<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<div>
<h1 class='c000'>Idle Hours in a Library</h1></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' /></div>
<table class='table0' summary=''>
<colgroup>
<col width='0%' />
<col width='100%' />
<col width='0%' />
</colgroup>
<tr>
<td class='btt blt c002'> </td>
<td class='btt c003'> </td>
<td class='btt brt c004'> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='blt c002'> </td>
<td class='c005'>By the same Author</td>
<td class='brt c004'> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='blt c002'> </td>
<td class='c003'> </td>
<td class='brt c004'> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='blt c002'> </td>
<td class='c003'><i>The Church and the Stage</i></td>
<td class='brt c004'> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='blt c002'> </td>
<td class='c003'> </td>
<td class='brt c004'> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='blt c002'> </td>
<td class='c003'><i>Introduction to the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer</i></td>
<td class='brt c004'> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='blt c002'> </td>
<td class='c003'> </td>
<td class='brt c004'> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='blt c002'> </td>
<td class='c003'><i>Studies in Interpretation</i></td>
<td class='brt c004'> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='bbt blt c002'> </td>
<td class='bbt c003'> </td>
<td class='bbt brt c004'> </td>
</tr>
</table>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' /></div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c001'>
<div><span class='xlarge'>Idle Hours in a Library</span></div>
<div class='c006'>By</div>
<div class='c006'>William Henry Hudson</div>
<div class='c006'><span class='small'>Professor of English Literature, Stanford University</span></div>
</div></div>
<div class='figcenter id001'>
<ANTIMG src='images/title_page.png' alt='' class='ig001' /></div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center'>
<div>William Doxey</div>
<div class='c006'>At the Sign of the Lark</div>
<div class='c006'>San Francisco</div>
</div></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' /></div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c001'>
<div><span class='sc'>Copyright, 1897</span></div>
<div class='c006'><span class='sc'>William Doxey</span></div>
<div class='c007'>THE DOXEY PRESS</div>
</div></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' /></div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c001'>
<div>TO</div>
<div class='c006'><span class='large'>F. E. H.</span></div>
<div class='c006'>IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE</div>
<div>DEAR OLD DAYS</div>
</div></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' /></div>
<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_vii'>vii</span></div>
<div class='preface'>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c008'>Preface</h2></div>
<p class='c009'>The title of this little volume was chosen because it
seems to indicate a characteristic possessed in common
by the otherwise unrelated essays here brought
together. They may all be described in a general way
as holiday tasks—the results of many hours of quiet
but rather aimless browsing among books, and not
of special investigations, undertaken with a view to
definite scholastic ends. They are, moreover, as will
readily be seen, completely unacademic in style and
intention. Three of the papers were originally put
into shape as popular lectures. The remaining one—that
on the Restoration novelists—was written for a
magazine which appeals not to a special body of students,
but to the more general reading public. The
title, hit upon after some little searching, will, I believe,
therefore be accepted as fairly descriptive, and will
not, I hope, be condemned as overfanciful.</p>
<p class='c010'>A word or two of more detailed explanation may,
perhaps, be permitted. Of the essays on Pepys’s
<span class='pageno' id='Page_viii'>viii</span>Diary and the “Scenes of Bohemian Life,” I would
simply say that they may be taken to testify to the
unfailing sources of unalloyed enjoyment I have found
in these delightful books; and I should be pleased to
think that, while they may renew for some readers the
charm of old associations, they may perhaps send
others here and there for the first time to the works
themselves—in which case I shall be sure of the gratitude
of some at least of those into whose hands this
little volume may chance to fall. I can scarcely say as
much as this for the study of Mrs. Behn and Mrs.
Manley—for most readers will be quite as well off if
they leave the lucubrations of these two ladies alone.
But in these days we all read novels; and it has
seemed to me, therefore, that my brief account of
some of the early experiments in English fiction may
not be altogether lacking in interest and suggestiveness.
Thus, after some hesitation, I decided to find a
place for the authors of “Oroonoko” and “The New
Atalantis” in these pages. So far as the chapter on
Shakspere’s London is concerned, it is needless to do
more than indicate the way in which it came to be
written. A number of years ago, while engaged for
other purposes in the study of Elizabethan popular
literature, and more especially of the drama of the
period, I began, for my own satisfaction, to jot down,
as I lighted upon them, the more striking references
<span class='pageno' id='Page_ix'>ix</span>and allusions to manners, customs, and the social life
of the time. I presently found that I had thus gathered
a good deal of miscellaneous material; and it
then occurred to me that, properly organized, my
memoranda might be made into an interesting popular
lecture. The lecture was presently prepared, and was
frequently delivered, both in England and in this
country. Naturally enough, the paper can lay no claim
to exhaustiveness; it is scrappy, formless, and sometimes
superficial. But the reader of Shakspere may
find it of some value, so far as it goes.</p>
<p class='c010'>The essay on the Restoration novel is reproduced,
greatly changed and somewhat amplified, from the
English magazine, “Time.” The remainder of the
volume has not before been in print.</p>
<p class='c010'>In such a book as this, it would be pedantic to
make a display of authorities and references, though I
hope that any direct indebtedness has always been
duly recorded in the proper place. But I must do
myself the pleasure of adding, that here, as elsewhere
in my work, I have gained more than I can say from
the help and encouragement of my wife.</p>
<div class='lg-container-r'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c011'><span class='small'><i>Stanford University, California, 1897</i></span></p>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c008'>Contents</h2></div>
<table class='table1' summary=''>
<colgroup>
<col width='87%' />
<col width='12%' />
</colgroup>
<tr>
<td class='c012'> </td>
<td class='c013'><span class='small'>Page</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c012'>London Life in Shakspere’s Time</td>
<td class='c013'><SPAN href='#chap1'>1</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c012'>Pepys and His Diary</td>
<td class='c013'><SPAN href='#chap2'>65</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c012'>Two Novelists of the English Restoration</td>
<td class='c013'><SPAN href='#chap3'>125</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c012'>A Glimpse of Bohemia</td>
<td class='c013'><SPAN href='#chap4'>181</SPAN></td>
</tr>
</table>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='chap1' class='c008'>London Life in Shakspere’s Time</h2></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' /></div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c001'>
<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_1'>1</span><span class='large'>London Life in Shakspere’s Time</span></div>
</div></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_0_0_7 c009'>It is the purpose of the present paper to give
some glimpses of every-day life in the English
metropolis in the latter part of the sixteenth and
the early part of the seventeenth centuries. Our
subject will take us from the main highways of
history into by-paths illuminated by the popular
literature of the time. It is not the grave historian,
the statesman, or the philosopher, but rather
the common playwright, the ballad-monger, the
pamphleteer, whom we must take here as our
guides. Yet ere we intrust ourselves to their care
it will not be amiss if, with the view of making
the clearer what we shall presently have to say,
we pause for a moment at the outset to consider
some of the more general aspects of the period
with which we are to deal.</p>
<p class='c010'>Looking, then, first of all, at the political conditions
of the time, we may describe the history
of the reign of Elizabeth as the history of consolidation
rather than of superficial change.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_2'>2</span>What strikes us most is not the addition of fresh
culture-elements, but the reorganization and expansion
of elements already existing. The forces
of evolution had turned inward, acting more
upon the internal structure than upon the external
forms of society. The Wars of the Roses
were now things of recollection only, the fierce
contentions which the struggle between York and
Lancaster had produced having subsided with
most of the bitter feelings engendered by them.
Save for the collision with Spain, which ended in
the defeat of the great Armada, England enjoyed
a singular immunity from complications with
foreign powers; and an opportunity, freely made
use of, was thus offered for the development of
foreign trade. The growth of a strong commercial
sentiment, consequent on this, acted as a
powerful solvent in the dissolution of feudal
ideas and the disintegration of feudal forms of
life. The conflict was now mainly between opinions—between
rival forces of an intellectual and
moral character. The power of the upper classes—the
representatives of the ancient <i>régime</i> of
chivalry—was on the wane; the power of the
middle classes—the representatives of the modern
<i>régime</i> of commerce—showed corresponding
growth. The voice of the people, through
<span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>their delegates in Parliament, began to be acknowledged
by the caution exhibited on sundry
critical occasions by the crown; the country at
large was growing richer and stronger; the sense
of English unity was intensified by the very
dangers which menaced the national life; and as
men came more and more to recognize their
individualities, they demanded greater freedom
of thought and speech. “England, alone of
European nations,” as Mr. Symonds pointed
out, “received the influences of both Renaissance
and Reformation simultaneously.” The
mighty forces generated by these two movements
in combination—one emancipating the reason,
the other the conscience, from the trammels of
the Middle Ages—told in countless ways upon
the masses of society. But with all this,—partly,
indeed, in consequence of all this,—there was a
deep-seated restlessness at the very springs of
life. The contests of opposing parties were carried
on with a fierceness and acerbity of which
we know little in these more moderate days; the
minds of men were set at variance and thrown
into confusion by a thousand distracting issues;
and, unrealized as yet in all their significance and
power, those Titanic religious and political agencies
were beginning to take shape which were
<span class='pageno' id='Page_4'>4</span>by and by to rend English society to its very
core.</p>
<p class='c010'>When we turn from the political character of
the age to the moral character of the people, we
find it difficult to avoid having recourse to a
series of antitheses, after the familiar manner of
Macaulay, so violent and surprising are the contrasts,
so diverse the component qualities which
analysis everywhere brings to light. The age
was virile in its power, its restlessness, its amazing
energy and fertility; it was virile, too, in its
unrestraint, its fierceness, its licentiousness and
brutality. Men gloried in their newly conquered
freedom, and in that wider knowledge of the
world which had been opened up to them by the
study of the past, by the scientific researches of
Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, by the discoveries
of Amerigo Vespucci, Columbus, Jenkinson,
Willoughby, Drake. National feeling was
strong; the national pulse beat high. Yet, in
spite of Protestantism and an open Bible, it was
essentially a pagan age; in spite of its Platonism
and Euphuism, a coarse and sensual one. You
had only to scratch the superficial polish to find
the old savagery beneath. Your smiling and
graceful courtier would discourse of Seneca and
Aristotle, but he would relish the obscenest jest
<span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>and act his part in the grossest intrigue. Your
young gallant would turn an Italian sonnet, or
“tune the music of an ever vain tongue,” but
within an hour he might have been found in all
the blood and filth and turmoil of the cockpit or
the bear-ring. The unseemliest freedom prevailed
throughout society—amidst the noble
ladies in immediate attendance upon the queen,
and thence all down the social scale. Laws were
horribly brutal, habits revoltingly rude. All the
powerful instincts of a fresh, buoyant, self-reliant,
ambitious, robust, sensuous manhood had burst
loose, finding expression now in wild extravagance,
indulgence, animalism, now in great effort
on distant seas, now in the mighty utterances
of the drama; for these things were but different
facets of the same national character. Still, with
all its gigantic prodigality of energy, with all its
untempered misuse of genius and power, the
English Renaissance kept itself free from many
of the worst features of the Spanish and Italian
revivals. It was all very well for Benvenuto
Cellini to call the English “wild beasts.” Deep
down beneath the casuistry and Euphuism, beneath
the artificiality and the glittering veneer,
beneath the coarseness and the brutalism, there
was ever to be found that which was lacking in
<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>the Southern character—a stern, hardy, tough-fibred
moral sense, which in that critical period
of disquietude and upheaval formed indeed the
very sheet-anchor of the nation’s hopes. It must
never be forgotten that it was this age of new-found
freedom, and of that license which went
with it like its shadow, that produced such types
of magnificent manhood as Raleigh, strong “the
fierce extremes of good and ill to brook”; as
Spenser, sweetest and purest of poets and of
men; as Sidney, whom that same Spenser might
well describe as “the most noble and virtuous
gentleman, most worthy of all titles, both of
learning and chivalry”; as Shakspere, whom,
all slanders notwithstanding, we, like his own
close friends, still think and speak of as our
“Gentle Will.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Such, so far as we are able to sum them up in
a few brief sentences, were some of the salient
characteristics of the great age of the Virgin
Queen—an age, as Dean Church has said, “of
vast ambitious adventure, which went to sea, little
knowing whither it went, and ill-provided with
knowledge or instrument”; but an age of magnificent
enterprise and achievement, none the
less. And now it is for us to follow down into
some of the details of their private, every-day
<span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>existence the men and women who, to use a suggestive
phrase of Goethe’s, were the citizens of
this period, and whose little lives shared, no
matter in how small and obscure a way, in the
movements and destinies of the large world into
which they were born.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>Just a quarter of a century before Queen Elizabeth’s
death, a proclamation was issued, reciting
that her Majesty foresaw that “great and manifold
inconveniences and mischiefs” were likely
to arise “from the access and confluence of the
people” to the metropolis, and making certain
stringent provisions with a view to keeping down
the population of the city. This enactment is
useful as showing us that even at that early date,—as
later on, in the time of Smollett,—the enormous
growth of London was held to be matter for
alarm. London was indeed increasing rapidly in
extent, population, wealth, and power; and Lyly
was hardly guilty of extravagance when, in his
“Euphues,” he wrote of it as a place that “both
for the beauty of building, infinite riches, variety
of all things,” “excelleth all the cities of the
world; insomuch that it may be called the storehouse
or mart of all Europe.” Yet we are most
of us probably unable without much effort to
<span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>realize how different was the English metropolis
of Elizabeth’s time from the metropolis of the
present day.</p>
<p class='c010'>We have to remember, in the first place, that
the London with which we are now concerned
was a walled city, and that the territory which lay
within the walls,—that is, the metropolis proper,—represented
but a very small portion of what
is now included within the civic area. Newgate,
Ludgate, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Cripplegate, and
Aldersgate, still mark out and perpetuate by their
names the narrow lines of those protecting walls
which held snug and secure the mere handful of
folk of which London was then composed. At
nine o’clock in the evening, when Bow-bell rang,
and the voices of the other city churches took
up the curfew-strain, the gates were shut for the
night, and the citizens retired to their dwellings
under the protection of armed watchmen who
guarded their slumbers along the walls. Westward
from Fleet Street and Holborn, beyond
which so much of modern London lies, the city
had not then penetrated.</p>
<p class='c010'>Within and about the walls there were many
“fair churches for divine service,” with old St.
Paul’s in their midst—the Gothic St. Paul’s of
the days before the great fire; and many prisons
<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>to help the churches in their philanthropic work.
Open spaces were very numerous; trees were
everywhere to be seen; fields invaded the most
sacred strongholds of commercial activity; conduits
and brooks (whereof Lamb’s Conduit Street
to-day carries a nominal reminiscence) flowed
through every part of the town. The narrow,
straggling streets ran hither and thither with no
very marked definity of aim; for county councils
had not as yet come into existence, and metropolitan
improvements were still hidden in the womb
of time; and so unsanitary were the general conditions
that they were seldom free from epidemic
disease. Cheap, with its old cross just opposite
the entrance to Wood Street, was a famous spot
for trading of all kinds; but there were other
localities which had their specialized activities.
St. Paul’s, for instance, was the acknowledged
quarter for booksellers, as indeed it has continued
to be down to the present time. Houndsditch,
like the Houndsditch of to-day, and Long Lane
in Smithfield, abounded in shops for second-hand
clothing—<i>fripperies</i>, as they were called.
“He shows like a walking frippery,” says one
of the characters in “The City Madam”; while
it was in the latter place that Mistress Birdlime
in “Westward Ho” speaks of “hiring three
<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>liveries.” In St. Martin’s-le-Grand clustered the
foreign handicraftsmen of doubtful character, who
manufactured copper lace and imitation jewellery;
and Watling Street and Birchin Lane were
the haunts of the tailors. Then, again, it was
in Bucklersbury that the grocers and druggists
most did congregate. “Go to Bucklersbury and
fetch me two ounces of preserved melons,” says
Mistress Tenterhook in “Westward Ho.” Fleet
Lane and Pie Corner were so famous for their
cook-shops that Anne in “The City Madam”
might well exclaim, when the porters enter with
their baskets of provisions, that they smell unmistakably
of these localities; while to Panyer
Alley repaired all true lovers of tripe. Even
religious opinions had their special homes.
Bloomsbury and Drury Lane, for example, were
favorite haunts of Catholics; and the Puritans
were particularly strong in Blackfriars. This
explains the words put by Webster into the
mouth of one of his characters: “We are as
pure about the heart as if we dwelt amongst ’em
in Blackfriars,” and Doll Common’s description
of Face, in “The Alchemist,” as—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“A rascal, upstart, apocryphal captain,</div>
<div class='line in1'>Whom not a Puritan in Blackfriars will trust.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>And through all this jumble of wealth and
dirt, away past the suburbs and into the open
country beyond, ran “the famous River Thames”—the
“great silent highway,” as it has been
called,—fed by the Fleet and other forgotten
and now hidden streams, and bearing upon its
majestic current its hundreds of watermen, its
boats, its barges, and its swans. It was spanned
by a single bridge, of which Lyly speaks enthusiastically
in his “Euphues,” and which is described
by the German traveller, Paul Hentzner,
as “a bridge of stone, eight hundred feet in
length, of wonderful work. It is supported,”
this writer continues, “upon twenty piers of
square stone, sixty feet high and thirty broad,
joined by arches of about twenty feet diameter.”
And he adds, touching in a brief sentence upon
a characteristic of its structure which must seem
particularly curious to modern readers: “The
whole is covered on each side with houses, so
disposed as to have the appearance of a continued
street, not at all of a bridge.”</p>
<p class='c010'>But if the difference between to-day and three
centuries ago is striking enough within the city
walls, still more striking does it become as we
pass beyond the gates. Fleet Street, where Dr.
Johnson was presently to enjoy watching the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>ceaseless ebb and flow of the great tide of human
life, was still suburban; Chancery Lane, with its
wide gardens on the eastern side and Lincoln’s
Inn enclosure on the western, possessed only a
few scattered houses at either end. The Strand—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“That goodly thoroughfare between</div>
<div class='line in8'>The court and city,”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c010'>as a Puritan poet called it—was a long country
road flanked with noblemen’s houses (“a continual
row of palaces, belonging to the chief
nobility,” Hentzner says), the gardens of which
on the one side ran down to the river, and on
the other backed upon the fine open space of
pasture-land called Covent (that is, Convent)
Garden. At Charing there was an ancient cross,
and beyond, wide fields known as the Haymarket,
the quiet stretches of St. James’s Park,
and the wide country road called Piccadilly, the
regular highway to Reading and the west. St.
Martin’s Lane ran up between hedgerows and
meadows to Tottenham, or Totten Court. In the
other direction, towards Westminster, there was
the Court, with its Tiltyard, standing where the
Horseguards now stand, and beyond this the city
of Westminster, with its abbey and great hall,
lying in the quiet fields. Just opposite, on the
other bank, in an unbroken expanse of country,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>stood Lambeth Palace, whence a long, lonely
road led eastward, through Lambeth Marsh, to
the city purlieus on the Surrey side of the water.</p>
<p class='c010'>What we know as the suburbs of London
were then separate villages, to reach which one
had to make a tedious journey over open country
and along desolate lanes. Finsbury Field was
covered with windmills, and there the archers
met for practice. Islington was famous, to quote
Ben Jonson, for the citizens that went a-ducking—that
is, duck-hunting—in its ponds. Pimlico
and Holloway were favorite resorts of pleasure-seeking
townsfolk on Sunday afternoons. Hoxton
and Hampstead and Willesden lay far away
in the country; Holborn was a rural highway
running through the little village of St. Giles’s
towards Oxford; and the Edgeware Road took
you away to Tyburn, the spot which has acquired
such grim notoriety in the annals of crime.
Highway robberies took place at Kentish Town
and Hampstead; even the Queen’s Majesty was
mobbed by a handful of ruffians in the sequestered
neighborhood of Islington, which stood alone
among the hills to the north; while no man who
valued his life would venture to walk after nightfall,
unarmed or unprotected, as far into the
country as Hyde Park Corner.</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>Let us now look a little more closely at the
street life of the city which we have thus roughly
sketched.</p>
<p class='c010'>There was little of that never-ceasing bustle
with which we are familiar—little of the eternal
hurry, the intense strain, the rush and turmoil of
our modern existence; but the buzz of commerce
was everywhere to be heard, telling us that the
world was not asleep. The streets were rough,
ill-paved, and narrow, and the appearance of a
vehicle in them was sufficiently rare an occurrence
to attract attention; though the ostentation of the
rich in making use of carriages on every possible
occasion was already beginning to be satirized
by the writers of the time—as, for instance,
by Massinger in “The City Madam,” and by
Cooke in “Greene’s Tu Quoque.” There were
the churches—six score or so of them, Lyly tells
us, within the walls; the inns, with their wide
hostleries; the private houses, built not in long
uniform rows, but irregularly, as though they
desired to preserve some traces of personal character.
Their upper stories were frequently built
out, and sometimes projected so far across the
narrow streetway that Jonson pictures a lady and
her lover exchanging confidences from the topmost
windows of opposite tenements—“arguing
<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>from different premises,” as Dr. Holmes would
say. There, too, were the shops, looking more
like booths in a fair, with their quaint and picturesque
signs, and their merchandise exposed
to public gaze on open stalls, while in front of
them paced the young apprentices, besieging
the ears of every passer-by with their ceaseless
clamor of “What d’ye lack?” and their long-winded
recommendations of the articles which
they had for sale. In Middleton’s “Michaelmas
Term” we have a scene before Quomodo’s shop,
and Quomodo himself calling out to Easy and
Shortyard: “Do you hear, sir? What lack
you, gentlemen? See, good kerseys and broadcloths
here—I pray you come near.” Many
other passages of similar import might be added.
Nor were these the only, or even the noisiest,
symptoms of commercial enterprise. Itinerant
vendors of the Autolycus tribe also patrolled the
streets, murdering the Queen’s English, like
their descendants of to-day, as in loud, hoarse
voices they advertised their miscellaneous wares.
There were fishwives, orange-women, and chimney-sweeps,
broom-men, hawkers of meat pies
and pepper, of rushes for the floor, of mats,
oat-cakes, milk, and coal; and numerous Irish
costermongers (of the kind Face refers to in
<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>“The Alchemist”) who trafficked in fruit and
vegetables. In addition to all these, and to
complete the confusion of the streets, there were
mountebanks, jugglers, and ballad-singers, full
of strange tricks and new songs, whereby to
attract attention and pick up a few odd coins.</p>
<p class='c010'>The daily round of existence in the city streets
offered, therefore, no small amount of interest
and variety; while from time to time the ordinary
routine was broken in upon by fresh elements
of excitement. Now it might be a splendid
procession—perhaps of one of the great livery
companies, purse-proud and ostentatious; perhaps
of the newly-installed Lord Mayor, on his
way back from Westminster; perhaps of the
Virgin Queen and her retinue, coming cityward
on some state occasion from Richmond or Whitehall.
Now, again, it might be a procession of a
very different kind—a mob following a thief who
was going to be put into the pillory, or a woman
of disreputable character who, meeting the fate
dreaded by Doll Common, was carted through
the streets to the accompaniment of a brass band,
and amid the cries and hootings of the populace;
or a group of felons who were led out of the city
along Holborn to Tyburn, there to pay the last
penalty of the law. Sometimes, too, there were
<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>large gatherings in St. Paul’s churchyard to hear
some famous preacher—like Bishop Jewell—discourse
from the steps of the great cross; and
sometimes there were street fights between retainers
of rival houses, or bands of hot-tempered
’prentices belonging to the different city guilds—fights
which generally ended in bloodshed and
broken heads. The ’prentices of the city were
indeed notoriously a turbulent tribe, and they
figure in many a brawl and squabble in the plays
of the time. “If he were in London, among the
clubs, up went his heels for striking of a ’prentice,”
says Gazet, in Massinger’s “Renegado,”
referring in this phrase to the fact that clubs were
habitually kept in the shops ready for use in the
event of any affray. So that the London streets
were not so dull as one might at first suppose;
while for the rest there was plenty of quiet, steady
activity from dawn till dusk. Though the struggle
for wealth was not then so keen as it is to-day,
and men on the whole took things more easily,
life was full of earnestness and purpose, and
commercial ambition shared the magnificent
vigor and energy of the Elizabethan nature with
the fever of adventure and a youthful, spontaneous,
and unabashed delight in the pleasures of
sense. Wide roads were open to the young man
<span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>of brains and courage, roads which would lead
to place and power. Fortunes were to be made,
positions won; and the ’prentice, starting out in
his career, had many examples of self-made and
successful men to remind him that the world was
all before him where to choose, and that the
future largely depended upon himself. Thus,
though the London of Shakspere’s time was far
different from the London of to-day as regards
its commerce, its activities, its habits and daily
life, it was still a thriving city, the object of ambition,
the dreamland of the aspiring youth, the
great heart which set the blood pulsing and
dancing through all the arteries of the land.</p>
<p class='c010'>As for the shops themselves, we must dismiss
them with a very few words. The modern difficulty—the
importation of foreign wares, and the
immigration of foreign dealers—was already to
the front; and Italian, French, German, Spanish,
and Flemish tradesmen were to be found in
almost every street—each with his peculiar class
of custom. Some writers of the time, like William
Stafford, in his “Brief Conceit,” grow violent
over the inroads of these aliens, and roundly
proclaim, with Bishop Hall, that all the vice of
the city was to be laid at their doors. But in the
ordinary walks of business the Englishman, in
<span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>spite of a good deal of characteristic bluster and
grumbling, still held his ground. The apothecary
sold love-charms and philters, tobacco,
cane, and pudding, as well as drugs; but there
were regular tobacco merchants, also, whose
shops were of unrivalled splendor. The immense
vogue of this novel luxury is sufficiently shown
by the statement made by Barnaby Riche in
“The Honesty of this Age,” that seven thousand
shops in London “vented” tobacco, and
by the passing remark of Hentzner, that it was
smoked (or “drunk,” as the phrase then went)
everywhere. At the theatre and all such places
of public resort, the pipe was the Englishman’s
habitual companion, and from sundry passages
in Jonson, Dekker, Marston, and other dramatists,
we infer that it was sometimes carried even
to church.</p>
<p class='c010'>Among the most noteworthy of the tradesmen
of the time were the barbers, who, be it remembered,
were surgeons as well, and would cut your
beard or bleed you, trim your hair or pull out
your teeth, with absolute impartiality. Their
shops were the favorite resorts of idlers, as they
had been long since in the days of Lucian; and
owing to the immense attention then paid to hair
and beard, the more accomplished among them
<span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>drove an enormous trade. Their garrulity was
proverbial. “Oh, sir, you know I am a barber
and cannot tittle-tattle,” says Dello, in Lyly’s
“Midas,” in a scene which is full of curious
information concerning the barbers of the time.
The Cutbeard of Jonson’s “Silent Woman,” is
another illustration in point. It may be mentioned,
as an odd feature of their establishments,
that a lute was commonly kept in readiness for
the amusement of those who might have to wait
for attention, as the newspapers and comic weeklies
are kept to-day. “Barbers shall wear thee
on their citterns,” says Rhetias to Coculus, in
Ford’s “Lover’s Melancholy,” referring to the
grotesque figureheads by which these instruments
were often decorated.</p>
<p class='c010'>In the matter of the relations of sellers and
purchasers, we may note, as one of those little
touches of nature which make the whole world
kin, that customers, as we learn from more than
one old play, often indulged in the quite modern
practice of having half the goods in a shop laid
out for inspection before buying the most trumpery
article. Nor, on the other hand, were the
dealers of the time much behind their descendants
of to-day in what are known as the tricks of
trade. Adulteration was a crying evil; some of
<span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>the methods often employed, for example, for the
“sophistication” of tobacco, will be recalled by
all readers of “The Alchemist.” Another common
practice among shopkeepers was that of
darkening their stores to disguise the inferiority
of their merchandise. This is constantly referred
to by contemporary writers. The sturdy Stubbs
attacks the abuse in his “Display of Corruptions.”
“They have their shops and places
where they sell their cloth very dark and obscure,”
he writes, referring to the mercers and
drapers of his time, “of purpose to deceive
buyers.” Webster, in “The Duchess of Malfi,”
employs this familiar abuse in the turn of a compliment:
“This darkening of your worth is not
like that which tradesmen use in the city; their
false lights are to rid bad wares off;” and Quomodo,
in “Michaelmas Term,” boasts, humanly
enough, that his shop is not “so dark as some of
his neighbors’.” Again, Brome, in the “City
Wit”: “What should the city do with honesty?
Why are your wares gummed? Your shops
dark?” In “Westward Ho” we read that the
shop of a linen-draper was generally “as dark as
a room in Bedlam,” and, not to multiply quotations,
Middleton, in “Anything for a Quiet Life,”
speaks of shopwares being habitually “set in
<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>deceiving lights.” Colliers, too, were so notorious
for short measure and other crafty practices
that Greene, in his “Notable Discovery of Cosenage,”
includes a special “delightful discourse”
on purpose to lay bare their knavery.</p>
<p class='c010'>The houses were not yet numbered, and all
trading establishments were known by their
tokens—great signboards decorating every shop
with strange mottoes and fantastic devices, which
took the place of the advertising media of the
present day. Milton, we remember, was born
at the Spread Eagle, in Bread Street, and well
on in the eighteenth century the imprints of
publishers still refer to these customary signs; as
in the case of the famous “left-legged Tonson,”
who did business at “Shakespeare’s Head, over
against Catherine Street, in the Strand.” Quotations
illustrative of these trading tokens and
the part they played in the commercial life of the
time might be indefinitely multiplied; but we
must content ourselves with a single bit of evidence
from “The Alchemist.” Abel Drugger,
the young tradesman, is opening a new shop, and
comes to Subtle to take his advice about the
choice of a suitable device. In the one suggested
by Subtle, Jonson satirizes the wildly
absurd combinations frequently employed, like
<span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>the foolish advertisements of our own century, to
attract or compel public attention:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in3'>“He shall have a bel, that’s Abel;</div>
<div class='line'>And by it standing one whose name is Dee,</div>
<div class='line'>In a rug gown, there’s D and Rug, that’s <i>drug</i>;</div>
<div class='line'>And right anenst him a dog snarling Er—</div>
<div class='line'>There’s Drugger, Abel Drugger—there’s his sign.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c010'>It is hardly necessary to add that though these
signs have practically disappeared from general
use, they survive in trademarks and in the odd
and often outlandish trading tokens still to be
seen over the doors of English public houses
and inns; though just why public houses should
have kept up a practice otherwise almost universally
abandoned since the numbering of houses
came into vogue, it would be difficult to say.</p>
<p class='c010'>But with the oncoming of the night, silence,
for the most part, fell over the city and its surroundings.
There was as yet no public lighting
of the streets, but the good citizens were supposed
to do their individual shares towards illuminating
the dark thoroughfares, to insure which
the watchmen, with lanterns and halberts, would
pace their solemn rounds, hoarsely bawling at
every doorway, “Lantern and a whole candle-light!
Hang out your lights here!” Writing
from Paris in 1620, and referring to the terrible
<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>condition of the streets in the French capital,
Howell says: “This makes one think often of
the excellent nocturnal government of our city of
London, where one may pass and repass securely
all hours of the night, if he gives good words
to the watch.” Yet it is to be feared that this
patriotic comment puts the matter in a somewhat
too favorable way. The impression one derives
from reading the plays and pamphlets of the
time certainly is that the roads were always more
or less dangerous after dark, and that good, law-abiding
townsfolk were best off within doors, or,
at all events, in the immediate neighborhood of
their own houses. If they were forced to go
farther afield, they would do well to take a link-boy
with them to guide them with his light, unless
they were like Falstaff, who, as we remember,
once told Bardolph that he been saved a thousand
marks in links and torches walking between
tavern and tavern, owing to the fiery and luminous
character of the said Bardolph’s nose. A
stout ’prentice boy with a well-weighted club
was a desirable companion, too, for those who
valued purses and pates. For the streets were
infested by “roaring boys” and wild young
bloods, whose principal amusement, besides
fighting among themselves, was in persecuting
<span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>quiet citizens, and who came into almost nightly
conflict with the doting old Dogberry watchmen,
who endeavored to cope with them, often with
but very slight success. These are the fine fellows
described in Shirley’s “Gamester,”—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in31'>“that roar</div>
<div class='line'>In brothels, and break windows, fright the streets,</div>
<div class='line'>And sometimes set upon innocent bell-men to beget</div>
<div class='line'>Discourse for a week’s diet,”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c010'>and whom Jonson’s Kastril looked up to with so
much admiration and respect.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>I could not hope by any series of thumbnail
sketches to conjure up the manifold details of the
daily life of Elizabethan London as one finds it
portrayed in the plays of Jonson, Middleton,
Dekker, Cooke, and the strange pamphlets of
Nash and Greene. But we must not linger over
these street scenes. It is ample time that we
should pass on to consider a little the various
classes which went to make up the population of
the metropolis in the days of which we speak.</p>
<p class='c010'>In the common relationships of class with class
the age of Elizabeth differed widely from our
own. Sociability was one of the main characteristics
of the time, and this the guild life of the
larger towns did much to foster. In the places
<span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>of common resort—in the tavern, the theatre, at
St. Paul’s Walk, or the Archery Ground at Finsbury,
men daily met their neighbors and brother-citizens,
and rubbed shoulders and chopped
opinions with a warmth and open-heartedness
which, if they had little of modern propriety,
also knew little of modern restraint. Moreover,
London was not then the vast, overgrown, incoherent
city which it has since become, and its
inhabitants still took that personal interest in one
another’s doings, and felt, to some extent at any
rate, that sense of family sympathy which, though
they are common traits of provincial town life,
are characteristic of the metropolis no longer.
