "if we could have amassed cups of gold and silver, excellent horses, or no mean sums of money, we could in those days have laid up abundance of wealth for ourselves. but we regarded books not pounds, and valued codices more than florens, and preferred paltry pamphlets to pampered palfreys.[198] in addition to this we were charged with frequent embassies of the said prince of everlasting memory, and owing to the multiplicity of state affairs, we were sent first to the roman chair, then to the court of france, then to the various other kingdoms of the world, on tedious embassies and in perilous times, carrying about with us that fondness for books, which many waters could not extinguish."[199] the booksellers found richard de bury a generous and profitable customer, and those residing abroad received commissions constantly from him. "besides the opportunities," he writes, "already touched upon, we easily acquired the notice of the stationers and librarians, not only within the provinces of our native soil, but of those dispersed over the kingdoms of france, germany, and italy."[200] such was bibliomania five hundred years ago! and does not the reader behold in it the very type and personification of its existence now? does he not see in richard de bury the prototype of a much honored and agreeable bibliophile of our own time? nor has the renowned "maister dibdin" described his book-hunting tours with more enthusiasm or delight; with what a thrill of rapture would that worthy doctor have explored those monastic treasures which de bury found hid in _locis tenebrosis_, antique bibles, rare fathers, rich classics or gems of monkish lore, enough to fire the brain of the most lymphatic bibliophile, were within the grasp of the industrious and eager richard de bury--that old "amator librorum," like his imitators of the present day, cared not whither he went to collect his books--dust and dirt were no barriers to him; at every nook and corner where a stationer's stall[201] appeared, he would doubtless tarry in defiance of the cold winds or scorching sun, exploring the ancient tomes reposing there. nor did he neglect the houses of the country rectors; and even the humble habitations of the rustics were diligently ransacked to increase his collections, and from these sources he gleaned many rude but pleasing volumes, perhaps full of old popular poetry! or the wild romances of chivalry which enlivened the halls and cots of our forefathers in gothic days. we must not overlook the fact that this treatise on the love of books was written as an accompaniment to a noble and generous gift. many of the parchment volumes which de bury had collected in his "_perilous embassies_," he gave, with the spirit of a true lover of learning, to the durham college at oxford, for the use of the students of his church. i cannot but regret that the names of these books, _of which he had made a catalogue_,[202] have not been preserved; perhaps the document may yet be discovered among the vast collections of manuscripts in the oxonian libraries; but the book, being written for this purpose, the author thought it consistent that full directions should be given for the preservation and regulation of the library, and we find the last chapter devoted to this matter; but we must not close the philobiblon without noticing his admonitions to the students, some of whom he upbraids for the carelessness and disrespect which they manifest in perusing books. "let there," says he, with all the veneration of a passionate booklover, "be a modest decorum in opening and closing of volumes, that they may neither be unclasped with precipitous haste, nor thrown aside after inspection without being duly closed."[203] loving and venerating a book as de bury did, it was agony to see a volume suffering under the indignities of the ignorant or thoughtless student whom he thus keenly satirizes: "you will perhaps see a stiffnecked youth lounging sluggishly in his study, while the frost pinches him in winter time; oppressed with cold his watery nose drops, nor does he take the trouble to wipe it with his handkerchief till it has moistened the book beneath it with its vile dew;" nor is he "ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book, or to transfer his empty cup from side to side; he reclines his elbow on the volume, turns down the leaves, and puts bits of straw to denote the place he is reading; he stuffs the book with leaves and flowers, and so pollutes it with filth and dust." with this our extracts from the philobiblon must close; enough has been said and transcribed to place the lord chancellor of the puissant king edward iii. among the foremost of the bibliomaniacs of the past, and to show how valuable were his efforts to literature and learning; indeed, like petrarch in italy was richard de bury in england: both enthusiastic collectors and preservers of ancient manuscripts, and both pioneers of that revival of european literature which soon afterwards followed. in the fourteenth century we cannot imagine a more useful or more essential person than the bibliomaniac, for that surely was the harvest day for the gathering in of that food on which the mind of future generations were to subsist. and who reaped so laboriously or gleaned so carefully as those two illustrious scholars? richard de bury was no unsocial bookworm; for whilst he loved to seek the intercourse of the learned dead, he was far from being regardless of the living. next to his clasped vellum tomes, nothing afforded him so much delight as an erudite disputation with his chaplains, who were mostly men of acknowledged learning and talent; among them were "thomas bradwardyn, afterwards archbishop of canterbury; and richard fitz-raufe, afterwards archbishop of armagh; walter burley, john maudyt, robert holcote, richard of kilwington, all doctors in theology, _omnes doctores in theologia_; richard benworth, afterwards bishop of london, and walter segraffe, afterwards bishop of chester;"[204] with these congenial spirits richard de bury held long and pleasing conversations, doubtless full of old bookwisdom and quaint gothic lore, derived from still quainter volumes; and after meals i dare say they discussed the choice volume which had been read during their repast, as was the pious custom of those old days, and which was not neglected by de bury, for "his manner was at dinner and supper time to have some good booke read unto him."[205] and now in bidding farewell to the illustrious aungraville--for little more is known of his biography--let me not forget to pay a passing tribute of respect to his private character, which is right worthy of a cherished remembrance, and derives its principal lustre from the eminent degree in which he was endowed with the greatest of christian virtues, and which, when practised with sincerity, covereth a multitude of sins; his charity, indeed, forms a delightful trait in the character of that great man; every week he distributed food to the poor; eight quarters of wheat _octo quarteria frumenti_, and the fragments from his own table comforted the indigent of his church; and always when he journeyed from newcastle to durham, he distributed twelve marks in relieving the distresses of the poor; from durham to stockton eight marks; and from the same place to his palace at aukeland five marks; and and when he rode from durham to middleham he gave away one hundred shillings.[206] living in troublous times, we do not find his name coupled with any great achievement in the political sphere; his talents were not the most propitious for a statesman among the fierce barons of the fourteenth century; his spirit loved converse with the departed great, and shone more to advantage in the quite closet of the bibliomaniac, or in fulfilling the benevolent duties of a bishop. yet he was successful in all that the ambition of a statesman could desire, the friend and confidant of his king; holding the highest offices in the state compatible with his ecclesiastical position, with wealth in abundance, and blessed with the friendship of the learned and the good, we find little in his earthly career to darken the current of his existence, or to disturb the last hours of a life of near three score years. he died lamented, honored, and esteemed, at aukeland palace, on the fourteenth of april, in the year 1345, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, and was buried with all due solemnity before the altar of the blessed mary magdalene, at the south angle of the church of durham. his bones are now mingled with the dust and gone, but his memory is engraven on tablets of life; the hearts of all bibliomaniacs love and esteem his name for the many virtues with which it was adorned, and delight to chat with his choice old spirit in the philobiblon, so congenial to their bookish souls. no doubt the illustrious example of richard de bury tended materially to spread far and wide the spirit of bibliomania. it certainly operated powerfully on the monks of durham, who not only by transcribing, but at the cost of considerable sums of money, greatly increased their library. a catalogue of the collection, taken some forty years after the death of de bury, is preserved to this day at durham, and shows how considerably they augmented it during a space of two hundred years, or from the time when the former list was written. if the bibliomaniac can obtain a sight of this ancient catalogue, he will dwell over it with astonishment and delight--immaculate volumes of scripture--fathers and classics bespeak its richness and extent, and robert of langchester, the librarian who wrote it, with pious preference places first on the list the magnificent bible which bishop hugo gave them many years before. this rare biblical treasure, then the pride and glory of the collection, is now in the durham library; but to look upon that fair manuscript will make the blood run cold--barbarous desecration has been committed by some bibliopegistical hand; the splendid illuminations so rich and spirited, which adorned the beauteous tomes, dazzled an ignorant mind, who cut them out and robbed it of half its interest and value. from near 600 volumes which the list enumerates, i cannot refrain from naming two or three. i have searched over its biblical department in vain to discover mention of the celebrated "saint cuthbert's gospels." it is surprising they should have forgotten so rich a gem, for although four copies of the gospels appear, not one of them answers to its description; two are specified as "_non glos_;" it could not have been either of those, another, the most interesting of the whole, is recorded as the venerable bede's own copy! what bibliophile can look unmoved upon those time-honored pages, without indeed all the warmth of his booklove kindling forth into a very frenzy of rapture and veneration! so fairly written, and so accurately transcribed, it is one of the most precious of the many gems which now crowd the shelves of the durham library, and is well worth a pilgrimage to view it.[207] but this cannot be st. cuthbert's gospels, and the remaining copy is mentioned as "_quarteur evangelum_," fol. ii. "_se levantem_;" now i have looked at the splendid volume in the british museum, to see if the catchword answered to this description, but it does not; so it cannot be this, which i might have imagined without the trouble of a research, for if it was, they surely would not have forgotten to mention its celebrated coopertoria. passing a splendid array of scriptures whole and in parts, for there was no paucity of sacred volumes in that old monkish library, and fathers, doctors of the church, schoolmen, lives of saints, chronicles, profane writers, philosophical and logical treatises, medical works, grammars, and books of devotion, we are particularly struck with the appearance of so many fine classical authors. works of virgil (including the æneid), pompeius trogus, claudius, juvenal, terence, ovid, prudentius, quintilian, cicero, boethius, and a host of others are in abundance, and form a catalogue rendered doubly exciting to the bibliophile by the insertion of an occasional note, which tells of its antiquity,[208] rarity, or value. in some of the volumes a curious inscription was inserted, thundering a curse upon any who would dare to pilfer it from the library, and for so sacrilegious a crime, calling down upon them the maledictions of saints maria, oswald, cuthbert, and benedict.[209] a volume containing the lives of st. cuthbert, st. oswald, and st. aydani, is described as "_liber speciales et preciosus cum signaculo deaurato_." thomas langley, who was chancellor of england and bishop of durham in the year 1406, collected many choice books, and left some of them to the library of durham church; among them a copy of lyra's commentaries stands conspicuous; he also bequeathed a number of volumes to many of his private friends. there are few monastic libraries whose progress we can trace with so much satisfaction as the one now under consideration, for we have another catalogue compiled during the librarianship of john tyshbourne, in the year 1416,[210] in which many errors appearing in the former ones are carefully corrected; books which subsequent to that time had been lost or stolen are here accounted for; many had been sent to the students at oxford, and others have notes appended, implying to whom the volume had been lent; thus to a "_flores bernardi_," occurs "_prior debit, i kempe episcopi londoni_." it is, next to monk henry's of canterbury, one of the best of all the monkish catalogues i have seen; not so much for its extent, as that here and there it fully partakes of the character of a catalogue _raisonné_; for terse sentences are affixed to some of the more remarkable volumes, briefly descriptive of their value; a circumstance seldom observable in these early attempts at bibliography. in taking leave of durham library, need i say that the bibliomaniacs who flourished there in the olden time, not only collected their books with so much industry, but knew well how to use them too. the reader is doubtless aware how many learned men dwelled in monkish time within those ancient walls; and if he is inquisitive about such things has often enjoyed a few hours of pleasant chat over the historic pages of symeon of durham,[211] turgot and wessington,[212] and has often heard of brothers lawrence,[213] reginald,[214] and bolton; but although unheeded now, many a monkish bookworm, glorying in the strict observance of christian humility, and so unknown to fame, lies buried beneath that splendid edifice, as many monuments and funeral tablets testify and speak in high favor of the great men of durham. if the reader should perchance to wander near that place, his eye will be attracted by many of these memorials of the dead; and a few hours spent in exploring them will serve to gain many additional facts to his antiquarian lore, and perhaps even something better too. for i know not a more suitable place, as far as outward circumstances are concerned, than an old sanctuary of god to prepare the mind and lead it to think of death and immortality. we read the names of great men long gone; of wealthy worldlings, whose fortunes have long been spent; of ambitious statesmen and doughty warriors, whose glory is fast fading as their costly mausoleums crumble in the hands of time, and whose stone tablets, green with the lichens' hue, manifest how futile it is to hope to gain immortality from stone, or purchase fame by the cold marble trophies of pompous grief; not that on their glassy surface the truth is always faithfully mirrored forth, even when the thoughts of holy men composed the eulogy; the tombs of old knew as well how to lie as now, and even ascetic monks could become too warm in their praises of departed worth; for whilst they blamed the great man living, with christian charity they thought only of his virtues when they had nothing but his body left, and murmured long prayers, said tedious masses, and kept midnight vigils for his soul. for had he not shown his love to god by his munificence to his church on earth? _benedicite_, saith the monks. footnotes: [153] bede's eccles. hist., b. iii. c. xvi. [154] bede, b. iv. c. xxvii. [155] marked nero, d. iv. in the cottonian collection. [156] the illuminations are engraved in strutt's _horda_. [157] there is prologue to the canons and prefaces of st. jerome and eusebius, and also a beautiful calendar written in compartments, elaborately finished in an architectural style. [158] he also transcribed the durham ritual, recently printed by the surtee society; when alfred wrote this volume he was with bishop alfsige, p. 185, 8vo. _lond._ 1840. [159] for an account of this rare gem of saxon art, see _selden præf. ad. hist. angl._ p. 25. _marshall observat. in vers. sax. evang._, 491. _dibdin's decameron, p._ lii. _smith's bibl. cotton. hist. et synop._, p. 33. [160] simeon of durham translated by stevens, p. 87. [161] simeon of durham, by stevens. [162] ep. viii. [163] tertia quinquagina augustini, marked b. ii. 14. [164] surtee publications, vol. i. p. 117. [165] this catalogue is preserved at durham, in the library of the dean and chapter, marked b. iv. 24. it is printed in the surtee publications, vol. i. p. 1. [166] "king stephen was vncle vnto him."--_godwin's cat. of bishops_, 511. [167] he died in 1195.--godwin, p. 735. he gave them also another bible in two volumes; a list of the whole is printed in the surtee publications, vol. i. p. 118. [168] surtee's hist, of durham, vol. i. p. xxxii. "he was wonderfull rich, not onely in ready money but in lands also, and temporall revenues. for he might dispend yeerely 5000 marks."--_godwin's cat. eng. bish._ 4to. 1601, p. 520. [169] robert de graystane's ap. wharton's angl. sacr. p. 748, tom. i.--_hutchinson's durham_, vol. i. p. 244. [170] surtee publ. vol. i. p. 121. [171] raine's north durham, p. 85. [172] surtee public. vol. 1. p. 39-40. [173] _ibid._, vol. i. p. 41. [174] chambre contin. hist. dunelm. apud wharton angliæ sacra, tom. i. p. 765. [175] lord campbell's lives of the lord chancellors, vol. i. p. 219. [176] absconditus est in campanili fratrum minorum.--_chambre ap. wharton_, tom. i. p. 765. [177] in one of his letters petrarch speaks of de bury as _virum ardentis ingenii_, pet. ep. 1-3. [178] epist. seniles, lib. xvi. ep. 1. [179] foscolo's essays on petrarch, p. 151. [180] foscolo's essays on petrarch, p. 156. famil. ep. lxxii. [181] hortatio ad nicol. laurent petrar., op. vol. i. p. 596. [182] _apud wharton ang. sac._ tom. i. p. 765. [183] _ibid._ [184] ms. harleian, no. 3224, fo. 89, b. [185] there are two mss. of the philobiblon in the british museum, which i quote in giving my latin extracts. the first is in the cotton collection, marked appendix iv. fol. 103. at the end are these lines, _ric. de aungervile cognominato de bury, dunelm. episc. philobiblon completum in manerio de auckland, d. 24 jan. 1344_, fol. 119, b. the other is in the harleian collection, no. 3224, both are in fine preservation. the first printed edition appeared at cologne, 1473, in 4to., without pagination, signatures, or catchwords, with 48 leaves, 26 lines on a full page; for some time, on account of its excessive rarity, which kept it from the eyes of book-lovers, bibliographers confused it with the second edition printed by john and conrad hüst, at spires, in 1483, 4to. which, like the first, is without pagination, signatures, or catchwords, but it has only 39 pages, with 31 lines on a full page. two editions were printed in 1500, 4to. at paris, but i have only seen one of them. a fifth edition was printed at oxford by t. j(ames), 4to. 1599. in 1614 it was published by goldastus in 8vo. at frankfort, with a _philologicarium epistolarum centuria una_. another edition of this same book was printed in 1674, 8vo. at leipsic, and a still better edition appeared in 1703 by schmidt, in 4to. the philobiblon has recently been translated by inglis, 8vo. _lond._ 1834, with much accuracy and spirit, and i have in many cases availed myself of this edition, though i do not always exactly follow it. [186] "greges et vellera, fruges et honea, porri et olera, potus et patera rectiones sunt hodie et studio monachorum."--ms. harl. 2324, fol. 79, a; ms. cot. ap. iv. fo. 108, a. [187] wharton ang. sac., tom. i. p. 766, he is called _ricardus fitz-rause postomodum archiepiscopus armachanus_. [188] scarcely. [189] translated by trevisa, ms. harleian, no. 1900, fol. 11, b. [190] the original is _grandis et nobilis libraria_. [191] chaplain. [192] could not. [193] profitable. [194] philobiblon, transl. by inglis, p. 56. [195] "curiam deinde vero rem. publicam regni sui cacellarii, viz.: est ac thesaurii fugeremur officiis, patescebat nobis aditus faciles regal favoris intuitu, ad libros latebras libere perscruta tandas amoris quippe nostri fama volatitis jam ubiqs. percreluit tam qs. libros _et maxime veterum_ ferabatur cupidite las vestere posse vero quemlibet nostrum per quaternos facilius quam per pecuniam adipisa favorem."--ms. harl. fo. 85, a. ms. cott. 110, b. [196] ms. cottonian claudius, e. iv. fol. 203, b. _warton's hist. of poetry, dissert. ii._; and _hallam's_ middle ages, vol. ii. p. 611. both notice this circumstance as a proof of the scarcity of books in de bury's time. [197] _ibid._ among the mss. in the royal library, there is a copy of john of salisbury's _ententicus_ which contains the following note, "hunc librum fecit dominus symon abbas s. albani, quem postea venditum domino _ricardo_ de bury. episcope dunelmensi emit michael abbas s. albani ab executoribus prædicti episcopi, a. d. 1345." marked 13 d. iv. 3. the same abbot expended a large sum in buying books for the library, but we shall speak more of michael de wentmore by and bye. [198] "sed revera libros non libras maluimus, codicesque plus quam florenos, ac pampletos exiguos incrussatis proetulimus palafridis."--ms. harl. fo. 86, a. ms. cott. fo. 111, a. [199] inglis's translation, p. 53. [200] inglis's translation, p. 58. [201] the stationers or booksellers carried on their business on open stalls.--_hallam, lit. europe_, vol. i. p. 339. it is pleasing to think that the same temptations which allure the bookworm now, in his perambulations, can claim such great antiquity, and that through so many centuries, bibliophiles and bibliopoles remain unaltered in their habits and singularities; but alas! this worthy relic of the middle ages i fear is passing into oblivion. plate-glass fronts and bulky expensive catalogues form the bookseller's pride in these days of speed and progress, and offer more splendid temptations to the collector, but sad obstacles to the hungry student and black-letter bargain hunters. [202] _philob._ xix. [203] inglis, p. 96. "in primis quidam circa claudenda et apienda volumina, sit matura modestia; ut nec præcipiti festinatione solvantur, nec inspectione finita, sina clausura debita dimittantur." _ms. harl._ fol. 103. [204] _chambre ap. wharton_, tom. i. p. 766. [205] godwin cat. of bish. 525. [206] _chambre ap. wharton_, tom. i. p. 766. [207] it is marked a, ii. 16, and described in the old ms. catalogue as _de manus bedæ_, ii. fol. _baptizatus_. [208] the attractive words "_est vetus liber_" often occur. [209] from a volume of thomas aquinas, the following is transcribed: "lib. sti. cuthberti de dunelm, ex procuratione fratis roberti de graystane quem qui aliena verit maledictionem sanctorum mariæ, oswaldi, cuthberti et benedicti incurrat." see _surtee publications_, vol. i. p. 35, where other instances are given. [210] surtee publ. vol. i. p. 85. [211] he wrote the chronicle of durham monastery in 1130. [212] his book on the rights and privileges of durham church is in the cottonian library, marked _vitellius_, a, 9. [213] lawrence was elected prior in 1149, "a man of singular prudence and learning, as the many books he writ manifest." _dugdale's monast._ vol. 1. p. 230. [214] wrote the life and miracles of st. cuthbert, the original book is in the durham library. chapter vi. _croyland monastery.--its library increased by egebric.--destroyed by fire.--peterborough.--destroyed by the danes.--benedict and his books.--anecdotes of collectors.--catalogue of the library of the abbey of peterborough.--leicester library, etc._ the low marshy fens of lincolnshire are particularly rich in monastic remains; but none prove so attractive to the antiquary as the ruins of the splendid abbey of croyland. the pen of ingulphus has made the affairs of that old monastery familiar to us; he has told us of its prospering and its misfortunes, and we may learn moreover from the pages of the monk how many wise and virtuous men, of saxon and norman days, were connected with this ancient fabric, receiving education there, or devoting their lives to piety within its walls. it was here that guthlac, a saxon warrior, disgusted with the world, sought solitude and repose; and for ten long years he led a hermit's life in that damp and marshy fen; in prayer and fasting, working miracles, and leading hearts to god, he spent his lonely days, all which was rewarded by a happy and peaceful death, and a sanctifying of his corporeal remains--for many wondrous miracles were wrought by those holy relics. croyland abbey was founded on the site of guthlac's hermitage, by ethelred, king of mercia. many years before, when he was striving for the crown of that kingdom, his cousin, crobrid, who then enjoyed it, pursued him with unremitting enmity; and worn out, spiritless and exhausted, the royal wanderer sought refuge in the hermit's cell. the holy man comforted him with every assurance of success; and prophesied that he would soon obtain his rights without battle or without bloodshed;[215] in return for these brighter prospects, and these kind wishes, ethelred promised to found a monastery on that very spot in honor of god and st. guthlac, which promise he faithfully fulfilled in the year 716, and "thus the wooden oratory was followed by a church of stone." succeeding benefactors endowed, and succeeding abbots enriched it with their learning; and as years rolled by so it grew and flourished till it became great in wealth and powerful in its influence. but a gloomy day approached--the danes destroyed that noble structure, devastating it by fire, and besmearing its holy altars with the blood of its hapless inmates. but zealous piety and monkish perseverance again restored it, with new and additional lustre; and besides adding to the splendor of the edifice, augmented its internal comforts by forming a library of considerable importance and value. we may judge how dearly they valued a _bibliotheca_ in those old days by the contribution of one benevolent book-lover--egebric, the second abbot of that name, a man whom ingulphus says was "far more devoted to sacred learning and to the perusal of books than skilled in secular matters,"[216] gladdened the hearts of the monks with a handsome library, consisting of forty original volumes in various branches of learning, and more than one hundred volumes of different tracts and histories,[217] besides eighteen books for the use of the divine offices of the church. honor to the monk who, in the land of dearth, could amass so bountiful a provision for the intellect to feed upon; and who encouraged our early literature--when feeble and trembling by the renewed attacks of rapacious invaders--by such fostering care. in the eleventh century croyland monastery was doomed to fresh misfortunes; a calamitous fire, accidental in its origin, laid the fine monastery in a heap of ruins, and scattered its library in blackened ashes to the winds.[218] a sad and irreparable loss was that to the norman monks and to the students of saxon history in modern times; for besides four hundred saxon charters, deeds, etc., many of the highest historical interest and value beautifully illuminated in gold (_aureis pictures_) and written in saxon characters,[219] the whole of the choice and ample library was burnt, containing seven hundred volumes, besides the books of divine offices--the antiphons and grailes. i will not agonize the bibliophile by expatiating further on the sad work of destruction; but is he not somewhat surprised that in those bookless days seven hundred volumes should have been amassed together, besides a lot of church books and saxon times? ingulphus, who has so graphically described the destruction of croyland monastery by the danes in 870, has also given the particulars of their proceedings at the monastery of peterborough, anciently called medeshamstede, to which they immediately afterwards bent their steps. the monks, on hearing of their approach, took the precaution to guard the monastery by all the means in their power; but the quiet habits of monastic life were ill suited to inspire them with a warlike spirit, and after a feeble resistance, their cruel enemies (whom the monks speak of in no gentle terms, as the reader may imagine), soon effected an entrance; in the contest however tulla, the brother of hulda, the danish leader, was slain by a stone thrown by one of the monks from the walls; this tended to kindle the fury of the besiegers, and so exasperated hulda that it is said he killed with his own hand the whole of the poor defenceless monks, including their venerable abbot. the sacred edifice, completely in their hands, was soon laid waste; they broke down the altars, destroyed the monuments, and--much will the bibliophile deplore it--set fire to their immense library "_ingens bibliotheca_," maliciously tearing into pieces all their valuable and numerous charters, evidences, and writings. the monastery, says the historian, continued burning for fifteen days.[220] this seat of saxon learning was left buried in its ruins for near one hundred years, when athelwold, bishop of winchester, in the year 966, restored it; but in the course of time, after a century of peaceful repose, fresh troubles sprang up. when turoldus, a norman, who had been appointed by william the conqueror, was abbot, the danes again paid them a visit of destruction. hareward de wake having joined a danish force, proceeded to the town of peterborough; fortunately the monks obtained some intelligence of their coming, which gave turoldus time to repair to stamford with his retinue. taurus, the sacrist, also managed to get away, carrying with him some of their treasures, and among them a text of the gospels, which he conveyed to his superior at stamford, and by that means preserved them. on the arrival of the danes, the remaining monks were prepared to offer a somewhat stern resistance, but without effect; for setting fire to the buildings, the danes entered through the flames and smoke, and pillaged the monastery of all its valuable contents; and that which they could not carry away, they destroyed: not even sparing the shrines of holy saints, or the miracle-working dust contained therein. the monks possessed a great cross of a most costly nature, which the invaders endeavored to take away, but could not on account of its weight and size; however, they broke off the gold crown from the head of the crucifix, and the footstool under its feet, which was made of pure gold and gems; they also carried away two golden biers, on which the monks carried the relics of their saints; with nine silver ones. there was certainly no monachal poverty here, for their wealth must have been profuse; besides the above treasures, they took twelve crosses, made of gold and silver; they also went up to the tower and took away a table of large size and value, which the monks had hid there, trusting it might escape their search; it was a splendid affair, made of gold and silver and precious stones, and was usually placed before the altar. but besides all this, they robbed them of that which those poor monkish bibliophiles loved more than all. their library, which they had collected with much care, and which contained many volumes, was carried away, "with many other precious things, the like of which were not to be found in all england."[221] the abbot and those monks who fortunately escaped, afterwards returned, sad and sorrowful no doubt; but trusting in their divine master and patron saint, they ultimately succeeded in making their old house habitable again, and well fortified it with a strong wall, so that formerly it used to be remarked that this building looked more like a military establishment than a house of god. eminently productive was the monastery of peterborough in saxon bibliomaniacs. its ancient annals prove how enthusiastically they collected and transcribed books. there were few indeed of its abbots who did not help in some way or other to increase their library. kenulfus, who was abbot in the year 992, was a learned and eloquent student in divine and secular learning. he much improved his monastery, and greatly added to its literary treasures.[222] but the benefactors of this place are too numerous to be minutely specified here. hugo candidus tells us, that kinfernus, archbishop of york, in 1056, gave them many valuable ornaments; and among them a fine copy of the gospels, beautifully adorned with gold. this puts us in mind of leofricus, a monk of the abbey, who was made abbot in the year 1057. he is said to have been related to the royal family, a circumstance which may account for his great riches. he was a sad pluralist, and held at one time no less than five monasteries, viz. burton, coventy, croyland, thorney, and peterborough.[223] he gave to the church of peterborough many and valuable utensils of gold, silver, and precious stones, and a copy of the gospels bound in gold.[224] but in all lights, whether regarded as an author or a bibliophile, great indeed was benedict, formerly prior of canterbury, and secretary to thomas à becket,[225] of whom it is supposed he wrote a life. he was made abbot of peterborough in the year 1177; he compiled a history of henry ii. and king richard i.;[226] he is spoken of in the highest terms of praise by robert swapham for his profound wisdom and great erudition in secular matters.[227] there can be no doubt of his book-loving passion; for during the time he was abbot he transcribed himself, and ordered others to transcribe, a great number of books. swapham has preserved a catalogue of them, which is so interesting that i have transcribed it entire. the list is entitled: de libris ejus. plurimos quoque libros 3 scribere fecit, quorum nomina subnotantur. vetus et novum testamentum in uno volumine. vetus et novum testamentum in 4 volumina. quinque libri moysi glosati in uno volumine. sexdecim prophetæ glosati in uno volumine. duodecim minores glosati prophetæ in uno volumine. liber regum glosatus, paralipomenon glosatus. job, parabolæ solomonis et ecclesiastes, cantica canticorum glosati in uno volumine. liber ecclesiasticus et liber sapientiæ glosatus in uno volumine. tobyas, judith, ester et esdras, glosati in uno volumine. liber judicum glosatus. scholastica hystoria. psalterium glosatum. item non glosatum. item psalterium. quatuor evangelia glosata in uno volumine. item mathæus et marcus in uno volumine. johannes et lucas in uno volumine. epistolæ pauli glosatæ apocalypsis et epistolæ canonicæ glosata in uno volumine. sententiæ petri lombardi. item sententiæ ejusdem. sermones bernardi abbatis clarevallensis. decreta gratiani. item decreta gratiani. summa ruffini de decretis. summa johannes fuguntini de decretis. decretales epistolæ. item decretales epistolæ. item decretales epistolæ cum summa sic incipiente; olim. institutiones justiniani cum autenticis et infortiatio digestum vetus. tres partes cum digesto novo. summa placentini. totum corpus juris in duobus voluminibus. arismetica. epistolæ senecæ cum aliis senecis in uno volumine. martialis totus et terentius in uno volumine. morale dogma philosophorum. gesta alexandri et liber claudii et claudiani. summa petri heylæ de grammatica, cum multis allis rebus in uno volumine. gesta regis henrica secunda et genealogiæ ejus. interpretatione hebraicorum nominum. libellus de incarnatione verbi. liber bernardi abbatis ad eugenium papam. missale. vitæ sancti thomæ martyris.[228] miracula ejusdem in quinque voluminibus. liber richardi plutonis, qui dicitur, unde malum meditationes anselmi. practica bartholomæi cum multis allis rebus in uno volumine. ars physicæ pantegni, et practica ipsius in uno volumine. almazor et diascoridis de virtutibus herbarum. liber dinamidiorum et aliorum multorum in uno volumine. libellus de compoto. sixty volumes! perhaps containing near 100 separate works, and all added to the library in the time of one abbot; surely this is enough to controvert the opinion that the monks cared nothing for books or learning, and let not the justin, seneca, martial, terence, and claudian escape the eye of the reader, those monkish bookworms did care a little, it would appear, for classical literature. but what will he say to the fine bibles that crown and adorn the list? the two complete copies of the _vetus et novum testamentum_, and the many glossed portions of the sacred writ, reflect honor upon the christian monk, and placed him conspicuously among the bible students of the middle ages; proving too, that while he could esteem the wisdom of seneca, and the vivacity of terence, and feel a deep interest in the secular history of his own times, he did not lose sight of the fountain of all knowledge, but gave to the bible his first care, and the most prominent place on his library shelf. besides the books which the abbots collected for the monastery, they often possessed a private selection for their own use; there are instances in which these collections were of great extent; some of which we shall notice, but generally speaking they seldom numbered many volumes. thus robert of lyndeshye, who was abbot of peterborough in 1214, only possessed six volumes, which were such as he constantly required for reference or devotion; they consisted of a numerale majestri w. de montibus cum alliis rebus; tropi majestri petri cum diversis summis; sententiæ petri pretanensis; psalterium glossatum; aurora; psalterium;[229] historiale. these were books continually in requisition, and which he possessed to save the trouble of constantly referring to the library. his successor, abbot holdernesse, possessed also twelve volumes,[230] and walter of st. edmundsbury abbot, in 1233, had eighteen books, and among them a fine copy of the bible for his private study. robert of sutton in 1262, also abbot of peterborough, possessed a similar number, containing a copy of the liber naturalium anstotelis; and his successor, richard of london, among ten books which formed his private library, had the consolation of philosophy, a great favorite in the monasteries. in the year 1295 william of wodeforde, collected twenty volumes, but less than that number constituted the library of adam de botheby, who was abbot of peterborough many years afterwards, but among them i notice a seneca, with thirty-six others contained in the same volume.[231] abbot godfrey, elected in the year 1299, was a great benefactor to the church, as we learn from walter de whytlesse, who gives a long list of donations made by him; among a vast quantity of valuables, "he gave to the church _two bibles_, one of which was written in france," with about twenty other volumes. in the war which occurred during his abbacy, between john baliol of scotland and edward i. of england, the scots applied to the pope for his aid and council; his holiness deemed it his province to interfere, and directed letters to the king of england, asserting that the kingdom of scotland appertained to the church of rome; in these letters he attempt to prove that it was opposed to justice, and, what he deemed of still greater importance, to the interests of the holy see, that the king of england should not have dominion over the kingdom of scotland. the pope's messengers on this occasion were received by abbot godfrey; walter says that "he honorably received two cardinals at peterborough with their retinues, who were sent by the pope to make peace between the english and the scotch, and besides cheerfully entertaining them with food and drink, gave them divers presents; to one of the cardinals, named gaucelin, he gave a certain psalter, beautifully written in letters of gold and purple, and marvellously illuminated, _literis aureis et assuris scriptum et mirabiliter luminatum_.[232] i give this anecdote to show how splendidly the monks inscribed those volumes designed for the service of the holy church. i ought to have mentioned before that wulstan, archbishop of york, gave many rare and precious ornaments to peterborough, nor should i omit a curious little book anecdote related of him. he was born at jceritune in warwickshire, and was sent by his parents to evesham, and afterwards to peterborough, where he gave great indications of learning. his schoolmaster, who was an anglo-saxon named erventus, was a clever calligraphist, and is said to have been highly proficient in the art of illuminating; he instructed wulstan in these accomplishments, who wrote under his direction a sacramentary and a psalter, and illuminated the capitals with many pictures painted in gold and colors; they were executed with so much taste that his master presented the sacramentary to canute, and the psalter to his queen."[233] from these few facts relative to peterborough monastery, the reader will readily perceive how earnestly books were collected by the monks there, and will be somewhat prepared to learn that a catalogue of 1,680 volumes is preserved, which formerly constituted the library of that fraternity of bibliophiles. this fine old catalogue, printed by gunton in his history of the abbey, covers fifty folio pages; it presents a faithful mirror of the literature of its day, and speaks well for the bibliomanical spirit of the monks of peterborough. volumes of patristic eloquence and pious erudition crowd the list; chronicles, poetry, and philosophical treatises are mingled with the titles of an abundant collection of classic works, full of the lore of the ancient world. although the names may be similar to those which i have extracted from other catalogues, i must not omit to give a few of them; i find works of-augustine. ambrose. albinus. cassiodorus. gregory. cyprian. seneca. prosper. tully. bede. basil. lanfranc. chrysostom. jerome. eusebius. boethius. isidore. origin. dionysius. cassian. bernard. anselm. alcuinus. honorius. donatus. macer. persius. virgil. isagoge of porphry. aristotle. entyci grammatica. socrates. ovid. priscian. hippocrates. horace. sedulus. theodulus. sallust. macrobius. cato. prudentius. but although they possessed these fine authors and many others equally choice, i am not able to say much for the biblical department of their library, i should have anticipated a goodly store of the holy scriptures, but in these necessary volumes they were unusually poor. but i suspect the catalogue to have been compiled during the fifteenth century, and i fear too, that in that age the monks were growing careless of scripture reading, or at least relaxing somewhat in the diligence of their studies; perhaps they devoured the attractive pages of ovid, and loved to read his amorous tales more than became the holiness of their priestly calling.[234] at any rate we may observe a marked change as regards the prevalence of the bible in monastic libraries between the twelfth and the fifteenth century. it is true we often find them in those of the later age; but sometimes they are entirely without, and frequently only in detached portions.[235] i may illustrate this by a reference to the library of the abbey of st. mary de la pré at leicester, which gloried in a collection of 600 volumes, of the choicest and almost venerable writers. it was written in the year 1477, by william chartye,[236] prior of the abbey, and an old defective and worn out bible, _biblie defect et usit_, with some detached portions, was all that fine library contained of the sacred writ. the bible _defect et usit_ speaks volumes to the praise of the ancient monks of that house, for it was by their constant reading and study, that it had become so thumbed and worn; but it stamps with disgrace the affluent monks of the fifteenth century, who, while they could afford to buy, in the year 1470,[237] some thirty volumes with a seneca, ovid, claudian, macrobius, æsop, etc., among them, and who found time to transcribe twice as many more, thought not of restoring their bible tomes, or adding one book of the holy scripture to their crowded shelves. but alas! monachal piety was waxing cool and indifferent then, and it is rare to find the honorable title of an _amator scripturarum_ affixed to a monkish name in the latter part of the fifteenth century. footnotes: [215] gough's hist. croyland in bibl. top. brit. xi. p. 3. [216] inguph. in gale's script. tom. i. p. 53. [217] "debit iste abbas egebricus communi bibliothecæ clanstralium monachorum magna volumina diversorum doctorum originalia numero quadraginta; minora vero volumina de diversæ tractatibus et historiis, quæ numerum centenarium excedibant." ingul. p. 53. [218] the fire occurred in 1091. ingulphus relates with painful minuteness the progress of the work of destruction, and enumerates all the rich treasures which those angry flames consumed. i should have given a longer account of this event had not the rev. mr. maitland already done so in his interesting work on the "_dark ages_." [219] gale's remin. ang. scrip. i. p. 98. [220] ingulph. ap. gale i. p. 25. [221] see gunter's peterborough, suppl. 263. [222] hugo candid, p. 31; tamer bib. brit. et hib. p. 175. candidus says, "flos literaris disciplina, torrens eloquentiæ, decus et norma rerum divinarum et secularium." [223] hugo candid. ap. sparke, hist. ang. scrip. p. 41. gunter's peterboro, p. 15, ed. 1686. [224] hugo candid. p. 42. [225] leland de scrip. brit. p. 217. [226] published by hearne, 2 vol. 8vo. _oxon._ 1735. [227] rt. swap. ap. sparke, p. 97. "erat. enin literarum scientiæ satis imbutus; regulari disciplina optime instructus; sapientia seculari plenissime eruditus." [228] swapham calls this "egregium volumen," p. 98. [229] now preserved in the library of the society of antiquaries. [230] gunter, peterborough, p. 29. [231] ibid, p. 37. [232] walter de whytlesse apud sparke, p. 173. [233] gunter's hist. of peterborough, p. 259. [234] at any rate, we find about thirty volumes of ovid's works enumerated, and several copies of "de arte amandi," and "de remedis amoris." [235] let the reader examine leland's collect., and the catalogues printed in hunter's tract on monastic libraries. see also catalogue of canterbury library, ms. cottonian julius, c. iv. 4., in the british museum. [236] printed by nichols, in appendix to hist. of leicester, from a ms. register. it contains almost as fine a collection of the classics and fathers as that at peterborough, just noticed, aristotle, virgil, plato, ovid, cicero, euclid, socrates, horace, lucan, seneca, etc., etc. are among them, pp. 101 to 108. it is curious that leland mentions only six mss. as forming the library at the time he visited the abbey of leicester, all its fine old volumes were gone. he only arrived in time to pick up the crumbs. [237] at least during the time of william charteys priorship. see nichols, p. 108. chapter vii. _king alfred an "amator librorum" and an author._ the latter part of the tenth century was a most memorable period in the annals of monkish bibliomania, and gave birth to one of the brightest scholars that ever shone in the dark days of our saxon forefathers. king alfred, in honor of whose talents posterity have gratefully designated the great, spread a fostering care over the feeble remnant of native literature which the danes in their cruel depredations had left unmolested. the noble aspirations of this royal student and patron of learning had been instilled into his mind by the tender care of a fond parent. it was from the pages of a richly illuminated little volume of saxon poetry, given to him by the queen as a reward for the facility with which he had mastered its contents, that he first derived that intense love of books which never forsook him, though the sterner duties of his after position frequently required his thoughts and energies in another channel. having made himself acquainted with this little volume, alfred found a thirst for knowledge grow upon him, and applied his youthful mind to study with the most zealous ardor; but his progress was considerably retarded, because he could not, at that time, find a grammaticus capable of instructing him,[238] although he searched the kingdom of the west saxons. yet he soon acquired the full knowledge of his own language, and the latin it is said he knew as well, and was able to use with a fluency equal to his native tongue; he could comprehend the meaning of the greek, although perhaps he was incapable of using it to advantage. he was so passionately fond of books, and so devoted to reading, that he constantly carried about him some favorite volume which, as a spare moment occurred, he perused with the avidity of an _helluo librorum_. this pleasing anecdote related by asser[239] is characteristic of his natural perseverance. when he ascended the throne, he lavished abundant favors upon all who were eminent for their literary acquirements; and displayed in their distribution the utmost liberality and discrimination. asser, who afterwards became his biographer, was during his life the companion and associate of his studies, and it is from his pen we learn that, when an interval occurred inoccupied by his princely duties, alfred stole into the quietude of his study to seek comfort and instruction from the pages of those choice volumes, which comprised his library. but alfred was not a mere bookworm, a devourer of knowledge without purpose or without meditation of his own, he thought with a student's soul well and deeply upon what he read, and drew from his books those principles of philanthropy, and those high resolves, which did such honor to the saxon monarch. he viewed with sorrow the degradation of his country, and the intellectual barrenness of his time; the warmest aspiration of his soul was to diffuse among his people a love for literature and science, to raise them above their saxon sloth, and lead them to think of loftier matters than war and carnage. to effect this noble aim, the highest to which the talents of a monarch can be applied, he for a length of time devoted his mind to the translation of latin authors into the vernacular tongue. in his preface to the pastoral of gregory which he translated, he laments the destruction of the old monastic libraries by the danes. "i saw," he writes, "before alle were spoiled and burnt, how the churches throughout britain were filled with treasures and books,"[240] which must have presented a striking contrast to the illiterate darkness which he tells us afterwards spread over his dominions, for there were then very few _paucissimi_ who could translate a latin epistle into the saxon language. when alfred had completed the translation of gregory's pastoral, he sent a copy to each of his bishops accompanied with a golden stylus or pen,[241] thus conveying to them the hint that it was their duty to use it in the service of piety and learning. encouraged by the favorable impression which this work immediately caused, he spared no pains to follow up the good design, but patiently applied himself to the translation of other valuable books which he rendered into as pleasing and expressive a version as the language of those rude times permitted. besides these literary labors he also wrote many original volumes, and became a powerful orator, a learned grammarian, an acute philosopher, a profound mathematician, and the prince of saxon poesy; with these exalted talents he united those of an historian, an architect, and an accomplished musician. a copious list of his productions, the length of which proves the fertility of his pen, will be found in the biographica britannica,[242] but names of others not there enumerated may be found in monkish chronicles; of his manual, which was in existence in the time of william of malmsbury, not a fragment has been found. the last of his labors was probably an attempt to render the psalms into the common language, and so unfold that portion of the holy scriptures to our saxon ancestors. alfred, with the assistance of the many learned men whom he had called to his court, restored the monasteries and schools of learning which the danes had desecrated, and it is said founded the university of oxford, where he built three halls, in the name of the holy trinity; for the doctors of divinity, philosophy, and grammar. the controversy which this subject has given rise to among the learned is too long to enter into here, although the matter is one of great interest to the scholar and to the antiquary. in the year 901, this royal bibliophile, "the victorious prince, the studious provider for widows, orphanes, and poore people, most perfect in saxon poetrie, most liberall endowed with wisdome, fortitude, justice, and temperance, departed this life;"[243] and right well did he deserve this eulogy, for as an old chronicle says, he was "a goode clerke and rote many bokes, and a boke he made in englysshe, of adventures of kynges and bataylles that had bene wne in the lande; and other bokes of gestes he them wryte, that were of greate wisdome, and of good learnynge, thrugh whych bokes many a man may him amende, that well them rede, and upon them loke. and thys kynge allured lyeth at wynchestre."[244] footnotes: [238] flor. vigorn. sub. anno. 871. brompton's chron. in alferi, p. 814. [239] asser de alfredi gestis., edit. camden i. p. 5. william malmsbury, b. ii. c. iv. [240] preface to pastoral. [241] much controversy has arisen as to the precise meaning of this word. _hearne_ renders this passage "with certain macussus or marks of gold the purest of his coin," which has led some to suppose gold coinage was known among the saxons. _william of malmsbury_ calls it a golden style in which was a maucus of gold. "in alfred's preface it is called an æstel of fifty macuses."--_v. asser a wise_, 86 to 175; but the meaning of that word is uncertain. the stylus properly speaking was a small instrument formerly used for writing on waxen tablets, and made of iron or bone, see _archæologia_, vol. ii. p. 75. but waxen tablets were out of use in alfred's time. the æstel or style was most probably an instrument used by the scribes of the monasteries, if it was not actually a pen. i am more strongly disposed to consider it so by the evidence of an ancient ms. illumination of eadwine, a monk of canterbury, in trinity coll. camb.; at the end of this ms. the scribe is represented with a _metal pen in his hand_. [242] vol. i. pp. 54, 55. [243] stowe's annals, 4to. 1615, p. 105. [244] cronycle of englonde with the fruyte of tymes, 4to. 1515. chapter viii. _benedict biscop and his book tours.--bede.--ceolfrid.--wilfrid.--boniface the saxon missionary--his love of books.--egbert of york.--alcuin.--whitby abbey.--cædmon.--classics in the library of withby.--rievall library.--coventry.--worcester.--evesham.--thomas of marleberg, etc._ the venerable bede enables us to show that in the early saxon days the monasteries of wearmouth and jarrow possessed considerable collections of books. benedict biscop, the most enthusiastic bibliomaniac of the age, founded the monastery of wearmouth in the year 674, in honor of the "most holy prince of the apostles." his whole soul was in the work, he spared neither pains or expense to obtain artists of well known and reputed talent to decorate the holy edifice; not finding them at home, he journeyed to gaul in search of them, and returned accompanied by numerous expert and ingenious workmen. within a year the building was sufficiently advanced to enable the monks to celebrate divine service there. he introduced glass windows and other ornaments into his church, and furnished it with numerous books of all descriptions, _innumerabilem librorum omnis generis_. benedict was so passionately fond of books that he took five journeys to rome for the purpose of collecting them. in his third voyage he gathered together a large quantity on divine erudition; some of these he bought, or received them as presents from his friends, _vel amicorum dono largitos retulit_. when he arrived at vienne on his way home, he collected others which he had commissioned his friends to purchase for him.[245] after the completion of his monastery he undertook his fourth journey to rome; he obtained from the pope many privileges for the abbey, and returned in the year 680, bringing with him many more valuable books; he was accompanied by john the chantor, who introduced into the english churches the roman method of singing. he was also a great _amator librorum_, and left many choice manuscripts to the monks, which bede writes "were still preserved in their library." it was about this time that ecgfrid[246] gave benedict a portion of land on the other side of the river wire, at a place called jarrow; and that enterprising and industrious abbot, in the year 684, built a monastery thereon. no sooner was it completed, than he went a fifth time to rome to search for volumes to gratify his darling passion. this was the last, but perhaps the most successful of his foreign tours, for he brought back with him a vast quantity of sacred volumes and curious pictures.[247] how deeply is it to be regretted that the relation of the travels which ceolfrid his successor undertook, and which it is said his own pen inscribed, has been lost to us forever. he probably spoke much of benedict in the volume and recorded his book pilgrimages. how dearly would the bibliomaniac revel over those early annals of his science, could his eye meet those venerable pages--perhaps describing the choice tomes benedict met with in his italian tours, and telling us how, and what, and where he gleaned those fine collections; sweet indeed would have been the perusal of that delectable little volume, full of the book experience of a bibliophile in saxon days, near twelve hundred years ago! but the ravages of time or the fury of the danes deprived us of this rare gem, and we are alone dependent on bede for the incidents connected with the life of this great man; we learn from that venerable author that benedict was seized with the palsy on his return, and that languishing a few short years, he died in the year 690; but through pain and suffering he often dwelt on the sweet treasures of his library, and his solemn thoughts of death and immortality were intermixed with many a fond bookish recollection. _his most noble and abundant library which he brought from rome_ he constantly referred to, and gave strict injunctions that the monks should apply the utmost care to the preservation of that rich and costly treasure, in the collection of which so many perils and anxious years were spent.[248] we all know the force of example, and are not surprised that the sweet mania which ruled so potently over the mind of benedict, spread itself around the crowned head of royalty. perhaps book collecting was beginning to make "a stir," and the rich and powerful among the saxons were regarding strange volumes with a curious eye. certain it is that egfride, or ælfride, the proud king of northumbria,[249] fondly coveted a beautiful copy of the geographer's (_codice mirandi operis_), which benedict numbered among his treasures; and so eagerly too did he desire its possession, that he gave in exchange a portion of eight hides of land, near the river fresca, for the volume; and ceolfrid, benedict's successor, received it. how useful must benedict's library have been in ripening the mind that was to cast a halo of immortality around that old monastery, and to generate a renown which was long to survive the grey walls of that costly fane; for whilst we now fruitlessly search for any vestiges of its former being, we often peruse the living pages of bede the venerable with pleasure and instruction, and we feel refreshed by the breath of piety and devotion which they unfold; yet it must be owned the superstition of rome will sometimes mar a devout prayer and the simplicity of a christian thought. but all honor to his manes and to his memory! for how much that is admirable in the human character--how much sweet and virtuous humility was hid in him, in the strict retirement of the cloister. the writings of that humble monk outlive the fame of many a proud ecclesiastic or haughty baron of his day; and well they might, for how homely does his pen record the simple annals of that far distant age. much have the old monks been blamed for their bad latin and their humble style; but far from upbraiding, i would admire them for it; for is not the inelegance of diction which their unpretending chronicles display, sufficiently compensated by their charming simplicity. as for myself, i have sometimes read them by the blaze of my cheerful hearth, or among the ruins of some old monastic abbey,[250] till in imagination i beheld the events which they attempt to record, and could almost hear the voice of the "_goode olde monke_" as he relates the deeds of some holy man--in language so natural and idiomatic are they written. but as we were saying, bede made ample use of benedict's library; and the many latin and greek books, which he refers to in the course of his writings, were doubtless derived from that source.[251] ceolfrid, the successor of benedict, "a man of great zeal, of acute wisdom, and bold in action," was a great lover of books, and under his care the libraries of wearmouth and jarrow became nearly doubled in extent; of the nature of these additions we are unable to judge, but probably they were not contemptible.[252] wilfrid, bishop of northumbria, was a dear and intimate friend of biscop's, and was the companion of one of his pilgrimages to rome. in his early youth he gave visible signs of a heart full of religion and piety, and he sought by a steady perusal of the holy scriptures, in the little monastery of lindesfarne, to garnish his mind with that divine lore with which he shone so brightly in the saxon church. it was at the court of ercenbyrht, king of kent, that he met with benedict biscop; and the sympathy which their mutual learning engendered gave rise to a warm and devoted friendship between them. both inspired with an ardent desire to visit the apostolic see, they set out together for rome;[253] and it was probably by the illustrious example of his fellow student and companion, that wilfrid imbibed that book-loving passion which he afterwards displayed on more than one occasion. on his return from rome, alfred of northumbria bestowed upon him the monastery of rhypum[254] in the year 661, and endowed it with certain lands. peter of blois records, in his life of wilfrid, that this "man of god" gave the monastery a copy of the gospels, a library, and many books of the old and new testament, with certain tablets made with marvellous ingenuity, and ornamented with gold and precious stones.[255] wilfrid did not long remain in the monastery of ripon, but advanced to higher honors, and took a more active part in the ecclesiastical affairs of the time.[256] but i am not about to pursue his history, or to attempt to show how his hot and imperious temper, or the pride and avarice of his disposition, wrought many grievous animosities in the saxon church; or how by his prelatical ambition he deservedly lost the friendship of his king and his ecclesiastical honors.[257] about this time, and contemporary with bede, we must not omit one who appears as a bright star in the early christian church. boniface,[258] the saxon missionary, was remarked by his parents to manifest at an early age signs of that talent which in after years achieved so much, and advanced so materially the interests of piety and the cause of civilization. when scarcely four years old his infant mind seemed prone to study, which growing upon him as he increased in years, his parent placed him in the monastery of exeter. his stay there was not of long duration, for he shortly after removed to a monastery in hampshire under the care of wybert. in seclusion and quietude he there studied with indefatigable ardor, and fortified his mind with that pious enthusiasm and profound erudition, which enabled him in a far distant country to render such service to the church. he was made a teacher, and when arrived at the necessary age he was ordained priest. in the year 710, a dispute having occurred among the western church of the saxons, he was appointed to undertake a mission to the archbishop of canterbury on the subject. pleased perhaps with the variety and bustle of travel, and inspired with a holy ambition, he determined to attempt the conversion of the german people, who, although somewhat acquainted with the gospel truths, had nevertheless deviated materially from the true faith, and returned again to their idolatry and paganism. heedless of the danger of the expedition, but looking forward only to the consummation of his fond design, he started on his missionary enterprise, accompanied by one or two of his monkish brethren. he arrived at friesland in the year 716, and proceeded onwards to utrecht; but disappointments and failures awaited him. the revolt of the frieslanders and the persecution then raging there against the christians, dissipated his hopes of usefulness; and with a heavy heart, no doubt, boniface retraced his steps, and re-embarked for his english home. yet hope had not deserted him--his philanthropic resolutions were only delayed for a time; for no sooner had the dark clouds of persecution passed away than his adventurous spirit burst forth afresh, and shone with additional lustre and higher aspirations. after an interval of two years we find him again starting on another christian mission. on reaching france he proceeded immediately to rome, and procured admission to the pope, who, ever anxious for the promulgation of the faith and for the spiritual dominion of the roman church, highly approved of the designs of boniface, and gave him letters authorizing his mission among the thuringians; invested with these powers and with the pontifical blessing, he took his departure from the holy city, well stored with the necessary ornaments and utensils for the performance of the ecclesiastical rites, besides a number of books to instruct the heathens and to solace his mind amidst the cares and anxieties of his travels. after some few years the fruits of his labor became manifest, and in 723 he had baptized vast multitudes in the true faith. his success was perhaps unparalleled in the early annals of the church, and remind us of the more recent wonders wrought by the jesuit missionaries in india.[259] elated with these happy results, far greater than even his sanguine mind had anticipated, he sent a messenger to the pope to acquaint his holiness of these vast acquisitions to his flock, and soon after he went himself to rome to receive the congratulations and thanks of the pontiff; he was then made bishop, and entrusted with the ecclesiastical direction of the new church. after his return, he spent many years in making fresh converts and maintaining the discipline of the faithful. but all these labors and these anxieties were terminated by a cruel and unnatural death; on one of his expeditions he was attacked by a body of pagans, who slew him and nearly the whole of his companions, but it is not here that a christian must look for his reward--he must rest his hopes on the benevolence and mercy of his god in a distant and far better world. he who would wish to trace more fully these events, and so catch a glimpse of the various incidents which touch upon the current of his life, must not keep the monk constantly before his mind, he must sometimes forget him in that capacity and regard him as a _student_, and that too in the highest acceptation of the term. his youthful studies, which i have said before were pursued with unconquerable energy, embraced grammar, poetry, rhetoric, history, and the exposition of the holy scriptures; the bible, indeed, he read unceasingly, and drew from it much of the vital truth with which it is inspired; but he perhaps too much tainted it with traditional interpretation and patristical logic. a student's life is always interesting; like a rippling stream, its unobtrusive gentle course is ever pleasing to watch, and the book-worms seems to find in it the counterpart of his own existence. who can read the life and letters of the eloquent cicero, or the benevolent pliny, without the deepest interest; or mark their anxious solicitude after books, without sincere delight. those elegant epistles reflect the image of their private studies, and so to behold boniface in a student's garb, to behold his love of books and passion for learning, we must alike have recourse to his letters. the epistolary correspondence of the middle ages is a mirror of those times, far more faithful as regards their social condition than the old chronicles and histories designed for posterity; written in the reciprocity of friendly civilities, they contain the outpourings of the heart, and enable us to peep into the secret thoughts and motives of the writer; "for out of the fulness of the hearth the mouth speaketh." turning over the letters of boniface, we cannot but be forcibly struck with his great knowledge of scripture; his mind seems to have been quite a concordance in itself, and we meet with epistles almost solely framed of quotations from the sacred books, in substantiation of some principle, or as grounds for some argument advanced. these are pleasurable instances, and convey a gentle hint that the greater plenitude of the bible has not, in all cases, emulated us to study it with equal energy; there are few who would now surpass the saxon bishop in biblical reading. most students have felt, at some period or other, a thirst after knowledge without the means of assuaging it--have felt a craving after books when their pecuniary circumstances would not admit of their acquisition, such will sympathize with boniface, the student in the wilds of germany, who, far from monastic libraries, sorely laments in some of his letters this great deprivation, and entreats his friends, sometimes in most piteous terms, to send him books. in writing to daniel, bishop of winchester, he asks for copies, and begs him to send the book of the six prophets, clearly and distinctly transcribed, and in large letters because his sight he says was growing weak; and because the book of the prophets was much wanted in germany, and could not be obtained except written so obscurely, and the letters so confusedly joined together, as to be scarcely readable _ac connexas litteras discere non possum_.[260] to "majestro lul" he writes for the productions of bishop aldhelm, and other works of prose, poetry, and rhyme, to console him in his peregrinations _ad consolationem peregrinationis meæ_.[261] with abbess eadburge he frequently corresponded, and received from her many choice and valuable volumes, transcribed by her nuns and sometimes by her own hands; at one period he writes in glowing terms and with a grateful pen for the books thus sent him, and at another time he sends for a copy of the gospels. "execute," says he, "a glittering lamp for our hands, and so illuminate the hearts of the gentiles to a study of the gospels and to the glory of christ; and intercede, i pray thee, with your pious prayers for these pagans who are committed by the apostles to our care, that by the mercy of the saviour of the world they may be delivered from their idolatrous practices, and united to the congregation of mother church, to the honor of the catholic faith, and to the praise and glory of his name, who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth."[262] all this no doubt the good abbess faithfully fulfilled; and stimulated by his friendship and these encouraging epistles, she set all the pens in her monastery industriously to work, and so gratified the saxon missionary with those book treasures, which his soul so ardently loved; certain it is, that we frequently find him thanking her for books, and with famishing eagerness craving for more; one of his letters,[263] full of gratitude, he accompanies with a present of a silver graphium, or writing instrument, and soon after we find him thus addressing her: "to the most beloved sister, abbess eadburge, and all now joined to her house and under her spiritual care. boniface, the meanest servant of god, wisheth eternal health in christ." "my dearest sister, may your assistance be abundantly rewarded hereafter in the mansions of the angels and saints above, for the kind presents of books which you have transmitted to me. germany rejoices in their spiritual light and consolation, because they have spread lustre into, the dark hearts of the german people; for except we have a lamp to guide our feet, we may, in the words of the lord, fall into the snares of death. moreover, through thy gifts i earnestly hope to be more diligent, so that my country may be honored, my sins forgiven, and myself protected from the perils of the sea and the violence of the tempest; and that he who dwells on high may lightly regard my transgression, and give utterance to the words of my mouth, that the gospel may have free course, and be glorified among men to the honor of christ."[264] writing to egbert, archbishop of york, of whose bibliomaniacal character and fine library we have yet to speak, boniface thanks that illustrious collector for the choice volumes he had kindly sent him, and further entreats egbert to procure for him transcripts of the smaller works _opusculi_ and other tracts of bede, "who, i hear," he writes, "has, by the divine grace of the holy spirit, been permitted to spread such lustre over your country."[265] these, that kind and benevolent prelate sent to him with other books, and received a letter full of gratitude in return, but with all the boldness of a hungry student still asking for more! especially for bede's commentary on the parables of solomon.[266] he sents to archbishop nothelm for a copy of the questions of st. augustine to pope gregory, with the answers of the pope, which he says he could not obtain from rome; and in writing to cuthbert, also archbishop of canterbury, imploring the aid of his earnest prayers, he does not forget to ask for books, but hopes that he may be speedily comforted with the works of bede, of whose writings he was especially fond, and was constantly sending to his friends for transcripts of them. in a letter to huetberth he writes for the "most sagacious dissertations of the monk bede,"[267] and to the abbot dudde he sends a begging message for the commentaries on the epistles of paul to the romans and to the corinthians[268] by the same. in a letter to lulla, bishop of coena, he deplores the want of books on the phenomena and works of nature, which, he says, were _omnio incognitum_ there, and asks for a book on cosmography;[269] and on another occasion lulla supplied boniface with many portions of the holy scriptures, and commentaries upon them.[270] many more of his epistles might be quoted to illustrate the saxon missionary as an "_amator librorum_," and to display his profound erudition. in one of his letters we find him referring to nearly all the celebrated authors of the church, and so aptly, that we conclude he must have had their works on his desk, and was deeply read in patristical theology. boniface has been fiercely denounced for his strong roman principles, and for his firm adherence to the interests of the pope.[271] of his theological errors, or his faults as a church disciplinarian, i have nothing here to do, but leave that delicate question to the ecclesiastical historian, having vindicated his character from the charge of ignorance, and displayed some pleasing traits which he evinced as a student and book-collector. it only remains to be mentioned, that many of the membranous treasures, which boniface had so eagerly searched for and collected from all parts, were nearly lost forever. the pagans, who murdered boniface and his fellow-monks, on entering their tents, discovered little to gratify their avarice, save a few relics and a number of books, which, with a barbarism corresponding with their ignorance, they threw into the river as useless; but fortunately, some of the monks, who had escaped from their hands, observing the transaction, recovered them and carried them away in safety with the remains of the martyred missionary, who was afterwards canonized saint boniface. the must remarkable book collector contemporary with boniface, was egbert of york, between whom, as we have seen, a bookish correspondence was maintained. this illustrious prelate was brother to king egbert, of northumbria, and received his education under bishop eata, at hexham, about the year 686. he afterwards went on a visit to the apostolic see, and on his return was made archbishop of york.[272] he probably collected at rome many of the fine volumes which comprised his library, and which was so celebrated in those old saxon days; and which will be ever renowned in the annals of ancient bibliomania. the immortal alcuin sang the praises of this library in a tedious lay; and what glorious tomes of antiquity he there enumerates! but stay, my pen should tarry whilst i introduce that worthy bibliomaniac to my reader, and relate some necessary anecdotes and facts connected with his early life and times. alcuin was born in england, and probably in the immediate vicinity of york; he was descended from affluent and noble parents; but history is especially barren on this subject, and we have no information to instruct us respecting the antiquity of his saxon ancestry. but if obscurity hangs around his birth, so soon as he steps into the paths of learning and ranks with the students of his day, we are no longer in doubt or perplexity; but are able from that period to his death to trace the occurrences of his life with all the ease that a searcher of monkish history can expect. he had the good fortune to receive his education from egbert, and under his care he soon became initiated into the mysteries of grammar, rhetoric, and jurisprudence; which were relieved by the more fascinating study of poetry, physics, and astronomy.[273] so much was he esteemed by his master the archbishop, that he entrusted him with a mission to rome, to receive from the hands of the pope his pall; on his return he called at parma, where he had an interview with charles the great; who was so captivated with his eloquence and erudition that he eagerly entreated him to remain, and to aid in diffusing throughout his kingdom the spirit of that knowledge which he had so successfully acquired in the saxon monasteries. but alcuin was equally anxious for the advancement of literature in his own country; and being then on a mission connected with his church, he could do no more than hold out a promise of consulting his superiors, to whose decisions he considered himself bound to submit. during the dominion of charles, the ecclesiastical as well as the political institutions of france, were severely agitated by heresy and war: the two great questions of the age--the worship of images and the nature of christ--divided and perplexed the members of a church which had hitherto been permitted to slumber in peace and quietude. the most prominent of the heretics was felix, bishop of urgel, who maintained in a letter to elipand, bishop of toledo, that christ was only the son of god by adoption. it was about the time of the convocation of the council of frankfort, assembled to consider this point, that alcuin returned to france at the earnest solicitation of charlemagne. when the business of the council was terminated, and peace was somewhat restored, alcuin began to think of returning to his native country; but england at that time was a land of bloodshed and tribulation, in the midst of which it would be vain to hope for retirement or the blessings of study; after some deliberation, therefore, alcuin resolved to remain in france, where there was at least a wide field for exertion and usefulness. he communicates his intention in a letter to offa, king of mercia. "i was prepared," says he, "to come to you with the presents of king charles, and to return to my country; but it seemed more advisable to me for the peace of my nation to remain abroad; not knowing what i could have done among those persons with whom no man can be secure or able to proceed in any laudable pursuit. see every holy place laid desolate by pagans, the altars polluted by perjury, the monasteries dishonored by adultery, the earth itself stained with the blood of rulers and of princes."[274] after the elapse of many years spent in the brilliant court of charles, during which time it surpassed in literary greatness any epoch that preceded it, he was permitted to seek retirement within the walls of the abbey of st. martin's at tours. but in escaping from the bustle and intrigue of public life he did not allow his days to pass away in an inglorious obscurity; but sought to complete his earthly career by inspiring the rising generation with an honorable and christian ambition. his cloistered solitude, far from weakening, seems to have augmented the fertility of his genius, for it was in the quiet seclusion of this monastery that alcuin composed the principal portion of his works; nor are these writings an accumulation of monastic trash, but the fruits of many a solitary hour spent in studious meditation. his method is perhaps fantastic and unnatural; but his style is lively, and often elegant. his numerous quotations and references give weight and interest to his writings, and clearly proves what a fine old library was at his command, and how well he knew the use of it. but for the elucidation of his character as a student, or a bibliomaniac, we naturally turn to the huge mass of his epistles which have been preserved; and in them we find a constant reference to books which shew his intimacy with the classics as well as the patristical lore of the church. in biblical literature he doubtless possessed many a choice and venerable tome; for an indefatigable scripture reader was that great man. in a curious little work of his called "_interrogationes et responsiones sui liber questionorum in genesim_," we find an illustration of his usefulness in spreading the knowledge he had gained in this department of learning. it was written expressly for his pupil and dearest brother (_carissime frater_), sigulf, as we learn from a letter which accompanies it. he tells him that he had composed it "that he might always have near him the means of refreshing his memory when the more ponderous volumes of the sacred scriptures were not at his immediate call."[275] perhaps of all his works this is the least deserving of our praise; the good old monk was apt to be prolix, if not tedious, when he found the _stylus_ in his hand and a clean skin of parchment spread invitingly before him. but as this work was intended as a manual to be consulted at any time, he was compelled to curb this propensity, and to reduce his explications to a few concise sentences. writing under this restraint, we find little bearing the stamp of originality, not because he had nothing original to say, but because he had not space to write it in; i think it necessary to give this explanation, as some critics upon the learning of that remote age select these small and ill-digested writings as fair specimens of the literary capacity of the time, without considering why they were written or compiled at all. but as a scribe how shall we sufficiently praise that great man when we take into consideration the fine bible which he executed for charlemagne, and which is now fortunately preserved in the british museum. it is a superb copy of st. jerome's latin version, freed from the inaccuracies of the scribes; he commenced it about the year 778, and did not complete it till the year 800, a circumstance which indicates the great care he bestowed upon it. when finished he sent it to rome by his friend and disciple, nathaniel, who presented it to charlemagne on the day of his coronation: it was preserved by that illustrious monarch to the last day of his life. alcuin makes frequent mention of this work being in progress, and speaks of the labor he was bestowing upon it.[276] we, who blame the monks for the scarcity of the bible among them, fail to take into consideration the immense labor attending the transcriptions of so great a volume; plodding and patience were necessary to complete it. the history of this biblical gem is fraught with interest, and well worth relating. it is supposed to have been given to the monastery of prum in lorraine by lothaire, the grandson of charlemagne, who became a monk of that monastery. in the year 1576 this religious house was dissolved, but the monks preserved the manuscript, and carried it into switzerland to the abbey of grandis vallis, near basle, where it reposed till the year 1793, when, on the occupation of the episcopal territory of basle by the french, all the property of the abbey was confiscated and sold, and the ms. under consideration came into the possession of m. bennot, from whom, in 1822, it was purchased by m. speyr passavant, who brought it into general notice, and offered it for sale to the french government at the price of 60,000 francs; this they declined, and its proprietor struck of nearly 20,000 francs from the amount; still the sum was deemed exorbitant, and with all their bibliomanical enthusiasm, the conservers of the royal library allowed the treasure to escape. m. passavant subsequently brought it to england, where it was submitted to the duke of sussex, still without success. he also applied to the trustees of the british museum, and sir f. madden informs us that "much correspondence took place; at first he asked 12,000_l._ for it; then 8,000_l._, and at last 6,500_l._, which he declared an _immense sacrifice!!_ at length, finding he could not part with his ms. on terms so absurd, he resolved to sell it if possible by auction; and accordingly, on the 27th of april, 1836, the bible was knocked down by mr. evans for the sum of 1,500_l._, but for the proprietor himself, as there was not one real bidding for it. this result having brought m. speyr passavant in some measure to his senses, overtures were made to him on the part of the trustees to the british museum, and the manuscript finally became the property of the nation, for the comparatively small sum of 750_l._" there can be no doubt as to the authenticity of this precious volume, the verses of alcuin's, found in the manuscript, sufficiently prove it, for he alone could write- "is carolus qui jam scribe jussit eum." . . . . . . . "hæc dator æternus cunctorum christe bonorum, munera de donis accipe sancta tuis, quæ pater albinus devoto pectore supplex nominus ad laudem obtulit ecce tui." other proofs are not wanting of alcuin's industry as a scribe, or his enthusiasm as an _amator librorum_. mark the rapture with which he describes the library of york cathedral, collected by egbert: "illic invenies veterum vestigia patrum, quidquid habet pro se latio romanus in orbe, græcia vel quidquid transmisit clara latinis. hebraicus vel quod populus bibet imbre superno africa lucifluo vel quidquid lumine sparsit. quod pater hieronymus quod sensit hilarius, atque ambrosius præsul simul augustinus, et ipse sanctus athanasius, quod orosius, edit avitus: quidquid gregorius summus docet, et leo papa; basilius quidquid, fulgentius atque coruscant cassiodorus item, chrysostomus atque johannes: quidquid et athelmus docuit, quid beda magister, quæ victorinus scripsêre, boetius; atque historici veteres, pompeius, plinius, ipse acer aristoteles, rhetor quoque tullius ingens; quidquoque sedulius, vel quid canit ipse invencus, alcuinus, et clemens, prosper, paulinus, arator. quid fortunatus, vel quid lactantius edunt; quæ maro virgilius, statius, lucanus, et auctor artis grammaticæ, vel quid scripsêre magistri; quid probus atque focas, donatus, priscian usve, sevius, euticius, pompeius, commenianus, invenies alios perplures, lector, ibidem egregios studiis, arte et sermone magistros plurima qui claro scripsêre volumina sensu: nomina sed quorum præsenti in carmine scribi longius est visum, quam plectri postulet usus."[277] often did alcuin think of these goodly times with a longing heart, and wish that he could revel among them whilst in france. how deeply would he have regretted, how many tears would he have shed over the sad destruction of that fine library, had he have known it; but his bones had mingled with the dust when the danes dispersed those rare gems of ancient lore. if the reader should doubt the ardor of alcuin as a book-lover, let him read the following letter, addressed to charlemagne, which none but a bibliomaniac could pen. "i, your flaccus, according to your admonitions and good-will, administer to some in the house of st. martin, the sweets of the holy scriptures, _sanctarum mella scripturarum_: others i inebriate with the study of ancient wisdom; and others i fill with the fruits of grammatical lore. many i seek to instruct in the order of the stars which illuminate the glorious vault of heaven; so that they may be made ornaments to the holy church of god and the court of your imperial majesty; that the goodness of god and your kindness may not be altogether unproductive of good. but in doing this i discover the want of much, especially those exquisite books of scholastic learning, which i possessed in my own country, through the industry of my good and most devout master (egbert). i therefore intreat your excellence to permit me to send into britain some of our youths to procure those books which we so much desire, and thus transplant into france the flowers of britain, that they may fructify and perfume, not only the garden at york, but also the paradise of tours; and that we may say, in the words of the song, '_let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruit_;' and to the young, '_eat, o friends; drink, yea, drink, abundantly, o beloved_;' or exhort, in the words of the prophet isaiah, '_every one that thirsteth to come to the waters, and ye that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat: yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price_.' "your majesty is not ignorant how earnestly we are exhorted throughout the holy scriptures to search after wisdom; nothing so tends to the attainment of a happy life; nothing more delightful or more powerful in resisting vice; nothing more honorable to an exalted dignity; and, according to philosophy, nothing more needful to a just government of a people. thus solomon exclaims, '_wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it_.' it exalteth the humble with sublime honors. '_by wisdom kings reign and princes decree justice: by me princes rule; and nobles, even all the judges of the earth. blessed are they that keep my ways, and blessed is the man that heareth me._' continue, then, my lord king, to exhort the young in the palaces of your highness to earnest pursuit in acquiring wisdom; that they may be honored in their old age, and ultimately enter into a blessed immortality. i shall truly, according to my ability, continue to sow in those parts the seeds of wisdom among your servants; remembering the command, '_in the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand._' in my youth i sowed the seeds of learning in the prosperous seminaries of britain; and now, in my old age, i am doing so in france without ceasing, praying that the grace of god may bless them in both countries."[278] such was the enthusiasm, such the spirit of bibliomania, which actuated the monks of those _bookless_ days; and which was fostered with such zealous care by alcuin, in the cloisters of st. martin of tours. he appropriated one of the apartments of the monastery for the transcription of books, and called it the _museum_, in which constantly were employed a numerous body of industrious scribes: he presided over them himself, and continually exhorted them to diligence and care; to guard against the inadvertencies of unskilful copyists, he wrote a small work on orthography. we cannot estimate the merits of this essay, for only a portion of it has been preserved; but in the fragment printed among his works, we can see much that might have been useful to the scribes, and can believe that it must have tended materially to preserve the purity of ancient texts. it consists of a catalogue of words closely resembling each other, and consequently requiring the utmost care in transcribing.[279] in these pleasing labors alcuin was assisted by many of the most learned men of the time, and especially by arno, archbishop of salzburgh, in writing to whom alcuin exclaims, "o that i could suddenly translate my _abacus_, and with my own hands quickly embrace your fraternity with that warmth which cannot be compressed in books. nevertheless, because i cannot conveniently come, i send more frequently my unpolished letters (_rusticitatis meæ litteras_) to thee, that they may speak for me instead of the words of my mouth." this arno, to whom he thus affectionately writes, was no despicable scholar; he was a true lover of literature, and proved himself something of an _amator librorum_, by causing to be transcribed or bought for his use, 150 volumes,[280] but about this period the bookloving mania spread far and wide--the emperor himself was touched with the enthusiasm; for, besides his choice private collections,[281] he collected together the ponderous writings of the holy fathers, amounting to upwards of 200 volumes, bound in a most sumptuous manner, and commanded them to be deposited in a public temple and arranged in proper order, so that those who could not purchase such treasures might be enabled to feast on the lore of the ancients. thus did bibliomania flourish in the days of old. but i must not be tempted to remain longer in france, though the names of many choice old book collectors would entice me to do so. when i left england, to follow the steps of alcuin, i was speaking of york, which puts me in mind of the monastery of whitby,[282] in the same shire, on the banks of the river eske. it was founded by hilda, the virgin daughter of hereric, nephew to king edwin, about the year 680, who was its first abbess. having put her monastery in regular order, hilda set an illustrious example of piety and virtue, and particularly directed all under her care to a constant reading of the holy scriptures. after a long life of usefulness and zeal she died deeply lamented by the saxon church,[283] an event which many powerful miracles commemorated. in the old times of the saxons the monastery of whitby was renowned for its learning; and many of the celebrated ecclesiastics of the day received their instruction within its walls. the most interesting literary anecdote connected with the good lady hilda's abbacy, is the kind reception she gave to the saxon poet cædmon, whose paraphrase of the book of genesis has rendered his name immortal. he was wont to make "pious and religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expression of much sweetness and humility in english, which was his native language. by his verses the minds of many were often excited to despise the world and to aspire to heaven. others after him attempted in the english nation to compose religious poems, but none could ever compare with him, _for he did not learn the art of poetry from man but from god_."[284] he was indeed, as the venerable bede says, a poet of nature's own teaching: originally a rustic herdsman, the sublime gift was bestowed upon him by inspiration, or as it is recorded, in a dream. as he slept an unknown being appeared, and commanded him to sing. cædmon hesitated to make the attempt, but the apparition retorted, "nevertheless, thou shalt sing--sing the origin of things." astonished and perplexed, our poet found himself instantaneously in possession of the pleasing art; and, when he awoke, his vision and the words of his song were so impressed upon his memory, that he easily repeated them to his wondering companions.[285] he hastened at day-break to relate these marvels and to display his new found talents to the monks of whitby, by whom he was joyfully received, and as they unfolded the divine mysteries, "the good man," says bede, "listened like a clean animal ruminating; and his song and his verse were so winsome to hear, that his teachers wrote them down, and learned from his mouth."[286] some contend that an ancient manuscript in the british museum is the original of this celebrated paraphrase.[287] it is just one of those choice relics which a bibliomaniac loves to handle, but scarcely perhaps bears evidence of antiquity so remote. it is described in the catalogue as, "the substance of the book of genesis, with the acts of moses and joshua, with brief notes and annotations, part in latin and part in saxon by bede and others." the notes, if by bede, would tend to favor the opinion that it is the original manuscript, or, at any rate, coeval with the saxon bard. the volume, as a specimen of calligraphic art, reflects honor upon the age, and is right worthy of lady hilda's monastery. there are 312[288] fine velum pages in this venerable and precious volume, nearly every one of which dazzles with the talent of the skilful illuminator. the initial letters are formed, with singular taste and ingenuity, of birds, beasts, and flowers. to give an idea of the nature of these pictorial embellishments--which display more splendor of coloring than accuracy of design--i may describe the singular illumination adorning the sixth page, which represents the birth of eve. adam is asleep, reclining on the grass, which is depicted as so many inverted cones; and, if we may judge from the appearance of our venerable forefather, he could not have enjoyed a very comfortable repose on that memorable occasion, and the grass which grew in the garden of paradise must have been of a very stubborn nature when compared with the earth's verdure of the present day; for the weight of adam alters not the position of the tender herb, which supports his huge body on their extreme summits. as he is lying on the left side eve is ascending from a circular aperture in his right; nor would the original, if she bore any resemblance to her monkish portraiture, excite the envy or the admiration of the present age, or bear comparison with her fair posterity. her physiognomy is anything but fascinating, and her figure is a repulsive monstrosity, _adorned_ with a profusion of luxurious hair of a brilliant blue! it is foreign to our subject to enter into any analysis of the literary beauties of this poem; let it suffice that cædmon, the old saxon herdsman, has been compared to our immortal milton; and their names have been coupled together when speaking of a poet's genius.[289] but on other grounds cædmon claims a full measure of our praise. not only was he the "father of saxon poetry," but to him also belongs the inestimable honor of being the first who attempted to render into the vulgar tongue the beauties and mysteries of the holy scriptures; he unsealed what had hitherto been a sealed book; his paraphrase is the first translation of the holy writ on record. so let it not be forgotten that to this milton of old our saxon ancestors were indebted for this invaluable treasure. we are unable to trace distinctly the formation of the monastic library of whitby. but of the time of richard, elected abbot in the year 1148, a good monk, and formerly prior of peterborough, we have a catalogue of their books preserved. i would refer the reader to that curious list,[290] and ask him if it does not manifest by its contents the existence of a more refined taste in the cloisters than he gave the old monks credit for. it is true, the legends of saints abound in it; but then look at the choice tomes of a classic age, whose names grace that humble catalogue, and remember that the studies of the whitby monks were divided between the miraculous lives of holy men, and the more pleasing pages of the "pagan homer," the eloquence of tully, and the wit of juvenal, of whose subject they seemed to have been fond; for they read also the satires of persius. i extract the names of some of the authors contained in this monkish library: ambrose. hugo. theodolus. aratores. bernard. avianus. gratian. odo. gilda. maximianus. eusebius. plato. homer. cicero. juvenal. persius. statius. sedulus. prosper. prudentius. boethius. donatus. rabanus maurus. origen. priscian. gregory nazianzen. josephus. bede. gildas. isidore. ruffinus. guido on music. diadema monachorum. come, the monks evidently read something besides their _credo_, and transcribed something better than "monastic trash." a little taste for literature and learning we must allow they enjoyed, when they formed their library of such volumes as the above. i candidly admit, that when i commenced these researches i had no expectations of finding a collection of a hundred volumes, embracing so many choice works of old greece and rome. it is pleasant, however, to trace these workings of bibliomania in the monasteries; and it is a surprise quite agreeable and delicious in itself to meet with instances like the present. at a latter period the monastery of rievall, in yorkshire, possessed an excellent library of 200 volumes. this we know by a catalogue of them, compiled by one of the monks about the middle of the fourteenth century, and now preserved in the library of jesus college, cambridge.[291] a transcript of this manuscript was made by mr. halliwell, and published in his "reliqua antiqua,"[292] from which it may be seen that the rievall monastery contained at that time many choice and valuable works. the numerous writings of sts. augustine, bernard, anselm, cyprian, origin, haimo, gregory, ambrose, isidore, chrysostom, bede, aldhelm, gregory nazienzen, ailred, josephus, rabanus maurus, peter lombard, orosius, boethius, justin, seneca, with histories of the church of britain, of jerusalem, of king henry, and many others equally interesting and costly, prove how industriously they used their pens, and how much they appreciated literature and learning. but in the fourteenth century the inhabitants of the monasteries were very industrious in transcribing books at a period coeval with the compilation of the rievall catalogue, a monk of coventry church was plying his pen with unceasing energy; john de bruges wrote with his own hand thirty-two volumes for the library of the benedictine priory of st. mary. the reader will see that there is little among them worthy of much observation. the ms. begins, "these are the books which john of bruges, monk of coventry, wrote for the coventry church. any who shall take them away from the church without the consent of the convent, let him be anathema."[293] in primis, ymnarium in grossa littera. halmo upon isaiah. a missal for the infirmary. a missal. duo missalia domini prioris rogeris, scilicet collectas cum secretis et postcommunione. a benedictional for the use of the same prior. another benedictional for the use of the convent. librum cartarum. martyrologium, rule of st. benedict and pastoral, in one volume. liber cartarum. a graduale, with a tropario, and a processional. psaltar for prior roger. palladium de agricultura. librum experimentorum, in quo ligatur compotus helprici. a book containing compotus manualis et merlin, etc. an ordinal for the choir. tables for the martyrology. kalendarium mortuorum. ditto. table of responses. capitular. capitular for prior roger. a reading book. a book of decretals. psalter for the monks in the infirmary. generationes veteris et novi testamenti; ante scholasticam hystoriam et ante psalterium domini anselmi. pater noster. an ordinal. tables for peter lombard's sentences. tables for the psalter. book of the statutes of the church. verses on the praise of the blessed mary. the priory of st. mary's was founded by leofricke, the celebrated earl of mercia and his good lady godiva, in the year 1042. "hollingshead says that this earl leofricke was a man of great honor, wise, and discreet in all his doings. his high wisdome and policie stood the realme in great steed whilst he lived.... he had a noble ladie to his wife named gudwina, at whose earnest sute he made the citie of couentrie free of all manner of toll except horsses, and to haue that toll laid downe also, his foresaid wife rode naked through the middest of the towne without other couerture, saue onlie her haire. moreouer partlie moued by his owne deuotion and partlie by the persuasion of his wife, he builded or beneficiallie augmented and repared manie abbeies and churches as the saide abbie or priorie at couentrie--the abbeies of wenlocke, worcester, stone, evesham, and leot, besides hereford." the church of worcester, which the good earl had thus "beneficiallie augmented," the saxon king offa had endowed with princely munificence before him. in the year 780, during the time of abbot tilhere, or gilhere, offa gave to the church croppethorne, netherton, elmlege cuddeshe, cherton, and other lands, besides a "large bible with two clasps, made of the purest gold."[294] in the tenth century the library of exeter church was sufficiently extensive to require the preserving care of an amanuensis; for according to dr. thomas, bishop oswald granted in the year 985 three hides of land at bredicot, one yardland at ginenofra, and seven acres of meadow at tiberton, to godinge a monk, on condition of his fulfilling the duties of a librarian to the see, and transcribing the registers and writings of the church. it is said that the scribe godinge wrote many choice books for the library.[295] i do not find any remarkable book donation, save now and then a volume or two, in the annals of worcester church; nor have i been able to discover any old parchment catalogue to tell of the number or rarity of their books; for although probably most monasteries had one compiled, being enjoined to do so by the regulations of their order, they have long ago been destroyed; for when we know that fine old manuscripts were used by the bookbinders after the reformation, we can easily imagine how little value would be placed on a mere catalogue of names. but to return again to godiva, that illustrious lady gave the monks, after the death of her lord, many landed possessions, and bestowed upon them the blessings of a library.[296] thomas cobham, who was consecrated bishop of worcester in the year 1317, was a great "_amator librorum_," and spent much time and money in collecting books. he was the first who projected the establishment of a public library at oxford, which he designed to form over the old congregation house in the churchyard of st. mary's, but dying soon after in the year 1327, the project was forgotten till about forty years after, when i suppose the example of the great bibliomaniac richard de bury drew attention to the matter; for his book treasures were then "deposited there, and the scholars permitted to consult them on certain conditions."[297] bishop carpenter built a library for the use of the monastery of exeter church, in the year 1461, over the charnal house; and endowed it with £10 per annum as a salary for an amanuensis.[298] but the books deposited there were grievously destroyed during the civil wars; for on the twenty-fourth of september, 1642, when the army under the earl of essex came to worcester, they set about "destroying the organ, breaking in pieces divers beautiful windows, wherein the foundation of the church was lively historified with painted glass;" they also "rifled the library, with the records and evidences of the church, tore in pieces the bibles and service books pertaining to the quire."[299] sad desecration of ancient literature! but the reader of history will sigh over many such examples. the registers of evesham monastery, near worcester, speak of several monkish bibliophiles, and the bookish anecdotes relating to them are sufficiently interesting to demand some attention here. ailward, who was abbot in the year 1014, gave the convent many relics and ornaments, and what was still better a quantity of books.[300] he was afterwards promoted to the see of london, over which he presided many years; but age and infirmity growing upon him, he was anxious again to retire to evesham, but the monks from some cause or other were unwilling to receive him back; at this he took offence, and seeking in the monastery of ramsey the quietude denied him there, he demanded back all the books he had given them.[301] his successor mannius was celebrated for his skill in the fine arts, and was an exquisite worker in metals, besides an ingenious scribe and illuminator. he wrote and illuminated with his own hand, for the use of his monastery, a missal and a large psalter.[302] walter, who was abbot in the year 1077, gave also many books to the library,[303] and among the catalogue of sumptuous treasures with which reginald, a succeeding abbot, enriched the convent, a great textus or gospels, with a multitude of other books, _multa alia libros_, are particularly specified.[304] almost equally liberal were the choice gifts bestowed upon the monks by adam (elected a. d. 1161); but we find but little in our way among them, except a fine copy of the "old and new testament with a gloss." no mean gift i ween in those old days; but one which amply compensated for the deficiency of the donation in point of numbers. but all these were greatly surpassed by a monk whom it will be my duty now to introduce; and to an account of whose life and bibliomanical propensities, i shall devote a page or two. like many who spread a lustre around the little sphere of their own, and did honor, humbly and quietly to the sanctuary of the church in those gothic days, he is unknown to many; and might, perhaps, have been entirely forgotten, had not time kindly spared a document which testifies to his piety and book-collecting industry. the reader will probably recollect many who, by their shining piety and spotless life, maintained the purity of the christian faith in a church surrounded by danger and ignorance, and many a bright name, renowned for their virtue or their glory of arms, who flourished during the early part of the thirteenth century; but few have heard of a good and humble monk named thomas of marleberg. had circumstances designed him for a higher sphere, had affairs of state, or weighty duties of an ecclesiastical import, been guided by his hand, his name would have been recorded with all the flourish of monkish adulation; but the learning and the prudence of that lowly monk was confined to the little world of evesham; and when his earthly manes were buried beneath the cloisters within the old convent walls, his name and good deeds were forgotten by the world, save in the hearts of his fraternity. "but past is all his fame. the very spot where many a time he triumph'd, is forgot." in a manuscript in the cotton library there is a document called "the good deeds of prior thomas," from which the following facts have been extracted.[305] from this interesting memorial of his labors, we learn that thomas had acquired some repute among the monks for his great knowledge of civil and canon law; so that when any difficulty arose respecting the claims or privileges of the monastery, or when any important matter was to be transacted, his advice was sought and received with deference and respect. thus three years after his admission the bishop of worcester intimated his intention of paying the monastery a visitation; a practice which the bishops of that see had not enforced since the days of abbot alurie. the abbot and convent however considered themselves free from the jurisdiction of the bishop; and acting on the advice of thomas of marleberg, they successfully repulsed him. the affair was quite an event, and seems to have caused much sensation among them at the time; and is mentioned to show with what esteem thomas was regarded by his monkish brethren. after a long enumeration of "good works" and important benefactions, such as rebuilding the tower and repairing the convent, we are told that "in the second year of randulp's abbacy, thomas, then dean, went with him to rome to a general council, where, by his prudence and advice, a new arrangement in the business of the convent rents was confirmed, and many other useful matters settled." here i am tempted to refer to the _arrangements_, for they offer pleasing illustrations of the monk as an "_amator librorum_." mark how his thoughts dwelt--even when surrounded by those high dignitaries of the church, and in the midst of that important council--on the library and the scriptorium of his monastery. "_to the prior belongs the tythes of beningar the both great and small, to defray the expenses of procuring parchment, and to procure manuscripts for transcription._" and in another clause it is settled that "_to the office of the precentor belongs the manner of hampton, from which he will receive five shillings annually, besides ten and eightpence from the tythes of stokes and alcester, with which he is to find all the ink and parchment for the scribes of the monastery, colours for illuminating, and all that is necessary for binding the books_."[306] pleasing traits are these of his bookloving passion; and doubtless under his guidance the convent library grew and flourished amazingly. but let us return to the account of his "good works." "returning from rome after two years he was elected sacrist. he then made a reading-desk behind the choir,[307] which was much wanted in the church, and appointed stated readings to be held near the tomb of saint wilsius.... leaving his office thus rich in good works, he was then elected prior. in this office he buried his predecessor, prior john, in a new mausoleum; and also john, surnamed dionysius; of the latter of whom prior thomas was accustomed to say, 'that he had never known any man who so perfectly performed every kind of penance as he did for more than thirty years, in fasting and in prayer; in tears and in watchings; in cold and in corporeal inflictions; in coarseness and roughness of clothing, and in denying himself bodily comforts, far more than any other of the brethren; all of which he rather dedicated in good purposes and to the support of the poor." thus did many an old monk live, practising all this with punctilious care as the essence of a holy life, and resting upon the fallacy that these cruel mortifyings of the flesh would greatly facilitate the acquisition of everlasting ease and joy in a better world; as if god knew not, better than themselves, what chastisements and afflictions were needful for them. we may sigh with pain over such instances of mistaken piety and fanatical zeal in all ages of the church; yet with all their privations, and with all their macerations of the flesh, there was a vast amount of human pride mingled with their humiliation. but he who sees into the hearts of all--looking in his benevolence more at the intention than the outward form, may perhaps sometimes find in it the workings of a true christian piety, and so reward it with his love. let us trust so in the charity of our faith, and proceed to notice that portion of the old record which is more intimately connected with our subject. we read that "thomas had brought with him to the convent, on his entering, many books, of both canon and civil law; as well as the books by which he had regulated the schools of oxford and exeter before he became a monk. he likewise had one book of democritus; and the book of antiparalenion, a gradual book, according to constantine; isidore's divine offices, and the quadrimum of isidore; tully's de amicitia; tully de senectute et de paradoxis; lucan, juvenal, and many other authors, _et multos alios auctores_, with a great number of sermons, with many writings on theological questions; on the art and rules of grammar and the book of accents. after he was prior he made a great breviary, better than any at that time in the monastery, with haimo, on the apocalypse, and a book containing the lives of the patrons of the church of evesham; with an account of the deeds of all the good and bad monks belonging to the church, in one volume. he also wrote and bound up the same lives and acts in another volume separately. he made also a great psalter, _magnum psalterium_, superior to any contained in the monastery, except the glossed ones. he collected and wrote all the necessary materials for four antiphoners, with their musical notes, himself; except what the brothers of the monastery transcribed for him. he also finished many books that william of lith, of pious memory, commenced--the marterologium, the exceptio missæ, and some excellent commentaries on the psalter and communion of the saints in the old antiphoners. he also bought the four gospels, with glosses, and isaiah and ezekiel, also glossed;[308] the pistillæ upon matthew; some allegories on the old testament; the lamentations of jeremiah, with a gloss; the exposition of the mass, according to pope innocent; and the great book of alexander necham, which is called _corrogationes promethea de partibus veteris testamenti et novæ_.... he also caused to be transcribed in large letters the book concerning the offices of the abbey, from the purification of st. mary to the feast of easter; the prelections respecting easter; pentecost, and the blessings at the baptismal fonts. he also caused a volume, containing the same works, to be transcribed, but in a smaller hand; all of which the convent had not before. he made also the tablet for the locutory in the chapel of st. anne, towards the west. after the altar of st. mary in the crypts had been despoiled by thieves of its books and ornaments, to the value of ten pounds, he contributed to their restoration." thomas was equally liberal in other matters. his whole time and wealth were spent in rebuilding and repairing the monastery and adding to its comforts and splendor. he had a great veneration for antiquity, and was especially anxious to restore those parts which were dilapidated by time; the old inscriptions on the monuments and altars he carefully re-inscribed. it is recorded that he renewed the inscription on the great altar himself, without the aid of a book, _sine libro_; which was deemed a mark of profound learning in my lord abbot by his monkish surbordinates. with this i conclude my remarks on thomas of marleberg, leaving these extracts to speak for him. it is pleasing to find that virtue so great, and industry so useful met with its just reward; and that the monks of evesham proved how much they appreciated such talents, by electing him their abbot, in 1229, which, for seven years he held with becoming piety and wisdom. the annals of the monastery[309] testify that "in the year of our lord one thousand three hundred and ninety-two, and the fifteenth of the reign of king richard the second, on the tenth calends of may, died the venerable prior nicholas hereford, of pious memory, who, as prior of the church of evesham, lived a devout and religious life for forty years." he held that office under three succeeding abbots, and filled it with great honor and industry. he was a dear lover of books, and spent vast sums in collecting together his private library, amounting to more than 100 volumes; some of these he wrote with his own hand, but most of them he bought _emit_. a list of these books is given in the harleian register, and many of the volumes are described as containing a number of tracts, bound up in one, _cum aliis tractatibus in eodem volumine_. some of these display the industry of his pen, and silently tell us of his christian piety. among those remarkable for their bulk, it is pleasurable to observe a copy of the holy scriptures, which was doubtless a comfort to the venerable prior in the last days of his green old age; and which probably guided him in the even tenor of that _devout and religious life_, for which he was so esteemed by the monks of evesham. he possessed also some works of bernard augustin, and boethius, whose consolation of philosophy few book-collectors of the middle ages were without. to many of the books the prices he gave for them, or at which they were then valued, are affixed: a "_summa prædicantium_" is valued at eight marks, and a "_burley super politices_" at seven marks. we may suspect monk nicholas of being rather a curious collector in his way, for we find in his library some interesting volumes of popular literature. he probably found much pleasure in perusing his copy of the marvelous tale of "beufys of hampton," and the romantic "mort d'arthur," both sufficiently interesting to relieve the monotonous vigils of the monastery. but i must not dwell longer on the monastic bibliophiles of evesham, other libraries and bookworms call for some notice from my pen. footnotes: [245] "rediens autem, ubi viennam pervenit, eruptitios sibi quos apud amicos commendaverat, recepit." p. 26. _vit. abbat. wear. 12mo. edit. ware._ [246] the youngest son of oswy, or oswis, king of northumbria, who succeeded his father in the year 670, alfred his elder brother being for a time set aside on the grounds of his illegitimacy; yet alfred was a far more enlightened and talented prince than ecgfrid, and much praised in saxon annals for his love of learning. [247] "magnâ quidem copiâ voluminum sacrorum; sed non minori sicut et prius sanctorum imaginum numere detatus." _vit. abb._ p. 38. [248] "bibliothecam, quam de roma nobillissimam copiosessimanque advenaret ad instructionem ecclesiæ necessariam sollicite servari integram, nec per incuriam foedari aut passim dissipari præcepit." [249] bede says that he was "learned in holy scriptures." dr. henry mentions this anecdote in his _hist. of england_, vol. ii. p. 287, 8vo. ed. which has led many secondary compilers into a curious blunder, by mistaking the king here alluded to for alfred the great: even didbin, in his bibliomania, falls into the same error although he suspected some mistake; he calls him _our immortal alfrid_, p. 219, and seems puzzled to account for the anachronism, but does not take the trouble to enquire into the matter; heylin's little help to history would have set him right, and shown that while alfrede king of northumberland reigned in 680, alfred king of england lived more than two centuries afterwards, pp. 25 and 29. [250] the reader may perhaps smile at this, but it has long been my custom to carry some 8vo. edition of a monkish writer about me, when time or opportunity allowed me to spend a few hours among the ruins of the olden time. i recall with pleasure the recollection of many such rambles, and especially my last--a visit to netley abbey. what a sweet spot for contemplation; surrounded by all that is lovely in nature, it drives our old prejudices away, and touches the heart with piety and awe. often have i explored its ruins and ascended its crumbling parapets, admiring the taste of those cistercian monks in choosing so quiet, romantic, and choice a spot, and one so well suited to lead man's thoughts to sacred things above. [251] bede, _vit. abb. wear._ p. 46. [252] the fine libraries thus assiduously collected were destroyed by the danes; that of jarrow in the year 793, and that of wearmouth in 867. [253] emer, vita. ap. mab. act. ss. tom. iii. 199. [254] bede's eccles. hist. b. iii. c. xxv. [255] "idemque vir dei quatuor evangelica et bibliothecam pluresque libros novi et veteris testamenti cum tabulis tectis auro purissimo et pretiosis gemmis mirabili artificio fabricatis ad honorem dei." dugdale's monast. vol. ii. p. 133. [256] in 665 he was raised to the episcopacy of all northumbria. [257] he was deprived of his bishopric in the year 678, and the see was divided into those of york and hexham. but for the particulars of his conduct see _soame's anglo. sax. church_, p. 63, with _dr. lingard's ang. sax. church_, vol. i. p. 245; though without accusing either of misrepresentation, i would advise the reader to search (if he has the opportunity), the original authorities for himself, it is a delicate matter for a roman or an english churchman to handle with impartiality. [258] his saxon name was winfrid, or wynfrith, but he is generally called boniface, archbishop of mentz. [259] the mere act of baptizing constitutes "_conversion_" in jesuitical phraseology; and thousands were so converted in a few days by the followers of ignatius. a similar process was used in working out the miracles of the saxon missionary. he was rather too conciliating and too anxious for a "converting miracle," to be over particular; but it was all for the good of the church papal, to whom he was a devoted servant; the church papal therefore could not see the fault. [260] ep. iii. p. 7, ed. 4to.--_moguntiæ_, 1629. [261] ep. iv. p. 8. [262] ep. xiii. [263] ep. vii. p. 11. [264] ep. xiv. see also ep. xxviii. p. 40. [265] ep. viii. p. 12. [266] ep. lxxxv. p. 119. [267] ep. ix. p. 13. [268] ep. xxii. p. 36. [269] ep. xcix. p. 135. [270] ep. cxi. p. 153. [271] the accusation is not a groundless one. foxe, in his _acts and monuments_, warmly upbraids him; and aikins in his _biog. dict._, has acted in a similar manner. but the best guides are his letters--they display his faults and his virtues too. [272] this was in the year 731. _goodwin_ says he "sate 36 years, and died an. 767." he says, "this man by his owne wisedome, and the authority of his brother, amended greatly the state of his church and see. he procured the archiepiscopall pall to be restored to his churche againe, and erected a famous library at york, which he stored plentifully with an infinite number of excellent bookes." p. 441. [273] de pontificibus et sanctis ecclesiæ eboracensis. [274] alcuini oper., tom. i. vol. 1, p. 57, translated in sharpe's william of malmsbury, p. 73. [275] opera, tom. i. p. 305. [276] in a letter to gisla, sister to the emperor, he writes "totius forsitan evangelii johannis expositionem direxissem vobis, si me non occupasset domini regis præceptum in emendatione veteri novique testamenti."--_opera_, tom. i. vol. 7, p. 591. [277] alcuini, ap. gale, tom. iii. p. 730. [278] alcuini, oper. tom. i. p. 52. ep. xxxviii. it was written about 796. [279] he was also very careful in instructing the scribes to punctuate with accuracy, which he deemed of great importance. see ep. lxxxv. p. 126. [280] necrolog. ms. capituli, metropolitani salisburgensis, _apud_ froben, tom. i. p. lxxxi. [281] charlemagne founded several libraries;--see _koeler, dissert. de biblio. caroli mog._ published in 1727. eginhart mentions his private collection, and it is thus spoken of in the emperor's will; "similiter et de libris, quorum magna in bibliotheca sua copiam congregavit: statuit ut ab iis qui eos habere uellet, justo pretio redimeretur, pretin in pauperes erogaretur." echin. vita caroli, p. 366, edit. 24mo. 1562. yet we cannot but regret the dispersion of this imperial library. [282] formerly called _streaneshalch_. [283] at the age of 66, _bede_, b. iv. cxxiii. [284] bede, b. iv. c. xxiv. [285] john de trevisa says, "cædmon of whitaby was inspired of the holy gost, and made wonder poisyes an englisch, meiz of al the storyes of holy writ." _ms. harleian_, 1900, fol. 43, a. [286] ibid. [287] cottonian collection marked _claudius_, b. iv. there is another ms. in the bodleian (_junius_ xi.) it was printed by junius in 1655, in 4to. sturt has engraved some of the illuminations in his _saxon antiquities_, and they were also copied and published by j. greene, f. a. s., in 1754, in fifteen plates. [288] it is unfortunately imperfect at the end, and wants folio 32. [289] take the following as an instance of the similarity of thought between the two poets. sharon turner thus renders a portion of satan's speech from the saxon of cædmon: "yet why should i sue for his grace? or bend to him with any obedience? i may be a god as he is. stand by me strong companions." _hist. anglo sax._ vol. ii. p. 314. the idea is with milton: . . . . . . . . to bow to one for grace with suppliant knee, and deify his power, who from the terror of this arm so late doubted his empire; that were low indeed! that were an ignominy, and shame beneath this downfall! _paradise lost_, b. i. [290] he will find it in charlton's history of whitby, 4to. 1779, p. 113. [291] marked ms. n. b. 17. [292] wright and halliwell's rel. antiq. vol. ii. p. 180. [293] it is printed in hearne's history of glastonbury, from a ms. in the bodleian library, ed. _oxon_, 1722, _appendix_ x. p. 291. [294] bibliothecam optimam cum duobus armillis ex auro purissimo fabricatis.--_heming. chart_, p. 95. [295] thomas's survey, of worcester church, 4to. 1736, p. 46. the scriptorium of the monastery was situated in the cloisters, and a bible in bennet college, cambridge, was written therein by a scribe named senatus, as we learn from a note printed in nasmith's catalogue, which proves it to have been written during the reign of henry ii. it is a folio ms. on vellum, and a fine specimen of the talent of the expert scribe.--see _nasmith's catalogus libr. mss._, 4to. _camb._ 1777, p. 31. [296] since writing the above, which i gave on the authority of green (_hist. of worc._ vol. i. p. 79), backed with the older one of thomas (_survey ch. worc._ p. 70), i have had the opportunity of consulting the reference given by them (_heming, chart._ p. 262), and was somewhat surprised to find the words "_et bibliothecam, in duobus partibus divisam_," the foundation of this pleasing anecdote. "_bibliothecam_," however, was the latin for a bible in the middle ages: so that in fact the lady godiva gave them a bible divided into two parts, or volumes. [297] chalmer's hist. of the colleges of oxford, p. 458. wood's hist. antiq. of oxon, lib. ii. p. 48. [298] green's hist. worc. p. 79. [299] sir w. dugdale's view of the troubles in england, _folio_, p. 557. we can easily credit the destruction of the organ and painted windows, so obnoxious to puritan piety; but with regard to the _bibles_, we may suspect the accuracy of the royalist writer, col. 182. [300] symeon dunelm. tweyed. script. x. [301] habingdon, mss. godwin de præf, p. 231. [302] tindal's hist. of evesham, p. 248. [303] _ibid._ p. 250. [304] ms. harl., no. 3763, p. 180. [305] ms. cot. vesp. b. xxiv. it is printed in latin in _nash's worcestershire_, vol. i. p. 419, and translated in _tindal's hist. of worcs._ p. 24, all of which i have used with _dugdale's monast._ vol. ii. p. 5. [306] _ms. cottonian augustus ii._ no. 11. "ex his debet invenire præcentor incaustum omnibus scriptoribus monasterii; et pergamenum ad brevia, et colores ad illuminandum, et necessaria ad legandum libros." see _dugdale's monast._ vol. ii. p. 24. [307] after the elapse of so many years, the research of the antiquarian has brought this desk to light; an account of it will be found in the archeologia, vol. xvii. p. 278. [308] "emit etiam quator evangelia glosata, et yaiam et ezechielem glossatos." [309] harleian mss., no. 3763. chapter ix. _old glastonbury abbey.--its library.--john of taunton.--richard whiting.--malmsbury.--bookish monks of gloucester abbey.--leofric of exeter and his private library.--peter of blois. extracts from his letters.--proved to have been a great classical student, etc., etc._ the fame of glastonbury abbey will attract the steps of the western traveller; and if he possess the spirit of an antiquary, his eye will long dwell on those mutilated fragments of monkish architecture. the bibliophile will regard it with still greater love; for, in its day, it was one of the most eminent repositories of those treasures which it is his province to collect. for more than ten hundred years that old fabric has stood there, exciting in days of remote antiquity the veneration of our pious forefathers, and in modern times the admiration of the curious. pilgrim! tread lightly on that hallowed ground! sacred to the memory of the most learned and illustrious of our saxon ancestry. the bones of princes and studious monks closely mingle with the ruins which time has caused, and bigotry helped to desecrate. monkish tradition claims, as the founder of glastonbury abbey, st. joseph of arimathea, who, sixty-three years after the incarnation of our lord, came to spread the truths of the gospel over the island of britain. let this be how it may, we leave it for more certain data. after, says a learned antiquary, its having been built by st. davis, archbishop of menevia, and then again restored by "twelve well affected men in the north;" it was entirely pulled down by ina, king of the west saxons, who "new builded the abbey of glastonburie[310] in a fenny place out of the way, to the end the monks mought so much the more give their mindes to heavenly thinges, and chiefely use the contemplation meete for men of such profession. this was the fourth building of that monasterie."[311] the king completed his good work by erecting a beautiful chapel, garnished with numerous ornaments and utensils of gold and silver; and among other costly treasures, william of malmsbury tells us that twenty pounds and sixty marks of gold was used in making a coopertoria for a book of the gospels.[312] would that i had it in my power to write the literary history of glastonbury abbey; to know what the monks of old there transcribed would be to acquire the history of learning in those times; for there was little worth reading in the literature of the day that was not copied by those industrious scribes. but if our materials will not enable us to do this, we may catch a glimpse of their well stored shelves through the kindness and care of william britone the librarian, who compiled a work of the highest interest to the biographer. it is no less than a catalogue of the books contained in the common library of the abbey in the year one thousand two hundred and forty-eight. four hundred choice volumes comprise this fine collection;[313] and will not the reader be surprised to find among them a selection of the classics, with the chronicles, poetry, and romantic productions of the middle ages, besides an abundant store of the theological writings of the primitive church. but i have not transcribed a large proportion of this list, as the extracts given from other monastic catalogues may serve to convey an idea of their nature; but i cannot allow one circumstance connected with this old document to pass without remark. i would draw the reader's attention to the fine bibles which commence the list, and which prove that the monks of glastonbury abbey were fond and devoted students of the bible. it begins with- bibliotheca una in duobus voluminibus. alia bibliotheca integra vetusta, set legibilis. bibliotheca integræ minoris litteræ. dimidia pars bibliothecæ incipiens à psalterio, vetusta. bibliotheca magna versificata. alia versificata in duobus voluminibus. bibliotheca tres versificata.[314] but besides these, the library contained numerous detached books and many copies of the gospels, an ample collection of the fathers, and the controversal writings of the middle ages; and among many others, the following classics- aristotle. livy. orosius. sallust. donatus. sedulus. virgil's æneid. virgil's georgics. virgil's bucolics. æsop. tully. boethius. plato. isagoge of porphyry. prudentius. fortuanus. persius. pompeius. isidore. smaragdius. marcianus. horace. priscian. prosper. aratores. claudian. juvenal. cornutus. i must not omit to mention that john de taunton, a monk and an enthusiastic _amator librorum_, and who was elected abbot in the year 1271, collected forty choice volumes, and gave them to the library, _dedit librario_, of the abbey; no mean gift, i ween, in the thirteenth century. they included- questions on the old and new law. st. augustine upon genesis. ecclesiastical dogmas. st. bernard's enchiridion. st. bernard's flowers. books of wisdom, with a gloss. postil's upon jeremiah and the lesser prophets. concordances to the bible. postil's of albertus upon matthew, and the lamentations of jeremiah and others, in one volume. postil's upon mark. postil's upon john, with a discourse on the epistles throughout the year. brother thomas old and new gloss. morabilius on the gospels and epistles. st. augustine on the trinity. epistles of paul glossed. st. augustine's city of god. kylwardesby upon the letter of the sentences. questions concerning crimes. perfection of the spiritual life. brother thomas' sum of divinity, in four volumes. decrees and decretals. a book of perspective. distinctions of maurice. books of natural history, in two volumes. book on the properties of things.[315] subsequent to this, in the time of one book-loving abbot, an addition of forty-nine volumes was made to the collection by his munificence and the diligence of his scribes; and time has allowed the modern bibliophile to gaze on a catalogue of these treasures. i wish the monkish annalist had recorded the life of this early bibliomaniac, but unfortunately we know little of him. but they were no mean nor paltry volumes that he transcribed. it is with pleasure i see the catalogue commenced by a copy of the holy scriptures; and the many commentaries upon them by the fathers of the church enumerated after it, prove my lord abbot to have been a diligent student of the bible. nor did he seek god alone in his written word; but wisely understood that his creator spoke to him also by visible works; and probably loved to observe the great wisdom and design of his god in the animated world; for a pliny's natural history stands conspicuous on the list, as the reader will perceive. the bible. pliny's natural history. cassiodorus upon the psalms. three great missals. two reading books. a breviary for the infirmary. jerome upon jeremiah and isaiah. origen upon the old testament. origen's homilies. origen upon the epistle of st. paul to the romans. jerome upon the epistles to the galatians, to ephesians, to titus, and to philemon. lives of the fathers. collations of the fathers. breviary for the hospital. an antiphon. pars una moralium. cyprian's works. register. liber dictus paradisus. jerome against jovinian. ambrose against novatian. seven volumes of the passions of the saints for the circle of the whole year. lives of the cæsars. acts of the britons. acts of the english. acts of the franks. pascasius. radbert on the body and blood of the lord. book of the abbot of clarevalle _de amando deo_. hugo de s. victore de duodecim gradibus humilitatis et de oratione. physiomania lapedarum et liber petri alsinii in uno volumine. rhetoric, two volumes. quintilian _de causes_, in one volume. augustine upon the lord's prayer and upon the psalm _miserero mei deus_. a benedictional. decreta cainotensis episcopi. jerome upon the twelve prophets, and upon the lamentations of jeremiah. augustine upon the trinity. augustine upon genesis. isidore's etymology. paterius. augustine on the words of our lord. hugo on the sacraments. cassinus on the incarnation of our lord. anselm's _cui deus homo_.[316] the reader, i think, will allow that the catalogue enumerates but little unsuitable for a christian's study; he may not admire the principles contained in some of them, or the superstition with which many of them are loaded; but after all there were but few volumes among them from which a bible reading monk might not have gleaned something good and profitable. these books were transcribed about the end of the thirteenth century, after the catalogue of the monastic library mentioned above was compiled. walter taunton, elected in the year 1322, gave to the library several volumes; and his successor, adam sodbury,[317] elected in the same year, increased it with a copy of the whole bible,[318] a scholastic history, lives of saints, a work on the properties of things, two costly psalters, and a most beautifully bound benedictional. but doubtless many a bookworm nameless in the page of history, dwelled within those walls apart from worldly solicitude and strife; relieving what would otherwise have been an insupportable monotony, with sweet converse, with books, or the avocations of a scribe. well, years rolled on, and this fair sanctuary remained in all its beauty, encouraging the trembling christian, and fostering with a mother's care the literature and learning of the time. thus it stood till that period, so dark and unpropitious for monkish ascendency, when protestant fury ran wild, and destruction thundered upon the heads of those poor old monks! a sad and cruel revenge for enlightened minds to wreck on mistaken piety and superstitious zeal. how widely was the fine library scattered then. even a few years after its dissolution, when leland spent some days exploring the book treasures reposing there, it had been broken up, and many of them lost; yet still it must have been a noble library, for he tells us that it was "scarcely equalled in all britain;" and adds, in the spirit of a true bibliomaniac, that he no sooner passed the threshold than the very sight of so many sacred remains of antiquity struck him with awe and astonishment. the reader will naturally wish that he had given us a list of what he found there; but he merely enumerates a selection of thirty-nine, among which we find a grammatica eriticis, formerly belonging to saint dunstan; a life of saint wilfrid; a saxon version of orosius, and the writings of william of malmsbury.[319] the antiquary will now search in vain for any vestige of the abbey library; even the spot on which it stood is unknown to the curious. no christian, let his creed be what it may, who has learnt from his master the principles of charity and love, will refuse a tear to the memory of richard whiting, the last of glastonbury's abbots. poor old man! surely those white locks and tottering limbs ought to have melted a christian heart; but what charity or love dwelt within the soul of that rapacious monarch? too old to relinquish his long cherished superstitions; too firm to renounce his religious principles, whiting offered a firm opposition to the reformation. the fury of the tyrant henry was aroused, and that grey headed monk was condemned to a barbarous death. as a protestant i blush to write it, yet so it was; after a hasty trial, if trial it can be called, he was dragged on a hurdle to a common gallows erected on torr hill, and there, in the face of a brutal mob, with two of his companion monks, was he hung! protestant zeal stopped not here, for when life had fled they cut his body down, and dividing it into quarters, sent one to each of the four principal towns; and as a last indignity to that mutilated clay, stuck his head on the gate of the old abbey, over which he had presided with judicious care in the last days of his troubled life. it was whiting's wish to bid adieu in person to his monastery, in which in more prosperous times he had spent many a quiet hour; it is said that even this, the dying prayer of that poor old man, they refused to grant.[320] on viewing the ruins of glastonbury abbey, so mournful to look upon, yet so splendid in its decay, we cannot help exclaiming with michael dayton,- "on whom for this sad waste, should justice lay the crime." whilst in the west we cannot pass unnoticed the monastery of malmsbury, one of the largest in england, and which possessed at one time an extensive and valuable library; but it was sadly ransacked at the reformation, and its vellum treasures sold to the bakers to heat their stoves, or applied to the vilest use; not even a catalogue was preserved to tell the curious of a more enlightened age, what books the old monks read there; but perhaps, and the blood runs cold as the thought arises in the mind, a perfect livy was among them, for a rare _amator librorum_ belonging to this monastery, quotes one of the lost decades.[321] i allude to william of malmsbury, one of the most enthusiastic bibliomaniacs of his age. from his youth he dwelt within the abbey walls, and received his education there. his constant study and indefatigable industry in collecting and perusing books, was only equalled by his prudence and by his talents; he soon rose in the estimation of his fellow monks, who appointed him their librarian, and ultimately offered him the abbacy, which he refused with christian humility, fearing too, lest its contingent duties would debar him from a full enjoyment of his favorite avocation; but of his book passion let william of malmsbury speak for himself: "a long period has elapsed since, as well through the care of my parents as my own industry, i became familiar with books. this pleasure possessed me from my childhood; this source of delight has grown with my years; indeed, i was so instructed by my father, that had i turned aside to other pursuits, i should have considered it as jeopardy to my soul, and discredit to my character. wherefore, mindful of the adage, 'covet what is necessary,' i constrained my early age to desire eagerly that which it was disgraceful not to possess. i gave indeed my attention to various branches of literature, but in different degrees. logic, for instance, which gives arms to eloquence, i contented myself with barely learning: medicine, which ministers to the health of the body, i studied with somewhat more attention. but now, having scrupulously examined the various branches of ethics, i bow down to its majesty, because it spontaneously inverts itself to those who study it, and directs their minds to moral practice, history more especially; which by a certain agreeable recapitulation of past events, excites its readers by example, to frame their lives to the pursuit of good or to aversion from evil. when, therefore, at my own expense i had procured some historians of foreign nations, i proceeded during my domestic leisure, to inquire if anything concerning our own country could be found worthy of handing down to posterity. hence it arose, that not content with the writings of ancient times, i began myself to compose, not indeed to display my learning, which is comparatively nothing, but to bring to light events lying concealed in the confused mass of antiquity. in consequence, rejecting vague opinions, i have studiously sought for chronicles far and near, though i confess i have scarcely profited anything by this industry; for perusing them all i still remained poor in information, though i ceased not my researches as long as i could find anything to read."[322] having read this passage, i think my readers will admit that william of malmsbury well deserves a place among the bibliomaniacs of the middle ages. as an historian his merit is too generally known and acknowledged to require an elucidation here. he combines in most cases a strict attention to fact, with the rare attributes of philosophic reflection, and sometimes the bloom of eloquence. but simplicity of narrative constitute the greatest and sometimes the only charm in the composition of the monkish chroniclers. william of malmsbury aimed at a more ambitious style, and attempted to adorn, as he admits himself, his english history with roman art; this he does sometimes with tolerable elegance, but too often at the cost of necessary detail. yet still we must place him at the head of the middle age historians, for he was diligent and critical, though perhaps not always impartial; and in matters connected with romish doctrine, his testimony is not always to be relied upon without additional authority; his account of those who held opinions somewhat adverse to the orthodoxy of rome is often equivocal; we may even suspect him of interpolating their writings, at least of alfric, whose homilies had excited the fears of the norman ecclesiastics. his works were compiled from many sources now unknown; and from the works of bede, the saxon chronicles, and florilegus, he occasionally transcribes with little alteration. but is it not distressing to find that this talented author, so superior in other respects to the crude compilers of monkish history, cannot rise above the superstition of the age? is it not deplorable that a mind so gifted could rely with fanatical zeal upon the verity of all those foul lies of rome called "holy" miracles; or that he could conceive how god would vouchsafe to make his saints ridiculous in the eyes of man, by such gross absurdities as tradition records, but which rome deemed worthy of canonization; but it was then, as now, so difficult to conquer the prejudices of early teaching. with all our philosophy and our science, great men cannot do it now; even so in the days of old; they were brought up in the midst of superstition; sucked it as it were from their mother's breast, and fondly cradled in its belief; and as soon as the infant mind could think, parental piety dedicated it to god; not, however, as a light to shine before men, but as a candle under a bushel; for to serve god and to serve monachism were synonymous expressions in those days. the west of england was honored by many a monkish bibliophile in the middle ages. the annals of gloucester abbey record the names of several. prior peter, who became abbot in the year 1104, is said to have enclosed the monastery with a stone wall, and greatly enriched it with many books "_copia librorum_."[323] a few years after (a. d. 1113), godeman the prior was made abbot, and the saxon chronicle records that during his time the tower was set on fire by lightning and the whole monastery was burnt; so that all the valuable things therein were destroyed except a "few books and three priest's mass-hackles."[324] abbot gamage gave many books to the library in the year 1306;[325] and richard de stowe, during the same century, gave the monks a small collection in nine or ten volumes; a list of them is preserved in an old manuscript.[326] but earlier than this in the eleventh century, a bishop of exeter stands remarkable as an _amator librorum_. leofric, the last bishop of crediton, and "sometime lord chancellor of england,"[327] received permission from edward the confessor to translate the seat of his diocese to the city of exeter in the year 1050. "he was brought up and studied in _lotharingos_," says william of malmsbury,[328] and he manifested his learning and fondness for study by collecting books. of the nature of his collections we are enabled to judge by the volumes he gave to the church of exeter. the glimpse thus obtained lead us to consider him a curious book-collector; and it is so interesting to look upon a catalogue of a bishop's private library in that early time, and to behold his tastes and his pursuits reflected and mirrored forth therein, that i am sure the reader will be gratified by its perusal.[329] after enumerating some broad lands and a glittering array of sumptuous ornaments, he is recorded to have given to the church "two complete mass books; 1 collectarium; 2 books of epistles (_pistel bec_[330]); 2 complete _sang bec_; 1 book of _night sang_; 1 book _unus liber_, a breviary or tropery; 2 psalters; 3 psalters according to the roman copies; 2 antiphoners; a precious book of blessings; 3 others; 1 book of christ _in english_; 2 summer reading bec; 1 winter ditto; rules and canons; 1 martyrology; 1 canons in latin; 1 confessional _in english_; 1 book of homilies and hymns for winter and summer; 1 boethius on the consolation of philosophy, _in english_ (king alfred's translation); 1 great book of poetry in english; 1 capitular; 1 book of very ancient nocturnal _sangs_; 1 pistel bec; 2 ancient ræding bec; 1 for the use of the priest; also the following books in latin, viz., 1 pastoral of gregory; 1 dialogues of gregory; 1 book of the four prophets; 1 boethius consolation of philosophy; 1 book of the offices of amalar; 1 isagoge of porphyry; 1 passional; 1 book of prosper; 1 book of prudentius the martyr; 1 prudentius; 1 prudentius (_de mrib._); 1 other book; 1 ezechael the prophet; 1 isaiah the prophet; 1 song of songs; 1 isidore etymology; 1 isidore on the new and old testament; 1 lives of the apostles; 1 works of bede; 1 bede on the apocalypse; 1 bede's exposition on the seven canonical epistles; 1 book of isidore on the miracles of christ; 1 book of orosius; 1 book of machabees; 1 book of persius; 1 sedulus; 1 avator; 1 book of statius with a gloss." such were the books forming a part of the private library of a bishop of exeter in the year of grace 1073. few indeed when compared with the vast multitudes assembled and amassed together in the ages of printed literature. but these sixty or seventy volumes, collected in those times of dearth, and each produced by the tedious process of the pen, were of an excessive value, and mark their owner as distinctly an _amator librorum_, as the enormous piles heaped together in modern times would do a magliabechi. nor was leofric an ordinary collector; he loved to preserve the idiomatic poetry of those old saxon days; his ancient _sang bec_, or song books, would now be deemed a curious and precious relic of saxon literature. one of these has fortunately escaped the ravages of time and the fate of war. "the great boc of english poetry" is still preserved at exeter--one of the finest relics of anglo saxon poetry extant. mark too those early translations which we cannot but regard with infinite pleasure, and which satisfactorily prove that the gospels and church service was at least partly read and sung in the saxon church in the common language of the people; let the roman catholics say what they will.[331] but without saying much of his church books, we cannot but be pleased to find the christian boethius in his library with bede, gregory, isidore, prosper, orosius, prudentius, sedulus, persius and statius; these are authors which retrieve the studies of leofric from the charge of mere monastic lore. but good books about this time were beginning to be sought after with avidity. the cluniac monks, who were introduced into england about the year 1077, more than one hundred and sixty years after their foundation, gave a powerful impetus to monastic learning; which received additional force by the enlightened efforts of the cistercians, instituted in 1098, and spread into britain about the year 1128. these two great branches of the benedictine order, by their great love of learning, and by their zeal in collecting books, effected a great change in the monkish literature of england. "they were not only curious and attentive in forming numerous libraries, but with indefatigable assiduity transcribed the volumes of the ancients, _l'assiduité infatigable à transcrire les livres des anciens_, say the benedictines of st. maur,"[332] who perhaps however may be suspected of regarding their ancient brethren in rather too favorable a light. but certain it is, that the state of literature became much improved, and the many celebrated scholars who flourished in the twelfth century spread a taste for reading far and wide, and by their example caused the monks to look more eagerly after books. peter of blois, archdeacon of london, is one of the most pleasing instances of this period, and his writings have even now a freshness and vivacity about them which surprise as they interest the reader. this illustrious student, and truly worthy man, was born at blois in the early part of the twelfth century. his parents, who were wealthy and noble, were desirous of bestowing upon their son an education befitting their own rank; for this purpose he was sent to paris to receive instruction in the general branches of scholastic knowledge. he paid particular attention to poetry, and studied rhetoric with still greater ardor.[333] but being designed for the bar, he left paris for bologna, there to study civil law; and succeeded in mastering all the dry technicalities of legal science. he then returned to paris to study scholastic divinity,[334] in which he became eminently proficient, and was ever excessively fond. he remained at paris studying deeply himself, and instructing others for many years. about the year 1167 he went with stephen, count de perche, into sicily, and was appointed tutor to the young king william ii., made keeper of his private seal, and for two years conducted his education.[335] soon after leaving sicily, he was invited by henry ii. into england,[336] and made archdeacon of bath. it was during the time he held that office that he wrote most of these letters, from which we obtain a knowledge of the above facts, and which he collected together at the particular desire of king henry; who ever regarded him with the utmost kindness, and bestowed upon him his lasting friendship. i know not a more interesting or a more historically valuable volume than these epistolary collections of archdeacon peter. they seem to bring those old times before us, to seat us by the fire-sides of our norman forefathers, and in a pleasant, quiet manner enter into a gossip on the passing events of the day; and being written by a student and an _amator librorum_, they moreover unfold to us the state of learning among the ecclesiastics at least of the twelfth century; and if we were to take our worthy archdeacon as a specimen, they possessed a far better taste for these matters than we usually give them credit for. peter of blois was no ordinary man; a churchman, he was free from the prejudices of churchmen--a visitant of courts and the associate of royalty, he was yet free from the sycophancy of a courtier--and when he saw pride and ungodliness in the church, or in high places, he feared not to use his pen in stern reproof at these abominations. it is both curious and extraordinary, when we bear in mind the prejudices of the age, to find him writing to a bishop upon the looseness of his conduct, and reproving him for his inattention to the affairs of his diocese, and upbraiding another for displaying an unseemly fondness for hunting,[337] and other sports of the field; which he says is so disreputable to one of his holy calling, and quotes an instance of pope nicholas suspending and excluding from the church bishop lanfred for a similar offence; which he considers even more disgraceful in walter, lord bishop of winchester, to whom he is writing, on account of his advanced age; he being at that time eighty years old. we are constantly reminded in reading his letters that we have those of an indefatigable student before us; almost every page bears some allusion to his books or to his studies, and prove how well and deeply read he was in latin literature; not merely the theological writings of the church, but the classics also. in one of his letters he speaks of his own studies, and tells us that when he learnt the art of versification and correct style, he did not spend his time on legends and fables, but took his models from livy, quintus curtius, trogus pompeius, josephus, tacitus, suetonius, and other classics; in the same letter he gives some directions to the archdeacon of nantes, who had undertaken the education of his nephews, as to the manner of their study. he had received from the archdeacon a flattering account of the progress made by one of them named william, to which he thus replies--"you speak," says he, "of william--his great penetration and ingenious disposition, who, without grammar or the authors of science, which are both so desirable, has mastered the subtilties of logic, so as to be esteemed a famous logician, as i learn by your letter. but this is not the foundation of a correct knowledge--these subtilties which you so highly extol, are manifoldly pernicious, as seneca truly affirms,--_odibilius nihil est subtilitate ubi est soloe subtilitas_. what indeed is the use of these things in which you say he spends his days--either at home, in the army, at the bar, in the cloister, in the church, in the court, or indeed in any position whatever, except, i suppose, the schools?" seneca says, in writing to lucalius, "_quid est, inquit acutius arista et in quo est utiles!_"[338] in many letters we find him quoting the classics with the greatest ease, and the most appropriate application to his subject; in one he refers to ovid, persius, and seneca,[339] and in others, when writing in a most interesting and amusing manner of poetic fame and literary study, he extracts from terence, ovid, juvenal, horace, plato, cicero, valerius maximus, seneca, etc.[340] in another, besides a constant use of scripture, which proves how deeply read too he was in holy writ, he quotes with amazing prodigality from juvenal, frontius, vigetius, dio, virgil, ovid, justin, horace, and plutarch.[341] indeed, horace was a great favorite with the archdeacon, who often applied some of his finest sentences to illustrate his familiar chat and epistolary disquisitions.[342] it is worth noticing that in one he quotes the roman history of sallust, in six books, which is now lost, save a few fragments; the passage relates to pompey the great.[343] we can scarcely refrain from a smile at the eagerness of archdeacon peter in persuading his friends to relinquish the too enticing study of frivolous plays, which he says can be of no service to the interest of the soul;[344] and then, forgetting this admonition, sending for tragedies and comedies himself, that he might get them transcribed.[345] this puts one in mind of a certain modern divine, whose conduct not agreeing with his doctrine, told his hearers not to do as he did, but as he told them. it appears also equally ludicrous to find him upbraiding a monk, named peter of blois, for studying the pagan authors: "the foolish old fables of hercules and jove," their lies and philosophy;[346] when, as we have seen, he read them so ravenously, and so greatly borrowed from them himself. but then we must bear in mind that the archdeacon had also well stored his mind with scripture, and certainly always deemed _that_ the first and most important of all his studies, which was perhaps not the case with the monk to whom he writes. in some of his letters we have pleasing pictures of the old times presented to us, and it is astonishing how homely and natural they read, after the elapse of 700 years. in more than one he launches out in strong invectives against the lawyers, who in all ages seems to have borne the indignation of mankind; peter accuses them of selling their knowledge for hire, to the direct perversion of all justice; of favoring the rich and oppressing the poor.[347] he reproves reginald, archdeacon of salisbury, for occupying his time with falconry, instead of attending to his clerical duties; and in another, a most interesting letter, he gives a description of king henry ii., whose character he extols in panegyric terms, and proves how much superior he was in learning to william ii. of sicily. he says that "henry, as often as he could breathe from his care and solicitudes, he was occupied in secret reading; or at other times joined by a body of clergy, would try to solve some elaborate question _quæstiones laborat evolvere_."[348] frequently we find him writing about books, begging transcripts, eagerly purchasing them; and in one of his letters to alexander, abbot of jenniege, _gemiticensem_, he writes, apologizing, and begging his forgiveness for not having fulfilled his promise in returning a book which he had borrowed from his library, and begs that his friend will yet allow him to retain it some days longer.[349] the last days of a scholar's life are not always remarkable, and we know nothing of those of archdeacon peter; for after the death of henry ii., his intellectual worth found no royal mind to appreciate it. the lion-hearted richard thought more of the battle axe and crusading than the encouragement of literature or science; and peter, like many other students, grown old in their studies, was left in his age to wander among his books, unmolested and uncared for. with the friendship of a few clerical associates, and the archdeaconry of london, which by the bye was totally unproductive,[350] he died, and for many ages was forgotten. but a student's worth can never perish; a time is certain to arrive when his erudition will receive its due reward of human praise. we now, after a slumber of many hundred years, begin to appreciate his value, and to entertain a hearty friendship and esteem for the venerable archdeacon peter. footnotes: [310] see speed's chron. p. 228. samme's antiq. p. 578. [311] stowe's annales, 4to. 1605, p. 97. see also hearne's hist. glastonbury. [312] _will. malm. ap. gale script._ 311.--coopertoria librorum evangelii. for many other instances of binding books in gold, and sometimes with costly gems, i refer the reader to _du cange_ verb-capsæ, and to _mr. maitland's dark ages_. [313] warton says, that this library was at the time the "_richest in england_." in this, however, he was mistaken. [314] john of glast. p. 423. [315] john of glastonbury edt., hearne, oxon, 1726, p. 451. steven's additions to dugdale, vol. i. p. 447. [316] printed in _tanner's notitia monastica_, 8vo. edit. 1695, p. 75, and in _hearne's history of glastonbury_, p. 141; but both these works are scarce, and i have thought it worth reprinting; the reader will perceive that i have given some of the items in english--the original of course is in latin. [317] john of glas. p. 262. [318] librario dedit. bibliam preciosam.--_john of glast._ p. 262. [319] among them was a "dictionarum latine et saxonicum."--_leland collect._ iii. p. 153. [320] leland, in his mss. preserved in the bodleian library, calls whiting "_homo sane candidissimus et amicus meus singularis_," but he afterwards scored the line with his pen. see _arch bodl._ a. dugdale monast. vol. i. p. 6. [321] see hume's hist. engl.; moffat's hist. of malmsbury, p. 223, and will. malms. novellæ hist. lib. ii.; sharpe's translation, p. 576. [322] william of malmsbury, translated by the rev. j. sharpe, 4to. _lond._ 1815, p. 107. [323] ms. _cottonian domit._ a. viii. fol. 128 b. [324] saxon chron. by ingram, p. 343. [325] dugdale's _monastica_, vol. i. p. 534. leland gives a list of the books he found there, but they only number about 20 volumes. see _collect._ vol. iv. p. 159. [326] ms. harleian, no. 627, fol. 8 a. "liber geneseos versificatus" probably cædmon's paraphrase was among them, and boethius's consolation of philosophy. [327] godwin cat. of bishops, p. 317. [328] will. of malms. de gestis pont. savile script. fol. 1601, p. 256, _apud lotharingos altus et doctus_. [329] i use a transcript of the exeter ms. collated by sir f. madden. _additional mss._ no. 9067. it is printed in latin and saxon from a old ms. in the bodl. auct. d. 2. 16. fol. 1 a; in dugdale's monasticon, vol. ii. p. 257, which varies a little from the exeter transcript. [330] bec is the plural of boc, a book. [331] see _dr. lingard's hist. anglo sax. church_, vol. i. p. 307, who cannot deny this entirely; see also _lappenberg hist. eng._ vol. i. p. 202, who says that the mass was read partially in the saxon tongue. _hallam_ in his _supplemental notes_, p. 408, has a good note on the subject. [332] hist. litt. de la france, ix. p. 142. [333] pet. blesensis opera, 4to. mogunt. 1600. ep. lxxxix. [334] ep. xxvi. [335] ep. lxvi. [336] ep. cxxvii. [337] ep. lvi. yet we find that charlemagne, in the year 795, granted the monks of the monastery of st. bertin, in the time of abbot odlando, the privilege of hunting in his forests for the purpose of procuring leather to bind their books. "odlando abbate hujus loci abbas nonus, in omni bonitate suo prædecessori hardrado coæqualis anno primo sui regiminis impetravit à rege carolo privilegium venandi in silvis nostris et aliis ubicumque constitutis, ad volumina librorum tegænda, et manicas et zonas habendas. salvis forestis regiis, quod sic incipit. carolus dei gratia rex francorum et longobardorum ac patricius romanorum, etc., data septimo kal. aprilis, anno xxvi. regni nostri." martene thasaurus nov. anecdotorum iii. 498. _warton_ mentions a similar instance of a grant to the monks of st. sithin, _dissert._ ii. _prefixed to hist. of eng. poetry_, but he quotes it with some sad misrepresentations, and refers to _mabillon de re diplomatica_, 611. mr. maitland, in his _dark ages_, has shown the absurdity of warton's inferences from the fact, and proved that it was to the servants, or _eorum homines_, that charlemagne granted this uncanonical privilege, p. 216. but i find no such restriction in the case i have quoted above. probably, however, it was thought needless to express what might be inferred, or to caution against a practice so uncongenial with the christian duties of a monk. [338] ep. ci. p. 184. he afterwards quotes livy, tacitus, and many others. [339] ep. xiv. he was fond of quintus curtius, and often read his history with much pleasure. ep. ci. p. 184. [340] ep. lxxvii. p. 81. [341] ep. xciv. [342] ep. xcii. and also lxxii. which is redundant with quotations from the poets. [343] ep. xciv. p. 170. [344] ep. lvii. [345] ep. xii. [346] ep. lxxvi. p. 132. [347] ep. cxl. p. 253. [348] ep. lxvi. p. 115. [349] ep. xxxvii. p. 68. [350] ep. cli. chapter x. _winchester famous for its scribes.--ethelwold and godemann.--anecdotes.--library of the monastery of reading.--the bible.--library of depying priory.--effects of gospel reading.--catalogue of ramsey library.--hebrew mss.--fine classics, etc.--st. edmund's bury.--church of ely.--canute, etc._ in the olden time the monks of winchester[351] were renowned for their calligraphic and pictorial art. the choice book collectors of the day sought anxiously for volumes produced by these ingenious scribes, and paid extravagant prices for them. a superb specimen of their skill was executed for bishop ethelwold; that enlightened and benevolent prelate was a great patron of art and literature, and himself a grammaticus and poet of no mean pretensions. he did more than any other of his time to restore the architectural beauties which were damaged or destroyed by the fire and sword of the danish invaders. his love of these undertakings, his industry in carrying them out, and the great talent he displayed in their restoration, is truly wonderful to observe. he is called by wolstan, his biographer, "a great builder of churches, and divers other works."[352] he was fond of learning, and very liberal in diffusing the knowledge which he acquired; and used to instruct the young by reading to them the latin authors, translated into the saxon tongue. "he wrote a saxion version of the rule of saint benedict, which was so much admired, and so pleased king edgar, that he granted to him the manor of sudborn,[353] as a token of his approbation." among a number of donations which he bequeathed to this monastery, twenty volumes are enumerated, embracing some writings of bede and isidore.[354] as a proof of his bibliomanical propensities, i refer the reader to the celebrated benedictional of the duke of devonshire; that rich gem, with its resplendent illuminations, place it beyond the shadow of a doubt, and prove ethelwold to have been an _amator librorum_ of consummate taste. this fine specimen of saxon ingenuity is the production of a cloistered monk of winchester, named godemann, who transcribed it at the bishop's special desire, as we learn, from the following lines:- "_presentem biblum iusset prescribere presul. wintoniæ dus que fecerat esse patronum magnus æthelwoldus._"[355] godemann, the scribe, entreats the prayers of his readers, and wishes "all who gaze on this book to ever pray that after the end of the flesh i may inherit health in heaven: this is the fervent prayer of the scribe, the humble godemann." this talented illuminator was chaplain to ethelwold, and afterwards abbot of thorney.[356] the choice benedictional in the public library of rouen is also ascribed to his elegant pen, and adds additional lustre of his artistic fame.[357] most readers have heard of walter, (who was prior of st. swithin in 1174,) giving twelve measures of barley and a pall, on which was embroidered in silver the history of st. berinus converting a saxon king, for a fine copy of bede's homilies and st. austin's psalter;[358] and of henry, a monk of the benedictine abbey of hyde, near there, who transcribed, in the year 1178, terence, boethius, seutonius and claudian; and richly illuminated and bound them, which he exchanged with a neighboring bibliophile for a life of st. christopher, st. gregory's pastoral care, and four missals.[359] nicholas, bishop of winchester, left one hundred marks and a bible, with a fine gloss, in two large volumes, to the convent of st. swithin. john de pontissara, who succeeded that bishop in the year 1282, borrowed this valuable manuscript to benefit and improve his biblical knowledge by a perusal of its numerous notes. so great was their regard for this precious gift, that the monks demanded a bond for its return; a circumstance which has caused some doubt as to the plenitude of the holy scriptures in the english church during that period; at least among those who have only casually glanced at the subject. i may as well notice that the ancient psalter in the cottonian library[360] was written about the year 1035, by the "most humble brother and monk ælsinus," of hyde abbey. the table prefixed to the volume records the deaths of other eminent scribes and illuminators, whose names are mingled with the great men of the day;[361] showing how esteemed they were, and how honorable was their avocation. thus under the 15th of may we find "_obitus ætherici mº picto_;" and again, under the 5th of july, "_obit wulfrici mº pictoris_." many were the choice transcripts made and adorned by the winchester monks. the monastery of reading, in berkshire, possessed during the reign of henry the third a choice library of a hundred and fifty volumes. it is printed in the supplement to the history of reading, from the original prefixed to the woollascot manuscripts. but it is copied very inaccurately, and with many grievous omissions; nevertheless it will suffice to enable us to gain a knowledge of the class of books most admired by the monks of reading; and the christian reader will be glad to learn that the catalogue opens, as usual, with the holy scriptures. indeed no less than four fine large and complete copies of the bible are enumerated. the first in two volumes; the second in three volumes; the third in two, and the fourth in the same number which was transcribed by the _cantor_, and kept in the cloisters for the use of the monks. but in addition to these, which are in themselves quite sufficient to exculpate the monks from any charge of negligence of bible reading, we find a long list of separate portions of the old and new testament; besides many of the most important works of the fathers, and productions of mediæval learning, as the following names will testify:- ambrose. augustine. basil. bede. cassidorus. eusebius. gregory. hilarius. jerome. josephus. lombard. macrobius. origen. plato. prosper. rabanus maurus. they possessed also the works of geoffry of monmouth; the _vita karoli et alexandri et gesta normannorum_; a "ystoria rading," and many others equally interesting; and among the books given by radbert of witchir, we find a juvenal, the bucolics and georgics of virgil, and the "ode et poetria et sermone et epistole oratii." but certainly the most striking characteristic is the fine biblical collection contained in their library, which is well worthy our attention, if not our admiration: not but that we find them in other libraries much less extensive. in those monasteries whose poverty would not allow the purchase of books in any quantity, and whose libraries could boast but of some twenty or thirty volumes, it is scarcely to be expected that they should be found rich in profane literature; but it is deeply gratifying to find, as we generally do, the bible first on their little list; conveying a proof by this prominence, in a quiet but expressive way, how highly they esteemed that holy volume, and how essential they deemed its possession. would that they had profited more by its holy precepts! we find an instance of this, and a proof of their fondness for the bible, in the catalogue of the books in depying priory,[362] in lincolnshire; which, containing a collection of twenty-three volumes, enumerates a copy of the bible first on the humble list. the catalogue is as follows:- these are the books in the library of the monks of depying.[363] the bible. the first part of the morals of pope st. gregory. the second part of the morals by the same. book of divine offices. gesta britonorum. tracts of robert, bishop of lincoln, on confession, with other compilations. martyrologium, with the rules of st. benedict; passion of st. james, with other books. constitutions of pope benedict. history of the island of ely. hugucio de dono fratris johannis tiryngham. homilies of the blessed gregory. constitutions of pope clement xii. book of the virtues and vices. majester historiarum. sacramentary given by master john swarby, rector of the church of st. guthlac. one great portoforium for the use of the brothers. two ditto. two psalters for the use of the brothers. three missals for the use of the brothers. there is not much in this scanty collection, the loss of which we need lament; nor does it inspire us with a very high notion of the learning of the monks of depying priory. yet how cheering it is to find that the bible was studied in this little cell; and i trust the monk often drew from it many words of comfort and consolation. where is the reader who will not regard these instances of bible reading with pleasure? where is the christian who will not rejoice that the gospel of christ was read and loved in the turbulent days of the norman monarchs? where is the philosopher who will affirm that we owe nothing to this silent but effectual and fervent study? where is he who will maintain that the influence of the blessed and abundant charity--the cheering promises, and the sweet admonitions of love and mercy with which the gospels overflow--aided nothing in the progress of civilization? where is the bible student who will believe that all this reading of the scriptures was unprofitable because, forsooth, a monk preached and taught it to the multitude? let the historian open his volumes with a new interest, and ponder over their pages with a fresh spirit of inquiry; let him read of days of darkness and barbarity; and as he peruses on, trace the origin of the light whose brightness drove the darkness and barbarity away. how much will he trace to the bible's influence; how often will he be compelled to enter a convent wall to find in the gospel student the one who shone as a redeeming light in those old days of iniquity and sin; and will he deny to the christian priest his gratitude and love, because he wore the cowl and mantle of a monk, or because he loved to read of saints whose lives were mingled with lying legends, or because he chose a life which to us looks dreary, cold, and heartless. will he deny him a grateful recollection when he reads of how much good he was permitted to achieve in the church of christ; of how many a doubting heart he reassured; of how many a soul he fired with a true spark of christian love; when he reads of how the monk preached the faith of christ, and how often he led some wandering pilgrim into the path of vital truth by the sweet words of the dear religion which he taught; when he reads that the hearts of many a norman chief was softened by the sweetness of the gospel's voice, and his evil passions were lulled by the hymn of praise which the monk devoutly sang to his master in heaven above. but speaking of the existence of the bible among the monks puts me in mind of the abbey of ramsey and its fine old library of books, which was particularly rich in biblical treasures. even superior to reading, as regards its biblical collection, was the library of ramsey. a portion of an old catalogue of the library of this monastery has been preserved, apparently transcribed about the beginning of the fourteenth century, during the warlike reign of richard the second. it is one of the richest and most interesting relics of its kind extant, at least of those to be found in our own public libraries; and a perusal of it will not fail to leave an impression on the mind that the monks were far wealthier in their literary stores than we previously imagined. originally on two or three skins, it is now torn into five separate pieces,[364] and in other respects much dilapidated. the writing also in some parts is nearly obliterated, so as to render the document scarcely readable. it is much to be regretted that this interesting catalogue is but a portion of the original; in its complete form it would probably have described twice as many volumes; but a fragment as it is, it nevertheless contains the titles of more than _eleven hundred books_, with the names of many of their donors attached. a creditable and right worthy testimonial this, of the learning and love of books prevalent among the monks of ramsey monastery. more than seven hundred of this goodly number were of a miscellaneous nature, and the rest were principally books used in the performance of divine service. among these there were no less than seventy breviaries; thirty-two grails; twenty-nine processionals; and one hundred psalters! the reader will regard most of these as superstitious and useless; nor should i remark upon them did they not show that books were not so scarce in those times as we suppose; as this prodigality satisfactorily proves, and moreover testifies to the unceasing industry of the monkish scribes. we who are used to the speed of the printing press and its fertile abundance can form an opinion of the labor necessary to transcribe this formidable array of papistical literature. four hundred volumes transcribed with the plodding pen! each word collated and each page diligently revised, lest a blunder or a misspelt syllable should blemish those books so deeply venerated. what long years of dry tedious labor and monotonous industry was here! but the other portion of the catalogue fully compensates for this vast proportion of ecclesiastical volumes. besides several _biblia optima in duobus voluminibus_, or complete copies of the bible, many separate books of the inspired writers are noted down; indeed the catalogue lays before us a superb array of fine biblical treasures, rendered doubly valuable by copious and useful glossaries; and embracing many a rare hebrew ms. bible, _bibliotheca hebraice_, and precious commentary. i count no less than twenty volumes in this ancient language. but we often find hebrew manuscripts in the monastic catalogues after the eleventh century. the jews, who came over in great numbers about that time, were possessed of many valuable books, and spread a knowledge of their language and literature among the students of the monasteries. and when the cruel persecution commenced against them in the thirteenth century, they disposed of their books, which were generally bought up by the monks, who were ever hungry after such acquisitions. gregory, prior of ramsey, collected a great quantity of hebrew mss. in this way, and highly esteemed the language, in which he became deeply learned. at his death, in the year 1250, he left them to the library of his monastery.