"I am tolerably well convinced that I shall never marry at all. Reason tells me so, and I am not so utterly the slave of feeling but that I can occasionally hear her voice."

This does not sound much like the woman who could write of Jane Eyre and Rochester; but there were depths of passion in the little woman, probably unsuspected by herself.

Again she writes, in 1845:—

"I know that if women wish to escape the stigma of husband-hunting, they must act and look like marble or clay,—cold, expressionless, bloodless; for every appearance of feeling, of joy, sorrow, friendliness, antipathy, admiration, disgust, are alike construed by the world into an attempt to hook a husband. Never mind! well-meaning women have their own consciences to comfort them, after all. Do not therefore be too much afraid of showing yourself as you are, affectionate and good-hearted; do not harshly repress sentiments and feelings excellent in themselves, because you fear that some puppy may fancy you are letting them come out to fascinate him; do not condemn yourself to live only by halves, because if you showed too much animation some pragmatical thing in breeches might take it into his pate to imagine that you desired to dedicate your life to inanity. Write again soon, for I feel rather fierce and want stroking down."

That the sisters were not without their own perturbations and heart troubles, even in the deep seclusion of their lonely home, may be judged by some extracts from a poem written by Emily, who never confided anything to any friend but her own sombre muse.

"Cold is the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee, Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave. Have I forgot, my only love, to love thee, Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?

"Now, when removed, do my thoughts no longer hover Over the mountains on that northern shore, Resting their wings where heath and fern leaves cover Thy noble heart forever, evermore?

"Cold in the grave, and fifteen wild Decembers From these brown hills have melted into spring; Faithful indeed the love is that remembers After such years of change and suffering."

That Charlotte had some admirers among her father's curates is well known, and that Mr. Nichols paid court to her eight years previous to the time of her marriage with him. That she was capable of intense and passionate devotion there can be no doubt, but we have no hint as to whom she had lavished it upon, in any of her letters.

She was always extremely sensitive about her personal appearance, considering herself irredeemably ugly, and always thinking that people must be disgusted with her looks. She purposely made her heroine in "Jane Eyre" unattractive, as she felt it an injustice that a woman must always be judged by her looks, and she felt that novelists were somewhat to blame in the matter, as they always made their heroines beautiful in person, however unattractive in mind or character. She was extremely short,—"stunted," as she herself calls it,—never having grown any after the days of her starvation at Cowan's Bridge. She had soft brown hair, and good and expressive eyes, though she was so near-sighted; a large mouth; and a broad, square, somewhat overhanging forehead. Her voice was very sweet, and she was not at all the unattractive person she fancied herself, though by no means beautiful. She was exquisitely neat in her dress, and dainty about her gloves and shoes. She had a keen and delicate touch, and could do any difficult work with her hands, which were the smallest perhaps ever seen upon a grown woman. Her needlework was marvellous, and she was an exquisite housekeeper, attending to the minutest details herself. Her circle of friends and acquaintances was a very narrow one all her life, though after the publication of "Jane Eyre" it of course widened and improved.

Harriet Martineau and Mrs. Gaskell proved themselves warm and enthusiastic friends to Charlotte; and Thackeray, who met her in London, where she visited her publishers, was much pleased with her, and wrote very kindly of her after her death. Sir James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth became much interested in her, and she enjoyed her visits to them in Westmoreland very highly. The Lake country was a revelation to her, though she was somewhat oppressed by seeing it all in company. She writes:—

"If I could only have dropped unseen out of the carriage, and gone away by myself in amongst those grand hills and sweet dales, I should have drunk in the full power of this glorious scenery. In company, this can hardly be."

Again she writes to another:—

"Decidedly I find it does not agree with me to prosecute the search for the picturesque in a carriage. A wagon, a spring-cart, even a post-chaise might do; but a carriage upsets everything. I longed to slip out unseen, and to run away by myself in amongst the hills and dales. Erratic and vagrant instincts tormented me; and these I was obliged to control, or rather suppress, for fear of growing in any degree enthusiastic, and thus drawing attention to 'the lioness,' the authoress."

The fact of her having sprung into sudden fame immediately after she was known as the author of "Jane Eyre"—the most wonderful book of her day—was a matter of great surprise to her, and would doubtless have afforded her very keen pleasure, only that she was so overburdened with home cares and sorrows at that time. Even the sweetness of her literary triumph was embittered by the sadness of the home life. "Jane Eyre" had been written during their worst trials with Branwell, and "Shirley" just after his death and during the illness of Emily and Anne, both works being the product of the very darkest hours of her darkened life. If these works are morbid and unhealthy, as has been asserted, is it any wonder, when we consider what must have been the state of her mind while writing them? She was most devotedly attached to her sisters; indeed, her very life may be said to have been bound up in theirs; and it was peculiarly hard for her to lose them just when success appeared to be at hand, and they might have looked forward to something of happiness during the remainder of their lives. Charlotte gives her own affecting account of Emily's death, which throws some light upon the character of that remarkable woman, as remarkable perhaps as Charlotte herself, although she did not live to do any work as lasting as that of her elder sister. She says:—

"But a great change approached. Affliction came in that shape which to anticipate is dread; to look back on, grief. In the very heat and burden of the day the laborers failed over their work. My sister Emily first declined. . . . Never in all her life had she lingered over any task that lay before her, and she did not linger now. She sank rapidly. She made haste to leave us. Day by day, when I saw with what a front she met suffering, I looked on her with an anguish of wonder and love. I have seen nothing like it; but indeed I have never seen her parallel in anything. Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone. The awful point was that, while full of ruth for others, on herself she had no pity; the spirit was inexorable to the flesh; from the trembling hands, the unnerved limbs, the fading eyes, the same service was exacted as they had rendered in health. To stand by and witness this, and not dare to remonstrate, was a pain no words can render."

Emily never left the house after Branwell's death. She made no complaint, but her friends could see that she was deadly ill. Yet she would have no doctor, and insisted upon going on with her work as usual. This she did until she was actually dying. Branwell had insisted upon standing up to die; and poor Emily had scarcely consented to lie down, when she was gone. Their will-power in their last agonies was something almost fearful to contemplate. As the old bereaved father and Charlotte and Anne followed the coffin to the grave, Emily's old, fierce, faithful bull-dog, to which she had been so much attached, came out and walked beside them. When they returned he lay down by Emily's door, and howled pitifully for many days. Charlotte recurred to this death-scene continually. In one letter she says:—

"I cannot forget Emily's death-day; it becomes a more fixed, a darker, a more frequently recurring idea in my mind than ever. It was very terrible. She was torn, conscious, panting, reluctant, though resolute, out of a happy life. But it will not do to dwell on these things."

Anne Bronte did not long survive her sister, and Charlotte was now alone except that she had the care of her aged father, who was feeble and nearly blind. The awful loneliness of the old house almost crazed her, but she went faithfully to work, and bore up with unheard of fortitude. Two or three solitary years went by, when Mr. Nichols, her father's curate, renewed his suit to Miss Bronte. Mrs. Gaskell tells us that he was one who had known her intimately for years, and was not a man to be attracted by any kind of literary fame. He was a grave, reserved, conscientious man, with strong religious feeling. In silence he had watched and loved her long.

She thus describes the meeting:—

"Instead I heard a tap, and like lightning it flashed upon me what was coming. He entered. He stood before me. What his words were you can imagine; his manner you can hardly realize, nor can I forget it. He made me for the first time feel what it costs a man to declare affection when he doubts response.... The spectacle of one ordinarily so statue-like, thus trembling, stirred, and overcome, gave me a strange shock. I could only entreat him to leave me then, and promise a reply on the morrow."

Mr. Bronte, when consulted, was so displeased with the whole proceeding, and was so weak at this time, that Charlotte, fearing ill consequences to him, gave Mr. Nichols a refusal, whereupon he resigned his curacy and left the country. But a year or two after, seeing that Charlotte was unhappy, and fearing for her health, her father withdrew his opposition; Mr. Nichols was recalled, and the marriage finally took place. Mrs. Gaskell says:—

"She expressed herself as thankful to One who had guided her through much difficulty and much distress and perplexity of mind; and yet she felt what most thoughtful women do, who marry when the first flash of careless youth is over, that there was a strange, half-sad feeling in making announcements of an engagement, for cares and fears come mingled inextricably with hopes. One great relief to her mind at this time was derived from the conviction that her father took a positive pleasure in all the thoughts about and preparations for her wedding. He was anxious that things should be expedited, and much interested in preparations for Mr. Nichols's reception into the household."

Again:—

"The news of the wedding had slipt abroad before the little party came out of the church, and many old and humble friends were there, seeing her look 'like a snowdrop' as they say. Her dress was white embroidered muslin, with a lace mantle, and white bonnet trimmed with green leaves, which perhaps might suggest the resemblance to the pale wintry flower."

