Fern Fanny
Fresh Leaves
ANNIVERSARY TIME. MR. GOUGH AT THE OPERA HOUSE
Funny, isn’t it? Country ministers, with their wives and daughters, in the unhallowed precincts of an Opera House! I trust they crossed themselves on the threshold, by way of exorcising Beelzebub. Observe their furtive glances at the naked little dimplednesses perched upon yonder wooden pillars. How legibly is – Saints and angels! where are those children’s trowsers? written upon the elongated corners of their evangelical mouths. R-a-t-h-e-r different, I confess, from the Snagtown “meetin’-house,” with its slam-down seats, its swallow-nested roof, and its shirt-sleeved chorister; but, my strait-laced friends, if you strain at a harmless marble Cupid, how could you swallow an electric flesh-and-blood ballet-dancer? Such as we are wont to see in this house? I have tried to educate myself up to it, but may I be pinched this minute if I do not catch myself diligently perusing the play-bill, whenever they execute one of their astounding rotary pas. I can’t stand it; and yet my friends, at the risk of being excommunicated, allow me to say, that I would rather stand a ballet-dancer’s chance of getting to heaven, than that of many a vinegar-visaged saint of high repute in your churches.
But this is a digression. Just see those women seating themselves on the stage. Saucy as I am, I could not do that; nor, if I did, would I put my feet upon the rounds of a chair in front of me – and the audience. How patriarchal Solon Robinson looks, with his clear, calm face, and his long, snow-white beard! He is quite a picture. What a pity he ever burned his fingers with “Hot Corn.” But let him throw the first stone who has never by one well-meant, but mistaken act of his life, called forth the regretful “what a pity!” The river which never overflows its banks may never devastate, nor – does it ever freshen the distant and arid Sahara. Many a poor man has blessed, and will bless, the name of Solon Robinson; and many a hard-toiling woman, too, whom he has instructed how to procure the most nutriment for her starving children from an old bone or a couple of onions. Let those who make wry mouths at “Hot Corn,” taste his “poor man’s soup,” and do justice to the active brain and philanthropic heart of its originator.
I used to think the “New York Tribune,” of which Solon is agricultural editor, a great institution, until I discovered two things: first, the number of able, talented, practical men employed in its getting up; secondly, that a bull’s head is kept constantly seething in the machine boiler to impart a wholesome ferocity to its paragraphs!
Hush! here comes the speaker of the evening – John B. Gough, supported by Dr. Tyng (who believes in preaching to dear little children, as well as to their fathers and mothers). John says, “Ladies and gentlemen” (not —Gentlemen and ladies, as do some ungallant orators). “Ladies and gentlemen, when the admission tickets are twenty-five cents I feel doubtful of giving you your money’s worth; judge then how a fifty cent ticket embarrasses me.” A very politic preface, John; but ere you had spoken five consecutive sentences, I knew it was mock-modesty. You know very well that no man understands better how to sway a crowd; you know that many an audience, who yawn through addresses that are squared, rounded, and plumb-ed by nicest rules of rhetoric, will sit spell-bound unconscious hours, and laugh and cry at your magnetic will. John, you are a good and a great institution, and right glad am I that the noble cause in which your eloquence is enlisted, has so pleasing and indomitable a defender.
But John – it is not all in you. Double-edged is the sword wielded in a just cause; and not a man, woman, or child has listened to your burning words to-night who did not know and feel that you spoke God’s truth.
Success to the Temperance cause, and all its apostles, both great and small; and above all, never let woman’s lip baptize the bowl, which, for aught she can tell, may sepulcher her dearest hopes this side heaven.
WAYSIDE WORDS
I wonder is there a country on the face of the earth, where the Almighty is oftener called upon to send to perdition the souls of those who offend its inhabitants? Everywhere that horrid imprecation, so familiar that it is unnecessary to shock you by writing it, meets the pained ear. I say pained, because I, for one, can not abhor it less on account of its frequency, or consider it less disgusting, because it filters through aristocratic lips. Everywhere it pursues me; in crowded streets, on ferry boats, in omnibusses, and, I am sorry to say, in ladies’ parlors, which should afford a refuge from this disgusting habit.
From old men – whose toothless lips mumble it almost inarticulately; from those who would resent to the death any question of their claim to the title of gentlemen; from young men, glorious else, in the strength and vigor of youth; and sadder still – from little children, who have caught the trick, and bandy curses at their sports. An oath from a child’s lips! One would as soon expect a thunderbolt from out the heart of a rose. And yet, there are those who deliberately teach little children to swear, and think it sport, when the rosy lips, with childish grace, lisp the demoniac lesson.
An oath from a woman’s lips! With shuddering horror we shrink away, and ask, what bitter cup of wrong, suffering, and despair, man has doomed her to drink to the dregs, ere she could so belie her beautiful womanhood.
One lovely moonlight night, I was returning late from the opera, with a gentleman friend, the delicious tones I had heard still floating through my charmed brain. Suddenly from out a dark angle in a building we passed, issued a woman; old, not in years, but in misery, for her long, brown hair curtained a face whose beauty had been its owner’s direst curse. To my dying day I shall never forget the horrid oaths of that wretched woman as she faced the moonlight and me. Perhaps I had evoked some vision of happier days, when she, too, had a protecting arm to lean upon; sure I am, could she have read my heart, she would not have cursed me. But oh, the wide gulf between what she must have been and what she was! Oh, the dreadful reckoning to be required at the hands of him who defaced this temple of the living God, and left it a shapeless, blackened ruin!