Nevertheless, the classes remained absolutely
distinct, cut off from one another by chasms
of custom and interest, and even law, which were
never, save with the rarest exceptions, bridged
over. The enactments which had been promulgated
at the beginning of the reign to fix with
rigid certainty the special garbs of the various
ranks of the community, are sufficient to show to
what extent the caste system, with its attendant
prejudices and conventions, was still rooted deep
in English life. The young ’prentice might
haply make a fortune, and reach a position of
great civic distinction. This much was open to
<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>him; but for his helpmeet in life he looked no
higher than his master’s daughter. The successful
merchant might even reach the Lord Mayor’s
bench, but he was still a citizen, and laid no claim
to set his foot within the charmed circle of gentle
life. This condition of things is illustrated again
and again in the plays of the time, as in Middleton’s
“City Madam” and Dekker’s “Shoemaker’s
Holiday.” There was practically no
overlapping of interests, no intermingling of class
with class. Money could do much, but it could
not, as it will at present, purchase an entrance
into the most select society; nor, in the matrimonial
market of that day, was a coronet ever
knocked down for a dower. But this is only
one side of the question. If there was little
class sympathy, there was little class rivalry also.
Society was more diffuse than it is to-day—held
together less firmly, but with less of the friction
which is a necessary preliminary to that readjustment
of social arrangements which the industrial
movements of the modern world are tending
slowly to bring about. The classes touched externally,
but that was all. In spirit they stood
aloof—each content to go its own way, to live
its own life, but each, for the most part, equally
ready to let the others freely do the same.</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>Of the various classes which went to the making
of the population of Shakspere’s London,
two only will here demand attention—the gentry
and the citizens. Of course, within both of these
great groups there were many grades, but time
will not allow us to subdivide. Of course, too,
beyond and outside these altogether, lay the
seething mass of miscellaneous humanity—the
vast fringe of the population—which then, as
now, formed so dark and so dangerous an unabsorbed
element in the city’s general life. Threads
from this dingy and tangled social frilling were
sometimes caught up and woven for picturesque
purposes into the pattern of the plays of the
time. But the epic of the submerged tenth was
as yet undreamed of; and all this side of Elizabethan
civilization must for the present be left
out of view.</p>
<p class='c010'>The citizens lived for the most part at their
shops or places of business; the gentlefolk were
more distributed. Some still had their habitations
in the commercial portions of the city, and
those of them who regularly lived in the country
and came to town during term-time—which
then constituted the London season,—were often
content to find temporary lodging over some
druggist’s or barber’s shop. But the exodus of
<span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>the gentry and courtiers from the centres of trade
and labor was already beginning, and the aristocratic
neighborhoods were admittedly outside
the walls. In “Greene’s Tu Quoque” when
Lionel Nash is knighted, he delivers up his store
to his head ’prentice, and announces his intention
of moving the next day into the Strand;
which may be taken as showing that for the
retired tradesman,—and still more, therefore, for
the gentleman or courtier,—a residence well
removed from the city was deemed the proper
thing.</p>
<p class='c010'>It is difficult to speak in general terms of the
houses of the time, since, naturally enough, the
comfort and luxury of the domestic arrangements
varied considerably as one passed up or down
the social scale. A few broad statements may,
however, be made. In the average dwelling the
ceilings were covered with plaster of Paris, and
the inner walls wainscoted and tapestried; the
tapestry being worked with landscapes and figures
often of a very elaborate character. This
explains Lyly’s simile in “Midas”—“like arras,
full of device.” Enough space was left for any
one to hide between the arras and the wall—a
fact, it will be remembered, frequently made use
of by the Elizabethan dramatists, as by Webster
<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>in “The Duchess of Malfi,” where Cariola conceals
herself behind the hanging to overhear
what goes on between the Duchess and Antonio;
and by Shakspere in “Henry the Fourth,”
where Falstaff goes to sleep and has his pocket
picked; and even more notably in the famous
rat-killing scene in “Hamlet.” In addition,
pictures were often used for decoration, and when
valuable were protected by curtains. “I yet but
draw the curtain; now to the picture,” says
Monticelso in Webster’s “White Devil”; and,
again, “We will draw the curtain and show you
the picture,” says Olivia in “Twelfth Night,” as
she removes her veil. The halls were lighted by
candelabras or torch-bearers, and watch-lights, or
night-lights, were in common use. At the foot
of the master’s bed, rolled under during the day
and drawn out at night, was a truckle-bed for his
page. “Well, go thy ways for as sweet a breasted
page as ever lay at his master’s feet in a truckle-bed,”
says Dondolo in Middleton’s “More Dissemblers
Besides Women.” The tables had
flaps, and the floors were strewn with rushes, for
carpets were as yet unknown. These rushes were
renewed for fresh-comers. “Strangers have
green rushes, while daily guests are not worth a
rush,” says Lyly, in “Sapho and Phao”—a
<span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>remark in which, by the way, we are reminded of
the origin of one of our familiar phrases. Brick
was costly, and the buildings were mostly of
wood; but a new fashion was just coming in—that
of employing well-constructed stoves in place
of the open, smoky fireplaces hitherto general.
The houses were now, too, provided with glass
for the windows, which had not been the case a
hundred years before, horn or wicker lattice-work
having been used for the purpose. But this
new notion was opposed by William Stafford,
who saw in it the symptom of growing fondness
for what he contemptuously called foreign nick-nacks.
Chimneys, too, of which some years
before there had been a few specimens only in
every large town, were now general in the ordinary
dwellings of the middle classes. The old
wooden platters were giving way to pewter,
which, though still rare, was gradually coming
into use. Tin spoons also were making their
appearance. China, gold, and silver plate were
to be seen on the tables of the wealthy, and
Venetian glass was sometimes employed, though,
as this was very expensive, many people still
drank from their mugs of burnt stone. Instead
of the straw bundle and log on which people
had formerly been content to sleep, proper
<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>sheets, pillows, and bolsters were now employed;
not, however, without incurring the ridicule or
the wrath of lovers of the good old times and
moralists of severe complexion. “What makes
us so weak as we now are?” demands Sir Lionel,
in “Greene’s Tu Quoque,” abusing the
new generation with all the vigor of a hale old
man. “A feather bed! What so unapt for exercise?
A feather bed! What breeds such pains
and aches in our bones? Why, a feather bed!”
Yet houses were so scantily furnished that uninvited
or unexpected guests often used to bring
their own stools with them, a practice referred
to by Massinger in his “Unnatural Combat,”
where he speaks of those who, “like unbidden
guests, bring their own stools.” Many of the
household arrangements, especially in the way
of sanitation, were from our own point of view
still crude and primitive enough. But the age
of Elizabeth, as regards domestic economy generally,
was distinctly a period of progress, and
we have only to compare the sixteenth century
with the centuries which went before, to sympathize
with old Harrison, when, dealing with this
very matter, he exclaims in a kind of fervent
rapture—“God be thankt for his good gifts!”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>Turning from the houses themselves to the
home life of the time, we may notice that in the
establishments of the ancient nobility the arrangements
were still on a large and almost regal
scale, savoring yet, in spite of the slow movements
conspicuous throughout society, of the
feudalism which was now on the wane, and the
old customs which, in an age of transition, were
gradually being left behind. In the greater
households a number of young gentlemen of
good family, usually the younger sons of knights
and esquires, continued to offer personal service
as in former days. Beneath these were the
retainers, so-called, who, not living in the house
or being liable to any menial duty, attended their
lord on occasions of public ceremony; while, in
the third place, there were the servants proper,
who formed actual portions of the establishment,
and on whom its various duties devolved. These
were headed by the steward, under whose control
was the common herd of serving men and
women and pages. With these must be reckoned
the poor tutor, passing rich on five marks
a year, who sat below the salt, and, as Hall’s
satire shows, had to endure all kinds of indignity.
And, finally, there was the jester, the
privileged personage of the household, who
<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>could say and do things on which no one else
would venture. “There is no slander in an
allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail,”
says Olivia in “Twelfth Night”; while the melancholy
Jaques, speaking of his desire to assume
the motley dress, protests:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in15'>“I must have liberty</div>
<div class='line'>Withal, as large a charter as the wind,</div>
<div class='line'>To blow on whom I please; for so fools have.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c010'>Thus the jester was able to find in his wit and
position an excuse generally, though not invariably,
sufficient to cover every freedom taken with
master or guests. But in Shakspere’s time this
ancient and long-famous appurtenance to the
larger households was already passing out of
existence, a fact to which the dramatist himself
makes reference in “As You Like It”: “Since
the little wit that fools have was silenced, the
little foolery that wise men have makes the
greater show.”</p>
<p class='c010'>But when we pass from these huge and ostentatious
establishments to the dwellings of the
middle and trading classes, we find the transitional
character of the period far more marked.
Evidences of domestic development and improvement
reveal themselves on every side. The
<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>essential traits of mediævalism were gradually
disappearing; and with the steady realization on
the part of the commercial elements in the community
of their increasing importance in the
complex life of the time, there went many significant
changes, indicating the slow collapse of the
old <i>régime</i> and the consolidation of society upon
its modern foundations.</p>
<p class='c010'>Nevertheless, in the internal policy and arrangement
of the Elizabethan household there
was still much that would strike a present-day
observer as remarkable—for the older spirit still
made itself felt, though ancient forms were passing
away. For instance, the relations existing
between the head of the house and those about
him and dependent upon him, if no longer what
they were a hundred years before, had not yet
begun to assume their distinguishing modern
characteristics. The position of servant, ’prentice,
or journeyman still partook of a certain
suggestion of servitude, which it has required
many years of social evolution to wear partially
away. Our nineteenth-century notion of contract
based upon terms something like equal, at
least in theory,—of so much money paid in
return for such and such services rendered,—had
not yet established itself; and while the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>understanding between employer and employed
was gradually acquiring more and more of a
commercial quality, it had not by any means lost
all its personal implications. The ’prentices of
the time, for example, were something more and
something less than those occupying analogous
positions in our own days. They belonged to
the establishment, lived with their master, ate at
his table, formed part of the family; yet at the
same time wore coats of blue—the color which
everywhere symbolized servitude, and even constituted,
as we know from “The City Madam”
and other plays, the livery of Bridewell. They
not only were their master’s assistants in the
work of the shop; they furnished him also a
kind of body-guard, or retinue,—for on occasions
when he had to make excursions after dark
they went with him, bearing torches or lanterns
to light the way, and stout clubs, for use in case
of sudden assault. But the personal character
of such relationships is perhaps most fully shown
in the fact that masters and mistresses dealt out
corporal punishment to their servants, a universal
practice, which, as Chamberlayne tells us in
his “Survey,” was expressly sanctioned by law.
In Heywood’s “English Traveller,” young Geraldine
accounts for the circumstance that Bess,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>Mrs. Winscott’s maid, tells slanderous stories
about her, by the supposition that—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in11'>“Perhaps her mistress</div>
<div class='line'>Hath stirred her anger by some word or blow,</div>
<div class='line'>Which she would thus revenge.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c010'>In the establishments of the gentry, the porter’s
lodge was the recognized place for the corporal
punishment of servants, male and female, a fact
to which many references will be found in the
contemporary drama; as, for instance, in Shirley’s
“Grateful Servant” and “Triumph of Peace,”
and Massinger’s “Duke of Milan” and “The
City Madam.” Indeed, the whole domestic
economy of the time still exhibited much of the
semi-patriarchal character of former centuries,
when those in authority not only exacted due
service from the men and maidens beneath them,
but held it also as part of their paternal responsibility
to educate and chastise.</p>
<p class='c010'>As for the children, they too were far differently
situated from the boys and girls of the
present day. There was as yet no talk of the
rights of childhood, and household law was rigid
and severe. At school the rudiments of knowledge
were pounded into young brains by sheer
force of arm; and when the children went from
the schoolhouse to the home, they merely
<span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>exchanged one form of despotism for another.
In every well-ordered family, the young people
habitually stood or knelt in the presence of their
elders, not venturing to sit down without express
permission; while correction by blows continued
to be their lot so long as they remained under the
parental roof and control. Even the children
of the wealthiest and noblest families in the land
were subjected to the same kind of treatment;
and we know that in their early years Queen
Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey had been pinched
and cuffed and smacked like their less famous
sisters. All this has been changed now, and we
have grown in some respects wiser, in others
simply more sentimental. Yet, with whatever
feelings we may look back at the harshness of
the past, let us, at all events, have the candor to
acknowledge that the discipline which produced
men like Sidney and Raleigh and Spenser, and
women like the two just referred to, cannot be
pronounced altogether a failure.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>And now a word or two about some of the
every-day habits of the time. Among the middle
classes, as a whole, the ancient doctrine of early to
bed and early to rise, upon which Charles Lamb
threw such well-merited ridicule, was currently
<span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>accepted, and this almost of necessity. Artificial
lights were as yet in little use, and being thus
more dependent upon the natural alternations of
day and night, the good folks under the Virgin
Queen inevitably kept better hours than do the
Londoners of the present time. In Dekker’s
“Shoemaker’s Holiday,” the master shoemaker
is depicted roundly rating his wife and maids for
their laziness in not having breakfast ready, and
his anger seems at least a trifle excessive to the
modern Cockney, since it subsequently turns out
that it is not yet seven o’clock. In reading the
old comedies, we are again and again struck by
the complementary facts that the activities of life
were well advanced while the day was still young,
and that few scenes of a social character are laid
in the evening time.</p>
<p class='c010'>As regards eating, important as the subject
doubtless is, we need not say much. Comparing
the Elizabethan age with the immediate past, we
may safely assert that men were more temperate
now than they had been—that they fed less
grossly, and spent less time at table. But the
abstemiousness was, after all, only relative. It
was still, from our point of view, a period of gluttony.
The early breakfast of meat and ale; the
morning luncheon, or bever; the twelve-o’clock
<span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>dinner, with its exceedingly substantial fare; and,
finally, in the evening, what Don Armado, in
“Love’s Labor’s Lost,” described as “the nourishment
which is called supper,”—all these made
up a series of gastronomic undertakings at which
we can look back only with mingled amazement
and disgust. The staple articles of diet were
the various kinds of meat, which were partaken
of in immense quantities, with but little bread
and only a limited accompaniment of vegetables.
But almost as important as the meats was the
pudding, for which the English had acquired so
great a reputation that a contemporary foreigner
fairly goes into a transport of enthusiasm about
it. The worst feature of all was the enormous
consumption of intoxicating liquors. Tea, coffee,
and cocoa—those delightful cups that cheer but
not inebriate, for which we moderns can hardly
be too thankful—were as yet unknown in England;
and, in their absence, every meal was
washed down with mighty draughts of ale and
sack. Testimony to the drunkenness of the
English at this time is appalling, whether we turn
to the plays themselves, or to the writings of professed
moralists, such as Camden’s “Elizabeth,”
Reeve’s “God’s Plea for Nineveh,” Tryon’s
“Way to Health,” Dekker’s “Seven Deadly
<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>Sins,” Wither’s “Abuses Stript and Whipt,”
and Thomas Young’s “England’s Bane,” which
may be mentioned as specimens of a voluminous
output of similar character. No wonder that, as
Iago and Hamlet remind us, the English people
had become a byword for inebriety among the
nations of the continent.</p>
<p class='c010'>It must, however, be added, as one favorable
sign of the times, that table manners were, on
the whole, distinctly improving. Bad as they
still were in many important particulars, a change
for the better was quite perceptible. For instance,
people thought it incumbent on them
now to wash before and after dinner, a ceremony
all the more needful, as fingers were still commonly
used where we use forks, “the laudable
use” of which, as Jonson has it, came in towards
the close of Shakspere’s life; and generally a
certain amount of delicacy in what Ouida has
pronounced the essentially disgusting operation
of eating, was for the first time beginning to be
looked for, at any rate amongst those in the
higher ranks of society.</p>
<p class='c010'>Hardly less important in social economy than
eating is dress, which in turn demands a share of
our attention. Unfortunately, however, it is impossible
in the small space here at our disposal
<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>to give any adequate idea of the extent, variety,
and extravagance of the fashions prevalent during
the period with which we are now dealing,
and which form a curious offset to the crudities
we have noticed in household furniture and
appliances. Harrison, in his “Description of
England,” declares that the taste for change and
novelty had simply run wild; and he and the
outspoken Stubbs are never weary of declaring
that while other nations have their own special
extravagances, the English gather up and adopt
the follies of all the rest of Europe. Here is
a passage from another contemporary writer,
Thomas Becon, on the same subject: “I think
no realm in the world, no, not among the Turks
and Saracens, doth so much in the variety of
their apparel as the Englishmen do at this present.
Their coat must be made after the Italian
fashion, their cloak after the use of the Spaniards,
their gown after the manner of the Turks; their
cap must be of the French fashion; and at the
last their dagger must be Scottish with a Venetian
tassel of silk. To whom may the Englishman
be compared worthily, but to Esop’s crow?
For as the crow decked himself with feathers of
all kinds of birds, even so doth the vain Englishman....
He is an Englishman; but he is also
<span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>an Italian, a Spaniard, a Turk, a Frenchman, a
Scotch, a Venetian, and at last what not?”</p>
<p class='c010'>This is only a sample; passages of similar import
might be multiplied almost without number.
The fashions of the day were indeed absurd and
extravagant to the last degree. Richness and
picturesqueness were the two things aimed at
alike in male and in female costume; and in both
cases the colors were as brilliant as the stuffs
were costly. The following speech of Sir Glorious
Tipto, in Jonson’s “New Inn,” will give
some idea of the run of masculine modes, as
seen by the vigorous old satirist:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in21'>“I would put on</div>
<div class='line'>The Savoy chain about my neck, the ruff</div>
<div class='line'>And cuffs of Flanders; then the Naples hat</div>
<div class='line'>With the Rome hatband and the Florentine agate,</div>
<div class='line'>The Milan sword, the cloak of Genoa, set</div>
<div class='line'>With Brabant buttons—all my given pieces,</div>
<div class='line'>Except my gloves, the natives of Madrid.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c010'>Over against such a strange human specimen as
is thus pictured in the imagination, we may well
set the women of the time, as painted, rouged,
highly scented, bejewelled, bewigged, in French
hoods, starched Cambric ruffs, close-fitting jerkins,
and embroidered velvet gowns, they look
down upon us from the walls of many an Elizabethan
<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>house, and fill the busy scene in many a
contemporary play. Women, Lyly thought—so
far had the artifices of the toilet carried
them,—were in reality the least part of themselves.
Some of their freaks of fashion in particular
drew down the ire alike of the playwright
and of the more serious satirist. One was the
habit of painting the face, so frequently referred
to by Shakspere and others. A second was
the very common practice of wearing false hair,
treated at length, along with nearly all similar
extravagances of the period, by the irrepressible
Stubbs. Every reader of Shakspere will recall
the passage from Bassanio’s moralizings on
“outward shows,” in which this fashion is
alluded to:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in27'>“Look on beauty,</div>
<div class='line'>And you shall see ’tis purchased by the weight;</div>
<div class='line'>Which therein works a miracle in nature,</div>
<div class='line'>Making them lightest that wear most of it;</div>
<div class='line'>So are those crisped snaky golden locks</div>
<div class='line'>Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,</div>
<div class='line'>Upon supposed fairness, often known</div>
<div class='line'>To be the dowry of a second head,</div>
<div class='line'>The skull that bred them in the sepulchre;”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c010'>and the parallel lines in the sixty-eighth sonnet,
in which the same point is touched on, with
striking similarity of phrasing. The “golden”
<span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>color of the locks, here specially emphasized,
it may be noted in passing, was particularly
popular, on account of the reddish, or, as her
flatterers would insist, the golden, hue of Queen
Elizabeth’s head-gear. Finally, a great deal was
said about the altogether needless and reprehensible
extravagance shown in certain small details
of dress. We may take the one item of foot-covering
as an example. Herein all the worst
taste of the day was illustrated; for shoes were
made of the most expensive materials, and were
frequently covered with artificial flowers and
other kinds of decoration. Thus, Massinger, in
“The City Madam,” speaks of rich “pantofles
in ostentation shown, and roses worth a family”;
while Stubbs, in his “Anatomy of Abuses,” refers
to shoes “embroidered with gold and silver
all over the foot.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Yet, upon the whole, truth compels us to
admit that, if we are to trust contemporary evidence,
masculine fashions exceeded in wildness,
absurdity, and monstrous barbarity those of the
other sex. “Women are bad, but men are
worse,”—such is the distinct judgment of Burton,
in his “Anatomy of Melancholy”; and
while we know from the speculative Jaques that
“the city madam,” would sometimes bear “the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>cost of princes on unworthy shoulders,” Burton
again is our authority for the statement that it
was no uncommon thing for a man to put a thousand
oxen into a suit of apparel, and to wear a
whole manor on his back.</p>
<p class='c010'>I mentioned incidentally just now that class
distinctions were severely marked out by differences
in costume. Certain sumptuary enactments
promulgated about this time undertook to regulate
down to the minutest details what should and
what should not be worn by the various classes
of the community, wealth and social standing
being taken together as the basis on which to
settle the problems of the toilet and personal
adornment. But within the limits allowed by
such regulations, and sometimes even irrespective
of them (for grandmotherly legislation here as
always stood foredoomed to failure) extravagance
in fashion remained throughout one of the
salient characteristics of the day. The dress
of the citizen and his wife, if less elegant, was
equally showy, and sometimes quite as expensive,
as that of the man of mode and the woman
of the court; and so it was through all grades
of society, from the highest to the lowest, or,
as Harrison put it in his vivid phrase, from the
courtier to the carter.</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>While we are still concerned with this item of
dress it is amusing to notice that three hundred
years ago people were to be found worrying their
tailors and abusing their dressmakers as it is the
custom to do at the present day. We might
quote illustrations from more than one comedy;
but let us once more fall back upon Harrison.
“How many times,” says this quaint old writer,
“must a garment be sent back to him that made
it? What chafing, what fretting, what reproachful
language doth the poor workman bear away....
For we must puff and blow and sweat till
we drop, that our clothes may stand well upon
us.” As we read such a passage as this in its
original strange old spelling (which, for the sake
of uniformity, we have not here reproduced), we
have surely to acknowledge—though it goes
much against the grain to do so—that our
manners have at bottom changed less than our
orthography.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>And now we must leave the ranks of the citizens
and trading folks to deal for a moment or
two with the more fashionable world.</p>
<p class='c010'>The society of the time, to employ the word
which in modern parlance has assumed a highly
specialized meaning, was artificial to an absurd
<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>and almost inconceivable extent. Affectations,
indeed, made up the larger part of life; and yet
beneath them all were a core of sound reality and
a healthy element of spontaneity. Euphuism
and Italianism had for the time being taken full
possession of the whole aristocratic world. Yet
Euphuism and Italianism were but external
crazes; and it was one mission of the age to
show that men could be heroes in the foolishest
dress, and do great deeds with the most ridiculous
of phrases upon their lips. We could not
here enter upon the task of analyzing the life
and aims of the men and women who surrounded
the Queen at her court; but as an offset to the
steady-going middle classes of whom we have
had much to say, we must try to present, if only
in rapidly sketched outline, the typical Elizabethan
gallant, or fashionable young man about
town, as we find him portrayed for us in the
plays and pamphlets of the time.</p>
<p class='c010'>The accomplishments of the young man of
this description were numerous and varied
enough; but they were all in keeping with the
character of the perfect gentleman as set forth
by Castiglione in his “Cortegiano,” a work
which had been translated by Thomas Hoby in
1561, and had forthwith become a kind of text-book
<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>or Bible for the youthful fashionable world.
He could dance, sing, and play the viol de
gamba; fence, ride, and hunt; write verses, turn
pretty compliments, and take his part in the
exchange of witty repartees, stocking his memory
with scraps of plays and stories, lest his
own mother-sense should fail him. He could
read the three languages of Portia’s summary
of requirements in which Falconbridge was
lacking—Latin, French, and Italian,—and was
perfectly at home in what Jonson calls the
“perfumed terms of the day”; he had some
acquaintance with the poets in vogue; played
cards, tennis, and other fashionable games, as a
matter of course; and, last but not least, was
learned in all matters connected with the drama,
etiquette, and dress.</p>
<p class='c010'>These were not great qualifications; but such a
young man had little need of great qualifications,
since he had no great aims or ideals. Let us
read over his every day’s experiences and doings
as we find them given in Dekker’s “Gull’s Horn
Book” and other similar productions, and this
statement will call for no further commentary.</p>
<p class='c010'>He was not an early riser—for, wearied with
his overnight exertions, he scarcely ever left his
couch till the plebeian Londoner was already
<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>thinking seriously about his midday meal. Then
began the first important task of the day—the
toilet, which was so elaborate a matter that Lyly,
in his “Midas,” speaks of its being almost “a
whole day’s work to dress.” But when at length
he stood erect in his scented doublet and gold-laced
cloak, with the roses in his shoes, the
bunch of toothpicks in his hat, the watch hung
about his neck, his earrings, and his sword, he
was ready to partake of a breakfast of meat and
ale with such appetite as he could muster for the
occasion, and then, jumping on his horse, with
his page and horse-boy behind him, to sally forth
upon the regular adventures of the day.</p>
<p class='c010'>Curiously enough, as it may well seem to us,
his first place of resort would very probably be
St. Paul’s Cathedral. One may well ask what
object could possibly take him thither. The
answer lies in the fact that St. Paul’s Church in
those days was the great place of rendezvous for
all the gay and fashionable world. “Thus,” says
Dekker, “doth my middle aisle show like the
Mediterranean Sea, in which as well the merchant
hoists sails to purchase wealth honestly
as the rover to light upon prize unjustly. Thus
am I like a common mart, where all the commodities
(both the good and the bad) are to be
<span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>bought and sold. Thus, while devotion kneels
at her prayers, doth profanation walk under her
nose, in contempt of religion.” Francis Osborne,
writing as late as 1658, says that it was a fashion
of the times for the principal gentry, lords, commons,
and professions, to meet in St. Paul’s
Church by eleven, and walk in the middle aisle
till twelve, and after dinner from three till six,
“during which time some discourse of business,
others of news.” Many bustling scenes in the
old comedies are laid in this same middle aisle,
where, amid bills posted as advertisements, and
crowds of servants looking out for places, of
sharpers, like Jonson’s Shift, with a keen eye for
prey, and of loafers, with nothing else to do, all
sorts of people strolled about, with their hats on,
chatting, laughing, and discussing finance or politics
or scandal, till the whole place was alive
with the hum of voices, the rustle of raiment,
and the jingle of spurs. “I walked in St. Paul’s
to see the fashions,” remarks a character in one
of Middleton’s plays. There Face threatened
to advertise Subtle’s misdeeds; and it is a matter
of common history that Falstaff picked Bardolph
up in the same spot. It was thus its reputation
as a place of general convenience, and one in
which to see and to be seen, that gave St. Paul’s
<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>the importance it undoubtedly possessed in the
social life of the time.</p>
<p class='c010'>St. Paul’s Walk and its varied interests would
keep our young man occupied till the hour of
dinner, a meal of which he would probably partake
in the bustle and excitement of the ordinary.
The ordinary—the forerunner of the
modern restaurant and <i>table d’hôte</i>—was then a
novel institution, and as such enjoyed immense
popularity among the gilded youth. Three
grades were commonly recognized—the aristocratic
ordinary, for which, to judge from a
remark in Middleton’s “Trick to Catch the Old
One,” about two shillings would be charged;
the twelvepenny ordinary, frequented by tradesmen,
professional people, and middle-class citizens;
and the threepenny, to which flocked only
the lowest and most questionable characters.
The first-named of the three, Dekker tells us,
was the great resort of all the court gallants.
There friends and acquaintances met, ate, gossiped,
laughed, and not infrequently quarrelled,
together; there braggarts, like Lafeu in “All’s
Well that Ends Well,” “made vent of their
travel”; there the latest intelligence was circulated,
the latest scandal discussed, the latest fads
of fashion displayed in all their grotesqueness.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>A good picture of the ordinary during the dinner
hour will be found in the twelfth chapter of
Scott’s “Fortunes of Nigel”; but the genuine
atmosphere is best caught in such a contemporary
piece of writing as the “Gull’s Horn
Book.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Dinner over, with its customary game of primero,
there were many ways in which our gallant
could kill time. There was the theatre, with its
more intellectual attractions; the bull-ring and
the cockpit; the juggler’s booth and the tennis-court;
the shops along Cheapside and about St.
Paul’s, among which the connoisseur in letters,
jewellery, and kickshaws would find it easy
enough to while away an afternoon. But however
he might pass the hours between dinner
and supper, he would probably appear in full time
for the latter meal, for which he might repair to
“The Devil,” in Fleet Street, or “The Mitre,”
in Cheap, or “The Mermaid,” in Bread Street;
at which last-named place he might peradventure
catch snatches of the conversation and laughter
of a little group of men in one corner, among
whom we should recognize, though he might
not, the burly form and surly face of rare old
Ben, and the serene countenance and deep, clear
eyes of one who is more to all of us to-day than
<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>any other Englishman who ever lived—Will
Shakspere, playwright and actor. After that
would not improbably follow the wildest episodes
of the day, which likely enough would end in
deep carousal behind the flaming red doors
of a tavern, or at the gambling-table, or even in
more doubtful places of resort. When in Heywood’s
“Wise Woman” old Chartley is looking
for his son, he bids his servants “inquire about
the taverns, ordinaries, bowl-alleys, tennis-courts,
and gaming-houses, for there I fear he will be
found,” a direction which gives us a fair idea of
the favorite haunts of the young men of the day.
Gambling particularly, in all its forms, was one
of the prevalent manias of the time, and was
often carried to such an extent that men would
stake their very clothes, and even their beards,
which might be used to stuff tennis-balls. In
“Greene’s Tu Quoque” will be found a wonderfully
realistic scene of a quarrel following a
dispute over the cards and dice, and ending in a
challenge for a duel. Then when the time came
for him to reel homeward through the darkness
with one sleepy page to light his way with a
torch, our gallant would be either uproariously
cheerful, or contentious, or maudlin, as his habit
might be when in his cups. He would bellow
<span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>out loose songs upon the night air, molest straggling
by-passers, come sometimes into conflict
with the watch, and once in a while, when luck
went against him, might find himself lodged for
the night in one of the prisons of the metropolis.
So the day would end; and with it must close
this part of our study. But, after all, very inadequate
justice can be done to such a theme in so
brief and rapid a sketch. We must go straight
to the pages of Dekker, Greene, Nash, and Peele,
if we would gain any adequate conception of the
wilder aspects of Elizabethan social life.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>In such a paper as the present, there is always
danger lest the final impression left should be, if
not a false, at any rate an inadequate one; for the
temptation is strong to seize only the picturesque
traits, and to pay such undue attention to grouping,
color, and general effect, that we fail in preserving
proper perspective, and throw portions
of our description into unnatural relief. The
risk of doing this is, of course, increased when,
as in our own case, we take the point of view
of the playwright and the popular writer, and
study the world of men and affairs mainly
through the medium of their pages. I trust
none the less, that we have not erred on the side
<span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>of painting life in Shakspere’s London in too
bright or seductive colors. Yet, to tone down
our picture, let us say a closing word about its
darker aspects; for these were many, and they
were very dark indeed.</p>
<p class='c010'>As Mr. Swinburne has pointed out, one of the
most difficult problems meeting the student of
the Elizabethan drama, is that of reconciling the
elements of lofty thought and gross passion, of
high idealism and coarse savagery, which lie
so close together, which are indeed bound up
inextricably, in the very woof and texture of the
plays of Shakspere’s time. The literature of the
stage shows us with startling distinctness how in
the world of the playwright there frequently went,
along with the deepest and most original thought
a revolting ferocity of manners, and along with
a lofty sense of the beautiful and the pure a
crude love of violence, a revelling in blood, a
thirst for wanton outrage and low excitement.