Her married love and happiness were of very brief duration; a few short months, and she lay upon the bed from which she would rise no more. Waking for an instant, we are told, "from this stupor of intelligence, she saw her husband's woe-worn face, and caught the sound of some murmured words of prayer that God would spare her. 'Oh,' she whispered forth, 'I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy.'" But love or prayer could not stay the hand of death, which had marked all of this family for an early doom, and she passed sweetly away in the arms of her devoted husband. Thank God for the little glimpse of womanly happiness which He gave her at the last, and for the faithful mourner who held her memory so sacred for many years in the old gray manse. Mr. Nichols watched faithfully over the old father in his last days, and only left Haworth when duty held him there no longer, although the place had grown inexpressibly sad to him after his affliction. To the graves of the gifted women who sleep there, pilgrimages are made to this day. The Yorkshire region has changed much; and many now seek its wild heathery moors, not only for its own sake, but for the sake of those who loved and suffered in the little gray parsonage among its bleak hills. Long will the genius which created "Jane Eyre" and "Villette" and "Shirley" delight the world; but the remembrance of the writer's womanly virtues will linger when all these shall have passed away.



MARGARET FULLER.

There was little in the life of the people of New England in the early part of the present century upon which to feed the imagination of a precocious and romantic child like Margaret Fuller; and her childhood, though outwardly fortunate and well placed, was one of labor and repression, and far from happy, if we may judge by her own account of it. The theology of the people was gloomy. They made everything connected with religion unlovely, and this austerity was particularly distasteful to one of Margaret's imaginative temperament and heroic disposition. Her ungratified imagination brought her early into conflict with the circumstances and surroundings of her life.

All the poetry of her nature cried out against the lives of toil and care by which she was surrounded,—lives at that time lighted up by little of art or literature or music, but held to a stern standard of duty and self-abnegation. Margaret's nature craved beauty and poetry and art and lavish affection, and it was nursed on a somewhat grim diet of hard work and little expressed affection, although her parents were both loving and intelligent. Her father himself educated her, being a Harvard graduate, and a lawyer and politician of that day. He taught her Latin at the age of six years; and she says that the lessons set for her were as many and various as the hours would allow, and on subjects far beyond her age. These lessons were recited to her father after office hours, which kept the poor tired child up till late in the evening, and as a result the youthful prodigy was terrified at night by dreams and illusions, and given to sleep-walking. The result of such over-tension of a childish mind was a morbid and unhealthy state of both body and mind; and though she loved study, these great demands made upon her powers almost overcame her with their weight. She had a natural passion for reading, and when a mere child singled out Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Moliere, from all the books in the library, for her especial favorites.

She was but eight years old when she took a passionate interest in "Romeo and Juliet," and was disgraced in the family for perusing it on Sunday; and the imaginative child was always seeking for the heroic figures of her Shakespearian world in the every-day life about her, and was always disappointed. Altogether, we must call it an unhappy and unfortunate childhood, and cannot but think much finer intellectual as well as moral results would have followed a different treatment in her home.

In her early girlhood she mixed much in the college society at Cambridge, and would have been taken for a much older person than she really was. She was not handsome, but her animated countenance made its own impression, and awakened interest in almost all who saw her. She made some of her life-long friends at this time. Dr. Hedge, James Freeman Clarke, and William Henry Channing were among them. With Emerson she made acquaintance a little later, through Miss Martineau, then visiting in this country. She was not at this time an agreeable person. She was much derided for her self-esteem by people who knew her slightly, and was also accused of hauteur and arrogance. Even Lowell was thus impressed by her, and put her in the pillory in the "Fable for Critics." He proposes to establish new punishments for criminals, thus:—

"I propose to shut up every doer of wrong With these desperate books, for such terms, short or long, As by statute in such cases made and provided Shall be by our wise legislators decided: Thus:—Let murderers be shut, to grow wiser and cooler, At hard labor for life on the works of Miss ——."

And again:—

"For a woman must surely see well, if she try, The whole of whose being's a capital I."

And still further:—

"Phoebus! you know That the infinite Soul has its infinite woe, As I ought to know, having lived cheek by jowl, Since the day I was born, with the Infinite Soul."

But people who knew her well soon lost this unfavorable impression, and she was almost idolized by her real friends. Mr. Emerson thus records his first impressions of her: "She had a face and frame that would indicate fulness and tenacity of life. . . . She was then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like self-possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing pre-possessing. Her extreme plainness, a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids, the nasal tone of her voice,—all repelled; and I said to myself, 'We shall never get far.'" He adds: "I believe I fancied her too much interested in personal history; and her talk was a comedy in which dramatic justice was done to everybody's foibles. I remember she made me laugh more than I liked." But, "soon her wit had effaced the impression of her personal unattractiveness, and the eyes, which were so plain at first, swam with fun and drolleries and the very tides of joy and superabundant life," and he saw "that her satire was only the pastime and necessity of her talent;" and as he came to know her better, "her plane of character rose constantly in my estimation, disclosing many moods and powers in successive platforms or terraces, each above each." All superior women were drawn to her at once, and even those noted only for beauty or social talent vied in their devotion to her. A few years later, it was for this circle that her famous conversation classes were held in Boston; and so great was their popularity that she continued them for six years. These conversations were entirely unique in character, and attracted great attention in their day. The novelty of such a departure in the Boston of forty years ago may be imagined, and the criticism drawn upon a woman who should inaugurate such an innovation was in some cases very severe. In regard to these same conversations, as in other things, the impression she made was twofold. Mrs. Howe says: "Without the fold of her admirers stood carping, unkind critics; within were enthusiastic and grateful friends." But as to her great eloquence and ability, there was but one opinion. Even critics admitted that no woman had spoken like this before. And she addressed her fine audience of Boston's most cultivated women with entire ease and freedom, and gave many of them an impulse toward an intellectual career which nothing else at that time could have done.

Here was the real beginning of what may be called the woman question in this country. Before Margaret Fuller's day the agitation regarding woman's career and work in the world was practically unknown here; and all the ideas which have now become incorporated into the platform of the woman's party found in her their first and perhaps their best exponent. Very little that is new has since been urged upon this question. Her powerful mind seemed to have grasped the whole subject, and to have given it the best expression of which it was capable. She embodied her ideas after a time in her book, "Woman in the Nineteenth Century;" and although the literature of the subject is now voluminous, that book is still read and referred to.

Finding it necessary to support herself and to care for her mother and brothers after her father's death, she at first taught school, at one time in Mr. Alcott's famous school in Boston and afterwards in Providence, and then took a position upon the "New York Tribune," kindly offered her by Mr. Greeley. She supported her brothers in college, and aided her mother for some years, putting by her own ambitions with a cheerful outward appearance, though oftentimes with a heavy heart. She had many and very ambitious literary projects, few of which were ever destined to be carried out. For a woman who occupied so much the minds of the men of her day and of a succeeding generation, she really left little upon which to base their admiration. What she was, rather than what she did, seems to have made its impression upon her time. That her vocation was to speak rather than to write, there seems little doubt. She had the rare but much-prized gift of eloquence, and in these latter days would no doubt have made a very large success as a speaker. Some who listened to her think that she might have been the peer of Wendell Phillips in oratory, had she bent her powers entirely in that direction. As it is, her genius has become almost wholly a tradition. There are many to-day who cannot guess the secret of the continued interest the world feels in her. That secret lies largely in the impression she made upon many of the famous men of her time. They have transmitted her name to posterity along with their own. Horace Greeley at first determined not to like her personally, and avoided her even after she became a member of his family; but he ended by growing as enthusiastic over her as the rest. Even crabbed Carlyle, though much prejudiced against women of her sort, bore testimony to his liking for her. He writes to Emerson:—

"Margaret is an excellent soul; in real regard with both of us here. Since she went I have been reading some of her papers in a new book we have got; greatly superior to all I knew before,—in fact, undeniable utterances of a truly heroic mind, altogether unique, so far as I know, among the writing women of this generation; rare enough too, God knows, among the writing men. She is very narrow, but she is truly high. Honor to Margaret, and more and more good speed to her!"

It was not until 1846 that Margaret's long desire to visit Europe was gratified. It had been the dream of her life, and one cannot but be sad at thought of its tragic ending. She spent some time in London, seeing all the celebrities of the day there, and then crossed over to Paris. Like London, Paris had then some brilliant men and women, whose peers she has not seen since. Rachel was the queen of the tragic stage, George Sand queen of the literary domain. De Balzac, Eugene Sue, Dumas pere, and Beranger were all alive, and the centre of the Parisian literary coterie. Liszt and Chopin held the musical world in the bondage of sweet sounds. Into this little inner circle Margaret entered, and did not fail to make her mark there. She was a second Madame de Stael in conversation, and in her little circle was recognized as such.

From Paris she went to Italy, where the real romance of her life was enacted and its tragic denouement prepared for. Italy had been her promised land from early youth. She had longed for its sunny clime, amid the storms and winds of bleak New England; for its historic associations, amid the poverty of a land without a past; for its architectural splendors, amid the bareness and baldness of the New World cities; for the grandeur of its ancient art, amid the poverty of the America of that day; for its impassioned music, in a land almost devoid of musical culture; and she had longed for the beautiful, sensuous, idle life of its people, through all the strain of a strenuous and overworked existence. Her vision had been fair, and at first she was much disappointed. In artistic or architectural magnificence St. Peter's and the Transfiguration could not disappoint a soul like Margaret's, but she was deeply disappointed in the life of the Italian people and in the general charm of the country.

