Lorin Low Dame - "Handbook of the Trees of New England"

Edward S. Ellis - "Two Boys in Wyoming"

Various - "The American Missionary Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896"

Pierre Louys - "Les chansons de Bilitis"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Fortitude

H >> Hugh Walpole >> Fortitude




At the succeeding strokes his flesh quivered and shrank together and then
opened again--the pain was intolerable; his teeth met through the coverlet
and grated on one another; but before his eyes was the picture of Stephen
slowly straightening himself before his enemy and then that swinging
blow--he would not cry. He seemed to be sharing his punishment with
Stephen, and they were marching, hand in hand, down a road lined with
red-hot pokers.

His back was on fire, and his head was bursting and the soles of his feet
were very, very cold.

Then he heard, from a long way away, his father's voice:

"Now you will not disobey me again."

The door closed. Very slowly he raised himself, but moving was torture; he
put on his night-shirt and then quickly caught back a scream as it touched
his back. He moved to the window and closed it, then he climbed very slowly
on to his bed, and the tears that he had held back came, slowly at first,
and then more rapidly, at last in torrents. It was not the pain, although
that was bad, but it was the misery and the desolation and the great
heaviness of a world that held out no hope, no comfort, but only a great
cloud of unrelieved unhappiness.

At last, sick with crying, he fell asleep.


III

The first shadow of light was stealing across the white undulating common
and creeping through the bare trees of the desolate garden when four dark
figures, one tall, two fat, and one small, stole softly up the garden path.
They halted beneath the windows of the house; the snow had ceased falling,
and their breath rose in clouds above their heads. They danced a little in
the snow and drove their hands together, and then the tall figure said:

"Now, Tom Prother, out with thy musick." One of the fat figures felt in his
coat and produced four papers, and these were handed round.

"Bill, my son, it's for thee to lead off at thy brightest, mind ye. Let 'em
have it praper."

The small figure came forward and began; at first his voice was thin and
quavering, but in the second line it gathered courage and rang out full and
bold:

_As oi sat under a sicymore tree
A sicymore tree, a sicymore tree,
Oi looked me out upon the sea
On Christ's Sunday at morn._

"Well for thee, lad," said the tall figure approvingly, "but the cold is
creepin' from the tips o' my fingers till my singin' voice is most frozen.
Now, altogether."

And the birds in the silent garden woke amongst the ivy on the distant wall
and listened:

_Oi saw three ships a-sailin' there--
A sailin' there, a-sailin' there,
Jesu, Mary, and Joseph they bare
On Christ's Sunday at morn._

A small boy curled up, like the birds, under the roof stirred uneasily in
his sleep and then slowly woke. He moved, and gave a little cry because his
back hurt him, then he remembered everything. The voices came up to him
from the garden:

_Joseph did whistle and Mary did sing,
Mary did sing, Mary did sing,
And all the bells on earth did ring
For joy our Lord was born._

_O they sail'd in to Bethlehem,
To Bethlehem, to Bethlehem;
Saint Michael was the steersman,
Saint John sate in the horn._

_And all the bells on earth did ring,
On earth did ring, on earth did ring;
"Welcome be thou Heaven's King,
On Christ's Sunday at morn."_

He got slowly out of bed and went to the window. The light was coming in
broad bands from the East and he could hear the birds in the ivy. The four
black figures stood out against the white shadowy garden and their heads
were bent together. He opened his window, and the fresh morning air swept
about his face.

He could hear the whispers of the singers as they chose another carol and
suddenly above the dark iron gates of the garden appeared the broad red
face of the sun.




CHAPTER III

OF THE DARK SHOP OF ZACHARY TAN, AND OF THE DECISIONS THAT THE PEOPLE IN
SCAW HOUSE CAME TO CONCERNING PETER


I

But it was of the nature of the whole of life that these things should
pass. "Look back on this bitterness a year hence and see how trivial it
seems" was one of the little wisdoms that helped Peter's courage in after
years. And to a boy of twelve years a beating is forgotten with amazing
quickness, especially if it is a week of holiday and there have been other
beatings not so very long before.

It left things behind it, of course. It was the worst beating that Peter
had ever had, and that was something, but its occurrence marked more than a
mere crescendo of pain, and that evening stood for some new resolution that
he did not rightly understand yet--something that was in its beginning the
mere planting of a seed. But he had certainly met the affair in a new way
and, although in the week that followed he saw his father very seldom and
spoke to him not at all beyond "Good morning" and "Good night," he fancied
that he was in greater favour with him than he had ever been before.