[365] nor was my lord prior a solitary instance; many others of the same abbey, inspired by his example and aided by his books, studied the hebrew with equal success. brother dodford, the armarian, and holbeach, a monk, displayed their erudition in writing a hebrew lexicon.[366] the library of ramsey was also remarkably rich in patristic lore. they gloried in the possession of the works of ambrose, augustine, anselm, basil, boniface, bernard, gregory, and many others equally voluminous. but it was not exclusively to the study of such matters that these monks applied their minds, they possessed a taste for other branches of literature besides. they read histories of the church, histories of england, of normandy, of the jews; and histories of scholastic philosophy, and many old chronicles which reposed on their shelves. in science they appear to have been equally studious, for the catalogue enumerates works on medicine, natural history, philosophy, mathematics, logic, dialects, arithmetic and music! who will say after this that the monks were ignorant of the sciences and careless of the arts? the classical student has perhaps ere this condemned them for their want of taste, and felt indignant at the absence of those authors of antiquity whose names and works he venerates. but the monks, far from neglecting those precious volumes, were ever careful of their preservation; they loved virgil, horace, and even ovid, "heathen dogs" as they were, and enjoyed a keen relish for their beauties. i find in this catalogue the following choice names of antiquity occur repeatedly:- aristotle. arian. boethius. claudius. dionysius. donatus. horace. josephus. justin. lucan. martial. macrobius. orosius. ovid. plato. priscian. prudentius. seneca. sallust. solinus. terence. virgil. here were rich mines of ancient eloquence, and fragrant flowers of poesy to enliven and perfume the dull cloister studies of the monks. it is not every library or reading society even of our own time that possess so many gems of old. but other treasures might yet be named which still further testify to the varied tastes and literary pursuits of these monastic bibliophiles; but i shall content myself with naming peter of blois, the sentences of peter lombard, of which they had several copies, some enriched with choice commentaries and notes, the works of thomas aquinas and others of his class, a "liber ricardi," dictionaries, grammars, and the writings of "majestri robi grostete," the celebrated bishop of lincoln, renowned as a great _amator librorum_ and collector of grecian literature. i might easily swell this notice out to a considerable extent by enumerating many other book treasures in this curious collection: but enough has been said to enable the reader to judge of the sort of literature the monks of ramsey collected and the books they read; and if he should feel inclined to pursue the inquiry further, i must refer him to the original manuscript, promising him much gratification for his trouble.[367] it only remains for me to say that the vandalism of the reformation swept all traces of this fine library away, save the broken, tattered catalogue we have just examined. but this is more than has been spared from some. the abbey of st. edmunds bury[368] at one time must have enjoyed a copious library, but we have no catalogue that i am aware of to tell of its nature, not even a passing notice of its well-stored shelves, except a few lines in which leland mentions some of the old manuscripts he found therein.[369] but a catalogue of their library in the flourishing days of their monastery would have disclosed, i imagine, many curious works, and probably some singular writings on the "_crafft off medycyne_," which abbot baldwin, "_phesean_" to edward the confessor,[370] had given the monks, and of whom lydgate thus speaks- "baldewynus, a monk off seynt denys, gretly expert in crafft of medycyne; full provydent off counsayl and right wys, sad off his port, functuons off doctryne; after by grace and influence devyne, choose off bury abbot, as i reede the thyrdde in order that did ther succeade."[371] we may equally deplore the loss of the catalogue of the monastery of ely, which, during the middle ages, we have every reason to suppose possessed a library of much value and extent. this old monastery can trace its foundation back to a remote period, and claim as its foundress, etheldredæ,[372] the daughter of anna, king of the east angles, she was the wife of king ecgfrid,[373] with whom she lived for twelve long years, though during that time she preserved the glory of perfect virginity, much to the annoyance of her royal spouse, who offered money and lands to induce that illustrious virgin to waver in her resolution, but without success. her inflexible determination at length induced her husband to grant her oft-repeated prayer; and in the year 673 she retired into the seclusion of monastic life,[374] and building the monastery of ely, devoted her days to the praise and glory of her heavenly king. her pure and pious life caused others speedily to follow her example, and she soon became the virgin-mother of a numerous progeny dedicated to god. a series of astounding miracles attended her monastic life; and sixteen years after her death, when her sister, the succeeding abbess, opened her wooden coffin to transfer her body to a more costly one of marble, that "holy virgin and spouse of christ" was found entirely free from corruption or decay.[375] a nunnery, glorying in so pure a foundress, grew and flourished, and for "two hundred years existed in the full observance of monastic discipline;" but on the coming of the danes in the year 870, those sad destroyers of religious establishments laid it in a heap of ruins, in which desolate condition it remained till it attracted the attention of the celebrated ethelwold, who under the patronage of king edgar restored it; and endowing it with considerable privileges appointed brithnoth, prior of winchester, its first abbot.[376] many years after, when leoffin was abbot there, and canute was king, that monarch honored the monastery of ely with his presence on several occasions. monkish traditions say, that on one of these visits as the king approached, he heard the pious inmates of the monastery chanting their hymn of praise; and so melodious were the voices of the devotees, that his royal heart was touched, and he poured forth his feelings in a saxon ballad, commencing thus: "merry sang the monks of ely, when canute the king was sailing by; row ye knights near the land, and let us hear these monks song."[377] it reads smoother in strutt's version; he renders it "cheerful sang the monk of ely, when canute the king was passing by; row to the shore knights, said the king, and let us hear these churchmen sing."[378] in addition to the title of a poet, canute has also received the appellation of a bibliomaniac. dibdin, in his bibliomania, mentions in a cursory manner a few monkish book collectors, and introduces canute among them.[379] the illuminated manuscript of the four gospels in the danish tongue, now in the british museum, he writes, "and once that monarch's own book leaves not the shadow of a doubt of his bibliomanical character!" i cannot however allow him that title upon such equivocal grounds; for upon examination, the ms. turns out to be in the theotisc dialect, possessing no illuminations of its own, and never perhaps once in the hands of the royal poet.[380] from the account books of ely church we may infer that the monks there enjoyed a tolerable library; for we find frequent entries of money having been expended for books and materials connected with the library; thus in the year 1300 we find that they bought at one time five dozen parchment, four pounds of ink, eight calf and four sheep-skins for binding books; and afterwards there is another entry of five dozen vellum and six pair of book clasps, a book of decretals for the library, 3s., a speculum gregor, 2s., and "_pro tabula paschalis fac denova et illuminand_," 4s.[381] they frequently perhaps sent one of the monks to distants parts to purchase or borrow books for their library; a curious instance of this occurs under the year 1329, when they paid "the precentor for going to balsham to enquire for books, 6s. 7d." the bookbinder two weeks' wages, 4s.; twelve iron chains to fasten books, 4s.; five dozen vellum, 25s. 8d. in the year 1396, they paid their librarian 53s. 4d., and a tunic for his services during one year.[382] nigel, bishop of ely, by endowing the scriptorium, enabled the monks to produce some excellent transcripts; they added several books of cassiodorus, bede, aldelem, radbert, andres, etc., to the library;[383] and they possessed at one time no less than thirteen fine copies of the gospels, which were beautifully bound in gold and silver.[384] footnotes: [351] those learned in such matters refer the foundation of winchester cathedral and monastery to a remote period. an old writer says that it was "built by king lucius, who, abolishing paganisme, embraced christ the first yere of his reigne, being the yeere of our lord 180."--_godwin's cat._ p. 157. see also _usher de primordiis_. fo. 126. [352] "ecclesiarum ac diversorum operum magnus ædificator, et dum esset abbas et dum esset episcopus."--_wolstan. vita æthelw. ap. mabillon actæ s. s. benedict, sæc._ v. p. 614. [353] dugdale's monasticon, vol. i. p. 614. [354] ms. belonging to the society of antiquaries, no. 60, fo. 34. see dugdale monast. vol. i. p. 382. he gave to the monks of abingdon a copy of the gospels cased in silver, ornamented with gold and precious stones. [355] _archæologia_, vol. xxiv. p. 22; and _dibdin's_ delightful "_decameron_," vol. i. p. lix. [356] wuls. act. s. s. benedict. p. 616. [357] archæolog. vol. xxiv. [358] regist. priorat. s. swithin winton.--_warton_ ii, _dissert._ [359] _ibid._ [360] _marked titus_, d. 27. [361] it is called "_calendarium, in quo notantur dies obitus plurimorum monachorum, abbatum, etc.; temp. regum anglo-saxonum_." [362] it was a little cell dependant on the abbey of thorney. [363] ms. _harleian_, no. 3658, fo. 74, b. it will be found printed in _dugdale's monasticon_, vol. iv. p. 167. the catalogue was evidently written about the year 1350. [364] cottonian charta, 11-16. i am sorry to observe so little attention paid to this curious fragment, which, insignificant as it may appear to some, is nevertheless quite a curiosity of literature in its way. its tattered condition calls for the care of sir frederick madden. [365] leland script. brit. p. 321, and mss. bibl. lambeth, wharton, l. p. 661. libris prioris gregorii de ramsey, _prima pars bibliothecæ hebraice_, etc. warton dissert ii. eng. poetry. [366] bale, iv. 41, et ix. 9. leland. scrip. brit. p. 452. [367] ailward, bishop of london, gave many books to the library of ramsey monastery, _hoveden scrip. post. bedam._ 1596, fol. 252. dugdale's monasticon, vol. ii. [368] in the year 1327, the inhabitants of bury besieged the abbey, wounded the monks, and "bare out of the abbey all the gold, silver ornaments, _bookes, charters, and other writings_." stowe annals, p. 353. [369] he particularly notices a sallust, a very ancient copy, _vetustis simus_. [370] and also to lanfranc, he was elected in the year 1065. [371] harleian ms. no. 2278. [372] or atheldryth. [373] the youngest son of osway, king of northumbria; he succeeded to the throne on the death of his father in the year 670. [374] she seems to have been principally encouraged in this fanatical determination by wilfrid; probably this was one of the causes of ecgfrid's displeasure towards him. so highly was the purity of the body regarded in the early saxon church, that aldhelm wrote a piece in its praise, in imitation of the style of sedulius, but in most extravagant terms. bede wrote a poem, solely to commemorate the chastety of etheldreda. "let maro wars in loftier numbers sing i sound the praises of our heavenly king; chaste is my verse, nor helen's rape i write, light tales like these, but prove the mind as light." _bede's eccl. hist. by giles_, b. iv. c. xx. [375] bede's eccl. hist. b. iv. c. xx. [376] saxon chronicle translated by ingram, p. 118. dugdale's monasticon, vol. i. p. 458. [377] sharon turner's hist. of the anglo-saxons, vol. ii. p. 288. [378] strutt's saxon antiquities, vol. i. p. 83. [379] _dibdin's bibliomania_, p. 228. [380] dibdin alludes to the "harmony of the four gospels," preserved among the cotton mss. _caligula_, a. vii. and described as "_harmonia evangeliorum, lingua francica capitulis, 71, liber quondam (dicit jamesius) canuti regis_." see also hicke's gram. franco-theotisca, p. 6. but there is no ground for the supposition that it belonged to canute; and the several fine historical illuminations bound up with it are evidently of a much later age. [381] an entry occurs of 6s. 8d. for writing two processionals. [382] stevenson's suppl. to bentham's church of ely, p. 52. "it is worth notice," says stevenson, "that in the course of a few years, about the middle of the 14th century, the precentor purchased upwards of seventy dozen parchment and thirty dozen vellum." [383] spelman antiquarii collectanea, vol. iii. p. 273. nigel, who was made bishop in 1133, was plundered by some of king stephen's soldiers, and robbed of his own copy of the gospels which he had adorned with many sacred relics; see _anglia sacra_, i. p. 622. [384] _warton's anglia sacra_, it is related that william longchamp, bishop in 1199, sold them to raise money towards the redemption of king richard, _pro regis ricardi redemptione_, tom. i. 633. dugd. monast. i. p. 463. chapter xi. _st. alban's.--willigod.--bones of st. alban.--eadmer.--norman conquest.--paul and the scriptorium.--geoffry de gorham.--brekspere the "poor clerk".--abbot simon and his "multis voluminibus".--raymond the prior.--wentmore.--whethamstede.--humphrey, duke of gloucester.--lydgate.--guy, earl of warwick._ the efficacy of "good works" was a principle ever inculcated by the monks of old. it is sad to reflect, that vile deeds and black intentions were too readily forgiven and absolved by the church on the performance of some _good deed_; or that the monks should dare to shelter or to gloss over those sins which their priestly duty bound them to condemn, because forsooth some wealthy baron could spare a portion of his broad lands or coffered gold to extenuate them. but this forms one of the dark stains of the monastic system; and the monks, i am sorry to say, were more readily inclined to overlook the blemish, because it proved so profitable to their order. and thus it was, that the proud and noble monastery of st. alban's was endowed by a murderer's hand, and built to allay the fierce tortures of an assassin's conscience. ethelbert, king of the east angles, fell by the regal hand of offa, king of mercia; and from the era of that black and guilty deed many a fine monastery dates its origin and owes its birth. st. alban's was founded, as its name implies, in honor of the english protomartyr, whose bones were said to have been discovered on that interesting site, and afterwards preserved with veneration in the abbey. in the ancient times, the building appears to have covered a considerable space, and to have been of great magnitude and power; for ruins of its former structure mark how far and wide the foundation spreads. "the glorious king offa," as the monks in their adulation style him, richly endowed the monastery on its completion, as we learn from the old chronicles of the abbey; and a succession of potent sovereigns are emblazoned on the glittering parchment, whose liberalty augmented or confirmed these privileges.[385] willigod, the first abbot, greatly enriched the monastery, and bestowed especial care upon the relics of st. alban. it is curious to mark how many perils those shrivelled bones escaped, and with what anxious care the monks preserved them. in the year 930, during the time of abbot eadfrid, the danes attacked the abbey, and after many destroying acts broke open the repository, and carried away some of the bones of st. alban into their own country.[386] the monks took greater care than ever of the remaining relics; and their anxiety for their safety, and the veneration with which they regarded them, is curiously illustrated by an anecdote of abbot leofric, elected in the year 1006. his abbacy was, therefore, held in troubled times; and in the midst of fresh invasions and danish cruelties. fearing lest they should a second time reach the abbey, he determined to protect by stratagem what he could not effect by force. after hiding the genuine bones of st. alban in a place quite secure from discovery, he sent an open message to the abbot of ely, entreating permission to deposit the holy relics in his keeping; and offering, as a plausible reason, that the monastery of ely, being surrounded by marshy and impenetrable bogs, was secure from the approaches of the barbarians. he accompanied this message with some false relics--the remains of an old monk belonging to the abbey enclosed in a coffin--and sent with them a worn antiquated looking mantle, pretending that it formerly belonged to amphibalus, the master of st. alban.[387] the monks of ely joyfully received these precious bones, and displayed perhaps too much eagerness in doing so. certain it is, that when the danger was past and the quietude of the country was restored, leofric, on applying for the restitution of these "holy relics," found some difficulty in obtaining them; for the abbot of ely attempted by equivocation and duplicity to retain them. after several ineffectual applications, leofric was compelled, for the honor of his monastery, to declare the "pious fraud" he had practised; which he proved by the testimony of several monks of his fraternity, who were witnesses of the transaction. it is said, that edward the confessor was highly incensed at the conduct of the abbot of ely. i have stated elsewhere, that the learned and pious ælfric gave the monastery many choice volumes. his successor, ealdred, abbot, about the year 955, was quite an antiquary in his way; and no spot in england afforded so many opportunities to gratify his taste as the site of the ancient city of verulam. he commenced an extensive search among the ruins, and rescued from the earth a vast quantity of interesting and valuable remains. he stowed all the stone-work and other materials which were serviceable in building away, intending to erect a new edifice for the monks: but death prevented the consummation of these designs. eadmer, his successor, a man of great piety and learning, followed up the pursuit, and made some important accessions to these stores. he found also a great number of gold and silver ornaments, specimens of ancient art, some of them of a most costly nature, but being idols or figures connected with heathen mythology, he cared not to preserve them. matthew paris is prolix in his account of the operations and discoveries of this abbot; and one portion of it is so interesting, and seems so connected with our subject, that i cannot refrain from giving it to the reader. "the abbot," he writes, "whilst digging out the walls and searching for the ruins which were buried in the earth in the midst of the ancient city, discovered many vestiges of the foundation of a great palace. in a recess in one of the walls he found the remains of a library, consisting of a number of books and rolls; and among them a volume in an unknown tongue, and which, although very ancient, had especially escaped destruction. this nobody in the monastery could read, nor could they at that time find any one who understood the writing or the idiom; it was exceedingly ancient, and the letters evidently were most beautifully formed; the inscriptions or titles were written in gold, and encircled with ornaments; bound in oak with silken bands, which still retained their strength and beauty; so perfectly was the volume preserved. but they could not conceive what the book was about; at last, after much search and diligent inquiry, they found a very feeble and aged priest, named unwon, who was very learned in writings _literis bene eruditum_, and imbued with the knowledge of divers languages. he knew directly what the volume was about, and clearly and fluently read the contents; he also explained the other _codices_ found in the same library _in eodem almariolo_ of the palace with the greatest ease, and showed them to be written in the characters formerly in use among the inhabitants of verulam, and in the language of the ancient britons. some, however, were in latin; but the book before-mentioned was found to be the history of saint alban, the english proto-martyr, according to that mentioned by bede, as having been daily used in the church. among the other books were discovered many contrivances for the invocation and idolatrous rites of the people of verulam, in which it was evident that phoebus the god sol was especially invoked and worshipped; and after him mercury, called in english woden, who was the god of the merchants. the books which contained these diabolical inventions they cast away and burnt; but that precious treasure, the history of saint alban, they preserved, and the priest before-mentioned was appointed to translate the ancient english or british into the vulgar tongue.[388] by the prudence of the abbot eadmer, the brothers of the convent made a faithful copy, and diligently explained it in their public teaching; they also translated it into latin, in which it is now known and read; the historian adds that the ancient and original copy, which was so curiously written, instantaneously crumbled into dust and was destroyed for ever."[389] although the attention of the saxon abbots was especially directed to literary matters, and to the affairs connected with the making of books, we find no definite mention of a scriptorium, or of manuscripts having been transcribed as a regular and systematic duty, till after the norman conquest. that event happened during the abbacy of frederic, and was one which greatly influenced the learning of the monks. indeed, i regard the norman conquest as a most propitious event for english literature, and one which wrought a vast change in the aspect of monastic learning; the student of those times cannot fail to perceive the revolution which then took place in the cloisters; visibly accomplished by the installation of norman bishops and the importation of norman monks, who in the well regulated monasteries of france and normandy had been initiated into a more general course of study, and brought up in a better system of mental training than was known here at that time. but poor frederic, a conscientious and worthy monk, suffered severely by that event, and was ultimately obliged to seek refuge in the monastery of ely to evade the displeasure of the new sovereign; but his earthly course was well nigh run, for three days after, death released him from his worldly troubles, and deprived the conqueror of a victim. paul, the first of the norman abbots, was appointed by the king in the year 1077. he was zealous and industrious in the interest of the abbey, and obtained the restitution of many lands and possessions of which it had been deprived; he rebuilt the old and almost ruined church, and employed for that purpose many of the materials which his predecessors had collected from the ruins of verulam; and even now, i believe, some remnants of these roman tiles, etc., may be discerned. he moreover obtained many important grants and valuable donations; among others a layman named robert, one of the norman leaders, gave him two parts of the tythes of his domain at hatfield, which he had received from the king at the distribution. "this he assigned," says matthew paris, "to the disposal of abbot paul, who was a lover of the scriptures, for the transcription of the necessary volumes for the monastery. he himself indeed was a learned soldier, and a diligent hearer and lover of scripture; to this he also added the tythes of redburn, appointing certain provisions to be given to the scribes; this he did out of "charity to the brothers that they may not thereby suffer, and that no impediment might be offered to the writers." the abbot thereupon sought and obtained from afar many renowned scribes, to write the necessary books for the monastery. and in return for these abundant favors, he presented, as a suitable gift to the warlike robert, for the chapel in his palace at hatfield, two pair of vestments, a silver cup, a missal, and the other needful books (_missale cum aliis libris necessariis_). having thus presented to him the first volumes produced by his liberality, he proceeded to construct a scriptorium, which was set apart (_præelectos_) for the transcription of books; lanfranc supplied the copies. they thus procured for the monastery twenty-eight notable volumes (_volumina notabilia_), also eight psalters, a book of collects, a book of epistles, a volume containing the gospels for the year, two copies of the gospels complete, bound in gold and silver, and ornamented with gems; besides ordinals, constitutions, missals, troapries, collects, and other books for the use of the library."[390] thus blessed, we find the monks of st. albans for ages after constantly acquiring fresh treasures, and multiplying their book stores by fruitful transcripts. there is scarce an abbot, whose portrait garnishes the fair manuscript before me, that is not represented with some goodly tomes spread around him, or who is not mentioned as a choice "_amator librorum_," in these monkish pages. it is a singular circumstance, when we consider how bookless those ages are supposed to have been, that the illuminated portraits of the monks are most frequently depicted with some ponderous volume before them, as if the idea of a monk and the study of a book were quite inseparable. during my search among the old manuscripts quoted in this work, this fact has been so repeatedly forced upon my attention that i am tempted to regard it as an important hint, and one which speaks favorably for the love of books and learning among the cowled devotees of the monasteries. passing richard de albani, who gave them a copy of the gospels, a missal written in letters of gold, an other precious volumes whose titles are unrecorded,[391] we come to geoffry, a native of gorham, who was elected abbot in the year 1119. he had been invited over to england (before he became a priest) by his predecessor, to superintend the school of st. albans; but he delayed the voyage so long, that on his arrival he found the appointment already filled; on this he went to dunstable, where he read lectures, and obtained some pupils. it was during his stay there that he wrote the piece which has obtained for him so much reputation. _ubi quendam ludum de sancta katarinæ quem miracula vulgariter appellamus fecit_, says the cotton manuscripts, on the vellum page of which he is portrayed in the act of writing it.[392] geoffry, from this passage, is supposed to be the first author of dramatic literature in england; although the title seems somewhat equivocal, from the casual manner in which his famous play of st. catherine is thus mentioned by matthew paris. of its merits we are still less able to form an opinion; for nothing more than the name of that much talked of miracle play has been preserved. we may conclude, however, that it was performed with all the paraphernalia of scenery and characteristic costume; for he borrowed of the sacrist of st. albans some copes for this purpose. on the night following the representation the house in which he resided was burnt; and, says the historian, all his books, and the copes he had borrowed were destroyed. rendered poor indeed by this calamity, and somewhat reflecting upon himself for the event, he assumed in sorrow and despair the religious habit, and entered the monastery of st. albans; where by his deep study, his learning and his piety, he so gained the hearts of his fraternity, that he ultimately became their abbot. he is said to have been very industrious in the transcription of books; and he "made a missal bound in gold, _auro ridimitum_, and another in two volumes; both incomparably illuminated in gold, and written in a clear and legible hand; also a precious psalter similarly illuminated; a book containing the benedictions and the sacraments; a book of exorcisms, and a collectaria."[393] geoffry was succeeded by ralph de gobium in the year 1143: he was a monk remarkable for his learning and his bibliomanical pursuits. he formerly remained some time in the services of alexander, bishop of lincoln, and gained the esteem of that prelate. his book-loving passion arose from hearing one "master wodon, of italy, expound the doctrines of the holy scriptures." he from that time became a most enthusiastic _amator librorum_; and collected, with great diligence, an abundant multitude of books.[394] the matters in which he was concerned, his donations to the monastery, and the anecdotes of his life, are all unconnected with my subject; so that i am obliged to pass from this interesting monk, an undoubted bibliophile, from sheer want of information. i cannot but regret that the historian does not inform us more fully of his book collecting pursuits; but he is especially barren on that subject, although he highly esteems him for prosecuting that pleasing avocation. he died in the year 1151, in the fourteenth of king stephen, and was followed by robert de gorham, who is also commemorated as a bibliophile in the pages of the cotton manuscripts; and to judge from his portrait, and the intensity with which he pores over his volume, he was a hard and devoted student. he ordered the scribes to make a great many books; indeed, adds paris the historian, who was himself somewhat of an _amator librorum_, "more by far than can be mentioned."[395] from another source we learn that these books were most sumptuously bound.[396] during the days of this learned abbot a devout and humble clerk asked admission at the abbey gate. aspiring to a holy life, he ardently hoped, by thus spending his days in monastic seclusion, to render his heart more acceptable to god. hearing his prayer, the monks conducted him into the presence of my lord abbot, who received him with compassionate tenderness, and kindly questioned him as to his qualifications for the duties and sacred responsibilities of the monkish priesthood; for even in those dark ages they looked a little into the learning of the applicant before he was admitted into their fraternity. but alas! the poor clerk was found wofully deficient in this respect, and was incapable of replying to the questions of my lord abbot, who thereupon gently answered, "my son, tarry awhile, and still exercise thyself in study, and so become more perfect for the holy office." abashed and disappointed, he retired with a kindling blush of shame; and deeming this temporary repulse a positive refusal he left his fatherland, and started on a pilgrimage to france.[397] and who was this poor, humble, unlettered clerk? who this simple layman, whose ignorance rendered him an unfit _socius_ for the plodding monks of old st. albans abbey? no less than the english born nicholas brekespere, afterwards his holiness adrian iv., pope of rome, vicar-apostolic and successor of st. peter! yes; still bearing in mind the kind yet keen reproof of the english abbot, on his arrival in a foreign land he studied with all the depth and intensity of despair, and soon surpassed his companions in the pursuit of knowledge; and became so renowned for learning, and for his prudence, that he was made canon of st. rufus. his sagacity, moreover, caused him to be chosen, on three separate occasions, to undertake some important embassies to the apostolic see; and at length he was elected a cardinal. so step by step he finally became elevated to the high dignity of the popedom. the first and last of england's sons who held the keys of peter. these shadows of the past--these shreds of a forgotten age--these echoes of five hundred years, are full of interest and instruction. for where shall we find a finer example--a more cheering instance of what perseverance will accomplish--or a more satisfactory result of the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties? not only may these curious facts cheer the dull student now, and inspire him with that energy so essential to success, but these whisperings of old may serve as lessons for ages yet to come. for if _we_ look back upon those dark days with such feelings of superiority, may not the wiser generations of the future regard _us_ with a still more contemptuous, yet curious eye? and when they look back at our franklins, and our johnsons, in astonishment at such fine instances of what perseverance could do, and what energy and plodding industry could accomplish, even when surrounded with the difficulties of _our_ ignorance; how much more will they praise this bright example, in the dark background of the historical tableaux, who, without even our means of obtaining knowledge--our libraries or our talent--rose by patient, hard and devoted study, from brekespere the humble clerk--the rejected of st. albans--to the proud title of vicar-apostolic of christ and pope of rome! simon, an englishman, a clerk and a "man of letters and good morals," was elected abbot in the year 1167. all my authorities concur in bestowing upon him the honor and praise appertaining to a bibliomaniac. he was, says one, an especial lover of books, _librorum amator speciales_: and another in panegyric terms still further dubs him an _amator scripturarum_. all this he proved, and well earned the distinction, by the great encouragement he gave to the collecting and transcribing of books. the monkish pens he found moving too slow, and yielding less fruit than formerly. he soon, however, set them hard at work again; and to facilitate their labors, he added materially to the comforts of the scriptorium by repairing and enlarging it; "and always," says the monk from whom i learn this, "kept two or three most choice scribes in the camera (scriptorium,) who sustained its reputation, and from whence an abundant supply of the most excellent books were continually produced.[398] he framed some efficient laws for its management, and ordered that, in subsequent times, every abbot should keep and support one able scribe at least. among the 'many choice books and authentic volumes,' _volumina authentica_, which he by this care and industry added to the abbey library, was included a splendid copy of the old and new testament, transcribed with great accuracy and beautifully written--indeed, says the manuscript history of that monastery, so noble a copy was nowhere else to be seen.[399] but besides this, abbot simon gave them all those precious books which he had been for a 'long time' collecting himself at great cost and patient labor, and having bound them in a sumptuous and marvellous manner,[400] he made a library for their reception near the tomb of roger the hermit.[401] he also bestowed many rich ornaments and much costly plate on the monastery; and by a long catalogue of good deeds, too ample to be inserted here, he gained the affections and gratitude of his fraternity, who loudly praised his virtues and lamented his loss when they laid him in his costly tomb. there is a curious illumination of this monkish bibliophile in the cotton manuscript. he is represented deeply engaged with his studies amidst a number of massy volumes, and a huge trunk is there before him crammed with rough old fashioned large clasped tomes, quite enticing to look upon."[402] after simon came garinus, who was soon succeeded by one john. our attention is arrested by the learned renown of this abbot, who had studied in his youth at paris, and obtained the unanimous praise of his masters for his assiduous attention and studious industry. he returned with these high honors, and was esteemed in grammar a priscian, in poetry an ovid, and in physic equal to galen.[403] with such literary qualifications, it was to be expected the scriptorium would flourish under his government, and the library increase under his fostering care. our expectations are not disappointed; for many valuable additions were made during his abbacy, and the monks over whom he presided gave many manifestations of refinement and artistic talent, which incline us to regard the ingenuity of the cloisters in a more favorable light. raymond, his prior, was a great help in all these undertakings. his industry seems to have been unceasing in beautifying the church, and looking after the transcription of books. with the assistance of roger de parco, the cellarer, he made a large table very handsome, and partly fabricated of metal. he wrote two copies of the gospels, and bound them in silver and gold adorned with various figures. brother walter of colchester, with randulph, gubium and others, produced some very handsome paintings comprising the evangelists and many holy saints, and hung them up in the church. "as we have before mentioned, by the care and industry of the lord raymond, many noble and useful books were transcribed and given to the monastery. the most remarkable of these was a historia scholastica, with allegorics, a most elegant book--_liber elegantissimus_ exclaims my monkish authority."[404] this leads me to say something more of my lord prior, for the troubles which the conscientious conduct of old raymond brought upon himself- "implores the passing tribute of a sigh." be it known then that william de trompington succeeded to the abbacy on the death of john; but he was a very different man, without much esteem for learning; and thinking i am afraid far more of the world and heaven or the _domus dei_. alas! memoirs of bad monks and worldly abbots are sometimes found blotting the holy pages of the monkish annals. _domus dei est porta coeli_, said the monks; and when they closed the convent gates they did not look back on the world again, but entered on that dull and gloomy path with a full conviction that they were leaving all and following christ, and so acting in accordance with his admonitions; but those who sought the convent to forget in its solitude their worldly cares and worldly disappointments, too often found how futile and how ineffectual was that dismal life to eradicate the grief of an overburdened heart, or to subdue the violence of misguided temper. the austerity of the monastic rules might tend to conquer passion or moderate despair, but there was little within those walls to drive painful recollections of the outward world away; for at every interval between their holy meditations and their monkish duties, images of the earth would crowd back upon their minds, and wring from their ascetic hearts tributes of anguish and despair; and so we find the writings and letters of the old monks full of vain regrets and misanthropic thoughts, but sometimes overflowing with the most touching pathos of human misery. yet the monk knew full well what his duty was, and knew how sinful it was to repine or rebel against the will of god. if he vowed obedience to his abbot, he did not forget that obedience was doubly due to him; and strove with all the strength that weak humanity could muster, to forget the darkness of the past by looking forward with a pious hope and a lively faith to the brightness and glory of the future. by constant prayer the monk thought more of his god, and gained help to strengthen the faith within him; and by assiduous and devoted study he disciplined his heart of flesh--tore from it what lingering affection for the world remained, and deserting all love of earth and all love of kin, purged and purified it for his holy calling, and closed its portals to render it inaccessible to all sympathy of blood. if a thought of those shut out from him by the monastic walls stole across his soul and mingled with his prayer, he started and trembled as if he had offered up an unholy desire in the supplication. to him it was a proof that his nature was not yet subdued; and a day of study and meditation, with a fast unbroken till the rays of the morrow's sun cast their light around his little cell, absolved the sin, and broke the tie that bound him to the world without. if this violence was experienced in subduing the tenderest of human sympathy; how much more severe was the conflict of dark passions only half subdued, or malignant depravity only partially reformed. these dark lines of human nature were sometimes prominent, even when the monk was clothed in sackcloth and ashes; and are markedly visible in the life of william de trompington. but let not the reader think that he was appointed with the hearty suffrages of the fraternity, he was elected at the recommendation of the "king," a very significant term in those days of despotic rule, at which choice became a mere farce. "out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh;" and the monks soon began to perceive with regret and trembling the worldly ways of the new abbot, which he could not hide even under his abbatical robes. in a place dedicated to holy deeds and heavenly thoughts, worldly conduct or unbridled passion strikes the mind as doubly criminal, and loads the heart with dismay and suffering; at least so my lord prior regarded it, whose righteous indignation could no longer endure these manifestations of a worldly mind. so he gently remonstrated with his superior, and hinted at the impropriety of such conduct. this was received not in christian fellowship, but with haughty and passionate displeasure; and from that day the fate of poor raymond was irrevocably sealed. the abbot thinking to suppress the dissatisfaction which was now becoming general and particularly inconvenient, sent him a long distance off to the cell of tynmouth in northumberland, where all were strangers to him. nor could the tears of the old man turn the heart of his cruel lord, nor the rebellious murmurings of the brothers avail. thank god such cases are not very frequent; and the reader of monkish annals will not find many instances of such cold and unfeeling cruelty to distress his studies or to arouse his indignation. but obedience was a matter of course in the monastery; it was one of the most imperative duties of the monk, and if not cheerfully he was compelled to manifest alacrity in fulfilling even the most unpleasant mandate. but i would have forgiven this transaction on the score of _expediency_ perhaps, had not the abbot heaped additional insults and cruelties upon the aged offender; but his books which he had transcribed with great diligence and care, he forcibly deprived him of, _violenter spoliatum_, and so robbed him, as his historian says, of all those things which would have been a comfort and solace to his old age.[405] the books which the abbot thus became dishonestly possessed of--for i cannot regard it in any other light--we are told he gave to the library of the monastery; and he also presented some books to more than one neighboring church.[406] but he was not bookworm himself, and dwelt i suspect with greater fondness over his wealthy rent roll than on the pages of the fine volumes in the monastic library. the monks, however, amidst all these troubles retained their love of books; indeed it was about this time that john de basingstoke, who had studied at athens, brought a valuable collection of greek books into england, and greatly aided in diffusing a knowledge of that language into this country. he was deacon of saint albans, and taught many of the monks greek; nicholas, a chaplain there, became so proficient in it, that he was capable of greatly assisting bishop grostete in translating his testament of the twelve patriarchs into latin.[407] roger de northone, the twenty-fourth abbot of saint albans, gave "many valuable and choice books to the monastery," and among them the commentaries of raymond, godfrey, and bernard, and a book containing the works and discourses of seneca. his bibliomaniacal propensities, and his industry in transcribing books, is indicated by an illumination representing this worthy abbot deeply engrossed with his ponderous volumes.[408] i have elsewhere related an anecdote of wallingford, abbot of st. albans, and the sale of books effected between him and richard de bury. it appears that rare and munificent collector gave many and various noble books, _multos et varios libros nobiles_, to the monastery of st. albans whilst he was bishop of durham.[409] michael de wentmore succeeded wallingford, and proved a very valuable benefactor to the monastery; and by wise regulations and economy greatly increased the comforts and good order of the abbey. he gave many books, _plures libros_, to the library, besides two excellent bibles,[410] one for the convent and one for the abbot's study, and to be kept especially for his private reading; an ordinal, very beautiful to look upon, being sumptuously bound.[411] indeed, so _multis voluminibus_ did he bestow, that he expended more than 100_l._ in this way, an immense sum in those old days, when a halfpenny a day was deemed fair wages for a scribe.[412] wentmore was succeeded by thomas de la mare, a man of singular learning, and remarkable as a patron of it in others; it was probably by his direction that john of tynmouth wrote his sanctilogium britannæ, for that work was dedicated to him. a copy, presented by thomas de la mare to the church of redburn, is in the british museum, much injured by fire, but retaining at the end the following lines: "hunc librum dedet dominus thomas de la mare, albas monasterii s. albani anglorum proto martyris deo et ecclesiæ b. amphibali de redburn, ut fratris indem in cursu existentus per ejus lecturam poterint coelestibus instrui, et per sanctorum exempla virtutibus insignixi."[413] but there are few who have obtained so much reputation as john de whethamstede, perhaps the most learned abbot of this monastery. he was formerly monk of the cell at tynmouth, and afterwards prior of gloucester college at oxford, from whence he was appointed to the government of st. albans. whethamstede was a passionate bibliomaniac, and when surrounded with his books he cared little, or perhaps from the absence of mind so often engendered by the delights of study, he too frequently forgot, the important affairs of his monastery, and the responsible duties of an abbot; but absorbed as he was with his studies, whethamstede was not a mere ..... "bookful blockhead ignorantly read with loads of learned lumber in his head." it is true he was an inveterate reader, amorously inclined towards vellum tomes and illuminated parchments; but he did not covet them like some collectors for the mere pride of possessing them, but gloried in feasting on their intellectual charms and delectable wisdom, and sought in their attractive pages the means of becoming a better christian and a wiser man. but he was so excessively fond of books, and became so deeply engrossed with his book-collecting pursuits, that it is said some of the monks showed a little dissatisfaction at his consequent neglect of the affairs of the monastery; but these are faults i cannot find the heart to blame him for, but am inclined to consider his conduct fully redeemed by the valuable encouragement he gave to literature and learning. generous to a fault, abundant in good deeds and costly expenditure, he became involved in pecuniary difficulties, and found that the splendor and wealth which he had scattered so lavishly around his monastery, and the treasures with which he had adorned the library shelves, had not only drained his ample coffers, but left a large balance unsatisfied. influenced by this circumstance, and the murmurings of the monks, and perhaps too, hoping to obtain more time for study and book-collecting, he determined to resign his abbacy, and again become a simple brother. the proceedings relative to this affair are curiously related by a contemporary, john of amersham.[414] in whethamstede's address to the monks on this occasion, he thus explains his reasons for the step he was about to take. after a touching address, wherein he intimates his determination, he says,[415] "ye have known moreover how, from the first day of my appointment even until this day, assiduously and continually without any intermission i have shown singular solicitude in four things, to wit, in the erection of conventual buildings, _in the writing of books_, in the renewal of vestments, and in the acquisition of property. and perhaps, by reason of this solicitude of mine, ye conceive that i have fallen into debt; yet that you may know, learn and understand what is in this matter the certain and plain truth, and when ye know it ye may report it unto others, know ye for certain, yea, for most certain, that for all these things about which, and in which i have expended money, i am not indebted to any one living more than 10,000 marks; but that i wish freely to acknowledge this debt, and so to make satisfaction to every creditor, that no survivor of any one in the world shall have to demand anything from my successor." the monks on hearing this declaration were sorely affected, and used every persuasion to induce my lord abbot to alter his determination, but without success; so that they were compelled to seek another in whom to confide the government of their abbey. their choice fell upon john stokes, who presided over them for many years; but at his death the love and respect which the brothers entertained for whethamstede, was manifested by unanimously electing him again, an honor which he in return could not find the heart to decline. but during all this time, and after his restoration, he was constantly attending to the acquisition of books, and numerous were the transcripts made under his direction by the scribes and enriched by his munificence, for some of the most costly copies produced in that century were the fruits of their labor; during his time there were more volumes transcribed than in that of any other abbot since the foundation of the abbey, says the manuscript from whence i am gleaning these details, and adds that the number of them exceeded eighty-seven. he commenced the transcription of the great commentary of nicholas de lyra upon the whole bible, which had then been published some few years. "det deus, ut in nostris felicem habere valeat consummacionem,"[416] exclaims the monk, nor will the reader be surprised at the expression, if he for one moment contemplates the magnitude of the undertaking. but not only was whethamstede remarkable as a bibliomaniac--he claims considerable respect as an author. some of his productions were more esteemed in his own time than now; being compilations and commentaries more adapted as a substitute for other books, than valuable as original works. under this class i am inclined to place his granarium, a large work in five volumes; full of miscellaneous extracts, etc., and somewhat partaking of the encyclopediac form; his propinarium, in two volumes, also treating of general matters; his pabularium and palearium poetarium, and his proverbiarium, or book of proverbs; to which may be added the many pieces relating to the affairs of the monastery. but far different must we regard many of his other productions, which are more important in a literary point of view, as calling for the exercise of a refined and cultivated mind, and no small share of critical acumen. among these i must not forget to include his chronicle,[417] which spreading over a space of twenty years, forms a valuable historical document. the rest are poetical narratives, embracing an account of jack cade's insurrection--the battles of ferrybridge, wakefield, and st. albans.[418] a cottonian manuscript contained a catalogue of the books which this worthy abbot compiled, or which were transcribed under his direction: unfortunately it was burnt, with many others forming part of that inestimable collection.[419] from another source we learn the names of some of them, and the cost incurred in their transcription.[420] twenty marks were paid for copying his granarium, in four volumes; forty shillings for his palearium; the same for a polycraticon of john of salisbury; five pounds for a boethius, with a gloss; upwards of six pounds for "a book of cato," enriched with a gloss and table; and four pounds for gorham upon luke. whethamstede ordered a grael to be written so beautifully illuminated, and so superbly bound, as to be valued at the enormous sum of twenty pounds: but let it be remembered that my lord abbot was a very epicure in books, and thought a great deal of choice bindings, tall copies, immaculate parchment, and brilliant illuminations, and the high prices which he freely gave for these book treasures evince how sensible he was to the joys of bibliomania; nor am i inclined to regard the works thus attained as "mere monastic trash."[421] the finest illumination in the cotton manuscript is a portrait of abbot whethamstede, which for artistic talent is far superior to any in the volume. eight folios are occupied with an enumeration of the "good works" of this liberal monk: among the items we find the sum of forty pounds having been expended on a reading desk, and four pounds for writing four antiphoners.[422] he displayed also great liberality of spirit in his benefactions to gloucester college, at oxford, besides great pecuniary aid. he built a library there, and gave many valuable books for the use of the students, in which he wrote these verses: fratribus oxonioe datur in minus liber iste, per patrem pecorem prothomartyris angligenorum: quem si quis rapiat ad partem sive reponat, vel judæ loqueum, vel furcas sentiat; amen. in others he wrote- discior ut docti fieret nova regia plebi culta magisque deæ datur hic liber ara minerva, hic qui diis dictis libant holocausta ministrias. et cirre bibulam sitiunt præ nectare lympham, estque librique loci, idem datur, actor et unus.[423] if we estimate worth by comparison, we must award a large proportion to this learned abbot. living in the most corrupt age of the monastic system, when the evils attendant on luxurious ease began to be too obvious in the cloister, and when complaints were heard at first in a whispering murmur, but anon in a stern loud voice of wroth and indignant remonstrance--when in fact the progressive, inquiring spirit of the reformation was taking root in what had hitherto been regarded as a hard, dry, stony soil. this coming tempest, only heard as yet like the lulling of a whisper, was nevertheless sufficiently loud to spread terror and dismay among the cowled habitants of the monasteries. that quietude and mental ease so indispensable to study--so requisite for the growth of thought and intellectuality, was disturbed by these distant sounds, or dissipated by their own indolence. and yet in the midst of all this, rendered still more anxious and perplexing by domestic troubles and signs of discontent and insubordination among the monks. whethamstede found time, and what was better the spirit, for literary and bibliomanical pursuits. honor to the man, monk though he be, who oppressed with these vicissitudes and cares could effect so much, and could appreciate both literature and art. contemporary with him we are not surprised that he gained the patronage and friendship of humphrey duke of gloucester, to whom he dedicated many of his own performances, and greatly aided in collecting those treasures which the duke regarded with such esteem. it is said that noble collector frequently paid a friendly visit to the abbey to inspect the work of the monkish scribes, and perhaps to negociate for some of those choice vellum tomes for which the monks of that monastery were so renowned. but we must not pass the "good duke" without some slight notice of his "ryghte valiant deedes," his domestic troubles and his dark mysterious end. old foxe thus speaks of him in his actes and monuments: "of manners he seemed meeke and gentle, louing the commonwealth, a supporter of the poore commons, of wit and wisdom, discrete and studious, well affected to religion and a friend to verity, and no lesse enemy to pride and ambition, especially in haughtie prelates, which was his undoing in this present evil world. and, which is seldom and rare in such princes of that calling, he was both learned himselfe and no lesse given to studie, and also a singular favourer and patron to those who were studious and learned."[424] to which i cannot refrain from adding the testimony of hollingshed, who tells us that "the ornaments of his mind were both rare and admirable; the feats of chiualrie by him commensed and atchiued valiant and fortunate; his grauitie in counsell and soundnesse of policie profound and singular; all which with a traine of other excellent properties linked together, require a man of manifold gifts to aduance them according to their dignitie. i refer the readers unto maister foxe's booke of actes and monuments. onelie this i ad, that in respect of his noble indowments and his demeanor full of decencie, which he dailie used, it seemeth he might wel haue giuen this prettie poesie:" "virtute duce non sanguine nitor."[425] but with all these high qualities, our notions of propriety are somewhat shocked at the open manner in which he kept his mistress eleanor cobham; but we can scarcely agree in the condemnation of the generality of historians for his marrying her afterwards, but regard it rather as the action of an honorable man, desirous of making every reparation in his power.[426] but the "pride of birth" was sorely wounded by the espousals; and the enmity of the aristocracy already roused, now became deeply rooted. eleanor's disposition is represented as passionate and unreasonable, and her mind sordid and oppressive. be this how it may, we must remember that it is from her enemies we learn it; and if so, unrelenting persecution and inveterate malice were proceedings ill calculated to soothe a temper prone to violence, or to elevate a mind undoubtedly weak. but the vindictive and haughty cardinal beaufort was the open and secret enemy of the good duke humphrey; for not only did he thwart every public measure proposed by his rival, but employed spies to insinuate themselves into his domestic circle, and to note and inform him of every little circumstance which malice could distort into crime, or party rage into treason. this detestable espionage met with a too speedy success. the duke, who was especially fond of the society of learned men, retained in his family many priests and clerks, and among them one roger bolingbroke, "a famous necromancer and astronomer." this was a sufficient ground for the enmity of the cardinal to feed upon, and he determined to annihilate at one blow the domestic happiness of his rival. he arrested the duchess, bolingbroke, and a witch called margery gourdimain, or jourdayn, on the charge of witchcraft and treason. he accused the priest and margery of making, and the duchess for having in her possession, a waxen figure, which, as she melted it before a slow fire, so would the body of the king waste and decay, and his marrow wither in his bones. her enemies tried her, and of course found her and her companions guilty, though without a shred of evidence to the purpose. the duchess was sentenced to do penance in st. paul's and two other churches on three separate days, and to be afterwards imprisoned in the isle of man for life. bolingbroke, who protested his innocence to the last, was hung and quartered at tyburn; and margery, the witch of eye, as she was called, was burnt at smithfield. but the black enmity of the cardinal was sorely disappointed at the effect produced by this persecution. he reasonably judged that no accusation was so likely to arouse a popular prejudice against duke humphrey as appealing to the superstition of the people who in that age were ever prone to receive the most incredulous fabrications; but far different was the impression made in the present case. the people with more than their usual sagacity saw through the flimsy designs of the cardinal and his faction; and while they pitied the victims of party malice, loved and esteemed the good duke humphrey more than ever. but the intriguing heart of beaufort soon resolved upon the most desperate measures, and shrunk not from staining his priestly hands with innocent and honorable blood. a parliament was summoned to meet at st. edmunds bury, in suffolk, on the 10th of february, 1447, at which all the nobility were ordered to assemble. on the arrival of duke humphrey, the cardinal arrested him on a groundless charge of high treason, and a few days after he was found dead in his bed, his enemies gave out that he had died of the palsy; but although his body was eagerly shown to the sorrowing multitude, the people believed that their friend and favorite had been foully murdered, and feared not to raise their voice in loud accusations at the suffolk party; "sum sayed that he was smouldered betwixt two fetherbeddes,"[427] and others declared that he had suffered a still more barbarous death. deep was the murmuring and the grief of the people, for the good duke had won the love and esteem of their hearts; and we can fully believe a contemporary who writes- "compleyne al yngland thys goode lorde's deth."[428] perhaps none suffered more by his death than the author and the scholar; for duke humphrey was a munificent patron of letters, and loved to correspond with learned men, many of whom dedicated their works to him, and received ample encouragement in return.[429] lydgate, who knew him well, composed some of his pieces at the duke's instigation. in his tragedies of ihon bochas he thus speaks of him: "duke of glocester men this prynce call, and not withstandyng his estate and dignitie, his courage neuer dothe appall to study in bokes of antiquitie; therein he hath so great felicitie, virtuously him selfe to occupye, of vycious slouthe, he hath the maistry. and for these causes as in his entent to shewe the untrust of all worldly thinge, he gave to me in commandment as him seemed it was ryghte well fittynge that i shoulde, after my small cunning, this boke translate, him to do pleasaunce, to shew the chaung of worldly variaunce. and with support of his magnificence under the wynges of his correction, though that i lacke of eloquence i shall proceede in this translation. fro me auoydyng all presumption, louyly submittying every houre and space, my rude language to my lorde's grace. anone after i of eutencion, with penne in hande fast gan me spede, as i coulde in my translation, in this labour further to procede, my lorde came forth by and gan to take hede; this mighty prince right manly and right wise gaue me charge in his prudent auyle. that i should in euery tragedy, after the processe made mencion, at the ende set a remedy, with a lenuoy, conveyed by reason; and after that, with humble affection, to noble princes lowly it dyrect, by others fallying them selues to correct. and i obeyed his biddyng and pleasaunce under support of his magnificence, as i coulde, i gan my penne aduaunce, all be i was barrayne of eloquence, folowing mine auctor in substance and sétence, for it sufficeth playnly unto me, so that my lorde my makyng take in gre."[430] lydgate often received money whilst translating this work, from the good duke humphrey, and there is a manuscript letter in the british museum in which he writes- "righte myghty prynce, and it be youre wille, condescende leyser for to take, to se the contents of thys litel bille, whiche whan i wrote my hand felt qquake."[431] duke humphrey gave a noble instance of his great love of learning in the year 1439, when he presented to the university of oxford one hundred and twenty-nine treatises, and shortly after, one hundred and twenty-six _admirandi apparatus_; and in the same year, nine more. in 1443, he made another important donation of one hundred and thirty volumes, to which he added one hundred and thirty-five more,[432] making in all, a collection of five hundred and thirty-eight volumes. these treasures, too, had been collected with all the nice acumen of a bibliomaniac, and the utmost attention was paid to their outward condition and internal purity. never, perhaps, were so many costly copies seen before, dazzling with the splendor of their illuminations, and rendered inestimable by the many faithful miniatures with which they were enriched. a superb copy of valerius maximus is the only relic of that costly and noble gift, a solitary but illustrious example of the membraneous treasures of that ducal library.[433] but alas! those very indications of art, those exquisite illuminations, were the fatal cause of their unfortunate end; the portraits of kings and eminent men, with which the historical works were adorned; the diagrams which pervaded the scientific treatises, were viewed by the zealous reformers of henry's reign, as damning evidence of their popish origin and use; and released from the chains with which they were secured, they were hastily committed to the greedy flames. thus perished the library of humphrey, duke of gloucester! and posterity have to mourn the loss of many an early gem of english literature.[434] but in the fourteenth century many other honorable examples occur of lay collectors. the magnificent volumes, nine hundred in number, collected by charles v. of france, a passionate bibliomaniac, were afterwards brought by the duke of bedford into england. the library then contained eight hundred and fifty-three volumes, so sumptuously bound and gorgeously illuminated as to be valued at 2,223 livres![435] this choice importation diffused an eager spirit of inquiry among the more wealthy laymen. humphrey, the "good duke," received some of these volumes as presents, and among others, a rich copy of livy, in french.[436] guy beauchamp, earl of warwick, also collected some choice tomes, and possessed an unusually interesting library of early romances. he left the whole of them to the monks of bordesley abbey in worcestershire, about the year 1359.[437] as a specimen of a private library in the fourteenth century, i am tempted to extract it. "a tus iceux, qe ceste lettre verront, ou orrount, gwy de beauchamp, comte de warr. saluz en deu. saluz nous aveir baylé e en la garde le abbé e le covent de bordesleye, lessé à demorer a touz jours touz les romaunces de sonz nomes; ceo est assaveyr, un volum, qe est appelé tresor. un volum, en le quel est le premer livere de lancelot, e un volum del romaunce de aygnes. un sauter de romaunce. un volum des evangelies, e de vie des seins. un volum, qe p'le des quatre principals gestes de charles, e de dooun, e de meyace e de girard de vienne e de emery de nerbonne. un volum del romaunce emmond de ageland, e deu roy charles dooun de nauntoyle. e le romaunce de gwyoun de nauntoyl. e un volum del romaunce titus et vespasien. e un volum del romaunce josep ab arimathie, e deu seint grael. e un volum, qe p'le coment adam fust eniesté hors de paradys, e le genesie. e un volum en le quel sount contenuz touns des romaunces, ceo este assaveir, vitas patrum au comencement; e pus un comte de auteypt; e la vision seint pol; et pus les vies des xii. seins. e le romaunce de willame de loungespe. e autorites des seins humes. e le mirour de alme. un volum, en le quel sount contenuz la vie seint pére e seint pol, e des autres liv. e un volum qe est appelé l'apocalips. e un livere de phisik, e de surgie. un volum del romaunce de gwy, e de la reygne tut enterement. un volum del romaunce de troies. un volum del romaunce de willame de orenges e de teband de arabie. un volum del romaunce de amase e de idoine. un volum del romaunce de girard de viene. un volum del romaunce deu brut, e del roy costentine. un volum de le enseignemt aristotle enveiez au roy alisaundre. un volum de la mort ly roy arthur, e de mordret. un volum en le quel sount contenuz les enfaunces de nostre seygneur, coment il fust mené en egipt. e la vie seint edwd. e la visioun seint pol. la vengeaunce n're seygneur par vespasien a titus, e la vie seint nicolas, qe fust nez en patras. e la vie seint eustace. e la vie seint cudlac. e la passioun n're seygneur. e la meditacioun seint bernard de n're dame seint marie, e del passioun sour deuz fiz jesu creist n're seignr. e la vie seint eufrasie. e la vie seint radegounde. e la vie seint juliane. un volum, en le quel est aprise de enfants et lumière à lays. un volum del romaunce d'a alisaundre, ove peintures. un petit rouge livere, en le quel sount contenuz mons diverses choses. un volum del romaunce des mareschans, e de ferebras e de alisaundre. les queus livres nous grauntons par nos heyrs e par nos assignes qil demorront en la dit abbeye, etc." footnotes: [385] see a fine manuscript in the cotton collection marked nero d. vii., and another marked claudius e. iv., both of which i have consulted. [386] matthew paris' edit. wats, tom. i. p. 39. [387] "asserens ad cantelam, ipsum fuisse beati amphibali, beate albini magistri, caracellam."--mat. paris, p. 44. [388] abjectis igitur et combustis libris, in quibus commenta diaboli continabantur. [389] ms. cottonian, e. iv. fo. 101; mat. paris, edit. wat. i. p. 41. [390] ms. cottanian claudius, e. iv. fo. 105 b., and ms. cott. nero, d. vii. fo. 13, b. [391] he was elected in 1093.--see ms. cott. claud. e. iv. fo. 107. [392] got. ms. claud. e. iv. fo. 108. [393] ms. cot. nero, d. vii. fo. 15, a; and ms. cot. claud. e. iv. [394] cot. ms. claud. e. iv. fo. 113. "ex tunc igitur amator librorum et adquisiter sedulus multio voluminibus habundavit." [395] fecit etiam scribi libros plurimos; quos longum esset enarrare.--_mat. paris edit. wat._ p. 89. [396] cot. ms. nero d. vii. fo. 16, a. [397] ms. claud. e. iv. fo. 114, a. [398] ms. cot. claud. e. iv. fo. 125 b. [399] _ibid._ [400] ms. cot. nero d. vii. fo. 16 a. [401] ms. cot. claud. iv. fo. 124. [402] claud. e. iv. fo. 124. [403] "in grammatica priscianus, in metrico ovidius, in physica censori potuit galenus." _ms. cot. claud._ e. iv. f. 129, b. _matt. paris' edit. wat._ p. 103. [404] ms. cot. claud. e. iv. fo. 131. b. [405] ms. cot. claud. e. iv. fol. 135 b. [406] ibid. fol. 141. [407] ms. reg. brit. mus. 4 d. viii. 4. wood's hist. oxon. 1-82, and matt. paris. turner's hist. of eng. vol. iv. p. 180. [408] ms. cot. nero, d. vii. fol. 19 a. [409] ibid. fol. 86. [410] duos bonas biblias. [411] ms. cot. claud. e. iv. fo. 229 b. [412] ms. cot. nero d. vii. fo. 20 b. [413] ms. cot. tiberius, e. i. [414] ms. cot. claud. d. i. fo. 165, "acta johannis abbatis per johannem agmundishamensem monachum s. albani." [415] gibson's hist. monast. tynmouth, vol. ii. p. 62, whose translation i use in giving the following extract. if the reader refers to mr. gibson's handsome volumes, he will find much interesting and curious matter from john of amersham relative to this matter. [416] otterb. cxvi.; see also ms. cot. nero. vii. fo. 32 a. [417] otterbourne hist. a hearne, _edit._ oxon, 1732, tom. i. 2. [418] gough's sepulchral monuments, vol. ii. pt. 11, p. 205. for a list of his works see bale; also pits. p. 630, who enumerates more than thirty. [419] marked otho, b. iv. [420] ms. arundel. brit. mus. clxiii. c. a curious register, "per magistrum johannem whethamstede et dominum thoman ramryge," fo. 74, 75. upwards of fifty volumes are specified, with the cost of each. [421] julius cæsar was among them.--cot. ms. claud. d. i. fo. 156. [422] ms. cod. nero, d. vii. fo. 28 a. he "enlarged the abbot's study," fo. 29, which most monasteries possessed. whethamstede had a study also at his manor at tittinhanger, and had inscribed on it these lines: "ipse johannis amor whethamstede ubique proclamor ejus et alter honor hic lucis in auge reponer." see also ms. cot. claud. d. i. fo. 157, for an account of his many donations. [423] weever's funerall monuments, p. 562 to 567. i have forgotten to mention before that whethamstede built a new library for the abbey books, and expended considerably more than £120 upon the building. [424] foxe's actes and monuments, folio, lond. 1576, p. 679. [425] holingshed chronicle, fol. 1587, vol. ii. p. 627. [426] see stowe, p. 367. [427] leland collect. vol. i. p. 494. [428] ms. harleian, no. 2251, fol. 7 b. [429] capgrave's commentary on genesis, in oriel college, cod. mss. 32, is dedicated to him. aretine's trans. aristotle's politics, ms. bodl. d. i. 8-10. pet. de monte de virt. de vit. ms. norvic. more, 257. bibl. publi cantab. many others are given in warton's hist. of poetry, 4to. vol. ii. pp. 48-50. [430] tragedies of ihon bochas. imp. at london, by john wayland, fol. 38 b. [431] ms. harleian, no. 2251, fol. 6. lydgate received one hundred shillings for translating the life of st. alban into english verse for whethamstede. [432] see wood's hist. and antiq. of oxford, vol. ii. p. 914. [433] mss. bodl. n. e. vii. ii. warton, vol. ii. p. 45. i find in the arundel register in the british museum (mss. arund. clxiii. c.) that a fine copy of valerius, in two volumes, with a gloss, was transcribed in the time of whethamstede at st. albans, at the cost of £6 13 4, probably the identical copy. [434] there are many volumes formerly belonging to duke humphrey, in the public libraries, a fine volume intitled "tabulas humfridi ducis glowcester in judicus artis geomantie," is in the brit. mus., mss. arund. 66, fo. 277, beautifully written and illuminated with excessive margins of the purest vellum. see also mss. harl. 1705. leland says, "humfredus multaties scripsit in frontispiecis librorum suorum, _moun bien mondain_," script. vol. iii. 58. [435] bouvin, mem. de l'acad. des inscrip., ii. 693. [436] _ibid._ [437] printed in todd's illustrations to gower and chaucer, 8vo. p. 161, from a copy by arch sancroft, from ashmole's register of the earl of ailesbury's evidences, fol. 110. lambeth, mss., no. 577. fol. 18 b. chapter xii. _the dominicans.--the franciscans and the carmelites.--scholastic studies.--robert grostest.--libraries in london.--miracle plays.--introduction of printing into england.--barkley's description of a bibliomaniac_. the old monastic orders of st. augustine and st. benedict, of whose love of books we have principally spoken hitherto, were kept from falling into sloth and ignorance in the thirteenth century by the appearance of several new orders of devotees. the dominicans,[438] the franciscans,[439] and the carmelites were each renowned for their profound learning, and their unquenchable passion for knowledge; assuming a garb of the most abject poverty, renouncing all love of the world, all participation in its temporal honors, and refraining to seek the aggrandizement of their order by fixed oblations or state endowments, but adhering to a voluntary system for support, they caused a visible sensation among all classes, and wrought a powerful change in the ecclesiastical and collegiate learning of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and by their devotion, their charity, their strict austerity, and by their brilliant and unconquerable powers of disputation, soon gained the respect and affections of the people.[440] much as the friars have been condemned, or darkly as they have been represented, i have no hesitation in saying that they did more for the revival of learning, and the progress of english literature, than any other of the monastic orders. we cannot trace their course without admiration and astonishment at their splendid triumphs and success; they appear to act as intellectual crusaders against the prevailing ignorance and sloth. the finest names that adorn the literary annals of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the most prolific authors who flourished during that long period were begging friars; and the very spirit that was raised against them by the churchmen, and the severe controversal battles which they had between them, were the means of doing a vast amount of good, of exposing ignorance in high places, and compelling those who enjoyed the honors of learning to strive to merit them, by a studious application to literature and science; need i do more than mention the shining names of duns scotus, of thomas aquinas, of roger bacon, the founder of experimental philosophy, and the justly celebrated robert grostest, the most enlightened ecclesiastic of his age.[441] we may not admire the scholastic philosophy which the followers of francis and dominic held and expounded; we may deplore the intricate mazes and difficulties which a false philosophy led them to maintain, and we may equally deplore the waste of time and learning which they lavished in the vain hope of solving the mysteries of god, or in comprehending a loose and futile science. yet the philosophy of the schoolmen is but little understood, and is too often condemned without reason or without proof; for those who trouble themselves to denounce, seldom care to read them; their ponderous volumes are too formidable to analyze; it is so much easier to declaim than to examine such sturdy antagonists; but we owe to the schoolmen far more than we are apt to suppose, and if it were possible to scratch their names from the page of history, and to obliterate all traces of their bulky writings from our libraries and from our literature, we should find our knowledge dark and gloomy in comparison with what it is. but the mendicant orders did not study and uphold the scholastic philosophy without improving it; the works of aristotle, of which it is said the early schoolmen possessed only a vitiated translation from the arabic,[442] was, at the period these friars sprung up, but imperfectly understood and taught. michael scot, with the assistance of a learned jew,[443] translated and published the writings of the great philosopher in latin, which greatly superseded the old versions derived from the saracen copies. the mendicant friars having qualified themselves with a respectable share of greek learning, then taught and expounded the aristotelian philosophy according to this new translation, and opened a new and proscribed field[444] for disputation and enquiry; their indomitable perseverance, their acute powers of reasoning, and the splendid popularity which many of the disciples of st. dominic and st. francis were fast acquiring, caused students to flock in crowds to their seats of learning, and all who were inspired to an acquaintance with scholastic philosophy placed themselves under their training and tuition.[445] no religious order before them ever carried the spirit of inquiry to such an extent as they, or allowed it to wander over such an unbounded field. the most difficult and mysterious questions of theology were discussed and fearlessly analyzed; far from exercising that blind and easy credulity which mark the religious conduct of the old monastic orders, they were disposed to probe and examine every article of their faith. to such an extent were their disputations carried, that sometimes it shook their faith in the orthodoxy of rome, and often aroused the pious fears of the more timid of their own order. angell de pisa, who founded the school of the franciscans or grey friars at oxford, is said to have gone one day into his school, with a view to discover what progress the students were making in their studies; as he entered he found them warm in disputation, and was shocked to find that the question at issue was "_whether there was a god_;" the good man, greatly alarmed, cried out, "alas, for me! alas, for me! simple brothers pierce the heavens and the learned dispute whether there be a god!" and with great indignation ran out of the house blaming himself for having established a school for such fearful disputes; but he afterwards returned and remained among his pupils, and purchased for ten marks a corrected copy of the decretals, to which he made his students apply their minds.[446] this school was the most flourishing of those belonging to the franciscans; and it was here that the celebrated robert grostest[447], bishop of lincoln, read lectures about the year 1230. he was a profound scholar, thoroughly conversant with the most abstruse matters of philosophy, and a great bible reader.[448] he possessed an extensive knowledge of the greek, and translated, into latin, dionysius the areopagite, damascenus, suida's greek lexicon, a greek grammar, and, with the assistance of nicholas, a monk of st. alban's, the history of the twelve patriarchs. he collected a fine library of greek books, many of which he obtained from athens. roger bacon speaks of his knowledge of the greek, and says, that he caused a vast number of books to be gathered together in that tongue.[449] his extraordinary talent and varied knowledge caused him to be deemed a conjuror and astrologer by the ignorant and superstitious; and his enemies, who were numerous and powerful, did not refuse to encourage the slanderous report. we find him so represented by the poet gower:- "for of the grete clerk grostest, i rede how redy that he was upon clergye, and bede of bras, to make and forge it, for to telle of suche thynges as befelle, and seven yeres besinesse. ye ladye, but for the lackhesse of 'a halfe a mynute of an houre, fro fyrst that he began laboure, ye lost al that he had do."[450] the franciscan convent at oxford contained two libraries, one for the use of the graduates and one for the secular students, who did not belong to their order, but who were receiving instruction from them. grostest gave many volumes to these libraries, and at his death he bequeathed to the convent all his books, which formed no doubt a fine collection. "to these were added," says wood, "the works of roger bacon, who, bale tells us, writ an hundred treatises. there were also volumes of other writers of the same order, which, i believe, amounted to no small number. in short, i guess that these libraries were filled with all sorts of erudition, because the friars of all orders, and chiefly the franciscans, used so diligently to procure all monuments of literature from all parts, that wise men looked upon it as an injury to laymen, who, therefore, found a difficulty to get any books. several books of grostest and bacon treated of astronomy and mathematics, besides some relating to the greek tongue. but these friars, as i have found by certain ancient manuscripts, bought many hebrew books of the jews who were disturbed in england. in a word, they, to their utmost power, purchased whatsoever was anywhere to be had of singular learning."[451] many of the smaller convents of the franciscan order possessed considerable libraries, which they purchased or received as gifts from their patrons.[452] there was a house of grey friars at exeter,[453] and roger de thoris, archdeacon of exeter, gave or lent them a library of books in the year 1266, soon after their establishment, reserving to himself the privilege of using them, and forbade the friars from selling or parting with them. the collection, however, contained less than twenty volumes, and was formed principally of the scriptures and writings of their own order. "whosoever," concludes the document, "shall presume hereafter to separate or destroy this donation of mine, may he incur the malediction of the omnipotent god! dated on the day of the purification, in the year of our lord mcclxvi."[454] the library of the grey friars in london was of more than usual magnificence and extent. it was founded by the celebrated richard whittington. its origin is thus set forth in an old manuscript in the cottonian library:[455] "in the year of our lord, 1421, the worshipful richard whyttyngton, knight and mayor of london, began the new library and laid the first foundation-stone on the 21st day of october; that is, on the feast of st. hilarion the abbot. and the following year before the feast of the nativity of christ, the house was raised and covered; and in three years after, it was floored, whitewashed, glazed,[456] adorned with shelves, statues, and carving, and furnished with books: and the expenses about what is aforesaid amount to £556:16:9; of which sum, the aforesaid richard whyttyngton paid £400, and the residue was paid by the reverend father b. thomas winchelsey and his friends, to whose soul god be propitious.--amen." among some items of money expended, we find, "for the works of doctor de lyra contained in two volumes, now in the chains,[457] 100 marks, of which b. john frensile remitted 20s.; and for the lectures of hostiensis, now lying in the chains, 5 marks."[458] leland speaks in the most enthusiastic terms of this library, and says, that it far surpassed all others for the number and antiquity of its volumes. john wallden bequeathed as many manuscripts of celebrated authors as were worth two thousand pounds.[459] the library of the dominicans in london was also at one time well stored with valuable books. leland mentions some of those he found there, and among them some writings of wicliff;[460] indeed those of this order were renowned far and wide for their love of study; look at the old portraits of a dominican friar, and you will generally see him with the pen in one hand and a book in the other; but they were more ambitious in literature than the monks, and aimed at the honors of an author rather than at those of a scribe; but we are surprised more at their fertility than at their style or originality in the mysteries of bookcraft. henry esseburn diligently read at oxford, and devoted his whole soul to study, and wrote a number of works, principally on the bible; he was appointed to govern the dominican monastery at chester; "being remote from all schools, he made use of his spare hours to revise and polish what he had writ at oxford; having performed the same to his own satisfaction, he caused his works to be fairly transcribed, and copies of them to be preserved in several libraries of his order."[461] but they did not usually pay so much attention to the duties of transcribing. the dominicans were fond of the physical sciences, and have been accused of too much partiality for occult philosophy. leland tells us that robert perserutatur, a dominican, was over solicitous in prying into the secrets of philosophy,[462] and lays the same charge to many others. the carmelites were more careful in transcribing books than the dominicans, and anxiously preserved them from dust and worms; but i can find but little notice of their libraries; the one at oxford was a large room, where they arranged their books in cases made for that purpose; before the foundation of this library, the carmelites kept their books in chests, and doubtless gloried in an ample store of manuscript treasures.[463] but in the fifteenth century we find the mendicant friars, like the order religious sects, disregarding those strict principles of piety which had for two hundred years so distinguished their order. the holy rules of st. francis and st. dominic were seldom read with much attention, and never practised with severity; they became careless in the propagation of religious principles, relaxed in their austerity, and looked with too much fondness on the riches and honors of the world.[464] this diminution in religious zeal was naturally accompanied by a proportionate decrease in learning and love of study. the sparkling orator, the acute controversialist, or the profound scholar, might have been searched for in vain among the franciscans or the dominicans of the fifteenth century. careless in literary matters, they thought little of collecting books, or preserving even those which their libraries already contained; the franciscans at oxford "sold many of their books to dr. thomas gascoigne, about the year 1433,[465] which he gave to the libraries of lincoln, durham, baliol, and oriel. they also declining in strictness of life and learning, sold many more to other persons, so that their libraries declined to little or nothing."[466] we are not therefore surprised at the disappointment of leland, on examining this famous repository; his expectations were raised by the care with which he found the library guarded, and the difficulty he had to obtain access to it: but when he entered, he did not find one-third the number of books which it originally contained; but dust and cobwebs, moths and beetles he found in abundance, which swarmed over the empty shelves.[467] the mendicant friars have rendered themselves famous by introducing theatrical representations[468] for the amusement and instruction of the people. these shows were usually denominated miracles, moralities, or mysteries, and were performed by the friars in their convents or on portable stages, which were wheeled into the market places and streets for the convenience of the spectators. the friars of the monastery of the franciscans at coventry are particularly celebrated for their ingenuity in performing these pageants on corpus christi day; a copy of this play or miracle is preserved in the cottonian collection, written in old english rhyme. it embraces the transactions of the old and new testament, and is entitled _ludus corpus christi_. it commences-a plaie called corpus christi.[469] now gracyous god groundyd of all goodnesse, as thy grete glorie neuyr begynnyng had; so you succour and save all those that sytt and sese, and lystenyth to our talkyng with sylens stylle and sad, for we purpose no pertly stylle in his prese the pepyl to plese with pleys ful glad, now lystenyth us lowly both mar and lesse gentyllys and 3emaury off goodly lyff lad, þis tyde, we call you shewe us that we kan, how that þis werd fyrst began, and howe god made bothe worlde and man if yt ye wyll abyde. these miracles were intended to instruct the more ignorant, or those whose circumstances placed the usual means of acquiring knowledge beyond their reach; but as books became accessible, they were no longer needed; the printing press made the bible, from which the plots of the miracle plays were usually derived, common among the people, and these gaudy representations were swept away by the reformation; but they were temporarily revived in queen mary's time, with the other abominations of the church papal, for we find that "in the year 1556 a goodly stage play of the passion of christ was presented at the grey friers in london on corpus christi day," before the lord mayor and citizens;[470] but we have nothing here to do with anecdotes illustrating a period so late as this. we have now arrived at the dawn of a new era in learning, and the slow, plodding, laborious scribes of the monasteries were startled by the appearance of an invention with which their poor pens had no power to compete. the year 1472 was the last of the parchment literature of the monks, and the first in the english annals of printed learning; but we must not forget that the monks with all their sloth and ignorance, were the foremost among the encouragers of the early printing press in england; the monotony of the dull cloisters of westminster abbey was broken by the clanking of caxton's press; and the prayers of the monks of old st. albans mingled with the echoes of the pressman's labor. little did those barefooted priests know what an opponent to their romish rites they were fostering into life; their love of learning and passion for books, drove all fear away; and the splendor of the new power so dazzled their eyes that they could not clearly see the nature of the refulgent light just bursting through the gloom of ages. after the invention of the printing art, bibliomania took some mighty strides; and many choice collectors, full of ardor in the pursuit, became renowned for the vast book stores they amassed together. but some of their names have been preserved and good deeds chronicled by dibdin, of bibliographical renown; so that a chapter is not necessary here to extol them. we may judge how fashionable the avocation became by the keen satire of alexander barkley, in his translation of brandt's _navis stultifera_ or shyp of folys,[471] who gives a curious illustration of a bibliomaniac; and thus speaks of those collectors who amassed their book treasures without possessing much esteem for their contents. "that in this ship the chiefe place i gouerne, by this wide sea with fooles wandring, the cause is plain & easy to discerne still am i busy, bookes assembling, for to have plentie it is a pleasaunt thing in my conceyt, to have them ay in hand, but what they meane do i not understande. "but yet i have them in great reverence and honoure, sauing them from filth & ordure by often brushing & much diligence full goodly bounde in pleasaunt couerture of damas, sattin, or els of velvet pure i keepe them sure, fearing least they should be lost, for in them is the cunning wherein i me boast. "but if it fortune that any learned man within my house fall to disputation, i drawe the curtaynes to shewe my bokes them, that they of my cunning should make probation i love not to fall in alterication, and while the commen, my bokes i turne and winde for all is in them, and nothing in my minde. "ptolomeus the riche caused, longe agone, over all the worlde good bookes to be sought, done was his commandement--anone these bokes he had, and in his studie brought, which passed all earthly treasure as he thought, but neverthelesse he did him not apply unto their doctrine, but lived unhappily. "lo, in likewise of bookes i have store, but fewe i reade and fewer understande, i folowe not their doctrine nor their lore, it is ynough to beare a booke in hande. it were too muche to be in such a bande, for to be bounde to loke within the booke i am content on the fayre coveryng to looke. "why should i studie to hurt my wit therby, or trouble my minde with studie excessiue. sithe many are which studie right busely, and yet therby thall they never thrive the fruite of wisdome can they not contriue, and many to studie so muche are inclinde, that utterly they fall out of their minde. "eche is not lettred that nowe is made a lorde, nor eche a clerke that hath a benefice; they are not all lawyers that pleas do recorde, all that are promoted are not fully wise; on suche chaunce nowe fortune throwes her dice that though we knowe but the yrishe game, yet would he have a gentleman's name. "so in like wise i am in suche case, though i nought can, i would be called wise, also i may set another in my place, whiche may for me my bokes exercise, or els i shall ensue the common guise, and say concedo to euery argument, least by much speache my latin should be spent. "i am like other clerkes, which so frowardly them gyde, that after they are once come unto promotion, they give them to pleasure, their study set aside, their auarice couering with fained deuotion; yet dayly they preache and have great derision against the rude laymen, and all for couetise, through their owne conscience be blended with that vice. "but if i durst truth plainely utter and expresse, this is the speciall cause of this inconvenience, that greatest of fooles & fullest of lewdness, having least wit and simplest science, are first promoted, & have greatest reverence; for if one can flatter & bear a hauke on his fist, he shall be made parson of honington or of elist. "but he that is in study ay firme and diligent, and without all favour preacheth christe's love, of all the cominalite nowe adayes is sore shent, and by estates threatned oft therfore. thus what anayle is it to us to study more, to knowe ether scripture, truth, wisdome, or virtue, since fewe or none without fauour dare them shewe. "but o noble doctours, that worthy are of name, consider oure olde fathers, note well their diligence, ensue ye to their steppes, obtayne ye suche fame as they did living; and that, by true prudence within their heartes, thy planted their science, and not in pleasaunt bookes, but noue to fewe suche be, therefore to this ship come you & rowe with me. "the lennoy of alexander barclay, translatour, exhorting the fooles accloyed with this vice, to amende their foly. "say worthie doctours & clerkes curious, what moneth you of bookes to have such number, since diuers doctrines through way contrarious, doth man's minde distract and sore encomber. alas blinde men awake, out of your slumber; and if ye will needes your bookes multiplye, with diligence endeuor you some to occupye."[472] footnotes: [438] thirteen dominicans were sent into england in the year 1221; they held their first provincial council in england in 1230 at oxford, three years before st. dominic was canonized by pope gregory. [439] four clercs and five laymen of the franciscan order were sent into england in 1224; ten years afterwards we find their disciples spreading over the whole of england. [440] edward the second regarded them with great favor, and wrote several letters to the pope in their praise; he says in one, "desiderantes itaque, pater sancte ordinis fratrum prædicatorum oxonii, ubi religionis devotio, et honestatis laudabilis decer viget, per quem etiam honor universitatis oxoniensis, et utilitas ibidem studentium, etc." dugdale's monast. vol. vi. p. 1492. [441] a list of celebrated authors who flourished in england, and who were members of the dominican order, will be found in _steven's monasticon_, vol. ii. p. 193, more than 80 names are mentioned. a similar list of authors of the franciscan order will be found at p. 97 of vol. i. containing 122 names; and of the carmelite authors, vol. ii. p. 160, specifying 137 writers; a great proportion of their works are upon the scriptures. [442] dr. cave says, "in scholis christianis pene unice regnavit scholastica theologia, advocata in subsidium aristotelis philosophia, eaque non ex græcis fontibus _sed ex turbidis arabum lacunis, ex versionibus male factis, male intellectis, hansta_." _hist. liter._, p. 615. but i am not satisfied that this has been proved, though often affirmed. [443] it was probably the work of andrew the jew. _meiners_, ii. p. 664. [444] at a council held at paris in the year 1209, the works of aristotle were proscribed and ordered to be burnt. _launvius de varia aristotelis fortuna_. but in spite of the papal mandate the friars revived its use. richard fizacre, an intimate friend of roger bacon, was so passionately fond of reading aristotle, that he always carried one of his works in his bosom. _stevens monast._, vol. ii. p. 194. [445] see what has been said of the mendicants at p. 79. [446] steven's additions to dugdale's monasticon from the mss. of anthony a wood in the library at oxford, vol. i. p. 129. agnell himself was "_a man of scarce any erudition_."--_ibid._ [447] he is spoken of under a multitude of names, sometimes grosthead, grouthead, etc. a list of them will be found in wood's oxford by gutch, vol. i. p. 198. [448] he gives strict injunctions as to the study of the scriptures in his _constitutiones_.--see pegge's life of grostest, p. 315. [449] utilitate scientiarum, cap. xxxix. [450] de confess. amantis, lib. iv. fo. 70, _imprint_. caxton _at westminster_, 1483. the bishop is said to have taken a journey from england to rome one night on an infernal horse.--pegge's life of grostest, p. 306. [451] stephen's additions to dugdale's monasticon from anthony a wood's mss. vol. i. p. 133. [452] the mendicant orders, unlike the monks, were not remarkable for their industry in transcribing books: their roving life was unsuitable to the tedious profession of a scribe. [453] leland's itin. vol. iii. p. 59. [454] oliver's collections relating to the monasteries in devon, 8vo. 1820, appendix lxii. [455] cottonian mss. vittel, f. xii. 13. fol. 325, headed "_de fundacione librarie_." [456] the library was 129 feet long and 31 feet broad, and most beautifully fitted up.--_lelandi antiquarii collectanea_, vol. i. p. 109. [457] this refers to the custom then prevalent of chaining their books, especially their choice ones, to the library shelf, or to a reading desk. [458] ms. _ibid._ fo. o. 325 b. [459] script. brit. p. 241, and collectanea, iii. 52. [460] leland's collect. vol. iii. p. 51. he found in the priory of the dominicans at cambridge, among other books, a _biblia in lingua vernacula_. [461] steven's monast. vol. ii. p. 194. [462] his works were of the impressions of the air--of the wonder of the elements--of ceremonial magic--of the mysteries of secrets--and the correction of chemistry. [463] sieben's monast. vol. i. p. 183, from the mss. of anthony a wood, who says, "what became of them (their books) at the dissolution unless they were carried into the library of some college, i know not." [464] they obtained much wealth by the sale of pardons and indulgences. margaret est, of the convent of franciscans, ordered her letters of pardon and absolution, to partake of the indulgences of the convent, to be returned as soon she was buried. _bloomfield's hist. of norfolk_, vol. ii. p. 565. [465] and among others of st. augustine's books, _de civitate dei_, with many notes in the margins, by grostest. _wood's hist. oxon_, p. 78. [466] anthony a wood in steven's monast. vol. i. p. 133. [467] script. brit. p. 286. [468] le boeuf gives an instance of one being represented as early as the eleventh century, in which virgil was introduced. _hallam's lit. of europe_, vol. i. p. 295. the case of geoffry of st. albans is well known, and i have already mentioned it. [469] ms. cottonian vespasian, d. viii. fo. 1. codex chart. 225 folios, written in the fifteenth century. sir w. dugdale, in his hist. of warwick, p. 116, mentions this volume; and stevens, in his monast. has printed a portion of it. mr. halliwell has printed them with much care and accuracy. [470] ms. cottonian vitel. e. 5. _warton's hist. eng. poetry_, vol. iii. p. 326. [471] the original was written in 1494. [472] ship of fooles, folio 1570, imprynted by cawood, fol. 1. chapter xiii. _conclusion._ we have traversed through the darkness of many long and dreary centuries, and with the aid of a few old manuscripts written by the monks in the _scriptoria_ of their monasteries, caught an occasional glimpse of their literary labors and love of books; these parchment volumes being mere monastic registers, or terse historic compilations, do not record with particular care the anecdotes applicable to my subject, but appear to be mentioned almost accidentally, and certainly without any ostentatious design; but such as they are we learn from them at least one thing, which some of us might not have known before--that the monks of old, besides telling their beads, singing psalms, and muttering their breviary, had yet one other duty to perform--the transcription of books. and i think there is sufficient evidence that they fulfilled this obligation with as much zeal as those of a more strictly monastic or religious nature. it is true, in casting our eye over the history of their labors, many regrets will arise that they did not manifest a little more taste and refinement in their choice of books for transcribing. the classical scholar will wish the holy monks had thought more about his darling authors of greece and rome; but the pious puritan historian blames them for patronizing the romantic allurements of ovid, or the loose satires of juvenal, and throws out some slanderous hint that they must have found a sympathy in those pages of licentiousness, or why so anxious to preserve them? the protestant is still more scandalized, and denounces the monks, their books, scriptorium and all together as part and parcel of popish craft and romish superstition. but surely the crimes of popedom and the evils of monachism, that thing of dry bones and fabricated relics, are bad enough; and the protestant cause is sufficiently holy, that we may afford to be honest if we cannot to be generous. what good purpose then will it serve to cavil at the monks forever? all readers of history know how corrupt they became in the fifteenth century; how many evils were wrought by the craft of some of them, and how pernicious the system ultimately waxed. we can all, i say, reflect upon these things, and guard against them in future; but it is not just to apply the same indiscriminate censure to all ages. many of the purest christians of the church, the brightest ornaments of christ's simple flock, were barefooted cowled monks of the cloister; devout perhaps to a fault, with simplicity verging on superstition; yet nevertheless faithful, pious men, and holy. look at all this with an eye of charity; avoid their errors and manifold faults: but to forget the loathsome thing our minds have conjured up as the type of an ancient monk. remember they had a few books to read, and venerated something more than the dry bones of long withered saints. their god was our god, and their saviour, let us trust, will be our saviour. i am well aware that many other names might have been added to those mentioned in the foregoing pages, equally deserving remembrance, and offering pleasing anecdotes of a student's life, or illustrating the early history of english learning; many facts and much miscellaneous matter i have collected in reference to them; but i am fearful whether my readers will regard this subject with sufficient relish to enjoy more illustrations of the same kind. students are apt to get too fond of their particular pursuit, which magnifies in importance with the difficulties of their research, or the duration of their studies. i am uncertain whether this may not be my own position, and wait the decision of my readers before proceeding further in the annals of early bibliomania. moreover as to the simple question--were the monks booklovers? enough i think as been said to prove it, but the enquiry is far from exhausted; and if the reader should deem the matter still equivocal and undecided, he must refer the blame to the feebleness of my pen, rather than to the barrenness of my subject. but let him not fail to mark well the instances i have given; let him look at benedict biscop and his foreign travels after books; at theodore and the early saxons of the seventh century; at boniface, alcuin, ælfric, and the numerous votaries of bibliomania who flourished then. look at the well stored libraries of st. albans, canterbury, ramsey, durham, croyland, peterborough, glastonbury, and their thousand tomes of parchment literature. look at richard de bury and his sweet little work on biographical experience; at whethamstede and his industrious pen; read the rules of monastic orders; the book of cassian; the regulations of st. augustine; benedict fulgentius; and the ancient admonitions of many other holy and ascetic men. search over the remnants and shreds of information which have escaped the ravages of time, and the havoc of cruel invasions relative to these things. attend to the import of these small still whisperings of a forgotten age; and then, letting the eye traverse down the stream of time, mark the great advent of the reformation; that wide gulf of monkish erudition in which was swallowed "whole shyppes full" of olden literature; think well and deeply over the huge bonfires of henry's reign, the flames of which were kindled by the libraries which monkish industry had transcribed. a merry sound no doubt, was the crackling of those "popish books" for protestant ears to feed upon! now all these facts thought of collectively--brought to bear one upon another--seem to favor the opinion my own study has deduced from them; that with all their superstition, with all their ignorance, their blindness to philosophic light--the monks of old were hearty lovers of books; that they encouraged learning, fostered and transcribed repeatedly the books which they had rescued from the destruction of war and time; and so kindly cherished and husbanded them as intellectual food for posterity. such being the case, let our hearts look charitably upon them; and whilst we pity them for their superstition, or blame them for their "pious frauds," love them as brother men and workers in the mines of literature; such a course is far more honorable to the tenor of a christian's heart, than bespattering their memory with foul denunciations. some may accuse me of having shown too much fondness--of having dwelt with a too loving tenderness in my retrospection of the middle ages. but in the course of my studies i have found much to admire. in parchment annals coeval with the times of which they speak, my eyes have traversed over many consecutive pages with increasing interest and with enraptured pleasure. i have read of old deeds worthy of an honored remembrance, where i least expected to find them. i have met with instances of faith as strong as death bringing forth fruit in abundance in those sterile times, and glorying god with its lasting incense. i have met with instances of piety exalted to the heavens--glowing like burning lava, and warming the cold dull cloisters of the monks. i have read of many a student who spent the long night in exploring mysteries of the bible truths; and have seen him sketched by a monkish pencil with his ponderous volumes spread around him, and the oil burning brightly by his side. i have watched him in his little cell thus depicted on the ancient parchment, and have sympathized with his painful difficulties in acquiring true knowledge, or enlightened wisdom, within the convent walls; and then i have read the pages of his fellow monk--perhaps, his book-companion; and heard what _he_ had to say of that poor lonely bible student, and have learnt with sadness how often truth had been extinguished from his mind by superstition, or learning cramped by his monkish prejudices; but it has not always been so, and i have enjoyed a more gladdening view on finding in the monk a bible teacher; and in another, a profound historian, or pleasing annalist. as a christian, the recollection of these cheering facts, with which my researches have been blessed, are pleasurable, and lead me to look back upon those old times with a student's fondness. but besides piety and virtue, i have met with wisdom and philanthropy; the former, too profound, and the latter, too generous for the age; but these things are precious, and worth remembering; and how can i speak of them but in words of kindness? it is these traits of worth and goodness that have gained my sympathies, and twined round my heart, and not the dark stains on the monkish page of history; these i have always striven to forget, or to remember them only when i thought experience might profit by them; for they offer a terrible lesson of blood, tyranny and anguish. but this dark and gloomy side is the one which from our infancy has ever been before us; we learnt it when a child from our tutor; or at college, or at school; we learnt it in the pages of our best and purest writers; learnt that in those old days nought existed, but bloodshed, tyranny, and anguish; but we never thought once to gaze at the scene behind, and behold the workings of human charity and love; if we had, we should have found that the same passions, the same affections, and the same hopes and fears existed then as now, and our sympathies would have been won by learning that we were reading of brother men, fellow christians, and fellow-companions in the church of christ. we have hitherto looked, when casting a backward glance at those long gone ages of inanimation, with the severity of a judge upon a criminal; but to understand him properly we must regard them with the tender compassion of a parent; for if our art, our science, and our philosophy exalts us far above them, is that a proof that there was nothing admirable, nothing that can call forth our love on that infant state, or in the annals of our civilization at its early growth? but let it not be thought that if i have striven to retrieve from the dust and gloom of antiquity, the remembrance of old things that are worthy; that i feel any love for the superstition with which we find them blended. there is much that is good connected with those times; talent even that is worth imitating, and art that we may be proud to learn, which is beginning after the elapse of centuries to arrest the attention of the ingenious, and the love of these, naturally revive with the discovery; but we need not fear in this resurrection of old things of other days, that the superstition and weakness of the middle ages; that the veneration for dry bones and saintly dust, can live again. i do not wish to make the past assume a superiority over the present; but i think a contemplation of mediæval art would often open a new avenue of thought and lead to many a pleasing and profitable discovery; i would too add the efforts of my feeble pen to elevate and ennoble the fond pursuit of my leisure hours. i would say one word to vindicate the lover of old musty writings, and the explorer of rude antiquities, from the charge of unprofitableness, and to protect him from the sneer of ridicule. for whilst some see in the dry studies of the antiquary a mere inquisitiveness after forgotten facts and worthless relics; i can see, nay, have felt, something morally elevating in the exercise of these inquiries. it is not the mere fact which may sometimes be gained by rubbing off the parochial whitewash from ancient tablets, or the encrusted oxide from monumental brasses, that render the study of ancient relics so attractive; but it is the deductions which may sometimes be drawn from them. the light which they sometimes cast on obscure parts of history, and the fine touches of human sensibility, which their eulogies and monodies bespeak, that instruct or elevate the mind, and make the student's heart beat with holier and loftier feelings. but it is not my duty here to enter into the motives, the benefits, or the most profitable manner of studying antiquity; if it were, i would strive to show how much superior it is to become an original investigator, a practical antiquary, than a mere borrower from others. for the most delightful moments of the student's course is when he rambles personally among the ruins and remnants of long gone ages; sometimes painful are such sights, even deeply so; but never to a righteous mind are they unprofitable, much less exerting a narrowing tendency on the mind, or cramping the gushing of human feeling; for cold, indeed, must be the heart that can behold strong walls tottering to decay, and fretted vaults, mutilated and dismantled of their pristine beauty; that can behold the proud strongholds of baronial power and feudal tyranny, the victims of the lichen or creeping parasites of the ivy tribe; cold, i say, must be the heart that can see such things, and draw no lesson from them. index. adam de botheby, abbot of peterborough, 145. adam, abbot of evesham, 196. adrian iv., pope of rome, anecdote of, 259, 260. ælfric, archbishop of canterbury, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73. ælfride, king of northumbria, 160, 163. ælsinus, the scribe, 232. ailward's gift of books to evesham monastery, 195. albans, abbey of st.--_see_ st. albans. alcuin, verses by, 33, 179, 180. letters of, 98, 175, 181. his bible, 177. love of books, 173, 176, 182. aldred, the glossator, 95. aldwine, bishop of lindesfarne, 99. alfred the great, 151. angell de pisa, a franciscan friar, 291. angraville.--_see_ richard de bury. anselm, 77, 78. antiquarii, 42, 43. arno, archbishop of salzburgh, library of, 183, 184. armarian, duties of the monkish, 13. aristotle; translation used by the schoolmen, 290. ascelin, prior of dover, 90. augustine, st., his copy of the bible and other books, 79. baldwin, abbot of, st. edmund's bury, 242. bale on the destruction of books at the reformation, 8. barkley's description of a bibliomaniac, 301, 302, 303, 304. basingstoke and his greek books, 267. bede the venerable, 129, 162, 163, 170, 243. bek, anthony, bishop of durham, 104. benedict, abbot of peterborough, and his books, 142, 143. benedict, biscop of wearmouth, and his book tours, 157, 158. bible among the monks in the middle ages, 79, 89, 101, 104, 129, 144, 163, 177, 193, 194, 196, 207, 208, 211, 212, 233, 234, 237, 260, 261. bible, monkish care in copying the, 36, 177. bible, errors in printed copies, 36. bible, translations of, 71, 72, 156, 185, 296, _note_. bible, illustrations of the scarcity of the, in the middle ages, 40, 41, 89, 148, 231. bible, students in the middle ages, 36, 71, 75, 88, 104, 144, 163, 168, 177, 184. bilfrid the illuminator, 95. binding, costly, 54, 85, 93, 246, 247, 258, 261, 262, 263, 273. blessing--monkish blessing on books, 25. boniface the saxon missionary, 45, 164, 165, 166, 167. books allowed the monks for private reading, 20. books-destroyers, 6, 7, 8, 9, 195, 282. books sent to oxford by the monks of durham, 105. book-stalls, antiquity of, 123. booksellers in the middle ages, 46, 47. britone the librarian--his catalogue of books in glastonbury abbey, 208. bruges, john de, a monk of coventry, and his books, 191. cædmon, the saxon poet, 185. canterbury monastery, etc., 61. canute, the song of, 244. care in transcribing, 33, 68. carelepho, bishop of durham, 101. carmelite, 287, 297. carpenter, bishop, built and endowed a library in exeter church, 194. catalogues of monastic libraries, 10, 14, 82, 83, 102, 129, 130, 142, 147, 179, 180, 190, 191, 208, 209, 210, 211, 219, 220, 237. catalogue of the books of guy beauchamp, earl of warwick, 283, 284, 285. charles v. of france--his fine library. charlemagne's bible, 177, his library, 184. chartey's, william, catalogue of the library of st. mary's at leicester, 148. chiclely, henry, archbishop of canterbury, 86. cistercian monks in england, 221. classics among the monks in the middle ages, 60, 84, 87, 101, 102, 116, 122, 129, 148, 190, 200, 208, 225, 226, 232, 233, 240. classics, monkish opinion of the, 23, 227. classics found in monasteries at the revival of learning, 58, 59, 60. cluniac monks in england, 221. cobham, eleanor duchess of gloucester, 277, 278. cobham, bishop, founded the library at oxford, 194. collier on the destruction of books, 8. converting miracles, 166. coventry church, 191. coventry miracles, 299. croyland monastery, library of, 135. cuthbert's gospels, 93, 129. danes in england, 95, 138, 139, 140. daniel, bishop of winchester, 168. de bury.--_see_ richard de bury. de estria and his catalogue of canterbury library, 81. depying priory, catalogue of the library of, 234. dover library, 90. dunstan, saint, 64, 65. eadburge--abbess, transcribes books for boniface, 169, 170. eadfrid, abbot of st. albans, 249. eadmer, abbot of st. albans, 251, 252. ealdred, abbot of st. albans, 250. eardulphus, or eurdulphus, bishop of lindesfarne, 96. ecgfrid and his queen, 242. edmunds bury, st., 241. edwine the scribe, 79. effects of gospel reading, 236. effects of the reformation on monkish learning, 8. egbert, archbishop of york, 170, 173, his library, 179, 180. egebric, abbot of croyland, his gift of books to the library, 137. egfrith, bishop of lindesfarne, 93. eleanor cobham, duchess of gloucester, 277, 278. ethelbert, 87. etheldredæ founds the monastery of ely, 243. ethelwold, bishop of winchester his love of architecture, 229, 244, his fine benedictional, 230. ely monastery, 243, 244. extracts from the account books of, 245. erventus the illuminator, 147. esseburn, henry, 296. evesham monastery, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204. fathers, veneration for the, 38, 39. frederic, abbot of st. albans, 253. franciscan library at oxford, 294. friars, mendicant, 115, 116, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294. geoffry de gorham, abbot of st. albans, 255, 256. gerbert, extract from a letter of, 45. gift of books to richard de bury by the monks of st. albans, 121. glanvill, bishop of rochester, 91. glastonbury abbey, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214. gloucester abbey, 218. godeman, abbot of gloucester, 218. godemann the scribe, 231, 232. godfrey, abbot of peterborough, 145, 146. godinge the librarian to exeter church, 193, 194. godiva, lady and her good deeds, 193, 194. gospels, notices of among the monks in the middle ages, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 129, 139, 140, 141, 142, 169, 196, 217, 221, 244, 245, 246, _note_, 255, 262. graystane, robert de, 105. grostest, robert, bishop of lincoln, 292, 293. gundulph, bishop of rochester, 87. guthlac, st., of croyland, 135. guy, earl of warwick, his gift of books to bordesley abbey, 283, 284, 285. hebrew manuscripts among the monks, 238, 293, 294. henry the second of england, 223, 227. henry de estria and his catalogue of canterbury library, 81. henry, a monk of hyde abbey, 231, 232. hilda, 184. holdernesse, abbot of peterborough, 145. hoton, prior of durham, 105. hubert walter, archbishop of canterbury, 79. hunting practised by the monks and churchmen, 224. humphrey, duke of gloucester, 275. his domestic troubles, 277, 278, 279. his death, 279. lydgate's verses upon, 280, 281. his gift of books to oxford, 281, 282, 283. illuminated mss., 54. ina, king of the west saxons, 206. jarrow, 157. john de bruges of coventry church, 191. john, prior of evesham, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204. john of taunton, a monk of glastonbury, his catalogue of books, 208. kenulfus, abbot of peterborough, 141. kinfernus, archbishop of york, gift of the gospels to peterborough monastery, 141. kildwardly, archbishop of canterbury, 79. lanfranc, archbishop of canterbury, 75. langley, thomas, 131. laws of the universities over booksellers, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52. lending books, system of among the monks, 17, 20; by the booksellers, 52. leoffin, abbot of ely, 244. leofric, abbot of st. albans, 249. leofric, bishop of exeter, 218; his private library, 219. leofricke, earl of mercia, 192. leofricus, abbot of peterborough, 141. leicester, abbey of st. mary de la pré, at, 148, 149. libraries in the middle ages.--_see_ catalogues. libraries, how supported, 24, 25, 79, 198, 199. librarii, or booksellers, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49. lindesfarne, 93. livy, the lost decades of, 214. lul, majestro, 168, 169. lulla, bishop of coena, 171. lydgate's verses on baldwin, abbot of st. edmunds bury, 242; on duke humphrey, 280, 281. malmsbury monastery, 214. malmsbury, william of, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219. mannius, abbot of evesham, his skill in illuminating, 195. manuscripts, ancient, described, 78, 79, 186, 187. manuscripts, collections of, 5. marleberg, thomas of, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202. medeshamstede, 139. mendicant friars, 115, 116, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294. michael de wentmore, abbot of st. albans, and his _multis voluminibus_, 268. milton and cædmon compared, 188. monachism, 29, 36, 307, 308, 309. monastic training, 263, 264, 265. monks, the preservers of books, 29. nicholas, of st. albans, 267, 292. nicholas brekspere, 259, 260. nicholas hereford, of evesham, 203, 204. nigel, bishop of ely, 244, 245, 246. norman conquest. effect of the, 74. northone, abbot of st. albans, 267. nothelm, archbishop of canterbury, 64, 171. offa, king, 4, 192, 247. alcuin's letter to, 175. osbern, of shepey, 91. oswald, bishop of worcester, 24, 193. paul or paulinus, of st. albans, 77, 253. peter of blois, archdeacon of london, 47, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228. peter, abbot of gloucester, 218. peterborough monastery, 138. library, 147, 148. petrarch, 107, 108, 109. philobiblon, by richard de bury, 112. prior john, of evesham, 199. puritans destroy the library in worcester church, 194. purple manuscripts, 54. pusar, hugh de, bishop of durham, 103. radolphus, bishop of rochester, 90. ralph de gobium, abbot of st. albans, 257, 258. ramsey abbey, 237. hebrew mss. at ramsey, 239. classics, 240. raymond, prior of st. albans, 262, 263. reading abbey. library of, 233. reginald, archdeacon of salisbury, reproved for his love of falconry, 227. reginald, of evesham, 196. richard de albini, 255. richard de bury, 17, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 268. richard de stowe, 218. richard of london, 145. richard wallingford, abbot of st. albans, 121. richard whiting, the last abbot of glastonbury, 213, 214. ridiculous signs for books.--_see_ signs. rievall monastery, library of, 190, 191, 192. robert de gorham, abbot of st. albans, 257, 258. robert, of lyndeshye, 144. robert, of sutton, 145. roger de northone, 267. roger de thoris, archdeacon of exeter. gift of books to the friars at exeter, 294, 295. rhypum monastery; gift of books to, 163. scarcity of parchment, 56, 57, 245, 246. scholastic philosophy, 289. scribes, monkish, 44. scriptoria, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 198, 199, 253, 254. sellinge, william, prior of canterbury, 86. signs for books used by the monks, 22, 23. simon, abbot of st. albans, 260. st. alban's abbey, 120, 121, 247, _et seq._ st. joseph, of arimathea, 206. st. mary's, at coventry, 191, 192. st. mary's de la pré, at leicester. library of, 149. stylus or pen, 154. tatwine, archbishop of canterbury, 63. taunton, john of, 208. taunton, william of, 211. theodore of tarsus, archbishop of canterbury, 62. thomas de la mare, abbot of st. albans, 268. thomas of marleberg, prior of evesham, 197. trompington, william de, abbot of st. albans, 265, 266. tully's de republica, 86. valerius maximus, duke humphrey's copy of, 282. value of books in the middle ages, 54, 203, 204, 245, 273, 282, 283, 295. verses written in books by whethamstede, 274. verulam, ruins of, excavated by eadmer, of st. albans, 250. waleran, bishop of rochester, 91. walter, bishop of rochester, 91. walter, bishop of winchester, fond of hunting, 224, 225. walter, of evesham, 196. walter, of st. edmunds bury, 145. walter, prior of st. swithin, 231. wearmouth, monastery of, 157. wentmore, abbot of st. albans, 268. whethamstede, abbot of st. albans, 268, 269; his works, 272; gift of books to gloucester college, 274. whitby abbey, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189. wilfrid, 162, 163, 243. willigod, abbot of st. albans, 248. william, of wodeforde, 145. winchester, famous for his scribes, 168, 229, 230, 231, 232. worcester, church of, 192. wulstan, archbishop of york, 147. york cathedral library, 179, 180. transcriber's notes 1. footnotes 293, 386 are not anchored in the page image. a best guess has been made as to their anchor point. 2. refer to the image for the black letter poems as the yogh/ezh & thorn/h characters are difficult to distinguish. other internet sources show vastly different interpretations for the text of 'a plaie called corpus christi'. 3. hyphenation has been left as printed inconsistencies are: bookloving, book-loving booklover, book-lover bookworms, book-worms goodwill, good-will halfpenny, half-penny protomartyr, proto-martyr reread, re-read 4. punctuation, particularly in footnotes has been standardised. 5. spelling inconsistencies between proper names in the text and index entries have been standardised. the original spelling has been noted. inconsistencies in the spelling of proper names within the text have been left as printed. 6. numerous quotation marks have been added to the text. please see the html version for details of where they have been added. 7. other corrections which have been made are: footnote 21, "gubernnatione" changed to "gubernatione" page 86, "chicleley" changed to "chiclely" page 91, "shebey" changed to "shepey" footnote 134, "catherbury" changed to "canterbury" page 113, "biblomaniac" changed to "bibliomaniac" page 138, "madeshamsted" changed to "medeshamstede" page 152, "descrimination" changed to "discrimination" page 218, "godemon" changed to "godeman" footnote 367, "alward" changed to "ailward" page 257, "gebium" changed to "gobium" page 312, "mediævel" changed to "mediæval" page 315, "salzburg" changed to "salzburgh" page 317, "ecfrid" changed to "ecgfrid" page 319, "kernulfus" changed to "kenulfus" page 319, "leofin" changed to "leoffin" page 319, 322, "pre" changed to "pré" page 320, "marlebergh" changed to "marleberg" page 321, "ryphum" changed to "rhypum" page 321, "sellynge" changed to "sellinge" page 322, "tatwyne" changed to "tatwine" page 322, "tharsus" changed to "tarsus" page 322, "wodeford" changed to "wodeforde" the golden bowl volumes i and ii, complete by henry james 1904 book first: the prince part first i the prince had always liked his london, when it had come to him; he was one of the modern romans who find by the thames a more convincing image of the truth of the ancient state than any they have left by the tiber. brought up on the legend of the city to which the world paid tribute, he recognised in the present london much more than in contemporary rome the real dimensions of such a case. if it was a question of an imperium, he said to himself, and if one wished, as a roman, to recover a little the sense of that, the place to do so was on london bridge, or even, on a fine afternoon in may, at hyde park corner. it was not indeed to either of those places that these grounds of his predilection, after all sufficiently vague, had, at the moment we are concerned with him, guided his steps; he had strayed, simply enough, into bond street, where his imagination, working at comparatively short range, caused him now and then to stop before a window in which objects massive and lumpish, in silver and gold, in the forms to which precious stones contribute, or in leather, steel, brass, applied to a hundred uses and abuses, were as tumbled together as if, in the insolence of the empire, they had been the loot of far-off victories. the young man’s movements, however, betrayed no consistency of attention--not even, for that matter, when one of his arrests had proceeded from possibilities in faces shaded, as they passed him on the pavement, by huge beribboned hats, or more delicately tinted still under the tense silk of parasols held at perverse angles in waiting victorias. and the prince’s undirected thought was not a little symptomatic, since, though the turn of the season had come and the flush of the streets begun to fade, the possibilities of faces, on the august afternoon, were still one of the notes of the scene. he was too restless--that was the fact--for any concentration, and the last idea that would just now have occurred to him in any connection was the idea of pursuit. he had been pursuing for six months as never in his life before, and what had actually unsteadied him, as we join him, was the sense of how he had been justified. capture had crowned the pursuit--or success, as he would otherwise have put it, had rewarded virtue; whereby the consciousness of these things made him, for the hour, rather serious than gay. a sobriety that might have consorted with failure sat in his handsome face, constructively regular and grave, yet at the same time oddly and, as might be, functionally almost radiant, with its dark blue eyes, its dark brown moustache and its expression no more sharply “foreign” to an english view than to have caused it sometimes to be observed of him with a shallow felicity that he looked like a “refined” irishman. what had happened was that shortly before, at three o’clock, his fate had practically been sealed, and that even when one pretended to no quarrel with it the moment had something of the grimness of a crunched key in the strongest lock that could be made. there was nothing to do as yet, further, but feel what one had done, and our personage felt it while he aimlessly wandered. it was already as if he were married, so definitely had the solicitors, at three o’clock, enabled the date to be fixed, and by so few days was that date now distant. he was to dine at half-past eight o’clock with the young lady on whose behalf, and on whose father’s, the london lawyers had reached an inspired harmony with his own man of business, poor calderoni, fresh from rome and now apparently in the wondrous situation of being “shown london,” before promptly leaving it again, by mr. verver himself, mr. verver whose easy way with his millions had taxed to such small purpose, in the arrangements, the principle of reciprocity. the reciprocity with which the prince was during these minutes most struck was that of calderoni’s bestowal of his company for a view of the lions. if there was one thing in the world the young man, at this juncture, clearly intended, it was to be much more decent as a son-in-law than lots of fellows he could think of had shown themselves in that character. he thought of these fellows, from whom he was so to differ, in english; he used, mentally, the english term to describe his difference, for, familiar with the tongue from his earliest years, so that no note of strangeness remained with him either for lip or for ear, he found it convenient, in life, for the greatest number of relations. he found it convenient, oddly, even for his relation with himself--though not unmindful that there might still, as time went on, be others, including a more intimate degree of that one, that would seek, possibly with violence, the larger or the finer issue--which was it?--of the vernacular. miss verver had told him he spoke english too well--it was his only fault, and he had not been able to speak worse even to oblige her. “when i speak worse, you see, i speak french,” he had said; intimating thus that there were discriminations, doubtless of the invidious kind, for which that language was the most apt. the girl had taken this, she let him know, as a reflection on her own french, which she had always so dreamed of making good, of making better; to say nothing of his evident feeling that the idiom supposed a cleverness she was not a person to rise to. the prince’s answer to such remarks--genial, charming, like every answer the parties to his new arrangement had yet had from him--was that he was practising his american in order to converse properly, on equal terms as it were, with mr. verver. his prospective father-in-law had a command of it, he said, that put him at a disadvantage in any discussion; besides which--well, besides which he had made to the girl the observation that positively, of all his observations yet, had most finely touched her. “you know i think he’s a real galantuomo--‘and no mistake.’ there are plenty of sham ones about. he seems to me simply the best man i’ve ever seen in my life.” “well, my dear, why shouldn’t he be?” the girl had gaily inquired. it was this, precisely, that had set the prince to think. the things, or many of them, that had made mr. verver what he was seemed practically to bring a charge of waste against the other things that, with the other people known to the young man, had failed of such a result. “why, his ‘form,’” he had returned, “might have made one doubt.” “father’s form?” she hadn’t seen it. “it strikes me he hasn’t got any.” “he hasn’t got mine--he hasn’t even got yours.” “thank you for ‘even’!” the girl had laughed at him. “oh, yours, my dear, is tremendous. but your father has his own. i’ve made that out. so don’t doubt it. it’s where it has brought him out--that’s the point.” “it’s his goodness that has brought him out,” our young woman had, at this, objected. “ah, darling, goodness, i think, never brought anyone out. goodness, when it’s real, precisely, rather keeps people in.” he had been interested in his discrimination, which amused him. “no, it’s his way. it belongs to him.” but she had wondered still. “it’s the american way. that’s all.” “exactly--it’s all. it’s all, i say! it fits him--so it must be good for something.” “do you think it would be good for you?” maggie verver had smilingly asked. to which his reply had been just of the happiest. “i don’t feel, my dear, if you really want to know, that anything much can now either hurt me or help me. such as i am--but you’ll see for yourself. say, however, i am a galantuomo--which i devoutly hope: i’m like a chicken, at best, chopped up and smothered in sauce; cooked down as a creme de volaille, with half the parts left out. your father’s the natural fowl running about the bassecour. his feathers, movements, his sounds--those are the parts that, with me, are left out.” “all, as a matter of course--since you can’t eat a chicken alive!” the prince had not been annoyed at this, but he had been positive. “well, i’m eating your father alive--which is the only way to taste him. i want to continue, and as it’s when he talks american that he is most alive, so i must also cultivate it, to get my pleasure. he couldn’t make one like him so much in any other language.” it mattered little that the girl had continued to demur--it was the mere play of her joy. “i think he could make you like him in chinese.” “it would be an unnecessary trouble. what i mean is that he’s a kind of result of his inevitable tone. my liking is accordingly for the tone--which has made him possible.” “oh, you’ll hear enough of it,” she laughed, “before you’ve done with us.” only this, in truth, had made him frown a little. “what do you mean, please, by my having ‘done’ with you?” “why, found out about us all there is to find.” he had been able to take it indeed easily as a joke. “ah, love, i began with that. i know enough, i feel, never to be surprised. it’s you yourselves meanwhile,” he continued, “who really know nothing. there are two parts of me”--yes, he had been moved to go on. “one is made up of the history, the doings, the marriages, the crimes, the follies, the boundless betises of other people--especially of their infamous waste of money that might have come to me. those things are written--literally in rows of volumes, in libraries; are as public as they’re abominable. everybody can get at them, and you’ve, both of you, wonderfully, looked them in the face. but there’s another part, very much smaller doubtless, which, such as it is, represents my single self, the unknown, unimportant, unimportant--unimportant save to you--personal quantity. about this you’ve found out nothing.” “luckily, my dear,” the girl had bravely said; “for what then would become, please, of the promised occupation of my future?” the young man remembered even now how extraordinarily clear--he couldn’t call it anything else--she had looked, in her prettiness, as she had said it. he also remembered what he had been moved to reply. “the happiest reigns, we are taught, you know, are the reigns without any history.” “oh, i’m not afraid of history!” she had been sure of that. “call it the bad part, if you like--yours certainly sticks out of you. what was it else,” maggie verver had also said, “that made me originally think of you? it wasn’t--as i should suppose you must have seen--what you call your unknown quantity, your particular self. it was the generations behind you, the follies and the crimes, the plunder and the waste--the wicked pope, the monster most of all, whom so many of the volumes in your family library are all about. if i’ve read but two or three yet, i shall give myself up but the more--as soon as i have time--to the rest. where, therefore”--she had put it to him again--“without your archives, annals, infamies, would you have been?” he recalled what, to this, he had gravely returned. “i might have been in a somewhat better pecuniary situation.” but his actual situation under the head in question positively so little mattered to them that, having by that time lived deep into the sense of his advantage, he had kept no impression of the girl’s rejoinder. it had but sweetened the waters in which he now floated, tinted them as by the action of some essence, poured from a gold-topped phial, for making one’s bath aromatic. no one before him, never--not even the infamous pope--had so sat up to his neck in such a bath. it showed, for that matter, how little one of his race could escape, after all, from history. what was it but history, and of their kind very much, to have the assurance of the enjoyment of more money than the palace-builder himself could have dreamed of? this was the element that bore him up and into which maggie scattered, on occasion, her exquisite colouring drops. they were of the colour--of what on earth? of what but the extraordinary american good faith? they were of the colour of her innocence, and yet at the same time of her imagination, with which their relation, his and these people’s, was all suffused. what he had further said on the occasion of which we thus represent him as catching the echoes from his own thoughts while he loitered--what he had further said came back to him, for it had been the voice itself of his luck, the soothing sound that was always with him. “you americans are almost incredibly romantic.” “of course we are. that’s just what makes everything so nice for us.” “everything?” he had wondered. “well, everything that’s nice at all. the world, the beautiful, world--or everything in it that is beautiful. i mean we see so much.” he had looked at her a moment--and he well knew how she had struck him, in respect to the beautiful world, as one of the beautiful, the most beautiful things. but what he had answered was: “you see too much--that’s what may sometimes make you difficulties. when you don’t, at least,” he had amended with a further thought, “see too little.” but he had quite granted that he knew what she meant, and his warning perhaps was needless. he had seen the follies of the romantic disposition, but there seemed somehow no follies in theirs--nothing, one was obliged to recognise, but innocent pleasures, pleasures without penalties. their enjoyment was a tribute to others without being a loss to themselves. only the funny thing, he had respectfully submitted, was that her father, though older and wiser, and a man into the bargain, was as bad--that is as good--as herself. “oh, he’s better,” the girl had freely declared “that is he’s worse. his relation to the things he cares for--and i think it beautiful--is absolutely romantic. so is his whole life over here--it’s the most romantic thing i know.” “you mean his idea for his native place?” “yes--the collection, the museum with which he wishes to endow it, and of which he thinks more, as you know, than of anything in the world. it’s the work of his life and the motive of everything he does.” the young man, in his actual mood, could have smiled again--smiled delicately, as he had then smiled at her. “has it been his motive in letting me have you?” “yes, my dear, positively--or in a manner,” she had said. “american city isn’t, by the way, his native town, for, though he’s not old, it’s a young thing compared with him--a younger one. he started there, he has a feeling about it, and the place has grown, as he says, like the programme of a charity performance. you’re at any rate a part of his collection,” she had explained--“one of the things that can only be got over here. you’re a rarity, an object of beauty, an object of price. you’re not perhaps absolutely unique, but you’re so curious and eminent that there are very few others like you--you belong to a class about which everything is known. you’re what they call a morceau de musee.” “i see. i have the great sign of it,” he had risked--“that i cost a lot of money.” “i haven’t the least idea,” she had gravely answered, “what you cost”--and he had quite adored, for the moment, her way of saying it. he had felt even, for the moment, vulgar. but he had made the best of that. “wouldn’t you find out if it were a question of parting with me? my value would in that case be estimated.” she had looked at him with her charming eyes, as if his value were well before her. “yes, if you mean that i’d pay rather than lose you.” and then there came again what this had made him say. “don’t talk about me--it’s you who are not of this age. you’re a creature of a braver and finer one, and the cinquecento, at its most golden hour, wouldn’t have been ashamed of you. it would of me, and if i didn’t know some of the pieces your father has acquired, i should rather fear, for american city, the criticism of experts. would it at all events be your idea,” he had then just ruefully asked, “to send me there for safety?” “well, we may have to come to it.” “i’ll go anywhere you want.” “we must see first--it will be only if we have to come to it. there are things,” she had gone on, “that father puts away--the bigger and more cumbrous of course, which he stores, has already stored in masses, here and in paris, in italy, in spain, in warehouses, vaults, banks, safes, wonderful secret places. we’ve been like a pair of pirates--positively stage pirates, the sort who wink at each other and say ‘ha-ha!’ when they come to where their treasure is buried. ours is buried pretty well everywhere--except what we like to see, what we travel with and have about us. these, the smaller pieces, are the things we take out and arrange as we can, to make the hotels we stay at and the houses we hire a little less ugly. of course it’s a danger, and we have to keep watch. but father loves a fine piece, loves, as he says, the good of it, and it’s for the company of some of his things that he’s willing to run his risks. and we’ve had extraordinary luck”--maggie had made that point; “we’ve never lost anything yet. and the finest objects are often the smallest. values, in lots of cases, you must know, have nothing to do with size. but there’s nothing, however tiny,” she had wound up, “that we’ve missed.” “i like the class,” he had laughed for this, “in which you place me! i shall be one of the little pieces that you unpack at the hotels, or at the worst in the hired houses, like this wonderful one, and put out with the family photographs and the new magazines. but it’s something not to be so big that i have to be buried.” “oh,” she had returned, “you shall not be buried, my dear, till you’re dead. unless indeed you call it burial to go to american city.” “before i pronounce i should like to see my tomb.” so he had had, after his fashion, the last word in their interchange, save for the result of an observation that had risen to his lips at the beginning, which he had then checked, and which now came back to him. “good, bad or indifferent, i hope there’s one thing you believe about me.” he had sounded solemn, even to himself, but she had taken it gaily. “ah, don’t fix me down to ‘one’! i believe things enough about you, my dear, to have a few left if most of them, even, go to smash. i’ve taken care of that. i’ve divided my faith into water-tight compartments. we must manage not to sink.” “you do believe i’m not a hypocrite? you recognise that i don’t lie or dissemble or deceive? is that water-tight?” the question, to which he had given a certain intensity, had made her, he remembered, stare an instant, her colour rising as if it had sounded to her still stranger than he had intended. he had perceived on the spot that any serious discussion of veracity, of loyalty, or rather of the want of them, practically took her unprepared, as if it were quite new to her. he had noticed it before: it was the english, the american sign that duplicity, like “love,” had to be joked about. it couldn’t be “gone into.” so the note of his inquiry was--well, to call it nothing else-premature; a mistake worth making, however, for the almost overdone drollery in which her answer instinctively sought refuge. “water-tight--the biggest compartment of all? why, it’s the best cabin and the main deck and the engine-room and the steward’s pantry! it’s the ship itself--it’s the whole line. it’s the captain’s table and all one’s luggage--one’s reading for the trip.” she had images, like that, that were drawn from steamers and trains, from a familiarity with “lines,” a command of “own” cars, from an experience of continents and seas, that he was unable as yet to emulate; from vast modern machineries and facilities whose acquaintance he had still to make, but as to which it was part of the interest of his situation as it stood that he could, quite without wincing, feel his future likely to bristle with them. it was in fact, content as he was with his engagement and charming as he thought his affianced bride, his view of that furniture that mainly constituted our young man’s “romance”--and to an extent that made of his inward state a contrast that he was intelligent enough to feel. he was intelligent enough to feel quite humble, to wish not to be in the least hard or voracious, not to insist on his own side of the bargain, to warn himself in short against arrogance and greed. odd enough, of a truth, was his sense of this last danger--which may illustrate moreover his general attitude toward dangers from within. personally, he considered, he hadn’t the vices in question--and that was so much to the good. his race, on the other hand, had had them handsomely enough, and he was somehow full of his race. its presence in him was like the consciousness of some inexpugnable scent in which his clothes, his whole person, his hands and the hair of his head, might have been steeped as in some chemical bath: the effect was nowhere in particular, yet he constantly felt himself at the mercy of the cause. he knew his antenatal history, knew it in every detail, and it was a thing to keep causes well before him. what was his frank judgment of so much of its ugliness, he asked himself, but a part of the cultivation of humility? what was this so important step he had just taken but the desire for some new history that should, so far as possible, contradict, and even if need be flatly dishonour, the old? if what had come to him wouldn’t do he must make something different. he perfectly recognised--always in his humility--that the material for the making had to be mr. verver’s millions. there was nothing else for him on earth to make it with; he had tried before--had had to look about and see the truth. humble as he was, at the same time, he was not so humble as if he had known himself frivolous or stupid. he had an idea--which may amuse his historian--that when you were stupid enough to be mistaken about such a matter you did know it. therefore he wasn’t mistaken--his future might be might be scientific. there was nothing in himself, at all events, to prevent it. he was allying himself to science, for what was science but the absence of prejudice backed by the presence of money? his life would be full of machinery, which was the antidote to superstition, which was in its turn, too much, the consequence, or at least the exhalation, of archives. he thought of these--of his not being at all events futile, and of his absolute acceptance of the developments of the coming age to redress the balance of his being so differently considered. the moments when he most winced were those at which he found himself believing that, really, futility would have been forgiven him. even with it, in that absurd view, he would have been good enough. such was the laxity, in the ververs, of the romantic spirit. they didn’t, indeed, poor dears, know what, in that line--the line of futility--the real thing meant. he did-having seen it, having tried it, having taken its measure. this was a memory in fact simply to screen out--much as, just in front of him while he walked, the iron shutter of a shop, closing early to the stale summer day, rattled down at the turn of some crank. there was machinery again, just as the plate glass, all about him, was money, was power, the power of the rich peoples. well, he was of them now, of the rich peoples; he was on their side--if it wasn’t rather the pleasanter way of putting it that they were on his. something of this sort was in any case the moral and the murmur of his walk. it would have been ridiculous--such a moral from such a source--if it hadn’t all somehow fitted to the gravity of the hour, that gravity the oppression of which i began by recording. another feature was the immediate nearness of the arrival of the contingent from home. he was to meet them at charing cross on the morrow: his younger brother, who had married before him, but whose wife, of hebrew race, with a portion that had gilded the pill, was not in a condition to travel; his sister and her husband, the most anglicised of milanesi, his maternal uncle, the most shelved of diplomatists, and his roman cousin, don ottavio, the most disponible of ex-deputies and of relatives--a scant handful of the consanguineous who, in spite of maggie’s plea for hymeneal reserve, were to accompany him to the altar. it was no great array, yet it was apparently to be a more numerous muster than any possible to the bride herself, having no wealth of kinship to choose from and making it up, on the other hand, by loose invitations. he had been interested in the girl’s attitude on the matter and had wholly deferred to it, giving him, as it did, a glimpse, distinctly pleasing, of the kind of ruminations she would in general be governed by--which were quite such as fell in with his own taste. they hadn’t natural relations, she and her father, she had explained; so they wouldn’t try to supply the place by artificial, by make-believe ones, by any searching of highways and hedges. oh yes, they had acquaintances enough--but a marriage was an intimate thing. you asked acquaintances when you had your kith and kin--you asked them over and above. but you didn’t ask them alone, to cover your nudity and look like what they weren’t. she knew what she meant and what she liked, and he was all ready to take from her, finding a good omen in both of the facts. he expected her, desired her, to have character; his wife should have it, and he wasn’t afraid of her having much. he had had, in his earlier time, to deal with plenty of people who had had it; notably with the three four ecclesiastics, his great-uncle, the cardinal, above all, who had taken a hand and played a part in his education: the effect of all of which had never been to upset him. he was thus fairly on the look-out for the characteristic in this most intimate, as she was to come, of his associates. he encouraged it when it appeared. he felt therefore, just at present, as if his papers were in order, as if his accounts so balanced as they had never done in his life before and he might close the portfolio with a snap. it would open again, doubtless, of itself, with the arrival of the romans; it would even perhaps open with his dining to-night in portland place, where mr. verver had pitched a tent suggesting that of alexander furnished with the spoils of darius. but what meanwhile marked his crisis, as i have said, was his sense of the immediate two or three hours. he paused on corners, at crossings; there kept rising for him, in waves, that consciousness, sharp as to its source while vague as to its end, which i began by speaking of--the consciousness of an appeal to do something or other, before it was too late, for himself. by any friend to whom he might have mentioned it the appeal could have been turned to frank derision. for what, for whom indeed but himself and the high advantages attached, was he about to marry an extraordinarily charming girl, whose “prospects,” of the solid sort, were as guaranteed as her amiability? he wasn’t to do it, assuredly, all for her. the prince, as happened, however, was so free to feel and yet not to formulate that there rose before him after a little, definitely, the image of a friend whom he had often found ironic. he withheld the tribute of attention from passing faces only to let his impulse accumulate. youth and beauty made him scarcely turn, but the image of mrs. assingham made him presently stop a hansom. her youth, her beauty were things more or less of the past, but to find her at home, as he possibly might, would be “doing” what he still had time for, would put something of a reason into his restlessness and thereby probably soothe it. to recognise the propriety of this particular pilgrimage--she lived far enough off, in long cadogan place--was already in fact to work it off a little. a perception of the propriety of formally thanking her, and of timing the act just as he happened to be doing--this, he made out as he went, was obviously all that had been the matter with him. it was true that he had mistaken the mood of the moment, misread it rather, superficially, as an impulse to look the other way--the other way from where his pledges had accumulated. mrs. assingham, precisely, represented, embodied his pledges--was, in her pleasant person, the force that had set them successively in motion. she had made his marriage, quite as truly as his papal ancestor had made his family--though he could scarce see what she had made it for unless because she too was perversely romantic. he had neither bribed nor persuaded her, had given her nothing--scarce even till now articulate thanks; so that her profit-to think of it vulgarly--must have all had to come from the ververs. yet he was far, he could still remind himself, from supposing that she had been grossly remunerated. he was wholly sure she hadn’t; for if there were people who took presents and people who didn’t she would be quite on the right side and of the proud class. only then, on the other hand, her disinterestedness was rather awful--it implied, that is, such abysses of confidence. she was admirably attached to maggie--whose possession of such a friend might moreover quite rank as one of her “assets”; but the great proof of her affection had been in bringing them, with her design, together. meeting him during a winter in rome, meeting him afterwards in paris, and “liking” him, as she had in time frankly let him know from the first, she had marked him for her young friend’s own and had then, unmistakably, presented him in a light. but the interest in maggie--that was the point--would have achieved but little without her interest in him. on what did that sentiment, unsolicited and unrecompensed, rest? what good, again--for it was much like his question about mr. verver--should he ever have done her? the prince’s notion of a recompense to women--similar in this to his notion of an appeal--was more or less to make love to them. now he hadn’t, as he believed, made love the least little bit to mrs. assingham--nor did he think she had for a moment supposed it. he liked in these days, to mark them off, the women to whom he hadn’t made love: it represented-and that was what pleased him in it--a different stage of existence from the time at which he liked to mark off the women to whom he had. neither, with all this, had mrs. assingham herself been either aggressive or resentful. on what occasion, ever, had she appeared to find him wanting? these things, the motives of such people, were obscure--a little alarmingly so; they contributed to that element of the impenetrable which alone slightly qualified his sense of his good fortune. he remembered to have read, as a boy, a wonderful tale by allan poe, his prospective wife’s countryman-which was a thing to show, by the way, what imagination americans could have: the story of the shipwrecked gordon pym, who, drifting in a small boat further toward the north pole--or was it the south?--than anyone had ever done, found at a given moment before him a thickness of white air that was like a dazzling curtain of light, concealing as darkness conceals, yet of the colour of milk or of snow. there were moments when he felt his own boat move upon some such mystery. the state of mind of his new friends, including mrs. assingham herself, had resemblances to a great white curtain. he had never known curtains but as purple even to blackness--but as producing where they hung a darkness intended and ominous. when they were so disposed as to shelter surprises the surprises were apt to be shocks. shocks, however, from these quite different depths, were not what he saw reason to apprehend; what he rather seemed to himself not yet to have measured was something that, seeking a name for it, he would have called the quantity of confidence reposed in him. he had stood still, at many a moment of the previous month, with the thought, freshly determined or renewed, of the general expectation--to define it roughly--of which he was the subject. what was singular was that it seemed not so much an expectation of anything in particular as a large, bland, blank assumption of merits almost beyond notation, of essential quality and value. it was as if he had been some old embossed coin, of a purity of gold no longer used, stamped with glorious arms, mediaeval, wonderful, of which the “worth” in mere modern change, sovereigns and half crowns, would be great enough, but as to which, since there were finer ways of using it, such taking to pieces was superfluous. that was the image for the security in which it was open to him to rest; he was to constitute a possession, yet was to escape being reduced to his component parts. what would this mean but that, practically, he was never to be tried or tested? what would it mean but that, if they didn’t “change” him, they really wouldn’t know--he wouldn’t know himself--how many pounds, shillings and pence he had to give? these at any rate, for the present, were unanswerable questions; all that was before him was that he was invested with attributes. he was taken seriously. lost there in the white mist was the seriousness in them that made them so take him. it was even in mrs. assingham, in spite of her having, as she had frequently shown, a more mocking spirit. all he could say as yet was that he had done nothing, so far as to break any charm. what should he do if he were to ask her frankly this afternoon what was, morally speaking, behind their veil. it would come to asking what they expected him to do. she would answer him probably: “oh, you know, it’s what we expect you to be!” on which he would have no resource but to deny his knowledge. would that break the spell, his saying he had no idea? what idea in fact could he have? he also took himself seriously--made a point of it; but it wasn’t simply a question of fancy and pretension. his own estimate he saw ways, at one time and another, of dealing with: but theirs, sooner or later, say what they might, would put him to the practical proof. as the practical proof, accordingly, would naturally be proportionate to the cluster of his attributes, one arrived at a scale that he was not, honestly, the man to calculate. who but a billionaire could say what was fair exchange for a billion? that measure was the shrouded object, but he felt really, as his cab stopped in cadogan place, a little nearer the shroud. he promised himself, virtually, to give the latter a twitch. ii “they’re not good days, you know,” he had said to fanny assingham after declaring himself grateful for finding her, and then, with his cup of tea, putting her in possession of the latest news--the documents signed an hour ago, de part et d’autre, and the telegram from his backers, who had reached paris the morning before, and who, pausing there a little, poor dears, seemed to think the whole thing a tremendous lark. “we’re very simple folk, mere country cousins compared with you,” he had also observed, “and paris, for my sister and her husband, is the end of the world. london therefore will be more or less another planet. it has always been, as with so many of us, quite their mecca, but this is their first real caravan; they’ve mainly known ‘old england’ as a shop for articles in india-rubber and leather, in which they’ve dressed themselves as much as possible. which all means, however, that you’ll see them, all of them, wreathed in smiles. we must be very easy with them. maggie’s too wonderful--her preparations are on a scale! she insists on taking in the sposi and my uncle. the others will come to me. i’ve been engaging their rooms at the hotel, and, with all those solemn signatures of an hour ago, that brings the case home to me.” “do you mean you’re afraid?” his hostess had amusedly asked. “terribly afraid. i’ve now but to wait to see the monster come. they’re not good days; they’re neither one thing nor the other. i’ve really got nothing, yet i’ve everything to lose. one doesn’t know what still may happen.” the way she laughed at him was for an instant almost irritating; it came out, for his fancy, from behind the white curtain. it was a sign, that is, of her deep serenity, which worried instead of soothing him. and to be soothed, after all, to be tided over, in his mystic impatience, to be told what he could understand and believe--that was what he had come for. “marriage then,” said mrs. assingham, “is what you call the monster? i admit it’s a fearful thing at the best; but, for heaven’s sake, if that’s what you’re thinking of, don’t run away from it.” “ah, to run away from it would be to run away from you,” the prince replied; “and i’ve already told you often enough how i depend on you to see me through.” he so liked the way she took this, from the corner of her sofa, that he gave his sincerity--for it was sincerity--fuller expression. “i’m starting on the great voyage--across the unknown sea; my ship’s all rigged and appointed, the cargo’s stowed away and the company complete. but what seems the matter with me is that i can’t sail alone; my ship must be one of a pair, must have, in the waste of waters, a--what do you call it?--a consort. i don’t ask you to stay on board with me, but i must keep your sail in sight for orientation. i don’t in the least myself know, i assure you, the points of the compass. but with a lead i can perfectly follow. you must be my lead.” “how can you be sure,” she asked, “where i should take you?” “why, from your having brought me safely thus far. i should never have got here without you. you’ve provided the ship itself, and, if you’ve not quite seen me aboard, you’ve attended me, ever so kindly, to the dock. your own vessel is, all conveniently, in the next berth, and you can’t desert me now.” she showed him again her amusement, which struck him even as excessive, as if, to his surprise, he made her also a little nervous; she treated him in fine as if he were not uttering truths, but making pretty figures for her diversion. “my vessel, dear prince?” she smiled. “what vessel, in the world, have i? this little house is all our ship, bob’s and mine--and thankful we are, now, to have it. we’ve wandered far, living, as you may say, from hand to mouth, without rest for the soles of our feet. but the time has come for us at last to draw in.” he made at this, the young man, an indignant protest. “you talk about rest--it’s too selfish!--when you’re just launching me on adventures?” she shook her head with her kind lucidity. “not adventures--heaven forbid! you’ve had yours--as i’ve had mine; and my idea has been, all along, that we should neither of us begin again. my own last, precisely, has been doing for you all you so prettily mention. but it consists simply in having conducted you to rest. you talk about ships, but they’re not the comparison. your tossings are over--you’re practically in port. the port,” she concluded, “of the golden isles.” he looked about, to put himself more in relation with the place; then, after an hesitation, seemed to speak certain words instead of certain others. “oh, i know where i am--! i do decline to be left, but what i came for, of course, was to thank you. if to-day has seemed, for the first time, the end of preliminaries, i feel how little there would have been any at all without you. the first were wholly yours.” “well,” said mrs. assingham, “they were remarkably easy. i’ve seen them, i’ve had them,” she smiled, “more difficult. everything, you must feel, went of itself. so, you must feel, everything still goes.” the prince quickly agreed. “oh, beautifully! but you had the conception.” “ah, prince, so had you!” he looked at her harder a moment. “you had it first. you had it most.” she returned his look as if it had made her wonder. “i liked it, if that’s what you mean. but you liked it surely yourself. i protest, that i had easy work with you. i had only at last--when i thought it was time--to speak for you.” “all that is quite true. but you’re leaving me, all the same, you’re leaving me--you’re washing your hands of me,” he went on. “however, that won’t be easy; i won’t be left.” and he had turned his eyes about again, taking in the pretty room that she had just described as her final refuge, the place of peace for a world-worn couple, to which she had lately retired with “bob.” “i shall keep this spot in sight. say what you will, i shall need you. i’m not, you know,” he declared, “going to give you up for anybody.” “if you’re afraid--which of course you’re not--are you trying to make me the same?” she asked after a moment. he waited a minute too, then answered her with a question. “you say you ‘liked’ it, your undertaking to make my engagement possible. it remains beautiful for me that you did; it’s charming and unforgettable. but, still more, it’s mysterious and wonderful. why, you dear delightful woman, did you like it?” “i scarce know what to make,” she said, “of such an inquiry. if you haven’t by this time found out yourself, what meaning can anything i say have for you? don’t you really after all feel,” she added while nothing came from him--“aren’t you conscious every minute, of the perfection of the creature of whom i’ve put you into possession?” “every minute--gratefully conscious. but that’s exactly the ground of my question. it wasn’t only a matter of your handing me over--it was a matter of your handing her. it was a matter of her fate still more than of mine. you thought all the good of her that one woman can think of another, and yet, by your account, you enjoyed assisting at her risk.” she had kept her eyes on him while he spoke, and this was what, visibly, determined a repetition for her. “are you trying to frighten me?” “ah, that’s a foolish view--i should be too vulgar. you apparently can’t understand either my good faith or my humility. i’m awfully humble,” the young man insisted; “that’s the way i’ve been feeling to-day, with everything so finished and ready. and you won’t take me for serious.” she continued to face him as if he really troubled her a little. “oh, you deep old italians!” “there you are,” he returned--“it’s what i wanted you to come to. that’s the responsible note.” “yes,” she went on--“if you’re ‘humble’ you must be dangerous.” she had a pause while he only smiled; then she said: “i don’t in the least want to lose sight of you. but even if i did i shouldn’t think it right.” “thank you for that--it’s what i needed of you. i’m sure, after all, that the more you’re with me the more i shall understand. it’s the only thing in the world i want. i’m excellent, i really think, all round--except that i’m stupid. i can do pretty well anything i see. but i’ve got to see it first.” and he pursued his demonstration. “i don’t in the least mind its having to be shown me--in fact i like that better. therefore it is that i want, that i shall always want, your eyes. through them i wish to look--even at any risk of their showing me what i mayn’t like. for then,” he wound up, “i shall know. and of that i shall never be afraid.” she might quite have been waiting to see what he would come to, but she spoke with a certain impatience. “what on earth are you talking about?” but he could perfectly say: “of my real, honest fear of being ‘off’ some day, of being wrong, without knowing it. that’s what i shall always trust you for--to tell me when i am. no--with you people it’s a sense. we haven’t got it--not as you have. therefore--!” but he had said enough. “ecco!” he simply smiled. it was not to be concealed that he worked upon her, but of course she had always liked him. “i should be interested,” she presently remarked, “to see some sense you don’t possess.” well, he produced one on the spot. “the moral, dear mrs. assingham. i mean, always, as you others consider it. i’ve of course something that in our poor dear backward old rome sufficiently passes for it. but it’s no more like yours than the tortuous stone staircase--half-ruined into the bargain!--in some castle of our quattrocento is like the `lightning elevator’ in one of mr. verver’s fifteen-storey buildings. your moral sense works by steam--it sends you up like a rocket. ours is slow and steep and unlighted, with so many of the steps missing that--well, that it’s as short, in almost any case, to turn round and come down again.” “trusting,” mrs. assingham smiled, “to get up some other way?” “yes--or not to have to get up at all. however,” he added, “i told you that at the beginning.” “machiavelli!” she simply exclaimed. “you do me too much honour. i wish indeed i had his genius. however, if you really believe i have his perversity you wouldn’t say it. but it’s all right,” he gaily enough concluded; “i shall always have you to come to.” on this, for a little, they sat face to face; after which, without comment, she asked him if he would have more tea. all she would give him, he promptly signified; and he developed, making her laugh, his idea that the tea of the english race was somehow their morality, “made,” with boiling water, in a little pot, so that the more of it one drank the more moral one would become. his drollery served as a transition, and she put to him several questions about his sister and the others, questions as to what bob, in particular, colonel assingham, her husband, could do for the arriving gentlemen, whom, by the prince’s leave, he would immediately go to see. he was funny, while they talked, about his own people too, whom he described, with anecdotes of their habits, imitations of their manners and prophecies of their conduct, as more rococo than anything cadogan place would ever have known. this, mrs. assingham professed, was exactly what would endear them to her, and that, in turn, drew from her visitor a fresh declaration of all the comfort of his being able so to depend on her. he had been with her, at this point, some twenty minutes; but he had paid her much longer visits, and he stayed now as if to make his attitude prove his appreciation. he stayed moreover--that was really the sign of the hour--in spite of the nervous unrest that had brought him and that had in truth much rather fed on the scepticism by which she had apparently meant to soothe it. she had not soothed him, and there arrived, remarkably, a moment when the cause of her failure gleamed out. he had not frightened her, as she called it--he felt that; yet she was herself not at ease. she had been nervous, though trying to disguise it; the sight of him, following on the announcement of his name, had shown her as disconcerted. this conviction, for the young man, deepened and sharpened; yet with the effect, too, of making him glad in spite of it. it was as if, in calling, he had done even better than he intended. for it was somehow important--that was what it was--that there should be at this hour something the matter with mrs. assingham, with whom, in all their acquaintance, so considerable now, there had never been the least little thing the matter. to wait thus and watch for it was to know, of a truth, that there was something the matter with him; since strangely, with so little to go upon--his heart had positively begun to beat to the tune of suspense. it fairly befell at last, for a climax, that they almost ceased to pretend--to pretend, that is, to cheat each other with forms. the unspoken had come up, and there was a crisis--neither could have said how long it lasted--during which they were reduced, for all interchange, to looking at each other on quite an inordinate scale. they might at this moment, in their positively portentous stillness, have been keeping it up for a wager, sitting for their photograph or even enacting a tableau-vivant. the spectator of whom they would thus well have been worthy might have read meanings of his own into the intensity of their communion--or indeed, even without meanings, have found his account, aesthetically, in some gratified play of our modern sense of type, so scantly to be distinguished from our modern sense of beauty. type was there, at the worst, in mrs. assingham’s dark, neat head, on which the crisp black hair made waves so fine and so numerous that she looked even more in the fashion of the hour than she desired. full of discriminations against the obvious, she had yet to accept a flagrant appearance and to make the best of misleading signs. her richness of hue, her generous nose, her eyebrows marked like those of an actress--these things, with an added amplitude of person on which middle age had set its seal, seemed to present her insistently as a daughter of the south, or still more of the east, a creature formed by hammocks and divans, fed upon sherbets and waited upon by slaves. she looked as if her most active effort might be to take up, as she lay back, her mandolin, or to share a sugared fruit with a pet gazelle. she was in fact, however, neither a pampered jewess nor a lazy creole; new york had been, recordedly, her birthplace and “europe” punctually her discipline. she wore yellow and purple because she thought it better, as she said, while one was about it, to look like the queen of sheba than like a revendeuse; she put pearls in her hair and crimson and gold in her tea-gown for the same reason: it was her theory that nature itself had overdressed her and that her only course was to drown, as it was hopeless to try to chasten, the overdressing. so she was covered and surrounded with “things,” which were frankly toys and shams, a part of the amusement with which she rejoiced to supply her friends. these friends were in the game that of playing with the disparity between her aspect and her character. her character was attested by the second movement of her face, which convinced the beholder that her vision of the humours of the world was not supine, not passive. she enjoyed, she needed the warm air of friendship, but the eyes of the american city looked out, somehow, for the opportunity of it, from under the lids of jerusalem. with her false indolence, in short, her false leisure, her false pearls and palms and courts and fountains, she was a person for whom life was multitudinous detail, detail that left her, as it at any moment found her, unappalled and unwearied. “sophisticated as i may appear”--it was her frequent phrase--she had found sympathy her best resource. it gave her plenty to do; it made her, as she also said, sit up. she had in her life two great holes to fill, and she described herself as dropping social scraps into them as she had known old ladies, in her early american time, drop morsels of silk into the baskets in which they collected the material for some eventual patchwork quilt. one of these gaps in mrs. assingham’s completeness was her want of children; the other was her want of wealth. it was wonderful how little either, in the fulness of time, came to show; sympathy and curiosity could render their objects practically filial, just as an english husband who in his military years had “run” everything in his regiment could make economy blossom like the rose. colonel bob had, a few years after his marriage, left the army, which had clearly, by that time, done its laudable all for the enrichment of his personal experience, and he could thus give his whole time to the gardening in question. there reigned among the younger friends of this couple a legend, almost too venerable for historical criticism, that the marriage itself, the happiest of its class, dated from the far twilight of the age, a primitive period when such things--such things as american girls accepted as “good enough”--had not begun to be;--so that the pleasant pair had been, as to the risk taken on either side, bold and original, honourably marked, for the evening of life, as discoverers of a kind of hymeneal northwest passage. mrs. assingham knew better, knew there had been no historic hour, from that of pocahontas down, when some young englishman hadn’t precipitately believed and some american girl hadn’t, with a few more gradations, availed herself to the full of her incapacity to doubt; but she accepted resignedly the laurel of the founder, since she was in fact pretty well the doyenne, above ground, of her transplanted tribe, and since, above all, she had invented combinations, though she had not invented bob’s own. it was he who had done that, absolutely puzzled it out, by himself, from his first odd glimmer-resting upon it moreover, through the years to come, as proof enough, in him, by itself, of the higher cleverness. if she kept her own cleverness up it was largely that he should have full credit. there were moments in truth when she privately felt how little--striking out as he had done--he could have afforded that she should show the common limits. but mrs. assingham’s cleverness was in truth tested when her present visitor at last said to her: “i don’t think, you know, that you’re treating me quite right. you’ve something on your mind that you don’t tell me.” it was positive too that her smile, in reply, was a trifle dim. “am i obliged to tell you everything i have on my mind?” “it isn’t a question of everything, but it’s a question of anything that may particularly concern me. then you shouldn’t keep it back. you know with what care i desire to proceed, taking everything into account and making no mistake that may possibly injure her.” mrs. assingham, at this, had after an instant an odd interrogation. “‘her’?” “her and him. both our friends. either maggie or her father.” “i have something on my mind,” mrs. assingham presently returned; “something has happened for which i hadn’t been prepared. but it isn’t anything that properly concerns you.” the prince, with immediate gaiety, threw back his head. “what do you mean by ‘properly’? i somehow see volumes in it. it’s the way people put a thing when they put it--well, wrong. _i_ put things right. what is it that has happened for me?” his hostess, the next moment, had drawn spirit from his tone. “oh, i shall be delighted if you’ll take your share of it. charlotte stant is in london. she has just been here.” “miss stant? oh really?” the prince expressed clear surprise--a transparency through which his eyes met his friend’s with a certain hardness of concussion. “she has arrived from america?” he then quickly asked. “she appears to have arrived this noon--coming up from southampton; at an hotel. she dropped upon me after luncheon and was here for more than an hour.” the young man heard with interest, though not with an interest too great for his gaiety. “you think then i’ve a share in it? what is my share?” “why, any you like--the one you seemed just now eager to take. it was you yourself who insisted.” he looked at her on this with conscious inconsistency, and she could now see that he had changed colour. but he was always easy. “i didn’t know then what the matter was.” “you didn’t think it could be so bad?” “do you call it very bad?” the young man asked. “only,” she smiled, “because that’s the way it seems to affect you.” he hesitated, still with the trace of his quickened colour, still looking at her, still adjusting his manner. “but you allowed you were upset.” “to the extent--yes--of not having in the least looked for her. any more,” said mrs. assingham, “than i judge maggie to have done.” the prince thought; then as if glad to be able to say something very natural and true: “no--quite right. maggie hasn’t looked for her. but i’m sure,” he added, “she’ll be delighted to see her.” “that, certainly”--and his hostess spoke with a different shade of gravity. “she’ll be quite overjoyed,” the prince went on. “has miss stant now gone to her?” “she has gone back to her hotel, to bring her things here. i can’t have her,” said mrs. assingham, “alone at an hotel.” “no; i see.” “if she’s here at all she must stay with me.” he quite took it in. “so she’s coming now?” “i expect her at any moment. if you wait you’ll see her.” “oh,” he promptly declared--“charming!” but this word came out as if, a little, in sudden substitution for some other. it sounded accidental, whereas he wished to be firm. that accordingly was what he next showed himself. “if it wasn’t for what’s going on these next days maggie would certainly want to have her. in fact,” he lucidly continued, “isn’t what’s happening just a reason to make her want to?” mrs. assingham, for answer, only looked at him, and this, the next instant, had apparently had more effect than if she had spoken. for he asked a question that seemed incongruous. “what has she come for!” it made his companion laugh. “why, for just what you say. for your marriage.” “mine?”