She fell upon exciting times in Italy. There had grown up the fiercest hatred of the Austrian rule, which had recently been aggravated by foolish acts of repression and violence. The whole country was in a ferment. Mazzini, whom Margaret had met in London, was here awaiting his opportunity. Mrs. Howe says: "Up and down went the hopes and the hearts of the Liberal party. Hither and thither ran the tides of popular affection, suspicion, and resentment. The Pope was the idol of the moment. The Grand Duke of Tuscany yielded to pressure whenever it became severe. The minor princes, who had from their birth been incapable of an idea, tried as well as they could to put on some semblance of concession without really yielding anything." Margaret was soon in close relations with leading Liberals, and shared all their hopes and fears and some of their dangers.

At this time she first met the young Italian nobleman, Ossoli, who became her husband. She became separated from her party one day at some service at St. Peter's, and, wandering around trying to find them, became tired and somewhat agitated. A young man of gentlemanly address offered his services to her as guide; and after looking in vain for her friends, she was obliged to accept his escort home, night having come on and no carriages being in attendance. They became mutually attracted, and the acquaintance continued, with that disregard of conventionality for which American women are noted when abroad. Although much younger than Margaret, he seemed to be greatly interested in her; and although he had none of her intellectual tastes, she was equally interested in him.

A very romantic attachment sprang up between them, which ended after a few months in a secret marriage. Her reason for the secrecy lay in the troubled times, and the fear of Ossoli's being deprived of his paternal inheritance on account of marrying a Protestant. They had great hopes of the coming revolution, and trusted to a more liberal government to give him his rights despite the fact of his marrying outside the Church of Rome. He was as poor as Margaret herself; and this was another reason for living apart for a time. He was a captain in the Civic Guard, and at this time much occupied with military duties. It was at this time that the Roman Republic was proclaimed, with great pomp of rejoicing; and Margaret chronicles the opening of the Constitutional Assembly, with great display of processions and banners. In one procession walked a Napoleonic prince side by side with Garibaldi, both having been chosen as deputies. All this raised the hopes of the Liberals throughout Europe to the highest point, and Margaret was almost transported with happy excitement,—probably not understanding as well as the natives of Italy how ill prepared that country was for liberty, and how soon the despotic power would again close around the people. In point of fact, the Republic lasted but a few days, and Margaret's brief time for rejoicing was over, and her own personal troubles became very urgent and oppressive.

A son had been born to her some months before, and had of necessity been left in the hands of a nurse in the country, as the marriage had not yet been made known. During all the pomp of processions and the ringing of bells and firing of cannon, she had heard the voice of her infant crying at Rieti. She had not seen him for three months, on account of the troublous times. She lay awake whole nights contriving how she might end the separation which seemed killing her; but circumstances were too strong for her, and the object so dear to her heart could not be compassed. The French were already in Italy. The siege of Rome soon ended in the downfall of the Republic, and the government was placed in the hands of a triumvirate. The city once invested, military hospitals became a necessity. Margaret was named superintendent of the hospital of the Fate Bene Fratelli. "Night and day," writes Mrs. Story, "Margaret was occupied, and with the Princess Belgiojoso so ordered and disposed the hospitals that their conduct was admirable. Of money they had very little, and they were obliged to give their time and thoughts in its place. I have walked through the wards with Margaret, and have seen how comforting was her presence to the poor suffering men. For each one's peculiar taste she had a care. To one she carried books; to another she told the news of the day; and listened to another's oft-repeated tale of wrongs, as the best sympathy she could give. They raised themselves on their elbows to get a last glimpse of her as she went away." Ossoli was stationed with his command on the walls of the Vatican, and in great danger. He refused to leave his post even for food and rest. The provisions which Margaret sent him he shared with his comrades. Sometimes she could visit him at his post and talk about the little Angelo, now always in her thoughts. As the wounded men were brought into the hospital she was always expecting to see her husband; and as the nurse had threatened to abandon the babe, and it was utterly impossible for Margaret to get outside the lines now investing the city, the two horrors were almost more than she could bear. It was only in trying to help the helpless that she found any consolation in this dreadful time. The night of the 20th of June, the French effected an entrance into the city; and although the defence was gallantly continued until the 30th, there was really no hope for the patriots.

At that time Garibaldi informed the Assembly that further resistance would be useless. The French occupation then began, and the end of all liberties. The gates once open, Margaret, with all her sorrow for Rome, was happy in the thought of reaching her child. She did reach him just in time to save his life. He had been forsaken by his nurse, and his mother found him "worn to a skeleton, too weak to smile or lift his wasted little hand." All that Margaret had endured seemed slight compared to this. She could but compare the women of the Papal States to wolves. The child, however, recovered with good nursing, and the family, now united, enjoyed a little season of repose and happiness. The marriage was announced, and Margaret's many friends in Rome extended their help and sympathy. Life in Italy had now become so painful to them that she resolved to return to the New World. Her husband was willing to accompany her. They accordingly engaged passage upon a merchant-vessel from Leghorn, the same vessel being engaged to bring over the heavy marble of Powers's "Greek Slave." She seemed to have great forebodings about this voyage, and was almost induced to give up their passage on the vessel at the last moment; but she overcame her fears, and they embarked. After a few days the captain died of small-pox. The disease spread; and Margaret, as courageously as ever, went about the ship nursing the sick. Soon the little Angelo was taken with the dread disease; they nursed him safely through it, however, and after many dangers and trials the vessel arrived off the Jersey coast in thick weather. At night, the mate promised them a landing in New York in the morning; but the vessel ran upon the sand-bars near Long Island, and on Fire Island beach she struck at four o'clock on the morning of July 19. Margaret, with husband and child, was lost, after refusing to be separated in the efforts at rescue. They went down together, and the career of a great and noble woman ended thus tragically on that desolate coast.



EDGAR ALLAN POE.

Among the names that were occasionally mentioned in the brief and fleeting annals of the stage from the year 1798 to the year 1811, were those of Mr. David Poe and the beautiful Miss Arnold—afterward Mrs. Poe,—the father and mother of that most brilliant but erratic genius Edgar A. Poe.

David Poe was the son of old General Poe, who won his honors in Revolutionary times and was a man of sterling character and many heroic qualities. Miss Arnold belonged to the stage by birth, and from earliest youth had been attached to the theatre in some capacity. It is a most miserable fate for a child, but she knew of nothing better. She came before the public with a naivete that was touching, and played her little airs on the piano and sung her little songs and uttered her childish sentences always to the very best of her ability, putting up with the late hours and the hasty and often scanty meals and the general discomfort of her lot with the utmost amiability and good-nature. No sheltered home, no days of careless pleasure, no constant and watchful care over health or manners or morals, fell to her lot; but the frowns and sometimes the curses of the older actors, the ill-nature of the manager, and the wearied fretfulness of her mother, who was growing old in the drudgery of her profession,—for she never rose above that at any time. Nor does it appear that Miss Arnold had any particular talent, though she won a moderate share of favor upon the stage; but she was always much esteemed by those who knew her in private. She sung and sometimes danced, as did her husband, who was an actor of inferior merit. There is something very pathetic in the story of the little second-rate actress who was so conscientious and so persevering, and one cannot but hope that she received her due share of the applause which lends such a fascination to the life of the actor that he rarely abandons it for any other career.

There is a hint of the hardship of her life in the fact that there are but three short breaks in her dramatic career through all those years,—the times when the three children were born to them. Edgar was born Jan. 19, 1809, and his mother appeared upon the stage again February 10, and played to the end of the season almost incessantly. The family were poor to the verge of destitution at all times, and the little woman had need of a brave heart when the children came crowding into the poor unfurnished nest. One cannot doubt that there was much of pain and worry in the little creature's heart before the birth of Edgar; and no doubt the paint covered the traces of many tears on the faded cheeks, and the smiles which wreathed her face were more artificial than the usual stage smiles during all those weary months. In 1811 she and her husband were playing in Richmond, when her health failed her, and they were brought to great straits for the means of life. The actors gave her a benefit, but the receipts were small, and the following card was inserted in the Richmond papers:—

"TO THE HUMANE: On this night Mrs. Poe, lingering on the bed of disease and surrounded by her children, asks your assistance; and asks it perhaps, for the last time."

Before the second benefit night the Richmond ladies had come to her relief, and she was tenderly cared for during the brief remainder of her life by stranger hands. She had never had a home. She had passed her whole life in poor, mean lodgings, about which no household charm could linger. In these desolate places had been passed even her honeymoon; in some garret lodgings had her children been born; here all that she had known of domestic joy or sorrow had been enacted; here she had doubtless wept her hot tears and had her little triumphs, and here she had died. Poor little variety-actress of the olden time! there is one heart at least that is touched by your lot, even at this distant day, and has dropped a tear to your memory on the page where she has read your history.