There were always days of silence after a beating, and that was more
markedly the case now when it was a week of holidays and no Parlow to go
to. Peter did not mind the silence--it was perhaps safer--and so long as
he was home by six o'clock he could spend the day where he pleased. He
asked Mrs. Trussit about the carol-singers. There was a little room, the
housekeeper's room, to which he crept when he thought that it was safe
to do so. She was a different Mrs. Trussit within the boundary of her
kingdom--a very cosy kingdom with pink wall-paper, a dark red sofa, a
canary in a cage, and a fire very lively in the grate. From the depths of a
big arm-chair, her black silk dress rustling a little every now and then,
her knitting needles clinking in the firelight, Mrs. Trussit held many
conversations in a subdued voice with Peter, who sat on the table and swung
his legs. She was valuable from two points of view--as an Historian and
an Encyclopaedia. She had been, in the first place, in the most wonderful
houses--The Earl of Twinkerton's, Bambary House, Wiltshire, was the
greatest of these, and she had been there for ten years; there were
also Lady Mettlesham, the Duchess of Cranburn, and, to Peter, the most
interesting of all, Mr. Henry Galleon, the famous novelist who was so
famous that American ladies used to creep into his garden and pick leaves
off his laurels.

Peter had from her a dazzling picture of wonderful houses--of staircases
and garden walks, of thousands and thousands of shining rooms, of family
portraits, and footmen with beautiful legs. Above it all was "my lady" who
was always beautiful and stately and, of course, devoted to Mrs. Trussit.
Why that good woman left these noble mansions for so dreary a place as Scaw
House Peter never could understand, and for many years that remained a
mystery to him--but in awed whispers he asked her questions about the lords
and ladies of the land and especially about the famous novelist and, from
the answers given to him, constructed a complete and most romantic picture
of the Peerage.

But, as an Encyclopaedia, Mrs. Trussit was even more interesting. She had
apparently discovered at an early age that the golden rule of life was
never to confess yourself defeated by any question whatever, and there was
therefore nothing that he could ask her for which she had not an immediate
answer ready. Her brow was always unruffled, her black shining hair brushed
neatly back and parted down the middle, her large flat face always composed
and placid, and her voice never raised above a whisper. The only sign that
she ever gave of disturbance was a little clucking noise that she made in
her mouth like an aroused hen. Peter's time in the little pink sitting-room
was sometimes exceedingly short and he used to make the most of it by
shooting questions at the good lady at an astonishing rate, and he was
sometimes irritated by her slow and placid replies:

"What kind of stockings did Mr. Galleon wear?"

"He didn't wear stockings unless, as you might say, in country attire, and
then, if I remember correctly, they were grey."

"Had he any children?"

"There was one little dear when I had the honour of being in the house--and
since then I have heard that there are two more."

"Mrs. Trussit, where do children come from?"

"They are brought by God's good angels when we are all asleep in the night
time."

"Oh!" (this rather doubtfully). A pause--then "Did the Earl of Twinkerton
have hot or cold baths?"

"Cold in the morning, I believe, with the chill off and hot at night before
dressing for dinner. He was a very cleanly gentleman."

"Mrs. Trussit, where _is_ Patagonia? It came in the history this morning."

"North of the Caribbean Sea, I believe, my dear."

And so on, and Peter never forgot any of her answers. About the
carol-singers she was a little irritable. They had woken her it seemed from
a very delightful sleep, and she considered the whole affair "savoured of
Paganism." And then Peter found suddenly that he didn't wish to talk about
the carol-singers at all because the things that he felt about them were,
in some curious way, not the things that he could say to Mrs. Trussit.

She was very kind to him during that Christmas week and gave him mixed
biscuits out of a brightly shining tin that she kept in a cupboard in her
room. But outside the gates of her citadel she was a very different person,
spoke to Peter but rarely, and then always with majesty and from a long way
away. Her attitude to the little maid-of-all-work was something very
wonderful indeed, and even to Aunt Jessie her tone might be considered
patronising.

But indeed to Aunt Jessie it was very difficult to be anything else. Aunt
Jessie was a poor creature, as Peter discovered very early in life. He
found that she never had any answers ready to the questions that he asked
her and that she hesitated when he wished to know whether he might do a
thing or no. She was always trembling and shaking, and no strong-minded
person ever wore mittens. He had a great contempt for his aunt....

On New Year's Eve, the last day but one of release from old Parlow, Mr.
Westcott spent the day doing business in Truro, and at once the atmosphere
over Scaw House seemed to lighten. The snow had melted away, and there was
a ridiculous feeling of spring in the air; ridiculous because it was still
December, but Cornwall is often surprisingly warm in the heart of winter,
and the sun was shining as ardently as though it were the middle of June.
The sunlight flooded the dining-room and roused old grandfather Westcott
to unwonted life, so that he stirred in his chair and was quite unusually
talkative.

He stopped Peter after breakfast, as he was going out of the room and
called him to his side:

"Is that the sun, boy?"

"Yes, grandfather."

"Deary me, to think of that and me a poor, broken, old man not able to move
an arm or foot."

He raised himself amongst his cushions, and Peter saw an old yellow
wrinkled face with the skin drawn tight over the cheekbones and little
black shining eyes like drops of ink. A wrinkled claw shot out and clutched
Peter's hand.

"Do you love your grandfather, boy?"

"Of course, grandfather."