All these diverse elements are, separately, prominent
enough in modern letters, as in modern
civilization; what seems so strange and puzzling
in our great romantic drama is the way in which
they constantly blend in the most intimate association.</p>
<p class='c010'>Now, these extraordinary incongruities are
<span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>not alone to be found in the world of the playwright;
they penetrated the life of Elizabethan
society. To some phases of the coarse brutalism
which formed one aspect of the complex
spirit of the English Renaissance incidental reference
has more than once been made. Did
space permit, we might here add much corroborative
testimony. But as space does not permit,
I will content myself with accentuating very
briefly the difference in temper between the age
of Elizabeth and our own, as exemplified in one
very crucial matter—in the treatment of the
large criminal class.</p>
<p class='c010'>We who are privileged to live in an epoch
of growing humanity may well be startled and
shocked at many of the facts brought to light
by even a casual inquiry in this direction.
Executions, be it remembered, were almost invariably
public, and formed, as we have seen, not
infrequent distractions in the monotonous round
of life. Felons were hanged, drawn, and quartered;
pirates were hanged on the seashore at
low water; and capital punishment was in use for
an enormous number of petty offences, including
even theft from the person above the value of
one shilling. The mere circumstance that we
read of seventy-four persons being sentenced to
<span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>death in one county in a single year, itself speaks
volumes. Indeed, the severity of punishments
was held something to boast of, and men were
still of the opinion of Fortescue, who, in the
reign of Henry the Sixth, had proudly proclaimed
that “more men are hanged in England in one
year than in France in seven, because the English
have better parts.” Public malefactors of
position were usually beheaded, and their heads
exposed in prominent places, as on London
Bridge or Temple Bar. On the tower of the
former, Hentzner “counted above thirty” placed
“on iron spikes.”<SPAN name='r1' /><SPAN href='#f1' class='c015'><sup>[1]</sup></SPAN> Witches were burnt alive;
a horrible fate also reserved for women who
killed their husbands, which crime stood on the
statute-books not as murder, but as petty treason.
Heretics, too, were frequently burnt. Perjury
was punished by the pillory and branding,
and rogues and vagabonds, irrespective of age
and sex, were sent to the public stocks and
whipping-post.</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“In London, and within a mile, I ween,</div>
<div class='line in1'>There are of jails and prisons full eighteen,</div>
<div class='line in1'>And sixty whipping-posts, and stocks, and cages,”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>writes Taylor, the Water Poet. Scolds were
ducked, and many minor offences were rewarded
by burning the hand, cropping the ears, and
similar mutilations. Finally, felons refusing to
plead were subjected to the <i>peine forte et dure</i>,
notwithstanding the proud and oft-repeated boast
that torture has always been unknown to the
English law.</p>
<p class='c010'>Surely it is needless for us to go farther than
all this, unless it be to add the striking fact
that, despite such brutal severity in punishment,
crimes and outrages of every description
remained alarmingly common throughout the
whole of the period with which we have been
concerned. Enough has been said to throw in
some of the heavier shadows necessary to complete
the slight sketch we have been trying to
furnish of the social life and every-day manners
of Shakspere’s time.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>With this as our last word, then, we take leave
of “the spacious times of great Elizabeth,”
and become once more denizens of our own
century. And here it would be easy, of course,
to fall into the cheap Macaulay-vein of moralizing;
to strike a contrast between present and
past, point out all the manifold and magnificent
<span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>achievements of modern civilization, and end
with rhetorical rhapsodies over our “wondrous,
wondrous age.” It would be easy, I say, to do
this; and I doubt not that it would be effective.
But when in my study of the literature of any
bygone generation I make myself at home for a
time among dead things and long-forgotten people,
I do not, I must confess, find myself in any
mood for brass-band celebrations. The feeling
left with me is a vaguer and sadder one. For,
as I turn back into our own world, I remember
that this past was once verily and actually the
present; that these dead things, these long-forgotten
people, were once intensely alive; that
the tragedy and the comedy of existence went
on then as it goes on to-day; and that in the
breasts of men and women fashioned like ourselves
beat human hearts, after all, very like our
own. Hope and disappointment, joy and despair;
the memory of yesterday, the expectation
of the morrow; the hunger and thirst of the
spirit; the lust of the eye; the pride of life; the
“ancient sorrow of man,”—all that goes to
make up the sum total of our little earthly lot,—was
their portion, too, as it will presently be the
portion of the countless generations by which
we in our turn shall be replaced. And thus,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>musing, I think of the nameless young men and
maidens of that dim, far-off age, who repeated
the sweet old story of love, as their fathers and
mothers had done before them, as their distant
descendants do to-day, while there was confusion
in high places, and storm and struggle about
the land. I think of the tears that were shed
as gentle hearts broke in anguish; of the brave
deeds wrought; of the tales of the faith of sturdy
manhood and the trust of womanly devotion,
which will never be retold. I think of the lives
that ran their placid course; of the children that
came as years went by, bringing “hope with
them and forward-looking thoughts”; of mothers
weeping over empty cradles; of tiny graves, long
since obliterated, where many a bright promise
found “its earthly close.” I think of lives that
were successful, and of lives that were failures;
of prophecies unfulfilled; of splendid ambitions
realized only to bring the inevitable disillusion;
of sordid aims accomplished; of vile things said
and done. The whole dead world seems to
take form and flesh in my imagination; the men
and women start from the pages of the book I
have been reading—a mad world, my masters,
and a strange one; but behold, a world singularly,
almost grotesquely, like our own. And then
<span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>my thought takes a sudden spin; and this age
of ours seems to slip some three centuries back
into the past, and becomes weird, and phantasmal,
and unreal. And I find myself peering
across the misty years into this throbbing world
of multitudinous enterprise and activity from
the standpoint of an era when you and I will
be long since forgotten—when no one will
know how we toiled and suffered and loved and
died, when no one will care where we lie at rest.
How curious to think of it all in this way! And
with what tempered enthusiasms and sobered
judgments must we needs go back to take up
again the burden of life knowing that the deep,
silent current of time is sweeping us slowly into
the great darkness, and that hereafter the tale
will be told of us as it has been told generation
after generation since the world began: Lo,
their glory endured but for a season, and the
fashion of it has passed away forever!</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c006' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='chap2' class='c008'>Pepys and His Diary</h2></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' /></div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c001'>
<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span><span class='large'>Pepys and His Diary</span></div>
</div></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_0_0_7 c009'>I have undertaken to talk to you this evening
about a singular book—a book that holds a
place practically by itself on our library shelves,—the
Diary of Samuel Pepys.<SPAN name='r2' /><SPAN href='#f2' class='c015'><sup>[2]</sup></SPAN> The writer of
this book was not a great man, or a strong man,
or in any way a man of transcendent mental or
moral characteristics. The work itself has none
of those qualities by virtue of which a piece of
literature will, in the average of cases, be found
to survive the lapse of time and the changes
of fashions and tastes. With the acknowledged
masterpieces of autobiographic narration—with
the “Confessions” of St. Augustine or Rousseau,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>for example, or the “Memoirs” of Benvenuto
Cellini or Gibbon, or the “Dichtung und Wahrheit”
of Goethe, or the “Journal” of Amiel,
we should never think of comparing it; for
Pepys’s garrulous pages have no eloquence,
no literary quality, no magic of style—they
record no intense spiritual struggles, reveal no
deep upheavals of thought and feeling, flash no
new light upon the dark places or into the
mysterious recesses of motive and character.
What, then, is the secret of Pepys’s enduring
fascination? Wherein lies the curious spell, the
undeniable vitality of his work? Why do we
continue to read this chaotic chronicle of his,
when, in the pressure of modern affairs, so many
books of the past—better books, wiser books,
nobler books—are left to slumber in serenity in
those vast mausoleums of genius, our public
libraries, undisturbed, all but forgotten?</p>
<p class='c010'>I say nothing now about the historic value of
Pepys’s journal—for historic value may have no
kind of relationship with broad popular interest;
and it is with the popular interest, and not with
the special significance of the work before us,
that we are at present concerned. And therefore
my question, concretely put, is just this: How is
it that you and I, who may care little or nothing
<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>for the information that Pepys gives us about the
degraded politics and miserable court intrigues
of the Restoration, may still find in his daily
capricious jottings a charm which, as literature
goes, is almost, if not absolutely, unique?</p>
<p class='c010'>For any one who has ever dipped into the
Diary at all, the answer to this question is not far
to seek. Pepys’s memoranda have lasting interest
for us on account of their naïve frankness,
their plain and simple spontaneity, their transparent
honesty of self-expression. As we read,
we realize that, for once at least, we are brought
into the closest, the most vital contact with a
living man, and that this man speaks to us, who,
by the irony of fate, chance to overhear his unconsidered
utterances, without disguise, without
reticence or reserve, of the things which stand
nearest to his heart. The reader of Pepys’s
Diary knows Pepys himself better than his
acquaintances knew him at the office, in the
coffee-house, at the street-corner; better than his
friends knew him at the social board, spite of the
truth that there is in wine; better even than his
wife knew him in the intercourse of the home.
To us he lays bare without sophistication or
guile thoughts and impulses, desires and disappointments,
concealed from them beneath the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>conventional wrappings of daily manners and
life—personal criticisms and private experiences
which, living, he confided to none. Does this
strike you as a small matter? Then, pause for a
moment and ask yourselves of what other man
whose written words have ever come into the
fierce white glare of publication such statements
as these could truthfully be made? Autobiographies,
memoirs, journals, confessions, letters we
have, of course, without number, and the value
of these as human documents may in most cases
be great, in some cases inestimable. But do we,
after all, accept literature of this character as the
truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Do we not rather know that, as a matter of
course, such literature must almost always be, in
varying degrees, forced, unreal, overwrought,
theatrical? The moment a man begins to talk
about himself, the dramatic instinct inevitably
comes into play; the least vain of mortals colors
his own experiences, the least self-conscious
manipulates his motives and transfigures his feelings.
That which we ought to know best—our
own heart—is precisely that which of set purpose
we are forever debarred from describing
with more than an approximation to the stern
and solid fact. You remember the famous words
<span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>in which Rousseau announced his intention of
writing the plain, unvarnished story of his life:
“I enter upon an undertaking which never had
an example, the execution of which will never
have an imitation. I desire to show my fellow-creatures
a man in all the truth of his nature—and
this man will be myself.” And with this
rhetorical exordium, the great sentimentalist
proceeds, as Mr. Lowell happily phrased it, to
throw “open his waistcoat, and make us the
confidants of his dirty linen.” The very condition
of deliberate self-revelation places an
embargo on perfect candor and unconsciousness;
an autobiographer, as George Sand said, always
makes himself the hero of his own novel, even
if he be a hero of the dirty vagabond type,
as in the case just referred to. Here, then, is
the ultimate secret of Pepys’s peculiar charm.
Beside him, Rousseau is a mere <i>poseur</i>, and
the rest are nowhere. “Is not,” asks Mr. Lowell,
“is not old Samuel Pepys, after all, the only
man who spoke to himself of himself with perfect
simplicity, frankness, and unconsciousness?”
That he should have done this is no trifling
thing. He remains, seemingly for all time, “a
creature unique as the dodo, a solitary specimen,
to show that it was possible for nature
<span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>once in the centuries to indulge in so odd a
whimsey.”</p>
<p class='c010'>In speaking of the difficulties inherent in
autobiographical writing, I lay stress, it will be
observed, on the set purpose, the deliberate
intention, generally characterizing it. No small
part of the secret of Pepys’s success as a diarist
is to be found in the simple fact that with him
the set purpose, the deliberate intention, and the
resultant disturbing self-consciousness are almost
entirely absent. Pepys did not write for the
public eye, or for any glance save his own; he
recorded his impressions and enterprises, his
pleasures, anxieties, ambitions, aims, and passing
fancies because he found satisfaction in thus
summing up “the actions of the day each night
before he slept”; and not at all because he proposed
to draw a full-length portrait of himself
for the benefit of his contemporaries or the
amusement of posterity. It has been suggested
by one of the wiseacres who can never leave a
simple fact alone, that Pepys regarded his Diary
as material towards a fully developed autobiography.
Possibly so. But we may be certain
that had such autobiography ever been written,
the self-delineation of its pages would have differed
in many important particulars—in details
<span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>put in, and even more seriously in details left out—from
that contained in the journal itself. As
it is, we have an odd and uncomfortable sense,
when we first open the Diary, of intruding where
we have no proper business, of breaking in upon
the privacy of a man’s life, and surprising him
in the undress which he might wear for himself,
but in which he would not willingly be caught by
even his closest friend. For remember that the
six small volumes which contain the manuscript
diary are filled with densely packed short-hand,
peppered with occasional words and phrases
from the French, Spanish, Latin, and Greek;
and that it was only after immense labor that the
script was transliterated, and the secrets which
poor Pepys had, as he fondly supposed, buried
there forever, given to an impertinent and unsympathetic
world.<SPAN name='r3' /><SPAN href='#f3' class='c015'><sup>[3]</sup></SPAN> Writing thus for himself,
and for himself alone, and guarding himself by
every means within his power against the possibility
of exposure, our chronicler was enabled
<span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>to make his narrative the luminous, because free
and spontaneous, expression of his innermost
life. A man may be honest with himself in
cipher for whom long-hand, to say nothing of
the thought of subsequent publication, would
bring the inevitable and fatal temptations to
sophistication. Could Pepys have foreseen the
ultimate fate of his journal, it is safe to say that
it would never have been written, or, once written,
would have been discreetly burned. Poor
fellow! His sense of complete security, of
inviolable self-concealment, made possible such
confidences as otherwise would never have been
committed to paper.</p>
<p class='c010'>But this is not all. Pepys’s unreserved frankness
is to be partially accounted for by the fact
that he had no fear lest any one but himself
should ever read what he found such curious
pleasure in writing down. Yet allowance must
at the same time be made for a deeper cause, to
be sought in an analysis of the character of the
man himself. Plenty of people who can write
short-hand and appreciate the usefulness of
a diary, contrive none the less to go through life
without finding themselves under the imperative
necessity of recording the minute happenings,
the petty annoyances and satisfactions, the casual
<span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>meetings, conversations, comings and goings of
the common routine of existence. They may
enjoy their dinner without feeling impelled at the
end of the day to make a solemn note of the
fact and add the bill of fare; they may fall asleep
during a sermon, and yet allow the astonishing
circumstance to pass unrecorded; they may say
and do a dozen foolish, hasty, and unnecessary
things, and see no cause to dwell upon them,
and perpetuate them, when the evening accounts
are made up. But the little things of life were
great to Pepys, its trifles singularly, grotesquely
significant. He was a man, it is clear, of a curiously
naïve and garrulous temper, a born lover
of gossip, even when he was gossiping only of
and to himself, and when some of the matters
he found to talk about did not by any means
redound to his credit.</p>
<p class='c010'>Mr. Lowell somewhere speaks of the unconscious
humor of the Diary. This unconscious
humor is, I think, to be referred very largely to
this extraordinary naïveté; to the irresponsible
loquacity, the love of commonplace and frivolous
detail, which seem to have been among Pepys’s
most salient characteristics, and to his amazing
lack of any sense of perspective—in other words,
to his congenital inability to disentangle the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_74'>74</span>momentous from the trivial in the complex
occurrences of life. An interview with the King,
a discussion with the naval authorities, the manning
of a ship, the arrangements for a war, were
serious matters to him; but so, too, were the
purchase of a new periwig, the sight of a pretty
face in the theatre, a specially succulent joint of
meat at the midday repast, a game of billiards
or ninepins. It is needful to lay stress on these
personal qualities, because they are of the very
essence of the man, of the very essence of the
Diary. That it should have seemed to him
worth while to place on record, if only for his
own perusal, so many things that most of us
would give no second thought to—that is the
point to be noted, as one only a little less astonishing
than the diarist’s odd plainness of dealing
with himself. I have said that the use of a cipher
which none of your family or acquaintances can
read, is in itself a premium upon veracity. Yet
Pepys’s singular, remorseless honesty of self-expression
remains still in the last degree surprising.
The Diary is full of confessions which,
I venture to think, you and I would hardly feel
called upon to make, even to ourselves, so strong,
so irresistible does the dramatic tendency become
in most of us the moment we begin to touch our
<span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>own lives. If we are fond of reading, it would
be natural to us, I suppose, to jot down the
names of the books we buy or dip into, and any
criticism we may have to make upon them; but
I wonder how many of us would think it incumbent
upon us to commit ourselves to such an
entry as this?—“To the Strand, to my bookseller’s,
and there bought an idle, roguish
French book, ‘L’Escholle des Filles,’ which I
have bought in plain binding, avoiding the buying
of it better bound, because I resolved, as
soon as I have read it, to burn it, that it may
not stand in the list of my books, nor among
them, to disgrace them if it should be found.”
A declaration like this may strike us as absurdly
familiar when we light upon it, but it takes a
Pepys to make it, after all; and we therefore feel
that in the solemnity and precision with which
such an experience is recorded, rather perhaps
than in the experience itself, which is neither
very important, nor very creditable, nor very singular,
is to be found the key to much that is most
interesting and significant in the pages of the
Diary. Pepys, for instance, quarrels with a captain
in the army, and goes about in mortal dread
of possible consequences. Thousands of men, I
dare say, have found themselves in just such a
<span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>predicament; but Pepys makes a note of the fact,
plainly, straightforwardly, with no pretence at
apology or self-deception, with no tendency
towards heroics. Again, he lies awake one night
quaking in fear of robbers, and starting at every
sound. You and I may have done the same; but
I do not imagine that our journals, if searched,
would contain any indication of the fact. Take
such an entry as the following: “After we had
dined came Mr. Mallard, and I brought down
my viol.... He played some very fine things
of his own, but I was afraid to enter too far into
their commendation, for fear he should offer to
copy them for me out, and so I be forced to give
or lend him something,”—and I wonder how
many of us could lay our hands on our hearts
and honestly say that this presentation of motive
strikes us as remote, unfamiliar, alien. But while
we would hardly dare to look a bit of conduct
of this kind squarely in the face, Pepys does so,
and unflinchingly sets down the not over-flattering
results of his observation. And he does
this not because he has the modern man’s morbid
love of self-analysis, or any of the grim
desire of many a recent writer to show himself
up as a sorry fellow, but simply because it is
his habit all through to report frankly and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>unreservedly the various circumstances of his life,
withholding nothing, adding nothing, disguising
nothing.</p>
<p class='c010'>All this helps to bring the essential naïveté of
Pepys’s character into high relief. He tears his
new cloak on the latch of a door, and is greatly
troubled, though the darning is successfully done;
he rejoices when Mr. Pierce’s little girl draws
him for her valentine, because a present to her
will cost him less than one to a grown-up person;
he drinks large quantities of milk and beer,
and gets pains in consequence; he acts the sycophant
and the tuft-hunter towards those in
power, swallowing his own opinions and rejoicing
in the success of his diplomacy; his appetite for
supper is taken away by the sight of his aunt’s
dirty hands; he makes up his mind to try how
eating fish will suit him, before vowing to diet
himself in Lent;—and down all such matters go
pell-mell in the Diary. He wrangles with his
mother; breaks an oath never to go to see a play
without his wife; gets a headache by drinking
overmuch wine; thinks he sees a ghost; rejoices
to find himself addressed as Esquire;—and
down go all these things, too. He puts his
thumb out of joint boxing his footboy’s ears; in
a fit of anger he tweaks Mrs. Pepys’s pretty
<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>nose; is “vext to the heart” when Sir William
Pen’s page chances to catch him kicking his
cook-maid, “because I know he will be telling
their family of it”;—and all these occurrences,
once again, are given due record and chronicle.
Finally,—not to multiply, as one might do
indefinitely, such illustrations of our writer’s
singular simplicity and artlessness,—he even
notes being “mightily troubled” with snoring
in his sleep, a statement which I have reserved
as a kind of climax, since I find the allegation
of snoring to be about the last that sensitive
humanity is willing to bear. Charge a man with
theft, if you will; but, as you value your life, do
not suggest that he snores.</p>
<p class='c010'>To this brief analysis of some of the personal
peculiarities upon which the curious charm of
Pepys’s Diary so largely depends, it would be
unfair to the writer not to add mention of a
characteristic of a somewhat different order. If
a diarist, like a poet, is rather born than made,
then justice compels us to acknowledge that
Pepys was a born diarist—a man who, by reason
of his strength and his weakness alike, was an
almost ideal chronicler of daily affairs and small
beer. For he possessed something more than
the native garrulousness, the itch to chatter and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>to tattle, of which we have already said enough.
His, too, was another rare quality of equal
importance for the success of his chosen undertaking—a
keen, immense, tireless interest in
“men, women, and things in general.” He was,
in the fullest sense of the term, a <i>viveur</i>—a man
who made it his business to get the most possible
out of existence, and who, as matters went in his
day, touched the world at an amazing variety of
points. Immersed as he was in practical responsibilities,
fond as he was of money and affairs, he
nevertheless threw himself with the utmost avidity
and ardor into the life of his time, an unheroic
Ulysses, forever setting forth upon a voyage of
new discovery and fresh adventure. He loved,
after his own fashion, literature and painting; he
was a devotee of music and an amateur of the
drama; and he had the shrewdest eye for character,
the largest appreciation of the picturesqueness
resulting from the clash of motives, the
contests of opinion and feeling, and outworkings
of ambitions and passions in the tragedy and
comedy of men’s every-day social world. He
was indeed, as Sir Walter Scott said of him, a
man of the “most undiscriminating, unsatiable,
and miscellaneous curiosity.” Although “exceptionally
busy and diligent in his attendance at
<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>the office,” this same writer continues, “he finds
time to go to every play and every execution, to
every procession, fire, concert, riot, trial, review,
city feast, public dissection, or picture-gallery
that he can hear of. Nay, there seems scarcely
to have been a school examination, a wedding,
christening, charity sermon, bull-baiting, philosophic
meeting, or private merrymaking in his
neighborhood at which he was not sure to make
his appearance, and mindful to record all the
particulars.” He had an unbounded love of
pleasure, a craving for new sensations, an indefatigable
courage in the pursuit of experience, a
versatility of enthusiasm simply amazing, an
industry in multitudinous enterprises which
makes us breathless as we read. “He is the
first to hear all the court scandal, and all the
public news; to observe the changes of fashions,
and the downfall of parties; to pick up family
gossip, and retail philosophical intelligence; to
criticise every new house or carriage that is built,
every new book or new beauty that appears,
every measure the King adopts, and every mistress
he discards.” In one sentence he will
report a debate in Parliament—in the next,
carefully itemize the points in a lady’s dress;
now he is deeply concerned over the problems
<span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>of the navy, and anon is to be found mourning
the death of a canary, or the ruin of his fine
bands, which he has carelessly slobbered with
chocolate. Accounts of state crises, details of
court profligacy, particulars of his own matrimonial
misunderstandings, literary criticisms,
headings of sermons, accounts of plays, disquisitions
on music and finance, on dinners and
dancing, and a thousand other matters, important
and petty, are jumbled together in bewildering
confusion in his pages, along with sketches
of character, bits of the frankest self-delineation,
scraps of wisdom and folly, keen judgments of
men and circumstances, and those notes of success
and failure, of aspiration, achievement,
disappointment, of penitence, and sometimes of
remorse, which belong to the true story of his
inner life. Such is Pepys’s Diary—the record
of the daily doings and feelings of a busy, restless,
vain, easy-tempered, pleasure-loving, ambitious,
shrewd, yet often fatuous, man of the
world; take it for all in all, a book without an
equal, almost without a rival, in its class.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>The author of this extraordinary book, despite
some rather aristocratic connections, was the son
of a not very successful tailor, and was born,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>perhaps in London, perhaps in Brampton, Huntingdonshire,
(the point remains unsettled,) on
23d February, 1632. He seems to have been at
one time at school in Huntingdon; but he afterwards
entered regularly as a scholar of St. Paul’s,
London, passing thence, in 1650, to the University
of Cambridge. Of his college career we
know little; but we have the record of one incident,
interesting as foreshadowing the convivial
tendencies which come out so often and so
strongly in the pages of the Diary. In the
Regents’ Book of Magdalene College appears
the following highly suggestive entry:—</p>
<div class='bq'>
<p class='c010'>“Oct 21, 1653. Mem. That Peapys and Hind were
solemnly admonished by myself and Mr. Hill for having
been scandalously overserved with drink y<sup>e</sup> night
before. This was done in the presence of all the
fellows then resident, in Mr. Hill’s chamber.</p>
<div class='lg-container-r'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“[Signed] <span class='sc'>John Wood</span>, Registrar.”</div>
</div></div>
</div></div>
<p class='c010'>Yet, notwithstanding this episode, and whatever
it may be taken to stand for as an exemplification of
Pepys’s way of life, as an undergraduate
he became the good friend of some of the most
industrious of his contemporaries, and, we have
reason to believe, acquitted himself in his own
studies, if not brilliantly, still with a very fair
measure of success. At all events, he took his
<span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>bachelor’s degree, in 1653—the very year, it
will be observed, of his bacchanalian misadventure,—and
received his mastership seven years
later. Meanwhile, as we learn from a passing
note in the Diary, made a long while after, he
dabbled in literary composition to the extent of
beginning a romance, called “Love a Cheat.”
The manuscript of this he tore up and destroyed
on 30th January, 1663, adding to his chronicle
of the event: “I liked it very well, and wondered
a little at myself, at my vein at that time,
when I wrote it, doubting that I cannot do so
well now if I would try.” Pepys may not have
shown himself in every emergency of life a
strong man or a brave; but thus to sacrifice the
first heir of his invention, even on finding it, after
all, rather better than he had imagined—let us
recognize here resolution and courage not by
any means to be sneered at.</p>
<p class='c010'>Pepys was but twenty-three when he married
Elizabeth St. Michel, an exceedingly pretty girl
of fifteen, the daughter of a Huguenot who had
come to England with Elizabeth Maria on her
union with Charles the First. Of the relations
of husband and wife we shall have something to
say by and by. Poor St. Michel was a man of
countless resources and infinite ingenuity, and in
<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>consequence was frequently both a burden to
himself and a tax upon his friends. He had the
genius for inventing things without, it would
appear, the talent for turning his inventions to
much practical account. He obtained a patent
for curing smoky chimneys, and another for
cleaning muddy pools; evolved plans for the
raising of submerged ships; and in a moment
of special illumination actually discovered the
whereabouts of King Solomon’s gold and silver
mines—in this respect anticipating the interesting
performance of Mr. Rider Haggard. In
view of these facts, it is hardly necessary to add
that, Micawber-like, he was always in an impecunious
condition, and, pending the establishment
of the said mines on a modern working
basis, was fain to support himself and wife on the
offerings of his daughter’s husband, with an
additional four shillings a week contributed out
of the charitable fund of the French church in
London. To one so keenly alive to the meaning
and value of money, and so cautious and economical
in the management of his own affairs, as
Mr. Pepys, the visions and vagaries of such a
father-in-law must have given constant cause for
dissatisfaction and alarm.</p>
<p class='c010'>Mrs. Pepys thus brought her husband no
<span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>fortune but her beauty, and as, at the time of their
marriage, Pepys himself had obtained no settled
position, the early years of their wedded life were
rendered picturesque (from an artistic point of
view) by financial difficulties, and often harassed
by the ancient problem of how to make one shilling
do the work of two. The young couple,
however, seem to have put a brave face on the
matter, and to have kept faith in each other, and
in the coming of better days. At this period, it
must be remembered, the Diary had not been
started, and direct information, therefore, fails
us. But in after years, as wealth grew, and his
prosperity became firmly established, Pepys
would often cast a back-glance at these early
times of anxiety and struggle, indulging, after
his manner, in many quaint expressions of
thankfulness to God over the change, and frequent
prayers for strength and courage in case
of sudden fall.</p>
<p class='c010'>On the first page of his Diary he notes that,
though “esteemed rich”, he was in reality “very
poor,”—a combination of circumstances which
is apt at times to be trying even to the most
philosophical. His salary was then only fifty
pounds a year, and the straitened character of
his domestic conditions is shown by the fact that,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>when the curtain rises on the journal, we discover
Mr. and Mrs. Pepys dining in the garret on the
remains of a turkey—in the preparation of
which, be it mentioned as matter of history, poor
Mrs. Pepys burned her hand. But changes were
pending. Chosen secretary to Sir Edward Montague
on his taking command of the fleet sent
to bring Charles the Second to England, Pepys
was shortly afterwards made clerk to the King’s
ships, a position in which, through his industry
and astuteness, he was presently to be of great
service to the country in very critical times. This
appointment was not, however, secured without
complications and difficulties. The actual incumbent
of the coveted office—one Barlow—was
a rival in the field, with personal prestige
and influence strong enough to fill poor Pepys
with dismal misgivings concerning his own
chances of success. Matters at length were
amicably settled between the candidates on the
basis of a rather singular compromise. Pepys
was inducted into the position on undertaking to
pay the said Mr. Barlow fifty pounds a year so
long as his (Pepys’s) salary was not increased,
and one hundred pounds a year when it was
raised to three hundred and fifty pounds or
more. The tax seems a heavy one, but Pepys
<span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>was willing to accept the responsibility on
observing, as he duly notes in the Diary, that
Mr. Barlow was “an old consumptive man,”
and therefore, assumably, not one likely to call
for many annual payments. The old consumptive
man lived till 1665, and the entry made by
Pepys on hearing of his decease is too characteristic
not to be reproduced in full:—</p>
<div class='bq'>
<p class='c010'>“9 Feb., 1665. Sir William Petty tells me that Mr.
Barlow is dead; for which, God knows my heart, I
would be as sorry as it is possible for one to be for a
stranger, by whose death he gets £100 per annum.”</p>
</div>
<p class='c010'>While still a young man, Pepys was made
Clerk of the Privy Seal, and a justice of the
peace, the latter appointment “mightily” pleasing
him, though he notes the somewhat unfortunate
circumstance that he was “wholly ignorant”
of the duties of the post. Little by little he rose
to be the most important and influential of the
naval officials, with a steadily improving financial
condition, the record of which is given, year by
year, in great detail in the Diary. Trouble came
presently in the shape of failing eyesight, and by
and by he lost his wife; but material fortune
continued to attend him through years which
were fraught, for the world of English politics,
with vast fluctuation and change. At length
<span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>reverses came. In 1679-80, he was imprisoned
for alleged complicity in the famous Popish Plot.
After his release he was made Secretary to the
Admiralty, and was for two consecutive years
President of the Royal Society. In 1690, he
was again imprisoned, this time on the charge
of Jacobinism. With this occurrence, Pepys’s
active life may be said to have come to a close.
His constitution had long been undermined by a
malady which had been intensified by his sedentary
existence, and in 1700 he was persuaded by
his physicians to leave his house in York Buildings
and take up his abode at the home of his
old friend and servant, William Hewer, at Clapham.
There he died on 26th May, 1703, having
just passed the Scriptural term of life.</p>
<p class='c010'>Pepys’s only acknowledged piece of literary
work was “The Memoirs of the Royal Navy,”
published in 1690, though a small volume entitled
“Relation of the Troubles in the Court of
Portugal.” and bearing the initials, S. P., is
sometimes ascribed to him by bibliographers.