The three children were cared for by the kind people of Richmond, and Edgar was adopted by Mrs. John Allan, whose husband gave but a reluctant consent to the arrangement. Edgar was a most beautiful and precocious child, and attracted much attention in the new home. If the poor mother on her dying-bed could have known of the good fortune which awaited him, it would have eased somewhat the bitter pangs of her parting with her beautiful and idolized child. He was taken to England, where he spent several years of his childhood, and when he returned, entered a classical school, where he was prepared for college. He was described as "self-willed, capricious, inclined to be imperious, and, though of generous impulses, not steadily kind or even amiable." He was a facile scholar and fond of Latin and English poetry. He was nearly always alone, making few friends among his schoolmates, and was of a dignified and reserved disposition and inclined to melancholy. He entered the University of Virginia at the age of seventeen, and it was here that his fatal habit of drinking was first formed. One of his schoolmates writes:—

"Poe's passion for strong drink was as marked and peculiar as that for cards. It was not the taste of the beverage that influenced him. Without a sip or smack of the mouth he would seize a full glass, without water or sugar, and send it home at a single gulp. This frequently used him up; but if not, he rarely returned to the charge."

This, for a lad of seventeen, with an excitable temperament, was sufficient to sow the seeds of all his future woe. The youthful brain inflamed with alcohol never really recovers its normal condition, even when abstinence follows, and Poe's life-long struggle with his adversary began at this tender age. Dr. Day, long connected with the inebriate asylum at Binghamton, N. Y., once had an opportunity to examine the brain of a man who, after having been a drunkard, reformed and lived for some years as a teetotaller. He found to his surprise that the globules of the brain had not shrunk to their natural size. They did not exhibit the inflammation of the drunkard's brain, but they were still enlarged, and seemed ready on the instant to absorb the fumes of alcohol and resume their former condition. He thought he saw in this morbid condition of the brain the physical part of the reason why a man who has once been habituated to liquor falls so easily under its sway again in spite of every moral reason for refraining. Doubtless he was right, and poor Poe was only one of a vast number of men of brilliant intellects and kind hearts, who after a life-long struggle are defeated by the enemy they have taken into their stomachs to destroy their brains.

It is not our purpose to trace the poet through all the devious windings of his life, but to dwell for a little while upon the course of his domestic life and give some of the striking points in his character. We will pass over the close of his college career and the episode at West Point, as well as the publication of his earliest volume of poems, and look at him as we find him in the summer of 1833, living in Baltimore. He had a home here with his father's widowed sister, Mrs. Clemm, who with her daughter Virginia lived in a very humble way in that city. The little Poe could earn—for he was then at one of his lowest financial periods—went into the common stock, and the three struggled along together. Virginia was a child of eleven, beautiful, delicate, refined; and Mrs. Clemm was then, as always thereafter, the best and kindest of friends to the poet. She had little to offer him, save kindness and motherly love; but she gave these most abundantly, and they were of priceless value to Poe. For many months he kept himself from his besetting sin, and worked faithfully at whatever literary work he could get to do. But he was poor to the point of destitution, and the mental strain upon him was great, with his extraordinary pride and sensitiveness. He had been well reared, with fine and delicate tastes, and accustomed to money; and privation was very bitter to him. He was naturally an aristocrat, too, and found in the associations to which he was almost compelled by poverty a heavy cross. At the end of two years he felt himself forced to leave Baltimore, and thought he could obtain employment in Richmond. He had become greatly attached to Virginia, and she was equally so to him; and although she was but a child of thirteen, Poe proposed to marry her and take her and Mrs. Clemm with him to his new destination. The youth of Virginia seems to have been the only obstacle in the mind of Mrs. Clemm, who had conceived the deepest affection for Poe and had great confidence in his abilities. She was friendless and unable to take care of herself and her daughter, and after some hesitation she consented to the marriage. It did not take place, however, till Virginia was fourteen years old.

Ill-starred and ill-timed as this marriage seemed to be, it was the one bright and beautiful thing about the life of Poe. He remained passionately devoted to the youthful wife as long as she lived; and it is thought by those who knew him best that, despite his numerous romantic passages with ladies after her death, Virginia was the only woman he ever really loved. In spite of the bad habits which clung to him so persistently, he seems to have been a really kind and devoted husband to the end. She, on her part, worshipped him with a supreme infatuation that was blind to all his faults. The romance of the first months of married life seemed never to wear off, and through all their sorrows—and they were many and bitter—their love burned as brightly as at first.

To Mrs. Clemm, also, Poe was always a devoted son, and through all his waywardness; and folly and sin she clung to him with the devotion of a true mother. The sturdy figure of this woman shows through all the dark spots of his life, casting a gleam of brightness. She was a strong, masculine-looking woman, full of energy, and took upon herself all the practical affairs of the little household. She received the money from Poe, and expended it in her own way; and she had a faculty of getting a good deal of comfort out of a very little money. So their home was almost always comfortable, even when they were poorest. And she never gave way to reproaches, even when Poe was at his worst. She seemed to consider his failing only in the light of a misfortune, and never blamed, but always pitied him. She worshipped his genius almost as blindly as did Virginia, and it is pleasant to think that with all their misfortunes and privations, they had much real happiness in their little home. Poe was very proud and very fond of Virginia, and liked to take strangers to see her. She had a voice of wonderful sweetness and sung exquisitely, and in some of their more prosperous days she had her harp and piano. One evening when she was singing she ruptured a blood-vessel, and for a time her life was despaired of Poe describes the affliction long afterwards in a letter as follows:—

"Six years ago a wife whom I loved as no man ever loved before, ruptured a blood-vessel in singing. I took leave of her forever, and underwent all the agonies of her death. She recovered partially, and I again hoped. At the end of a year the vessel again broke. I went through precisely the same scene. Then again—again—and even once again at varying intervals. Each time I felt all the agonies of her death, and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive,—nervous to an unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of possible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness, I drank—God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink, rather than the drink to the insanity."

Although Poe's word is not always to be taken in regard to his own affairs, this doubtless describes his feelings over Virginia's condition quite truthfully; and whether the drinking was cause or effect we shall probably never really know.

During one of the periods of Virginia's improved health Poe took her and went to New York, leaving Mrs. Clemm behind to settle up domestic affairs. In a letter which he wrote to his mother-in-law, we have a glimpse of the kindlier side of the man's nature and of his real affection for this devoted friend, as well as some hints of the straits of poverty to which they had been accustomed, by the fulness of his descriptions of the plenty upon which they had fallen. He is speaking of his boarding-house:—

"I wish Catarina [the cat] could see it; she would faint. Last night for supper we had the nicest tea you ever drank,—strong and hot,—wheat and rye bread, cheese, tea-cakes (elegant—a great dish), two dishes of elegant ham and two of cold veal, piled up like a mountain and large slices, three dishes of the cakes, and everything in the greatest profusion. No fear of starving here. The landlady seemed as if she couldn't press us enough, and we were at home directly. For breakfast we had excellent-flavored coffee, hot and strong,—not very clear and no great deal of cream,—veal-cutlets, elegant ham and eggs, and nice bread and butter. I never sat down to a more plentiful or a nicer breakfast. I wish you could have seen the eggs and the great dishes of meat. Sis is delighted, and we are both in excellent spirits. She has coughed hardly any, and had no night-sweat. She is now busy mending my pants, which I tore against a nail. I went out last night and bought a skein of silk, a skein of thread, two buttons, a pair of slippers, and a tin pan for the stove. The fire kept all night. We have now got four dollars and a half left. To-morrow I am going to try and borrow three dollars, so that I may have a fortnight to go upon. I feel in excellent spirits, and haven't drank a drop—so that I hope soon to get out of trouble. The very instant I scrape together enough money I will send it on. You can't imagine how much we both do miss you. Sissy had a hearty cry last night because you and Catarina weren't here. We hope to send for you very soon."

It is hard to read of the straits to which Poe was often reduced for a little money, and to know that all this time he was writing those immortal tales which would now make a man's fortune as soon as produced. It is true that he had two or three times good salaried positions,—good for that day,—but he never kept them long, and his chronic state was one of poverty, if not of destitution.

Mrs. Osgood, who knew him in the later days in New York, says of him:—

"I have never seen him otherwise than gentle, generous, well-bred, and fastidiously refined. To a sensitive and delicately nurtured woman there was a peculiar and irresistible charm in the chivalric, graceful, and almost tender reverence with which he invariably approached all women who won his respect."

The home in the suburbs where he lived in the last days of his wife's life is described as a story-and-a-half house at the top of Fordham Hill. Within on the ground floor were two small apartments,—a kitchen and sitting-room,—and above, up a narrow stairway, two others, one Poe's room,—a low, cramped chamber lighted by little square windows like port-holes,—the other a diminutive closet of a bedroom, hardly large enough to lie down in. The furnishing was of the scantiest, but everything faultlessly neat.

"Mrs. Clemm, now over sixty, in her worn black dress made upon all who saw her an impression of dignity, refinement, and deep motherly devotion to her children. Virginia, at the age of twenty-five, retained her beauty, but the large black eyes and raven hair contrasted sadly with the pallor of her face. Poe himself, poor, proud, and ill, anticipating grief and nursing the bitterness that springs from helplessness in the sight of suffering borne by those dear to us, was restless and variable, the creature of contradictory impulses."