--he wondered. “maggie’s--it’s the same thing. it’s ‘for’ your great event. and then,” said mrs. assingham, “she’s so lonely.” “has she given you that as a reason?” “i scarcely remember--she gave me so many. she abounds, poor dear, in reasons. but there’s one that, whatever she does, i always remember for myself.” “and which is that?” he looked as if he ought to guess but couldn’t. “why, the fact that she has no home--absolutely none whatever. she’s extraordinarily alone.” again he took it in. “and also has no great means.” “very small ones. which is not, however, with the expense of railways and hotels, a reason for her running to and fro.” “on the contrary. but she doesn’t like her country.” “hers, my dear man?--it’s little enough ‘hers.’” the attribution, for the moment, amused his hostess. “she has rebounded now--but she has had little enough else to do with it.” “oh, i say hers,” the prince pleasantly explained, “very much as, at this time of day, i might say mine. i quite feel, i assure you, as if the great place already more or less belonged to me.” “that’s your good fortune and your point of view. you own--or you soon practically will own--so much of it. charlotte owns almost nothing in the world, she tells me, but two colossal trunks-only one of which i have given her leave to introduce into this house. she’ll depreciate to you,” mrs. assingham added, “your property.” he thought of these things, he thought of every thing; but he had always his resource at hand of turning all to the easy. “has she come with designs upon me?” and then in a moment, as if even this were almost too grave, he sounded the note that had least to do with himself. “est-elle toujours aussi belle?” that was the furthest point, somehow, to which charlotte stant could be relegated. mrs. assingham treated it freely. “just the same. the person in the world, to my sense, whose looks are most subject to appreciation. it’s all in the way she affects you. one admires her if one doesn’t happen not to. so, as well, one criticises her.” “ah, that’s not fair!” said the prince. “to criticise her? then there you are! you’re answered.” “i’m answered.” he took it, humorously, as his lesson--sank his previous self-consciousness, with excellent effect, in grateful docility. “i only meant that there are perhaps better things to be done with miss stant than to criticise her. when once you begin that, with anyone--!” he was vague and kind. “i quite agree that it’s better to keep out of it as long as one can. but when one must do it--” “yes?” he asked as she paused. “then know what you mean.” “i see. perhaps,” he smiled, “_i_ don’t know what i mean.” “well, it’s what, just now, in all ways, you particularly should know.” mrs. assingham, however, made no more of this, having, before anything else, apparently, a scruple about the tone she had just used. “i quite understand, of course, that, given her great friendship with maggie, she should have wanted to be present. she has acted impulsively--but she has acted generously.” “she has acted beautifully,” said the prince. “i say ‘generously’ because i mean she hasn’t, in any way, counted the cost. she’ll have it to count, in a manner, now,” his hostess continued. “but that doesn’t matter.” he could see how little. “you’ll look after her.” “i’ll look after her.” “so it’s all right.” “it’s all right,” said mrs. assingham. “then why are you troubled?” it pulled her up--but only for a minute. “i’m not--any more than you.” the prince’s dark blue eyes were of the finest, and, on occasion, precisely, resembled nothing so much as the high windows of a roman palace, of an historic front by one of the great old designers, thrown open on a feast-day to the golden air. his look itself, at such times, suggested an image--that of some very noble personage who, expected, acclaimed by the crowd in the street and with old precious stuffs falling over the sill for his support, had gaily and gallantly come to show himself: always moreover less in his own interest than in that of spectators and subjects whose need to admire, even to gape, was periodically to be considered. the young man’s expression became, after this fashion, something vivid and concrete--a beautiful personal presence, that of a prince in very truth, a ruler, warrior, patron, lighting up brave architecture and diffusing the sense of a function. it had been happily said of his face that the figure thus appearing in the great frame was the ghost of some proudest ancestor. whoever the ancestor now, at all events, the prince was, for mrs. assingham’s benefit, in view of the people. he seemed, leaning on crimson damask, to take in the bright day. he looked younger than his years; he was beautiful, innocent, vague. “oh, well, i’m not!” he rang out clear. “i should like to see you, sir!” she said. “for you wouldn’t have a shadow of excuse.” he showed how he agreed that he would have been at a loss for one, and the fact of their serenity was thus made as important as if some danger of its opposite had directly menaced them. the only thing was that if the evidence of their cheer was so established mrs. assingham had a little to explain her original manner, and she came to this before they dropped the question. “my first impulse is always to behave, about everything, as if i feared complications. but i don’t fear them--i really like them. they’re quite my element.” he deferred, for her, to this account of herself. “but still,” he said, “if we’re not in the presence of a complication.” she hesitated. “a handsome, clever, odd girl staying with one is always a complication.” the young man weighed it almost as if the question were new to him. “and will she stay very long?” his friend gave a laugh. “how in the world can i know? i’ve scarcely asked her.” “ah yes. you can’t.” but something in the tone of it amused her afresh. “do you think you could?” “i?” he wondered. “do you think you could get it out of her for me--the probable length of her stay?” he rose bravely enough to the occasion and the challenge. “i daresay, if you were to give me the chance.” “here it is then for you,” she answered; for she had heard, within the minute, the stop of a cab at her door. “she’s back.” iii it had been said as a joke, but as, after this, they awaited their friend in silence, the effect of the silence was to turn the time to gravity--a gravity not dissipated even when the prince next spoke. he had been thinking the case over and making up his mind. a handsome, clever, odd girl staying with one was a complication. mrs. assingham, so far, was right. but there were the facts--the good relations, from schooldays, of the two young women, and the clear confidence with which one of them had arrived. “she can come, you know, at any time, to us.” mrs. assingham took it up with an irony beyond laughter. “you’d like her for your honeymoon?” “oh no, you must keep her for that. but why not after?” she had looked at him a minute; then, at the sound of a voice in the corridor, they had got up. “why not? you’re splendid!” charlotte stant, the next minute, was with them, ushered in as she had alighted from her cab, and prepared for not finding mrs. assingham alone--this would have been to be noticed--by the butler’s answer, on the stairs, to a question put to him. she could have looked at her hostess with such straightness and brightness only from knowing that the prince was also there--the discrimination of but a moment, yet which let him take her in still better than if she had instantly faced him. he availed himself of the chance thus given him, for he was conscious of all these things. what he accordingly saw, for some seconds, with intensity, was a tall, strong, charming girl who wore for him, at first, exactly the look of her adventurous situation, a suggestion, in all her person, in motion and gesture, in free, vivid, yet altogether happy indications of dress, from the becoming compactness of her hat to the shade of tan in her shoes, of winds and waves and custom-houses, of far countries and long journeys, the knowledge of how and where and the habit, founded on experience, of not being afraid. he was aware, at the same time, that of this combination the “strongminded” note was not, as might have been apprehended, the basis; he was now sufficiently familiar with english-speaking types, he had sounded attentively enough such possibilities, for a quick vision of differences. he had, besides, his own view of this young lady’s strength of mind. it was great, he had ground to believe, but it would never interfere with the play of her extremely personal, her always amusing taste. this last was the thing in her--for she threw it out positively, on the spot, like a light--that she might have reappeared, during these moments, just to cool his worried eyes with. he saw her in her light that immediate, exclusive address to their friend was like a lamp she was holding aloft for his benefit and for his pleasure. it showed him everything--above all her presence in the world, so closely, so irretrievably contemporaneous with his own: a sharp, sharp fact, sharper during these instants than any other at all, even than that of his marriage, but accompanied, in a subordinate and controlled way, with those others, facial, physiognomic, that mrs. assingham had been speaking of as subject to appreciation. so they were, these others, as he met them again, and that was the connection they instantly established with him. if they had to be interpreted, this made at least for intimacy. there was but one way certainly for him--to interpret them in the sense of the already known. making use then of clumsy terms of excess, the face was too narrow and too long, the eyes not large, and the mouth, on the other hand, by no means small, with substance in its lips and a slight, the very slightest, tendency to protrusion in the solid teeth, otherwise indeed well arrayed and flashingly white. but it was, strangely, as a cluster of possessions of his own that these things, in charlotte stant, now affected him; items in a full list, items recognised, each of them, as if, for the long interval, they had been “stored” wrapped up, numbered, put away in a cabinet. while she faced mrs. assingham the door of the cabinet had opened of itself; he took the relics out, one by one, and it was more and more, each instant, as if she were giving him time. he saw again that her thick hair was, vulgarly speaking, brown, but that there was a shade of tawny autumn leaf in it, for “appreciation”--a colour indescribable and of which he had known no other case, something that gave her at moments the sylvan head of a huntress. he saw the sleeves of her jacket drawn to her wrists, but he again made out the free arms within them to be of the completely rounded, the polished slimness that florentine sculptors, in the great time, had loved, and of which the apparent firmness is expressed in their old silver and old bronze. he knew her narrow hands, he knew her long fingers and the shape and colour of her finger-nails, he knew her special beauty of movement and line when she turned her back, and the perfect working of all her main attachments, that of some wonderful finished instrument, something intently made for exhibition, for a prize. he knew above all the extraordinary fineness of her flexible waist, the stem of an expanded flower, which gave her a likeness also to some long, loose silk purse, well filled with gold pieces, but having been passed, empty, through a finger-ring that held it together. it was as if, before she turned to him, he had weighed the whole thing in his open palm and even heard a little the chink of the metal. when she did turn to him it was to recognise with her eyes what he might have been doing. she made no circumstance of thus coming upon him, save so far as the intelligence in her face could at any moment make a circumstance of almost anything. if when she moved off she looked like a huntress, she looked when she came nearer like his notion, perhaps not wholly correct, of a muse. but what she said was simply: “you see you’re not rid of me. how is dear maggie?” it was to come soon enough by the quite unforced operation of chance, the young man’s opportunity to ask her the question suggested by mrs. assingham shortly before her entrance. the license, had he chosen to embrace it, was within a few minutes all there--the license given him literally to inquire of this young lady how long she was likely to be with them. for a matter of the mere domestic order had quickly determined, on mrs. assingham’s part, a withdrawal, of a few moments, which had the effect of leaving her visitors free. “mrs. betterman’s there?” she had said to charlotte in allusion to some member of the household who was to have received her and seen her belongings settled; to which charlotte had replied that she had encountered only the butler, who had been quite charming. she had deprecated any action taken on behalf of her effects; but her hostess, rebounding from accumulated cushions, evidently saw more in mrs. betterman’s non-appearance than could meet the casual eye. what she saw, in short, demanded her intervention, in spite of an earnest “let me go!” from the girl, and a prolonged smiling wail over the trouble she was giving. the prince was quite aware, at this moment, that departure, for himself, was indicated; the question of miss stant’s installation didn’t demand his presence; it was a case for one to go away--if one hadn’t a reason for staying. he had a reason, however--of that he was equally aware; and he had not for a good while done anything more conscious and intentional than not, quickly, to take leave. his visible insistence--for it came to that--even demanded of him a certain disagreeable effort, the sort of effort he had mostly associated with acting for an idea. his idea was there, his idea was to find out something, something he wanted much to know, and to find it out not tomorrow, not at some future time, not in short with waiting and wondering, but if possible before quitting the place. this particular curiosity, moreover, confounded itself a little with the occasion offered him to satisfy mrs. assingham’s own; he wouldn’t have admitted that he was staying to ask a rude question--there was distinctly nothing rude in his having his reasons. it would be rude, for that matter, to turn one’s back, without a word or two, on an old friend. well, as it came to pass, he got the word or two, for mrs. assingham’s preoccupation was practically simplifying. the little crisis was of shorter duration than our account of it; duration, naturally, would have forced him to take up his hat. he was somehow glad, on finding himself alone with charlotte, that he had not been guilty of that inconsequence. not to be flurried was the kind of consistency he wanted, just as consistency was the kind of dignity. and why couldn’t he have dignity when he had so much of the good conscience, as it were, on which such advantages rested? he had done nothing he oughtn’t--he had in fact done nothing at all. once more, as a man conscious of having known many women, he could assist, as he would have called it, at the recurrent, the predestined phenomenon, the thing always as certain as sunrise or the coming round of saints’ days, the doing by the woman of the thing that gave her away. she did it, ever, inevitably, infallibly--she couldn’t possibly not do it. it was her nature, it was her life, and the man could always expect it without lifting a finger. this was his, the man’s, any man’s, position and strength--that he had necessarily the advantage, that he only had to wait, with a decent patience, to be placed, in spite of himself, it might really be said, in the right. just so the punctuality of performance on the part of the other creature was her weakness and her deep misfortune--not less, no doubt, than her beauty. it produced for the man that extraordinary mixture of pity and profit in which his relation with her, when he was not a mere brute, mainly consisted; and gave him in fact his most pertinent ground of being always nice to her, nice about her, nice for her. she always dressed her act up, of course, she muffled and disguised and arranged it, showing in fact in these dissimulations a cleverness equal to but one thing in the world, equal to her abjection: she would let it be known for anything, for everything, but the truth of which it was made. that was what, precisely, charlotte stant would be doing now; that was the present motive and support, to a certainty, of each of her looks and motions. she was the twentieth woman, she was possessed by her doom, but her doom was also to arrange appearances, and what now concerned him was to learn how she proposed. he would help her, would arrange with her to any point in reason; the only thing was to know what appearance could best be produced and best be preserved. produced and preserved on her part of course; since on his own there had been luckily no folly to cover up, nothing but a perfect accord between conduct and obligation. they stood there together, at all events, when the door had closed behind their friend, with a conscious, strained smile and very much as if each waited for the other to strike the note or give the pitch. the young man held himself, in his silent suspense--only not more afraid because he felt her own fear. she was afraid of herself, however; whereas, to his gain of lucidity, he was afraid only of her. would she throw herself into his arms, or would she be otherwise wonderful? she would see what he would do--so their queer minute without words told him; and she would act accordingly. but what could he do but just let her see that he would make anything, everything, for her, as honourably easy as possible? even if she should throw herself into his arms he would make that easy--easy, that is, to overlook, to ignore, not to remember, and not, by the same token, either, to regret. this was not what in fact happened, though it was also not at a single touch, but by the finest gradations, that his tension subsided. “it’s too delightful to be back!” she said at last; and it was all she definitely gave him--being moreover nothing but what anyone else might have said. yet with two or three other things that, on his response, followed it, it quite pointed the path, while the tone of it, and her whole attitude, were as far removed as need have been from the truth of her situation. the abjection that was present to him as of the essence quite failed to peep out, and he soon enough saw that if she was arranging she could be trusted to arrange. good--it was all he asked; and all the more that he could admire and like her for it. the particular appearance she would, as they said, go in for was that of having no account whatever to give him--it would be in fact that of having none to give anybody--of reasons or of motives, of comings or of goings. she was a charming young woman who had met him before, but she was also a charming young woman with a life of her own. she would take it high--up, up, up, ever so high. well then, he would do the same; no height would be too great for them, not even the dizziest conceivable to a young person so subtle. the dizziest seemed indeed attained when, after another moment, she came as near as she was to come to an apology for her abruptness. “i’ve been thinking of maggie, and at last i yearned for her. i wanted to see her happy--and it doesn’t strike me i find you too shy to tell me i shall.” “of course she’s happy, thank god! only it’s almost terrible, you know, the happiness of young, good, generous creatures. it rather frightens one. but the blessed virgin and all the saints,” said the prince, “have her in their keeping.” “certainly they have. she’s the dearest of the dear. but i needn’t tell you,” the girl added. “ah,” he returned with gravity, “i feel that i’ve still much to learn about her.” to which he subjoined “she’ll rejoice awfully in your being with us.” “oh, you don’t need me!” charlotte smiled. “it’s her hour. it’s a great hour. one has seen often enough, with girls, what it is. but that,” she said, “is exactly why. why i’ve wanted, i mean, not to miss it.” he bent on her a kind, comprehending face. “you mustn’t miss anything.” he had got it, the pitch, and he could keep it now, for all he had needed was to have it given him. the pitch was the happiness of his wife that was to be--the sight of that happiness as a joy for an old friend. it was, yes, magnificent, and not the less so for its coming to him, suddenly, as sincere, as nobly exalted. something in charlotte’s eyes seemed to tell him this, seemed to plead with him in advance as to what he was to find in it. he was eager--and he tried to show her that too--to find what she liked; mindful as he easily could be of what the friendship had been for maggie. it had been armed with the wings of young imagination, young generosity; it had been, he believed--always counting out her intense devotion to her father--the liveliest emotion she had known before the dawn of the sentiment inspired by himself. she had not, to his knowledge, invited the object of it to their wedding, had not thought of proposing to her, for a matter of a couple of hours, an arduous and expensive journey. but she had kept her connected and informed, from week to week, in spite of preparations and absorptions. “oh, i’ve been writing to charlotte--i wish you knew her better:” he could still hear, from recent weeks, this record of the fact, just as he could still be conscious, not otherwise than queerly, of the gratuitous element in maggie’s wish, which he had failed as yet to indicate to her. older and perhaps more intelligent, at any rate, why shouldn’t charlotte respond--and be quite free to respond--to such fidelities with something more than mere formal good manners? the relations of women with each other were of the strangest, it was true, and he probably wouldn’t have trusted here a young person of his own race. he was proceeding throughout on the ground of the immense difference--difficult indeed as it might have been to disembroil in this young person her race-quality. nothing in her definitely placed her; she was a rare, a special product. her singleness, her solitude, her want of means, that is her want of ramifications and other advantages, contributed to enrich her somehow with an odd, precious neutrality, to constitute for her, so detached yet so aware, a sort of small social capital. it was the only one she had--it was the only one a lonely, gregarious girl could have, since few, surely, had in anything like the same degree arrived at it, and since this one indeed had compassed it but through the play of some gift of nature to which you could scarce give a definite name. it wasn’t a question of her strange sense for tongues, with which she juggled as a conjuror at a show juggled with balls or hoops or lighted brands--it wasn’t at least entirely that, for he had known people almost as polyglot whom their accomplishment had quite failed to make interesting. he was polyglot himself, for that matter--as was the case too with so many of his friends and relations; for none of whom, more than for himself, was it anything but a common convenience. the point was that in this young woman it was a beauty in itself, and almost a mystery: so, certainly, he had more than once felt in noting, on her lips, that rarest, among the barbarians, of all civil graces, a perfect felicity in the use of italian. he had known strangers--a few, and mostly men--who spoke his own language agreeably; but he had known neither man nor woman who showed for it charlotte’s almost mystifying instinct. he remembered how, from the first of their acquaintance, she had made no display of it, quite as if english, between them, his english so matching with hers, were their inevitable medium. he had perceived all by accident--by hearing her talk before him to somebody else that they had an alternative as good; an alternative in fact as much better as the amusement for him was greater in watching her for the slips that never came. her account of the mystery didn’t suffice: her recall of her birth in florence and florentine childhood; her parents, from the great country, but themselves already of a corrupt generation, demoralised, falsified, polyglot well before her, with the tuscan balia who was her first remembrance; the servants of the villa, the dear contadini of the poder, the little girls and the other peasants of the next podere, all the rather shabby but still ever so pretty human furniture of her early time, including the good sisters of the poor convent of the tuscan hills, the convent shabbier than almost anything else, but prettier too, in which she had been kept at school till the subsequent phase, the phase of the much grander institution in paris at which maggie was to arrive, terribly frightened, and as a smaller girl, three years before her own ending of her period of five. such reminiscences, naturally, gave a ground, but they had not prevented him from insisting that some strictly civil ancestor--generations back, and from the tuscan hills if she would-made himself felt, ineffaceably, in her blood and in her tone. she knew nothing of the ancestor, but she had taken his theory from him, gracefully enough, as one of the little presents that make friendship flourish. these matters, however, all melted together now, though a sense of them was doubtless concerned, not unnaturally, in the next thing, of the nature of a surmise, that his discretion let him articulate. “you haven’t, i rather gather, particularly liked your country?” they would stick, for the time, to their english. “it doesn’t, i fear, seem particularly mine. and it doesn’t in the least matter, over there, whether one likes it or not--that is to anyone but one’s self. but i didn’t like it,” said charlotte stant. “that’s not encouraging then to me, is it?” the prince went on. “do you mean because you’re going?” “oh yes, of course we’re going. i’ve wanted immensely to go.” she hesitated. “but now?--immediately?” “in a month or two--it seems to be the new idea.” on which there was something in her face--as he imagined--that made him say: “didn’t maggie write to you?” “not of your going at once. but of course you must go. and of course you must stay”--charlotte was easily clear--“as long as possible.” “is that what you did?” he laughed. “you stayed as long as possible?” “well, it seemed to me so--but i hadn’t ‘interests.’ you’ll have them--on a great scale. it’s the country for interests,” said charlotte. “if i had only had a few i doubtless wouldn’t have left it.” he waited an instant; they were still on their feet. “yours then are rather here?” “oh, mine!”--the girl smiled. “they take up little room, wherever they are.” it determined in him, the way this came from her and what it somehow did for her-it determined in him a speech that would have seemed a few minutes before precarious and in questionable taste. the lead she had given him made the difference, and he felt it as really a lift on finding an honest and natural word rise, by its license, to his lips. nothing surely could be, for both of them, more in the note of a high bravery. “i’ve been thinking it all the while so probable, you know, that you would have seen your way to marrying.” she looked at him an instant, and, just for these seconds, he feared for what he might have spoiled. “to marrying whom?” “why, some good, kind, clever, rich american.” again his security hung in the balance--then she was, as he felt, admirable. “i tried everyone i came across. i did my best. i showed i had come, quite publicly, for that. perhaps i showed it too much. at any rate it was no use. i had to recognise it. no one would have me.” then she seemed to show as sorry for his having to hear of her anything so disconcerting. she pitied his feeling about it; if he was disappointed she would cheer him up. “existence, you know, all the same, doesn’t depend on that. i mean,” she smiled, “on having caught a husband.” “oh--existence!” the prince vaguely commented. “you think i ought to argue for more than mere existence?” she asked. “i don’t see why my existence--even reduced as much as you like to being merely mine--should be so impossible. there are things, of sorts, i should be able to have--things i should be able to be. the position of a single woman to-day is very favourable, you know.” “favourable to what?” “why, just to existence--which may contain, after all, in one way and another, so much. it may contain, at the worst, even affections; affections in fact quite particularly; fixed, that is, on one’s friends. i’m extremely fond of maggie, for instance--i quite adore her. how could i adore her more if i were married to one of the people you speak of?” the prince gave a laugh. “you might adore him more--!” “ah, but it isn’t, is it?” she asked, “a question of that.” “my dear friend,” he returned, “it’s always a question of doing the best for one’s self one can--without injury to others.” he felt by this time that they were indeed on an excellent basis; so he went on again, as if to show frankly his sense of its firmness. “i venture therefore to repeat my hope that you’ll marry some capital fellow; and also to repeat my belief that such a marriage will be more favourable to you, as you call it, than even the spirit of the age.” she looked at him at first only for answer, and would have appeared to take it with meekness had she not perhaps appeared a little more to take it with gaiety. “thank you very much,” she simply said; but at that moment their friend was with them again. it was undeniable that, as she came in, mrs. assingham looked, with a certain smiling sharpness, from one of them to the other; the perception of which was perhaps what led charlotte, for reassurance, to pass the question on. “the prince hopes so much i shall still marry some good person.” whether it worked for mrs. assingham or not, the prince was himself, at this, more than ever reassured. he was safe, in a word--that was what it all meant; and he had required to be safe. he was really safe enough for almost any joke. “it’s only,” he explained to their hostess, “because of what miss stant has been telling me. don’t we want to keep up her courage?” if the joke was broad he had at least not begun it--not, that is, as a joke; which was what his companion’s address to their friend made of it. “she has been trying in america, she says, but hasn’t brought it off.” the tone was somehow not what mrs. assingham had expected, but she made the best of it. “well then,” she replied to the young man, “if you take such an interest you must bring it off.” “and you must help, dear,” charlotte said unperturbed--“as you’ve helped, so beautifully, in such things before.” with which, before mrs. assingham could meet the appeal, she had addressed herself to the prince on a matter much nearer to him. “your marriage is on friday?--on saturday?” “oh, on friday, no! for what do you take us? there’s not a vulgar omen we’re neglecting. on saturday, please, at the oratory, at three o’clock--before twelve assistants exactly.” “twelve including me?” it struck him--he laughed. “you’ll make the thirteenth. it won’t do!” “not,” said charlotte, “if you’re going in for ‘omens.’ should you like me to stay away?” “dear no--we’ll manage. we’ll make the round number--we’ll have in some old woman. they must keep them there for that, don’t they?” mrs. assingham’s return had at last indicated for him his departure; he had possessed himself again of his hat and approached her to take leave. but he had another word for charlotte. “i dine to-night with mr. verver. have you any message?” the girl seemed to wonder a little. “for mr. verver?” “for maggie--about her seeing you early. that, i know, is what she’ll like.” “then i’ll come early--thanks.” “i daresay,” he went on, “she’ll send for you. i mean send a carriage.” “oh, i don’t require that, thanks. i can go, for a penny, can’t i?” she asked of mrs. assingham, “in an omnibus.” “oh, i say!” said the prince while mrs. assingham looked at her blandly. “yes, love--and i’ll give you the penny. she shall get there,” the good lady added to their friend. but charlotte, as the latter took leave of her, thought of something else. “there’s a great favour, prince, that i want to ask of you. i want, between this and saturday, to make maggie a marriage-present.” “oh, i say!” the young man again soothingly exclaimed. “ah, but i must,” she went on. “it’s really almost for that i came back. it was impossible to get in america what i wanted.” mrs. assingham showed anxiety. “what is it then, dear, you want?” but the girl looked only at their companion. “that’s what the prince, if he’ll be so good, must help me to decide.” “can’t _i_,” mrs. assingham asked, “help you to decide?” “certainly, darling, we must talk it well over.” and she kept her eyes on the prince. “but i want him, if he kindly will, to go with me to look. i want him to judge with me and choose. that, if you can spare the hour,” she said, “is the great favour i mean.” he raised his eyebrows at her--he wonderfully smiled. “what you came back from america to ask? ah, certainly then, i must find the hour!” he wonderfully smiled, but it was rather more, after all, than he had been reckoning with. it went somehow so little with the rest that, directly, for him, it wasn’t the note of safety; it preserved this character, at the best, but by being the note of publicity. quickly, quickly, however, the note of publicity struck him as better than any other. in another moment even it seemed positively what he wanted; for what so much as publicity put their relation on the right footing? by this appeal to mrs. assingham it was established as right, and she immediately showed that such was her own understanding. “certainly, prince,” she laughed, “you must find the hour!” and it was really so express a license from her, as representing friendly judgment, public opinion, the moral law, the margin allowed a husband about to be, or whatever, that, after observing to charlotte that, should she come to portland place in the morning, he would make a point of being there to see her and so, easily, arrange with her about a time, he took his departure with the absolutely confirmed impression of knowing, as he put it to himself, where he was. which was what he had prolonged his visit for. he was where he could stay. iv “i don’t quite see, my dear,” colonel assingham said to his wife the night of charlotte’s arrival, “i don’t quite see, i’m bound to say, why you take it, even at the worst, so ferociously hard. it isn’t your fault, after all, is it? i’ll be hanged, at any rate, if it’s mine.” the hour was late, and the young lady who had disembarked at southampton that morning to come up by the “steamer special,” and who had then settled herself at an hotel only to re-settle herself a couple of hours later at a private house, was by this time, they might hope, peacefully resting from her exploits. there had been two men at dinner, rather battered brothers-in-arms, of his own period, casually picked up by her host the day before, and when the gentlemen, after the meal, rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room, charlotte, pleading fatigue, had already excused herself. the beguiled warriors, however, had stayed till after eleven--mrs. assingham, though finally quite without illusions, as she said, about the military character, was always beguiling to old soldiers; and as the colonel had come in, before dinner, only in time to dress, he had not till this moment really been summoned to meet his companion over the situation that, as he was now to learn, their visitor’s advent had created for them. it was actually more than midnight, the servants had been sent to bed, the rattle of the wheels had ceased to come in through a window still open to the august air, and robert assingham had been steadily learning, all the while, what it thus behoved him to know. but the words just quoted from him presented themselves, for the moment, as the essence of his spirit and his attitude. he disengaged, he would be damned if he didn’t--they were both phrases he repeatedly used--his responsibility. the simplest, the sanest, the most obliging of men, he habitually indulged in extravagant language. his wife had once told him, in relation to his violence of speech; that such excesses, on his part, made her think of a retired general whom she had once seen playing with toy soldiers, fighting and winning battles, carrying on sieges and annihilating enemies with little fortresses of wood and little armies of tin. her husband’s exaggerated emphasis was his box of toy soldiers, his military game. it harmlessly gratified in him, for his declining years, the military instinct; bad words, when sufficiently numerous and arrayed in their might, could represent battalions, squadrons, tremendous cannonades and glorious charges of cavalry. it was natural, it was delightful--the romance, and for her as well, of camp life and of the perpetual booming of guns. it was fighting to the end, to the death, but no one was ever killed. less fortunate than she, nevertheless, in spite of his wealth of expression, he had not yet found the image that described her favourite game; all he could do was practically to leave it to her, emulating her own philosophy. he had again and again sat up late to discuss those situations in which her finer consciousness abounded, but he had never failed to deny that anything in life, anything of hers, could be a situation for himself. she might be in fifty at once if she liked--and it was what women did like, at their ease, after all; there always being, when they had too much of any, some man, as they were well aware, to get them out. he wouldn’t at any price, have one, of any sort whatever, of his own, or even be in one along with her. he watched her, accordingly, in her favourite element, very much as he had sometimes watched, at the aquarium, the celebrated lady who, in a slight, though tight, bathing-suit, turned somersaults and did tricks in the tank of water which looked so cold and uncomfortable to the non-amphibious. he listened to his companion to-night, while he smoked his last pipe, he watched her through her demonstration, quite as if he had paid a shilling. but it was true that, this being the case, he desired the value of his money. what was it, in the name of wonder, that she was so bent on being responsible for? what did she pretend was going to happen, and what, at the worst, could the poor girl do, even granting she wanted to do anything? what, at the worst, for that matter, could she be conceived to have in her head? “if she had told me the moment she got here,” mrs. assingham replied, “i shouldn’t have my difficulty in finding out. but she wasn’t so obliging, and i see no sign at all of her becoming so. what’s certain is that she didn’t come for nothing. she wants”--she worked it out at her leisure--“to see the prince again. that isn’t what troubles me. i mean that such a fact, as a fact, isn’t. but what i ask myself is, what does she want it for?” “what’s the good of asking yourself if you know you don’t know?” the colonel sat back at his own ease, with an ankle resting on the other knee and his eyes attentive to the good appearance of an extremely slender foot which he kept jerking in its neat integument of fine-spun black silk and patent leather. it seemed to confess, this member, to consciousness of military discipline, everything about it being as polished and perfect, as straight and tight and trim, as a soldier on parade. it went so far as to imply that someone or other would have “got” something or other, confinement to barracks or suppression of pay, if it hadn’t been just as it was. bob assingham was distinguished altogether by a leanness of person, a leanness quite distinct from physical laxity, which might have been determined, on the part of superior powers, by views of transport and accommodation, and which in fact verged on the abnormal. he “did” himself as well as his friends mostly knew, yet remained hungrily thin, with facial, with abdominal cavities quite grim in their effect, and with a consequent looseness of apparel that, combined with a choice of queer light shades and of strange straw-like textures, of the aspect of chinese mats, provocative of wonder at his sources of supply, suggested the habit of tropic islands, a continual cane-bottomed chair, a governorship exercised on wide verandahs. his smooth round head, with the particular shade of its white hair, was like a silver pot reversed; his cheekbones and the bristle of his moustache were worthy of attila the hun. the hollows of his eyes were deep and darksome, but the eyes within them, were like little blue flowers plucked that morning. he knew everything that could be known about life, which he regarded as, for far the greater part, a matter of pecuniary arrangement. his wife accused him of a want, alike, of moral and of intellectual reaction, or rather indeed of a complete incapacity for either. he never went even so far as to understand what she meant, and it didn’t at all matter, since he could be in spite of the limitation a perfectly social creature. the infirmities, the predicaments of men neither surprised nor shocked him, and indeed--which was perhaps his only real loss in a thrifty career--scarce even amused; he took them for granted without horror, classifying them after their kind and calculating results and chances. he might, in old bewildering climates, in old campaigns of cruelty and license, have had such revelations and known such amazements that he had nothing more to learn. but he was wholly content, in spite of his fondness, in domestic discussion, for the superlative degree; and his kindness, in the oddest way, seemed to have nothing to do with his experience. he could deal with things perfectly, for all his needs, without getting near them. this was the way he dealt with his wife, a large proportion of whose meanings he knew he could neglect. he edited, for their general economy, the play of her mind, just as he edited, savingly, with the stump of a pencil, her redundant telegrams. the thing in the world that was least of a mystery to him was his club, which he was accepted as perhaps too completely managing, and which he managed on lines of perfect penetration. his connection with it was really a master-piece of editing. this was in fact, to come back, very much the process he might have been proposing to apply to mrs. assingham’s view of what was now before them; that is to their connection with charlotte stant’s possibilities. they wouldn’t lavish on them all their little fortune of curiosity and alarm; certainly they wouldn’t spend their cherished savings so early in the day. he liked charlotte, moreover, who was a smooth and compact inmate, and whom he felt as, with her instincts that made against waste, much more of his own sort than his wife. he could talk with her about fanny almost better than he could talk with fanny about charlotte. however, he made at present the best of the latter necessity, even to the pressing of the question he has been noted as having last uttered. “if you can’t think what to be afraid of, wait till you can think. then you’ll do it much better. or otherwise, if that’s waiting too long, find out from her. don’t try to find out from me. ask her herself.” mrs. assingham denied, as we know, that her husband had a play of mind; so that she could, on her side, treat these remarks only as if they had been senseless physical gestures or nervous facial movements. she overlooked them as from habit and kindness; yet there was no one to whom she talked so persistently of such intimate things. “it’s her friendship with maggie that’s the immense complication. because that,” she audibly mused, “is so natural.” “then why can’t she have come out for it?” “she came out,” mrs. assingham continued to meditate, “because she hates america. there was no place for her there--she didn’t fit in. she wasn’t in sympathy--no more were the people she saw. then it’s hideously dear; she can’t, on her means, begin to live there. not at all as she can, in a way, here.” “in the way, you mean, of living with us?” “of living with anyone. she can’t live by visits alone--and she doesn’t want to. she’s too good for it even if she could. but she will--she must, sooner or later--stay with them. maggie will want her--maggie will make her. besides, she’ll want to herself.” “then why won’t that do,” the colonel asked, “for you to think it’s what she has come for?” “how will it do, how?”--she went on as without hearing him. “that’s what one keeps feeling.” “why shouldn’t it do beautifully?” “that anything of the past,” she brooded, “should come back now? how will it do, how will it do?” “it will do, i daresay, without your wringing your hands over it. when, my dear,” the colonel pursued as he smoked, “have you ever seen anything of yours--anything that you’ve done--not do?” “ah, i didn’t do this!” it brought her answer straight. “i didn’t bring her back.” “did you expect her to stay over there all her days to oblige you?” “not a bit--for i shouldn’t have minded her coming after their marriage. it’s her coming, this way, before.” to which she added with inconsequence: “i’m too sorry for her--of course she can’t enjoy it. but i don’t see what perversity rides her. she needn’t have looked it all so in the face--as she doesn’t do it, i suppose, simply for discipline. it’s almost--that’s the bore of it--discipline to me.” “perhaps then,” said bob assingham, “that’s what has been her idea. take it, for god’s sake, as discipline to you and have done with it. it will do,” he added, “for discipline to me as well.” she was far, however, from having done with it; it was a situation with such different sides, as she said, and to none of which one could, in justice, be blind. “it isn’t in the least, you know, for instance, that i believe she’s bad. never, never,” mrs. assingham declared. “i don’t think that of her.” “then why isn’t that enough?” nothing was enough, mrs. assingham signified, but that she should develop her thought. “she doesn’t deliberately intend, she doesn’t consciously wish, the least complication. it’s perfectly true that she thinks maggie a dear--as who doesn’t? she’s incapable of any plan to hurt a hair of her head. yet here she is--and there they are,” she wound up. her husband again, for a little, smoked in silence. “what in the world, between them, ever took place?” “between charlotte and the prince? why, nothing--except their having to recognise that nothing could. that was their little romance--it was even their little tragedy.” “but what the deuce did they do?” “do? they fell in love with each other--but, seeing it wasn’t possible, gave each other up.” “then where was the romance?” “why, in their frustration, in their having the courage to look the facts in the face.” “what facts?” the colonel went on. “well, to begin with, that of their neither of them having the means to marry. if she had had even a little--a little, i mean, for two--i believe he would bravely have done it.” after which, as her husband but emitted an odd vague sound, she corrected herself. “i mean if he himself had had only a little--or a little more than a little, a little for a prince. they would have done what they could”--she did them justice”--if there had been a way. but there wasn’t a way, and charlotte, quite to her honour, i consider, understood it. he had to have money--it was a question of life and death. it wouldn’t have been a bit amusing, either, to marry him as a pauper--i mean leaving him one. that was what she had--as he had--the reason to see.” “and their reason is what you call their romance?” she looked at him a moment. “what do you want more?” “didn’t he,” the colonel inquired, “want anything more? or didn’t, for that matter, poor charlotte herself?” she kept her eyes on him; there was a manner in it that half answered. “they were thoroughly in love. she might have been his--” she checked herself; she even for a minute lost herself. “she might have been anything she liked--except his wife.” “but she wasn’t,” said the colonel very smokingly. “she wasn’t,” mrs. assingham echoed. the echo, not loud but deep, filled for a little the room. he seemed to listen to it die away; then he began again. “how are you sure?” she waited before saying, but when she spoke it was definite. “there wasn’t time.” he had a small laugh for her reason; he might have expected some other. “does it take so much time?” she herself, however, remained serious. “it takes more than they had.” he was detached, but he wondered. “what was the matter with their time?” after which, as, remembering it all, living it over and piecing it together, she only considered, “you mean that you came in with your idea?” he demanded. it brought her quickly to the point, and as if also in a measure to answer herself. “not a bit of it--then. but you surely recall,” she went on, “the way, a year ago, everything took place. they had parted before he had ever heard of maggie.” “why hadn’t he heard of her from charlotte herself?” “because she had never spoken of her.” “is that also,” the colonel inquired, “what she has told you?” “i’m not speaking,” his wife returned, “of what she has told me. that’s one thing. i’m speaking of what i know by myself. that’s another.” “you feel, in other words, that she lies to you?” bob assingham more sociably asked. she neglected the question, treating it as gross. “she never so much, at the time, as named maggie.” it was so positive that it appeared to strike him. “it’s he then who has told you?” she after a moment admitted it. “it’s he.” “and he doesn’t lie?” “no--to do him justice. i believe he absolutely doesn’t. if i hadn’t believed it,” mrs. assingham declared, for her general justification, “i would have had nothing to do with him--that is in this connection. he’s a gentleman--i mean all as much of one as he ought to be. and he had nothing to gain. that helps,” she added, “even a gentleman. it was i who named maggie to him--a year from last may. he had never heard of her before.” “then it’s grave,” said the colonel. she hesitated. “do you mean grave for me?” “oh, that everything’s grave for ‘you’ is what we take for granted and are fundamentally talking about. it’s grave--it was--for charlotte. and it’s grave for maggie. that is it was--when he did see her. or when she did see him.” “you don’t torment me as much as you would like,” she presently went on, “because you think of nothing that i haven’t a thousand times thought of, and because i think of everything that you never will. it would all,” she recognised, “have been grave if it hadn’t all been right. you can’t make out,” she contended, “that we got to rome before the end of february.” he more than agreed. “there’s nothing in life, my dear, that i can make out.” well, there was nothing in life, apparently, that she, at real need, couldn’t. “charlotte, who had been there, that year, from early, quite from november, left suddenly, you’ll quite remember, about the 10th of april. she was to have stayed on--she was to have stayed, naturally, more or less, for us; and she was to have stayed all the more that the ververs, due all winter, but delayed, week after week, in paris, were at last really coming. they were coming--that is maggie was--largely to see her, and above all to be with her there. it was all altered--by charlotte’s going to florence. she went from one day to the other--you forget everything. she gave her reasons, but i thought it odd, at the time; i had a sense that something must have happened. the difficulty was that, though i knew a little, i didn’t know enough. i didn’t know her relation with him had been, as you say, a ‘near’ thing--that is i didn’t know how near. the poor girl’s departure was a flight--she went to save herself.” he had listened more than he showed--as came out in his tone. “to save herself?” “well, also, really, i think, to save him too. i saw it afterwards--i see it all now. he would have been sorry--he didn’t want to hurt her.” “oh, i daresay,” the colonel laughed. “they generally don’t!” “at all events,” his wife pursued, “she escaped--they both did; for they had had simply to face it. their marriage couldn’t be, and, if that was so, the sooner they put the apennines between them the better. it had taken them, it is true, some time to feel this and to find it out. they had met constantly, and not always publicly, all that winter; they had met more than was known--though it was a good deal known. more, certainly,” she said, “than i then imagined--though i don’t know what difference it would after all have made with me. i liked him, i thought him charming, from the first of our knowing him; and now, after more than a year, he has done nothing to spoil it. and there are things he might have done--things that many men easily would. therefore i believe in him, and i was right, at first, in knowing i was going to. so i haven’t”--and she stated it as she might have quoted from a slate, after adding up the items, the sum of a column of figures--“so i haven’t, i say to myself, been a fool.” “well, are you trying to make out that i’ve said you have? all their case wants, at any rate,” bob assingham declared, “is that you should leave it well alone. it’s theirs now; they’ve bought it, over the counter, and paid for it. it has ceased to be yours.” “of which case,” she asked, “are you speaking?” he smoked a minute: then with a groan: “lord, are there so many?” “there’s maggie’s and the prince’s, and there’s the prince’s and charlotte’s.” “oh yes; and then,” the colonel scoffed, “there’s charlotte’s and the prince’s.” “there’s maggie’s and charlotte’s,” she went on--“and there’s also maggie’s and mine. i think too that there’s charlotte’s and mine. yes,” she mused, “charlotte’s and mine is certainly a case. in short, you see, there are plenty. but i mean,” she said, “to keep my head.” “are we to settle them all,” he inquired, “to-night?” “i should lose it if things had happened otherwise--if i had acted with any folly.” she had gone on in her earnestness, unheeding of his question. “i shouldn’t be able to bear that now. but my good conscience is my strength; no one can accuse me. the ververs came on to rome alone--charlotte, after their days with her in florence, had decided about america. maggie, i daresay, had helped her; she must have made her a present, and a handsome one, so that many things were easy. charlotte left them, came to england, ‘joined’ somebody or other, sailed for new york. i have still her letter from milan, telling me; i didn’t know at the moment all that was behind it, but i felt in it nevertheless the undertaking of a new life. certainly, in any case, it cleared that air--i mean the dear old roman, in which we were steeped. it left the field free--it gave me a free hand. there was no question for me of anybody else when i brought the two others together. more than that, there was no question for them. so you see,” she concluded, “where that puts me.” she got up, on the words, very much as if they were the blue daylight towards which, through a darksome tunnel, she had been pushing her way, and the elation in her voice, combined with her recovered alertness, might have signified the sharp whistle of the train that shoots at last into the open. she turned about the room; she looked out a moment into the august night; she stopped, here and there, before the flowers in bowls and vases. yes, it was distinctly as if she had proved what was needing proof, as if the issue of her operation had been, almost unexpectedly, a success. old arithmetic had perhaps been fallacious, but the new settled the question. her husband, oddly, however, kept his place without apparently measuring these results. as he had been amused at her intensity, so he was not uplifted by her relief; his interest might in fact have been more enlisted than he allowed. “do you mean,” he presently asked, “that he had already forgot about charlotte?” she faced round as if he had touched a spring. “he wanted to, naturally--and it was much the best thing he could do.” she was in possession of the main case, as it truly seemed; she had it all now. “he was capable of the effort, and he took the best way. remember too what maggie then seemed to us.” “she’s very nice; but she always seems to me, more than anything else, the young woman who has a million a year. if you mean that that’s what she especially seemed to him, you of course place the thing in your light. the effort to forget charlotte couldn’t, i grant you, have been so difficult.” this pulled her up but for an instant. “i never said he didn’t from the first--i never said that he doesn’t more and more--like maggie’s money.” “i never said i shouldn’t have liked it myself,” bob assingham returned. he made no movement; he smoked another minute. “how much did maggie know?” “how much?” she seemed to consider--as if it were between quarts and gallons--how best to express the quantity. “she knew what charlotte, in florence, had told her.” “and what had charlotte told her?” “very little.” “what makes you so sure?” “why, this--that she couldn’t tell her.” and she explained a little what she meant. “there are things, my dear--haven’t you felt it yourself, coarse as you are?--that no one could tell maggie. there are things that, upon my word, i shouldn’t care to attempt to tell her now.” the colonel smoked on it. “she’d be so scandalised?” “she’d be so frightened. she’d be, in her strange little way, so hurt. she wasn’t born to know evil. she must never know it.” bob assingham had a queer grim laugh; the sound of which, in fact, fixed his wife before him. “we’re taking grand ways to prevent it.” but she stood there to protest. “we’re not taking any ways. the ways are all taken; they were taken from the moment he came up to our carriage that day in villa borghese--the second or third of her days in rome, when, as you remember, you went off somewhere with mr. verver, and the prince, who had got into the carriage with us, came home with us to tea. they had met; they had seen each other well; they were in relation: the rest was to come of itself and as it could. it began, practically, i recollect, in our drive. maggie happened to learn, by some other man’s greeting of him, in the bright roman way, from a streetcorner as we passed, that one of the prince’s baptismal names, the one always used for him among his relations, was amerigo: which (as you probably don’t know, however, even after a lifetime of me), was the name, four hundred years ago, or whenever, of the pushing man who followed, across the sea, in the wake of columbus and succeeded, where columbus had failed, in becoming godfather, or name-father, to the new continent; so that the thought of any connection with him can even now thrill our artless breasts.” the colonel’s grim placidity could always quite adequately meet his wife’s not infrequent imputation of ignorances, on the score of the land of her birth, unperturbed and unashamed; and these dark depths were even at the present moment not directly lighted by an inquiry that managed to be curious without being apologetic. “but where does the connection come in?” his wife was prompt. “by the women--that is by some obliging woman, of old, who was a descendant of the pushing man, the make-believe discoverer, and whom the prince is therefore luckily able to refer to as an ancestress. a branch of the other family had become great--great enough, at least, to marry into his; and the name of the navigator, crowned with glory, was, very naturally, to become so the fashion among them that some son, of every generation, was appointed to wear it. my point is, at any rate, that i recall noticing at the time how the prince was, from the start, helped with the dear ververs by his wearing it. the connection became romantic for maggie the moment she took it in; she filled out, in a flash, every link that might be vague. ‘by that sign,’ i quite said to myself, ‘he’ll conquer’--with his good fortune, of course, of having the other necessary signs too. it really,” said mrs. assingham, “was, practically, the fine side of the wedge. which struck me as also,” she wound up, “a lovely note for the candour of the ververs.” the colonel took in the tale, but his comment was prosaic. “he knew, amerigo, what he was about. and i don’t mean the old one.” “i know what you mean!” his wife bravely threw off. “the old one”--he pointed his effect “isn’t the only discoverer in the family.” “oh, as much as you like! if he discovered america--or got himself honoured as if he had--his successors were, in due time, to discover the americans. and it was one of them in particular, doubtless, who was to discover how patriotic we are.” “wouldn’t this be the same one,” the colonel asked, “who really discovered what you call the connection?” she gave him a look. “the connection’s a true thing--the connection’s perfectly historic, your insinuations recoil upon your cynical mind. don’t you understand,” she asked, “that the history of such people is known, root and branch, at every moment of its course?” “oh, it’s all right,” said bob assingham. “go to the british museum,” his companion continued with spirit. “and what am i to do there?” “there’s a whole immense room, or recess, or department, or whatever, filled with books written about his family alone. you can see for yourself.” “have you seen for your self?” she faltered but an instant. “certainly--i went one day with maggie. we looked him up, so to say. they were most civil.” and she fell again into the current her husband had slightly ruffled. “the effect was produced, the charm began to work, at all events, in rome, from that hour of the prince’s drive with us. my only course, afterwards, had to be to make the best of it. it was certainly good enough for that,” mrs. assingham hastened to add, “and i didn’t in the least see my duty in making the worst. in the same situation, to-day; i wouldn’t act differently. i entered into the case as it then appeared to me--and as, for the matter of that, it still does. i liked it, i thought all sorts of good of it, and nothing can even now,” she said with some intensity, “make me think anything else.” “nothing can ever make you think anything you don’t want to,” the colonel, still in his chair, remarked over his pipe. “you’ve got a precious power of thinking whatever you do want. you want also, from moment to moment, to think such desperately different things. what happened,” he went on, “was that you fell violently in love with the prince yourself, and that as you couldn’t get me out of the way you had to take some roundabout course. you couldn’t marry him, any more than charlotte could--that is not to yourself. but you could to somebody else--it was always the prince, it was always marriage. you could to your little friend, to whom there were no objections.” “not only there were no objections, but there were reasons, positive ones--and all excellent, all charming.” she spoke with an absence of all repudiation of his exposure of the spring of her conduct; and this abstention, clearly and effectively conscious, evidently cost her nothing. “it is always the prince; and it is always, thank heaven, marriage. and these are the things, god grant, that it will always be. that i could help, a year ago, most assuredly made me happy, and it continues to make me happy.” “then why aren’t you quiet?” “i am quiet,” said fanny assingham. he looked at her, with his colourless candour, still in his place; she moved about again, a little, emphasising by her unrest her declaration of her tranquillity. he was as silent, at first, as if he had taken her answer, but he was not to keep it long. “what do you make of it that, by your own show, charlotte couldn’t tell her all? what do you make of it that the prince didn’t tell her anything? say one understands that there are things she can’t be told--since, as you put it, she is so easily scared and shocked.” he produced these objections slowly, giving her time, by his pauses, to stop roaming and come back to him. but she was roaming still when he concluded his inquiry. “if there hadn’t been anything there shouldn’t have been between the pair before charlotte bolted--in order, precisely, as you say, that there shouldn’t be: why in the world was what there had been too bad to be spoken of?” mrs. assingham, after this question, continued still to circulate--not directly meeting it even when at last she stopped. “i thought you wanted me to be quiet.” “so i do--and i’m trying to make you so much so that you won’t worry more. can’t you be quiet on that?” she thought a moment--then seemed to try. “to relate that she had to ‘bolt’ for the reasons we speak of, even though the bolting had done for her what she wished--that i can perfectly feel charlotte’s not wanting to do.” “ah then, if it has done for her what she wished-!” but the colonel’s conclusion hung by the “if” which his wife didn’t take up. so it hung but the longer when he presently spoke again. “all one wonders, in that case, is why then she has come back to him.” “say she hasn’t come back to him. not really to him.” “i’ll say anything you like. but that won’t do me the same good as your saying it.” “nothing, my dear, will do you good,” mrs. assingham returned. “you don’t care for anything in itself; you care for nothing but to be grossly amused because i don’t keep washing my hands--!” “i thought your whole argument was that everything is so right that this is precisely what you do.” but his wife, as it was a point she had often made, could go on as she had gone on before. “you’re perfectly indifferent, really; you’re perfectly immoral. you’ve taken part in the sack of cities, and i’m sure you’ve done dreadful things yourself. but i don’t trouble my head, if you like. ‘so now there!’” she laughed. he accepted her laugh, but he kept his way. “well, i back poor charlotte.” “‘back’ her?” “to know what she wants.” “ah then, so do i. she does know what she wants.” and mrs. assingham produced this quantity, at last, on the girl’s behalf, as the ripe result of her late wanderings and musings. she had groped through their talk, for the thread, and now she had got it. “she wants to be magnificent.” “she is,” said the colonel almost cynically. “she wants”--his wife now had it fast “to be thoroughly superior, and she’s capable of that.” “of wanting to?” “of carrying out her idea.” “and what is her idea?” “to see maggie through.” bob assingham wondered. “through what?” “through everything. she knows the prince.” “and maggie doesn’t. no, dear thing”--mrs. assingham had to recognise it--“she doesn’t.” “so that charlotte has come out to give her lessons?” she continued, fanny assingham, to work out her thought. “she has done this great thing for him. that is, a year ago, she practically did it. she practically, at any rate, helped him to do it himself--and helped me to help him. she kept off, she stayed away, she left him free; and what, moreover, were her silences to maggie but a direct aid to him? if she had spoken in florence; if she had told her own poor story; if she had, come back at any time--till within a few weeks ago; if she hadn’t gone to new york and hadn’t held out there: if she hadn’t done these things all that has happened since would certainly have been different. therefore she’s in a position to be consistent now. she knows the prince,” mrs. assingham repeated. it involved even again her former recognition. “and maggie, dear thing, doesn’t.” she was high, she was lucid, she was almost inspired; and it was but the deeper drop therefore to her husband’s flat common sense. “in other words maggie is, by her ignorance, in danger? then if she’s in danger, there is danger.” “there won’t be--with charlotte’s understanding of it. that’s where she has had her conception of being able to be heroic, of being able in fact to be sublime. she is, she will be”--the good lady by this time glowed. “so she sees it--to become, for her best friend, an element of positive safety.” bob assingham looked at it hard. “which of them do you call her best friend?” she gave a toss of impatience. “i’ll leave you to discover!” but the grand truth thus made out she had now completely adopted. “it’s for us, therefore, to be hers.” “‘hers’?” “you and i. it’s for us to be charlotte’s. it’s for us, on our side, to see her through.” “through her sublimity?” “through her noble, lonely life. only--that’s essential--it mustn’t be lonely. it will be all right if she marries.” “so we’re to marry her?” “we’re to marry her. it will be,” mrs. assingham continued, “the great thing i can do.” she made it out more and more. “it will make up.” “make up for what?” as she said nothing, however, his desire for lucidity renewed itself. “if everything’s so all right what is there to make up for?” “why, if i did do either of them, by any chance, a wrong. if i made a mistake.” “you’ll make up for it by making another?” and then as she again took her time: “i thought your whole point is just that you’re sure.” “one can never be ideally sure of anything. there are always possibilities.” “then, if we can but strike so wild, why keep meddling?” it made her again look at him. “where would you have been, my dear, if i hadn’t meddled with you?” “ah, that wasn’t meddling--i was your own. i was your own,” said the colonel, “from the moment i didn’t object.” “well, these people won’t object. they are my own too--in the sense that i’m awfully fond of them. also in the sense,” she continued, “that i think they’re not so very much less fond of me. our relation, all round, exists--it’s a reality, and a very good one; we’re mixed up, so to speak, and it’s too late to change it. we must live in it and with it. therefore to see that charlotte gets a good husband as soon as possible--that, as i say, will be one of my ways of living. it will cover,” she said with conviction, “all the ground.” and then as his own conviction appeared to continue as little to match: “the ground, i mean, of any nervousness i may ever feel. it will be in fact my duty and i shan’t rest till my duty’s performed.” she had arrived by this time at something like exaltation. “i shall give, for the next year or two if necessary, my life to it. i shall have done in that case what i can.” he took it at last as it came. “you hold there’s no limit to what you ‘can’?” “i don’t say there’s no limit, or anything of the sort. i say there are good chances--enough of them for hope. why shouldn’t there be when a girl is, after all, all that she is?” “by after ‘all’ you mean after she’s in love with somebody else?” the colonel put his question with a quietude doubtless designed to be fatal; but it scarcely pulled her up. “she’s not too much in love not herself to want to marry. she would now particularly like to.” “has she told you so?” “not yet. it’s too soon. but she will. meanwhile, however, i don’t require the information. her marrying will prove the truth.” “and what truth?” “the truth of everything i say.” “prove it to whom?” “well, to myself, to begin with. that will be enough for me--to work for her. what it will prove,” mrs. assingham presently went on, “will be that she’s cured. that she accepts the situation.” he paid this the tribute of a long pull at his pipe. “the situation of doing the one thing she can that will really seem to cover her tracks?” his wife looked at him, the good dry man, as if now at last he was merely vulgar. “the one thing she can do that will really make new tracks altogether. the thing that, before any other, will be wise and right. the thing that will best give her her chance to be magnificent.” he slowly emitted his smoke. “and best give you, by the same token, yours to be magnificent with her?” “i shall be as magnificent, at least, as i can.” bob assingham got up. “and you call me immoral?” she hesitated. “i’ll call you stupid if you prefer. but stupidity pushed to a certain point is, you know, immorality. just so what is morality but high intelligence?” this he was unable to tell her; which left her more definitely to conclude. “besides, it’s all, at the worst, great fun.” “oh, if you simply put it at that--!” his implication was that in this case they had a common ground; yet even thus he couldn’t catch her by it. “oh, i don’t mean,” she said from the threshold, “the fun that you mean. good-night.” in answer to which, as he turned out the electric light, he gave an odd, short groan, almost a grunt. he had apparently meant some particular kind. v “well, now i must tell you, for i want to be absolutely honest.” so charlotte spoke, a little ominously, after they had got into the park. “i don’t want to pretend, and i can’t pretend a moment longer. you may think of me what you will, but i don’t care. i knew i shouldn’t and i find now how little. i came back for this. not really for anything else. for this,” she repeated as, under the influence of her tone, the prince had already come to a pause. “for ‘this’?” he spoke as if the particular thing she indicated were vague to him--or were, rather, a quantity that couldn’t, at the most, be much. it would be as much, however, as she should be able to make it. “to have one hour alone with you.” it had rained heavily in the night, and though the pavements were now dry, thanks to a cleansing breeze, the august morning, with its hovering, thick-drifting clouds and freshened air, was cool and grey. the multitudinous green of the park had been deepened, and a wholesome smell of irrigation, purging the place of dust and of odours less acceptable, rose from the earth. charlotte had looked about her, with expression, from the first of their coming in, quite as if for a deep greeting, for general recognition: the day was, even in the heart of london, of a rich, low-browed, weatherwashed english type. it was as if it had been waiting for her, as if she knew it, placed it, loved it, as if it were in fact a part of what she had come back for. so far as this was the case the impression of course could only be lost on a mere vague italian; it was one of those for which you had to be, blessedly, an american--as indeed you had to be, blessedly, an american for all sorts of things: so long as you hadn’t, blessedly or not, to remain in america. the prince had, by half-past ten--as also by definite appointment--called in cadogan place for mrs. assingham’s visitor, and then, after brief delay, the two had walked together up sloane street and got straight into the park from knightsbridge. the understanding to this end had taken its place, after a couple of days, as inevitably consequent on the appeal made by the girl during those first moments in mrs. assingham’s drawing-room. it was an appeal the couple of days had done nothing to invalidate--everything, much rather, to place in a light, and as to which, obviously, it wouldn’t have fitted that anyone should raise an objection. who was there, for that matter, to raise one, from the moment mrs. assingham, informed and apparently not disapproving, didn’t intervene? this the young man had asked himself--with a very sufficient sense of what would have made him ridiculous. he wasn’t going to begin--that at least was certain--by showing a fear. even had fear at first been sharp in him, moreover, it would already, not a little, have dropped; so happy, all round, so propitious, he quite might have called it, had been the effect of this rapid interval. the time had been taken up largely by his active reception of his own wedding-guests and by maggie’s scarce less absorbed entertainment of her friend, whom she had kept for hours together in portland place; whom she had not, as wouldn’t have been convenient, invited altogether as yet to migrate, but who had been present, with other persons, his contingent, at luncheon, at tea, at dinner, at perpetual repasts--he had never in his life, it struck him, had to reckon with so much eating--whenever he had looked in. if he had not again, till this hour, save for a minute, seen charlotte alone, so, positively, all the while, he had not seen even maggie; and if, therefore, he had not seen even maggie, nothing was more natural than that he shouldn’t have seen charlotte. the exceptional minute, a mere snatch, at the tail of the others, on the huge portland place staircase had sufficiently enabled the girl to remind him--so ready she assumed him to be--of what they were to do. time pressed if they were to do it at all. everyone had brought gifts; his relations had brought wonders--how did they still have, where did they still find, such treasures? she only had brought nothing, and she was ashamed; yet even by the sight of the rest of the tribute she wouldn’t be put off. she would do what she could, and he was, unknown to maggie, he must remember, to give her his aid. he had prolonged the minute so far as to take time to hesitate, for a reason, and then to risk bringing his reason out. the risk was because he might hurt her--hurt her pride, if she had that particular sort. but she might as well be hurt one way as another; and, besides, that particular sort of pride was just what she hadn’t. so his slight resistance, while they lingered, had been just easy enough not to be impossible. “i hate to encourage you--and for such a purpose, after all--to spend your money.” she had stood a stair or two below him; where, while she looked up at him beneath the high, domed light of the hall, she rubbed with her palm the polished mahogany of the balustrade, which was mounted on fine ironwork, eighteenth-century english. “because you think i must have so little? i’ve enough, at any rate--enough for us to take our hour. enough,” she had smiled, “is as good as a feast! and then,” she had said, “it isn’t of course a question of anything expensive, gorged with treasure as maggie is; it isn’t a question of competing or outshining. what, naturally, in the way of the priceless, hasn’t she got? mine is to be the offering of the poor--something, precisely, that--no rich person could ever give her, and that, being herself too rich ever to buy it, she would therefore never have.” charlotte had spoken as if after so much thought. “only, as it can’t be fine, it ought to be funny--and that’s the sort of thing to hunt for. hunting in london, besides, is amusing in itself.” he recalled even how he had been struck with her word. “‘funny’?” “oh, i don’t mean a comic toy--i mean some little thing with a charm. but absolutely right, in its comparative cheapness. that’s what i call funny,” she had explained. “you used,” she had also added, “to help me to get things cheap in rome. you were splendid for beating down. i have them all still, i needn’t say--the little bargains i there owed you. there are bargains in london in august.” “ah, but i don’t understand your english buying, and i confess i find it dull.” so much as that, while they turned to go up together, he had objected. “i understood my poor dear romans.” “it was they who understood you--that was your pull,” she had laughed. “our amusement here is just that they don’t understand us. we can make it amusing. you’ll see.” if he had hesitated again it was because the point permitted. “the amusement surely will be to find our present.” “certainly--as i say.” “well, if they don’t come down--?” “then we’ll come up. there’s always something to be done. besides, prince,” she had gone on, “i’m not, if you come to that, absolutely a pauper. i’m too poor for some things,” she had said--yet, strange as she was, lightly enough; “but i’m not too poor for others.” and she had paused again at the top. “i’ve been saving up.” he had really challenged it. “in america?” “yes, even there--with my motive. and we oughtn’t, you know,” she had wound up, “to leave it beyond to-morrow.” that, definitely, with ten words more, was what had passed--he feeling all the while how any sort of begging-off would only magnify it. he might get on with things as they were, but he must do anything rather than magnify. besides which it was pitiful to make her beg of him. he was making her--she had begged; and this, for a special sensibility in him, didn’t at all do. that was accordingly, in fine, how they had come to where they were: he was engaged, as hard as possible, in the policy of not magnifying. he had kept this up even on her making a point--and as if it were almost the whole point--that maggie of course was not to have an idea. half the interest of the thing at least would be that she shouldn’t suspect; therefore he was completely to keep it from her--as charlotte on her side would--that they had been anywhere at all together or had so much as seen each other for five minutes alone. the absolute secrecy of their little excursion was in short of the essence; she appealed to his kindness to let her feel that he didn’t betray her. there had been something, frankly, a little disconcerting in such an appeal at such an hour, on the very eve of his nuptials: it was one thing to have met the girl casually at mrs. assingham’s and another to arrange with her thus for a morning practically as private as their old mornings in rome and practically not less intimate. he had immediately told maggie, the same evening, of the minutes that had passed between them in cadogan place--though not mentioning those of mrs. assingham’s absence any more than he mentioned the fact of what their friend had then, with such small delay, proposed. but what had briefly checked his assent to any present, to any positive making of mystery--what had made him, while they stood at the top of the stairs, demur just long enough for her to notice it--was the sense of the resemblance of the little plan before him to occasions, of the past, from which he was quite disconnected, from which he could only desire to be. this was like beginning something over, which was the last thing he wanted. the strength, the beauty of his actual position was in its being wholly a fresh start, was that what it began would be new altogether. these items of his consciousness had clustered so quickly that by the time charlotte read them in his face he was in presence of what they amounted to. she had challenged them as soon as read them, had met them with a “do you want then to go and tell her?” that had somehow made them ridiculous. it had made him, promptly, fall back on minimizing it--that is on minimizing “fuss.” apparent scruples were, obviously, fuss, and he had on the spot clutched, in the light of this truth, at the happy principle that would meet every case. this principle was simply to be, with the girl, always simple--and with the very last simplicity. that would cover everything. it had covered, then and there, certainly, his immediate submission to the sight of what was clearest. this was, really, that what she asked was little compared to what she gave. what she gave touched him, as she faced him, for it was the full tune of her renouncing. she really renounced--renounced everything, and without even insisting now on what it had all been for her. her only insistence was her insistence on the small matter of their keeping their appointment to themselves. that, in exchange for “everything,” everything she gave up, was verily but a trifle. he let himself accordingly be guided; he so soon assented, for enlightened indulgence, to any particular turn she might wish the occasion to take, that the stamp of her preference had been well applied to it even while they were still in the park. the application in fact presently required that they should sit down a little, really to see where they were; in obedience to which propriety they had some ten minutes, of a quality quite distinct, in a couple of penny-chairs under one of the larger trees. they had taken, for their walk, to the cropped, rain-freshened grass, after finding it already dry; and the chairs, turned away from the broad alley, the main drive and the aspect of park lane, looked across the wide reaches of green which seemed in a manner to refine upon their freedom. they helped charlotte thus to make her position--her temporary position--still more clear, and it was for this purpose, obviously, that, abruptly, on seeing her opportunity, she sat down. he stood for a little before her, as if to mark the importance of not wasting time, the importance she herself had previously insisted on; but after she had said a few words it was impossible for him not to resort again to good-nature. he marked as he could, by this concession, that if he had finally met her first proposal for what would be “amusing” in it, so any idea she might have would contribute to that effect. he had consequently--in all consistency--to treat it as amusing that she reaffirmed, and reaffirmed again, the truth that was her truth. “i don’t care what you make of it, and i don’t ask anything whatever of you--anything but this. i want to have said it--that’s all; i want not to have failed to say it. to see you once and be with you, to be as we are now and as we used to be, for one small hour--or say for two--that’s what i have had for weeks in my head. i mean, of course, to get it before--before what you’re going to do. so, all the while, you see,” she went on with her eyes on him, “it was a question for me if i should be able to manage it in time. if i couldn’t have come now i probably shouldn’t have come at all--perhaps even ever. now that i’m here i shall stay, but there were moments, over there, when i despaired. it wasn’t easy--there were reasons; but it was either this or nothing. so i didn’t struggle, you see, in vain. after--oh, i didn’t want that! i don’t mean,” she smiled, “that it wouldn’t have been delightful to see you even then--to see you at any time; but i would never have come for it. this is different. this is what i wanted. this is what i’ve got. this is what i shall always have. this is what i should have missed, of course,” she pursued, “if you had chosen to make me miss it. if you had thought me horrid, had refused to come, i should, naturally, have been immensely ‘sold.’ i had to take the risk. well, you’re all i could have hoped. that’s what i was to have said. i didn’t want simply to get my time with you, but i wanted you to know. i wanted you”--she kept it up, slowly, softly, with a small tremor of voice, but without the least failure of sense or sequence--“i wanted you to understand. i wanted you, that is, to hear. i don’t care, i think, whether you understand or not. if i ask nothing of you i don’t--i mayn’t--ask even so much as that. what you may think of me--that doesn’t in the least matter. what i want is that it shall always be with you--so that you’ll never be able quite to get rid of it--that i did. i won’t say that you did--you may make as little of that as you like. but that i was here with you where we are and as we are--i just saying this. giving myself, in other words, away--and perfectly willing to do it for nothing. that’s all.” she paused as if her demonstration was complete--yet, for the moment, without moving; as if in fact to give it a few minutes to sink in; into the listening air, into the watching space, into the conscious hospitality of nature, so far as nature was, all londonised, all vulgarised, with them there; or even, for that matter, into her own open ears, rather than into the attention of her passive and prudent friend. his attention had done all that attention could do; his handsome, slightly anxious, yet still more definitely “amused” face sufficiently played its part. he clutched, however, at what he could best clutch at--the fact that she let him off, definitely let him off. she let him off, it seemed, even from so much as answering; so that while he smiled back at her in return for her information he felt his lips remain closed to the successive vaguenesses of rejoinder, of objection, that rose for him from within. charlotte herself spoke again at last--“you may want to know what i get by it. but that’s my own affair.” he really didn’t want to know even this--or continued, for the safest plan, quite to behave as if he didn’t; which prolonged the mere dumbness of diversion in which he had taken refuge. he was glad when, finally--the point she had wished to make seeming established to her satisfaction--they brought to what might pass for a close the moment of his life at which he had had least to say. movement and progress, after this, with more impersonal talk, were naturally a relief; so that he was not again, during their excursion, at a loss for the right word. the air had been, as it were, cleared; they had their errand itself to discuss, and the opportunities of london, the sense of the wonderful place, the pleasures of prowling there, the question of shops, of possibilities, of particular objects, noticed by each in previous prowls. each professed surprise at the extent of the other’s knowledge; the prince in especial wondered at his friend’s possession of her london. he had rather prized his own possession, the guidance he could really often give a cabman; it was a whim of his own, a part of his anglomania, and congruous with that feature, which had, after all, so much more surface than depth. when his companion, with the memory of other visits and other rambles, spoke of places he hadn’t seen and things he didn’t know, he actually felt again--as half the effect--just a shade humiliated. he might even have felt a trifle annoyed--if it hadn’t been, on this spot, for his being, even more, interested. it was a fresh light on charlotte and on her curious world-quality, of which, in rome, he had had his due sense, but which clearly would show larger on the big london stage. rome was, in comparison, a village, a family-party, a little old-world spinnet for the fingers of one hand. by the time they reached the marble arch it was almost as if she were showing him a new side, and that, in fact, gave amusement a new and a firmer basis. the right tone would be easy for putting himself in her hands. should they disagree a little--frankly and fairly--about directions and chances, values and authenticities, the situation would be quite gloriously saved. they were none the less, as happened, much of one mind on the article of their keeping clear of resorts with which maggie would be acquainted. charlotte recalled it as a matter of course, named it in time as a condition--they would keep away from any place to which he had already been with maggie. this made indeed a scant difference, for though he had during the last month done few things so much as attend his future wife on her making of purchases, the antiquarii, as he called them with charlotte, had not been the great affair. except in bond street, really, maggie had had no use for them: her situation indeed, in connection with that order of traffic, was full of consequences produced by her father’s. mr. verver, one of the great collectors of the world, hadn’t left his daughter to prowl for herself; he had little to do with shops, and was mostly, as a purchaser, approached privately and from afar. great people, all over europe, sought introductions to him; high personages, incredibly high, and more of them than would ever be known, solemnly sworn as everyone was, in such cases, to discretion, high personages made up to him as the one man on the short authentic list likely to give the price. it had therefore been easy to settle, as they walked, that the tracks of the ververs, daughter’s as well as father’s, were to be avoided; the importance only was that their talk about it led for a moment to the first words they had as yet exchanged on the subject of maggie. charlotte, still in the park, proceeded to them--for it was she who began--with a serenity of appreciation that was odd, certainly, as a sequel to her words of ten minutes before. this was another note on her--what he would have called another light--for her companion, who, though without giving a sign, admired, for what it was, the simplicity of her transition, a transition that took no trouble either to trace or to explain itself. she paused again an instant, on the grass, to make it; she stopped before him with a sudden “anything of course, dear as she is, will do for her. i mean if i were to give her a pin-cushion from the baker-street bazaar.” “that’s exactly what _i_ meant”--the prince laughed out this allusion to their snatch of talk in portland place. “it’s just what i suggested.” she took, however, no notice of the reminder; she went on in her own way. “but it isn’t a reason. in that case one would never do anything for her. i mean,” charlotte explained, “if one took advantage of her character.” “of her character?” “we mustn’t take advantage of her character,” the girl, again unheeding, pursued. “one mustn’t, if not for her, at least for one’s self. she saves one such trouble.” she had spoken thoughtfully, with her eyes on her friend’s; she might have been talking, preoccupied and practical, of someone with whom he was comparatively unconnected. “she certainly gives one no trouble,” said the prince. and then as if this were perhaps ambiguous or inadequate: “she’s not selfish--god forgive her!--enough.” “that’s what i mean,” charlotte instantly said. “she’s not selfish enough. there’s nothing, absolutely, that one need do for her. she’s so modest,” she developed--“she doesn’t miss things. i mean if you love her--or, rather, i should say, if she loves you. she lets it go.” the prince frowned a little--as a tribute, after all, to seriousness. “she lets what--?” “anything--anything that you might do and that you don’t. she lets everything go but her own disposition to be kind to you. it’s of herself that she asks efforts--so far as she ever has to ask them. she hasn’t, much. she does everything herself. and that’s terrible.” the prince had listened; but, always with propriety, he didn’t commit himself. “terrible?” “well, unless one is almost as good as she. it makes too easy terms for one. it takes stuff, within one, so far as one’s decency is concerned, to stand it. and nobody,” charlotte continued in the same manner, “is decent enough, good enough, to stand it--not without help from religion, or something of that kind. not without prayer and fasting--that is without taking great care. certainly,” she said, “such people as you and i are not.” the prince, obligingly, thought an instant. “not good enough to stand it?” “well, not good enough not rather to feel the strain. we happen each, i think, to be of the kind that are easily spoiled.” her friend, again, for propriety, followed the argument. “oh, i don’t know. may not one’s affection for her do something more for one’s decency, as you call it, than her own generosity--her own affection, her ‘decency’--has the unfortunate virtue to undo?” “ah, of course it must be all in that.” but she had made her question, all the same, interesting to him. “what it comes to--one can see what you mean--is the way she believes in one. that is if she believes at all.” “yes, that’s what it comes to,” said charlotte stant. “and why,” he asked, almost soothingly, “should it be terrible?” he couldn’t, at the worst, see that. “because it’s always so--the idea of having to pity people.” “not when there’s also, with it, the idea of helping them.” “yes, but if we can’t help them?” “we can--we always can. that is,” he competently added, “if we care for them. and that’s what we’re talking about.” “yes”--she on the whole assented. “it comes back then to our absolutely refusing to be spoiled.” “certainly. but everything,” the prince laughed as they went on--“all your ‘decency,’ i mean--comes back to that.” she walked beside him a moment. “it’s just what _i_ meant,” she then reasonably said. vi the man in the little shop in which, well after this, they lingered longest, the small but interesting dealer in the bloomsbury street who was remarkable for an insistence not importunate, inasmuch as it was mainly mute, but singularly, intensely coercive--this personage fixed on his visitors an extraordinary pair of eyes and looked from one to the other while they considered the object with which he appeared mainly to hope to tempt them. they had come to him last, for their time was nearly up; an hour of it at least, from the moment of their getting into a hansom at the marble arch, having yielded no better result than the amusement invoked from the first. the amusement, of course, was to have consisted in seeking, but it had also involved the idea of finding; which latter necessity would have been obtrusive only if they had found too soon. the question at present was if they were finding, and they put it to each other, in the bloomsbury shop, while they enjoyed the undiverted attention of the shopman. he was clearly the master, and devoted to his business--the essence of which, in his conception, might precisely have been this particular secret that he possessed for worrying the customer so little that it fairly made for their relations a sort of solemnity. he had not many things, none of the redundancy of “rot” they had elsewhere seen, and our friends had, on entering, even had the sense of a muster so scant that, as high values obviously wouldn’t reign, the effect might be almost pitiful. then their impression had changed; for, though the show was of small pieces, several taken from the little window and others extracted from a cupboard behind the counter--dusky, in the rather low-browed place, despite its glass doors--each bid for their attention spoke, however modestly, for itself, and the pitch of their entertainer’s pretensions was promptly enough given. his array was heterogeneous and not at all imposing; still, it differed agreeably from what they had hitherto seen. charlotte, after the incident, was to be full of impressions, of several of which, later on, she gave her companion--always in the interest of their amusement--the benefit; and one of the impressions had been that the man himself was the greatest curiosity they had looked at. the prince was to reply to this that he himself hadn’t looked at him; as, precisely, in the general connection, charlotte had more than once, from other days, noted, for his advantage, her consciousness of how, below a certain social plane, he never saw. one kind of shopman was just like another to him--which was oddly inconsequent on the part of a mind that, where it did notice, noticed so much. he took throughout, always, the meaner sort for granted--the night of their meanness, or whatever name one might give it for him, made all his cats grey. he didn’t, no doubt, want to hurt them, but he imaged them no more than if his eyes acted only for the level of his own high head. her own vision acted for every relation--this he had seen for himself: she remarked beggars, she remembered servants, she recognised cabmen; she had often distinguished beauty, when out with him, in dirty children; she had admired “type” in faces at hucksters’ stalls. therefore, on this occasion, she had found their antiquario interesting; partly because he cared so for his things, and partly because he cared--well, so for them. “he likes his things--he loves them,” she was to say; “and it isn’t only--it isn’t perhaps even at all--that he loves to sell them. i think he would love to keep them if he could; and he prefers, at any rate, to sell them to right people. we, clearly, were right people--he knows them when he sees them; and that’s why, as i say, you could make out, or at least _i_ could, that he cared for us. didn’t you see”--she was to ask it with an insistence--“the way he looked at us and took us in? i doubt if either of us have ever been so well looked at before. yes, he’ll remember us”--she was to profess herself convinced of that almost to uneasiness. “but it was after all”--this was perhaps reassuring--“because, given his taste, since he has taste, he was pleased with us, he was struck--he had ideas about us. well, i should think people might; we’re beautiful--aren’t we?--and he knows. then, also, he has his way; for that way of saying nothing with his lips when he’s all the while pressing you so with his face, which shows how he knows you feel it--that is a regular way.” of decent old gold, old silver, old bronze, of old chased and jewelled artistry, were the objects that, successively produced, had ended by numerously dotting the counter, where the shopman’s slim, light fingers, with neat nails, touched them at moments, briefly, nervously, tenderly, as those of a chess-player rest, a few seconds, over the board, on a figure he thinks he may move and then may not: small florid ancientries, ornaments, pendants, lockets, brooches, buckles, pretexts for dim brilliants, bloodless rubies, pearls either too large or too opaque for value; miniatures mounted with diamonds that had ceased to dazzle; snuffboxes presented to--or by--the too-questionable great; cups, trays, taper-stands, suggestive of pawn-tickets, archaic and brown, that would themselves, if preserved, have been prized curiosities. a few commemorative medals, of neat outline but dull reference; a classic monument or two, things of the first years of the century; things consular, napoleonic, temples, obelisks, arches, tinily re-embodied, completed the discreet cluster; in which, however, even after tentative reinforcement from several quaint rings, intaglios, amethysts, carbuncles, each of which had found a home in the ancient sallow satin of some weakly-snapping little box, there was, in spite of the due proportion of faint poetry, no great force of persuasion. they looked, the visitors, they touched, they vaguely pretended to consider, but with scepticism, so far as courtesy permitted, in the quality of their attention. it was impossible they shouldn’t, after a little, tacitly agree as to the absurdity of carrying to maggie a token from such a stock. it would be--that was the difficulty--pretentious without being “good”; too usual, as a treasure, to have been an inspiration of the giver, and yet too primitive to be taken as tribute welcome on any terms. they had been out more than two hours and, evidently, had found nothing. it forced from charlotte a kind of admission. “it ought, really, if it should be a thing of this sort, to take its little value from having belonged to one’s self.” “ecco!” said the prince--just triumphantly enough. “there you are.” behind the dealer were sundry small cupboards in the wall. two or three of these charlotte had seen him open, so that her eyes found themselves resting on those he had not visited. but she completed her admission. “there’s nothing here she could wear.” it was only after a moment that her companion rejoined. “is there anything--do you think--that you could?” it made her just start. she didn’t, at all events, look at the objects; she but looked for an instant very directly at him. “no.” “ah!” the prince quietly exclaimed. “would it be,” charlotte asked, “your idea to offer me something?” “well, why not--as a small ricordo.” “but a ricordo of what?” “why, of ‘this’--as you yourself say. of this little hunt.” “oh, i say it--but hasn’t my whole point been that i don’t ask you to. therefore,” she demanded--but smiling at him now--“where’s the logic?” “oh, the logic--!” he laughed. “but logic’s everything. that, at least, is how i feel it. a ricordo from you--from you to me--is a ricordo of nothing. it has no reference.” “ah, my dear!” he vaguely protested. their entertainer, meanwhile, stood there with his eyes on them, and the girl, though at this minute more interested in her passage with her friend than in anything else, again met his gaze. it was a comfort to her that their foreign tongue covered what they said--and they might have appeared of course, as the prince now had one of the snuffboxes in his hand, to be discussing a purchase. “you don’t refer,” she went on to her companion. “_i_ refer.” he had lifted the lid of his little box and he looked into it hard. “do you mean by that then that you would be free--?” “‘free’--?” “to offer me something?” this gave her a longer pause, and when she spoke again she might have seemed, oddly, to be addressing the dealer. “would you allow me--?” “no,” said the prince into his little box. “you wouldn’t accept it from me?” “no,” he repeated in the same way. she exhaled a long breath that was like a guarded sigh. “but you’ve touched an idea that has been mine. it’s what i’ve wanted.” then she added: “it was what i hoped.” he put down his box--this had drawn his eyes. he made nothing, clearly, of the little man’s attention. “it’s what you brought me out for?” “well, that’s, at any rate,” she returned, “my own affair. but it won’t do?” “it won’t do, cara mia.” “it’s impossible?” “it’s impossible.” and he took up one of the brooches. she had another pause, while the shopman only waited. “if i were to accept from you one of these charming little ornaments as you suggest, what should i do with it?” he was perhaps at last a little irritated; he even--as if he might understand--looked vaguely across at their host. “wear it, per bacco!” “where then, please? under my clothes?” “wherever you like. but it isn’t then, if you will,” he added, “worth talking about.” “it’s only worth talking about, mio caro,” she smiled, “from your having begun it. my question is only reasonable--so that your idea may stand or fall by your answer to it. if i should pin one of these things on for you would it be, to your mind, that i might go home and show it to maggie as your present?” they had had between them often in talk the refrain, jocosely, descriptively applied, of “old roman.” it had been, as a pleasantry, in the other time, his explanation to her of everything; but nothing, truly, had even seemed so old-roman as the shrug in which he now indulged. “why in the world not?” “because--on our basis--it would be impossible to give her an account of the pretext.” “the pretext--?” he wondered. “the occasion. this ramble that we shall have had together and that we’re not to speak of.” “oh yes,” he said after a moment “i remember we’re not to speak of it.” “that of course you’re pledged to. and the one thing, you see, goes with the other. so you don’t insist.” he had again, at random, laid back his trinket; with which he quite turned to her, a little wearily at last--even a little impatiently. “i don’t insist.” it disposed for the time of the question, but what was next apparent was that it had seen them no further. the shopman, who had not stirred, stood there in his patience--which, his mute intensity helping, had almost the effect of an ironic comment. the prince moved to the glass door and, his back to the others, as with nothing more to contribute, looked--though not less patiently--into the street. then the shopman, for charlotte, momentously broke silence. “you’ve seen, disgraziatamente, signora principessa,” he sadly said, “too much”--and it made the prince face about. for the effect of the momentous came, if not from the sense, from the sound of his words; which was that of the suddenest, sharpest italian. charlotte exchanged with her friend a glance that matched it, and just for the minute they were held in check. but their glance had, after all, by that time, said more than one thing; had both exclaimed on the apprehension, by the wretch, of their intimate conversation, let alone of her possible, her impossible, title, and remarked, for mutual reassurance, that it didn’t, all the same, matter. the prince remained by the door, but immediately addressing the speaker from where he stood. “you’re italian then, are you?” but the reply came in english. “oh dear no.” “you’re english?” to which the answer was this time, with a smile, in briefest italian. “che!” the dealer waived the question--he practically disposed of it by turning straightway toward a receptacle to which he had not yet resorted and from which, after unlocking it, he extracted a square box, of some twenty inches in height, covered with worn-looking leather. he placed the box on the counter, pushed back a pair of small hooks, lifted the lid and removed from its nest a drinking-vessel larger than a common cup, yet not of exorbitant size, and formed, to appearance, either of old fine gold or of some material once richly gilt. he handled it with tenderness, with ceremony, making a place for it on a small satin mat. “my golden bowl,” he observed--and it sounded, on his lips, as if it said everything. he left the important object--for as “important” it did somehow present itself--to produce its certain effect. simple, but singularly elegant, it stood on a circular foot, a short pedestal with a slightly spreading base, and, though not of signal depth, justified its title by the charm of its shape as well as by the tone of its surface. it might have been a large goblet diminished, to the enhancement of its happy curve, by half its original height. as formed of solid gold it was impressive; it seemed indeed to warn off the prudent admirer. charlotte, with care, immediately took it up, while the prince, who had after a minute shifted his position again, regarded it from a distance. it was heavier than charlotte had thought. “gold, really gold?” she asked of their companion. he hesitated. “look a little, and perhaps you’ll make out.” she looked, holding it up in both her fine hands, turning it to the light. “it may be cheap for what it is, but it will be dear, i’m afraid, for me.” “well,” said the man, “i can part with it for less than its value. i got it, you see, for less.” “for how much then?” again he waited, always with his serene stare. “do you like it then?” charlotte turned to her friend. “do you like it?” he came no nearer; he looked at their companion. “cos’e?” “well, signori miei, if you must know, it’s just a perfect crystal.” “of course we must know, per dio!” said the prince. but he turned away again--he went back to his glass door. charlotte set down the bowl; she was evidently taken. “do you mean it’s cut out of a single crystal?” “if it isn’t i think i can promise you that you’ll never find any joint or any piecing.” she wondered. “even if i were to scrape off the gold?” he showed, though with due respect, that she amused him. “you couldn’t scrape it off--it has been too well put on; put on i don’t know when and i don’t know how. but by some very fine old worker and by some beautiful old process.” charlotte, frankly charmed with the cup, smiled back at him now. “a lost art?” “call it a lost art,” “but of what time then is the whole thing?” “well, say also of a lost time.” the girl considered. “then if it’s so precious, how comes it to be cheap?” her interlocutor once more hung fire, but by this time the prince had lost patience. “i’ll wait for you out in the air,” he said to his companion, and, though he spoke without irritation, he pointed his remark by passing immediately into the street, where, during the next minutes, the others saw him, his back to the shopwindow, philosophically enough hover and light a fresh cigarette. charlotte even took, a little, her time; she was aware of his funny italian taste for london street-life. her host meanwhile, at any rate, answered her question. “ah, i’ve had it a long time without selling it. i think i must have been keeping it, madam, for you.” “you’ve kept it for me because you’ve thought i mightn’t see what’s the matter with it?” he only continued to face her--he only continued to appear to follow the play of her mind. “what is the matter with it?” “oh, it’s not for me to say; it’s for you honestly to tell me. of course i know something must be.” “but if it’s something you can’t find out, isn’t it as good as if it were nothing?” “i probably should find out as soon as i had paid for it.” “not,” her host lucidly insisted, “if you hadn’t paid too much.” “what do you call,” she asked, “little enough?” “well, what should you say to fifteen pounds?” “i should say,” said charlotte with the utmost promptitude, “that it’s altogether too much.” the dealer shook his head slowly and sadly, but firmly. “it’s my price, madam--and if you admire the thing i think it really might be yours. it’s not too much. it’s too little. it’s almost nothing. i can’t go lower.” charlotte, wondering, but resisting, bent over the bowl again. “then it’s impossible. it’s more than i can afford.” “ah,” the man returned, “one can sometimes afford for a present more than one can afford for one’s self.” he said it so coaxingly that she found herself going on without, as might be said, putting him in his place. “oh, of course it would be only for a present--!” “then it would be a lovely one.” “does one make a present,” she asked, “of an object that contains, to one’s knowledge, a flaw?” “well, if one knows of it one has only to mention it. the good faith,” the man smiled, “is always there.” “and leave the person to whom one gives the thing, you mean, to discover it?” “he wouldn’t discover it--if you’re speaking of a gentleman.” “i’m not speaking of anyone in particular,” charlotte said. “well, whoever it might be. he might know--and he might try. but he wouldn’t find.” she kept her eyes on him as if, though unsatisfied, mystified, she yet had a fancy for the bowl. “not even if the thing should come to pieces?” and then as he was silent: “not even if he should have to say to me ‘the golden bowl is broken’?” he was still silent; after which he had his strangest smile. “ah, if anyone should want to smash it--!” she laughed; she almost admired the little man’s expression. “you mean one could smash it with a hammer?” “yes; if nothing else would do. or perhaps even by dashing it with violence--say upon a marble floor.” “oh, marble floors!” but she might have been thinking--for they were a connection, marble floors; a connection with many things: with her old rome, and with his; with the palaces of his past, and, a little, of hers; with the possibilities of his future, with the sumptuosities of his marriage, with the wealth of the ververs. all the same, however, there were other things; and they all together held for a moment her fancy. “does crystal then break--when it is crystal? i thought its beauty was its hardness.” her friend, in his way, discriminated. “its beauty is its being crystal. but its hardness is certainly, its safety. it doesn’t break,” he went on, “like vile glass. it splits--if there is a split.” “ah!”--charlotte breathed with interest. “if there is a split.” and she looked down again at the bowl. “there is a split, eh? crystal does split, eh?” “on lines and by laws of its own.” “you mean if there’s a weak place?” for all answer, after an hesitation, he took the bowl up again, holding it aloft and tapping it with a key. it rang with the finest, sweetest sound. “where is the weak place?” she then did the question justice. “well, for me, only the price. i’m poor, you see--very poor. but i thank you and i’ll think.” the prince, on the other side of the shop-window, had finally faced about and, as to see if she hadn’t done, was trying to reach, with his eyes, the comparatively dim interior. “i like it,” she said--“i want it. but i must decide what i can do.” the man, not ungraciously, resigned himself. “well, i’ll keep it for you.” the small quarter-of-an-hour had had its marked oddity--this she felt even by the time the open air and the bloomsbury aspects had again, in their protest against the truth of her gathered impression, made her more or less their own. yet the oddity might have been registered as small as compared to the other effect that, before they had gone much further, she had, with her companion, to take account of. this latter was simply the effect of their having, by some tacit logic, some queer inevitability, quite dropped the idea of a continued pursuit. they didn’t say so, but it was on the line of giving up maggie’s present that they practically proceeded--the line of giving it up without more reference to it. the prince’s first reference was in fact quite independently made. “i hope you satisfied yourself, before you had done, of what was the matter with that bowl.” “no indeed, i satisfied myself of nothing. of nothing at least but that the more i looked at it the more i liked it, and that if you weren’t so unaccommodating this would be just the occasion for your giving me the pleasure of accepting it.” he looked graver for her, at this, than he had looked all the morning. “do you propose it seriously--without wishing to play me a trick?” she wondered. “what trick would it be?” he looked at her harder. “you mean you really don’t know?” “but know what?” “why, what’s the matter with it. you didn’t see, all the while?” she only continued, however, to stare. “how could you see--out in the street?” “i saw before i went out. it was because i saw that i did go out. i didn’t want to have another scene with you, before that rascal, and i judged you would presently guess for yourself.” “is he a rascal?” charlotte asked. “his price is so moderate.” she waited but a moment. “five pounds. really so little.” “five pounds?” he continued to look at her. “five pounds.” he might have been doubting her word, but he was only, it appeared, gathering emphasis. “it would be dear--to make a gift of--at five shillings. if it had cost you even but five pence i wouldn’t take it from you.” “then,” she asked, “what is the matter?” “why, it has a crack.” it sounded, on his lips, so sharp, it had such an authority, that she almost started, while her colour, at the word, rose. it was as if he had been right, though his assurance was wonderful. “you answer for it without having looked?” “i did look. i saw the object itself. it told its story. no wonder it’s cheap.” “but it’s exquisite,” charlotte, as if with an interest in it now made even tenderer and stranger, found herself moved to insist. “of course it’s exquisite. that’s the danger.” then a light visibly came to her--a light in which her friend suddenly and intensely showed. the reflection of it, as she smiled at him, was in her own face. “the danger--i see--is because you’re superstitious.” “per dio, i’m superstitious! a crack is a crack--and an omen’s an omen.” “you’d be afraid--?” “per bacco!” “for your happiness?” “for my happiness.” “for your safety?” “for my safety.” she just paused. “for your marriage?” “for my marriage. for everything.” she thought again. “thank goodness then that if there be a crack we know it! but if we may perish by cracks in things that we don’t know--!” and she smiled with the sadness of it. “we can never then give each other anything.” he considered, but he met it. “ah, but one does know. _i_ do, at least--and by instinct. i don’t fail. that will always protect me.” it was funny, the way he said such things; yet she liked him, really, the more for it. they fell in for her with a general, or rather with a special, vision. but she spoke with a mild despair. “what then will protect me?” “where i’m concerned _i_ will. from me at least you’ve nothing to fear,” he now quite amiably responded. “anything you consent to accept from me--” but he paused. “well?” “well, shall be perfect.” “that’s very fine,” she presently answered. “it’s vain, after all, for you to talk of my accepting things when you’ll accept nothing from me.” ah, there, better still, he could meet her. “you attach an impossible condition. that, i mean, of my keeping your gift so to myself.” well, she looked, before him there, at the condition--then, abruptly, with a gesture, she gave it up. she had a headshake of disenchantment--so far as the idea had appealed to her. it all appeared too difficult. “oh, my ‘condition’--i don’t hold to it. you may cry it on the housetops--anything i ever do.” “ah well, then--!” this made, he laughed, all the difference. but it was too late. “oh, i don’t care now! i should have liked the bowl. but if that won’t do there’s nothing.” he considered this; he took it in, looking graver again; but after a moment he qualified. “yet i shall want some day to give you something.” she wondered at him. “what day?” “the day you marry. for you will marry. you must--seriously--marry.” she took it from him, but it determined in her the only words she was to have uttered, all the morning, that came out as if a spring had been pressed. “to make you feel better?” “well,” he replied frankly, wonderfully--“it will. but here,” he added, “is your hansom.” he had signalled--the cab was charging. she put out no hand for their separation, but she prepared to get in. before she did so, however, she said what had been gathering while she waited. “well, i would marry, i think, to have something from you in all freedom.” part second vii adam verver, at fawns, that autumn sunday, might have been observed to open the door of the billiard-room with a certain freedom--might have been observed, that is, had there been a spectator in the field. the justification of the push he had applied, however, and of the push, equally sharp, that, to shut himself in, he again applied--the ground of this energy was precisely that he might here, however briefly, find himself alone, alone with the handful of letters, newspapers and other unopened missives, to which, during and since breakfast, he had lacked opportunity to give an eye. the vast, square, clean apartment was empty, and its large clear windows looked out into spaces of terrace and garden, of park and woodland and shining artificial lake, of richly-condensed horizon, all dark blue upland and church-towered village and strong cloudshadow, which were, together, a thing to create the sense, with everyone else at church, of one’s having the world to one’s self. we share this world, none the less, for the hour, with mr. verver; the very fact of his striking, as he would have said, for solitude, the fact of his quiet flight, almost on tiptoe, through tortuous corridors, investing him with an interest that makes our attention--tender indeed almost to compassion--qualify his achieved isolation. for it may immediately be mentioned that this amiable man bethought himself of his personal advantage, in general, only when it might appear to him that other advantages, those of other persons, had successfully put in their claim. it may be mentioned also that he always figured other persons--such was the law of his nature--as a numerous array, and that, though conscious of but a single near tie, one affection, one duty deepest-rooted in his life, it had never, for many minutes together, been his portion not to feel himself surrounded and committed, never quite been his refreshment to make out where the many-coloured human appeal, represented by gradations of tint, diminishing concentric zones of intensity, of importunity, really faded to the blessed impersonal whiteness for which his vision sometimes ached. it shaded off, the appeal--he would have admitted that; but he had as yet noted no point at which it positively stopped. thus had grown in him a little habit--his innermost secret, not confided even to maggie, though he felt she understood it, as she understood, to his view, everything--thus had shaped itself the innocent trick of occasionally making believe that he had no conscience, or at least that blankness, in the field of duty, did reign for an hour; a small game to which the few persons near enough to have caught him playing it, and of whom mrs. assingham, for instance, was one, attached indulgently that idea of quaintness, quite in fact that charm of the pathetic, involved in the preservation by an adult of one of childhood’s toys. when he took a rare moment “off,” he did so with the touching, confessing eyes of a man of forty-seven caught in the act of handling a relic of infancy--sticking on the head of a broken soldier or trying the lock of a wooden gun. it was essentially, in him, the imitation of depravity--which, for amusement, as might have been, he practised “keeping up.” in spite of practice he was still imperfect, for these so artlessly-artful interludes were condemned, by the nature of the case, to brevity. he had fatally stamped himself--it was his own fault--a man who could be interrupted with impunity. the greatest of wonders, moreover, was exactly in this, that so interrupted a man should ever have got, as the phrase was, should above all have got so early, to where he was. it argued a special genius; he was clearly a case of that. the spark of fire, the point of light, sat somewhere in his inward vagueness as a lamp before a shrine twinkles in the dark perspective of a church; and while youth and early middle-age, while the stiff american breeze of example and opportunity were blowing upon it hard, had made of the chamber of his brain a strange workshop of fortune. this establishment, mysterious and almost anonymous, the windows of which, at hours of highest pressure, never seemed, for starers and wonderers, perceptibly to glow, must in fact have been during certain years the scene of an unprecedented, a miraculous white-heat, the receipt for producing which it was practically felt that the master of the forge could not have communicated even with the best intentions. the essential pulse of the flame, the very action of the cerebral temperature, brought to the highest point, yet extraordinarily contained--these facts themselves were the immensity of the result; they were one with perfection of machinery, they had constituted the kind of acquisitive power engendered and applied, the necessary triumph of all operations. a dim explanation of phenomena once vivid must at all events for the moment suffice us; it being obviously no account of the matter to throw on our friend’s amiability alone the weight of the demonstration of his economic history. amiability, of a truth, is an aid to success; it has even been known to be the principle of large accumulations; but the link, for the mind, is none the less fatally missing between proof, on such a scale, of continuity, if of nothing more insolent, in one field, and accessibility to distraction in every other. variety of imagination--what is that but fatal, in the world of affairs, unless so disciplined as not to be distinguished from monotony? mr. verver then, for a fresh, full period, a period betraying, extraordinarily, no wasted year, had been inscrutably monotonous behind an iridescent cloud. the cloud was his native envelope--the soft looseness, so to say, of his temper and tone, not directly expressive enough, no doubt, to figure an amplitude of folds, but of a quality unmistakable for sensitive feelers. he was still reduced, in fine, to getting his rare moments with himself by feigning a cynicism. his real inability to maintain the pretence, however, had perhaps not often been better instanced than by his acceptance of the inevitable to-day--his acceptance of it on the arrival, at the end of a quarter-of-an hour, of that element of obligation with which he had all the while known he must reckon. a quarter-of-an-hour of egoism was about as much as he, taking one situation with another, usually got. mrs. rance opened the door--more tentatively indeed than he himself had just done; but on the other hand, as if to make up for this, she pushed forward even more briskly on seeing him than he had been moved to do on seeing nobody. then, with force, it came home to him that he had, definitely, a week before, established a precedent. he did her at least that justice--it was a kind of justice he was always doing someone. he had on the previous sunday liked to stop at home, and he had exposed himself thereby to be caught in the act. to make this possible, that is, mrs. rance had only had to like to do the same--the trick was so easily played. it had not occurred to him to plan in any way for her absence--which would have destroyed, somehow, in principle, the propriety of his own presence. if persons under his roof hadn’t a right not to go to church, what became, for a fair mind, of his own right? his subtlest manoeuvre had been simply to change from the library to the billiard-room, it being in the library that his guest, or his daughter’s, or the guest of the miss lutches--he scarce knew in which light to regard her--had then, and not unnaturally, of course, joined him. it was urged on him by his memory of the duration of the visit she had that time, as it were, paid him, that the law of recurrence would already have got itself enacted. she had spent the whole morning with him, was still there, in the library, when the others came back--thanks to her having been tepid about their taking, mr. verver and she, a turn outside. it had been as if she looked on that as a kind of subterfuge--almost as a form of disloyalty. yet what was it she had in mind, what did she wish to make of him beyond what she had already made, a patient, punctilious host, mindful that she had originally arrived much as a stranger, arrived not at all deliberately or yearningly invited?--so that one positively had her possible susceptibilities the more on one’s conscience. the miss lutches, the sisters from the middle west, were there as friends of maggie’s, friends of the earlier time; but mrs. rance was there--or at least had primarily appeared--only as a friend of the miss lutches. this lady herself was not of the middle west--she rather insisted on it--but of new jersey, rhode island or delaware, one of the smallest and most intimate states: he couldn’t remember which, though she insisted too on that. it was not in him--we may say it for him--to go so far as to wonder if their group were next to be recruited by some friend of her own; and this partly because she had struck him, verily, rather as wanting to get the miss lutches themselves away than to extend the actual circle, and partly, as well as more essentially, because such connection as he enjoyed with the ironic question in general resided substantially less in a personal use of it than in the habit of seeing it as easy to others. he was so framed by nature as to be able to keep his inconveniences separate from his resentments; though indeed if the sum of these latter had at the most always been small, that was doubtless in some degree a consequence of the fewness of the former. his greatest inconvenience, he would have admitted, had he analyzed, was in finding it so taken for granted that, as he had money, he had force. it pressed upon him hard, and all round, assuredly, this attribution of power. everyone had need of one’s power, whereas one’s own need, at the best, would have seemed to be but some trick for not communicating it. the effect of a reserve so merely, so meanly defensive would in most cases, beyond question, sufficiently discredit the cause; wherefore, though it was complicating to be perpetually treated as an infinite agent, the outrage was not the greatest of which a brave man might complain. complaint, besides, was a luxury, and he dreaded the imputation of greed. the other, the constant imputation, that of being able to “do,” would have no ground if he hadn’t been, to start with--this was the point--provably luxurious. his lips, somehow, were closed--and by a spring connected moreover with the action of his eyes themselves. the latter showed him what he had done, showed him where he had come out; quite at the top of his hill of difficulty, the tall sharp spiral round which he had begun to wind his ascent at the age of twenty, and the apex of which was a platform looking down, if one would, on the kingdoms of the earth and with standing-room for but half-a-dozen others. his eyes, in any case, now saw mrs. rance approach with an instant failure to attach to the fact any grossness of avidity of mrs. rance’s own--or at least to descry any triumphant use even for the luridest impression of her intensity. what was virtually supreme would be her vision of his having attempted, by his desertion of the library, to mislead her--which in point of fact barely escaped being what he had designed. it was not easy for him, in spite of accumulations fondly and funnily regarded as of systematic practice, not now to be ashamed; the one thing comparatively easy would be to gloss over his course. the billiard-room was not, at the particular crisis, either a natural or a graceful place for the nominally main occupant of so large a house to retire to--and this without prejudice, either, to the fact that his visitor wouldn’t, as he apprehended, explicitly make him a scene. should she frankly denounce him for a sneak he would simply go to pieces; but he was, after an instant, not afraid of that. wouldn’t she rather, as emphasising their communion, accept and in a manner exploit the anomaly, treat it perhaps as romantic or possibly even as comic?--show at least that they needn’t mind even though the vast table, draped in brown holland, thrust itself between them as an expanse of desert sand. she couldn’t cross the desert, but she could, and did, beautifully get round it; so that for him to convert it into an obstacle he would have had to cause himself, as in some childish game or unbecoming romp, to be pursued, to be genially hunted. this last was a turn he was well aware the occasion should on no account take; and there loomed before him--for the mere moment--the prospect of her fairly proposing that they should knock about the balls. that danger certainly, it struck him, he should manage in some way to deal with. why too, for that matter, had he need of defences, material or other?--how was it a question of dangers really to be called such? the deep danger, the only one that made him, as an idea, positively turn cold, would have been the possibility of her seeking him in marriage, of her bringing up between them that terrible issue. here, fortunately, she was powerless, it being apparently so provable against her that she had a husband in undiminished existence. she had him, it was true, only in america, only in texas, in nebraska, in arizona or somewhere--somewhere that, at old fawns house, in the county of kent, scarcely counted as a definite place at all; it showed somehow, from afar, as so lost, so indistinct and illusory, in the great alkali desert of cheap divorce. she had him even in bondage, poor man, had him in contempt, had him in remembrance so imperfect as barely to assert itself, but she had him, none the less, in existence unimpeached: the miss lutches had seen him in the flesh--as they had appeared eager to mention; though when they were separately questioned their descriptions failed to tally. he would be at the worst, should it come to the worst, mrs. rance’s difficulty, and he served therefore quite enough as the stout bulwark of anyone else. this was in truth logic without a flaw, yet it gave mr. verver less comfort than it ought. he feared not only danger--he feared the idea of danger, or in other words feared, hauntedly, himself. it was above all as a symbol that mrs. rance actually rose before him--a symbol of the supreme effort that he should have sooner or later, as he felt, to make. this effort would be to say no--he lived in terror of having to. he should be proposed to at a given moment--it was only a question of time--and then he should have to do a thing that would be extremely disagreeable. he almost wished, on occasion, that he wasn’t so sure he would do it. he knew himself, however, well enough not to doubt: he knew coldly, quite bleakly, where he would, at the crisis, draw the line. it was maggie’s marriage and maggie’s finer happiness--happy as he had supposed her before--that had made the difference; he hadn’t in the other time, it now seemed to him, had to think of such things. they hadn’t come up for him, and it was as if she, positively, had herself kept them down. she had only been his child--which she was indeed as much as ever; but there were sides on which she had protected him as if she were more than a daughter. she had done for him more than he knew--much, and blissfully, as he always had known. if she did at present more than ever, through having what she called the change in his life to make up to him for, his situation still, all the same, kept pace with her activity--his situation being simply that there was more than ever to be done. there had not yet been quite so much, on all the showing, as since their return from their twenty months in america, as since their settlement again in england, experimental though it was, and the consequent sense, now quite established for him, of a domestic air that had cleared and lightened, producing the effect, for their common personal life, of wider perspectives and large waiting spaces. it was as if his son-in-law’s presence, even from before his becoming his son-in-law, had somehow filled the scene and blocked the future--very richly and handsomely, when all was said, not at all inconveniently or in ways not to have been desired: inasmuch as though the prince, his measure now practically taken, was still pretty much the same “big fact,” the sky had lifted, the horizon receded, the very foreground itself expanded, quite to match him, quite to keep everything in comfortable scale. at first, certainly, their decent little old-time union, maggie’s and his own, had resembled a good deal some pleasant public square, in the heart of an old city, into which a great palladian church, say--something with a grand architectural front--had suddenly been dropped; so that the rest of the place, the space in front, the way round, outside, to the east end, the margin of street and passage, the quantity of over-arching heaven, had been temporarily compromised. not even then, of a truth, in a manner disconcerting--given, that is, for the critical, or at least the intelligent, eye, the great style of the facade and its high place in its class. the phenomenon that had since occurred, whether originally to have been pronounced calculable or not, had not, naturally, been the miracle of a night, but had taken place so gradually, quietly, easily, that from this vantage of wide, wooded fawns, with its eighty rooms, as they said, with its spreading park, with its acres and acres of garden and its majesty of artificial lake--though that, for a person so familiar with the “great” ones, might be rather ridiculous--no visibility of transition showed, no violence of adjustment, in retrospect, emerged. the palladian church was always there, but the piazza took care of itself. the sun stared down in his fulness, the air circulated, and the public not less; the limit stood off, the way round was easy, the east end was as fine, in its fashion, as the west, and there were also side doors for entrance, between the two--large, monumental, ornamental, in their style--as for all proper great churches. by some such process, in fine, had the prince, for his father-in-law, while remaining solidly a feature, ceased to be, at all ominously, a block. mr. verver, it may further be mentioned, had taken at no moment sufficient alarm to have kept in detail the record of his reassurance; but he would none the less not have been unable, not really have been indisposed, to impart in confidence to the right person his notion of the history of the matter. the right person--it is equally distinct--had not, for this illumination, been wanting, but had been encountered in the form of fanny assingham, not for the first time indeed admitted to his counsels, and who would have doubtless at present, in any case, from plenitude of interest and with equal guarantees, repeated his secret. it all came then, the great clearance, from the one prime fact that the prince, by good fortune, hadn’t proved angular. he clung to that description of his daughter’s husband as he often did to terms and phrases, in the human, the social connection, that he had found for himself: it was his way to have times of using these constantly, as if they just then lighted the world, or his own path in it, for him--even when for some of his interlocutors they covered less ground. it was true that with mrs. assingham he never felt quite sure of the ground anything covered; she disputed with him so little, agreed with him so much, surrounded him with such systematic consideration, such predetermined tenderness, that it was almost--which he had once told her in irritation as if she were nursing a sick baby. he had accused her of not taking him seriously, and she had replied--as from her it couldn’t frighten him--that she took him religiously, adoringly. she had laughed again, as she had laughed before, on his producing for her that good right word about the happy issue of his connection with the prince--with an effect the more odd perhaps as she had not contested its value. she couldn’t of course, however, be, at the best, as much in love with his discovery as he was himself. he was so much so that he fairly worked it--to his own comfort; came in fact sometimes near publicly pointing the moral of what might have occurred if friction, so to speak, had occurred. he pointed it frankly one day to the personage in question, mentioned to the prince the particular justice he did him, was even explicit as to the danger that, in their remarkable relation, they had thus escaped. oh, if he had been angular!--who could say what might then have happened? he spoke--and it was the way he had spoken to mrs. assingham too--as if he grasped the facts, without exception, for which angularity stood. it figured for him, clearly, as a final idea, a conception of the last vividness. he might have been signifying by it the sharp corners and hard edges, all the stony pointedness, the grand right geometry of his spreading palladian church. just so, he was insensible to no feature of the felicity of a contact that, beguilingly, almost confoundingly, was a contact but with practically yielding lines and curved surfaces. “you’re round, my boy,” he had said--“you’re all, you’re variously and inexhaustibly round, when you might, by all the chances, have been abominably square. i’m not sure, for that matter,” he had added, “that you’re not square in the general mass--whether abominably or not. the abomination isn’t a question, for you’re inveterately round--that’s what i mean--in the detail. it’s the sort of thing, in you, that one feels--or at least i do--with one’s hand. say you had been formed, all over, in a lot of little pyramidal lozenges like that wonderful side of the ducal palace in venice--so lovely in a building, but so damnable, for rubbing against, in a man, and especially in a near relation. i can see them all from here--each of them sticking out by itself--all the architectural cut diamonds that would have scratched one’s softer sides. one would have been scratched by diamonds--doubtless the neatest way if one was to be scratched at all--but one would have been more or less reduced to a hash. as it is, for living with, you’re a pure and perfect crystal. i give you my idea--i think you ought to have it--just as it has come to me.” the prince had taken the idea, in his way, for he was well accustomed, by this time, to taking; and nothing perhaps even could more have confirmed mr. verver’s account of his surface than the manner in which these golden drops evenly flowed over it. they caught in no interstice, they gathered in no concavity; the uniform smoothness betrayed the dew but by showing for the moment a richer tone. the young man, in other words, unconfusedly smiled--though indeed as if assenting, from principle and habit, to more than he understood. he liked all signs that things were well, but he cared rather less why they were. in regard to the people among whom he had since his marriage been living, the reasons they so frequently gave--so much oftener than he had ever heard reasons given before--remained on the whole the element by which he most differed from them; and his father-in-law and his wife were, after all, only first among the people among whom he had been living. he was never even yet sure of how, at this, that or the other point, he would strike them; they felt remarkably, so often, things he hadn’t meant, and missed not less remarkably, and not less often, things he had. he had fallen back on his general explanation--“we haven’t the same values;” by which he understood the same measure of importance. his “curves” apparently were important because they had been unexpected, or, still more, unconceived; whereas when one had always, as in his relegated old world, taken curves, and in much greater quantities too, for granted, one was no more surprised at the resulting feasibility of intercourse than one was surprised at being upstairs in a house that had a staircase. he had in fact on this occasion disposed alertly enough of the subject of mr. verver’s approbation. the promptitude of his answer, we may in fact well surmise, had sprung not a little from a particular kindled remembrance; this had given his acknowledgment its easiest turn. “oh, if i’m a crystal i’m delighted that i’m a perfect one, for i believe that they sometimes have cracks and flaws--in which case they’re to be had very cheap!” he had stopped short of the emphasis it would have given his joke to add that there had been certainly no having him cheap; and it was doubtless a mark of the good taste practically reigning between them that mr. verver had not, on his side either, taken up the opportunity. it is the latter’s relation to such aspects, however, that now most concerns us, and the bearing of his pleased view of this absence of friction upon amerigo’s character as a representative precious object. representative precious objects, great ancient pictures and other works of art, fine eminent “pieces” in gold, in silver, in enamel, majolica, ivory, bronze, had for a number of years so multiplied themselves round him and, as a general challenge to acquisition and appreciation, so engaged all the faculties of his mind, that the instinct, the particular sharpened appetite of the collector, had fairly served as a basis for his acceptance of the prince’s suit. over and above the signal fact of the impression made on maggie herself, the aspirant to his daughter’s hand showed somehow the great marks and signs, stood before him with the high authenticities, he had learned to look for in pieces of the first order. adam verver knew, by this time, knew thoroughly; no man in europe or in america, he privately believed, was less capable, in such estimates, of vulgar mistakes. he had never spoken of himself as infallible--it was not his way; but, apart from the natural affections, he had acquainted himself with no greater joy, of the intimately personal type, than the joy of his originally coming to feel, and all so unexpectedly, that he had in him the spirit of the connoisseur. he had, like many other persons, in the course of his reading, been struck with keats’s sonnet about stout cortez in the presence of the pacific; but few persons, probably, had so devoutly fitted the poet’s grand image to a fact of experience. it consorted so with mr. verver’s consciousness of the way in which, at a given moment, he had stared at his pacific, that a couple of perusals of the immortal lines had sufficed to stamp them in his memory. his “peak in darien” was the sudden hour that had transformed his life, the hour of his perceiving with a mute inward gasp akin to the low moan of apprehensive passion, that a world was left him to conquer and that he might conquer it if he tried. it had been a turning of the page of the book of life--as if a leaf long inert had moved at a touch and, eagerly reversed, had made such a stir of the air as sent up into his face the very breath of the golden isles. to rifle the golden isles had, on the spot, become the business of his future, and with the sweetness of it--what was most wondrous of all--still more even in the thought than in the act. the thought was that of the affinity of genius, or at least of taste, with something in himself--with the dormant intelligence of which he had thus almost violently become aware and that affected him as changing by a mere revolution of the screw his whole intellectual plane. he was equal, somehow, with the great seers, the invokers and encouragers of beauty--and he didn’t after all perhaps dangle so far below the great producers and creators. he had been nothing of that kind before-too decidedly, too dreadfully not; but now he saw why he had been what he had, why he had failed and fallen short even in huge success; now he read into his career, in one single magnificent night, the immense meaning it had waited for. it was during his first visit to europe after the death of his wife, when his daughter was ten years old, that the light, in his mind, had so broken--and he had even made out at that time why, on an earlier occasion, the journey of his honeymoon year, it had still been closely covered. he had “bought” then, so far as he had been able, but he had bought almost wholly for the frail, fluttered creature at his side, who had had her fancies, decidedly, but all for the art, then wonderful to both of them, of the rue de la paix, the costly authenticities of dressmakers and jewellers. her flutter--pale disconcerted ghost as she actually was, a broken white flower tied round, almost grotesquely for his present sense, with a huge satin “bow” of the boulevard--her flutter had been mainly that of ribbons, frills and fine fabrics; all funny, pathetic evidence, for memory, of the bewilderments overtaking them as a bridal pair confronted with opportunity. he could wince, fairly, still, as he remembered the sense in which the poor girl’s pressure had, under his fond encouragement indeed, been exerted in favour of purchase and curiosity. these were wandering images, out of the earlier dusk, that threw her back, for his pity, into a past more remote than he liked their common past, their young affection, to appear. it would have had to be admitted, to an insistent criticism, that maggie’s mother, all too strangely, had not so much failed of faith as of the right application of it; since she had exercised it eagerly and restlessly, made it a pretext for innocent perversities in respect to which philosophic time was at, last to reduce all groans to gentleness. and they had loved each other so that his own intelligence, on the higher line, had temporarily paid for it. the futilities, the enormities, the depravities, of decoration and ingenuity, that, before his sense was unsealed, she had made him think lovely! musing, reconsidering little man that he was, and addicted to silent pleasures--as he was accessible to silent pains--he even sometimes wondered what would have become of his intelligence, in the sphere in which it was to learn more and more exclusively to play, if his wife’s influence upon it had not been, in the strange scheme of things, so promptly removed. would she have led him altogether, attached as he was to her, into the wilderness of mere mistakes? would she have prevented him from ever scaling his vertiginous peak?--or would she, otherwise, have been able to accompany him to that eminence, where he might have pointed out to her, as cortez to his companions, the revelation vouchsafed? no companion of cortez had presumably been a real lady: mr. verver allowed that historic fact to determine his inference. viii what was at all events not permanently hidden from him was a truth much less invidious about his years of darkness. it was the strange scheme of things again: the years of darkness had been needed to render possible the years of light. a wiser hand than he at first knew had kept him hard at acquisition of one sort as a perfect preliminary to acquisition of another, and the preliminary would have been weak and wanting if the good faith of it had been less. his comparative blindness had made the good faith, which in its turn had made the soil propitious for the flower of the supreme idea. he had had to like forging and sweating, he had had to like polishing and piling up his arms. they were things at least he had had to believe he liked, just as he had believed he liked transcendent calculation and imaginative gambling all for themselves, the creation of “interests” that were the extinction of other interests, the livid vulgarity, even, of getting in, or getting out, first. that had of course been so far from really the case--with the supreme idea, all the while, growing and striking deep, under everything, in the warm, rich earth. he had stood unknowing, he had walked and worked where it was buried, and the fact itself, the fact of his fortune, would have been a barren fact enough if the first sharp tender shoot had never struggled into day. there on one side was the ugliness his middle time had been spared; there on the other, from all the portents, was the beauty with which his age might still be crowned. he was happier, doubtless, than he deserved; but that, when one was happy at all, it was easy to be. he had wrought by devious ways, but he had reached the place, and what would ever have been straighter, in any man’s life, than his way, now, of occupying it? it hadn’t merely, his plan, all the sanctions of civilization; it was positively civilization condensed, concrete, consummate, set down by his hands as a house on a rock--a house from whose open doors and windows, open to grateful, to thirsty millions, the higher, the highest knowledge would shine out to bless the land. in this house, designed as a gift, primarily, to the people of his adoptive city and native state, the urgency of whose release from the bondage of ugliness he was in a position to measure--in this museum of museums, a palace of art which was to show for compact as a greek temple was compact, a receptacle of treasures sifted to positive sanctity, his spirit to-day almost altogether lived, making up, as he would have said, for lost time and haunting the portico in anticipation of the final rites. these would be the “opening exercises,” the august dedication of the place. his imagination, he was well aware, got over the ground faster than his judgment; there was much still to do for the production of his first effect. foundations were laid and walls were rising, the structure of the shell all determined; but raw haste was forbidden him in a connection so intimate with the highest effects of patience and piety; he should belie himself by completing without a touch at least of the majesty of delay a monument to the religion he wished to propagate, the exemplary passion, the passion for perfection at any price. he was far from knowing as yet where he would end, but he was admirably definite as to where he wouldn’t begin. he wouldn’t begin with a small show--he would begin with a great, and he could scarce have indicated, even had he wished to try, the line of division he had drawn. he had taken no trouble to indicate it to his fellow-citizens, purveyors and consumers, in his own and the circumjacent commonwealths, of comic matter in large lettering, diurnally “set up,” printed, published, folded and delivered, at the expense of his presumptuous emulation of the snail. the snail had become for him, under this ironic suggestion, the loveliest beast in nature, and his return to england, of which we are present witnesses, had not been unconnected with the appreciation so determined. it marked what he liked to mark, that he needed, on the matter in question, instruction from no one on earth. a couple of years of europe again, of renewed nearness to changes and chances, refreshed sensibility to the currents of the market, would fall in with the consistency of wisdom, the particular shade of enlightened conviction, that he wished to observe. it didn’t look like much for a whole family to hang about waiting-they being now, since the birth of his grandson, a whole family; and there was henceforth only one ground in all the world, he felt, on which the question of appearance would ever really again count for him. he cared that a work of art of price should “look like” the master to whom it might perhaps be deceitfully attributed; but he had ceased on the whole to know any matter of the rest of life by its looks. he took life in general higher up the stream; so far as he was not actually taking it as a collector, he was taking it, decidedly, as a grandfather. in the way of precious small pieces he had handled nothing so precious as the principino, his daughter’s first-born, whose italian designation endlessly amused him and whom he could manipulate and dandle, already almost toss and catch again, as he couldn’t a correspondingly rare morsel of an earlier pate tendre. he could take the small clutching child from his nurse’s arms with an iteration grimly discountenanced, in respect to their contents, by the glass doors of high cabinets. something clearly beatific in this new relation had, moreover, without doubt, confirmed for him the sense that none of his silent answers to public detraction, to local vulgarity, had ever been so legitimately straight as the mere element of attitude--reduce it, he said, to that--in his easy weeks at fawns. the element of attitude was all he wanted of these weeks, and he was enjoying it on the spot, even more than he had hoped: enjoying it in spite of mrs. rance and the miss lutches; in spite of the small worry of his belief that fanny assingham had really something for him that she was keeping back; in spite of his full consciousness, overflowing the cup like a wine too generously poured, that if he had consented to marry his daughter, and thereby to make, as it were, the difference, what surrounded him now was, exactly, consent vivified, marriage demonstrated, the difference, in fine, definitely made. he could call back his prior, his own wedded consciousness--it was not yet out of range of vague reflection. he had supposed himself, above all he had supposed his wife, as married as anyone could be, and yet he wondered if their state had deserved the name, or their union worn the beauty, in the degree to which the couple now before him carried the matter. in especial since the birth of their boy, in new york--the grand climax of their recent american period, brought to so right an issue--the happy pair struck him as having carried it higher, deeper, further; to where it ceased to concern his imagination, at any rate, to follow them. extraordinary, beyond question, was one branch of his characteristic mute wonderment--it characterised above all, with its subject before it, his modesty: the strange dim doubt, waking up for him at the end of the years, of whether maggie’s mother had, after all, been capable of the maximum. the maximum of tenderness he meant--as the terms existed for him; the maximum of immersion in the fact of being married. maggie herself was capable; maggie herself at this season, was, exquisitely, divinely, the maximum: such was the impression that, positively holding off a little for the practical, the tactful consideration it inspired in him, a respect for the beauty and sanctity of it almost amounting to awe--such was the impression he daily received from her. she was her mother, oh yes--but her mother and something more; it becoming thus a new light for him, and in such a curious way too, that anything more than her mother should prove at this time of day possible. he could live over again at almost any quiet moment the long process of his introduction to his present interests--an introduction that had depended all on himself, like the “cheek” of the young man who approaches a boss without credentials or picks up an acquaintance, makes even a real friend, by speaking to a passer in the street. his real friend, in all the business, was to have been his own mind, with which nobody had put him in relation. he had knocked at the door of that essentially private house, and his call, in truth, had not been immediately answered; so that when, after waiting and coming back, he had at last got in, it was, twirling his hat, as an embarrassed stranger, or, trying his keys, as a thief at night. he had gained confidence only with time, but when he had taken real possession of the place it had been never again to come away. all of which success represented, it must be allowed, his one principle of pride. pride in the mere original spring, pride in his money, would have been pride in something that had come, in comparison, so easily. the right ground for elation was difficulty mastered, and his difficulty--thanks to his modesty--had been to believe in his facility. this was the problem he had worked out to its solution--the solution that was now doing more than all else to make his feet settle and his days flush; and when he wished to feel “good,” as they said at american city, he had but to retrace his immense development. that was what the whole thing came back to--that the development had not been somebody’s else passing falsely, accepted too ignobly, for his. to think how servile he might have been was absolutely to respect himself, was in fact, as much as he liked, to admire himself, as free. the very finest spring that ever responded to his touch was always there to press--the memory of his freedom as dawning upon him, like a sunrise all pink and silver, during a winter divided between florence, rome and naples some three years after his wife’s death. it was the hushed daybreak of the roman revelation in particular that he could usually best recover, with the way that there, above all, where the princes and popes had been before him, his divination of his faculty most went to his head. he was a plain american citizen, staying at an hotel where, sometimes, for days together, there were twenty others like him; but no pope, no prince of them all had read a richer meaning, he believed, into the character of the patron of art. he was ashamed of them really, if he wasn’t afraid, and he had on the whole never so climbed to the tip-top as in judging, over a perusal of hermann grimm, where julius ii and leo x were “placed” by their treatment of michael angelo. far below the plain american citizen--in the case at least in which this personage happened not to be too plain to be adam verver. going to our friend’s head, moreover, some of the results of such comparisons may doubtless be described as having stayed there. his freedom to see--of which the comparisons were part--what could it do but steadily grow and grow? it came perhaps even too much to stand to him for all freedom--since, for example, it was as much there as ever at the very time of mrs. rance’s conspiring against him, at fawns, with the billiard-room and the sunday morning, on the occasion round which we have perhaps drawn our circle too wide. mrs. rance at least controlled practically each other license of the present and the near future: the license to pass the hour as he would have found convenient; the license to stop remembering, for a little, that, though if proposed to--and not only by this aspirant but by any other--he wouldn’t prove foolish, the proof of wisdom was none the less, in such a fashion, rather cruelly conditioned; the license in especial to proceed from his letters to his journals and insulate, orientate, himself afresh by the sound, over his gained interval, of the many-mouthed monster the exercise of whose lungs he so constantly stimulated. mrs. rance remained with him till the others came back from church, and it was by that time clearer than ever that his ordeal, when it should arrive, would be really most unpleasant. his impression--this was the point--took somehow the form not so much of her wanting to press home her own advantage as of her building better than she knew; that is of her symbolising, with virtual unconsciousness, his own special deficiency, his unfortunate lack of a wife to whom applications could be referred. the applications, the contingencies with which mrs. rance struck him as potentially bristling, were not of a sort, really, to be met by one’s self. and the possibility of them, when his visitor said, or as good as said, “i’m restrained, you see, because of mr. rance, and also because i’m proud and refined; but if it wasn’t for mr. rance and for my refinement and my pride!”--the possibility of them, i say, turned to a great murmurous rustle, of a volume to fill the future; a rustle of petticoats, of scented, many-paged letters, of voices as to which, distinguish themselves as they might from each other, it mattered little in what part of the resounding country they had learned to make themselves prevail. the assinghams and the miss lutches had taken the walk, through the park, to the little old church, “on the property,” that our friend had often found himself wishing he were able to transport, as it stood, for its simple sweetness, in a glass case, to one of his exhibitory halls; while maggie had induced her husband, not inveterate in such practices, to make with her, by carriage, the somewhat longer pilgrimage to the nearest altar, modest though it happened to be, of the faith--her own as it had been her mother’s, and as mr. verver himself had been loosely willing, always, to let it be taken for his--without the solid ease of which, making the stage firm and smooth, the drama of her marriage might not have been acted out. what at last appeared to have happened, however, was that the divided parties, coming back at the same moment, had met outside and then drifted together, from empty room to room, yet not in mere aimless quest of the pair of companions they had left at home. the quest had carried them to the door of the billiard-room, and their appearance, as it opened to admit them, determined for adam verver, in the oddest way in the world, a new and sharp perception. it was really remarkable: this perception expanded, on the spot, as a flower, one of the strangest, might, at a breath, have suddenly opened. the breath, for that matter, was more than anything else, the look in his daughter’s eyes--the look with which he saw her take in exactly what had occurred in her absence: mrs. rance’s pursuit of him to this remote locality, the spirit and the very form, perfectly characteristic, of his acceptance of the complication--the seal set, in short, unmistakably, on one of maggie’s anxieties. the anxiety, it was true, would have been, even though not imparted, separately shared; for fanny assingham’s face was, by the same stroke, not at all thickly veiled for him, and a queer light, of a colour quite to match, fairly glittered in the four fine eyes of the miss lutches. each of these persons--counting out, that is, the prince and the colonel, who didn’t care, and who didn’t even see that the others did--knew something, or had at any rate had her idea; the idea, precisely, that this was what mrs. rance, artfully biding her time, would do. the special shade of apprehension on the part of the miss lutches might indeed have suggested the vision of an energy supremely asserted. it was droll, in truth, if one came to that, the position of the miss lutches: they had themselves brought, they had guilelessly introduced mrs. rance, strong in the fact of mr. rance’s having been literally beheld of them; and it was now for them, positively, as if their handful of flowers--since mrs. rance was a handful!--had been but the vehicle of a dangerous snake. mr. verver fairly felt in the air the miss lutches’ imputation--in the intensity of which, really, his own propriety might have been involved. that, none the less, was but a flicker; what made the real difference, as i have hinted, was his mute passage with maggie. his daughter’s anxiety alone had depths, and it opened out for him the wider that it was altogether new. when, in their common past, when till this moment, had she shown a fear, however dumbly, for his individual life? they had had fears together, just as they had had joys, but all of hers, at least, had been for what equally concerned them. here of a sudden was a question that concerned him alone, and the soundless explosion of it somehow marked a date. he was on her mind, he was even in a manner on her hands--as a distinct thing, that is, from being, where he had always been, merely deep in her heart and in her life; too deep down, as it were, to be disengaged, contrasted or opposed, in short objectively presented. but time finally had done it; their relation was altered: he saw, again, the difference lighted for her. this marked it to himself--and it wasn’t a question simply of a mrs. rance the more or the less. for maggie too, at a stroke, almost beneficently, their visitor had, from being an inconvenience, become a sign. they had made vacant, by their marriage, his immediate foreground, his personal precinct--they being the princess and the prince. they had made room in it for others--so others had become aware. he became aware himself, for that matter, during the minute maggie stood there before speaking; and with the sense, moreover, of what he saw her see, he had the sense of what she saw him. this last, it may be added, would have been his intensest perception had there not, the next instant, been more for him in fanny assingham. her face couldn’t keep it from him; she had seen, on top of everything, in her quick way, what they both were seeing. ix so much mute communication was doubtless, all this time, marvellous, and we may confess to having perhaps read into the scene, prematurely, a critical character that took longer to develop. yet the quiet hour of reunion enjoyed that afternoon by the father and the daughter did really little else than deal with the elements definitely presented to each in the vibration produced by the return of the church-goers. nothing allusive, nothing at all insistent, passed between them either before or immediately after luncheon--except indeed so far as their failure soon again to meet might be itself an accident charged with reference. the hour or two after luncheon--and on sundays with especial rigour, for one of the domestic reasons of which it belonged to maggie quite multitudinously to take account--were habitually spent by the princess with her little boy, in whose apartment she either frequently found her father already established or was sooner or later joined by him. his visit to his grandson, at some hour or other, held its place, in his day, against all interventions, and this without counting his grandson’s visits to him, scarcely less ordered and timed, and the odd bits, as he called them, that they picked up together when they could--communions snatched, for the most part, on the terrace, in the gardens or the park, while the principino, with much pomp and circumstance of perambulator, parasol, fine lace over-veiling and incorruptible female attendance, took the air. in the private apartments, which, occupying in the great house the larger part of a wing of their own, were not much more easily accessible than if the place had been a royal palace and the small child an heir-apparent--in the nursery of nurseries the talk, at these instituted times, was always so prevailingly with or about the master of the scene that other interests and other topics had fairly learned to avoid the slighting and inadequate notice there taken of them. they came in, at the best, but as involved in the little boy’s future, his past, or his comprehensive present, never getting so much as a chance to plead their own merits or to complain of being neglected. nothing perhaps, in truth, had done more than this united participation to confirm in the elder parties that sense of a life not only uninterrupted but more deeply associated, more largely combined, of which, on adam verver’s behalf, we have made some mention. it was of course an old story and a familiar idea that a beautiful baby could take its place as a new link between a wife and a husband, but maggie and her father had, with every ingenuity, converted the precious creature into a link between a mamma and a grandpapa. the principino, for a chance spectator of this process, might have become, by an untoward stroke, a hapless half-orphan, with the place of immediate male parent swept bare and open to the next nearest sympathy. they had no occasion thus, the conjoined worshippers, to talk of what the prince might be or might do for his son--the sum of service, in his absence, so completely filled itself out. it was not in the least, moreover, that there was doubt of him, for he was conspicuously addicted to the manipulation of the child, in the frank italian way, at such moments as he judged discreet in respect to other claims: conspicuously, indeed, that is, for maggie, who had more occasion, on the whole, to speak to her husband of the extravagance of her father than to speak to her father of the extravagance of her husband. adam verver had, all round, in this connection, his own serenity. he was sure of his son-in-law’s auxiliary admiration--admiration, he meant, of his grand-son; since, to begin with, what else had been at work but the instinct--or it might fairly have been the tradition--of the latter’s making the child so solidly beautiful as to have to be admired? what contributed most to harmony in this play of relations, however, was the way the young man seemed to leave it to be gathered that, tradition for tradition, the grandpapa’s own was not, in any estimate, to go for nothing. a tradition, or whatever it was, that had flowered prelusively in the princess herself--well, amerigo’s very discretions were his way of taking account of it. his discriminations in respect to his heir were, in fine, not more angular than any others to be observed in him; and mr. verver received perhaps from no source so distinct an impression of being for him an odd and important phenomenon as he received from this impunity of appropriation, these unchallenged nursery hours. it was as if the grandpapa’s special show of the character were but another side for the observer to study, another item for him to note. it came back, this latter personage knew, to his own previous perception--that of the prince’s inability, in any matter in which he was concerned, to conclude. the idiosyncrasy, for him, at each stage, had to be demonstrated--on which, however, he admirably accepted it. this last was, after all, the point; he really worked, poor young man, for acceptance, since he worked so constantly for comprehension. and how, when you came to that, could you know that a horse wouldn’t shy at a brass-band, in a country road, because it didn’t shy at a traction-engine? it might have been brought up to traction-engines without having been brought up to brass-bands. little by little, thus, from month to month, the prince was learning what his wife’s father had been brought up to; and now it could be checked off--he had been brought, up to the romantic view of principini. who would have thought it, and where would it all stop? the only fear somewhat sharp for mr. verver was a certain fear of disappointing him for strangeness. he felt that the evidence he offered, thus viewed, was too much on the positive side. he didn’t know--he was learning, and it was funny for him--to how many things he had been brought up. if the prince could only strike something to which he hadn’t! this wouldn’t, it seemed to him, ruffle the smoothness, and yet might, a little, add to the interest. what was now clear, at all events, for the father and the daughter, was their simply knowing they wanted, for the time, to be together--at any cost, as it were; and their necessity so worked in them as to bear them out of the house, in a quarter hidden from that in which their friends were gathered, and cause them to wander, unseen, unfollowed, along a covered walk in the “old” garden, as it was called, old with an antiquity of formal things, high box and shaped yew and expanses of brick wall that had turned at once to purple and to pink. they went out of a door in the wall, a door that had a slab with a date set above it, 1713, but in the old multiplied lettering, and then had before them a small white gate, intensely white and clean amid all the greenness, through which they gradually passed to where some of the grandest trees spaciously clustered and where they would find one of the quietest places. a bench had been placed, long ago, beneath a great oak that helped to crown a mild eminence, and the ground sank away below it, to rise again, opposite, at a distance sufficient to enclose the solitude and figure a bosky horizon. summer, blissfully, was with them yet, and the low sun made a splash of light where it pierced the looser shade; maggie, coming down to go out, had brought a parasol, which, as, over her charming bare head, she now handled it, gave, with the big straw hat that her father in these days always wore a good deal tipped back, definite intention to their walk. they knew the bench; it was “sequestered”--they had praised it for that together, before, and liked the word; and after they had begun to linger there they could have smiled (if they hadn’t been really too serious, and if the question hadn’t so soon ceased to matter), over the probable wonder of the others as to what would have become of them. the extent to which they enjoyed their indifference to any judgment of their want of ceremony, what did that of itself speak but for the way that, as a rule, they almost equally had others on their mind? they each knew that both were full of the superstition of not “hurting,” but might precisely have been asking themselves, asking in fact each other, at this moment, whether that was to be, after all, the last word of their conscientious development. certain it was, at all events, that, in addition to the assinghams and the lutches and mrs. rance, the attendance at tea, just in the right place on the west terrace, might perfectly comprise the four or five persons--among them the very pretty, the typically irish miss maddock, vaunted, announced and now brought--from the couple of other houses near enough, one of these the minor residence of their proprietor, established, thriftily, while he hired out his ancestral home, within sight and sense of his profit. it was not less certain, either, that, for once in a way, the group in question must all take the case as they found it. fanny assingham, at any time, for that matter, might perfectly be trusted to see mr. verver and his daughter, to see their reputation for a decent friendliness, through any momentary danger; might be trusted even to carry off their absence for amerigo, for amerigo’s possible funny italian anxiety; amerigo always being, as the princess was well aware, conveniently amenable to this friend’s explanations, beguilements, reassurances, and perhaps in fact rather more than less dependent on them as his new life--since that was his own name for it--opened out. it was no secret to maggie--it was indeed positively a public joke for her--that she couldn’t explain as mrs. assingham did, and that, the prince liking explanations, liking them almost as if he collected them, in the manner of book-plates or postage-stamps, for themselves, his requisition of this luxury had to be met. he didn’t seem to want them as yet for use--rather for ornament and amusement, innocent amusement of the kind he most fancied and that was so characteristic of his blessed, beautiful, general, slightly indolent lack of more dissipated, or even just of more sophisticated, tastes. however that might be, the dear woman had come to be frankly and gaily recognised--and not least by herself--as filling in the intimate little circle an office that was not always a sinecure. it was almost as if she had taken, with her kind, melancholy colonel at her heels, a responsible engagement; to be within call, as it were, for all those appeals that sprang out of talk, that sprang not a little, doubtless too, out of leisure. it naturally led her position in the household, as, she called it, to considerable frequency of presence, to visits, from the good couple, freely repeated and prolonged, and not so much as under form of protest. she was there to keep him quiet--it was amerigo’s own description of her influence; and it would only have needed a more visible disposition to unrest in him to make the account perfectly fit. fanny herself limited indeed, she minimised, her office; you didn’t need a jailor, she contended, for a domesticated lamb tied up with pink ribbon. this was not an animal to be controlled--it was an animal to be, at the most, educated. she admitted accordingly that she was educative--which maggie was so aware that she herself, inevitably, wasn’t; so it came round to being true that what she was most in charge of was his mere intelligence. this left, goodness knew, plenty of different calls for maggie to meet--in a case in which so much pink ribbon, as it might be symbolically named, was lavished on the creature. what it all amounted to, at any rate, was that mrs. assingham would be keeping him quiet now, while his wife and his father-in-law carried out their own little frugal picnic; quite moreover, doubtless, not much less neededly in respect to the members of the circle that were with them there than in respect to the pair they were missing almost for the first time. it was present to maggie that the prince could bear, when he was with his wife, almost any queerness on the part of people, strange english types, who bored him, beyond convenience, by being so little as he himself was; for this was one of the ways in which a wife was practically sustaining. but she was as positively aware that she hadn’t yet learned to see him as meeting such exposure in her absence. how did he move and talk, how above all did he, or how would he, look--he who, with his so nobly handsome face, could look such wonderful things--in case of being left alone with some of the subjects of his wonder? there were subjects for wonder among these very neighbours; only maggie herself had her own odd way--which didn’t moreover the least irritate him--of really liking them in proportion as they could strike her as strange. it came out in her by heredity, he amused himself with declaring, this love of chinoiseries; but she actually this evening didn’t mind--he might deal with her chinese as he could. maggie indeed would always have had for such moments, had they oftener occurred, the impression made on her by a word of mrs. assingham’s, a word referring precisely to that appetite in amerigo for the explanatory which we have just found in our path. it wasn’t that the princess could be indebted to another person, even to so clever a one as this friend, for seeing anything in her husband that she mightn’t see unaided; but she had ever, hitherto, been of a nature to accept with modest gratitude any better description of a felt truth than her little limits--terribly marked, she knew, in the direction of saying the right things--enabled her to make. thus it was, at any rate, that she was able to live more or less in the light of the fact expressed so lucidly by their common comforter--the fact that the prince was saving up, for some very mysterious but very fine eventual purpose, all the wisdom, all the answers to his questions, all the impressions and generalisations, he gathered; putting them away and packing them down because he wanted his great gun to be loaded to the brim on the day he should decide to let it off. he wanted first to make sure of the whole of the subject that was unrolling itself before him; after which the innumerable facts he had collected would find their use. he knew what he was about---trust him at last therefore to make, and to some effect, his big noise. and mrs. assingham had repeated that he knew what he was about. it was the happy form of this assurance that had remained with maggie; it could always come in for her that amerigo knew what he was about. he might at moments seem vague, seem absent, seem even bored: this when, away from her father, with whom it was impossible for him to appear anything but respectfully occupied, he let his native gaiety go in outbreaks of song, or even of quite whimsical senseless sound, either expressive of intimate relaxation or else fantastically plaintive. he might at times reflect with the frankest lucidity on the circumstance that the case was for a good while yet absolutely settled in regard to what he still had left, at home, of his very own; in regard to the main seat of his affection, the house in rome, the big black palace, the palazzo nero, as he was fond of naming it, and also on the question of the villa in the sabine hills, which she had, at the time of their engagement, seen and yearned over, and the castello proper, described by him always as the “perched” place, that had, as she knew, formerly stood up, on the pedestal of its mountain-slope, showing beautifully blue from afar, as the head and front of the princedom. he might rejoice in certain moods over the so long-estranged state of these properties, not indeed all irreclaimably alienated, but encumbered with unending leases and charges, with obstinate occupants, with impossibilities of use--all without counting the cloud of mortgages that had, from far back, buried them beneath the ashes of rage and remorse, a shroud as thick as the layer once resting on the towns at the foot of vesuvius, and actually making of any present restorative effort a process much akin to slow excavation. just so he might with another turn of his humour almost wail for these brightest spots of his lost paradise, declaring that he was an idiot not to be able to bring himself to face the sacrifices--sacrifices resting, if definitely anywhere, with mr. verver--necessary for winning them back. one of the most comfortable things between the husband and the wife meanwhile--one of those easy certitudes they could be merely gay about--was that she never admired him so much, or so found him heartbreakingly handsome, clever, irresistible, in the very degree in which he had originally and fatally dawned upon her, as when she saw other women reduced to the same passive pulp that had then begun, once for all, to constitute her substance. there was really nothing they had talked of together with more intimate and familiar pleasantry than of the license and privilege, the boundless happy margin, thus established for each: she going so far as to put it that, even should he some day get drunk and beat her, the spectacle of him with hated rivals would, after no matter what extremity, always, for the sovereign charm of it, charm of it in itself and as the exhibition of him that most deeply moved her, suffice to bring her round. what would therefore be more open to him than to keep her in love with him? he agreed, with all his heart, at these light moments, that his course wouldn’t then be difficult, inasmuch as, so simply constituted as he was on all the precious question--and why should he be ashamed of it?