Apart from the Diary, however,—the peculiar
qualities of which, it will be understood, remove
it altogether from the region of comparison—Pepys’s
most useful and lasting achievement was
the foundation of the famous library at Cambridge,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>which still bears his name—a collection
of manuscript naval memoirs, prints, old English
ballads, and curious miscellanea, which, by the
judgment of high authorities, remains to-day one
of the richest of its class. The visitor to Magdalene
College, Cambridge, may still inspect this
library as it stands in Pepys’s original book-presses;
and if he be a student of the journal,
and withal a man of any imaginative power, he
will hardly fail to recall with what true bibliomaniac
delight the old collector gathered these
treasures about him in his own home, with what
twinges of conscience he sometimes laid out
larger sums than he felt he could well afford in
their acquisition, with what enthusiasm he pored
over their pages, with what satisfaction and pride
he arranged and rearranged them on many a
dull and tedious day.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>I have sketched in brief the external history
of Pepys’s life, but you must not be under the
impression that the whole, or even the larger
part of his career, is covered by the voluminous
Diary. This daily record comprises some ten
years only, extending from 1st January, 1659-60,
when the writer was nearly twenty-seven, to
May, 1669, when he had recently completed his
<span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>thirty-seventh year. Just how and why he came
to open his secret chronicle, he nowhere tells us;
but he makes it very clear that he closed it at
length, not because he had grown weary of it, or
ceased to find satisfaction in its composition, but
simply on account of the failure of eyesight,
above referred to. Very pathetic is the final
entry:—</p>
<div class='bq'>
<p class='c010'>“And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able
to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal,
I not being able to do it any longer, having done now
so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I
take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever
comes of it, I must forbear; and, therefore, resolve
from this time forward to have it kept by my people in
long-hand, and must be contented to set down no
more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or
if there be anything, I must endeavor to keep a margin
in my book open, to add here and there a note in
short-hand with my own hand. And so I betake myself
to that course, which is almost as much as to see
myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts
that will accompany my being blind, the
good God prepare me.” May 31, 1669. S. P.</p>
</div>
<p class='c010'>Few readers probably will rise from the perusal
of the Diary, dismissing it with such an entry
as this as the closing note, without regretting
that the end should have come just when it did;
for we would well have liked to know how Pepys
<span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>responded to some of his later experiences, and
especially in what spirit he accepted the tragic
accidents which presently forced his manhood to
the test. About these matters we can now only
speculate, with the feeling that had the journal
been continued for even a few years longer, we
should perhaps have been brought into contact
with a deeper, stronger, more earnest side of the
writer’s character than actually makes itself apparent
in the narrative. We little guess what
resources of courage and power lie somewhere
mysteriously stored up in men and women seemingly
the least heroic, to be drawn upon only
when the great and decisive moments of a lifetime
come; and it might well give us, we fancy,
a certain sense of satisfaction if we could follow
the vain and garrulous Pepys through his season
of growing wealth and prosperity onward to the
time when he fell on evil days, and watch him in
the enveloping darkness, bowing his head amid
reverses of fortune, or standing face to face with
death beside his wife’s open grave. But it is
useless to indulge in hypothesis. We must
accept the Diary as it is, and be thankful that
the years covered by it were so full of matters
of private interest and public importance.</p>
<p class='c010'>And if we only think for a moment of all that
<span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>happened in a public way during these ten critical
years, and remember that Pepys, by virtue
of his official position, was often drawn into very
close relations with some of the moving forces and
figures of the time—“names that in their motion
were full-welling fountain-heads of change,”—we
can realize at once that on the historical side
this Diary has immense value. I do not dwell
upon this side now, for time is limited, and there
are other matters, not so frequently dealt with,
to which I want to direct attention. Yet it is
necessary just to say that, as documentary evidence
concerning the inner life of the court and
society, the inconceivable, the unutterable profligacy
of the King and his followers, the irresponsibility
of those in charge of public affairs, the
complete demoralization of the upper classes
during the early years of the Restoration, Pepys’s
chronicle furnishes a record that we cannot
afford to overlook. His simplicity, insouciance,
and habitual self-possession are often more telling
than the most eloquent descriptions of historians,
the most fervid denunciations of moralists.
An accidental word of his will often lay bare
a condition of things which lengthy analysis,
supported by innumerable references to authorities
will hardly make us realize, a few passing
<span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>sentences, penned <i>au jour le jour</i>, having frequently
the power of throwing some circumstance,
otherwise almost incredible, into sudden
and lurid relief. Indeed, the mere fact that the
temper of moral indignation is not one to which
Pepys often or easily gives way, itself lends added
force to all he writes, and intensifies the meaning
of his rare exclamations of horror or protest. If
Pepys had any political convictions at all, they
were of the most flexible kind; he did not cultivate
the sort of conscience which has the troublesome
faculty of interfering at unexpected
times with its owner’s chances of worldly advancement
and success. Brought up under the
Commonwealth, and, for a time at least, marked
by Roundhead proclivities, he readily and rapidly
transferred his allegiance to the new <i>régime</i>,
his only anxiety being, it would seem, lest his
earlier opinions should be resuscitated, with
unpleasant practical results. Oddly enough,
though the Diary opens in the midst of a great
political crisis—when Monk was marching from
Scotland, and English affairs were hanging
poised in the balance of fate,—it nowhere contains
any utterance of strong party feeling, any
distinctly enunciated wish, either for the restoration
of the Stuarts or for the preservation of the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>Commonwealth. When the Merry Monarch was
settled upon the throne, Pepys quietly accepted
the fact—along with the very desirable office in
the Admiralty secured thereby. You say that
the spirit thus shown is not a manly, not a noble
one. Alas! no. Pepys, I am afraid, had but
one firmly rooted political principle—the principle
proverbially associated with the celebrated
Vicar of Bray, of looking out for himself and
his own welfare. Here, of course, we are strongly
tempted to indulge by the way in a little conventional
moralizing, and to congratulate ourselves
that in our own days, in enlightened America,
the low aims and sordid ambitions of poor old
Pepys are quite unknown. But I restrain my
eloquence, having other matters on hand. The
point I want to dwell on for the moment is, that
testimony to the political and social corruption
following the Restoration, coming from such a
man as this, is testimony of almost unique value,
on account of the very character of the witness.
To lead you through the miry places of the
Diary is no part of my present plan; but let
me just say that when such a man, albeit unused
to the chiding mood, bursts out with the exclamation,
“So they are all mad!—and thus the
kingdom is governed!”—when, as sometimes
<span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>happens, he speaks with genuine sorrow of what
he has heard, or perhaps seen, in the high places
of the land; when he scatters among his small
talk and frivolous details sentences full of dismal
apprehension concerning the country’s position
and outlook,—then things must have come to a
pretty pass indeed. Pepys was professionally
committed to the Stuart dynasty; yet, as has
been well said, a splendid eulogy of Cromwell
could be gathered from the <i>obiter dicta</i> of his
pages. Certainly, we need hardly travel outside
the Diary itself, if we seek only to understand
and estimate the iniquities and political short-sightedness
of those who succeeded Cromwell in
place and power.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>But now we will descend from the dignity of
history—if these things belong to the dignity
of history—to the plane of common every-day
life. Abandoning our quest for edification, we
will wander for a little while about the Diary, for
no other purpose than that of deriving what
amusement we may from its personal banalities
and social tittle-tattle. Pepys tempts us to be as
unsystematic and inconsequential as himself.
We will assume, therefore, the privilege which,
according to Hazlitt, Coleridge so constantly
<span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>abused in his conversational monologues—that
of beginning nowhere in particular, and ending,
if we see fit, in the same place.</p>
<p class='c010'>It has been said that in Pepys’s ten years’
record there are more than five hundred references
to dress and personal decoration. I have
not checked the statement, but I can easily
believe it. This gives, roughly speaking, an
average of one such notice to each week covered
by the journal. Dress and the affairs of the
toilet were indeed for Pepys always matters of
serious importance, not to be disregarded in the
midst of the greatest strain of public events.
We learn that at times Mrs. Pepys’s feminine
desire for a new gown or some expensive bit of
finery gave rise to domestic bickering and husbandly
reproof, and that the money laid out on
tailoring and haberdashery occasionally caused
an uneasy hour. Yet, with all his thrift, Pepys
seems to have had a remarkably free hand when
questions of this kind stood in the way. He
reports, without remorse, the payment of twenty-four
pounds for a single suit—the best, he adds,
“that I ever wore in my life”; and later on,
notes the spending of eighty pounds for a necklace
for his wife—though in this case he has
misgivings. It is sad to relate that, on the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>whole, our diarist was much less concerned about
his own personal extravagances than about the
extravagances of his better-half—a fact which
shows us that husbands, like other conveniences
of life, have been improved by the course of
civilization. At any rate, once noting, to his
great sorrow and alarm, a month’s outlay of
seventy-seven pounds on dress and its accompaniments,
he adds that about twelve pounds of
this had gone for his wife, and the small remaining
balance—some fifty-five pounds—for himself.
Charity begins at home; but economy, like
justice, often starts next door. Pepys’s marital
parsimoniousness frequently manifests itself in
very petty ways; as when, for example, under
date 14th February, 1666-7, he writes—“I am
also this year my wife’s valentine, and it will cost
me £5; <i>but that I must have laid out if we had
not been valentines</i>.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Once upon a time, Mr. and Mrs. Pepys went
to the theatre together, and there they saw
“Mrs. Stewart, very fine, with her locks done up
with puffs, as my wife calls them, and several
other great ladies had their hair so, though I do
not like it; but my wife do mightily; but it is
only because she sees it is the fashion.” This is
all very well as a piece of superior masculine
<span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>judgment; but unfortunately our moralist betrays
no such scruples when social opinion prescribes
a new departure in his own accoutrement. We
notice with interest in the jottings of the journal
the first appearance, or early reappearance, of
several curious customs in dress. Patches were
used by Mrs. Pepys, for the first time “since we
were married,” on 30th August, 1660; and on
12th June, 1663, after observing the growth of
the practice then indulged in by ladies, of wearing
vizards, or masks, at the theatre—a practice
we can understand better as we come to know
more of the character of the performances given
on the Restoration stage,—Mr. Pepys goes
forthwith to the Exchange “to buy things with
my wife; among others, a vizard for herself.”
On 3d November, in this same year, he reports
the adoption by himself of the new mode of
wearing a periwig in place of the natural hair.
It went a little to his heart, we find, to part with
his own head-gear. However, he was somewhat
reassured when, causing all his maids to look
upon him, he observed their satisfaction with the
result; though he notes intense self-consciousness
and some embarrassment when, the next
day, he went abroad for the first time in his
new guise. About the same period he begins to
<span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>shave himself—a performance which pleases
him “mightily,” as promising to save both time
and money. “Up betimes and shaved myself,”
so runs a later entry, “after a week’s growth;
but Lord! how ugly I was yesterday, and how
fine to-day.”</p>
<p class='c010'>One is sorely tempted here to reproduce a
few of the many passages in which the vain old
chronicler gloats over his handsome clothing,
and the imposing figure cut by him at the theatre,
or on the promenade, or in church. But
one or two must suffice as specimens:—</p>
<div class='bq'>
<p class='c010'>“July 10, 1660. This day I put on my new silk suit,
the first that ever I wore in my life.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Feb. 3, 1661, (Lord’s Day). This day I first begun
[sic] to go forth in my coat and sword, as the manner
now among gentlemen is.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“April 22, 1661. Up early, and made myself as fine
as I could.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“Oct 19, 1662, (Lord’s Day). Put on my first new
lace-band; and so neat it is, that I am resolved my
great expense shall be lace-bands, and it will set off
anything else the more.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“May 17, 1668, (Lord’s Day). Up and put on my
new stuff suit, with a shoulder belt, according to the
new fashion, and the bands of my vest and tunique
laced with silk lace of the colour of my suit; and so
very handsome to church.”</p>
</div>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>Alas, poor Pepys! Where be your lace-bands
now? your shoulder-belts? your rich silk vests?</p>
<p class='c010'>The prominence of dress in the Diary may well
surprise us, but we are scarcely less astonished
by the amount of space given by our busy man
of affairs to the most various kinds of pleasure
and simple merrymaking. Amongst the games
in which Mr. Secretary Pepys seems to have
found special satisfaction, tennis, ninepins, and
billiards hold high place; but these, after all, never
yielded him a tithe of the pure enjoyment that
he derived from his more intellectual pastimes,
reading and music. Pepys was a genuine musician;
and we get the impression from the journal
that his love of music reached the proportions of
a real passion—the only passion, indeed, of his
life. On the other hand, he was not a systematic
scholar, though he devoured books with avidity,
keeping in touch with the literary output of his
day, and at least tasting all sorts of things, from
Cicero, the Hebrew grammar, and Hooker’s
“Ecclesiastical Polity,” downward to Audley’s
“Way to be Rich,” and the last-published comedy
of the popular playwrights of his time. Here
are a couple of sample entries:—</p>
<div class='bq'>
<p class='c010'>“Feb. 10, 1661-2. To Paul’s Churchyard, and there
I met with Dr. Fuller’s ‘England’s Worthys,’ the first
<span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>time that ever I saw it; and so I sat down reading in
it; being much troubled that (though he had some
discourse with me about my family and arms) he says
nothing at all, nor mentions us either in Cambridgeshire
or Norfolke. But I believe, indeed, our family
were never considerable.”</p>
<p class='c010'>“July 1, 1666. ... Walked to Woolwich, reading
‘The Rivall Ladys’<SPAN name='r4' /><SPAN href='#f4' class='c015'><sup>[4]</sup></SPAN> all the way, and find it a most
pleasant and fine writ play.”</p>
</div>
<p class='c010'>Pepys’s passing opinions have not much critical
value, but they are his own, which is more
than can be said of many literary <i>dicta</i> far more
pretentious than his. It is rather instructive to
follow some of his fluctuations in taste. We
notice—to take a single illustration only—that
when the first part of “Hudibras” was issued,
he bought a copy for half a crown, having heard
it much cried up for its pungent wit; but was so
much disappointed when he came to dip into it,
that he sold it again the same afternoon for
eighteen-pence. Still every one talked of the
poem, and Pepys began to wonder whether he
had given it a fair trial. So a few days later he
purchased another copy, resolved on closer study.
Now, I will venture to say that in this emergency
<span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>poor Pepys kept himself by no means free from
the sham admiration and cuckoo-criticism which
is the bane of our drawing-rooms, and, for that
matter, of some of our college classrooms, at the
present day. Had you met him in social gatherings,
and had the talk turned on “Hudibras,”
as it would almost certainly have done, then,
doubtless, you would have found that Pepys,
fearful of appearing deficient in acumen or taste,
would have little or nothing to say about his
adverse judgment, and might even consent to
laugh perfunctorily at jokes he really did not
think funny, and at doggerel rhymes which in
his heart of hearts he held to be simply stupid.
Meanwhile, he confides to his Diary the expression
of his honest opinion, promising himself
that, on the appearance of the second part of the
poem, he will borrow it from some friend, and
buy it only if, on inspection, it should turn out
to be better than the first part. All this is surely
edifying.</p>
<p class='c010'>Here we ought perhaps to add that, in an ill-advised
moment, Mr. Pepys undertook to learn
to dance. “The truth is, I think it a thing very
useful for a gentleman, and sometimes I may
have occasion of using it, and though it cost me
what I am heartily sorry it should,” (he deeply
<span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>deplores the payment of ten shillings entrance
fee to the class,) “yet I am resolved to get it up
some other way.... So, though it be against
my stomach, yet I will try it for a little while.”
The subsequent introduction of a dancing-master,
whose name was Pemberton, turned out, however,
to be the introduction of a serpent into Pepys’s
matrimonial Paradise. Mrs. Pepys, crazy over
the new accomplishment, insisted on his coming
twice a day, which, as Mr. Pepys properly protested,
was “a folly.” Moreover, he by and by
grew jealous of his wife’s attention to the said
Pemberton, and some heartache and much petulance
were the result. Pepys gives us one graphic
description of himself, too angry to join his wife
at her lesson, yet walking up and down in his
own chamber, “listening to hear whether they
danced or no.” But he presently became an
adept in the art, and danced his own part,
infinitely to his satisfaction, in many a corranto
and jig.</p>
<p class='c010'>For Pepys, as we have said, was a highly convivial
person, and abandoned himself to the
pleasure of the moment with an ardor and
whole-heartedness which fill the grimly serious
modern reader with something like amazement.
The thought of the morrow rarely for him disturbed
<span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>the enjoyment of to-day, though with the
coming of the morrow he sometimes found that
he had applied himself to the good things of this
life not wisely but too well. Accounts of suppers,
of social festivities kept up until ever so
much o’clock in the morning, of mirthmaking
of the most boisterous kind, abound in his
pages, mixed up with matters of more serious
import in quite a bewildering way. Pepys will
often round off some such detailed report with a
characteristic comment expressive of deep satisfaction;
as, for example, “mighty merry,” or
“so home, mighty pleased with this day’s
sport.” <i>Carpe diem</i> was evidently his counsel
of perfection. There is something charming
about the man’s juvenile capacity for enjoyment,
though we are frequently inclined to wonder how
he managed in certain emergencies to keep his
clear head and his steady hand. Yet only occasionally
does the journal record any marked
reaction from even the most roistering overnight
carousal. Here, however, is just one case in
point. On 14th August, 1666,—in the midst, be
it noted, of a good deal of mental disturbance
caused by a misunderstanding between himself
and Lord Peterborough,—Pepys describes at
length an evening of wild frolic and buffoonery.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>After dinner, with his wife and wife’s maid,
Mercer (who played a rather prominent part in
subsequent domestic unpleasantnesses), he takes
a turn at the Bear Garden, where there is much
wine-drinking.</p>
<div class='bq'>
<p class='c010'>“Then we supped at home, and very merry. And
then about 9 o’clock to Mrs. Mercer’s gate, where
the fire and boys expected us, and her son had provided
abundance of serpents and rockets; and there
mighty merry (my Lady Pen and Pegg going thither
with us, and Nan Wright) till about 12 at night, flinging
our fireworks and burning one another and the people
over the way. At last our businesses being most
spent, we into Mrs. Mercer’s, and there mighty merry,
smutting one another with candle-grease and soot, till
most of us were like devils. And that being done,
then we broke up, and to my house, and there I made
them drink; and upstairs we went, and there fell into
dancing (W. Batelier dancing well), and dressing him
and I and one Mr. Banister ... like women; and
Mercer put on a suit of Tom’s like a boy, and mighty
mirth we had; and Mercer danced a jig, and Nan
Wright and my wife and Pegg Pen put on periwigs.
Thus we spent till three or four in the morning, mighty
merry; and then parted and to bed.”</p>
</div>
<p class='c010'>Do we wonder that the next day’s entry should
significantly open—“Mighty sleepy; slept till
past eight of the clock”?</p>
<p class='c010'>As wine-bibbing, and even downright drunkenness,
occupy so large a space in our record, it
<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>may be proper to note indications contained in it
of the rise of domestic forces destined to do
much in a quiet way towards the gradual improvement
of general manners in this particular
respect. From the point of view of social history,
there is much to interest us in Pepys’s
occasional references to tea, coffee, and chocolate.
These three beverages found their way into
England within a few years of one another, about
the middle of the seventeenth century, cocoa
leading the way, and tea bringing up the rear.
We have seen that on one occasion our diarist
spoilt his bands by spilling chocolate upon them.
The coffee-house was an accomplished fact in his
time. There he often met distinguished men on
business; there he passed many a chatty hour;
there he once reports seeing “Dryden the poet
... and all the wits of the town.” For tea he
never seems to have acquired special fondness.
I have marked but two references to it in the
Diary. Once, on 28th September, 1660, he
notes: “I did send for a cup of tea (a China
drink), of which I never had drank before,”—and
unfortunately, for a wonder, he does not tell
us how he liked it. And again, on 28th June,
1667, he chronicles returning home to find his
wife “making of tea, a drink which Mr. Pelling,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>the Potticary, tells her is good for her cold.”
Tea, by the way, was enormously dear in those
days, and was supposed to possess astonishing
and mysterious medicinal properties, concerning
which we may read much in a broadside issued
by Thomas Garway, the coffee-man of Change
Alley,—a rare and curious document, a copy of
which is still preserved in the British Museum.</p>
<p class='c010'>It does not, of course, surprise us to learn
that this pleasure-loving man of the town was a
regular attendant at all the public amusements
of his time. He visited the cockpit, the bear-garden,
the gambling-room, the prize-ring;
though, much to his credit, he found little pleasure
in these places of popular resort—a fact
which makes it harder for us to understand his
frequent presence at public executions, in witnessing
which, as many entries serve to show, he
found a curious kind of satisfaction. On the
other hand, his enthusiasm for everything connected
with the theatre was simply unbounded;
his Diary remaining to-day an important source
of first-hand information on all matters pertaining
to the drama of the Restoration. From his
miscellaneous jottings we gain a wonderfully
vivid impression of the manners and customs
of the playhouse of the period, together with a
<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>sense of life in things otherwise dead beyond
recall. For Pepys saw the great Betterton in all
his glory, and was bewitched by the beautiful
and fascinating Nell Gwynne. When his record
opens, boys were still playing female parts, as
they had done in Shakspere’s time, and the
introduction of women to the English stage is
duly registered by him as an event. He details,
after his manner, all the odds and ends of scandal
concerning prominent theatrical people; was
himself on very friendly terms—somewhat too
friendly at times for domestic peace—with
various pretty actresses; and was an occasional
visitor to that mysterious realm which lies behind
the scenes. Once in a while, however, he
acknowledges the disillusion caused by such
excursions. The extremely human proportions
into which the heroes and heroines of that magic
stage-land dwindled when seen at close quarters,—the
dust, noise, confusion, paint, powder, and
general dinginess of the dressing-rooms and
coulisses,—these are subjects of frequent remark.
Perhaps his most disenchanting experience was
one connected with Nell Gwynne—“pretty,
witty Nelly,” as he fondly calls her,—(we will
not forget that the Diary was written in cipher).
He finds her once behind the curtain,—alas,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>that we should have to repeat it!—swearing like
a trooper because of the smallness of the audience.
Now, a small house is a trial sufficient to
tax the philosophy of any actress; but we are
sorry that pretty, witty Nelly, should have behaved
herself in this way. Pepys confesses that
on this occasion he went home a sadder and a
wiser man.</p>
<p class='c010'>Let us not imagine that Pepys followed his
career of pleasure without twinges of conscience
and occasional remorse. The expense involved
frequently worried him, and again and again he
reproved himself for wasting valuable time. It
saddened him once in a while, too, to realize that
he could not say “No” when temptation came
in his way,—“a very great fault of mine which I
must amend in.” Sometimes he argued the
matter out to a logical issue; as, for instance,
when, on 9th March, 1665, he writes:—</p>
<div class='bq'>
<p class='c010'>“The truth is I do indulge myself a little more in
pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age of my
life to do it; and out of my observation that most men
that do thrive in the world do forget to take pleasure
during the time they are getting their estate, but
reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too
late for them to enjoy it.”</p>
</div>
<p class='c010'>This eminently philosophical generalization appears
to have given him a good deal of relief.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>Still, the qualms would come, philosophy notwithstanding.
The thought of neglected business
is like a death’s head at the feast when he dines
once with Lady Batten and Madame Williams;
and when, on another memorable occasion, he
goes to the playhouse when he knows well
enough that he should have been elsewhere, he
is so thoroughly ashamed of himself that he
sneaks in and takes a back place—only to be
immediately singled out by an acquaintance, who
spies him out from afar, and, much to his mortification,
insists on sitting beside him. Incidents
of this kind are numerous enough to show us
that the way of the transgressor was sometimes
hard.</p>
<p class='c010'>Pepys, however, managed upon occasion to
get even with himself in these delicate matters
by a very curious device. He registered solemn
vows,—as, for instance, not to drink wine for a
specified period, or not to go to the play till after
a certain date,—inflicting various penalties upon
himself for infraction. These penalties habitually
took financial forms—payments to charities and
the like; and we note that in cases of infraction—and
these were sufficiently frequent—Pepys
was more deeply concerned about the spent
money than about the broken vow. Moreover,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>it has to be acknowledged that some fine casuistry
is now and then shown by him in the way
in which he manages to elude the sense of an
obligation while technically fulfilling its letter.
Under pledge not to touch wine, he consumes
hypocras, a mixture of red and white wine with
sugar and spices, and comforts himself with the
extraordinary theory that this is, “to the best of
my personal judgment, ... only a mixed compound
drink, and not any wine.” Equally dubious
are some of his theatrical doings. Once he
congratulates himself that he has kept his vow
because he arrives at the playhouse too late to
make it worth his while to go in—a really magnificent
confusion of intention with result. Once
again, he allows an acquaintance to pay for him,
and exonerates himself on the ground that he
was taken to the performance, and did not, so to
speak, take himself—did not, in other words, go
as a free agent, and of his own impulse and will.
And on yet another occasion,—such is his
subtlety,—he gets Mr. Creed to treat him in this
way, actually lending the said Mr. Creed the
money necessary for the purpose. This, however,
he felt to be going rather too far, even for
an ethical theorist. In reporting the incident, he
adds that this “is a fallacy that I have found
<span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>now once, to avoid my vow with, but never to
be more practised, I swear.”</p>
<p class='c010'>I said that in this part of my lecture I
should make no attempt to maintain logical consistency.
This must be my excuse for leading
you by an abrupt transition from the stage to
the pulpit. Pepys occasionally stayed at home
on Sundays to work up his accounts, or look
over his papers, and once (but he was sick that
day) to read plays; but he was, on the whole, a
faithful church-goer, and, as we have had occasion
to observe, made special use of the Lord’s
Day for a display of his new clothes and finery,
a practice which to modern readers must needs
seem both strange and reprehensible. His notes
of discourses heard by him are sometimes extremely
interesting; while his criticisms—and he
was evidently by no means easy to satisfy in the
matter of sermons—are often as pungent and
incisive as they are quaint and characteristic.
“A lazy, poor sermon,” he writes, after hearing
Dr. Fuller. Once he reports “an unnecessary
sermon upon original sin, neither understood”
by the preacher himself “nor the people”; and
another time he hears a young man “play the
fool upon the doctrine of Purgatory.” Considerable
space is given in his jottings to a certain
<span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>poor young Scotchman, who had a perfect
genius for preaching “most tediously,” and who
becomes for Pepys a sort of type and standard
of dulness and nebulosity. Poor little Scot,
thus to be pilloried to the end of time! Pepys
had, however,—let us put it euphemistically,—a
wonderful power of withdrawing into himself,
when the exercises of the pulpit became unusually
trying—when, to adapt the phrase of
Madame de Sévigné, a preacher abused the
privilege preachers have of being long-winded
and tiresome. Over and over again he chronicles
sleeping soundly through a sermon, and waking
refreshed, if not edified, at the close. “After
dinner, to church again, where the young Scot
preaching, I slept all the while.”—“So up and
to church, where Mr. Mills preached, but I know
not how; I slept most of the sermon.”—“So to
church, and slept all the sermon, the Scot, to
whose voice I am not to be reconciled [one
would suppose that he had become pretty well
reconciled to it, judging by its soporific influences]
preaching.” I pick these at random, as
specimen entries. There were seasons, however,
when, the sermon being bad, and himself unable
to achieve the benign relief of slumber, Pepys
confesses to killing time in less innocent ways.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>Susceptible to an extreme degree to feminine
charms and graces, he often passed the hour of
exhortation in looking out for pretty women,
and in studying carefully their various styles of
beauty and of dress. Here are a few instances
to the point. “To church, where, God forgive
me! I spent most of my time in looking on my
new Morena [brunette] at the other side of the
church.” So runs one of his confidences. And
again: “After dinner, I by water alone to Westminster
to the parish church, and there did
entertain myself with my perspective-glass up
and down the church, by which I had the great
pleasure of seeing and gazing at a great many
very fine women; and what with that and sleeping,
I passed away the time till the sermon was
done.” He even reports that once, at St. Dunstan’s,
in the midst too of an “able sermon,” he
found himself beside a “pretty, modest maid,”
whom “I did labor to take by the hand, but she
would not, but got further and further from me;
and at last I could perceive her to take pins out
of her pocket, to prick me if I should touch her
again, which seeing I did forbear, and was glad
I did spy her design. And then I fell to gaze
upon another pretty maid in a pew close to me,
and she on me; and I did go about to take her
<span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>by the hand, which she suffered a little, and then
withdrew. So the sermon ended, and the church
broke up, and my amours ended also.”</p>
<p class='c010'>This time, by a transition strictly logical, we
are led to speak for a moment about the most
intimate side of Pepys’s domestic existence—his
relations with his wife. The subject is a difficult
and delicate one; it is, moreover, too complicated
to be dealt with in any detail here. A few general
words must suffice.</p>
<p class='c010'>Their marriage had been one of love, and it
can hardly be called, on the whole, an unfortunate
one, in spite of many unhappy episodes and a
good deal of misunderstanding; for even in the
white glare of the Diary, where every fleck
shows, their home life often comes out in a very
pleasant light. Still there were unquestionably,
even from the very beginning, little rifts within
the lute, and these rifts widen terribly, we notice,
as the journal runs its course. To the outside
world, very probably, such rifts were not often
apparent; but we are privileged to see matters
close at hand, and from the inside; and this undercurrent
of tragedy, beneath the broad stream
of prosperity and success, becomes at times painfully
manifest as we read.</p>
<p class='c010'>I suppose it can hardly be said that in the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>case of Mr. and Mrs. Pepys’s various matrimonial
difficulties, the entire blame rested on either
pair of shoulders. Mrs. Pepys was extremely
pretty and attractive, and her husband admired
her thoroughly, and was after his own rather singular
fashion, devotedly attached to her. Yet she
was evidently whimsical, somewhat capricious,
apt to get into what Pepys calls “fusty” humors,
and at times exceedingly trying to the nerves.
Many a little crisis, not serious perhaps, but distinctly
unpleasant, seems to have been brought
about by a word unnecessarily spoken, a look or
a phrase interpreted amiss. But, after all, we fear
that the main burden of responsibility rested
with Pepys himself. Why would he undertake
to teach the poor young woman astronomy and
arithmetic, when, admittedly, she had neither
taste nor talent for such subjects? Why was he
so much upset on finding that her ear for music
was not nearly as good as he thought it should
have been? Why did he cut her short so peremptorily
on one most unfortunate occasion
when she was telling that long-winded story of
hers from “The Grand Cyrus”? Why was he
petulant with her, at another time, for no better
reason, as he himself confesses, than that he was
hungry, and she had dressed herself, as she not
<span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>infrequently did, in a manner that displeased
him? Why, finally, when she was berating him
rather roundly about her deficient wardrobe, did
he fall to reading Boyle’s “Hydrostatics” aloud,
“and let her talk till she was tired, and vexed
that I would not hear her”? It is surely, to say
the least of it, far from tactful in a husband to
declaim from a treatise on hydrostatics, when his
wife is determined to discuss more serious matters.
These may be trifles; but such trifles are
important things, when viewed from the standpoint
of domestic peace. But all this touches
merely the fringe of the problem. The really
serious troubles were generally, if not always,
caused by poor Mr. Pepys’s fatal over-sensibility—that
characteristic weakness of his, to which
he himself from time to time became only too
keenly alive. The simple fact of the matter is,
that our diarist had a fondness for the society of
pretty women; that his wife, naturally enough,
grew jealous; and that all sorts of unpleasantness,
deepening sometimes into genuine domestic
tragedy, was the inevitable result. I have
not time now to go into the ins and outs of what
is really a very long story, to follow the rapid
fluctuations of feeling, or mark out the converging
lines of approach to the unavoidable catastrophe.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>But I cannot resist the temptation of recounting
one curious episode—that of a neat joke once
played by Mrs. Pepys on her susceptible better-half.
Pepys, early in the period of the Diary,
had fallen in with his wife’s desire to have a girl
to live with them—a kind of companion and
lady’s maid. He did not like the expense
incurred; but as long as the young lady was
sufficiently well-favored to be a pleasant object
to look on, he saw but little other cause for
complaint—though cause for complaint, and
good cause too, Mrs. Pepys was presently to
find. Well, on one occasion his wife told him
she had engaged a new maid—a girl so pretty
and winsome, she went on to say, that positively
she was already jealous. Mr. Pepys was a little
uneasy about all this. However, he concluded
that she “meant it merrily,” and awaited with
a good deal of ill-repressed excitement the
coming of the domestic beauty. In due season,
Hebe arrived; and judge his astonishment and
disgust, when he found, as he plaintively reports,
that she was not pretty at all, but a very ordinary
wench! For once, at all events, the laugh
was on Mrs. Pepys’s side.</p>
<p class='c010'>Towards the latter part of the Diary the conjugal
misunderstandings pass into a very acute
<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>stage, and for a time a break-up of the Pepys
establishment seems imminent. But we are glad
to be able to record that the crisis was a comparatively
brief one. Mr. Pepys, sorrow-smitten
and full of remorse over his recent ill-doings,
undertakes to mend his ways, and sets manfully,
though with some misgivings and much difficulty,
about the task of so doing. And thus the
curtain falls upon what promises to be a complete
reconciliation; and we close the Diary with the
hope that the new peace lasted for the few brief
years that were destined to elapse before the life
of poor Elizabeth Pepys was brought to its
untimely end. There is one odd commentary
on matrimony, which I must needs add for its
characteristic strain. Pepys, going to church
one day, happens by accident to witness a wedding,
and is much interested in what Thackeray
described as “the happy couple, as the saying
is.” In chronicling this incident, he makes the
following extraordinary remark: “Strange to
see what delight we married people have to
see these poor fools decoyed into our condition,
every man and woman gazing and smiling upon
them.”</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>There is much still on the purely personal side
of the Diary about which I should well have
liked to speak; and, in particular, I had hoped
to dwell for a little on Pepys’s notices of the
Great Plague (which are much more interesting,
as well as accurate, than Defoe’s well-known
romancing book), and on his graphic account
of the fire of London, which forms an admirable
commentary on the second half of Dryden’s
famous, if somewhat unmanageable, poem, “Annus
Mirabilis.” But these matters, and many
other such, cannot now be even touched upon.
Meanwhile, in bringing these rambling memoranda
to a close, I do not feel inclined to apologize
for what may seem the frivolous character
of my material. The unique charm of Pepys’s
Diary, as I said at the outset, lies very largely in
the frankness, the naïveté, the unsophisticated
directness of its record; it is, as I insisted, really
and truly what other chronicles of the kind have
been simply in name, a <i>journal intime</i>. Something
of this frankness, this naïveté, it has been
my aim to illustrate, and to show you at the
same time how quaint and startling are some
of the results. And let me ask you not to
judge too harshly of the man into whose existence
we have thus ventured to pry. Remember
<span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>that we have been privileged in his case to push
aside the curtain which men habitually keep
carefully drawn across the penetralia of their
lives; that we have caught him often enough at
unfair advantage, and in a light fiercer than that
which, Tennyson says, beats upon a throne,
blackening each blot. At any rate, I, for my
own part, see no reason why, as we lay his Diary
aside, we should indulge in platitudes of criticism—still
less, why we should console ourselves
with the flattering thought of moral superiority.