Virginia now failed rapidly, Poe was ill, and the household was reduced almost to the starving-point. Winter was upon them; and when at last a sympathizing friend found them she thus describes the situation:—

"There was no clothing upon the bed, which was only straw, but a snow-white counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the straw bed wrapped in her husband's great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat and the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth, except as her husband held her hands and her mother her feet. Mrs. Clemm was passionately fond of her daughter, and her distress on account of her illness and poverty and misery was dreadful to see."

This friend at once interested some benevolent people in the case, and poor Virginia's last days were made comfortable by their aid. Poe's heart seemed filled with inexpressible gratitude to all who aided him in this sorest crisis of his life; and although he was much broken by his loss, he rallied once more and was sober and industrious for a time. Mrs. Clemm stood faithfully by him, and even watched over him through some of the fearful seasons of delirium which followed his complete giving up to the habits of drinking and of taking opium.

Of the final scenes of this unhappy life it is needless to write. They have been often described, and though the accounts vary, the sum and substance are the same. Poe was attacked with delirium-tremens in Baltimore, and died in a hospital in that city in October, 1849. Beautiful, gifted, and sensitive, proud, ambitious, and daring, endowed with a subtle charm of manner as well as of person, amiable and generous in his home life, loyal and devoted to his family, a very pleasing picture is presented of the man if we look but on this side. Could he have overcome the fatal fascination of drink, we might never have seen the reverse side of all this. As it is, let us cover his follies with our mantle of charity and dwell only upon his genius and his virtues.



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

During a portion of Thackeray's life there seemed to be in the public mind a complete misapprehension of the character of the man. Superficial readers of his books, who knew nothing of him personally, were fond of applying the name of cynic to him; and he was even accused by some of these of being a hater of his kind, a misanthropist, a bitter satirist, a hard, ungenial man.

As no adequate personal memoir of him has ever been written, it being understood by his family that such a publication would have been distasteful to him, it has taken time to correct all the false impressions that have gained credence in regard to the great humorist; but at the present time his character has been practically cleared of the former false charges. As one by one the friends who knew him personally have spoken, it has been discovered that this cynic was one of the tenderest and kindest men that our time has produced; this hater of his kind, a man so soft-hearted and full of sensibility that it was really a serious drawback to him in life; this misanthropist, one of the most genial and kindly companions in the world; this bitter satirist, a man who never made an enemy by his speech; this hard man, one who actually threw money away, as all his friends thought, by bestowing it upon every applicant whether he could afford it or not.

So great a change in the world's estimate of a man has seldom been made after the man's death. It is to be accounted for by the fact that while he was living his friends never told what they knew of him, and that only very gradually did they reveal his virtues, even after he had gone, feeling always that he would have preferred them to be silent; and by the other fact that he often appeared other than he was, to cover up his excessive sensibility, of which he was very much ashamed.

The world will come to a truer knowledge of him still some day; and then it will be found what a great, loving, noble heart was hidden behind his thin crust of cynicism,—what gentleness, what tenderness, what wise kindness he was capable of,—what loyalty to his friends and to his principles, what reverence for sacred things, what infinite depths of pathos, lay beneath that mocking exterior. Let us gather together a few of these personal traits as they have been given us by different hands, and try to make thus a true likeness of the man as he appeared to those who knew him best. The events of his life were few and by no means striking.

He was born in Calcutta in 1811, and brought to England when six years of age. At eleven he was placed in Charter-House School, where he is described as a rosy-faced boy, with dark curling hair, and a quick intelligent eye, ever twinkling with good-humor. For the usual school sports he had no taste, and was only known to enjoy theatricals and caricatures, for which he retained his taste throughout life. He was wonderfully social and vivacious, and the best of good company, even at this early day. Merry, light-hearted, unselfish, not very industrious, but a fair classical scholar, and possessed of a wonderful memory,—so he is remembered by those who knew him at this time. In a great school, where nearly all the boys bullied those who were beneath them, he was noted for his invariable kindness to the smaller boys, and it was remarked of him, even at this age, that for one who had such powers of sarcasm he made very few wounds by his tongue. At eighteen he entered Cambridge University, but left it at nineteen and went to study art in Paris. Here he remained for several years, and began his literary work. Here, too, he was married, when twenty-six years of age, to Miss Isabella Shawe, and here they passed the first happy days of their married life together. He has himself sketched a picture of the time, in these words:—

"The humblest painter, be he ever so poor, may have a friend watching at his easel, or a gentle wife sitting by with her work in her lap, and with fond smiles or silence, or both, cheering his labors."

For a few short years they were very happy together, and three children were born to them. Then the most terrible misfortune of his life fell upon him,—his wife, after a severe illness, became hopelessly insane. For some time Thackeray refused to believe that it was more than an illness from which she would recover, but at last the terrible truth was forced upon him that he had lost her forever, and in a way so much more cruel than death. She was placed in the home of a kind family employed to care for her, and there she remained until death released her. His grief was of the most hopeless kind, and it made a melancholy man of him throughout life. At times and seasons his natural gayety would return to him; but he was a sad man at heart from that dreadful day when the horror of her fate was revealed to him. He never spoke directly of his grief, but once in a while he would speak of it in parable, as when he talked to a friend about somebody's wife whom he had known becoming insane, and that friend says:—

"Never shall I forget the look, the manner, the voice, with which he said to me, 'It is an awful thing for her to continue to live. It is awful for her so to die. But has it ever occurred to you how awful the recovery of her lost reason would be, without the consciousness of the loss of time? She finds the lover of her youth a gray-haired old man, and her infants young men and women. Is it not sad to think of this?'"

His mother came to live with him, and his children grew to maturity beneath his roof, one of them the Miss Thackeray now so well known as a novelist. But tenderly as he was attached to them,—and there could have been no fonder father,—he no doubt felt all the sadness of the thought that

"The many make the household, But only one the home."

In one of the "Roundabouts" he says:—

"I own, for my part, that in reading papers which this hand formerly penned, I often lose sight of the text under my eyes. It is not the words I see, but that past day, that by-gone page of life's history, that tragedy—comedy it may be—which our little home company were enacting, that merry-making which we shared, that funeral which we followed, that bitter, bitter grief which we buried."

That he should live much in that vanished past, was but natural; yet it was hard for a man like Thackeray, who had naturally such great capacity for the enjoyment of life.

That his home was a pleasant and goodly place, all who have ever visited it bear witness. He made it his refuge from all outer troubles, and practised a genial and kindly hospitality there. It was a long time before he was able to buy a house, though he made a good deal of money from his books, his free-handed generous ways always keeping him back financially; but when he was enabled to buy one, he took great pride and pleasure in it, and decorated it according to his artistic tastes. To make a little more money for his daughters, that they might be independent when he was gone, he began lecturing, and was twice induced to come to America for that purpose, much as he dreaded leaving home, and especially crossing the ocean.

His speech at the farewell dinner given him before leaving for America the last time, expressed this dread in a very comical manner, and was received with great cheering and uproar. "I have before me," he said, "at this minute the horrid figure of a steward with a basin perhaps, or a glass of brandy and water, which he will press me to drink, and which I shall try to swallow, and which won't make me any better. I know it won't." This with a grimace which put the whole table in a roar. Then he went on to tell of the last dinners given to criminals and convicts, and how they were allowed always to choose what they would have, in a manner so droll that all thought him in the happiest mood, while he was scarcely able to keep up, so sad was his heart at the prospect of leaving home. Next morning, we are told by a spectator, "he had been round crying in corners; and when the cab finally came, and the luggage had all been bestowed, and the servants stood in the hall, 'This is the moment I have dreaded,' said Thackeray, as he entered the dining-room to embrace his daughters, and when he hastily descended the steps to the door, he knew that they would be at the window to cast one loving, lingering look. 'Good-by,' he murmured in a suppressed tone, 'keep close behind me, and try to let me jump in unseen.' The instant the door of the vehicle closed behind him, he threw himself back in the corner, and buried his face in his hands."

His allusion to his little girls, in the poem of "The White Squall," is well known, and shows how constantly he had them in his thoughts:—

"And when, its force expended, The harmless storm was ended, And as the sunrise splendid Came blushing o'er the sea, I thought, as day was breaking, My little girls were waking, And smiling, and making A prayer at home for me."

His love for these little girls, to whom he felt he must be both father and mother, gave him unusual tenderness for all children, and he once said he never could see a boy without wanting to give him a sovereign. This he did very often too in England, where children, like servants, are allowed to receive "tips" from their parents' friends; and when in this country he felt it quite a hardship that the children of his friends were not allowed to take his money.