--he knew but one way with the fair. they had to be fair--and he was fastidious and particular, his standard was high; but when once this was the case what relation with them was conceivable, what relation was decent, rudimentary, properly human, but that of a plain interest in the fairness? his interest, she always answered, happened not to be “plain,” and plainness, all round, had little to do with the matter, which was marked, on the contrary, by the richest variety of colour; but the working basis, at all events, had been settled--the miss maddocks of life been assured of their importance for him. how conveniently assured maggie--to take him too into the joke--had more than once gone so far as to mention to her father; since it fell in easily with the tenderness of her disposition to remember she might occasionally make him happy by an intimate confidence. this was one of her rules-full as she was of little rules, considerations, provisions. there were things she of course couldn’t tell him, in so many words, about amerigo and herself, and about their happiness and their union and their deepest depths--and there were other things she needn’t; but there were also those that were both true and amusing, both communicable and real, and of these, with her so conscious, so delicately cultivated scheme of conduct as a daughter, she could make her profit at will. a pleasant hush, for that matter, had fallen on most of the elements while she lingered apart with her companion; it involved, this serenity, innumerable complete assumptions: since so ordered and so splendid a rest, all the tokens, spreading about them, of confidence solidly supported, might have suggested for persons of poorer pitch the very insolence of facility. still, they weren’t insolent--they weren’t, our pair could reflect; they were only blissful and grateful and personally modest, not ashamed of knowing, with competence, when great things were great, when good things were good, and when safe things were safe, and not, therefore, placed below their fortune by timidity which would have been as bad as being below it by impudence. worthy of it as they were, and as each appears, under our last possible analysis, to have wished to make the other feel that they were, what they most finally exhaled into the evening air as their eyes mildly met may well have been a kind of helplessness in their felicity. their rightness, the justification of everything--something they so felt the pulse of--sat there with them; but they might have been asking themselves a little blankly to what further use they could put anything so perfect. they had created and nursed and established it; they had housed it here in dignity and crowned it with comfort; but mightn’t the moment possibly count for them--or count at least for us while we watch them with their fate all before them--as the dawn of the discovery that it doesn’t always meet all contingencies to be right? otherwise why should maggie have found a word of definite doubt--the expression of the fine pang determined in her a few hours before--rise after a time to her lips? she took so for granted moreover her companion’s intelligence of her doubt that the mere vagueness of her question could say it all. “what is it, after all, that they want to do to you?” “they” were for the princess too the hovering forces of which mrs. rance was the symbol, and her father, only smiling back now, at his ease, took no trouble to appear not to know what she meant. what she meant--when once she had spoken--could come out well enough; though indeed it was nothing, after they had come to the point, that could serve as ground for a great defensive campaign. the waters of talk spread a little, and maggie presently contributed an idea in saying: “what has really happened is that the proportions, for us, are altered.” he accepted equally, for the time, this somewhat cryptic remark; he still failed to challenge her even when she added that it wouldn’t so much matter if he hadn’t been so terribly young. he uttered a sound of protest only when she went to declare that she ought as a daughter, in common decency, to have waited. yet by that time she was already herself admitting that she should have had to wait long--if she waited, that is, till he was old. but there was a way. “since you are an irresistible youth, we’ve got to face it. that, somehow, is what that woman has made me feel. there’ll be others.” x to talk of it thus appeared at last a positive relief to him. “yes, there’ll be others. but you’ll see me through.” she hesitated. “do you mean if you give in?” “oh no. through my holding out.” maggie waited again, but when she spoke it had an effect of abruptness. “why should you hold out forever?” he gave, none the less, no start--and this as from the habit of taking anything, taking everything, from her as harmonious. but it was quite written upon him too, for that matter, that holding out wouldn’t be, so very completely, his natural, or at any rate his acquired, form. his appearance would have testified that he might have to do so a long time--for a man so greatly beset. this appearance, that is, spoke but little, as yet, of short remainders and simplified senses--and all in spite of his being a small, spare, slightly stale person, deprived of the general prerogative of presence. it was not by mass or weight or vulgar immediate quantity that he would in the future, any more than he had done in the past, insist or resist or prevail. there was even something in him that made his position, on any occasion, made his relation to any scene or to any group, a matter of the back of the stage, of an almost visibly conscious want of affinity with the footlights. he would have figured less than anything the stage-manager or the author of the play, who most occupy the foreground; he might be, at the best, the financial “backer,” watching his interests from the wing, but in rather confessed ignorance of the mysteries of mimicry. barely taller than his daughter, he pressed at no point on the presumed propriety of his greater stoutness. he had lost early in life much of his crisp, closely-curling hair, the fineness of which was repeated in a small neat beard, too compact to be called “full,” though worn equally, as for a mark where other marks were wanting, on lip and cheek and chin. his neat, colourless face, provided with the merely indispensable features, suggested immediately, for a description, that it was clear, and in this manner somewhat resembled a small decent room, clean-swept and unencumbered with furniture, but drawing a particular advantage, as might presently be noted, from the outlook of a pair of ample and uncurtained windows. there was something in adam verver’s eyes that both admitted the morning and the evening in unusual quantities and gave the modest area the outward extension of a view that was “big” even when restricted to stars. deeply and changeably blue, though not romantically large, they were yet youthfully, almost strangely beautiful, with their ambiguity of your scarce knowing if they most carried their possessor’s vision out or most opened themselves to your own. whatever you might feel, they stamped the place with their importance, as the house-agents say; so that, on one side or the other, you were never out of their range, were moving about, for possible community, opportunity, the sight of you scarce knew what, either before them or behind them. if other importances, not to extend the question, kept themselves down, they were in no direction less obtruded than in that of our friend’s dress, adopted once for all as with a sort of sumptuary scruple. he wore every day of the year, whatever the occasion, the same little black “cut away” coat, of the fashion of his younger time; he wore the same cool-looking trousers, chequered in black and white--the proper harmony with which, he inveterately considered, was a sprigged blue satin necktie; and, over his concave little stomach, quaintly indifferent to climates and seasons, a white duck waistcoat. “should you really,” he now asked, “like me to marry?” he spoke as if, coming from his daughter herself, it might be an idea; which, for that matter, he would be ready to carry out should she definitely say so. definite, however, just yet, she was not prepared to be, though it seemed to come to her with force, as she thought, that there was a truth, in the connection, to utter. “what i feel is that there is somehow something that used to be right and that i’ve made wrong. it used to be right that you hadn’t married, and that you didn’t seem to want to. it used also”--she continued to make out “to seem easy for the question not to come up. that’s what i’ve made different. it does come up. it will come up.” “you don’t think i can keep it down?” mr. verver’s tone was cheerfully pensive. “well, i’ve given you, by my move, all the trouble of having to.” he liked the tenderness of her idea, and it made him, as she sat near him, pass his arm about her. “i guess i don’t feel as if you had ‘moved’ very far. you’ve only moved next door.” “well,” she continued, “i don’t feel as if it were fair for me just to have given you a push and left you so. if i’ve made the difference for you, i must think of the difference.” “then what, darling,” he indulgently asked, “do you think?” “that’s just what i don’t yet know. but i must find out. we must think together--as we’ve always thought. what i mean,” she went on after a moment, “is that it strikes me that i ought to at least offer you some alternative. i ought to have worked one out for you.” “an alternative to what?” “well, to your simply missing what you’ve lost--without anything being done about it.” “but what have i lost?” she thought a minute, as if it were difficult to say, yet as if she more and more saw it. “well, whatever it was that, before, kept us from thinking, and kept you, really, as you might say, in the market. it was as if you couldn’t be in the market when you were married to me. or rather as if i kept people off, innocently, by being married to you. now that i’m married to some one else you’re, as in consequence, married to nobody. therefore you may be married to anybody, to everybody. people don’t see why you shouldn’t be married to them.” “isn’t it enough of a reason,” he mildly inquired, “that i don’t want to be?” “it’s enough of a reason, yes. but to be enough of a reason it has to be too much of a trouble. i mean for you. it has to be too much of a fight. you ask me what you’ve lost,” maggie continued to explain. “the not having to take the trouble and to make the fight--that’s what you’ve lost. the advantage, the happiness of being just as you were--because i was just as _i_ was--that’s what you miss.” “so that you think,” her father presently said, “that i had better get married just in order to be as i was before?” the detached tone of it--detached as if innocently to amuse her by showing his desire to accommodate--was so far successful as to draw from her gravity a short, light laugh. “well, what i don’t want you to feel is that if you were to i shouldn’t understand. i should understand. that’s all,” said the princess gently. her companion turned it pleasantly over. “you don’t go so far as to wish me to take somebody i don’t like?” “ah, father,” she sighed, “you know how far i go--how far i could go. but i only wish that if you ever should like anybody, you may never doubt of my feeling how i’ve brought you to it. you’ll always know that i know that it’s my fault.” “you mean,” he went on in his contemplative way, “that it will be you who’ll take the consequences?” maggie just considered. “i’ll leave you all the good ones, but i’ll take the bad.” “well, that’s handsome.” he emphasised his sense of it by drawing her closer and holding her more tenderly. “it’s about all i could expect of you. so far as you’ve wronged me, therefore, we’ll call it square. i’ll let you know in time if i see a prospect of your having to take it up. but am i to understand meanwhile,” he soon went on, “that, ready as you are to see me through my collapse, you’re not ready, or not as ready, to see me through my resistance? i’ve got to be a regular martyr before you’ll be inspired?” she demurred at his way of putting it. “why, if you like it, you know, it won’t be a collapse.” “then why talk about seeing me through at all? i shall only collapse if i do like it. but what i seem to feel is that i don’t want to like it. that is,” he amended, “unless i feel surer i do than appears very probable. i don’t want to have to think i like it in a case when i really shan’t. i’ve had to do that in some cases,” he confessed--“when it has been a question of other things. i don’t want,” he wound up, “to be made to make a mistake.” “ah, but it’s too dreadful,” she returned, “that you should even have to fear--or just nervously to dream--that you may be. what does that show, after all,” she asked, “but that you do really, well within, feel a want? what does it show but that you’re truly susceptible?” “well, it may show that”--he defended himself against nothing. “but it shows also, i think, that charming women are, in the kind of life we’re leading now, numerous and formidable.” maggie entertained for a moment the proposition; under cover of which, however, she passed quickly from the general to the particular. “do you feel mrs. rance to be charming?” “well, i feel her to be formidable. when they cast a spell it comes to the same thing. i think she’d do anything.” “oh well, i’d help you,” the princess said with decision, “as against her--if that’s all you require. it’s too funny,” she went on before he again spoke, “that mrs. rance should be here at all. but if you talk of the life we lead, much of it is, altogether, i’m bound to say, too funny. the thing is,” maggie developed under this impression, “that i don’t think we lead, as regards other people, any life at all. we don’t at any rate, it seems to me, lead half the life we might. and so it seems, i think, to amerigo. so it seems also, i’m sure, to fanny assingham.” mr. verver-as if from due regard for these persons--considered a little. “what life would they like us to lead?” “oh, it’s not a question, i think, on which they quite feel together. she thinks, dear fanny, that we ought to be greater.” “greater--?” he echoed it vaguely. “and amerigo too, you say?” “ah yes”--her reply was prompt “but amerigo doesn’t mind. he doesn’t care, i mean, what we do. it’s for us, he considers, to see things exactly as we wish. fanny herself,” maggie pursued, “thinks he’s magnificent. magnificent, i mean, for taking everything as it is, for accepting the ‘social limitations’ of our life, for not missing what we don’t give him.” mr. verver attended. “then if he doesn’t miss it his magnificence is easy.” “it is easy-that’s exactly what i think. if there were things he did miss, and if in spite of them he were always sweet, then, no doubt, he would be a more or less unappreciated hero. he could be a hero--he will be one if it’s ever necessary. but it will be about something better than our dreariness. _i_ know,” the princess declared, “where he’s magnificent.” and she rested a minute on that. she ended, however, as she had begun. “we’re not, all the same, committed to anything stupid. if we ought to be grander, as fanny thinks, we can be grander. there’s nothing to prevent.” “is it a strict moral obligation?” adam verver inquired. “no--it’s for the amusement.” “for whose? for fanny’s own?” “for everyone’s--though i dare say fanny’s would be a large part.” she hesitated; she had now, it might have appeared, something more to bring out, which she finally produced. “for yours in particular, say--if you go into the question.” she even bravely followed it up. “i haven’t really, after all, had to think much to see that much more can be done for you than is done.” mr. verver uttered an odd vague sound. “don’t you think a good deal is done when you come out and talk to me this way?” “ah,” said his daughter, smiling at him, “we make too much of that!” and then to explain: “that’s good, and it’s natural--but it isn’t great. we forget that we’re as free as air.” “well, that’s great,” mr. verver pleaded. “great if we act on it. not if we don’t.” she continued to smile, and he took her smile; wondering again a little by this time, however; struck more and more by an intensity in it that belied a light tone. “what do you want,” he demanded, “to do to me?” and he added, as she didn’t say: “you’ve got something in your mind.” it had come to him within the minute that from the beginning of their session there she had been keeping something back, and that an impression of this had more than once, in spite of his general theoretic respect for her present right to personal reserves and mysteries, almost ceased to be vague in him. there had been from the first something in her anxious eyes, in the way she occasionally lost herself, that it would perfectly explain. he was therefore now quite sure. “you’ve got something up your sleeve.” she had a silence that made him right. “well, when i tell you you’ll understand. it’s only up my sleeve in the sense of being in a letter i got this morning. all day, yes--it has been in my mind. i’ve been asking myself if it were quite the right moment, or in any way fair, to ask you if you could stand just now another woman.” it relieved him a little, yet the beautiful consideration of her manner made it in a degree portentous. “stand one--?” “well, mind her coming.” he stared--then he laughed. “it depends on who she is.” “there--you see! i’ve at all events been thinking whether you’d take this particular person but as a worry the more. whether, that is, you’d go so far with her in your notion of having to be kind.” he gave at this the quickest shake to his foot. how far would she go in her notion of it. “well,” his daughter returned, “you know how far, in a general way, charlotte stant goes.” “charlotte? is she coming?” “she writes me, practically, that she’d like to if we’re so good as to ask her.” mr. verver continued to gaze, but rather as if waiting for more. then, as everything appeared to have come, his expression had a drop. if this was all it was simple. “then why in the world not?” maggie’s face lighted anew, but it was now another light. “it isn’t a want of tact?” “to ask her?” “to propose it to you.” “that _i_ should ask her?” he put the question as an effect of his remnant of vagueness, but this had also its own effect. maggie wondered an instant; after which, as with a flush of recognition, she took it up. “it would be too beautiful if you would!” this, clearly, had not been her first idea--the chance of his words had prompted it. “do you mean write to her myself?” “yes--it would be kind. it would be quite beautiful of you. that is, of course,” said maggie, “if you sincerely can.” he appeared to wonder an instant why he sincerely shouldn’t, and indeed, for that matter, where the question of sincerity came in. this virtue, between him and his daughter’s friend, had surely been taken for granted. “my dear child,” he returned, “i don’t think i’m afraid of charlotte.” “well, that’s just what it’s lovely to have from you. from the moment you’re not--the least little bit--i’ll immediately invite her.” “but where in the world is she?” he spoke as if he had not thought of charlotte, nor so much as heard her name pronounced, for a very long time. he quite in fact amicably, almost amusedly, woke up to her. “she’s in brittany, at a little bathing-place, with some people i don’t know. she’s always with people, poor dear--she rather has to be; even when, as is sometimes the case; they’re people she doesn’t immensely like.” “well, i guess she likes us,” said adam verver. “yes--fortunately she likes us. and if i wasn’t afraid of spoiling it for you,” maggie added, “i’d even mention that you’re not the one of our number she likes least.” “why should that spoil it for me?” “oh, my dear, you know. what else have we been talking about? it costs you so much to be liked. that’s why i hesitated to tell you of my letter.” he stared a moment--as if the subject had suddenly grown out of recognition. “but charlotte--on other visits--never used to cost me anything.” “no--only her ‘keep,’” maggie smiled. “then i don’t think i mind her keep--if that’s all.” the princess, however, it was clear, wished to be thoroughly conscientious. “well, it may not be quite all. if i think of its being pleasant to have her, it’s because she will make a difference.” “well, what’s the harm in that if it’s but a difference for the better?” “ah then--there you are!” and the princess showed in her smile her small triumphant wisdom. “if you acknowledge a possible difference for the better we’re not, after all, so tremendously right as we are. i mean we’re not--as satisfied and amused. we do see there are ways of being grander.” “but will charlotte stant,” her father asked with surprise, “make us grander?” maggie, on this, looking at him well, had a remarkable reply. “yes, i think. really grander.” he thought; for if this was a sudden opening he wished but the more to meet it. “because she’s so handsome?” “no, father.” and the princess was almost solemn. “because she’s so great.” “great--?” “great in nature, in character, in spirit. great in life.” “so?” mr. verver echoed. “what has she done--in life?” “well, she has been brave and bright,” said maggie. “that mayn’t sound like much, but she has been so in the face of things that might well have made it too difficult for many other girls. she hasn’t a creature in the world really--that is nearly--belonging to her. only acquaintances who, in all sorts of ways, make use of her, and distant relations who are so afraid she’ll make use of them that they seldom let her look at them.” mr. verver was struck--and, as usual, to some purpose. “if we get her here to improve us don’t we too then make use of her?” it pulled the princess up, however, but an instant. “we’re old, old friends--we do her good too. i should always, even at the worst--speaking for myself--admire her still more than i used her.” “i see. that always does good.” maggie hesitated. “certainly--she knows it. she knows, i mean, how great i think her courage and her cleverness. she’s not afraid--not of anything; and yet she no more ever takes a liberty with you than if she trembled for her life. and then she’s interesting--which plenty of other people with plenty of other merits never are a bit.” in which fine flicker of vision the truth widened to the princess’s view. “i myself of course don’t take liberties, but then i do, always, by nature, tremble for my life. that’s the way i live.” “oh i say, love!” her father vaguely murmured. “yes, i live in terror,” she insisted. “i’m a small creeping thing.” “you’ll not persuade me that you’re not as good as charlotte stant,” he still placidly enough remarked. “i may be as good, but i’m not so great--and that’s what we’re talking about. she has a great imagination. she has, in every way, a great attitude. she has above all a great conscience.” more perhaps than ever in her life before maggie addressed her father at this moment with a shade of the absolute in her tone. she had never come so near telling him what he should take it from her to believe. “she has only twopence in the world--but that has nothing to do with it. or rather indeed”--she quickly corrected herself--“it has everything. for she doesn’t care. i never saw her do anything but laugh at her poverty. her life has been harder than anyone knows.” it was moreover as if, thus unprecedentedly positive, his child had an effect upon him that mr. verver really felt as a new thing. “why then haven’t you told me about her before?” “well, haven’t we always known--?” “i should have thought,” he submitted, “that we had already pretty well sized her up.” “certainly--we long ago quite took her for granted. but things change, with time, and i seem to know that, after this interval, i’m going to like her better than ever. i’ve lived more myself, i’m older, and one judges better. yes, i’m going to see in charlotte,” said the princess--and speaking now as with high and free expectation--“more than i’ve ever seen.” “then i’ll try to do so too. she was”--it came back to mr. verver more--“the one of your friends i thought the best for you.” his companion, however, was so launched in her permitted liberty of appreciation that she for the moment scarce heard him. she was lost in the case she made out, the vision of the different ways in which charlotte had distinguished herself. “she would have liked for instance--i’m sure she would have liked extremely--to marry; and nothing in general is more ridiculous, even when it has been pathetic, than a woman who has tried and has not been able.” it had all mr. verver’s attention. “she has ‘tried’--?” “she has seen cases where she would have liked to.” “but she has not been able?” “well, there are more cases, in europe, in which it doesn’t come to girls who are poor than in which it does come to them. especially,” said maggie with her continued competence, “when they’re americans.” well, her father now met her, and met her cheerfully, on all sides. “unless you mean,” he suggested, “that when the girls are american there are more cases in which it comes to the rich than to the poor.” she looked at him good-humouredly. “that may be--but i’m not going to be smothered in my case. it ought to make me--if i were in danger of being a fool--all the nicer to people like charlotte. it’s not hard for me,” she practically explained, “not to be ridiculous--unless in a very different way. i might easily be ridiculous, i suppose, by behaving as if i thought i had done a great thing. charlotte, at any rate, has done nothing, and anyone can see it, and see also that it’s rather strange; and yet no one--no one not awfully presumptuous or offensive would like, or would dare, to treat her, just as she is, as anything but quite right. that’s what it is to have something about you that carries things off.” mr. verver’s silence, on this, could only be a sign that she had caused her story to interest him; though the sign when he spoke was perhaps even sharper. “and is it also what you mean by charlotte’s being ‘great’?” “well,” said maggie, “it’s one of her ways. but she has many.” again for a little her father considered. “and who is it she has tried to marry?” maggie, on her side as well, waited as if to bring it out with effect; but she after a minute either renounced or encountered an obstacle. “i’m afraid i’m not sure.” “then how do you know?” “well, i don’t know”--and, qualifying again, she was earnestly emphatic. “i only make it out for myself.” “but you must make it out about someone in particular.” she had another pause. “i don’t think i want even for myself to put names and times, to pull away any veil. i’ve an idea there has been, more than once, somebody i’m not acquainted with--and needn’t be or want to be. in any case it’s all over, and, beyond giving her credit for everything, it’s none of my business.” mr. verver deferred, yet he discriminated. “i don’t see how you can give credit without knowing the facts.” “can’t i give it--generally--for dignity? dignity, i mean, in misfortune.” “you’ve got to postulate the misfortune first.” “well,” said maggie, “i can do that. isn’t it always a misfortune to be--when you’re so fine--so wasted? and yet,” she went on, “not to wail about it, not to look even as if you knew it?” mr. verver seemed at first to face this as a large question, and then, after a little, solicited by another view, to let the appeal drop. “well, she mustn’t be wasted. we won’t at least have waste.” it produced in maggie’s face another gratitude. “then, dear sir, that’s all i want.” and it would apparently have settled their question and ended their talk if her father had not, after a little, shown the disposition to revert. “how many times are you supposing that she has tried?” once more, at this, and as if she hadn’t been, couldn’t be, hated to be, in such delicate matters, literal, she was moved to attenuate. “oh, i don’t say she absolutely ever tried--!” he looked perplexed. “but if she has so absolutely failed, what then had she done?” “she has suffered--she has done that.” and the princess added: “she has loved--and she has lost.” mr. verver, however, still wondered. “but how many times.” maggie hesitated, but it cleared up. “once is enough. enough, that is, for one to be kind to her.” her father listened, yet not challenging--only as with a need of some basis on which, under these new lights, his bounty could be firm. “but has she told you nothing?” “ah, thank goodness, no!” he stared. “then don’t young women tell?” “because, you mean, it’s just what they’re supposed to do?” she looked at him, flushed again now; with which, after another hesitation, “do young men tell?” she asked. he gave a short laugh. “how do i know, my dear, what young men do?” “then how do _i_ know, father, what vulgar girls do?” “i see--i see,” he quickly returned. but she spoke the next moment as if she might, odiously, have been sharp. “what happens at least is that where there’s a great deal of pride there’s a great deal of silence. i don’t know, i admit, what _i_ should do if i were lonely and sore--for what sorrow, to speak of, have i ever had in my life? i don’t know even if i’m proud--it seems to me the question has never come up for me.” “oh, i guess you’re proud, mag,” her father cheerfully interposed. “i mean i guess you’re proud enough.” “well then, i hope i’m humble enough too. i might, at all events, for all i know, be abject under a blow. how can i tell? do you realise, father, that i’ve never had the least blow?” he gave her a long, quiet look. “who should realise if i don’t?” “well, you’ll realise when i have one!” she exclaimed with a short laugh that resembled, as for good reasons, his own of a minute before. “i wouldn’t in any case have let her tell me what would have been dreadful to me. for such wounds and shames are dreadful: at least,” she added, catching herself up, “i suppose they are; for what, as i say, do i know of them? i don’t want to know!”--she spoke quite with vehemence. “there are things that are sacred whether they’re joys or pains. but one can always, for safety, be kind,” she kept on; “one feels when that’s right.” she had got up with these last words; she stood there before him with that particular suggestion in her aspect to which even the long habit of their life together had not closed his sense, kept sharp, year after year, by the collation of types and signs, the comparison of fine object with fine object, of one degree of finish, of one form of the exquisite with another--the appearance of some slight, slim draped “antique” of vatican or capitoline halls, late and refined, rare as a note and immortal as a link, set in motion by the miraculous infusion of a modern impulse and yet, for all the sudden freedom of folds and footsteps forsaken after centuries by their pedestal, keeping still the quality, the perfect felicity, of the statue; the blurred, absent eyes, the smoothed, elegant, nameless head, the impersonal flit of a creature lost in an alien age and passing as an image in worn relief round and round a precious vase. she had always had odd moments of striking him, daughter of his very own though she was, as a figure thus simplified, “generalised” in its grace, a figure with which his human connection was fairly interrupted by some vague analogy of turn and attitude, something shyly mythological and nymphlike. the trick, he was not uncomplacently aware, was mainly of his own mind; it came from his caring for precious vases only less than for precious daughters. and what was more to the point still, it often operated while he was quite at the same time conscious that maggie had been described, even in her prettiness, as “prim”--mrs. rance herself had enthusiastically used the word of her; while he remembered that when once she had been told before him, familiarly, that she resembled a nun, she had replied that she was delighted to hear it and would certainly try to; while also, finally, it was present to him that, discreetly heedless, thanks to her long association with nobleness in art, to the leaps and bounds of fashion, she brought her hair down very straight and flat over her temples, in the constant manner of her mother, who had not been a bit mythological. nymphs and nuns were certainly separate types, but mr. verver, when he really amused himself, let consistency go. the play of vision was at all events so rooted in him that he could receive impressions of sense even while positively thinking. he was positively thinking while maggie stood there, and it led for him to yet another question--which in its turn led to others still. “do you regard the condition as hers then that you spoke of a minute ago?” “the condition--?” “why that of having loved so intensely that she’s, as you say, ‘beyond everything’?” maggie had scarcely to reflect--her answer was so prompt. “oh no. she’s beyond nothing. for she has had nothing.” “i see. you must have had things to be them. it’s a kind of law of perspective.” maggie didn’t know about the law, but she continued definite. “she’s not, for example, beyond help.” “oh well then, she shall have all we can give her. i’ll write to her,” he said, “with pleasure.” “angel!” she answered as she gaily and tenderly looked at him. true as this might be, however, there was one thing more--he was an angel with a human curiosity. “has she told you she likes me much?” “certainly she has told me--but i won’t pamper you. let it be enough for you it has always been one of my reasons for liking her.” “then she’s indeed not beyond everything,” mr. verver more or less humorously observed. “oh it isn’t, thank goodness, that she’s in love with you. it’s not, as i told you at first, the sort of thing for you to fear.” he had spoken with cheer, but it appeared to drop before this reassurance, as if the latter overdid his alarm, and that should be corrected. “oh, my dear, i’ve always thought of her as a little girl.” “ah, she’s not a little girl,” said the princess. “then i’ll write to her as a brilliant woman.” “it’s exactly what she is.” mr. verver had got up as he spoke, and for a little, before retracing their steps, they stood looking at each other as if they had really arranged something. they had come out together for themselves, but it had produced something more. what it had produced was in fact expressed by the words with which he met his companion’s last emphasis. “well, she has a famous friend in you, princess.” maggie took this in--it was too plain for a protest. “do you know what i’m really thinking of?” she asked. he wondered, with her eyes on him--eyes of contentment at her freedom now to talk; and he wasn’t such a fool, he presently showed, as not, suddenly, to arrive at it. “why, of your finding her at last yourself a husband.” “good for you!” maggie smiled. “but it will take,” she added, “some looking.” “then let me look right here with you,” her father said as they walked on. xi mrs. assingham and the colonel, quitting fawns before the end of september, had come back later on; and now, a couple of weeks after, they were again interrupting their stay, but this time with the question of their return left to depend, on matters that were rather hinted at than importunately named. the lutches and mrs. rance had also, by the action of charlotte stant’s arrival, ceased to linger, though with hopes and theories, as to some promptitude of renewal, of which the lively expression, awakening the echoes of the great stone-paved, oak-panelled, galleried hall that was not the least interesting feature of the place, seemed still a property of the air. it was on this admirable spot that, before her october afternoon had waned, fanny assingham spent with her easy host a few moments which led to her announcing her own and her husband’s final secession, at the same time as they tempted her to point the moral of all vain reverberations. the double door of the house stood open to an effect of hazy autumn sunshine, a wonderful, windless, waiting, golden hour, under the influence of which adam verver met his genial friend as she came to drop into the post-box with her own hand a thick sheaf of letters. they presently thereafter left the house together and drew out half-an-hour on the terrace in a manner they were to revert to in thought, later on, as that of persons who really had been taking leave of each other at a parting of the ways. he traced his impression, on coming to consider, back to a mere three words she had begun by using about charlotte stant. she simply “cleared them out”--those had been the three words, thrown off in reference to the general golden peace that the kentish october had gradually ushered in, the “halcyon” days the full beauty of which had appeared to shine out for them after charlotte’s arrival. for it was during these days that mrs. rance and the miss lutches had been observed to be gathering themselves for departure, and it was with that difference made that the sense of the whole situation showed most fair--the sense of how right they had been to engage for so ample a residence, and of all the pleasure so fruity an autumn there could hold in its lap. this was what had occurred, that their lesson had been learned; and what mrs. assingham had dwelt upon was that without charlotte it would have been learned but half. it would certainly not have been taught by mrs. rance and the miss lutches if these ladies had remained with them as long as at one time seemed probable. charlotte’s light intervention had thus become a cause, operating covertly but none the less actively, and fanny assingham’s speech, which she had followed up a little, echoed within him, fairly to startle him, as the indication of something irresistible. he could see now how this superior force had worked, and he fairly liked to recover the sight--little harm as he dreamed of doing, little ill as he dreamed of wishing, the three ladies, whom he had after all entertained for a stiffish series of days. she had been so vague and quiet about it, wonderful charlotte, that he hadn’t known what was happening--happening, that is, as a result of her influence. “their fires, as they felt her, turned to smoke,” mrs. assingham remarked; which he was to reflect on indeed even while they strolled. he had retained, since his long talk with maggie--the talk that had settled the matter of his own direct invitation to her friend--an odd little taste, as he would have described it, for hearing things said about this young woman, hearing, so to speak, what could be said about her: almost as it her portrait, by some eminent hand, were going on, so that he watched it grow under the multiplication of touches. mrs. assingham, it struck him, applied two or three of the finest in their discussion of their young friend--so different a figure now from that early playmate of maggie’s as to whom he could almost recall from of old the definite occasions of his having paternally lumped the two children together in the recommendation that they shouldn’t make too much noise nor eat too much jam. his companion professed that in the light of charlotte’s prompt influence she had not been a stranger to a pang of pity for their recent visitors. “i felt in fact, privately, so sorry for them, that i kept my impression to myself while they were here--wishing not to put the rest of you on the scent; neither maggie, nor the prince, nor yourself, nor even charlotte herself, if you didn’t happen to notice. since you didn’t, apparently, i perhaps now strike you as extravagant. but i’m not--i followed it all. one saw the consciousness i speak of come over the poor things, very much as i suppose people at the court of the borgias may have watched each other begin to look queer after having had the honour of taking wine with the heads of the family. my comparison’s only a little awkward, for i don’t in the least mean that charlotte was consciously dropping poison into their cup. she was just herself their poison, in the sense of mortally disagreeing with them--but she didn’t know it.” “ah, she didn’t know it?” mr. verver had asked with interest. “well, i think she didn’t”--mrs. assingham had to admit that she hadn’t pressingly sounded her. “i don’t pretend to be sure, in every connection, of what charlotte knows. she doesn’t, certainly, like to make people suffer--not, in general, as is the case with so many of us, even other women: she likes much rather to put them at their ease with her. she likes, that is--as all pleasant people do--to be liked.” “ah, she likes to be liked?” her companion had gone on. “she did, at the same time, no doubt, want to help us--to put us at our ease. that is she wanted to put you--and to put maggie about you. so far as that went she had a plan. but it was only after--it was not before, i really believe--that she saw how effectively she could work.” again, as mr. verver felt, he must have taken it up. “ah, she wanted to help us?--wanted to help me?” “why,” mrs. assingham asked after an instant, “should it surprise you?” he just thought. “oh, it doesn’t!” “she saw, of course, as soon as she came, with her quickness, where we all were. she didn’t need each of us to go, by appointment, to her room at night, or take her out into the fields, for our palpitating tale. no doubt even she was rather impatient.” “of the poor things?” mr. verver had here inquired while he waited. “well, of your not yourselves being so--and of your not in particular. i haven’t the least doubt in the world, par exemple, that she thinks you too meek.” “oh, she thinks me too meek?” “and she had been sent for, on the very face of it, to work right in. all she had to do, after all, was to be nice to you.” “to--a--me?” said adam verver. he could remember now that his friend had positively had a laugh for his tone. “to you and to every one. she had only to be what she is--and to be it all round. if she’s charming, how can she help it? so it was, and so only, that she ‘acted’-as the borgia wine used to act. one saw it come over them--the extent to which, in her particular way, a woman, a woman other, and so other, than themselves, could be charming. one saw them understand and exchange looks, then one saw them lose heart and decide to move. for what they had to take home was that it’s she who’s the real thing.” “ah, it’s she who’s the real thing?” as he had not hitherto taken it home as completely as the miss lutches and mrs. rance, so, doubtless, he had now, a little, appeared to offer submission in his appeal. “i see, i see”--he could at least simply take it home now; yet as not without wanting, at the same time, to be sure of what the real thing was. “and what would it be--a--definitely that you understand by that?” she had only for an instant not found it easy to say. “why, exactly what those women themselves want to be, and what her effect on them is to make them recognise that they never will.” “oh--of course never?” it not only remained and abode with them, it positively developed and deepened, after this talk, that the luxurious side of his personal existence was now again furnished, socially speaking, with the thing classed and stamped as “real”--just as he had been able to think of it as not otherwise enriched in consequence of his daughter’s marriage. the note of reality, in so much projected light, continued to have for him the charm and the importance of which the maximum had occasionally been reached in his great “finds”--continued, beyond any other, to keep him attentive and gratified. nothing perhaps might affect us as queerer, had we time to look into it, than this application of the same measure of value to such different pieces of property as old persian carpets, say, and new human acquisitions; all the more indeed that the amiable man was not without an inkling, on his own side, that he was, as a taster of life, economically constructed. he put into his one little glass everything he raised to his lips, and it was as if he had always carried in his pocket, like a tool of his trade, this receptacle, a little glass cut with a fineness of which the art had long since been lost, and kept in an old morocco case stamped in uneffaceable gilt with the arms of a deposed dynasty. as it had served him to satisfy himself, so to speak, both about amerigo and about the bernadino luini he had happened to come to knowledge of at the time he was consenting to the announcement of his daughter’s betrothal, so it served him at present to satisfy himself about charlotte stant and an extraordinary set of oriental tiles of which he had lately got wind, to which a provoking legend was attached, and as to which he had made out, contentedly, that further news was to be obtained from a certain mr. gutermann-seuss of brighton. it was all, at bottom, in him, the aesthetic principle, planted where it could burn with a cold, still flame; where it fed almost wholly on the material directly involved, on the idea (followed by appropriation) of plastic beauty, of the thing visibly perfect in its kind; where, in short, in spite of the general tendency of the “devouring element” to spread, the rest of his spiritual furniture, modest, scattered, and tended with unconscious care, escaped the consumption that in so many cases proceeds from the undue keeping-up of profane altar-fires. adam verver had in other words learnt the lesson of the senses, to the end of his own little book, without having, for a day, raised the smallest scandal in his economy at large; being in this particular not unlike those fortunate bachelors, or other gentlemen of pleasure, who so manage their entertainment of compromising company that even the austerest housekeeper, occupied and competent below-stairs, never feels obliged to give warning. that figure has, however, a freedom that the occasion doubtless scarce demands, though we may retain it for its rough negative value. it was to come to pass, by a pressure applied to the situation wholly from within, that before the first ten days of november had elapsed he found himself practically alone at fawns with his young friend; amerigo and maggie having, with a certain abruptness, invited his assent to their going abroad for a month, since his amusement was now scarce less happily assured than his security. an impulse eminently natural had stirred within the prince; his life, as for some time established, was deliciously dull, and thereby, on the whole, what he best liked; but a small gust of yearning had swept over him, and maggie repeated to her father, with infinite admiration, the pretty terms in which, after it had lasted a little, he had described to her this experience. he called it a “serenade,” a low music that, outside one of the windows of the sleeping house, disturbed his rest at night. timid as it was, and plaintive, he yet couldn’t close his eyes for it, and when finally, rising on tiptoe, he had looked out, he had recognised in the figure below with a mandolin, all duskily draped in her grace, the raised appealing eyes and the one irresistible voice of the ever-to-be-loved italy. sooner or later, that way, one had to listen; it was a hovering, haunting ghost, as of a creature to whom one had done a wrong, a dim, pathetic shade crying out to be comforted. for this there was obviously but one way--as there were doubtless also many words for the simple fact that so prime a roman had a fancy for again seeing rome. they would accordingly--hadn’t they better?--go for a little; maggie meanwhile making the too-absurdly artful point with her father, so that he repeated it, in his amusement, to charlotte stant, to whom he was by this time conscious of addressing many remarks, that it was absolutely, when she came to think, the first thing amerigo had ever asked of her. “she doesn’t count of course his having asked of her to marry him”-this was mr. verver’s indulgent criticism; but he found charlotte, equally touched by the ingenuous maggie, in easy agreement with him over the question. if the prince had asked something of his wife every day in the year, this would be still no reason why the poor dear man should not, in a beautiful fit of homesickness, revisit, without reproach, his native country. what his father-in-law frankly counselled was that the reasonable, the really too reasonable, pair should, while they were about it, take three or four weeks of paris as well--paris being always, for mr. verver, in any stress of sympathy, a suggestion that rose of itself to the lips. if they would only do that, on their way back, or however they preferred it, charlotte and he would go over to join them there for a small look--though even then, assuredly, as he had it at heart to add, not in the least because they should have found themselves bored at being left together. the fate of this last proposal indeed was that it reeled, for the moment, under an assault of destructive analysis from maggie, who--having, as she granted, to choose between being an unnatural daughter or an unnatural mother, and “electing” for the former--wanted to know what would become of the principino if the house were cleared of everyone but the servants. her question had fairly resounded, but it had afterwards, like many of her questions, dropped still more effectively than it had risen: the highest moral of the matter being, before the couple took their departure, that mrs. noble and dr. brady must mount unchallenged guard over the august little crib. if she hadn’t supremely believed in the majestic value of the nurse, whose experience was in itself the amplest of pillows, just as her attention was a spreading canopy from which precedent and reminiscence dropped as thickly as parted curtains--if she hadn’t been able to rest in this confidence she would fairly have sent her husband on his journey without her. in the same manner, if the sweetest--for it was so she qualified him--of little country doctors hadn’t proved to her his wisdom by rendering irresistible, especially on rainy days and in direct proportion to the frequency of his calls, adapted to all weathers, that she should converse with him for hours over causes and consequences, over what he had found to answer with his little five at home, she would have drawn scant support from the presence of a mere grandfather and a mere brilliant friend. these persons, accordingly, her own predominance having thus, for the time, given way, could carry with a certain ease, and above all with mutual aid, their consciousness of a charge. so far as their office weighed they could help each other with it--which was in fact to become, as mrs. noble herself loomed larger for them, not a little of a relief and a diversion. mr. verver met his young friend, at certain hours, in the day-nursery, very much as he had regularly met the child’s fond mother--charlotte having, as she clearly considered, given maggie equal pledges and desiring never to fail of the last word for the daily letter she had promised to write. she wrote with high fidelity, she let her companion know, and the effect of it was, remarkably enough, that he himself didn’t write. the reason of this was partly that charlotte “told all about him”--which she also let him know she did--and partly that he enjoyed feeling, as a consequence, that he was generally, quite systematically, eased and, as they said, “done” for. committed, as it were, to this charming and clever young woman, who, by becoming for him a domestic resource, had become for him practically a new person--and committed, especially, in his own house, which somehow made his sense of it a deeper thing--he took an interest in seeing how far the connection could carry him, could perhaps even lead him, and in thus putting to the test, for pleasant verification, what fanny assingham had said, at the last, about the difference such a girl could make. she was really making one now, in their simplified existence, and a very considerable one, though there was no one to compare her with, as there had been, so usefully, for fanny--no mrs. rance, no kitty, no dotty lutch, to help her to be felt, according to fanny’s diagnosis, as real. she was real, decidedly, from other causes, and mr. verver grew in time even a little amused at the amount of machinery mrs. assingham had seemed to see needed for pointing it. she was directly and immediately real, real on a pleasantly reduced and intimate scale, and at no moments more so than during those--at which we have just glanced--when mrs. noble made them both together feel that she, she alone, in the absence of the queen-mother, was regent of the realm and governess of the heir. treated on such occasions as at best a pair of dangling and merely nominal court-functionaries, picturesque hereditary triflers entitled to the petites entrees but quite external to the state, which began and ended with the nursery, they could only retire, in quickened sociability, to what was left them of the palace, there to digest their gilded insignificance and cultivate, in regard to the true executive, such snuff-taking ironies as might belong to rococo chamberlains moving among china lap-dogs. every evening, after dinner, charlotte stant played to him; seated at the piano and requiring no music, she went through his “favourite things”--and he had many favourites--with a facility that never failed, or that failed but just enough to pick itself up at a touch from his fitful voice. she could play anything, she could play everything--always shockingly, she of course insisted, but always, by his own vague measure, very much as if she might, slim, sinuous and strong, and with practised passion, have been playing lawn-tennis or endlessly and rhythmically waltzing. his love of music, unlike his other loves, owned to vaguenesses, but while, on his comparatively shaded sofa, and smoking, smoking, always smoking, in the great fawns drawing-room as everywhere, the cigars of his youth, rank with associations--while, i say, he so listened to charlotte’s piano, where the score was ever absent but, between the lighted candles, the picture distinct, the vagueness spread itself about him like some boundless carpet, a surface delightfully soft to the pressure of his interest. it was a manner of passing the time that rather replaced conversation, but the air, at the end, none the less, before they separated, had a way of seeming full of the echoes of talk. they separated, in the hushed house, not quite easily, yet not quite awkwardly either, with tapers that twinkled in the large dark spaces, and for the most part so late that the last solemn servant had been dismissed for the night. late as it was on a particular evening toward the end of october, there had been a full word or two dropped into the still-stirring sea of other voices--a word or two that affected our friend even at the moment, and rather oddly, as louder and rounder than any previous sound; and then he had lingered, under pretext of an opened window to be made secure, after taking leave of his companion in the hall and watching her glimmer away up the staircase. he had for himself another impulse than to go to bed; picking up a hat in the hall, slipping his arms into a sleeveless cape and lighting still another cigar, he turned out upon the terrace through one of the long drawing-room windows and moved to and fro there for an hour beneath the sharp autumn stars. it was where he had walked in the afternoon sun with fanny assingham, and the sense of that other hour, the sense of the suggestive woman herself, was before him again as, in spite of all the previous degustation we have hinted at, it had not yet been. he thought, in a loose, an almost agitated order, of many things; the power that was in them to agitate having been part of his conviction that he should not soon sleep. he truly felt for a while that he should never sleep again till something had come to him; some light, some idea, some mere happy word perhaps, that he had begun to want, but had been till now, and especially the last day or two, vainly groping for. “can you really then come if we start early?”--that was practically all he had said to the girl as she took up her bedroom light. and “why in the world not, when i’ve nothing else to do, and should, besides, so immensely like it?”--this had as definitely been, on her side, the limit of the little scene. there had in fact been nothing to call a scene, even of the littlest, at all--though he perhaps didn’t quite know why something like the menace of one hadn’t proceeded from her stopping half-way upstairs to turn and say, as she looked down on him, that she promised to content herself, for their journey, with a toothbrush and a sponge. there hovered about him, at all events, while he walked, appearances already familiar, as well as two or three that were new, and not the least vivid of the former connected itself with that sense of being treated with consideration which had become for him, as we have noted, one of the minor yet so far as there were any such, quite one of the compensatory, incidents of being a father-in-law. it had struck him, up to now, that this particular balm was a mixture of which amerigo, as through some hereditary privilege, alone possessed the secret; so that he found himself wondering if it had come to charlotte, who had unmistakably acquired it, through the young man’s having amiably passed it on. she made use, for her so quietly grateful host, however this might be, of quite the same shades of attention and recognition, was mistress in an equal degree of the regulated, the developed art of placing him high in the scale of importance. that was even for his own thought a clumsy way of expressing the element of similarity in the agreeable effect they each produced on him, and it held him for a little only because this coincidence in their felicity caused him vaguely to connect or associate them in the matter of tradition, training, tact, or whatever else one might call it. it might almost have been--if such a link between them was to be imagined--that amerigo had, a little, “coached” or incited their young friend, or perhaps rather that she had simply, as one of the signs of the general perfection fanny assingham commended in her, profited by observing, during her short opportunity before the start of the travellers, the pleasant application by the prince of his personal system. he might wonder what exactly it was that they so resembled each other in treating him like--from what noble and propagated convention, in cases in which the exquisite “importance” was to be neither too grossly attributed nor too grossly denied, they had taken their specific lesson; but the difficulty was here of course that one could really never know--couldn’t know without having been one’s self a personage; whether a pope, a king, a president, a peer, a general, or just a beautiful author. before such a question, as before several others when they recurred, he would come to a pause, leaning his arms on the old parapet and losing himself in a far excursion. he had as to so many of the matters in hand a divided view, and this was exactly what made him reach out, in his unrest, for some idea, lurking in the vast freshness of the night, at the breath of which disparities would submit to fusion, and so, spreading beneath him, make him feel that he floated. what he kept finding himself return to, disturbingly enough, was the reflection, deeper than anything else, that in forming a new and intimate tie he should in a manner abandon, or at the best signally relegate, his daughter. he should reduce to definite form the idea that he had lost her--as was indeed inevitable--by her own marriage; he should reduce to definite form the idea of his having incurred an injury, or at the best an inconvenience, that required some makeweight and deserved some amends. and he should do this the more, which was the great point, that he should appear to adopt, in doing it, the sentiment, in fact the very conviction, entertained, and quite sufficiently expressed, by maggie herself, in her beautiful generosity, as to what he had suffered--putting it with extravagance--at her hands. if she put it with extravagance the extravagance was yet sincere, for it came--which she put with extravagance too--from her persistence, always, in thinking, feeling, talking about him, as young. he had had glimpses of moments when to hear her thus, in her absolutely unforced compunction, one would have supposed the special edge of the wrong she had done him to consist in his having still before him years and years to groan under it. she had sacrificed a parent, the pearl of parents, no older than herself: it wouldn’t so much have mattered if he had been of common parental age. that he wasn’t, that he was just her extraordinary equal and contemporary, this was what added to her act the long train of its effect. light broke for him at last, indeed, quite as a consequence of the fear of breathing a chill upon this luxuriance of her spiritual garden. as at a turn of his labyrinth he saw his issue, which opened out so wide, for the minute, that he held his breath with wonder. he was afterwards to recall how, just then, the autumn night seemed to clear to a view in which the whole place, everything round him, the wide terrace where he stood, the others, with their steps, below, the gardens, the park, the lake, the circling woods, lay there as under some strange midnight sun. it all met him during these instants as a vast expanse of discovery, a world that looked, so lighted, extraordinarily new, and in which familiar objects had taken on a distinctness that, as if it had been a loud, a spoken pretension to beauty, interest, importance, to he scarce knew what, gave them an inordinate quantity of character and, verily, an inordinate size. this hallucination, or whatever he might have called it, was brief, but it lasted long enough to leave him gasping. the gasp of admiration had by this time, however, lost itself in an intensity that quickly followed--the way the wonder of it, since wonder was in question, truly had been the strange delay of his vision. he had these several days groped and groped for an object that lay at his feet and as to which his blindness came from his stupidly looking beyond. it had sat all the while at his hearth-stone, whence it now gazed up in his face. once he had recognised it there everything became coherent. the sharp point to which all his light converged was that the whole call of his future to him, as a father, would be in his so managing that maggie would less and less appear to herself to have forsaken him. and it not only wouldn’t be decently humane, decently possible, not to make this relief easy to her--the idea shone upon him, more than that, as exciting, inspiring, uplifting. it fell in so beautifully with what might be otherwise possible; it stood there absolutely confronted with the material way in which it might be met. the way in which it might be met was by his putting his child at peace, and the way to put her at peace was to provide for his future--that is for hers--by marriage, by a marriage as good, speaking proportionately, as hers had been. as he fairly inhaled this measure of refreshment he tasted the meaning of recent agitations. he had seen that charlotte could contribute--what he hadn’t seen was what she could contribute to. when it had all supremely cleared up and he had simply settled this service to his daughter well before him as the proper direction of his young friend’s leisure, the cool darkness had again closed round him, but his moral lucidity was constituted. it wasn’t only moreover that the word, with a click, so fitted the riddle, but that the riddle, in such perfection, fitted the word. he might have been equally in want and yet not have had his remedy. oh, if charlotte didn’t accept him, of course the remedy would fail; but, as everything had fallen together, it was at least there to be tried. and success would be great--that was his last throb--if the measure of relief effected for maggie should at all prove to have been given by his own actual sense of felicity. he really didn’t know when in his life he had thought of anything happier. to think of it merely for himself would have been, even as he had just lately felt, even doing all justice to that condition--yes, impossible. but there was a grand difference in thinking of it for his child. xii it was at brighton, above all, that this difference came out; it was during the three wonderful days he spent there with charlotte that he had acquainted himself further--though doubtless not even now quite completely--with the merits of his majestic scheme. and while, moreover, to begin with, he still but held his vision in place, steadying it fairly with his hands, as he had often steadied, for inspection, a precarious old pot or kept a glazed picture in its right relation to the light, the other, the outer presumptions in his favour, those independent of what he might himself contribute and that therefore, till he should “speak,” remained necessarily vague--that quantity, i say, struck him as positively multiplying, as putting on, in the fresh brighton air and on the sunny brighton front, a kind of tempting palpability. he liked, in this preliminary stage, to feel that he should be able to “speak” and that he would; the word itself being romantic, pressing for him the spring of association with stories and plays where handsome and ardent young men, in uniforms, tights, cloaks, high-boots, had it, in soliloquies, ever on their lips; and the sense on the first day that he should probably have taken the great step before the second was over conduced already to make him say to his companion that they must spend more than their mere night or two. at his ease on the ground of what was before him he at all events definitely desired to be, and it was strongly his impression that he was proceeding step by step. he was acting--it kept coming back to that--not in the dark, but in the high golden morning; not in precipitation, flurry, fever, dangers these of the path of passion properly so called, but with the deliberation of a plan, a plan that might be a thing of less joy than a passion, but that probably would, in compensation for that loss, be found to have the essential property, to wear even the decent dignity, of reaching further and of providing for more contingencies. the season was, in local parlance, “on,” the elements were assembled; the big windy hotel, the draughty social hall, swarmed with “types,” in charlotte’s constant phrase, and resounded with a din in which the wild music of gilded and befrogged bands, croatian, dalmatian, carpathian, violently exotic and nostalgic, was distinguished as struggling against the perpetual popping of corks. much of this would decidedly have disconcerted our friends if it hadn’t all happened, more preponderantly, to give them the brighter surprise. the noble privacy of fawns had left them--had left mr. verver at least--with a little accumulated sum of tolerance to spend on the high pitch and high colour of the public sphere. fawns, as it had been for him, and as maggie and fanny assingham had both attested, was out of the world, whereas the scene actually about him, with the very sea a mere big booming medium for excursions and aquariums, affected him as so plump in the conscious centre that nothing could have been more complete for representing that pulse of life which they had come to unanimity at home on the subject of their advisedly not hereafter forgetting. the pulse of life was what charlotte, in her way, at home, had lately reproduced, and there were positively current hours when it might have been open to her companion to feel himself again indebted to her for introductions. he had “brought” her, to put it crudely, but it was almost as if she were herself, in her greater gaiety, her livelier curiosity and intensity, her readier, happier irony, taking him about and showing him the place. no one, really, when he came to think, had ever taken him about before--it had always been he, of old, who took others and who in particular took maggie. this quickly fell into its relation with him as part of an experience--marking for him, no doubt, what people call, considerately, a time of life; a new and pleasant order, a flattered passive state, that might become--why shouldn’t it?-one of the comforts of the future. mr. gutermann-seuss proved, on the second day--our friend had waited till then--a remarkably genial, a positively lustrous young man occupying a small neat house in a quarter of the place remote from the front and living, as immediate and striking signs testified, in the bosom of his family. our visitors found themselves introduced, by the operation of close contiguity, to a numerous group of ladies and gentlemen older and younger, and of children larger and smaller, who mostly affected them as scarce less anointed for hospitality and who produced at first the impression of a birthday party, of some anniversary gregariously and religiously kept, though they subsequently fell into their places as members of one quiet domestic circle, preponderantly and directly indebted for their being, in fact, to mr. gutermann-seuss. to the casual eye a mere smart and shining youth of less than thirty summers, faultlessly appointed in every particular, he yet stood among his progeny--eleven in all, as he confessed without a sigh, eleven little brown clear faces, yet with such impersonal old eyes astride of such impersonal old noses--while he entertained the great american collector whom he had so long hoped he might meet, and whose charming companion, the handsome, frank, familiar young lady, presumably mrs. verver, noticed the graduated offspring, noticed the fat, ear-ringed aunts and the glossy, cockneyfied, familiar uncles, inimitable of accent and assumption, and of an attitude of cruder intention than that of the head of the firm; noticed the place in short, noticed the treasure produced, noticed everything, as from the habit of a person finding her account at any time, according to a wisdom well learned of life, in almost any “funny” impression. it really came home to her friend on the spot that this free range of observation in her, picking out the frequent funny with extraordinary promptness, would verily henceforth make a different thing for him of such experiences, of the customary hunt for the possible prize, the inquisitive play of his accepted monomania; which different thing could probably be a lighter and perhaps thereby a somewhat more boisterously refreshing form of sport. such omens struck him as vivid, in any case, when mr. gutermann-seuss, with a sharpness of discrimination he had at first scarce seemed to promise, invited his eminent couple into another room, before the threshold of which the rest of the tribe, unanimously faltering, dropped out of the scene. the treasure itself here, the objects on behalf of which mr. verver’s interest had been booked, established quickly enough their claim to engage the latter’s attention; yet at what point of his past did our friend’s memory, looking back and back, catch him, in any such place, thinking so much less of wares artfully paraded than of some other and quite irrelevant presence? such places were not strange to him when they took the form of bourgeois back-parlours, a trifle ominously grey and grim from their north light, at watering-places prevailingly homes of humbug, or even when they wore some aspect still less, if not perhaps still more, insidious. he had been everywhere, pried and prowled everywhere, going, on occasion, so far as to risk, he believed, life, health and the very bloom of honour; but where, while precious things, extracted one by one from thrice-locked yet often vulgar drawers and soft satchels of old oriental ilk, were impressively ranged before him, had he, till now, let himself, in consciousness, wander like one of the vague? he didn’t betray it--ah that he knew; but two recognitions took place for him at once, and one of them suffered a little in sweetness by the confusion. mr. gutermann-seuss had truly, for the crisis, the putting down of his cards, a rare manner; he was perfect master of what not to say to such a personage as mr. verver while the particular importance that dispenses with chatter was diffused by his movements themselves, his repeated act of passage between a featureless mahogany meuble and a table so virtuously disinterested as to look fairly smug under a cotton cloth of faded maroon and indigo, all redolent of patriarchal teas. the damascene tiles, successively, and oh so tenderly, unmuffled and revealed, lay there at last in their full harmony and their venerable splendour, but the tribute of appreciation and decision was, while the spectator considered, simplified to a point that but just failed of representing levity on the part of a man who had always acknowledged without shame, in such affairs, the intrinsic charm of what was called discussion. the infinitely ancient, the immemorial amethystine blue of the glaze, scarcely more meant to be breathed upon, it would seem, than the cheek of royalty--this property of the ordered and matched array had inevitably all its determination for him, but his submission was, perhaps for the first time in his life, of the quick mind alone, the process really itself, in its way, as fine as the perfection perceived and admired: every inch of the rest of him being given to the foreknowledge that an hour or two later he should have “spoken.” the burning of his ships therefore waited too near to let him handle his opportunity with his usual firm and sentient fingers--waited somehow in the predominance of charlotte’s very person, in her being there exactly as she was, capable, as mr. gutermann-seuss himself was capable, of the right felicity of silence, but with an embracing ease, through it all, that made deferred criticism as fragrant as some joy promised a lover by his mistress, or as a big bridal bouquet held patiently behind her. he couldn’t otherwise have explained, surely, why he found himself thinking, to his enjoyment, of so many other matters than the felicity of his acquisition and the figure of his cheque, quite equally high; any more than why, later on, with their return to the room in which they had been received and the renewed encompassment of the tribe, he felt quite merged in the elated circle formed by the girl’s free response to the collective caress of all the shining eyes, and by her genial acceptance of the heavy cake and port wine that, as she was afterwards to note, added to their transaction, for a finish, the touch of some mystic rite of old jewry. this characterisation came from her as they walked away--walked together, in the waning afternoon, back to the breezy sea and the bustling front, back to the nimble and the flutter and the shining shops that sharpened the grin of solicitation on the mask of night. they were walking thus, as he felt, nearer and nearer to where he should see his ships burn, and it was meanwhile for him quite as if this red glow would impart, at the harmonious hour, a lurid grandeur to his good faith. it was meanwhile too a sign of the kind of sensibility often playing up in him that--fabulous as this truth may sound--he found a sentimental link, an obligation of delicacy, or perhaps even one of the penalties of its opposite, in his having exposed her to the north light, the quite properly hard business-light, of the room in which they had been alone with the treasure and its master. she had listened to the name of the sum he was capable of looking in the face. given the relation of intimacy with him she had already, beyond all retractation, accepted, the stir of the air produced at the other place by that high figure struck him as a thing that, from the moment she had exclaimed or protested as little as he himself had apologised, left him but one thing more to do. a man of decent feeling didn’t thrust his money, a huge lump of it, in such a way, under a poor girl’s nose--a girl whose poverty was, after a fashion, the very basis of her enjoyment of his hospitality--without seeing, logically, a responsibility attached. and this was to remain none the less true for the fact that twenty minutes later, after he had applied his torch, applied it with a sign or two of insistence, what might definitely result failed to be immediately clear. he had spoken--spoken as they sat together on the out-of-the-way bench observed during one of their walks and kept for the previous quarter of the present hour well in his memory’s eye; the particular spot to which, between intense pauses and intenser advances, he had all the while consistently led her. below the great consolidated cliff, well on to where the city of stucco sat most architecturally perched, with the rumbling beach and the rising tide and the freshening stars in front and above, the safe sense of the whole place yet prevailed in lamps and seats and flagged walks, hovering also overhead in the close neighbourhood of a great replete community about to assist anew at the removal of dish-covers. “we’ve had, as it seems to me, such quite beautiful days together, that i hope it won’t come to you too much as a shock when i ask if you think you could regard me with any satisfaction as a husband.” as if he had known she wouldn’t, she of course couldn’t, at all gracefully, and whether or no, reply with a rush, he had said a little more--quite as he had felt he must in thinking it out in advance. he had put the question on which there was no going back and which represented thereby the sacrifice of his vessels, and what he further said was to stand for the redoubled thrust of flame that would make combustion sure. “this isn’t sudden to me, and i’ve wondered at moments if you haven’t felt me coming to it. i’ve been coming ever since we left fawns--i really started while we were there.” he spoke slowly, giving her, as he desired, time to think; all the more that it was making her look at him steadily, and making her also, in a remarkable degree, look “well” while she did so--a large and, so far, a happy, consequence. she wasn’t at all events shocked--which he had glanced at but for a handsome humility--and he would give her as many minutes as she liked. “you mustn’t think i’m forgetting that i’m not young.” “oh, that isn’t so. it’s i that am old. you are young.” this was what she had at first answered--and quite in the tone too of having taken her minutes. it had not been wholly to the point, but it had been kind--which was what he most wanted. and she kept, for her next words, to kindness, kept to her clear, lowered voice and unshrinking face. “to me too it thoroughly seems that these days have been beautiful. i shouldn’t be grateful to them if i couldn’t more or less have imagined their bringing us to this.” she affected him somehow as if she had advanced a step to meet him and yet were at the same time standing still. it only meant, however, doubtless, that she was, gravely and reasonably, thinking--as he exactly desired to make her. if she would but think enough she would probably think to suit him. “it seems to me,” she went on, “that it’s for you to be sure.” “ah, but i am sure,” said adam verver. “on matters of importance i never speak when i’m not. so if you can yourself face such a union you needn’t in the least trouble.” she had another pause, and she might have been felt as facing it while, through lamplight and dusk, through the breath of the mild, slightly damp southwest, she met his eyes without evasion. yet she had at the end of another minute debated only to the extent of saying: “i won’t pretend i don’t think it would be good for me to marry. good for me, i mean,” she pursued, “because i’m so awfully unattached. i should like to be a little less adrift. i should like to have a home. i should like to have an existence. i should like to have a motive for one thing more than another--a motive outside of myself. in fact,” she said, so sincerely that it almost showed pain, yet so lucidly that it almost showed humour, “in fact, you know, i want to be married. it’s--well, it’s the condition.” “the condition--?” he was just vague. “it’s the state, i mean. i don’t like my own. ‘miss,’ among us all, is too dreadful--except for a shopgirl. i don’t want to be a horrible english old-maid.” “oh, you want to be taken care of. very well then, i’ll do it.” “i dare say it’s very much that. only i don’t see why, for what i speak of,” she smiled--“for a mere escape from my state--i need do quite so much.” “so much as marry me in particular?” her smile was as for true directness. “i might get what i want for less.” “you think it so much for you to do?” “yes,” she presently said, “i think it’s a great deal.” then it was that, though she was so gentle, so quite perfect with him, and he felt he had come on far--then it was that of a sudden something seemed to fail and he didn’t quite know where they were. there rose for him, with this, the fact, to be sure, of their disparity, deny it as mercifully and perversely as she would. he might have been her father. “of course, yes--that’s my disadvantage: i’m not the natural, i’m so far from being the ideal match to your youth and your beauty. i’ve the drawback that you’ve seen me always, so inevitably, in such another light.” but she gave a slow headshake that made contradiction soft--made it almost sad, in fact, as from having to be so complete; and he had already, before she spoke, the dim vision of some objection in her mind beside which the one he had named was light, and which therefore must be strangely deep. “you don’t understand me. it’s of all that it is for you to do--it’s of that i’m thinking.” oh, with this, for him, the thing was clearer! “then you needn’t think. i know enough what it is for me to do.” but she shook her head again. “i doubt if you know. i doubt if you can.” “and why not, please--when i’ve had you so before me? that i’m old has at least that fact about it to the good--that i’ve known you long and from far back.” “do you think you’ve ‘known’ me?” asked charlotte stant. he hesitated--for the tone of it, and her look with it might have made him doubt. just these things in themselves, however, with all the rest, with his fixed purpose now, his committed deed, the fine pink glow, projected forward, of his ships, behind him, definitely blazing and crackling--this quantity was to push him harder than any word of her own could warn him. all that she was herself, moreover, was so lighted, to its advantage, by the pink glow. he wasn’t rabid, but he wasn’t either, as a man of a proper spirit, to be frightened. “what is that then--if i accept it--but as strong a reason as i can want for just learning to know you?” she faced him always--kept it up as for honesty, and yet at the same time, in her odd way, as for mercy. “how can you tell whether if you did you would?” it was ambiguous for an instant, as she showed she felt. “i mean when it’s a question of learning, one learns sometimes too late.” “i think it’s a question,” he promptly enough made answer, “of liking you the more just for your saying these things. you should make something,” he added, “of my liking you.” “i make everything. but are you sure of having exhausted all other ways?” this, of a truth, enlarged his gaze. “but what other ways?” “why, you’ve more ways of being kind than anyone i ever knew.” “take it then,” he answered, “that i’m simply putting them all together for you.” she looked at him, on this, long again--still as if it shouldn’t be said she hadn’t given him time or had withdrawn from his view, so to speak, a single inch of her surface. this at least she was fully to have exposed. it represented her as oddly conscientious, and he scarce knew in what sense it affected him. on the whole, however, with admiration. “you’re very, very honourable.” “it’s just what i want to be. i don’t see,” she added, “why you’re not right, i don’t see why you’re not happy, as you are. i can not ask myself, i can not ask you,” she went on, “if you’re really as much at liberty as your universal generosity leads you to assume. oughtn’t we,” she asked, “to think a little of others? oughtn’t i, at least, in loyalty--at any rate in delicacy--to think of maggie?” with which, intensely gentle, so as not to appear too much to teach him his duty, she explained. “she’s everything to you--she has always been. are you so certain that there’s room in your life--?” “for another daughter?--is that what you mean?” she had not hung upon it long, but he had quickly taken her up. he had not, however, disconcerted her. “for another young woman--very much of her age, and whose relation to her has always been so different from what our marrying would make it. for another companion,” said charlotte stant. “can’t a man be, all his life then,” he almost fiercely asked, “anything but a father?” but he went on before she could answer. “you talk about differences, but they’ve been already made--as no one knows better than maggie. she feels the one she made herself by her own marriage--made, i mean, for me. she constantly thinks of it--it allows her no rest. to put her at peace is therefore,” he explained, “what i’m trying, with you, to do. i can’t do it alone, but i can do it with your help. you can make her,” he said, “positively happy about me.” “about you?” she thoughtfully echoed. “but what can i make her about herself?” “oh, if she’s at ease about me the rest will take care of itself. the case,” he declared, “is in your hands. you’ll effectually put out of her mind that i feel she has abandoned me.” interest certainly now was what he had kindled in her face, but it was all the more honourable to her, as he had just called it that she should want to see each of the steps of his conviction. “if you’ve been driven to the ‘likes’ of me, mayn’t it show that you’ve felt truly forsaken?” “well, i’m willing to suggest that, if i can show at the same time that i feel consoled.” “but have you,” she demanded, “really felt so?” he hesitated. “consoled?” “forsaken.” “no--i haven’t. but if it’s her idea--!” if it was her idea, in short, that was enough. this enunciation of motive, the next moment, however, sounded to him perhaps slightly thin, so that he gave it another touch. “that is if it’s my idea. i happen, you see, to like my idea.” “well, it’s beautiful and wonderful. but isn’t it, possibly,” charlotte asked, “not quite enough to marry me for?” “why so, my dear child? isn’t a man’s idea usually what he does marry for?” charlotte, considering, looked as if this might perhaps be a large question, or at all events something of an extension of one they were immediately concerned with. “doesn’t that a good deal depend on the sort of thing it may be?” she suggested that, about marriage, ideas, as he called them, might differ; with which, however, giving no more time to it, she sounded another question. “don’t you appear rather to put it to me that i may accept your offer for maggie’s sake? somehow”--she turned it over--“i don’t so clearly see her quite so much finding reassurance, or even quite so much needing it.” “do you then make nothing at all of her having been so ready to leave us?” ah, charlotte on the contrary made much! “she was ready to leave us because she had to be. from the moment the prince wanted it she could only go with him.” “perfectly--so that, if you see your way, she will be able to ‘go with him’ in future as much as she likes.” charlotte appeared to examine for a minute, in maggie’s interest, this privilege--the result of which was a limited concession. “you’ve certainly worked it out!” “of course i’ve worked it out--that’s exactly what i have done. she hadn’t for a long time been so happy about anything as at your being there with me.” “i was to be with you,” said charlotte, “for her security.” “well,” adam verver rang out, “this is her security. you’ve only, if you can’t see it, to ask her.” “‘ask’ her?”--the girl echoed it in wonder. “certainly--in so many words. telling her you don’t believe me.” still she debated. “do you mean write it to her?” “quite so. immediately. to-morrow.” “oh, i don’t think i can write it,” said charlotte stant. “when i write to her”--and she looked amused for so different a shade--“it’s about the principino’s appetite and dr. brady’s visits.” “very good then--put it to her face to face. we’ll go straight to paris to meet them.” charlotte, at this, rose with a movement that was like a small cry; but her unspoken sense lost itself while she stood with her eyes on him--he keeping his seat as for the help it gave him, a little, to make his appeal go up. presently, however, a new sense had come to her, and she covered him, kindly, with the expression of it. “i do think, you know, you must rather ‘like’ me.” “thank you,” said adam verver. “you will put it to her yourself then?” she had another hesitation. “we go over, you say, to meet them?” “as soon as we can get back to fawns. and wait there for them, if necessary, till they come.” “wait--a--at fawns?” “wait in paris. that will be charming in itself.” “you take me to pleasant places.” she turned it over. “you propose to me beautiful things.” “it rests but with you to make them beautiful and pleasant. you’ve made brighton--!” “ah!”--she almost tenderly protested. “with what i’m doing now?” “you’re promising me now what i want. aren’t you promising me,” he pressed, getting up, “aren’t you promising me to abide by what maggie says?” oh, she wanted to be sure she was. “do you mean she’ll ask it of me?” it gave him indeed, as by communication, a sense of the propriety of being himself certain. yet what was he but certain? “she’ll speak to you. she’ll speak to you for me.” this at last then seemed to satisfy her. “very good. may we wait again to talk of it till she has done so?” he showed, with his hands down in his pockets and his shoulders expressively up, a certain disappointment. soon enough, none the less, his gentleness was all back and his patience once more exemplary. “of course i give you time. especially,” he smiled, “as it’s time that i shall be spending with you. our keeping on together will help you perhaps to see. to see, i mean, how i need you.” “i already see,” said charlotte, “how you’ve persuaded yourself you do.” but she had to repeat it. “that isn’t, unfortunately, all.” “well then, how you’ll make maggie right.” “‘right’?” she echoed it as if the word went far. and “o--oh!” she still critically murmured as they moved together away. xiii he had talked to her of their waiting in paris, a week later, but on the spot there this period of patience suffered no great strain. he had written to his daughter, not indeed from brighton, but directly after their return to fawns, where they spent only forty-eight hours before resuming their journey; and maggie’s reply to his news was a telegram from rome, delivered to him at noon of their fourth day and which he brought out to charlotte, who was seated at that moment in the court of the hotel, where they had agreed that he should join her for their proceeding together to the noontide meal. his letter, at fawns--a letter of several pages and intended lucidly, unreservedly, in fact all but triumphantly, to inform--had proved, on his sitting down to it, and a little to his surprise, not quite so simple a document to frame as even his due consciousness of its weight of meaning had allowed him to assume: this doubtless, however, only for reasons naturally latent in the very wealth of that consciousness, which contributed to his message something of their own quality of impatience. the main result of their talk, for the time, had been a difference in his relation to his young friend, as well as a difference, equally sensible, in her relation to himself; and this in spite of his not having again renewed his undertaking to “speak” to her so far even as to tell her of the communication despatched to rome. delicacy, a delicacy more beautiful still, all the delicacy she should want, reigned between them--it being rudimentary, in their actual order, that she mustn’t be further worried until maggie should have put her at her ease. it was just the delicacy, however, that in paris--which, suggestively, was brighton at a hundredfold higher pitch--made, between him and his companion, the tension, made the suspense, made what he would have consented perhaps to call the provisional peculiarity, of present conditions. these elements acted in a manner of their own, imposing and involving, under one head, many abstentions and precautions, twenty anxieties and reminders--things, verily, he would scarce have known how to express; and yet creating for them at every step an acceptance of their reality. he was hanging back, with charlotte, till another person should intervene for their assistance, and yet they had, by what had already occurred, been carried on to something it was out of the power of other persons to make either less or greater. common conventions--that was what was odd--had to be on this basis more thought of; those common conventions that, previous to the passage by the brighton strand, he had so enjoyed the sense of their overlooking. the explanation would have been, he supposed--or would have figured it with less of unrest--that paris had, in its way, deeper voices and warnings, so that if you went at all “far” there it laid bristling traps, as they might have been viewed, all smothered in flowers, for your going further still. there were strange appearances in the air, and before you knew it you might be unmistakably matching them. since he wished therefore to match no appearance but that of a gentleman playing with perfect fairness any game in life he might be called to, he found himself, on the receipt of maggie’s missive, rejoicing with a certain inconsistency. the announcement made her from home had, in the act, cost some biting of his pen to sundry parts of him--his personal modesty, his imagination of her prepared state for so quick a jump, it didn’t much matter which--and yet he was more eager than not for the drop of delay and for the quicker transitions promised by the arrival of the imminent pair. there was after all a hint of offence to a man of his age in being taken, as they said at the shops, on approval. maggie, certainly, would have been as far as charlotte herself from positively desiring this, and charlotte, on her side, as far as maggie from holding him light as a real value. she made him fidget thus, poor girl, but from generous rigour of conscience. these allowances of his spirit were, all the same, consistent with a great gladness at the sight of the term of his ordeal; for it was the end of his seeming to agree that questions and doubts had a place. the more he had inwardly turned the matter over the more it had struck him that they had in truth only an ugliness. what he could have best borne, as he now believed, would have been charlotte’s simply saying to him that she didn’t like him enough. this he wouldn’t have enjoyed, but he would quite have understood it and been able ruefully to submit. she did like him enough--nothing to contradict that had come out for him; so that he was restless for her as well as for himself. she looked at him hard a moment when he handed her his telegram, and the look, for what he fancied a dim, shy fear in it, gave him perhaps his best moment of conviction that--as a man, so to speak--he properly pleased her. he said nothing--the words sufficiently did it for him, doing it again better still as charlotte, who had left her chair at his approach, murmured them out. “we start to-night to bring you all our love and joy and sympathy.” there they were, the words, and what did she want more? she didn’t, however, as she gave him back the little unfolded leaf, say they were enough--though he saw, the next moment, that her silence was probably not disconnected from her having just visibly turned pale. her extraordinarily fine eyes, as it was his present theory that he had always thought them, shone at him the more darkly out of this change of colour; and she had again, with it, her apparent way of subjecting herself, for explicit honesty and through her willingness to face him, to any view he might take, all at his ease, and even to wantonness, of the condition he produced in her. as soon as he perceived that emotion kept her soundless he knew himself deeply touched, since it proved that, little as she professed, she had been beautifully hoping. they stood there a minute while he took in from this sign that, yes then, certainly she liked him enough--liked him enough to make him, old as he was ready to brand himself, flush for the pleasure of it. the pleasure of it accordingly made him speak first. “do you begin, a little, to be satisfied?” still, however, she had to think. “we’ve hurried them, you see. why so breathless a start?” “because they want to congratulate us. they want,” said adam verver, “to see our happiness.” she wondered again--and this time also, for him, as publicly as possible. “so much as that?” “do you think it’s too much?” she continued to think plainly. “they weren’t to have started for another week.” “well, what then? isn’t our situation worth the little sacrifice? we’ll go back to rome as soon as you like with them.” this seemed to hold her--as he had previously seen her held, just a trifle inscrutably, by his allusions to what they would do together on a certain contingency. “worth it, the little sacrifice, for whom? for us, naturally--yes,” she said. “we want to see them--for our reasons. that is,” she rather dimly smiled, “you do.” “and you do, my dear, too!” he bravely declared. “yes then--i do too,” she after an instant ungrudging enough acknowledged. “for us, however, something depends on it.” “rather! but does nothing depend on it for them?” “what can--from the moment that, as appears, they don’t want to nip us in the bud? i can imagine their rushing up to prevent us. but an enthusiasm for us that can wait so very little--such intense eagerness, i confess,” she went on, “more than a little puzzles me. you may think me,” she also added, “ungracious and suspicious, but the prince can’t at all want to come back so soon. he wanted quite too intensely to get away.” mr. verver considered. “well, hasn’t he been away?” “yes, just long enough to see how he likes it. besides,” said charlotte, “he may not be able to join in the rosy view of our case that you impute to her. it can’t in the least have appeared to him hitherto a matter of course that you should give his wife a bouncing stepmother.” adam verver, at this, looked grave. “i’m afraid then he’ll just have to accept from us whatever his wife accepts; and accept it--if he can imagine no better reason--just because she does. that,” he declared, “will have to do for him.” his tone made her for a moment meet his face; after which, “let me,” she abruptly said, “see it again”--taking from him the folded leaf that she had given back and he had kept in his hand. “isn’t the whole thing,” she asked when she had read it over, “perhaps but a way like another for their gaining time?” he again stood staring; but the next minute, with that upward spring of his shoulders and that downward pressure of his pockets which she had already, more than once, at disconcerted moments, determined in him, he turned sharply away and wandered from her in silence. he looked about in his small despair; he crossed the hotel court, which, overarched and glazed, muffled against loud sounds and guarded against crude sights, heated, gilded, draped, almost carpeted, with exotic trees in tubs, exotic ladies in chairs, the general exotic accent and presence suspended, as with wings folded or feebly fluttering, in the superior, the supreme, the inexorably enveloping parisian medium, resembled some critical apartment of large capacity, some “dental,” medical, surgical waiting-room, a scene of mixed anxiety and desire, preparatory, for gathered barbarians, to the due amputation or extraction of excrescences and redundancies of barbarism. he went as far as the porte-cochere, took counsel afresh of his usual optimism, sharpened even, somehow, just here, by the very air he tasted, and then came back smiling to charlotte. “it is incredible to you that when a man is still as much in love as amerigo his most natural impulse should be to feel what his wife feels, to believe what she believes, to want what she wants?--in the absence, that is, of special impediments to his so doing.” the manner of it operated--she acknowledged with no great delay this natural possibility. “no--nothing is incredible to me of people immensely in love.” “well, isn’t amerigo immensely in love?” she hesitated but as for the right expression of her sense of the degree--but she after all adopted mr. verver’s. “immensely.” “then there you are!” she had another smile, however--she wasn’t there quite yet. “that isn’t all that’s wanted.” “but what more?” “why that his wife shall have made him really believe that she really believes.” with which charlotte became still more lucidly logical. “the reality of his belief will depend in such a case on the reality of hers. the prince may for instance now,” she went on, “have made out to his satisfaction that maggie may mainly desire to abound in your sense, whatever it is you do. he may remember that he has never seen her do anything else.” “well,” said adam verver, “what kind of a warning will he have found in that? to what catastrophe will he have observed such a disposition in her to lead?” “just to this one!” with which she struck him as rising straighter and clearer before him than she had done even yet. “our little question itself?” her appearance had in fact, at the moment, such an effect on him that he could answer but in marvelling mildness. “hadn’t we better wait a while till we call it a catastrophe?” her rejoinder to this was to wait--though by no means as long as he meant. when at the end of her minute she spoke, however, it was mildly too. “what would you like, dear friend, to wait for?” it lingered between them in the air, this demand, and they exchanged for the time a look which might have made each of them seem to have been watching in the other the signs of its overt irony. these were indeed immediately so visible in mr. verver’s face that, as if a little ashamed of having so markedly produced them--and as if also to bring out at last, under pressure, something she had all the while been keeping back--she took a jump to pure plain reason. “you haven’t noticed for yourself, but i can’t quite help noticing, that in spite of what you assume--we assume, if you like--maggie wires her joy only to you. she makes no sign of its overflow to me.” it was a point--and, staring a moment, he took account of it. but he had, as before, his presence of mind--to say nothing of his kindly humour. “why, you complain of the very thing that’s most charmingly conclusive! she treats us already as one.” clearly now, for the girl, in spite of lucidity and logic, there was something in the way he said things--! she faced him in all her desire to please him, and then her word quite simply and definitely showed it. “i do like you, you know.” well, what could this do but stimulate his humour? “i see what’s the matter with you. you won’t be quiet till you’ve heard from the prince himself. i think,” the happy man added, “that i’ll go and secretly wire to him that you’d like, reply paid, a few words for yourself.” it could apparently but encourage her further to smile. “reply paid for him, you mean--or for me?” “oh, i’ll pay, with pleasure, anything back for you--as many words as you like.” and he went on, to keep it up. “not requiring either to see your message.” she could take it, visibly, as he meant it. “should you require to see the prince’s?” “not a bit. you can keep that also to yourself.” on his speaking, however, as if his transmitting the hint were a real question, she appeared to consider--and almost as if for good taste--that the joke had gone far enough. “it doesn’t matter. unless he speaks of his own movement--! and why should it be,” she asked, “a thing that would occur to him?” “i really think,” mr. verver concurred, “that it naturally wouldn’t. he doesn’t know you’re morbid.” she just wondered--but she agreed. “no--he hasn’t yet found it out. perhaps he will, but he hasn’t yet; and i’m willing to give him meanwhile the benefit of the doubt.” so with this the situation, to her view, would appear to have cleared had she not too quickly had one of her restless relapses. “maggie, however, does know i’m morbid. she hasn’t the benefit.” “well,” said adam verver a little wearily at last, “i think i feel that you’ll hear from her yet.” it had even fairly come over him, under recurrent suggestion, that his daughter’s omission was surprising. and maggie had never in her life been wrong for more than three minutes. “oh, it isn’t that i hold that i’ve a right to it,” charlotte the next instant rather oddly qualified--and the observation itself gave him a further push. “very well--i shall like it myself.” at this then, as if moved by his way of constantly--and more or less against his own contention--coming round to her, she showed how she could also always, and not less gently, come half way. “i speak of it only as the missing grace--the grace that’s in everything that maggie does. it isn’t my due”--she kept it up--“but, taking from you that we may still expect it, it will have the touch. it will be beautiful.” “then come out to breakfast.” mr. verver had looked at his watch. “it will be here when we get back.” “if it isn’t”--and charlotte smiled as she looked about for a feather boa that she had laid down on descending from her room--“if it isn’t it will have had but that slight fault.” he saw her boa on the arm of the chair from which she had moved to meet him, and, after he had fetched it, raising it to make its charming softness brush his face--for it was a wondrous product of paris, purchased under his direct auspices the day before--he held it there a minute before giving it up. “will you promise me then to be at peace?” she looked, while she debated, at his admirable present. “i promise you.” “quite for ever?” “quite for ever.” “remember,” he went on, to justify his demand, “remember that in wiring you she’ll naturally speak even more for her husband than she has done in wiring me.” it was only at a word that charlotte had a demur. “‘naturally’--?” “why, our marriage puts him for you, you see--or puts you for him--into a new relation, whereas it leaves his relation to me unchanged. it therefore gives him more to say to you about it.” “about its making me his stepmother-in-law--or whatever i should become?” over which, for a little, she not undivertedly mused. “yes, there may easily be enough for a gentleman to say to a young woman about that.” “well, amerigo can always be, according to the case, either as funny or as serious as you like; and whichever he may be for you, in sending you a message, he’ll be it all.” and then as the girl, with one of her so deeply and oddly, yet so tenderly, critical looks at him, failed to take up the remark, he found himself moved, as by a vague anxiety, to add a question. “don’t you think he’s charming?” “oh, charming,” said charlotte stant. “if he weren’t i shouldn’t mind.” “no more should i!” her friend harmoniously returned. “ah, but you don’t mind. you don’t have to. you don’t have to, i mean, as i have. it’s the last folly ever to care, in an anxious way, the least particle more than one is absolutely forced. if i were you,” she went on--“if i had in my life, for happiness and power and peace, even a small fraction of what you have, it would take a great deal to make me waste my worry. i don’t know,” she said, “what in the world--that didn’t touch my luck--i should trouble my head about.” “i quite understand you--yet doesn’t it just depend,” mr. verver asked, “on what you call one’s luck? it’s exactly my luck that i’m talking about. i shall be as sublime as you like when you’ve made me all right. it’s only when one is right that one really has the things you speak of. it isn’t they,” he explained, “that make one so: it’s the something else i want that makes them right. if you’ll give me what i ask, you’ll see.” she had taken her boa and thrown it over her shoulders, and her eyes, while she still delayed, had turned from him, engaged by another interest, though the court was by this time, the hour of dispersal for luncheon, so forsaken that they would have had it, for free talk, should they have been moved to loudness, quite to themselves. she was ready for their adjournment, but she was also aware of a pedestrian youth, in uniform, a visible emissary of the postes et telegraphes, who had approached, from the street, the small stronghold of the concierge and who presented there a missive taken from the little cartridge-box slung over his shoulder. the portress, meeting him on the threshold, met equally, across the court, charlotte’s marked attention to his visit, so that, within the minute, she had advanced to our friends with her cap-streamers flying and her smile of announcement as ample as her broad white apron. she raised aloft a telegraphic message and, as she delivered it, sociably discriminated. “cette fois-ci pour madame!”--with which she as genially retreated, leaving charlotte in possession. charlotte, taking it, held it at first unopened. her eyes had come back to her companion, who had immediately and triumphantly greeted it. “ah, there you are!” she broke the envelope then in silence, and for a minute, as with the message he himself had put before her, studied its contents without a sign. he watched her without a question, and at last she looked up. “i’ll give you,” she simply said, “what you ask.” the expression of her face was strange--but since when had a woman’s at moments of supreme surrender not a right to be? he took it in with his own long look and his grateful silence--so that nothing more, for some instants, passed between them. their understanding sealed itself--he already felt that she had made him right. but he was in presence too of the fact that maggie had made her so; and always, therefore, without maggie, where, in fine, would he be? she united them, brought them together as with the click of a silver spring, and, on the spot, with the vision of it, his eyes filled, charlotte facing him meanwhile with her expression made still stranger by the blur of his gratitude. through it all, however, he smiled. “what my child does for me--!” through it all as well, that is still through the blur, he saw charlotte, rather than heard her, reply. she held her paper wide open, but her eyes were all for his. “it isn’t maggie. it’s the prince.” “i say!”--he gaily rang out. “then it’s best of all.” “it’s enough.” “thank you for thinking so!” to which he added “it’s enough for our question, but it isn’t--is it? quite enough for our breakfast? dejeunons.” she stood there, however, in spite of this appeal, her document always before them. “don’t you want to read it?” he thought. “not if it satisfies you. i don’t require it.” but she gave him, as for her conscience, another chance. “you can if you like.” he hesitated afresh, but as for amiability, not for curiosity. “is it funny?” thus, finally, she again dropped her eyes on it, drawing in her lips a little. “no--i call it grave.” “ah, then, i don’t want it.” “very grave,” said charlotte stant. “well, what did i tell you of him?” he asked, rejoicing, as they started: a question for all answer to which, before she took his arm, the girl thrust her paper, crumpled, into the pocket of her coat. part third xiv charlotte, half way up the “monumental” staircase, had begun by waiting alone--waiting to be rejoined by her companion, who had gone down all the way, as in common kindness bound, and who, his duty performed, would know where to find her. she was meanwhile, though extremely apparent, not perhaps absolutely advertised; but she would not have cared if she had been--so little was it, by this time, her first occasion of facing society with a consciousness materially, with a confidence quite splendidly, enriched. for a couple of years now she had known as never before what it was to look “well”--to look, that is, as well as she had always felt, from far back, that, in certain conditions, she might. on such an evening as this, that of a great official party in the full flush of the london spring-time, the conditions affected her, her nerves, her senses, her imagination, as all profusely present; so that perhaps at no moment yet had she been so justified of her faith as at the particular instant of our being again concerned with her, that of her chancing to glance higher up from where she stood and meeting in consequence the quiet eyes of colonel assingham, who had his elbows on the broad balustrade of the great gallery overhanging the staircase and who immediately exchanged with her one of his most artlessly familiar signals. this simplicity of his visual attention struck her, even with the other things she had to think about, as the quietest note in the whole high pitch--much, in fact, as if she had pressed a finger on a chord or a key and created, for the number of seconds, an arrest of vibration, a more muffled thump. the sight of him suggested indeed that fanny would be there, though so far as opportunity went she had not seen her. this was about the limit of what it could suggest. the air, however, had suggestions enough--it abounded in them, many of them precisely helping to constitute those conditions with which, for our young woman, the hour was brilliantly crowned. she was herself in truth crowned, and it all hung together, melted together, in light and colour and sound: the unsurpassed diamonds that her head so happily carried, the other jewels, the other perfections of aspect and arrangement that made her personal scheme a success, the proved private theory that materials to work with had been all she required and that there were none too precious for her to understand and use--to which might be added lastly, as the strong-scented flower of the total sweetness, an easy command, a high enjoyment, of her crisis. for a crisis she was ready to take it, and this ease it was, doubtless, that helped her, while she waited, to the right assurance, to the right indifference, to the right expression, and above all, as she felt, to the right view of her opportunity for happiness--unless indeed the opportunity itself, rather, were, in its mere strange amplitude, the producing, the precipitating cause. the ordered revellers, rustling and shining, with sweep of train and glitter of star and clink of sword, and yet, for all this, but so imperfectly articulate, so vaguely vocal--the double stream of the coming and the going, flowing together where she stood, passed her, brushed her, treated her to much crude contemplation and now and then to a spasm of speech, an offered hand, even in some cases to an unencouraged pause; but she missed no countenance and invited no protection: she fairly liked to be, so long as she might, just as she was--exposed a little to the public, no doubt, in her unaccompanied state, but, even if it were a bit brazen, careless of queer reflections on the dull polish of london faces, and exposed, since it was a question of exposure, to much more competent recognitions of her own. she hoped no one would stop--she was positively keeping herself; it was her idea to mark in a particular manner the importance of something that had just happened. she knew how she should mark it, and what she was doing there made already a beginning. when presently, therefore, from her standpoint, she saw the prince come back she had an impression of all the place as higher and wider and more appointed for great moments; with its dome of lustres lifted, its ascents and descents more majestic, its marble tiers more vividly overhung, its numerosity of royalties, foreign and domestic, more unprecedented, its symbolism of “state” hospitality both emphasised and refined. this was doubtless a large consequence of a fairly familiar cause, a considerable inward stir to spring from the mere vision, striking as that might be, of amerigo in a crowd; but she had her reasons, she held them there, she carried them in fact, responsibly and overtly, as she carried her head, her high tiara, her folded fan, her indifferent, unattended eminence; and it was when he reached her and she could, taking his arm, show herself as placed in her relation, that she felt supremely justified. it was her notion of course that she gave a glimpse of but few of her grounds for this discrimination--indeed of the most evident alone; yet she would have been half willing it should be guessed how she drew inspiration, drew support, in quantity sufficient for almost anything, from the individual value that, through all the picture, her husband’s son-in-law kept for the eye, deriving it from his fine unconscious way, in the swarming social sum, of outshining, overlooking and overtopping. it was as if in separation, even the shortest, she half forgot or disbelieved how he affected her sight, so that reappearance had, in him, each time, a virtue of its own--a kind of disproportionate intensity suggesting his connection with occult sources of renewal. what did he do when he was away from her that made him always come back only looking, as she would have called it, “more so?” superior to any shade of cabotinage, he yet almost resembled an actor who, between his moments on the stage, revisits his dressing-room and, before the glass, pressed by his need of effect, retouches his make-up. the prince was at present, for instance, though he had quitted her but ten minutes before, still more than then the person it pleased her to be left with--a truth that had all its force for her while he made her his care for their conspicuous return together to the upper rooms. conspicuous beyond any wish they could entertain was what, poor wonderful man, he couldn’t help making it; and when she raised her eyes again, on the ascent, to bob assingham, still aloft in his gallery and still looking down at her, she was aware that, in spite of hovering and warning inward voices, she even enjoyed the testimony rendered by his lonely vigil to the lustre she reflected. he was always lonely at great parties, the dear colonel--it wasn’t in such places that the seed he sowed at home was ever reaped by him; but nobody could have seemed to mind it less, to brave it with more bronzed indifference; so markedly that he moved about less like one of the guests than like some quite presentable person in charge of the police arrangements or the electric light. to mrs. verver, as will be seen, he represented, with the perfect good faith of his apparent blankness, something definite enough; though her bravery was not thereby too blighted for her to feel herself calling him to witness that the only witchcraft her companion had used, within the few minutes, was that of attending maggie, who had withdrawn from the scene, to her carriage. notified, at all events, of fanny’s probable presence, charlotte was, for a while after this, divided between the sense of it as a fact somehow to reckon with and deal with, which was a perception that made, in its degree, for the prudence, the pusillanimity of postponement, of avoidance--and a quite other feeling, an impatience that presently ended by prevailing, an eagerness, really, to be suspected, sounded, veritably arraigned, if only that she might have the bad moment over, if only that she might prove to herself, let alone to mrs. assingham also, that she could convert it to good; if only, in short, to be “square,” as they said, with her question. for herself indeed, particularly, it wasn’t a question; but something in her bones told her that fanny would treat it as one, and there was truly nothing that, from this friend, she was not bound in decency to take. she might hand things back with every tender precaution, with acknowledgments and assurances, but she owed it to them, in any case, and it to all mrs. assingham had done for her, not to get rid of them without having well unwrapped and turned them over. to-night, as happened--and she recognised it more and more, with the ebbing minutes, as an influence of everything about her--to-night exactly, she would, no doubt, since she knew why, be as firm as she might at any near moment again hope to be for going through that process with the right temper and tone. she said, after a little, to the prince, “stay with me; let no one take you; for i want her, yes, i do want her to see us together, and the sooner the better”--said it to keep her hand on him through constant diversions, and made him, in fact, by saying it, profess a momentary vagueness. she had to explain to him that it was fanny assingham, she wanted to see--who clearly would be there, since the colonel never either stirred without her or, once arrived, concerned himself for her fate; and she had, further, after amerigo had met her with “see us together? why in the world? hasn’t she often seen us together?” to inform him that what had elsewhere and otherwise happened didn’t now matter and that she at any rate well knew, for the occasion, what she was about. “you’re strange, cara mia,” he consentingly enough dropped; but, for whatever strangeness, he kept her, as they circulated, from being waylaid, even remarking to her afresh as he had often done before, on the help rendered, in such situations, by the intrinsic oddity of the london “squash,” a thing of vague, slow, senseless eddies, revolving as in fear of some menace of conversation suspended over it, the drop of which, with some consequent refreshing splash or spatter, yet never took place. of course she was strange; this, as they went, charlotte knew for herself: how could she be anything else when the situation holding her, and holding him, for that matter, just as much, had so the stamp of it? she had already accepted her consciousness, as we have already noted, that a crisis, for them all, was in the air; and when such hours were not depressing, which was the form indeed in which she had mainly known them, they were apparently in a high degree exhilarating. later on, in a corner to which, at sight of an empty sofa, mrs. assingham had, after a single attentive arrest, led her with a certain earnestness, this vision of the critical was much more sharpened than blurred. fanny had taken it from her: yes, she was there with amerigo alone, maggie having come with them and then, within ten minutes, changed her mind, repented and departed. “so you’re staying on together without her?” the elder woman had asked; and it was charlotte’s answer to this that had determined for them, quite indeed according to the latter’s expectation, the need of some seclusion and her companion’s pounce at the sofa. they were staying on together alone, and--oh distinctly!--it was alone that maggie had driven away, her father, as usual, not having managed to come. “‘as usual’--?” mrs. assingham had seemed to wonder; mr. verver’s reluctances not having, she in fact quite intimated, hitherto struck her. charlotte responded, at any rate, that his indisposition to go out had lately much increased--even though to-night, as she admitted, he had pleaded his not feeling well. maggie had wished to stay with him--for the prince and she, dining out, had afterwards called in portland place, whence, in the event, they had brought her, charlotte, on. maggie had come but to oblige her father--she had urged the two others to go without her; then she had yielded, for the time, to mr. verver’s persuasion. but here, when they had, after the long wait in the carriage, fairly got in; here, once up the stairs, with the rooms before them, remorse had ended by seizing her: she had listened to no other remonstrance, and at present therefore, as charlotte put it, the two were doubtless making together a little party at home. but it was all right--so charlotte also put it: there was nothing in the world they liked better than these snatched felicities, little parties, long talks, with “i’ll come to you to-morrow,” and “no, i’ll come to you,” make-believe renewals of their old life. they were fairly, at times, the dear things, like children playing at paying visits, playing at “mr. thompson” and “mrs. fane,” each hoping that the other would really stay to tea. charlotte was sure she should find maggie there on getting home--a remark in which mrs. verver’s immediate response to her friend’s inquiry had culminated. she had thus, on the spot, the sense of having given her plenty to think about, and that moreover of liking to see it even better than she had expected. she had plenty to think about herself, and there was already something in fanny that made it seem still more. “you say your husband’s ill? he felt too ill to come?” “no, my dear--i think not. if he had been too ill i wouldn’t have left him.” “and yet maggie was worried?” mrs. assingham asked. “she worries, you know, easily. she’s afraid of influenza--of which he has had, at different times, though never with the least gravity, several attacks.” “but you’re not afraid of it?” charlotte had for a moment a pause; it had continued to come to her that really to have her case “out,” as they said, with the person in the world to whom her most intimate difficulties had oftenest referred themselves, would help her, on the whole, more than hinder; and under that feeling all her opportunity, with nothing kept back; with a thing or two perhaps even thrust forward, seemed temptingly to open. besides, didn’t fanny at bottom half expect, absolutely at the bottom half want, things?--so that she would be disappointed if, after what must just have occurred for her, she didn’t get something to put between the teeth of her so restless rumination, that cultivation of the fear, of which our young woman had already had glimpses, that she might have “gone too far” in her irrepressible interest in other lives. what had just happened--it pieced itself together for charlotte--was that the assingham pair, drifting like everyone else, had had somewhere in the gallery, in the rooms, an accidental concussion; had it after the colonel, over his balustrade, had observed, in the favouring high light, her public junction with the prince. his very dryness, in this encounter, had, as always, struck a spark from his wife’s curiosity, and, familiar, on his side, with all that she saw in things, he had thrown her, as a fine little bone to pick, some report of the way one of her young friends was “going on” with another. he knew perfectly--such at least was charlotte’s liberal assumption--that she wasn’t going on with anyone, but she also knew that, given the circumstances, she was inevitably to be sacrificed, in some form or another, to the humorous intercourse of the inimitable couple. the prince meanwhile had also, under coercion, sacrificed her; the ambassador had come up to him with a message from royalty, to whom he was led away; after which she had talked for five minutes with sir john brinder, who had been of the ambassador’s company and who had rather artlessly remained with her. fanny had then arrived in sight of them at the same moment as someone else she didn’t know, someone who knew mrs. assingham and also knew sir john. charlotte had left it to her friend’s competence to throw the two others immediately together and to find a way for entertaining her in closer quarters. this was the little history of the vision, in her, that was now rapidly helping her to recognise a precious chance, the chance that mightn’t again soon be so good for the vivid making of a point. her point was before her; it was sharp, bright, true; above all it was her own. she had reached it quite by herself; no one, not even amerigo--amerigo least of all, who would have nothing to do with it--had given her aid. to make it now with force for fanny assingham’s benefit would see her further, in the direction in which the light had dawned, than any other spring she should, yet awhile, doubtless, be able to press. the direction was that of her greater freedom--which was all in the world she had in mind. her opportunity had accordingly, after a few minutes of mrs. assingham’s almost imprudently interested expression of face, positively acquired such a price for her that she may, for ourselves, while the intensity lasted, rather resemble a person holding out a small mirror at arm’s length and consulting it with a special turn of the head. it was, in a word, with this value of her chance that she was intelligently playing when she said in answer to fanny’s last question: “don’t you remember what you told me, on the occasion of something or other, the other day? that you believe there’s nothing i’m afraid of? so, my dear, don’t ask me!” “mayn’t i ask you,” mrs. assingham returned, “how the case stands with your poor husband?” “certainly, dear. only, when you ask me as if i mightn’t perhaps know what to think, it seems to me best to let you see that i know perfectly what to think.” mrs. assingham hesitated; then, blinking a little, she took her risk. “you didn’t think that if it was a question of anyone’s returning to him, in his trouble, it would be better you yourself should have gone?” well, charlotte’s answer to this inquiry visibly shaped itself in the interest of the highest considerations. the highest considerations were good humour, candour, clearness and, obviously, the real truth. “if we couldn’t be perfectly frank and dear with each other, it would be ever so much better, wouldn’t it? that we shouldn’t talk about anything at all; which, however, would be dreadful--and we certainly, at any rate, haven’t yet come to it. you can ask me anything under the sun you like, because, don’t you see? you can’t upset me.” “i’m sure, my dear charlotte,” fanny assingham laughed, “i don’t want to upset you.” “indeed, love, you simply couldn’t even if you thought it necessary--that’s all i mean. nobody could, for it belongs to my situation that i’m, by no merit of my own, just fixed--fixed as fast as a pin stuck, up to its head, in a cushion. i’m placed--i can’t imagine anyone more placed. there i am!” fanny had indeed never listened to emphasis more firmly applied, and it brought into her own eyes, though she had reasons for striving to keep them from betrayals, a sort of anxiety of intelligence. “i dare say--but your statement of your position, however you see it, isn’t an answer to my inquiry. it seems to me, at the same time, i confess,” mrs. assingham added, “to give but the more reason for it. you speak of our being ‘frank.’ how can we possibly be anything else? if maggie has gone off through finding herself too distressed to stay, and if she’s willing to leave you and her husband to show here without her, aren’t the grounds of her preoccupation more or less discussable?” “if they’re not,” charlotte replied, “it’s only from their being, in a way, too evident. they’re not grounds for me--they weren’t when i accepted adam’s preference that i should come to-night without him: just as i accept, absolutely, as a fixed rule, all his preferences. but that doesn’t alter the fact, of course, that my husband’s daughter, rather than his wife, should have felt she could, after all, be the one to stay with him, the one to make the sacrifice of this hour--seeing, especially, that the daughter has a husband of her own in the field.” with which she produced, as it were, her explanation. “i’ve simply to see the truth of the matter--see that maggie thinks more, on the whole, of fathers than of husbands. and my situation is such,” she went on, “that this becomes immediately, don’t you understand? a thing i have to count with.” mrs. assingham, vaguely heaving, panting a little but trying not to show it, turned about, from some inward spring, in her seat. “if you mean such a thing as that she doesn’t adore the prince--!” “i don’t say she doesn’t adore him. what i say is that she doesn’t think of him. one of those conditions doesn’t always, at all stages, involve the other. this is just how she adores him,” charlotte said. “and what reason is there, in the world, after all, why he and i shouldn’t, as you say, show together? we’ve shown together, my dear,” she smiled, “before.” her friend, for a little, only looked at her--speaking then with abruptness. “you ought to be absolutely happy. you live with such good people.” the effect of it, as well, was an arrest for charlotte; whose face, however, all of whose fine and slightly hard radiance, it had caused, the next instant, further to brighten. “does one ever put into words anything so fatuously rash? it’s a thing that must be said, in prudence, for one--by somebody who’s so good as to take the responsibility: the more that it gives one always a chance to show one’s best manners by not contradicting it. certainly, you’ll never have the distress, or whatever, of hearing me complain.” “truly, my dear, i hope in all conscience not!” and the elder woman’s spirit found relief in a laugh more resonant than was quite advised by their pursuit of privacy. to this demonstration her friend gave no heed. “with all our absence after marriage, and with the separation from her produced in particular by our so many months in america, maggie has still arrears, still losses to make up--still the need of showing how, for so long, she simply kept missing him. she missed his company--a large allowance of which is, in spite of everything else, of the first necessity to her. so she puts it in when she can--a little here, a little there, and it ends by making up a considerable amount. the fact of our distinct establishments--which has, all the same, everything in its favour,” charlotte hastened to declare, “makes her really see more of him than when they had the same house. to make sure she doesn’t fail of it she’s always arranging for it--which she didn’t have to do while they lived together. but she likes to arrange,” charlotte steadily proceeded; “it peculiarly suits her; and the result of our separate households is really, for them, more contact and more intimacy. to-night, for instance, has been practically an arrangement. she likes him best alone. and it’s the way,” said our young woman, “in which he best likes her. it’s what i mean therefore by being ‘placed.’ and the great thing is, as they say, to ‘know’ one’s place. doesn’t it all strike you,” she wound up, “as rather placing the prince too?” fanny assingham had at this moment the sense as of a large heaped dish presented to her intelligence and inviting it to a feast--so thick were the notes of intention in this remarkable speech. but she also felt that to plunge at random, to help herself too freely, would--apart from there not being at such a moment time for it--tend to jostle the ministering hand, confound the array and, more vulgarly speaking, make a mess. so she picked out, after consideration, a solitary plum. “so placed that you have to arrange?” “certainly i have to arrange.” “and the prince also--if the effect for him is the same?” “really, i think, not less.” “and does he arrange,” mrs. assingham asked, “to make up his arrears?” the question had risen to her lips--it was as if another morsel, on the dish, had tempted her. the sound of it struck her own ear, immediately, as giving out more of her thought than she had as yet intended; but she quickly saw that she must follow it up, at any risk, with simplicity, and that what was simplest was the ease of boldness. “make them up, i mean, by coming to see you?” charlotte replied, however, without, as her friend would have phrased it, turning a hair. she shook her head, but it was beautifully gentle. “he never comes.” “oh!” said fanny assingham: with which she felt a little stupid. “there it is. he might so well, you know, otherwise.” “‘otherwise’?”--and fanny was still vague. it passed, this time, over her companion, whose eyes, wandering, to a distance, found themselves held. the prince was at hand again; the ambassador was still at his side; they were stopped a moment by a uniformed personage, a little old man, of apparently the highest military character, bristling with medals and orders. this gave charlotte time to go on. “he has not been for three months.” and then as with her friend’s last word in her ear: “‘otherwise’--yes. he arranges otherwise. and in my position,” she added, “i might too. it’s too absurd we shouldn’t meet.” “you’ve met, i gather,” said fanny assingham, “to-night.” “yes--as far as that goes. but what i mean is that i might--placed for it as we both are--go to see him.” “and do you?” fanny asked with almost mistaken solemnity. the perception of this excess made charlotte, whether for gravity or for irony, hang fire a minute. “i have been. but that’s nothing,” she said, “in itself, and i tell you of it only to show you how our situation works. it essentially becomes one, a situation, for both of us. the prince’s, however, is his own affair--i meant but to speak of mine.” “your situation’s perfect,” mrs. assingham presently declared. “i don’t say it isn’t. taken, in fact, all round, i think it is. and i don’t, as i tell you, complain of it. the only thing is that i have to act as it demands of me.” “to ‘act’?” said mrs. assingham with an irrepressible quaver. “isn’t it acting, my dear, to accept it? i do accept it. what do you want me to do less?” “i want you to believe that you’re a very fortunate person.” “do you call that less?” charlotte asked with a smile. “from the point of view of my freedom i call it more. let it take, my position, any name you like.” “don’t let it, at any rate”--and mrs. assingham’s impatience prevailed at last over her presence of mind--“don’t let it make you think too much of your freedom.” “i don’t know what you call too much--for how can i not see it as it is? you’d see your own quickly enough if the colonel gave you the same liberty--and i haven’t to tell you, with your so much greater knowledge of everything, what it is that gives such liberty most. for yourself personally of course,” charlotte went on, “you only know the state of neither needing it nor missing it. your husband doesn’t treat you as of less importance to him than some other woman.” “ah, don’t talk to me of other women!” fanny now overtly panted. “do you call mr. verver’s perfectly natural interest in his daughter--?” “the greatest affection of which he is capable?” charlotte took it up in all readiness. “i do distinctly--and in spite of my having done all i could think of--to make him capable of a greater. i’ve done, earnestly, everything i could--i’ve made it, month after month, my study. but i haven’t succeeded--it has been vividly brought home to me to-night. however,” she pursued, “i’ve hoped against hope, for i recognise that, as i told you at the time, i was duly warned.” and then as she met in her friend’s face the absence of any such remembrance: “he did tell me that he wanted me just because i could be useful about her.” with which charlotte broke into a wonderful smile. “so you see i am!” it was on fanny assingham’s lips for the moment to reply that this was, on the contrary, exactly what she didn’t see; she came in fact within an ace of saying: “you strike me as having quite failed to help his idea to work--since, by your account, maggie has him not less, but so much more, on her mind. how in the world, with so much of a remedy, comes there to remain so much of what was to be obviated?” but she saved herself in time, conscious above all that she was in presence of still deeper things than she had yet dared to fear, that there was “more in it” than any admission she had made represented--and she had held herself familiar with admissions: so that, not to seem to understand where she couldn’t accept, and not to seem to accept where she couldn’t approve, and could still less, with precipitation, advise, she invoked the mere appearance of casting no weight whatever into the scales of her young friend’s consistency. the only thing was that, as she was quickly enough to feel, she invoked it rather to excess. it brought her, her invocation, too abruptly to her feet. she brushed away everything. “i can’t conceive, my dear, what you’re talking about!” charlotte promptly rose then, as might be, to meet it, and her colour, for the first time, perceptibly heightened. she looked, for the minute, as her companion had looked--as if twenty protests, blocking each other’s way, had surged up within her. but when charlotte had to make a selection, her selection was always the most effective possible. it was happy now, above all, for being made not in anger but in sorrow. “you give me up then?” “give you up--?” “you forsake me at the hour of my life when it seems to me i most deserve a friend’s loyalty? if you do you’re not just, fanny; you’re even, i think,” she went on, “rather cruel; and it’s least of all worthy of you to seem to wish to quarrel with me in order to cover your desertion.” she spoke, at the same time, with the noblest moderation of tone, and the image of high, pale, lighted disappointment she meanwhile presented, as of a creature patient and lonely in her splendour, was an impression so firmly imposed that she could fill her measure to the brim and yet enjoy the last word, as it is called in such cases, with a perfection void of any vulgarity of triumph. she merely completed, for truth’s sake, her demonstration. “what is a quarrel with me but a quarrel with my right to recognise the conditions of my bargain? but i can carry them out alone,” she said as she turned away. she turned to meet the ambassador and the prince, who, their colloquy with their field-marshal ended, were now at hand and had already, between them, she was aware, addressed her a remark that failed to penetrate the golden glow in which her intelligence was temporarily bathed. she had made her point, the point she had foreseen she must make; she had made it thoroughly and once for all, so that no more making was required; and her success was reflected in the faces of the two men of distinction before her, unmistakably moved to admiration by her exceptional radiance. she at first but watched this reflection, taking no note of any less adequate form of it possibly presented by poor fanny--poor fanny left to stare at her incurred “score,” chalked up in so few strokes on the wall; then she took in what the ambassador was saying, in french, what he was apparently repeating to her. “a desire for your presence, madame, has been expressed en tres-haut lieu, and i’ve let myself in for the responsibility, to say nothing of the honour, of seeing, as the most respectful of your friends, that so august an impatience is not kept waiting.” the greatest possible personage had, in short, according to the odd formula of societies subject to the greatest personages possible, “sent for” her, and she asked, in her surprise, “what in the world does he want to do to me?” only to know, without looking, that fanny’s bewilderment was called to a still larger application, and to hear the prince say with authority, indeed with a certain prompt dryness: “you must go immediately--it’s a summons.” the ambassador, using authority as well, had already somehow possessed himself of her hand, which he drew into his arm, and she was further conscious as she went off with him that, though still speaking for her benefit, amerigo had turned to fanny assingham. he would explain afterwards--besides which she would understand for herself. to fanny, however, he had laughed--as a mark, apparently, that for this infallible friend no explanation at all would be necessary. xv it may be recorded none the less that the prince was the next moment to see how little any such assumption was founded. alone with him now mrs. assingham was incorruptible. “they send for charlotte through you?” “no, my dear; as you see, through the ambassador.” “ah, but the ambassador and you, for the last quarter-of-an-hour, have been for them as one. he’s your ambassador.” it may indeed be further mentioned that the more fanny looked at it the more she saw in it. “they’ve connected her with you--she’s treated as your appendage.” “oh, my ‘appendage,’” the prince amusedly exclaimed--“cara mia, what a name! she’s treated, rather, say, as my ornament and my glory. and it’s so remarkable a case for a mother-in-law that you surely can’t find fault with it.” “you’ve ornaments enough, it seems to me--as you’ve certainly glories enough--without her. and she’s not the least little bit,” mrs. assingham observed, “your mother-in-law. in such a matter a shade of difference is enormous. she’s no relation to you whatever, and if she’s known in high quarters but as going about with you, then--then--!” she failed, however, as from positive intensity of vision. “then, then what?” he asked with perfect good-nature. “she had better in such a case not be known at all.” “but i assure you i never, just now, so much as mentioned her. do you suppose i asked them,” said the young man, still amused, “if they didn’t want to see her? you surely don’t need to be shown that charlotte speaks for herself--that she does so above all on such an occasion as this and looking as she does to-night. how, so looking, can she pass unnoticed? how can she not have ‘success’? besides,” he added as she but watched his face, letting him say what he would, as if she wanted to see how he would say it, “besides, there is always the fact that we’re of the same connection, of--what is your word?--the same ‘concern.’ we’re certainly not, with the relation of our respective sposi, simply formal acquaintances. we’re in the same boat”--and the prince smiled with a candour that added an accent to his emphasis. fanny assingham was full of the special sense of his manner: it caused her to turn for a moment’s refuge to a corner of her general consciousness in which she could say to herself that she was glad she wasn’t in love with such a man. as with charlotte just before, she was embarrassed by the difference between what she took in and what she could say, what she felt and what she could show. “it only appears to me of great importance that--now that you all seem more settled here--charlotte should be known, for any presentation, any further circulation or introduction, as, in particular, her husband’s wife; known in the least possible degree as anything else. i don’t know what you mean by the ‘same’ boat. charlotte is naturally in mr. verver’s boat.” “and, pray, am _i_ not in mr. verver’s boat too? why, but for mr. verver’s boat, i should have been by this time”--and his quick italian gesture, an expressive direction and motion of his forefinger, pointed to deepest depths--“away down, down, down.” she knew of course what he meant--how it had taken his father-in-law’s great fortune, and taken no small slice, to surround him with an element in which, all too fatally weighted as he had originally been, he could pecuniarily float; and with this reminder other things came to her--how strange it was that, with all allowance for their merit, it should befall some people to be so inordinately valued, quoted, as they said in the stock-market, so high, and how still stranger, perhaps, that there should be cases in which, for some reason, one didn’t mind the so frequently marked absence in them of the purpose really to represent their price. she was thinking, feeling, at any rate, for herself; she was thinking that the pleasure she could take in this specimen of the class didn’t suffer from his consent to be merely made buoyant: partly because it was one of those pleasures (he inspired them) that, by their nature, couldn’t suffer, to whatever proof they were put; and partly because, besides, he after all visibly had on his conscience some sort of return for services rendered. he was a huge expense assuredly--but it had been up to now her conviction that his idea was to behave beautifully enough to make the beauty well nigh an equivalent. and that he had carried out his idea, carried it out by continuing to lead the life, to breathe the air, very nearly to think the thoughts, that best suited his wife and her father-this she had till lately enjoyed the comfort of so distinctly perceiving as to have even been moved more than once, to express to him the happiness it gave her. he had that in his favour as against other matters; yet it discouraged her too, and rather oddly, that he should so keep moving, and be able to show her that he moved, on the firm ground of the truth. his acknowledgment of obligation was far from unimportant, but she could find in his grasp of the real itself a kind of ominous intimation. the intimation appeared to peep at her even out of his next word, lightly as he produced it. “isn’t it rather as if we had, charlotte and i, for bringing us together, a benefactor in common?” and the effect, for his interlocutress, was still further to be deepened. “i somehow feel, half the time, as if he were her father-in-law too. it’s as if he had saved us both--which is a fact in our lives, or at any rate in our hearts, to make of itself a link. don’t you remember”--he kept it up--“how, the day she suddenly turned up for you, just before my wedding, we so frankly and funnily talked, in her presence, of the advisability, for her, of some good marriage?” and then as his friend’s face, in her extremity, quite again as with charlotte, but continued to fly the black flag of general repudiation: “well, we really began then, as it seems to me, the work of placing her where she is. we were wholly right--and so was she. that it was exactly the thing is shown by its success. we recommended a good marriage at almost any price, so to speak, and, taking us at our word, she has made the very best. that was really what we meant, wasn’t it? only--what she has got--something thoroughly good. it would be difficult, it seems to me, for her to have anything better--once you allow her the way it’s to be taken. of course if you don’t allow her that the case is different. her offset is a certain decent freedom-which, i judge, she’ll be quite contented with. you may say that will be very good of her, but she strikes me as perfectly humble about it. she proposes neither to claim it nor to use it with any sort of retentissement. she would enjoy it, i think, quite as quietly as it might be given. the ‘boat,’ you see”--the prince explained it no less considerately and lucidly--“is a good deal tied up at the dock, or anchored, if you like, out in the stream. i have to jump out from time to time to stretch my legs, and you’ll probably perceive, if you give it your attention, that charlotte really can’t help occasionally doing the same. it isn’t even a question, sometimes, of one’s getting to the dock--one has to take a header and splash about in the water. call our having remained here together to-night, call the accident of my having put them, put our illustrious friends there, on my companion’s track--for i grant you this as a practical result of our combination--call the whole thing one of the harmless little plunges off the deck, inevitable for each of us. why not take them, when they occur, as inevitable--and, above all, as not endangering life or limb? we shan’t drown, we shan’t sink--at least i can answer for myself. mrs. verver too, moreover--do her the justice--visibly knows how to swim.” he could easily go on, for she didn’t interrupt him; fanny felt now that she wouldn’t have interrupted him for the world. she found his eloquence precious; there was not a drop of it that she didn’t, in a manner, catch, as it came, for immediate bottling, for future preservation. the crystal flask of her innermost attention really received it on the spot, and she had even already the vision of how, in the snug laboratory of her afterthought, she should be able chemically to analyse it. there were moments, positively, still beyond this, when, with the meeting of their eyes, something as yet unnamable came out for her in his look, when something strange and subtle and at variance with his words, something that gave them away, glimmered deep down, as an appeal, almost an incredible one, to her finer comprehension. what, inconceivably, was it like? wasn’t it, however gross, such a rendering of anything so occult, fairly like a quintessential wink, a hint of the possibility of their really treating their subject--of course on some better occasion--and thereby, as well, finding it much more interesting? if this far red spark, which might have been figured by her mind as the head-light of an approaching train seen through the length of a tunnel, was not, on her side, an ignis fatuus, a mere subjective phenomenon, it twinkled there at the direct expense of what the prince was inviting her to understand. meanwhile too, however, and unmistakably, the real treatment of their subject did, at a given moment, sound. this was when he proceeded, with just the same perfect possession of his thought--on the manner of which he couldn’t have improved--to complete his successful simile by another, in fact by just the supreme touch, the touch for which it had till now been waiting. “for mrs. verver to be known to people so intensely and exclusively as her husband’s wife, something is wanted that, you know, they haven’t exactly got. he should manage to be known--or at least to be seen--a little more as his wife’s husband. you surely must by this time have seen for yourself that he has his own habits and his own ways, and that he makes, more and more--as of course he has a perfect right to do--his own discriminations. he’s so perfect, so ideal a father, and, doubtless largely by that very fact, a generous, a comfortable, an admirable father-in-law, that i should really feel it base to avail myself of any standpoint whatever to criticise him. to you, nevertheless, i may make just one remark; for you’re not stupid--you always understand so blessedly what one means.” he paused an instant, as if even this one remark might be difficult for him should she give no sign of encouraging him to produce it. nothing would have induced her, however, to encourage him; she was now conscious of having never in her life stood so still or sat, inwardly, as it were, so tight; she felt like the horse of the adage, brought--and brought by her own fault--to the water, but strong, for the occasion, in the one fact that she couldn’t be forced to drink. invited, in other words, to understand, she held her breath for fear of showing she did, and this for the excellent reason that she was at last fairly afraid to. it was sharp for her, at the same time, that she was certain, in advance, of his remark; that she heard it before it had sounded, that she already tasted, in fine, the bitterness it would have for her special sensibility. but her companion, from an inward and different need of his own, was presently not deterred by her silence. “what i really don’t see is why, from his own point of view--given, that is, his conditions, so fortunate as they stood--he should have wished to marry at all.” there it was then--exactly what she knew would come, and exactly, for reasons that seemed now to thump at her heart, as distressing to her. yet she was resolved, meanwhile, not to suffer, as they used to say of the martyrs, then and there; not to suffer, odiously, helplessly, in public--which could be prevented but by her breaking off, with whatever inconsequence; by her treating their discussion as ended and getting away. she suddenly wanted to go home much as she had wanted, an hour or two before, to come. she wanted to leave well behind her both her question and the couple in whom it had, abruptly, taken such vivid form--but it was dreadful to have the appearance of disconcerted flight. discussion had of itself, to her sense, become danger--such light, as from open crevices, it let in; and the overt recognition of danger was worse than anything else. the worst in fact came while she was thinking how she could retreat and still not overtly recognise. her face had betrayed her trouble, and with that she was lost. “i’m afraid, however,” the prince said, “that i, for some reason, distress you--for which i beg your pardon. we’ve always talked so well together--it has been, from the beginning, the greatest pull for me.” nothing so much as such a tone could have quickened her collapse; she felt he had her now at his mercy, and he showed, as he went on, that he knew it. “we shall talk again, all the same, better than ever--i depend on it too much. don’t you remember what i told you, so definitely, one day before my marriage?--that, moving as i did in so many ways among new things, mysteries, conditions, expectations, assumptions different from any i had known, i looked to you, as my original sponsor, my fairy godmother, to see me through. i beg you to believe,” he added, “that i look to you yet.” his very insistence had, fortunately, the next moment, affected her as bringing her help; with which, at least, she could hold up her head to speak. “ah, you are through--you were through long ago. or if you aren’t you ought to be.” “well then, if i ought to be it’s all the more reason why you should continue to help me. because, very distinctly, i assure you, i’m not. the new things or ever so many of them--are still for me new things; the mysteries and expectations and assumptions still contain an immense element that i’ve failed to puzzle out. as we’ve happened, so luckily, to find ourselves again really taking hold together, you must let me, as soon as possible, come to see you; you must give me a good, kind hour. if you refuse it me”--and he addressed himself to her continued reserve--“i shall feel that you deny, with a stony stare, your responsibility.” at this, as from a sudden shake, her reserve proved an inadequate vessel. she could bear her own, her private reference to the weight on her mind, but the touch of another hand made it too horribly press. “oh, i deny responsibility--to you. so far as i ever had it i’ve done with it.” he had been, all the while, beautifully smiling; but she made his look, now, penetrate her again more. “as to whom then do you confess it?” “ah, mio caro, that’s--if to anyone--my own business!” he continued to look at her hard. “you give me up then?” it was what charlotte had asked her ten minutes before, and its coming from him so much in the same way shook her in her place. she was on the point of replying “do you and she agree together for what you’ll say to me?”--but she was glad afterwards to have checked herself in time, little as her actual answer had perhaps bettered it. “i think i don’t know what to make of you.” “you must receive me at least,” he said. “oh, please, not till i’m ready for you!”--and, though she found a laugh for it, she had to turn away. she had never turned away from him before, and it was quite positively for her as if she were altogether afraid of him. xvi later on, when their hired brougham had, with the long vociferation that tormented her impatience, been extricated from the endless rank, she rolled into the london night, beside her husband, as into a sheltering darkness where she could muffle herself and draw breath. she had stood for the previous half-hour in a merciless glare, beaten upon, stared out of countenance, it fairly seemed to her, by intimations of her mistake. for what she was most immediately feeling was that she had, in the past, been active, for these people, to ends that were now bearing fruit and that might yet bear a larger crop. she but brooded, at first, in her corner of the carriage: it was like burying her exposed face, a face too helplessly exposed, in the cool lap of the common indifference, of the dispeopled streets, of the closed shops and darkened houses seen through the window of the brougham, a world mercifully unconscious and unreproachful. it wouldn’t, like the world she had just left, know sooner or later what she had done, or would know it, at least, only if the final consequence should be some quite overwhelming publicity. she fixed this possibility itself so hard, however, for a few moments, that the misery of her fear produced the next minute a reaction; and when the carriage happened, while it grazed a turn, to catch the straight shaft from the lamp of a policeman in the act of playing his inquisitive flash over an opposite house-front, she let herself wince at being thus incriminated only that she might protest, not less quickly, against mere blind terror. it had become, for the occasion, preposterously, terror--of which she must shake herself free before she could properly measure her ground. the perception of this necessity had in truth soon aided her; since she found, on trying, that, lurid as her prospect might hover there, she could none the less give it no name. the sense of seeing was strong in her, but she clutched at the comfort of not being sure of what she saw. not to know what it would represent on a longer view was a help, in turn, to not making out that her hands were embrued; since if she had stood in the position of a producing cause she should surely be less vague about what she had produced. this, further, in its way, was a step toward reflecting that when one’s connection with any matter was too indirect to be traced it might be described also as too slight to be deplored. by the time they were nearing cadogan place she had in fact recognised that she couldn’t be as curious as she desired without arriving at some conviction of her being as innocent. but there had been a moment, in the dim desert of eaton square, when she broke into speech. “it’s only their defending themselves so much more than they need--it’s only that that makes me wonder. it’s their having so remarkably much to say for themselves.” her husband had, as usual, lighted his cigar, remaining apparently as busy with it as she with her agitation. “you mean it makes you feel that you have nothing?” to which, as she made no answer, the colonel added: “what in the world did you ever suppose was going to happen? the man’s in a position in which he has nothing in life to do.” her silence seemed to characterise this statement as superficial, and her thoughts, as always in her husband’s company, pursued an independent course. he made her, when they were together, talk, but as if for some other person; who was in fact for the most part herself. yet she addressed herself with him as she could never have done without him. “he has behaved beautifully--he did from the first. i’ve thought it, all along, wonderful of him; and i’ve more than once, when i’ve had a chance, told him so. therefore, therefore--!” but it died away as she mused. “therefore he has a right, for a change, to kick up his heels?” “it isn’t a question, of course, however,” she undivertedly went on, “of their behaving beautifully apart. it’s a question of their doing as they should when together--which is another matter.” “and how do you think then,” the colonel asked with interest, “that, when together, they should do? the less they do, one would say, the better--if you see so much in it.” his wife, at this, appeared to hear him. “i don’t see in it what you’d see. and don’t, my dear,” she further answered, “think it necessary to be horrid or low about them. they’re the last people, really, to make anything of that sort come in right.” “i’m surely never horrid or low,” he returned, “about anyone but my extravagant wife. i can do with all our friends--as i see them myself: what i can’t do with is the figures you make of them. and when you take to adding your figures up--!” but he exhaled it again in smoke. “my additions don’t matter when you’ve not to pay the bill.” with which her meditation again bore her through the air. “the great thing was that when it so suddenly came up for her he wasn’t afraid. if he had been afraid he could perfectly have prevented it. and if i had seen he was--if i hadn’t seen he wasn’t--so,” said mrs. assingham, “could i. so,” she declared, “would i. it’s perfectly true,” she went on--“it was too good a thing for her, such a chance in life, not to be accepted. and i liked his not keeping her out of it merely from a fear of his own nature. it was so wonderful it should come to her. the only thing would have been if charlotte herself couldn’t have faced it. then, if she had not had confidence, we might have talked. but she had it to any amount.” “did you ask her how much?” bob assingham patiently inquired. he had put the question with no more than his usual modest hope of reward, but he had pressed, this time, the sharpest spring of response. “never, never--it wasn’t a time to ‘ask.’ asking is suggesting--and it wasn’t a time to suggest. one had to make up one’s mind, as quietly as possible, by what one could judge. and i judge, as i say, that charlotte felt she could face it. for which she struck me at the time as--for so proud a creature--almost touchingly grateful. the thing i should never forgive her for would be her forgetting to whom it is her thanks have remained most due.” “that is to mrs. assingham?” she said nothing for a little--there were, after all, alternatives. “maggie herself of course--astonishing little maggie.” “is maggie then astonishing too?”--and he gloomed out of his window. his wife, on her side now, as they rolled, projected the same look. “i’m not sure that i don’t begin to see more in her than--dear little person as i’ve always thought--i ever supposed there was. i’m not sure that, putting a good many things together, i’m not beginning to make her out rather extraordinary.” “you certainly will if you can,” the colonel resignedly remarked. again his companion said nothing; then again she broke out. “in fact--i do begin to feel it--maggie’s the great comfort. i’m getting hold of it. it will be she who’ll see us through. in fact she’ll have to. and she’ll be able.” touch by touch her meditation had completed it, but with a cumulative effect for her husband’s general sense of her method that caused him to overflow, whimsically enough, in his corner, into an ejaculation now frequent on his lips for the relief that, especially in communion like the present, it gave him, and that fanny had critically traced to the quaint example, the aboriginal homeliness, still so delightful, of mr. verver. “oh, lordy, lordy!” “if she is, however,” mrs. assingham continued, “she’ll be extraordinary enough--and that’s what i’m thinking of. but i’m not indeed so very sure,” she added, “of the person to whom charlotte ought in decency to be most grateful. i mean i’m not sure if that person is even almost the incredible little idealist who has made her his wife.” “i shouldn’t think you would be, love,” the colonel with some promptness responded. “charlotte as the wife of an incredible little idealist--!” his cigar, in short, once more, could alone express it. “yet what is that, when one thinks, but just what she struck one as more or less persuaded that she herself was really going to be?”--this memory, for the full view, fanny found herself also invoking. it made her companion, in truth, slightly gape. “an incredible little idealist--charlotte herself?” “and she was sincere,” his wife simply proceeded “she was unmistakably sincere. the question is only how much is left of it.” “and that--i see--happens to be another of the questions you can’t ask her. you have to do it all,” said bob assingham, “as if you were playing some game with its rules drawn up--though who’s to come down on you if you break them i don’t quite see. or must you do it in three guesses--like forfeits on christmas eve?” to which, as his ribaldry but dropped from her, he further added: “how much of anything will have to be left for you to be able to go on with it?” “i shall go on,” fanny assingham a trifle grimly declared, “while there’s a scrap as big as your nail. but we’re not yet, luckily, reduced only to that.” she had another pause, holding the while the thread of that larger perception into which her view of mrs. verver’s obligation to maggie had suddenly expanded. “even if her debt was not to the others--even then it ought to be quite sufficiently to the prince himself to keep her straight. for what, really, did the prince do,” she asked herself, “but generously trust her? what did he do but take it from her that if she felt herself willing it was because she felt herself strong? that creates for her, upon my word,” mrs. assingham pursued, “a duty of considering him, of honourably repaying his trust, which--well, which she’ll be really a fiend if she doesn’t make the law of her conduct. i mean of course his trust that she wouldn’t interfere with him--expressed by his holding himself quiet at the critical time.” the brougham was nearing home, and it was perhaps this sense of ebbing opportunity that caused the colonel’s next meditation to flower in a fashion almost surprising to his wife. they were united, for the most part, but by his exhausted patience; so that indulgent despair was generally, at the best, his note. he at present, however, actually compromised with his despair to the extent of practically admitting that he had followed her steps. he literally asked, in short, an intelligent, well nigh a sympathising, question. “gratitude to the prince for not having put a spoke in her wheel--that, you mean, should, taking it in the right way, be precisely the ballast of her boat?” “taking it in the right way.” fanny, catching at this gleam, emphasised the proviso. “but doesn’t it rather depend on what she may most feel to be the right way?” “no--it depends on nothing. because there’s only one way--for duty or delicacy.” “oh--delicacy!” bob assingham rather crudely murmured. “i mean the highest kind--moral. charlotte’s perfectly capable of appreciating that. by every dictate of moral delicacy she must let him alone.” “then you’ve made up your mind it’s all poor charlotte?” he asked with an effect of abruptness. the effect, whether intended or not, reached her--brought her face short round. it was a touch at which she again lost her balance, at which, somehow, the bottom dropped out of her recovered comfort. “then you’ve made up yours differently? it really struck you that there is something?” the movement itself, apparently, made him once more stand off. he had felt on his nearer approach the high temperature of the question. “perhaps that’s just what she’s doing: showing him how much she’s letting him alone--pointing it out to him from day to day.” “did she point it out by waiting for him to-night on the stair-case in the manner you described to me?” “i really, my dear, described to you a manner?” the colonel, clearly, from want of habit, scarce recognised himself in the imputation. “yes--for once in a way; in those few words we had after you had watched them come up you told me something of what you had seen. you didn’t tell me very much--that you couldn’t for your life; but i saw for myself that, strange to say, you had received your impression, and i felt therefore that there must indeed have been something out of the way for you so to betray it.” she was fully upon him now, and she confronted him with his proved sensibility to the occasion--confronted him because of her own uneasy need to profit by it. it came over her still more than at the time, it came over her that he had been struck with something, even he, poor dear man; and that for this to have occurred there must have been much to be struck with. she tried in fact to corner him, to pack him insistently down, in the truth of his plain vision, the very plainness of which was its value; for so recorded, she felt, none of it would escape--she should have it at hand for reference. “come, my dear--you thought what you thought: in the presence of what you saw you couldn’t resist thinking. i don’t ask more of it than that. and your idea is worth, this time, quite as much as any of mine--so that you can’t pretend, as usual, that mine has run away with me. i haven’t caught up with you. i stay where i am. but i see,” she concluded, “where you are, and i’m much obliged to you for letting me. you give me a point de repere outside myself--which is where i like it. now i can work round you.” their conveyance, as she spoke, stopped at their door, and it was, on the spot, another fact of value for her that her husband, though seated on the side by which they must alight, made no movement. they were in a high degree votaries of the latch-key, so that their household had gone to bed; and as they were unaccompanied by a footman the coachman waited in peace. it was so indeed that for a minute bob assingham waited--conscious of a reason for replying to this address otherwise than by the so obvious method of turning his back. he didn’t turn his face, but he stared straight before him, and his wife had already perceived in the fact of his not moving all the proof she could desire-proof, that is, of her own contention. she knew he never cared what she said, and his neglect of his chance to show it was thereby the more eloquent. “leave it,” he at last remarked, “to them.” “‘leave’ it--?” she wondered. “let them alone. they’ll manage.” “they’ll manage, you mean, to do everything they want? ah, there then you are!” “they’ll manage in their own way,” the colonel almost cryptically repeated. it had its effect for her: quite apart from its light on the familiar phenomenon of her husband’s indurated conscience, it gave her, full in her face, the particular evocation of which she had made him guilty. it was wonderful truly, then, the evocation. “so cleverly--that’s your idea?--that no one will be the wiser? it’s your idea that we shall have done all that’s required of us if we simply protect them?” the colonel, still in his place, declined, however, to be drawn into a statement of his idea. statements were too much like theories, in which one lost one’s way; he only knew what he said, and what he said represented the limited vibration of which his confirmed old toughness had been capable. still, none the less, he had his point to make--for which he took another instant. but he made it, for the third time, in the same fashion. “they’ll manage in their own way.” with which he got out. oh yes, at this, for his companion, it had indeed its effect, and while he mounted their steps she but stared, without following him, at his opening of their door. their hall was lighted, and as he stood in the aperture looking back at her, his tall lean figure outlined in darkness and with his crush-hat, according to his wont, worn cavalierly, rather diabolically, askew, he seemed to prolong the sinister emphasis of his meaning. in general, on these returns, he came back for her when he had prepared their entrance; so that it was now as if he were ashamed to face her in closer quarters. he looked at her across the interval, and, still in her seat, weighing his charge, she felt her whole view of everything flare up. wasn’t it simply what had been written in the prince’s own face beneath what he was saying?--didn’t it correspond with the mocking presence there that she had had her troubled glimpse of? wasn’t, in fine, the pledge that they would “manage in their own way” the thing he had been feeling for his chance to invite her to take from him? her husband’s tone somehow fitted amerigo’s look--the one that had, for her, so strangely, peeped, from behind, over the shoulder of the one in front. she had not then read it--but wasn’t she reading it when she now saw in it his surmise that she was perhaps to be squared? she wasn’t to be squared, and while she heard her companion call across to her “well, what’s the matter?” she also took time to remind herself that she had decided she couldn’t be frightened. the “matter”?