Pepys was not a great man, it is true: he was
often weak, often foolish; the temptations of the
world again and again proved too much for him;
at many important points, his theory and practice
of life were alike unsound. But it might be
well perhaps, before we undertake to throw
stones at his glass house, to look a little carefully
into the vitreous mansion in which we ourselves
dwell. And if you and I were forced to lay bare,
as he has done for himself, the secret thoughts
and feelings, the passing fancies, the unspoken
desires, the foibles and failures of our every-day
existence, I wonder how many of us would see
reason to be proud of the revelation so made.
O my brothers, let us be humble and charitable!
Humility and charity are excellent things; and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>humility and charity, I confess, I find constantly
forced upon me whenever I dip, for an hour’s
genuine amusement, into the Diary of old Samuel
Pepys.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c006' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='chap3' class='c008'>Two Novelists of the English<br/>Restoration.</h2></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' /></div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c001'>
<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span><span class='large'>Two Novelists of the English</span></div>
<div><span class='large'>Restoration.</span></div>
</div></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_0_0_7 c009'>It is the object of this brief paper to introduce
the good-natured reader, who, as a well-organized
human being, is undoubtedly possessed
of a proper love of fiction, to two women who
had much to do with settling the English novel
into its true line of development. I confess I
could wish that the ladies in question were, socially
and morally, a trifle more presentable. I
can well remember the time when I myself made
their acquaintance in the library of the British
Museum, and how I was almost ashamed of
myself, despite the fact that I had the definite
purposes of a student to support me, when I
thought of the hours I had been fain to spend in
their singularly unedifying company. But in
the study of literary evolution, as in that of the
history of the world at large, it is not always
possible to be over-fastidious. When we are
interested in a thing done, we must consider, as
<span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>cheerfully as may be, the doer and the doing of
it, though we may have fault enough to find
sometimes with the character of the former and
the manner of the latter.</p>
<p class='c010'>The women to whose personalities and writings
we are presently to turn—Mrs. Behn and Mrs.
Manley—stand out among the least attractive
products of an age of low ideals and scandalous
living. But they none the less remain figures of
some permanent attractiveness to those of us who
care to investigate the beginnings of our great
modern prose fiction; and it is on account of
their relative or historic importance that I have
undertaken to say something about them in this
place.</p>
<p class='c010'>In order, however, to make such historic importance
clear, we must go back a little in our
inquiry.</p>
<p class='c010'>The titanic imaginative energy of the Elizabethan
and Jacobean periods had found its principal
outlet in the drama. It was on the stage
and through the literature of the stage that, during
the most brilliant era of its intellectual activity,
the genius of the English people, for the
most part, sought expression. The drama thus
became the representative and the embodiment
of all that was strongest and most characteristic
<span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>in the national life. In it we find the great mental
and moral movements of the time gathered
up and made vocal; to it we turn for the fullest
and richest manifestation of the national mind.
As Mr. Symonds truly said: “The drama, its
own original creation, stood to the English nation
in the place of all the other arts. England ...
needed no æsthetic outlet but the drama.”</p>
<p class='c010'>But little by little the close connection between
the stage and the national life was severed;
and cut off from its sources of deepest impulse
and inspiration, the drama fell gradually into a
condition of decrepitude and decay. For many
years before the Revolution the breach between
theatre and people had been a slowly widening
one; and by the time the Restoration once more
gave free rein to dramatic art, the separation had
become complete. No longer making catholic
appeal to the whole community, no longer absorbing
into itself, by way of nourishment and
stimulation, the broad and generous interests of a
varied social life, the drama now became the
mouthpiece and the mirror of one class only—of
the aristocratic class, which had brought foreign
fashions, tastes, morality, with it from
abroad. The theatre of Shakspere and his contemporaries
had been, as it were, the flower and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>fruitage of a period of intense national vigor and
excitement; the theatre of Congreve and Wycherley
was little more than the passing amusement
of the idle and demoralized fashionable
world. Harassed by Puritan austerity on the
one hand, and more seriously perverted by
Royalist profligacy upon the other, the drama
was forced into a relationship with the larger
mass of the people at once unnatural and most
disastrous; and thus the plays of the time, in
spite of all their pungency of wit and glitter of
dialogue, lack that breadth of horizon, earnestness
of purpose, and firm grasp of life, without
which no body of literature—and no body of
dramatic literature especially—can lay claim to
permanent value and significance.</p>
<p class='c010'>Meanwhile a new taste was growing up, and
with it a fresh channel was opened for imaginative
activity. While the drama, sapped at its
foundations, was sinking deeper and deeper into
corruption, and before as yet any effort had been
put forth to save it from its fate, the first noteworthy
experiments were being made towards
the development of a class of literature which
has since acquired unrivalled popularity, and
every year continues to fill a larger and larger
place in public estimation, as well as upon our
<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>library shelves. The causes which combined to
bring about the decline of the drama and the
rise of the modern novel were so varied in character
and intricate in their outworkings, that
even the briefest discussion of them here would
commit us to an unwarrantable digression;
though it should be said, and said emphatically,
that the change is not to be regarded as a mere
matter of shifting literary taste, since it was unquestionably
related, in the most direct and intimate
way, with some of the largest and deepest
movements of the time in society, manners, and
general thought.<SPAN name='r5' /><SPAN href='#f5' class='c015'><sup>[5]</sup></SPAN> Suffice it for us now to remark
the simple fact that, while the dramatists
of the Restoration were engaged upon works
which, fortunately for English society and letters,
left but little permanent mark upon the history
of the theatre, the foundations were being slowly
but firmly laid upon which the vast superstructure
of modern fiction was presently to be reared.</p>
<p class='c010'>So thoroughly absorbed had men been in the
drama, and so natural had it seemed for those
<span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>of imaginative power to turn directly to the
stage, that hitherto prose fiction, though by no
means neglected, had done little towards making
a decisive start. Some popular stories, then
long current, had been gathered up and circulated
in chap-books, and had in sundry cases
furnished materials for contemporary playwrights;
translations had been made from several foreign
languages, and in this way “Don Quixote,” and
the works of Rabelais, Boccaccio, Montemayor,
and others, introduced to English readers; while
such collections of versions and adaptations as
those of Painter and Turbervile might have been
found, it is said, so great had been their temporary
vogue, on almost every London bookstall.
Moreover, the form of fiction had been
occasionally employed by philosophers for
broaching new theories of life and government;
as by More, in his “Utopia,” and Bacon, in his
“New Atlantis.” And, far more important
than any such sporadic efforts as these, there
were the romances produced by some of the
early dramatists—Lyly, and his most famous
followers, Lodge and Greene, in particular. To
these have to be added the chivalrous pastoral
of Sir Philip Sidney, “warbler of poetic prose”;
and in a very different category, the stories and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>sketches of Thomas Nash, Dekker, and Chettle,
whose work, apart altogether from any question
of absolute merit, is of supreme significance to
the student of English fiction, because in it we
find the crude beginnings of the picaresque novel
of later times.</p>
<p class='c010'>Lumped together in this way—and the above
paragraph makes no pretence at completeness of
statement,—the amount of prose fiction of one
and another kind produced in England under
Elizabeth and James the First may seem to be
considerable, and certainly no student of the
evolution of literature, or of the many-sided intellectual
activity of the Shaksperian age, would
to-day think of underrating it. Yet it is possible
perhaps to go to the other extreme, and to exaggerate
its historic importance. To trace the
connection between the tentative output of the
’prentice-writers just referred to and the fully
grown fiction of the eighteenth century—to indicate,
for example, the lines along which Nash
leads us through Defoe to Smollett and Fielding,
and the points of unexpected contact between
Sidney and Richardson is an inquiry full of
curious interest for the special student. But too
much might easily be made of the results
brought to light thereby. After duly allowing
<span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>for the isolated productions of the Elizabethan
period, which undoubtedly broke ground in
many directions, we come back still to the broad
fact, that it was not until after the Restoration,
and largely as a result of what was then undertaken
and accomplished, that the novel firmly
established itself as a well-defined form of literary
art. With the Restoration, therefore, it may
fairly be said that we open a new chapter in the
history of English fiction.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>The new era, however, began badly enough,
in the midst of a byway of most absurd experiment,
which could not, in the nature of things,
lead to any permanent achievement. For along
with so much else that was French in manners,
fashions, morals, turns of speech, there had already
been imported into England a taste for the
peculiar form of romance—the <i>roman à longue
haleine</i>—which was just then enjoying amazing
popularity in the country of its birth, on the
other side of the Channel. As we turn back to
the dull and monstrous productions of the class
now in question, we find it difficult enough to
conceive that in any place, under any possible
circumstances, there should have been men and
women able to derive not simply enjoyment, but
<span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>passionate and continuous enjoyment, from their
pages. But the famous Hôtel de Rambouillet
had set its mark upon them, and in the well-prepared
country of the “Arcadia,” they realized
instant and complete success, not only among
the ultra-fashionables of a Gallicized society, but
also in the more general reading world.</p>
<p class='c010'>We must glance for a moment at one or two
of the most salient characteristics of the school
of fiction which thus became for a time so
widely influential, that we may at once appreciate
its stultifying tendencies, and bring into
clear perspective what we shall presently have to
say about the work of Mrs. Manley and Mrs.
Behn. In doing this we need go no farther than
the examples furnished by the three most prominent
French leaders of polite taste—Gomberville,
La Calprenède, and Mlle. de Scudéri.</p>
<p class='c010'>In the first place, the would-be student of the
so-called classical-heroic romances of these once
celebrated writers is staggered by their tremendous
bulk and inordinate prolixity. The modern
reader shudders at Richardson, and takes his
“Pamela” and “Sir Charles Grandison” in condensed
editions. But Richardson is brevity
itself compared with these earlier indefatigable
laborers in the field of the novel. Gomberville’s
<span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>“Polexandre” began in four volumes quarto,
and in its later editions comprised some six thousand
pages; the “Cléopâtre” of La Calprenède,
when finished, filled twelve octavo volumes;
“Pharamond,” written partly by the same author,
and partly by Pierre d’Ortigue de Vaumorière,
reached nearly the same length; while
the “Clélie” and “Le Grand Cyrus” of Mlle.
de Scudéri—who in the matter of resolute long-windedness
was, naturally enough, more than a
match for her masculine rivals—extended
respectively to some eight thousand and fifteen
thousand octavo pages.<SPAN name='r6' /><SPAN href='#f6' class='c015'><sup>[6]</sup></SPAN> These, and such as
these, were the works that Pope was ridiculing
when in “The Rape of the Lock” he built out
of them an altar for the due celebration of the
“adventurous baron’s” religious rites; and he
was surely justified in describing them as “huge
French romances.” It makes us feel how little
of permanence and stability there is in any matter
of taste, when we remember that these colossal
productions, over which the most patient
reader of to-day would soon catch himself yawning,
were once awaited with interest and devoured
with avidity.</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>But even more important, from the standpoint
of literary history, than the mere size of these
overgrown absurdities were their structural principles
and peculiarities of style. An offshoot
apparently from the chivalrous and pastoral romances
of earlier date, with the addition of what
it pleased writers and readers alike to regard as
an “historical” blend of interest, the classical-heroic
romance proper presents a bewildering
jumble of the most far-sought and incongruous
materials. In fine disregard of anachronism and
inconsistency, their authors carry us hither and
thither about the world, introducing us to Greeks
and Romans, Egyptians and Persians, Knights
of the Round Table, Paladins of Charlemagne,
shepherds and shepherdesses of nowhere in particular,
and even Peruvian Incas. The main
plot, as a rule deceptively simple, is complicated
from first to last by enormous and intricate ramifications
of secondary actions; a characteristic
due to the fact that every fresh individual introduced,
whether in the central narrative, or in
some excrescence from it, persists in recounting
his own adventures at tremendous length. Thus
we have story within story, wheel within wheel,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>till the reader completely loses his hold upon
the tangled threads of intrigue, and collapses
into a condition of dazed despair.<SPAN name='r7' /><SPAN href='#f7' class='c015'><sup>[7]</sup></SPAN> But this is
not the worst. The characters seem to be totally
unable to tell their experiences in a straightforward
fashion and have done with it. They
linger by the way—time being of no importance
to any of them—to indulge in everlasting conversations
and soliloquies, discourse learnedly on
delicate questions of gallantry and honor, quote,
criticise, sentimentalize, pour out page after page
of inflated rhapsody, and cavil remorselessly on
the ninth part of a hair. Thus the so-called
“historic” element in these romances, is nominal
only. The heroes and heroines, of whatever
race, clime, or era, are only masquerading men
and women of seventeenth-century France, with
the ridiculous jargon of the Hôtel de Rambouillet
incessantly upon their lips.</p>
<p class='c010'>It will be seen from this brief description that
the classical-heroic romance was absolutely artificial
and unreal; that it had, and pretended to
<span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>have, no touch or contact with the things of
solid existence. Characters, incidents, sentiments,
speech were all of a world apart—Utopia, Arcadia,
No-Man’s-Land. Life was not distorted,
as it is in the writings of many romantic novelists
and most of our modern realists. It was
simply not considered at all.</p>
<p class='c010'>At the time when these ponderous and vapid
productions reached the climax of their popularity
on their native soil, French was well
understood by the educated classes in England;
and it was in their original tongue, therefore, that
they made their way at first among the fellow-countrymen
of Milton. But translations soon
followed with a rapidity that bore startling testimony
to the strength of the new taste. “Polexandre”
appeared in an English version as early
as 1647; “Ibrahim,” “Cassandra,” and “Cléopâtre”
in 1652; while “Clélie,” “Astrée,”
“Scipion,” “Le Grand Cyrus,” “Zelinda,” and
“Almahide” were all translated and published
between the latter date and 1677. On the heels
of these regular translations soon came sundry
imitations which, after the manner of imitations
in general, reproduced with scrupulous fidelity
all the worst features of the original works.
“Eliana,” issued in 1661, reads almost like a
<span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span>burlesque of the heroic style, and abounds in
long-drawn descriptive passages of the most
florid and fantastic kind. Running this very
close in overwrought extravagance of theme and
language, the “Pandion and Amphigenia” of
Crowne the dramatist saw the light four years
later. But the most celebrated of the English
specimens of this exotic school is a somewhat
earlier work—the “Parthenissa” of Roger Boyle,
Earl of Orrery; a production left incomplete
after reaching more than eight hundred folio
pages. This is pronounced by Dunlop, whose
industry and patience in reading the romances
of this period must have been little short of
superhuman, to be the best English specimen of
its class; and most of us will probably be more
ready to accept his judgment than to undertake
its verification.<SPAN name='r8' /><SPAN href='#f8' class='c015'><sup>[8]</sup></SPAN></p>
<p class='c010'>Both “Eliana” and “Parthenissa” were
broken off abruptly, the latter in the middle of
one of its most interesting situations; and Dunlop
is probably right in regarding this fact as
<span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>evidence of the gradual decline of the taste out
of which they had grown and to which they had
appealed. Indeed, so far as England was concerned,
the classical-heroic romance could not
have been otherwise than ephemeral. It had no
real hold upon English society, and was fundamentally
out of harmony with the spirit of an age
in which chivalry had degenerated into empty
gallantry, and playing at pastoral simplicity had
ceased to be an aristocratic amusement. The
temper of which it was one manifestation for a
time made its influence deeply felt in almost
every department of literature; it invaded even
poetry; and directly inspired that extraordinary
form of drama, so familiar to the student of Davenant
and Dryden—the heroic play. But the
prose fiction to which it gave existence carried
in its essential qualities the seeds of early decay.
It is true that in certain quarters it retained a
faint and shadowy kind of reputation longer than
might have been expected.<SPAN name='r9' /><SPAN href='#f9' class='c015'><sup>[9]</sup></SPAN> But the rise of a
totally different school of novelists in the last
<span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>decades of the seventeenth century, practically
marks the close of its career; and dying, it left
no issue.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>We are now at length prepared to appreciate
the historic significance and interest of what, in a
rather loose way, is commonly called the prose
fiction of the Restoration.</p>
<p class='c010'>Says Mrs. Manley, in the introductory address
to the reader in her “Secret History of Queen
Zarah”:—</p>
<div class='bq'>
<p class='c010'>“Romances in France have for a long time been
the diversion and amusement of the whole world; the
people ... have read these works with a most surprising
greediness; but that fury is very much abated,
and they are all fallen off from this distraction. The
little histories of this kind have taken place [sic] of
romances, whose prodigious number of volumes were
sufficient to tire and satiate such whose heads were
most filled with these notions.... These little pieces
which have banished romances are much more agreeable
to the brisk and impetuous humor of the English,
who have naturally no taste for long-winded performances;
for they have no sooner begun a book than they
desire to see the end of it.”</p>
</div>
<p class='c010'>These remarks will doubtless strike some readers
as curious, and we may well wonder what the
followers of Taine, particularly, would make of
<span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>the “brisk and impetuous humor” here alleged
to characterize the English people. But they are
valuable to us, irrespective of their psychology,
because they enable us to understand how the
new fiction—the fiction in which, despite all
adventitious differences, we can clearly recognize
the beginnings of the modern novel—arose to
take the place of the Anglo-French romance.
The “little histories” to which Mrs. Manley
refers grew up by the most natural process of
reaction against the “prodigious number of volumes”
into which, as we have noted, the older
narratives had run. Nor was it in measure only
that a change was initiated. As we shall presently
see, the novel of the Restoration, broadly
so-called, differed from its predecessors not
merely in length, but also in the more important
qualities of subject-matter, treatment, and style.
The old Arcadia was finally forsaken for the solid
earth, and lengthy descriptions, multifarious episodes,
wearisome soliloquies, and needless tortuosities
of plot were at the same time left behind.
Real life now formed the basis of the story, and,
despite occasional reminiscences of the older
manner, crispness of narration became one of the
writers’ principal aims.</p>
<p class='c010'>We have here undertaken to consider a little
<span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>this healthy and significant change from the
romance to the novel in the writings of two of its
representative exponents—Mrs. Behn and Mrs.
Manley. It should be understood, however, that
in adopting this course we have no intention of
throwing their work into undue prominence.
They were but part-factors in a general movement,
and must be contented to share its honors
with a number of their contemporaries. Nevertheless,
they possess a special interest for the
student of English literature, for two very good
reasons. In the first place, taken together, they
illustrate with remarkable clearness those broader
characteristics of the new fiction which it is our
principal concern in this little essay to bring to
light; and, secondly, there is the fact that they
were women. It is surely in itself instructive to
find that while the great Elizabethan drama can
adduce no example of a woman-writer, it is in the
productions of a couple of women that we can
study to the best advantage some of the rudimentary
developments of the modern novel.<SPAN name='r10' /><SPAN href='#f10' class='c015'><sup>[10]</sup></SPAN></p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span>It will be convenient for us to ignore the strict
demands of chronology and begin with the work
of Mrs. Manley, which, though somewhat later in
date than Mrs. Behn’s, may properly be taken
first, since it is at once cruder in form and historically
of minor importance.</p>
<p class='c010'>Mrs. De la Riviere Manley—“poor Mrs.
Manley,” as Swift calls her, in the “Journal to
Stella”—enjoyed anything but a peaceful life.
It seems to be an accepted tradition among biographers
of men and women of letters to begin
their narratives by protesting that the lives of
authors seldom furnish exciting materials, and
then to go on to add that their particular heroes
or heroines are exceptions to the general rule.
Certainly Mrs. Manley was an exception, if rule
indeed it be, which I think open to question.
She herself has given us some account of her
adventures and misfortunes in different portions
of her “New Atalantis,” and more particularly in
“The History of Rivella”—an autobiography
and <i>apologia pro vitâ sua</i>—published in 1714,
under the pseudonym of Sir Charles Lovemore.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_144'>144</span>There is no need for us to follow her through all
her varied experiences, the record of which,
though often lively enough, is seldom of a very
improving character. It will be sufficient to give
the briefest outline of her career.</p>
<p class='c010'>She was born in Guernsey about the year
1677, her father, Sir Roger Manley, being, as is
generally stated, governor, or, as seems more
probable, deputy governor, of that island. According
to her own account, she grew up into a
sharp-witted, impressionable girl, who, receiving
rather more than an average education, early
gave signs of an intelligence beyond what, at
that time, was considered the fair endowment of
her sex. Her tribulations, too, began early. Her
parents died when she was still very young, and
she fell into the hands of a male cousin, who
unfortunately became enamored of her. The
man was known to be married already, but he
asserted that his wife was dead; and Rivella, deceived
by his protestations, entered into a secret
marriage with him. The theme of one of her
most unsavory stories seems to have been directly
suggested by this tragic episode in her own life.
After a while, of course, the truth came out.
Then her scoundrelly husband abandoned her,
and she was left to shift for herself as best she
<span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span>might. About this time she gained the patronage
of the famous Duchess of Cleveland, one of
Charles the Second’s mistresses, in attendance
upon whom she remained during some six
months. But the Duchess was a woman of
fickle temper. She soon grew tired of Mrs.
Manley; and, by pretending that she had discovered
her in an intrigue with her son (and
there may possibly have been more ground than
poor Rivella admits for the allegation), found an
excuse for dismissing her from her service. It
was now that Mrs. Manley appears to have taken
up her pen in earnest—and a very reckless and
caustic pen it by and by turned out to be. Her
tragedy, “The Royal Mistress,” acted in 1696,
proved so successful that she found herself
courted by all the dandies and witlings of the
day; and for some years, as a consequence, she
spent her time principally in getting out of one
intrigue into another. Nevertheless, she found
leisure, amid all her excitements, to write and
produce her “Secret Memoirs and Manners of
Several Persons of Quality, from the New Atalantis”—a
work which, under the most thinly
disguised names, attacked in an extremely violent
and outspoken manner the men who had been
mainly instrumental in bringing about the Revolution.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_146'>146</span>In virtue of this production Mrs. Manley
may be said to have secured the doubtful
honor of being the first political woman-writer in
England. So successful was the satire in reaching
those for whom it was intended, that the
printer was straightway apprehended; but Mrs.
Manley—who, as Swift contemptuously put it,
“had generous principles for one of her sort”—would
not allow him to suffer in her behalf. She
appeared before the Court of King’s Bench, and
declared herself solely responsible for the entire
undertaking, maintaining, moreover, “with unaltered
constancy, that the whole work was mere
invention, without any cynical allusion to real
characters.”<SPAN name='r11' /><SPAN href='#f11' class='c015'><sup>[11]</sup></SPAN> Mrs. Manley, indeed, seems to
have cared a great deal more about getting her
printer out of a scrape than about sticking too
solemnly to the simple truth; since, apart
altogether from the manifestly satirical intention
of the book, we know that she made its publication
the basis of a personal application to the
ministry. In the “Journal to Stella,” Swift tells
us how he afterwards met Mrs. Manley at the
house of Lord Peterborough, and adds that she
was there “soliciting him to get some pension
or reward for her service in the cause, by writing
<span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>her ‘Atalantis.’” Still we must frankly admit
that her loyalty to the printer in such a crisis
throws her character into a rather favorable light.</p>
<p class='c010'>However, after a short period of confinement,
and sundry appearances before the court, Mrs.
Manley was allowed to go free, and the matter
dropped. After this adventure, she produced
several dramatic pieces, wrote some pamphlets
of a political kind, and for a time conducted
“The Examiner,” which had then been relinquished
by Swift. Indeed, she appears to have
remained in the full swing of activity to the close
of her life. She died, aged about forty-seven, in
1724, at the house of one John Barber, an alderman
of the City of London, with whom it is supposed
she had for some time past been living.</p>
<p class='c010'>In person, as she herself very candidly tells
us, Mrs. Manley was fat, and her face had been
early marked by that terrible scourge of the
age, the smallpox; notwithstanding which defects,
her fascination of manner and conversation
was so great, that she was always popular with
the other sex. Of her moral character, perhaps,
the less said the better. Circumstances had not
been kind to Rivella; and at this distance of
time, and with all the intrigues in which she
was involved, it is not always easy to say how
<span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>far she was sinned against, and how far sinning,
or whether her own statement came anywhere
near the facts of the case when she boldly declared
that “her virtues” were “her own, her
vices occasioned by her misfortunes.” Still we
must admit the truth of the words which she
has put into the mouth of d’Aumont in the
“History of Rivella”: “If she have but half
so much of the practice as the theory, in the way
of love, she must certainly be a most accomplished
person.” And a most accomplished
person, after her own fashion, she evidently
seems to have been.</p>
<p class='c010'>The most famous of her writings—if the word
<i>famous</i> can properly be used, when they have all
passed into oblivion—is, of course, the “New
Atalantis”—that veritable “cornucopia of scandal,”
as Swift dubbed it. This work swept its
author into temporary notoriety, and for a few
years was perhaps as much talked of and discussed
as any publication of the time. But the
life has long since gone out of its personalities
and topical allusions, and the ordinary reader of
English literature, if he recall it even by name,
is likely to remember it only for the use Pope
makes of it in a well-known passage in “The
Rape of the Lock”:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>“Let wreaths of triumph now my temples twine!</div>
<div class='line in1'>(The victor cried); the glorious prize is mine!</div>
<div class='line in1'>While fish in streams, or birds delight in air,</div>
<div class='line in1'>Or in a coach and six the British fair;</div>
<div class='line in1'>As long as Atalantis shall be read,</div>
<div class='line in1'>Or the small pillow grace a lady’s bed;</div>
<div class='line in1'>While visits shall be paid on solemn days,</div>
<div class='line in1'>When numerous wax-lights in bright order blaze;</div>
<div class='line in1'>While nymphs take treats, or assignations give,</div>
<div class='line in1'>So long my honor, name, and praise shall live!”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c010'>But though this book, as we shall hereafter
find, is not without its significance for the student
of the English novel, it is less interesting
and important from our point of view than “The
Power of Love: In Seven Examples,” to which
for the present we will confine our attention.</p>
<p class='c010'>As the title indicates, this volume consists of
seven separate stories—“The Fair Hypocrite,”
“The Physician’s Stratagem,” “The Wife’s
Resentment,” “The Husband’s Resentment”
(in two examples), “The Happy Fugitives,” and
“The Perjured Beauty.” The keynote of the
whole collection is clearly struck in the following
passage from the first-mentioned of the tales:—</p>
<div class='bq'>
<p class='c010'>“Of all those passions which may be said to tyrannize
over the heart of man, love is not only the most
violent, but the most persuasive.... A lover esteems
nothing difficult in the pursuit of his desires. It is then
that fame, honor, chastity, and glory have no longer
<span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>their due estimation, even in the most virtuous breast.
When love truly seizes the heart, it is like a malignant
fever which thence disperses itself through all the sensible
parts; the poison preys upon the vitals, and is
only extinguished by death; or by as fatal a cure, the
accomplishment of its own desires.”</p>
</div>
<p class='c010'>The “love” shadowed forth in these sentences
is that which dominates each of the seven “Examples”
in this little book, which are thus only
variations on a single persistent theme. It is the
merest animal passion—passion unrefined by
sentiment, uncolored by emotion; the love of
Etheridge and Wycherley. Upon the gratification
of this in a licit, or, as frequently happens,
in an illicit way, the plot is, with the monotony
of a modern French novel, everywhere made to
turn. The heroes of her stories are all, like Mr.
Slye, in the author’s rather amusing sketch, the
“Stage-Coach Journey to Exeter,” “naturally
amorous”; her heroines, like the Fair Princess
in “The Happy Fugitives,” are one and all
“born under an amorous constellation,” and
like her, are forever “floating on the tempestuous
sea of passion, guided by a master who is
too often pleased with the shipwreck of those
whom he conducts.” So violent are the experiences
portrayed that we can hardly avoid the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>thought that Mrs. Manley must have adhered in
practice to the maxim of “Astrophel and Stella”—“Look
in thy heart, and write,”—and must
have gone straight to some of the stormiest episodes
of her own career for the pictures which
she gives us. Passion and gratification—these,
then, are the regular ingredients of her stories.
Of the larger and finer influence of love; of its
strengthening and ennobling power; of the way
in which its subtle mastery will work through
life,—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Not only to keep down the base in man,</div>
<div class='line in1'>But teach high thought, and amiable words,</div>
<div class='line in1'>And courtliness, and the desire of fame,</div>
<div class='line in1'>And love of truth, and all that makes a man,”—</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c010'>of all these things, familiar enough, fortunately,
to the reader of modern fiction, we have scarcely
a trace. So far as the influence of love is shown
at all, it is consistently shown as a debasing influence.
This point, clearly set forth in the quotation
already made, may be illustrated from the
record of the writer’s own life. In the “History
of Rivella,” she tells us that, when quite a girl,
she was infatuated with a handsome young soldier
who, when the gaming-tables were brought
out, found, to his embarrassment, that he had no
money to play with. Noticing this, Rivella
<span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>went to her father’s drawer, stole some money,
and gave it to him. Now, mark the author’s
commentary upon the action: “Being perfectly
just,” she says, “by nature, principle, and education,
nothing but love, and that in a high
degree, could have made her otherwise.” Here
we have, then, a fair expression of the kind of
love which is presented to us in these “Examples.”
A despotic animal appetite, unchecked
in its fierce, impulsive play by any
nobler considerations whatever, it drives human
nature downward, captive and slave to the “fury
passions” which civilization has been struggling
to bring under partial control.</p>
<p class='c010'>These seven stories, therefore, are anything
but pleasant reading, unless they be, like certain
incidents referred to in the “New Atalantis,”
“pleasant ... to the ears of the vicious.” It
is not only that they are repulsive because of the
undisguised licentiousness that everywhere prevails
in them; they are occasionally disgusting
on account of the large part played by the
merely horrible. So intimately related are unemotionalized
passion and utter brutality, that, as
might be expected, here, where the one is so
conspicuous, the other has considerable place.
The revenge taken by the woman upon her
<span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>worthless husband in “The Wife’s Resentment”
(Did recollection of her own wrongs add bitterness
to Rivella’s pen, we may well wonder?)
may be cited as an example of this. Don Roderigo,
a Spanish gentleman, after trying for fifteen
months to seduce a poor girl named Violenta,
marries her in a moment of thoughtlessness, but
keeps the marriage a secret from his friends.
Before long he is forced by his family into a
second and public union with a wealthy heiress.