His American visits afforded him much pleasure—and profit too; and he always spoke kindly of us after his return. His light way of expressing his feeling towards us was extremely characteristic, as when he said he hoped he should never be guilty of speaking ill either of the North or the South, as he had been offered equally good claret by both. His frequent allusions to eating and drinking give the idea of a much more convivial person than he really was; he was temperate in both, but he loved to write of these things. In the "Memorials of Gormandizing," he writes in the most appetizing manner of all the good dinners he has eaten in many lands. Each dinner is an epic of the table. They make one hungry with an inappeasable hunger, and make him long to have Thackeray at his own board as a most appreciative guest. He was quite a diner-out in London, and a great favorite wherever he went. He was not one of the professional talkers, but always had one or two good things to say, which he did not repeat until they were stereotyped, as so many do. Though he said witty things now and then, he was not a wit in the sense that Jerrold was. He shone most in little subtle remarks on life, little off-hand sketches of character, and descriptive touches of men and things. He could be uproariously funny on occasion, and even sing his "Jolly Doctor Luther" at table to a congenial company; but he was often very dignified, and always gentlemanly. The bits of doggerel with which he was wont to diversify his conversation are spoken of by all his friends as irresistibly ludicrous, and he seems to have indulged in this pastime from a boy, as he did in those of caricaturing and parodying. Mr. Fields tells us that—

"In the midst of the most serious topic under discussion he was fond of asking permission to sing a comic song, or he would beg to be allowed to enliven the occasion by the instant introduction of a double shuffle. . . . During his first visit to America his jollity knew no bounds, and it became necessary often to repress him when walking in the street. I well remember his uproarious shouting and dancing when he was told that the tickets to his first course of readings were all sold; and when we rode together from his hotel to the lecture-hall, he insisted on thrusting both his long legs out of the carriage window, in deference, as he said, to his magnanimous ticket-holders."

Some of his fun was a little embarrassing to his friends, as when Mr. Fields had taken him to the meeting of a scientific club at the house of a distinguished Boston gentlemen, and Thackeray, being bored by the proceedings, stole into a little anteroom, where he thought no one could see him but his friend, and proceeded to give vent to his feelings in pantomime.

"He threw an imaginary person (myself, of course) upon the floor, and proceeded to stab him several times with a paper-folder which he caught up for that purpose. After disposing of his victim in this way, he was not satisfied, for the dull lecture still went on in the other room, and he fired an imaginary revolver several times at an imaginary head; still the droning speaker proceeded; and now began the greatest pantomimic scene of all, namely, murder by poison, after the manner in which the player King is disposed of in 'Hamlet.' Thackeray had found a small phial on the mantel-shelf and out of it he proceeded to pour the imaginary 'juice of cursed hebenon' into the imaginary porches of somebody's ears. The whole thing was inimitably done, and I hoped nobody saw it but myself; but years afterwards a ponderous fat-witted young man put the question squarely to me: 'What was the matter with Mr. Thackeray that night the club met at M——'s house?'"

Thackeray's playfulness was indeed a marked peculiarity, and innumerable stories are told of his dancing pirouettes, singing impromptu songs, and rhyming a whole company to their infinite amusement. Each one of his personal friends, in talking of him, says, "But if you could only have heard him" at such a time; but of course no one can repeat such unpremeditated jests, and the flavor is gone from them when any one tries to do so. He was the life of the clubs he frequented, and spent much time in them and at theatres, of which he was passionately fond. His duties as a man of fashion took much of his time, and his friends were always wondering when he wrote his books. Much of the jollity and boyish hilarity of his life in society was a rebound from the strain of these books. He was wont to live much, as did Dickens, in the creations of his fancy, and sometimes his emotional nature became overwrought in his work. Mr. Underwood tells us:—

"One day while the great novel of 'The Newcomes' was in course of publication, Lowell, who was then in London, met Thackeray on the street. The novelist was serious in manner, and his looks and voice told of weariness and affliction. He saw the kindly inquiry in the poet's eyes, and said, 'Come into Evans's and I'll tell you all about it. I have killed the Colonel!' So they walked in and took a table in a remote corner; and then Thackeray, drawing the fresh manuscript from his breast-pocket, read through that exquisitely touching chapter which records the death of Colonel Newcome. When he came to the final Adsum, the tears which had been swelling his lids for some time trickled down his face, and the last word was almost an inarticulate sob."

Thackeray's sensibility was really extreme, and he could not read anything pathetic without actual discomfort,—never could get through "The Bride of Lammermoor," for instance,—and would not listen to any sad tales of suffering in real life if he could escape them. If he did hear of any one in want or distress, he relieved his feelings by instantly appropriating to their use all the money he found himself in possession of at the time. When he was editor of the "Cornhill Magazine," this soft-heartedness was a great drawback to him. He was always paying for contributions he could not use, if they were sent, as so many are, with some pitiful tale accompanying; and was always wasting his valuable time by writing to poor creatures about their dreary verses, which there was no hope of his being able to improve. When quite young, he loaned—or rather gave, though he called it a loan—three hundred pounds to poor old Maginn, when he was beaten in the battle of life and lay in the Fleet Prison. But he denied this act with the utmost vehemence when accused of it, and berated the old fellow in a laborious manner for having been beaten when he should have fought on. Indeed, he was very much ashamed of his soft-heartedness always, and would oftentimes bluster and appear very fierce when appealed to for assistance.

Anthony Trollope tells a story about going to him one day and telling him of the straits to which a mutual friend was reduced.

"'Do you mean to say that I am to find two thousand pounds?' he said angrily, with some expletives. I explained that I had not even suggested the doing of anything,—only that we might discuss the matter. Then there came over his face a peculiar smile, and a wink in his eye, and he whispered his suggestion, as if ashamed of his meanness. 'I'll go half,' he said, 'if anybody will do the rest.' And he did go half at a day or two's notice. I could tell various stories of the same kind."

These things were not easy for him to do; for he was never a rich man, and he had constant calls upon his charity. He kept a small floating fund always in circulation among his poorer acquaintances; and when one returned it to him he passed it to another, never considering it as his own but for the use of the unfortunate. He liked to disguise his charities as jokes,—as filling a pill-box with gold pieces and sending it to a needy friend, with the inscription, "To be taken one at a time, as needed;" and various devices of this kind. He was as generous of his praise as of his money, and always had a good word for his literary friends. His fine tribute to Macaulay will be remembered, and his praise of Washington Irving, of Charlotte Bronte, and many others. While he had an exaggerated contempt for the foibles of the world at large, he had an almost equally exaggerated sympathy for the joys and sorrows of individuals; and much of the scorn which he gives to humanity collectively may be taken as a sort of vent to his feelings when he is ashamed of having been too foolishly weak in dealing with some of these fellow-mortals in real life.

He never encouraged his companions in being cynical, but always encouraged them in admiration. "I am glad he worships anybody," he said, when some friends were satirizing an absent companion for his devotion to a great man. Neither would he encourage any unkind talk about the absent, or laugh at any good hit which was aimed at a friend. "You fiend!" he said to a friend who was laughing over a sharp attack on an acquaintance, and he refused to read or hear a word of it. Indeed, for steadfast loyalty to his friends, his equal has seldom been seen. He made common cause with them in everything, and nothing so enraged him as treachery or deceit among friends.

He was a man of aristocratic feeling, and resented familiarity. He was also in general a reserved man, and allowed few people really to know him. He had a surface nature which was all his mere acquaintances knew. Even his friends were long in finding him out. Douglas Jerrold was once heard to say, "I have known Thackeray eighteen years, and I don't know him yet;" and this was the case with the majority of his friends. His great griefs he kept closely within his own heart, and the more serious side of his nature was all hidden from the world as much as he could hide it. Those who read between the lines discovered it in his books, and those who looked deeply enough into human nature found it in the man, but superficial observers saw only the mocking man of the world. When suddenly observed, his face always had a sad, grave aspect, and it was often hard for him to throw off this seriousness and to put on his harlequin's mask. Upon religious matters he was always reticent, but reverent. Only upon rare occasions would he discuss serious subjects at all, and only with a chosen few. In one letter which has been published he departs from his usual custom and writes:—

"I never feel pity for a man dying, only for survivors if there be such passionately deploring him. You see the pleasures the undersigned proposes to himself here in future years,—a sight of the Alps, a holiday on the Rhine, a ride in the Park, a colloquy with pleasant friends of an evening. If it is death to part with these delights (and pleasures they are, and no mistake), sure the mind can conceive others afterward; and I know one small philosopher who is quite ready to give up these pleasures,—quite content (after a pang or two of separation from dear friends here) to put his hand into that of the summoning angel, and say, 'Lead on, O messenger of God our Father, to the next place whither the divine goodness calls us.' We must be blindfolded before we can pass, I know; but I have no fear about what is to come, any more than my children need fear that the love of their father should fail them. I thought myself a dead man once, and protest the notion gave me no disquiet about myself,—at least the philosophy is more comfortable than that which is tinctured with brimstone."

He hated those who make a stock in trade of their religion, and, like Dr. Johnson, would have advised them to clear their minds of cant; but no genuine evidence of religious feeling or experience was ever treated lightly by him, and he was greatly shocked at any real desecration of sacred things. He had a simple, childlike faith in God and in the Saviour, and a firm hope in the everlasting life.

In person, Thackeray was a tall, ruddy, simple-looking Englishman, with rather a full face, florid, almost rubicund, and keen, kindly eyes, and, after forty, abundant gray hair. He had a conspicuous, almost a commanding figure, with a certain awkwardness in his gait. He had a misshaped nose, caused by an accident in boyhood, and a sarcastic twinkle oftentimes in his eyes, which changed the expression of his whole face.