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
Who has not read “Jane Eyre?” and who has not longed to know the personal history of its gifted author? At last we have it. Poor Charlotte Bronte! So have I seen a little bird trying bravely with outspread wings to soar, and as often beaten back by the gathering storm-cloud – not discouraged – biding its time for another trial – singing feebly its quivering notes as if to keep up its courage – growing bolder in each essay till the eye ached in watching its triumphant progress – up – up – into the clear blue of heaven.
Noble Charlotte Bronte! worthy to receive the baptism of fire which is sent to purify earth’s gifted. I see her on the gloomy moors of Haworth, in the damp parsonage-house – skirted by the grave-yard, sickening with its unwholesome exhalations, crushing down, at the stern bidding of duty, her gloomy thoughts and aspirations; tending patiently the irritable sick, performing cheerfully the most menial household offices; the days “passing in a slow and dead march;” cheered by no mother’s loving smile, or rewarding kiss; waiting patiently upon the hard, selfish, unsympathizing father, who saw, one by one, his gifted daughters sink into untimely graves, for want of the love, and sympathy, and companionship for which their yearning hearts were aching.
I see these sisters at night, released from toil, when their father had retired to rest, denied the cheerful candle-light, pacing up and down, in utter darkness, the dreary little sitting-room, talking of the vacant past and present, and trying vainly to pierce the impenetrable future for one glimmering ray of hope; and as years passed on, and vision after vision faded away – alas! with those who wove them – I see Charlotte, the last survivor of that little group, pacing alone that desolate sitting-room; while the winds that swept over the bleak moor, and through the church-yard, and howled about the windows, seemed to the excited imagination of the lonely, feeble watcher, like the voices of her sisters shrieking to be again enfolded in her warm, sisterly embrace. Alone —all alone! – no shoulder to weep upon – no loving sister’s hand to creep about her waist – the voices of her soul crying eternally, unceasingly, vainly, Give, give – and he who gave her life, sleeping, eating, drinking, as stoically as if ten thousand deaths were not compressed, to that feeble girl, into each agonized moment.
One smiles now, when the praise of “Jane Eyre” is on every tongue, at the weary way the author’s thumbed manuscript traveled from publisher to publisher, seeking a resting-place, and finding none; and when at length it did appear in book form – the caution of the sapient book-dissecting “London Athenæum” containing only “very qualified admissions of the power of the author” – also of “The Literary Gazette,” which “considered it unsafe to pronounce upon an unknown author;” also at “The Daily News,” which “did not review novels” – but found time soon afterward to notice others. Mistaken gentlemen! you were yet, like some others of your class, to take off your publishing and editorial hats to the little woman who was destined to a world-wide fame, but – and if ye have manly hearts they must have ached ere now to think of it – not until the bitter cup of privation and sorrow had been so nearly drained to the dregs by those quivering lips, that the laurel wreath, so bravely, hardly won, was twined with the cypress vine.
Literary fame! alas – what is it to a loving woman’s heart, save that it lifts her out of the miry pit of poverty and toil? To have one’s glowing thoughts handled, twisted, and distorted by coarse fingers; to shed scalding tears over the gravest charge which can be untruthfully brought against a woman’s pen; to bear it, writhing in silence, and have that silence misconstrued, or speak in your own defense, and be called unwomanly; to be a target for slander, envy, and misrepresentation, by those of both sexes who can not look upon a shining garment without a wish to defile it – all this, a man’s shoulders may be broad enough to bear, but she must be a strong woman who does not stagger under it.
I see Charlotte Bronte in the little parsonage parlor, at Haworth, draperied, hung with pictures, furnished, at last, with books from the proceeds of her own pen; and upon the vacant chairs upon which should have sat the toiling, gifted sisters, over whom the grave had closed, I see inscribed, Too late – Too late! and I look at its delicate and only inmate, and trace the blue veins on her transparent temples, and say, Too late! – even for thee– Too late! Happiness is not happiness if it be not shared – it turns to misery. But, thank God, at last came the delirious draught of love, even for so brief a space, to those thirsting lips – but which, incredible as it may seem, the father, in his selfishness, would have dashed aside; relenting at last, he gave up this tender, shrinking flower to more appreciative keeping; but the blast had been too keen that had gone before – the storms too rough – the sky too inclement. We read of a wedding, the happiness of which the selfish father must cloud at the last moment, by refusing, for some inexplicable reason, or no reason at all, to give away the bride in person according to episcopal usage – we read of a short bridal tour – of a return to a love-beautified, love-sanctified home – we read of a pleasant walk of the happy pair – of a slight cold taken on that occasion – of a speedy delirium – of a conscious moment, in which the new-made bride opened wide her astonished eyes upon her kneeling husband, pleading with God to spare her precious life; and we read the heart-rending exclamation of the latter as the truth flashed upon her clouded intellect – “O! I am not to die now? – when we have been so happy?” and with streaming eyes we turn away from the corpse of Charlotte Bronte.