The news of his inconstancy fills Violenta with
delirious passion; and nothing will appease her
but revenge, sudden and complete. She decoys
Roderigo into her apartment, murders him while
he is asleep, and, not contented with this, deliberately
tears out his eyes and mangles “his body
all over with an infinite number of gashes”
before throwing it out into the street. And what
is particularly noteworthy is, that the narrator
herself does not seem to be in the least impressed
by the loathsome details accumulated in her
description. She reports the incident as though
it were a matter of course, and quietly tells us
that when Violenta was brought to justice for
her crime, the duke, the magistrates, and all the
spectators were amazed “at the courage and
magnanimity of the maid, and that one of so
<span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>little rank should have so great a sense of her
dishonor.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Unquestionably the most pleasing of all these
stories, alike from a literary and from a moral
standpoint, is “The Happy Fugitives,” a simple
tale, containing comparatively little to which
exception could be taken. The plots of “The
Physician’s Stratagem” and “The Perjured
Beauty,” on the other hand, are too hideous to
be reproduced. As a whole, the book is desperately
dull and tiresome; for the pornographic
horrors of its pages are unredeemed by any
excellencies of style. Its only interest for us
here, therefore, is an historic one; and about this
side of the matter, we shall have a general word
or two to say later on.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>If, morally considered, she is equally open to
stricture, our second woman-novelist, Mrs. Behn,
at least bulks out as a more considerable figure
in the annals of English letters. Highly eulogized
by some of the most distinguished of her
contemporaries—Dryden, Otway, and Southerne
among the number,—she must still be
spoken of with the respect due to her undoubted
talents, versatility, industry, and courage. That
she is to be regarded as “an honor and glory”
<span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>to her sex, as one of her enthusiastic admirers
roundly declared, it would now, for many reasons,
be out of the question to maintain. But
the one fact that she was the first woman of her
country to support herself entirely by the pen,
itself establishes her right to a certain place in
the long line of female writers who have since
her day done so much for literature.</p>
<p class='c010'>Aphra (or Aphara) Johnson, afterwards Behn,
(known as the “Divine Astræa” in the exuberant
language of the time,<SPAN name='r12' /><SPAN href='#f12' class='c015'><sup>[12]</sup></SPAN> and long commonly
referred to as an “extraordinary woman,”<SPAN name='r13' /><SPAN href='#f13' class='c015'><sup>[13]</sup></SPAN>) was
born towards the end of the reign of Charles the
First. While still a girl, she was taken to the
West Indies by her father, who had been appointed
lieutenant-general of Surinam.<SPAN name='r14' /><SPAN href='#f14' class='c015'><sup>[14]</sup></SPAN> Johnson
himself “died at sea, and never arrived to
<span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>possess the honor designed him.” But the
family settled in the colony—a “land flowing
with milk and honey,” they are said to have
found it,—and continued to reside there till
about 1653. A high-colored description of her
life abroad is given in her best-known work, as
it was during this period that she made her
hero’s acquaintance, and became interested in
the story of his love and tragic fate. It is characteristic
of the tendencies of the age that her
biographer should feel it necessary to pause at
this point in her narrative to contradict some
current town gossip about the kind of relationship
which had existed between Astræa and the
African prince. Returning to England, she married
a man named Behn, who seems to have been
“a merchant in the city, tho’ of Dutch extraction,”
but concerning whom our information is
of the most meagre sort. Of him we hear little
or nothing in connection with Aphra’s subsequent
adventurous career; and she was a widow
before 1666. Attached to the court of Charles
the Second, she attracted so much attention, we
are told, by her keenness of intellect, alertness,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>and wit, that she was employed by the Merry
Monarch in some delicate diplomatic affairs during
the Dutch war. These took her to Antwerp
in the character of a spy, in which capacity she
succeeded so well that in course of time, and by
means principally of her innumerable love intrigues,
she obtained possession of some secrets
of considerable value. “They are mistaken who
imagine that a <i>Dutchman</i> can’t love,” remarks
her biographer, in commenting upon these incidents;
“for tho’ they are generally more phlegmatic
than other men, yet it sometimes happens
that love does penetrate their lump and dispense
an enlivening fire,”—now and then with disastrous
results, as we perceive. Her information,
however, was neglected by the English Government,
and in disgust the patriotic lady threw up
politics and diplomacy altogether, and presently
returned to London, narrowly escaping death
by shipwreck on the way.</p>
<p class='c010'>Once more in London, Mrs. Behn, now thrown
entirely upon her own resources, turned to her
pen for the means of support, and thenceforth
continued to occupy herself with literature and
pleasure till her death, in 1689. Say what one
may about the general quality of her work, its
total amount remains remarkable, especially when
<span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>one takes into consideration the conditions of
poverty, failing health, and many harassing distractions
under which it was produced. For a
number of years, with unabated industry but
varying success, she poured out plays which
were calculated, in style and morality, to hit the
prevailing taste; and so boldly did she meet her
masculine rivals on the common ground of licentiousness,
that she earned for herself the highly
significant nickname of “the female Wycherley.”
Miscellaneous tracts and translations kept
her busy in the intervals of dramatic activity,
during which time she also threw off a couple of
very curious treatises, the characters of which are
perhaps sufficiently indicated by their titles—“The
Lover’s Watch; or, The Art of Making
Love,” and “The Lady’s Looking-Glass to
Dress Herself by; or, The Whole Art of Charming
All Mankind.” As manuals of conduct, it
is to be feared that these lucubrations hardly
tend to edification.</p>
<p class='c010'>Finally, to leave out for the moment what is,
of course, for us now the most important item,
her experiments in fiction, which we will deal
with by themselves, Mrs. Behn also managed to
write and publish a good deal of verse. As work
actually done, this must be mentioned, because
<span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>it swells her account; but it may be said at once
that most of it—and particularly her one ambitious
effort, the allegorical “Voyage to the Isle
of Love,”—is without value or interest. Here
and there in her plays, however, she touches a
true poetic note, as in the really fine song in
“Abdelazer,” for which—though it is doubtless
familiar to readers of the anthologies—space
may be found here:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Love in fantastic triumph sate,</div>
<div class='line in3'>Whilst bleeding hearts about him flowed,</div>
<div class='line in1'>For whom fresh pains he did create,</div>
<div class='line in3'>And strange tyrannic power he showed;</div>
<div class='line in1'>From thy bright eyes he took his fires,</div>
<div class='line in3'>Which round about in space he hurled;</div>
<div class='line in1'>But ’twas from mine he took desires</div>
<div class='line in3'>Enough to undo the amorous world.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“From me he took his sighs and tears,</div>
<div class='line in3'>From thee his pride and cruelty,</div>
<div class='line in1'>From me his languishment and fears,</div>
<div class='line in3'>And every killing dart from thee;</div>
<div class='line in1'>Thus thou and I the god have armed,</div>
<div class='line in3'>And set him up a deity,</div>
<div class='line in1'>But my poor heart alone is harmed,</div>
<div class='line in3'>While thine the victor is, and free.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c010'>Her biographer tells us that Mrs. Behn “was
a woman of sense, and by consequence [mark
the consequence!] a lover of pleasure; as indeed,”
<span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>it is added, “all, both men and women, are,”
though “some would be thought above the conditions
of humanity, and place their chief pleasure
in a proud, vain hypocrisy.” It needs hardly to
be said here that I am not at all concerned to
defend the character of Astræa’s life or the tone
of her writings; and at this time of day any
denunciation of the one or the other would surely
be a work of supererogation. But we should
at least try to be fair in our judgments; and if the
very flattering description given “by one of the
fair sex” who “knew her intimately” is even
approximately correct, she must have been
generous, frank, and thoroughly good-hearted.
These are not bad qualities in a world which in
practice knows only too little about them, though
we might hesitate to add, with her anonymous
friend, that, being thus endowed, “she was, I’m
satisfied, a greater honor to our sex than all the
canting tribe of dissemblers that die with the
false reputation of saints.” So far as her writings
themselves are concerned, it has only to be
said that when she found herself dependent for a
livelihood upon her talents and industry, she took
what seemed to be the shortest and easiest way
open to success, and undertook to produce just
what the reading public of her day was most
<span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>willing to pay for—and the reading public of her
day was unfortunately ready to pay highest for
the most wanton and scandalous things. Herein
she was neither better nor worse than the majority
of her contemporaries who, like her, wielded
the professional pen, though the fact that she was
a woman undoubtedly adds heinousness to her
offences against the ordinary decencies of life.
“Let any one of common sense and reason,”
she says in her own defence—and the circumstance
that, like Dryden and others, she was
driven into explanation and apology is noteworthy,—“read
one of my comedies, and compare
it with others of this age; and if they can
find one word which can offend the chastest ear,
I will submit to all their peevish cavils.” This is
the familiar argument—However bad I may be,
my neighbors are a trifle worse. I should be
very sorry, for Mrs. Behn’s sake, to take up her
challenge; sorrier for my own to have it supposed
that what has been said above was said
in the way of palliation or excuse. Mrs. Behn
wrote foully; and this for most of us, and very
properly, is an end of the whole discussion. But
it is as idle in these matters of sentiment, taste,
expression, as it is elsewhere, to ignore in any
final judgment the subtle but profound influence
<span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>of the time-spirit; and though we may regret
that such a distinction should have to be made,
we must still, in common fairness, remember that
Mrs. Behn was a woman of the seventeenth century,
and not of our own generation.<SPAN name='r15' /><SPAN href='#f15' class='c015'><sup>[15]</sup></SPAN></p>
<p class='c010'>But we must now turn to her novels—her
“incomparable novels,” as they used to be
called. The collected edition of 1705, containing,
according to its own statement, “All the
Histories and Novels Written by the Late
<span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>Ingenious Mrs. Behn,” includes, besides the two
treatises to which reference has been made, the
following stories: “The History of Oroonoko;
or, The Royal Slave,” “The Fair Jilt,” “The
Nun,” “Agnes de Castro,” “The Lucky Mistake,”
“Memoirs of the Court of the King of
Bantam,” and “The Adventure of the Black
Lady.”</p>
<p class='c010'>The first-mentioned of these—“Oroonoko,”
the novel with which Mrs. Behn’s name is to-day
almost exclusively associated—is from every
point of view by far the most interesting of her
works. It represents the first really noteworthy
experiment in the fiction of the time to descend
from the misty realms of the old romance to the
plain ground of actual life. The history—which,
as Miss Kavanagh has said, “is the only one of
her tales that, spite of all its defects, can still be
read with entertainment”<SPAN name='r16' /><SPAN href='#f16' class='c015'><sup>[16]</sup></SPAN>—was written at the
special request of Charles the Second, to whom
Mrs. Behn, on her return from the West Indies,
had given “so pleasant and rational an account
of his affairs there, and particularly of the misfortunes
of <i>Oroonoko</i>, that he desired her to deliver
them publicly to the world.” The narrative
is, indeed, represented by the author as a direct
<span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>transcript from her own experiences. “I was,”
she says, “myself an eye-witness to a great part
of what you will here find set down; and what
I could not be witness of, I received from the
mouth of the chief actor in this history, the
hero himself.”</p>
<p class='c010'>The motive of the story is the tragedy of
Oroonoko’s life, and this is worked out simply,
but with a good deal of power. The grandson
of an African king, and a youth of great
strength, courage, and intelligence, Oroonoko
early becomes enamored of Imoinda—“a beauty,
that to describe her truly, one need only say she
was female to the noble male,”—but to whom,
unfortunately, his grandfather also takes a fancy.
The young people are secretly married; notwithstanding
which, the old king has the girl carried
to his palace and placed among his mistresses.
In desperation, the husband makes his way by
night to Imoinda’s chamber. Here he is discovered
by the king’s guards; Imoinda is sold
into slavery; and after a while Oroonoko shares
the same fate—“a lion taken in a toil.” By
a remarkable coincidence, they are brought at
length to the same place—the colony where
Aphra and her family were then living. Thus
unexpectedly reunited to the woman he had
<span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>deemed lost to him forever, Oroonoko is for a
time contented with his lot; but presently, growing
weary of captivity, he plans a revolt among
the slaves, upon the suppression of which he is
brutally punished. After this he escapes to the
woods with his young wife, whose fidelity and
never-failing devotion are very touchingly set
forth. Then comes the final tragedy. Dreading
that she may fall into the hands of the whites, he
deliberately and with her full consent, murders
her; and after remaining for several days half-insensible
beside her corpse, he is again taken
by the colonists, and hacked to pieces limb by
limb. With his death, the simple story ends.</p>
<p class='c010'>Now, in the first and casual reading of this
novel, we may very probably be struck rather
by its points of similarity to the older romances
than by its qualities of essential difference from
them. For Mrs. Behn frequently adopts the
heroic, or “big bow-wow” strain, especially in
her sentimental situations, and where she desires
to be particularly effective. Her language is often
stilted and conventional, and there are occasions
when we are more than half-convinced that Surinam
is, after all, only another way of spelling
Arcadia. But further study of the work will
convince us that we must not attach too much
<span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>importance to what are really superficial characteristics.
In the deeper matters of substance
and purpose, the story belongs not to the old
school of fiction, but to the new; and that Mrs.
Behn herself understood what she was about, is,
I think, made clear by what she says in the
opening paragraph:—</p>
<div class='bq'>
<p class='c010'>“I do not pretend, in giving you the history of this
royal slave, to entertain my reader with the adventures
of a feigned hero, whose life and fortunes fancy
may manage at the poet’s pleasure; nor in relating the
truth, design to adorn it with any accidents, but such
as arrived in earnest to him. And it shall come simply
into the world, recommended by its own proper merits
and natural intrigues; there being enough of reality to
support it, and to render it diverting, without the addition
of invention.”</p>
</div>
<p class='c010'>Two points, then, are noticeable in this work.
In the first place, it depends for its interest not
on astonishing adventures, high-flown diction, or
extravagant play of fancy, but simply on the
sterling humanity of the narrative. The unfortunate
hero and his wife are, of course, drawn
upon the heroic scale, but they still possess the
solid traits of real manhood and womanhood,
and, applying the supreme test in all such cases,
we find that we can believe in them. The chasm
which separates such an achievement as this
<span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>from the windy sentimentalities of the Anglo-French
romance is a very wide one, and Mrs.
Behn’s boldness of innovation was, therefore, the
more remarkable. In the second place, “Oroonoko”
is written with a well-defined didactic
aim. It is a novel with a purpose—the remote
forerunner of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and the
whole modern school of ethical fiction. Thus,
together with a marked tendency towards realism,
Mrs. Behn’s book exhibits a no less marked
bias in the direction of practical teaching. Its
historic significance is therefore twofold.<SPAN name='r17' /><SPAN href='#f17' class='c015'><sup>[17]</sup></SPAN></p>
<p class='c010'>Mrs. Behn’s other tales show less originality,
and are neither so attractive nor so valuable.
They are short love-stories which, though not so
radically and aggressively impure as her plays,
are still tainted through and through by the prevailing
grossness of the time. Like Mrs. Manley,
Mrs. Behn makes mere physical appetite—the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>passion which “rages beyond the inspirations
of <i>a god all soft and gentle</i>, and reigns
more like <i>a fury from hell</i>”<SPAN name='r18' /><SPAN href='#f18' class='c015'><sup>[18]</sup></SPAN>—the turning-point
of all her plots; like Mrs. Manley, she
centres the entire interest of her narratives in
the gratification, not in the influences, of this
passion. Like Mrs. Manley, too,—and here the
severest judgment might well pass unprotested,—she
is as harsh and free-spoken as the most
profligate of male cynics regarding the foibles of
her own sex. Vain, selfish, salacious, intriguing,
spiteful, her female figures, as a whole, are simply
repulsive in their unqualified animality; and as
we read of their lives and their doings, we no
longer wonder at the open savagery of a Wycherley,
or the undisguised contempt of a Congreve,
in an age when a woman could thus write
of women, without fear, almost without reproach.
Finally, like Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Behn is ready at
times to indulge not only in scenes of the utmost
coarseness, but also in pictures of the most revolting
brutality. An instance of this might be
given from “The Fair Jilt”, where the unskilful
execution of Tarquin is detailed with horrible
minuteness. The best of these shorter stories is
“The Lucky Mistake,” a tale written throughout
<span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>with comparatively good taste. They are nearly
all based on fact—many on direct observation;
and this renders them, from a student’s point of
view, interesting. But there is a great sameness
in the incidents described, and on the side of
characterization they are very weak indeed. The
plots are all made up out of the same classes of
material; and the men and women of any one
story are hardly to be distinguished otherwise
than by name from those of any other.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>And now, in returning to the question of the
historic significance of the two writers into whose
books—habitually allowed to stand undisturbed
upon the library shelf—we have here rather
rashly ventured to pry, we shall find, if I mistake
not, that little remains to be said. Brief as our
analysis of the heroic romances and the tales of
Mrs. Behn and Mrs. Manley has necessarily been,
it will, if it does not fail entirely of its purpose,
suffice to mark the points of fundamental contrast
between them. The nature and importance
of the changes exemplified in these story-tellers
of the Restoration will thus be made clear.</p>
<p class='c010'>Hitherto, as we have seen, fiction had made
little or no attempt to deal frankly with life. In
other words, it had not as yet found its proper
<span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span>sphere. Purely a thing of the imagination, it
had sought its subjects afar, proudly ignoring the
common matters of the world—the joys and
sorrows, the hopes and struggles of every-day
humanity. The words which the author of a
life of Sidney, prefixed to one of the early editions
of the “Arcadia,” applies to that work, we
might with equal fairness apply to almost the
entire mass of fiction thus far written. “The
invention is wholly spun out of the fancy,” he
says. The scene was laid in some far-away
dreamland, not the less remote and visionary
because occasionally called by a familiar earthly
name; the characters were swollen out to superhuman
proportions, and were endowed with
qualities that no mortal being has ever been
known to possess; their adventures were on the
face of them impossible; they thought, acted,
talked as no man or woman had thought, acted,
talked since the world began. Life and fiction
stood entirely apart. The real world of tangible
flesh and blood found for the time its only expression
in the drama. In fiction there was as
yet no human interest whatever.</p>
<p class='c010'>With Mrs. Behn commenced the tendency to
deal with life—to make the novel in some sense
a reproduction of actual experience. We may
<span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span>regret that the special phases of the human
comedy that she deliberately chose to write
about, were only too often phases the least
worthy of attention; that her interests were narrowed
down, and her work crippled, by considerations
of the most cramping and disastrous
kinds; that she knew nothing of proportion and
perspective, and little of the higher and finer
developments of motive and character; that she
could not see life steadily, and did not see it
whole. But all this must not stand in the way
of our insisting that she was one of the first
writers of prose fiction—perhaps the first in
England—to substitute the solid stuff of reality
for the flimsy material of the imagination. Crude
and partial as her observations were, she at least
observed; sorry as are most of the results of her
study of the world, she did study it at first
hand—did hold the mirror up to nature. What
she accomplished in thus opening up the field of
the modern novel, what Mrs. Manley accomplished
in following her lead, are matters, therefore,
of sufficient importance to call for distinct
recognition. We do not claim for the books of
these two women any individual merit or interest.
But when we lay aside one of their stories, bearing
in mind the conditions of the time at which
<span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>it was written, we realize that, artistically, if not
always morally, they represent a step in advance;
that it was by such work as this—poor and hopelessly
dull as it may seem to us to-day—that the
folios of La Calprenède and De Scudéri were
overthrown, the way made clear for Defoe and
Richardson, and the foundations of modern
fiction firmly laid.</p>
<p class='c010'>But now let us notice the suggestive circumstance
that, like nearly all innovators, these first
realists seriously overstepped the mark. In their
early attempts to exchange Fairy Land for the
actual world, we find too large a place given to
fact, in the most hard and circumscribed sense
of the word. In place of pure fancy, they
sought to give absolute and undiluted reality; in
place of a picture without existing counterpart,
they strove to secure the detailed verisimilitude
of a photograph. Indeed, for a time the aims
and methods of fiction were almost entirely lost
sight of. And it is easy to see how this unfortunate
result was brought about. Weary of the
conventionalities of the old romances, and of the
shadowy heroes and heroines with whose tedious
adventures and even more tedious disquisitions
their pages were filled, the novelists of the Restoration
made a bold endeavor to get back to
<span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>the life with which they were familiar, and to
deal with the world as they knew it to exist.
But for the moment, there seemed only one way
of doing this. Instead of fancy, they must have
fact; instead of wandering off into the impossible,
they must limit themselves to the things
which had actually happened—which had really,
in Charles Reade’s witty phrase, gone through
the formality of taking place. Hence, for the
present, the constructive work of the imagination—which
some of us, in these days of so-called
Naturalism, are still old-fashioned enough
to hold essentially important—was almost entirely
neglected. Nearly every story was statedly
“founded on fact”; and the business of the
novelist was practically reduced to the task of
presenting, with but slight embellishment or
rearrangement, specific occurrences in life. Thus
we have an early example of the tendency, just
now so conspicuous, towards what M. Brunetière
has happily called “reportage” in literature.
In the reaction against the school of heroic
romance, the new story-writers, therefore, went
to the other extreme. To take the materials of
familiar existence and to reorganize them, thus
producing a work of art which is at once all
compact of truth and imagination, was for the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_174'>174</span>time being beyond their ken. To their limited
view, realism meant slavish reality.</p>
<p class='c010'>It was only after this mistake had been made
that the possibility of avoiding the airy unrealities
of old romance, without being bound down
to the skeleton facts of life, gradually became
apparent. The discovery that a writer could be
true to experience and human nature without
necessarily reproducing actual events or photographing
individual men and women, was the
outcome of many experiments and much failure,
and was at length hit upon in a half-blind and
fortuitous way. It was only little by little that
the element of acknowledged fiction was allowed
to encroach upon the domain of truth; only little
by little that people began to understand that the
art of fiction and the art of lying are not one and
the same, and that the boldest play of imagination
in the treatment of life is not always to be
associated with the distortion of reality. In the
works of Mrs. Manley and Mrs. Behn we see the
English novel stumbling painfully towards the
comprehension of its own objects. We have
reached firm ground, and that is a great achievement;
for only when we move on firm ground is
the novel possible. But the dead weight of the
actual is too heavy for us; we cannot synthesize
<span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>the results of experience; we gather observations,
but we are unable to make artistic productions
out of them. Thus, we have a “New Atalantis”
(and the book is historically significant just
for this reason) which is little more than a jumble
of personal scandal, filled in with occasional
false incidents and mendacious details; an “Oroonoko,”
which is rather a fanciful biography than
a tale; we have a “Wife’s Resentment,” a “Fair
Jilt,” a “Lucky Mistake,”—stories all of which
are based more or less exclusively on historic
occurrences or on events that had come under
the direct observation of the relaters.<SPAN name='r19' /><SPAN href='#f19' class='c015'><sup>[19]</sup></SPAN> Even
where there is a lack of truth, the appearance of
truth is still carefully preserved. Things which
have not actually happened are nevertheless related
as facts; real characters are put through
unreal incidents; the novel is supposed to give
history; fiction and falsehood are as yet confused.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>With this brief summary of the qualities and
shortcomings of our two women-novelists, this
little paper might properly close. But it may be
interesting if, having carried our inquiry thus far,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>we add a paragraph about the way in which the
rigid reality of the works at which we have been
glancing grew gradually out into the genuine
realism of the later novel.</p>
<p class='c010'>Properly to understand this tendency towards
an equilibrium between fact and imagination, we
should turn aside to examine the profound influence
exerted over the fiction of the time of the
“Tatler” and the “Spectator.” But for our
present purposes we shall find the movement
forward clearly enough exemplified in the work
of one man—the author of “Robinson Crusoe,”
whose writings, therefore, we will take as our
clue.</p>
<p class='c010'>Beginning with the production of history, or
semi-history, in which real characters, slightly
exaggerated, move through real scenes, or
through scenes to but small extent imaginary,
Defoe proceeded little by little to import more
of fiction into his narrative, to the detriment of
the small substratum of truth still retained. By
and by, he did no more than preserve the mere
frame-work of history—as in “The Journal of
the Plague Year” and the “Memoirs of a Cavalier,”
in which most of the characters and many
of the incidents are purely fictitious. After this,
the remaining element of truth was gradually
<span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>eliminated, and he reached the production of
narratives of fictitious characters in fictitious
settings and among fictitious scenes. “From
writing biographies with real names attached to
them,” says Professor Minto, in his Life of Defoe,
“it was but a short step to writing biographies
with fictitious names.” Even when that
short step was taken, the artifices resorted to by
him to preserve the apparent truthfulness of his
narrations show us that he was by no means
satisfied that it would be desirable to let matters
of fact slip out of his work entirely. Though
what he wrote was false, he still tried to palm it
off upon the world as true. This makes the
writing of Defoe more like lying than fiction,
and goes far to explain the extraordinary minuteness
of the circumstantial method adopted
by him. But it marks, also, the transitional
quality of his work. As Mr. Leslie Stephen has
neatly put it, “Defoe’s novels are simply history
<i>minus</i> the facts.” Only in his latest works do
we find this pseudo-history making way for
fiction proper; and then we recognize in Defoe
the distinct forerunner of the great novelists of
the eighteenth century.</p>
<p class='c010'>But to follow this matter farther would take
us beyond the due bounds, already somewhat
<span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>transgressed, of our present study. As we may
now see, the story of English fiction from the
period of the Anglo-French romance to the time
of Fielding and Smollett, is a long one, and we
have undertaken to deal with only one chapter
here—the chapter which tells of Mrs. Behn and
Mrs. Manley, of what they did, and of what they
failed to do. That finished, our task is at an
end.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c006' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='chap4' class='c008'>A Glimpse of Bohemia</h2></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' /></div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c001'>
<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span><span class='large'>A Glimpse of Bohemia</span></div>
</div></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_0_0_7 c009'>The Bohemia with which the following pages
are concerned is not that inland country of
Europe which Greene and Shakspere, to the
indignation of all right-minded commentators,
so generously endowed with a sea-coast. We
must at once dismiss from our minds all thought
of Prague and the Czechs; for the country into
which we are about to offer a personally conducted
excursion finds no place on our maps and
no mention in our geographies. Our Bohemia is,
in a word, none other than the Bohemia of Paris.</p>
<p class='c010'>The confines and landmarks of this strange
country have, fortunately for us, been authoritatively
established. Bohemia, according to the
painter Marcel, of whom we shall hear more anon,
and who certainly knew well what he was talking
about, is “bounded on the north by hope, work,
and gayety; on the south by necessity and courage;
on the west and east by calumny and the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>hospital.”<SPAN name='r20' /><SPAN href='#f20' class='c015'><sup>[20]</sup></SPAN> Yet it is just possible that these
cryptic phrases may fail to convey to some readers
any very definite geographical information;
since even Rodolphe, to whom they were first
addressed, is reported to have shrugged his
shoulders and responded with a simple “Je ne
comprends pas.” Hence, it may be well at the
outset to attempt to describe, as succinctly as
possible, the limits of that seductive land through
which our road is now to lie.</p>
<p class='c010'>This is far from being an easy task, however.
Often as the word <i>Bohemia</i> is used, in the broad
sense here attached to it, so many writers have
colored it with so many different shades of
meaning, that, though we may understand
vaguely its general significance, it seems well-nigh
impossible to bring it satisfactorily within
the terms of a strict definition. “Vive la Bohème!”
cries George Sand, at the end of her
novel, “La Dernière Aldini”; and “Vive la
Bohème!” has found many an echo and re-echo
in the pages of French literature, down to the
present day, when it would seem that, as a free
and independent country, Bohemia is practically
disappearing from the face of the earth. But
each one of the many explorers of this dark and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>mysterious corner of our modern world, has
brought back with him his own report of the
territory and its inhabitants; and these travellers’
stories by no means tally one with another. To
some it has seemed to be peopled by the lowest
classes of those who, as the phrase goes, live
upon their wits; by beggars, petty swindlers of
all descriptions, and men and women who,
through idleness or misfortune, are unable to
obtain a livelihood, we will not say in honest
ways, but in any way that society chooses to
recognize as honest. To others the population
has appeared to be composed of those who follow
undignified and precarious careers, as cheap-jacks,
circus-riders, street-conjurers, acrobats,
bear-trainers, sword-swallowers, and itinerant
mountebanks of kindred descriptions. A third
class of writers has made Bohemia a regular
sink of society, the receptacle of all such outcasts
and human abominations as Eugène Sue
and his followers loved to depict; villains of the
deepest dye—vitriol-throwers, house-breakers,
assassins. While to a fourth group this same
domain has been the land of literature and the
arts, where philosophy and beer, music and
debt, painting and hunger, criticism and tobacco-smoke,
combine to make life picturesque and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_184'>184</span>inspiring; a land the denizens of which either
die of penury in the streets or the hospital, uncared
for, unknown, or, living, at last take their
rightful places in the front rank, among the
painters, composers, and writers of their time.</p>
<p class='c010'>Wherein these various critics agree, is in describing
Bohemia as a country lying on the outskirts
of ordinary society, and inhabited by those
who cannot, or will not, yield to that society’s
conventions—the failures or the incompatibles
of decent modern civilization. It is hardly
worth while to try to decide as to what particular
portion of this vast and complex community
has the best right to a name which has
thus been used with great elasticity of meaning.
It will be sufficient if we say at once that the
phase of Bohemian life with which we here
purpose to deal is not that reflected in the
romances of Xavier de Montépin, Féval, or Sue.
Our Bohemia is the Bohemia of art and letters;
and, as our guide through this romantic region,
we will take the man who has drawn its life for
us with such marvellous power and vividness—Henri
Murger, himself the representative Bohemian,
alike in the struggles and lurid contradictions
of his career, and alas! in his early and
tragic death.</p>
<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span></div>
<div class='bq'>
<p class='c010'>“To-day, as of old, every man who devotes himself
to art, with no other means of subsistence than art
itself, will be forced to tread the pathways of Bohemia.
The majority of our contemporaries who display the
most beautiful heraldry of art have been Bohemians;
and, in their calm and prosperous glory, they often
recall, sometimes perhaps with regret, the time when,
climbing the green slopes of youth, they had no other
fortune, in the sunshine of their twenty years, than
courage, which is the virtue of the young, and hope,
which is the fortune of the poor. For the uneasy
reader, for the timorous bourgeois, for all those who
can never have too many dots on the <i>i</i>’s of a definition,
we will repeat in the form of an axiom: Bohemia
is the probation of artistic life; it is the preface to the
academy, the hospital, or the morgue.”</p>
</div>
<p class='c010'>Thus writes Murger, in the preface to his immortal
“Scènes de la Vie de Bohème,” and the
words will be found to furnish a startling commentary
about the kind of life with which his
volume deals—a life made up of extraordinary
contrasts; of dazzling dreams and the most sordid
of realities; of hope alternating with despair;
of high talents ruined by reckless excesses; of
splendid promises defeated by the Fates; of
brilliant careers cut short by premature death.
“The true Bohemians,” continues this writer,
who, more than any other, speaks as their accredited
mouthpiece and historian, “are really
<span class='pageno' id='Page_186'>186</span>the called of art, and stand a chance of being
also the chosen.” But the country of their
adoption literally “bristles with dangers. Chasms
yawn on either side—misery and doubt. Yet
between these two chasms, there is at least a
road, leading to a goal, which the Bohemians
can already reach with their eyes, while awaiting
the time when they shall touch it with their
hands.” But till such time shall come, even if
it ever comes at all, the young enthusiast must
turn a brave face upon all the troubles, the anxieties,
the privations, the fears, the petty worries
and distractions, by which his self-chosen career
will be everywhere begirt. For those who have
once set their feet in the alluring but perilous
pathway, which will lead to fame or misery, to
immortality or death, there must be no trembling,
no hesitation, no looking backward with
regretful eyes to the safe, though humble, beaten
tracks which they have left below. They have
dared to devote themselves, brain and soul, to
art, in a world which cannot understand their
aims, which sneers at their aspirations, which is
very likely to leave them to starve, and will at
best yield them only a grudging and tardy welcome.
Hence, every day’s existence becomes
for them “a work of genius, an ever-recurring
<span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>problem.”<SPAN name='r21' /><SPAN href='#f21' class='c015'><sup>[21]</sup></SPAN> Nor is it surprising that, in the
haphazard life which they are thus forced to
lead, they should inevitably acquire those habits
of carelessness, that easy-going morality, and
often enough that want of settled purpose, which
make them the black sheep of respectable society.</p>
<div class='bq'>
<p class='c010'>“If a little good fortune falls into their hands, they
forthwith begin to pursue the most ruinous fancies
... not finding windows enough to throw their
money out of; and then, when the last écu is dead and
buried, they begin again to dine at the table d’hôte of
chance, where their cover is always laid; and to chase,
from morning till night, that ferocious beast, the hundred-sous-piece.”<SPAN name='r22' /><SPAN href='#f22' class='c015'><sup>[22]</sup></SPAN></p>
</div>
<p class='c010'>Such is the tenor of their way; certainly not a
noiseless one, nor one running through the cool,
sequestered vale of life. Little wonder, then,
that with all the frivolities and uncertainties of
their journey, with all its physical hardships and
moral perils, so few should survive their pilgrimage
through Bohemia, or, when they finally
reach a quieter resting-place, should have the
heart to recount, with frankness and simplicity,
their varied experiences in the probationary land.</p>
<p class='c010'>Yet the Bohemians are a great race, and may
boast a proud extraction. The founder of their
illustrious family was none other than the great
<span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>father of Western song, who, “living by chance
from day to day, wandered about the fertile
country of Ionia, eating the bread of charity,
and stopped at eventide to hang beside the
hearth of hospitality, the harmonious lyre that
had chanted the loves of Helen and the fall of
Troy.”<SPAN name='r23' /><SPAN href='#f23' class='c015'><sup>[23]</sup></SPAN> Descending the centuries to modern
times, the Bohemian reckons his ancestors
among the prominent figures of every great literary
epoch. In the middle ages, the great
family tradition is perpetuated among the minstrels
and ballad-makers, the devotees of the gay
science, the whole tribe of the melodious vagabonds
of Touraine; while, as we pass from the
days of chivalry to the dawn of the Renaissance,
we find “Bohemia still strolling about all the
highways of the kingdom, and already invading
the streets of Paris itself.” Who does not know
of Pierre Gringoire, friend of vagrants and foe to
fasting? Who cannot picture him as “he beats
the pavements of the town, nose in air, like a
dog’s, sniffing the odors of the kitchens and the
cook-shops”; and “jingling in imagination—alas,
not in his pockets!—the ten crowns, which the
aldermen have promised him for the very pious
<span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>and devout farce he has written for their theatre
in the hall of the Palais de Justice”? Who,
again, does not recall Master François Villon,
“poet and vagabond, <i>par excellence</i>,” whose
ballads to-day may still make us forget the ruffian,
the vagabond, the debauchee? These are
names with strange power still over the imagination.