--why, it was sufficiently the matter, with all this, that she felt a little sick. for it was not the prince that she had been prepared to regard as primarily the shaky one. shakiness in charlotte she had, at the most, perhaps postulated--it would be, she somehow felt, more easy to deal with. therefore if he had come so far it was a different pair of sleeves. there was nothing to choose between them. it made her so helpless that, as the time passed without her alighting, the colonel came back and fairly drew her forth; after which, on the pavement, under the street-lamp, their very silence might have been the mark of something grave--their silence eked out for her by his giving her his arm and their then crawling up their steps quite mildly and unitedly together, like some old darby and joan who have had a disappointment. it almost resembled a return from a funeral--unless indeed it resembled more the hushed approach to a house of mourning. what indeed had she come home for but to bury, as decently as possible, her mistake? xvii it appeared thus that they might enjoy together extraordinary freedom, the two friends, from the moment they should understand their position aright. with the prince himself, from an early stage, not unnaturally, charlotte had made a great point of their so understanding it; she had found frequent occasion to describe to him this necessity, and, her resignation tempered, or her intelligence at least quickened, by irrepressible irony, she applied at different times different names to the propriety of their case. the wonderful thing was that her sense of propriety had been, from the first, especially alive about it. there were hours when she spoke of their taking refuge in what she called the commonest tact--as if this principle alone would suffice to light their way; there were others when it might have seemed, to listen to her, that their course would demand of them the most anxious study and the most independent, not to say original, interpretation of signs. she talked now as if it were indicated, at every turn, by finger-posts of almost ridiculous prominence; she talked again as if it lurked in devious ways and were to be tracked through bush and briar; and she even, on occasion, delivered herself in the sense that, as their situation was unprecedented, so their heaven was without stars. “‘do’?” she once had echoed to him as the upshot of passages covertly, though briefly, occurring between them on her return from the visit to america that had immediately succeeded her marriage, determined for her by this event as promptly as an excursion of the like strange order had been prescribed in his own case. “isn’t the immense, the really quite matchless beauty of our position that we have to ‘do’ nothing in life at all?--nothing except the usual, necessary, everyday thing which consists in one’s not being more of a fool than one can help. that’s all--but that’s as true for one time as for another. there has been plenty of ‘doing,’ and there will doubtless be plenty still; but it’s all theirs, every inch of it; it’s all a matter of what they’ve done to us.” and she showed how the question had therefore been only of their taking everything as everything came, and all as quietly as might be. nothing stranger surely had ever happened to a conscientious, a well-meaning, a perfectly passive pair: no more extraordinary decree had ever been launched against such victims than this of forcing them against their will into a relation of mutual close contact that they had done everything to avoid. she was to remember not a little, meanwhile, the particular prolonged silent look with which the prince had met her allusion to these primary efforts at escape. she was inwardly to dwell on the element of the unuttered that her tone had caused to play up into his irresistible eyes; and this because she considered with pride and joy that she had, on the spot, disposed of the doubt, the question, the challenge, or whatever else might have been, that such a look could convey. he had been sufficiently off his guard to show some little wonder as to their having plotted so very hard against their destiny, and she knew well enough, of course, what, in this connection, was at the bottom of his thought, and what would have sounded out more or less if he had not happily saved himself from words. all men were brutes enough to catch when they might at such chances for dissent--for all the good it really did them; but the prince’s distinction was in being one of the few who could check himself before acting on the impulse. this, obviously, was what counted in a man as delicacy. if her friend had blurted or bungled he would have said, in his simplicity, “did we do ‘everything to avoid’ it when we faced your remarkable marriage?”--quite handsomely of course using the plural, taking his share of the case, by way of a tribute of memory to the telegram she had received from him in paris after mr. verver had despatched to rome the news of their engagement. that telegram, that acceptance of the prospect proposed to them--an acceptance quite other than perfunctory--she had never destroyed; though reserved for no eyes but her own it was still carefully reserved. she kept it in a safe place--from which, very privately, she sometimes took it out to read it over. “a la guerre comme a la guerre then”--it had been couched in the french tongue. “we must lead our lives as we see them; but i am charmed with your courage and almost surprised at my own.” the message had remained ambiguous; she had read it in more lights than one; it might mean that even without her his career was up-hill work for him, a daily fighting-matter on behalf of a good appearance, and that thus, if they were to become neighbours again, the event would compel him to live still more under arms. it might mean on the other hand that he found he was happy enough, and that accordingly, so far as she might imagine herself a danger, she was to think of him as prepared in advance, as really seasoned and secure. on his arrival in paris with his wife, none the less, she had asked for no explanation, just as he himself had not asked if the document were still in her possession. such an inquiry, everything implied, was beneath him--just as it was beneath herself to mention to him, uninvited, that she had instantly offered, and in perfect honesty, to show the telegram to mr. verver, and that if this companion had but said the word she would immediately have put it before him. she had thereby forborne to call his attention to her consciousness that such an exposure would, in all probability, straightway have dished her marriage; that all her future had in fact, for the moment, hung by the single hair of mr. verver’s delicacy (as she supposed they must call it); and that her position, in the matter of responsibility, was therefore inattackably straight. for the prince himself, meanwhile, time, in its measured allowance, had originally much helped him--helped him in the sense of there not being enough of it to trip him up; in spite of which it was just this accessory element that seemed, at present, with wonders of patience, to lie in wait. time had begotten at first, more than anything else, separations, delays and intervals; but it was troublesomely less of an aid from the moment it began so to abound that he had to meet the question of what to do with it. less of it was required for the state of being married than he had, on the whole, expected; less, strangely, for the state of being married even as he was married. and there was a logic in the matter, he knew; a logic that but gave this truth a sort of solidity of evidence. mr. verver, decidedly, helped him with it--with his wedded condition; helped him really so much that it made all the difference. in the degree in which he rendered it the service on mr. verver’s part was remarkable--as indeed what service, from the first of their meeting, had not been? he was living, he had been living these four or five years, on mr. verver’s services: a truth scarcely less plain if he dealt with them, for appreciation, one by one, than if he poured them all together into the general pot of his gratitude and let the thing simmer to a nourishing broth. to the latter way with them he was undoubtedly most disposed; yet he would even thus, on occasion, pick out a piece to taste on its own merits. wondrous at such hours could seem the savour of the particular “treat,” at his father-in-law’s expense, that he more and more struck himself as enjoying. he had needed months and months to arrive at a full appreciation--he couldn’t originally have given offhand a name to his deepest obligation; but by the time the name had flowered in his mind he was practically living at the ease guaranteed him. mr. verver then, in a word, took care of his relation to maggie, as he took care, and apparently always would, of everything else. he relieved him of all anxiety about his married life in the same manner in which he relieved him on the score of his bank-account. and as he performed the latter office by communicating with the bankers, so the former sprang as directly from his good understanding with his daughter. this understanding had, wonderfully--that was in high evidence--the same deep intimacy as the commercial, the financial association founded, far down, on a community of interest. and the correspondence, for the prince, carried itself out in identities of character the vision of which, fortunately, rather tended to amuse than to--as might have happened--irritate him. those people--and his free synthesis lumped together capitalists and bankers, retired men of business, illustrious collectors, american fathers-in-law, american fathers, little american daughters, little american wives--those people were of the same large lucky group, as one might say; they were all, at least, of the same general species and had the same general instincts; they hung together, they passed each other the word, they spoke each other’s language, they did each other “turns.” in this last connection it of course came up for our young man at a given moment that maggie’s relation with him was also, on the perceived basis, taken care of. which was in fact the real upshot of the matter. it was a “funny” situation--that is it was funny just as it stood. their married life was in question, but the solution was, not less strikingly, before them. it was all right for himself, because mr. verver worked it so for maggie’s comfort; and it was all right for maggie, because he worked it so for her husband’s. the fact that time, however, was not, as we have said, wholly on the prince’s side might have shown for particularly true one dark day on which, by an odd but not unprecedented chance, the reflections just noted offered themselves as his main recreation. they alone, it appeared, had been appointed to fill the hours for him, and even to fill the great square house in portland place, where the scale of one of the smaller saloons fitted them but loosely. he had looked into this room on the chance that he might find the princess at tea; but though the fireside service of the repast was shiningly present the mistress of the table was not, and he had waited for her, if waiting it could be called, while he measured again and again the stretch of polished floor. he could have named to himself no pressing reason for seeing her at this moment, and her not coming in, as the half-hour elapsed, became in fact quite positively, however perversely, the circumstance that kept him on the spot. just there, he might have been feeling, just there he could best take his note. this observation was certainly by itself meagre amusement for a dreary little crisis; but his walk to and fro, and in particular his repeated pause at one of the high front windows, gave each of the ebbing minutes, none the less, after a time, a little more of the quality of a quickened throb of the spirit. these throbs scarce expressed, however, the impatience of desire, any more than they stood for sharp disappointment: the series together resembled perhaps more than anything else those fine waves of clearness through which, for a watcher of the east, dawn at last trembles into rosy day. the illumination indeed was all for the mind, the prospect revealed by it a mere immensity of the world of thought; the material outlook was all the while a different matter. the march afternoon, judged at the window, had blundered back into autumn; it had been raining for hours, and the colour of the rain, the colour of the air, of the mud, of the opposite houses, of life altogether, in so grim a joke, so idiotic a masquerade, was an unutterable dirty brown. there was at first even, for the young man, no faint flush in the fact of the direction taken, while he happened to look out, by a slow-jogging four-wheeled cab which, awkwardly deflecting from the middle course, at the apparent instance of a person within, began to make for the left-hand pavement and so at last, under further instructions, floundered to a full stop before the prince’s windows. the person within, alighting with an easier motion, proved to be a lady who left the vehicle to wait and, putting up no umbrella, quickly crossed the wet interval that separated her from the house. she but flitted and disappeared; yet the prince, from his standpoint, had had time to recognise her, and the recognition kept him for some minutes motionless. charlotte stant, at such an hour, in a shabby four-wheeler and a waterproof, charlotte stant turning up for him at the very climax of his special inner vision, was an apparition charged with a congruity at which he stared almost as if it had been a violence. the effect of her coming to see him, him only, had, while he stood waiting, a singular intensity--though after some minutes had passed the certainty of this began to drop. perhaps she had not come, or had come only for maggie; perhaps, on learning below that the princess had not returned, she was merely leaving a message, writing a word on a card. he should see, at any rate; and meanwhile, controlling himself, would do nothing. this thought of not interfering took on a sudden force for him; she would doubtless hear he was at home, but he would let her visit to him be all of her own choosing. and his view of a reason for leaving her free was the more remarkable that, though taking no step, he yet intensely hoped. the harmony of her breaking into sight while the superficial conditions were so against her was a harmony with conditions that were far from superficial and that gave, for his imagination, an extraordinary value to her presence. the value deepened strangely, moreover, with the rigour of his own attitude--with the fact too that, listening hard, he neither heard the house-door close again nor saw her go back to her cab; and it had risen to a climax by the time he had become aware, with his quickened sense, that she had followed the butler up to the landing from which his room opened. if anything could further then have added to it, the renewed pause outside, as if she had said to the man “wait a moment!” would have constituted this touch. yet when the man had shown her in, had advanced to the tea-table to light the lamp under the kettle and had then busied himself, all deliberately, with the fire, she made it easy for her host to drop straight from any height of tension and to meet her, provisionally, on the question of maggie. while the butler remained it was maggie that she had come to see and maggie that--in spite of this attendant’s high blankness on the subject of all possibilities on that lady’s part--she would cheerfully, by the fire, wait for. as soon as they were alone together, however, she mounted, as with the whizz and the red light of a rocket, from the form to the fact, saying straight out, as she stood and looked at him: “what else, my dear, what in the world else can we do?” it was as if he then knew, on the spot, why he had been feeling, for hours, as he had felt--as if he in fact knew, within the minute, things he had not known even while she was panting, as from the effect of the staircase, at the door of the room. he knew at the same time, none the less, that she knew still more than he--in the sense, that is, of all the signs and portents that might count for them; and his vision of alternative--she could scarce say what to call them, solutions, satisfactions--opened out, altogether, with this tangible truth of her attitude by the chimney-place, the way she looked at him as through the gained advantage of it; her right hand resting on the marble and her left keeping her skirt from the fire while she held out a foot to dry. he couldn’t have told what particular links and gaps had at the end of a few minutes found themselves renewed and bridged; for he remembered no occasion, in rome, from which the picture could have been so exactly copied. he remembered, that is, none of her coming to see him in the rain while a muddy four-wheeler waited, and while, though having left her waterproof downstairs, she was yet invested with the odd eloquence--the positive picturesqueness, yes, given all the rest of the matter--of a dull dress and a black bowdlerised hat that seemed to make a point of insisting on their time of life and their moral intention, the hat’s and the frock’s own, as well as on the irony of indifference to them practically playing in her so handsome rain-freshened face. the sense of the past revived for him nevertheless as it had not yet done: it made that other time somehow meet the future close, interlocking with it, before his watching eyes, as in a long embrace of arms and lips, and so handling and hustling the present that this poor quantity scarce retained substance enough, scarce remained sufficiently there, to be wounded or shocked. what had happened, in short, was that charlotte and he had, by a single turn of the wrist of fate--“led up” to indeed, no doubt, by steps and stages that conscious computation had missed--been placed face to face in a freedom that partook, extraordinarily, of ideal perfection, since the magic web had spun itself without their toil, almost without their touch. above all, on this occasion, once more, there sounded through their safety, as an undertone, the very voice he had listened to on the eve of his marriage with such another sort of unrest. dimly, again and again, from that period on, he had seemed to hear it tell him why it kept recurring; but it phrased the large music now in a way that filled the room. the reason was--into which he had lived, quite intimately, by the end of a quarter-of-an-hour--that just this truth of their safety offered it now a kind of unexampled receptacle, letting it spread and spread, but at the same time elastically enclosing it, banking it in, for softness, as with billows of eiderdown. on that morning; in the park there had been, however dissimulated, doubt and danger, whereas the tale this afternoon was taken up with a highly emphasised confidence. the emphasis, for their general comfort, was what charlotte had come to apply; inasmuch as, though it was not what she definitely began with, it had soon irrepressibly shaped itself. it was the meaning of the question she had put to him as soon as they were alone--even though indeed, as from not quite understanding, he had not then directly replied; it was the meaning of everything else, down to the conscious quaintness of her ricketty “growler” and the conscious humility of her dress. it had helped him a little, the question of these eccentricities, to let her immediate appeal pass without an answer. he could ask her instead what had become of her carriage and why, above all, she was not using it in such weather. “it’s just because of the weather,” she explained. “it’s my little idea. it makes me feel as i used to--when i could do as i liked.” xviii this came out so straight that he saw at once how much truth it expressed; yet it was truth that still a little puzzled him. “but did you ever like knocking about in such discomfort?” “it seems to me now that i then liked everything. it’s the charm, at any rate,” she said from her place at the fire, “of trying again the old feelings. they come back--they come back. everything,” she went on, “comes back. besides,” she wound up, “you know for yourself.” he stood near her, his hands in his pockets; but not looking at her, looking hard at the tea-table. “ah, i haven’t your courage. moreover,” he laughed, “it seems to me that, so far as that goes, i do live in hansoms. but you must awfully want your tea,” he quickly added; “so let me give you a good stiff cup.” he busied himself with this care, and she sat down, on his pushing up a low seat, where she had been standing; so that, while she talked, he could bring her what she further desired. he moved to and fro before her, he helped himself; and her visit, as the moments passed, had more and more the effect of a signal communication that she had come, all responsibly and deliberately, as on the clear show of the clock-face of their situation, to make. the whole demonstration, none the less, presented itself as taking place at a very high level of debate--in the cool upper air of the finer discrimination, the deeper sincerity, the larger philosophy. no matter what were the facts invoked and arrayed, it was only a question, as yet, of their seeing their way together: to which indeed, exactly, the present occasion appeared to have so much to contribute. “it’s not that you haven’t my courage,” charlotte said, “but that you haven’t, i rather think, my imagination. unless indeed it should turn out after all,” she added, “that you haven’t even my intelligence. however, i shall not be afraid of that till you’ve given me more proof.” and she made again, but more clearly, her point of a moment before. “you knew, besides, you knew to-day, i would come. and if you knew that you know everything.” so she pursued, and if he didn’t meanwhile, if he didn’t even at this, take her up, it might be that she was so positively fitting him again with the fair face of temporising kindness that he had given her, to keep her eyes on, at the other important juncture, and the sense of which she might ever since have been carrying about with her like a precious medal--not exactly blessed by the pope suspended round her neck. she had come back, however this might be, to her immediate account of herself, and no mention of their great previous passage was to rise to the lips of either. “above all,” she said, “there has been the personal romance of it.” “of tea with me over the fire? ah, so far as that goes i don’t think even my intelligence fails me.” “oh, it’s further than that goes; and if i’ve had a better day than you it’s perhaps, when i come to think of it, that i am braver. you bore yourself, you see. but i don’t. i don’t, i don’t,” she repeated. “it’s precisely boring one’s self without relief,” he protested, “that takes courage.” “passive then--not active. my romance is that, if you want to know, i’ve been all day on the town. literally on the town--isn’t that what they call it? i know how it feels.” after which, as if breaking off, “and you, have you never been out?” she asked. he still stood there with his hands in his pockets. “what should i have gone out for?” “oh, what should people in our case do anything for? but you’re wonderful, all of you--you know how to live. we’re clumsy brutes, we other’s, beside you--we must always be ‘doing’ something. however,” charlotte pursued, “if you had gone out you might have missed the chance of me--which i’m sure, though you won’t confess it, was what you didn’t want; and might have missed, above all, the satisfaction that, look blank about it as you will, i’ve come to congratulate you on. that’s really what i can at last do. you can’t not know at least, on such a day as this--you can’t not know,” she said, “where you are.” she waited as for him either to grant that he knew or to pretend that he didn’t; but he only drew a long deep breath which came out like a moan of impatience. it brushed aside the question of where he was or what he knew; it seemed to keep the ground clear for the question of his visitor herself, that of charlotte verver exactly as she sat there. so, for some moments, with their long look, they but treated the matter in silence; with the effect indeed, by the end of the time, of having considerably brought it on. this was sufficiently marked in what charlotte next said. “there it all is--extraordinary beyond words. it makes such a relation for us as, i verily believe, was never before in the world thrust upon two well-meaning creatures. haven’t we therefore to take things as we find them?” she put the question still more directly than that of a moment before, but to this one, as well, he returned no immediate answer. noticing only that she had finished her tea, he relieved her of her cup, carried it back to the table, asked her what more she would have; and then, on her “nothing, thanks,” returned to the fire and restored a displaced log to position by a small but almost too effectual kick. she had meanwhile got up again, and it was on her feet that she repeated the words she had first frankly spoken. “what else can we do, what in all the world else?” he took them up, however, no more than at first. “where then have you been?” he asked as from mere interest in her adventure. “everywhere i could think of--except to see people. i didn’t want people--i wanted too much to think. but i’ve been back at intervals--three times; and then come away again. my cabman must think me crazy--it’s very amusing; i shall owe him, when we come to settle, more money than he has ever seen. i’ve been, my dear,” she went on, “to the british museum--which, you know, i always adore. and i’ve been to the national gallery, and to a dozen old booksellers’, coming across treasures, and i’ve lunched, on some strange nastiness, at a cookshop in holborn. i wanted to go to the tower, but it was too far--my old man urged that; and i would have gone to the zoo if it hadn’t been too wet--which he also begged me to observe. but you wouldn’t believe--i did put in st. paul’s. such days,” she wound up, “are expensive; for, besides the cab, i’ve bought quantities of books.” she immediately passed, at any rate, to another point: “i can’t help wondering when you must last have laid eyes on them.” and then as it had apparently for her companion an effect of abruptness: “maggie, i mean, and the child. for i suppose you know he’s with her.” “oh yes, i know he’s with her. i saw them this morning.” “and did they then announce their programme?” “she told me she was taking him, as usual, da nonno.” “and for the whole day?” he hesitated, but it was as if his attitude had slowly shifted. “she didn’t say. and i didn’t ask.” “well,” she went on, “it can’t have been later than half-past ten--i mean when you saw them. they had got to eaton square before eleven. you know we don’t formally breakfast, adam and i; we have tea in our rooms--at least i have; but luncheon is early, and i saw my husband, this morning, by twelve; he was showing the child a picture-book. maggie had been there with them, had left them settled together. then she had gone out--taking the carriage for something he had been intending but that she offered to do instead.” the prince appeared to confess, at this, to his interest. “taking, you mean, your carriage?” “i don’t know which, and it doesn’t matter. it’s not a question,” she smiled, “of a carriage the more or the less. it’s not a question even, if you come to that, of a cab. it’s so beautiful,” she said, “that it’s not a question of anything vulgar or horrid.” which she gave him time to agree about; and though he was silent it was, rather remarkably, as if he fell in. “i went out--i wanted to. i had my idea. it seemed to me important. it has been--it is important. i know as i haven’t known before the way they feel. i couldn’t in any other way have made so sure of it.” “they feel a confidence,” the prince observed. he had indeed said it for her. “they feel a confidence.” and she proceeded, with lucidity, to the fuller illustration of it; speaking again of the three different moments that, in the course of her wild ramble, had witnessed her return--for curiosity, and even really a little from anxiety--to eaton square. she was possessed of a latch-key, rarely used: it had always irritated adam--one of the few things that did--to find servants standing up so inhumanly straight when they came home, in the small hours, after parties. “so i had but to slip in, each time, with my cab at the door, and make out for myself, without their knowing it, that maggie was still there. i came, i went--without their so much as dreaming. what do they really suppose,” she asked, “becomes of one?--not so much sentimentally or morally, so to call it, and since that doesn’t matter; but even just physically, materially, as a mere wandering woman: as a decent harmless wife, after all; as the best stepmother, after all, that really ever was; or at the least simply as a maitresse de maison not quite without a conscience. they must even in their odd way,” she declared, “have some idea.” “oh, they’ve a great deal of idea,” said the prince. and nothing was easier than to mention the quantity. “they think so much of us. they think in particular so much of you.” “ah, don’t put it all on ‘me’!” she smiled. but he was putting it now where she had admirably prepared the place. “it’s a matter of your known character.” “ah, thank you for ‘known’!” she still smiled. “it’s a matter of your wonderful cleverness and wonderful charm. it’s a matter of what those things have done for you in the world--i mean in this world and this place. you’re a personage for them--and personages do go and come.” “oh no, my dear; there you’re quite wrong.” and she laughed now in the happier light they had diffused. “that’s exactly what personages don’t do: they live in state and under constant consideration; they haven’t latch-keys, but drums and trumpets announce them; and when they go out in growlers it makes a greater noise still. it’s you, caro mio,” she said, “who, so far as that goes, are the personage.” “ah,” he in turn protested, “don’t put it all on me! what, at any rate, when you get home,” he added, “shall you say that you’ve been doing?” “i shall say, beautifully, that i’ve been here.” “all day?” “yes--all day. keeping you company in your solitude. how can we understand anything,” she went on, “without really seeing that this is what they must like to think i do for you?--just as, quite as comfortably, you do it for me. the thing is for us to learn to take them as they are.” he considered this a while, in his restless way, but with his eyes not turning from her; after which, rather disconnectedly, though very vehemently, he brought out: “how can i not feel more than anything else how they adore together my boy?” and then, further, as if, slightly disconcerted, she had nothing to meet this and he quickly perceived the effect: “they would have done the same for one of yours.” “ah, if i could have had one--! i hoped and i believed,” said charlotte, “that that would happen. it would have been better. it would have made perhaps some difference. he thought so too, poor duck--that it might have been. i’m sure he hoped and intended so. it’s not, at any rate,” she went on, “my fault. there it is.” she had uttered these statements, one by one, gravely, sadly and responsibly, owing it to her friend to be clear. she paused briefly, but, as if once for all, she made her clearness complete. “and now i’m too sure. it will never be.” he waited for a moment. “never?” “never.” they treated the matter not exactly with solemnity, but with a certain decency, even perhaps urgency, of distinctness. “it would probably have been better,” charlotte added. “but things turn out--! and it leaves us”--she made the point--“more alone.” he seemed to wonder. “it leaves you more alone.” “oh,” she again returned, “don’t put it all on me! maggie would have given herself to his child, i’m sure, scarcely less than he gives himself to yours. it would have taken more than any child of mine,” she explained--“it would have taken more than ten children of mine, could i have had them--to keep our sposi apart.” she smiled as for the breadth of the image, but, as he seemed to take it, in spite of this, for important, she then spoke gravely enough. “it’s as strange as you like, but we’re immensely alone.” he kept vaguely moving, but there were moments when, again, with an awkward ease and his hands in his pockets, he was more directly before her. he stood there at these last words, which had the effect of making him for a little throw back his head and, as thinking something out, stare up at the ceiling. “what will you say,” she meanwhile asked, “that you’ve been doing?” this brought his consciousness and his eyes back to her, and she pointed her question. “i mean when she comes in--for i suppose she will, some time, come in. it seems to me we must say the same thing.” well, he thought again. “yet i can scarce pretend to have had what i haven’t.” “ah, what haven’t you had?--what aren’t you having?” her question rang out as they lingered face to face, and he still took it, before he answered, from her eyes. “we must at least then, not to be absurd together, do the same thing. we must act, it would really seem, in concert.” “it would really seem!” her eyebrows, her shoulders went up, quite in gaiety, as for the relief this brought her. “it’s all in the world i pretend. we must act in concert. heaven knows,” she said, “they do!” so it was that he evidently saw and that, by his admission, the case, could fairly be put. but what he evidently saw appeared to come over him, at the same time, as too much for him, so that he fell back suddenly to ground where she was not awaiting him. “the difficulty is, and will always be, that i don’t understand them. i didn’t at first, but i thought i should learn to. that was what i hoped, and it appeared then that fanny assingham might help me.” “oh, fanny assingham!” said charlotte verver. he stared a moment at her tone. “she would do anything for us.” to which charlotte at first said nothing--as if from the sense of too much. then, indulgently enough, she shook her head. “we’re beyond her.” he thought a moment--as of where this placed them. “she’d do anything then for them.” “well, so would we--so that doesn’t help us. she has broken down. she doesn’t understand us. and really, my dear,” charlotte added, “fanny assingham doesn’t matter.” he wondered again. “unless as taking care of them.” “ah,” charlotte instantly said, “isn’t it for us, only, to do that?” she spoke as with a flare of pride for their privilege and their duty. “i think we want no one’s aid.” she spoke indeed with a nobleness not the less effective for coming in so oddly; with a sincerity visible even through the complicated twist by which any effort to protect the father and the daughter seemed necessarily conditioned for them. it moved him, in any case, as if some spring of his own, a weaker one, had suddenly been broken by it. these things, all the while, the privilege, the duty, the opportunity, had been the substance of his own vision; they formed the note he had been keeping back to show her that he was not, in their so special situation, without a responsible view. a conception that he could name, and could act on, was something that now, at last, not to be too eminent a fool, he was required by all the graces to produce, and the luminous idea she had herself uttered would have been his expression of it. she had anticipated him, but, as her expression left, for positive beauty, nothing to be desired, he felt rather righted than wronged. a large response, as he looked at her, came into his face, a light of excited perception all his own, in the glory of which--as it almost might be called--what he gave her back had the value of what she had, given him. “they’re extraordinarily happy.” oh, charlotte’s measure of it was only too full. “beatifically.” “that’s the great thing,” he went on; “so that it doesn’t matter, really, that one doesn’t understand. besides, you do--enough.” “i understand my husband perhaps,” she after an instant conceded. “i don’t understand your wife.” “you’re of the same race, at any rate--more or less; of the same general tradition and education, of the same moral paste. there are things you have in common with them. but i, on my side, as i’ve gone on trying to see if i haven’t some of these things too--i, on my side, have more and more failed. there seem at last to be none worth mentioning. i can’t help seeing it--i’m decidedly too different.” “yet you’re not”--charlotte made the important point--“too different from me.” “i don’t know--as we’re not married. that brings things out. perhaps if we were,” he said, “you would find some abyss of divergence.” “since it depends on that then,” she smiled, “i’m safe--as you are anyhow. moreover, as one has so often had occasion to feel, and even to remark, they’re very, very simple. that makes,” she added, “a difficulty for belief; but when once one has taken it in it makes less difficulty for action. i have at last, for myself, i think, taken it in. i’m not afraid.” he wondered a moment. “not afraid of what?” “well, generally, of some beastly mistake. especially of any mistake founded on one’s idea of their difference. for that idea,” charlotte developed, “positively makes one so tender.” “ah, but rather!” “well then, there it is. i can’t put myself into maggie’s skin--i can’t, as i say. it’s not my fit--i shouldn’t be able, as i see it, to breathe in it. but i can feel that i’d do anything--to shield it from a bruise. tender as i am for her too,” she went on, “i think i’m still more so for my husband. he’s in truth of a sweet simplicity--!” the prince turned over a while the sweet simplicity of mr. verver. “well, i don’t know that i can choose. at night all cats are grey. i only see how, for so many reasons, we ought to stand toward them--and how, to do ourselves justice, we do. it represents for us a conscious care--” “of every hour, literally,” said charlotte. she could rise to the highest measure of the facts. “and for which we must trust each other--!” “oh, as we trust the saints in glory. fortunately,” the prince hastened to add, “we can.” with which, as for the full assurance and the pledge it involved, their hands instinctively found their hands. “it’s all too wonderful.” firmly and gravely she kept his hand. “it’s too beautiful.” and so for a minute they stood together, as strongly held and as closely confronted as any hour of their easier past even had seen them. they were silent at first, only facing and faced, only grasping and grasped, only meeting and met. “it’s sacred,” he said at last. “it’s sacred,” she breathed back to him. they vowed it, gave it out and took it in, drawn, by their intensity, more closely together. then of a sudden, through this tightened circle, as at the issue of a narrow strait into the sea beyond, everything broke up, broke down, gave way, melted and mingled. their lips sought their lips, their pressure their response and their response their pressure; with a violence that had sighed itself the next moment to the longest and deepest of stillnesses they passionately sealed their pledge. xix he had taken it from her, as we have seen, moreover, that fanny assingham didn’t now matter--the “now” he had even himself supplied, as no more than fair to his sense of various earlier stages; and, though his assent remained scarce more than tacit, his behaviour, for the hour, so fell into line that, for many days, he kept postponing the visit he had promised his old friend on the occasion of their talk at the foreign office. with regret, none the less, would he have seen it quite extinguished, that theory of their relation as attached pupil and kind instructress in which they had from the first almost equally found a convenience. it had been he, no doubt, who had most put it forward, since his need of knowledge fairly exceeded her mild pretension; but he had again and again repeated to her that he should never, without her, have been where he was, and she had not successfully concealed the pleasure it might give her to believe it, even after the question of where he was had begun to show itself as rather more closed than open to interpretation. it had never indeed, before that evening, come up as during the passage at the official party, and he had for the first time at those moments, a little disappointedly, got the impression of a certain failure, on the dear woman’s part, of something he was aware of having always rather freely taken for granted in her. of what exactly the failure consisted he would still perhaps have felt it a little harsh to try to say; and if she had in fact, as by charlotte’s observation, “broken down,” the details of the collapse would be comparatively unimportant. they came to the same thing, all such collapses--the failure of courage, the failure of friendship, or the failure just simply of tact; for didn’t any one of them by itself amount really to the failure of wit?--which was the last thing he had expected of her and which would be but another name for the triumph of stupidity. it had been charlotte’s remark that they were at last “beyond” her; whereas he had ever enjoyed believing that a certain easy imagination in her would keep up with him to the end. he shrank from affixing a label to mrs. assingham’s want of faith; but when he thought, at his ease, of the way persons who were capable really entertained--or at least with any refinement--the passion of personal loyalty, he figured for them a play of fancy neither timorous nor scrupulous. so would his personal loyalty, if need be, have accepted the adventure for the good creature herself; to that definite degree that he had positively almost missed the luxury of some such call from her. that was what it all came back to again with these people among whom he was married--that one found one used one’s imagination mainly for wondering how they contrived so little to appeal to it. he felt at moments as if there were never anything to do for them that was worthy--to call worthy--of the personal relation; never any charming charge to take of any confidence deeply reposed. he might vulgarly have put it that one had never to plot or to lie for them; he might humourously have put it that one had never, as by the higher conformity, to lie in wait with the dagger or to prepare, insidiously, the cup. these were the services that, by all romantic tradition, were consecrated to affection quite as much as to hate. but he could amuse himself with saying--so far as the amusement went--that they were what he had once for all turned his back on. fanny was meanwhile frequent, it appeared, in eaton square; so much he gathered from the visitor who was not infrequent, least of all at tea-time, during the same period, in portland place; though they had little need to talk of her after practically agreeing that they had outlived her. to the scene of these conversations and suppressions mrs. assingham herself made, actually, no approach; her latest view of her utility seeming to be that it had found in eaton square its most urgent field. it was finding there in fact everything and everyone but the prince, who mostly, just now, kept away, or who, at all events, on the interspaced occasions of his calling, happened not to encounter the only person from whom he was a little estranged. it would have been all prodigious if he had not already, with charlotte’s aid, so very considerably lived into it--it would have been all indescribably remarkable, this fact that, with wonderful causes for it so operating on the surface, nobody else, as yet, in the combination, seemed estranged from anybody. if mrs. assingham delighted in maggie she knew by this time how most easily to reach her, and if she was unhappy about charlotte she knew, by the same reasoning, how most probably to miss that vision of her on which affliction would feed. it might feed of course on finding her so absent from her home--just as this particular phenomenon of her domestic detachment could be, by the anxious mind, best studied there. fanny was, however, for her reasons, “shy” of portland place itself--this was appreciable; so that she might well, after all, have no great light on the question of whether charlotte’s appearances there were frequent or not, any more than on that of the account they might be keeping of the usual solitude (since it came to this) of the head of that house. there was always, to cover all ambiguities, to constitute a fund of explanation for the divisions of mrs. verver’s day, the circumstance that, at the point they had all reached together, mrs. verver was definitely and by general acclamation in charge of the “social relations” of the family, literally of those of the two households; as to her genius for representing which in the great world and in the grand style vivid evidence had more and more accumulated. it had been established in the two households at an early stage, and with the highest good-humour, that charlotte was a, was the, “social success,” whereas the princess, though kind, though punctilious, though charming, though in fact the dearest little creature in the world and the princess into the bargain, was distinctly not, would distinctly never be, and might as well, practically, give it up: whether through being above it or below it, too much outside of it or too much lost in it, too unequipped or too indisposed, didn’t especially matter. what sufficed was that the whole thing, call it appetite or call it patience, the act of representation at large and the daily business of intercourse, fell in with charlotte’s tested facility and, not much less visibly, with her accommodating, her generous, view of her domestic use. she had come, frankly, into the connection, to do and to be what she could, “no questions asked,” and she had taken over, accordingly, as it stood, and in the finest practical spirit, the burden of a visiting-list that maggie, originally, left to herself, and left even more to the principino, had suffered to get inordinately out of hand. she had in a word not only mounted, cheerfully, the london treadmill--she had handsomely professed herself, for the further comfort of the three others, sustained in the effort by a “frivolous side,” if that were not too harsh a name for a pleasant constitutional curiosity. there were possibilities of dulness, ponderosities of practice, arid social sands, the bad quarters-of-an-hour that turned up like false pieces in a debased currency, of which she made, on principle, very nearly as light as if she had not been clever enough to distinguish. the prince had, on this score, paid her his compliment soon after her return from her wedding-tour in america, where, by all accounts, she had wondrously borne the brunt; facing brightly, at her husband’s side, everything that came up--and what had come, often, was beyond words: just as, precisely, with her own interest only at stake, she had thrown up the game during the visit paid before her marriage. the discussion of the american world, the comparison of notes, impressions and adventures, had been all at hand, as a ground of meeting for mrs. verver and her husband’s son-in-law, from the hour of the reunion of the two couples. thus it had been, in short, that charlotte could, for her friend’s appreciation, so promptly make her point; even using expressions from which he let her see, at the hour, that he drew amusement of his own. “what could be more simple than one’s going through with everything,” she had asked, “when it’s so plain a part of one’s contract? i’ve got so much, by my marriage”--for she had never for a moment concealed from him how “much” she had felt it and was finding it “that i should deserve no charity if i stinted my return. not to do that, to give back on the contrary all one can, are just one’s decency and one’s honour and one’s virtue. these things, henceforth, if you’re interested to know, are my rule of life, the absolute little gods of my worship, the holy images set up on the wall. oh yes, since i’m not a brute,” she had wound up, “you shall see me as i am!” which was therefore as he had seen her--dealing always, from month to month, from day to day and from one occasion to the other, with the duties of a remunerated office. her perfect, her brilliant efficiency had doubtless, all the while, contributed immensely to the pleasant ease in which her husband and her husband’s daughter were lapped. it had in fact probably done something more than this--it had given them a finer and sweeter view of the possible scope of that ease. they had brought her in--on the crudest expression of it--to do the “worldly” for them, and she had done it with such genius that they had themselves in consequence renounced it even more than they had originally intended. in proportion as she did it, moreover, was she to be relieved of other and humbler doings; which minor matters, by the properest logic, devolved therefore upon maggie, in whose chords and whose province they more naturally lay. not less naturally, by the same token, they included the repair, at the hands of the latter young woman, of every stitch conceivably dropped by charlotte in eaton square. this was homely work, but that was just what made it maggie’s. bearing in mind dear amerigo, who was so much of her own great mundane feather, and whom the homeliness in question didn’t, no doubt, quite equally provide for--that would be, to balance, just in a manner charlotte’s very most charming function, from the moment charlotte could be got adequately to recognise it. well, that charlotte might be appraised as at last not ineffectually recognising it, was a reflection that, during the days with which we are actually engaged, completed in the prince’s breast these others, these images and ruminations of his leisure, these gropings and fittings of his conscience and his experience, that we have attempted to set in order there. they bore him company, not insufficiently--considering, in especial, his fuller resources in that line--while he worked out--to the last lucidity the principle on which he forbore either to seek fanny out in cadogan place or to perpetrate the error of too marked an assiduity in eaton square. this error would be his not availing himself to the utmost of the convenience of any artless theory of his constitution, or of charlotte’s, that might prevail there. that artless theories could and did prevail was a fact he had ended by accepting, under copious evidence, as definite and ultimate; and it consorted with common prudence, with the simplest economy of life, not to be wasteful of any odd gleaning. to haunt eaton square, in fine, would be to show that he had not, like his brilliant associate, a sufficiency of work in the world. it was just his having that sufficiency, it was just their having it together, that, so strangely and so blessedly, made, as they put it to each other, everything possible. what further propped up the case, moreover, was that the “world,” by still another beautiful perversity of their chance, included portland place without including to anything like the same extent eaton square. the latter residence, at the same time, it must promptly be added, did, on occasion, wake up to opportunity and, as giving itself a frolic shake, send out a score of invitations--one of which fitful flights, precisely, had, before easter, the effect of disturbing a little our young man’s measure of his margin. maggie, with a proper spirit, held that her father ought from time to time to give a really considered dinner, and mr. verver, who had as little idea as ever of not meeting expectation, was of the harmonious opinion that his wife ought. charlotte’s own judgment was, always, that they were ideally free--the proof of which would always be, she maintained, that everyone they feared they might most have alienated by neglect would arrive, wreathed with smiles, on the merest hint of a belated signal. wreathed in smiles, all round, truly enough, these apologetic banquets struck amerigo as being; they were, frankly, touching occasions to him, marked, in the great london bousculade, with a small, still grace of their own, an investing amenity and humanity. everybody came, everybody rushed; but all succumbed to the soft influence, and the brutality of mere multitude, of curiosity without tenderness, was put off, at the foot of the fine staircase, with the overcoats and shawls. the entertainment offered a few evenings before easter, and at which maggie and he were inevitably present as guests, was a discharge of obligations not insistently incurred, and had thereby, possibly, all the more, the note of this almost arcadian optimism: a large, bright, dull, murmurous, mild-eyed, middle-aged dinner, involving for the most part very bland, though very exalted, immensely announceable and hierarchically placeable couples, and followed, without the oppression of a later contingent, by a brief instrumental concert, over the preparation of which, the prince knew, maggie’s anxiety had conferred with charlotte’s ingenuity and both had supremely revelled, as it were, in mr. verver’s solvency. the assinghams were there, by prescription, though quite at the foot of the social ladder, and with the colonel’s wife, in spite of her humility of position, the prince was more inwardly occupied than with any other person except charlotte. he was occupied with charlotte because, in the first place, she looked so inordinately handsome and held so high, where so much else was mature and sedate, the torch of responsive youth and the standard of passive grace; and because of the fact that, in the second, the occasion, so far as it referred itself with any confidence of emphasis to a hostess, seemed to refer itself preferentially, well-meaningly and perversely, to maggie. it was not indistinguishable to him, when once they were all stationed, that his wife too had in perfection her own little character; but he wondered how it managed so visibly to simplify itself--and this, he knew, in spite of any desire she entertained--to the essential air of having overmuch on her mind the felicity, and indeed the very conduct and credit, of the feast. he knew, as well, the other things of which her appearance was at any time--and in eaton square especially--made up: her resemblance to her father, at times so vivid, and coming out, in the delicate warmth of occasions, like the quickened fragrance of a flower; her resemblance, as he had hit it off for her once in rome, in the first flushed days, after their engagement, to a little dancing-girl at rest, ever so light of movement but most often panting gently, even a shade compunctiously, on a bench; her approximation, finally--for it was analogy, somehow, more than identity--to the transmitted images of rather neutral and negative propriety that made up, in his long line, the average of wifehood and motherhood. if the roman matron had been, in sufficiency, first and last, the honour of that line, maggie would no doubt, at fifty, have expanded, have solidified to some such dignity, even should she suggest a little but a cornelia in miniature. a light, however, broke for him in season, and when once it had done so it made him more than ever aware of mrs. verver’s vaguely, yet quite exquisitely, contingent participation--a mere hinted or tendered discretion; in short of mrs. verver’s indescribable, unfathomable relation to the scene. her placed condition, her natural seat and neighbourhood, her intenser presence, her quieter smile, her fewer jewels, were inevitably all as nothing compared with the preoccupation that burned in maggie like a small flame and that had in fact kindled in each of her cheeks a little attesting, but fortunately by no means unbecoming, spot. the party was her father’s party, and its greater or smaller success was a question having for her all the importance of his importance; so that sympathy created for her a sort of visible suspense, under pressure of which she bristled with filial reference, with little filial recalls of expression, movement, tone. it was all unmistakable, and as pretty as possible, if one would, and even as funny; but it put the pair so together, as undivided by the marriage of each, that the princess il n’y avait pas a dire--might sit where she liked: she would still, always, in that house, be irremediably maggie verver. the prince found himself on this occasion so beset with that perception that its natural complement for him would really have been to wonder if mr. verver had produced on people something of the same impression in the recorded cases of his having dined with his daughter. this backward speculation, had it begun to play, however, would have been easily arrested; for it was at present to come over amerigo as never before that his remarkable father-in-law was the man in the world least equipped with different appearances for different hours. he was simple, he was a revelation of simplicity, and that was the end of him so far as he consisted of an appearance at all--a question that might verily, for a weakness in it, have been argued. it amused our young man, who was taking his pleasure to-night, it will be seen, in sundry occult ways, it amused him to feel how everything else the master of the house consisted of, resources, possessions, facilities and amiabilities amplified by the social legend, depended, for conveying the effect of quantity, on no personal “equation,” no mere measurable medium. quantity was in the air for these good people, and mr. verver’s estimable quality was almost wholly in that pervasion. he was meagre and modest and clearbrowed, and his eyes, if they wandered without fear, yet stayed without defiance; his shoulders were not broad, his chest was not high, his complexion was not fresh, and the crown of his head was not covered; in spite of all of which he looked, at the top of his table, so nearly like a little boy shyly entertaining in virtue of some imposed rank, that he could only be one of the powers, the representative of a force--quite as an infant king is the representative of a dynasty. in this generalised view of his father-in-law, intensified to-night but always operative, amerigo had now for some time taken refuge. the refuge, after the reunion of the two households in england, had more and more offered itself as the substitute for communities, from man to man, that, by his original calculation, might have become possible, but that had not really ripened and flowered. he met the decent family eyes across the table, met them afterwards in the music-room, but only to read in them still what he had learned to read during his first months, the time of over-anxious initiation, a kind of apprehension in which the terms and conditions were finally fixed and absolute. this directed regard rested at its ease, but it neither lingered nor penetrated, and was, to the prince’s fancy, much of the same order as any glance directed, for due attention, from the same quarter, to the figure of a cheque received in the course of business and about to be enclosed to a banker. it made sure of the amount--and just so, from time to time, the amount of the prince was made sure. he was being thus, in renewed instalments, perpetually paid in; he already reposed in the bank as a value, but subject, in this comfortable way, to repeated, to infinite endorsement. the net result of all of which, moreover, was that the young man had no wish to see his value diminish. he himself, after all, had not fixed it--the “figure” was a conception all of mr. verver’s own. certainly, however, everything must be kept up to it; never so much as to-night had the prince felt this. he would have been uncomfortable, as these quiet expressions passed, had the case not been guaranteed for him by the intensity of his accord with charlotte. it was impossible that he should not now and again meet charlotte’s eyes, as it was also visible that she too now and again met her husband’s. for her as well, in all his pulses, he felt the conveyed impression. it put them, it kept them together, through the vain show of their separation, made the two other faces, made the whole lapse of the evening, the people, the lights, the flowers, the pretended talk, the exquisite music, a mystic golden bridge between them, strongly swaying and sometimes almost vertiginous, for that intimacy of which the sovereign law would be the vigilance of “care,” would be never rashly to forget and never consciously to wound. xx the main interest of these hours for us, however, will have been in the way the prince continued to know, during a particular succession of others, separated from the evening in eaton square by a short interval, a certain persistent aftertaste. this was the lingering savour of a cup presented to him by fanny assingham’s hand after dinner, while the clustered quartette kept their ranged companions, in the music-room, moved if one would, but conveniently motionless. mrs. assingham contrived, after a couple of pieces, to convey to her friend that, for her part, she was moved--by the genius of brahms--beyond what she could bear; so that, without apparent deliberation, she had presently floated away, at the young man’s side, to such a distance as permitted them to converse without the effect of disdain. it was the twenty minutes enjoyed with her, during the rest of the concert, in the less associated electric glare of one of the empty rooms--it was their achieved and, as he would have said, successful, most pleasantly successful, talk on one of the sequestered sofas, it was this that was substantially to underlie his consciousness of the later occasion. the later occasion, then mere matter of discussion, had formed her ground for desiring--in a light undertone into which his quick ear read indeed some nervousness--these independent words with him: she had sounded, covertly but distinctly, by the time they were seated together, the great question of what it might involve. it had come out for him before anything else, and so abruptly that this almost needed an explanation. then the abruptness itself had appeared to explain--which had introduced, in turn, a slight awkwardness. “do you know that they’re not, after all, going to matcham; so that, if they don’t--if, at least, maggie doesn’t--you won’t, i suppose, go by yourself?” it was, as i say, at matcham, where the event had placed him, it was at matcham during the easter days, that it most befell him, oddly enough, to live over, inwardly, for its wealth of special significance, this passage by which the event had been really a good deal determined. he had paid, first and last, many an english country visit; he had learned, even from of old, to do the english things, and to do them, all sufficiently, in the english way; if he didn’t always enjoy them madly he enjoyed them at any rate as much, to an appearance, as the good people who had, in the night of time, unanimously invented them, and who still, in the prolonged afternoon of their good faith, unanimously, even if a trifle automatically, practised them; yet, with it all, he had never so much as during such sojourns the trick of a certain detached, the amusement of a certain inward critical, life; the determined need, which apparently all participant, of returning upon itself, of backing noiselessly in, far in again, and rejoining there, as it were, that part of his mind that was not engaged at the front. his body, very constantly, was engaged at the front--in shooting, in riding, in golfing, in walking, over the fine diagonals of meadow-paths or round the pocketed corners of billiard-tables; it sufficiently, on the whole, in fact, bore the brunt of bridge-playing, of breakfasting, lunching, tea-drinking, dining, and of the nightly climax over the bottigliera, as he called it, of the bristling tray; it met, finally, to the extent of the limited tax on lip, on gesture, on wit, most of the current demands of conversation and expression. therefore something of him, he often felt at these times, was left out; it was much more when he was alone, or when he was with his own people--or when he was, say, with mrs. verver and nobody else--that he moved, that he talked, that he listened, that he felt, as a congruous whole. “english society,” as he would have said, cut him, accordingly, in two, and he reminded himself often, in his relations with it, of a man possessed of a shining star, a decoration, an order of some sort, something so ornamental as to make his identity not complete, ideally, without it, yet who, finding no other such object generally worn, should be perpetually, and the least bit ruefully, unpinning it from his breast to transfer it to his pocket. the prince’s shining star may, no doubt, having been nothing more precious than his private subtlety; but whatever the object was he just now fingered it a good deal, out of sight--amounting as it mainly did for him to a restless play of memory and a fine embroidery of thought. something had rather momentously occurred, in eaton square, during his enjoyed minutes with his old friend: his present perspective made definitely clear to him that she had plumped out for him her first little lie. that took on--and he could scarce have said why--a sharpness of importance: she had never lied to him before--if only because it had never come up for her, properly, intelligibly, morally, that she must. as soon as she had put to him the question of what he would do--by which she meant of what charlotte would also do--in that event of maggie’s and mr. verver’s not embracing the proposal they had appeared for a day or two resignedly to entertain; as soon as she had betrayed her curiosity as to the line the other pair, so left to themselves, might take, a desire to avoid the appearance of at all too directly prying had become marked in her. betrayed by the solicitude of which she had, already, three weeks before, given him a view, she had been obliged, on a second thought, to name, intelligibly, a reason for her appeal; while the prince, on his side, had had, not without mercy, his glimpse of her momentarily groping for one and yet remaining unprovided. not without mercy because, absolutely, he had on the spot, in his friendliness, invented one for her use, presenting it to her with a look no more significant than if he had picked up, to hand back to her, a dropped flower. “you ask if i’m likely also to back out then, because it may make a difference in what you and the colonel decide?”--he had gone as far as that for her, fairly inviting her to assent, though not having had his impression, from any indication offered him by charlotte, that the assinghams were really in question for the large matcham party. the wonderful thing, after this, was that the active couple had, in the interval, managed to inscribe themselves on the golden roll; an exertion of a sort that, to do her justice, he had never before observed fanny to make. this last passage of the chapter but proved, after all, with what success she could work when she would. once launched, himself, at any rate, as he had been directed by all the terms of the intercourse between portland place and eaton square, once steeped, at matcham, in the enjoyment of a splendid hospitality, he found everything, for his interpretation, for his convenience, fall easily enough into place; and all the more that mrs. verver was at hand to exchange ideas and impressions with. the great house was full of people, of possible new combinations, of the quickened play of possible propinquity, and no appearance, of course, was less to be cultivated than that of his having sought an opportunity to foregather with his friend at a safe distance from their respective sposi. there was a happy boldness, at the best, in their mingling thus, each unaccompanied, in the same sustained sociability--just exactly a touch of that eccentricity of associated freedom which sat so lightly on the imagination of the relatives left behind. they were exposed as much as one would to its being pronounced funny that they should, at such a rate, go about together--though, on the other hand, this consideration drew relief from the fact that, in their high conditions and with the easy tradition, the almost inspiring allowances, of the house in question, no individual line, however freely marked, was pronounced anything more than funny. both our friends felt afresh, as they had felt before, the convenience of a society so placed that it had only its own sensibility to consider--looking as it did well over the heads of all lower growths; and that moreover treated its own sensibility quite as the easiest, friendliest, most informal and domesticated party to the general alliance. what anyone “thought” of anyone else--above all of anyone else with anyone else--was a matter incurring in these lulls so little awkward formulation that hovering judgment, the spirit with the scales, might perfectly have been imaged there as some rather snubbed and subdued, but quite trained and tactful poor relation, of equal, of the properest, lineage, only of aspect a little dingy, doubtless from too limited a change of dress, for whose tacit and abstemious presence, never betrayed by a rattle of her rusty machine, a room in the attic and a plate at the side-table were decently usual. it was amusing, in such lightness of air, that the prince should again present himself only to speak for the princess, so unfortunately unable, again, to leave home; and that mrs. verver should as regularly figure as an embodied, a beautifully deprecating apology for her husband, who was all geniality and humility among his own treasures, but as to whom the legend had grown up that he couldn’t bear, with the height of his standards and the tone of the company, in the way of sofas and cabinets, habitually kept by him, the irritation and depression to which promiscuous visiting, even at pompous houses, had been found to expose him. that was all right, the noted working harmony of the clever son-in-law and the charming stepmother, so long as the relation was, for the effect in question, maintained at the proper point between sufficiency and excess. what with the noble fairness of the place, meanwhile, the generous mood of the sunny, gusty, lusty english april, all panting and heaving with impatience, or kicking and crying, even, at moments, like some infant hercules who wouldn’t be dressed; what with these things and the bravery of youth and beauty, the insolence of fortune and appetite so diffused among his fellow-guests that the poor assinghams, in their comparatively marked maturity and their comparatively small splendour, were the only approach to a false note in the concert, the stir of the air was such, for going, in a degree, to one’s head, that, as a mere matter of exposure, almost grotesque in its flagrancy, his situation resembled some elaborate practical joke carried out at his expense. every voice in the great bright house was a call to the ingenuities and impunities of pleasure; every echo was a defiance of difficulty, doubt or danger; every aspect of the picture, a glowing plea for the immediate, and as with plenty more to come, was another phase of the spell. for a world so constituted was governed by a spell, that of the smile of the gods and the favour of the powers; the only handsome, the only gallant, in fact the only intelligent acceptance of which was a faith in its guarantees and a high spirit for its chances. its demand--to that the thing came back--was above all for courage and good-humour; and the value of this as a general assurance--that is for seeing one through at the worst--had not even in the easiest hours of his old roman life struck the prince so convincingly. his old roman life had had more poetry, no doubt, but as he looked back upon it now it seemed to hang in the air of mere iridescent horizons, to have been loose and vague and thin, with large languorous unaccountable blanks. the present order, as it spread about him, had somehow the ground under its feet, and a trumpet in its ears, and a bottomless bag of solid shining british sovereigns--which was much to the point--in its hand. courage and good-humour therefore were the breath of the day; though for ourselves at least it would have been also much to the point that, with amerigo, really, the innermost effect of all this perceptive ease was perhaps a strange final irritation. he compared the lucid result with the extraordinary substitute for perception that presided, in the bosom of his wife, at so contented a view of his conduct and course--a state of mind that was positively like a vicarious good conscience, cultivated ingeniously on his behalf, a perversity of pressure innocently persisted in; and this wonder of irony became on occasion too intense to be kept wholly to himself. it wasn’t that, at matcham, anything particular, anything monstrous, anything that had to be noticed permitted itself, as they said, to “happen”; there were only odd moments when the breath of the day, as it has been called, struck him so full in the face that he broke out with all the hilarity of “what indeed would they have made of it?” “they” were of course maggie and her father, moping--so far as they ever consented to mope in monotonous eaton square, but placid too in the belief that they knew beautifully what their expert companions were in for. they knew, it might have appeared in these lights, absolutely nothing on earth worth speaking of--whether beautifully or cynically; and they would perhaps sometimes be a little less trying if they would only once for all peacefully admit that knowledge wasn’t one of their needs and that they were in fact constitutionally inaccessible to it. they were good children, bless their hearts, and the children of good children; so that, verily, the principino himself, as less consistently of that descent, might figure to the fancy as the ripest genius of the trio. the difficulty was, for the nerves of daily intercourse with maggie in particular, that her imagination was clearly never ruffled by the sense of any anomaly. the great anomaly would have been that her husband, or even that her father’s wife, should prove to have been made, for the long run, after the pattern set from so far back to the ververs. if one was so made one had certainly no business, on any terms, at matcham; whereas if one wasn’t one had no business there on the particular terms--terms of conformity with the principles of eaton square--under which one had been so absurdly dedicated. deep at the heart of that resurgent unrest in our young man which we have had to content ourselves with calling his irritation--deep in the bosom of this falsity of position glowed the red spark of his inextinguishable sense of a higher and braver propriety. there were situations that were ridiculous, but that one couldn’t yet help, as for instance when one’s wife chose, in the most usual way, to make one so. precisely here, however, was the difference; it had taken poor maggie to invent a way so extremely unusual--yet to which, none the less, it would be too absurd that he should merely lend himself. being thrust, systematically, with another woman, and a woman one happened, by the same token, exceedingly to like, and being so thrust that the theory of it seemed to publish one as idiotic or incapable--this was a predicament of which the dignity depended all on one’s own handling. what was supremely grotesque, in fact, was the essential opposition of theories--as if a galantuomo, as he at least constitutionally conceived galantuomini, could do anything but blush to “go about” at such a rate with such a person as mrs. verver in a state of childlike innocence, the state of our primitive parents before the fall. the grotesque theory, as he would have called it, was perhaps an odd one to resent with violence, and he did it--also as a man of the world--all merciful justice; but, assuredly, none the less, there was but one way really to mark, and for his companion as much as for himself, the commiseration in which they held it. adequate comment on it could only be private, but it could also at least be active, and of rich and effectual comment charlotte and he were fortunately alike capable. wasn’t this consensus literally their only way not to be ungracious? it was positively as if the measure of their escape from that danger were given by the growth between them, during their auspicious visit, of an exquisite sense of complicity. xxi he found himself therefore saying, with gaiety, even to fanny assingham, for their common, concerned glance at eaton square, the glance that was so markedly never, as it might have been, a glance at portland place: “what would our cari sposi have made of it here? what would they, you know, really?”--which overflow would have been reckless if, already, and surprisingly perhaps even to himself, he had not got used to thinking of this friend as a person in whom the element of protest had of late been unmistakably allayed. he exposed himself of course to her replying: “ah, if it would have been so bad for them, how can it be so good for you?”--but, quite apart from the small sense the question would have had at the best, she appeared already to unite with him in confidence and cheer. he had his view, as well--or at least a partial one--of the inner spring of this present comparative humility, which was all consistent with the retraction he had practically seen her make after mr. verver’s last dinner. without diplomatising to do so, with no effort to square her, none to bribe her to an attitude for which he would have had no use in her if it were not sincere, he yet felt how he both held her and moved her by the felicity of his taking pity, all instinctively, on her just discernible depression. by just so much as he guessed that she felt herself, as the slang was, out of it, out of the crystal current and the expensive picture, by just so much had his friendship charmingly made up to her, from hour to hour, for the penalties, as they might have been grossly called, of her mistake. her mistake had only been, after all, in her wanting to seem to him straight; she had let herself in for being--as she had made haste, for that matter, during the very first half-hour, at tea, to proclaim herself--the sole and single frump of the party. the scale of everything was so different that all her minor values, her quainter graces, her little local authority, her humour and her wardrobe alike, for which it was enough elsewhere, among her bons amis, that they were hers, dear fanny assingham’s--these matters and others would be all, now, as nought: five minutes had sufficed to give her the fatal pitch. in cadogan place she could always, at the worst, be picturesque--for she habitually spoke of herself as “local” to sloane street whereas at matcham she should never be anything but horrible. and it all would have come, the disaster, from the real refinement, in her, of the spirit of friendship. to prove to him that she wasn’t really watching him--ground for which would have been too terribly grave--she had followed him in his pursuit of pleasure: so she might, precisely, mark her detachment. this was handsome trouble for her to take--the prince could see it all: it wasn’t a shade of interference that a good-natured man would visit on her. so he didn’t even say, when she told him how frumpy she knew herself, how frumpy her very maid, odiously going back on her, rubbed it into her, night and morning, with unsealed eyes and lips, that she now knew her--he didn’t then say “ah, see what you’ve done: isn’t it rather your own fault?” he behaved differently altogether: eminently distinguished himself--for she told him she had never seen him so universally distinguished--he yet distinguished her in her obscurity, or in what was worse, her objective absurdity, and frankly invested her with her absolute value, surrounded her with all the importance of her wit. that wit, as discriminated from stature and complexion, a sense for “bridge” and a credit for pearls, could have importance was meanwhile but dimly perceived at matcham; so that his “niceness” to her--she called it only niceness, but it brought tears into her eyes--had the greatness of a general as well as of a special demonstration. “she understands,” he said, as a comment on all this, to mrs. verver--“she understands all she needs to understand. she has taken her time, but she has at last made it out for herself: she sees how all we can desire is to give them the life they prefer, to surround them with the peace and quiet, and above all with the sense of security, most favourable to it. she can’t of course very well put it to us that we have, so far as she is concerned, but to make the best of our circumstances; she can’t say in so many words ‘don’t think of me, for i too must make the best of mine: arrange as you can, only, and live as you must.’ i don’t get quite that from her, any more than i ask for it. but her tone and her whole manner mean nothing at all unless they mean that she trusts us to take as watchful, to take as artful, to take as tender care, in our way, as she so anxiously takes in hers. so that she’s--well,” the prince wound up, “what you may call practically all right.” charlotte in fact, however, to help out his confidence, didn’t call it anything; return as he might to the lucidity, the importance, or whatever it was, of this lesson, she gave him no aid toward reading it aloud. she let him, two or three times over, spell it out for himself; only on the eve of their visit’s end was she, for once, clear or direct in response. they had found a minute together in the great hall of the house during the half-hour before dinner; this easiest of chances they had already, a couple of times, arrived at by waiting persistently till the last other loiterers had gone to dress, and by being prepared themselves to dress so expeditiously that they might, a little later on, be among the first to appear in festal array. the hall then was empty, before the army of rearranging, cushion-patting housemaids were marshalled in, and there was a place by the forsaken fire, at one end, where they might imitate, with art, the unpremeditated. above all, here, for the snatched instants, they could breathe so near to each other that the interval was almost engulfed in it, and the intensity both of the union and the caution became a workable substitute for contact. they had prolongations of instants that counted as visions of bliss; they had slow approximations that counted as long caresses. the quality of these passages, in truth, made the spoken word, and especially the spoken word about other people, fall below them; so that our young woman’s tone had even now a certain dryness. “it’s very good of her, my dear, to trust us. but what else can she do?” “why, whatever people do when they don’t trust. let one see they don’t.” “but let whom see?” “well, let me, say, to begin with.” “and should you mind that?” he had a slight show of surprise. “shouldn’t you?” “her letting you see? no,” said charlotte; “the only thing i can imagine myself minding is what you yourself, if you don’t look out, may let her see.” to which she added: “you may let her see, you know, that you’re afraid.” “i’m only afraid of you, a little, at moments,” he presently returned. “but i shan’t let fanny see that.” it was clear, however, that neither the limits nor the extent of mrs. assingham’s vision were now a real concern to her, and she gave expression to this as she had not even yet done. “what in the world can she do against us? there’s not a word that she can breathe. she’s helpless; she can’t speak; she would be herself the first to be dished by it.” and then as he seemed slow to follow: “it all comes back to her. it all began with her. everything, from the first. she introduced you to maggie. she made your marriage.” the prince might have had his moment of demur, but at this, after a little, as with a smile dim but deep, he came on. “mayn’t she also be said, a good deal, to have made yours? that was intended, i think, wasn’t it? for a kind of rectification.” charlotte, on her side, for an instant, hesitated; then she was prompter still. “i don’t mean there was anything to rectify; everything was as it had to be, and i’m not speaking of how she may have been concerned for you and me. i’m speaking of how she took, in her way, each time, their lives in hand, and how, therefore, that ties her up to-day. she can’t go to them and say ‘it’s very awkward of course, you poor dear things, but i was frivolously mistaken.’” he took it in still, with his long look at her. “all the more that she wasn’t. she was right. everything’s right,” he went on, “and everything will stay so.” “then that’s all i say.” but he worked it out, for the deeper satisfaction, even to superfluous lucidity. “we’re happy, and they’re happy. what more does the position admit of? what more need fanny assingham want?” “ah, my dear,” said charlotte, “it’s not i who say that she need want anything. i only say that she’s fixed, that she must stand exactly where everything has, by her own act, placed her. it’s you who have seemed haunted with the possibility, for her, of some injurious alternative, something or other we must be prepared for.” and she had, with her high reasoning, a strange cold smile. “we are prepared--for anything, for everything; and as we are, practically, so she must take us. she’s condemned to consistency; she’s doomed, poor thing, to a genial optimism. that, luckily for her, however, is very much the law of her nature. she was born to soothe and to smooth. now then, therefore,” mrs. verver gently laughed, “she has the chance of her life!” “so that her present professions may, even at the best, not be sincere?--may be but a mask for doubts and fears, and for gaining time?” the prince had looked, with the question, as if this, again, could trouble him, and it determined in his companion a slight impatience. “you keep talking about such things as if they were our affair at all. i feel, at any rate, that i’ve nothing to do with her doubts and fears, or with anything she may feel. she must arrange all that for herself. it’s enough for me that she’ll always be, of necessity, much more afraid for herself, really, either to see or to speak, than we should be to have her do it even if we were the idiots and cowards we aren’t.” and charlotte’s face, with these words--to the mitigation of the slightly hard ring there might otherwise have been in them--fairly lightened, softened, shone out. it reflected as really never yet the rare felicity of their luck. it made her look for the moment as if she had actually pronounced that word of unpermitted presumption--so apt is the countenance, as with a finer consciousness than the tongue, to betray a sense of this particular lapse. she might indeed, the next instant, have seen her friend wince, in advance, at her use of a word that was already on her lips; for it was still unmistakable with him that there were things he could prize, forms of fortune he could cherish, without at all proportionately liking their names. had all this, however, been even completely present to his companion, what other term could she have applied to the strongest and simplest of her ideas but the one that exactly fitted it? she applied it then, though her own instinct moved her, at the same time, to pay her tribute to the good taste from which they hadn’t heretofore by a hair’s breadth deviated. “if it didn’t sound so vulgar i should say that we’re--fatally, as it were--safe. pardon the low expression--since it’s what we happen to be. we’re so because they are. and they’re so because they can’t be anything else, from the moment that, having originally intervened for them, she wouldn’t now be able to bear herself if she didn’t keep them so. that’s the way she’s inevitably with us,” said charlotte over her smile. “we hang, essentially, together.” well, the prince candidly allowed she did bring it home to him. every way it worked out. “yes, i see. we hang, essentially, together.” his friend had a shrug--a shrug that had a grace. “cosa volete?” the effect, beautifully, nobly, was more than roman. “ah, beyond doubt, it’s a case.” he stood looking at her. “it’s a case. there can’t,” he said, “have been many.” “perhaps never, never, never any other. that,” she smiled, “i confess i should like to think. only ours.” “only ours--most probably. speriamo.” to which, as after hushed connections, he presently added: “poor fanny!” but charlotte had already, with a start and a warning hand, turned from a glance at the clock. she sailed away to dress, while he watched her reach the staircase. his eyes followed her till, with a simple swift look round at him, she vanished. something in the sight, however, appeared to have renewed the spring of his last exclamation, which he breathed again upon the air. “poor, poor fanny!” it was to prove, however, on the morrow, quite consistent with the spirit of these words that, the party at matcham breaking up and multitudinously dispersing, he should be able to meet the question of the social side of the process of repatriation with due presence of mind. it was impossible, for reasons, that he should travel to town with the assinghams; it was impossible, for the same reasons, that he should travel to town save in the conditions that he had for the last twenty-four hours been privately, and it might have been said profoundly, thinking out. the result of his thought was already precious to him, and this put at his service, he sufficiently believed, the right tone for disposing of his elder friend’s suggestion, an assumption in fact equally full and mild, that he and charlotte would conveniently take the same train and occupy the same compartment as the colonel and herself. the extension of the idea to mrs. verver had been, precisely, a part of mrs. assingham’s mildness, and nothing could better have characterised her sense for social shades than her easy perception that the gentleman from portland place and the lady from eaton square might now confess, quite without indiscretion, to simultaneity of movement. she had made, for the four days, no direct appeal to the latter personage, but the prince was accidental witness of her taking a fresh start at the moment the company were about to scatter for the last night of their stay. there had been, at this climax, the usual preparatory talk about hours and combinations, in the midst of which poor fanny gently approached mrs. verver. she said “you and the prince, love,”--quite, apparently, without blinking; she took for granted their public withdrawal together; she remarked that she and bob were alike ready, in the interest of sociability, to take any train that would make them all one party. “i feel really as if, all this time, i had seen nothing of you”--that gave an added grace to the candour of the dear thing’s approach. but just then it was, on the other hand, that the young man found himself borrow most effectively the secret of the right tone for doing as he preferred. his preference had, during the evening, not failed of occasion to press him with mute insistences; practically without words, without any sort of straight telegraphy, it had arrived at a felt identity with charlotte’s own. she spoke all for their friend while she answered their friend’s question, but she none the less signalled to him as definitely as if she had fluttered a white handkerchief from a window. “it’s awfully sweet of you, darling--our going together would be charming. but you mustn’t mind us--you must suit yourselves we’ve settled, amerigo and i, to stay over till after luncheon.” amerigo, with the chink of this gold in his ear, turned straight away, so as not to be instantly appealed to; and for the very emotion of the wonder, furthermore, of what divination may achieve when winged by a community of passion. charlotte had uttered the exact plea that he had been keeping ready for the same foreseen necessity, and had uttered it simply as a consequence of their deepening unexpressed need of each other and without the passing between them of a word. he hadn’t, god knew, to take it from her--he was too conscious of what he wanted; but the lesson for him was in the straight clear tone that charlotte could thus distil, in the perfect felicity of her adding no explanation, no touch for plausibility, that she wasn’t strictly obliged to add, and in the truly superior way in which women, so situated, express and distinguish themselves. she had answered mrs. assingham quite adequately; she had not spoiled it by a reason a scrap larger than the smallest that would serve, and she had, above all, thrown off, for his stretched but covered attention, an image that flashed like a mirror played at the face of the sun. the measure of everything, to all his sense, at these moments, was in it--the measure especially of the thought that had been growing with him a positive obsession and that began to throb as never yet under this brush of her having, by perfect parity of imagination, the match for it. his whole consciousness had by this time begun almost to ache with a truth of an exquisite order, at the glow of which she too had, so unmistakably then, been warming herself--the truth that the occasion constituted by the last few days couldn’t possibly, save by some poverty of their own, refuse them some still other and still greater beauty. it had already told them, with an hourly voice, that it had a meaning--a meaning that their associated sense was to drain even as thirsty lips, after the plough through the sands and the sight, afar, of the palm-cluster, might drink in at last the promised well in the desert. there had been beauty, day after day, and there had been, for the spiritual lips, something of the pervasive taste of it; yet it was all, none the less, as if their response had remained below their fortune. how to bring it, by some brave, free lift, up to the same height was the idea with which, behind and beneath everything, he was restlessly occupied, and in the exploration of which, as in that of the sun-chequered greenwood of romance, his spirit thus, at the opening of a vista, met hers. they were already, from that moment, so hand-in-hand in the place that he found himself making use, five minutes later, of exactly the same tone as charlotte’s for telling mrs. assingham that he was likewise, in the matter of the return to london, sorry for what mightn’t be. this had become, of a sudden, the simplest thing in the world--the sense of which moreover seemed really to amount to a portent that he should feel, forevermore, on the general head, conveniently at his ease with her. he went in fact a step further than charlotte--put the latter forward as creating his necessity. she was staying over luncheon to oblige their hostess--as a consequence of which he must also stay to see her decently home. he must deliver her safe and sound, he felt, in eaton square. regret as he might, too, the difference made by this obligation, he frankly didn’t mind, inasmuch as, over and above the pleasure itself, his scruple would certainly gratify both mr. verver and maggie. they never yet had absolutely and entirely learned, he even found deliberation to intimate, how little he really neglected the first--as it seemed nowadays quite to have become--of his domestic duties: therefore he still constantly felt how little he must remit his effort to make them remark it. to which he added with equal lucidity that they would return in time for dinner, and if he didn’t, as a last word, subjoin that it would be “lovely” of fanny to find, on her own return, a moment to go to eaton square and report them as struggling bravely on, this was not because the impulse, down to the very name for the amiable act, altogether failed to rise. his inward assurance, his general plan, had at moments, where she was concerned, its drops of continuity, and nothing would less have pleased him than that she should suspect in him, however tempted, any element of conscious “cheek.” but he was always--that was really the upshot--cultivating thanklessly the considerate and the delicate: it was a long lesson, this unlearning, with people of english race, all the little superstitions that accompany friendship. mrs. assingham herself was the first to say that she would unfailingly “report”; she brought it out in fact, he thought, quite wonderfully--having attained the summit of the wonderful during the brief interval that had separated her appeal to charlotte from this passage with himself. she had taken the five minutes, obviously, amid the rest of the talk and the movement, to retire into her tent for meditation--which showed, among several things, the impression charlotte had made on her. it was from the tent she emerged, as with arms refurbished; though who indeed could say if the manner in which she now met him spoke most, really, of the glitter of battle or of the white waver of the flag of truce? the parley was short either way; the gallantry of her offer was all sufficient. “i’ll go to our friends then--i’ll ask for luncheon. i’ll tell them when to expect you.” “that will be charming. say we’re all right.” “all right--precisely. i can’t say more,” mrs. assingham smiled. “no doubt.” but he considered, as for the possible importance of it. “neither can you, by what i seem to feel, say less.” “oh, i won’t say less!” fanny laughed; with which, the next moment, she had turned away. but they had it again, not less bravely, on the morrow, after breakfast, in the thick of the advancing carriages and the exchange of farewells. “i think i’ll send home my maid from euston,” she was then prepared to amend, “and go to eaton square straight. so you can be easy.” “oh, i think we’re easy,” the prince returned. “be sure to say, at any rate, that we’re bearing up.” “you’re bearing up--good. and charlotte returns to dinner?” “to dinner. we’re not likely, i think, to make another night away.” “well then, i wish you at least a pleasant day,” “oh,” he laughed as they separated, “we shall do our best for it!”--after which, in due course, with the announcement of their conveyance, the assinghams rolled off. xxii it was quite, for the prince, after this, as if the view had further cleared; so that the half-hour during which he strolled on the terrace and smoked--the day being lovely--overflowed with the plenitude of its particular quality. its general brightness was composed, doubtless, of many elements, but what shone out of it as if the whole place and time had been a great picture, from the hand of genius, presented to him as a prime ornament for his collection and all varnished and framed to hang up--what marked it especially for the highest appreciation was his extraordinarily unchallenged, his absolutely appointed and enhanced possession of it. poor fanny assingham’s challenge amounted to nothing: one of the things he thought of while he leaned on the old marble balustrade--so like others that he knew in still more nobly-terraced italy--was that she was squared, all-conveniently even to herself, and that, rumbling toward london with this contentment, she had become an image irrelevant to the scene. it further passed across him, as his imagination was, for reasons, during the time, unprecedentedly active,--that he had, after all, gained more from women than he had ever lost by them; there appeared so, more and more, on those mystic books that are kept, in connection with such commerce, even by men of the loosest business habits, a balance in his favour that he could pretty well, as a rule, take for granted. what were they doing at this very moment, wonderful creatures, but combine and conspire for his advantage?--from maggie herself, most wonderful, in her way, of all, to his hostess of the present hour, into whose head it had so inevitably come to keep charlotte on, for reasons of her own, and who had asked, in this benevolent spirit, why in the world, if not obliged, without plausibility, to hurry, her husband’s son-in-law should not wait over in her company. he would at least see, lady castledean had said, that nothing dreadful should happen to her, either while still there or during the exposure of the run to town; and, for that matter, if they exceeded a little their license it would positively help them to have done so together. each of them would, in this way, at home, have the other comfortably to blame. all of which, besides, in lady castledean as in maggie, in fanny assingham as in charlotte herself, was working; for him without provocation or pressure, by the mere play of some vague sense on their part--definite and conscious at the most only in charlotte--that he was not, as a nature, as a character, as a gentleman, in fine, below his remarkable fortune. but there were more things before him than even these; things that melted together, almost indistinguishably, to feed his sense of beauty. if the outlook was in every way spacious--and the towers of three cathedrals, in different counties, as had been pointed out to him, gleamed discernibly, like dim silver, in the rich sameness of tone--didn’t he somehow the more feel it so because, precisely, lady castledean had kept over a man of her own, and that this offered a certain sweet intelligibility as the note of the day? it made everything fit; above all it diverted him to the extent of keeping up, while he lingered and waited, his meditative smile. she had detained charlotte because she wished to detain mr. blint, and she couldn’t detain mr. blint, disposed though he clearly was to oblige her, without spreading over the act some ampler drapery. castledean had gone up to london; the place was all her own; she had had a fancy for a quiet morning with mr. blint, a sleek, civil, accomplished young man--distinctly younger than her ladyship--who played and sang delightfully (played even “bridge” and sang the english-comic as well as the french-tragic), and the presence--which really meant the absence--of a couple of other friends, if they were happily chosen, would make everything all right. the prince had the sense, all good-humouredly, of being happily chosen, and it was not spoiled for him even by another sense that followed in its train and with which, during his life in england, he had more than once had reflectively to deal: the state of being reminded how, after all, as an outsider, a foreigner, and even as a mere representative husband and son-in-law, he was so irrelevant to the working of affairs that he could be bent on occasion to uses comparatively trivial. no other of her guests would have been thus convenient for their hostess; affairs, of whatever sorts, had claimed, by early trains, every active, easy, smoothly-working man, each in his way a lubricated item of the great social, political, administrative engrenage--claimed most of all castledean himself, who was so very oddly, given the personage and the type, rather a large item. if he, on the other hand, had an affair, it was not of that order; it was of the order, verily, that he had been reduced to as a not quite glorious substitute. it marked, however, the feeling of the hour with him that this vision of being “reduced” interfered not at all with the measure of his actual ease. it kept before him again, at moments, the so familiar fact of his sacrifices--down to the idea of the very relinquishment, for his wife’s convenience, of his real situation in the world; with the consequence, thus, that he was, in the last analysis, among all these so often inferior people, practically held cheap and made light of. but though all this was sensible enough there was a spirit in him that could rise above it, a spirit that positively played with the facts, with all of them; from that of the droll ambiguity of english relations to that of his having in mind something quite beautiful and independent and harmonious, something wholly his own. he couldn’t somehow take mr. blint seriously--he was much more an outsider, by the larger scale, even than a roman prince who consented to be in abeyance. yet it was past finding out, either, how such a woman as lady castledean could take him--since this question but sank for him again into the fathomless depths of english equivocation. he knew them all, as was said, “well”; he had lived with them, stayed with them, dined, hunted, shot and done various other things with them; but the number of questions about them he couldn’t have answered had much rather grown than shrunken, so that experience struck him for the most part as having left in him but one residual impression. they didn’t like les situations nettes--that was all he was very sure of. they wouldn’t have them at any price; it had been their national genius and their national success to avoid them at every point. they called it themselves, with complacency, their wonderful spirit of compromise--the very influence of which actually so hung about him here, from moment to moment, that the earth and the air, the light and the colour, the fields and the hills and the sky, the blue-green counties and the cold cathedrals, owed to it every accent of their tone. verily, as one had to feel in presence of such a picture, it had succeeded; it had made, up to now, for that seated solidity, in the rich sea-mist, on which the garish, the supposedly envious, peoples have ever cooled their eyes. but it was at the same time precisely why even much initiation left one, at given moments, so puzzled as to the element of staleness in all the freshness and of freshness in all the staleness, of innocence in the guilt and of guilt in the innocence. there were other marble terraces, sweeping more purple prospects, on which he would have known what to think, and would have enjoyed thereby at least the small intellectual fillip of a discerned relation between a given appearance and a taken meaning. the inquiring mind, in these present conditions, might, it was true, be more sharply challenged; but the result of its attention and its ingenuity, it had unluckily learned to know, was too often to be confronted with a mere dead wall, a lapse of logic, a confirmed bewilderment. and moreover, above all, nothing mattered, in the relation of the enclosing scene to his own consciousness, but its very most direct bearings. lady castledean’s dream of mr. blint for the morning was doubtless already, with all the spacious harmonies re-established, taking the form of “going over” something with him, at the piano, in one of the numerous smaller rooms that were consecrated to the less gregarious uses; what she had wished had been effected--her convenience had been assured. this made him, however, wonder the more where charlotte was--since he didn’t at all suppose her to be making a tactless third, which would be to have accepted mere spectatorship, in the duet of their companions. the upshot of everything for him, alike of the less and of the more, was that the exquisite day bloomed there like a large fragrant flower that he had only to gather. but it was to charlotte he wished to make the offering, and as he moved along the terrace, which rendered visible parts of two sides of the house, he looked up at all the windows that were open to the april morning, and wondered which of them would represent his friend’s room. it befell thus that his question, after no long time, was answered; he saw charlotte appear above as if she had been called by the pausing of his feet on the flags. she had come to the sill, on which she leaned to look down, and she remained there a minute smiling at him. he had been immediately struck with her wearing a hat and a jacket--which conduced to her appearance of readiness not so much to join him, with a beautiful uncovered head and a parasol, where he stood, as to take with him some larger step altogether. the larger step had been, since the evening before, intensely in his own mind, though he had not fully thought out, even yet, the slightly difficult detail of it; but he had had no chance, such as he needed, to speak the definite word to her, and the face she now showed affected him, accordingly, as a notice that she had wonderfully guessed it for herself. they had these identities of impulse--they had had them repeatedly before; and if such unarranged but unerring encounters gave the measure of the degree in which people were, in the common phrase, meant for each other, no union in the world had ever been more sweetened with rightness. what in fact most often happened was that her rightness went, as who should say, even further than his own; they were conscious of the same necessity at the same moment, only it was she, as a general thing, who most clearly saw her way to it. something in her long look at him now out of the old grey window, something in the very poise of her hat, the colour of her necktie, the prolonged stillness of her smile, touched into sudden light for him all the wealth of the fact that he could count on her. he had his hand there, to pluck it, on the open bloom of the day; but what did the bright minute mean but that her answering hand was already intelligently out? so, therefore, while the minute lasted, it passed between them that their cup was full; which cup their very eyes, holding it fast, carried and steadied and began, as they tasted it, to praise. he broke, however, after a moment, the silence. “it only wants a moon, a mandolin, and a little danger, to be a serenade.” “ah, then,” she lightly called down, “let it at least have this!” with which she detached a rich white rosebud from its company with another in the front of her dress and flung it down to him. he caught it in its fall, fixing her again after she had watched him place it in his buttonhole. “come down quickly!” he said in an italian not loud but deep. “vengo, vengo!” she as clearly, but more lightly, tossed out; and she had left him the next minute to wait for her. he came along the terrace again, with pauses during which his eyes rested, as they had already often done, on the brave darker wash of far-away watercolour that represented the most distant of the cathedral towns. this place, with its great church and its high accessibility, its towers that distinguishably signalled, its english history, its appealing type, its acknowledged interest, this place had sounded its name to him half the night through, and its name had become but another name, the pronounceable and convenient one, for that supreme sense of things which now throbbed within him. he had kept saying to himself “gloucester, gloucester, gloucester,” quite as if the sharpest meaning of all the years just passed were intensely expressed in it. that meaning was really that his situation remained quite sublimely consistent with itself, and that they absolutely, he and charlotte, stood there together in the very lustre of this truth. every present circumstance helped to proclaim it; it was blown into their faces as by the lips of the morning. he knew why, from the first of his marriage, he had tried with such patience for such conformity; he knew why he had given up so much and bored himself so much; he knew why he, at any rate, had gone in, on the basis of all forms, on the basis of his having, in a manner, sold himself, for a situation nette. it had all been just in order that his--well, what on earth should he call it but his freedom?--should at present be as perfect and rounded and lustrous as some huge precious pearl. he hadn’t struggled nor snatched; he was taking but what had been given him; the pearl dropped itself, with its exquisite quality and rarity, straight into his hand. here, precisely, it was, incarnate; its size and its value grew as mrs. verver appeared, afar off, in one of the smaller doorways. she came toward him in silence, while he moved to meet her; the great scale of this particular front, at matcham, multiplied thus, in the golden morning, the stages of their meeting and the successions of their consciousness. it wasn’t till she had come quite close that he produced for her his “gloucester, gloucester, gloucester,” and his “look at it over there!” she knew just where to look. “yes--isn’t it one of the best? there are cloisters or towers or some thing.” and her eyes, which, though her lips smiled, were almost grave with their depths of acceptance; came back to him. “or the tomb of some old king.” “we must see the old king; we must ‘do’ the cathedral,” he said; “we must know all about it. if we could but take,” he exhaled, “the full opportunity!” and then while, for all they seemed to give him, he sounded again her eyes: “i feel the day like a great gold cup that we must somehow drain together.” “i feel it, as you always make me feel everything, just as you do; so that i know ten miles off how you feel! but do you remember,” she asked, “apropos of great gold cups, the beautiful one, the real one, that i offered you so long ago and that you wouldn’t have? just before your marriage”--she brought it back to him: “the gilded crystal bowl in the little bloomsbury shop.” “oh yes!”--but it took, with a slight surprise on the ‘prince’s part, some small recollecting. “the treacherous cracked thing you wanted to palm off on me, and the little swindling jew who understood italian and who backed you up! but i feel this an occasion,” he immediately added, “and i hope you don’t mean,” he smiled, “that as an occasion it’s also cracked.” they spoke, naturally, more low than loud, overlooked as they were, though at a respectful distance, by tiers of windows; but it made each find in the other’s voice a taste as of something slowly and deeply absorbed. “don’t you think too much of ‘cracks,’ and aren’t you too afraid of them? i risk the cracks,” said charlotte, “and i’ve often recalled the bowl and the little swindling jew, wondering if they’ve parted company. he made,” she said, “a great impression on me.” “well, you also, no doubt, made a great impression on him, and i dare say that if you were to go back to him you’d find he has been keeping that treasure for you. but as to cracks,” the prince went on--“what did you tell me the other day you prettily call them in english?-’rifts within the lute’?--risk them as much as you like for yourself, but don’t risk them for me.” he spoke it in all the gaiety of his just barely-tremulous serenity. “i go, as you know, by my superstitions. and that’s why,” he said, “i know where we are. they’re every one, to-day, on our side.” resting on the parapet; toward the great view, she was silent a little, and he saw the next moment that her eyes were closed. “i go but by one thing.” her hand was on the sun-warmed stone; so that, turned as they were away from the house, he put his own upon it and covered it. “i go by you,” she said. “i go by you.” so they remained a moment, till he spoke again with a gesture that matched. “what is really our great necessity, you know, is to go by my watch. it’s already eleven”--he had looked at the time; “so that if we stop here to luncheon what becomes of our afternoon?” to this charlotte’s eyes opened straight. “there’s not the slightest need of our stopping here to luncheon. don’t you see,” she asked, “how i’m ready?” he had taken it in, but there was always more and more of her. “you mean you’ve arranged--?” “it’s easy to arrange. my maid goes up with my things. you’ve only to speak to your man about yours, and they can go together.” “you mean we can leave at once?” she let him have it all. “one of the carriages, about which i spoke, will already have come back for us. if your superstitions are on our side,” she smiled, “so my arrangements are, and i’ll back my support against yours.” “then you had thought,” he wondered, “about gloucester?” she hesitated--but it was only her way. “i thought you would think. we have, thank goodness, these harmonies. they are food for superstition if you like. it’s beautiful,” she went on, “that it should be gloucester; ‘glo’ster, glo’ster,’ as you say, making it sound like an old song. however, i’m sure glo’ster, glo’ster will be charming,” she still added; “we shall be able easily to lunch there, and, with our luggage and our servants off our hands, we shall have at least three or four hours. we can wire,” she wound up, “from there.” ever so quietly she had brought it, as she had thought it, all out, and it had to be as covertly that he let his appreciation expand. “then lady castledean--?” “doesn’t dream of our staying.” he took it, but thinking yet. “then what does she dream--?” “of mr. blint, poor dear; of mr. blint only.” her smile for him--for the prince himself--was free. “have i positively to tell you that she doesn’t want us? she only wanted us for the others--to show she wasn’t left alone with him. now that that’s done, and that they’ve all gone, she of course knows for herself--!” “‘knows’?” the prince vaguely echoed. “why, that we like cathedrals; that we inevitably stop to see them, or go round to take them in, whenever we’ve a chance; that it’s what our respective families quite expect of us and would be disappointed for us to fail of. this, as forestieri,” mrs. verver pursued, “would be our pull--if our pull weren’t indeed so great all round.” he could only keep his eyes on her. “and have you made out the very train--?” “the very one. paddington--the 6.50 ‘in.’ that gives us oceans; we can dine, at the usual hour, at home; and as maggie will of course be in eaton square i hereby invite you.” for a while he still but looked at her; it was a minute before he spoke. “thank you very much. with pleasure.” to which he in a moment added: “but the train for gloucester?” “a local one--11.22; with several stops, but doing it a good deal, i forget how much, within the hour. so that we’ve time. only,” she said, “we must employ our time.” he roused himself as from the mere momentary spell of her; he looked again at his watch while they moved back to the door through which she had advanced. but he had also again questions and stops--all as for the mystery and the charm. “you looked it up--without my having asked you?” “ah, my dear,” she laughed, “i’ve seen you with bradshaw! it takes anglo-saxon blood.” “‘blood’?” he echoed. “you’ve that of every race!” it kept her before him. “you’re terrible.” well, he could put it as he liked. “i know the name of the inn.” “what is it then?” “there are two--you’ll see. but i’ve chosen the right one. and i think i remember the tomb,” she smiled. “oh, the tomb--!” any tomb would do for him. “but i mean i had been keeping my idea so cleverly for you, while there you already were with it.” “you had been keeping it ‘for’ me as much as you like. but how do you make out,” she asked, “that you were keeping it from me?” “i don’t--now. how shall i ever keep anything--some day when i shall wish to?” “ah, for things i mayn’t want to know, i promise you shall find me stupid.” they had reached their door, where she herself paused to explain. “these days, yesterday, last night, this morning, i’ve wanted everything.” well, it was all right. “you shall have everything.” xxiii fanny, on her arrival in town, carried out her second idea, despatching the colonel to his club for luncheon and packing her maid into a cab, for cadogan place, with the variety of their effects. the result of this for each of the pair was a state of occupation so unbroken that the day practically passed without fresh contact between them. they dined out together, but it was both in going to their dinner and in coming back that they appeared, on either side, to have least to communicate. fanny was wrapped in her thoughts still more closely than in the lemon-coloured mantle that protected her bare shoulders, and her husband, with her silence to deal with, showed himself not less disposed than usual, when so challenged, to hold up, as he would have said, his end of it. they had, in general, in these days, longer pauses and more abrupt transitions; in one of which latter they found themselves, for a climax, launched at midnight. mrs. assingham, rather wearily housed again, ascended to the first floor, there to sink, overburdened, on the landing outside the drawing-room, into a great gilded venetian chair--of which at first, however, she but made, with her brooding face, a sort of throne of meditation. she would thus have recalled a little, with her so free orientalism of type, the immemorially speechless sphinx about at last to become articulate. the colonel, not unlike, on his side, some old pilgrim of the desert camping at the foot of that monument, went, by way of reconnoissance, into the drawing-room. he visited, according to his wont, the windows and their fastenings; he cast round the place the eye, all at once, of the master and the manager, the commandant and the rate-payer; then he came back to his wife, before whom, for a moment, he stood waiting. but she herself, for a time, continued to wait, only looking up at him inscrutably. there was in these minor manoeuvres and conscious patiences something of a suspension of their old custom of divergent discussion, that intercourse by misunderstanding which had grown so clumsy now. this familiar pleasantry seemed to desire to show it could yield, on occasion, to any clear trouble; though it was also sensibly, and just incoherently, in the air that no trouble was at present to be vulgarly recognised as clear. there might, for that matter, even have been in mr. assingham’s face a mild perception of some finer sense--a sense for his wife’s situation, and the very situation she was, oddly enough, about to repudiate--that she had fairly caused to grow in him. but it was a flower to breathe upon gently, and this was very much what she finally did. she knew he needed no telling that she had given herself, all the afternoon, to her friends in eaton square, and that her doing so would have been but the prompt result of impressions gathered, in quantities, in brimming baskets, like the purple grapes of the vintage, at matcham; a process surrounded by him, while it so unmistakably went on, with abstentions and discretions that might almost have counted as solemnities. the solemnities, at the same time, had committed him to nothing--to nothing beyond this confession itself of a consciousness of deep waters. she had been out on these waters, for him, visibly; and his tribute to the fact had been his keeping her, even if without a word, well in sight. he had not quitted for an hour, during her adventure, the shore of the mystic lake; he had on the contrary stationed himself where she could signal to him at need. her need would have arisen if the planks of her bark had parted--then some sort of plunge would have become his immediate duty. his present position, clearly, was that of seeing her in the centre of her sheet of dark water, and of wondering if her actual mute gaze at him didn’t perhaps mean that her planks were now parting. he held himself so ready that it was quite as if the inward man had pulled off coat and waistcoat. before he had plunged, however--that is before he had uttered a question--he perceived, not without relief, that she was making for land. he watched her steadily paddle, always a little nearer, and at last he felt her boat bump. the bump was distinct, and in fact she stepped ashore. “we were all wrong. there’s nothing.” “nothing--?” it was like giving her his hand up the bank. “between charlotte verver and the prince. i was uneasy--but i’m satisfied now. i was in fact quite mistaken. there’s nothing.” “but i thought,” said bob assingham, “that that was just what you did persistently asseverate. you’ve guaranteed their straightness from the first.” “no--i’ve never till now guaranteed anything but my own disposition to worry. i’ve never till now,” fanny went on gravely from her chair, “had such a chance to see and to judge. i had it at that place--if i had, in my infatuation and my folly,” she added with expression, “nothing else. so i did see--i have seen. and now i know.” her emphasis, as she repeated the word, made her head, in her seat of infallibility, rise higher. “i know.” the colonel took it--but took it at first in silence. “do you mean they’ve told you--?” “no--i mean nothing so absurd. for in the first place i haven’t asked them, and in the second their word in such a matter wouldn’t count.” “oh,” said the colonel with all his oddity, “they’d tell us.” it made her face him an instant as with her old impatience of his short cuts, always across her finest flower-beds; but she felt, none the less, that she kept her irony down. “then when they’ve told you, you’ll be perhaps so good as to let me know.” he jerked up his chin, testing the growth of his beard with the back of his hand while he fixed her with a single eye. “ah, i don’t say that they’d necessarily tell me that they are over the traces.” “they’ll necessarily, whatever happens, hold their tongues, i hope, and i’m talking of them now as i take them for myself only. that’s enough for me--it’s all i have to regard.” with which, after an instant, “they’re wonderful,” said fanny assingham. “indeed,” her husband concurred, “i really think they are.” “you’d think it still more if you knew. but you don’t know--because you don’t see. their situation”--this was what he didn’t see--“is too extraordinary.” “‘too’?” he was willing to try. “too extraordinary to be believed, i mean, if one didn’t see. but just that, in a way, is what saves them. they take it seriously.” he followed at his own pace. “their situation?” “the incredible side of it. they make it credible.” “credible then--you do say--to you?” she looked at him again for an interval. “they believe in it themselves. they take it for what it is. and that,” she said, “saves them.” “but if what it ‘is’ is just their chance--?” “it’s their chance for what i told you when charlotte first turned up. it’s their chance for the idea that i was then sure she had.” the colonel showed his effort to recall. “oh, your idea, at different moments, of any one of their ideas!” this dim procession, visibly, mustered before him, and, with the best will in the world, he could but watch its immensity. “are you speaking now of something to which you can comfortably settle down?” again, for a little, she only glowered at him. “i’ve come back to my belief, and that i have done so--” “well?” he asked as she paused. “well, shows that i’m right--for i assure you i had wandered far. now i’m at home again, and i mean,” said fanny assingham, “to stay here. they’re beautiful,” she declared. “the prince and charlotte?” “the prince and charlotte. that’s how they’re so remarkable. and the beauty,” she explained, “is that they’re afraid for them. afraid, i mean, for the others.” “for mr. verver and maggie?” it did take some following. “afraid of what?” “afraid of themselves.” the colonel wondered. “of themselves? of mr. verver’s and maggie’s selves?” mrs. assingham remained patient as well as lucid. “yes--of such blindness too. but most of all of their own danger.” he turned it over. “that danger being the blindness--?” “that danger being their position. what their position contains--of all the elements--i needn’t at this time of day attempt to tell you. it contains, luckily--for that’s the mercy--everything but blindness: i mean on their part. the blindness,” said fanny, “is primarily her husband’s.” he stood for a moment; he would have it straight. “whose husband’s?” “mr. verver’s,” she went on. “the blindness is most of all his. that they feel--that they see. but it’s also his wife’s.” “whose wife’s?” he asked as she continued to gloom at him in a manner at variance with the comparative cheer of her contention. and then as she only gloomed: “the prince’s?” “maggie’s own--maggie’s very own,” she pursued as for herself. he had a pause. “do you think maggie so blind?” “the question isn’t of what i think. the question’s of the conviction that guides the prince and charlotte--who have better opportunities than i for judging.” the colonel again wondered. “are you so very sure their opportunities are better?” “well,” his wife asked, “what is their whole so extraordinary situation, their extraordinary relation, but an opportunity?” “ah, my dear, you have that opportunity--of their extraordinary situation and relation--as much as they.” “with the difference, darling,” she returned with some spirit, “that neither of those matters are, if you please, mine. i see the boat they’re in, but i’m not, thank god, in it myself. to-day, however,” mrs. assingham added, “to-day in eaton square i did see.” “well then, what?” but she mused over it still. “oh, many things. more, somehow, than ever before. it was as if, god help me, i was seeing for them--i mean for the others. it was as if something had happened--i don’t know what, except some effect of these days with them at that place--that had either made things come out or had cleared my own eyes.” these eyes indeed of the poor lady’s rested on her companion’s, meanwhile, with the lustre not so much of intenser insight as of a particular portent that he had at various other times had occasion to recognise. she desired, obviously, to reassure him, but it apparently took a couple of large, candid, gathering, glittering tears to emphasise the fact. they had immediately, for him, their usual direct action: she must reassure him, he was made to feel, absolutely in her own way. he would adopt it and conform to it as soon as he should be able to make it out. the only thing was that it took such incalculable twists and turns. the twist seemed remarkable for instance as she developed her indication of what had come out in the afternoon. “it was as if i knew better than ever what makes them--” “what makes them?”--he pressed her as she fitfully dropped. “well, makes the prince and charlotte take it all as they do. it might well have been difficult to know how to take it; and they may even say for themselves that they were a long time trying to see. as i say, to-day,” she went on, “it was as if i were suddenly, with a kind of horrible push, seeing through their eyes.” on which, as to shake off her perversity, fanny assingham sprang up. but she remained there, under the dim illumination, and while the colonel, with his high, dry, spare look of “type,” to which a certain conformity to the whiteness of inaccessible snows in his necktie, shirt-front and waistcoat gave a rigour of accent, waited, watching her, they might, at the late hour and in the still house, have been a pair of specious worldly adventurers, driven for relief, under sudden stress, to some grim midnight reckoning in an odd corner. her attention moved mechanically over the objects of ornament disposed too freely on the walls of staircase and landing, as to which recognition, for the time, had lost both fondness and compunction. “i can imagine the way it works,” she said; “it’s so easy to understand. yet i don’t want to be wrong,” she the next moment broke out “i don’t, i don’t want to be wrong!” “to make a mistake, you mean?” oh no, she meant nothing of the sort; she knew but too well what she meant. “i don’t make mistakes. but i perpetrate--in thought--crimes.” and she spoke with all intensity. “i’m a most dreadful person. there are times when i seem not to mind a bit what i’ve done, or what i think or imagine or fear or accept; when i feel that i’d do it again--feel that i’d do things myself.” “ah, my dear!” the colonel remarked in the coolness of debate. “yes, if you had driven me back on my ‘nature.’ luckily for you you never have. you’ve done every thing else, but you’ve never done that. but what i really don’t a bit want,” she declared, “is to abet them or to protect them.” her companion turned this over. “what is there to protect them from?--if, by your now so settled faith, they’ve done nothing that justly exposes them.” and it in fact half pulled her up. “well, from a sudden scare. from the alarm, i mean, of what maggie may think.” “yet if your whole idea is that maggie thinks nothing--?” she waited again. “it isn’t my ‘whole’ idea. nothing is my ‘whole’ idea--for i felt to-day, as i tell you, that there’s so much in the air.” “oh, in the air--!” the colonel dryly breathed. “well, what’s in the air always has--hasn’t it?--to come down to the earth. and maggie,” mrs. assingham continued, “is a very curious little person. since i was ‘in,’ this afternoon, for seeing more than i had ever done--well, i felt that too, for some reason, as i hadn’t yet felt it.” “for ‘some’ reason? for what reason?” and then, as his wife at first said nothing: “did she give any sign? was she in any way different?” “she’s always so different from anyone else in the world that it’s hard to say when she’s different from herself. but she has made me,” said fanny after an instant, “think of her differently. she drove me home.” “home here?” “first to portland place--on her leaving her father: since she does, once in a while, leave him. that was to keep me with her a little longer. but she kept the carriage and, after tea there, came with me herself back here. this was also for the same purpose. then she went home, though i had brought her a message from the prince that arranged their movements otherwise. he and charlotte must have arrived--if they have arrived--expecting to drive together to eaton square and keep maggie on to dinner there. she has everything there, you know--she has clothes.” the colonel didn’t in fact know, but he gave it his apprehension. “oh, you mean a change?” “twenty changes, if you like--all sorts of things. she dresses, really, maggie does, as much for her father--and she always did--as for her husband or for herself. she has her room in his house very much as she had it before she was married--and just as the boy has quite a second nursery there, in which mrs. noble, when she comes with him, makes herself, i assure you, at home. si bien that if charlotte, in her own house, so to speak, should wish a friend or two to stay with her, she really would be scarce able to put them up.” it was a picture into which, as a thrifty entertainer himself, bob assingham could more or less enter. “maggie and the child spread so?” “maggie and the child spread so.” well, he considered. “it is rather rum,” “that’s all i claim”--she seemed thankful for the word. “i don’t say it’s anything more--but it is, distinctly, rum.” which, after an instant, the colonel took up. “‘more’? what more could it be?” “it could be that she’s unhappy, and that she takes her funny little way of consoling herself. for if she were unhappy”--mrs. assingham had figured it out--“that’s just the way, i’m convinced, she would take. but how can she be unhappy, since--as i’m also convinced--she, in the midst of everything, adores her husband as much as ever?” the colonel at this brooded for a little at large. “then if she’s so happy, please what’s the matter?” it made his wife almost spring at him. “you think then she’s secretly wretched?” but he threw up his arms in deprecation. “ah, my dear, i give them up to you. i’ve nothing more to suggest.” “then it’s not sweet of you.” she spoke at present as if he were frequently sweet. “you admit that it is ‘rum.’” and this indeed fixed again, for a moment, his intention. “has charlotte complained of the want of rooms for her friends?” “never, that i know of, a word. it isn’t the sort of thing she does. and whom has she, after all,” mrs. assingham added, “to complain to?” “hasn’t she always you?” “oh, ‘me’! charlotte and i, nowadays--!” she spoke as of a chapter closed. “yet see the justice i still do her. she strikes me, more and more, as extraordinary.” a deeper shade, at the renewal of the word, had come into the colonel’s face. “if they’re each and all so extraordinary then, isn’t that why one must just resign one’s self to wash one’s hands of them--to be lost?” her face, however, so met the question as if it were but a flicker of the old tone that their trouble had now become too real for--her charged eyes so betrayed the condition of her nerves that he stepped back, alertly enough, to firmer ground. he had spoken before in this light of a plain man’s vision, but he must be something more than a plain man now. “hasn’t she then, charlotte, always her husband--?” “to complain to? she’d rather die.” “oh!”--and bob assingham’s face, at the vision of such extremities, lengthened for very docility. “hasn’t she the prince then?” “for such matters? oh, he doesn’t count.” “i thought that was just what--as the basis of our agitation--he does do!” mrs. assingham, however, had her distinction ready. “not a bit as a person to bore with complaints. the ground of my agitation is, exactly, that she never on any pretext bores him. not charlotte!” and in the imagination of mrs. verver’s superiority to any such mistake she gave, characteristically, something like a toss of her head--as marked a tribute to that lady’s general grace, in all the conditions, as the personage referred to doubtless had ever received. “ah, only maggie!” with which the colonel gave a short low gurgle. but it found his wife again prepared. “no--not only maggie. a great many people in london--and small wonder!--bore him.” “maggie only worst then?” but it was a question that he had promptly dropped at the returning brush of another, of which she had shortly before sown the seed. “you said just now that he would by this time be back with charlotte ‘if they have arrived.’ you think it then possible that they really won’t have returned?” his companion exhibited to view, for the idea, a sense of her responsibility; but this was insufficient, clearly, to keep her from entertaining it. “i think there’s nothing they’re not now capable of--in their so intense good faith.” “good faith?”--he echoed the words, which had in fact something of an odd ring, critically. “their false position. it comes to the same thing.” and she bore down, with her decision, the superficial lack of sequence. “they may very possibly, for a demonstration--as i see them--not have come back.” he wondered, visibly, at this, how she did see them. “may have bolted somewhere together?” “may have stayed over at matcham itself till tomorrow. may have wired home, each of them, since maggie left me. may have done,” fanny assingham continued, “god knows what!” she went on, suddenly, with more emotion--which, at the pressure of some spring of her inner vision, broke out in a wail of distress, imperfectly smothered. “whatever they’ve done i shall never know. never, never--because i don’t want to, and because nothing will induce me. so they may do as they like. but i’ve worked for them all” she uttered this last with another irrepressible quaver, and the next moment her tears had come, though she had, with the explosion, quitted her husband as if to hide it from him. she passed into the dusky drawing-room, where, during his own prowl, shortly previous, he had drawn up a blind, so that the light of the street-lamps came in a little at the window. she made for this window, against which she leaned her head, while the colonel, with his lengthened face, looked after her for a minute and hesitated. he might have been wondering what she had really done, to what extent, beyond his knowledge or his conception, in the affairs of these people, she could have committed herself. but to hear her cry, and yet try not to, was, quickly enough, too much for him; he had known her at other times quite not try not to, and that had not been so bad. he went to her and put his arm round her; he drew her head to his breast, where, while she gasped, she let it stay a little--all with a patience that presently stilled her. yet the effect of this small crisis, oddly enough, was not to close their colloquy, with the natural result of sending them to bed: what was between them had opened out further, had somehow, through the sharp show of her feeling, taken a positive stride, had entered, as it were, without more words, the region of the understood, shutting the door after it and bringing them so still more nearly face to face. they remained for some minutes looking at it through the dim window which opened upon the world of human trouble in general and which let the vague light play here and there upon gilt and crystal and colour, the florid features, looming dimly, of fanny’s drawing-room. and the beauty of what thus passed between them, passed with her cry of pain, with her burst of tears, with his wonderment and his kindness and his comfort, with the moments of their silence, above all, which might have represented their sinking together, hand in hand, for a time, into the mystic lake where he had begun, as we have hinted, by seeing her paddle alone--the beauty of it was that they now could really talk better than before, because the basis had at last, once for all, defined itself. what was the basis, which fanny absolutely exacted, but that charlotte and the prince must be saved--so far as consistently speaking of them as still safe might save them? it did save them, somehow, for fanny’s troubled mind--for that was the nature of the mind of women. he conveyed to her now, at all events, by refusing her no gentleness, that he had sufficiently got the tip, and that the tip was all he had wanted. this remained quite clear even when he presently reverted to what she had told him of her recent passage with maggie. “i don’t altogether see, you know, what you infer from it, or why you infer anything.” when he so expressed himself it was quite as if in possession of what they had brought up from the depths. xxiv “i can’t say more,” this made his companion reply, “than that something in her face, her voice and her whole manner acted upon me as nothing in her had ever acted before; and just for the reason, above all, that i felt her trying her very best--and her very best, poor duck, is very good--to be quiet and natural. it’s when one sees people who always are natural making little pale, pathetic, blinking efforts for it--then it is that one knows something’s the matter. i can’t describe my impression--you would have had it for yourself. and the only thing that ever can be the matter with maggie is that. by ‘that’ i mean her beginning to doubt. to doubt, for the first time,” mrs. assingham wound up, “of her wonderful little judgment of her wonderful little world.” it was impressive, fanny’s vision, and the colonel, as if himself agitated by it, took another turn of prowling. “to doubt of fidelity--to doubt of friendship! poor duck indeed! it will go hard with her. but she’ll put it all,” he concluded, “on charlotte.” mrs. assingham, still darkly contemplative, denied this with a headshake. “she won’t ‘put’ it anywhere. she won’t do with it anything anyone else would. she’ll take it all herself.” “you mean she’ll make it out her own fault?” “yes--she’ll find means, somehow, to arrive at that.” “ah then,” the colonel dutifully declared, “she’s indeed a little brick!” “oh,” his wife returned, “you’ll see, in one way or another, to what tune!” and she spoke, of a sudden, with an approach to elation--so that, as if immediately feeling his surprise, she turned round to him. “she’ll see me somehow through!” “see you--?” “yes, me. i’m the worst. for,” said fanny assingham, now with a harder exaltation, “i did it all. i recognise that--i accept it. she won’t cast it up at me--she won’t cast up anything. so i throw myself upon her--she’ll bear me up.” she spoke almost volubly--she held him with her sudden sharpness. “she’ll carry the whole weight of us.” there was still, nevertheless, wonder in it. “you mean she won’t mind? i say, love--!” and he not unkindly stared. “then where’s the difficulty?” “there isn’t any!” fanny declared with the same rich emphasis. it kept him indeed, as by the loss of the thread, looking at her longer. “ah, you mean there isn’t any for us!” she met his look for a minute as if it perhaps a little too much imputed a selfishness, a concern, at any cost, for their own surface. then she might have been deciding that their own surface was, after all, what they had most to consider. “not,” she said with dignity, “if we properly keep our heads.” she appeared even to signify that they would begin by keeping them now. this was what it was to have at last a constituted basis. “do you remember what you said to me that night of my first real anxiety--after the foreign office party?” “in the carriage--as we came home?” yes--he could recall it. “leave them to pull through?” “precisely. ‘trust their own wit,’ you practically said, ‘to save all appearances.’ well, i’ve trusted it. i have left them to pull through.” he hesitated. “and your point is that they’re not doing so?” “i’ve left them,” she went on, “but now i see how and where. i’ve been leaving them all the while, without knowing it, to her.” “to the princess?” “and that’s what i mean,” mrs. assingham pensively pursued. “that’s what happened to me with her to-day,” she continued to explain. “it came home to me that that’s what i’ve really been doing.” “oh, i see.” “i needn’t torment myself. she has taken them over.” the colonel declared that he “saw”; yet it was as if, at this, he a little sightlessly stared. “but what then has happened, from one day to the other, to her? what has opened her eyes?” “they were never really shut. she misses him.” “then why hasn’t she missed him before?” well, facing him there, among their domestic glooms and glints, fanny worked it out. “she did--but she wouldn’t let herself know it. she had her reason--she wore her blind. now, at last, her situation has come to a head. to-day she does know it. and that’s illuminating. it has been,” mrs. assingham wound up, “illuminating to me.” her husband attended, but the momentary effect of his attention was vagueness again, and the refuge of his vagueness was a gasp. “poor dear little girl!” “ah no--don’t pity her!” this did, however, pull him up. “we mayn’t even be sorry for her?” “not now--or at least not yet. it’s too soon--that is if it isn’t very much too late. this will depend,” mrs. assingham went on; “at any rate we shall see. we might have pitied her before--for all the good it would then have done her; we might have begun some time ago. now, however, she has begun to live. and the way it comes to me, the way it comes to me--” but again she projected her vision. “the way it comes to you can scarcely be that she’ll like it!” “the way it comes to me is that she will live. the way it comes to me is that she’ll triumph.” she said this with so sudden a prophetic flare that it fairly cheered her husband. “ah then, we must back her!” “no--we mustn’t touch her. we mayn’t touch any of them. we must keep our hands off; we must go on tiptoe. we must simply watch and wait. and meanwhile,” said mrs. assingham, “we must bear it as we can. that’s where we are--and serves us right. we’re in presence.” and so, moving about the room as in communion with shadowy portents, she left it till he questioned again. “in presence of what?” “well, of something possibly beautiful. beautiful as it may come off.” she had paused there before him while he wondered. “you mean she’ll get the prince back?” she raised her hand in quick impatience: the suggestion might have been almost abject. “it isn’t a question of recovery. it won’t be a question of any vulgar struggle. to ‘get him back’ she must have lost him, and to have lost him she must have had him.” with which fanny shook her head. “what i take her to be waking up to is the truth that, all the while, she really hasn’t had him. never.” “ah, my dear--!” the poor colonel panted. “never!” his wife repeated. and she went on without pity. “do you remember what i said to you long ago--that evening, just before their marriage, when charlotte had so suddenly turned up?” the smile with which he met this appeal was not, it was to be feared, robust. “what haven’t you, love, said in your time?” “so many things, no doubt, that they make a chance for my having once or twice spoken the truth. i never spoke it more, at all events, than when i put it to you, that evening, that maggie was the person in the world to whom a wrong thing could least be communicated. it was as if her imagination had been closed to it, her sense altogether sealed, that therefore,” fanny continued, “is what will now have to happen. her sense will have to open.” “i see.” he nodded. “to the wrong.” he nodded again, almost cheerfully--as if he had been keeping the peace with a baby or a lunatic. “to the very, very wrong.” but his wife’s spirit, after its effort of wing, was able to remain higher. “to what’s called evil--with a very big e: for the first time in her life. to the discovery of it, to the knowledge of it, to the crude experience of it.” and she gave, for the possibility, the largest measure. “to the harsh, bewildering brush, the daily chilling breath of it. unless indeed”--and here mrs. assingham noted a limit “unless indeed, as yet (so far as she has come, and if she comes no further), simply to the suspicion and the dread. what we shall see is whether that mere dose of alarm will prove enough.” he considered. “but enough for what then, dear--if not enough to break her heart?” “enough to give her a shaking!” mrs. assingham rather oddly replied. “to give her, i mean, the right one. the right one won’t break her heart. it will make her,” she explained--“well, it will make her, by way of a change, understand one or two things in the world.” “but isn’t it a pity,” the colonel asked, “that they should happen to be the one or two that will be the most disagreeable to her?” “oh, ‘disagreeable’--? they’ll have had to be disagreeable--to show her a little where she is. they’ll have had to be disagreeable to make her sit up. they’ll have had to be disagreeable to make her decide to live.” bob assingham was now at the window, while his companion slowly revolved; he had lighted a cigarette, for final patience, and he seemed vaguely to “time” her as she moved to and fro. he had at the same time to do justice to the lucidity she had at last attained, and it was doubtless by way of expression of this teachability that he let his eyes, for a minute, roll, as from the force of feeling, over the upper dusk of the room. he had thought of the response his wife’s words ideally implied. “decide to live--ah yes!--for her child.” “oh, bother her child!”--and he had never felt so snubbed, for an exemplary view, as when fanny now stopped short. “to live, you poor dear, for her father--which is another pair of sleeves!” and mrs. assingham’s whole ample, ornamented person irradiated, with this, the truth that had begun, under so much handling, to glow. “any idiot can do things for her child. she’ll have a motive more original, and we shall see how it will work her. she’ll have to save him.” “to ‘save’ him--?” “to keep her father from her own knowledge. that”--and she seemed to see it, before her, in her husband’s very eyes--“will be work cut out!” with which, as at the highest conceivable climax, she wound up their colloquy. “good night!” there was something in her manner, however--or in the effect, at least, of this supreme demonstration that had fairly, and by a single touch, lifted him to her side; so that, after she had turned her back to regain the landing and the staircase, he overtook her, before she had begun to mount, with the ring of excited perception. “ah, but, you know, that’s rather jolly!” “jolly’--?” she turned upon it, again, at the foot of the staircase. “i mean it’s rather charming.” “‘charming’--?” it had still to be their law, a little, that she was tragic when he was comic. “i mean it’s rather beautiful. you just said, yourself, it would be. only,” he pursued promptly, with the impetus of this idea, and as if it had suddenly touched with light for him connections hitherto dim--“only i don’t quite see why that very care for him which has carried her to such other lengths, precisely, as affect one as so ‘rum,’ hasn’t also, by the same stroke, made her notice a little more what has been going on.” “ah, there you are! it’s the question that i’ve all along been asking myself.” she had rested her eyes on the carpet, but she raised them as she pursued--she let him have it straight. “and it’s the question of an idiot.” “an idiot--?” “well, the idiot that i’ve been, in all sorts of ways--so often, of late, have i asked it. you’re excusable, since you ask it but now. the answer, i saw to-day, has all the while been staring me in the face.” “then what in the world is it?” “why, the very intensity of her conscience about him--the very passion of her brave little piety. that’s the way it has worked,” mrs. assingham explained “and i admit it to have been as ‘rum’ a way as possible. but it has been working from a rum start. from the moment the dear man married to ease his daughter off, and it then happened, by an extraordinary perversity, that the very opposite effect was produced--!” with the renewed vision of this fatality, however, she could give but a desperate shrug. “i see,” the colonel sympathetically mused. “that was a rum start.” but his very response, as she again flung up her arms, seemed to make her sense, for a moment, intolerable. “yes--there i am! i was really at the bottom of it,” she declared; “i don’t know what possessed me--but i planned for him, i goaded him on.” with which, however, the next moment, she took herself up. “or, rather, i do know what possessed me--for wasn’t he beset with ravening women, right and left, and didn’t he, quite pathetically, appeal for protection, didn’t he, quite charmingly, show one how he needed and desired it? maggie,” she thus lucidly continued, “couldn’t, with a new life of her own, give herself up to doing for him in the future all she had done in the past--to fencing him in, to keeping him safe and keeping them off. one perceived this,” she went on--“out of the abundance of one’s affection and one’s sympathy.” it all blessedly came back to her--when it wasn’t all, for the fiftieth time, obscured, in face of the present facts, by anxiety and compunction. “one was no doubt a meddlesome fool; one always is, to think one sees people’s lives for them better than they see them for themselves. but one’s excuse here,” she insisted, “was that these people clearly didn’t see them for themselves--didn’t see them at all. it struck one for very pity--that they were making a mess of such charming material; that they were but wasting it and letting it go. they didn’t know how to live--and somehow one couldn’t, if one took an interest in them at all, simply stand and see it. that’s what i pay for”--and the poor woman, in straighter communion with her companion’s intelligence at this moment, she appeared to feel, than she had ever been before, let him have the whole of the burden of her consciousness. “i always pay for it, sooner or later, my sociable, my damnable, my unnecessary interest. nothing of course would suit me but that it should fix itself also on charlotte--charlotte who was hovering there on the edge of our lives, when not beautifully, and a trifle mysteriously, flitting across them, and who was a piece of waste and a piece of threatened failure, just as, for any possible good to the world, mr. verver and maggie were. it began to come over me, in the watches of the night, that charlotte was a person who could keep off ravening women--without being one herself, either, in the vulgar way of the others; and that this service to mr. verver would be a sweet employment for her future. there was something, of course, that might have stopped me: you know, you know what i mean--it looks at me,” she veritably moaned, “out of your face! but all i can say is that it didn’t; the reason largely being--once i had fallen in love with the beautiful symmetry of my plan--that i seemed to feel sure maggie would accept charlotte, whereas i didn’t quite make out either what other woman, or what other kind of woman, one could think of her accepting.” “i see--i see.” she had paused, meeting all the while his listening look, and the fever of her retrospect had so risen with her talk that the desire was visibly strong in him to meet her, on his side, but with cooling breath. “one quite understands, my dear.” it only, however, kept her there sombre. “i naturally see, love, what you understand; which sits again, perfectly, in your eyes. you see that i saw that maggie would accept her in helpless ignorance. yes, dearest”--and the grimness of her dreariness suddenly once more possessed her: “you’ve only to tell me that that knowledge was my reason for what i did. how, when you do, can i stand up to you? you see,” she said with an ineffable headshake, “that i don’t stand up! i’m down, down, down,” she declared; “yet” she as quickly added--“there’s just one little thing that helps to save my life.” and she kept him waiting but an instant. “they might easily--they would perhaps even certainly--have done something worse.” he thought. “worse than that charlotte--?” “ah, don’t tell me,” she cried, “that there could have been nothing worse. there might, as they were, have been many things. charlotte, in her way, is extraordinary.” he was almost simultaneous. “extraordinary!” “she observes the forms,” said fanny assingham. he hesitated. “with the prince--?” “for the prince. and with the others,” she went on. “with mr. verver--wonderfully. but above all with maggie. and the forms”--she had to do even them justice--“are two-thirds of conduct. say he had married a woman who would have made a hash of them.” but he jerked back. “ah, my dear, i wouldn’t say it for the world!” “say,” she none the less pursued, “he had married a woman the prince would really have cared for.” “you mean then he doesn’t care for charlotte--?” this was still a new view to jump to, and the colonel, perceptibly, wished to make sure of the necessity of the effort. for that, while he stared, his wife allowed him time; at the end of which she simply said: “no!” “then what on earth are they up to?” still, however, she only looked at him; so that, standing there before her with his hands in his pockets, he had time, further, to risk, soothingly, another question. “are the ‘forms’ you speak of--that are two-thirds of conduct--what will be keeping her now, by your hypothesis, from coming home with him till morning?” “yes--absolutely. their forms.” “‘theirs’--?” “maggie’s and mr. verver’s--those they impose on charlotte and the prince. those,” she developed, “that, so perversely, as i say, have succeeded in setting themselves up as the right ones.” he considered--but only now, at last, really to relapse into woe. “your ‘perversity,’ my dear, is exactly what i don’t understand. the state of things existing hasn’t grown, like a field of mushrooms, in a night. whatever they, all round, may be in for now is at least the consequence of what they’ve done. are they mere helpless victims of fate?” well, fanny at last had the courage of it, “yes--they are. to be so abjectly innocent--that is to be victims of fate.” “and charlotte and the prince are abjectly innocent--?” it took her another minute, but she rose to the full height. “yes. that is they were--as much so in their way as the others. there were beautiful intentions all round. the prince’s and charlotte’s were beautiful--of that i had my faith. they were--i’d go to the stake. otherwise,” she added, “i should have been a wretch. and i’ve not been a wretch. i’ve only been a double-dyed donkey.” “ah then,” he asked, “what does our muddle make them to have been?” “well, too much taken up with considering each other. you may call such a mistake as that by what ever name you please; it at any rate means, all round, their case. it illustrates the misfortune,” said mrs. assingham gravely, “of being too, too charming.” this was another matter that took some following, but the colonel again did his best. “yes, but to whom?--doesn’t it rather depend on that? to whom have the prince and charlotte then been too charming?” “to each other, in the first place--obviously. and then both of them together to maggie.” “to maggie?” he wonderingly echoed. “to maggie.” she was now crystalline. “by having accepted, from the first, so guilelessly--yes, so guilelessly, themselves--her guileless idea of still having her father, of keeping him fast, in her life.” “then isn’t one supposed, in common humanity, and if one hasn’t quarrelled with him, and one has the means, and he, on his side, doesn’t drink or kick up rows--isn’t one supposed to keep one’s aged parent in one’s life?” “certainly--when there aren’t particular reasons against it. that there may be others than his getting drunk is exactly the moral of what is before us. in the first place mr. verver isn’t aged.” the colonel just hung fire--but it came. “then why the deuce does he--oh, poor dear man!--behave as if he were?” she took a moment to meet it. “how do you know how he behaves?” “well, my own love, we see how charlotte does!” again, at this, she faltered; but again she rose. “ah, isn’t my whole point that he’s charming to her?” “doesn’t it depend a bit on what she regards as charming?” she faced the question as if it were flippant, then with a headshake of dignity she brushed it away. “it’s mr. verver who’s really young--it’s charlotte who’s really old. and what i was saying,” she added, “isn’t affected!” “you were saying”--he did her the justice--“that they’re all guileless.” “that they were. guileless, all, at first--quite extraordinarily. it’s what i mean by their failure to see that the more they took for granted they could work together the more they were really working apart. for i repeat,” fanny went on, “that i really believe charlotte and the prince honestly to have made up their minds, originally, that their very esteem for mr. verver--which was serious, as well it might be!--would save them.” “i see.” the colonel inclined himself. “and save him.” “it comes to the same thing!” “then save maggie.” “that comes,” said mrs. assingham, “to something a little different. for maggie has done the most.” he wondered. “what do you call the most?” “well, she did it originally--she began the vicious circle. for that--though you make round eyes at my associating her with ‘vice’--is simply what it has been. it’s their mutual consideration, all round, that has made it the bottomless gulf; and they’re really so embroiled but because, in their way, they’ve been so improbably good.” “in their way--yes!” the colonel grinned. “which was, above all, maggie’s way.” no flicker of his ribaldry was anything to her now. “maggie had in the first place to make up to her father for her having suffered herself to become--poor little dear, as she believed--so intensely married. then she had to make up to her husband for taking so much of the time they might otherwise have spent together to make this reparation to mr. verver perfect. and her way to do this, precisely, was by allowing the prince the use, the enjoyment, whatever you may call it, of charlotte to cheer his path--by instalments, as it were--in proportion as she herself, making sure her father was all right, might be missed from his side. by so much, at the same time, however,” mrs. assingham further explained, “by so much as she took her young stepmother, for this purpose, away from mr. verver, by just so much did this too strike her as something again to be made up for. it has saddled her, you will easily see, with a positively new obligation to her father, an obligation created and aggravated by her unfortunate, even if quite heroic, little sense of justice. she began with wanting to show him that his marriage could never, under whatever temptation of her own bliss with the prince, become for her a pretext for deserting or neglecting him. then that, in its order, entailed her wanting to show the prince that she recognised how the other desire--this wish to remain, intensely, the same passionate little daughter she had always been--involved in some degree, and just for the present, so to speak, her neglecting and deserting him. i quite hold,” fanny with characteristic amplitude parenthesised, “that a person can mostly feel but one passion--one tender passion, that is--at a time. only, that doesn’t hold good for our primary and instinctive attachments, the ‘voice of blood,’ such as one’s feeling for a parent or a brother. those may be intense and yet not prevent other intensities--as you will recognise, my dear, when you remember how i continued, tout betement, to adore my mother, whom you didn’t adore, for years after i had begun to adore you. well, maggie”--she kept it up--“is in the same situation as i was, plus complications from which i was, thank heaven, exempt: plus the complication, above all, of not having in the least begun with the sense for complications that i should have had. before she knew it, at any rate, her little scruples and her little lucidities, which were really so divinely blind--her feverish little sense of justice, as i say--had brought the two others together as her grossest misconduct couldn’t have done. and now she knows something or other has happened--yet hasn’t heretofore known what. she has only piled up her remedy, poor child--something that she has earnestly but confusedly seen as her necessary policy; piled it on top of the policy, on top of the remedy, that she at first thought out for herself, and that would really have needed, since then, so much modification. her only modification has been the growth of her necessity to prevent her father’s wondering if all, in their life in common, may be so certainly for the best. she has now as never before to keep him unconscious that, peculiar, if he makes a point of it, as their situation is, there’s anything in it all uncomfortable or disagreeable, anything morally the least out of the way. she has to keep touching it up to make it, each day, each month, look natural and normal to him; so that--god forgive me the comparison!--she’s like an old woman who has taken to ‘painting’ and who has to lay it on thicker, to carry it off with a greater audacity, with a greater impudence even, the older she grows.” and fanny stood a moment captivated with the image she had thrown off. “i like the idea of maggie audacious and impudent--learning to be so to gloss things over. she could--she even will, yet, i believe--learn it, for that sacred purpose, consummately, diabolically. for from the moment the dear man should see it’s all rouge--!” she paused, staring at the vision. it imparted itself even to bob. “then the fun would begin?” as it but made her look at him hard, however, he amended the form of his inquiry. “you mean that in that case she will, charming creature, be lost?” she was silent a moment more. “as i’ve told you before, she won’t be lost if her father’s saved. she’ll see that as salvation enough.” the colonel took it in. “then she’s a little heroine.” “rather--she’s a little heroine. but it’s his innocence, above all,” mrs. assingham added, “that will pull them through.” her companion, at this, focussed again mr. verver’s innocence. “it’s awfully quaint.” “of course it’s awfully quaint! that it’s awfully quaint, that the pair are awfully quaint, quaint with all our dear old quaintness--by which i don’t mean yours and mine, but that of my own sweet countrypeople, from whom i’ve so deplorably degenerated--that,” mrs. assingham declared, “was originally the head and front of their appeal to me and of my interest in them. and of course i shall feel them quainter still,” she rather ruefully subjoined, “before they’ve done with me!” this might be, but it wasn’t what most stood in the colonel’s way. “you believe so in mr. verver’s innocence after two years of charlotte?” she stared. “but the whole point is just that two years of charlotte are what he hasn’t really--or what you may call undividedly--had.” “any more than maggie, by your theory, eh, has ‘really or undividedly,’ had four of the prince? it takes all she hasn’t had,” the colonel conceded, “to account for the innocence that in her, too, so leaves us in admiration.” so far as it might be ribald again she let this pass. “it takes a great many things to account for maggie. what is definite, at all events, is that--strange though this be--her effort for her father has, up to now, sufficiently succeeded. she has made him, she makes him, accept the tolerably obvious oddity of their relation, all round, for part of the game. behind her there, protected and amused and, as it were, exquisitely humbugged--the principino, in whom he delights, always aiding--he has safely and serenely enough suffered the conditions of his life to pass for those he had sublimely projected. he hadn’t worked them out in detail--any more than i had, heaven pity me!--and the queerness has been, exactly, in the detail. this, for him, is what it was to have married charlotte. and they both,” she neatly wound up, “‘help.’” “‘both’--?” “i mean that if maggie, always in the breach, makes it seem to him all so flourishingly to fit, charlotte does her part not less. and her part is very large. charlotte,” fanny declared, “works like a horse.” so there it all was, and her husband looked at her a minute across it. “and what does the prince work like?” she fixed him in return. “like a prince!” whereupon, breaking short off, to ascend to her room, she presented her highly--decorated back--in which, in odd places, controlling the complications of its aspect, the ruby or the garnet, the turquoise and the topaz, gleamed like faint symbols of the wit that pinned together the satin patches of her argument. he watched her as if she left him positively under the impression of her mastery of her subject; yes, as if the real upshot of the drama before them was but that he had, when it came to the tight places of life--as life had shrunk for him now--the most luminous of wives. he turned off, in this view of her majestic retreat, the comparatively faint little electric lamp which had presided over their talk; then he went up as immediately behind her as the billows of her amber train allowed, making out how all the clearness they had conquered was even for herself a relief--how at last the sense of the amplitude of her exposition sustained and floated her. joining her, however, on the landing above, where she had already touched a metallic point into light, he found she had done perhaps even more to create than to extinguish in him the germ of a curiosity. he held her a minute longer--there was another plum in the pie. “what did you mean some minutes ago by his not caring for charlotte?” “the prince’s? by his not ‘really’ caring?” she recalled, after a little, benevolently enough. “i mean that men don’t, when it has all been too easy. that’s how, in nine cases out of ten, a woman is treated who has risked her life. you asked me just now how he works,” she added; “but you might better perhaps have asked me how he plays.” well, he made it up. “like a prince?” “like a prince. he is, profoundly, a prince. for that,” she said with expression, “he’s--beautifully--a case. they’re far rarer, even in the ‘highest circles,’ than they pretend to be--and that’s what makes so much of his value. he’s perhaps one of the very last--the last of the real ones. so it is we must take him. we must take him all round.” the colonel considered. “and how must charlotte--if anything happens--take him?” the question held her a minute, and while she waited, with her eyes on him, she put out a grasping hand to his arm, in the flesh of which he felt her answer distinctly enough registered. thus she gave him, standing off a little, the firmest, longest, deepest injunction he had ever received from her. “nothing--in spite of everything--will happen. nothing has happened. nothing is happening.” he looked a trifle disappointed. “i see. for us.” “for us. for whom else?” and he was to feel indeed how she wished him to understand it. “we know nothing on earth--!” it was an undertaking he must sign. so he wrote, as it were, his name. “we know nothing on earth.” it was like the soldiers’ watchword at night. “we’re as innocent,” she went on in the same way, “as babes.” “why not rather say,” he asked, “as innocent as they themselves are?” “oh, for the best of reasons! because we’re much more so.” he wondered. “but how can we be more--?” “for them? oh, easily! we can be anything.” “absolute idiots then?” “absolute idiots. and oh,” fanny breathed, “the way it will rest us!” well, he looked as if there were something in that. “but won’t they know we’re not?” she barely hesitated. “charlotte and the prince think we are--which is so much gained. mr. verver believes in our intelligence--but he doesn’t matter.” “and maggie? doesn’t she know--?” “that we see before our noses?” yes, this indeed took longer. “oh, so far as she may guess it she’ll give no sign. so it comes to the same thing.” he raised his eyebrows. “comes to our not being able to help her?” “that’s the way we shall help her.” “by looking like fools?” she threw up her hands. “she only wants, herself, to look like a bigger! so there we are!” with which she brushed it away--his conformity was promised. something, however, still held her; it broke, to her own vision, as a last wave of clearness. “moreover now,” she said, “i see! i mean,” she added,--“what you were asking me: how i knew to-day, in eaton square, that maggie’s awake.” and she had indeed visibly got it. “it was by seeing them together.” “seeing her with her father?” he fell behind again. “but you’ve seen her often enough before.” “never with my present eyes. for nothing like such a test--that of this length of the others’ absence together--has hitherto occurred.” “possibly! but if she and mr. verver insisted upon it--?” “why is it such a test? because it has become one without their intending it. it has spoiled, so to speak, on their hands.” “it has soured, eh?” the colonel said. “the word’s horrible--say rather it has ‘changed.’ perhaps,” fanny went on, “she did wish to see how much she can bear. in that case she has seen. only it was she alone who--about the visit--insisted. her father insists on nothing. and she watches him do it.” her husband looked impressed. “watches him?” “for the first faint sign. i mean of his noticing. it doesn’t, as i tell you, come. but she’s there for it to see. and i felt,” she continued, “how she’s there; i caught her, as it were, in the fact. she couldn’t keep it from me--though she left her post on purpose--came home with me to throw dust in my eyes. i took it all--her dust; but it was what showed me.” with which supreme lucidity she reached the door of her room. “luckily it showed me also how she has succeeded. nothing--from him--has come.” “you’re so awfully sure?” “sure. nothing will. good-night,” she said. “she’ll die first.” book second: the princess part fourth xxv it was not till many days had passed that the princess began to accept the idea of having done, a little, something she was not always doing, or indeed that of having listened to any inward voice that spoke in a new tone. yet these instinctive postponements of reflection were the fruit, positively, of recognitions and perceptions already active; of the sense, above all, that she had made, at a particular hour, made by the mere touch of her hand, a difference in the situation so long present to her as practically unattackable. this situation had been occupying, for months and months, the very centre of the garden of her life, but it had reared itself there like some strange, tall tower of ivory, or perhaps rather some wonderful, beautiful, but outlandish pagoda, a structure plated with hard, bright porcelain, coloured and figured and adorned, at the overhanging eaves, with silver bells that tinkled, ever so charmingly, when stirred by chance airs. she had walked round and round it--that was what she felt; she had carried on her existence in the space left her for circulation, a space that sometimes seemed ample and sometimes narrow: looking up, all the while, at the fair structure that spread itself so amply and rose so high, but never quite making out, as yet, where she might have entered had she wished. she had not wished till now--such was the odd case; and what was doubtless equally odd, besides, was that, though her raised eyes seemed to distinguish places that must serve, from within, and especially far aloft, as apertures and outlooks, no door appeared to give access from her convenient garden level. the great decorated surface had remained consistently impenetrable and inscrutable. at present, however, to her considering mind, it was as if she had ceased merely to circle and to scan the elevation, ceased so vaguely, so quite helplessly to stare and wonder: she had caught herself distinctly in the act of pausing, then in that of lingering, and finally in that of stepping unprecedentedly near. the thing might have been, by the distance at which it kept her, a mahometan mosque, with which no base heretic could take a liberty; there so hung about it the vision of one’s putting off one’s shoes to enter, and even, verily, of one’s paying with one’s life if found there as an interloper. she had not, certainly, arrived at the conception of paying with her life for anything she might do; but it was nevertheless quite as if she had sounded with a tap or two one of the rare porcelain plates. she had knocked, in short--though she could scarce have said whether for admission or for what; she had applied her hand to a cool smooth spot and had waited to see what would happen. something had happened; it was as if a sound, at her touch, after a little, had come back to her from within; a sound sufficiently suggesting that her approach had been noted. if this image, however, may represent our young woman’s consciousness of a recent change in her life--a change now but a few days old--it must at the same time be observed that she both sought and found in renewed circulation, as i have called it, a measure of relief from the idea of having perhaps to answer for what she had done. the pagoda in her blooming garden figured the arrangement--how otherwise was it to be named?--by which, so strikingly, she had been able to marry without breaking, as she liked to put it, with the past. she had surrendered herself to her husband without the shadow of a reserve or a condition, and yet she had not, all the while, given up her father--the least little inch. she had compassed the high city of seeing the two men beautifully take to each other, and nothing in her marriage had marked it as more happy than this fact of its having practically given the elder, the lonelier, a new friend. what had moreover all the while enriched the whole aspect of success was that the latter’s marriage had been no more meassurably paid for than her own. his having taken the same great step in the same free way had not in the least involved the relegation of his daughter. that it was remarkable they should have been able at once so to separate and so to keep together had never for a moment, from however far back, been equivocal to her; that it was remarkable had in fact quite counted, at first and always, and for each of them equally, as part of their inspiration and their support. there were plenty of singular things they were not enamoured of--flights of brilliancy, of audacity, of originality, that, speaking at least for the dear man and herself, were not at all in their line; but they liked to think they had given their life this unusual extension and this liberal form, which many families, many couples, and still more many pairs of couples, would not have found workable. that last truth had been distinctly brought home to them by the bright testimony, the quite explicit envy, of most of their friends, who had remarked to them again and again that they must, on all the showing, to keep on such terms, be people of the highest amiability--equally including in the praise, of course, amerigo and charlotte. it had given them pleasure--as how should it not?