He dressed well, but unpretendingly, and his voice and manner were always courteous and cordial. He smiled easily, and had a humorous look when not oppressed with sadness, which was often the case in later life. He died suddenly in middle life, leaving, like Dickens, an unfinished novel in the press. No other literary man, save perhaps Macaulay, has been mourned as Thackeray was mourned. There was universal sorrow for his premature loss, and great personal grief among his friends. Twenty-three years have passed since that time, and no successor has arisen to repay the world for that loss. When the curtain fell upon Becky Sharpe and Beatrix, upon Ethel Newcome and the good Colonel, upon Laura and Pendennis, upon Esmond and Warrington, and upon all the deeply studied characters of his mimic stage, that curtain fell to rise no more upon such creatures as his hands had made. He will have no successor. He is the One, the Only. Such pathos, such wit, such wisdom, will not dawn upon us again—in time.

When he wrote Finis for the last time at the close of one of those matchless volumes, it was an epoch closed in the history of literature. When the recording angel wrote Finis at the close of that sad and weary but bravely spent and useful life, it was a sad day for the world of men, who will not look upon his like again. Who that felt a love for the writer and the man could fail to rejoice that the end was quick and painless? One of our own poets has well described the scene:—

"The angel came by night (Such angels still come down), And like a winter cloud Passed over London Town, Along its lonesome streets, Where want had ceased to weep, Until it reached a house Where a great man lay asleep; The man of all his time Who knew the most of men,— The soundest head and heart, The sharpest, kindest pen. It paused beside his bed And whispered in his ear; He never turned his head, But answered, 'I am here.' Into the night they went; At morning, side by side, They gained the sacred place Where the greatest dead abide; Where grand old Homer sits, In godlike state benign; Where broods in endless thought The awful Florentine; Where sweet Cervantes walks, A smile on his grave face; Where gossips quaint Montaigne, The wisest of his race; Where Goethe looks through all With that calm eye of his; Where—little seen, but light— The only Shakspeare is! When the new spirit came, They asked him, drawing near, 'Art thou become like us?' He answered, 'I am here.'"



CHARLES DICKENS.

No novelist has dealt so directly with the home life of the world as Charles Dickens. He has painted few historic pictures; he has dealt mostly in interiors,—beautiful bits of home life, full of domestic feeling. Indeed, we may say that his background is always the home, and here he paints his portraits, often like those of Hogarth for strength and grotesque effect. Here, too, he limns the scenes of his comedy-tragedy, and depicts the changing fashions of the time. The color is sometimes a little crude, laid on occasionally with too coarse a brush; but the effect is always lifelike, and our interest in it is never known to flag.

Nowhere else in all the range of literature have we such tender description of home life and love, such intuitive knowledge of child life, such wonderful sympathy with every form of domestic wrong and suffering, such delicate appreciation of the shyest and most unobtrusive of social virtues; nowhere else such indignation at any neglect or desecration of the home, as in Mrs. Jellyby with her mission, in Mrs. Pardiggle with her charities, Mr. Pecksniff with his hypocrisy, and Mr. Dombey with his unfeeling selfishness. In short, Dickens is pre-eminently the prophet and the poet of the home.

Now, can it be possible that we must say of such a man as this, that in his own life he was the opposite of all that which he so feelingly describes,—that he desecrated the very home he so apostrophizes,—that he put all his warmth, geniality, and tenderness into his books and kept for his own fireside his sour humors and unhappy moods,—that he was "ill to live with," as Mrs. Carlyle puts it? We cannot believe it in so bald a form, but we are forced to admit that his married life seems to have been in every way unhappy and unfortunate. No one could state this more strongly than Dickens himself, in the letter he wrote at the time of the separation. He said:—

"Mrs. Dickens and I have lived unhappily for many years. Hardly any one who has known us intimately can fail to have known that we are in all respects of character and temperament wonderfully unsuited to each other. I suppose that no two people, not vicious in themselves, were ever joined together, who had greater difficulty in understanding one another, or who had less in common. An attached woman-servant (more friend to both of us than servant), who lived with us sixteen years and had the closest familiar experience of this unhappiness in London, in the country, in France, in Italy, wherever we have been, year after year, month after month, week after week, day after day, will bear testimony to this. Nothing has on many occasions stood between us and a separation but Mrs. Dickens's sister, Georgina Hogarth. From the age of fifteen, she has devoted herself to our home and our children. She has been their playmate, nurse, instructress, friend, protectress, adviser, companion. In the manly consideration towards Mrs. Dickens, which I owe to my wife, I will only remark of her that the peculiarity of her character has thrown all the children on some one else. I do not know, I cannot by any stretch of fancy imagine, what would have become of them but for this aunt, who has grown up with them, to whom they are devoted, and who has sacrificed the best part of her youth and life to them. She has remonstrated, reasoned, suffered, and toiled, and come again to prevent a separation between Mrs. Dickens and me. Mrs. Dickens has often expressed to her her sense of her affectionate care and devotion in the house,—never more strongly than within the last twelve months."

Again, in the public statement which he prepared for "Household Words," alluding to a multitude of damaging rumors which were quickly put in circulation, he says:—

"By some means, arising out of wickedness or out of folly or out of inconceivable wild chance, or out of all three, this trouble has been made the occasion of misrepresentations most grossly false, most monstrous, and most cruel,—involving not only me, but innocent persons dear to my heart, and innocent persons of whom I have no knowledge, if indeed they have any existence,—and so widely spread that I doubt if one reader in a thousand will peruse these lines by whom some touch of the breath of these slanderers will not have passed like an unwholesome air.

"Those who know me and my nature need no assurance under my hand that such calumnies are as irreconcilable with me as they are in their frantic incoherence with one another. But there is a great multitude who know me through my writings and who do not know me otherwise, and I cannot bear that one of them should be left in doubt or hazard of doubt through my poorly shrinking from taking the unusual means to which I now resort of circulating the truth. I most solemnly declare then—and this I do both in my own name and my wife's name—that all lately whispered rumors touching the trouble at which I have glanced are abominably false; and that whosoever repeats one of them, after this denial, will lie as wilfully and as foully as it is possible for any false witness to lie before heaven and earth."

This denial, coming from a man of truth and honor like Charles Dickens, must, once for all, dispose of that convenient way of accounting for the sad estrangement.

The reasons for the unhappy state of things were of a much more complicated nature than this. Only the most intimate of his friends ever knew them in full, and of course they were debarred from making them public. But Professor Ward of Cambridge University, who has written a very kind and appreciative Life of Dickens, and one which gives a far more pleasing idea of his character than the bulky and egotistical Life by Forster, gives a clue to the whole trouble in the following statement. He says:—

"If he ever loved his wife with that affection before which so-called incompatibilities of habits, temper, or disposition fade into nothingness, there is no indication of it in any of the numerous letters addressed to her. Neither has it ever been pretended that he strove in the direction of that resignation which love and duty made possible to David Copperfield, or even that he remained in every way master of himself, as many men have known how to remain, the story of whose wedded life and its disappointments has never been written in history or figured in fiction."

And this troublous condition of things was very much intensified by Dickens having fallen violently in love with Mary Hogarth, Mrs. Dickens's youngest sister. This beautiful girl died at their house at the early age of seventeen. No sorrow seems ever to have touched the heart and possessed the imagination of Charles Dickens like that for the loss of this dearly loved girl. "I can solemnly say," he wrote to her mother a few months after her death, "that waking or sleeping I have never lost the recollection of our hard sorrow, and I never shall." "If," he writes in his diary at the beginning of a new year, "she was with me now,—the same winning, happy, amiable companion, sympathizing with all my thoughts and feelings more than any one I ever knew did or will,—I think I should have nothing to wish but a continuance of such happiness." Throughout life her memory haunted him with great vividness. After her death he wrote: "I dreamed of her every night for many weeks, and always with a kind of quiet happiness, which became so pleasant to me that I never lay down without a hope of the vision returning." The year before he died he wrote to a friend: "She is so much in my thoughts at all times, especially when I am successful, that the recollection of her is an essential part of my being, and is as inseparable from my existence as the beating of my heart is." In a word, she was the one great imaginative passion of his life. He is said to have pictured her in Little Nell, and he writes after finishing that book, "Dear Mary died yesterday when I think of it."

Have we not in this the key to all the sorrows of his domestic life? Could he have married the woman he loved in this manner, he would doubtless have been one of the tenderest and most devoted of husbands, and a family life as beautiful as any of the ideal ones he has depicted would have resulted. It is probable that he did not know Mary Hogarth until after his marriage, when she came to live in his house, and when his youthful fancy for his wife had begun to decline. Miss Hogarth died instantly of heart-disease, without even a premonitory warning.

All accounts agree in calling Mrs. Dickens a very pretty, amiable, and well-bred woman; and even if she was as infinitely incapable as represented, that alone would seem to be insufficient cause for so serious a trouble. Miss Georgina Hogarth, whom all describe as a very lovely and superior person, possessed the executive ability Mrs. Dickens lacked, it would seem; for all visitors both to Tavistock House and Gad's Hill describe with enthusiasm the perfect order which prevailed in the large establishments, attributing this in part at least to Dickens's own intense love of method and passion for neatness. But no man without the aid of feminine head and hands would have succeeded in attaining to this perfect housekeeping, especially where the family consisted of nine children, as in this case.