And, when we come to the splendid
outburst of the Renaissance, is it not to find
ourselves face to face with men in whose veins
the rich old blood was fierce and strong, with
Clément Marot, and the ill-starred Tasso, with
Jean Goujon, Pierre Ronsard, Mathurin Regnier,
and who shall say how many more? Shakspere,
and Molière, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and d’Alembert—these,
too, the historian of Bohemia must
include in his annals, to say nothing of the long
line of great writers in England (whom Murger
does not even allude to), by whom the name of
Grub Street was made illustrious in the chronicles
of the eighteenth century.</p>
<p class='c010'>Two groups of Bohemians in Paris—where
perhaps alone to-day artistic Bohemianism is still
possible—have within more recent years made
their voices heard and their influence felt in
the literature and art of their time. The first
was that which gathered about poor Gérard
<span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>Labrunie, better known as Gérard de Nerval, the
unfortunate young writer whose works have yet
to reap their due appreciation, but whose translation
of “Faust,” as Goethe told Eckermann,
made the great German proud “to find such an
interpreter.” That group was composed of such
men as Corot, Chesseriau, Arsène Houssaye,
Théophile Gautier, Jules Janin, and Stadler; the
mere recital of whose names is enough. Shortly
after this band was broken up—some, like Nerval,
dying tragically and long before their time;
others reaching high rank in the world of French
letters—another famous <i>cénacle</i> arose, the central
figure of which was the prince of modern
Bohemia, Henri Murger himself. Among those
who toiled and suffered with him, we may make
passing mention of Auguste Vitu, Schaune, and
Alfred Delvau; but there were, of course, others,
whose names are less familiar to the reading
public of to-day, especially in this country. The
romance of this second Bohemia has been written
for us by Murger in the “Scènes de la Vie
de Bohème”; and it is to the pages of this fascinating
book that we purpose presently to turn.
But to understand these aright, to appreciate
their pathos and their comedy, to realize their
intensity of meaning, we must first of all know
<span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>something of the writer’s personality and career.
I do not mean that it will be necessary for us to
retell in detail the whole sad story of Murger’s
life. But so much of his character and experiences
find embodiment in this book of his, that
we should miss half its charm and more than half
its significance, if we did not, to begin with,
make ourselves acquainted with at least the
larger facts of his existence.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>Henri Murger was born in 1822. His father,
a Savoyard, moved to Paris either just before or
just after his son’s birth; obtained a situation as
janitor; and while attending to the demands of
this position, carried on at the same time his
trade as a tailor. Murger <i>père</i> was a hard,
severe, unsympathetic man, totally unable to
understand his son’s early-developed literary
propensities, and with no higher ambition in life
than that of making a decent income by the exercise
of his craft. His intention from the beginning
was to bring young Henri up as an adept at
shears and thimble, so that he might by-and-by
turn out a hard-working, thrifty ninth part of a
man, like himself. But Henri rebelled; and as his
mother sided with him, having, as it would seem,
some faith in the child’s talents, or perhaps
<span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span>only a womanly yearning to make a gentleman
of him, the long struggle with paternal
authority finally closed, though not without the
breeding of bitterness, in his favor. The original
scheme of training him to manual labor was
abandoned, and he received such education as
his parents could afford, which, after all, was
poor enough.</p>
<p class='c010'>While still a mere boy he entered the practical
business of life through the narrow and
dingy portals of a lawyer’s office; but like many
another youth under similar conditions, the itch
for verse was too strong for him, and he relieved
with the inditing of stanzas the dry technicalities
of the legal routine. Meanwhile, an academician,
M. de Jouy, had taken a fancy to him;
and through his influence, at the age of sixteen,
he obtained an appointment as secretary to Count
Tolstoï, a Russian diplomatist then resident in
Paris. Forty francs a month represented the
material advantages of this position; not a lordly
remuneration, certainly, but acceptable enough,
none the less; more especially as the duties, anything
but cumbersome at the start, dwindled considerably
with lapse of time and presently became
almost nominal. With a small definite income
to fall back upon, and plenty of leisure on his
<span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>hands, Murger now began to give free scope to
his literary impulses, passing his hours in the
study of the poets, and making a humble start
in his own productive career. But his good
fortune was destined to be of short duration; for
through a rather ludicrous misadventure his connection
with Tolstoï was after a while brought to
a sudden close. At that time he was engaged to
furnish a certain amount of daily copy to one of
the Parisian papers. It so chanced that during
the Revolution of 1848 Tolstoï found it necessary
to put his secretarial services once more
into active requisition; and, what with getting
off his daily supply of matter for the press and
preparing dispatches for the Czar of all the Russias,
the young man unexpectedly found his
energies taxed to the full. One memorable day
the functions of diplomatist and author unfortunately
became entangled, and in his hurry and
excitement he sent off his <i>feuilleton</i> to the Russian
Court and his dispatch to the “Corsaire.”
With this ill-timed performance, Murger’s political
career ignominiously ended, and—what was
by far the most serious part of the matter—the
monthly recompense of forty francs, which had
seemed to him a veritable Peruvian gold-mine,
ended also. Nor was this all. Ere this his
<span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>mother had died, and with the cessation of her
mediatorial influence, the feud between himself
and his father had broken out afresh. Thus
Murger was thrown entirely on his own resources,
with nothing but his pen to look to for the means
of support. His father peremptorily refused to
have anything to do with him. “He contents
himself with giving me advice,” wrote Henri to
a friend, in a season of special tribulation, “and
with insulting me whenever we meet.” And it
is well known that one cannot live on advice,
while insults, though more stimulating, are not a
whit more nutritious.</p>
<p class='c010'>It was at this point, then, that Henri Murger
became a dweller in Bohemia. He was now one
of those who, in his own words, have no other
means of subsistence beyond that afforded by art
itself; one of those described by Balzac, “whose
religion is hope, whose code is faith in oneself,
whose budget is charity.” Through nearly all
the varied experiences of which he was afterwards
to write with such wonderfully sustained
graphic power, the young man himself now
passed; through the days of careless idleness or
strenuous exertion; through the nights of homeless
wandering or furious dissipation; through all
the grim poverty and suffering, all the doubt and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>restlessness, all the fierce fluctuations of assurance
and despair, which presently went to the
making of his book. Even while he had still
been in receipt of Count Tolstoï’s allowance,
things had sometimes gone hardly enough with
him; for, needless to state, he was not of the
thrifty or frugal kind, “Your friend,” he
writes in a letter, as early as 1841, “has found
the means of swallowing forty francs in a fortnight;
but happily for him there are still forty
sous left to carry him to the end of the month.
His existence, then, has been during the past
fortnight diversified with beefsteaks ... and
Havana cigars”; while for the remaining two
ill-omened weeks, recourse must be had to that
“table d’hôte of chance” already referred to.
With the discontinuance of this tiny but periodic
dropping from the great Cornucopia of Providence,
the beefsteaks and Havana cigars became
less and less frequent apparitions in his life, and
the famous inn which bears the “Belle Etoile”
as its sign and trading token, found in him a
pretty constant guest. To make his shoes last
more than six months, and his debts forever, now
became an urgent problem for him. Sometimes
fortune would pay him a flying visit, and on
such occasions he describes himself as being
<span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>temporarily in possession of more money than
he knows what to do with; but libraries, tailors,
restaurants, cafés, theatres, Turkish tobacco-pipes,
and friends, combined to help him over
this perplexing difficulty with extraordinary ease
and rapidity. Once, in the intense excitement
of a sudden windfall, he went to bed and dreamed
that he was the Emperor of Morocco and was
marrying the Bank of France. But such seasons
of miraculous plenty were few and far between,
and visions of this extraordinary kind, when
they came at all, were less likely to arise from
repletion than from an empty stomach; for sometimes
he was brought face to face with actual
starvation. Now, he reports borrowing right
and left from any acquaintance who had a franc
to lend; now, again, “S—— is paying me the
thirty francs he owes me, fourteen sous at a
time.” So from month to month he struggled
on, without seeming to get any nearer to the
goal he had in view, or, in point of fact, to any
goal at all; often tortured with physical pain and
privation; often driven half-wild with despair;
but, after the fashion of the true Bohemian, keeping
always a brave heart, and a ready jest for the
good friends who stuck close to him through all,
and who would have been only too willing to
<span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>help him in his need, but for the single unfortunate
circumstance that they were as badly off as
himself.</p>
<p class='c010'>Unhappily, Murger was, in one important
respect, particularly ill-adapted for the kind of
life into which he was thus driven. A man who
trusts to his pen for daily bread should at least
be a facile and ready writer, able to turn off
indefinite quantities of copy in a given time, and
willing to undertake the writing up of any subject
upon which public interest may be temporarily
aroused, and an article required. When
literature becomes a business, the higher ambition
to produce only good work must almost
inevitably be subordinated to the lower and more
practical aim of making the thing pay. Now,
the difficulty with Murger was, that although
literature was his livelihood, his regular trade
and calling, he persistently refused to regard it
mainly in that light—refused to sacrifice artistic
excellence to temporary advantage, and to debase
a sacred mission into mere routine work, the
immediate, if not indeed the sole, object of which
was to turn so much intellectual labor into so
much food and clothing. He himself has
remarked concerning one of his characters that,
after the fashion of genius—a generalization
<span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>which may or may not be partially true,—he
had a tendency to be lazy. Murger was not
exactly lazy; but he was whimsical and uncertain;
his energies were not always under command;
and he did not, with Anthony Trollope,
put firmer faith in a piece of beeswax on the seat
of his chair than in all the promptings of the
divine afflatus. Like Goldsmith, he recognized
that the conditions of his life rendered it impossible
for him to pay court to the “draggle-tail
Muses”; they would simply have left him to
starve outright. So he turned to prose; but
with prose things were nearly as bad. There
were times when he could not and would not
write—when the spirit was not upon him; and
when he could not work as an artist, he would
not work as a day-laborer or publisher’s drudge.
And even when he was in full swing, his delicate
taste, his almost morbid care in composition, his
constant desire to do his best, prevented him
from ever producing with the rapidity necessary
to make the results really remunerative. Never,
even under the greatest stress of circumstances,
would he consent to write hastily, or allow his
manuscript to leave his hands without what he
conceived to be its proper share of thought and
revision. Money to him was always the secondary
<span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>consideration; even hunger had to wait, that
the artistic sense might be satisfied. Rather
than prove traitor to his lofty ideals, he would
live for weeks on dry bread.</p>
<p class='c010'>Thus he had more than the usual difficulty in
making ends meet. But the misfortune did not
stop there. A slow and exceedingly painstaking
writer, he could produce but little in the normal
hours of work; hence, the limit had to be frequently
extended; and, for this purpose, recourse
was had to the perilous aid of artificial stimulants.
We now touch the saddest part of
Murger’s sad story. He wrote at night, and
generally in bed—a practice which he had probably
adopted in days when fuel was a luxury
beyond his reach;<SPAN name='r24' /><SPAN href='#f24' class='c015'><sup>[24]</sup></SPAN> and his work was almost
invariably done with the assistance of strong and
incessant potations of coffee. When the house
was perfectly quiet, when darkness and silence
had fallen over the city, then Murger, like
<span class='pageno' id='Page_200'>200</span>Balzac, commenced the labors of the day. With
these desperate measures, there can be little
doubt that he began very early to undermine a
constitution which had never been robust. The
story of the habits thus formed, and of the
tyranny they acquired over him, is a terribly
tragic one, and might furnish a fearful warning
to many a jaded brain-worker, did we not know
that it is the everlasting law of human nature
that no one shall profit by any one else’s experiences.
“I am literally killing myself,” he writes
to a friend. “You must break me of coffee. I
count on you.” “There are nights,” he declares
at another time, “when I have consumed as
much as six ounces of coffee, and only end by
convincing myself more than ever of my lack
of power—and this, yes, this has lasted three
months. So that at present I am broken down
by the application of these Mochas.... And
here I am still passing my nights drinking coffee
like Voltaire, and smoking like Jean Bart.” As
a direct consequence of these suicidal habits, he
gradually contracted a terrible disease—known
to medicine as “purpura”—which took him
again and again to the hospital. Once, when
the hand of sickness had smitten him with more
than usual severity, he made a determined
<span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>attempt to reform. He banished his coffee,
and strove, by closing the shutters and lighting
the candles, to trick himself into working, not
of course by daylight, but simply during the
day. But it was too late to inaugurate so radical
a change. Ere long his nocturnal instincts reasserted
themselves, and continued in full force
to the end of his career. Doubtless, it is in the
pathological conditions thus brought about, that
we have to seek the explanation of the fearful
restlessness which presently came to characterize
him, and which earned for him the nickname of
the Wandering Christian.</p>
<p class='c010'>It was only after his constitution had been
shattered, and he had grown prematurely old,
that Murger found his way out of Bohemia.
The path into that land of glamour and enchantments
had been easy enough, like the road to
Avernus; the passage back again into the common
world was in his case, as in the case of so
many others, a steep and difficult one. But
after months and years of toil and waiting, success
came at last, and little by little he was able
to break with tenacious old associations, and
settle down to a more steady and regular routine
of life. He established a connection with
the “Revue des Deux Mondes”; and with a
<span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>position now practically assured, took up his
abode at Marlotte, near Fontainebleau. Here
he had every chance of restoring his enfeebled
health, and starting his career anew upon a different
and a wiser plan. But the hour had
gone by. A brief period of work and quiet
happiness was brought to a close in January,
1861, when Henri Murger breathed his last in
the house where he had already spent so many
weeks of suffering—in the Hôpital St. Louis.
He had not completed his thirty-ninth year.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>Of the general work of Murger, this is not the
place to speak. It is considerable in quantity,
and much of it has substantial claim to critical
attention; for his prose is finely wrought, and
his lyrics—instance the superb “Chanson de
Musette,” so highly but justly praised by Gautier,—are
sometimes of rare purity and sweetness.
But it is by the “Scenes of Bohemian
Life,” and by these alone, after all, that Murger
keeps his hold to-day upon the broader reading
public. It has been said that he only wrote at
his best when he was writing straight out of his
own life. This is perhaps at bottom the reason
why this one singular book possesses vitality far
in excess of all his other productions. These
<span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>may still be read with enjoyment, though in the
tremendous stress of modern affairs, and with
the ceaseless activity of the printing-press, they
are more likely to be ignored by all but special
students. But the “Scenes of Bohemian Life,”
as Mr. Saintsbury has rightly insisted, take a
permanent place in the literature of humanity.
Here we may notice one more illustration of the
curiously distorted judgments which authors
often pass upon their own works. In later
years he was accustomed to speak slightingly
and almost petulantly of the volume which has
carried his name over into a new generation;
even, it is said, going so far as to affirm that
“that devil of a book will hinder me from ever
crossing the Pont des Arts”—that is, from
entering the Academy, which was one of the
unfulfilled ambitions of his life. But, in another
and finer sense, it has placed his name among
those of the Immortals.</p>
<p class='c010'>We may now pass from the author to his
volume, on the title-page of which he might well
have written the famous <i>quorum pars magna fui</i>
of Virgil’s hero. “Murger, c’est la Bohème,
comme la Bohème fut Murger,” was the declaration
of one of his personal friends; and the stuff
of his wonderful scenes, with all their extravagance
<span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>and rollicking absurdity, with all their
poignant pathos and whimsical humor, is, as we
have said, stuff furnished by close observation
and intimate experience, though the crude material
is transmuted into gold by the secret
alchemy of genius. It has been said that many
of Murger’s chapters were actually written—in
the French phrase, for which we have no satisfactory
equivalent—<i>au jour le jour</i>; that he
made the scenes of his Bohemian life into literature,
so to speak, while they were still being
enacted. To this effect Théophile de Banville
reported that “that which was done by Rodolphe”—who,
as we shall presently see, is
generally to be identified with Murger himself—“during
the month when he was Mademoiselle
Mimi’s neighbor, has perhaps had no parallel
since letters began. His days he passed in composing
verses, sketching plots of plays, and
covering Mimi’s hands with kisses as with a
glove; but his daily bread was his <i>feuilleton</i> for
the ‘Corsaire,’ and as Rodolphe had neither
money nor books to invent anything but his own
life, each evening he wrote as a <i>feuilleton</i> for the
‘Corsaire’ the life of that day, and each day he
lived the <i>feuilleton</i> for the next. It was thus that
the morrow of I know not what quarrel, after the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>fashion of the lovers of Horace, Mimi, leaning on
her lover’s arm, was bowed to in the Luxembourg
by the poet of the ‘Feuilles d’Automne,’
and returned home quite proud to the <i>Rue des
Canettes</i>; and that same evening Rodolphe wrote
on this theme one of his most delightful chapters.”<SPAN name='r25' /><SPAN href='#f25' class='c015'><sup>[25]</sup></SPAN>
This account of the connection between
Murger’s book and his daily life, probably overstates
the matter, or is to be accepted as approximately
true only in regard to exceptional
occurrences, like the one directly referred to.
But that the substance of the volume was
throughout furnished by experience is certain.
The principal characters, and even some of the
minor ones, have long since been traced back to
their archetypes; the spots rendered famous by
<span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>many a memorable scene—such as the Café
Momus and the shop of the old Jewish bric-a-brac
dealer, Father Médicis—are known to have
actually existed in the old Latin Quarter, though
in the evolution of modern Paris the historic
landmarks have been swept away; while there is
no question that in most of his stories Murger
either drew immediately upon actual circumstances,
or at least built his superstructure of
fancy upon a very solid foundation of fact.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>The heroes of the “Scenes of Bohemian
Life” are four in number. To each member of
the strange group—the “Quatuor Murger,” as
it came to be called—we will yield the honor of
a separate paragraph or two of characterization.</p>
<p class='c010'>First we have Alexandre Schaunard, who,
though he cultivates “the two liberal arts of
painting and music,” devotes the larger part of his
attention to the latter, and is indeed particularly
engaged at the time when we make his acquaintance,
in the composition of an elaborate symbolic
symphony which might almost be said to anticipate
some of the crazy theories of more recent
doctrinaires, representing as it does “the influence
of blue in the arts.” This strange production
had a real existence, and its originator in
<span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>the book has been identified with Alexandre
Schaune, who also drove an artistic tandem with
much enthusiasm for a season, though he subsequently
forsook Bohemia and adopted a more
profitable career in the toy-making business. He
and Murger became acquainted in 1841, lived
together at one time in the closest intimacy in
the Rue de la Harpe, and remained friends till
the latter’s death. Schaune survived among
“new faces, other minds,” till 1887, and only a
short time before he died published some memoirs
which contain many matters of interest for
the Murger student. He bore among his companions
the nickname of Schannard-sauvage,
and in Murger’s original manuscript the name
was so written—Schannard. By a printer’s
error, however, the first <i>n</i> was turned into a <i>u</i>,
and the historian thought well, in reading the
proof, to let the blunder pass.</p>
<p class='c010'>Schaunard in the book is specially distinguished
among his acquaintances for having
raised borrowing to the level of a fine art. By
dint of many careful observations and delicate
experiments he has discovered the days when
each one of his friends is accustomed to receive
money, and thus, following the periodic ebb
and flow of the financial tide, spares himself the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>trouble and annoyance of appealing to the generosity
of those who, at the given moment, are
likely to be in as low water as himself. Having,
furthermore, “learned the way to borrow five
francs in all the languages of the globe,” the
painter-musician is able, as a rule, to keep pretty
firmly on his feet. By a critical friend he was
once described as “passing one half of his time
in looking for money to pay his creditors, and
the other half in eluding his creditors when the
money has been found.”<SPAN name='r26' /><SPAN href='#f26' class='c015'><sup>[26]</sup></SPAN> But it should be
remembered that this calls for some discount as
a friend’s judgment, and likely, therefore, to be
a trifle over-colored; and it is but doing justice
to Schaunard to say that, towards the immediate
companions who had come to his rescue from
time to time, he behaved upon a more honorable
plan. To facilitate, and at the same time to
equalize so far as possible, the “taxes” which he
levied, he “had drawn up, in order of districts
and streets, an alphabetical list containing the
names of all his friends and acquaintances.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>Opposite each name was inscribed the maximum
sum which, having regard to their state of fortune,
he might borrow from them, the times
when they were in funds, their dinner-hour, and
the ordinary bill of fare of the house. Beside
this list, Schaunard kept in perfect order a little
ledger, in which he entered the amounts lent to
him, down to the minutest fractions; for he would
never go beyond a certain figure, which was
within the fortune of a Norman uncle whose heir
he was.<SPAN name='r27' /><SPAN href='#f27' class='c015'><sup>[27]</sup></SPAN> As soon as he owed twenty francs to
an individual, he closed the account, and liquidated
it at a single payment, even if for the purpose
he had to borrow from others to whom he
owed less. In this way he always kept up a
certain credit, which he called his floating debt,
and as people knew that he was accustomed to
pay when his personal resources permitted, they
willingly obliged him when they could.”</p>
<p class='c010'>Schaunard plays his part to the amusement,
if not always to the edification, of the reader in
many delightful episodes in the “Scenes.” It
is through his misadventures with his landlord
that the establishment of the club is largely,
though indirectly, brought about; it is he who
<span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>paints the provincial Blancheron’s portrait in
fancy dressing-gown, while Marcel goes off to
dine with a deputy in his—the said Blancheron’s—coat;
it is he, again, who is hired by an Englishman
to play the piano from morning till night,
as a means of getting even with an actress living
near by, whose parrot and shrill declamation
combined, have proved rather too much for even
British nerves,—a transaction out of which, we
need scarcely add, the <i>virtuoso</i> made a good deal
more money than he did from his famous symphony.
On the whole, however, of the four
friends with whose doings our volume is mainly
occupied, Schaunard is by far the least attractive
figure. He is coarse and morose; has a harsh,
rasping voice; is apt to be put out about trifles;
sometimes treats his male friends with scant
courtesy; and has an unpleasant habit of employing,
with his more intimate associates of the other
sex, Captain Marryatt’s <i>argumentum ad feminam</i>—in
other words, of conversing with them
occasionally through the medium of a stout
cane. Poor Phémie—the melancholy Phémie—had
every right more than once or twice to
complain of the strength and efficacy of his
logic; nor were matters made very much better
for her, we may opine, when, after one of their
<span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>quarrels, he gave her in grim joke, and as a
keepsake, the stick with which he had addressed
to her so many telling remarks.</p>
<p class='c010'>After Schaunard comes Marcel the painter,
a character of more amiable type, who appears
to be a compound portrait of the two artists,
Tabar and Lazare. He is essentially a good
fellow, bright, enthusiastic, happy-go-lucky, and
shiftless; and though, after the fashion of the
world in which he lives, he has an “insolent
confidence in luck,” he is manly enough, upon
occasion, to “give fortune a helping hand.”
He is the hero of many amazing and some very
ludicrous adventures, of which we can find space
here only for a single specimen. Like Schaunard,
he is devoting as much of his time and
energy as he can save from the manufacture of
pot-boilers and the consideration of the “terrible
daily problem of how to get breakfast,” to
the composition of one great work, which is to be
his <i>open sesame</i> to fame—“The Passage of the
Red Sea.”<SPAN name='r28' /><SPAN href='#f28' class='c015'><sup>[28]</sup></SPAN> Was ever so much labor expended
with such little practical result, one may wonder,
by any artist whatsoever—painter, musician, or
<span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>poet? For five or six years Marcel had worked
away at his canvas with unflagging diligence and
courage, and “for five or six years this masterpiece
of color had been obstinately refused by
the jury”; so that, by dint of going and returning
from the artist’s studio to the exhibition,
and from the exhibition back to the studio, the
picture had come to know the way so well, that,
had it been set on wheels, it could have gone
to the Louvre by itself. Marcel, of course,
attributed the policy of the jury to the personal
spite of its members, and persisted, in the teeth
of all discouragement, in regarding his production
as the pendant to “The Marriage in Cana.”
Hence, nothing daunted, he returned again and
again to his vast design, after indulging in a
sufficient amount of abuse to relieve his ruffled
temper. At length, under conviction that the
child of this world might possibly succeed where
the child of light had failed, he began to seek
for means whereby, without altering the general
plan of his gigantic undertaking, he might deceive
the jury in supposing it to be an entirely
fresh and hitherto unexamined work. Thus,
one year he turned Pharaoh into Cæsar, and the
“Passage of the Red Sea” became “The Passage
of the Rubicon.” This ruse failing, he
<span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>covered, as by miracle, the Red Sea with snow,
planted a fir-tree in one corner thereof, dressed
an Egyptian in the costume of the Imperial
Guard, and sent forth his canvas as “The Passage
of the Beresina.” But, unfortunately, the
jury had wiped its glasses that day and was not
to be duped. It recognized the inexorable
picture by dint of a multi-colored horse—his
“synoptic table of fine colors,” Marcel privately
called this astonishing steed—that went prancing
about on the top of a wave of the Red Sea; and
again the masterpiece was churlishly blackballed.
“Till my dying day I will send my picture to
the judges,” vowed Marcel, after this new repulse;
“it shall be engraved on their memories.”—“The
surest way of ever getting it engraved,”
remarked Colline, who chanced to be near by.
And so the poor painter might have been left to
try further and still wilder experiments, but for
the kindly intervention of Daddy Médicis, an
old Jew who had constant dealings with the
Bohemians, and often managed to do them a
friendly turn without, as may be imagined,
sacrificing himself overmuch in the transaction.
This singular individual, coming one evening to
Marcel’s room, offered to purchase the famous
picture “for the collection of a rich amateur,”
<span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>and proposed one hundred and fifty francs as a
fair price. At first, the artist grumbled; there
was at least a hundred and fifty francs’ worth of
cobalt in the dress of Pharaoh alone, he protested.
But the Jew stood firm, and at last the
painter yielded; whereupon Daddy Médicis gave
the Bohemians a dinner, at which “the lobster
ceased to be a myth for Schaunard, who contracted
for this amphibious creature a passion
bordering on madness.” As for Marcel himself,
his intoxication came near upon having deplorable
results. Passing his tailor’s shop, at two
o’clock in the morning, he actually wanted to
wake up his creditor, and give him on account
the hundred and fifty francs he had just received.
A ray of reason, which still flitted in the mind of
Colline, stopped the artist on the brink of this
precipice.</p>
<p class='c010'>And now for the sequel of the story.</p>
<div class='bq'>
<p class='c010'>“A week after these festivities, Marcel found out the
gallery in which his picture had been placed. In passing
through the Faubourg St. Honoré, he stopped in
the midst of a group which seemed to be watching
with curious interest a sign that was being placed over
a shop. This sign was neither more nor less than
Marcel’s picture, which had been sold by Médicis to
a grocer. Only, ‘The Passage of the Red Sea’ had
undergone one more change, and bore a new name.
<span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span>A steamboat had been added, and it was now called
‘The Harbor of Marseilles.’ The curious onlookers,
when they saw the picture, burst out in a flattering ovation;
and Marcel returned home in ecstasy over the
triumph, murmuring—‘The voice of the people is the
voice of God.’”</p>
</div>
<p class='c010'>What part the synoptic charger was now called
on to fill, unfortunately we cannot say.</p>
<p class='c010'>The third member of our quartet is Gustave
Colline, student of “hyperphysical philosophy,”
and inveterate perpetrator of alarming puns.
He too is a composite character, the principal
ingredients of his make-up being furnished by
two of Murger’s old associates—Jean Walton
and Trapadoux, both of whom were men of immense
and curious erudition and many eccentricities.
Colline himself, of a somewhat more
steady way of life than his companions, gains a
fairly regular income by teaching mathematics,
botany, Arabic, and various other subjects, as
occasion demands, and spends the greater part
of it in the accumulation of second-hand books.
“What he did with all these volumes,” remarks
the historian, “so numerous that the life of a
man would never have sufficed to read them, no
one knew—he least of all.” But still he goes
on adding tome to tome, and when he chances
to return to his lodgings at night without bringing
<span class='pageno' id='Page_216'>216</span>a new specimen to his store, he feels that,
like the good Titus, he has wasted his day.
Thus his strange, shapeless mouth, pouting lips,
double chin, shaggy light hair, and threadbare,
hazel-colored overcoat, are well known upon the
quays and wherever ancient volumes are exposed
for sale. His tastes are catholic in the extreme;
for he will buy anything and everything that is to
be bought, provided only it is rare, out of the
way, and for all practical purposes useless. Some
idea of the range and versatility of his interests
may be given by reference to a single episode in
his history. When, in company with Marcel,
Rodolphe gave that famous Christmas entertainment,
whereof the record is to be found in its
proper place in the annals of Bohemia, he insisted
on borrowing for the occasion the philosopher’s
famous swallowtail coat. Now, this coat,
as the chronicler justly suggests, deserves a word
or two. By courtesy it was held to be black by
candle-light, though it was really of a decided
blue. It was also cut upon a wild and startling
plan, very short in the waist and exceedingly long
in the tails. But its most astonishing features were
the pockets—“positive gulfs, in which Colline
was accustomed to lodge some thirty of the volumes
which he everlastingly carried about with
<span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span>him; which caused his friends to say that during
the times when the libraries were closed scientists
and men of letters could always seek information
in the skirts of Colline’s coat—a library always
open to readers.” Well, on this particular day,
strange to relate, the great swallowtail apparently
harbored only a quarto volume of Bayle, a treatise
in three volumes on the hyperphysical faculties,
a volume of Condillac, two of Swedenborg,
and Pope’s “Essay on Man.” “Hullo!” exclaimed
Rodolphe, when the philosopher had
turned out this odd collection and allowed the
other to don the imposing habit; “the left pocket
still feels very heavy; there is still something in
it.”—“Ah!” replied Colline, “that is true; I
forgot to empty the foreign language pocket.”
Whereupon he drew out two Arabic grammars,
a Malay dictionary, and “The Perfect Stock-Breeder”
in Chinese—his favorite reading.<SPAN name='r29' /><SPAN href='#f29' class='c015'><sup>[29]</sup></SPAN>
Nor was this quite all. Later on, in looking for
his handkerchief, Rodolphe came accidentally
upon a small Tartar volume, overlooked in the
department of foreign literature.</p>
<p class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_218'>218</span>For the rest, Colline is a very agreeable companion,
pleasant of manner, and courteous of
bearing; and his conversation is amusingly spiced
with quaint technical expressions and the most
outrageous puns. Unlike his three companions,
who are in perpetual bondage to love, he passes
on, for the most part, in bachelor meditation,
fancy free, as becomes a philosopher of the
“hyperphysical school.” Once in a while, we
find him flirting a little with the <i>bonne amie</i> of
one of his friends, and we recall a single occasion
on which, according to his own statement, he had
an appointment of a romantic character. We
read also, in the most incidental way, of his
devotion to a waistcoat-maker, whom he keeps
day and night copying the manuscripts of his
philosophical works. But at these, as at all other
times, the lady of his affections remains “invisible
and anonymous.” In general, it may be
said that he shows himself markedly superior to
the human weakness which does so much to disturb
the byways of Bohemia no less than the
highways of the outer world.</p>
<p class='c010'>Music, painting, and philosophy are thus well
represented in the Bohemian <i>cénacle</i>, and in
Rodolphe, the last of the group, the sister art
of poetry finds a worthy exponent. Rodolphe
<span class='pageno' id='Page_219'>219</span>is the real hero of the book, and is indeed an
approximately faithful sketch of the author himself.
In the fancy-poet of the Latin Quarter, the
man who, in the very cut of his clothes, manners,
appearance, conversation, “confessed his
association with the Muses,” many of Murger’s
well-known traits of character and personal idiosyncrasies
are frankly reproduced. We have a
brief but sufficiently detailed description of him
when he makes his first appearance in the Café
Momus, and there can be no doubt as to the
artist’s model from which the study is made.
He is presented as “a young man whose face
was almost lost in an enormous thicket of many-colored
beard. But, as a set-off against this abundance
of hair on the chin, a precocious baldness
had dismantled his forehead, which looked like
a knee, and the nakedness of which a few stray
hairs that one might have counted vainly endeavored
to cover. He wore a black coat, tonsured at
the elbows, and with practical ventilators under
the armpits, which could be seen whenever he
raised his arm too high. His trousers might
once have been black, but his shoes, which had
never been new, seemed to have several times
made the tour of the world on the feet of the
Wandering Jew.” In all this—in the precocious
<span class='pageno' id='Page_220'>220</span>baldness and parti-colored beard especially—we
have the historian of Bohemia himself. We do
not, therefore, wonder that the character of Rodolphe
should stand out from among the other
figures of the “Scenes,” by reason of a certain
autobiographic distinctness of outline and color,
nor that he should prevail upon us by a kind
of personal charm which his companions rarely
possess.</p>
<p class='c010'>To follow Rodolphe’s various adventures and
enterprises back to their originals in Murger’s
life, would be an interesting task, but it is one
that cannot be attempted here; and for the time
being we must keep to the poet in the book.