--to find themselves shed such a glamour; it had certainly, that is, given pleasure to her father and herself, both of them distinguishably of a nature so slow to presume that they would scarce have been sure of their triumph without this pretty reflection of it. so it was that their felicity had fructified; so it was that the ivory tower, visible and admirable doubtless, from any point of the social field, had risen stage by stage. maggie’s actual reluctance to ask herself with proportionate sharpness why she had ceased to take comfort in the sight of it represented accordingly a lapse from that ideal consistency on which her moral comfort almost at any time depended. to remain consistent she had always been capable of cutting down more or less her prior term. moving for the first time in her life as in the darkening shadow of a false position, she reflected that she should either not have ceased to be right--that is, to be confident--or have recognised that she was wrong; though she tried to deal with herself, for a space, only as a silken-coated spaniel who has scrambled out of a pond and who rattles the water from his ears. her shake of her head, again and again, as she went, was much of that order, and she had the resource, to which, save for the rude equivalent of his generalising bark, the spaniel would have been a stranger, of humming to herself hard as a sign that nothing had happened to her. she had not, so to speak, fallen in; she had had no accident and had not got wet; this at any rate was her pretension until after she began a little to wonder if she mightn’t, with or without exposure, have taken cold. she could at all events remember no time at which she had felt so excited, and certainly none--which was another special point--that so brought with it as well the necessity for concealing excitement. this birth of a new eagerness became a high pastime, in her view, precisely by reason of the ingenuity required for keeping the thing born out of sight. the ingenuity was thus a private and absorbing exercise, in the light of which, might i so far multiply my metaphors, i should compare her to the frightened but clinging young mother of an unlawful child. the idea that had possession of her would be, by our new analogy, the proof of her misadventure, but likewise, all the while, only another sign of a relation that was more to her than anything on earth. she had lived long enough to make out for herself that any deep-seated passion has its pangs as well as its joys, and that we are made by its aches and its anxieties most richly conscious of it. she had never doubted of the force of the feeling that bound her to her husband; but to become aware, almost suddenly, that it had begun to vibrate with a violence that had some of the effect of a strain would, rightly looked at, after all but show that she was, like thousands of women, every day, acting up to the full privilege of passion. why in the world shouldn’t she, with every right--if, on consideration, she saw no good reason against it? the best reason against it would have been the possibility of some consequence disagreeable or inconvenient to others-especially to such others as had never incommoded her by the egotism of their passions; but if once that danger were duly guarded against the fulness of one’s measure amounted to no more than the equal use of one’s faculties or the proper playing of one’s part. it had come to the princess, obscurely at first, but little by little more conceivably, that her faculties had not for a good while been concomitantly used; the case resembled in a manner that of her once-loved dancing, a matter of remembered steps that had grown vague from her ceasing to go to balls. she would go to balls again--that seemed, freely, even crudely, stated, the remedy; she would take out of the deep receptacles in which she had laid them away the various ornaments congruous with the greater occasions, and of which her store, she liked to think, was none of the smallest. she would have been easily to be figured for us at this occupation; dipping, at off moments and quiet hours, in snatched visits and by draughty candle-light, into her rich collections and seeing her jewels again a little shyly, but all unmistakably, glow. that in fact may pass as the very picture of her semi-smothered agitation, of the diversion she to some extent successfully found in referring her crisis, so far as was possible, to the mere working of her own needs. it must be added, however, that she would have been at a loss to determine--and certainly at first--to which order, that of self-control or that of large expression, the step she had taken the afternoon of her husband’s return from matcham with his companion properly belonged. for it had been a step, distinctly, on maggie’s part, her deciding to do something, just then and there, which would strike amerigo as unusual, and this even though her departure from custom had merely consisted in her so arranging that he wouldn’t find her, as he would definitely expect to do, in eaton square. he would have, strangely enough, as might seem to him, to come back home for it, and there get the impression of her rather pointedly, or at least all impatiently and independently, awaiting him. these were small variations and mild manoeuvres, but they went accompanied on maggie’s part, as we have mentioned, with an infinite sense of intention. her watching by his fireside for her husband’s return from an absence might superficially have presented itself as the most natural act in the world, and the only one, into the bargain, on which he would positively have reckoned. it fell by this circumstance into the order of plain matters, and yet the very aspect by which it was, in the event, handed over to her brooding fancy was the fact that she had done with it all she had designed. she had put her thought to the proof, and the proof had shown its edge; this was what was before her, that she was no longer playing with blunt and idle tools, with weapons that didn’t cut. there passed across her vision ten times a day the gleam of a bare blade, and at this it was that she most shut her eyes, most knew the impulse to cheat herself with motion and sound. she had merely driven, on a certain wednesday, to portland place, instead of remaining in eaton square, and she privately repeated it again and again--there had appeared beforehand no reason why she should have seen the mantle of history flung, by a single sharp sweep, over so commonplace a deed. that, all the same, was what had happened; it had been bitten into her mind, all in an hour, that nothing she had ever done would hereafter, in some way yet to be determined, so count for her--perhaps not even what she had done in accepting, in their old golden rome, amerigo’s proposal of marriage. and yet, by her little crouching posture there, that of a timid tigress, she had meant nothing recklessly ultimate, nothing clumsily fundamental; so that she called it names, the invidious, the grotesque attitude, holding it up to her own ridicule, reducing so far as she could the portee of what had followed it. she had but wanted to get nearer--nearer to something indeed that she couldn’t, that she wouldn’t, even to herself, describe; and the degree of this achieved nearness was what had been in advance incalculable. her actual multiplication of distractions and suppressions, whatever it did for her, failed to prevent her living over again any chosen minute--for she could choose them, she could fix them--of the freshness of relation produced by her having administered to her husband the first surprise to which she had ever treated him. it had been a poor thing, but it had been all her own, and the whole passage was backwardly there, a great picture hung on the wall of her daily life, for her to make what she would of. it fell, for retrospect, into a succession of moments that were watchable still; almost in the manner of the different things done during a scene on the stage, some scene so acted as to have left a great impression on the tenant of one of the stalls. several of these moments stood out beyond the others, and those she could feel again most, count again like the firm pearls on a string, had belonged more particularly to the lapse of time before dinner--dinner which had been so late, quite at nine o’clock, that evening, thanks to the final lateness of amerigo’s own advent. these were parts of the experience--though in fact there had been a good many of them--between which her impression could continue sharply to discriminate. before the subsequent passages, much later on, it was to be said, the flame of memory turned to an equalising glow, that of a lamp in some side-chapel in which incense was thick. the great moment, at any rate, for conscious repossession, was doubtless the first: the strange little timed silence which she had fully gauged, on the spot, as altogether beyond her own intention, but which--for just how long? should she ever really know for just how long?--she could do nothing to break. she was in the smaller drawing-room, in which she always “sat,” and she had, by calculation, dressed for dinner on finally coming in. it was a wonder how many things she had calculated in respect to this small incident--a matter for the importance of which she had so quite indefinite a measure. he would be late--he would be very late; that was the one certainty that seemed to look her in the face. there was still also the possibility that if he drove with charlotte straight to eaton square he might think it best to remain there even on learning she had come away. she had left no message for him on any such chance; this was another of her small shades of decision, though the effect of it might be to keep him still longer absent. he might suppose she would already have dined; he might stay, with all he would have to tell, just on purpose to be nice to her father. she had known him to stretch the point, to these beautiful ends, far beyond that; he had more than once stretched it to the sacrifice of the opportunity of dressing. if she herself had now avoided any such sacrifice, and had made herself, during the time at her disposal, quite inordinately fresh and quite positively smart, this had probably added, while she waited and waited, to that very tension of spirit in which she was afterwards to find the image of her having crouched. she did her best, quite intensely, by herself, to banish any such appearance; she couldn’t help it if she couldn’t read her pale novel--ah, that, par exemple, was beyond her! but she could at least sit by the lamp with the book, sit there with her newest frock, worn for the first time, sticking out, all round her, quite stiff and grand; even perhaps a little too stiff and too grand for a familiar and domestic frock, yet marked none the less, this time, she ventured to hope, by incontestable intrinsic merit. she had glanced repeatedly at the clock, but she had refused herself the weak indulgence of walking up and down, though the act of doing so, she knew, would make her feel, on the polished floor, with the rustle and the “hang,” still more beautifully bedecked. the difficulty was that it would also make her feel herself still more sharply in a state; which was exactly what she proposed not to do. the only drops of her anxiety had been when her thought strayed complacently, with her eyes, to the front of her gown, which was in a manner a refuge, a beguilement, especially when she was able to fix it long enough to wonder if it would at last really satisfy charlotte. she had ever been, in respect to her clothes, rather timorous and uncertain; for the last year, above all, she had lived in the light of charlotte’s possible and rather inscrutable judgment of them. charlotte’s own were simply the most charming and interesting that any woman had ever put on; there was a kind of poetic justice in her being at last able, in this particular, thanks to means, thanks quite to omnipotence, freely to exercise her genius. but maggie would have described herself as, in these connections, constantly and intimately “torn”; conscious on one side of the impossibility of copying her companion and conscious on the other of the impossibility of sounding her, independently, to the bottom. yes, it was one of the things she should go down to her grave without having known--how charlotte, after all had been said, really thought her stepdaughter looked under any supposedly ingenious personal experiment. she had always been lovely about the stepdaughter’s material braveries--had done, for her, the very best with them; but there had ever fitfully danced at the back of maggie’s head the suspicion that these expressions were mercies, not judgments, embodying no absolute, but only a relative, frankness. hadn’t charlotte, with so perfect a critical vision, if the truth were known, given her up as hopeless--hopeless by a serious standard, and thereby invented for her a different and inferior one, in which, as the only thing to be done, she patiently and soothingly abetted her? hadn’t she, in other words, assented in secret despair, perhaps even in secret irritation, to her being ridiculous?--so that the best now possible was to wonder, once in a great while, whether one mightn’t give her the surprise of something a little less out of the true note than usual. something of this kind was the question that maggie, while the absentees still delayed, asked of the appearance she was endeavouring to present; but with the result, repeatedly again, that it only went and lost itself in the thick air that had begun more and more to hang, for our young woman, over her accumulations of the unanswered. they were there, these accumulations; they were like a roomful of confused objects, never as yet “sorted,” which for some time now she had been passing and re-passing, along the corridor of her life. she passed it when she could without opening the door; then, on occasion, she turned the key to throw in a fresh contribution. so it was that she had been getting things out of the way. they rejoined the rest of the confusion; it was as if they found their place, by some instinct of affinity, in the heap. they knew, in short, where to go; and when she, at present, by a mental act, once more pushed the door open, she had practically a sense of method and experience. what she should never know about charlotte’s thought--she tossed that in. it would find itself in company, and she might at last have been standing there long enough to see it fall into its corner. the sight moreover would doubtless have made her stare, had her attention been more free--the sight of the mass of vain things, congruous, incongruous, that awaited every addition. it made her in fact, with a vague gasp, turn away, and what had further determined this was the final sharp extinction of the inward scene by the outward. the quite different door had opened and her husband was there. it had been as strange as she could consent, afterwards, to think it; it had been, essentially, what had made the abrupt bend in her life: he had come back, had followed her from the other house, visibly uncertain--this was written in the face he for the first minute showed her. it had been written only for those seconds, and it had appeared to go, quickly, after they began to talk; but while it lasted it had been written large, and, though she didn’t quite know what she had expected of him, she felt she hadn’t expected the least shade of embarrassment. what had made the embarrassment--she called it embarrassment so as to be able to assure herself she put it at the very worst--what had made the particular look was his thus distinguishably wishing to see how he should find her. why first--that had, later on, kept coming to her; the question dangled there as if it were the key to everything. with the sense of it on the spot, she had felt, overwhelmingly, that she was significant, that so she must instantly strike him, and that this had a kind of violence beyond what she had intended. it was in fact even at the moment not absent from her view that he might easily have made an abject fool of her--at least for the time. she had indeed, for just ten seconds, been afraid of some such turn: the uncertainty in his face had become so, the next thing, an uncertainty in the very air. three words of impatience the least bit loud, some outbreak of “what in the world are you ‘up to’, and what do you mean?” any note of that sort would instantly have brought her low--and this all the more that heaven knew she hadn’t in any manner designed to be high. it was such a trifle, her small breach with custom, or at any rate with his natural presumption, that all magnitude of wonder had already had, before one could deprecate the shadow of it, the effect of a complication. it had made for him some difference that she couldn’t measure, this meeting him at home and alone instead of elsewhere and with others, and back and back it kept coming to her that the blankness he showed her before he was able to see might, should she choose to insist on it, have a meaning--have, as who should say, an historic value--beyond the importance of momentary expressions in general. she had naturally had on the spot no ready notion of what he might want to see; it was enough for a ready notion, not to speak of a beating heart, that he did see, that he saw his wife in her own drawing-room at the hour when she would most properly be there. he hadn’t in any way challenged her, it was true, and, after those instants during which she now believed him to have been harbouring the impression of something unusually prepared and pointed in her attitude and array, he had advanced upon her smiling and smiling, and thus, without hesitation at the last, had taken her into his arms. the hesitation had been at the first, and she at present saw that he had surmounted it without her help. she had given him no help; for if, on the one hand, she couldn’t speak for hesitation, so on the other--and especially as he didn’t ask her--she couldn’t explain why she was agitated. she had known it all the while down to her toes, known it in his presence with fresh intensity, and if he had uttered but a question it would have pressed in her the spring of recklessness. it had been strange that the most natural thing of all to say to him should have had that appearance; but she was more than ever conscious that any appearance she had would come round, more or less straight, to her father, whose life was now so quiet, on the basis accepted for it, that any alteration of his consciousness even in the possible sense of enlivenment, would make their precious equilibrium waver. that was at the bottom of her mind, that their equilibrium was everything, and that it was practically precarious, a matter of a hair’s breadth for the loss of the balance. it was the equilibrium, or at all events her conscious fear about it, that had brought her heart into her mouth; and the same fear was, on either side, in the silent look she and amerigo had exchanged. the happy balance that demanded this amount of consideration was truly thus, as by its own confession, a delicate matter; but that her husband had also his habit of anxiety and his general caution only brought them, after all, more closely together. it would have been most beautifully, therefore, in the name of the equilibrium, and in that of her joy at their feeling so exactly the same about it, that she might have spoken if she had permitted the truth on the subject of her behaviour to ring out--on the subject of that poor little behaviour which was for the moment so very limited a case of eccentricity. “‘why, why’ have i made this evening such a point of our not all dining together? well, because i’ve all day been so wanting you alone that i finally couldn’t bear it, and that there didn’t seem any great reason why i should try to. that came to me--funny as it may at first sound, with all the things we’ve so wonderfully got into the way of bearing for each other. you’ve seemed these last days--i don’t know what: more absent than ever before, too absent for us merely to go on so. it’s all very well, and i perfectly see how beautiful it is, all round; but there comes a day when something snaps, when the full cup, filled to the very brim, begins to flow over. that’s what has happened to my need of you--the cup, all day, has been too full to carry. so here i am with it, spilling it over you--and just for the reason that is the reason of my life. after all, i’ve scarcely to explain that i’m as much in love with you now as the first hour; except that there are some hours--which i know when they come, because they almost frighten me--that show me i’m even more so. they come of themselves--and, ah, they’ve been coming! after all, after all--!” some such words as those were what didn’t ring out, yet it was as if even the unuttered sound had been quenched here in its own quaver. it was where utterance would have broken down by its very weight if he had let it get so far. without that extremity, at the end of a moment, he had taken in what he needed to take--that his wife was testifying, that she adored and missed and desired him. “after all, after all,” since she put it so, she was right. that was what he had to respond to; that was what, from the moment that, as has been said, he “saw,” he had to treat as the most pertinent thing possible. he held her close and long, in expression of their personal reunion--this, obviously, was one way of doing so. he rubbed his cheek, tenderly, and with a deep vague murmur, against her face, that side of her face she was not pressing to his breast. that was, not less obviously, another way, and there were ways enough, in short, for his extemporised ease, for the good humour she was afterwards to find herself thinking of as his infinite tact. this last was partly, no doubt, because the question of tact might be felt as having come up at the end of a quarter of an hour during which he had liberally talked and she had genially questioned. he had told her of his day, the happy thought of his roundabout journey with charlotte, all their cathedral-hunting adventure, and how it had turned out rather more of an affair than they expected. the moral of it was, at any rate, that he was tired, verily, and must have a bath and dress--to which end she would kindly excuse him for the shortest time possible. she was to remember afterwards something that had passed between them on this--how he had looked, for her, during an instant, at the door, before going out, how he had met her asking him, in hesitation first, then quickly in decision, whether she couldn’t help him by going up with him. he had perhaps also for a moment hesitated, but he had declined her offer, and she was to preserve, as i say, the memory of the smile with which he had opined that at that rate they wouldn’t dine till ten o’clock and that he should go straighter and faster alone. such things, as i say, were to come back to her--they played, through her full after-sense, like lights on the whole impression; the subsequent parts of the experience were not to have blurred their distinctness. one of these subsequent parts, the first, had been the not inconsiderable length, to her later and more analytic consciousness, of this second wait for her husband’s reappearance. she might certainly, with the best will in the world, had she gone up with him, have been more in his way than not, since people could really, almost always, hurry better without help than with it. still, she could actually hardly have made him take more time than he struck her taking, though it must indeed be added that there was now in this much-thinking little person’s state of mind no mere crudity of impatience. something had happened, rapidly, with the beautiful sight of him and with the drop of her fear of having annoyed him by making him go to and fro. subsidence of the fearsome, for maggie’s spirit, was always, at first, positive emergence of the sweet, and it was long since anything had been so sweet to her as the particular quality suddenly given by her present emotion to the sense of possession. xxvi amerigo was away from her again, as she sat there, as she walked there without him--for she had, with the difference of his presence in the house, ceased to keep herself from moving about; but the hour was filled nevertheless with the effect of his nearness, and above all with the effect, strange in an intimacy so established, of an almost renewed vision of the facts of his aspect. she had seen him last but five days since, yet he had stood there before her as if restored from some far country, some long voyage, some combination of dangers or fatigues. this unquenchable variety in his appeal to her interest, what did it mean but that--reduced to the flatness of mere statement--she was married, by good fortune, to an altogether dazzling person? that was an old, old story, but the truth of it shone out to her like the beauty of some family picture, some mellow portrait of an ancestor, that she might have been looking at, almost in surprise, after a long intermission. the dazzling person was upstairs and she was down, and there were moreover the other facts of the selection and decision that this demonstration of her own had required, and of the constant care that the equilibrium involved; but she had, all the same, never felt so absorbingly married, so abjectly conscious of a master of her fate. he could do what he would with her; in fact what was actually happening was that he was actually doing it. “what he would,” what he really would--only that quantity itself escaped perhaps, in the brightness of the high harmony, familiar naming and discussing. it was enough of a recognition for her that, whatever the thing he might desire, he would always absolutely bring it off. she knew at this moment, without a question, with the fullest surrender, how he had brought off, in her, by scarce more than a single allusion, a perfect flutter of tenderness. if he had come back tired, tired from his long day, the exertion had been, literally, in her service and her father’s. they two had sat at home at peace, the principino between them, the complications of life kept down, the bores sifted out, the large ease of the home preserved, because of the way the others held the field and braved the weather. amerigo never complained--any more than, for that matter, charlotte did; but she seemed to see to-night as she had never yet quite done that their business of social representation, conceived as they conceived it, beyond any conception of her own, and conscientiously carried out, was an affair of living always in harness. she remembered fanny assingham’s old judgment, that friend’s description of her father and herself as not living at all, as not knowing what to do or what might be done for them; and there came back to her with it an echo of the long talk they had had together, one september day at fawns, under the trees, when she put before him this dictum of fanny’s. that occasion might have counted for them--she had already often made the reflection--as the first step in an existence more intelligently arranged. it had been an hour from which the chain of causes and consequences was definitely traceable--so many things, and at the head of the list her father’s marriage, having appeared to her to flow from charlotte’s visit to fawns, and that event itself having flowed from the memorable talk. but what perhaps most came out in the light of these concatenations was that it had been, for all the world, as if charlotte had been “had in,” as the servants always said of extra help, because they had thus suffered it to be pointed out to them that if their family coach lumbered and stuck the fault was in its lacking its complement of wheels. having but three, as they might say, it had wanted another, and what had charlotte done from the first but begin to act, on the spot, and ever so smoothly and beautifully, as a fourth? nothing had been, immediately, more manifest than the greater grace of the movement of the vehicle--as to which, for the completeness of her image, maggie was now supremely to feel how every strain had been lightened for herself. so far as she was one of the wheels she had but to keep in her place; since the work was done for her she felt no weight, and it wasn’t too much to acknowledge that she had scarce to turn round. she had a long pause before the fire during which she might have been fixing with intensity her projected vision, have been conscious even of its taking an absurd, fantastic shape. she might have been watching the family coach pass and noting that, somehow, amerigo and charlotte were pulling it while she and her father were not so much as pushing. they were seated inside together, dandling the principino and holding him up to the windows, to see and be seen, like an infant positively royal; so that the exertion was all with the others. maggie found in this image a repeated challenge; again and yet again she paused before the fire: after which, each time, in the manner of one for whom a strong light has suddenly broken, she gave herself to livelier movement. she had seen herself at last, in the picture she was studying, suddenly jump from the coach; whereupon, frankly, with the wonder of the sight, her eyes opened wider and her heart stood still for a moment. she looked at the person so acting as if this person were somebody else, waiting with intensity to see what would follow. the person had taken a decision--which was evidently because an impulse long gathering had at last felt a sharpest pressure. only how was the decision to be applied?--what, in particular, would the figure in the picture do? she looked about her, from the middle of the room, under the force of this question, as if there, exactly, were the field of action involved. then, as the door opened again, she recognised, whatever the action, the form, at any rate, of a first opportunity. her husband had reappeared--he stood before her refreshed, almost radiant, quite reassuring. dressed, anointed, fragrant, ready, above all, for his dinner, he smiled at her over the end of their delay. it was as if her opportunity had depended on his look--and now she saw that it was good. there was still, for the instant, something in suspense, but it passed more quickly than on his previous entrance. he was already holding out his arms. it was, for hours and hours, later on, as if she had somehow been lifted aloft, were floated and carried on some warm high tide beneath which stumbling blocks had sunk out of sight. this came from her being again, for the time, in the enjoyment of confidence, from her knowing, as she believed, what to do. all the next day, and all the next, she appeared to herself to know it. she had a plan, and she rejoiced in her plan: this consisted of the light that, suddenly breaking into her restless reverie, had marked the climax of that vigil. it had come to her as a question--“what if i’ve abandoned them, you know? what if i’ve accepted too passively the funny form of our life?” there would be a process of her own by which she might do differently in respect to amerigo and charlotte--a process quite independent of any process of theirs. such a solution had but to rise before her to affect her, to charm her, with its simplicity, an advantageous simplicity she had been stupid, for so long, not to have been struck by; and the simplicity meanwhile seemed proved by the success that had already begun to attend her. she had only had herself to do something to see how immediately it answered. this consciousness of its having answered with her husband was the uplifting, sustaining wave. he had “met” her--she so put it to herself; met her with an effect of generosity and of gaiety, in especial, on his coming back to her ready for dinner, which she wore in her breast as the token of an escape for them both from something not quite definite, but clearly, much less good. even at that moment, in fact, her plan had begun to work; she had been, when he brightly reappeared, in the act of plucking it out of the heart of her earnestness--plucking it, in the garden of thought, as if it had been some full-blown flower that she could present to him on the spot. well, it was the flower of participation, and as that, then and there, she held it out to him, putting straightway into execution the idea, so needlessly, so absurdly obscured, of her sharing with him, whatever the enjoyment, the interest, the experience might be--and sharing also, for that matter, with charlotte. she had thrown herself, at dinner, into every feature of the recent adventure of the companions, letting him see, without reserve, that she wished to hear everything about it, and making charlotte in particular, charlotte’s judgment of matcham, charlotte’s aspect, her success there, her effect traceably produced, her clothes inimitably worn, her cleverness gracefully displayed, her social utility, in fine, brilliantly exemplified, the subject of endless inquiry. maggie’s inquiry was most empathetic, moreover, for the whole happy thought of the cathedral-hunt, which she was so glad they had entertained, and as to the pleasant results of which, down to the cold beef and bread-and-cheese, the queer old smell and the dirty table-cloth at the inn, amerigo was good-humouredly responsive. he had looked at her across the table, more than once, as if touched by the humility of this welcome offered to impressions at second-hand, the amusements, the large freedoms only of others--as if recognising in it something fairly exquisite; and at the end, while they were alone, before she had rung for a servant, he had renewed again his condonation of the little irregularity, such as it was, on which she had ventured. they had risen together to come upstairs; he had been talking at the last about some of the people, at the very last of all about lady castledean and mr. blint; after which she had once more broken ground on the matter of the “type” of gloucester. it brought her, as he came round the table to join her, yet another of his kind conscious stares, one of the looks, visibly beguiled, but at the same time not invisibly puzzled, with which he had already shown his sense of this charming grace of her curiosity. it was as if he might for a moment be going to say:--“you needn’t pretend, dearest, quite so hard, needn’t think it necessary to care quite so much!”--it was as if he stood there before her with some such easy intelligence, some such intimate reassurance, on his lips. her answer would have been all ready--that she wasn’t in the least pretending; and she looked up at him, while he took her hand, with the maintenance, the real persistence, of her lucid little plan in her eyes. she wanted him to understand from that very moment that she was going to be with him again, quite with them, together, as she doubtless hadn’t been since the “funny” changes--that was really all one could call them--into which they had each, as for the sake of the others, too easily and too obligingly slipped. they had taken too much for granted that their life together required, as people in london said, a special “form”--which was very well so long as the form was kept only for the outside world and was made no more of among themselves than the pretty mould of an iced pudding, or something of that sort, into which, to help yourself, you didn’t hesitate to break with the spoon. so much as that she would, with an opening, have allowed herself furthermore to observe; she wanted him to understand how her scheme embraced charlotte too; so that if he had but uttered the acknowledgment she judged him on the point of making--the acknowledgment of his catching at her brave little idea for their case--she would have found herself, as distinctly, voluble almost to eloquence. what befell, however, was that even while she thus waited she felt herself present at a process taking place rather deeper within him than the occasion, on the whole, appeared to require--a process of weighing something in the balance, of considering, deciding, dismissing. he had guessed that she was there with an idea, there in fact by reason of her idea; only this, oddly enough, was what at the last stayed his words. she was helped to these perceptions by his now looking at her still harder than he had yet done--which really brought it to the turn of a hair, for her, that she didn’t make sure his notion of her idea was the right one. it was the turn of a hair, because he had possession of her hands and was bending toward her, ever so kindly, as if to see, to understand, more, or possibly give more--she didn’t know which; and that had the effect of simply putting her, as she would have said, in his power. she gave up, let her idea go, let everything go; her one consciousness was that he was taking her again into his arms. it was not till afterwards that she discriminated as to this; felt how the act operated with him instead of the words he hadn’t uttered--operated, in his view, as probably better than any words, as always better, in fact, at any time, than anything. her acceptance of it, her response to it, inevitable, foredoomed, came back to her, later on, as a virtual assent to the assumption he had thus made that there was really nothing such a demonstration didn’t anticipate and didn’t dispose of, and that the spring acting within herself moreover might well have been, beyond any other, the impulse legitimately to provoke it. it made, for any issue, the third time since his return that he had drawn her to his breast; and at present, holding her to his side as they left the room, he kept her close for their moving into the hall and across it, kept her for their slow return together to the apartments above. he had been right, overwhelmingly right, as to the felicity of his tenderness and the degree of her sensibility, but even while she felt these things sweep all others away she tasted of a sort of terror of the weakness they produced in her. it was still, for her, that she had positively something to do, and that she mustn’t be weak for this, must much rather be strong. for many hours after, none the less, she remained weak--if weak it was; though holding fast indeed to the theory of her success, since her agitated overture had been, after all, so unmistakably met. she recovered soon enough on the whole, the sense that this left her charlotte always to deal with--charlotte who, at any rate, however she might meet overtures, must meet them, at the worst, more or less differently. of that inevitability, of such other ranges of response as were open to charlotte, maggie took the measure in approaching her, on the morrow of her return from matcham, with the same show of desire to hear all her story. she wanted the whole picture from her, as she had wanted it from her companion, and, promptly, in eaton square, whither, without the prince, she repaired, almost ostentatiously, for the purpose, this purpose only, she brought her repeatedly back to the subject, both in her husband’s presence and during several scraps of independent colloquy. before her father, instinctively, maggie took the ground that his wish for interesting echoes would be not less than her own--allowing, that is, for everything his wife would already have had to tell him, for such passages, between them, as might have occurred since the evening before. joining them after luncheon, reaching them, in her desire to proceed with the application of her idea, before they had quitted the breakfast-room, the scene of their mid-day meal, she referred, in her parent’s presence, to what she might have lost by delay, and expressed the hope that there would be an anecdote or two left for her to pick up. charlotte was dressed to go out, and her husband, it appeared, rather positively prepared not to; he had left the table, but was seated near the fire with two or three of the morning papers and the residuum of the second and third posts on a stand beside him--more even than the usual extravagance, as maggie’s glance made out, of circulars, catalogues, advertisements, announcements of sales, foreign envelopes and foreign handwritings that were as unmistakable as foreign clothes. charlotte, at the window, looking into the side-street that abutted on the square, might have been watching for their visitor’s advent before withdrawing; and in the light, strange and coloured, like that of a painted picture, which fixed the impression for her, objects took on values not hitherto so fully shown. it was the effect of her quickened sensibility; she knew herself again in presence of a problem, in need of a solution for which she must intensely work: that consciousness, lately born in her, had been taught the evening before to accept a temporary lapse, but had quickly enough again, with her getting out of her own house and her walking across half the town--for she had come from portland place on foot--found breath still in its lungs. it exhaled this breath in a sigh, faint and unheard; her tribute, while she stood there before speaking, to realities looming through the golden mist that had already begun to be scattered. the conditions facing her had yielded, for the time, to the golden mist--had considerably melted away; but there they were again, definite, and it was for the next quarter of an hour as if she could have counted them one by one on her fingers. sharp to her above all was the renewed attestation of her father’s comprehensive acceptances, which she had so long regarded as of the same quality with her own, but which, so distinctly now, she should have the complication of being obliged to deal with separately. they had not yet struck her as absolutely extraordinary--which had made for her lumping them with her own, since her view of her own had but so lately begun to change; though it instantly stood out for her that there was really no new judgment of them she should be able to show without attracting in some degree his attention, without perhaps exciting his surprise and making thereby, for the situation she shared with him, some difference. she was reminded and warned by the concrete image; and for a minute charlotte’s face, immediately presented to her, affected her as searching her own to see the reminder tell. she had not less promptly kissed her stepmother, and then had bent over her father, from behind, and laid her cheek upon him; little amenities tantamount heretofore to an easy change of guard--charlotte’s own frequent, though always cheerful, term of comparison for this process of transfer. maggie figured thus as the relieving sentry, and so smoothly did use and custom work for them that her mate might even, on this occasion, after acceptance of the pass-word, have departed without irrelevant and, in strictness, unsoldierly gossip. this was not, none the less, what happened; inasmuch as if our young woman had been floated over her first impulse to break the existing charm at a stroke, it yet took her but an instant to sound, at any risk, the note she had been privately practising. if she had practised it the day before, at dinner, on amerigo, she knew but the better how to begin for it with mrs. verver, and it immensely helped her, for that matter, to be able at once to speak of the prince as having done more to quicken than to soothe her curiosity. frankly and gaily she had come to ask--to ask what, in their unusually prolonged campaign, the two had achieved. she had got out of her husband, she admitted, what she could, but husbands were never the persons who answered such questions ideally. he had only made her more curious, and she had arrived early, this way, in order to miss as little as possible of charlotte’s story. “wives, papa,” she said; “are always much better reporters--though i grant,” she added for charlotte, “that fathers are not much better than husbands. he never,” she smiled, “tells me more than a tenth of what you tell him; so i hope you haven’t told him everything yet, since in that case i shall probably have lost the best part of it.” maggie went, she went--she felt herself going; she reminded herself of an actress who had been studying a part and rehearsing it, but who suddenly, on the stage, before the footlights, had begun to improvise, to speak lines not in the text. it was this very sense of the stage and the footlights that kept her up, made her rise higher: just as it was the sense of action that logically involved some platform--action quite positively for the first time in her life, or, counting in the previous afternoon, for the second. the platform remained for three or four days thus sensibly under her feet, and she had all the while, with it, the inspiration of quite remarkably, of quite heroically improvising. preparation and practice had come but a short way; her part opened out, and she invented from moment to moment what to say and to do. she had but one rule of art--to keep within bounds and not lose her head; certainly she might see for a week how far that would take her. she said to herself, in her excitement, that it was perfectly simple: to bring about a difference, touch by touch, without letting either of the three, and least of all her father, so much as suspect her hand. if they should suspect they would want a reason, and the humiliating truth was that she wasn’t ready with a reason--not, that is, with what she would have called a reasonable one. she thought of herself, instinctively, beautifully, as having dealt, all her life, at her father’s side and by his example, only in reasonable reasons; and what she would really have been most ashamed of would be to produce for him, in this line, some inferior substitute. unless she were in a position to plead, definitely, that she was jealous she should be in no position to plead, decently, that she was dissatisfied. this latter condition would be a necessary implication of the former; without the former behind it it would have to fall to the ground. so had the case, wonderfully, been arranged for her; there was a card she could play, but there was only one, and to play it would be to end the game. she felt herself--as at the small square green table, between the tall old silver candlesticks and the neatly arranged counters--her father’s playmate and partner; and what it constantly came back to, in her mind, was that for her to ask a question, to raise a doubt, to reflect in any degree on the play of the others, would be to break the charm. the charm she had to call it, since it kept her companion so constantly engaged, so perpetually seated and so contentedly occupied. to say anything at all would be, in fine, to have to say why she was jealous; and she could, in her private hours, but stare long, with suffused eyes, at that impossibility. by the end of a week, the week that had begun, especially, with her morning hour, in eaton square, between her father and his wife, her consciousness of being beautifully treated had become again verily greater than her consciousness of anything else; and i must add, moreover, that she at last found herself rather oddly wondering what else, as a consciousness, could have been quite so overwhelming. charlotte’s response to the experiment of being more with her ought, as she very well knew, to have stamped the experiment with the feeling of success; so that if the success itself seemed a boon less substantial than the original image of it, it enjoyed thereby a certain analogy with our young woman’s aftertaste of amerigo’s own determined demonstrations. maggie was to have retained, for that matter, more than one aftertaste, and if i have spoken of the impressions fixed in her as soon as she had, so insidiously, taken the field, a definite note must be made of her perception, during those moments, of charlotte’s prompt uncertainty. she had shown, no doubt--she couldn’t not have shown--that she had arrived with an idea; quite exactly as she had shown her husband, the night before, that she was awaiting him with a sentiment. this analogy in the two situations was to keep up for her the remembrance of a kinship of expression in the two faces in respect to which all she as yet professed to herself was that she had affected them, or at any rate the sensibility each of them so admirably covered, in the same way. to make the comparison at all was, for maggie, to return to it often, to brood upon it, to extract from it the last dregs of its interest--to play with it, in short, nervously, vaguely, incessantly, as she might have played with a medallion containing on either side a cherished little portrait and suspended round her neck by a gold chain of a firm fineness that no effort would ever snap. the miniatures were back to back, but she saw them forever face to face, and when she looked from one to the other she found in charlotte’s eyes the gleam of the momentary “what does she really want?” that had come and gone for her in the prince’s. so again, she saw the other light, the light touched into a glow both in portland place and in eaton square, as soon as she had betrayed that she wanted no harm--wanted no greater harm of charlotte, that is, than to take in that she meant to go out with her. she had been present at that process as personally as she might have been present at some other domestic incident--the hanging of a new picture, say, or the fitting of the principino with his first little trousers. she remained present, accordingly, all the week, so charmingly and systematically did mrs. verver now welcome her company. charlotte had but wanted the hint, and what was it but the hint, after all, that, during the so subdued but so ineffaceable passage in the breakfast-room, she had seen her take? it had been taken moreover not with resignation, not with qualifications or reserves, however bland; it had been taken with avidity, with gratitude, with a grace of gentleness that supplanted explanations. the very liberality of this accommodation might indeed have appeared in the event to give its own account of the matter--as if it had fairly written the princess down as a person of variations and had accordingly conformed but to a rule of tact in accepting these caprices for law. the caprice actually prevailing happened to be that the advent of one of the ladies anywhere should, till the fit had changed, become the sign, unfailingly, of the advent of the other; and it was emblazoned, in rich colour, on the bright face of this period, that mrs. verver only wished to know, on any occasion, what was expected of her, only held herself there for instructions, in order even to better them if possible. the two young women, while the passage lasted, became again very much the companions of other days, the days of charlotte’s prolonged visits to the admiring and bountiful maggie, the days when equality of condition for them had been all the result of the latter’s native vagueness about her own advantages. the earlier elements flushed into life again, the frequency, the intimacy, the high pitch of accompanying expression--appreciation, endearment, confidence; the rarer charm produced in each by this active contribution to the felicity of the other: all enhanced, furthermore--enhanced or qualified, who should say which?--by a new note of diplomacy, almost of anxiety, just sensible on charlotte’s part in particular; of intensity of observance, in the matter of appeal and response, in the matter of making sure the princess might be disposed or gratified, that resembled an attempt to play again, with more refinement, at disparity of relation. charlotte’s attitude had, in short, its moments of flowering into pretty excesses of civility, self-effacements in the presence of others, sudden little formalisms of suggestion and recognition, that might have represented her sense of the duty of not “losing sight” of a social distinction. this impression came out most for maggie when, in their easier intervals, they had only themselves to regard, and when her companion’s inveteracy of never passing first, of not sitting till she was seated, of not interrupting till she appeared to give leave, of not forgetting, too, familiarly, that in addition to being important she was also sensitive, had the effect of throwing over their intercourse a kind of silver tissue of decorum. it hung there above them like a canopy of state, a reminder that though the lady-in-waiting was an established favourite, safe in her position, a little queen, however, good-natured, was always a little queen and might, with small warning, remember it. and yet another of these concomitants of feverish success, all the while, was the perception that in another quarter too things were being made easy. charlotte’s alacrity in meeting her had, in one sense, operated slightly overmuch as an intervention: it had begun to reabsorb her at the very hour of her husband’s showing her that, to be all there, as the phrase was, he likewise only required--as one of the other phrases was too--the straight tip. she had heard him talk about the straight tip, in his moods of amusement at english slang, in his remarkable displays of assimilative power, power worthy of better causes and higher inspirations; and he had taken it from her, at need, in a way that, certainly in the first glow of relief, had made her brief interval seem large. then, however, immediately, and even though superficially, there had declared itself a readjustment of relations to which she was, once more, practically a little sacrificed. “i must do everything,” she had said, “without letting papa see what i do--at least till it’s done!” but she scarce knew how she proposed, even for the next few days, to blind or beguile this participant in her life. what had in fact promptly enough happened, she presently recognised, was that if her stepmother had beautifully taken possession of her, and if she had virtually been rather snatched again thereby from her husband’s side, so, on the other hand, this had, with as little delay, entailed some very charming assistance for her in eaton square. when she went home with charlotte, from whatever happy demonstration, for the benefit of the world in which they supposed themselves to live, that there was no smallest reason why their closer association shouldn’t be public and acclaimed--at these times she regularly found that amerigo had come either to sit with his father-in-law in the absence of the ladies, or to make, on his side, precisely some such display of the easy working of the family life as would represent the equivalent of her excursions with charlotte. under this particular impression it was that everything in maggie most melted and went to pieces--every thing, that is, that belonged to her disposition to challenge the perfection of their common state. it divided them again, that was true, this particular turn of the tide--cut them up afresh into pairs and parties; quite as if a sense for the equilibrium was what, between them all, had most power of insistence; quite as if amerigo himself were all the while, at bottom, equally thinking of it and watching it. but, as against that, he was making her father not miss her, and he could have rendered neither of them a more excellent service. he was acting in short on a cue, the cue given him by observation; it had been enough for him to see the shade of change in her behaviour; his instinct for relations, the most exquisite conceivable, prompted him immediately to meet and match the difference, to play somehow into its hands. that was what it was, she renewedly felt, to have married a man who was, sublimely, a gentleman; so that, in spite of her not wanting to translate all their delicacies into the grossness of discussion, she yet found again and again, in portland place, moments for saying: “if i didn’t love you, you know, for yourself, i should still love you for him.” he looked at her, after such speeches, as charlotte looked, in eaton square, when she called her attention to his benevolence: through the dimness of the almost musing smile that took account of her extravagance, harmless though it might be, as a tendency to reckon with. “but my poor child,” charlotte might under this pressure have been on the point of replying, “that’s the way nice people are, all round--so that why should one be surprised about it? we’re all nice together--as why shouldn’t we be? if we hadn’t been we wouldn’t have gone far--and i consider that we’ve gone very far indeed. why should you ‘take on’ as if you weren’t a perfect dear yourself, capable of all the sweetest things?--as if you hadn’t in fact grown up in an atmosphere, the atmosphere of all the good things that i recognised, even of old, as soon as i came near you, and that you’ve allowed me now, between you, to make so blessedly my own.” mrs. verver might in fact have but just failed to make another point, a point charmingly natural to her as a grateful and irreproachable wife. “it isn’t a bit wonderful, i may also remind you, that your husband should find, when opportunity permits, worse things to do than to go about with mine. i happen, love, to appreciate my husband--i happen perfectly to understand that his acquaintance should be cultivated and his company enjoyed.” some such happily-provoked remarks as these, from charlotte, at the other house, had been in the air, but we have seen how there was also in the air, for our young woman, as an emanation from the same source, a distilled difference of which the very principle was to keep down objections and retorts. that impression came back--it had its hours of doing so; and it may interest us on the ground of its having prompted in maggie a final reflection, a reflection out of the heart of which a light flashed for her like a great flower grown in a night. as soon as this light had spread a little it produced in some quarters a surprising distinctness, made her of a sudden ask herself why there should have been even for three days the least obscurity. the perfection of her success, decidedly, was like some strange shore to which she had been noiselessly ferried and where, with a start, she found herself quaking at the thought that the boat might have put off again and left her. the word for it, the word that flashed the light, was that they were treating her, that they were proceeding with her--and, for that matter, with her father--by a plan that was the exact counterpart of her own. it was not from her that they took their cue, but--and this was what in particular made her sit up--from each other; and with a depth of unanimity, an exact coincidence of inspiration that, when once her attention had begun to fix it, struck her as staring out at her in recovered identities of behaviour, expression and tone. they had a view of her situation, and of the possible forms her own consciousness of it might take--a view determined by the change of attitude they had had, ever so subtly, to recognise in her on their return from matcham. they had had to read into this small and all-but-suppressed variation a mute comment--on they didn’t quite know what; and it now arched over the princess’s head like a vault of bold span that important communication between them on the subject couldn’t have failed of being immediate. this new perception bristled for her, as we have said, with odd intimations, but questions unanswered played in and out of it as well--the question, for instance, of why such promptitude of harmony should have been important. ah, when she began to recover, piece by piece, the process became lively; she might have been picking small shining diamonds out of the sweepings of her ordered house. she bent, in this pursuit, over her dust-bin; she challenged to the last grain the refuse of her innocent economy. then it was that the dismissed vision of amerigo, that evening, in arrest at the door of her salottino while her eyes, from her placed chair, took him in--then it was that this immense little memory gave out its full power. since the question was of doors, she had afterwards, she now saw, shut it out; she had responsibly shut in, as we have understood, shut in there with her sentient self, only the fact of his reappearance and the plenitude of his presence. these things had been testimony, after all, to supersede any other, for on the spot, even while she looked, the warmly-washing wave had travelled far up the strand. she had subsequently lived, for hours she couldn’t count, under the dizzying, smothering welter positively in submarine depths where everything came to her through walls of emerald and mother-of-pearl; though indeed she had got her head above them, for breath, when face to face with charlotte again, on the morrow, in eaton square. meanwhile, none the less, as was so apparent, the prior, the prime impression had remained, in the manner of a spying servant, on the other side of the barred threshold; a witness availing himself, in time, of the lightest pretext to re-enter. it was as if he had found this pretext in her observed necessity of comparing--comparing the obvious common elements in her husband’s and her stepmother’s ways of now “taking” her. with or without her witness, at any rate, she was led by comparison to a sense of the quantity of earnest intention operating, and operating so harmoniously, between her companions; and it was in the mitigated midnight of these approximations that she had made out the promise of her dawn. it was a worked-out scheme for their not wounding her, for their behaving to her quite nobly; to which each had, in some winning way, induced the other to contribute, and which therefore, so far as that went, proved that she had become with them a subject of intimate study. quickly, quickly, on a certain alarm taken, eagerly and anxiously, before they should, without knowing it, wound her, they had signalled from house to house their clever idea, the idea by which, for all these days, her own idea had been profiting. they had built her in with their purpose--which was why, above her, a vault seemed more heavily to arch; so that she sat there, in the solid chamber of her helplessness, as in a bath of benevolence artfully prepared for her, over the brim of which she could but just manage to see by stretching her neck. baths of benevolence were very well, but, at least, unless one were a patient of some sort, a nervous eccentric or a lost child, one was usually not so immersed save by one’s request. it wasn’t in the least what she had requested. she had flapped her little wings as a symbol of desired flight, not merely as a plea for a more gilded cage and an extra allowance of lumps of sugar. above all she hadn’t complained, not by the quaver of a syllable--so what wound in particular had she shown her fear of receiving? what wound had she received--as to which she had exchanged the least word with them? if she had ever whined or moped they might have had some reason; but she would be hanged--she conversed with herself in strong language--if she had been, from beginning to end, anything but pliable and mild. it all came back, in consequence, to some required process of their own, a process operating, quite positively, as a precaution and a policy. they had got her into the bath and, for consistency with themselves--which was with each other--must keep her there. in that condition she wouldn’t interfere with the policy, which was established, which was arranged. her thought, over this, arrived at a great intensity--had indeed its pauses and timidities, but always to take afterwards a further and lighter spring. the ground was well-nigh covered by the time she had made out her husband and his colleague as directly interested in preventing her freedom of movement. policy or no policy, it was they themselves who were arranged. she must be kept in position so as not to disarrange them. it fitted immensely together, the whole thing, as soon as she could give them a motive; for, strangely as it had by this time begun to appear to herself, she had hitherto not imagined them sustained by an ideal distinguishably different from her own. of course they were arranged--all four arranged; but what had the basis of their life been, precisely, but that they were arranged together? amerigo and charlotte were arranged together, but she--to confine the matter only to herself--was arranged apart. it rushed over her, the full sense of all this, with quite another rush from that of the breaking wave of ten days before; and as her father himself seemed not to meet the vaguely-clutching hand with which, during the first shock of complete perception, she tried to steady herself, she felt very much alone. xxvii there had been, from far back--that is from the christmas time on--a plan that the parent and the child should “do something lovely” together, and they had recurred to it on occasion, nursed it and brought it up theoretically, though without as yet quite allowing it to put its feet to the ground. the most it had done was to try a few steps on the drawing-room carpet, with much attendance, on either side, much holding up and guarding, much anticipation, in fine, of awkwardness or accident. their companions, by the same token, had constantly assisted at the performance, following the experiment with sympathy and gaiety, and never so full of applause, maggie now made out for herself, as when the infant project had kicked its little legs most wildly--kicked them, for all the world, across the channel and half the continent, kicked them over the pyrenees and innocently crowed out some rich spanish name. she asked herself at present if it had been a “real” belief that they were but wanting, for some such adventure, to snatch their moment; whether either had at any instant seen it as workable, save in the form of a toy to dangle before the other, that they should take flight, without wife or husband, for one more look, “before they died,” at the madrid pictures as well as for a drop of further weak delay in respect to three or four possible prizes, privately offered, rarities of the first water, responsibly reported on and profusely photographed, still patiently awaiting their noiseless arrival in retreats to which the clue had not otherwise been given away. the vision dallied with during the duskier days in eaton square had stretched to the span of three or four weeks of springtime for the total adventure, three or four weeks in the very spirit, after all, of their regular life, as their regular life had been persisting; full of shared mornings, afternoons, evenings, walks, drives, “looks-in,” at old places, on vague chances; full also, in especial, of that purchased social ease, the sense of the comfort and credit of their house, which had essentially the perfection of something paid for, but which “came,” on the whole, so cheap that it might have been felt as costing--as costing the parent and child--nothing. it was for maggie to wonder, at present, if she had been sincere about their going, to ask herself whether she would have stuck to their plan even if nothing had happened. her view of the impossibility of sticking to it now may give us the measure of her sense that everything had happened. a difference had been made in her relation to each of her companions, and what it compelled her to say to herself was that to behave as she might have behaved before would be to act, for amerigo and charlotte, with the highest hypocrisy. she saw in these days that a journey abroad with her father would, more than anything else, have amounted, on his part and her own, to a last expression of an ecstasy of confidence, and that the charm of the idea, in fact, had been in some such sublimity. day after day she put off the moment of “speaking,” as she inwardly and very comprehensively, called it--speaking, that is, to her father; and all the more that she was ridden by a strange suspense as to his himself breaking silence. she gave him time, gave him, during several days, that morning, that noon, that night, and the next and the next and the next; even made up her mind that if he stood off longer it would be proof conclusive that he too wasn’t at peace. they would then have been, all successfully, throwing dust in each other’s eyes; and it would be at last as if they must turn away their faces, since the silver mist that protected them had begun to grow sensibly thin. finally, at the end of april, she decided that if he should say nothing for another period of twenty-four hours she must take it as showing that they were, in her private phraseology, lost; so little possible sincerity could there be in pretending to care for a journey to spain at the approach of a summer that already promised to be hot. such a proposal, on his lips, such an extravagance of optimism, would be his way of being consistent--for that he didn’t really want to move, or to move further, at the worst, than back to fawns again, could only signify that he wasn’t, at heart, contented. what he wanted, at any rate, and what he didn’t want were, in the event, put to the proof for maggie just in time to give her a fresh wind. she had been dining, with her husband, in eaton square, on the occasion of hospitality offered by mr. and mrs. verver to lord and lady castledean. the propriety of some demonstration of this sort had been for many days before our group, the question reduced to the mere issue of which of the two houses should first take the field. the issue had been easily settled--in the manner of every issue referred in any degree to amerigo and charlotte: the initiative obviously belonged to mrs. verver, who had gone to matcham while maggie had stayed away, and the evening in eaton square might have passed for a demonstration all the more personal that the dinner had been planned on “intimate” lines. six other guests only, in addition to the host and the hostess of matcham, made up the company, and each of these persons had for maggie the interest of an attested connection with the easter revels at that visionary house. their common memory of an occasion that had clearly left behind it an ineffaceable charm--this air of beatific reference, less subdued in the others than in amerigo and charlotte, lent them, together, an inscrutable comradeship against which the young woman’s imagination broke in a small vain wave. it wasn’t that she wished she had been of the remembered party and possessed herself of its secrets; for she didn’t care about its secrets--she could concern herself at present, absolutely, with no secret but her own. what occurred was simply that she became aware, at a stroke, of the quantity of further nourishment required by her own, and of the amount of it she might somehow extract from these people; whereby she rose, of a sudden, to the desire to possess and use them, even to the extent of braving, of fairly defying, of directly exploiting, of possibly quite enjoying, under cover of an evil duplicity, the felt element of curiosity with which they regarded her. once she was conscious of the flitting wing of this last impression--the perception, irresistible, that she was something for their queer experience, just as they were something for hers--there was no limit to her conceived design of not letting them escape. she went and went, again, to-night, after her start was taken; went, positively, as she had felt herself going, three weeks before, on the morning when the vision of her father and his wife awaiting her together in the breakfast-room had been so determinant. in this other scene it was lady castledean who was determinant, who kindled the light, or at all events the heat, and who acted on the nerves; lady castledean whom she knew she, so oddly, didn’t like, in spite of reasons upon reasons, the biggest diamonds on the yellowest hair, the longest lashes on the prettiest, falsest eyes, the oldest lace on the most violet velvet, the rightest manner on the wrongest assumption. her ladyship’s assumption was that she kept, at every moment of her life, every advantage--it made her beautifully soft, very nearly generous; so she didn’t distinguish the little protuberant eyes of smaller social insects, often endowed with such a range, from the other decorative spots on their bodies and wings. maggie had liked, in london, and in the world at large, so many more people than she had thought it right to fear, right even to so much as judge, that it positively quickened her fever to have to recognise, in this case, such a lapse of all the sequences. it was only that a charming clever woman wondered about her--that is wondered about her as amerigo’s wife, and wondered, moreover, with the intention of kindness and the spontaneity, almost, of surprise. the point of view--that one--was what she read in their free contemplation, in that of the whole eight; there was something in amerigo to be explained, and she was passed about, all tenderly and expertly, like a dressed doll held, in the right manner, by its firmly-stuffed middle, for the account she could give. she might have been made to give it by pressure of her stomach; she might have been expected to articulate, with a rare imitation of nature, “oh yes, i’m here all the while; i’m also in my way a solid little fact and i cost originally a great deal of money: cost, that is, my father, for my outfit, and let in my husband for an amount of pains--toward my training--that money would scarce represent.” well, she would meet them in some such way, and she translated her idea into action, after dinner, before they dispersed, by engaging them all, unconventionally, almost violently, to dine with her in portland place, just as they were, if they didn’t mind the same party, which was the party she wanted. oh she was going, she was going--she could feel it afresh; it was a good deal as if she had sneezed ten times or had suddenly burst into a comic song. there were breaks in the connection, as there would be hitches in the process; she didn’t wholly see, yet, what they would do for her, nor quite how, herself, she should handle them; but she was dancing up and down, beneath her propriety, with the thought that she had at least begun something--she so fairly liked to feel that she was a point for convergence of wonder. it wasn’t after all, either, that their wonder so much signified--that of the cornered six, whom it glimmered before her that she might still live to drive about like a flock of sheep: the intensity of her consciousness, its sharpest savour, was in the theory of her having diverted, having, as they said, captured the attention of amerigo and charlotte, at neither of whom, all the while, did she so much as once look. she had pitched them in with the six, for that matter, so far as they themselves were concerned; they had dropped, for the succession of minutes, out of contact with their function--had, in short, startled and impressed, abandoned their post. “they’re paralysed, they’re paralysed!” she commented, deep within; so much it helped her own apprehension to hang together that they should suddenly lose their bearings. her grasp of appearances was thus out of proportion to her view of causes; but it came to her then and there that if she could only get the facts of appearance straight, only jam them down into their place, the reasons lurking behind them, kept uncertain, for the eyes, by their wavering and shifting, wouldn’t perhaps be able to help showing. it wasn’t of course that the prince and mrs. verver marvelled to see her civil to their friends; it was rather, precisely, that civil was just what she wasn’t: she had so departed from any such custom of delicate approach--approach by the permitted note, the suggested “if,” the accepted vagueness--as would enable the people in question to put her off if they wished. and the profit of her plan, the effect of the violence she was willing to let it go for, was exactly in their being the people in question, people she had seemed to be rather shy of before and for whom she suddenly opened her mouth so wide. later on, we may add, with the ground soon covered by her agitated but resolute step, it was to cease to matter what people they were or weren’t; but meanwhile the particular sense of them that she had taken home to-night had done her the service of seeming to break the ice where that formation was thickest. still more unexpectedly, the service might have been the same for her father; inasmuch as, immediately, when everyone had gone, he did exactly what she had been waiting for and despairing of--and did it, as he did everything, with a simplicity that left any purpose of sounding him deeper, of drawing him out further, of going, in his own frequent phrase, “behind” what he said, nothing whatever to do. he brought it out straight, made it bravely and beautifully irrelevant, save for the plea of what they should lose by breaking the charm: “i guess we won’t go down there after all, will we, mag?--just when it’s getting so pleasant here.” that was all, with nothing to lead up to it; but it was done for her at a stroke, and done, not less, more rather, for amerigo and charlotte, on whom the immediate effect, as she secretly, as she almost breathlessly measured it, was prodigious. everything now so fitted for her to everything else that she could feel the effect as prodigious even while sticking to her policy of giving the pair no look. there were thus some five wonderful minutes during which they loomed, to her sightless eyes, on either side of her, larger than they had ever loomed before, larger than life, larger than thought, larger than any danger or any safety. there was thus a space of time, in fine, fairly vertiginous for her, during which she took no more account of them than if they were not in the room. she had never, never treated them in any such way--not even just now, when she had plied her art upon the matcham band; her present manner was an intenser exclusion, and the air was charged with their silence while she talked with her other companion as if she had nothing but him to consider. he had given her the note amazingly, by his allusion to the pleasantness--that of such an occasion as his successful dinner--which might figure as their bribe for renouncing; so that it was all as if they were speaking selfishly, counting on a repetition of just such extensions of experience. maggie achieved accordingly an act of unprecedented energy, threw herself into her father’s presence as by the absolute consistency with which she held his eyes; saying to herself, at the same time that she smiled and talked and inaugurated her system, “what does he mean by it? that’s the question--what does he mean?” but studying again all the signs in him that recent anxiety had made familiar and counting the stricken minutes on the part of the others. it was in their silence that the others loomed, as she felt; she had had no measure, she afterwards knew, of this duration, but it drew out and out--really to what would have been called in simpler conditions awkwardness--as if she herself were stretching the cord. ten minutes later, however, in the homeward carriage, to which her husband, cutting delay short, had proceeded at the first announcement, ten minutes later she was to stretch it almost to breaking. the prince had permitted her to linger much less, before his move to the door, than they usually lingered at the gossiping close of such evenings; which she, all responsive, took for a sign of his impatience to modify for her the odd effect of his not having, and of charlotte’s not having, instantly acclaimed the issue of the question debated, or more exactly, settled, before them. he had had time to become aware of this possible impression in her, and his virtually urging her into the carriage was connected with his feeling that he must take action on the new ground. a certain ambiguity in her would absolutely have tormented him; but he had already found something to soothe and correct--as to which she had, on her side, a shrewd notion of what it would be. she was herself, for that matter, prepared, and she was, of a truth, as she took her seat in the brougham, amazed at her preparation. it allowed her scarce an interval; she brought it straight out. “i was certain that was what father would say if i should leave him alone. i have been leaving him alone, and you see the effect. he hates now to move--he likes too much to be with us. but if you see the effect”--she felt herself magnificently keeping it up--“perhaps you don’t see the cause. the cause, my dear, is too lovely.” her husband, on taking his place beside her, had, during a minute or two, for her watching sense, neither said nor done anything; he had been, for that sense, as if thinking, waiting, deciding: yet it was still before he spoke that he, as she felt it to be, definitely acted. he put his arm round her and drew her close--indulged in the demonstration, the long, firm embrace by his single arm, the infinite pressure of her whole person to his own, that such opportunities had so often suggested and prescribed. held, accordingly, and, as she could but too intimately feel, exquisitely solicited, she had said the thing she was intending and desiring to say, and as to which she felt, even more than she felt anything else, that whatever he might do she mustn’t be irresponsible. yes, she was in his exerted grasp, and she knew what that was; but she was at the same time in the grasp of her conceived responsibility, and the extraordinary thing was that, of the two intensities, the second was presently to become the sharper. he took his time for it meanwhile, but he met her speech after a fashion. “the cause of your father’s deciding not to go?” “yes, and of my having wanted to let it act for him quietly--i mean without my insistence.” she had, in her compressed state, another pause, and it made her feel as if she were immensely resisting. strange enough was this sense for her, and altogether new, the sense of possessing, by miraculous help, some advantage that, absolutely then and there, in the carriage, as they rolled, she might either give up or keep. strange, inexpressibly strange--so distinctly she saw that if she did give it up she should somehow give up everything for ever. and what her husband’s grasp really meant, as her very bones registered, was that she should give it up: it was exactly for this that he had resorted to unfailing magic. he knew how to resort to it--he could be, on occasion, as she had lately more than ever learned, so munificent a lover: all of which was, precisely, a part of the character she had never ceased to regard in him as princely, a part of his large and beautiful ease, his genius for charm, for intercourse, for expression, for life. she should have but to lay her head back on his shoulder with a certain movement to make it definite for him that she didn’t resist. to this, as they went, every throb of her consciousness prompted her--every throb, that is, but one, the throb of her deeper need to know where she “really” was. by the time she had uttered the rest of her idea, therefore, she was still keeping her head and intending to keep it; though she was also staring out of the carriage-window with eyes into which the tears of suffered pain had risen, indistinguishable, perhaps, happily, in the dusk. she was making an effort that horribly hurt her, and, as she couldn’t cry out, her eyes swam in her silence. with them, all the same, through the square opening beside her, through the grey panorama of the london night, she achieved the feat of not losing sight of what she wanted; and her lips helped and protected her by being able to be gay. “it’s not to leave you, my dear--for that he’ll give up anything; just as he would go off anywhere, i think, you know, if you would go with him. i mean you and he alone,” maggie pursued with her gaze out of her window. for which amerigo’s answer again took him a moment. “ah, the dear old boy! you would like me to propose him something--?” “well, if you think you could bear it.” “and leave,” the prince asked, “you and charlotte alone?” “why not?” maggie had also to wait a minute, but when she spoke it came clear. “why shouldn’t charlotte be just one of my reasons--my not liking to leave her? she has always been so good, so perfect, to me--but never so wonderfully as just now. we have somehow been more together--thinking, for the time, almost only of each other; it has been quite as in old days.” and she proceeded consummately, for she felt it as consummate: “it’s as if we had been missing each other, had got a little apart--though going on so side by side. but the good moments, if one only waits for them,” she hastened to add, “come round of themselves. moreover you’ve seen for yourself, since you’ve made it up so to father; feeling, for yourself, in your beautiful way, every difference, every air that blows; not having to be told or pushed, only being perfect to live with, through your habit of kindness and your exquisite instincts. but of course you’ve seen, all the while, that both he and i have deeply felt how you’ve managed; managed that he hasn’t been too much alone and that i, on my side, haven’t appeared, to--what you might call--neglect him. this is always,” she continued, “what i can never bless you enough for; of all the good things you’ve done for me you’ve never done anything better.” she went on explaining as for the pleasure of explaining--even though knowing he must recognise, as a part of his easy way too, her description of his large liberality. “your taking the child down yourself, those days, and your coming, each time, to bring him away--nothing in the world, nothing you could have invented, would have kept father more under the charm. besides, you know how you’ve always suited him, and how you’ve always so beautifully let it seem to him that he suits you. only it has been, these last weeks, as if you wished--just in order to please him--to remind him of it afresh. so there it is,” she wound up; “it’s your doing. you’ve produced your effect--that of his wanting not to be, even for a month or two, where you’re not. he doesn’t want to bother or bore you--that, i think, you know, he never has done; and if you’ll only give me time i’ll come round again to making it my care, as always, that he shan’t. but he can’t bear you out of his sight.” she had kept it up and up, filling it out, crowding it in; and all, really, without difficulty, for it was, every word of it, thanks to a long evolution of feeling, what she had been primed to the brim with. she made the picture, forced it upon him, hung it before him; remembering, happily, how he had gone so far, one day, supported by the principino, as to propose the zoo in eaton square, to carry with him there, on the spot, under this pleasant inspiration, both his elder and his younger companion, with the latter of whom he had taken the tone that they were introducing granddaddy, granddaddy nervous and rather funking it, to lions and tigers more or less at large. touch by touch she thus dropped into her husband’s silence the truth about his good nature and his good manners; and it was this demonstration of his virtue, precisely, that added to the strangeness, even for herself, of her failing as yet to yield to him. it would be a question but of the most trivial act of surrender, the vibration of a nerve, the mere movement of a muscle; but the act grew important between them just through her doing perceptibly nothing, nothing but talk in the very tone that would naturally have swept her into tenderness. she knew more and more--every lapsing minute taught her--how he might by a single rightness make her cease to watch him; that rightness, a million miles removed from the queer actual, falling so short, which would consist of his breaking out to her diviningly, indulgently, with the last happy inconsequence. “come away with me, somewhere, you--and then we needn’t think, we needn’t even talk, of anything, of anyone else:” five words like that would answer her, would break her utterly down. but they were the only ones that would so serve. she waited for them, and there was a supreme instant when, by the testimony of all the rest of him, she seemed to feel them in his heart and on his lips; only they didn’t sound, and as that made her wait again so it made her more intensely watch. this in turn showed her that he too watched and waited, and how much he had expected something that he now felt wouldn’t come. yes, it wouldn’t come if he didn’t answer her, if he but said the wrong things instead of the right. if he could say the right everything would come--it hung by a hair that everything might crystallise for their recovered happiness at his touch. this possibility glowed at her, however, for fifty seconds, only then to turn cold, and as it fell away from her she felt the chill of reality and knew again, all but pressed to his heart and with his breath upon her cheek, the slim rigour of her attitude, a rigour beyond that of her natural being. they had silences, at last, that were almost crudities of mutual resistance--silences that persisted through his felt effort to treat her recurrence to the part he had lately played, to interpret all the sweetness of her so talking to him, as a manner of making love to him. ah, it was no such manner, heaven knew, for maggie; she could make love, if this had been in question, better than that! on top of which it came to her presently to say, keeping in with what she had already spoken: “except of course that, for the question of going off somewhere, he’d go readily, quite delightedly, with you. i verily believe he’d like to have you for a while to himself.” “do you mean he thinks of proposing it?” the prince after a moment sounded. “oh no--he doesn’t ask, as you must so often have seen. but i believe he’d go ‘like a shot,’ as you say, if you were to suggest it.” it had the air, she knew, of a kind of condition made, and she had asked herself while she spoke if it wouldn’t cause his arm to let her go. the fact that it didn’t suggested to her that she had made him, of a sudden, still more intensely think, think with such concentration that he could do but one thing at once. and it was precisely as if the concentration had the next moment been proved in him. he took a turn inconsistent with the superficial impression--a jump that made light of their approach to gravity and represented for her the need in him to gain time. that she made out, was his drawback--that the warning from her had come to him, and had come to charlotte, after all, too suddenly. that they were in face of it rearranging, that they had to rearrange, was all before her again; yet to do as they would like they must enjoy a snatch, longer or shorter, of recovered independence. amerigo, for the instant, was but doing as he didn’t like, and it was as if she were watching his effort without disguise. “what’s your father’s idea, this year, then, about fawns? will he go at whitsuntide, and will he then stay on?” maggie went through the form of thought. “he will really do, i imagine, as he has, in so many ways, so often done before; do whatever may seem most agreeable to yourself. and there’s of course always charlotte to be considered. only their going early to fawns, if they do go,” she said, “needn’t in the least entail your and my going.” “ah,” amerigo echoed, “it needn’t in the least entail your and my going?” “we can do as we like. what they may do needn’t trouble us, since they’re by good fortune perfectly happy together.” “oh,” the prince returned, “your father’s never so happy as with you near him to enjoy his being so.” “well, i may enjoy it,” said maggie, “but i’m not the cause of it.” “you’re the cause,” her husband declared, “of the greater part of everything that’s good among us.” but she received this tribute in silence, and the next moment he pursued: “if mrs. verver has arrears of time with you to make up, as you say, she’ll scarcely do it--or you scarcely will--by our cutting, your and my cutting, too loose.” “i see what you mean,” maggie mused. he let her for a little to give her attention to it; after which, “shall i just quite, of a sudden,” he asked, “propose him a journey?” maggie hesitated, but she brought forth the fruit of reflection. “it would have the merit that charlotte then would be with me--with me, i mean, so much more. also that i shouldn’t, by choosing such a time for going away, seem unconscious and ungrateful, seem not to respond, seem in fact rather to wish to shake her off. i should respond, on the contrary, very markedly--by being here alone with her for a month.” “and would you like to be here alone with her for a month?” “i could do with it beautifully. or we might even,” she said quite gaily, “go together down to fawns.” “you could be so very content without me?” the prince presently inquired. “yes, my own dear--if you could be content for a while with father. that would keep me up. i might, for the time,” she went on, “go to stay there with charlotte; or, better still, she might come to portland place.” “oho!” said the prince with cheerful vagueness. “i should feel, you see,” she continued, “that the two of us were showing the same sort of kindness.” amerigo thought. “the two of us? charlotte and i?” maggie again hesitated. “you and i, darling.” “i see, i see”--he promptly took it in. “and what reason shall i give--give, i mean, your father?” “for asking him to go off? why, the very simplest--if you conscientiously can. the desire,” said maggie, “to be agreeable to him. just that only.” something in this reply made her husband again reflect. “‘conscientiously?’ why shouldn’t i conscientiously? it wouldn’t, by your own contention,” he developed, “represent any surprise for him. i must strike him sufficiently as, at the worst, the last person in the world to wish to do anything to hurt him.” ah, there it was again, for maggie--the note already sounded, the note of the felt need of not working harm! why this precautionary view, she asked herself afresh, when her father had complained, at the very least, as little as herself? with their stillness together so perfect, what had suggested so, around them, the attitude of sparing them? her inner vision fixed it once more, this attitude, saw it, in the others, as vivid and concrete, extended it straight from her companion to charlotte. before she was well aware, accordingly, she had echoed in this intensity of thought amerigo’s last words. “you’re the last person in the world to wish to do anything to hurt him.” she heard herself, heard her tone, after she had spoken, and heard it the more that, for a minute after, she felt her husband’s eyes on her face, very close, too close for her to see him. he was looking at her because he was struck, and looking hard--though his answer, when it came, was straight enough. “why, isn’t that just what we have been talking about--that i’ve affected you as fairly studying his comfort and his pleasure? he might show his sense of it,” the prince went on, “by proposing to me an excursion.” “and you would go with him?” maggie immediately asked. he hung fire but an instant. “per dio!” she also had her pause, but she broke it--since gaiety was in the air--with an intense smile. “you can say that safely, because the proposal’s one that, of his own motion, he won’t make.” she couldn’t have narrated afterwards--and in fact was at a loss to tell herself--by what transition, what rather marked abruptness of change in their personal relation, their drive came to its end with a kind of interval established, almost confessed to, between them. she felt it in the tone with which he repeated, after her, “‘safely’--?” “safely as regards being thrown with him perhaps after all, in such a case, too long. he’s a person to think you might easily feel yourself to be. so it won’t,” maggie said, “come from father. he’s too modest.” their eyes continued to meet on it, from corner to corner of the brougham. “oh your modesty, between you--!” but he still smiled for it. “so that unless i insist--?” “we shall simply go on as we are.” “well, we’re going on beautifully,” he answered--though by no means with the effect it would have had if their mute transaction, that of attempted capture and achieved escape, had not taken place. as maggie said nothing, none the less, to gainsay his remark, it was open to him to find himself the next moment conscious of still another idea. “i wonder if it would do. i mean for me to break in.” “‘to break in’--?” “between your father and his wife. but there would be a way,” he said--“we can make charlotte ask him.” and then as maggie herself now wondered, echoing it again: “we can suggest to her to suggest to him that he shall let me take him off.” “oh!” said maggie. “then if he asks her why i so suddenly break out she’ll be able to tell him the reason.” they were stopping, and the footman, who had alighted, had rung at the house-door. “that you think it would be so charming?” “that i think it would be so charming. that we’ve persuaded her will be convincing.” “i see,” maggie went on while the footman came back to let them out. “i see,” she said again; though she felt a little disconcerted. what she really saw, of a sudden, was that her stepmother might report her as above all concerned for the proposal, and this brought her back her need that her father shouldn’t think her concerned in any degree for anything. she alighted the next instant with a slight sense of defeat; her husband, to let her out, had passed before her, and, a little in advance, he awaited her on the edge of the low terrace, a step high, that preceded their open entrance, on either side of which one of their servants stood. the sense of a life tremendously ordered and fixed rose before her, and there was something in amerigo’s very face, while his eyes again met her own through the dusky lamplight, that was like a conscious reminder of it. he had answered her, just before, distinctly, and it appeared to leave her nothing to say. it was almost as if, having planned for the last word, she saw him himself enjoying it. it was almost as if--in the strangest way in the world--he were paying her back, by the production of a small pang, that of a new uneasiness, for the way she had slipped from him during their drive. xxviii maggie’s new uneasiness might have had time to drop, inasmuch as she not only was conscious, during several days that followed, of no fresh indication for it to feed on, but was even struck, in quite another way, with an augmentation of the symptoms of that difference she had taken it into her head to work for. she recognised by the end of a week that if she had been in a manner caught up her father had been not less so--with the effect of her husband’s and his wife’s closing in, together, round them, and of their all having suddenly begun, as a party of four, to lead a life gregarious, and from that reason almost hilarious, so far as the easy sound of it went, as never before. it might have been an accident and a mere coincidence--so at least she said to herself at first; but a dozen chances that furthered the whole appearance had risen to the surface, pleasant pretexts, oh certainly pleasant, as pleasant as amerigo in particular could make them, for associated undertakings, quite for shared adventures, for its always turning out, amusingly, that they wanted to do very much the same thing at the same time and in the same way. funny all this was, to some extent, in the light of the fact that the father and daughter, for so long, had expressed so few positive desires; yet it would be sufficiently natural that if amerigo and charlotte had at last got a little tired of each other’s company they should find their relief not so much in sinking to the rather low level of their companions as in wishing to pull the latter into the train in which they so constantly moved. “we’re in the train,” maggie mutely reflected after the dinner in eaton square with lady castledean; “we’ve suddenly waked up in it and found ourselves rushing along, very much as if we had been put in during sleep--shoved, like a pair of labelled boxes, into the van. and since i wanted to ‘go’ i’m certainly going,” she might have added; “i’m moving without trouble--they’re doing it all for us: it’s wonderful how they understand and how perfectly it succeeds.” for that was the thing she had most immediately to acknowledge: it seemed as easy for them to make a quartette as it had formerly so long appeared for them to make a pair of couples--this latter being thus a discovery too absurdly belated. the only point at which, day after day, the success appeared at all qualified was represented, as might have been said, by her irresistible impulse to give her father a clutch when the train indulged in one of its occasional lurches. then--there was no denying it--his eyes and her own met; so that they were themselves doing active violence, as against the others, to that very spirit of union, or at least to that very achievement of change, which she had taken the field to invoke. the maximum of change was reached, no doubt, the day the matcham party dined in portland place; the day, really perhaps, of maggie’s maximum of social glory, in the sense of its showing for her own occasion, her very own, with every one else extravagantly rallying and falling in, absolutely conspiring to make her its heroine. it was as if her father himself, always with more initiative as a guest than as a host, had dabbled too in the conspiracy; and the impression was not diminished by the presence of the assinghams, likewise very much caught-up, now, after something of a lull, by the side-wind of all the rest of the motion, and giving our young woman, so far at least as fanny was concerned, the sense of some special intention of encouragement and applause. fanny, who had not been present at the other dinner, thanks to a preference entertained and expressed by charlotte, made a splendid show at this one, in new orange-coloured velvet with multiplied turquoises, and with a confidence, furthermore, as different as possible, her hostess inferred, from her too-marked betrayal of a belittled state at matcham. maggie was not indifferent to her own opportunity to redress this balance--which seemed, for the hour, part of a general rectification; she liked making out for herself that on the high level of portland place, a spot exempt, on all sorts of grounds, from jealous jurisdictions, her friend could feel as “good” as any one, and could in fact at moments almost appear to take the lead in recognition and celebration, so far as the evening might conduce to intensify the lustre of the little princess. mrs. assingham produced on her the impression of giving her constantly her cue for this; and it was in truth partly by her help, intelligently, quite gratefully accepted, that the little princess, in maggie, was drawn out and emphasised. she couldn’t definitely have said how it happened, but she felt herself, for the first time in her career, living up to the public and popular notion of such a personage, as it pressed upon her from all round; rather wondering, inwardly too, while she did so, at that strange mixture in things through which the popular notion could be evidenced for her by such supposedly great ones of the earth as the castledeans and their kind. fanny assingham might really have been there, at all events, like one of the assistants in the ring at the circus, to keep up the pace of the sleek revolving animal on whose back the lady in short spangled skirts should brilliantly caper and posture. that was all, doubtless maggie had forgotten, had neglected, had declined, to be the little princess on anything like the scale open to her; but now that the collective hand had been held out to her with such alacrity, so that she might skip up into the light, even, as seemed to her modest mind, with such a show of pink stocking and such an abbreviation of white petticoat, she could strike herself as perceiving, under arched eyebrows, where her mistake had been. she had invited for the later hours, after her dinner, a fresh contingent, the whole list of her apparent london acquaintance--which was again a thing in the manner of little princesses for whom the princely art was a matter of course. that was what she was learning to do, to fill out as a matter of course her appointed, her expected, her imposed character; and, though there were latent considerations that somewhat interfered with the lesson, she was having to-night an inordinate quantity of practice, none of it so successful as when, quite wittingly, she directed it at lady castledean, who was reduced by it at last to an unprecedented state of passivity. the perception of this high result caused mrs. assingham fairly to flush with responsive joy; she glittered at her young friend, from moment to moment, quite feverishly; it was positively as if her young friend had, in some marvellous, sudden, supersubtle way, become a source of succour to herself, become beautifully, divinely retributive. the intensity of the taste of these registered phenomena was in fact that somehow, by a process and through a connexion not again to be traced, she so practised, at the same time, on amerigo and charlotte--with only the drawback, her constant check and second-thought, that she concomitantly practised perhaps still more on her father. this last was a danger indeed that, for much of the ensuing time, had its hours of strange beguilement--those at which her sense for precautions so suffered itself to lapse that she felt her communion with him more intimate than any other. it couldn’t but pass between them that something singular was happening--so much as this she again and again said to herself; whereby the comfort of it was there, after all, to be noted, just as much as the possible peril, and she could think of the couple they formed together as groping, with sealed lips, but with mutual looks that had never been so tender, for some freedom, some fiction, some figured bravery, under which they might safely talk of it. the moment was to come--and it finally came with an effect as penetrating as the sound that follows the pressure of an electric button--when she read the least helpful of meanings into the agitation she had created. the merely specious description of their case would have been that, after being for a long time, as a family, delightfully, uninterruptedly happy, they had still had a new felicity to discover; a felicity for which, blessedly, her father’s appetite and her own, in particular, had been kept fresh and grateful. this livelier march of their intercourse as a whole was the thing that occasionally determined in him the clutching instinct we have glanced at; very much as if he had said to her, in default of her breaking silence first: “everything is remarkably pleasant, isn’t it?--but where, for it, after all, are we? up in a balloon and whirling through space, or down in the depths of the earth, in the glimmering passages of a gold-mine?” the equilibrium, the precious condition, lasted in spite of rearrangement; there had been a fresh distribution of the different weights, but the balance persisted and triumphed: all of which was just the reason why she was forbidden, face to face with the companion of her adventure, the experiment of a test. if they balanced they balanced--she had to take that; it deprived her of every pretext for arriving, by however covert a process, at what he thought. but she had her hours, thus, of feeling supremely linked to him by the rigour of their law, and when it came over her that, all the while, the wish, on his side, to spare her might be what most worked with him, this very fact of their seeming to have nothing “inward” really to talk about wrapped him up for her in a kind of sweetness that was wanting, as a consecration, even in her yearning for her husband. she was powerless, however, was only more utterly hushed, when the interrupting flash came, when she would have been all ready to say to him, “yes, this is by every appearance the best time we’ve had yet; but don’t you see, all the same, how they must be working together for it, and how my very success, my success in shifting our beautiful harmony to a new basis, comes round to being their success, above all; their cleverness, their amiability, their power to hold out, their complete possession, in short, of our life?” for how could she say as much as that without saying a great deal more? without saying “they’ll do everything in the world that suits us, save only one thing--prescribe a line for us that will make them separate.” how could she so much as imagine herself even faintly murmuring that without putting into his mouth the very words that would have made her quail? “separate, my dear? do you want them to separate? then you want us to--you and me? for how can the one separation take place without the other?” that was the question that, in spirit, she had heard him ask--with its dread train, moreover, of involved and connected inquiries. their own separation, his and hers, was of course perfectly thinkable, but only on the basis of the sharpest of reasons. well, the sharpest, the very sharpest, would be that they could no longer afford, as it were, he to let his wife, she to let her husband, “run” them in such compact formation. and say they accepted this account of their situation as a practical finality, acting upon it and proceeding to a division, would no sombre ghosts of the smothered past, on either side, show, across the widening strait, pale unappeased faces, or raise, in the very passage, deprecating, denouncing hands? meanwhile, however such things might be, she was to have occasion to say to herself that there might be but a deeper treachery in recoveries and reassurances. she was to feel alone again, as she had felt at the issue of her high tension with her husband during their return from meeting the castledeans in eaton square. the evening in question had left her with a larger alarm, but then a lull had come--the alarm, after all, was yet to be confirmed. there came an hour, inevitably, when she knew, with a chill, what she had feared and why; it had taken, this hour, a month to arrive, but to find it before her was thoroughly to recognise it, for it showed her sharply what amerigo had meant in alluding to a particular use that they might make, for their reaffirmed harmony and prosperity, of charlotte. the more she thought, at present, of the tone he had employed to express their enjoyment of this resource, the more it came back to her as the product of a conscious art of dealing with her. he had been conscious, at the moment, of many things--conscious even, not a little, of desiring; and thereby of needing, to see what she would do in a given case. the given case would be that of her being to a certain extent, as she might fairly make it out, menaced--horrible as it was to impute to him any intention represented by such a word. why it was that to speak of making her stepmother intervene, as they might call it, in a question that seemed, just then and there, quite peculiarly their own business--why it was that a turn so familiar and so easy should, at the worst, strike her as charged with the spirit of a threat, was an oddity disconnected, for her, temporarily, from its grounds, the adventure of an imagination within her that possibly had lost its way. that, precisely, was doubtless why she had learned to wait, as the weeks passed by, with a fair, or rather indeed with an excessive, imitation of resumed serenity. there had been no prompt sequel to the prince’s equivocal light, and that made for patience; yet she was none the less to have to admit, after delay, that the bread he had cast on the waters had come home, and that she should thus be justified of her old apprehension. the consequence of this, in turn, was a renewed pang in presence of his remembered ingenuity. to be ingenious with her--what didn’t, what mightn’t that mean, when she had so absolutely never, at any point of contact with him, put him, by as much as the value of a penny, to the expense of sparing, doubting, fearing her, of having in any way whatever to reckon with her? the ingenuity had been in his simply speaking of their use of charlotte as if it were common to them in an equal degree, and his triumph, on the occasion, had been just in the simplicity. she couldn’t--and he knew it--say what was true: “oh, you ‘use’ her, and i use her, if you will, yes; but we use her ever so differently and separately--not at all in the same way or degree. there’s nobody we really use together but ourselves, don’t you see?--by which i mean that where our interests are the same i can so beautifully, so exquisitely serve you for everything, and you can so beautifully, so exquisitely serve me. the only person either of us needs is the other of us; so why, as a matter of course, in such a case as this, drag in charlotte?” she couldn’t so challenge him, because it would have been--and there she was paralysed--the note. it would have translated itself on the spot, for his ear, into jealousy; and, from reverberation to repercussion, would have reached her father’s exactly in the form of a cry piercing the stillness of peaceful sleep. it had been for many days almost as difficult for her to catch a quiet twenty minutes with her father as it had formerly been easy; there had been in fact, of old--the time, so strangely, seemed already far away--an inevitability in her longer passages with him, a sort of domesticated beauty in the calculability, round about them, of everything. but at present charlotte was almost always there when amerigo brought her to eaton square, where amerigo was constantly bringing her; and amerigo was almost always there when charlotte brought her husband to portland place, where charlotte was constantly bringing him. the fractions of occasions, the chance minutes that put them face to face had, as yet, of late, contrived to count but little, between them, either for the sense of opportunity or for that of exposure; inasmuch as the lifelong rhythm of their intercourse made against all cursory handling of deep things. they had never availed themselves of any given quarter-of-an-hour to gossip about fundamentals; they moved slowly through large still spaces; they could be silent together, at any time, beautifully, with much more comfort than hurriedly expressive. it appeared indeed to have become true that their common appeal measured itself, for vividness, just by this economy of sound; they might have been talking “at” each other when they talked with their companions, but these latter, assuredly, were not in any directer way to gain light on the current phase of their relation. such were some of the reasons for which maggie suspected fundamentals, as i have called them, to be rising, by a new movement, to the surface--suspected it one morning late in may, when her father presented himself in portland place alone. he had his pretext--of that she was fully aware: the principino, two days before, had shown signs, happily not persistent, of a feverish cold and had notoriously been obliged to spend the interval at home. this was ground, ample ground, for punctual inquiry; but what it wasn’t ground for, she quickly found herself reflecting, was his having managed, in the interest of his visit, to dispense so unwontedly--as their life had recently come to be arranged--with his wife’s attendance. it had so happened that she herself was, for the hour, exempt from her husband’s, and it will at once be seen that the hour had a quality all its own when i note that, remembering how the prince had looked in to say he was going out, the princess whimsically wondered if their respective sposi mightn’t frankly be meeting, whimsically hoped indeed they were temporarily so disposed of. strange was her need, at moments, to think of them as not attaching an excessive importance to their repudiation of the general practice that had rested only a few weeks before on such a consecrated rightness. repudiations, surely, were not in the air--they had none of them come to that; for wasn’t she at this minute testifying directly against them by her own behaviour? when she should confess to fear of being alone with her father, to fear of what he might then--ah, with such a slow, painful motion as she had a horror of!--say to her, then would be time enough for amerigo and charlotte to confess to not liking to appear to foregather. she had this morning a wonderful consciousness both of dreading a particular question from him and of being able to check, yes even to disconcert, magnificently, by her apparent manner of receiving it, any restless imagination he might have about its importance. the day, bright and soft, had the breath of summer; it made them talk, to begin with, of fawns, of the way fawns invited--maggie aware, the while, that in thus regarding, with him, the sweetness of its invitation to one couple just as much as to another, her humbugging smile grew very nearly convulsive. that was it, and there was relief truly, of a sort, in taking it in: she was humbugging him already, by absolute necessity, as she had never, never done in her life--doing it up to the full height of what she had allowed for. the necessity, in the great dimly-shining room where, declining, for his reasons, to sit down, he moved about in amerigo’s very footsteps, the necessity affected her as pressing upon her with the very force of the charm itself; of the old pleasantness, between them, so candidly playing up there again; of the positive flatness of their tenderness, a surface all for familiar use, quite as if generalised from the long succession of tapestried sofas, sweetly faded, on which his theory of contentment had sat, through unmeasured pauses, beside her own. she knew, from this instant, knew in advance and as well as anything would ever teach her, that she must never intermit for a solitary second her so highly undertaking to prove that there was nothing the matter with her. she saw, of a sudden, everything she might say or do in the light of that undertaking, established connections from it with any number of remote matters, struck herself, for instance, as acting all in its interest when she proposed their going out, in the exercise of their freedom and in homage to the season, for a turn in the regent’s park. this resort was close at hand, at the top of portland place, and the principino, beautifully better, had already proceeded there under high attendance: all of which considerations were defensive for maggie, all of which became, to her mind, part of the business of cultivating continuity. upstairs, while she left him to put on something to go out in, the thought of his waiting below for her, in possession of the empty house, brought with it, sharply if briefly, one of her abrupt arrests of consistency, the brush of a vain imagination almost paralysing her, often, for the minute, before her glass--the vivid look, in other words, of the particular difference his marriage had made. the particular difference seemed at such instants the loss, more than anything else, of their old freedom, their never having had to think, where they were together concerned, of any one, of anything but each other. it hadn’t been her marriage that did it; that had never, for three seconds, suggested to either of them that they must act diplomatically, must reckon with another presence--no, not even with her husband’s. she groaned to herself, while the vain imagination lasted, “why did he marry? ah, why did he?” and then it came up to her more than ever that nothing could have been more beautiful than the way in which, till charlotte came so much more closely into their life, amerigo hadn’t interfered. what she had gone on owing him for this mounted up again, to her eyes, like a column of figures---or call it even, if one would, a house of cards; it was her father’s wonderful act that had tipped the house down and made the sum wrong. with all of which, immediately after her question, her “why did he, why did he?” rushed back, inevitably, the confounding, the overwhelming wave of the knowledge of his reason. “he did it for me, he did it for me,” she moaned, “he did it, exactly, that our freedom--meaning, beloved man, simply and solely mine--should be greater instead of less; he did it, divinely, to liberate me so far as possible from caring what became of him.” she found time upstairs, even in her haste, as she had repeatedly found time before, to let the wonderments involved in these recognitions flash at her with their customary effect of making her blink: the question in especial of whether she might find her solution in acting, herself, in the spirit of what he had done, in forcing her “care” really to grow as much less as he had tried to make it. thus she felt the whole weight of their case drop afresh upon her shoulders, was confronted, unmistakably, with the prime source of her haunted state. it all came from her not having been able not to mind--not to mind what became of him; not having been able, without anxiety, to let him go his way and take his risk and lead his life. she had made anxiety her stupid little idol; and absolutely now, while she stuck a long pin, a trifle fallaciously, into her hat--she had, with an approach to irritation, told her maid, a new woman, whom she had lately found herself thinking of as abysmal, that she didn’t want her--she tried to focus the possibility of some understanding between them in consequence of which he should cut loose. very near indeed it looked, any such possibility! that consciousness, too, had taken its turn by the time she was ready; all the vibration, all the emotion of this present passage being, precisely, in the very sweetness of their lapse back into the conditions of the simpler time, into a queer resemblance between the aspect and the feeling of the moment and those of numberless other moments that were sufficiently far away. she had been quick in her preparation, in spite of the flow of the tide that sometimes took away her breath; but a pause, once more, was still left for her to make, a pause, at the top of the stairs, before she came down to him, in the span of which she asked herself if it weren’t thinkable, from the perfectly practical point of view, that she should simply sacrifice him. she didn’t go into the detail of what sacrificing him would mean--she didn’t need to; so distinct was it, in one of her restless lights, that there he was awaiting her, that she should find him walking up and down the drawing-room in the warm, fragrant air to which the open windows and the abundant flowers contributed; slowly and vaguely moving there and looking very slight and young and, superficially, manageable, almost as much like her child, putting it a little freely, as like her parent; with the appearance about him, above all, of having perhaps arrived just on purpose to say it to her, himself, in so many words: “sacrifice me, my own love; do sacrifice me, do sacrifice me!” should she want to, should she insist on it, she might verily hear him bleating it at her, all conscious and all accommodating, like some precious, spotless, exceptionally intelligent lamb. the positive effect of the intensity of this figure, however, was to make her shake it away in her resumed descent; and after she had rejoined him, after she had picked him up, she was to know the full pang of the thought that her impossibility was made, absolutely, by his consciousness, by the lucidity of his intention: this she felt while she smiled there for him, again, all hypocritically; while she drew on fair, fresh gloves; while she interrupted the process first to give his necktie a slightly smarter twist and then to make up to him for her hidden madness by rubbing her nose into his cheek according to the tradition of their frankest levity. from the instant she should be able to convict him of intending, every issue would be closed and her hypocrisy would have to redouble. the only way to sacrifice him would be to do so without his dreaming what it might be for. she kissed him, she arranged his cravat, she dropped remarks, she guided him out, she held his arm, not to be led, but to lead him, and taking it to her by much the same intimate pressure she had always used, when a little girl, to mark the inseparability of her doll--she did all these things so that he should sufficiently fail to dream of what they might be for. xxix there was nothing to show that her effort in any degree fell short till they got well into the park and he struck her as giving, unexpectedly, the go-by to any serious search for the principino. the way they sat down awhile in the sun was a sign of that; his dropping with her into the first pair of sequestered chairs they came across and waiting a little, after they were placed, as if now at last she might bring out, as between them, something more specific. it made her but feel the more sharply how the specific, in almost any direction, was utterly forbidden her--how the use of it would be, for all the world, like undoing the leash of a dog eager to follow up a scent. it would come out, the specific, where the dog would come out; would run to earth, somehow, the truth--for she was believing herself in relation to the truth!--at which she mustn’t so much as indirectly point. such, at any rate, was the fashion in which her passionate prudence played over possibilities of danger, reading symptoms and betrayals into everything she looked at, and yet having to make it evident, while she recognised them, that she didn’t wince. there were moments between them, in their chairs, when he might have been watching her guard herself and trying to think of something new that would trip her up. there were pauses during which, with her affection as sweet and still as the sunshine, she might yet, as at some hard game, over a table, for money, have been defying him to fasten upon her the least little complication of consciousness. she was positively proud, afterwards, of the great style in which she had kept this up; later on, at the hour’s end, when they had retraced their steps to find amerigo and charlotte awaiting them at the house, she was able to say to herself that, truly, she had put her plan through; even though once more setting herself the difficult task of making their relation, every minute of the time, not fall below the standard of that other hour, in the treasured past, which hung there behind them like a framed picture in a museum, a high watermark for the history of their old fortune; the summer evening, in the park at fawns, when, side by side under the trees just as now, they had let their happy confidence lull them with its most golden tone. there had been the possibility of a trap for her, at present, in the very question of their taking up anew that residence; wherefore she had not been the first to sound it, in spite of the impression from him of his holding off to see what she would do. she was saying to herself in secret: “can we again, in this form, migrate there? can i, for myself, undertake it? face all the intenser keeping-up and stretching-out, indefinitely, impossibly, that our conditions in the country, as we’ve established and accepted them, would stand for?” she had positively lost herself in this inward doubt--so much she was subsequently to remember; but remembering then too that her companion, though perceptibly perhaps as if not to be eager, had broken the ice very much as he had broken it in eaton square after the banquet to the castledeans. her mind had taken a long excursion, wandered far into the vision of what a summer at fawns, with amerigo and charlotte still more eminently in presence against that higher sky, would bring forth. wasn’t her father meanwhile only pretending to talk of it? just as she was, in a manner, pretending to listen? he got off it, finally, at all events, for the transition it couldn’t well help thrusting out at him; it had amounted exactly to an arrest of her private excursion by the sense that he had begun to imitate--oh, as never yet!--the ancient tone of gold. it had verily come from him at last, the question of whether she thought it would be very good--but very good indeed--that he should leave england for a series of weeks, on some pretext, with the prince. then it had been that she was to know her husband’s “menace” hadn’t really dropped, since she was face to face with the effect of it. ah, the effect of it had occupied all the rest of their walk, had stayed out with them and come home with them, besides making it impossible that they shouldn’t presently feign to recollect how rejoining the child had been their original purpose. maggie’s uneffaced note was that it had, at the end of five minutes more, driven them to that endeavour as to a refuge, and caused them afterwards to rejoice, as well, that the boy’s irrepressibly importunate company, in due course secured and enjoyed, with the extension imparted by his governess, a person expectant of consideration, constituted a cover for any awkwardness. for that was what it had all come to, that the dear man had spoken to her to try her--quite as he had been spoken to himself by charlotte, with the same fine idea. the princess took it in, on the spot, firmly grasping it; she heard them together, her father and his wife, dealing with the queer case. “the prince tells me that maggie has a plan for your taking some foreign journey with him, and, as he likes to do everything she wants, he has suggested my speaking to you for it as the thing most likely to make you consent. so i do speak--see?--being always so eager myself, as you know, to meet maggie’s wishes. i speak, but without quite understanding, this time, what she has in her head. why should she, of a sudden, at this particular moment, desire to ship you off together and to remain here alone with me? the compliment’s all to me, i admit, and you must decide quite as you like. the prince is quite ready, evidently, to do his part--but you’ll have it out with him. that is you’ll have it out with her.” something of that kind was what, in her mind’s ear, maggie heard--and this, after his waiting for her to appeal to him directly, was her father’s invitation to her to have it out. well, as she could say to herself all the rest of the day, that was what they did while they continued to sit there in their penny chairs, that was what they had done as much as they would now ever, ever, have out anything. the measure of this, at least, had been given, that each would fight to the last for the protection, for the perversion, of any real anxiety. she had confessed, instantly, with her humbugging grin, not flinching by a hair, meeting his eyes as mildly as he met hers, she had confessed to her fancy that they might both, he and his son-in-law, have welcomed such an escapade, since they had both been so long so furiously domestic. she had almost cocked her hat under the inspiration of this opportunity to hint how a couple of spirited young men, reacting from confinement and sallying forth arm-in-arm, might encounter the agreeable in forms that would strike them for the time at least as novel. she had felt for fifty seconds, with her eyes, all so sweetly and falsely, in her companion’s, horribly vulgar; yet without minding it either--such luck should she have if to be nothing worse than vulgar would see her through. “and i thought amerigo might like it better,” she had said, “than wandering off alone.” “do you mean that he won’t go unless i take him?” she had considered here, and never in her life had she considered so promptly and so intently. if she really put it that way, her husband, challenged, might belie the statement; so that what would that do but make her father wonder, make him perhaps ask straight out, why she was exerting pressure? she couldn’t of course afford to be suspected for an instant of exerting pressure; which was why she was obliged only to make answer: “wouldn’t that be just what you must have out with him?” “decidedly--if he makes me the proposal. but he hasn’t made it yet.” oh, once more, how she was to feel she had smirked! “perhaps he’s too shy!” “because you’re so sure he so really wants my company?” “i think he has thought you might like it.” “well, i should--!” but with this he looked away from her, and she held her breath to hear him either ask if she wished him to address the question to amerigo straight, or inquire if she should be greatly disappointed by his letting it drop. what had “settled” her, as she was privately to call it, was that he had done neither of these things, and had thereby markedly stood off from the risk involved in trying to draw out her reason. to attenuate, on the other hand, this appearance, and quite as if to fill out the too large receptacle made, so musingly, by his abstention, he had himself presently given her a reason--had positively spared her the effort of asking whether he judged charlotte not to have approved. he had taken everything on himself--that was what had settled her. she had had to wait very little more to feel, with this, how much he was taking. the point he made was his lack of any eagerness to put time and space, on any such scale, between himself and his wife. he wasn’t so unhappy with her--far from it, and maggie was to hold that he had grinned back, paternally, through his rather shielding glasses, in easy emphasis of this--as to be able to hint that he required the relief of absence. therefore, unless it was for the prince himself--! “oh, i don’t think it would have been for amerigo himself. amerigo and i,” maggie had said, “perfectly rub on together.” “well then, there we are.” “i see”--and she had again, with sublime blandness, assented. “there we are.” “charlotte and i too,” her father had gaily proceeded, “perfectly rub on together.” and then he had appeared for a little to be making time. “to put it only so,” he had mildly and happily added--“to put it only so!” he had spoken as if he might easily put it much better, yet as if the humour of contented understatement fairly sufficed for the occasion. he had played then, either all consciously or all unconsciously, into charlotte’s hands; and the effect of this was to render trebly oppressive maggie’s conviction of charlotte’s plan. she had done what she wanted, his wife had--which was also what amerigo had made her do. she had kept her test, maggie’s test, from becoming possible, and had applied instead a test of her own. it was exactly as if she had known that her stepdaughter would be afraid to be summoned to say, under the least approach to cross-examination, why any change was desirable; and it was, for our young woman herself, still more prodigiously, as if her father had been capable of calculations to match, of judging it important he shouldn’t be brought to demand of her what was the matter with her. why otherwise, with such an opportunity, hadn’t he demanded it? always from calculation--that was why, that was why. he was terrified of the retort he might have invoked: “what, my dear, if you come to that, is the matter with you?” when, a minute later on, he had followed up his last note by a touch or two designed still further to conjure away the ghost of the anomalous, at that climax verily she would have had to be dumb to the question. “there seems a kind of charm, doesn’t there? on our life--and quite as if, just lately, it had got itself somehow renewed, had waked up refreshed. a kind of wicked selfish prosperity perhaps, as if we had grabbed everything, fixed everything, down to the last lovely object for the last glass case of the last corner, left over, of my old show. that’s the only take-off, that it has made us perhaps lazy, a wee bit languid--lying like gods together, all careless of mankind.” “do you consider that we’re languid?”--that form of rejoinder she had jumped at for the sake of its pretty lightness. “do you consider that we are careless of mankind?--living as we do in the biggest crowd in the world, and running about always pursued and pursuing.” it had made him think indeed a little longer than she had meant; but he came up again, as she might have said, smiling. “well, i don’t know. we get nothing but the fun, do we?” “no,” she had hastened to declare; “we certainly get nothing but the fun.” “we do it all,” he had remarked, “so beautifully.” “we do it all so beautifully.” she hadn’t denied this for a moment. “i see what you mean.” “well, i mean too,” he had gone on, “that we haven’t, no doubt, enough, the sense of difficulty.” “enough? enough for what?” “enough not to be selfish.” “i don’t think you are selfish,” she had returned--and had managed not to wail it. “i don’t say that it’s me particularly--or that it’s you or charlotte or amerigo. but we’re selfish together--we move as a selfish mass. you see we want always the same thing,” he had gone on--“and that holds us, that binds us, together. we want each other,” he had further explained; “only wanting it, each time, for each other. that’s what i call the happy spell; but it’s also, a little, possibly, the immorality.” “‘the immorality’?” she had pleasantly echoed. “well, we’re tremendously moral for ourselves--that is for each other; and i won’t pretend that i know exactly at whose particular personal expense you and i, for instance, are happy. what it comes to, i daresay, is that there’s something haunting--as if it were a bit uncanny--in such a consciousness of our general comfort and privilege. unless indeed,” he had rambled on, “it’s only i to whom, fantastically, it says so much. that’s all i mean, at any rate--that it’s sort of soothing; as if we were sitting about on divans, with pigtails, smoking opium and seeing visions. ‘let us then be up and doing’--what is it longfellow says? that seems sometimes to ring out; like the police breaking in--into our opium den--to give us a shake. but the beauty of it is, at the same time, that we are doing; we’re doing, that is, after all, what we went in for. we’re working it, our life, our chance, whatever you may call it, as we saw it, as we felt it, from the first. we have worked it, and what more can you do than that? it’s a good deal for me,” he had wound up, “to have made charlotte so happy--to have so perfectly contented her. you, from a good way back, were a matter of course--i mean your being all right; so that i needn’t mind your knowing that my great interest, since then, has rather inevitably been in making sure of the same success, very much to your advantage as well, for charlotte. if we’ve worked our life, our idea really, as i say--if at any rate i can sit here and say that i’ve worked my share of it--it has not been what you may call least by our having put charlotte so at her ease. that has been soothing, all round; that has curled up as the biggest of the blue fumes, or whatever they are, of the opium. don’t you see what a cropper we would have come if she hadn’t settled down as she has?” and he had concluded by turning to maggie as for something she mightn’t really have thought of. “you, darling, in that case, i verily believe, would have been the one to hate it most.” “to hate it--?” maggie had wondered. “to hate our having, with our tremendous intentions, not brought it off. and i daresay i should have hated it for you even more than for myself.” “that’s not unlikely perhaps when it was for me, after all, that you did it.” he had hesitated, but only a moment. “i never told you so.” “well, charlotte herself soon enough told me.” “but i never told her,” her father had answered. “are you very sure?” she had presently asked. “well, i like to think how thoroughly i was taken with her, and how right i was, and how fortunate, to have that for my basis. i told her all the good i thought of her.” “then that,” maggie had returned, “was precisely part of the good. i mean it was precisely part of it that she could so beautifully understand.” “yes--understand everything.” “everything--and in particular your reasons. her telling me--that showed me how she had understood.” they were face to face again now, and she saw she had made his colour rise; it was as if he were still finding in her eyes the concrete image, the enacted scene, of her passage with charlotte, which he was now hearing of for the first time and as to which it would have been natural he should question her further. his forbearance to do so would but mark, precisely, the complication of his fears. “what she does like,” he finally said, “is the way it has succeeded.” “your marriage?” “yes--my whole idea. the way i’ve been justified. that’s the joy i give her. if for her, either, it had failed--!” that, however, was not worth talking about; he had broken off. “you think then you could now risk fawns?” “‘risk’ it?” “well, morally--from the point of view i was talking of; that of our sinking deeper into sloth. our selfishness, somehow, seems at its biggest down there.” maggie had allowed him the amusement of her not taking this up. “is charlotte,” she had simply asked, “really ready?” “oh, if you and i and amerigo are. whenever one corners charlotte,” he had developed more at his ease, “one finds that she only wants to know what we want. which is what we got her for!” “what we got her for--exactly!” and so, for a little, even though with a certain effect of oddity in their more or less successful ease, they left it; left it till maggie made the remark that it was all the same wonderful her stepmother should be willing, before the season was out, to exchange so much company for so much comparative solitude. “ah,” he had then made answer, “that’s because her idea, i think, this time, is that we shall have more people, more than we’ve hitherto had, in the country. don’t you remember that that, originally, was what we were to get her for?” “oh yes--to give us a life.” maggie had gone through the form of recalling this, and the light of their ancient candour, shining from so far back, had seemed to bring out some things so strangely that, with the sharpness of the vision, she had risen to her feet. “well, with a ‘life’ fawns will certainly do.” he had remained in his place while she looked over his head; the picture, in her vision, had suddenly swarmed. the vibration was that of one of the lurches of the mystic train in which, with her companion, she was travelling; but she was having to steady herself, this time, before meeting his eyes. she had measured indeed the full difference between the move to fawns because each of them now knew the others wanted it and the pairing-off, for a journey, of her husband and her father, which nobody knew that either wanted. “more company” at fawns would be effectually enough the key in which her husband and her stepmother were at work; there was truly no question but that she and her father must accept any array of visitors. no one could try to marry him now. what he had just said was a direct plea for that, and what was the plea itself but an act of submission to charlotte? he had, from his chair, been noting her look, but he had, the next minute, also risen, and then it was they had reminded each other of their having come out for the boy. their junction with him and with his companion successfully effected, the four had moved home more slowly, and still more vaguely; yet with a vagueness that permitted of maggie’s reverting an instant to the larger issue. “if we have people in the country then, as you were saying, do you know for whom my first fancy would be? you may be amused, but it would be for the castledeans.” “i see. but why should i be amused?” “well, i mean i am myself. i don’t think i like her--and yet i like to see her: which, as amerigo says, is ‘rum.’” “but don’t you feel she’s very handsome?” her father inquired. “yes, but it isn’t for that.” “then what is it for?” “simply that she may be there--just there before us. it’s as if she may have a value--as if something may come of her. i don’t in the least know what, and she rather irritates me meanwhile. i don’t even know, i admit, why--but if we see her often enough i may find out.” “does it matter so very much?” her companion had asked while they moved together. she had hesitated. “you mean because you do rather like her?” he on his side too had waited a little, but then he had taken it from her. “yes, i guess i do rather like her.” which she accepted for the first case she could recall of their not being affected by a person in the same way. it came back therefore to his pretending; but she had gone far enough, and to add to her appearance of levity she further observed that, though they were so far from a novelty, she should also immediately desire, at fawns, the presence of the assinghams. that put everything on a basis independent of explanations; yet it was extraordinary, at the same time, how much, once in the country again with the others, she was going, as they used to say at home, to need the presence of the good fanny. it was the strangest thing in the world, but it was as if mrs. assingham might in a manner mitigate the intensity of her consciousness of charlotte. it was as if the two would balance, one against the other; as if it came round again in that fashion to her idea of the equilibrium. it would be like putting this friend into her scale to make weight--into the scale with her father and herself. amerigo and charlotte would be in the other; therefore it would take the three of them to keep that one straight. and as this played, all duskily, in her mind it had received from her father, with a sound of suddenness, a luminous contribution. “ah, rather! do let’s have the assinghams.” “it would be to have them,” she had said, “as we used so much to have them. for a good long stay, in the old way and on the old terms: ‘as regular boarders’ fanny used to call it. that is if they’ll come.” “as regular boarders, on the old terms--that’s what i should like too. but i guess they’ll come,” her companion had added in a tone into which she had read meanings. the main meaning was that he felt he was going to require them quite as much as she was. his recognition of the new terms as different from the old, what was that, practically, but a confession that something had happened, and a perception that, interested in the situation she had helped to create, mrs. assingham would be, by so much as this, concerned in its inevitable development? it amounted to an intimation, off his guard, that he should be thankful for some one to turn to. if she had wished covertly to sound him he had now, in short, quite given himself away, and if she had, even at the start, needed anything more to settle her, here assuredly was enough. he had hold of his small grandchild as they retraced their steps, swinging the boy’s hand and not bored, as he never was, by his always bristling, like a fat little porcupine, with shrill interrogation-points--so that, secretly, while they went, she had wondered again if the equilibrium mightn’t have been more real, mightn’t above all have demanded less strange a study, had it only been on the books that charlotte should give him a principino of his own. she had repossessed herself now of his other arm, only this time she was drawing him back, gently, helplessly back, to what they had tried, for the hour, to get away from--just as he was consciously drawing the child, and as high miss bogle on her left, representing the duties of home, was complacently drawing her. the duties of home, when the house in portland place reappeared, showed, even from a distance, as vividly there before them. amerigo and charlotte had come in--that is amerigo had, charlotte, rather, having come out--and the pair were perched together in the balcony, he bare-headed, she divested of her jacket, her mantle, or whatever, but crowned with a brilliant brave hat, responsive to the balmy day, which maggie immediately “spotted” as new, as insuperably original, as worn, in characteristic generous harmony, for the first time; all, evidently, to watch for the return of the absent, to be there to take them over again as punctually as possible. they were gay, they were amused, in the pleasant morning; they leaned across the rail and called down their greeting, lighting up the front of the great black house with an expression that quite broke the monotony, that might almost have shocked the decency, of portland place. the group on the pavement stared up as at the peopled battlements of a castle; even miss bogle, who carried her head most aloft, gaped a little, through the interval of space, as toward truly superior beings. there could scarce have been so much of the open mouth since the dingy waits, on christmas eve, had so lamentably chanted for pennies--the time when amerigo, insatiable for english customs, had come out, with a gasped “santissima vergine!” to marvel at the depositaries of this tradition and purchase a reprieve. maggie’s individual gape was inevitably again for the thought of how the pair would be at work. xxx she had not again, for weeks, had mrs. assingham so effectually in presence as on the afternoon of that lady’s return from the easter party at matcham; but the intermission was made up as soon as the date of the migration to fawns--that of the more or less simultaneous adjournment of the two houses--began to be discussed. it had struck her, promptly, that this renewal, with an old friend, of the old terms she had talked of with her father, was the one opening, for her spirit, that wouldn’t too much advertise or betray her. even her father, who had always, as he would have said, “believed in” their ancient ally, wouldn’t necessarily suspect her of invoking fanny’s aid toward any special inquiry--and least of all if fanny would only act as fanny so easily might. maggie’s measure of fanny’s ease would have been agitating to mrs. assingham had it been all at once revealed to her--as, for that matter, it was soon destined to become even on a comparatively graduated showing. our young woman’s idea, in particular, was that her safety, her escape from being herself suspected of suspicion, would proceed from this friend’s power to cover, to protect and, as might be, even showily to represent her--represent, that is, her relation to the form of the life they were all actually leading. this would doubtless be, as people said, a large order; but that mrs. assingham existed, substantially, or could somehow be made prevailingly to exist, for her private benefit, was the finest flower maggie had plucked from among the suggestions sown, like abundant seed, on the occasion of the entertainment offered in portland place to the matcham company. mrs. assingham, that night, rebounding from dejection, had bristled with bravery and sympathy; she had then absolutely, she had perhaps recklessly, for herself, betrayed the deeper and darker consciousness--an impression it would now be late for her inconsistently to attempt to undo. it was with a wonderful air of giving out all these truths that the princess at present approached her again; making doubtless at first a sufficient scruple of letting her know what in especial she asked of her, yet not a bit ashamed, as she in fact quite expressly declared, of fanny’s discerned foreboding of the strange uses she might perhaps have for her. quite from the first, really, maggie said extraordinary things to her, such as “you can help me, you know, my dear, when nobody else can;” such as “i almost wish, upon my word, that you had something the matter with you, that you had lost your health, or your money, or your reputation (forgive me, love!) so that i might be with you as much as i want, or keep you with me, without exciting comment, without exciting any other remark than that such kindnesses are ‘like’ me.” we have each our own way of making up for our unselfishness, and maggie, who had no small self at all as against her husband or her father and only a weak and uncertain one as against her stepmother, would verily, at this crisis, have seen mrs. assingham’s personal life or liberty sacrificed without a pang. the attitude that the appetite in question maintained in her was to draw peculiar support moreover from the current aspects and agitations of her victim. this personage struck her, in truth, as ready for almost anything; as not perhaps effusively protesting, yet as wanting with a restlessness of her own to know what she wanted. and in the long run--which was none so long either--there was to be no difficulty, as happened, about that. it was as if, for all the world, maggie had let her see that she held her, that she made her, fairly responsible for something; not, to begin with, dotting all the i’s nor hooking together all the links, but treating her, without insistence, rather with caressing confidence, as there to see and to know, to advise and to assist. the theory, visibly, had patched itself together for her that the dear woman had somehow, from the early time, had a hand in all their fortunes, so that there was no turn of their common relations and affairs that couldn’t be traced back in some degree to her original affectionate interest. on this affectionate interest the good lady’s young friend now built, before her eyes--very much as a wise, or even as a mischievous, child, playing on the floor, might pile up blocks, skilfully and dizzily, with an eye on the face of a covertly-watching elder. when the blocks tumbled down they but acted after the nature of blocks; yet the hour would come for their rising so high that the structure would have to be noticed and admired. mrs. assingham’s appearance of unreservedly giving herself involved meanwhile, on her own side, no separate recognitions: her face of almost anxious attention was directed altogether to her young friend’s so vivid felicity; it suggested that she took for granted, at the most, certain vague recent enhancements of that state. if the princess now, more than before, was going and going, she was prompt to publish that she beheld her go, that she had always known she would, sooner or later, and that any appeal for participation must more or less contain and invite the note of triumph. there was a blankness in her blandness, assuredly, and very nearly an extravagance in her generalising gaiety; a precipitation of cheer particularly marked whenever they met again after short separations: meetings during the first flush of which maggie sometimes felt reminded of other looks in other faces; of two strangely unobliterated impressions above all, the physiognomic light that had played out in her husband at the shock--she had come at last to talk to herself of the “shock”--of his first vision of her on his return from matcham and gloucester, and the wonder of charlotte’s beautiful bold wavering gaze when, the next morning in eaton square, this old friend had turned from the window to begin to deal with her. if she had dared to think of it so crudely she would have said that fanny was afraid of her, afraid of something she might say or do, even as, for their few brief seconds, amerigo and charlotte had been--which made, exactly, an expressive element common to the three. the difference however was that this look had in the dear woman its oddity of a constant renewal, whereas it had never for the least little instant again peeped out of the others. other looks, other lights, radiant and steady, with the others, had taken its place, reaching a climax so short a time ago, that morning of the appearance of the pair on the balcony of her house to overlook what she had been doing with her father; when their general interested brightness and beauty, attuned to the outbreak of summer, had seemed to shed down warmth and welcome and the promise of protection. they were conjoined not to do anything to startle her--and now at last so completely that, with experience and practice, they had almost ceased to fear their liability. mrs. assingham, on the other hand, deprecating such an accident not less, had yet less assurance, as having less control. the high pitch of her cheer, accordingly, the tentative, adventurous expressions, of the would-be smiling order, that preceded her approach even like a squad of skirmishers, or whatever they were called, moving ahead of the baggage train--these things had at the end of a fortnight brought a dozen times to our young woman’s lips a challenge that had the cunning to await its right occasion, but of the relief of which, as a demonstration, she meanwhile felt no little need. “you’ve such a dread of my possibly complaining to you that you keep pealing all the bells to drown my voice; but don’t cry out, my dear, till you’re hurt--and above all ask yourself how i can be so wicked as to complain. what in the name of all that’s fantastic can you dream that i have to complain of?” such inquiries the princess temporarily succeeded in repressing, and she did so, in a measure, by the aid of her wondering if this ambiguity with which her friend affected her wouldn’t be at present a good deal like the ambiguity with which she herself must frequently affect her father. she wondered how she should enjoy, on his part, such a take-up as she but just succeeded, from day to day, in sparing mrs. assingham, and that made for her trying to be as easy with this associate as mr. verver, blessed man, all indulgent but all inscrutable, was with his daughter. she had extracted from her, none the less, a vow in respect to the time that, if the colonel might be depended on, they would spend at fawns; and nothing came home to her more, in this connection, or inspired her with a more intimate interest, than her sense of absolutely seeing her interlocutress forbear to observe that charlotte’s view of a long visit, even from such allies, was there to be reckoned with. fanny stood off from that proposition as visibly to the princess, and as consciously to herself, as she might have backed away from the edge of a chasm into which she feared to slip; a truth that contributed again to keep before our young woman her own constant danger of advertising her subtle processes. that charlotte should have begun to be restrictive about the assinghams--which she had never, and for a hundred obviously good reasons, been before--this in itself was a fact of the highest value for maggie, and of a value enhanced by the silence in which fanny herself so much too unmistakably dressed it. what gave it quite thrillingly its price was exactly the circumstance that it thus opposed her to her stepmother more actively--if she was to back up her friends for holding out--than she had ever yet been opposed; though of course with the involved result of the fine chance given mrs. verver to ask her husband for explanations. ah, from the moment she should be definitely caught in opposition there would be naturally no saying how much charlotte’s opportunities might multiply! what would become of her father, she hauntedly asked, if his wife, on the one side, should begin to press him to call his daughter to order, and the force of old habit--to put it only at that--should dispose him, not less effectively, to believe in this young person at any price? there she was, all round, imprisoned in the circle of the reasons it was impossible she should give--certainly give him. the house in the country was his house, and thereby was charlotte’s; it was her own and amerigo’s only so far as its proper master and mistress should profusely place it at their disposal. maggie felt of course that she saw no limit to her father’s profusion, but this couldn’t be even at the best the case with charlotte’s, whom it would never be decent, when all was said, to reduce to fighting for her preferences. there were hours, truly, when the princess saw herself as not unarmed for battle if battle might only take place without spectators. this last advantage for her, was, however, too sadly out of the question; her sole strength lay in her being able to see that if charlotte wouldn’t “want” the assinghams it would be because that sentiment too would have motives and grounds. she had all the while command of one way of meeting any objection, any complaint, on his wife’s part, reported to her by her father; it would be open to her to retort to his possible “what are your reasons, my dear?” by a lucidly-produced “what are hers, love, please?--isn’t that what we had better know? mayn’t her reasons be a dislike, beautifully founded, of the presence, and thereby of the observation, of persons who perhaps know about her things it’s inconvenient to her they should know?” that hideous card she might in mere logic play--being by this time, at her still swifter private pace, intimately familiar with all the fingered pasteboard in her pack. but she could play it only on the forbidden issue of sacrificing him; the issue so forbidden that it involved even a horror of finding out if he would really have consented to be sacrificed. what she must do she must do by keeping her hands off him; and nothing meanwhile, as we see, had less in common with that scruple than such a merciless manipulation of their yielding beneficiaries as her spirit so boldly revelled in. she saw herself, in this connexion, without detachment--saw others alone with intensity; otherwise she might have been struck, fairly have been amused, by her free assignment of the pachydermatous quality. if she could face the awkwardness of the persistence of her friends at fawns in spite of charlotte, she somehow looked to them for an inspiration of courage that would improve upon her own. they were in short not only themselves to find a plausibility and an audacity, but were somehow by the way to pick up these forms for her, maggie, as well. and she felt indeed that she was giving them scant time longer when, one afternoon in portland place, she broke out with an irrelevance that was merely superficial. “what awfulness, in heaven’s name, is there between them? what do you believe, what do you know?” oh, if she went by faces her visitor’s sudden whiteness, at this, might have carried her far! fanny assingham turned pale for it, but there was something in such an appearance, in the look it put into the eyes, that renewed maggie’s conviction of what this companion had been expecting. she had been watching it come, come from afar, and now that it was there, after all, and the first convulsion over, they would doubtless soon find themselves in a more real relation. it was there because of the sunday luncheon they had partaken of alone together; it was there, as strangely as one would, because of the bad weather, the cold perverse june rain, that was making the day wrong; it was there because it stood for the whole sum of the perplexities and duplicities among which our young woman felt herself lately to have picked her steps; it was there because amerigo and charlotte were again paying together alone a “week end” visit which it had been maggie’s plan infernally to promote--just to see if, this time, they really would; it was there because she had kept fanny, on her side, from paying one she would manifestly have been glad to pay, and had made her come instead, stupidly, vacantly, boringly, to luncheon: all in the spirit of celebrating the fact that the prince and mrs. verver had thus put it into her own power to describe them exactly as they were. it had abruptly occurred, in truth, that maggie required the preliminary help of determining how they were; though, on the other hand, before her guest had answered her question everything in the hour and the place, everything in all the conditions, affected her as crying it out. her guest’s stare of ignorance, above all--that of itself at first cried it out. “‘between them?’ what do you mean?” “anything there shouldn’t be, there shouldn’t have been--all this time. do you believe there is--or what’s your idea?” fanny’s idea was clearly, to begin with, that her young friend had taken her breath away; but she looked at her very straight and very hard. “do you speak from a suspicion of your own?” “i speak, at last, from a torment. forgive me if it comes out. i’ve been thinking for months and months, and i’ve no one to turn to, no one to help me to make things out; no impression but my own, don’t you see? to go by.” “you’ve been thinking for months and months?” mrs. assingham took it in. “but what then, dear maggie, have you been thinking?” “well, horrible things--like a little beast that i perhaps am. that there may be something--something wrong and dreadful, something they cover up.” the elder woman’s colour had begun to come back; she was able, though with a visible effort, to face the question less amazedly. “you imagine, poor child, that the wretches are in love? is that it?” but maggie for a minute only stared back at her. “help me to find out what i imagine. i don’t know--i’ve nothing but my perpetual anxiety. have you any?--do you see what i mean? if you’ll tell me truly, that at least, one way or the other, will do something for me.” fanny’s look had taken a peculiar gravity--a fulness with which it seemed to shine. “is what it comes to that you’re jealous of charlotte?” “do you mean whether i hate her?”--and maggie thought. “no; not on account of father.” “ah,” mrs. assingham returned, “that isn’t what one would suppose. what i ask is if you’re jealous on account of your husband.” “well,” said maggie presently, “perhaps that may be all. if i’m unhappy i’m jealous; it must come to the same thing; and with you, at least, i’m not afraid of the word. if i’m jealous, don’t you see? i’m tormented,” she went on--“and all the more if i’m helpless. and if i’m both helpless and tormented i stuff my pocket-handkerchief into my mouth, i keep it there, for the most part, night and day, so as not to be heard too indecently moaning. only now, with you, at last, i can’t keep it longer; i’ve pulled it out, and here i am fairly screaming at you. they’re away,” she wound up, “so they can’t hear; and i’m, by a miracle of arrangement, not at luncheon with father at home. i live in the midst of miracles of arrangement, half of which i admit, are my own; i go about on tiptoe, i watch for every sound, i feel every breath, and yet i try all the while to seem as smooth as old satin dyed rose-colour. have you ever thought of me,” she asked, “as really feeling as i do?” her companion, conspicuously, required to be clear. “jealous, unhappy, tormented--? no,” said mrs. assingham; “but at the same time--and though you may laugh at me for it!--i’m bound to confess that i’ve never been so awfully sure of what i may call knowing you. here you are indeed, as you say--such a deep little person! i’ve never imagined your existence poisoned, and, since you wish to know if i consider that it need be, i’ve not the least difficulty in speaking on the spot. nothing, decidedly, strikes me as more unnecessary.” for a minute after this they remained face to face; maggie had sprung up while her friend sat enthroned, and, after moving to and fro in her intensity, now paused to receive the light she had invoked. it had accumulated, considerably, by this time, round mrs. assingham’s ample presence, and it made, even to our young woman’s own sense, a medium in which she could at last take a deeper breath. “i’ve affected you, these months--and these last weeks in especial--as quiet and natural and easy?” but it was a question that took, not imperceptibly, some answering. “you’ve never affected me, from the first hour i beheld you, as anything but--in a way all your own--absolutely good and sweet and beautiful. in a way, as i say,” mrs. assingham almost caressingly repeated, “just all your very own--nobody else’s at all. i’ve never thought of you but as outside of ugly things, so ignorant of any falsity or cruelty or vulgarity as never to have to be touched by them or to touch them. i’ve never mixed you up with them; there would have been time enough for that if they had seemed to be near you. but they haven’t--if that’s what you want to know.” “you’ve only believed me contented then because you’ve believed me stupid?” mrs. assingham had a free smile, now, for the length of this stride, dissimulated though it might be in a graceful little frisk. “if i had believed you stupid i shouldn’t have thought you interesting, and if i hadn’t thought you interesting i shouldn’t have noted whether i ‘knew’ you, as i’ve called it, or not. what i’ve always been conscious of is your having concealed about you somewhere no small amount of character; quite as much in fact,” fanny smiled, “as one could suppose a person of your size able to carry. the only thing was,” she explained, “that thanks to your never calling one’s attention to it, i hadn’t made out much more about it, and should have been vague, above all, as to where you carried it or kept it. somewhere under, i should simply have said--like that little silver cross you once showed me, blest by the holy father, that you always wear, out of sight, next your skin. that relic i’ve had a glimpse of”--with which she continued to invoke the privilege of humour. “but the precious little innermost, say this time little golden, personal nature of you--blest by a greater power, i think, even than the pope--that you’ve never consentingly shown me. i’m not sure you’ve ever consentingly shown it to anyone. you’ve been in general too modest.” maggie, trying to follow, almost achieved a little fold of her forehead. “i strike you as modest to-day--modest when i stand here and scream at you?” “oh, your screaming, i’ve granted you, is something new. i must fit it on somewhere. the question is, however,” mrs. assingham further proceeded, “of what the deuce i can fit it on to. do you mean,” she asked, “to the fact of our friends’ being, from yesterday to to-morrow, at a place where they may more or less irresponsibly meet?” she spoke with the air of putting it as badly for them as possible. “are you thinking of their being there alone--of their having consented to be?” and then as she had waited without result for her companion to say: “but isn’t it true that--after you had this time again, at the eleventh hour, said you wouldn’t--they would really much rather not have gone?” “yes--they would certainly much rather not have gone. but i wanted them to go.” “then, my dear child, what in the world is the matter?” “i wanted to see if they would. and they’ve had to,” maggie added. “it was the only thing.” her friend appeared to wonder. “from the moment you and your father backed out?” “oh, i don’t mean go for those people; i mean go for us. for father and me,” maggie went on. “because now they know.” “they ‘know’?” fanny assingham quavered. “that i’ve been for some time past taking more notice. notice of the queer things in our life.” maggie saw her companion for an instant on the point of asking her what these queer things might be; but mrs. assingham had the next minute brushed by that ambiguous opening and taken, as she evidently felt, a better one. “and is it for that you did it? i mean gave up the visit.” “it’s for that i did it. to leave them to themselves--as they less and less want, or at any rate less and less venture to appear to want, to be left. as they had for so long arranged things,” the princess went on, “you see they sometimes have to be.” and then, as if baffled by the lucidity of this, mrs. assingham for a little said nothing: “now do you think i’m modest?” with time, however; fanny could brilliantly think anything that would serve. “i think you’re wrong. that, my dear, is my answer to your question. it demands assuredly the straightest i can make. i see no ‘awfulness’--i suspect none. i’m deeply distressed,” she added, “that you should do anything else.” it drew again from maggie a long look. “you’ve never even imagined anything?” “ah, god forbid!--for it’s exactly as a woman of imagination that i speak. there’s no moment of my life at which i’m not imagining something; and it’s thanks to that, darling,” mrs. assingham pursued, “that i figure the sincerity with which your husband, whom you see as viciously occupied with your stepmother, is interested, is tenderly interested, in his admirable, adorable wife.” she paused a minute as to give her friend the full benefit of this--as to maggie’s measure of which, however, no sign came; and then, poor woman, haplessly, she crowned her effort.--“he wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head.” it had produced in maggie, at once, and apparently in the intended form of a smile, the most extraordinary expression. “ah, there it is!” but her guest had already gone on. “and i’m absolutely certain that charlotte wouldn’t either.” it kept the princess, with her strange grimace, standing there. “no--charlotte wouldn’t either. that’s how they’ve had again to go off together. they’ve been afraid not to--lest it should disturb me, aggravate me, somehow work upon me. as i insisted that they must, that we couldn’t all fail--though father and charlotte hadn’t really accepted; as i did this they had to yield to the fear that their showing as afraid to move together would count for them as the greater danger: which would be the danger, you see, of my feeling myself wronged. their least danger, they know, is in going on with all the things that i’ve seemed to accept and that i’ve given no indication, at any moment, of not accepting. everything that has come up for them has come up, in an extraordinary manner, without my having by a sound or a sign given myself away--so that it’s all as wonderful as you may conceive. they move at any rate among the dangers i speak of--between that of their doing too much and that of their not having any longer the confidence, or the nerve, or whatever you may call it, to do enough.” her tone, by this time, might have shown a strangeness to match her smile; which was still more marked as she wound up. “and that’s how i make them do what i like!” it had an effect on mrs. assingham, who rose with the deliberation that, from point to point, marked the widening of her grasp. “my dear child, you’re amazing.” “amazing--?” “you’re terrible.” maggie thoughtfully shook her head. “no; i’m not terrible, and you don’t think me so. i do strike you as surprising, no doubt--but surprisingly mild. because--don’t you see?--i am mild. i can bear anything.” “oh, ‘bear’!” mrs. assingham fluted. “for love,” said the princess. fanny hesitated. “of your father?” “for love,” maggie repeated. it kept her friend watching. “of your husband?” “for love,” maggie said again. it was, for the moment, as if the distinctness of this might have determined in her companion a choice between two or three highly different alternatives. mrs. assingham’s rejoinder, at all events--however much or however little it was a choice--was presently a triumph. “speaking with this love of your own then, have you undertaken to convey to me that you believe your husband and your father’s wife to be in act and in fact lovers of each other?” and then as the princess didn’t at first answer: “do you call such an allegation as that ‘mild’?” “oh, i’m not pretending to be mild to you. but i’ve told you, and moreover you must have seen for yourself, how much so i’ve been to them.” mrs. assingham, more brightly again, bridled. “is that what you call it when you make them, for terror as you say, do as you like?” “ah, there wouldn’t be any terror for them if they had nothing to hide.” mrs. assingham faced her--quite steady now. “are you really conscious, love, of what you’re saying?” “i’m saying that i’m bewildered and tormented, and that i’ve no one but you to speak to. i’ve thought, i’ve in fact been sure, that you’ve seen for yourself how much this is the case. it’s why i’ve believed you would meet me half way.” “half way to what? to denouncing,” fanny asked, “two persons, friends of years, whom i’ve always immensely admired and liked, and against whom i haven’t the shadow of a charge to make?” maggie looked at her with wide eyes. “i had much rather you should denounce me than denounce them. denounce me, denounce me,” she said, “if you can see your way.” it was exactly what she appeared to have argued out with herself. “if, conscientiously, you can denounce me; if, conscientiously, you can revile me; if, conscientiously, you can put me in my place for a low-minded little pig--!” “well?” said mrs. assingham, consideringly, as she paused for emphasis. “i think i shall be saved.” her friend took it, for a minute, however, by carrying thoughtful eyes, eyes verily portentous, over her head. “you say you’ve no one to speak to, and you make a point of your having so disguised your feelings--not having, as you call it, given yourself away. have you then never seen it not only as your right, but as your bounden duty, worked up to such a pitch, to speak to your husband?” “i’ve spoken to him,” said maggie. mrs. assingham stared. “ah, then it isn’t true that you’ve made no sign.” maggie had a silence. “i’ve made no trouble. i’ve made no scene. i’ve taken no stand. i’ve neither reproached nor accused him. you’ll say there’s a way in all that of being nasty enough.” “oh!” dropped from fanny as if she couldn’t help it. “but i don’t think--strangely enough--that he regards me as nasty. i think that at bottom--for that is,” said the princess, “the strangeness--he’s sorry for me. yes, i think that, deep within, he pities me.” her companion wondered. “for the state you’ve let yourself get into?” “for not being happy when i’ve so much to make me so.” “you’ve everything,” said mrs. assingham with alacrity. yet she remained for an instant embarrassed as to a further advance. “i don’t understand, however, how, if you’ve done nothing--” an impatience from maggie had checked her. “i’ve not done absolutely ‘nothing.’” “but what then--?” “well,” she went on after a minute, “he knows what i’ve done.” it produced on mrs. assingham’s part, her whole tone and manner exquisitely aiding, a hush not less prolonged, and the very duration of which inevitably gave it something of the character of an equal recognition. “and what then has he done?” maggie took again a minute. “he has been splendid.” “‘splendid’? then what more do you want?” “ah, what you see!” said maggie. “not to be afraid.” it made her guest again hang fire. “not to be afraid really to speak?” “not to be afraid not to speak.” mrs. assingham considered further. “you can’t even to charlotte?” but as, at this, after a look at her, maggie turned off with a movement of suppressed despair, she checked herself and might have been watching her, for all the difficulty and the pity of it, vaguely moving to the window and the view of the hill street. it was almost as if she had had to give up, from failure of responsive wit in her friend--the last failure she had feared--the hope of the particular relief she had been working for. mrs. assingham resumed the next instant, however, in the very tone that seemed most to promise her she should have to give up nothing. “i see, i see; you would have in that case too many things to consider.” it brought the princess round again, proving itself thus the note of comprehension she wished most to clutch at. “don’t be afraid.” maggie took it where she stood--which she was soon able to signify. “thank-you.” it very properly encouraged her counsellor. “what your idea imputes is a criminal intrigue carried on, from day to day, amid perfect trust and sympathy, not only under your eyes, but under your father’s. that’s an idea it’s impossible for me for a. moment to entertain.” “ah, there you are then! it’s exactly what i wanted from you.” “you’re welcome to it!” mrs. assingham breathed. “you never have entertained it?” maggie pursued. “never for an instant,” said fanny with her head very high. maggie took it again, yet again as wanting more. “pardon my being so horrid. but by all you hold sacred?” mrs. assingham faced her. “ah, my dear, upon my positive word as an honest woman.” “thank-you then,” said the princess. so they remained a little; after which, “but do you believe it, love?” fanny inquired. “i believe you.” “well, as i’ve faith in them, it comes to the same thing.” maggie, at this last, appeared for a moment to think again; but she embraced the proposition. “the same thing.” “then you’re no longer unhappy?” her guest urged, coming more gaily toward her. “i doubtless shan’t be a great while.” but it was now mrs. assingham’s turn to want more. “i’ve convinced you it’s impossible?” she had held out her arms, and maggie, after a moment, meeting her, threw herself into them with a sound that had its oddity as a sign of relief. “impossible, impossible,” she emphatically, more than emphatically, replied; yet the next minute she had burst into tears over the impossibility, and a few seconds later, pressing, clinging, sobbing, had even caused them to flow, audibly, sympathetically and perversely, from her friend. xxxi the understanding appeared to have come to be that the colonel and his wife were to present themselves toward the middle of july for the “good long visit” at fawns on which maggie had obtained from her father that he should genially insist; as well as that the couple from eaton square should welcome there earlier in the month, and less than a week after their own arrival, the advent of the couple from portland place. “oh, we shall give you time to breathe!” fanny remarked, in reference to the general prospect, with a gaiety that announced itself as heedless of criticism, to each member of the party in turn; sustaining and bracing herself by her emphasis, pushed even to an amiable cynicism, of the confident view of these punctualities of the assinghams. the ground she could best occupy, to her sense, was that of her being moved, as in this connexion she had always been moved, by the admitted grossness of her avidity, the way the hospitality of the ververs met her convenience and ministered to her ease, destitute as the colonel had kept her, from the first, of any rustic retreat, any leafy bower of her own, any fixed base for the stale season now at hand. she had explained at home, she had repeatedly reexplained, the terms of her dilemma, the real difficulty of her, or--as she now put it--of their position. when the pair could do nothing else, in cadogan place, they could still talk of marvellous little maggie, and of the charm, the sinister charm, of their having to hold their breath to watch her; a topic the momentous midnight discussion at which we have been present was so far from having exhausted. it came up, irrepressibly, at all private hours; they had planted it there between them, and it grew, from day to day, in a manner to make their sense of responsibility almost yield to their sense of fascination. mrs. assingham declared at such moments that in the interest of this admirable young thing--to whom, she also declared, she had quite “come over”--she was ready to pass with all the world else, even with the prince himself, the object, inconsequently, as well, of her continued, her explicitly shameless appreciation, for a vulgar, indelicate, pestilential woman, showing her true character in an abandoned old age. the colonel’s confessed attention had been enlisted, we have seen, as never yet, under pressure from his wife, by any guaranteed imbroglio; but this, she could assure him she perfectly knew, was not a bit because he was sorry for her, or touched by what she had let herself in for, but because, when once they had been opened, he couldn’t keep his eyes from resting complacently, resting almost intelligently, on the princess. if he was in love with her now, however, so much the better; it would help them both not to wince at what they would have to do for her. mrs. assingham had come back to that, whenever he groaned or grunted; she had at no beguiled moment--since maggie’s little march was positively beguiling--let him lose sight of the grim necessity awaiting them. “we shall have, as i’ve again and again told you, to lie for her--to lie till we’re black in the face.” “to lie ‘for’ her?” the colonel often, at these hours, as from a vague vision of old chivalry in a new form, wandered into apparent lapses from lucidity. “to lie to her, up and down, and in and out--it comes to the same thing. it will consist just as much of lying to the others too: to the prince about one’s belief in him; to charlotte about one’s belief in her; to mr. verver, dear sweet man, about one’s belief in everyone. so we’ve work cut out--with the biggest lie, on top of all, being that we like to be there for such a purpose. we hate it unspeakably--i’m more ready to be a coward before it, to let the whole thing, to let everyone, selfishly and pusillanimously slide, than before any social duty, any felt human call, that has ever forced me to be decent. i speak at least for myself. for you,” she had added, “as i’ve given you so perfect an opportunity to fall in love with maggie, you’ll doubtless find your account in being so much nearer to her.” “and what do you make,” the colonel could, at this, always imperturbably enough ask, “of the account you yourself will find in being so much nearer to the prince; of your confirmed, if not exasperated, infatuation with whom--to say nothing of my weak good-nature about it--you give such a pretty picture?” to the picture in question she had been always, in fact, able contemplatively to return. “the difficulty of my enjoyment of that is, don’t you see? that i’m making, in my loyalty to maggie, a sad hash of his affection for me.” “you find means to call it then, this whitewashing of his crime, being ‘loyal’ to maggie?” “oh, about that particular crime there is always much to say. it is always more interesting to us than any other crime; it has at least that for it. but of course i call everything i have in mind at all being loyal to maggie. being loyal to her is, more than anything else, helping her with her father--which is what she most wants and needs.” the colonel had had it before, but he could apparently never have too much of it. “helping her ‘with’ him--?” “helping her against him then. against what we’ve already so fully talked of--its having to be recognised between them that he doubts. that’s where my part is so plain--to see her through, to see her through to the end.” exaltation, for the moment, always lighted mrs. assingham’s reference to this plainness; yet she at the same time seldom failed, the next instant, to qualify her view of it. “when i talk of my obligation as clear i mean that it’s absolute; for just how, from day to day and through thick and thin, to keep the thing up is, i grant you, another matter. there’s one way, luckily, nevertheless, in which i’m strong. i can perfectly count on her.” the colonel seldom failed here, as from the insidious growth of an excitement, to wonder, to encourage. “not to see you’re lying?” “to stick to me fast, whatever she sees. if i stick to her--that is to my own poor struggling way, under providence, of watching over them all--she’ll stand by me to the death. she won’t give me away. for, you know, she easily can.” this, regularly, was the most lurid turn of their road; but bob assingham, with each journey, met it as for the first time. “easily?” “she can utterly dishonour me with her father. she can let him know that i was aware, at the time of his marriage--as i had been aware at the time of her own--of the relations that had pre-existed between his wife and her husband.” “and how can she do so if, up to this minute, by your own statement, she is herself in ignorance of your knowledge?” it was a question that mrs. assingham had ever, for dealing with, a manner to which repeated practice had given almost a grand effect; very much as if she was invited by it to say that about this, exactly, she proposed to do her best lying. but she said, and with full lucidity, something quite other: it could give itself a little the air, still, of a triumph over his coarseness. “by acting, immediately with the blind resentment with which, in her place, ninety-nine women out of a hundred would act; and by so making mr. verver, in turn, act with the same natural passion, the passion of ninety-nine men out of a hundred. they’ve only to agree about me,” the poor lady said; “they’ve only to feel at one over it, feel bitterly practised upon, cheated and injured; they’ve only to denounce me to each other as false and infamous, for me to be quite irretrievably dished. of course it’s i who have been, and who continue to be, cheated--cheated by the prince and charlotte; but they’re not obliged to give me the benefit of that, or to give either of us the benefit of anything. they’ll be within their rights to lump us all together as a false, cruel, conspiring crew, and, if they can find the right facts to support them, get rid of us root and branch.” this, on each occasion, put the matter so at the worst that repetition even scarce controlled the hot flush with which she was compelled to see the parts of the whole history, all its ugly consistency and its temporary gloss, hang together. she enjoyed, invariably, the sense of making her danger present, of making it real, to her husband, and of his almost turning pale, when their eyes met, at this possibility of their compromised state and their shared discredit. the beauty was that, as under a touch of one of the ivory notes at the left of the keyboard, he sounded out with the short sharpness of the dear fond stupid uneasy man. “conspiring--so far as you were concerned--to what end?” “why, to the obvious end of getting the prince a wife--at maggie’s expense. and then to that of getting charlotte a husband at mr. verver’s.” “of rendering friendly services, yes--which have produced, as it turns out, complications. but from the moment you didn’t do it for the complications, why shouldn’t you have rendered them?” it was extraordinary for her, always, in this connexion, how, with time given him, he fell to speaking better for her than she could, in the presence of her clear-cut image of the “worst,” speak for herself. troubled as she was she thus never wholly failed of her amusement by the way. “oh, isn’t what i may have meddled ‘for’--so far as it can be proved i did meddle--open to interpretation; by which i mean to mr. verver’s and maggie’s? mayn’t they see my motive, in the light of that appreciation, as the wish to be decidedly more friendly to the others than to the victimised father and daughter?” she positively liked to keep it up. “mayn’t they see my motive as the determination to serve the prince, in any case, and at any price, first; to ‘place’ him comfortably; in other words to find him his fill of money? mayn’t it have all the air for them of a really equivocal, sinister bargain between us--something quite unholy and louche?” it produced in the poor colonel, infallibly, the echo. “‘louche,’ love--?” “why, haven’t you said as much yourself?