Hans Christian Andersen thus describes a visit to Gad's Hill:—

"It was a fine new house, with red walls and four bow-windows, and a jutting entrance supported by pillars; in the gable a large window. A dense hedge of cherry-laurel surrounded the house, in front of which extended a neat lawn, and on the opposite side rose two mighty cedars of Lebanon, whose crooked branches spread their green far over another large lawn surrounded by ivy and wild vines, the hedge being so dense and dark that no sunbeam could penetrate it.

"As soon as I stepped into the house, Dickens came to meet me kindly and cordially. He was now in the prime of life, still so youthful, so active, so eloquent, so rich in the most pleasant humor, through which his sterling kind-heartedness always beamed forth. As he stood before me in the first hour, so he was and remained during all the weeks I passed in his company,—merry, good-natured, and full of charming sympathy. Dickens at home seems to be perpetually jolly, and enters into the interests of games with all the ardor of a boy. My bedroom was the perfection of a sleeping-apartment; the view across the Kentish hills, with a distant peep of the Thames, charming. In every room I found a table covered with writing-materials, headed notepaper, envelopes, cut quill-pens, wax, matches, sealing-wax, and all scrupulously neat and orderly. There are magnificent specimens of Newfoundland dogs on the grounds, such animals as Landseer would love to paint. One of these, named Bumble, seems to be a favorite with Dickens."

Mr. Mackenzie writes:—

"Eminently social and domestic, he exercised a liberal hospitality, and though he lived well as his means allowed, avoided excesses. It is said of him that he never lost a friend, never made an enemy."

From all sources comes the same report of his geniality, of his devotion to his children and their devotion to him, of his constant generosity and good-humor. Byron's old servant said that Lady Byron was the only woman he ever saw who could not manage his master. Was this also true of Mrs. Dickens? Was she the only one who found him "ill to live with"? It may be; and yet one can easily imagine him to have been a man of moods, and that in some of these moods it would be best to give him a wide berth. The very excess of his animal spirits may have been wearying to one who could not share them; and that he was egotistical to a degree, and vain, and fond of flattery, goes without saying. A lady in the "English-woman's Magazine" tells this story of his wild and reckless fun, and it is matched by many others. They were down on the seashore in the moonlight, and had been dancing there.

"We then strolled farther down to watch the fading light. The tide came rippling in. The night grew darker,—starless, moonless. Dickens seemed suddenly to be possessed with the spirit of mischief; he threw his arm around me, and ran me down the inclined plane to the end of the jetty till we reached the toll-post. He put his other arm around this, and exclaimed in theatrical tones that he intended to hold me there till the sad sea waves should submerge us. 'Think of the sensation we shall create.' Here I implored him to let me go, and struggled hard to release myself. 'Let your mind dwell upon the column in the "Times" wherein will be vividly described the pathetic fate of the lovely E. P., drowned by Dickens in a fit of dementia. Don't struggle, poor little bird; you are helpless.' By this time the last gleam of light had faded out, and the water close to us looked uncomfortably black. The tide was coming up rapidly, and surged over my feet. I gave a loud shriek, and tried to bring him back to common-sense by reminding him that my dress—my best dress, my only silk dress—would be ruined. Even this climax did not soften him; he still went on with his serio-comic nonsense, shaking with laughter all the time, and panting with his struggles to hold me. 'Mrs. Dickens,' I shrieked, 'help me! Make Mr. Dickens let me go—the waves are up to my knees.' 'Charles,' cried Mrs. Dickens, 'how can you be so silly? You will both be carried off by the tide!' And it was not until my dress had been completely ruined that I succeeded in wresting myself from him. Upon two other occasions he seized me and ran with me under the cataract, and held me there until I was thoroughly baptized and my bonnets a wreck of lace and feathers."

The same writer says,—and she is one who writes from familiar personal acquaintance,—"To describe Dickens as always amiable, always just, and always in the right, would be simply false and untrue to Nature;" and she relates several anecdotes going to prove that he was sometimes capricious, not always responsive to appeals for help, and other things of that sort; all of which may be true and not be very damaging. This writer tells still another story of his reckless fun-making, as follows:—

"We were about to make an excursion to Pegwell Bay, and lunch there. Presently Dickens came in in high glee, flourishing about a yard of ballads, which he had bought from a beggar in the street. 'Look here,' he cried exultingly, 'all for a penny. One song alone is worth a Jew's eye,—quite new and original, the subject being the interesting announcement by our gracious Queen.' He commenced to give us a specimen, but after hearing one verse there arose a cry of universal execration. He pretended to be vexed at our 'shutting him up.' said there was nothing wrong in it, he had written a great deal worse himself; and when we were going to enter the carriages he said: 'Now, look here! I give due notice to all and sundry, that I mean to sing that song, and a good many others, during the ride; so those ladies who think them vulgar can go in the other carriages. I am not going to invest my hard-earned penny for nothing.' I was quite certain that Charles Dickens was the last man in the world to shock the modesty of any female, and too much of a gentleman to do anything that was annoying to us, but I thought it as well to go in the other carriage; and so he had no ladies with him but his wife and Mrs. S——. I was not sorry, however, to be where I was, as I heard for the next half-hour portions of those songs wafted on the breeze; and the bursts of laughter from ladies and gentlemen and the mischievous twinkle in Dickens's eye proved that he was in such a madcap mood that it was as well there were none but married people with him,—the subject being of a 'Gampish' nature. But he was not always full of spirits or even-tempered,—indeed, I was sometimes puzzled by the variability of his moods."

Anecdotes like the following, told by Blanchard Jerrold, abound in all writers who wrote of Dickens from personal knowledge:—

"A very dear friend of mine, and of many others to whom literature is a staff, had died. To say that his family had claims upon Dickens is to say that they were promptly acknowledged and satisfied, with the grace and heartiness which double the gift, sweeten the bread, and warm the wine. I asked a connection of our dead friend whether he had seen the poor wife and children. 'Seen them?' he answered. 'I was there to-day. They are removed into a charming cottage. They have everything about them; and just think of this: when I burst into the room, in my eager survey of the new home, I saw a man in his shirt-sleeves up some steps, hammering away lustily. He turned. It was Charles Dickens, and he was hanging the pictures for the widow. . . . Dickens was the soul of truth and manliness as well as kindness, so that such a service as this came as naturally to him as help from his purse.'"

Jerrold continues:—

"There was that boy-element in him which has been so often remarked of men of genius. 'Why, we played a game of knock 'em down only a week ago,' a friend remarked to me last June, with beaming eyes, 'and he showed all the old astonishing energy and delight in taking aim at Aunt Sally.' My own earliest recollections of Dickens are of his gayest moods, when the boy in him was exuberant, and leap-frog and rounders were not sports too young for the player who had written 'Pickwick' twenty years before. The sweet and holy lessons which he presented to humanity out of the humble places in the world could not have been evolved out of a nature less true and sympathetic than his. It wanted such a man as Dickens was in his life to be such a writer as he was for the world."

One more anecdote. J. C. Young tells us that one day Mrs. Henry Siddons, a neighbor and intimate of Lord Jeffrey, who often entered his library unannounced, opened the door very gently to see if he were there, and saw enough at a glance to convince her that the visit was ill-timed. The hard critic of the "Edinburgh Review" was sitting in his chair with his head on the table in deep grief. As Mrs. Siddons was retiring, in the hope that her entrance had been unnoticed, Jeffrey raised his head and kindly beckoned her back. Perceiving that his cheek was flushed and his eyes suffused with tears, she begged permission to withdraw. When he found that she was intending to leave him, he rose from his chair, took her by both hands, and led her to a seat.

"Don't go, my dear friend; I shall be right again in another minute."

"I had no idea you had had any bad news, or cause for grief, or I would not have come. Is any one dead?"

"Yes, indeed. I'm a great goose to have given way so; but I could not help it. You'll be sorry to hear that little Nelly, Boz's little Nelly, is dead."

Dear, sweet, loving little Nell! We doubt if any other creation of poet or novelist in any language has received the tribute of as many tears as thou. From high, from low, on land, on sea, wherever thy story has been read, there has been paid the spontaneous tribute of tears. Whether or not many of the fantastic creations of the great master's hand will live in the far future we cannot tell, but of thy immortality there is no more question than there is of that of Hamlet or of Lear. Bret Harte tells us of a camp among the stern Sierras, where a group of wanderers gathered about the fire, and one of them arose, and "from his pack's scant treasure" drew forth the magic book; and soon all their own wants and labors were forgotten, and

"The whole camp with Nell on English meadows Wandered and lost their way."

And from many different sources come stories of her influence upon the hearts and minds of all classes and conditions of men.

Of Dickens's personal appearance and of the leading traits of his character much has been written, and by some of the keenest observers of his time. He is said to have been a very small and sickly boy, subject to attacks of violent spasm. Although so fond of games and sports when a man, as a boy he evinced little interest in them, probably on account of his ill health. We should naturally think of him as the autocrat of the playground, and the champion in all games of strength and skill; but such was not the fact. He was extremely fond of reading, at a very early age, and of acting little plays, and showing pictures in a magic lantern; he even sang at this time, and was as fond of fun as in later life. When quite young he and his companions mounted a small theatre, and got together scenery to illustrate "The Miller and his Men," and one or two other plays.