Like his friends Schaunard and Marcel, this
young man has pinned his faith to one ambitious
work, a drama called the “The Avenger,” which
has already gone the round of all the theatres
of Paris, and of which in the course of a couple
of years, he has accumulated a dozen or so huge
manuscript copies, weighing collectively something
like fifteen pounds. “The Avenger” was
ultimately produced, and ran for five successive
nights, after large portions of these carefully
wrought versions had been used up in the humble
service of lighting the fire. But this does
not come till towards the end of the story; and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_221'>221</span>during the days when we know him best, Rodolphe,
awaiting his dramatic triumph, is willing
enough to turn his literary talents to account in
less dignified ways. The main sources of his income
appear to be “The Scarf of Iris,” a fashion-journal,
and “The Castor,” a paper devoted to
the interests of the hat-trade, both of which he
edits, and in which he publishes from time to
time his opinions on tragedy and kindred subjects.
It is to the columns of the latter periodical,
by-the-by, that Gustave Colline contributes
a discussion on “The Philosophy of Hats, and
Other Things in General”—how much to the
amusement and instruction of its readers we are
unfortunately not told. Probably the financial
advantages of these two undertakings are of a
rather slight and unsubstantial character; at any
rate, the editor-in-chief shows himself at all
times ready to supplement his official emoluments
whensoever occasion offers. Witness his
most famous piece of hack-work, the composition
of “The Perfect Chimney Constructor.”
Rodolphe, who has been sadly down on his luck
for a time—fluctuating between going to bed
without supper and supping without going to
bed—happens accidentally to run across his
Uncle Monetti, a stove-maker and physician of
<span class='pageno' id='Page_222'>222</span>smoky chimneys, whom he has not seen for an
age. Now, Monsieur Monetti is an enthusiast in
his art, and has conceived the idea of drawing
up for the benefit of future generations, a manual
of chimney-construction, in which his own
numerous patents shall be given adequate presentation.
Finding his nephew fallen upon evil
days, he intrusts him with this literary enterprise,
promising him a remuneration of three
hundred francs, and rashly giving him outright
fifty francs on account. Of course, Rodolphe
incontinently disappears, and only turns up again
when the money has disappeared also. Uncle
Monetti then resorts to drastic measures. He
locks the volatile young gentleman in a small
room, six stories up, with stoves and ovens for
his company, and takes away his clothes, leaving
in their stead a ridiculous Turkish dressing-gown.
In this attic solitude the unfortunate young poet
is fain to wax eloquent over ventilators, till he is
rescued in the most romantic way by a certain
Mademoiselle Sidonia, as the reader will find
recorded at length in its proper place in the
Bohemian chronicles.</p>
<p class='c010'>In connection with one extraordinary episode
in Rodolphe’s career—his sudden receipt of
five hundred francs in hard cash—we have an
<span class='pageno' id='Page_223'>223</span>excellent opportunity of studying some of the
mysteries of Bohemian finance. He and Marcel,
who was then his fellow-lodger, regarded this
colossal sum as practically inexhaustible; they
were not a little surprised, therefore, to find,
before a fortnight had gone by, that it had vanished
into air, as though by magic. The strictest
frugality had presided over all their expenditures,
and the question was, where in the world
the money could have gone to. Into this
problem the two economists forthwith made inquisition,
analyzing their accounts, and carefully
weighing them item by item. This is about the
way in which the audit was conducted:—</p>
<p class='c010'>“March 19.—Received five hundred francs.
Paid, one Turkish pipe, twenty-five francs; dinner,
fifteen francs; miscellaneous expenses, forty
francs,” Marcel read out.</p>
<p class='c010'>“What in the world are these miscellaneous
expenses?” asked Rodolphe.</p>
<p class='c010'>“You know well enough,” said the other.
“It was the evening when we didn’t come home
till morning. At any rate, that saved us fuel
and candles.”</p>
<p class='c010'>There is nothing like rigid economy, as we see.</p>
<p class='c010'>“March 20.—Breakfast, one franc, fifty centimes;
tobacco, twenty centimes; dinner, two
<span class='pageno' id='Page_224'>224</span>francs; an opera glass”—needed by Rodolphe,
who, as editor of the “Scarf of Iris,” had to
write a notice of an art exhibition; and so on,
and so on. As the account continued, “miscellaneous
expenses” reappeared with ever-increasing
frequency; indeed, the two financiers
had in the end to admit that this “vague and
perfidious title,” as Rodolphe called it, had
proved a delusion and a snare.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>Such, then, are the four principal characters
with whose doings and misdoings the “Scenes
of Bohemian Life” are mainly occupied. A
word only about the women of the book.</p>
<p class='c010'>It is while he is in their company, I suppose,
more than at any other time, that the Anglo-Saxon
reader feels how far the pathways of
Bohemia lie outside the boundaries of respectable
society. Louise, the fickle bird of passage;
Musette, vagabond and careless; Mimi, charming,
heartless, ill-fated; Phémie, beneath whose
delicate exterior was concealed a veritable volcano
of passion;—yes, the face of the moralist
will certainly harden as he dwells on the giddy
vagrancy of their lives, and the hopeless tragedy
in which the music and the laughter inevitably
find their earthly close. About this matter I
<span class='pageno' id='Page_225'>225</span>shall try to say something presently. For the
moment I want only to point out that, though
the women of Murger’s book are drawn from
known or conjectured originals, the portraiture
does not seem to be nearly as close as it is
throughout in the case of the men. This does
not mean only that each girl in the “Scenes”
is a more or less blurred compound of various
famous figures of the old Latin Quarter; it
means, also—and this is, of course, far more
important,—that the characters have undergone
much transfiguration. The magic and grace by
which, amid all their personal shortcomings and
delinquencies, these heedless adventurers of the
studio and the café are actually marked, are
largely, it is to be feared, the results of Murger’s
own idealizing imagination and delicately poetic
touch.</p>
<p class='c010'>There is an important point, suggested by the
present part of our subject, which demands a
moment’s attention. The principle indicated in
the well-known lines of Lafontaine—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Deux coqs vivaient en paix: une poule survint,</div>
<div class='line in1'>Et voilà la guerre allumée!”—</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c010'>is generally held to be one of universal applicability.
But the life of our Bohemian brotherhood
for once gives it the lie direct. Never,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_226'>226</span>even in the most trying seasons of love and
jealousy, did the ties slacken which bound the
four companions—Colline, the great philosopher;
Marcel, the great painter; Schaunard, the
great musician; and Rodolphe, the great poet—as
they called one another. Rodolphe and
Mimi might lead a cat-and-dog life; Marcel
might quarrel with Musette, and make it up
only to quarrel again; Schaunard might see fit
to address some of his telling observations to the
person of the melancholy Phémie; but artist
and poet, philosopher and painter, rubbed on
together in peace; and if the truth must be
told, smoked many a pipe in company over the
grave of their dead passions. Truly the domestic
side of their life left much to be desired. At
one time they all occupied the same house, and
then the unfortunate neighbors lived, as it were,
on a volcano. Six months went by; things grew
daily more and more intolerable; and then the
final breaking-up of the establishment came about.
“But,” adds Murger—and the remark exhibits
clearly the kind of understanding which existed
among the strangely-assorted friends—“in this
association, despite the three young and pretty
women who formed part of it, no sign of discord
appeared among the men. They frequently gave
<span class='pageno' id='Page_227'>227</span>way to the most absurd caprices of their mistresses;
but not one of them would have hesitated
a moment between the woman and the friend.”</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>Amid all the uncertainties and anxieties, the
follies and the vices of their daily life, these
brother Bohemians are possessed of a very keen
and genuine enthusiasm for art, and of a sturdy
faith in themselves and their own high calling.
This is one good aspect of their character; another
and complementary aspect, upon which
Murger lays much stress, is their complete freedom
from stiff-necked virtuosity and dilettante
affectations. There are Bohemians who chatter
only of “art for art’s sake,” who hold with inflexible
obstinacy and stoical pride to the narrow
path they have marked out for themselves, who
scorn to descend, upon any pretext, for any purpose
whatsoever, to the plane of common affairs.
But Murger takes pains to make it clear that
Rodolphe and his friends do not belong to this
unfortunate class—the “Buveurs d’Eau,” as
they are called, the first tenet of whose creed
is that no one of their number, on penalty of
expulsion from the society, shall accept any
work outside pure art itself.<SPAN name='r30' /><SPAN href='#f30' class='c015'><sup>[30]</sup></SPAN> Rodolphe, as we
<span class='pageno' id='Page_228'>228</span>know, is working hard upon his great tragedy;
Marcel, upon his “Passage of the Red Sea”;
Schaunard, upon his symbolic symphony; Colline,
upon his system of “Hyperphysical Philosophy”:
but there are no cant phrases of art-worship
everlastingly upon their lips, and they
are ready enough to turn their energies, when
opportunity offers, into more remunerative, if
less ambitious, undertakings. We have seen
something already of the practical means, sometimes
adopted by them, of putting a figure
before the cipher, which unfortunately, as a rule,
constitutes their entire available capital. If further
evidence be demanded, we need only refer
to the occasions when Rodolphe versifies an
epitaph for an inconsolable widow and turns off
a rhyming advertisement for a dentist, and when
Marcel paints eight grenadiers at six francs
apiece—likenesses guaranteed for a year, like a
watch.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>Of the “Scenes of Bohemian Life” as a
whole, it would be hopeless to endeavor to give
any general idea within the limits of a rapid
sketch. It is little to say that from cover to
<span class='pageno' id='Page_229'>229</span>cover of this wonderful book there is not a dull
or indifferent page—not a page that does not
teem with quaint description, brilliant bits of
characterization, vivid pictures of manners and
life. Of the range and opulence of its humor
some hint has perhaps been given, though the
merest hint only, in the personal delineations attempted
above. Mirth-compelling the “Scenes”
certainly are, and we feel in their case, as we cannot
always feel with the masterpieces of the
French comic genius, that the laughter they provoke
is generous, hearty, wholesome—laughter
without taint of cynicism or spite. But the humor
of the volume, rich and racy as it is, and the
ebullient wit that glitters and flashes in its dialogues
and incidental touches of comment and
criticism, are not by any means the only qualities
that deserve attention. Murger was a true
humorist, and, like all true humorists, he had the
keenest realization of the pathos and tragedy of
life, the most delicate apprehension of “the sense
of tears in mortal things.” Though it can hardly
be said of the “Scenes of Bohemian Life,” as it
has been rightly said of the great body of the
author’s work, that the dominant note is one of
poignant melancholy, the minor chords are heavy
and frequent enough to tone down the exuberant
<span class='pageno' id='Page_230'>230</span>gayety of the volume, and to cause the final
impression left by it to be rather sombre than
exhilarating. Murger saw much of the reckless
and irresponsible life of the Latin Quarter on its
grotesque side, and he has given this side extraordinary
prominence in this particular book, reserving
many of the harsher features, which from
personal contact he knew equally well, for the
“Scenes de la Vie de Jeunesse” and the “Buveurs
d’Eau.” But the reader who follows to
their close the chapters we have here more especially
been considering—and who can put them down
unfinished?—will find that their brilliancy
of light and color are thrown up against a very
dark background, and that the shadows gather
and deepen about us as the story runs its course.
At length, the wild music ceases altogether; the
mad laughter is silenced; and the book is laid
by, not with a burst of final merriment, but with
a gulp and a pang. <i>Ah, comme nous avons ri!</i>
Yes, the struggles, the privations, the absurdities
of Bohemia are comical enough; but life is stern,
even in this Land of Romance; there is death in
it, and many a heartbreak; and if we escape the
suffering of failure, we must accept the inevitable
disillusion of success. Life, too, is fleeting; the
golden sands slip through our fingers as we try
<span class='pageno' id='Page_231'>231</span>to clutch them. <i>Eheu fugaces!</i> It is the old-world
burden that we must needs end with—“La
jeunesse n’a qu’un temps!”</p>
<p class='c010'>No—“ce n’est pas gai tous les jours, la Bohème.”
For my own part, I know not whither
one could turn to find pages of purer tenderness
and pathos than those in which Murger has
written of Francine’s muff and of the death
of poor little Mimi. And yet, there is no effort,
no melodramatic striving after effect. The lips
quiver, the eyes grow dim as we read; but so
admirably is the art concealed, so perfect is the
reserve under which it is all done, that it is only
when we come to turn back over the chapters
for the express purpose of analyzing them, that
we begin to realize the author’s exquisite perception
and tact, and the genius with which he
carries his meaning straight home to our hearts.
Poor Francine! Poor Mimi! These fragile slips
of womanhood from the dingy old Latin Quarter
are filled with the life that the poet alone can
give. We meet them once in a few pages of
print; and their hungry eyes and poor, worn
faces linger with us forever.</p>
<hr class='c014' />
<p class='c010'>And now we must revert for a moment to a
question already touched on—the loose morality
<span class='pageno' id='Page_232'>232</span>not infrequently charged against this record of
Bohemian life. I promised that I should try to
say something about this matter ere I brought
these jottings to a close; but now that it is definitely
before us, I do not feel, after all, that there
is very much to be said. Our judgment on such
a book as this, ethically considered, must finally
depend on the point of view from which we
regard it, and this point of view will always be
at bottom so much an affair of temperament, outlook,
training, bias, that it is not likely to be
much affected by any arguments, adverse or
favorable. “Certainly,” Murger once imagines
one of his readers saying, “I shall not allow
this story to fall into the hands of my daughter.”
To this, doubtless, most Anglo-Saxon fathers
would say amen, and there is little question that
they would, on the whole, be wise in so doing.
I readily admit that it would be better that the
perusal of such a work as this, as of many other
great and enduring pieces of literature, should
be left for those whose minds have been schooled
and sobered by the discipline of real life, and
who are thus in a position to bring Murger’s
imaginary scenes, with all their bewitching humor,
magic of description, and charm of style,
to the touchstone of actual experience. But
<span class='pageno' id='Page_233'>233</span>while I concede this much, I cannot for a moment
go with those who would, therefore, place
the volume on their unofficial “Index Expurgatorius,”
on the score that it will be found dangerous
to morality. Such a notion seems to
me simply absurd, and due to an entire misapprehension
of what it is in literature that renders
it injurious in its effects. Murger drew his
material from a world he had known and lived
in, and he incorporates all its irregularities of
conduct, and very much of its wantonness. Yet I
challenge any intelligent and broad-minded reader
to deny that the atmosphere of his “Scenes”
is almost always fresh and wholesome. Those at
least who know something of the French novel,
from “La Dame aux Camélias” onward, and of
some of the English fiction produced within recent
decades, by writers who boldly claim place
in the ranks of the moralists, will hardly feel
called upon to attack our author on this particular
head. Nowhere, let it be said emphatically,
does Murger deliberately give himself up to the
worship of the great Goddess of Lubricity; nowhere
does he willingly throw the halo of poetry
over mere physical passion; nowhere does
he go out of his way to show vice as vice in
glowing or attractive colors. These may read
<span class='pageno' id='Page_234'>234</span>like phrases of the most conventional criticism,
but they are here thoroughly to the point. The
very story which the writer stops short for a
moment to interject the imaginary comment
quoted above, is as pure and delicate as a love-story
well could be, and only a reader capable
of sucking poison out of a lily, could be disturbed
in the slightest degree by the irregularity
of the relations existing between Jacques and
poor Francine. It can never be often urged
that in such a case as this—perhaps in all art
whatsoever—the one fundamentally essential
thing is treatment; and with Murger’s handling
of his theme, no possible fault could be found,
even by the most austere and exacting critic.</p>
<p class='c010'>A more substantial charge may, I think, be
brought against the “Scenes,” on the ground
that in their delightful pages the shiftless, improvident,
hand-to-mouth existence of Rodolphe
and his friends is made too engaging and seductive.
Are there not, it may be asked, scores of
young men who believe that they have (in very
large capitals) Genius and a Mission in Art, and
who need nothing but the incentive of such a volume
as this to lead them to throw aside the sober
concerns of law or commerce, and voluntarily
exchange a career of useful, if monotonous, toil,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_235'>235</span>for one wherein immediate misery is practically
certain, and ultimate success only a remote
chance? Youths of some sensibility and ambition,
who hate the counting-house and the desk;
who have written verses or made sketches which
have been praised by injudicious friends; and
who have devoured the numerous biographies
of those who, having commenced life in uncongenial
labor, boldly kicked over the traces and
finally made for themselves a position and a
name, are prone enough, it may be alleged, to
mistake themselves for great men in embryo,
and to set up their backs against the daily routine
and the common task, without the aid of a
book which paints Bohemia so constantly on its
pleasantest side, and gives to even its struggles
and sufferings a romantic charm, which the jog-trot
round of experience does not possess. All
this, perhaps, is true. At any rate, I have myself
known one young fellow of the class referred
to who, under Murger’s inspiration, played for
a time at Bohemianism, allowed his hair to grow
down over his shoulders, wore by preference a
threadbare coat, and posed as an unappreciated
genius. His genius, I believe, remains unrecognized
still; but he has long since assumed a
respectable garb, and given other outward and
<span class='pageno' id='Page_236'>236</span>visible signs of his perversion to conventionality.
And yet, even with this instructive case well in
mind, I think too much might easily be made
of the harmful tendencies of Murger’s book.
The <i>Sturm und Drang</i> period of youth, the
period of ferment, and aimless experiment, and
general unrest, will always be fraught with perils
of one or another kind; and a few wild dreams
of vague ambition, some spiritual green-sickness,
an attack or two of the hysterics of social revolt,
a little affectation of Byronism, or Shelleyism,
or Murgerism, are not the worst of these. Fortunately,
the real world is a businesslike and
remorseless disciplinarian, and in the school of
practical experience, a nature essentially healthy
will presently right itself, and be none the worse—perhaps
even the better—for a handful of
battered illusions and some pricked bubbles of
fancy. And as for the natures not fundamentally
healthy—well, Life the Schoolmistress has her
own effectual way with these also.</p>
<p class='c010'>But should there perchance be any young man
in danger of taking the Bohemian fever a trifle
too seriously, we will refer him for treatment to a
very satisfactory physician, a specialist, one may
say, in the complaint—Murger himself. Properly
read, and read through to the end, the
<span class='pageno' id='Page_237'>237</span>“Scenes” should prove their own corrective;
and if their full significance is not clear, the
preface furnishes the needed commentary. It is
but simple justice to Murger to say that he himself
had no sympathy whatever with the indefinite
ambitions and mawkish sentimentalism of a
certain class of young men, who mistake the
cravings of aspiration for the promptings of
genius, and turn to art because they are fit for
nothing else. Again and again does he insist
upon the stern realities of the artist’s probation;
again and again does he raise the voice of warning
to those who would rashly decide to commit
themselves to the artist’s career.</p>
<div class='bq'>
<p class='c010'>“Il en est dans les luttes de l’art à peu près comme
à la guerre—toute la gloire conquise rejaillit sur le
nom des chefs. L’armée se partage pour récompense
les quelques lignes d’un ordre du jour. Quant aux
soldats frappés dans le combat, on les enterre là où ils
sont tombés, et une seule épitaphe suffit pour vingt
mille morts.”<SPAN name='r31' /><SPAN href='#f31' class='c015'><sup>[31]</sup></SPAN></p>
</div>
<p class='c010'>These are solemn and uncompromising words.
And scarcely less solemn are the phrases in which
he describes the life of Bohemia as “charming
but terrible, having its conquerors and its martyrs”—a
life upon which no one should enter
<span class='pageno' id='Page_238'>238</span>“who is not prepared beforehand to submit to
the inexorable law of <i>Væ Victis</i>!” Woe to the
conquered indeed! In the brilliant pages of the
world’s history, the name and fortune of the
one who succeeds alone are inscribed; those of
the nine hundred and ninety-nine who ignominiously
and miserably fail pass into everlasting
oblivion.</p>
<hr class='c016' />
<div class='footnote' id='f1'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r1'>1</SPAN>. </span>Allusions to the continuance of this revolting practice are
numerous as late as the eighteenth century. See, <i>e. g.</i>, Pope’s
“Essay on Man,” iv., 251-252, and the famous anecdote of Johnson
and Goldsmith (Boswell, <i>anno</i> 1773).</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f2'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r2'>2</SPAN>. </span>As the pronunciation of our diarist’s name is often under
discussion, I subjoin, for the reader’s guidance in the matter,
some clever verses, originally published a few years ago in the
London “Graphic”:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“There are people, I’m told,—some say there are heaps,—</div>
<div class='line in1'>Who speak of the talkative Samuel as Peeps;</div>
<div class='line in1'>And some, so precise and pedantic their step is,</div>
<div class='line in1'>Who call the delightful old diarist, Pepys;</div>
<div class='line in1'>But those I think right, and I follow their steps,</div>
<div class='line in1'>Ever mention the garrulous gossip as Peps!”</div>
</div></div>
</div></div>
<div class='footnote' id='f3'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r3'>3</SPAN>. </span>A curious circumstance in connection with the first reading of
the Diary is worth mentioning. An indefatigable student, it is
said, toiled at its decipherment from twelve to fourteen hours a
day for the space of three or four years. All the while—such
is the strange untowardness of earthly things—Pepys had left
in his library a long-hand transcript of his short-hand account
of Charles the Second’s escape, and this, had it been known
at the time, would have served the purpose of the required key.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f4'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r4'>4</SPAN>. </span>This is a tragi-comedy by Dryden, written partly in blank
verse, partly in rhyme. Pepys had seen it performed some two
years before, and had then pronounced it “a very innocent and
most pretty witty play.”</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f5'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r5'>5</SPAN>. </span>Taking always in my own study of literature the wider line of
inquiry just indicated, I am grateful to Professor Royce for pointing
out the connection between two phenomena apparently so radically
diverse as the spread of prose fiction and the appearance of the
Lockian philosophy. (See his delightful volume—a model of popular
exposition—“The Spirit of Modern Philosophy,” pp. 80-81.)</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f6'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r6'>6</SPAN>. </span>The reader of Pepys, recalling Mrs. Pepys’s fondness for these
interminable stories, will remember that, as we have seen, “Le
Grand Cyrus” once gave rise to considerable unpleasantness between
husband and wife.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f7'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r7'>7</SPAN>. </span>Novel-readers will not need to be reminded that the “story-within-story”
device survived long after the classical-heroic romance
had passed into oblivion. It is employed, for instance, by
both Fielding and Smollett, and traces of it are to be found in the
earlier work of Dickens, and in other writers quite near our own
time.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f8'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r8'>8</SPAN>. </span>A delightfully witty account of this work, and of the classical-heroic
romance at large, will be found in Jusserand’s “English
Novel in the Time of Shakspere,” a book which combines with the
erudition of the German specialist the verve, tact, and lucidity of
the French—qualities which are commonly to be sought in vain in
the voluminous and too often chaotic lucubrations of Teutonic
scholarship.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f9'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r9'>9</SPAN>. </span>Translations of several of the great French romances, including
“Clelia,” “which opened of itself in the place that described
two lovers in a bower,” are given in the list of books on Leonora’s
shelves (“Spectator,” No. 37); and suggestive mention is made of
“Pharamond” and “Cassandra” as late as 1711 (“Spectator,” No.
92). Mrs. Lennox’s satire, “The Female Quixote,” may be taken to
show that even in 1752 these works were still sometimes read.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f10'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r10'>10</SPAN>. </span>Common fairness leads me to state, though it must be in the
quasi-obscurity of a foot-note, that in any exhaustive treatment of
the Restoration novel, place should be found for a third female
name—that of Swift’s “stupid, infamous, scribbling woman,” Mrs.
Haywood. But though this lady produced, between 1720 and 1730,
a number of short stories that might fittingly be touched upon here,
her best-known works, “The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless”
(1751) and “The History of Jeremy and Jenny Jessamy” (1754), belong
to the times of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, and therefore
to another school and period of fiction entirely. She would
thus be very likely to tempt us too far afield for the purposes we
have here in view.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f11'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r11'>11</SPAN>. </span>Scott’s edition of Swift’s works (1824), vol. ii., p. 303, <i>note</i>.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f12'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r12'>12</SPAN>. </span>This is the name under which Mrs. Behn enters the satire
of Pope:-</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“The stage how loosely doth Astræa tread!”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c010'>The second line of the couplet may be left unquoted.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f13'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r13'>13</SPAN>. </span>See “Apotheosis of Milton” in the “Gentleman’s Magazine,”
for 1738 (vol. viii., p. 469).</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f14'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r14'>14</SPAN>. </span>This, according to Mr. Gosse (“Dictionary of National Biography”)
was “a relative whom she called her father.” Mrs. Behn certainly
does speak of him as her father in “Oroonoko.” And in the
Life, “by one of the Fair Sex,” prefixed to the first collected edition
of her works, we read: “Her father’s name was <i>Johnson</i>, whose
relation to the Lord Willoughby, drew him, for the advantageous
post of Lieutenant-General of many isles, besides the continent of
<i>Surinam</i>, from his quiet retreat at Canterbury to run the hazardous
voyage of the West Indies.” I do not know what is the source and
origin of Mr. Gosse’s implied doubt.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f15'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r15'>15</SPAN>. </span>How vast was the change in taste between, say, the opening
and the close of the eighteenth century, is shown by Sir Walter
Scott, in an anecdote which has special interest for us here, as bearing
directly upon the woman now in question. A grand-aunt of
his, Mrs. Keith, of Ravelstone, towards the close of a very long life,
asked Scott if he had ever seen Mrs. Behn’s novels. “I confessed
the charge. Whether I could get her a sight of them?—I said, with
some hesitation, I believed I could; but that I did not think she
would like either the manners or the language, which approached
too near that of Charles the Second’s time to be quite proper reading.
‘Nevertheless,’ said the good old lady, ‘I remember them
being so much admired, and being so interested in them myself,
that I wish to look at them again.’ To hear was to obey. So I
sent Mrs. Aphra Behn, curiously sealed up, with ‘private and confidential’
on the packet, to my gay old grand-aunt. The next time
I saw her afterwards, she gave me back Aphra, properly wrapped
up, with merely these words: ‘Take back your bonny Mrs. Behn;
and, if you will take my advice, put her in the fire, for I found it
impossible to get through the very first novel. But is it not,’ she
said, ‘a very odd thing that I, an old woman of eighty and upwards,
sitting alone, feel myself ashamed to read a book which,
sixty years ago, I have heard read aloud for the amusement of
large circles, consisting of the first and most creditable society in
London!’” (See Lockhart’s Scott, chap. liv.)</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f16'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r16'>16</SPAN>. </span>“English Women of Letters,” vol. i., p. 31.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f17'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r17'>17</SPAN>. </span>Another matter of curious interest in connection with “Oroonoko”
calls for passing mention, though too far removed from our
special subject to detain us here. This is the remarkable way in
which, in its presentation of the “noble savage,” and the innocence,
purity, and high moral character of the “natural man,” the
story anticipates Rousseau and the later romanticists. Jusserand,
who points this out, goes so far as to say that Mrs. Behn “carries
us at once beyond the times of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, and
takes us among the precursors of the French Revolution.” It may
be added that, in the hands of “Honest Tom Southerne,” the story
of Oroonoko became a successful play.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f18'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r18'>18</SPAN>. </span>“The Fair Jilt.”</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f19'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r19'>19</SPAN>. </span>Mrs. Manley, in her Dedication to Lady Lansdowne, says that
her stories have truth for their foundation—<i>i.e.</i>, are based on fact.
Mrs. Behn calls her “Nun” a “true novel.”</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f20'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r20'>20</SPAN>. </span>“La Vie de Bohème,” act i., scene 8.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f21'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r21'>21</SPAN>. </span>“La Vie de Bohème,” act i., scene 8.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f22'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r22'>22</SPAN>. </span><i>Ibid.</i></p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f23'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r23'>23</SPAN>. </span>In this slight historic sketch of Bohemianism, we simply follow,
without comment or criticism, Murger’s original preface to the
“Scènes de la Vie de Bohème.”</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f24'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r24'>24</SPAN>. </span>A story to the point is worth repeating here. When the playwright,
Barrière, went to him one afternoon to propose the dramatization
of the “Scenes of Bohemian Life,” he found Murger in his
attic in the Latin Quarter, in bed. It subsequently came out that a
Bohemian friend, having occasion to pay a business visit to some
important functionary, had borrowed his only pair of trousers,
which had the advantage of being a trifle better than his own; and
Murger had to remain in bed, with such patience as he could command,
until they should be restored.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f25'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r25'>25</SPAN>. </span>The passage in which reference is made to the meeting with
Victor Hugo will be found at the close of chapter xiv. of the
“Scenes.” “After lunching together, they started for the country.
In crossing the Luxembourg, Rodolphe met a great poet, who had
always behaved to him with charming kindness. For propriety’s
sake, he was going to pretend not to see him. But the poet did not
allow him time; in passing, he gave him a friendly recognition, and
bowed to his young companion with a gracious smile. ‘Who is
that gentleman?’ asked Mimi. Rodolphe replied by mentioning
a name which made her blush with pleasure and pride. ‘Oh,’
said Rodolphe, ‘this meeting with a poet who has sung so well of
love, is a good omen, and will bring luck to our reconciliation.’”
Banville’s statement of the way in which Murger fed his fiction day
by day upon the happenings of his own life, reminds us somewhat
of Mr. Robert S. Hichens’ grim and powerful story, “The
Collaborators.”</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f26'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r26'>26</SPAN>. </span>This passage, like sundry others already cited, is taken from
the dramatization of the “Scenes of Bohemian Life,” which was,
as we have seen, made by Murger in collaboration with Théodore
Barrière, and was extremely successful. It differs in many particulars
from the book, the scattered scenes of which are reduced to
coherence and unity, but the male characters preserve their general
traits.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f27'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r27'>27</SPAN>. </span>The “Norman uncle” very possibly stands for Schaune’s
father, the toy-manufacturer, to whose business he presently succeeded.</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f28'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r28'>28</SPAN>. </span>This incident of Marcel’s picture is said to have had its prototype
in a composition of Tabar’s, originally sketched as “The Passage
of the Red Sea,” and afterwards exhibited in the Salon as
“Niobe and Her Children Slain by the Arrows of Apollo and Diana.”</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f29'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r29'>29</SPAN>. </span>This famous volume appears in an “édition princeps,” with
“notes in modern Syriac,” in the very amusing story, “Son Excellence
Gustave Colline,” which really forms an episode of the
“Scènes de la Vie de Bohème,” though it is published in the collection
of miscellanies entitled “Dona Sirène.”</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f30'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r30'>30</SPAN>. </span>See “Les Derniers Buveurs d’Eau,” in “Dona Sirène”; “Les
Buveurs d’Eau”; “Scènes de la Vie de Jeunesse”; and the
“Scènes de la Vie de Bohème,” preface, and the story of “Le
Manchon de Francine.”</p>
</div>
<div class='footnote' id='f31'>
<p class='c010'><span class='label'><SPAN href='#r31'>31</SPAN>. </span>“Les Derniers Buveurs d’Eau,” in “Dona Sirène.” Murger
uses precisely the same words in the preface just referred to.</p>
</div>
<hr class='c016' />
<p class='c017'><span class='pageno' id='Page_239'>239</span>THE PRESSWORK ON THIS BOOK WAS
DONE IN SAN FRANCISCO, AT THE
PRINTING SHOP OF THE E. D. TAYLOR
COMPANY, IN THE MONTH OF OCTOBER
AND YEAR EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND
NINETY-SEVEN.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c007' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c008'>Transcriber’s note:</h2></div>
<p class='c018'>Page 13, ‘sequested’ changed to ‘sequestered,’ “in the sequestered neighborhood”</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 48, ‘euphuism’ changed to ‘Euphuism,’ “Yet Euphuism and Italianism were”</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 69, comma inserted after ‘Lowell,’ “asks Mr. Lowell,”</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 80, ‘euthusiasm’ changed to ‘enthusiasm,’ “versatility of enthusiasm”</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 137, comma struck after “Cléopâtre”</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 137, comma inserted after “Le Grand Cyrus”</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 148, ‘D’Aumont’ changed to ‘d’Aumont,’ “into the mouth of d’Aumont”</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 158, comma struck after ‘prevailing,’ “to hit the prevailing taste”</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 159, ‘ambibitious’ changed to ‘ambitious,’ “her one ambitious effort”</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 159, ‘consquence’ changed to ‘consequence,’ “mark the consequence!”</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 175 footnote, second ‘a’ struck before ‘true,’ ““Nun” a “true novel.””</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 188, ‘cookshops’ changed to ‘cook-shops,’ “kitchens and the cook-shops”</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 188 footnote 30, single quote changed to double quote before “Scènes de la Vie de Bohème”</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 205, ‘thfs’ changed to ‘this,’ “this meeting with a poet”</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 208, ‘Medicis’ changed to ‘Médicis,’ “bric-a-brac dealer, Father Médicis”</p>
<p class='c019'>Page 216, ‘courtersy’ changed to ‘courtesy,’ “By courtesy it was held”</p>
<SPAN name="endofbook"></SPAN>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />
1 of 2
2 of 2
Previous
Next
Update Required
To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.