--haven’t you put your finger on that awful possibility?” she had a way now, with his felicities, that made him enjoy being reminded of them. “in speaking of your having always had such a ‘mash’--?” “such a mash, precisely, for the man i was to help to put so splendidly at his ease. a motherly mash an impartial look at it would show it only as likely to have been--but we’re not talking, of course, about impartial looks. we’re talking of good innocent people deeply worked upon by a horrid discovery, and going much further, in their view of the lurid, as such people almost always do, than those who have been wider awake, all round, from the first. what i was to have got from my friend, in such a view, in exchange for what i had been able to do for him--well, that would have been an equivalent, of a kind best known to myself, for me shrewdly to consider.” and she easily lost herself, each time, in the anxious satisfaction of filling out the picture. “it would have been seen, it would have been heard of, before, the case of the woman a man doesn’t want, or of whom he’s tired, or for whom he has no use but such uses, and who is capable, in her infatuation, in her passion, of promoting his interests with other women rather than lose sight of him, lose touch of him, cease to have to do with him at all. cela s’est vu, my dear; and stranger things still--as i needn’t tell you! very good then,” she wound up; “there is a perfectly possible conception of the behaviour of your sweet wife; since, as i say, there’s no imagination so lively, once it’s started, as that of really agitated lambs. lions are nothing to them, for lions are sophisticated, are blases, are brought up, from the first, to prowling and mauling. it does give us, you’ll admit, something to think about. my relief is luckily, however, in what i finally do think.” he was well enough aware, by this time, of what she finally did think; but he was not without a sense, again, also for his amusement by the way. it would have made him, for a spectator of these passages between the pair, resemble not a little the artless child who hears his favourite story told for the twentieth time and enjoys it exactly because he knows what is next to happen. “what of course will pull them up, if they turn out to have less imagination than you assume, is the profit you can have found in furthering mrs. verver’s marriage. you weren’t at least in love with charlotte.” “oh,” mrs. assingham, at this, always brought out, “my hand in that is easily accounted for by my desire to be agreeable to him.” “to mr. verver?” “to the prince--by preventing her in that way from taking, as he was in danger of seeing her do, some husband with whom he wouldn’t be able to open, to keep open, so large an account as with his father-in-law. i’ve brought her near him, kept her within his reach, as she could never have remained either as a single woman or as the wife of a different man.” “kept her, on that sweet construction, to be his mistress?” “kept her, on that sweet construction, to be his mistress.” she brought it out grandly--it had always so, for her own ear as well as, visibly, for her husband’s, its effect. “the facilities in the case, thanks to the particular conditions, being so quite ideal.” “down even to the facility of your minding everything so little--from your own point of view--as to have supplied him with the enjoyment of two beautiful women.” “down even to that--to the monstrosity of my folly. but not,” mrs. assingham added, “‘two’ of anything. one beautiful woman--and one beautiful fortune. that’s what a creature of pure virtue exposes herself to when she suffers her pure virtue, suffers her sympathy, her disinterestedness, her exquisite sense for the lives of others, to carry her too far. voila.” “i see. it’s the way the ververs have you.” “it’s the way the ververs ‘have’ me. it’s in other words the way they would be able to make such a show to each other of having me--if maggie weren’t so divine.” “she lets you off?” he never failed to insist on all this to the very end; which was how he had become so versed in what she finally thought. “she lets me off. so that now, horrified and contrite at what i’ve done, i may work to help her out. and mr. verver,” she was fond of adding, “lets me off too.” “then you do believe he knows?” it determined in her always, there, with a significant pause, a deep immersion in her thought. “i believe he would let me off if he did know--so that i might work to help him out. or rather, really,” she went on, “that i might work to help maggie. that would be his motive, that would be his condition, in forgiving me; just as hers, for me, in fact, her motive and her condition, are my acting to spare her father. but it’s with maggie only that i’m directly concerned; nothing, ever--not a breath, not a look, i’ll guarantee--shall i have, whatever happens, from mr. verver himself. so it is, therefore, that i shall probably, by the closest possible shave, escape the penalty of my crimes.” “you mean being held responsible.” “i mean being held responsible. my advantage will be that maggie’s such a trump.” “such a trump that, as you say, she’ll stick to you.” “stick to me, on our understanding--stick to me. for our understanding’s signed and sealed.” and to brood over it again was ever, for mrs. assingham, to break out again with exaltation. “it’s a grand, high compact. she has solemnly promised.” “but in words--?” “oh yes, in words enough--since it’s a matter of words. to keep up her lie so long as i keep up mine.” “and what do you call ‘her’ lie?” “why, the pretence that she believes me. believes they’re innocent.” “she positively believes then they’re guilty? she has arrived at that, she’s really content with it, in the absence of proof?” it was here, each time, that fanny assingham most faltered; but always at last to get the matter, for her own sense, and with a long sigh, sufficiently straight. “it isn’t a question of belief or of proof, absent or present; it’s inevitably, with her, a question of natural perception, of insurmountable feeling. she irresistibly knows that there’s something between them. but she hasn’t ‘arrived’ at it, as you say, at all; that’s exactly what she hasn’t done, what she so steadily and intensely refuses to do. she stands off and off, so as not to arrive; she keeps out to sea and away from the rocks, and what she most wants of me is to keep at a safe distance with her--as i, for my own skin, only ask not to come nearer.” after which, invariably, she let him have it all. “so far from wanting proof--which she must get, in a manner, by my siding with her--she wants disproof, as against herself, and has appealed to me, so extraordinarily, to side against her. it’s really magnificent, when you come to think of it, the spirit of her appeal. if i’ll but cover them up brazenly enough, the others, so as to show, round and about them, as happy as a bird, she on her side will do what she can. if i’ll keep them quiet, in a word, it will enable her to gain time--time as against any idea of her father’s--and so, somehow, come out. if i’ll take care of charlotte, in particular, she’ll take care of the prince; and it’s beautiful and wonderful, really pathetic and exquisite, to see what she feels that time may do for her.” “ah, but what does she call, poor little thing, ‘time’?” “well, this summer at fawns, to begin with. she can live as yet, of course, but from hand to mouth; but she has worked it out for herself, i think, that the very danger of fawns, superficially looked at, may practically amount to a greater protection. there the lovers--if they are lovers!--will have to mind. they’ll feel it for themselves, unless things are too utterly far gone with them.” “and things are not too utterly far gone with them?” she had inevitably, poor woman, her hesitation for this, but she put down her answer as, for the purchase of some absolutely indispensable article, she would have put down her last shilling. “no.” it made him always grin at her. “is that a lie?” “do you think you’re worth lying to? if it weren’t the truth, for me,” she added, “i wouldn’t have accepted for fawns. i can, i believe, keep the wretches quiet.” “but how--at the worst?” “oh, ‘the worst’--don’t talk about the worst! i can keep them quiet at the best, i seem to feel, simply by our being there. it will work, from week to week, of itself. you’ll see.” he was willing enough to see, but he desired to provide--! “yet if it doesn’t work?” “ah, that’s talking about the worst!” well, it might be; but what were they doing, from morning to night, at this crisis, but talk? “who’ll keep the others?” “the others--?” “who’ll keep them quiet? if your couple have had a life together, they can’t have had it completely without witnesses, without the help of persons, however few, who must have some knowledge, some idea about them. they’ve had to meet, secretly, protectedly, they’ve had to arrange; for if they haven’t met, and haven’t arranged, and haven’t thereby, in some quarter or other, had to give themselves away, why are we piling it up so? therefore if there’s evidence, up and down london--” “there must be people in possession of it? ah, it isn’t all,” she always remembered, “up and down london. some of it must connect them--i mean,” she musingly added, “it naturally would--with other places; with who knows what strange adventures, opportunities, dissimulations? but whatever there may have been, it will also all have been buried on the spot. oh, they’ve known how--too beautifully! but nothing, all the same, is likely to find its way to maggie of itself.” “because every one who may have anything to tell, you hold, will have been so squared?” and then inveterately, before she could say--he enjoyed so much coming to this: “what will have squared lady castledean?” “the consciousness”--she had never lost her promptness--“of having no stones to throw at any one else’s windows. she has enough to do to guard her own glass. that was what she was doing,” fanny said, “that last morning at matcham when all of us went off and she kept the prince and charlotte over. she helped them simply that she might herself be helped--if it wasn’t perhaps, rather, with her ridiculous mr. blint, that he might be. they put in together, therefore, of course, that day; they got it clear--and quite under her eyes; inasmuch as they didn’t become traceable again, as we know, till late in the evening.” on this historic circumstance mrs. assingham was always ready afresh to brood; but she was no less ready, after her brooding, devoutly to add “only we know nothing whatever else--for which all our stars be thanked!” the colonel’s gratitude was apt to be less marked. “what did they do for themselves, all the same, from the moment they got that free hand to the moment (long after dinner-time, haven’t you told me?) of their turning up at their respective homes?” “well, it’s none of your business!” “i don’t speak of it as mine, but it’s only too much theirs. people are always traceable, in england, when tracings are required. something, sooner or later, happens; somebody, sooner or later, breaks the holy calm. murder will out.” “murder will--but this isn’t murder. quite the contrary perhaps! i verily believe,” she had her moments of adding, “that, for the amusement of the row, you would prefer an explosion.” this, however, was a remark he seldom noticed; he wound up, for the most part, after a long, contemplative smoke, with a transition from which no exposed futility in it had succeeded in weaning him. “what i can’t for my life make out is your idea of the old boy.” “charlotte’s too inconceivably funny husband? i have no idea.” “i beg your pardon--you’ve just shown it. you never speak of him but as too inconceivably funny.” “well, he is,” she always confessed. “that is he may be, for all i know, too inconceivably great. but that’s not an idea. it represents only my weak necessity of feeling that he’s beyond me--which isn’t an idea either. you see he may be stupid too.” “precisely--there you are.” “yet on the other hand,” she always went on, “he may be sublime: sublimer even than maggie herself. he may in fact have already been. but we shall never know.” with which her tone betrayed perhaps a shade of soreness for the single exemption she didn’t yearningly welcome. “that i can see.” “oh, i say--!” it came to affect the colonel himself with a sense of privation. “i’m not sure, even, that charlotte will.” “oh, my dear, what charlotte doesn’t know--!” but she brooded and brooded. “i’m not sure even that the prince will.” it seemed privation, in short, for them all. “they’ll be mystified, confounded, tormented. but they won’t know--and all their possible putting their heads together won’t make them. that,” said fanny assingham, “will be their punishment.” and she ended, ever, when she had come so far, at the same pitch. “it will probably also--if i get off with so little--be mine.” “and what,” her husband liked to ask, “will be mine?” “nothing--you’re not worthy of any. one’s punishment is in what one feels, and what will make ours effective is that we shall feel.” she was splendid with her “ours”; she flared up with this prophecy. “it will be maggie herself who will mete it out.” “maggie--?” “she’ll know--about her father; everything. everything,” she repeated. on the vision of which, each time, mrs. assingham, as with the presentiment of an odd despair, turned away from it. “but she’ll never tell us.” xxxii if maggie had not so firmly made up her mind never to say, either to her good friend or to any one else, more than she meant about her father, she might have found herself betrayed into some such overflow during the week spent in london with her husband after the others had adjourned to fawns for the summer. this was because of the odd element of the unnatural imparted to the so simple fact of their brief separation by the assumptions resident in their course of life hitherto. she was used, herself, certainly, by this time, to dealing with odd elements; but she dropped, instantly, even from such peace as she had patched up, when it was a question of feeling that her unpenetrated parent might be alone with them. she thought of him as alone with them when she thought of him as alone with charlotte--and this, strangely enough, even while fixing her sense to the full on his wife’s power of preserving, quite of enhancing, every felicitous appearance. charlotte had done that--under immeasurably fewer difficulties indeed--during the numerous months of their hymeneal absence from england, the period prior to that wonderful reunion of the couples, in the interest of the larger play of all the virtues of each, which was now bearing, for mrs. verver’s stepdaughter at least, such remarkable fruit. it was the present so much briefer interval, in a situation, possibly in a relation, so changed--it was the new terms of her problem that would tax charlotte’s art. the princess could pull herself up, repeatedly, by remembering that the real “relation” between her father and his wife was a thing that she knew nothing about and that, in strictness, was none of her business; but she none the less failed to keep quiet, as she would have called it, before the projected image of their ostensibly happy isolation. nothing could have had less of the quality of quietude than a certain queer wish that fitfully flickered up in her, a wish that usurped, perversely, the place of a much more natural one. if charlotte, while she was about it, could only have been worse!--that idea maggie fell to invoking instead of the idea that she might desirably have been better. for, exceedingly odd as it was to feel in such ways, she believed she mightn’t have worried so much if she didn’t somehow make her stepmother out, under the beautiful trees and among the dear old gardens, as lavish of fifty kinds of confidence and twenty kinds, at least, of gentleness. gentleness and confidence were certainly the right thing, as from a charming woman to her husband, but the fine tissue of reassurance woven by this lady’s hands and flung over her companion as a light, muffling veil, formed precisely a wrought transparency through which she felt her father’s eyes continually rest on herself. the reach of his gaze came to her straighter from a distance; it showed him as still more conscious, down there alone, of the suspected, the felt elaboration of the process of their not alarming or hurting him. she had herself now, for weeks and weeks, and all unwinkingly, traced the extension of this pious effort; but her perfect success in giving no sign--she did herself that credit--would have been an achievement quite wasted if mrs. verver should make with him those mistakes of proportion, one set of them too abruptly, too incoherently designed to correct another set, that she had made with his daughter. however, if she had been worse, poor woman, who should say that her husband would, to a certainty, have been better? one groped noiselessly among such questions, and it was actually not even definite for the princess that her own amerigo, left alone with her in town, had arrived at the golden mean of non-precautionary gallantry which would tend, by his calculation, to brush private criticism from its last perching-place. the truth was, in this connection, that she had different sorts of terrors, and there were hours when it came to her that these days were a prolonged repetition of that night-drive, of weeks before, from the other house to their own, when he had tried to charm her, by his sovereign personal power, into some collapse that would commit her to a repudiation of consistency. she was never alone with him, it was to be said, without her having sooner or later to ask herself what had already become of her consistency; yet, at the same time, so long as she breathed no charge, she kept hold of a remnant of appearance that could save her from attack. attack, real attack, from him, as he would conduct it was what she above all dreaded; she was so far from sure that under that experience she mightn’t drop into some depth of weakness, mightn’t show him some shortest way with her that he would know how to use again. therefore, since she had given him, as yet, no moment’s pretext for pretending to her that she had either lost faith or suffered by a feather’s weight in happiness, she left him, it was easy to reason, with an immense advantage for all waiting and all tension. she wished him, for the present, to “make up” to her for nothing. who could say to what making-up might lead, into what consenting or pretending or destroying blindness it might plunge her? she loved him too helplessly, still, to dare to open the door, by an inch, to his treating her as if either of them had wronged the other. something or somebody--and who, at this, which of them all?--would inevitably, would in the gust of momentary selfishness, be sacrificed to that; whereas what she intelligently needed was to know where she was going. knowledge, knowledge, was a fascination as well as a fear; and a part, precisely, of the strangeness of this juncture was the way her apprehension that he would break out to her with some merely general profession was mixed with her dire need to forgive him, to reassure him, to respond to him, on no ground that she didn’t fully measure. to do these things it must be clear to her what they were for; but to act in that light was, by the same effect, to learn, horribly, what the other things had been. he might tell her only what he wanted, only what would work upon her by the beauty of his appeal; and the result of the direct appeal of any beauty in him would be her helpless submission to his terms. all her temporary safety, her hand-to-mouth success, accordingly, was in his neither perceiving nor divining this, thanks to such means as she could take to prevent him; take, literally from hour to hour, during these days of more unbroken exposure. from hour to hour she fairly expected some sign of his having decided on a jump. “ah yes, it has been as you think; i’ve strayed away, i’ve fancied myself free, given myself in other quantities, with larger generosities, because i thought you were different--different from what i now see. but it was only, only, because i didn’t know--and you must admit that you gave me scarce reason enough. reason enough, i mean, to keep clear of my mistake; to which i confess, for which i’ll do exquisite penance, which you can help me now, i too beautifully feel, to get completely over.” that was what, while she watched herself, she potentially heard him bring out; and while she carried to an end another day, another sequence and yet another of their hours together, without his producing it, she felt herself occupied with him beyond even the intensity of surrender. she was keeping her head, for a reason, for a cause; and the labour of this detachment, with the labour of her keeping the pitch of it down, held them together in the steel hoop of an intimacy compared with which artless passion would have been but a beating of the air. her greatest danger, or at least her greatest motive for care, was the obsession of the thought that, if he actually did suspect, the fruit of his attention to her couldn’t help being a sense of the growth of her importance. taking the measure, with him, as she had taken it with her father, of the prescribed reach of her hypocrisy, she saw how it would have to stretch even to her seeking to prove that she was not, all the same, important. a single touch from him--oh, she should know it in case of its coming!--any brush of his hand, of his lips, of his voice, inspired by recognition of her probable interest as distinct from pity for her virtual gloom, would hand her over to him bound hand and foot. therefore to be free, to be free to act, other than abjectly, for her father, she must conceal from him the validity that, like a microscopic insect pushing a grain of sand, she was taking on even for herself. she could keep it up with a change in sight, but she couldn’t keep it up forever; so that, really, one extraordinary effect of their week of untempered confrontation, which bristled with new marks, was to make her reach out, in thought, to their customary companions and calculate the kind of relief that rejoining them would bring. she was learning, almost from minute to minute, to be a mistress of shades since, always, when there were possibilities enough of intimacy, there were also, by that fact, in intercourse, possibilities of iridescence; but she was working against an adversary who was a master of shades too, and on whom, if she didn’t look out, she should presently have imposed a consciousness of the nature of their struggle. to feel him in fact, to think of his feeling himself, her adversary in things of this fineness--to see him at all, in short, brave a name that would represent him as in opposition-was already to be nearly reduced to a visible smothering of her cry of alarm. should he guess they were having, in their so occult manner, a high fight, and that it was she, all the while, in her supposed stupidity, who had made it high and was keeping it high--in the event of his doing this before they could leave town she should verily be lost. the possible respite for her at fawns would come from the fact that observation, in him, there, would inevitably find some of its directness diverted. this would be the case if only because the remarkable strain of her father’s placidity might be thought of as likely to claim some larger part of his attention. besides which there would be always charlotte herself to draw him off. charlotte would help him again, doubtless, to study anything, right or left, that might be symptomatic; but maggie could see that this very fact might perhaps contribute, in its degree, to protect the secret of her own fermentation. it is not even incredible that she may have discovered the gleam of a comfort that was to broaden in the conceivable effect on the prince’s spirit, on his nerves, on his finer irritability, of some of the very airs and aspects, the light graces themselves, of mrs. verver’s too perfect competence. what it would most come to, after all, she said to herself, was a renewal for him of the privilege of watching that lady watch her. very well, then: with the elements after all so mixed in him, how long would he go on enjoying mere spectatorship of that act? for she had by this time made up her mind that in charlotte’s company he deferred to charlotte’s easier art of mounting guard. wouldn’t he get tired--to put it only at that--of seeing her always on the rampart, erect and elegant, with her lace-flounced parasol now folded and now shouldered, march to and fro against a gold-coloured east or west? maggie had gone far, truly for a view of the question of this particular reaction, and she was not incapable of pulling herself up with the rebuke that she counted her chickens before they were hatched. how sure she should have to be of so many things before she might thus find a weariness in amerigo’s expression and a logic in his weariness! one of her dissimulated arts for meeting their tension, meanwhile, was to interweave mrs. assingham as plausibly as possible with the undulations of their surface, to bring it about that she should join them, of an afternoon, when they drove together or if they went to look at things--looking at things being almost as much a feature of their life as if they were bazaar-opening royalties. then there were such combinations, later in the day, as her attendance on them, and the colonel’s as well, for such whimsical matters as visits to the opera no matter who was singing, and sudden outbreaks of curiosity about the british drama. the good couple from cadogan place could always unprotestingly dine with them and “go on” afterwards to such publicities as the princess cultivated the boldness of now perversely preferring. it may be said of her that, during these passages, she plucked her sensations by the way, detached, nervously, the small wild blossoms of her dim forest, so that she could smile over them at least with the spacious appearance, for her companions, for her husband above all, of bravely, of altogether frivolously, going a-maying. she had her intense, her smothered excitements, some of which were almost inspirations; she had in particular the extravagant, positively at moments the amused, sense of using her friend to the topmost notch, accompanied with the high luxury of not having to explain. never, no never, should she have to explain to fanny assingham again--who, poor woman, on her own side, would be charged, it might be forever, with that privilege of the higher ingenuity. she put it all off on fanny, and the dear thing herself might henceforth appraise the quantity. more and more magnificent now in her blameless egoism, maggie asked no questions of her, and thus only signified the greatness of the opportunity she gave her. she didn’t care for what devotions, what dinners of their own the assinghams might have been “booked”; that was a detail, and she could think without wincing of the ruptures and rearrangements to which her service condemned them. it all fell in beautifully, moreover; so that, as hard, at this time, in spite of her fever, as a little pointed diamond, the princess showed something of the glitter of consciously possessing the constructive, the creative hand. she had but to have the fancy of presenting herself, of presenting her husband, in a certain high and convenient manner, to make it natural they should go about with their gentleman and their lady. to what else but this, exactly, had charlotte, during so many weeks of the earlier season, worked her up?--herself assuming and discharging, so far as might be, the character and office of one of those revolving subordinate presences that float in the wake of greatness. the precedent was therefore established and the group normally constituted. mrs. assingham, meanwhile, at table, on the stairs, in the carriage or the opera-box, might--with her constant overflow of expression, for that matter, and its singularly resident character where men in especial were concerned--look across at amerigo in whatever sense she liked: it was not of that maggie proposed to be afraid. she might warn him, she might rebuke him, she might reassure him, she might--if it were impossible not to--absolutely make love to him; even this was open to her, as a matter simply between them, if it would help her to answer for the impeccability he had guaranteed. and maggie desired in fact only to strike her as acknowledging the efficacy of her aid when she mentioned to her one evening a small project for the morrow, privately entertained--the idea, irresistible, intense, of going to pay, at the museum, a visit to mr. crichton. mr. crichton, as mrs. assingham could easily remember, was the most accomplished and obliging of public functionaries, whom every one knew and who knew every one--who had from the first, in particular, lent himself freely, and for the love of art and history, to becoming one of the steadier lights of mr. verver’s adventurous path. the custodian of one of the richest departments of the great national collection of precious things, he could feel for the sincere private collector and urge him on his way even when condemned to be present at his capture of trophies sacrificed by the country to parliamentary thrift. he carried his amiability to the point of saying that, since london, under pettifogging views, had to miss, from time to time, its rarest opportunities, he was almost consoled to see such lost causes invariably wander at last, one by one, with the tormenting tinkle of their silver bells, into the wondrous, the already famous fold beyond the mississippi. there was a charm in his “almosts” that was not to be resisted, especially after mr. verver and maggie had grown sure--or almost, again--of enjoying the monopoly of them; and on this basis of envy changed to sympathy by the more familiar view of the father and the daughter, mr. crichton had at both houses, though especially in eaton square, learned to fill out the responsive and suggestive character. it was at his invitation, fanny well recalled, that maggie, one day, long before, and under her own attendance precisely, had, for the glory of the name she bore, paid a visit to one of the ampler shrines of the supreme exhibitory temple, an alcove of shelves charged with the gold-and-brown, gold-and-ivory, of old italian bindings and consecrated to the records of the prince’s race. it had been an impression that penetrated, that remained; yet maggie had sighed, ever so prettily, at its having to be so superficial. she was to go back some day, to dive deeper, to linger and taste; in spite of which, however, mrs. assingham could not recollect perceiving that the visit had been repeated. this second occasion had given way, for a long time, in her happy life, to other occasions--all testifying, in their degree, to the quality of her husband’s blood, its rich mixture and its many remarkable references; after which, no doubt, the charming piety involved had grown, on still further grounds, bewildered and faint. it now appeared, none the less, that some renewed conversation with mr. crichton had breathed on the faintness revivingly, and maggie mentioned her purpose as a conception of her very own, to the success of which she designed to devote her morning. visits of gracious ladies, under his protection, lighted up rosily, for this perhaps most flower-loving and honey-sipping member of the great bloomsbury hive, its packed passages and cells; and though not sworn of the province toward which his friend had found herself, according to her appeal to him, yearning again, nothing was easier for him than to put her in relation with the presiding urbanities. so it had been settled, maggie said to mrs. assingham, and she was to dispense with amerigo’s company. fanny was to remember later on that she had at first taken this last fact for one of the finer notes of her young woman’s detachment, imagined she must be going alone because of the shade of irony that, in these ambiguous days, her husband’s personal presence might be felt to confer, practically, on any tribute to his transmitted significance. then as, the next moment, she felt it clear that so much plotted freedom was virtually a refinement of reflection, an impulse to commemorate afresh whatever might still survive of pride and hope, her sense of ambiguity happily fell and she congratulated her companion on having anything so exquisite to do and on being so exquisitely in the humour to do it. after the occasion had come and gone she was confirmed in her optimism; she made out, in the evening, that the hour spent among the projected lights, the annals and illustrations, the parchments and portraits, the emblazoned volumes and the murmured commentary, had been for the princess enlarging and inspiring. maggie had said to her some days before, very sweetly but very firmly, “invite us to dine, please, for friday, and have any one you like or you can--it doesn’t in the least matter whom;” and the pair in cadogan place had bent to this mandate with a docility not in the least ruffled by all that it took for granted. it provided for an evening--this had been maggie’s view; and she lived up to her view, in her friend’s eyes, by treating the occasion, more or less explicitly, as new and strange. the good assinghams had feasted in fact at the two other boards on a scale so disproportionate to the scant solicitations of their own that it was easy to make a joke of seeing how they fed at home, how they met, themselves, the question of giving to eat. maggie dined with them, in short, and arrived at making her husband appear to dine, much in the manner of a pair of young sovereigns who have, in the frolic humour of the golden years of reigns, proposed themselves to a pair of faithfully-serving subjects. she showed an interest in their arrangements, an inquiring tenderness almost for their economies; so that her hostess not unnaturally, as they might have said, put it all down--the tone and the freedom of which she set the example--to the effect wrought in her afresh by one of the lessons learned, in the morning, at the altar of the past. hadn’t she picked it up, from an anecdote or two offered again to her attention, that there were, for princesses of such a line, more ways than one of being a heroine? maggie’s way to-night was to surprise them all, truly, by the extravagance of her affability. she was doubtless not positively boisterous; yet, though mrs. assingham, as a bland critic, had never doubted her being graceful, she had never seen her put so much of it into being what might have been called assertive. it was all a tune to which fanny’s heart could privately palpitate: her guest was happy, happy as a consequence of something that had occurred, but she was making the prince not lose a ripple of her laugh, though not perhaps always enabling him to find it absolutely not foolish. foolish, in public, beyond a certain point, he was scarce the man to brook his wife’s being thought to be; so that there hovered before their friend the possibility of some subsequent scene between them, in the carriage or at home, of slightly sarcastic inquiry, of promptly invited explanation; a scene that, according as maggie should play her part in it, might or might not precipitate developments. what made these appearances practically thrilling, meanwhile, was this mystery--a mystery, it was clear, to amerigo himself--of the incident or the influence that had so peculiarly determined them. the lady of cadogan place was to read deeper, however, within three days, and the page was turned for her on the eve of her young confidant’s leaving london. the awaited migration to fawns was to take place on the morrow, and it was known meanwhile to mrs. assingham that their party of four were to dine that night, at the american embassy, with another and a larger party; so that the elder woman had a sense of surprise on receiving from the younger, under date of six o’clock, a telegram requesting her immediate attendance. “please come to me at once; dress early, if necessary, so that we shall have time: the carriage, ordered for us, will take you back first.” mrs. assingham, on quick deliberation, dressed, though not perhaps with full lucidity, and by seven o’clock was in portland place, where her friend, “upstairs” and described to her on her arrival as herself engaged in dressing, instantly received her. she knew on the spot, poor fanny, as she was afterwards to declare to the colonel, that her feared crisis had popped up as at the touch of a spring, that her impossible hour was before her. her impossible hour was the hour of its coming out that she had known of old so much more than she had ever said; and she had often put it to herself, in apprehension, she tried to think even in preparation, that she should recognise the approach of her doom by a consciousness akin to that of the blowing open of a window on some night of the highest wind and the lowest thermometer. it would be all in vain to have crouched so long by the fire; the glass would have been smashed, the icy air would fill the place. if the air in maggie’s room then, on her going up, was not, as yet, quite the polar blast she had expected, it was distinctly, none the less, such an atmosphere as they had not hitherto breathed together. the princess, she perceived, was completely dressed--that business was over; it added indeed to the effect of her importantly awaiting the assistance she had summoned, of her showing a deck cleared, so to speak, for action. her maid had already left her, and she presented herself, in the large, clear room, where everything was admirable, but where nothing was out of place, as, for the first time in her life rather “bedizened.” was it that she had put on too many things, overcharged herself with jewels, wore in particular more of them than usual, and bigger ones, in her hair?--a question her visitor presently answered by attributing this appearance largely to the bright red spot, red as some monstrous ruby, that burned in either of her cheeks. these two items of her aspect had, promptly enough, their own light for mrs. assingham, who made out by it that nothing more pathetic could be imagined than the refuge and disguise her agitation had instinctively asked of the arts of dress, multiplied to extravagance, almost to incoherence. she had had, visibly, her idea--that of not betraying herself by inattentions into which she had never yet fallen, and she stood there circled about and furnished forth, as always, in a manner that testified to her perfect little personal processes. it had ever been her sign that she was, for all occasions, found ready, without loose ends or exposed accessories or unremoved superfluities; a suggestion of the swept and garnished, in her whole splendid, yet thereby more or less encumbered and embroidered setting, that reflected her small still passion for order and symmetry, for objects with their backs to the walls, and spoke even of some probable reference, in her american blood, to dusting and polishing new england grandmothers. if her apartment was “princely,” in the clearness of the lingering day, she looked as if she had been carried there prepared, all attired and decorated, like some holy image in a procession, and left, precisely, to show what wonder she could work under pressure. her friend felt--how could she not?--as the truly pious priest might feel when confronted, behind the altar, before the festa, with his miraculous madonna. such an occasion would be grave, in general, with all the gravity of what he might look for. but the gravity to-night would be of the rarest; what he might look for would depend so on what he could give. xxxiii “something very strange has happened, and i think you ought to know it.” maggie spoke this indeed without extravagance, yet with the effect of making her guest measure anew the force of her appeal. it was their definite understanding: whatever fanny knew fanny’s faith would provide for. and she knew, accordingly, at the end of five minutes, what the extraordinary, in the late occurrence, had consisted of, and how it had all come of maggie’s achieved hour, under mr. crichton’s protection, at the museum. he had desired, mr. crichton, with characteristic kindness, after the wonderful show, after offered luncheon at his incorporated lodge hard by, to see her safely home; especially on his noting, in attending her to the great steps, that she had dismissed her carriage; which she had done, really, just for the harmless amusement of taking her way alone. she had known she should find herself, as the consequence of such an hour, in a sort of exalted state, under the influence of which a walk through the london streets would be exactly what would suit her best; an independent ramble, impressed, excited, contented, with nothing to mind and nobody to talk to, and shop-windows in plenty to look at if she liked: a low taste, of the essence, it was to be supposed, of her nature, that she had of late, for so many reasons, been unable to gratify. she had taken her leave, with her thanks--she knew her way quite enough; it being also sufficiently the case that she had even a shy hope of not going too straight. to wander a little wild was what would truly amuse her; so that, keeping clear of oxford street and cultivating an impression as of parts she didn’t know, she had ended with what she had more or less had been fancying, an encounter with three or four shops--an old bookseller’s, an old printmonger’s, a couple of places with dim antiquities in the window--that were not as so many of the other shops, those in sloane street, say; a hollow parade which had long since ceased to beguile. there had remained with her moreover an allusion of charlotte’s, of some months before--seed dropped into her imagination in the form of a casual speech about there being in bloomsbury such “funny little fascinating” places and even sometimes such unexpected finds. there could perhaps have been no stronger mark than this sense of well-nigh romantic opportunity--no livelier sign of the impression made on her, and always so long retained, so watchfully nursed, by any observation of charlotte’s, however lightly thrown off. and then she had felt, somehow, more at her ease than for months and months before; she didn’t know why, but her time at the museum, oddly, had done it; it was as if she hadn’t come into so many noble and beautiful associations, nor secured them also for her boy, secured them even for her father, only to see them turn to vanity and doubt, turn possibly to something still worse. “i believed in him again as much as ever, and i felt how i believed in him,” she said with bright, fixed eyes; “i felt it in the streets as i walked along, and it was as if that helped me and lifted me up, my being off by myself there, not having, for the moment, to wonder and watch; having, on the contrary, almost nothing on my mind.” it was so much as if everything would come out right that she had fallen to thinking of her father’s birthday, had given herself this as a reason for trying what she could pick up for it. they would keep it at fawns, where they had kept it before--since it would be the twenty-first of the month; and she mightn’t have another chance of making sure of something to offer him. there was always the impossibility, of course, of finding him anything, the least bit “good,” that he wouldn’t already, long ago, in his rummagings, have seen himself--and only not to think a quarter good enough; this, however, was an old story, and one could not have had any fun with him but for his sweet theory that the individual gift, the friendship’s offering, was, by a rigorous law of nature, a foredoomed aberration, and that the more it was so the more it showed, and the more one cherished it for showing, how friendly it had been. the infirmity of art was the candour of affection, the grossness of pedigree the refinement of sympathy; the ugliest objects, in fact, as a general thing, were the bravest, the tenderest mementos, and, as such, figured in glass cases apart, worthy doubtless of the home, but not worthy of the temple--dedicated to the grimacing, not to the clear-faced, gods. she herself, naturally, through the past years, had come to be much represented in those receptacles; against the thick, locked panes of which she still liked to flatten her nose, finding in its place, each time, everything she had on successive anniversaries tried to believe he might pretend, at her suggestion, to be put off with, or at least think curious. she was now ready to try it again: they had always, with his pleasure in her pretence and her pleasure in his, with the funny betrayal of the sacrifice to domestic manners on either side, played the game so happily. to this end, on her way home, she had loitered everywhere; quite too deludedly among the old books and the old prints, which had yielded nothing to her purpose, but with a strange inconsequence in one of the other shops, that of a small antiquarian, a queer little foreign man, who had shown her a number of things, shown her finally something that, struck with it as rather a rarity and thinking it would, compared to some of her ventures, quite superlatively do, she had bought--bought really, when it came to that, for a price. “it appears now it won’t do at all,” said maggie, “something has happened since that puts it quite out of the question. i had only my day of satisfaction in it, but i feel, at the same time, as i keep it here before me, that i wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” she had talked, from the first of her friend’s entrances coherently enough, even with a small quaver that overstated her calm; but she held her breath every few seconds, as if for deliberation and to prove she didn’t pant--all of which marked for fanny the depth of her commotion: her reference to her thought about her father, about her chance to pick up something that might divert him, her mention, in fine, of his fortitude under presents, having meanwhile, naturally, it should be said, much less an amplitude of insistence on the speaker’s lips than a power to produce on the part of the listener herself the prompt response and full comprehension of memory and sympathy, of old amused observation. the picture was filled out by the latter’s fond fancy. but maggie was at any rate under arms; she knew what she was doing and had already her plan--a plan for making, for allowing, as yet, “no difference”; in accordance with which she would still dine out, and not with red eyes, nor convulsed features, nor neglected items of appearance, nor anything that would raise a question. yet there was some knowledge that, exactly to this support of her not breaking down, she desired, she required, possession of; and, with the sinister rise and fall of lightning unaccompanied by thunder, it played before mrs. assingham’s eyes that she herself should have, at whatever risk or whatever cost, to supply her with the stuff of her need. all our friend’s instinct was to hold off from this till she should see what the ground would bear; she would take no step nearer unless intelligibly to meet her, and, awkward though it might be to hover there only pale and distorted, with mere imbecilities of vagueness, there was a quality of bald help in the fact of not as yet guessing what such an ominous start could lead to. she caught, however, after a second’s thought, at the princess’s allusion to her lost reassurance. “you mean you were so at your ease on monday--the night you dined with us?” “i was very happy then,” said maggie. “yes--we thought you so gay and so brilliant.” fanny felt it feeble, but she went on. “we were so glad you were happy.” maggie stood a moment, at first only looking at her. “you thought me all right, eh?” “surely, dearest; we thought you all right.” “well, i daresay it was natural; but in point of fact i never was more wrong in my life. for, all the while, if you please, this was brewing.” mrs. assingham indulged, as nearly as possible to luxury, her vagueness. “‘this’--?” “that!” replied the princess, whose eyes, her companion now saw, had turned to an object on the chimney-piece of the room, of which, among so many precious objects--the ververs, wherever they might be, always revelled peculiarly in matchless old mantel ornaments--her visitor had not taken heed. “do you mean the gilt cup?” “i mean the gilt cup.” the piece now recognised by fanny as new to her own vision was a capacious bowl, of old-looking, rather strikingly yellow gold, mounted, by a short stem, on an ample foot, which held a central position above the fire-place, where, to allow it the better to show, a clearance had been made of other objects, notably of the louis-seize clock that accompanied the candelabra. this latter trophy ticked at present on the marble slab of a commode that exactly matched it in splendour and style. mrs. assingham took it, the bowl, as a fine thing; but the question was obviously not of its intrinsic value, and she kept off from it, admiring it at a distance. “but what has that to do--?” “it has everything. you’ll see.” with which again, however, for the moment, maggie attached to her strange wide eyes. “he knew her before--before i had ever seen him.” “‘he’ knew--?” but fanny, while she cast about her for the links she missed, could only echo it. “amerigo knew charlotte--more than i ever dreamed.” fanny felt then it was stare for stare. “but surely you always knew they had met.” “i didn’t understand. i knew too little. don’t you see what i mean?” the princess asked. mrs. assingham wondered, during these instants, how much she even now knew; it had taken a minute to perceive how gently she was speaking. with that perception of its being no challenge of wrath, no heat of the deceived soul, but only a free exposure of the completeness of past ignorance, inviting derision even if it must, the elder woman felt, first, a strange, barely credible relief: she drew in, as if it had been the warm summer scent of a flower, the sweet certainty of not meeting, any way she should turn, any consequence of judgment. she shouldn’t be judged--save by herself; which was her own wretched business. the next moment, however, at all events, she blushed, within, for her immediate cowardice: she had thought of herself, thought of “getting off,” before so much as thinking--that is of pitifully seeing--that she was in presence of an appeal that was all an appeal, that utterly accepted its necessity. “in a general way, dear child, yes. but not--a--in connexion with what you’ve been telling me.” “they were intimate, you see. intimate,” said the princess. fanny continued to face her, taking from her excited eyes this history, so dim and faint for all her anxious emphasis, of the far-away other time. “there’s always the question of what one considers--!” “what one considers intimate? well, i know what i consider intimate now. too intimate,” said maggie, “to let me know anything about it.” it was quiet--yes; but not too quiet for fanny assingham’s capacity to wince. “only compatible with letting me, you mean?” she had asked it after a pause, but turning again to the new ornament of the chimney and wondering, even while she took relief from it, at this gap in her experience. “but here are things, my dear, of which my ignorance is perfect.” “they went about together--they’re known to have done it. and i don’t mean only before--i mean after.” “after?” said fanny assingham. “before we were married--yes; but after we were engaged.” “ah, i’ve known nothing about that!” and she said it with a braver assurance--clutching, with comfort, at something that was apparently new to her. “that bowl,” maggie went on, “is, so strangely--too strangely, almost, to believe at this time of day--the proof. they were together all the while--up to the very eve of our marriage. don’t you remember how just before that she came back, so unexpectedly, from america?” the question had for mrs. assingham--and whether all consciously or not--the oddest pathos of simplicity. “oh yes, dear, of course i remember how she came back from america--and how she stayed with us, and what view one had of it.” maggie’s eyes still, all the time, pressed and penetrated; so that, during a moment, just here, she might have given the little flare, have made the little pounce, of asking what then “one’s” view had been. to the small flash of this eruption fanny stood, for her minute, wittingly exposed; but she saw it as quickly cease to threaten--quite saw the princess, even though in all her pain, refuse, in the interest of their strange and exalted bargain, to take advantage of the opportunity for planting the stab of reproach, the opportunity thus coming all of itself. she saw her--or she believed she saw her--look at her chance for straight denunciation, look at it and then pass it by; and she felt herself, with this fact, hushed well-nigh to awe at the lucid higher intention that no distress could confound and that no discovery--since it was, however obscurely, a case of “discovery”--could make less needful. these seconds were brief--they rapidly passed; but they lasted long enough to renew our friend’s sense of her own extraordinary undertaking, the function again imposed on her, the answerability again drilled into her, by this intensity of intimation. she was reminded of the terms on which she was let off--her quantity of release having made its sufficient show in that recall of her relation to charlotte’s old reappearance; and deep within the whole impression glowed--ah, so inspiringly when it came to that! her steady view, clear from the first, of the beauty of her companion’s motive. it was like a fresh sacrifice for a larger conquest “only see me through now, do it in the face of this and in spite of it, and i leave you a hand of which the freedom isn’t to be said!” the aggravation of fear--or call it, apparently, of knowledge--had jumped straight into its place as an aggravation above all for her father; the effect of this being but to quicken to passion her reasons for making his protectedness, or in other words the forms of his ignorance, still the law of her attitude and the key to her solution. she kept as tight hold of these reasons and these forms, in her confirmed horror, as the rider of a plunging horse grasps his seat with his knees; and she might absolutely have been putting it to her guest that she believed she could stay on if they should only “meet” nothing more. though ignorant still of what she had definitely met fanny yearned, within, over her spirit; and so, no word about it said, passed, through mere pitying eyes, a vow to walk ahead and, at crossroads, with a lantern for the darkness and wavings away for unadvised traffic, look out for alarms. there was accordingly no wait in maggie’s reply. “they spent together hours--spent at least a morning--the certainty of which has come back to me now, but that i didn’t dream of it at the time. that cup there has turned witness--by the most wonderful of chances. that’s why, since it has been here, i’ve stood it out for my husband to see; put it where it would meet him, almost immediately, if he should come into the room. i’ve wanted it to meet him,” she went on, “and i’ve wanted him to meet it, and to be myself present at the meeting. but that hasn’t taken place as yet; often as he has lately been in the way of coming to see me here--yes, in particular lately--he hasn’t showed to-day.” it was with her managed quietness, more and more, that she talked--an achieved coherence that helped her, evidently, to hear and to watch herself; there was support, and thereby an awful harmony, but which meant a further guidance, in the facts she could add together. “it’s quite as if he had an instinct--something that has warned him off or made him uneasy. he doesn’t quite know, naturally, what has happened, but guesses, with his beautiful cleverness, that something has, and isn’t in a hurry to be confronted with it. so, in his vague fear, he keeps off.” “but being meanwhile in the house--?” “i’ve no idea--not having seen him to-day, by exception, since before luncheon. he spoke to me then,” the princess freely explained, “of a ballot, of great importance, at a club--for somebody, some personal friend, i think, who’s coming up and is supposed to be in danger. to make an effort for him he thought he had better lunch there. you see the efforts he can make”--for which maggie found a smile that went to her friend’s heart. “he’s in so many ways the kindest of men. but it was hours ago.” mrs. assingham thought. “the more danger then of his coming in and finding me here. i don’t know, you see, what you now consider that you’ve ascertained; nor anything of the connexion with it of that object that you declare so damning.” her eyes rested on this odd acquisition and then quitted it, went back to it and again turned from it: it was inscrutable in its rather stupid elegance, and yet, from the moment one had thus appraised it, vivid and definite in its domination of the scene. fanny could no more overlook it now than she could have overlooked a lighted christmas-tree; but nervously and all in vain she dipped into her mind for some floating reminiscence of it. at the same time that this attempt left her blank she understood a good deal, she even not a little shared the prince’s mystic apprehension. the golden bowl put on, under consideration, a sturdy, a conscious perversity; as a “document,” somehow, it was ugly, though it might have a decorative grace. “his finding me here in presence of it might be more flagrantly disagreeable--for all of us--than you intend or than would necessarily help us. and i must take time, truly, to understand what it means.” “you’re safe, as far as that goes,” maggie returned; “you may take it from me that he won’t come in; and that i shall only find him below, waiting for me, when i go down to the carriage.” fanny assingham took it from her, took it and more. “we’re to sit together at the ambassador’s then--or at least you two are--with this new complication thrust up before you, all unexplained; and to look at each other with faces that pretend, for the ghastly hour, not to be seeing it?” maggie looked at her with a face that might have been the one she was preparing. “‘unexplained,’ my dear? quite the contrary--explained: fully, intensely, admirably explained, with nothing really to add. my own love”--she kept it up--“i don’t want anything more. i’ve plenty to go upon and to do with, as it is.” fanny assingham stood there in her comparative darkness, with her links, verily, still missing; but the most acceptable effect of this was, singularly, as yet, a cold fear of getting nearer the fact. “but when you come home--? i mean he’ll come up with you again. won’t he see it then?” on which maggie gave her, after an instant’s visible thought, the strangest of slow headshakes. “i don’t know. perhaps he’ll never see it--if it only stands there waiting for him. he may never again,” said the princess, “come into this room.” fanny more deeply wondered, “never again? oh--!” “yes, it may be. how do i know? with this!” she quietly went on. she had not looked again at the incriminating piece, but there was a marvel to her friend in the way the little word representing it seemed to express and include for her the whole of her situation. “then you intend not to speak to him--?” maggie waited. “to ‘speak’--?” “well, about your having it and about what you consider that it represents.” “oh, i don’t know that i shall speak--if he doesn’t. but his keeping away from me because of that--what will that be but to speak? he can’t say or do more. it won’t be for me to speak,” maggie added in a different tone, one of the tones that had already so penetrated her guest. “it will be for me to listen.” mrs. assingham turned it over. “then it all depends on that object that you regard, for your reasons, as evidence?” “i think i may say that _i_ depend on it. i can’t,” said maggie, “treat it as nothing now.” mrs. assingham, at this, went closer to the cup on the chimney--quite liking to feel that she did so, moreover, without going closer to her companion’s vision. she looked at the precious thing--if precious it was--found herself in fact eyeing it as if, by her dim solicitation, to draw its secret from it rather than suffer the imposition of maggie’s knowledge. it was brave and rich and firm, with its bold deep hollow; and, without this queer torment about it, would, thanks to her love of plenty of yellow, figure to her as an enviable ornament, a possession really desirable. she didn’t touch it, but if after a minute she turned away from it the reason was, rather oddly and suddenly, in her fear of doing so. “then it all depends on the bowl? i mean your future does? for that’s what it comes to, i judge.” “what it comes to,” maggie presently returned, “is what that thing has put me, so almost miraculously, in the way of learning: how far they had originally gone together. if there was so much between them before, there can’t--with all the other appearances--not be a great deal more now.” and she went on and on; she steadily made her points. “if such things were already then between them they make all the difference for possible doubt of what may have been between them since. if there had been nothing before there might be explanations. but it makes to-day too much to explain. i mean to explain away,” she said. fanny assingham was there to explain away--of this she was duly conscious; for that at least had been true up to now. in the light, however, of maggie’s demonstration the quantity, even without her taking as yet a more exact measure, might well seem larger than ever. besides which, with or without exactness, the effect of each successive minute in the place was to put her more in presence of what maggie herself saw. maggie herself saw the truth, and that was really, while they remained there together, enough for mrs. assingham’s relation to it. there was a force in the princess’s mere manner about it that made the detail of what she knew a matter of minor importance. fanny had in fact something like a momentary shame over her own need of asking for this detail. “i don’t pretend to repudiate,” she said after a little, “my own impressions of the different times i suppose you speak of; any more,” she added, “than i can forget what difficulties and, as it constantly seemed to me, what dangers, every course of action--whatever i should decide upon--made for me. i tried, i tried hard, to act for the best. and, you know,” she next pursued, while, at the sound of her own statement, a slow courage and even a faint warmth of conviction came back to her--“and, you know, i believe it’s what i shall turn out to have done.” this produced a minute during which their interchange, though quickened and deepened, was that of silence only, and the long, charged look; all of which found virtual consecration when maggie at last spoke. “i’m sure you tried to act for the best.” it kept fanny assingham again a minute in silence. “i never thought, dearest, you weren’t an angel.” not, however, that this alone was much help! “it was up to the very eve, you see,” the princess went on--“up to within two or three days of our marriage. that, that, you know--!” and she broke down for strangely smiling. “yes, as i say, it was while she was with me. but i didn’t know it. that is,” said fanny assingham, “i didn’t know of anything in particular.” it sounded weak--that she felt; but she had really her point to make. “what i mean is that i don’t know, for knowledge, now, anything i didn’t then. that’s how i am.” she still, however, floundered. “i mean it’s how i was.” “but don’t they, how you were and how you are,” maggie asked, “come practically to the same thing?” the elder woman’s words had struck her own ear as in the tone, now mistimed, of their recent, but all too factitious understanding, arrived at in hours when, as there was nothing susceptible of proof, there was nothing definitely to disprove. the situation had changed by--well, by whatever there was, by the outbreak of the definite; and this could keep maggie at least firm. she was firm enough as she pursued. “it was on the whole thing that amerigo married me.” with which her eyes had their turn again at her damnatory piece. “and it was on that--it was on that!” but they came back to her visitor. “and it was on it all that father married her.” her visitor took it as might be. “they both married--ah, that you must believe!--with the highest intentions.” “father did certainly!” and then, at the renewal of this consciousness, it all rolled over her. “ah, to thrust such things on us, to do them here between us and with us, day after day, and in return, in return--! to do it to him--to him, to him!” fanny hesitated. “you mean it’s for him you most suffer?” and then as the princess, after a look, but turned away, moving about the room--which made the question somehow seem a blunder--“i ask,” she continued, “because i think everything, everything we now speak of, may be for him, really may be made for him, quite as if it hadn’t been.” but maggie had, the next moment faced about as if without hearing her. “father did it for me--did it all and only for me.” mrs. assingham, with a certain promptness, threw up her head; but she faltered again before she spoke. “well--!” it was only an intended word, but maggie showed after an instant that it had reached her. “do you mean that that’s the reason, that that’s a reason--?” fanny at first, however, feeling the response in this, didn’t say all she meant; she said for the moment something else instead. “he did it for you--largely at least for you. and it was for you that i did, in my smaller, interested way--well, what i could do. for i could do something,” she continued; “i thought i saw your interest as he himself saw it. and i thought i saw charlotte’s. i believed in her.” “and _i_ believed in her,” said maggie. mrs. assingham waited again; but she presently pushed on. “she believed then in herself.” “ah?” maggie murmured. something exquisite, faintly eager, in the prompt simplicity of it, supported her friend further. “and the prince believed. his belief was real. just as he believed in himself.” maggie spent a minute in taking it from her. “he believed in himself?” “just as i too believed in him. for i absolutely did, maggie.” to which fanny then added: “and i believe in him yet. i mean,” she subjoined--“well, i mean i do.” maggie again took it from her; after which she was again, restlessly, set afloat. then when this had come to an end: “and do you believe in charlotte yet?” mrs. assingham had a demur that she felt she could now afford. “we’ll talk of charlotte some other day. they both, at any rate, thought themselves safe at the time.” “then why did they keep from me everything i might have known?” her friend bent upon her the mildest eyes. “why did i myself keep it from you?” “oh, you weren’t, for honour, obliged.” “dearest maggie,” the poor woman broke out on this, “you are divine!” “they pretended to love me,” the princess went on. “and they pretended to love him.” “and pray what was there that i didn’t pretend?” “not, at any rate, to care for me as you cared for amerigo and for charlotte. they were much more interesting--it was perfectly natural. how couldn’t you like amerigo?” maggie continued. mrs. assingham gave it up. “how couldn’t i, how couldn’t i?” then, with a fine freedom, she went all her way. “how can’t i, how can’t i?” it fixed afresh maggie’s wide eyes on her. “i see--i see. well, it’s beautiful for you to be able to. and of course,” she added, “you wanted to help charlotte.” “yes”--fanny considered it--“i wanted to help charlotte. but i wanted also, you see, to help you--by not digging up a past that i believed, with so much on top of it, solidly buried. i wanted, as i still want,” she richly declared, “to help every one.” it set maggie once more in movement--movement which, however, spent itself again with a quick emphasis. “then it’s a good deal my fault--if everything really began so well?” fanny assingham met it as she could. “you’ve been only too perfect. you’ve thought only too much.” but the princess had already caught at the words. “yes--i’ve thought only too much!” yet she appeared to continue, for the minute, full of that fault. she had it in fact, by this prompted thought, all before her. “of him, dear man, of him--!” her friend, able to take in thus directly her vision of her father, watched her with a new suspense. that way might safety lie--it was like a wider chink of light. “he believed--with a beauty!--in charlotte.” “yes, and it was i who had made him believe. i didn’t mean to, at the time, so much; for i had no idea then of what was coming. but i did it, i did it!” the princess declared. “with a beauty--ah, with a beauty, you too!” mrs. assingham insisted. maggie, however, was seeing for herself--it was another matter, “the thing was that he made her think it would be so possible.” fanny again hesitated. “the prince made her think--?” maggie stared--she had meant her father. but her vision seemed to spread. “they both made her think. she wouldn’t have thought without them.” “yet amerigo’s good faith,” mrs. assingham insisted, “was perfect. and there was nothing, all the more,” she added, “against your father’s.” the remark, however, kept maggie for a moment still. “nothing perhaps but his knowing that she knew.” “‘knew’?” “that he was doing it, so much, for me. to what extent,” she suddenly asked of her friend, “do you think he was aware that she knew?” “ah, who can say what passes between people in such a relation? the only thing one can be sure of is that he was generous.” and mrs. assingham conclusively smiled. “he doubtless knew as much as was right for himself.” “as much, that is, as was right for her.” “yes then--as was right for her. the point is,” fanny declared, “that, whatever his knowledge, it made, all the way it went, for his good faith.” maggie continued to gaze, and her friend now fairly waited on her successive movements. “isn’t the point, very considerably, that his good faith must have been his faith in her taking almost as much interest in me as he himself took?” fanny assingham thought. “he recognised, he adopted, your long friendship. but he founded on it no selfishness.” “no,” said maggie with still deeper consideration: “he counted her selfishness out almost as he counted his own.” “so you may say.” “very well,” maggie went on; “if he had none of his own, he invited her, may have expected her, on her side, to have as little. and she may only since have found that out.” mrs. assingham looked blank. “since--?” “and he may have become aware,” maggie pursued, “that she has found it out. that she has taken the measure, since their marriage,” she explained, “of how much he had asked of her--more, say, than she had understood at the time. he may have made out at last how such a demand was, in the long run, to affect her.” “he may have done many things,” mrs. assingham responded; “but there’s one thing he certainly won’t have done. he’ll never have shown that he expected of her a quarter as much as she must have understood he was to give.” “i’ve often wondered,” maggie mused, “what charlotte really understood. but it’s one of the things she has never told me.” “then as it’s one of the things she has never told me either, we shall probably never know it; and we may regard it as none of our business. there are many things,” said mrs. assingham, “that we shall never know.” maggie took it in with a long reflection. “never.” “but there are others,” her friend went on, “that stare us in the face and that--under whatever difficulty you may feel you labour--may now be enough for us. your father has been extraordinary.” it had been as if maggie were feeling her way; but she rallied to this with a rush. “extraordinary.” “magnificent,” said fanny assingham. her companion held tight to it. “magnificent.” “then he’ll do for himself whatever there may be to do. what he undertook for you he’ll do to the end. he didn’t undertake it to break down; in what--quiet, patient, exquisite as he is--did he ever break down? he had never in his life proposed to himself to have failed, and he won’t have done it on this occasion.” “ah, this occasion!”--and maggie’s wail showed her, of a sudden, thrown back on it. “am i in the least sure that, with everything, he even knows what it is? and yet am i in the least sure he doesn’t?” “if he doesn’t then, so much the better. leave him alone.” “do you mean give him up?” “leave her,” fanny assingham went on. “leave her to him.” maggie looked at her darkly. “do you mean leave him to her? after this?” “after everything. aren’t they, for that matter, intimately together now?” “‘intimately’--? how do i know?” but fanny kept it up. “aren’t you and your husband--in spite of everything?” maggie’s eyes still further, if possible, dilated. “it remains to be seen!” “if you’re not then, where’s your faith?” “in my husband--?” mrs. assingham but for an instant hesitated. “in your father. it all comes back to that. rest on it.” “on his ignorance?” fanny met it again. “on whatever he may offer you. take that.” “take it--?” maggie stared. mrs. assingham held up her head. “and be grateful.” on which, for a minute, she let the princess face her. “do you see?” “i see,” said maggie at last. “then there you are.” but maggie had turned away, moving to the window, as if still to keep something in her face from sight. she stood there with her eyes on the street while mrs. assingham’s reverted to that complicating object on the chimney as to which her condition, so oddly even to herself, was that both of recurrent wonder and recurrent protest. she went over it, looked at it afresh and yielded now to her impulse to feel it in her hands. she laid them on it, lifting it up, and was surprised, thus, with the weight of it--she had seldom handled so much massive gold. that effect itself somehow prompted her to further freedom and presently to saying: “i don’t believe in this, you know.” it brought maggie round to her. “don’t believe in it? you will when i tell you.” “ah, tell me nothing! i won’t have it,” said mrs. assingham. she kept the cup in her hand, held it there in a manner that gave maggie’s attention to her, she saw the next moment, a quality of excited suspense. this suggested to her, oddly, that she had, with the liberty she was taking, an air of intention, and the impression betrayed by her companion’s eyes grew more distinct in a word of warning. “it’s of value, but its value’s impaired, i’ve learned, by a crack.” “a crack?--in the gold--?” “it isn’t gold.” with which, somewhat strangely, maggie smiled. “that’s the point.” “what is it then?” “it’s glass--and cracked, under the gilt, as i say, at that.” “glass?--of this weight?” “well,” said maggie, “it’s crystal--and was once, i suppose, precious. but what,” she then asked, “do you mean to do with it?” she had come away from her window, one of the three by which the wide room, enjoying an advantageous “back,” commanded the western sky and caught a glimpse of the evening flush; while mrs. assingham, possessed of the bowl, and possessed too of this indication of a flaw, approached another for the benefit of the slowly-fading light. here, thumbing the singular piece, weighing it, turning it over, and growing suddenly more conscious, above all, of an irresistible impulse, she presently spoke again. “a crack? then your whole idea has a crack.” maggie, by this time at some distance from her, waited a moment. “if you mean by my idea the knowledge that has come to me that--” but fanny, with decision, had already taken her up. “there’s only one knowledge that concerns us--one fact with which we can have anything to do.” “which one, then?” “the fact that your husband has never, never, never--!” but the very gravity of this statement, while she raised her eyes to her friend across the room, made her for an instant hang fire. “well, never what?” “never been half so interested in you as now. but don’t you, my dear, really feel it?” maggie considered. “oh, i think what i’ve told you helps me to feel it. his having to-day given up even his forms; his keeping away from me; his not having come.” and she shook her head as against all easy glosses. “it is because of that, you know.” “well then, if it’s because of this--!” and fanny assingham, who had been casting about her and whose inspiration decidedly had come, raised the cup in her two hands, raised it positively above her head, and from under it, solemnly, smiled at the princess as a signal of intention. so for an instant, full of her thought and of her act, she held the precious vessel, and then, with due note taken of the margin of the polished floor, bare, fine and hard in the embrasure of her window, she dashed it boldly to the ground, where she had the thrill of seeing it, with the violence of the crash, lie shattered. she had flushed with the force of her effort, as maggie had flushed with wonder at the sight, and this high reflection in their faces was all that passed between them for a minute more. after which, “whatever you meant by it--and i don’t want to know now--has ceased to exist,” mrs. assingham said. “and what in the world, my dear, did you mean by it?”--that sound, as at the touch of a spring, rang out as the first effect of fanny’s speech. it broke upon the two women’s absorption with a sharpness almost equal to the smash of the crystal, for the door of the room had been opened by the prince without their taking heed. he had apparently had time, moreover, to catch the conclusion of fanny’s act; his eyes attached themselves, through the large space allowing just there, as happened, a free view, to the shining fragments at this lady’s feet. his question had been addressed to his wife, but he moved his eyes immediately afterwards to those of her visitor, whose own then held them in a manner of which neither party had been capable, doubtless, for mute penetration, since the hour spent by him in cadogan place on the eve of his marriage and the afternoon of charlotte’s reappearance. something now again became possible for these communicants, under the intensity of their pressure, something that took up that tale and that might have been a redemption of pledges then exchanged. this rapid play of suppressed appeal and disguised response lasted indeed long enough for more results than one--long enough for mrs. assingham to measure the feat of quick self-recovery, possibly therefore of recognition still more immediate, accompanying amerigo’s vision and estimate of the evidence with which she had been--so admirably, she felt as she looked at him--inspired to deal. she looked at him and looked at him--there were so many things she wanted, on the spot, to say. but maggie was looking too--and was moreover looking at them both; so that these things, for the elder woman, quickly enough reduced themselves to one. she met his question--not too late, since, in their silence, it had remained in the air. gathering herself to go, leaving the golden bowl split into three pieces on the ground, she simply referred him to his wife. she should see them later, they would all meet soon again; and meanwhile, as to what maggie had meant--she said, in her turn, from the door--why, maggie herself was doubtless by this time ready to tell him. xxxiv left with her husband, maggie, however, for the time, said nothing; she only felt, on the spot, a strong, sharp wish not to see his face again till he should have had a minute to arrange it. she had seen it enough for her temporary clearness and her next movement--seen it as it showed during the stare of surprise that followed his entrance. then it was that she knew how hugely expert she had been made, for judging it quickly, by that vision of it, indelibly registered for reference, that had flashed a light into her troubled soul the night of his late return from matcham. the expression worn by it at that juncture, for however few instants, had given her a sense of its possibilities, one of the most relevant of which might have been playing up for her, before the consummation of fanny assingham’s retreat, just long enough to be recognised. what she had recognised in it was his recognition, the result of his having been forced, by the flush of their visitor’s attitude and the unextinguished report of her words, to take account of the flagrant signs of the accident, of the incident, on which he had unexpectedly dropped. he had, not unnaturally, failed to see this occurrence represented by the three fragments of an object apparently valuable which lay there on the floor and which, even across the width of the room, his kept interval, reminded him, unmistakably though confusedly, of something known, some other unforgotten image. that was a mere shock, that was a pain--as if fanny’s violence had been a violence redoubled and acting beyond its intention, a violence calling up the hot blood as a blow across the mouth might have called it. maggie knew as she turned away from him that she didn’t want his pain; what she wanted was her own simple certainty--not the red mark of conviction flaming there in his beauty. if she could have gone on with bandaged eyes she would have liked that best; if it were a question of saying what she now, apparently, should have to, and of taking from him what he would say, any blindness that might wrap it would be the nearest approach to a boon. she went in silence to where her friend--never, in intention, visibly, so much her friend as at that moment--had braced herself to so amazing an energy, and there, under amerigo’s eyes, she picked up the shining pieces. bedizened and jewelled, in her rustling finery, she paid, with humility of attitude, this prompt tribute to order--only to find, however, that she could carry but two of the fragments at once. she brought them over to the chimney-piece, to the conspicuous place occupied by the cup before fanny’s appropriation of it, and, after laying them carefully down, went back for what remained, the solid detached foot. with this she returned to the mantel-shelf, placing it with deliberation in the centre and then, for a minute, occupying herself as with the attempt to fit the other morsels together. the split, determined by the latent crack, was so sharp and so neat that if there had been anything to hold them the bowl might still, quite beautifully, a few steps away, have passed for uninjured. but, as there was, naturally, nothing to hold them but maggie’s hands, during the few moments the latter were so employed, she could only lay the almost equal parts of the vessel carefully beside their pedestal and leave them thus before her husband’s eyes. she had proceeded without words, but quite as if with a sought effect-in spite of which it had all seemed to her to take a far longer time than anything she had ever so quickly accomplished. amerigo said nothing either-though it was true that his silence had the gloss of the warning she doubtless appeared to admonish him to take: it was as if her manner hushed him to the proper observation of what she was doing. he should have no doubt of it whatever: she _knew_ and her broken bowl was proof that she knew-yet the least part of her desire was to make him waste words. he would have to think-this she knew even better still; and all she was for the present concerned with was that he should be aware. she had taken him for aware all day, or at least for obscurely and instinctively anxious-as to that she had just committed herself to fanny assingham; but what she had been wrong about was the effect of his anxiety. his fear of staying away, as a marked symptom, had at least proved greater than his fear of coming in ; he had come in even at the risk of bringing it with him-and, ah, what more did she require now than her sense, established within the first minute or two, that he had brought it, however he might be steadying himself against dangers of betrayal by some wrong word, and that it was shut in there between them, the successive moments throbbing under it the while as the pulse of fever throbs under the doctor’s thumb? maggie’s sense, in fine, in his presence, was that though the bowl had been broken, her reason hadn’t ; the reason for which she had made up her mind, the reason for which she had summoned her friend, the reason for which she had prepared the place for her husband’s eyes ; it was all one reason, and, as her intense little clutch held the matter, what had happened by fanny’s act and by his apprehension of it had not in the least happened to _her_ but absolutely and directly to himself, as he must proceed to take in. there it was that her wish for time interposed-time for amerigo’s use, not for hers, since she, for ever so long now, for hours and hours as they seemed, had been living with eternity; with which she would continue to live. she wanted to say to him, “ take it, take it, take all you need of it ; arrange yourself so as to suffer least, or to be, at any rate, least distorted and disfigured only _see_ see that _i_ see, and make up your mind, on this new basis, at your convenience. wait-it won’t be long-till you can confer again with charlotte, for you’ll do it much better then-more easily to both of us. above all don’t show me, till you’ve got it well under, the dreadful blur, the ravage of suspense and embarrassment, produced, and produced by my doing, in your personal serenity, your incomparable superiority.” after she had squared again her little objects on the chimney, she was within an ace, in fact, of turning on him with that appeal; besides its being lucid for her, all the while, that the occasion was passing, that they were dining out, that he wasn’t dressed, and that, though she herself was, she was yet, in all probability, so horribly red in the face and so awry, in many ways, with agitation, that in view of the ambassador’s company, of possible comments and constructions, she should need, before her glass, some restoration of appearances. amerigo, meanwhile, after all, could clearly make the most of her having enjoined on him to wait--suggested it by the positive pomp of her dealings with the smashed cup; to wait, that is, till she should pronounce as mrs. assingham had promised for her. this delay, again, certainly tested her presence of mind--though that strain was not what presently made her speak. keep her eyes, for the time, from her husband’s as she might, she soon found herself much more drivingly conscious of the strain on his own wit. there was even a minute, when her back was turned to him, during which she knew once more the strangeness of her desire to spare him, a strangeness that had already, fifty times, brushed her, in the depth of her trouble, as with the wild wing of some bird of the air who might blindly have swooped for an instant into the shaft of a well, darkening there by his momentary flutter the far-off round of sky. it was extraordinary, this quality in the taste of her wrong which made her completed sense of it seem rather to soften than to harden and it was the more extraordinary the more she had to recognise it; for what it came to was that seeing herself finally sure, knowing everything, having the fact, in all its abomination, so utterly before her that there was nothing else to add--what it came to was that, merely by being with him there in silence, she felt, within her, the sudden split between conviction and action. they had begun to cease, on the spot, surprisingly, to be connected; conviction, that is, budged no inch, only planting its feet the more firmly in the soil--but action began to hover like some lighter and larger, but easier form, excited by its very power to keep above ground. it would be free, it would be independent, it would go in--wouldn’t it?--for some prodigious and superior adventure of its own. what would condemn it, so to speak, to the responsibility of freedom--this glimmered on maggie even now--was the possibility, richer with every lapsing moment, that her husband would have, on the whole question, a new need of her, a need which was in fact being born between them in these very seconds. it struck her truly as so new that he would have felt hitherto none to compare with it at all; would indeed, absolutely, by this circumstance, be really needing her for the first one in their whole connection. no, he had used her, had even exceedingly enjoyed her, before this; but there had been no precedent for that character of a proved necessity to him which she was rapidly taking on. the immense advantage of this particular clue, moreover, was that she should have now to arrange, alter, to falsify nothing; should have to be but consistently simple and straight. she asked herself, with concentration, while her back was still presented, what would be the very ideal of that method; after which, the next instant, it had all come to her and she had turned round upon him for the application. “fanny assingham broke it--knowing it had a crack and that it would go if she used sufficient force. she thought, when i had told her, that that would be the best thing to do with it--thought so from her own point of view. that hadn’t been at all my idea, but she acted before i understood. i had, on the contrary,” she explained, “put it here, in full view, exactly that you might see.” he stood with his hands in his pockets; he had carried his eyes to the fragments on the chimney-piece, and she could already distinguish the element of relief, absolutely of succour, in his acceptance from her of the opportunity to consider the fruits of their friend’s violence--every added inch of reflection and delay having the advantage, from this point on, of counting for him double. it had operated within her now to the last intensity, her glimpse of the precious truth that by her helping him, helping him to help himself, as it were, she should help him to help her. hadn’t she fairly got into his labyrinth with him?--wasn’t she indeed in the very act of placing herself there, for him, at its centre and core, whence, on that definite orientation and by an instinct all her own, she might securely guide him out of it? she offered him thus, assuredly, a kind of support that was not to have been imagined in advance, and that moreover required--ah most truly!--some close looking at before it could be believed in and pronounced void of treachery. “yes, look, look,” she seemed to see him hear her say even while her sounded words were other--“look, look, both at the truth that still survives in that smashed evidence and at the even more remarkable appearance that i’m not such a fool as you supposed me. look at the possibility that, since i am different, there may still be something in it for you--if you’re capable of working with me to get that out. consider of course, as you must, the question of what you may have to surrender, on your side, what price you may have to pay, whom you may have to pay with, to set this advantage free; but take in, at any rate, that there is something for you if you don’t too blindly spoil your chance for it.” he went no nearer the damnatory pieces, but he eyed them, from where he stood, with a degree of recognition just visibly less to be dissimulated; all of which represented for her a certain traceable process. and her uttered words, meanwhile, were different enough from those he might have inserted between the lines of her already-spoken. “it’s the golden bowl, you know, that you saw at the little antiquario’s in bloomsbury, so long ago--when you went there with charlotte, when you spent those hours with her, unknown to me, a day or two before our marriage. it was shown you both, but you didn’t take it; you left it for me, and i came upon it, extraordinarily, through happening to go into the same shop on monday last; in walking home, in prowling about to pick up some small old thing for father’s birthday, after my visit to the museum, my appointment there with mr. crichton, of which i told you. it was shown me, and i was struck with it and took it--knowing nothing about it at the time. what i now know i’ve learned since--i learned this afternoon, a couple of hours ago; receiving from it naturally a great impression. so there it is--in its three pieces. you can handle them--don’t be afraid--if you want to make sure the thing is the thing you and charlotte saw together. its having come apart makes an unfortunate difference for its beauty, its artistic value, but none for anything else. its other value is just the same--i mean that of its having given me so much of the truth about you. i don’t therefore so much care what becomes of it now--unless perhaps you may yourself, when you come to think, have some good use for it. in that case,” maggie wound up, “we can easily take the pieces with us to fawns.” it was wonderful how she felt, by the time she had seen herself through this narrow pass, that she had really achieved something--that she was emerging a little, in fine, with the prospect less contracted. she had done for him, that is, what her instinct enjoined; had laid a basis not merely momentary on which he could meet her. when, by the turn of his head, he did finally meet her, this was the last thing that glimmered out of his look; but it came into sight, none the less, as a perception of his distress and almost as a question of his eyes; so that, for still another minute, before he committed himself, there occurred between them a kind of unprecedented moral exchange over which her superior lucidity presided. it was not, however, that when he did commit himself the show was promptly portentous. “but what in the world has fanny assingham had to do with it?” she could verily, out of all her smothered soreness, almost have smiled: his question so affected her as giving the whole thing up to her. but it left her only to go the straighter. “she has had to do with it that i immediately sent for her and that she immediately came. she was the first person i wanted to see--because i knew she would know. know more about what i had learned, i mean, than i could make out for myself. i made out as much as i could for myself--that i also wanted to have done; but it didn’t, in spite of everything, take me very far, and she has really been a help. not so much as she would like to be--not so much as, poor dear, she just now tried to be; yet she has done her very best for you--never forget that!--and has kept me along immeasurably better than i should have been able to come without her. she has gained me time; and that, these three months, don’t you see? has been everything.” she had said “don’t you see?” on purpose, and was to feel the next moment that it had acted. “these three months’?” the prince asked. “counting from the night you came home so late from matcham. counting from the hours you spent with charlotte at gloucester; your visit to the cathedral--which you won’t have forgotten describing to me in so much detail. for that was the beginning of my being sure. before it i had been sufficiently in doubt. sure,” maggie developed, “of your having, and of your having for a long time had, two relations with charlotte.” he stared, a little at sea, as he took it up. “two--?” something in the tone of it gave it a sense, or an ambiguity, almost foolish--leaving maggie to feel, as in a flash, how such a consequence, a foredoomed infelicity, partaking of the ridiculous even in one of the cleverest, might be of the very essence of the penalty of wrong-doing. “oh, you may have had fifty--had the same relation with her fifty times! it’s of the number of kinds of relation with her that i speak--a number that doesn’t matter, really, so long as there wasn’t only one kind, as father and i supposed. one kind,” she went on, “was there before us; we took that fully for granted, as you saw, and accepted it. we never thought of there being another, kept out of our sight. but after the evening i speak of i knew there was something else. as i say, i had, before that, my idea--which you never dreamed i had. from the moment i speak of it had more to go upon, and you became yourselves, you and she, vaguely, yet uneasily, conscious of the difference. but it’s within these last hours that i’ve most seen where we are; and as i’ve been in communication with fanny assingham about my doubts, so i wanted to let her know my certainty--with the determination of which, however, you must understand, she has had nothing to do. she defends you,” maggie remarked. he had given her all his attention, and with this impression for her, again, that he was, in essence, fairly reaching out to her for time--time, only time--she could sufficiently imagine, and to whatever strangeness, that he absolutely liked her to talk, even at the cost of his losing almost everything else by it. it was still, for a minute, as if he waited for something worse; wanted everything that was in her to come out, any definite fact, anything more precisely nameable, so that he too--as was his right--should know where he was. what stirred in him above all, while he followed in her face the clear train of her speech, must have been the impulse to take up something she put before him that he was yet afraid directly to touch. he wanted to make free with it, but had to keep his hands off--for reasons he had already made out; and the discomfort of his privation yearned at her out of his eyes with an announcing gleam of the fever, the none too tolerable chill, of specific recognition. she affected him as speaking more or less for her father as well, and his eyes might have been trying to hypnotise her into giving him the answer without his asking the question. “had he his idea, and has he now, with you, anything more?”--those were the words he had to hold himself from not speaking and that she would as yet, certainly, do nothing to make easy. she felt with her sharpest thrill how he was straitened and tied, and with the miserable pity of it her present conscious purpose of keeping him so could none the less perfectly accord. to name her father, on any such basis of anxiety, of compunction, would be to do the impossible thing, to do neither more nor less than give charlotte away. visibly, palpably, traceably, he stood off from this, moved back from it as from an open chasm now suddenly perceived, but which had been, between the two, with so much, so strangely much else, quite uncalculated. verily it towered before her, this history of their confidence. they had built strong and piled high--based as it was on such appearances--their conviction that, thanks to her native complacencies of so many sorts, she would always, quite to the end and through and through, take them as nobly sparing her. amerigo was at any rate having the sensation of a particular ugliness to avoid, a particular difficulty to count with, that practically found him as unprepared as if he had been, like his wife, an abjectly simple person. and she meanwhile, however abjectly simple, was further discerning, for herself, that, whatever he might have to take from her--she being, on her side, beautifully free--he would absolutely not be able, for any qualifying purpose, to name charlotte either. as his father-in-law’s wife mrs. verver rose between them there, for the time, in august and prohibitive form; to protect her, defend her, explain about her, was, at the least, to bring her into the question--which would be by the same stroke to bring her husband. but this was exactly the door maggie wouldn’t open to him; on all of which she was the next moment asking herself if, thus warned and embarrassed, he were not fairly writhing in his pain. he writhed, on that hypothesis, some seconds more, for it was not till then that he had chosen between what he could do and what he couldn’t. “you’re apparently drawing immense conclusions from very small matters. won’t you perhaps feel, in fairness, that you’re striking out, triumphing, or whatever i may call it, rather too easily--feel it when i perfectly admit that your smashed cup there does come back to me? i frankly confess, now, to the occasion, and to having wished not to speak of it to you at the time. we took two or three hours together, by arrangement; it was on the eve of my marriage--at the moment you say. but that put it on the eve of yours too, my dear--which was directly the point. it was desired to find for you, at the eleventh hour, some small wedding-present--a hunt, for something worth giving you, and yet possible from other points of view as well, in which it seemed i could be of use. you were naturally not to be told--precisely because it was all for you. we went forth together and we looked; we rummaged about and, as i remember we called it, we prowled; then it was that, as i freely recognise, we came across that crystal cup--which i’m bound to say, upon my honour, i think it rather a pity fanny assingham, from whatever good motive, should have treated so.” he had kept his hands in his pockets; he turned his eyes again, but more complacently now, to the ruins of the precious vessel; and maggie could feel him exhale into the achieved quietness of his explanation a long, deep breath of comparative relief. behind everything, beneath everything, it was somehow a comfort to him at last to be talking with her--and he seemed to be proving to himself that he could talk. “it was at a little shop in bloomsbury--i think i could go to the place now. the man understood italian, i remember; he wanted awfully to work off his bowl. but i didn’t believe in it, and we didn’t take it.” maggie had listened with an interest that wore all the expression of candour. “oh, you left it for me. but what did you take?” he looked at her; first as if he were trying to remember, then as if he might have been trying to forget. “nothing, i think--at that place.” “what did you take then at any other? what did you get me--since that was your aim and end--for a wedding-gift?” the prince continued very nobly to bethink himself. “didn’t we get you anything?” maggie waited a little; she had for some time, now, kept her eyes on him steadily; but they wandered, at this, to the fragments on her chimney. “yes; it comes round, after all, to your having got me the bowl. i myself was to come upon it, the other day, by so wonderful a chance; was to find it in the same place and to have it pressed upon me by the same little man, who does, as you say, understand italian. i did ‘believe in it,’ you see--must have believed in it somehow instinctively; for i took it as soon as i saw it. though i didn’t know at all then,” she added, “what i was taking with it.” the prince paid her for an instant, visibly, the deference of trying to imagine what this might have been. “i agree with you that the coincidence is extraordinary--the sort of thing that happens mainly in novels and plays. but i don’t see, you must let me say, the importance or the connexion--” “of my having made the purchase where you failed of it?” she had quickly taken him up; but she had, with her eyes on him once more, another drop into the order of her thoughts, to which, through whatever he might say, she was still adhering. “it’s not my having gone into the place, at the end of four years, that makes the strangeness of the coincidence; for don’t such chances as that, in london, easily occur? the strangeness,” she lucidly said, “is in what my purchase was to represent to me after i had got it home; which value came,” she explained, “from the wonder of my having found such a friend.” “‘such a friend’?” as a wonder, assuredly, her husband could but take it. “as the little man in the shop. he did for me more than he knew--i owe it to him. he took an interest in me,” maggie said; “and, taking that interest, he recalled your visit, he remembered you and spoke of you to me.” on which the prince passed the comment of a sceptical smile. “ah but, my dear, if extraordinary things come from people’s taking an interest in you--” “my life in that case,” she asked, “must be very agitated? well, he liked me, i mean--very particularly. it’s only so i can account for my afterwards hearing from him--and in fact he gave me that to-day,” she pursued, “he gave me it frankly as his reason.” “to-day?” the prince inquiringly echoed. but she was singularly able--it had been marvellously “given” her, she afterwards said to herself--to abide, for her light, for her clue, by her own order. “i inspired him with sympathy--there you are! but the miracle is that he should have a sympathy to offer that could be of use to me. that was really the oddity of my chance,” the princess proceeded--“that i should have been moved, in my ignorance, to go precisely to him.” he saw her so keep her course that it was as if he could, at the best, but stand aside to watch her and let her pass; he only made a vague demonstration that was like an ineffective gesture. “i’m sorry to say any ill of your friends, and the thing was a long time ago; besides which there was nothing to make me recur to it. but i remember the man’s striking me as a decided little beast.” she gave a slow headshake--as if, no, after consideration, not that way were an issue. “i can only think of him as kind, for he had nothing to gain. he had in fact only to lose. it was what he came to tell me--that he had asked me too high a price, more than the object was really worth. there was a particular reason, which he hadn’t mentioned, and which had made him consider and repent. he wrote for leave to see me again--wrote in such terms that i saw him here this afternoon.” “here?”--it made the prince look about him. “downstairs--in the little red room. while he was waiting he looked at the few photographs that stand about there and recognised two of them. though it was so long ago, he remembered the visit made him by the lady and the gentleman, and that gave him his connexion. it gave me mine, for he remembered everything and told me everything. you see you too had produced your effect; only, unlike you, he had thought of it again--he had recurred to it. he told me of your having wished to make each other presents--but of that’s not having come off. the lady was greatly taken with the piece i had bought of him, but you had your reason against receiving it from her, and you had been right. he would think that of you more than ever now,” maggie went on; “he would see how wisely you had guessed the flaw and how easily the bowl could be broken. i had bought it myself, you see, for a present--he knew i was doing that. this was what had worked in him--especially after the price i had paid.” her story had dropped an instant; she still brought it out in small waves of energy, each of which spent its force; so that he had an opportunity to speak before this force was renewed. but the quaint thing was what he now said. “and what, pray, was the price?” she paused again a little. “it was high, certainly--for those fragments. i think i feel, as i look at them there, rather ashamed to say.” the prince then again looked at them; he might have been growing used to the sight. “but shall you at least get your money back?” “oh, i’m far from wanting it back--i feel so that i’m getting its worth.” with which, before he could reply, she had a quick transition. “the great fact about the day we’re talking of seems to me to have been, quite remarkably, that no present was then made me. if your undertaking had been for that, that was not at least what came of it.” “you received then nothing at all?” the prince looked vague and grave, almost retrospectively concerned. “nothing but an apology for empty hands and empty pockets; which was made me--as if it mattered a mite!--ever so frankly, ever so beautifully and touchingly.” this amerigo heard with interest, yet not with confusion. “ah, of course you couldn’t have minded!” distinctly, as she went on, he was getting the better of the mere awkwardness of his arrest; quite as if making out that he need suffer arrest from her now--before they should go forth to show themselves in the world together--in no greater quantity than an occasion ill-chosen at the best for a scene might decently make room for. he looked at his watch; their engagement, all the while, remained before him. “but i don’t make out, you see, what case against me you rest--” “on everything i’m telling you? why, the whole case--the case of your having for so long so successfully deceived me. the idea of your finding something for me--charming as that would have been--was what had least to do with your taking a morning together at that moment. what had really to do with it,” said maggie, “was that you had to: you couldn’t not, from the moment you were again face to face. and the reason of that was that there had been so much between you before--before i came between you at all.” her husband had been for these last moments moving about under her eyes; but at this, as to check any show of impatience, he again stood still. “you’ve never been more sacred to me than you were at that hour--unless perhaps you’ve become so at this one.” the assurance of his speech, she could note, quite held up its head in him; his eyes met her own so, for the declaration, that it was as if something cold and momentarily unimaginable breathed upon her, from afar off, out of his strange consistency. she kept her direction still, however, under that. “oh, the thing i’ve known best of all is that you’ve never wanted, together, to offend us. you’ve wanted quite intensely not to, and the precautions you’ve had to take for it have been for a long time one of the strongest of my impressions. that, i think,” she added, “is the way i’ve best known.” “known?” he repeated after a moment. “known. known that you were older friends, and so much more intimate ones, than i had any reason to suppose when we married. known there were things that hadn’t been told me--and that gave their meaning, little by little, to other things that were before me.” “would they have made a difference, in the matter of our marriage,” the prince presently asked, “if you had known them?” she took her time to think. “i grant you not--in the matter of ours.” and then as he again fixed her with his hard yearning, which he couldn’t keep down: “the question is so much bigger than that. you see how much what i know makes of it for me.” that was what acted on him, this iteration of her knowledge, into the question of the validity, of the various bearings of which, he couldn’t on the spot trust himself to pretend, in any high way, to go. what her claim, as she made it, represented for him--that he couldn’t help betraying, if only as a consequence of the effect of the word itself, her repeated distinct “know, know,” on his nerves. she was capable of being sorry for his nerves at a time when he should need them for dining out, pompously, rather responsibly, without his heart in it; yet she was not to let that prevent her using, with all economy, so precious a chance for supreme clearness. “i didn’t force this upon you, you must recollect, and it probably wouldn’t have happened for you if you hadn’t come in.” “ah,” said the prince, “i was liable to come in, you know.” “i didn’t think you were this evening.” “and why not?” “well,” she answered, “you have many liabilities--of different sorts.” with which she recalled what she had said to fanny assingham. “and then you’re so deep.” it produced in his features, in spite of his control of them, one of those quick plays of expression, the shade of a grimace, that testified as nothing else did to his race. “it’s you, cara, who are deep.” which, after an instant, she had accepted from him; she could so feel at last that it was true. “then i shall have need of it all.” “but what would you have done,” he was by this time asking, “if i hadn’t come in?” “i don’t know.” she had hesitated. “what would you?” “oh; i oh--that isn’t the question. i depend upon you. i go on. you would have spoken to-morrow?” “i think i would have waited.” “and for what?” he asked. “to see what difference it would make for myself. my possession at last, i mean, of real knowledge.” “oh!” said the prince. “my only point now, at any rate,” she went on, “is the difference, as i say, that it may make for you. your knowing was--from the moment you did come in--all i had in view.” and she sounded it again--he should have it once more. “your knowing that i’ve ceased--” “that you’ve ceased--?” with her pause, in fact, she had fairly made him press her for it. “why, to be as i was. not to know.” it was once more then, after a little, that he had had to stand receptive; yet the singular effect of this was that there was still something of the same sort he was made to want. he had another hesitation, but at last this odd quantity showed. “then does any one else know?” it was as near as he could come to naming her father, and she kept him at that distance. “any one--?” “any one, i mean, but fanny assingham.” “i should have supposed you had had by this time particular means of learning. i don’t see,” she said, “why you ask me.” then, after an instant--and only after an instant, as she saw--he made out what she meant; and it gave her, all strangely enough, the still further light that charlotte, for herself, knew as little as he had known. the vision loomed, in this light, it fairly glared, for the few seconds--the vision of the two others alone together at fawns, and charlotte, as one of them, having gropingly to go on, always not knowing and not knowing! the picture flushed at the same time with all its essential colour--that of the so possible identity of her father’s motive and principle with her own. he was “deep,” as amerigo called it, so that no vibration of the still air should reach his daughter; just as she had earned that description by making and by, for that matter, intending still to make, her care for his serenity, or at any rate for the firm outer shell of his dignity, all marvellous enamel, her paramount law. more strangely even than anything else, her husband seemed to speak now but to help her in this. “i know nothing but what you tell me.” “then i’ve told you all i intended. find out the rest--!” “find it out--?” he waited. she stood before him a moment--it took that time to go on. depth upon depth of her situation, as she met his face, surged and sank within her; but with the effect somehow, once more, that they rather lifted her than let her drop. she had her feet somewhere, through it all--it was her companion, absolutely, who was at sea. and she kept her feet; she pressed them to what was beneath her. she went over to the bell beside the chimney and gave a ring that he could but take as a summons for her maid. it stopped everything for the present; it was an intimation to him to go and dress. but she had to insist. “find out for yourself!” part fifth xxxv after the little party was again constituted at fawns--which had taken, for completeness, some ten days--maggie naturally felt herself still more possessed, in spirit, of everything that had last happened in london. there was a phrase that came back to her from old american years: she was having, by that idiom, the time of her life--she knew it by the perpetual throb of this sense of possession, which was almost too violent either to recognise or to hide. it was as if she had come out--that was her most general consciousness; out of a dark tunnel, a dense wood, or even simply a smoky room, and had thereby, at least, for going on, the advantage of air in her lungs. it was as if she were somehow at last gathering in the fruits of patience; she had either been really more patient than she had known at the time, or had been so for longer: the change brought about by itself as great a difference of view as the shift of an inch in the position of a telescope. it was her telescope in fact that had gained in range--just as her danger lay in her exposing herself to the observation by the more charmed, and therefore the more reckless, use of this optical resource. not under any provocation to produce it in public was her unremitted rule; but the difficulties of duplicity had not shrunk, while the need of it had doubled. humbugging, which she had so practised with her father, had been a comparatively simple matter on the basis of mere doubt; but the ground to be covered was now greatly larger, and she felt not unlike some young woman of the theatre who, engaged for a minor part in the play and having mastered her cues with anxious effort, should find herself suddenly promoted to leading lady and expected to appear in every act of the five. she had made much to her husband, that last night, of her “knowing”; but it was exactly this quantity she now knew that, from the moment she could only dissimulate it, added to her responsibility and made of the latter all a mere question of having something precious and precarious in charge. there was no one to help her with it--not even fanny assingham now; this good friend’s presence having become, inevitably, with that climax of their last interview in portland place, a severely simplified function. she had her use, oh yes, a thousand times; but it could only consist henceforth in her quite conspicuously touching at no point whatever--assuredly, at least with maggie--the matter they had discussed. she was there, inordinately, as a value, but as a value only for the clear negation of everything. she was their general sign, precisely, of unimpaired beatitude--and she was to live up to that somewhat arduous character, poor thing, as she might. she might privately lapse from it, if she must, with amerigo or with charlotte--only not, of course, ever, so much as for the wink of an eye, with the master of the house. such lapses would be her own affair, which maggie at present could take no thought of. she treated her young friend meanwhile, it was to be said, to no betrayal of such wavering; so that from the moment of her alighting at the door with the colonel everything went on between them at concert pitch. what had she done, that last evening in maggie’s room, but bring the husband and wife more together than, as would seem, they had ever been? therefore what indiscretion should she not show by attempting to go behind the grand appearance of her success?--which would be to court a doubt of her beneficent work. she knew accordingly nothing but harmony and diffused, restlessly, nothing but peace--an extravagant, expressive, aggressive peace, not incongruous, after all, with the solid calm of the place; a kind of helmetted, trident-shaking pax britannica. the peace, it must be added, had become, as the days elapsed, a peace quite generally animated and peopled--thanks to that fact of the presence of “company” in which maggie’s ability to preserve an appearance had learned, from so far back, to find its best resource. it was not inconspicuous, it was in fact striking, that this resource, just now, seemed to meet in the highest degree every one’s need: quite as if every one were, by the multiplication of human objects in the scene, by the creation, by the confusion, of fictive issues, hopeful of escaping somebody else’s notice. it had reached the point, in truth, that the collective bosom might have been taken to heave with the knowledge of the descent upon adjacent shores, for a short period, of mrs. rance and the lutches, still united, and still so divided, for conquest: the sense of the party showed at least, oddly enough, as favourable to the fancy of the quaint turn that some near “week-end” might derive from their reappearance. this measured for maggie the ground they had all travelled together since that unforgotten afternoon of the none so distant year, that determinant september sunday when, sitting with her father in the park, as in commemoration of the climax both of their old order and of their old danger, she had proposed to him that they should “call in” charlotte,--call her in as a specialist might be summoned to an invalid’s chair. wasn’t it a sign of something rather portentous, their being ready to be beholden, as for a diversion, to the once despised kitty and dotty? that had already had its application, in truth, to her invocation of the castledeans and several other members, again, of the historic matcham week, made before she left town, and made, always consistently, with an idea--since she was never henceforth to approach these people without an idea, and since that lurid element of their intercourse grew and grew for her with each occasion. the flame with which it burned afresh during these particular days, the way it held up the torch to anything, to everything, that might have occurred as the climax of revels springing from traditions so vivified--this by itself justified her private motive and reconsecrated her diplomacy. she had already produced by the aid of these people something of the effect she sought--that of being “good” for whatever her companions were good for, and of not asking either of them to give up anyone or anything for her sake. there was moreover, frankly, a sharpness of point in it that she enjoyed; it gave an accent to the truth she wished to illustrate--the truth that the surface of her recent life, thick-sown with the flower of earnest endeavour, with every form of the unruffled and the undoubting, suffered no symptom anywhere to peep out. it was as if, under her pressure, neither party could get rid of the complicity, as it might be figured, of the other; as if, in a word, she saw amerigo and charlotte committed, for fear of betrayals on their own side, to a kind of wan consistency on the subject of lady castledean’s “set,” and this latter group, by the same stroke, compelled to assist at attestations the extent and bearing of which they rather failed to grasp and which left them indeed, in spite of hereditary high spirits, a trifle bewildered and even a trifle scared. they made, none the less, at fawns, for number, for movement, for sound--they played their parts during a crisis that must have hovered for them, in the long passages of the old house, after the fashion of the established ghost, felt, through the dark hours as a constant possibility, rather than have menaced them in the form of a daylight bore, one of the perceived outsiders who are liable to be met in the drawing-room or to be sat next to at dinner. if the princess, moreover, had failed of her occult use for so much of the machinery of diversion, she would still have had a sense not other than sympathetic for the advantage now extracted from it by fanny assingham’s bruised philosophy. this good friend’s relation to it was actually the revanche, she sufficiently indicated, of her obscured lustre at matcham, where she had known her way about so much less than most of the others. she knew it at fawns, through the pathless wild of the right tone, positively better than any one, maggie could note for her; and her revenge had the magnanimity of a brave pointing out of it to every one else, a wonderful irresistible, conscious, almost compassionate patronage. here was a house, she triumphantly caused it to be noted, in which she so bristled with values that some of them might serve, by her amused willingness to share, for such of the temporarily vague, among her fellow-guests, such of the dimly disconcerted, as had lost the key to their own. it may have been partly through the effect of this especial strain of community with her old friend that maggie found herself, one evening, moved to take up again their dropped directness of reference. they had remained downstairs together late; the other women of the party had filed, singly or in couples, up the “grand” staircase on which, from the equally grand hall, these retreats and advances could always be pleasantly observed; the men had apparently taken their way to the smoking-room; while the princess, in possession thus of a rare reach of view, had lingered as if to enjoy it. then she saw that mrs. assingham was remaining a little--and as for the appreciation of her enjoyment; upon which they stood looking at each other across the cleared prospect until the elder woman, only vaguely expressive and tentative now, came nearer. it was like the act of asking if there were anything she could yet do, and that question was answered by her immediately feeling, on this closer view, as she had felt when presenting herself in portland place after maggie’s last sharp summons. their understanding was taken up by these new snatched moments where that occasion had left it. “he has never told her that i know. of that i’m at last satisfied.” and then as mrs. assingham opened wide eyes: “i’ve been in the dark since we came down, not understanding what he has been doing or intending--not making out what can have passed between them. but within a day or two i’ve begun to suspect, and this evening, for reasons--oh, too many to tell you!--i’ve been sure, since it explains. nothing has passed between them--that’s what has happened. it explains,” the princess repeated with energy; “it explains, it explains!” she spoke in a manner that her auditor was afterwards to describe to the colonel, oddly enough, as that of the quietest excitement; she had turned back to the chimney-place, where, in honour of a damp day and a chill night, the piled logs had turned to flame and sunk to embers; and the evident intensity of her vision for the fact she imparted made fanny assingham wait upon her words. it explained, this striking fact, more indeed than her companion, though conscious of fairly gaping with good-will, could swallow at once. the princess, however, as for indulgence and confidence, quickly filled up the measure. “he hasn’t let her know that i know--and, clearly, doesn’t mean to. he has made up his mind; he’ll say nothing about it. therefore, as she’s quite unable to arrive at the knowledge by herself, she has no idea how much i’m really in possession. she believes,” said maggie, “and, so far as her own conviction goes, she knows, that i’m not in possession of anything. and that, somehow, for my own help seems to me immense.” “immense, my dear!” mrs. assingham applausively murmured, though not quite, even as yet, seeing all the way. “he’s keeping quiet then on purpose?” “on purpose.” maggie’s lighted eyes, at least, looked further than they had ever looked. “he’ll never tell her now.” fanny wondered; she cast about her; most of all she admired her little friend, in whom this announcement was evidently animated by an heroic lucidity. she stood there, in her full uniform, like some small erect commander of a siege, an anxious captain who has suddenly got news, replete with importance for him, of agitation, of division within the place. this importance breathed upon her comrade. “so you’re all right?” “oh, all right’s a good deal to say. but i seem at least to see, as i haven’t before, where i am with it.” fanny bountifully brooded; there was a point left vague. “and you have it from him?--your husband himself has told you?” “‘told’ me--?” “why, what you speak of. it isn’t of an assurance received from him then that you do speak?” at which maggie had continued to stare. “dear me, no. do you suppose i’ve asked him for an assurance?” “ah, you haven’t?” her companion smiled. “that’s what i supposed you might mean. then, darling, what have you--?” “asked him for? i’ve asked him for nothing.” but this, in turn, made fanny stare. “then nothing, that evening of the embassy dinner, passed between you?” “on the contrary, everything passed.” “everything--?” “everything. i told him what i knew--and i told him how i knew it.” mrs. assingham waited. “and that was all?” “wasn’t it quite enough?” “oh, love,” she bridled, “that’s for you to have judged!” “then i have judged,” said maggie--“i did judge. i made sure he understood--then i let him alone.” mrs. assingham wondered. “but he didn’t explain--?” “explain? thank god, no!” maggie threw back her head as with horror at the thought, then the next moment added: “and i didn’t, either.” the decency of pride in it shed a cold little light--yet as from heights at the base of which her companion rather panted. “but if he neither denies nor confesses--?” “he does what’s a thousand times better--he lets it alone. he does,” maggie went on, “as he would do; as i see now that i was sure he would. he lets me alone.” fanny assingham turned it over. “then how do you know so where, as you say, you ‘are’?” “why, just by that. i put him in possession of the difference; the difference made, about me, by the fact that i hadn’t been, after all--though with a wonderful chance, i admitted, helping me--too stupid to have arrived at knowledge. he had to see that i’m changed for him--quite changed from the idea of me that he had so long been going on with. it became a question then of his really taking in the change--and what i now see is that he is doing so.” fanny followed as she could. “which he shows by letting you, as you say, alone?” maggie looked at her a minute. “and by letting her.” mrs. assingham did what she might to embrace it--checked a little, however, by a thought that was the nearest approach she could have, in this almost too large air, to an inspiration. “ah, but does charlotte let him?” “oh, that’s another affair--with which i’ve practically nothing to do. i dare say, however, she doesn’t.” and the princess had a more distant gaze for the image evoked by the question. “i don’t in fact well see how she can. but the point for me is that he understands.” “yes,” fanny assingham cooed, “understands--?” “well, what i want. i want a happiness without a hole in it big enough for you to poke in your finger.” “a brilliant, perfect surface--to begin with at least. i see.” “the golden bowl--as it was to have been.” and maggie dwelt musingly on this obscured figure. “the bowl with all our happiness in it. the bowl without the crack.” for mrs. assingham too the image had its force, and the precious object shone before her again, reconstituted, plausible, presentable. but wasn’t there still a piece missing? “yet if he lets you alone and you only let him--?” “mayn’t our doing so, you mean, be noticed?--mayn’t it give us away? well, we hope not--we try not--we take such care. we alone know what’s between us--we and you; and haven’t you precisely been struck, since you’ve been here,” maggie asked, “with our making so good a show?” her friend hesitated. “to your father?” but it made her hesitate too; she wouldn’t speak of her father directly. “to everyone. to her--now that you understand.” it held poor fanny again in wonder. “to charlotte--yes: if there’s so much beneath it, for you, and if it’s all such a plan. that makes it hang together it makes you hang together.” she fairly exhaled her admiration. “you’re like nobody else--you’re extraordinary.” maggie met it with appreciation, but with a reserve. “no, i’m not extraordinary--but i am, for every one, quiet.” “well, that’s just what is extraordinary. ‘quiet’ is more than _i_ am, and you leave me far behind.” with which, again, for an instant, mrs. assingham frankly brooded. “‘now that i understand,’ you say--but there’s one thing i don’t understand.” and the next minute, while her companion waited, she had mentioned it. “how can charlotte, after all, not have pressed him, not have attacked him about it? how can she not have asked him--asked him on his honour, i mean--if you know?” “how can she ‘not’? why, of course,” said the princess limpidly, “she must!” “well then--?” “well then, you think, he must have told her? why, exactly what i mean,” said maggie, “is that he will have done nothing of the sort; will, as i say, have maintained the contrary.” fanny assingham weighed it. “under her direct appeal for the truth?” “under her direct appeal for the truth.” “her appeal to his honour?” “her appeal to his honour. that’s my point.” fanny assingham braved it. “for the truth as from him to her?” “from him to any one.” mrs. assingham’s face lighted. “he’ll simply, he’ll insistently have lied?” maggie brought it out roundly. “he’ll simply, he’ll insistently have lied.” it held again her companion, who next, however, with a single movement, throwing herself on her neck, overflowed. “oh, if you knew how you help me!” maggie had liked her to understand, so far as this was possible; but had not been slow to see afterwards how the possibility was limited, when one came to think, by mysteries she was not to sound. this inability in her was indeed not remarkable, inasmuch as the princess herself, as we have seen, was only now in a position to boast of touching bottom. maggie lived, inwardly, in a consciousness that she could but partly open even to so good a friend, and her own visitation of the fuller expanse of which was, for that matter, still going on. they had been duskier still, however, these recesses of her imagination--that, no doubt, was what might at present be said for them. she had looked into them, on the eve of her leaving town, almost without penetration: she had made out in those hours, and also, of a truth, during the days which immediately followed, little more than the strangeness of a relation having for its chief mark--whether to be prolonged or not--the absence of any “intimate” result of the crisis she had invited her husband to recognise. they had dealt with this crisis again, face to face, very briefly, the morning after the scene in her room--but with the odd consequence of her having appeared merely to leave it on his hands. he had received it from her as he might have received a bunch of keys or a list of commissions--attentive to her instructions about them, but only putting them, for the time, very carefully and safely, into his pocket. the instructions had seemed, from day to day, to make so little difference for his behaviour--that is for his speech or his silence; to produce, as yet, so little of the fruit of action. he had taken from her, on the spot, in a word, before going to dress for dinner, all she then had to give--after which, on the morrow, he had asked her for more, a good deal as if she might have renewed her supply during the night; but he had had at his command for this latter purpose an air of extraordinary detachment and discretion, an air amounting really to an appeal which, if she could have brought herself to describe it vulgarly, she would have described as cool, just as he himself would have described it in any one else as “cheeky”; a suggestion that she should trust him on the particular ground since she didn’t on the general. neither his speech nor his silence struck her as signifying more, or less, under this pressure, than they had seemed to signify for weeks past; yet if her sense hadn’t been absolutely closed to the possibility in him of any thought of wounding her, she might have taken his undisturbed manner, the perfection of his appearance of having recovered himself, for one of those intentions of high impertinence by the aid of which great people, les grands seigneurs, persons of her husband’s class and type, always know how to re-establish a violated order. it was her one purely good fortune that she could feel thus sure impertinence--to her at any rate--was not among the arts on which he proposed to throw himself; for though he had, in so almost mystifying a manner, replied to nothing, denied nothing, explained nothing, apologised for nothing, he had somehow conveyed to her that this was not because of any determination to treat her case as not “worth” it. there had been consideration, on both occasions, in the way he had listened to her--even though at the same time there had been extreme reserve; a reserve indeed, it was also to be remembered, qualified by the fact that, on their second and shorter interview, in portland place, and quite at the end of this passage, she had imagined him positively proposing to her a temporary accommodation. it had been but the matter of something in the depths of the eyes he finally fixed upon her, and she had found in it, the more she kept it before her, the tacitly-offered sketch of a working arrangement. “leave me my reserve; don’t question it--it’s all i have, just now, don’t you see? so that, if you’ll make me the concession of letting me alone with it for as long a time as i require, i promise you something or other, grown under cover of it, even though i don’t yet quite make out what, as a return for your patience.” she had turned away from him with some such unspoken words as that in her ear, and indeed she had to represent to herself that she had spiritually heard them, had to listen to them still again, to explain her particular patience in face of his particular failure. he hadn’t so much as pretended to meet for an instant the question raised by her of her accepted ignorance of the point in time, the period before their own marriage, from which his intimacy with charlotte dated. as an ignorance in which he and charlotte had been personally interested--and to the pitch of consummately protecting, for years, each other’s interest--as a condition so imposed upon her the fact of its having ceased might have made it, on the spot, the first article of his defence. he had vouchsafed it, however, nothing better than his longest stare of postponed consideration. that tribute he had coldly paid it, and maggie might herself have been stupefied, truly, had she not had something to hold on by, at her own present ability, even provisional, to make terms with a chapter of history into which she could but a week before not have dipped without a mortal chill. at the rate at which she was living she was getting used hour by hour to these extensions of view; and when she asked herself, at fawns, to what single observation of her own, in london, the prince had had an affirmation to oppose, she but just failed to focus the small strained wife of the moments in question as some panting dancer of a difficult step who had capered, before the footlights of an empty theatre, to a spectator lounging in a box. her best comprehension of amerigo’s success in not committing himself was in her recall, meanwhile, of the inquiries he had made of her on their only return to the subject, and which he had in fact explicitly provoked their return in order to make. he had had it over with her again, the so distinctly remarkable incident of her interview at home with the little bloomsbury shopman. this anecdote, for him, had, not altogether surprisingly, required some straighter telling, and the prince’s attitude in presence of it had represented once more his nearest approach to a cross-examination. the difficulty in respect to the little man had been for the question of his motive--his motive in writing, first, in the spirit of retraction, to a lady with whom he had made a most advantageous bargain, and in then coming to see her so that his apology should be personal. maggie had felt her explanation weak; but there were the facts, and she could give no other. left alone, after the transaction, with the knowledge that his visitor designed the object bought of him as a birthday-gift to her father--for maggie confessed freely to having chattered to him almost as to a friend--the vendor of the golden bowl had acted on a scruple rare enough in vendors of any class, and almost unprecedented in the thrifty children of israel. he hadn’t liked what he had done, and what he had above all made such a “good thing” of having done; at the thought of his purchaser’s good faith and charming presence, opposed to that flaw in her acquestion which would make it, verily, as an offering to a loved parent, a thing of sinister meaning and evil effect, he had known conscientious, he had known superstitious visitings, had given way to a whim all the more remarkable to his own commercial mind, no doubt, from its never having troubled him in other connexions. she had recognised the oddity of her adventure and left it to show for what it was. she had not been unconscious, on the other hand, that if it hadn’t touched amerigo so nearly he would have found in it matter for some amused reflection. he had uttered an extraordinary sound, something between a laugh and a howl, on her saying, as she had made a point of doing: “oh, most certainly, he told me his reason was because he ‘liked’ me”--though she remained in doubt of whether that inarticulate comment had been provoked most by the familiarities she had offered or by those that, so pictured, she had had to endure. that the partner of her bargain had yearned to see her again, that he had plainly jumped at a pretext for it, this also she had frankly expressed herself to the prince as having, in no snubbing, no scandalised, but rather in a positively appreciative and indebted spirit, not delayed to make out. he had wished, ever so seriously, to return her a part of her money, and she had wholly declined to receive it; and then he had uttered his hope that she had not, at all events, already devoted the crystal cup to the beautiful purpose she had, so kindly and so fortunately, named to him. it wasn’t a thing for a present to a person she was fond of, for she wouldn’t wish to give a present that would bring ill luck. that had come to him--so that he couldn’t rest, and he should feel better now that he had told her. his having led her to act in ignorance was what he should have been ashamed of; and, if she would pardon, gracious lady as she was, all the liberties he had taken, she might make of the bowl any use in life but that one. it was after this that the most extraordinary incident of all, of course, had occurred--his pointing to the two photographs with the remark that those were persons he knew, and that, more wonderful still, he had made acquaintance with them, years before, precisely over the same article. the lady, on that occasion, had taken up the fancy of presenting it to the gentleman, and the gentleman, guessing and dodging ever so cleverly, had declared that he wouldn’t for the world receive an object under such suspicion. he himself, the little man had confessed, wouldn’t have minded--about them; but he had never forgotten either their talk or their faces, the impression altogether made by them, and, if she really wished to know, now, what had perhaps most moved him, it was the thought that she should ignorantly have gone in for a thing not good enough for other buyers. he had been immensely struck--that was another point--with this accident of their turning out, after so long, friends of hers too: they had disappeared, and this was the only light he had ever had upon them. he had flushed up, quite red, with his recognition, with all his responsibility--had declared that the connexion must have had, mysteriously, something to do with the impulse he had obeyed. and maggie had made, to her husband, while he again stood before her, no secret of the shock, for herself, so suddenly and violently received. she had done her best, even while taking it full in the face, not to give herself away; but she wouldn’t answer--no, she wouldn’t--for what she might, in her agitation, have made her informant think. he might think what he would--there had been three or four minutes during which, while she asked him question upon question, she had doubtless too little cared. and he had spoken, for his remembrance, as fully as she could have wished; he had spoken, oh, delightedly, for the “terms” on which his other visitors had appeared to be with each other, and in fact for that conviction of the nature and degree of their intimacy under which, in spite of precautions, they hadn’t been able to help leaving him. he had observed and judged and not forgotten; he had been sure they were great people, but no, ah no, distinctly, hadn’t “liked” them as he liked the signora principessa. certainly--she had created no vagueness about that--he had been in possession of her name and address, for sending her both her cup and her account. but the others he had only, always, wondered about--he had been sure they would never come back. and as to the time of their visit, he could place it, positively, to a day--by reason of a transaction of importance, recorded in his books, that had occurred but a few hours later. he had left her, in short, definitely rejoicing that he had been able to make up to her for not having been quite “square” over their little business by rendering her, so unexpectedly, the service of this information. his joy, moreover, was--as much as amerigo would!--a matter of the personal interest with which her kindness, gentleness, grace, her charming presence and easy humanity and familiarity, had inspired him. all of which, while, in thought, maggie went over it again and again--oh, over any imputable rashness of her own immediate passion and pain, as well as over the rest of the straight little story she had, after all, to tell--might very conceivably make a long sum for the prince to puzzle out. there were meanwhile, after the castledeans and those invited to meet them had gone, and before mrs. rance and the lutches had come, three or four days during which she was to learn the full extent of her need not to be penetrable; and then it was indeed that she felt all the force, and threw herself upon all the help, of the truth she had confided, several nights earlier, to fanny assingham. she had known it in advance, had warned herself of it while the house was full: charlotte had designs upon her of a nature best known to herself, and was only waiting for the better opportunity of their finding themselves less companioned. this consciousness had been exactly at the bottom of maggie’s wish to multiply their spectators; there were moments for her, positively, moments of planned postponement, of evasion scarcely less disguised than studied, during which she turned over with anxiety the different ways--there being two or three possible ones--in which her young stepmother might, at need, seek to work upon her. amerigo’s not having “told” her of his passage with his wife gave, for maggie, altogether a new aspect to charlotte’s consciousness and condition--an aspect with which, for apprehension, for wonder, and even, at moments, inconsequently enough, for something like compassion, the princess had now to reckon. she asked herself--for she was capable of that--what he had meant by keeping the sharer of his guilt in the dark about a matter touching her otherwise so nearly; what he had meant, that is, for this unmistakably mystified personage herself. maggie could imagine what he had meant for her--all sorts of thinkable things, whether things of mere “form” or things of sincerity, things of pity or things of prudence: he had meant, for instance, in all probability, primarily, to conjure away any such appearance of a changed relation between the two women as his father-in-law might notice and follow up. it would have been open to him however, given the pitch of their intimacy, to avert this danger by some more conceivable course with charlotte; since an earnest warning, in fact, the full freedom of alarm, that of his insisting to her on the peril of suspicion incurred, and on the importance accordingly of outward peace at any price, would have been the course really most conceivable. instead of warning and advising he had reassured and deceived her; so that our young woman, who had been, from far back, by the habit, if her nature, as much on her guard against sacrificing others as if she felt the great trap of life mainly to be set for one’s doing so, now found herself attaching her fancy to that side of the situation of the exposed pair which involved, for themselves at least, the sacrifice of the least fortunate. she never, at present, thought of what amerigo might be intending, without the reflection, by the same stroke, that, whatever this quantity, he was leaving still more to her own ingenuity. he was helping her, when the thing came to the test, only by the polished, possibly almost too polished surface his manner to his wife wore for an admiring world; and that, surely, was entitled to scarcely more than the praise of negative diplomacy. he was keeping his manner right, as she had related to mrs. assingham; the case would have been beyond calculation, truly, if, on top of everything, he had allowed it to go wrong. she had hours of exaltation indeed when the meaning of all this pressed in upon her as a tacit vow from him to abide without question by whatever she should be able to achieve or think fit to prescribe. then it was that, even while holding her breath for the awe of it, she truly felt almost able enough for anything. it was as if she had passed, in a time incredibly short, from being nothing for him to being all; it was as if, rightly noted, every turn of his head, every tone of his voice, in these days, might mean that there was but one way in which a proud man reduced to abjection could hold himself. during those of maggie’s vigils in which that view loomed largest, the image of her husband that it thus presented to her gave out a beauty for the revelation of which she struck herself as paying, if anything, all too little. to make sure of it--to make sure of the beauty shining out of the humility, and of the humility lurking in all the pride of his presence--she would have gone the length of paying more yet, of paying with difficulties and anxieties compared to which those actually before her might have been as superficial as headaches or rainy days. the point at which these exaltations dropped, however, was the point at which it was apt to come over her that if her complications had been greater the question of paying would have been limited still less to the liabilities of her own pocket. the complications were verily great enough, whether for ingenuities or sublimities, so long as she had to come back to it so often that charlotte, all the while, could only be struggling with secrets sharper than her own. it was odd how that certainty again and again determined and coloured her wonderments of detail; the question, for instance, of how amerigo, in snatched opportunities of conference, put the haunted creature off with false explanations, met her particular challenges and evaded--if that was what he did do!--her particular demands. even the conviction that charlotte was but awaiting some chance really to test her trouble upon her lover’s wife left maggie’s sense meanwhile open as to the sight of gilt wires and bruised wings, the spacious but suspended cage, the home of eternal unrest, of pacings, beatings, shakings, all so vain, into which the baffled consciousness helplessly resolved itself. the cage was the deluded condition, and maggie, as having known delusion--rather!--understood the nature of cages. she walked round charlotte’s--cautiously and in a very wide circle; and when, inevitably, they had to communicate she felt herself, comparatively, outside, on the breast of nature, and saw her companion’s face as that of a prisoner looking through bars. so it was that through bars, bars richly gilt, but firmly, though discreetly, planted, charlotte finally struck her as making a grim attempt; from which, at first, the princess drew back as instinctively as if the door of the cage had suddenly been opened from within. xxxvi they had been alone that evening--alone as a party of six, and four of them, after dinner, under suggestion not to be resisted, sat down to “bridge” in the smoking-room. they had passed together to that apartment, on rising from table, charlotte and mrs. assingham alike indulgent, always, to tobacco, and in fact practising an emulation which, as fanny said, would, for herself, had the colonel not issued an interdict based on the fear of her stealing his cigars, have stopped only at the short pipe. here cards had with inevitable promptness asserted their rule, the game forming itself, as had often happened before, of mr. verver with mrs. assingham for partner and of the prince with mrs. verver. the colonel, who had then asked of maggie license to relieve his mind of a couple of letters for the earliest post out on the morrow, was addressing himself to this task at the other end of the room, and the princess herself had welcomed the comparatively hushed hour--for the bridge-players were serious and silent--much in the mood of a tired actress who has the good fortune to be “off,” while her mates are on, almost long enough for a nap on the property sofa in the wing. maggie’s nap, had she been able to snatch forty winks, would have been of the spirit rather than of the sense; yet as she subsided, near a lamp, with the last salmon-coloured french periodical, she was to fail, for refreshment, even of that sip of independence. there was no question for her, as she found, of closing her eyes and getting away; they strayed back to life, in the stillness, over the top of her review; she could lend herself to none of those refinements of the higher criticism with which its pages bristled; she was there, where her companions were, there again and more than ever there; it was as if, of a sudden, they had been made, in their personal intensity and their rare complexity of relation, freshly importunate to her. it was the first evening there had been no one else. mrs. rance and the lutches were due the next day; but meanwhile the facts of the situation were upright for her round the green cloth and the silver flambeaux; the fact of her father’s wife’s lover facing his mistress; the fact of her father sitting, all unsounded and unblinking, between them; the fact of charlotte keeping it up, keeping up everything, across the table, with her husband beside her; the fact of fanny assingham, wonderful creature, placed opposite to the three and knowing more about each, probably, when one came to think, than either of them knew of either. erect above all for her was the sharp-edged fact of the relation of the whole group, individually and collectively, to herself--herself so speciously eliminated for the hour, but presumably more present to the attention of each than the next card to be played. yes, under that imputation, to her sense, they sat--the imputation of wondering, beneath and behind all their apparently straight play, if she weren’t really watching them from her corner and consciously, as might be said, holding them in her hand. she was asking herself at last how they could bear it--for, though cards were as nought to her and she could follow no move, so that she was always, on such occasions, out of the party, they struck her as conforming alike, in the matter of gravity and propriety, to the stiff standard of the house. her father, she knew, was a high adept, one of the greatest--she had been ever, in her stupidity, his small, his sole despair; amerigo excelled easily, as he understood and practised every art that could beguile large leisure; mrs. assingham and charlotte, moreover, were accounted as “good” as members of a sex incapable of the nobler consistency could be. therefore, evidently, they were not, all so up to their usual form, merely passing it off, whether for her or for themselves; and the amount of enjoyed, or at least achieved, security represented by so complete a conquest of appearances was what acted on her nerves, precisely, with a kind of provocative force. she found herself, for five minutes, thrilling with the idea of the prodigious effect that, just as she sat there near them, she had at her command; with the sense that if she were but different--oh, ever so different!--all this high decorum would hang by a hair. there reigned for her, absolutely, during these vertiginous moments, that fascination of the monstrous, that temptation of the horribly possible, which we so often trace by its breaking out suddenly, lest it should go further, in unexplained retreats and reactions. after it had been thus vividly before her for a little that, springing up under her wrong and making them all start, stare and turn pale, she might sound out their doom in a single sentence, a sentence easy to choose among several of the lurid--after she had faced that blinding light and felt it turn to blackness, she rose from her place, laying aside her magazine, and moved slowly round the room, passing near the card-players and pausing an instant behind the chairs in turn. silent and discreet, she bent a vague mild face upon them, as if to signify that, little as she followed their doings, she wished them well; and she took from each, across the table, in the common solemnity, an upward recognition which she was to carry away with her on her moving out to the terrace, a few minutes later. her father and her husband, mrs. assingham and charlotte, had done nothing but meet her eyes; yet the difference in these demonstrations made each a separate passage--which was all the more wonderful since, with the secret behind every face, they had alike tried to look at her through it and in denial of it. it all left her, as she wandered off, with the strangest of impressions--the sense, forced upon her as never yet, of an appeal, a positive confidence, from the four pairs of eyes, that was deeper than any negation, and that seemed to speak, on the part of each, of some relation to be contrived by her, a relation with herself, which would spare the individual the danger, the actual present strain, of the relation with the others. they thus tacitly put it upon her to be disposed of, the whole complexity of their peril, and she promptly saw why because she was there, and there just as she was, to lift it off them and take it; to charge herself with it as the scapegoat of old, of whom she had once seen a terrible picture, had been charged with the sins of the people and had gone forth into the desert to sink under his burden and die. that indeed wasn’t their design and their interest, that she should sink under hers; it wouldn’t be their feeling that she should do anything but live, live on somehow for their benefit, and even as much as possible in their company, to keep proving to them that they had truly escaped and that she was still there to simplify. this idea of her simplifying, and of their combined struggle, dim as yet but steadily growing, toward the perception of her adopting it from them, clung to her while she hovered on the terrace, where the summer night was so soft that she scarce needed the light shawl she had picked up. several of the long windows of the occupied rooms stood open to it, and the light came out in vague shafts and fell upon the old smooth stones. the hour was moonless and starless and the air heavy and still--which was why, in her evening dress, she need fear no chill and could get away, in the outer darkness, from that provocation of opportunity which had assaulted her, within, on her sofa, as a beast might have leaped at her throat. nothing in fact was stranger than the way in which, when she had remained there a little, her companions, watched by her through one of the windows, actually struck her as almost consciously and gratefully safer. they might have been--really charming as they showed in the beautiful room, and charlotte certainly, as always, magnificently handsome and supremely distinguished--they might have been figures rehearsing some play of which she herself was the author; they might even, for the happy appearance they continued to present, have been such figures as would, by the strong note of character in each, fill any author with the certitude of success, especially of their own histrionic. they might in short have represented any mystery they would; the point being predominantly that the key to the mystery, the key that could wind and unwind it without a snap of the spring, was there in her pocket--or rather, no doubt, clasped at this crisis in her hand and pressed, as she walked back and forth, to her breast. she walked to the end and far out of the light; she returned and saw the others still where she had left them; she passed round the house and looked into the drawing-room, lighted also, but empty now, and seeming to speak the more, in its own voice, of all the possibilities she controlled. spacious and splendid, like a stage again awaiting a drama, it was a scene she might people, by the press of her spring, either with serenities and dignities and decencies, or with terrors and shames and ruins, things as ugly as those formless fragments of her golden bowl she was trying so hard to pick up. she continued to walk and continued to pause; she stopped afresh for the look into the smoking-room, and by this time--it was as if the recognition had of itself arrested her--she saw as in a picture, with the temptation she had fled from quite extinct, why it was she had been able to give herself so little, from the first, to the vulgar heat of her wrong. she might fairly, as she watched them, have missed it as a lost thing; have yearned for it, for the straight vindictive view, the rights of resentment, the rages of jealousy, the protests of passion, as for something she had been cheated of not least: a range of feelings which for many women would have meant so much, but which for her husband’s wife, for her father’s daughter, figured nothing nearer to experience than a wild eastern caravan, looming into view with crude colours in the sun, fierce pipes in the air, high spears against the sky, all a thrill, a natural joy to mingle with, but turning off short before it reached her and plunging into other defiles. she saw at all events why horror itself had almost failed her; the horror that, foreshadowed in advance, would, by her thought, have made everything that was unaccustomed in her cry out with pain; the horror of finding evil seated, all at its ease, where she had only dreamed of good; the horror of the thing hideously behind, behind so much trusted, so much pretended, nobleness, cleverness, tenderness. it was the first sharp falsity she had known in her life, to touch at all, or be touched by; it had met her like some bad-faced stranger surprised in one of the thick-carpeted corridors of a house of quiet on a sunday afternoon; and yet, yes, amazingly, she had been able to look at terror and disgust only to know that she must put away from her the bitter-sweet of their freshness. the sight, from the window, of the group so constituted, told her why, told her how, named to her, as with hard lips, named straight at her, so that she must take it full in the face, that other possible relation to the whole fact which alone would bear upon her irresistibly. it was extraordinary: they positively brought home to her that to feel about them in any of the immediate, inevitable, assuaging ways, the ways usually open to innocence outraged and generosity betrayed, would have been to give them up, and that giving them up was, marvellously, not to be thought of. she had never, from the first hour of her state of acquired conviction, given them up so little as now; though she was, no doubt, as the consequence of a step taken a few minutes later, to invoke the conception of doing that, if might be, even less. she had resumed her walk--stopping here and there, while she rested on the cool smooth stone balustrade, to draw it out; in the course of which, after a little, she passed again the lights of the empty drawing-room and paused again for what she saw and felt there. it was not at once, however, that this became quite concrete; that was the effect of her presently making out that charlotte was in the room, launched and erect there, in the middle, and looking about her; that she had evidently just come round to it, from her card-table, by one of the passages--with the expectation, to all appearance, of joining her stepdaughter. she had pulled up at seeing the great room empty--maggie not having passed out, on leaving the group, in a manner to be observed. so definite a quest of her, with the bridge-party interrupted or altered for it, was an impression that fairly assailed the princess, and to which something of attitude and aspect, of the air of arrested pursuit and purpose, in charlotte, together with the suggestion of her next vague movements, quickly added its meaning. this meaning was that she had decided, that she had been infinitely conscious of maggie’s presence before, that she knew that she would at last find her alone, and that she wanted her, for some reason, enough to have presumably called on bob assingham for aid. he had taken her chair and let her go, and the arrangement was for maggie a signal proof of her earnestness; of the energy, in fact, that, though superficially commonplace in a situation in which people weren’t supposed to be watching each other, was what affected our young woman, on the spot, as a breaking of bars. the splendid shining supple creature was out of the cage, was at large; and the question now almost grotesquely rose of whether she mightn’t by some art, just where she was and before she could go further, be hemmed in and secured. it would have been for a moment, in this case, a matter of quickly closing the windows and giving the alarm--with poor maggie’s sense that, though she couldn’t know what she wanted of her, it was enough for trepidation that, at these firm hands, anything should be to say nothing of the sequel of a flight taken again along the terrace, even under the shame of the confessed feebleness of such evasions on the part of an outraged wife. it was to this feebleness, none the less, that the outraged wife had presently resorted; the most that could be said for her being, as she felt while she finally stopped short, at a distance, that she could at any rate resist her abjection sufficiently not to sneak into the house by another way and safely reach her room. she had literally caught herself in the act of dodging and ducking, and it told her there, vividly, in a single word, what she had all along been most afraid of. she had been afraid of the particular passage with charlotte that would determine her father’s wife to take him into her confidence as she couldn’t possibly as yet have done, to prepare for him a statement of her wrong, to lay before him the infamy of what she was apparently suspected of. this, should she have made up her mind to do it, would rest on a calculation the thought of which evoked, strangely, other possibilities and visions. it would show her as sufficiently believing in her grasp of her husband to be able to assure herself that, with his daughter thrown on the defensive, with maggie’s cause and maggie’s word, in fine, against her own, it wasn’t maggie’s that would most certainly carry the day. such a glimpse of her conceivable idea, which would be founded on reasons all her own, reasons of experience and assurance, impenetrable to others, but intimately familiar to herself--such a glimpse opened out wide as soon as it had come into view; for if so much as this was still firm ground between the elder pair, if the beauty of appearances had been so consistently preserved, it was only the golden bowl as maggie herself knew it that had been broken. the breakage stood not for any wrought discomposure among the triumphant three--it stood merely for the dire deformity of her attitude toward them. she was unable at the minute, of course, fully to measure the difference thus involved for her, and it remained inevitably an agitating image, the way it might be held over her that if she didn’t, of her own prudence, satisfy charlotte as to the reference, in her mocking spirit, of so much of the unuttered and unutterable, of the constantly and unmistakably implied, her father would be invited without further ceremony to recommend her to do so. but any confidence, any latent operating insolence, that mrs. verver should, thanks to her large native resources, continue to be possessed of and to hold in reserve, glimmered suddenly as a possible working light and seemed to offer, for meeting her, a new basis and something like a new system. maggie felt, truly, a rare contraction of the heart on making out, the next instant, what the new system would probably have to be--and she had practically done that before perceiving that the thing she feared had already taken place. charlotte, extending her search, appeared now to define herself vaguely in the distance; of this, after an instant, the princess was sure, though the darkness was thick, for the projected clearness of the smoking-room windows had presently contributed its help. her friend came slowly into that circle--having also, for herself, by this time, not indistinguishably discovered that maggie was on the terrace. maggie, from the end, saw her stop before one of the windows to look at the group within, and then saw her come nearer and pause again, still with a considerable length of the place between them. yes, charlotte had seen she was watching her from afar, and had stopped now to put her further attention to the test. her face was fixed on her, through the night; she was the creature who had escaped by force from her cage, yet there was in her whole motion assuredly, even as so dimly discerned, a kind of portentous intelligent stillness. she had escaped with an intention, but with an intention the more definite that it could so accord with quiet measures. the two women, at all events, only hovered there, for these first minutes, face to face over their interval and exchanging no sign; the intensity of their mutual look might have pierced the night, and maggie was at last to start with the scared sense of having thus yielded to doubt, to dread, to hesitation, for a time that, with no other proof needed, would have completely given her away. how long had she stood staring?--a single minute or five? long enough, in any case, to have felt herself absolutely take from her visitor something that the latter threw upon her, irresistibly, by this effect of silence, by this effect of waiting and watching, by this effect, unmistakably, of timing her indecision and her fear. if then, scared and hanging back, she had, as was so evident, sacrificed all past pretences, it would have been with the instant knowledge of an immense advantage gained that charlotte finally saw her come on. maggie came on with her heart in her hands; she came on with the definite prevision, throbbing like the tick of a watch, of a doom impossibly sharp and hard, but to which, after looking at it with her eyes wide open, she had none the less bowed her head. by the time she was at her companion’s side, for that matter, by the time charlotte had, without a motion, without a word, simply let her approach and stand there, her head was already on the block, so that the consciousness that everything had now gone blurred all perception of whether or no the axe had fallen. oh, the “advantage,” it was perfectly enough, in truth, with mrs. verver; for what was maggie’s own sense but that of having been thrown over on her back, with her neck, from the first, half broken and her helpless face staring up? that position only could account for the positive grimace of weakness and pain produced there by charlotte’s dignity. “i’ve come to join you--i thought you would be here.” “oh yes, i’m here,” maggie heard herself return a little flatly. “it’s too close in-doors.” “very--but close even here.” charlotte was still and grave--she had even uttered her remark about the temperature with an expressive weight that verged upon solemnity; so that maggie, reduced to looking vaguely about at the sky, could only feel her not fail of her purpose. “the air’s heavy as if with thunder--i think there’ll be a storm.” she made the suggestion to carry off an awkwardness--which was a part, always, of her companion’s gain; but the awkwardness didn’t diminish in the silence that followed. charlotte had said nothing in reply; her brow was dark as with a fixed expression, and her high elegance, her handsome head and long, straight neck testified, through the dusk, to their inveterate completeness and noble erectness. it was as if what she had come out to do had already begun, and when, as a consequence, maggie had said helplessly, “don’t you want something? won’t you have my shawl?” everything might have crumbled away in the comparative poverty of the tribute. mrs. verver’s rejection of it had the brevity of a sign that they hadn’t closed in for idle words, just as her dim, serious face, uninterruptedly presented until they moved again, might have represented the success with which she watched all her message penetrate. they presently went back the way she had come, but she stopped maggie again within range of the smoking-room window and made her stand where the party at cards would be before her. side by side, for three minutes, they fixed this picture of quiet harmonies, the positive charm of it and, as might have been said, the full significance--which, as was now brought home to maggie, could be no more, after all, than a matter of interpretation, differing always for a different interpreter. as she herself had hovered in sight of it a quarter-of-an-hour before, it would have been a thing for her to show charlotte--to show in righteous irony, in reproach too stern for anything but silence. but now it was she who was being shown it, and shown it by charlotte, and she saw quickly enough that, as charlotte showed it, so she must at present submissively seem to take it. the others were absorbed and unconscious, either silent over their game or dropping remarks unheard on the terrace; and it was to her father’s quiet face, discernibly expressive of nothing that was in his daughter’s mind, that our young woman’s attention was most directly given. his wife and his daughter were both closely watching him, and to which of them, could he have been notified of this, would his raised eyes first, all impulsively, have responded; in which of them would he have felt it most important to destroy--for his clutch at the equilibrium--any germ of uneasiness? not yet, since his marriage, had maggie so sharply and so formidably known her old possession of him as a thing divided and contested. she was looking at him by charlotte’s leave and under charlotte’s direction; quite in fact as if the particular way she should look at him were prescribed to her; quite, even, as if she had been defied to look at him in any other. it came home to her too that the challenge wasn’t, as might be said, in his interest and for his protection, but, pressingly, insistently, in charlotte’s, for that of her security at any price. she might verily, by this dumb demonstration, have been naming to maggie the price, naming it as a question for maggie herself, a sum of money that she, properly, was to find. she must remain safe and maggie must pay--what she was to pay with being her own affair. straighter than ever, thus, the princess again felt it all put upon her, and there was a minute, just a supreme instant, during which there burned in her a wild wish that her father would only look up. it throbbed for these seconds as a yearning appeal to him--she would chance it, that is, if he would but just raise his eyes and catch them, across the larger space, standing in the outer dark together. then he might be affected by the sight, taking them as they were; he might make some sign--she scarce knew what--that would save her; save her from being the one, this way, to pay all. he might somehow show a preference-distinguishing between them; might, out of pity for her, signal to her that this extremity of her effort for him was more than he asked. that represented maggie’s one little lapse from consistency--the sole small deflection in the whole course of her scheme. it had come to nothing the next minute, for the dear man’s eyes had never moved, and charlotte’s hand, promptly passed into her arm, had already, had very firmly drawn her on--quite, for that matter, as from some sudden, some equal perception on her part too of the more ways than one in which their impression could appeal. they retraced their steps along the rest of the terrace, turning the corner of the house, and presently came abreast of the other windows, those of the pompous drawing-room, still lighted and still empty. here charlotte again paused, and it was again as if she were pointing out what maggie had observed for herself, the very look the place had of being vivid in its stillness, of having, with all its great objects as ordered and balanced as for a formal reception, been appointed for some high transaction, some real affair of state. in presence of this opportunity she faced her companion once more; she traced in her the effect of everything she had already communicated; she signified, with the same success, that the terrace and the sullen night would bear too meagre witness to the completion of her idea. soon enough then, within the room, under the old lustres of venice and the eyes of the several great portraits, more or less contemporary with these, that awaited on the walls of fawns their final far migration--soon enough maggie found herself staring, and at first all too gaspingly, at the grand total to which each separate demand mrs. verver had hitherto made upon her, however she had made it, now amounted. “i’ve been wanting--and longer than you’d perhaps believe--to put a question to you for which no opportunity has seemed to me yet quite so good as this. it would have been easier perhaps if you had struck me as in the least disposed ever to give me one. i have to take it now, you see, as i find it.” they stood in the centre of the immense room, and maggie could feel that the scene of life her imagination had made of it twenty minutes before was by this time sufficiently peopled. these few straight words filled it to its uttermost reaches, and nothing was now absent from her consciousness, either, of the part she was called upon to play in it. charlotte had marched straight in, dragging her rich train; she rose there beautiful and free, with her whole aspect and action attuned to the firmness of her speech. maggie had kept the shawl she had taken out with her, and, clutching it tight in her nervousness, drew it round her as if huddling in it for shelter, covering herself with it for humility. she looked out as from under an improvised hood--the sole headgear of some poor woman at somebody’s proud door; she waited even like the poor woman; she met her friend’s eyes with recognitions she couldn’t suppress. she might sound it as she could--“what question then?”--everything in her, from head to foot, crowded it upon charlotte that she knew. she knew too well--that she was showing; so that successful vagueness, to save some scrap of her dignity from the imminence of her defeat, was already a lost cause, and the one thing left was if possible, at any cost, even that of stupid inconsequence, to try to look as if she weren’t afraid. if she could but appear at all not afraid she might appear a little not ashamed--that is not ashamed to be afraid, which was the kind of shame that could be fastened on her, it being fear all the while that moved her. her challenge, at any rate, her wonder, her terror--the blank, blurred surface, whatever it was that she presented became a mixture that ceased to signify; for to the accumulated advantage by which charlotte was at present sustained her next words themselves had little to add. “have you any ground of complaint of me? is there any wrong you consider i’ve done you? i feel at last that i’ve a right to ask you.” their eyes had to meet on it, and to meet long; maggie’s avoided at least the disgrace of looking away. “what makes you want to ask it?” “my natural desire to know. you’ve done that, for so long, little justice.” maggie waited a moment. “for so long? you mean you’ve thought--?” “i mean, my dear, that i’ve seen. i’ve seen, week after week, that you seemed to be thinking--of something that perplexed or worried you. is it anything for which i’m in any degree responsible?” maggie summoned all her powers. “what in the world should it be?” “ah, that’s not for me to imagine, and i should be very sorry to have to try to say! i’m aware of no point whatever at which i may have failed you,” said charlotte; “nor of any at which i may have failed any one in whom i can suppose you sufficiently interested to care. if i’ve been guilty of some fault i’ve committed it all unconsciously, and am only anxious to hear from you honestly about it. but if i’ve been mistaken as to what i speak of--the difference, more and more marked, as i’ve thought, in all your manner to me--why, obviously, so much the better. no form of correction received from you could give me greater satisfaction.” she spoke, it struck her companion, with rising, with extraordinary ease; as if hearing herself say it all, besides seeing the way it was listened to, helped her from point to point. she saw she was right--that this was the tone for her to take and the thing for her to do, the thing as to which she was probably feeling that she had in advance, in her delays and uncertainties, much exaggerated the difficulty. the difficulty was small, and it grew smaller as her adversary continued to shrink; she was not only doing as she wanted, but had by this time effectively done it and hung it up. all of which but deepened maggie’s sense of the sharp and simple need, now, of seeing her through to the end. “‘if’ you’ve been mistaken, you say?”--and the princess but barely faltered. “you have been mistaken.” charlotte looked at her splendidly hard. “you’re perfectly sure it’s all my mistake?” “all i can say is that you’ve received a false impression.” “ah then--so much the better! from the moment i had received it i knew i must sooner or later speak of it--for that, you see, is, systematically, my way. and now,” charlotte added, “you make me glad i’ve spoken. i thank you very much.” it was strange how for maggie too, with this, the difficulty seemed to sink. her companion’s acceptance of her denial was like a general pledge not to keep things any worse for her than they essentially had to be; it positively helped her to build up her falsehood--to which, accordingly, she contributed another block. “i’ve affected you evidently--quite accidentally--in some way of which i’ve been all unaware. i’ve not felt at any time that you’ve wronged me.” “how could i come within a mile,” charlotte inquired, “of such a possibility?” maggie, with her eyes on her more easily now, made no attempt to say; she said, after a little, something more to the present point. “i accuse you--i accuse you of nothing.” “ah, that’s lucky!” charlotte had brought this out with the richness, almost, of gaiety; and maggie, to go on, had to think, with her own intensity, of amerigo--to think how he, on his side, had had to go through with his lie to her, how it was for his wife he had done so, and how his doing so had given her the clue and set her the example. he must have had his own difficulty about it, and she was not, after all, falling below him. it was in fact as if, thanks to her hovering image of him confronted with this admirable creature even as she was confronted, there glowed upon her from afar, yet straight and strong, a deep explanatory light which covered the last inch of the ground. he had given her something to conform to, and she hadn’t unintelligently turned on him, “gone back on” him, as he would have said, by not conforming. they were together thus, he and she, close, close together--whereas charlotte, though rising there radiantly before her, was really off in some darkness of space that would steep her in solitude and harass her with care. the heart of the princess swelled, accordingly, even in her abasement; she had kept in tune with the right, and something, certainly, something that might be like a rare flower snatched from an impossible ledge, would, and possibly soon, come of it for her. the right, the right--yes, it took this extraordinary form of her humbugging, as she had called it, to the end. it was only a question of not, by a hair’s breadth, deflecting into the truth. so, supremely, was she braced. “you must take it from me that your anxiety rests quite on a misconception. you must take it from me that i’ve never at any moment fancied i could suffer by you.” and, marvellously, she kept it up--not only kept it up, but improved on it. “you must take it from me that i’ve never thought of you but as beautiful, wonderful and good. which is all, i think, that you can possibly ask.” charlotte held her a moment longer: she needed--not then to have appeared only tactless--the last word. “it’s much more, my dear, than i dreamed of asking. i only wanted your denial.” “well then, you have it.” “upon your honour?” “upon my honour:” and she made a point even, our young woman, of not turning away. her grip of her shawl had loosened--she had let it fall behind her; but she stood there for anything more and till the weight should be lifted. with which she saw soon enough what more was to come. she saw it in charlotte’s face, and felt it make between them, in the air, a chill that completed the coldness of their conscious perjury. “will you kiss me on it then?” she couldn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no; what availed her still, however, was to measure, in her passivity, how much too far charlotte had come to retreat. but there was something different also, something for which, while her cheek received the prodigious kiss, she had her opportunity--the sight of the others, who, having risen from their cards to join the absent members of their party, had reached the open door at the end of the room and stopped short, evidently, in presence of the demonstration that awaited them. her husband and her father were in front, and charlotte’s embrace of her--which wasn’t to be distinguished, for them, either, she felt, from her embrace of charlotte--took on with their arrival a high publicity. xxxvii her father had asked her, three days later, in an interval of calm, how she was affected, in the light of their reappearance and of their now perhaps richer fruition, by dotty and kitty, and by the once formidable mrs. rance; and the consequence of this inquiry had been, for the pair, just such another stroll together, away from the rest of the party and off into the park, as had asserted its need to them on the occasion of the previous visit of these anciently more agitating friends--that of their long talk, on a sequestered bench beneath one of the great trees, when the particular question had come up for them the then purblind discussion of which, at their enjoyed leisure, maggie had formed the habit of regarding as the “first beginning” of their present situation. the whirligig of time had thus brought round for them again, on their finding themselves face to face while the others were gathering for tea on the terrace, the same odd impulse quietly to “slope”--so adam verver himself, as they went, familiarly expressed it--that had acted, in its way, of old; acted for the distant autumn afternoon and for the sharpness of their since so outlived crisis. it might have been funny to them now that the presence of mrs. rance and the lutches--and with symptoms, too, at that time less developed--had once, for their anxiety and their prudence, constituted a crisis; it might have been funny that these ladies could ever have figured, to their imagination, as a symbol of dangers vivid enough to precipitate the need of a remedy. this amount of entertainment and assistance they were indeed disposed to extract from their actual impressions; they had been finding it, for months past, by maggie’s view, a resource and a relief to talk, with an approach to intensity, when they met, of all the people they weren’t really thinking of and didn’t really care about, the people with whom their existence had begun almost to swarm; and they closed in at present round the spectres of their past, as they permitted themselves to describe the three ladies, with a better imitation of enjoying their theme than they had been able to achieve, certainly, during the stay, for instance, of the castledeans. the castledeans were a new joke, comparatively, and they had had--always to maggie’s view--to teach themselves the way of it; whereas the detroit, the providence party, rebounding so from providence, from detroit, was an old and ample one, of which the most could be made and as to which a humorous insistence could be guarded. sharp and sudden, moreover, this afternoon, had been their well-nigh confessed desire just to rest together, a little, as from some strain long felt but never named; to rest, as who should say, shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand, each pair of eyes so yearningly--and indeed what could it be but so wearily?--closed as to render the collapse safe from detection by the other pair. it was positively as if, in short, the inward felicity of their being once more, perhaps only for half-an-hour, simply daughter and father had glimmered out for them, and they had picked up the pretext that would make it easiest. they were husband and wife--oh, so immensely!--as regards other persons; but after they had dropped again on their old bench, conscious that the party on the terrace, augmented, as in the past, by neighbours, would do beautifully without them, it was wonderfully like their having got together into some boat and paddled off from the shore where husbands and wives, luxuriant complications, made the air too tropical. in the boat they were father and daughter, and poor dotty and kitty supplied abundantly, for their situation, the oars or the sail. why, into the bargain, for that matter--this came to maggie--couldn’t they always live, so far as they lived together, in a boat? she felt in her face, with the question, the breath of a possibility that soothed her; they needed only know each other, henceforth, in the unmarried relation. that other sweet evening, in the same place, he had been as unmarried as possible--which had kept down, so to speak, the quantity of change in their state. well then, that other sweet evening was what the present sweet evening would resemble; with the quite calculable effect of an exquisite inward refreshment. they had, after all, whatever happened, always and ever each other; each other--that was the hidden treasure and the saving truth--to do exactly what they would with: a provision full of possibilities. who could tell, as yet, what, thanks to it, they wouldn’t have done before the end? they had meanwhile been tracing together, in the golden air that, toward six o’clock of a july afternoon, hung about the massed kentish woods, several features of the social evolution of her old playmates, still beckoned on, it would seem, by unattainable ideals, still falling back, beyond the sea, to their native seats, for renewals of the moral, financial, conversational--one scarce knew what to call it--outfit, and again and for ever reappearing like a tribe of wandering jewesses. our couple had finally exhausted, however, the study of these annals, and maggie was to take up, after a drop, a different matter, or one at least with which the immediate connection was not at first apparent. “were you amused at me just now--when i wondered what other people could wish to struggle for? did you think me,” she asked with some earnestness--“well, fatuous?” “‘fatuous’?”--he seemed at a loss. “i mean sublime in our happiness--as if looking down from a height. or, rather, sublime in our general position--that’s what i mean.” she spoke as from the habit of her anxious conscience something that disposed her frequently to assure herself, for her human commerce, of the state of the “books” of the spirit. “because i don’t at all want,” she explained, “to be blinded, or made ‘sniffy,’ by any sense of a social situation.” her father listened to this declaration as if the precautions of her general mercy could still, as they betrayed themselves, have surprises for him--to say nothing of a charm of delicacy and beauty; he might have been wishing to see how far she could go and where she would, all touchingly to him, arrive. but she waited a little--as if made nervous, precisely, by feeling him depend too much on what she said. they were avoiding the serious, standing off, anxiously, from the real, and they fell, again and again, as if to disguise their precaution itself, into the tone of the time that came back to them from their other talk, when they had shared together this same refuge. “don’t you remember,” she went on, “how, when they were here before, i broke it to you that i wasn’t so very sure we, ourselves had the thing itself?” he did his best to do so. “had, you mean a social situation?” “yes--after fanny assingham had first broken it to me that, at the rate we were going, we should never have one.” “which was what put us on charlotte?” oh yes, they had had it over quite often enough for him easily to remember. maggie had another pause--taking it from him that he now could both affirm and admit without wincing that they had been, at their critical moment, “put on” charlotte. it was as if this recognition had been threshed out between them as fundamental to the honest view of their success. “well,” she continued, “i recall how i felt, about kitty and dotty, that even if we had already then been more ‘placed,’ or whatever you may call what we are now, it still wouldn’t have been an excuse for wondering why others couldn’t obligingly leave me more exalted by having, themselves, smaller ideas. for those,” she said, “were the feelings we used to have.” “oh yes,” he responded philosophically--“i remember the feelings we used to have.” maggie appeared to wish to plead for them a little, in tender retrospect--as if they had been also respectable. “it was bad enough, i thought, to have no sympathy in your heart when you had a position. but it was worse to be sublime about it--as i was so afraid, as i’m in fact still afraid of being--when it wasn’t even there to support one.” and she put forth again the earnestness she might have been taking herself as having outlived; became for it--which was doubtless too often even now her danger--almost sententious. “one must always, whether or no, have some imagination of the states of others--of what they may feel deprived of. however,” she added, “kitty and dotty couldn’t imagine we were deprived of anything. and now, and now--!” but she stopped as for indulgence to their wonder and envy. “and now they see, still more, that we can have got everything, and kept everything, and yet not be proud.” “no, we’re not proud,” she answered after a moment. “i’m not sure that we’re quite proud enough.” yet she changed the next instant that subject too. she could only do so, however, by harking back--as if it had been a fascination. she might have been wishing, under this renewed, this still more suggestive visitation, to keep him with her for remounting the stream of time and dipping again, for the softness of the water, into the contracted basin of the past. “we talked about it--we talked about it; you don’t remember so well as i. you too didn’t know--and it was beautiful of you; like kitty and dotty you too thought we had a position, and were surprised when _i_ thought we ought to have told them we weren’t doing for them what they supposed. in fact,” maggie pursued, “we’re not doing it now. we’re not, you see, really introducing them. i mean not to the people they want.” “then what do you call the people with whom they’re now having tea?” it made her quite spring round. “that’s just what you asked me the other time--one of the days there was somebody. and i told you i didn’t call anybody anything.” “i remember--that such people, the people we made so welcome, didn’t ‘count’; that fanny assingham knew they didn’t.” she had awakened, his daughter, the echo; and on the bench there, as before, he nodded his head amusedly, he kept nervously shaking his foot. “yes, they were only good enough--the people who came--for us. i remember,” he said again: “that was the way it all happened.” “that was the way--that was the way. and you asked me,” maggie added, “if i didn’t think we ought to tell them. tell mrs. rance, in particular, i mean, that we had been entertaining her up to then under false pretences.” “precisely--but you said she wouldn’t have understood.” “to which you replied that in that case you were like her. you didn’t understand.” “no, no--but i remember how, about our having, in our benighted innocence, no position, you quite crushed me with your explanation.” “well then,” said maggie with every appearance of delight, “i’ll crush you again. i told you that you by yourself had one--there was no doubt of that. you were different from me--you had the same one you always had.” “and then i asked you,” her father concurred, “why in that case you hadn’t the same.” “then indeed you did.” he had brought her face round to him before, and this held it, covering him with its kindled brightness, the result of the attested truth of their being able thus, in talk, to live again together. “what i replied was that i had lost my position by my marriage. that one--i know how i saw it--would never come back. i had done something to it--i didn’t quite know what; given it away, somehow, and yet not, as then appeared, really got my return. i had been assured--always by dear fanny--that i could get it, only i must wake up. so i was trying, you see, to wake up--trying very hard.” “yes--and to a certain extent you succeeded; as also in waking me. but you made much,” he said, “of your difficulty.” to which he added: “it’s the only case i remember, mag, of you ever making anything of a difficulty.” she kept her eyes on him a moment. “that i was so happy as i was?” “that you were so happy as you were.” “well, you admitted”--maggie kept it up--“that that was a good difficulty. you confessed that our life did seem to be beautiful.” he thought a moment. “yes--i may very well have confessed it, for so it did seem to me.” but he guarded himself with his dim, his easier smile. “what do you want to put on me now?” “only that we used to wonder--that we were wondering then--if our life wasn’t perhaps a little selfish.” this also for a time, much at his leisure, adam verver retrospectively fixed. “because fanny assingham thought so?” “oh no; she never thought, she couldn’t think, if she would, anything of that sort. she only thinks people are sometimes fools,” maggie developed; “she doesn’t seem to think so much about their being wrong--wrong, that is, in the sense of being wicked. she doesn’t,” the princess further adventured, “quite so much mind their being wicked.” “i see--i see.” and yet it might have been for his daughter that he didn’t so very vividly see. “then she only thought us fools?” “oh no--i don’t say that. i’m speaking of our being selfish.” “and that comes under the head of the wickedness fanny condones?” “oh, i don’t say she condones--!” a scruple in maggie raised its crest. “besides, i’m speaking of what was.” her father showed, however, after a little, that he had not been reached by this discrimination; his thoughts were resting for the moment where they had settled. “look here, mag,” he said reflectively--“i ain’t selfish. i’ll be blowed if i’m selfish.” well, maggie, if he would talk of that, could also pronounce. “then, father, _i_ am.” “oh shucks!” said adam verver, to whom the vernacular, in moments of deepest sincerity, could thus come back. “i’ll believe it,” he presently added, “when amerigo complains of you.” “ah, it’s just he who’s my selfishness. i’m selfish, so to speak, for him. i mean,” she continued, “that he’s my motive--in everything.” well, her father could, from experience, fancy what she meant. “but hasn’t a girl a right to be selfish about her husband?” “what i don’t mean,” she observed without answering, “is that i’m jealous of him. but that’s his merit--it’s not mine.” her father again seemed amused at her. “you could be--otherwise?” “oh, how can i talk,” she asked, “of otherwise? it isn’t, luckily for me, otherwise. if everything were different”--she further presented her thought--“of course everything would be.” and then again, as if that were but half: “my idea is this, that when you only love a little you’re naturally not jealous--or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn’t matter. but when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you are, in the same proportion, jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity. when, however, you love in the most abysmal and unutterable way of all--why then you’re beyond everything, and nothing can pull you down.” mr. verver listened as if he had nothing, on these high lines, to oppose. “and that’s the way you love?” for a minute she failed to speak, but at last she answered: “it wasn’t to talk about that. i do feel, however, beyond everything--and as a consequence of that, i dare say,” she added with a turn to gaiety, “seem often not to know quite where i am.” the mere fine pulse of passion in it, the suggestion as of a creature consciously floating and shining in a warm summer sea, some element of dazzling sapphire and silver, a creature cradled upon depths, buoyant among dangers, in which fear or folly, or sinking otherwise than in play, was impossible--something of all this might have been making once more present to him, with his discreet, his half shy assent to it, her probable enjoyment of a rapture that he, in his day, had presumably convinced no great number of persons either of his giving or of his receiving. he sat awhile as if he knew himself hushed, almost admonished, and not for the first time; yet it was an effect that might have brought before him rather what she had gained than what he had missed. besides, who but himself really knew what he, after all, hadn’t, or even had, gained? the beauty of her condition was keeping him, at any rate, as he might feel, in sight of the sea, where, though his personal dips were over, the whole thing could shine at him, and the air and the plash and the play become for him too a sensation. that couldn’t be fixed upon him as missing; since if it wasn’t personally floating, if it wasn’t even sitting in the sand, it could yet pass very well for breathing the bliss, in a communicated irresistible way--for tasting the balm. it could pass, further, for knowing--for knowing that without him nothing might have been: which would have been missing least of all. “i guess i’ve never been jealous,” he finally remarked. and it said more to her, he had occasion next to perceive, than he was intending; for it made her, as by the pressure of a spring, give him a look that seemed to tell of things she couldn’t speak. but she at last tried for one of them. “oh, it’s you, father, who are what i call beyond everything. nothing can pull you down.” he returned the look as with the sociability of their easy communion, though inevitably throwing in this time a shade of solemnity. he might have been seeing things to say, and others, whether of a type presumptuous or not, doubtless better kept back. so he settled on the merely obvious. “well then, we make a pair. we’re all right.” “oh, we’re all right!” a declaration launched not only with all her discriminating emphasis, but confirmed by her rising with decision and standing there as if the object of their small excursion required accordingly no further pursuit. at this juncture, however--with the act of their crossing the bar, to get, as might be, into port--there occurred the only approach to a betrayal of their having had to beat against the wind. her father kept his place, and it was as if she had got over first and were pausing for her consort to follow. if they were all right; they were all right; yet he seemed to hesitate and wait for some word beyond. his eyes met her own, suggestively, and it was only after she had contented herself with simply smiling at him, smiling ever so fixedly, that he spoke, for the remaining importance of it, from the bench; where he leaned back, raising his face to her, his legs thrust out a trifle wearily and his hands grasping either side of the seat. they had beaten against the wind, and she was still fresh; they had beaten against the wind, and he, as at the best the more battered vessel, perhaps just vaguely drooped. but the effect of their silence was that she appeared to beckon him on, and he might have been fairly alongside of her when, at the end of another minute, he found their word. “the only thing is that, as for ever putting up again with your pretending that you’re selfish--!” at this she helped him out with it. “you won’t take it from me?” “i won’t take it from you.” “well, of course you won’t, for that’s your way. it doesn’t matter, and it only proves--! but it doesn’t matter, either, what it proves. i’m at this very moment,” she declared, “frozen stiff with selfishness.” he faced her awhile longer in the same way; it was, strangely, as if, by this sudden arrest, by their having, in their acceptance of the unsaid, or at least their reference to it, practically given up pretending--it was as if they were “in” for it, for something they had been ineffably avoiding, but the dread of which was itself, in a manner, a seduction, just as any confession of the dread was by so much an allusion. then she seemed to see him let himself go. “when a person’s of the nature you speak of there are always other persons to suffer. but you’ve just been describing to me what you’d take, if you had once a good chance, from your husband.” “oh, i’m not talking about my husband!” “then whom, are you talking about?” both the retort and the rejoinder had come quicker than anything previously exchanged, and they were followed, on maggie’s part, by a momentary drop. but she was not to fall away, and while her companion kept his eyes on her, while she wondered if he weren’t expecting her to name his wife then, with high hypocrisy, as paying for his daughter’s bliss, she produced something that she felt to be much better. “i’m talking about you.” “do you mean i’ve been your victim?” “of course you’ve been my victim. what have you done, ever done, that hasn’t been for me?” “many things; more than i can tell you--things you’ve only to think of for yourself. what do you make of all that i’ve done for myself?” “‘yourself’?--” she brightened out with derision. “what do you make of what i’ve done for american city?” it took her but a moment to say. “i’m not talking of you as a public character--i’m talking of you on your personal side.” “well, american city--if ‘personalities’ can do it--has given me a pretty personal side. what do you make,” he went on, “of what i’ve done for my reputation?” “your reputation there? you’ve given it up to them, the awful people, for less than nothing; you’ve given it up to them to tear to pieces, to make their horrible vulgar jokes against you with.” “ah, my dear, i don’t care for their horrible vulgar jokes,” adam verver almost artlessly urged. “then there, exactly, you are!” she triumphed. “everything that touches you, everything that surrounds you, goes on--by your splendid indifference and your incredible permission--at your expense.” just as he had been sitting he looked at her an instant longer; then he slowly rose, while his hands stole into his pockets, and stood there before her. “of course, my dear, you go on at my expense: it has never been my idea,” he smiled, “that you should work for your living. i wouldn’t have liked to see it.” with which, for a little again, they remained face to face. “say therefore i have had the feelings of a father. how have they made me a victim?” “because i sacrifice you.” “but to what in the world?” at this it hung before her that she should have had as never yet her opportunity to say, and it held her for a minute as in a vise, her impression of his now, with his strained smile, which touched her to deepest depths, sounding her in his secret unrest. this was the moment, in the whole process of their mutual vigilance, in which it decidedly most hung by a hair that their thin wall might be pierced by the lightest wrong touch. it shook between them, this transparency, with their very breath; it was an exquisite tissue, but stretched on a frame, and would give way the next instant if either so much as breathed too hard. she held her breath, for she knew by his eyes, the light at the heart of which he couldn’t blind, that he was, by his intention, making sure--sure whether or no her certainty was like his. the intensity of his dependence on it at that moment--this itself was what absolutely convinced her so that, as if perched up before him on her vertiginous point and in the very glare of his observation, she balanced for thirty seconds, she almost rocked: she might have been for the time, in all her conscious person, the very form of the equilibrium they were, in their different ways, equally trying to save. and they were saving it--yes, they were, or at least she was: that was still the workable issue, she could say, as she felt her dizziness drop. she held herself hard; the thing was to be done, once for all, by her acting, now, where she stood. so much was crowded into so short a space that she knew already she was keeping her head. she had kept it by the warning of his eyes; she shouldn’t lose it again; she knew how and why, and if she had turned cold this was precisely what helped her. he had said to himself “she’ll break down and name amerigo; she’ll say it’s to him she’s sacrificing me; and its by what that will give me--with so many other things too--that my suspicion will be clinched.” he was watching her lips, spying for the symptoms of the sound; whereby these symptoms had only to fail and he would have got nothing that she didn’t measure out to him as she gave it. she had presently in fact so recovered herself that she seemed to know she could more easily have made him name his wife than he have made her name her husband. it was there before her that if she should so much as force him just not consciously to avoid saying “charlotte, charlotte” he would have given himself away. but to be sure of this was enough for her, and she saw more clearly with each lapsing instant what they were both doing. he was doing what he had steadily been coming to; he was practically offering himself, pressing himself upon her, as a sacrifice--he had read his way so into her best possibility; and where had she already, for weeks and days past, planted her feet if not on her acceptance of the offer? cold indeed, colder and colder she turned, as she felt herself suffer this close personal vision of his attitude still not to make her weaken. that was her very certitude, the intensity of his pressure; for if something dreadful hadn’t happened there wouldn’t, for either of them, be these dreadful things to do. she had meanwhile, as well, the immense advantage that she could have named charlotte without exposing herself--as, for that matter, she was the next minute showing him. “why, i sacrifice you, simply, to everything and to every one. i take the consequences of your marriage as perfectly natural.” he threw back his head a little, settling with one hand his eyeglass. “what do you call, my dear, the consequences?” “your life as your marriage has made it.” “well, hasn’t it made it exactly what we wanted?” she just hesitated, then felt herself steady--oh, beyond what she had dreamed. “exactly what _i_ wanted--yes.” his eyes, through his straightened glasses, were still on hers, and he might, with his intenser fixed smile, have been knowing she was, for herself, rightly inspired. “what do you make then of what i wanted?” “i don’t make anything, any more than of what you’ve got. that’s exactly the point. i don’t put myself out to do so--i never have; i take from you all i can get, all you’ve provided for me, and i leave you to make of your own side of the matter what you can. there you are--the rest is your own affair. i don’t even pretend to concern myself--!” “to concern yourself--?” he watched her as she faintly faltered, looking about her now so as not to keep always meeting his face. “with what may have really become of you. it’s as if we had agreed from the first not to go into that--such an arrangement being of course charming for me. you can’t say, you know, that i haven’t stuck to it.” he didn’t say so then--even with the opportunity given him of her stopping once more to catch her breath. he said instead: “oh, my dear--oh, oh!” but it made no difference, know as she might what a past--still so recent and yet so distant--it alluded to; she repeated her denial, warning him off, on her side, from spoiling the truth of her contention. “i never went into anything, and you see i don’t; i’ve continued to adore you--but what’s that, from a decent daughter to such a father? what but a question of convenient arrangement, our having two houses, three houses, instead of one (you would have arranged for fifty if i had wished!) and my making it easy for you to see the child? you don’t claim, i suppose, that my natural course, once you had set up for yourself, would have been to ship you back to american city?” these were direct inquiries, they quite rang out, in the soft, wooded air; so that adam verver, for a minute, appeared to meet them with reflection. she saw reflection, however, quickly enough show him what to do with them. “do you know, mag, what you make me wish when you talk that way?” and he waited again, while she further got from him the sense of something that had been behind, deeply in the shade, coming cautiously to the front and just feeling its way before presenting itself. “you regularly make me wish that i had shipped back to american city. when you go on as you do--” but he really had to hold himself to say it. “well, when i go on--?” “why, you make me quite want to ship back myself. you make me quite feel as if american city would be the best place for us.” it made her all too finely vibrate. “for ‘us’--?” “for me and charlotte. do you know that if we should ship, it would serve you quite right?” with which he smiled--oh he smiled! “and if you say much more we will ship.” ah, then it was that the cup of her conviction, full to the brim, overflowed at a touch! there was his idea, the clearness of which for an instant almost dazzled her. it was a blur of light, in the midst of which she saw charlotte like some object marked, by contrast, in blackness, saw her waver in the field of vision, saw her removed, transported, doomed. and he had named charlotte, named her again, and she had made him--which was all she had needed more: it was as if she had held a blank letter to the fire and the writing had come out still larger than she hoped. the recognition of it took her some seconds, but she might when she spoke have been folding up these precious lines and restoring them to her pocket. “well, i shall be as much as ever then the cause of what you do. i haven’t the least doubt of your being up to that if you should think i might get anything out of it; even the little pleasure,” she laughed, “of having said, as you call it, ‘more.’ let my enjoyment of this therefore, at any price, continue to represent for you what _i_ call sacrificing you.” she had drawn a long breath; she had made him do it all for her, and had lighted the way to it without his naming her husband. that silence had been as distinct as the sharp, the inevitable sound, and something now, in him, followed it up, a sudden air as of confessing at last fully to where she was and of begging the particular question. “don’t you think then i can take care of myself?” “ah, it’s exactly what i’ve gone upon. if it wasn’t for that--!” but she broke off, and they remained only another moment face to face. “i’ll let you know, my dear, the day _i_ feel you’ve begun to sacrifice me.” “‘begun’?” she extravagantly echoed. “well, it will be, for me, the day you’ve ceased to believe in me.” with which, his glasses still fixed on her, his hands in his pockets, his hat pushed back, his legs a little apart, he seemed to plant or to square himself for a kind of assurance it had occurred to him he might as well treat her to, in default of other things, before they changed their subject. it had the effect, for her, of a reminder--a reminder of all he was, of all he had done, of all, above and beyond his being her perfect little father, she might take him as representing, take him as having, quite eminently, in the eyes of two hemispheres, been capable of, and as therefore wishing, not--was it?--illegitimately, to call her attention to. the “successful,” beneficent person, the beautiful, bountiful, original, dauntlessly wilful great citizen, the consummate collector and infallible high authority he had been and still was--these things struck her, on the spot, as making up for him, in a wonderful way, a character she must take into account in dealing with him either for pity or for envy. he positively, under the impression, seemed to loom larger than life for her, so that she saw him during these moments in a light of recognition which had had its brightness for her at many an hour of the past, but which had never been so intense and so almost admonitory. his very quietness was part of it now, as always part of everything, of his success, his originality, his modesty, his exquisite public perversity, his inscrutable, incalculable energy; and this quality perhaps it might be--all the more too as the result, for the present occasion, of an admirable, traceable effort--that placed him in her eyes as no precious a work of art probably had ever been placed in his own. there was a long moment, absolutely, during which her impression rose and rose, even as that of the typical charmed gazer, in the still museum, before the named and dated object, the pride of the catalogue, that time has polished and consecrated. extraordinary, in particular, was the number of the different ways in which he thus affected her as showing. he was strong--that was the great thing. he was sure--sure for himself, always, whatever his idea: the expression of that in him had somehow never appeared more identical with his proved taste for the rare and the true. but what stood out beyond everything was that he was always, marvellously, young--which couldn’t but crown, at this juncture, his whole appeal to her imagination. before she knew it she was lifted aloft by the consciousness that he was simply a great and deep and high little man, and that to love him with tenderness was not to be distinguished, a whit, from loving him with pride. it came to her, all strangely, as a sudden, an immense relief. the sense that he wasn’t a failure, and could never be, purged their predicament of every meanness--made it as if they had really emerged, in their transmuted union, to smile almost without pain. it was like a new confidence, and after another instant she knew even still better why. wasn’t it because now, also, on his side, he was thinking of her as his daughter, was trying her, during these mute seconds, as the child of his blood? oh then, if she wasn’t with her little conscious passion, the child of any weakness, what was she but strong enough too? it swelled in her, fairly; it raised her higher, higher: she wasn’t in that case a failure either--hadn’t been, but the contrary; his strength was her strength, her pride was his, and they were decent and competent together. this was all in the answer she finally made him. “i believe in you more than any one.” “than any one at all?” she hesitated, for all it might mean; but there was--oh a thousand times!--no doubt of it. “than any one at all.” she kept nothing of it back now, met his eyes over it, let him have the whole of it; after which she went on: “and that’s the way, i think, you believe in me.” he looked at her a minute longer, but his tone at last was right. “about the way--yes.” “well then--?” she spoke as for the end and for other matters--for anything, everything, else there might be. they would never return to it. “well then--!” his hands came out, and while her own took them he drew her to his breast and held her. he held her hard and kept her long, and she let herself go; but it was an embrace that, august and almost stern, produced, for all its intimacy, no revulsion and broke into no inconsequence of tears. xxxviii maggie was to feel, after this passage, how they had both been helped through it by the influence of that accident of her having been caught, a few nights before, in the familiar embrace of her father’s wife. his return to the saloon had chanced to coincide exactly with this demonstration, missed moreover neither by her husband nor by the assinghams, who, their card-party suspended, had quitted the billiard-room with him. she had been conscious enough at the time of what such an impression, received by the others, might, in that extended state, do for her case; and none the less that, as no one had appeared to wish to be the first to make a remark about it, it had taken on perceptibly the special shade of consecration conferred by unanimities of silence. the effect, she might have considered, had been almost awkward--the promptitude of her separation from charlotte, as if they had been discovered in some absurdity, on her becoming aware of spectators. the spectators, on the other hand--that was the appearance--mightn’t have supposed them, in the existing relation, addicted to mutual endearments; and yet, hesitating with a fine scruple between sympathy and hilarity, must have felt that almost any spoken or laughed comment could be kept from sounding vulgar only by sounding, beyond any permitted measure, intelligent. they had evidently looked, the two young wives, like a pair of women “making up” effusively, as women were supposed to do, especially when approved fools, after a broil; but taking note of the reconciliation would imply, on her father’s part, on amerigo’s, and on fanny assingham’s, some proportionate vision of the grounds of their difference. there had been something, there had been but too much, in the incident, for each observer; yet there was nothing any one could have said without seeming essentially to say: “see, see, the dear things--their quarrel’s blissfully over!” “our quarrel? what quarrel?” the dear things themselves would necessarily, in that case, have demanded; and the wits of the others would thus have been called upon for some agility of exercise. no one had been equal to the flight of producing, off-hand, a fictive reason for any estrangement--to take, that is, the place of the true, which had so long, for the finer sensibility, pervaded the air; and every one, accordingly, not to be inconveniently challenged, was pretending, immediately after, to have remarked nothing that any one else hadn’t. maggie’s own measure had remained, all the same, full of the reflection caught from the total inference; which had acted, virtually, by enabling every one present--and oh charlotte not least!--to draw a long breath. the message of the little scene had been different for each, but it had been this, markedly, all round, that it reinforced--reinforced even immensely--the general effort, carried on from week to week and of late distinctly more successful, to look and talk and move as if nothing in life were the matter. supremely, however, while this glass was held up to her, had maggie’s sense turned to the quality of the success constituted, on the spot, for charlotte. most of all, if she was guessing how her father must have secretly started, how her husband must have secretly wondered, how fanny assingham must have secretly, in a flash, seen daylight for herself--most of all had she tasted, by communication, of the high profit involved for her companion. she felt, in all her pulses, charlotte feel it, and how publicity had been required, absolutely, to crown her own abasement. it was the added touch, and now nothing was wanting--which, to do her stepmother justice, mrs. verver had appeared but to desire, from that evening, to show, with the last vividness, that she recognised. maggie lived over again the minutes in question--had found herself repeatedly doing so; to the degree that the whole evening hung together, to her aftersense, as a thing appointed by some occult power that had dealt with her, that had for instance--animated the four with just the right restlessness too, had decreed and directed and exactly timed it in them, making their game of bridge--however abysmal a face it had worn for her--give way, precisely, to their common unavowed impulse to find out, to emulate charlotte’s impatience; a preoccupation, this latter, attached detectedly to the member of the party who was roaming in her queerness and was, for all their simulated blindness, not roaming unnoted. if mrs. verver meanwhile, then, had struck her as determined in a certain direction by the last felicity into which that night had flowered, our young woman was yet not to fail of appreciating the truth that she had not been put at ease, after all, with absolute permanence. maggie had seen her, unmistakably, desire to rise to the occasion and be magnificent--seen her decide that the right way for this would be to prove that the reassurance she had extorted there, under the high, cool lustre of the saloon, a twinkle of crystal and silver, had not only poured oil upon the troubled waters of their question, but had fairly drenched their whole intercourse with that lubricant. she had exceeded the limit of discretion in this insistence on her capacity to repay in proportion a service she acknowledged as handsome. “why handsome?” maggie would have been free to ask; since if she had been veracious the service assuredly would not have been huge. it would in that case have come up vividly, and for each of them alike, that the truth, on the princess’s lips, presented no difficulty. if the latter’s mood, in fact, could have turned itself at all to private gaiety it might have failed to resist the diversion of seeing so clever a creature so beguiled. charlotte’s theory of a generous manner was manifestly to express that her stepdaughter’s word, wiping out, as she might have said, everything, had restored them to the serenity of a relation without a cloud. it had been, in short, in this light, ideally conclusive, so that no ghost of anything it referred to could ever walk again. what was the ecstasy of that, however, but in itself a trifle compromising?--as truly, within the week, maggie had occasion to suspect her friend of beginning, and rather abruptly, to remember. convinced as she was of the example already given her by her husband, and in relation to which her profession of trust in his mistress had been an act of conformity exquisitely calculated, her imagination yet sought in the hidden play of his influence the explanation of any change of surface, any difference of expression or intention. there had been, through life, as we know, few quarters in which the princess’s fancy could let itself loose; but it shook off restraint when it plunged into the figured void of the detail of that relation. this was a realm it could people with images--again and again with fresh ones; they swarmed there like the strange combinations that lurked in the woods at twilight; they loomed into the definite and faded into the vague, their main present sign for her being, however, that they were always, that they were duskily, agitated. her earlier vision of a state of bliss made insecure by the very intensity of the bliss--this had dropped from her; she had ceased to see, as she lost herself, the pair of operatic, of high wagnerian lovers (she found, deep within her, these comparisons) interlocked in their wood of enchantment, a green glade as romantic as one’s dream of an old german forest. the picture was veiled, on the contrary, with the dimness of trouble; behind which she felt, indistinguishable, the procession of forms that had lost, all so pitifully, their precious confidence. therefore, though there was in these days, for her, with amerigo, little enough even of the imitation, from day to day, of unembarrassed references--as she had foreseen, for that matter, from the first, that there would be--her active conception of his accessibility to their companion’s own private and unextinguished right to break ground was not much less active than before. so it was that her inner sense, in spite of everything, represented him as still pulling wires and controlling currents, or rather indeed as muffling the whole possibility, keeping it down and down, leading his accomplice continually on to some new turn of the road. as regards herself maggie had become more conscious from week to week of his ingenuities of intention to make up to her for their forfeiture, in so dire a degree, of any reality of frankness--a privation that had left on his lips perhaps a little of the same thirst with which she fairly felt her own distorted, the torment of the lost pilgrim who listens in desert sands for the possible, the impossible, plash of water. it was just this hampered state in him, none the less, that she kept before her when she wished most to find grounds of dignity for the hard little passion which nothing he had done could smother. there were hours enough, lonely hours, in which she let dignity go; then there were others when, clinging with her winged concentration to some deep cell of her heart, she stored away her hived tenderness as if she had gathered it all from flowers. he was walking ostensibly beside her, but in fact given over, without a break, to the grey medium in which he helplessly groped; a perception on her part which was a perpetual pang and which might last what it would--for ever if need be--but which, if relieved at all, must be relieved by his act alone. she herself could do nothing more for it; she had done the utmost possible. it was meantime not the easier to bear for this aspect under which charlotte was presented as depending on him for guidance, taking it from him even in doses of bitterness, and yet lost with him in devious depths. nothing was thus more sharply to be inferred than that he had promptly enough warned her, on hearing from her of the precious assurance received from his wife, that she must take care her satisfaction didn’t betray something of her danger. maggie had a day of still waiting, after allowing him time to learn how unreservedly she had lied for him--of waiting as for the light of she scarce knew what slow-shining reflection of this knowledge in his personal attitude. what retarded evolution, she asked herself in these hours, mightn’t poor charlotte all unwittingly have precipitated? she was thus poor charlotte again for maggie even while maggie’s own head was bowed, and the reason for this kept coming back to our young woman in the conception of what would secretly have passed. she saw her, face to face with the prince, take from him the chill of his stiffest admonition, with the possibilities of deeper difficulty that it represented for each. she heard her ask, irritated and sombre, what tone, in god’s name--since her bravery didn’t suit him--she was then to adopt; and, by way of a fantastic flight of divination, she heard amerigo reply, in a voice of which every fine note, familiar and admirable, came home to her, that one must really manage such prudences a little for one’s self. it was positive in the princess that, for this, she breathed charlotte’s cold air--turned away from him in it with her, turned with her, in growing compassion, this way and that, hovered behind her while she felt her ask herself where then she should rest. marvellous the manner in which, under such imaginations, maggie thus circled and lingered--quite as if she were, materially, following her unseen, counting every step she helplessly wasted, noting every hindrance that brought her to a pause. a few days of this, accordingly, had wrought a change in that apprehension of the instant beatitude of triumph--of triumph magnanimous and serene--with which the upshot of the night-scene on the terrace had condemned our young woman to make terms. she had had, as we know, her vision of the gilt bars bent, of the door of the cage forced open from within and the creature imprisoned roaming at large--a movement, on the creature’s part, that was to have even, for the short interval, its impressive beauty, but of which the limit, and in yet another direction, had loomed straight into view during her last talk under the great trees with her father. it was when she saw his wife’s face ruefully attached to the quarter to which, in the course of their session, he had so significantly addressed his own--it was then that maggie could watch for its turning pale, it was then she seemed to know what she had meant by thinking of her, in she shadow of his most ominous reference, as “doomed.” if, as i say, her attention now, day after day, so circled and hovered, it found itself arrested for certain passages during which she absolutely looked with charlotte’s grave eyes. what she unfailingly made out through them was the figure of a little quiet gentleman who mostly wore, as he moved, alone, across the field of vision, a straw hat, a white waistcoat and a blue necktie, keeping a cigar in his teeth and his hands in his pockets, and who, oftener than not, presented a somewhat meditative back while he slowly measured the perspectives of the park and broodingly counted (it might have appeared) his steps. there were hours of intensity, for a week or two, when it was for all the world as if she had guardedly tracked her stepmother, in the great house, from room to room and from window to window, only to see her, here and there and everywhere, try her uneasy outlook, question her issue and her fate. something, unmistakably, had come up for her that had never come up before; it represented a new complication and had begotten a new anxiety--things, these, that she carried about with her done up in the napkin of her lover’s accepted rebuke, while she vainly hunted for some corner where she might put them safely down. the disguised solemnity, the prolonged futility of her search might have been grotesque to a more ironic eye; but maggie’s provision of irony, which we have taken for naturally small, had never been so scant as now, and there were moments while she watched with her, thus unseen, when the mere effect of being near her was to feel her own heart in her throat, was to be almost moved to saying to her: “hold on tight, my poor dear--without too much terror--and it will all come out somehow.” even to that indeed, she could reflect, charlotte might have replied that it was easy to say; even to that no great meaning could attach so long as the little meditative man in the straw hat kept coming into view with his indescribable air of weaving his spell, weaving it off there by himself. in whatever quarter of the horizon the appearances were scanned he was to be noticed as absorbed in this occupation; and maggie was to become aware of two or three extraordinary occasions of receiving from him the hint that he measured the impression he produced. it was not really till after their recent long talk in the park that she knew how deeply, how quite exhaustively, they had then communicated--so that they were to remain together, for the time, in consequence, quite in the form of a couple of sociable drinkers who sit back from the table over which they have been resting their elbows, over which they have emptied to the last drop their respective charged cups. the cups were still there on the table, but turned upside down; and nothing was left for the companions but to confirm by placid silences the fact that the wine had been good. they had parted, positively, as if, on either side, primed with it--primed for whatever was to be; and everything between them, as the month waned, added its touch of truth to this similitude. nothing, truly, was at present between them save that they were looking at each other in infinite trust; it fairly wanted no more words, and when they met, during the deep summer days, met even without witnesses, when they kissed at morning and evening, or on any of the other occasions of contact that they had always so freely celebrated, a pair of birds of the upper air could scarce have appeared less to invite each other to sit down and worry afresh. so it was that in the house itself, where more of his waiting treasures than ever were provisionally ranged, she sometimes only looked at him--from end to end of the great gallery, the pride of the house, for instance--as if, in one of the halls of a museum, she had been an earnest young woman with a baedeker and he a vague gentleman to whom even baedekers were unknown. he had ever, of course, had his way of walking about to review his possessions and verify their condition; but this was a pastime to which he now struck her as almost extravagantly addicted, and when she passed near him and he turned to give her a smile she caught--or so she fancied--the greater depth of his small, perpetual hum of contemplation. it was as if he were singing to himself, sotto voce, as he went--and it was also, on occasion, quite ineffably, as if charlotte, hovering, watching, listening, on her side too, kept sufficiently within earshot to make it out as song, and yet, for some reason connected with the very manner of it, stood off and didn’t dare. one of the attentions she had from immediately after her marriage most freely paid him was that of her interest in his rarities, her appreciation of his taste, her native passion for beautiful objects and her grateful desire not to miss anything he could teach her about them. maggie had in due course seen her begin to “work” this fortunately natural source of sympathy for all it was worth. she took possession of the mound throughout its extent; she abounded, to odd excess, one might have remarked, in the assumption of its being for her, with her husband, all the ground, the finest, clearest air and most breathable medium common to them. it had been given to maggie to wonder if she didn’t, in these intensities of approbation, too much shut him up to his province; but this was a complaint he had never made his daughter, and charlotte must at least have had for her that, thanks to her admirable instinct, her range of perception marching with his own and never falling behind, she had probably not so much as once treated him to a rasping mistake or a revealing stupidity. maggie, wonderfully, in the summer days, felt it forced upon her that that was one way, after all, of being a genial wife; and it was never so much forced upon her as at these odd moments of her encountering the sposi, as amerigo called them, under the coved ceilings of fawns while, so together, yet at the same time so separate, they were making their daily round. charlotte hung behind, with emphasised attention; she stopped when her husband stopped, but at the distance of a case or two, or of whatever other succession of objects; and the likeness of their connection would not have been wrongly figured if he had been thought of as holding in one of his pocketed hands the end of a long silken halter looped round her beautiful neck. he didn’t twitch it, yet it was there; he didn’t drag her, but she came; and those indications that i have described the princess as finding extraordinary in him were two or three mute facial intimations which his wife’s presence didn’t prevent his addressing his daughter--nor prevent his daughter, as she passed, it was doubtless to be added, from flushing a little at the receipt of. they amounted perhaps only to a wordless, wordless smile, but the smile was the soft shake of the twisted silken rope, and maggie’s translation of it, held in her breast till she got well away, came out only, as if it might have been overheard, when some door was closed behind her. “yes, you see--i lead her now by the neck, i lead her to her doom, and she doesn’t so much as know what it is, though she has a fear in her heart which, if you had the chances to apply your ear there that i, as a husband, have, you would hear thump and thump and thump. she thinks it may be, her doom, the awful place over there--awful for her; but she’s afraid to ask, don’t you see? just as she’s afraid of not asking; just as she’s afraid of so many other things that she sees multiplied round her now as portents and betrayals. she’ll know, however--when she does know.” charlotte’s one opportunity, meanwhile, for the air of confidence she had formerly worn so well and that agreed so with her firm and charming type, was the presence of visitors, never, as the season advanced, wholly intermitted--rather, in fact, so constant, with all the people who turned up for luncheon and for tea and to see the house, now replete, now famous, that maggie grew to think again of this large element of “company” as of a kind of renewed water-supply for the tank in which, like a party of panting gold-fish, they kept afloat. it helped them, unmistakably, with each other, weakening the emphasis of so many of the silences of which their intimate intercourse would otherwise have consisted. beautiful and wonderful for her, even, at times, was the effect of these interventions--their effect above all in bringing home to each the possible heroism of perfunctory things. they learned fairly to live in the perfunctory; they remained in it as many hours of the day as might be; it took on finally the likeness of some spacious central chamber in a haunted house, a great overarched and overglazed rotunda, where gaiety might reign, but the doors of which opened into sinister circular passages. here they turned up for each other, as they said, with the blank faces that denied any uneasiness felt in the approach; here they closed numerous doors carefully behind them--all save the door that connected the place, as by a straight tented corridor, with the outer world, and, encouraging thus the irruption of society, imitated the aperture through which the bedizened performers of the circus are poured into the ring. the great part mrs. verver had socially played came luckily, maggie could make out, to her assistance; she had “personal friends”--charlotte’s personal friends had ever been, in london, at the two houses, one of the most convenient pleasantries--who actually tempered, at this crisis, her aspect of isolation; and it wouldn’t have been hard to guess that her best moments were those in which she suffered no fear of becoming a bore to restrain her appeal to their curiosity. their curiosity might be vague, but their clever hostess was distinct, and she marched them about, sparing them nothing, as if she counted, each day, on a harvest of half crowns. maggie met her again, in the gallery, at the oddest hours, with the party she was entertaining; heard her draw out the lesson, insist upon the interest, snub, even, the particular presumption and smile for the general bewilderment--inevitable features, these latter, of almost any occasion--in a manner that made our young woman, herself incurably dazzled, marvel afresh at the mystery by which a creature who could be in some connexions so earnestly right could be in others so perversely wrong. when her father, vaguely circulating, was attended by his wife, it was always charlotte who seemed to bring up the rear; but he hung in the background when she did cicerone, and it was then perhaps that, moving mildly and modestly to and fro on the skirts of the exhibition, his appearance of weaving his spell was, for the initiated conscience, least to be resisted. brilliant women turned to him in vague emotion, but his response scarce committed him more than if he had been the person employed to see that, after the invading wave was spent, the cabinets were all locked and the symmetries all restored. there was a morning when, during the hour before luncheon and shortly after the arrival of a neighbourly contingent--neighbourly from ten miles off--whom mrs. verver had taken in charge, maggie paused on the threshold of the gallery through which she had been about to pass, faltered there for the very impression of his face as it met her from an opposite door. charlotte, half-way down the vista, held together, as if by something almost austere in the grace of her authority, the semi-scared (now that they were there!) knot of her visitors, who, since they had announced themselves by telegram as yearning to inquire and admire, saw themselves restricted to this consistency. her voice, high and clear and a little hard, reached her husband and her step-daughter while she thus placed beyond doubt her cheerful submission to duty. her words, addressed to the largest publicity, rang for some minutes through the place, every one as quiet to listen as if it had been a church ablaze with tapers and she were taking her part in some hymn of praise. fanny assingham looked rapt in devotion--fanny assingham who forsook this other friend as little as she forsook either her host or the princess or the prince or the principino; she supported her, in slow revolutions, in murmurous attestations of presence, at all such times, and maggie, advancing after a first hesitation, was not to fail of noting her solemn, inscrutable attitude, her eyes attentively lifted, so that she might escape being provoked to betray an impression. she betrayed one, however, as maggie approached, dropping her gaze to the latter’s level long enough to seem to adventure, marvellously, on a mute appeal. “you understand, don’t you, that if she didn’t do this there would be no knowing what she might do?” this light mrs. assingham richly launched while her younger friend, unresistingly moved, became uncertain again, and then, not too much to show it--or, rather, positively to conceal it, and to conceal something more as well--turned short round to one of the windows and awkwardly, pointlessly waited. “the largest of the three pieces has the rare peculiarity that the garlands, looped round it, which, as you see, are the finest possible vieux saxe, are not of the same origin or period, or even, wonderful as they are, of a taste quite so perfect. they have been put on at a later time, by a process of which there are very few examples, and none so important as this, which is really quite unique--so that, though the whole thing is a little baroque, its value as a specimen is, i believe, almost inestimable.” so the high voice quavered, aiming truly at effects far over the heads of gaping neighbours; so the speaker, piling it up, sticking at nothing, as less interested judges might have said, seemed to justify the faith with which she was honoured. maggie meanwhile, at the window, knew the strangest thing to be happening: she had turned suddenly to crying, or was at least on the point of it--the lighted square before her all blurred and dim. the high voice went on; its quaver was doubtless for conscious ears only, but there were verily thirty seconds during which it sounded, for our young woman, like the shriek of a soul in pain. kept up a minute longer it would break and collapse--so that maggie felt herself, the next thing, turn with a start to her father. “can’t she be stopped? hasn’t she done it enough?”--some such question as that she let herself ask him to suppose in her. then it was that, across half the gallery--for he had not moved from where she had first seen him--he struck her as confessing, with strange tears in his own eyes, to sharp identity of emotion. “poor thing, poor thing”--it reached straight-“isn’t she, for one’s credit, on the swagger?” after which, as, held thus together they had still another strained minute, the shame, the pity, the better knowledge, the smothered protest, the divined anguish even, so overcame him that, blushing to his eyes, he turned short away. the affair but of a few muffled moments, this snatched communion yet lifted maggie as on air--so much, for deep guesses on her own side too, it gave her to think of. there was, honestly, an awful mixture in things, and it was not closed to her aftersense of such passages--we have already indeed, in other cases, seen it open--that the deepest depth of all, in a perceived penalty, was that you couldn’t be sure some of your compunctions and contortions wouldn’t show for ridiculous. amerigo, that morning, for instance, had been as absent as he at this juncture appeared to desire he should mainly be noted as being; he had gone to london for the day and the night--a necessity that now frequently rose for him and that he had more than once suffered to operate during the presence of guests, successions of pretty women, the theory of his fond interest in whom had been publicly cultivated. it had never occurred to his wife to pronounce him ingenuous, but there came at last a high dim august dawn when she couldn’t sleep and when, creeping restlessly about and breathing at her window the coolness of wooded acres, she found the faint flush of the east march with the perception of that other almost equal prodigy. it rosily coloured her vision that--even such as he was, yes--her husband could on occasion sin by excess of candour. he wouldn’t otherwise have given as his reason for going up to portland place in the august days that he was arranging books there. he had bought a great many of late, and he had had others, a large number, sent from rome--wonders of old print in which her father had been interested. but when her imagination tracked him to the dusty town, to the house where drawn blinds and pale shrouds, where a caretaker and a kitchenmaid were alone in possession, it wasn’t to see him, in his shirtsleeves, unpacking battered boxes. she saw him, in truth, less easily beguiled--saw him wander, in the closed dusky rooms, from place to place, or else, for long periods, recline on deep sofas and stare before him through the smoke of ceaseless cigarettes. she made him out as liking better than anything in the world just now to be alone with his thoughts. being herself connected with his thoughts, she continued to believe, more than she had ever been, it was thereby a good deal as if he were alone with her. she made him out as resting so from that constant strain of the perfunctory to which he was exposed at fawns; and she was accessible to the impression of the almost beggared aspect of this alternative. it was like his doing penance in sordid ways--being sent to prison or being kept without money; it wouldn’t have taken much to make her think of him as really kept without food. he might have broken away, might easily have started to travel; he had a right--thought wonderful maggie now--to so many more freedoms than he took! his secret was of course that at fawns he all the while winced, was all the while in presences in respect to which he had thrown himself back, with a hard pressure, on whatever mysteries of pride, whatever inward springs familiar to the man of the world, he could keep from snapping. maggie, for some reason, had that morning, while she watched the sunrise, taken an extraordinary measure of the ground on which he would have had to snatch at pretexts for absence. it all came to her there--he got off to escape from a sound. the sound was in her own ears still--that of charlotte’s high coerced quaver before the cabinets in the hushed gallery; the voice by which she herself had been pierced the day before as by that of a creature in anguish and by which, while she sought refuge at the blurred window, the tears had been forced into her eyes. her comprehension soared so high that the wonder for her became really his not feeling the need of wider intervals and thicker walls. before that admiration she also meditated; consider as she might now, she kept reading not less into what he omitted than into what he performed a beauty of intention that touched her fairly the more by being obscure. it was like hanging over a garden in the dark; nothing was to be made of the confusion of growing things, but one felt they were folded flowers, and their vague sweetness made the whole air their medium. he had to turn away, but he wasn’t at least a coward; he would wait on the spot for the issue of what he had done on the spot. she sank to her knees with her arm on the ledge of her window-seat, where she blinded her eyes from the full glare of seeing that his idea could only be to wait, whatever might come, at her side. it was to her buried face that she thus, for a long time, felt him draw nearest; though after a while, when the strange wail of the gallery began to repeat its inevitable echo, she was conscious of how that brought out his pale hard grimace. xxxix the resemblance had not been present to her on first coming out into the hot, still brightness of the sunday afternoon--only the second sunday, of all the summer, when the party of six, the party of seven including the principino, had practically been without accessions or invasions; but within sight of charlotte, seated far away, very much where she had expected to find her, the princess fell to wondering if her friend wouldn’t be affected quite as she herself had been, that night on the terrace, under mrs. verver’s perceptive pursuit. the relation, to-day, had turned itself round; charlotte was seeing her come, through patches of lingering noon, quite as she had watched charlotte menace her through the starless dark; and there was a moment, that of her waiting a little as they thus met across the distance, when the interval was bridged by a recognition not less soundless, and to all appearance not less charged with strange meanings, than that of the other occasion. the point, however, was that they had changed places; maggie had from her window, seen her stepmother leave the house--at so unlikely an hour, three o’clock of a canicular august, for a ramble in garden or grove--and had thereupon felt her impulse determined with the same sharpness that had made the spring of her companion’s three weeks before. it was the hottest day of the season, and the shaded siesta, for people all at their ease, would certainly rather have been prescribed; but our young woman had perhaps not yet felt it so fully brought home that such refinements of repose, among them, constituted the empty chair at the feast. this was the more distinct as the feast, literally, in the great bedimmed dining-room, the cool, ceremonious semblance of luncheon, had just been taking place without mrs. verver. she had been represented but by the plea of a bad headache, not reported to the rest of the company by her husband, but offered directly to mr. verver himself, on their having assembled, by her maid, deputed for the effect and solemnly producing it. maggie had sat down, with the others, to viands artfully iced, to the slow circulation of precious tinkling jugs, to marked reserves of reference in many directions--poor fanny assingham herself scarce thrusting her nose out of the padded hollow into which she had withdrawn. a consensus of languor, which might almost have been taken for a community of dread, ruled the scene--relieved only by the fitful experiments of father mitchell, good holy, hungry man, a trusted and overworked london friend and adviser, who had taken, for a week or two, the light neighbouring service, local rites flourishing under maggie’s munificence, and was enjoying, as a convenience, all the bounties of the house. he conversed undiscouraged, father mitchell--conversed mainly with the indefinite, wandering smile of the entertainers, and the princess’s power to feel him on the whole a blessing for these occasions was not impaired by what was awkward in her consciousness of having, from the first of her trouble, really found her way without his guidance. she asked herself at times if he suspected how more than subtly, how perversely, she had dispensed with him, and she balanced between visions of all he must privately have guessed and certitudes that he had guessed nothing whatever. he might nevertheless have been so urbanely filling up gaps, at present, for the very reason that his instinct, sharper than the expression of his face, had sufficiently served him--made him aware of the thin ice, figuratively speaking, and of prolongations of tension, round about him, mostly foreign to the circles in which luxury was akin to virtue. some day in some happier season, she would confess to him that she hadn’t confessed, though taking so much on her conscience; but just now she was carrying in her weak, stiffened hand a glass filled to the brim, as to which she had recorded a vow that no drop should overflow. she feared the very breath of a better wisdom, the jostle of the higher light, of heavenly help itself; and, in addition, however that might be, she drew breath this afternoon, as never yet, in an element heavy to oppression. something grave had happened, somehow and somewhere, and she had, god knew, her choice of suppositions: her heart stood still when she wondered above all if the cord mightn’t at last have snapped between her husband and her father. she shut her eyes for dismay at the possibility of such a passage--there moved before them the procession of ugly forms it might have taken. “find out for yourself!” she had thrown to amerigo, for her last word, on the question of who else “knew,” that night of the breaking of the bowl; and she flattered herself that she hadn’t since then helped him, in her clear consistency, by an inch. it was what she had given him, all these weeks, to be busy with, and she had again and again lain awake for the obsession of this sense of his uncertainty ruthlessly and endlessly playing with his dignity. she had handed him over to an ignorance that couldn’t even try to become indifferent and that yet wouldn’t project itself, either, into the cleared air of conviction. in proportion as he was generous it had bitten into his spirit, and more than once she had said to herself that to break the spell she had cast upon him and that the polished old ivory of her father’s inattackable surface made so absolute, he would suddenly commit some mistake or some violence, smash some windowpane for air, fail even of one of his blest inveteracies of taste. in that way, fatally, he would have put himself in the wrong--blighting by a single false step the perfection of his outward show. these shadows rose and fell for her while father mitchell prattled; with other shadows as well, those that hung over charlotte herself, those that marked her as a prey to equal suspicions--to the idea, in particular, of a change, such a change as she didn’t dare to face, in the relations of the two men. or there were yet other possibilities, as it seemed to maggie; there were always too many, and all of them things of evil when one’s nerves had at last done for one all that nerves could do; had left one in a darkness of prowling dangers that was like the predicament of the night-watcher in a beast-haunted land who has no more means for a fire. she might, with such nerves, have supposed almost anything of any one; anything, almost, of poor bob assingham, condemned to eternal observances and solemnly appreciating her father’s wine; anything, verily, yes, of the good priest, as he finally sat back with fat folded hands and twiddled his thumbs on his stomach. the good priest looked hard at the decanters, at the different dishes of dessert--he eyed them, half-obliquely, as if they might have met him to-day, for conversation, better than any one present. but the princess had her fancy at last about that too; she was in the midst of a passage, before she knew it, between father mitchell and charlotte--some approach he would have attempted with her, that very morning perhaps, to the circumstance of an apparent detachment, recently noted in her, from any practice of devotion. he would have drawn from this, say, his artless inference--taken it for a sign of some smothered inward trouble and pointed, naturally, the moral that the way out of such straits was not through neglect of the grand remedy. he had possibly prescribed contrition--he had at any rate quickened in her the beat of that false repose to which our young woman’s own act had devoted her at her all so deluded instance. the falsity of it had laid traps compared to which the imputation of treachery even accepted might have seemed a path of roses. the acceptance, strangely, would have left her nothing to do--she could have remained, had she liked, all insolently passive; whereas the failure to proceed against her, as it might have been called, left her everything, and all the more that it was wrapped so in confidence. she had to confirm, day after day, the rightness of her cause and the justice and felicity of her exemption--so that wouldn’t there have been, fairly, in any explicit concern of father mitchell’s, depths of practical derision of her success? the question was provisionally answered, at all events, by the time the party at luncheon had begun to disperse--with maggie’s version of mrs. verver sharp to the point of representing her pretext for absence as a positive flight from derision. she met the good priest’s eyes before they separated, and priests were really, at the worst, so to speak, such wonderful people that she believed him for an instant on the verge of saying to her, in abysmal softness: “go to mrs. verver, my child--you go: you’ll find that you can help her.” this didn’t come, however; nothing came but the renewed twiddle of thumbs over the satisfied stomach and the full flush, the comical candour, of reference to the hand employed at fawns for mayonnaise of salmon. nothing came but the receding backs of each of the others--her father’s slightly bent shoulders, in especial, which seemed to weave his spell, by the force of habit, not less patiently than if his wife had been present. her husband indeed was present to feel anything there might be to feel--which was perhaps exactly why this personage was moved promptly to emulate so definite an example of “sloping.” he had his occupations--books to arrange perhaps even at fawns; the idea of the siesta, moreover, in all the conditions, had no need to be loudly invoked. maggie, was, in the event, left alone for a minute with mrs. assingham, who, after waiting for safety, appeared to have at heart to make a demonstration. the stage of “talking over” had long passed for them; when they communicated now it was on quite ultimate facts; but fanny desired to testify to the existence, on her part, of an attention that nothing escaped. she was like the kind lady who, happening to linger at the circus while the rest of the spectators pour grossly through the exits, falls in with the overworked little trapezist girl--the acrobatic support presumably of embarrassed and exacting parents--and gives her, as an obscure and meritorious artist, assurance of benevolent interest. what was clearest, always, in our young woman’s imaginings, was the sense of being herself left, for any occasion, in the breach. she was essentially there to bear the burden, in the last resort, of surrounding omissions and evasions, and it was eminently to that office she had been to-day abandoned--with this one alleviation, as appeared, of mrs. assingham’s keeping up with her. mrs. assingham suggested that she too was still on the ramparts--though her gallantry proved indeed after a moment to consist not a little of her curiosity. she had looked about and seen their companions beyond earshot. “don’t you really want us to go--?” maggie found a faint smile. “do you really want to--?” it made her friend colour. “well then--no. but we would, you know, at a look from you. we’d pack up and be off--as a sacrifice.” “ah, make no sacrifice,” said maggie. “see me through.” “that’s it--that’s all i want. i should be too base--! besides,” fanny went on, “you’re too splendid.” “splendid?” “splendid. also, you know, you are all but ‘through.’ you’ve done it,” said mrs. assingham. but maggie only half took it from her. “what does it strike you that i’ve done?” “what you wanted. they’re going.” maggie continued to look at her. “is that what i wanted?” “oh, it wasn’t for you to say. that was his business.” “my father’s?” maggie asked after an hesitation. “your father’s. he has chosen--and now she knows. she sees it all before her--and she can’t speak, or resist, or move a little finger. that’s what’s the matter with her,” said fanny assingham. it made a picture, somehow, for the princess, as they stood there--the picture that the words of others, whatever they might be, always made for her, even when her vision was already charged, better than any words of her own. she saw, round about her, through the chinks of the shutters, the hard glare of nature--saw charlotte, somewhere in it, virtually at bay, and yet denied the last grace of any protecting truth. she saw her off somewhere all unaided, pale in her silence and taking in her fate. “has she told you?” she then asked. her companion smiled superior. “_i_ don’t need to be told--either! i see something, thank god, every day.” and then as maggie might appear to be wondering what, for instance: “i see the long miles of ocean and the dreadful great country, state after state--which have never seemed to me so big or so terrible. i see them at last, day by day and step by step, at the far end--and i see them never come back. but never--simply. i see the extraordinary ‘interesting’ place--which i’ve never been to, you know, and you have--and the exact degree in which she will be expected to be interested.” “she will be,” maggie presently replied. “expected?” “interested.” for a little, after this, their eyes met on it; at the end of which fanny said: “she’ll be--yes--what she’ll have to be. and it will be--won’t it? for ever and ever.” she spoke as abounding in her friend’s sense, but it made maggie still only look at her. these were large words and large visions--all the more that now, really, they spread and spread. in the midst of them, however, mrs. assingham had soon enough continued. “when i talk of ‘knowing,’ indeed, i don’t mean it as you would have a right to do. you know because you see--and i don’t see him. i don’t make him out,” she almost crudely confessed. maggie again hesitated. “you mean you don’t make out amerigo?” but fanny shook her head, and it was quite as if, as an appeal to one’s intelligence, the making out of amerigo had, in spite of everything, long been superseded. then maggie measured the reach of her allusion, and how what she next said gave her meaning a richness. no other name was to be spoken, and mrs. assingham had taken that, without delay, from her eyes--with a discretion, still, that fell short but by an inch. “you know how he feels.” maggie at this then slowly matched her headshake. “i know nothing.” “you know how you feel.” but again she denied it. “i know nothing. if i did--!” “well, if you did?” fanny asked as she faltered. she had had enough, however. “i should die,” she said as she turned away. she went to her room, through the quiet house; she roamed there a moment, picking up, pointlessly, a different fan, and then took her way to the shaded apartments in which, at this hour, the principino would be enjoying his nap. she passed through the first empty room, the day nursery, and paused at an open door. the inner room, large, dim and cool, was equally calm; her boy’s ample, antique, historical, royal crib, consecrated, reputedly, by the guarded rest of heirs-apparent, and a gift, early in his career, from his grandfather, ruled the scene from the centre, in the stillness of which she could almost hear the child’s soft breathing. the prime protector of his dreams was installed beside him; her father sat there with as little motion--with head thrown back and supported, with eyes apparently closed, with the fine foot that was so apt to betray nervousness at peace upon the other knee, with the unfathomable heart folded in the constant flawless freshness of the white waistcoat that could always receive in its armholes the firm prehensile thumbs. mrs. noble had majestically melted, and the whole place signed her temporary abdication; yet the actual situation was regular, and maggie lingered but to look. she looked over her fan, the top of which was pressed against her face, long enough to wonder if her father really slept or if, aware of her, he only kept consciously quiet. did his eyes truly fix her between lids partly open, and was she to take this--his forebearance from any question--only as a sign again that everything was left to her? she at all events, for a minute, watched his immobility--then, as if once more renewing her total submission, returned, without a sound, to her own quarters. a strange impulse was sharp in her, but it was not, for her part, the desire to shift the weight. she could as little have slept as she could have slept that morning, days before, when she had watched the first dawn from her window. turned to the east, this side of her room was now in shade, with the two wings of the casement folded back and the charm she always found in her seemingly perched position--as if her outlook, from above the high terraces, was that of some castle-tower mounted on a rock. when she stood there she hung over, over the gardens and the woods--all of which drowsed below her, at this hour, in the immensity of light. the miles of shade looked hot, the banks of flowers looked dim; the peacocks on the balustrades let their tails hang limp and the smaller birds lurked among the leaves. nothing therefore would have appeared to stir in the brilliant void if maggie, at the moment she was about to turn away, had not caught sight of a moving spot, a clear green sunshade in the act of descending a flight of steps. it passed down from the terrace, receding, at a distance, from sight, and carried, naturally, so as to conceal the head and back of its bearer; but maggie had quickly recognised the white dress and the particular motion of this adventurer--had taken in that charlotte, of all people, had chosen the glare of noon for an exploration of the gardens, and that she could be betaking herself only to some unvisited quarter deep in them, or beyond them, that she had already marked as a superior refuge. the princess kept her for a few minutes in sight, watched her long enough to feel her, by the mere betrayal of her pace and direction, driven in a kind of flight, and then understood, for herself, why the act of sitting still had become impossible to either of them. there came to her, confusedly, some echo of an ancient fable--some vision of io goaded by the gadfly or of ariadne roaming the lone sea-strand. it brought with it all the sense of her own intention and desire; she too might have been, for the hour, some far-off harassed heroine--only with a part to play for which she knew, exactly, no inspiring precedent. she knew but that, all the while--all the while of her sitting there among the others without her--she had wanted to go straight to this detached member of the party and make somehow, for her support, the last demonstration. a pretext was all that was needful, and maggie after another instant had found one. she had caught a glimpse, before mrs. verver disappeared, of her carrying a book--made out, half lost in the folds of her white dress, the dark cover of a volume that was to explain her purpose in case of her being met with surprise, and the mate of which, precisely, now lay on maggie’s table. the book was an old novel that the princess had a couple of days before mentioned having brought down from portland place in the charming original form of its three volumes. charlotte had hailed, with a specious glitter of interest, the opportunity to read it, and our young woman had, thereupon, on the morrow, directed her maid to carry it to mrs. verver’s apartments. she was afterwards to observe that this messenger, unintelligent or inadvertent, had removed but one of the volumes, which happened not to be the first. still possessed, accordingly, of the first while charlotte, going out, fantastically, at such an hour, to cultivate romance in an arbour, was helplessly armed with the second, maggie prepared on the spot to sally forth with succour. the right volume, with a parasol, was all she required--in addition, that is, to the bravery of her general idea. she passed again through the house, unchallenged, and emerged upon the terrace, which she followed, hugging the shade, with that consciousness of turning the tables on her friend which we have already noted. but so far as she went, after descending into the open and beginning to explore the grounds, mrs. verver had gone still further--with the increase of the oddity, moreover, of her having exchanged the protection of her room for these exposed and shining spaces. it was not, fortunately, however, at last, that by persisting in pursuit one didn’t arrive at regions of admirable shade: this was the asylum, presumably, that the poor wandering woman had had in view--several wide alleys, in particular, of great length, densely overarched with the climbing rose and the honeysuckle and converging, in separate green vistas, at a sort of umbrageous temple, an ancient rotunda, pillared and statued, niched and roofed, yet with its uncorrected antiquity, like that of everything else at fawns, conscious hitherto of no violence from the present and no menace from the future. charlotte had paused there, in her frenzy, or what ever it was to be called; the place was a conceivable retreat, and she was staring before her, from the seat to which she appeared to have sunk, all unwittingly, as maggie stopped at the beginning of one of the perspectives. it was a repetition more than ever then of the evening on the terrace; the distance was too great to assure her she had been immediately seen, but the princess waited, with her intention, as charlotte on the other occasion had waited--allowing, oh allowing, for the difference of the intention! maggie was full of the sense of that--so full that it made her impatient; whereupon she moved forward a little, placing herself in range of the eyes that had been looking off elsewhere, but that she had suddenly called to recognition. charlotte had evidently not dreamed of being followed, and instinctively, with her pale stare, she stiffened herself for protest. maggie could make that out--as well as, further, however, that her second impression of her friend’s approach had an instant effect on her attitude. the princess came nearer, gravely and in silence, but fairly paused again, to give her time for whatever she would. whatever she would, whatever she could, was what maggie wanted--wanting above all to make it as easy for her as the case permitted. that was not what charlotte had wanted the other night, but this never mattered--the great thing was to allow her, was fairly to produce in her, the sense of highly choosing. at first, clearly, she had been frightened; she had not been pursued, it had quickly struck her, without some design on the part of her pursuer, and what might she not be thinking of in addition but the way she had, when herself the pursuer, made her stepdaughter take in her spirit and her purpose? it had sunk into maggie at the time, that hard insistence, and mrs. verver had felt it and seen it and heard it sink; which wonderful remembrance of pressure successfully applied had naturally, till now, remained with her. but her stare was like a projected fear that the buried treasure, so dishonestly come by, for which her companion’s still countenance, at the hour and afterwards, had consented to serve as the deep soil, might have worked up again to the surface, to be thrown back upon her hands. yes, it was positive that during one of these minutes the princess had the vision of her particular alarm. “it’s her lie, it’s her lie that has mortally disagreed with her; she can keep down no longer her rebellion at it, and she has come to retract it, to disown it and denounce it--to give me full in my face the truth instead.” this, for a concentrated instant, maggie felt her helplessly gasp--but only to let it bring home the indignity, the pity of her state. she herself could but tentatively hover, place in view the book she carried, look as little dangerous, look as abjectly mild, as possible; remind herself really of people she had read about in stories of the wild west, people who threw up their hands, on certain occasions, as a sign they weren’t carrying revolvers. she could almost have smiled at last, troubled as she yet knew herself, to show how richly she was harmless; she held up her volume, which was so weak a weapon, and while she continued, for consideration, to keep her distance, she explained with as quenched a quaver as possible. “i saw you come out--saw you from my window, and couldn’t bear to think you should find yourself here without the beginning of your book. this is the beginning; you’ve got the wrong volume, and i’ve brought you out the right.” she remained after she had spoken; it was like holding a parley with a possible adversary, and her intense, her exalted little smile asked for formal leave. “may i come nearer now?” she seemed to say--as to which, however, the next minute, she saw charlotte’s reply lose itself in a strange process, a thing of several sharp stages, which she could stand there and trace. the dread, after a minute, had dropped from her face; though, discernibly enough, she still couldn’t believe in her having, in so strange a fashion, been deliberately made up to. if she had been made up to, at least, it was with an idea--the idea that had struck her at first as necessarily dangerous. that it wasn’t, insistently wasn’t, this shone from maggie with a force finally not to be resisted; and on that perception, on the immense relief so constituted, everything had by the end of three minutes extraordinarily changed. maggie had come out to her, really, because she knew her doomed, doomed to a separation that was like a knife in her heart; and in the very sight of her uncontrollable, her blinded physical quest of a peace not to be grasped, something of mrs. assingham’s picture of her as thrown, for a grim future, beyond the great sea and the great continent had at first found fulfilment. she had got away, in this fashion--burning behind her, almost, the ships of disguise--to let her horror of what was before her play up without witnesses; and even after maggie’s approach had presented an innocent front it was still not to be mistaken that she bristled with the signs of her extremity. it was not to be said for them, either, that they were draped at this hour in any of her usual graces; unveiled and all but unashamed, they were tragic to the princess in spite of the dissimulation that, with the return of comparative confidence, was so promptly to operate. how tragic, in essence, the very change made vivid, the instant stiffening of the spring of pride--this for possible defence if not for possible aggression. pride indeed, the next moment, had become the mantle caught up for protection and perversity; she flung it round her as a denial of any loss of her freedom. to be doomed was, in her situation, to have extravagantly incurred a doom, so that to confess to wretchedness was, by the same stroke, to confess to falsity. she wouldn’t confess, she didn’t--a thousand times no; she only cast about her, and quite frankly and fiercely, for something else that would give colour to her having burst her bonds. her eyes expanded, her bosom heaved as she invoked it, and the effect upon maggie was verily to wish she could only help her to it. she presently got up--which seemed to mean “oh, stay if you like!” and when she had moved about awhile at random, looking away, looking at anything, at everything but her visitor; when she had spoken of the temperature and declared that she revelled in it; when she had uttered her thanks for the book, which, a little incoherently, with her second volume, she perhaps found less clever than she expected; when she had let maggie approach sufficiently closer to lay, untouched, the tribute in question on a bench and take up obligingly its superfluous mate: when she had done these things she sat down in another place, more or less visibly in possession of her part. our young woman was to have passed, in all her adventure, no stranger moments; for she not only now saw her companion fairly agree to take her then for the poor little person she was finding it so easy to appear, but fell, in a secret, responsive ecstasy, to wondering if there were not some supreme abjection with which she might be inspired. vague, but increasingly brighter, this possibility glimmered on her. it at last hung there adequately plain to charlotte that she had presented herself once more to (as they said) grovel; and that, truly, made the stage large. it had absolutely, within the time, taken on the dazzling merit of being large for each of them alike. “i’m glad to see you alone--there’s something i’ve been wanting to say to you. i’m tired,” said mrs. verver, “i’m tired--!” “tired--?” it had dropped the next thing; it couldn’t all come at once; but maggie had already guessed what it was, and the flush of recognition was in her face. “tired of this life--the one we’ve been leading. you like it, i know, but i’ve dreamed another dream.” she held up her head now; her lighted eyes more triumphantly rested; she was finding, she was following her way. maggie, by the same influence, sat in sight of it; there was something she was saving, some quantity of which she herself was judge; and it was for a long moment, even with the sacrifice the princess had come to make, a good deal like watching her, from the solid shore, plunge into uncertain, into possibly treacherous depths. “i see something else,” she went on; “i’ve an idea that greatly appeals to me--i’ve had it for a long time. it has come over me that we’re wrong. our real life isn’t here.” maggie held her breath. “‘ours’--?” “my husband’s and mine. i’m not speaking for you.” “oh!” said maggie, only praying not to be, not even to appear, stupid. “i’m speaking for ourselves. i’m speaking,” charlotte brought out, “for him.” “i see. for my father.” “for your father. for whom else?” they looked at each other hard now, but maggie’s face took refuge in the intensity of her interest. she was not at all even so stupid as to treat her companion’s question as requiring an answer; a discretion that her controlled stillness had after an instant justified. “i must risk your thinking me selfish--for of course you know what it involves. let me admit it--i am selfish. i place my husband first.” “well,” said maggie smiling and smiling, “since that’s where i place mine--!” “you mean you’ll have no quarrel with me? so much the better then; for,” charlotte went on with a higher and higher flight, “my plan is completely formed.” maggie waited--her glimmer had deepened; her chance somehow was at hand. the only danger was her spoiling it; she felt herself skirting an abyss. “what then, may i ask is your plan?” it hung fire but ten seconds; it came out sharp. “to take him home--to his real position. and not to wait.” “do you mean--a--this season?” “i mean immediately. and--i may as well tell you now--i mean for my own time. i want,” charlotte said, “to have him at last a little to myself; i want, strange as it may seem to you”--and she gave it all its weight “to keep the man i’ve married. and to do so, i see, i must act.” maggie, with the effort still to follow the right line, felt herself colour to the eyes. “immediately?” she thoughtfully echoed. “as soon as we can get off. the removal of everything is, after all, but a detail. that can always be done; with money, as he spends it, everything can. what i ask for,” charlotte declared, “is the definite break. and i wish it now.” with which her head, like her voice rose higher. “oh,” she added, “i know my difficulty!” far down below the level of attention, in she could scarce have said what sacred depths, maggie’s inspiration had come, and it had trembled the next moment into sound. “do you mean i’m your difficulty?” “you and he together--since it’s always with you that i’ve had to see him. but it’s a difficulty that i’m facing, if you wish to know; that i’ve already faced; that i propose to myself to surmount. the struggle with it--none too pleasant--hasn’t been for me, as you may imagine, in itself charming; i’ve felt in it at times, if i must tell you all, too great and too strange, an ugliness. yet i believe it may succeed.” she had risen, with this, mrs. verver, and had moved, for the emphasis of it, a few steps away; while maggie, motionless at first, but sat and looked at her. “you want to take my father from me?” the sharp, successful, almost primitive wail in it made charlotte turn, and this movement attested for the princess the felicity of her deceit. something in her throbbed as it had throbbed the night she stood in the drawing-room and denied that she had suffered. she was ready to lie again if her companion would but give her the opening. then she should know she had done all. charlotte looked at her hard, as if to compare her face with her note of resentment; and maggie, feeling this, met it with the signs of an impression that might pass for the impression of defeat. “i want really to possess him,” said mrs. verver. “i happen also to feel that he’s worth it.” maggie rose as if to receive her. “oh--worth it!” she wonderfully threw off. the tone, she instantly saw, again had its effect: charlotte flamed aloft--might truly have been believing in her passionate parade. “you’ve thought you’ve known what he’s worth?” “indeed then, my dear, i believe i have--as i believe i still do.” she had given it, maggie, straight back, and again it had not missed. charlotte, for another moment, only looked at her; then broke into the words--maggie had known they would come--of which she had pressed the spring. “how i see that you loathed our marriage!” “do you ask me?” maggie after an instant demanded. charlotte had looked about her, picked up the parasol she had laid on a bench, possessed herself mechanically of one of the volumes of the relegated novel and then, more consciously, flung it down again: she was in presence, visibly, of her last word. she opened her sunshade with a click; she twirled it on her shoulder in her pride. “‘ask’ you? do i need? how i see,” she broke out, “that you’ve worked against me!” “oh, oh, oh!” the princess exclaimed. her companion, leaving her, had reached one of the archways, but on this turned round with a flare. “you haven’t worked against me?” maggie took it and for a moment kept it; held it, with closed eyes, as if it had been some captured fluttering bird pressed by both hands to her breast. then she opened her eyes to speak. “what does it matter--if i’ve failed?” “you recognise then that you’ve failed?” asked charlotte from the threshold. maggie waited; she looked, as her companion had done a moment before, at the two books on the seat; she put them together and laid them down; then she made up her mind. “i’ve failed!” she sounded out before charlotte, having given her time, walked away. she watched her, splendid and erect, float down the long vista; then she sank upon a seat. yes, she had done all. part sixth. xl “i’ll do anything you like,” she said to her husband on one of the last days of the month, “if our being here, this way at this time, seems to you too absurd, or too uncomfortable, or too impossible. we’ll either take leave of them now, without waiting--or we’ll come back in time, three days before they start. i’ll go abroad with you, if you but say the word; to switzerland, the tyrol, the italian alps, to whichever of your old high places you would like most to see again--those beautiful ones that used to do you good after rome and that you so often told me about.” where they were, in the conditions that prompted this offer, and where it might indeed appear ridiculous that, with the stale london september close at hand, they should content themselves with remaining, was where the desert of portland place looked blank as it had never looked, and where a drowsy cabman, scanning the horizon for a fare, could sink to oblivion of the risks of immobility. but amerigo was of the odd opinion, day after day, that their situation couldn’t be bettered; and he even went at no moment through the form of replying that, should their ordeal strike her as exceeding their patience, any step they might take would be for her own relief. this was, no doubt, partly because he stood out so wonderfully, to the end, against admitting, by a weak word at least, that any element of their existence was, or ever had been, an ordeal; no trap of circumstance, no lapse of “form,” no accident of irritation, had landed him in that inconsequence. his wife might verily have suggested that he was consequent--consequent with the admirable appearance he had from the first so undertaken, and so continued, to present--rather too rigidly at her expense; only, as it happened, she was not the little person to do anything of the sort, and the strange tacit compact actually in operation between them might have been founded on an intelligent comparison, a definite collation positively, of the kinds of patience proper to each. she was seeing him through--he had engaged to come out at the right end if she would see him: this understanding, tacitly renewed from week to week, had fairly received, with the procession of the weeks, the consecration of time; but it scarce needed to be insisted on that she was seeing him on his terms, not all on hers, or that, in other words, she must allow him his unexplained and uncharted, his one practicably workable way. if that way, by one of the intimate felicities the liability to which was so far from having even yet completely fallen from him, happened handsomely to show him as more bored than boring (with advantages of his own freely to surrender, but none to be persuadedly indebted to others for,) what did such a false face of the matter represent but the fact itself that she was pledged? if she had questioned or challenged or interfered--if she had reserved herself that right--she wouldn’t have been pledged; whereas there were still, and evidently would be yet a while, long, tense stretches during which their case might have been hanging, for every eye, on her possible, her impossible defection. she must keep it up to the last, mustn’t absent herself for three minutes from her post: only on those lines, assuredly, would she show herself as with him and not against him. it was extraordinary how scant a series of signs she had invited him to make of being, of truly having been at any time, “with” his wife: that reflection she was not exempt from as they now, in their suspense, supremely waited--a reflection under the brush of which she recognised her having had, in respect to him as well, to “do all,” to go the whole way over, to move, indefatigably, while he stood as fixed in his place as some statue of one of his forefathers. the meaning of it would seem to be, she reasoned in sequestered hours, that he had a place, and that this was an attribute somehow indefeasible, unquenchable, which laid upon others--from the moment they definitely wanted anything of him-the necessity of taking more of the steps that he could, of circling round him, of remembering for his benefit the famous relation of the mountain to mahomet. it was strange, if one had gone into it, but such a place as amerigo’s was like something made for him beforehand by innumerable facts, facts largely of the sort known as historical, made by ancestors, examples, traditions, habits; while maggie’s own had come to show simply as that improvised “post”--a post of the kind spoken of as advanced--with which she was to have found herself connected in the fashion of a settler or a trader in a new country; in the likeness even of some indian squaw with a papoose on her back and barbarous bead-work to sell. maggie’s own, in short, would have been sought in vain in the most rudimentary map of the social relations as such. the only geography marking it would be doubtless that of the fundamental passions. the “end” that the prince was at all events holding out for was represented to expectation by his father-in-law’s announced departure for america with mrs. verver; just as that prospective event had originally figured as advising, for discretion, the flight of the younger couple, to say nothing of the withdrawal of whatever other importunate company, before the great upheaval of fawns. this residence was to be peopled for a month by porters, packers and hammerers, at whose operations it had become peculiarly public--public that is for portland place--that charlotte was to preside in force; operations the quite awful appointed scale and style of which had at no moment loomed so large to maggie’s mind as one day when the dear assinghams swam back into her ken besprinkled with sawdust and looking as pale as if they had seen samson pull down the temple. they had seen at least what she was not seeing, rich dim things under the impression of which they had retired; she having eyes at present but for the clock by which she timed her husband, or for the glass--the image perhaps would be truer--in which he was reflected to her as he timed the pair in the country. the accession of their friends from cadogan place contributed to all their intermissions, at any rate, a certain effect of resonance; an effect especially marked by the upshot of a prompt exchange of inquiries between mrs. assingham and the princess. it was noted, on the occasion of that anxious lady’s last approach to her young friend at fawns, that her sympathy had ventured, after much accepted privation, again to become inquisitive, and it had perhaps never so yielded to that need as on this question of the present odd “line” of the distinguished eccentrics. “you mean to say really that you’re going to stick here?” and then before maggie could answer: “what on earth will you do with your evenings?” maggie waited a moment--maggie could still tentatively smile. “when people learn we’re here--and of course the papers will be full of it!--they’ll flock back in their hundreds, from wherever they are, to catch us. you see you and the colonel have yourselves done it. as for our evenings, they won’t, i dare say, be particularly different from anything else that’s ours. they won’t be different from our mornings or our afternoons--except perhaps that you two dears will sometimes help us to get through them. i’ve offered to go anywhere,” she added; “to take a house if he will. but this--just this and nothing else--is amerigo’s idea. he gave it yesterday” she went on, “a name that, as, he said, described and fitted it. so you see”--and the princess indulged again in her smile that didn’t play, but that only, as might have been said, worked--“so you see there’s a method in our madness.” it drew mrs. assingham’s wonder. “and what then is the name?” “‘the reduction to its simplest expression of what we are doing’--that’s what he called it. therefore as we’re doing nothing, we’re doing it in the most aggravated way--which is the way he desires.” with which maggie further said: “of course i understand.” “so do i!” her visitor after a moment breathed. “you’ve had to vacate the house--that was inevitable. but at least here he doesn’t funk.” our young woman accepted the expression. “he doesn’t funk.” it only, however, half contented fanny, who thoughtfully raised her eyebrows. “he’s prodigious; but what is there--as you’ve ‘fixed’ it--to dodge? unless,” she pursued, “it’s her getting near him; it’s--if you’ll pardon my vulgarity--her getting at him. that,” she suggested, “may count with him.” but it found the princess prepared. “she can get near him here. she can get ‘at’ him. she can come up.” “can she?” fanny assingham questioned. “can’t she?” maggie returned. their eyes, for a minute, intimately met on it; after which the elder woman said: “i mean for seeing him alone.” “so do i,” said the princess. at which fanny, for her reasons, couldn’t help smiling. “oh, if it’s for that he’s staying--!” “he’s staying--i’ve made it out--to take anything that comes or calls upon him. to take,” maggie went on, “even that.” then she put it as she had at last put it to herself. “he’s staying for high decency.” “decency?” mrs. assingham gravely echoed. “decency. if she should try--!” “well--?” mrs. assingham urged. “well, i hope--!” “hope he’ll see her?” maggie hesitated, however; she made no direct reply. “it’s useless hoping,” she presently said. “she won’t. but he ought to.” her friend’s expression of a moment before, which had been apologised for as vulgar, prolonged its sharpness to her ear--that of an electric bell under continued pressure. stated so simply, what was it but dreadful, truly, that the feasibility of charlotte’s “getting at” the man who for so long had loved her should now be in question? strangest of all things, doubtless, this care of maggie’s as to what might make for it or make against it; stranger still her fairly lapsing at moments into a vague calculation of the conceivability, on her own part, with her husband, of some direct sounding of the subject. would it be too monstrous, her suddenly breaking out to him as in alarm at the lapse of the weeks: “wouldn’t it really seem that you’re bound in honour to do something for her, privately, before they go?” maggie was capable of weighing the risk of this adventure for her own spirit, capable of sinking to intense little absences, even while conversing, as now, with the person who had most of her confidence, during which she followed up the possibilities. it was true that mrs. assingham could at such times somewhat restore the balance--by not wholly failing to guess her thought. her thought, however, just at present, had more than one face--had a series that it successively presented. these were indeed the possibilities involved in the adventure of her concerning herself for the quantity of compensation that mrs. verver might still look to. there was always the possibility that she was, after all, sufficiently to get at him--there was in fact that of her having again and again done so. against this stood nothing but fanny assingham’s apparent belief in her privation--more mercilessly imposed, or more hopelessly felt, in the actual relation of the parties; over and beyond everything that, from more than three months back, of course, had fostered in the princess a like conviction. these assumptions might certainly be baseless--inasmuch as there were hours and hours of amerigo’s time that there was no habit, no pretence of his accounting for; inasmuch too as charlotte, inevitably, had had more than once, to the undisguised knowledge of the pair in portland place, been obliged to come up to eaton square, whence so many of her personal possessions were in course of removal. she didn’t come to portland place--didn’t even come to ask for luncheon on two separate occasions when it reached the consciousness of the household there that she was spending the day in london. maggie hated, she scorned, to compare hours and appearances, to weigh the idea of whether there hadn’t been moments, during these days, when an assignation, in easy conditions, a snatched interview, in an air the season had so cleared of prying eyes, mightn’t perfectly work. but the very reason of this was partly that, haunted with the vision of the poor woman carrying off with such bravery as she found to her hand the secret of her not being appeased, she was conscious of scant room for any alternative image. the alternative image would have been that the secret covered up was the secret of appeasement somehow obtained, somehow extorted and cherished; and the difference between the two kinds of hiding was too great to permit of a mistake. charlotte was hiding neither pride nor joy--she was hiding humiliation; and here it was that the princess’s passion, so powerless for vindictive flights, most inveterately bruised its tenderness against the hard glass of her question. behind the glass lurked the whole history of the relation she had so fairly flattened her nose against it to penetrate--the glass mrs. verver might, at this stage, have been frantically tapping, from within, by way of supreme, irrepressible entreaty. maggie had said to herself complacently, after that last passage with her stepmother in the garden of fawns, that there was nothing left for her to do and that she could thereupon fold her hands. but why wasn’t it still left to push further and, from the point of view of personal pride, grovel lower?--why wasn’t it still left to offer herself as the bearer of a message reporting to him their friend’s anguish and convincing him of her need? she could thus have translated mrs. verver’s tap against the glass, as i have called it, into fifty forms; could perhaps have translated it most into the form of a reminder that would pierce deep. “you don’t know what it is to have been loved and broken with. you haven’t been broken with, because in your relation what can there have been, worth speaking of, to break? ours was everything a relation could be, filled to the brim with the wine of consciousness; and if it was to have no meaning, no better meaning than that such a creature as you could breathe upon it, at your hour, for blight, why was i myself dealt with all for deception? why condemned after a couple of short years to find the golden flame--oh, the golden flame!--a mere handful of black ashes?” our young woman so yielded, at moments, to what was insidious in these foredoomed ingenuities of her pity, that for minutes together, sometimes, the weight of a new duty seemed to rest upon her--the duty of speaking before separation should constitute its chasm, of pleading for some benefit that might be carried away into exile like the last saved object of price of the emigre, the jewel wrapped in a piece of old silk and negotiable some day in the market of misery. this imagined service to the woman who could no longer help herself was one of the traps set for maggie’s spirit at every turn of the road; the click of which, catching and holding the divine faculty fast, was followed inevitably by a flutter, by a struggle of wings and even, as we may say, by a scattering of fine feathers. for they promptly enough felt, these yearnings of thought and excursions of sympathy, the concussion that couldn’t bring them down--the arrest produced by the so remarkably distinct figure that, at fawns, for the previous weeks, was constantly crossing, in its regular revolution, the further end of any watched perspective. whoever knew, or whoever didn’t, whether or to what extent charlotte, with natural business in eaton square, had shuffled other opportunities under that cloak, it was all matter for the kind of quiet ponderation the little man who so kept his wandering way had made his own. it was part of the very inveteracy of his straw hat and his white waistcoat, of the trick of his hands in his pockets, of the detachment of the attention he fixed on his slow steps from behind his secure pince-nez. the thing that never failed now as an item in the picture was that gleam of the silken noose, his wife’s immaterial tether, so marked to maggie’s sense during her last month in the country. mrs. verver’s straight neck had certainly not slipped it; nor had the other end of the long cord--oh, quite conveniently long!--disengaged its smaller loop from the hooked thumb that, with his fingers closed upon it, her husband kept out of sight. to have recognised, for all its tenuity, the play of this gathered lasso might inevitably be to wonder with what magic it was twisted, to what tension subjected, but could never be to doubt either of its adequacy to its office or of its perfect durability. these reminded states for the princess were in fact states of renewed gaping. so many things her father knew that she even yet didn’t! all this, at present, with mrs. assingham, passed through her in quick vibrations. she had expressed, while the revolution of her thought was incomplete, the idea of what amerigo “ought,” on his side, in the premises, to be capable of, and then had felt her companion’s answering stare. but she insisted on what she had meant. “he ought to wish to see her--and i mean in some protected and independent way, as he used to--in case of her being herself able to manage it. that,” said maggie with the courage of her conviction, “he ought to be ready, he ought to be happy, he ought to feel himself sworn--little as it is for the end of such a history!--to take from her. it’s as if he wished to get off without taking anything.” mrs. assingham deferentially mused. “but for what purpose is it your idea that they should again so intimately meet?” “for any purpose they like. that’s their affair.” fanny assingham sharply laughed, then irrepressibly fell back to her constant position. “you’re splendid--perfectly splendid.” to which, as the princess, shaking an impatient head, wouldn’t have it again at all, she subjoined: “or if you’re not it’s because you’re so sure. i mean sure of him.” “ah, i’m exactly not sure of him. if i were sure of him i shouldn’t doubt--!” but maggie cast about her. “doubt what?” fanny pressed as she waited. “well, that he must feel how much less than she he pays--and how that ought to keep her present to him.” this, in its turn, after an instant, mrs. assingham could meet with a smile. “trust him, my dear, to keep her present! but trust him also to keep himself absent. leave him his own way.” “i’ll leave him everything,” said maggie. “only--you know it’s my nature--i think.” “it’s your nature to think too much,” fanny assingham a trifle coarsely risked. this but quickened, however, in the princess the act she reprobated. “that may be. but if i hadn’t thought--!” “you wouldn’t, you mean, have been where you are?” “yes, because they, on their side, thought of everything but that. they thought of everything but that i might think.” “or even,” her friend too superficially concurred, “that your father might!” as to this, at all events, maggie discriminated. “no, that wouldn’t have prevented them; for they knew that his first care would be not to make me do so. as it is,” maggie added, “that has had to become his last.” fanny assingham took it in deeper--for what it immediately made her give out louder. “he’s splendid then.” she sounded it almost aggressively; it was what she was reduced to--she had positively to place it. “ah, that as much as you please!” maggie said this and left it, but the tone of it had the next moment determined in her friend a fresh reaction. “you think, both of you, so abysmally and yet so quietly. but it’s what will have saved you.” “oh,” maggie returned, “it’s what--from the moment they discovered we could think at all--will have saved them. for they’re the ones who are saved,” she went on. “we’re the ones who are lost.” “lost--?” “lost to each other--father and i.” and then as her friend appeared to demur, “oh yes,” maggie quite lucidly declared, “lost to each other much more, really, than amerigo and charlotte are; since for them it’s just, it’s right, it’s deserved, while for us it’s only sad and strange and not caused by our fault. but i don’t know,” she went on, “why i talk about myself, for it’s on father it really comes. i let him go,” said maggie. “you let him, but you don’t make him.” “i take it from him,” she answered. “but what else can you do?” “i take it from him,” the princess repeated. “i do what i knew from the first i should do. i get off by giving him up.” “but if he gives you?” mrs. assingham presumed to object. “doesn’t it moreover then,” she asked, “complete the very purpose with which he married--that of making you and leaving you more free?” maggie looked at her long. “yes--i help him to do that.” mrs. assingham hesitated, but at last her bravery flared. “why not call it then frankly his complete success?” “well,” said maggie, “that’s all that’s left me to do.” “it’s a success,” her friend ingeniously developed, “with which you’ve simply not interfered.” and as if to show that she spoke without levity mrs. assingham went further. “he has made it a success for them--!” “ah, there you are!” maggie responsively mused. “yes,” she said the next moment, “that’s why amerigo stays.” “let alone it’s why charlotte goes.” that mrs. assingham, and emboldened, smiled “so he knows--?” but maggie hung back. “amerigo--?” after which, however, she blushed--to her companion’s recognition. “your father. he knows what you know? i mean,” fanny faltered--“well, how much does he know?” maggie’s silence and maggie’s eyes had in fact arrested the push of the question--which, for a decent consistency, she couldn’t yet quite abandon. “what i should rather say is does he know how much?” she found it still awkward. “how much, i mean, they did. how far”--she touched it up--“they went.” maggie had waited, but only with a question. “do you think he does?” “know at least something? oh, about him i can’t think. he’s beyond me,” said fanny assingham. “then do you yourself know?” “how much--?” “how much.” “how far--?” “how far.” fanny had appeared to wish to make sure, but there was something she remembered--remembered in time and even with a smile. “i’ve told you before that i know absolutely nothing.” “well--that’s what _i_ know,” said the princess. her friend again hesitated. “then nobody knows--? i mean,” mrs. assingham explained, “how much your father does.” oh, maggie showed that she understood. “nobody.” “not--a little--charlotte?” “a little?” the princess echoed. “to know anything would be, for her, to know enough.” “and she doesn’t know anything?” “if she did,” maggie answered, “amerigo would.” “and that’s just it--that he doesn’t?” “that’s just it,” said the princess profoundly. on which mrs. assingham reflected. “then how is charlotte so held?” “just by that.” “by her ignorance?” “by her ignorance.” fanny wondered. “a torment--?” “a torment,” said maggie with tears in her eyes. her companion a moment watched them. “but the prince then--?” “how is he held?” maggie asked. “how is he held?” “oh, i can’t tell you that!” and the princess again broke off. xli a telegram, in charlotte’s name, arrived early--“we shall come and ask you for tea at five, if convenient to you. am wiring for the assinghams to lunch.” this document, into which meanings were to be read, maggie promptly placed before her husband, adding the remark that her father and his wife, who would have come up the previous night or that morning, had evidently gone to an hotel. the prince was in his “own” room, where he often sat now alone; half-a-dozen open newspapers, the “figaro” notably, as well as the “times,” were scattered about him; but, with a cigar in his teeth and a visible cloud on his brow, he appeared actually to be engaged in walking to and fro. never yet, on thus approaching him--for she had done it of late, under one necessity or another, several times--had a particular impression so greeted her; supremely strong, for some reason, as he turned quickly round on her entrance. the reason was partly the look in his face--a suffusion like the flush of fever, which brought back to her fanny assingham’s charge, recently uttered under that roof, of her “thinking” too impenetrably. the word had remained with her and made her think still more; so that, at first, as she stood there, she felt responsible for provoking on his part an irritation of suspense at which she had not aimed. she had been going about him these three months, she perfectly knew, with a maintained idea--of which she had never spoken to him; but what had at last happened was that his way of looking at her, on occasion, seemed a perception of the presence not of one idea, but of fifty, variously prepared for uses with which he somehow must reckon. she knew herself suddenly, almost strangely, glad to be coming to him, at this hour, with nothing more abstract than a telegram; but even after she had stepped into his prison under her pretext, while her eyes took in his face and then embraced the four walls that enclosed his restlessness, she recognised the virtual identity of his condition with that aspect of charlotte’s situation for which, early in the summer and in all the amplitude of a great residence, she had found, with so little seeking, the similitude of the locked cage. he struck her as caged, the man who couldn’t now without an instant effect on her sensibility give an instinctive push to the door she had not completely closed behind her. he had been turning twenty ways, for impatiences all his own, and when she was once shut in with him it was yet again as if she had come to him in his more than monastic cell to offer him light or food. there was a difference none the less, between his captivity and charlotte’s--the difference, as it might be, of his lurking there by his own act and his own choice; the admission of which had indeed virtually been in his starting, on her entrance, as if even this were in its degree an interference. that was what betrayed for her, practically, his fear of her fifty ideas, and what had begun, after a minute, to make her wish to repudiate or explain. it was more wonderful than she could have told; it was for all the world as if she was succeeding with him beyond her intention. she had, for these instants, the sense that he exaggerated, that the imputation of purpose had fairly risen too high in him. she had begun, a year ago, by asking herself how she could make him think more of her; but what was it, after all, he was thinking now? he kept his eyes on her telegram; he read it more than once, easy as it was, in spite of its conveyed deprecation, to understand; during which she found herself almost awestruck with yearning, almost on the point of marking somehow what she had marked in the garden at fawns with charlotte--that she had truly come unarmed. she didn’t bristle with intentions--she scarce knew, as he at this juncture affected her, what had become of the only intention she had come with. she had nothing but her old idea, the old one he knew; she hadn’t the ghost of another. presently in fact, when four or five minutes had elapsed, it was as if she positively, hadn’t so much even as that one. he gave her back her paper, asking with it if there were anything in particular she wished him to do. she stood there with her eyes on him, doubling the telegram together as if it had been a precious thing and yet all the while holding her breath. of a sudden, somehow, and quite as by the action of their merely having between them these few written words, an extraordinary fact came up. he was with her as if he were hers, hers in a degree and on a scale, with an intensity and an intimacy, that were a new and a strange quantity, that were like the irruption of a tide loosening them where they had stuck and making them feel they floated. what was it that, with the rush of this, just kept her from putting out her hands to him, from catching at him as, in the other time, with the superficial impetus he and charlotte had privately conspired to impart, she had so often, her breath failing her, known the impulse to catch at her father? she did, however, just yet, nothing inconsequent--though she couldn’t immediately have said what saved her; and by the time she had neatly folded her telegram she was doing something merely needful. “i wanted you simply to know--so that you mayn’t by accident miss them. for it’s the last,” said maggie. “the last?” “i take it as their good-bye.” and she smiled as she could always smile. “they come in state--to take formal leave. they do everything that’s proper. tomorrow,” she said, “they go to southampton.” “if they do everything that’s proper,” the prince presently asked, “why don’t they at least come to dine?” she hesitated, yet she lightly enough provided her answer. “that we must certainly ask them. it will be easy for you. but of course they’re immensely taken--!” he wondered. “so immensely taken that they can’t--that your father can’t--give you his last evening in england?” this, for maggie, was more difficult to meet; yet she was still not without her stop-gap. “that may be what they’ll propose--that we shall go somewhere together, the four of us, for a celebration--except that, to round it thoroughly off, we ought also to have fanny and the colonel. they don’t want them at tea, she quite sufficiently expresses; they polish them off, poor dears, they get rid of them, beforehand. they want only us together; and if they cut us down to tea,” she continued, “as they cut fanny and the colonel down to luncheon, perhaps it’s for the fancy, after all, of their keeping their last night in london for each other.” she said these things as they came to her; she was unable to keep them back, even though, as she heard herself, she might have been throwing everything to the winds. but wasn’t that the right way--for sharing his last day of captivity with the man one adored? it was every moment more and more for her as if she were waiting with him in his prison--waiting with some gleam of remembrance of how noble captives in the french revolution, the darkness of the terror, used to make a feast, or a high discourse, of their last poor resources. if she had broken with everything now, every observance of all the past months, she must simply then take it so--take it that what she had worked for was too near, at last, to let her keep her head. she might have been losing her head verily in her husband’s eyes--since he didn’t know, all the while, that the sudden freedom of her words was but the diverted intensity of her disposition personally to seize him. he didn’t know, either, that this was her manner--now she was with him--of beguiling audaciously the supremacy of suspense. for the people of the french revolution, assuredly, there wasn’t suspense; the scaffold, for those she was thinking of, was certain--whereas what charlotte’s telegram announced was, short of some incalculable error, clear liberation. just the point, however, was in its being clearer to herself than to him; her clearnesses, clearances--those she had so all but abjectly laboured for--threatened to crowd upon her in the form of one of the clusters of angelic heads, the peopled shafts of light beating down through iron bars, that regale, on occasion, precisely, the fevered vision of those who are in chains. she was going to know, she felt, later on--was going to know with compunction, doubtless, on the very morrow, how thumpingly her heart had beaten at this foretaste of their being left together: she should judge at leisure the surrender she was making to the consciousness of complications about to be bodily lifted. she should judge at leisure even that avidity for an issue which was making so little of any complication but the unextinguished presence of the others; and indeed that she was already simplifying so much more than her husband came out for her next in the face with which he listened. he might certainly well be puzzled, in respect to his father-in-law and mrs. verver, by her glance at their possible preference for a concentrated evening. “but it isn’t--is it?” he asked--“as if they were leaving each other?” “oh no; it isn’t as if they were leaving each other. they’re only bringing to a close--without knowing when it may open again--a time that has been, naturally, awfully interesting to them.” yes, she could talk so of their “time”--she was somehow sustained; she was sustained even to affirm more intensely her present possession of her ground. “they have their reasons--many things to think of; how can one tell? but there’s always, also, the chance of his proposing to me that we shall have our last hours together; i mean that he and i shall. he may wish to take me off to dine with him somewhere alone--and to do it in memory of old days. i mean,” the princess went on, “the real old days; before my grand husband was invented and, much more, before his grand wife was: the wonderful times of his first great interest in what he has since done, his first great plans and opportunities, discoveries and bargains. the way we’ve sat together late, ever so late, in foreign restaurants, which he used to like; the way that, in every city in europe, we’ve stayed on and on, with our elbows on the table and most of the lights put out, to talk over things he had that day seen or heard of or made his offer for, the things he had secured or refused or lost! there were places he took me to--you wouldn’t believe!--for often he could only have left me with servants. if he should carry me off with him to-night, for old sake’s sake, to the earl’s court exhibition, it will be a little--just a very, very little--like our young adventures.” after which while amerigo watched her, and in fact quite because of it, she had an inspiration, to which she presently yielded. if he was wondering what she would say next she had found exactly the thing. “in that case he will leave you charlotte to take care of in our absence. you’ll have to carry her off somewhere for your last evening; unless you may prefer to spend it with her here. i shall then see that you dine, that you have everything, quite beautifully. you’ll be able to do as you like.” she couldn’t have been sure beforehand, and had really not been; but the most immediate result of this speech was his letting her see that he took it for no cheap extravagance either of irony or of oblivion. nothing in the world, of a truth, had ever been so sweet to her, as his look of trying to be serious enough to make no mistake about it. she troubled him--which hadn’t been at all her purpose; she mystified him--which she couldn’t help and, comparatively, didn’t mind; then it came over her that he had, after all, a simplicity, very considerable, on which she had never dared to presume. it was a discovery--not like the other discovery she had once made, but giving out a freshness; and she recognised again in the light of it the number of the ideas of which he thought her capable. they were all, apparently, queer for him, but she had at least, with the lapse of the months, created the perception that there might be something in them; whereby he stared there, beautiful and sombre, at what she was at present providing him with. there was something of his own in his mind, to which, she was sure, he referred everything for a measure and a meaning; he had never let go of it, from the evening, weeks before, when, in her room, after his encounter with the bloomsbury cup, she had planted it there by flinging it at him, on the question of her father’s view of him, her determined “find out for yourself!” she had been aware, during the months, that he had been trying to find out, and had been seeking, above all, to avoid the appearance of any evasions of such a form of knowledge as might reach him, with violence or with a penetration more insidious, from any other source. nothing, however, had reached him; nothing he could at all conveniently reckon with had disengaged itself for him even from the announcement, sufficiently sudden, of the final secession of their companions. charlotte was in pain, charlotte was in torment, but he himself had given her reason enough for that; and, in respect to the rest of the whole matter of her obligation to follow her husband, that personage and she, maggie, had so shuffled away every link between consequence and cause, that the intention remained, like some famous poetic line in a dead language, subject to varieties of interpretation. what renewed the obscurity was her strange image of their common offer to him, her father’s and her own, of an opportunity to separate from mrs. verver with the due amount of form--and all the more that he was, in so pathetic a way, unable to treat himself to a quarrel with it on the score of taste. taste, in him, as a touchstone, was now all at sea; for who could say but that one of her fifty ideas, or perhaps forty-nine of them, wouldn’t be, exactly, that taste by itself, the taste he had always conformed to, had no importance whatever? if meanwhile, at all events, he felt her as serious, this made the greater reason for her profiting by it as she perhaps might never be able to profit again. she was invoking that reflection at the very moment he brought out, in reply to her last words, a remark which, though perfectly relevant and perfectly just, affected her at first as a high oddity. “they’re doing the wisest thing, you know. for if they were ever to go--!” and he looked down at her over his cigar. if they were ever to go, in short, it was high time, with her father’s age, charlotte’s need of initiation, and the general magnitude of the job of their getting settled and seasoned, their learning to “live into” their queer future--it was high time that they should take up their courage. this was eminent sense, but it didn’t arrest the princess, who, the next moment, had found a form for her challenge. “but shan’t you then so much as miss her a little? she’s wonderful and beautiful, and i feel somehow as if she were dying. not really, not physically,” maggie went on--“she’s so far, naturally, splendid as she is, from having done with life. but dying for us--for you and me; and making us feel it by the very fact of there being so much of her left.” the prince smoked hard a minute. “as you say, she’s splendid, but there is--there always will be--much of her left. only, as you also say, for others.” “and yet i think,” the princess returned, “that it isn’t as if we had wholly done with her. how can we not always think of her? it’s as if her unhappiness had been necessary to us--as if we had needed her, at her own cost, to build us up and start us.” he took it in with consideration, but he met it with a lucid inquiry. “why do you speak of the unhappiness of your father’s wife?” they exchanged a long look--the time that it took her to find her reply. “because not to--!” “well, not to--?” “would make me have to speak of him. and i can’t,” said maggie, “speak of him.” “you ‘can’t’--?” “i can’t.” she said it as for definite notice, not to be repeated. “there are too many things,” she nevertheless added. “he’s too great.” the prince looked at his cigar-tip, and then as he put back the weed: “too great for whom?” upon which as she hesitated, “not, my dear, too great for you,” he declared. “for me--oh, as much as you like.” “too great for me is what i mean. i know why i think it,” maggie said. “that’s enough.” he looked at her yet again as if she but fanned his wonder; he was on the very point, she judged, of asking her why she thought it. but her own eyes maintained their warning, and at the end of a minute he had uttered other words. “what’s of importance is that you’re his daughter. that at least we’ve got. and i suppose that, if i may say nothing else, i may say at least that i value it.” “oh yes, you may say that you value it. i myself make the most of it.” this again he took in, letting it presently put forth for him a striking connection. “she ought to have known you. that’s what’s present to me. she ought to have understood you better.” “better than you did?” “yes,” he gravely maintained, “better than i did. and she didn’t really know you at all. she doesn’t know you now.” “ah, yes she does!” said maggie. but he shook his head--he knew what he meant. “she not only doesn’t understand you more than i, she understands you ever so much less. though even i--!” “well, even you?” maggie pressed as he paused. “even i, even i even yet--!” again he paused and the silence held them. but maggie at last broke it. “if charlotte doesn’t understand me, it is that i’ve prevented her. i’ve chosen to deceive her and to lie to her.” the prince kept his eyes on her. “i know what you’ve chosen to do. but i’ve chosen to do the same.” “yes,” said maggie after an instant--“my choice was made when i had guessed yours. but you mean,” she asked, “that she understands you?” “it presents small difficulty!” “are you so sure?” maggie went on. “sure enough. but it doesn’t matter.” he waited an instant; then looking up through the fumes of his smoke, “she’s stupid,” he abruptly opined. “o--oh!” maggie protested in a long wail. it had made him in fact quickly change colour. “what i mean is that she’s not, as you pronounce her, unhappy.” and he recovered, with this, all his logic. “why is she unhappy if she doesn’t know?” “doesn’t know--?” she tried to make his logic difficult. “doesn’t know that you know.” it came from him in such a way that she was conscious, instantly, of three or four things to answer. but what she said first was: “do you think that’s all it need take?” and before he could reply, “she knows, she knows!” maggie proclaimed. “well then, what?” but she threw back her head, she turned impatiently away from him. “oh, i needn’t tell you! she knows enough. besides,” she went on, “she doesn’t believe us.” it made the prince stare a little. “ah, she asks too much!” that drew, however, from his wife another moan of objection, which determined in him a judgment. “she won’t let you take her for unhappy.” “oh, i know better than any one else what she won’t let me take her for!” “very well,” said amerigo, “you’ll see.” “i shall see wonders, i know. i’ve already seen them, and i’m prepared for them.” maggie recalled--she had memories enough. “it’s terrible”--her memories prompted her to speak. “i see it’s always terrible for women.” the prince looked down in his gravity. “everything’s terrible, cara, in the heart of man. she’s making her life,” he said. “she’ll make it.” his wife turned back upon him; she had wandered to a table, vaguely setting objects straight. “a little by the way then too, while she’s about it, she’s making ours.” at this he raised his eyes, which met her own, and she held him while she delivered herself of some thing that had been with her these last minutes. “you spoke just now of charlotte’s not having learned from you that i ‘know.’ am i to take from you then that you accept and recognise my knowledge?” he did the inquiry all the honours--visibly weighed its importance and weighed his response. “you think i might have been showing you that a little more handsomely?” “it isn’t a question of any beauty,” said maggie; “it’s only a question of the quantity of truth.” “oh, the quantity of truth!” the prince richly, though ambiguously, murmured. “that’s a thing by itself, yes. but there are also such things, all the same, as questions of good faith.” “of course there are!” the prince hastened to reply. after which he brought up more slowly: “if ever a man, since the beginning of time, acted in good faith!” but he dropped it, offering it simply for that. for that then, when it had had time somewhat to settle, like some handful of gold-dust thrown into the air--for that then maggie showed herself, as deeply and strangely taking it. “i see.” and she even wished this form to be as complete as she could make it. “i see.” the completeness, clearly, after an instant, had struck him as divine. “ah, my dear, my dear, my dear--!” it was all he could say. she wasn’t talking, however, at large. “you’ve kept up for so long a silence--!” “yes, yes, i know what i’ve kept up. but will you do,” he asked, “still one thing more for me?” it was as if, for an instant, with her new exposure, it had made her turn pale. “is there even one thing left?” “ah, my dear, my dear, my dear!”--it had pressed again in him the fine spring of the unspeakable. there was nothing, however, that the princess herself couldn’t say. “i’ll do anything, if you’ll tell me what.” “then wait.” and his raised italian hand, with its play of admonitory fingers, had never made gesture more expressive. his voice itself dropped to a tone--! “wait,” he repeated. “wait.” she understood, but it was as if she wished to have it from him. “till they’ve been here, you mean?” “yes, till they’ve gone. till they’re away.” she kept it up. “till they’ve left the country?” she had her eyes on him for clearness; these were the conditions of a promise--so that he put the promise, practically, into his response. “till we’ve ceased to see them--for as long as god may grant! till we’re really alone.” “oh, if it’s only that--!” when she had drawn from him thus then, as she could feel, the thick breath of the definite--which was the intimate, the immediate, the familiar, as she hadn’t had them for so long--she turned away again, she put her hand on the knob of the door. but her hand rested at first without a grasp; she had another effort to make, the effort of leaving him, of which everything that had just passed between them, his presence, irresistible, overcharged with it, doubled the difficulty. there was something--she couldn’t have told what; it was as if, shut in together, they had come too far--too far for where they were; so that the mere act of her quitting him was like the attempt to recover the lost and gone. she had taken in with her something that, within the ten minutes, and especially within the last three or four, had slipped away from her--which it was vain now, wasn’t it? to try to appear to clutch or to pick up. that consciousness in fact had a pang, and she balanced, intensely, for the lingering moment, almost with a terror of her endless power of surrender. he had only to press, really, for her to yield inch by inch, and she fairly knew at present, while she looked at him through her cloud, that the confession of this precious secret sat there for him to pluck. the sensation, for the few seconds, was extraordinary; her weakness, her desire, so long as she was yet not saving herself, flowered in her face like a light or a darkness. she sought for some word that would cover this up; she reverted to the question of tea, speaking as if they shouldn’t meet sooner. “then about five. i count on you.” on him too, however, something had descended; as to which this exactly gave him his chance. “ah, but i shall see you--! no?” he said, coming nearer. she had, with her hand still on the knob, her back against the door, so that her retreat, under his approach must be less than a step, and yet she couldn’t for her life, with the other hand, have pushed him away. he was so near now that she could touch him, taste him, smell him, kiss him, hold him; he almost pressed upon her, and the warmth of his face--frowning, smiling, she mightn’t know which; only beautiful and strange--was bent upon her with the largeness with which objects loom in dreams. she closed her eyes to it, and so, the next instant, against her purpose, she had put out her hand, which had met his own and which he held. then it was that, from behind her closed eyes, the right word came. “wait!” it was the word of his own distress and entreaty, the word for both of them, all they had left, their plank now on the great sea. their hands were locked, and thus she said it again. “wait. wait.” she kept her eyes shut, but her hand, she knew, helped her meaning--which after a minute she was aware his own had absorbed. he let her go--he turned away with this message, and when she saw him again his back was presented, as he had left her, and his face staring out of the window. she had saved herself and she got off. xlii later on, in the afternoon, before the others arrived, the form of their reunion was at least remarkable: they might, in their great eastward drawing-room, have been comparing notes or nerves in apprehension of some stiff official visit. maggie’s mind, in its restlessness, even played a little with the prospect; the high cool room, with its afternoon shade, with its old tapestries uncovered, with the perfect polish of its wide floor reflecting the bowls of gathered flowers and the silver and linen of the prepared tea-table, drew from her a remark in which this whole effect was mirrored, as well as something else in the prince’s movement while he slowly paced and turned. “we’re distinctly bourgeois!” she a trifle grimly threw off, as an echo of their old community; though to a spectator sufficiently detached they might have been quite the privileged pair they were reputed, granted only they were taken as awaiting the visit of royalty. they might have been ready, on the word passed up in advance, to repair together to the foot of the staircase--the prince somewhat in front, advancing indeed to the open doors and even going down, for all his princedom, to meet, on the stopping of the chariot, the august emergence. the time was stale, it was to be admitted, for incidents of magnitude; the september hush was in full possession, at the end of the dull day, and a couple of the long windows stood open to the balcony that overhung the desolation-the balcony from which maggie, in the springtime, had seen amerigo and charlotte look down together at the hour of her return from the regent’s park, near by, with her father, the principino and miss bogle. amerigo now again, in his punctual impatience, went out a couple of times and stood there; after which, as to report that nothing was in sight, he returned to the room with frankly nothing else to do. the princess pretended to read; he looked at her as he passed; there hovered in her own sense the thought of other occasions when she had cheated appearances of agitation with a book. at last she felt him standing before her, and then she raised her eyes. “do you remember how, this morning, when you told me of this event, i asked you if there were anything particular you wished me to do? you spoke of my being at home, but that was a matter of course. you spoke of something else,” he went on, while she sat with her book on her knee and her raised eyes; “something that makes me almost wish it may happen. you spoke,” he said, “of the possibility of my seeing her alone. do you know, if that comes,” he asked, “the use i shall make of it?” and then as she waited: “the use is all before me.” “ah, it’s your own business now!” said his wife. but it had made her rise. “i shall make it my own,” he answered. “i shall tell her i lied to her.” “ah no!” she returned. “and i shall tell her you did.” she shook her head again. “oh, still less!” with which therefore they stood at difference, he with his head erect and his happy idea perched, in its eagerness, on his crest. “and how then is she to know?” “she isn’t to know.” “she’s only still to think you don’t--?” “and therefore that i’m always a fool? she may think,” said maggie, “what she likes.” “think it without my protest--?” the princess made a movement. “what business is it of yours?” “isn’t it my right to correct her--?” maggie let his question ring--ring long enough for him to hear it himself; only then she took it up. “‘correct’ her?”--and it was her own now that really rang. “aren’t you rather forgetting who she is?” after which, while he quite stared for it, as it was the very first clear majesty he had known her to use, she flung down her book and raised a warning hand. “the carriage. come!” the “come!” had matched, for lucid firmness, the rest of her speech, and, when they were below, in the hall, there was a “go!” for him, through the open doors and between the ranged servants, that matched even that. he received royalty, bareheaded, therefore, in the persons of mr. and mrs. verver, as it alighted on the pavement, and maggie was at the threshold to welcome it to her house. later on, upstairs again, she even herself felt still more the force of the limit of which she had just reminded him; at tea, in charlotte’s affirmed presence--as charlotte affirmed it--she drew a long breath of richer relief. it was the strangest, once more, of all impressions; but what she most felt, for the half-hour, was that mr. and mrs. verver were making the occasion easy. they were somehow conjoined in it, conjoined for a present effect as maggie had absolutely never yet seen them; and there occurred, before long, a moment in which amerigo’s look met her own in recognitions that he couldn’t suppress. the question of the amount of correction to which charlotte had laid herself open rose and hovered, for the instant, only to sink, conspicuously, by its own weight; so high a pitch she seemed to give to the unconsciousness of questions, so resplendent a show of serenity she succeeded in making. the shade of the official, in her beauty and security, never for a moment dropped; it was a cool, high refuge, like the deep, arched recess of some coloured and gilded image, in which she sat and smiled and waited, drank her tea, referred to her husband and remembered her mission. her mission had quite taken form--it was but another name for the interest of her great opportunity--that of representing the arts and the graces to a people languishing, afar off, in ignorance. maggie had sufficiently intimated to the prince, ten minutes before, that she needed no showing as to what their friend wouldn’t consent to be taken for; but the difficulty now indeed was to choose, for explicit tribute of admiration, between the varieties of her nobler aspects. she carried it off, to put the matter coarsely, with a taste and a discretion that held our young woman’s attention, for the first quarter-of-an-hour, to the very point of diverting it from the attitude of her overshadowed, her almost superseded companion. but adam verver profited indeed at this time, even with his daughter, by his so marked peculiarity of seeming on no occasion to have an attitude; and so long as they were in the room together she felt him still simply weave his web and play out his long fine cord, knew herself in presence of this tacit process very much as she had known herself at fawns. he had a way, the dear man, wherever he was, of moving about the room, noiselessly, to see what it might contain; and his manner of now resorting to this habit, acquainted as he already was with the objects in view, expressed with a certain sharpness the intention of leaving his wife to her devices. it did even more than this; it signified, to the apprehension of the princess, from the moment she more directly took thought of him, almost a special view of these devices, as actually exhibited in their rarity, together with an independent, a settled appreciation of their general handsome adequacy, which scarcely required the accompaniment of his faint contemplative hum. charlotte throned, as who should say, between her hostess and her host, the whole scene having crystallised, as soon as she took her place, to the right quiet lustre; the harmony was not less sustained for being superficial, and the only approach to a break in it was while amerigo remained standing long enough for his father-in-law, vaguely wondering, to appeal to him, invite or address him, and then, in default of any such word, selected for presentation to the other visitor a plate of petits fours. maggie watched her husband--if it now could be called watching--offer this refreshment; she noted the consummate way--for “consummate” was the term she privately applied--in which charlotte cleared her acceptance, cleared her impersonal smile, of any betrayal, any slightest value, of consciousness; and then felt the slow surge of a vision that, at the end of another minute or two, had floated her across the room to where her father stood looking at a picture, an early florentine sacred subject, that he had given her on her marriage. he might have been, in silence, taking his last leave of it; it was a work for which he entertained, she knew, an unqualified esteem. the tenderness represented for her by his sacrifice of such a treasure had become, to her sense, a part of the whole infusion, of the immortal expression; the beauty of his sentiment looked out at her, always, from the beauty of the rest, as if the frame made positively a window for his spiritual face: she might have said to herself, at this moment, that in leaving the thing behind him, held as in her clasping arms, he was doing the most possible toward leaving her a part of his palpable self. she put her hand over his shoulder, and their eyes were held again, together, by the abiding felicity; they smiled in emulation, vaguely, as if speech failed them through their having passed too far; she would have begun to wonder the next minute if it were reserved to them, for the last stage, to find their contact, like that of old friends reunited too much on the theory of the unchanged, subject to shy lapses. “it’s all right, eh?” “oh, my dear--rather!” he had applied the question to the great fact of the picture, as she had spoken for the picture in reply, but it was as if their words for an instant afterwards symbolised another truth, so that they looked about at everything else to give them this extension. she had passed her arm into his, and the other objects in the room, the other pictures, the sofas, the chairs, the tables, the cabinets, the “important” pieces, supreme in their way, stood out, round them, consciously, for recognition and applause. their eyes moved together from piece to piece, taking in the whole nobleness--quite as if for him to measure the wisdom of old ideas. the two noble persons seated, in conversation, at tea, fell thus into the splendid effect and the general harmony: mrs. verver and the prince fairly “placed” themselves, however unwittingly, as high expressions of the kind of human furniture required, esthetically, by such a scene. the fusion of their presence with the decorative elements, their contribution to the triumph of selection, was complete and admirable; though, to a lingering view, a view more penetrating than the occasion really demanded, they also might have figured as concrete attestations of a rare power of purchase. there was much indeed in the tone in which adam verver spoke again, and who shall say where his thought stopped? “le compte y est. you’ve got some good things.” maggie met it afresh--“ah, don’t they look well?” their companions, at the sound of this, gave them, in a spacious intermission of slow talk, an attention, all of gravity, that was like an ampler submission to the general duty of magnificence; sitting as still, to be thus appraised, as a pair of effigies of the contemporary great on one of the platforms of madame tussaud. “i’m so glad--for your last look.” with which, after maggie--quite in the air--had said it, the note was struck indeed; the note of that strange accepted finality of relation, as from couple to couple, which almost escaped an awkwardness only by not attempting a gloss. yes, this was the wonder, that the occasion defied insistence precisely because of the vast quantities with which it dealt--so that separation was on a scale beyond any compass of parting. to do such an hour justice would have been in some degree to question its grounds--which was why they remained, in fine, the four of them, in the upper air, united in the firmest abstention from pressure. there was no point, visibly, at which, face to face, either amerigo or charlotte had pressed; and how little she herself was in danger of doing so maggie scarce needed to remember. that her father wouldn’t, by the tip of a toe--of that she was equally conscious: the only thing was that, since he didn’t, she could but hold her breath for what he would do instead. when, at the end of three minutes more, he had said, with an effect of suddenness, “well, mag--and the principino?” it was quite as if that were, by contrast, the hard, the truer voice. she glanced at the clock. “i ‘ordered’ him for half-past five--which hasn’t yet struck. trust him, my dear, not to fail you!” “oh, i don’t want him to fail me!” was mr. verver’s reply; yet uttered in so explicitly jocose a relation to the possibilities of failure that even when, just afterwards, he wandered in his impatience to one of the long windows and passed out to the balcony, she asked herself but for a few seconds if reality, should she follow him, would overtake or meet her there. she followed him of necessity--it came, absolutely, so near to his inviting her, by stepping off into temporary detachment, to give the others something of the chance that she and her husband had so fantastically discussed. beside him then, while they hung over the great dull place, clear and almost coloured now, coloured with the odd, sad, pictured, “old-fashioned” look that empty london streets take on in waning afternoons of the summer’s end, she felt once more how impossible such a passage would have been to them, how it would have torn them to pieces, if they had so much as suffered its suppressed relations to peep out of their eyes. this danger would doubtless indeed have been more to be reckoned with if the instinct of each--she could certainly at least answer for her own--had not so successfully acted to trump up other apparent connexions for it, connexions as to which they could pretend to be frank. “you mustn’t stay on here, you know,” adam verver said as a result of his unobstructed outlook. “fawns is all there for you, of course--to the end of my tenure. but fawns so dismantled,” he added with mild ruefulness, “fawns with half its contents, and half its best things, removed, won’t seem to you, i’m afraid, particularly lively.” “no,” maggie answered, “we should miss its best things. its best things, my dear, have certainly been removed. to be back there,” she went on, “to be back there--!” and she paused for the force of her idea. “oh, to be back there without anything good--!” but she didn’t hesitate now; she brought her idea forth. “to be back there without charlotte is more than i think would do.” and as she smiled at him with it, so she saw him the next instant take it--take it in a way that helped her smile to pass all for an allusion to what she didn’t and couldn’t say. this quantity was too clear--that she couldn’t at such an hour be pretending to name to him what it was, as he would have said, “going to be,” at fawns or anywhere else, to want for him. that was now--and in a manner exaltedly, sublimely--out of their compass and their question; so that what was she doing, while they waited for the principino, while they left the others together and their tension just sensibly threatened, what was she doing but just offer a bold but substantial substitute? nothing was stranger moreover, under the action of charlotte’s presence, than the fact of a felt sincerity in her words. she felt her sincerity absolutely sound--she gave it for all it might mean. “because charlotte, dear, you know,” she said, “is incomparable.” it took thirty seconds, but she was to know when these were over that she had pronounced one of the happiest words of her life. they had turned from the view of the street; they leaned together against the balcony rail, with the room largely in sight from where they stood, but with the prince and mrs. verver out of range. nothing he could try, she immediately saw, was to keep his eyes from lighting; not even his taking out his cigarette-case and saying before he said anything else: “may i smoke?” she met it, for encouragement, with her “my dear!” again, and then, while he struck his match, she had just another minute to be nervous--a minute that she made use of, however, not in the least to falter, but to reiterate with a high ring, a ring that might, for all she cared, reach the pair inside: “father, father--charlotte’s great!” it was not till after he had begun to smoke that he looked at her. “charlotte’s great.” they could close upon it--such a basis as they might immediately feel it make; and so they stood together over it, quite gratefully, each recording to the other’s eyes that it was firm under their feet. they had even thus a renewed wait, as for proof of it; much as if he were letting her see, while the minutes lapsed for their concealed companions, that this was finally just why--but just why! “you see,” he presently added, “how right i was. right, i mean, to do it for you.” “ah, rather!” she murmured with her smile. and then, as to be herself ideally right: “i don’t see what you would have done without her.” “the point was,” he returned quietly, “that i didn’t see what you were to do. yet it was a risk.” “it was a risk,” said maggie--“but i believed in it. at least for myself!” she smiled. “well now,” he smoked, “we see.” “we see.” “i know her better.” “you know her best.” “oh, but naturally!” on which, as the warranted truth of it hung in the air--the truth warranted, as who should say, exactly by the present opportunity to pronounce, this opportunity created and accepted--she found herself lost, though with a finer thrill than she had perhaps yet known, in the vision of all he might mean. the sense of it in her rose higher, rose with each moment that he invited her thus to see him linger; and when, after a little more, he had said, smoking again and looking up, with head thrown back and hands spread on the balcony rail, at the grey, gaunt front of the house, “she’s beautiful, beautiful!” her sensibility reported to her the shade of a new note. it was all she might have wished, for it was, with a kind of speaking competence, the note of possession and control; and yet it conveyed to her as nothing till now had done the reality of their parting. they were parting, in the light of it, absolutely on charlotte’s value--the value that was filling the room out of which they had stepped as if to give it play, and with which the prince, on his side, was perhaps making larger acquaintance. if maggie had desired, at so late an hour, some last conclusive comfortable category to place him in for dismissal, she might have found it here in its all coming back to his ability to rest upon high values. somehow, when all was said, and with the memory of her gifts, her variety, her power, so much remained of charlotte’s! what else had she herself meant three minutes before by speaking of her as great? great for the world that was before her--that he proposed she should be: she was not to be wasted in the application of his plan. maggie held to this then--that she wasn’t to be wasted. to let his daughter know it he had sought this brief privacy. what a blessing, accordingly, that she could speak her joy in it! his face, meanwhile, at all events, was turned to her, and as she met his eyes again her joy went straight. “it’s success, father.” “it’s success. and even this,” he added as the principino, appearing alone, deep within, piped across an instant greeting--“even this isn’t altogether failure!” they went in to receive the boy, upon whose introduction to the room by miss bogle charlotte and the prince got up--seemingly with an impressiveness that had caused miss bogle not to give further effect to her own entrance. she had retired, but the principino’s presence, by itself, sufficiently broke the tension--the subsidence of which, in the great room, ten minutes later, gave to the air something of the quality produced by the cessation of a sustained rattle. stillness, when the prince and princess returned from attending the visitors to their carriage, might have been said to be not so much restored as created; so that whatever next took place in it was foredoomed to remarkable salience. that would have been the case even with so natural, though so futile, a movement as maggie’s going out to the balcony again to follow with her eyes her father’s departure. the carriage was out of sight--it had taken her too long solemnly to reascend, and she looked awhile only at the great grey space, on which, as on the room still more, the shadow of dusk had fallen. here, at first, her husband had not rejoined her; he had come up with the boy, who, clutching his hand, abounded, as usual, in remarks worthy of the family archives; but the two appeared then to have proceeded to report to miss bogle. it meant something for the princess that her husband had thus got their son out of the way, not bringing him back to his mother; but everything now, as she vaguely moved about, struck her as meaning so much that the unheard chorus swelled. yet this above all--her just being there as she was and waiting for him to come in, their freedom to be together there always--was the meaning most disengaged: she stood in the cool twilight and took in, all about her, where it lurked, her reason for what she had done. she knew at last really why--and how she had been inspired and guided, how she had been persistently able, how, to her soul, all the while, it had been for the sake of this end. here it was, then, the moment, the golden fruit that had shone from afar; only, what were these things, in the fact, for the hand and for the lips, when tested, when tasted--what were they as a reward? closer than she had ever been to the measure of her course and the full face of her act, she had an instant of the terror that, when there has been suspense, always precedes, on the part of the creature to be paid, the certification of the amount. amerigo knew it, the amount; he still held it, and the delay in his return, making her heart beat too fast to go on, was like a sudden blinding light on a wild speculation. she had thrown the dice, but his hand was over her cast. he opened the door, however, at last--he hadn’t been away ten minutes; and then, with her sight of him renewed to intensity, she seemed to have a view of the number. his presence alone, as he paused to look at her, somehow made it the highest, and even before he had spoken she had begun to be paid in full. with that consciousness, in fact, an extraordinary thing occurred; the assurance of her safety so making her terror drop that already, within the minute, it had been changed to concern for his own anxiety, for everything that was deep in his being and everything that was fair in his face. so far as seeing that she was “paid” went, he might have been holding out the money-bag for her to come and take it. but what instantly rose, for her, between the act and her acceptance was the sense that she must strike him as waiting for a confession. this, in turn, charged her with a new horror: if that was her proper payment she would go without money. his acknowledgment hung there, too monstrously, at the expense of charlotte, before whose mastery of the greater style she had just been standing dazzled. all she now knew, accordingly, was that she should be ashamed to listen to the uttered word; all, that is, but that she might dispose of it on the spot forever. “isn’t she too splendid?” she simply said, offering it to explain and to finish. “oh, splendid!” with which he came over to her. “that’s our help, you see,” she added--to point further her moral. it kept him before her therefore, taking in--or trying to--what she so wonderfully gave. he tried, too clearly, to please her--to meet her in her own way; but with the result only that, close to her, her face kept before him, his hands holding her shoulders, his whole act enclosing her, he presently echoed: “‘see’? i see nothing but you.” and the truth of it had, with this force, after a moment, so strangely lighted his eyes that, as for pity and dread of them, she buried her own in his breast. 