"That's right, that's right--on a nice sunny morning, too. Do you love your
father, boy?"

"Of course, grandfather."

"He, he--oh, yes--all the Westcotts love their fathers. _He_ loved his
father when he was young, didn't he? Oh, yes, I should rather think so."

And his voice rose into a shrill scream so that Peter jumped. Then he began
to look Peter up and down.

"You'll be strong, boy, when you're a man--oh, yes, I should rather think
so--I was strong once.... Do you hear that?... I was strong once, he, he!"

And here grandfather Westcott, overcome by his chuckling, began to cough so
badly that Peter was afraid that he was going to be ill, and considered
running for Aunt Jessie.

"Hit my back, boy--huh, huh! Ugh, ugh! That's right, hit it hard--that's
better--ugh, ugh! Oh! deary me! that's better--_what_ a nasty cough, oh,
deary me, what a nasty cough! I was strong once, boy, hegh, hegh! Indeed
I was, just like your father--and he'll be just like me, one day! Oh! yes,
he will--blast his bones! He, he! We all come to it--all of us strong men,
and we're cruel and hard, and won't give a poor old man enough for his
breakfast--and then suddenly we're old ourselves, and what fun that is! Oh!
Yes, your father will be old one day!" and suddenly, delighted with the
thought, the old man slipped down beneath his cushions and was fast asleep.

And Peter went out into the sunlight.


II

Peter looked very different at different times. When he was happy his
cheeks were flooded with colour, his eyes shone, and his mouth smiled. He
was happy now, and he forgot as he came out into the garden that he had
promised his aunt that he would go in and see his mother for a few minutes.
Old Curtis, wearing the enormous sun-hat that he always had flapping about
his head and his trousers tied below his knees with string in the most
ridiculous way, was sweeping the garden path. He never did very much work,
and the garden was in a shocking state of neglect, but he told delightful
stories. To-day, however, he was in a bad temper and would pay no attention
to Peter at all, and so Peter left him and went out into the high road.

It was two miles across the common to Stephen's farm and it took the boy
nearly an hour, because the ground was uneven and there were walls to
climb, and also because he was thinking of what his grandfather had said.
Would his father one day be old and silly like his grandfather? Did every
one get old and silly like that? and, if so, what was the use of being born
at all? But what happened to all his father's strength? Where did it all go
to? In some curious undefined way he resented his grandfather's remarks. He
could have loved and admired his father immensely had he been allowed to,
but even if that were not permitted he could stand up for him when he was
attacked. What right had his silly old grandfather to talk like that?...
His father would one day be old? And Stephen, would he be old, too? Did all
strength go?

Peter was crossing a ploughed field, and the rich brown earth heaved in a
great circle against the sky and in the depth of its furrows there were
mysterious velvet shadows--the brown hedges stood back against the sky
line. The world was so fresh and clean and strong this morning that the
figure and voice of his grandfather hung unpleasantly about him and
depressed him. There were so many things that he wanted to know and so few
people to tell him, and he turned through the white gates of Stephen's farm
with a consciousness that since Christmas Eve the world had begun to be a
new place.

Stephen was sitting in the upstairs room scratching his head over his
accounts, whilst his old mother sat dozing, with her knitting fallen on
to her lap by the fire. The window was open, and all the sound and smells
of the farm came into the room. The room was an old one with brown oaken
rafters and whitewashed walls, a long oaken table down the middle of it,
and a view over the farmyard and the sweeping fields beyond it, lost at
last, in the distant purple hills. Peter was given a chair opposite the old
lady, who was nearly eighty, and wore a beautiful white cap, and she woke
up and talked incessantly, because she was very garrulous by nature and
didn't care in the least to whom she talked. Peter politely listened to
what she had to say, although he understood little of it, and his eyes were
watching for the moment when the accounts should be finished and Stephen
free.

"Ay," said the old lady, "and it were good Mr. Tenement were the rector
in those days, I remember, and he gave us a roaring discourse many's the
Sunday. Church is not what it was, with all this singing and what not and
the clothes the young women wear--I remember..."

But Stephen had closed his books with a bang and given his figures up in
despair. "I don't know how it is, boy," he said, "but they're at something
different every time yer look at 'em--they're one too many for me, that's
certain."

One of Stephen's eyes was still nearly closed, and both eyes were black and
blue, and his right cheek had a bad bruise on it, but Peter thought it was
wiser not to allude to the encounter. The farm was exceedingly interesting,
and then there was dinner, and it was not until the meal had been cleared
away that Peter remembered that he wanted to ask some questions, and then
Stephen interrupted him with:

"Like to go to Zachary Tan's with me this afternoon, boy? I've got to be
lookin' in."

Peter jumped to his feet with excitement.

"Oh! Steve! This afternoon--this _very_ afternoon?"

It was the most exciting thing possible. Zachary Tan's was the curiosity
shop of Treliss and famous even twenty years ago throughout the south
country. It is still there, I believe, although Zachary himself is dead and
with him has departed most of the atmosphere of the place, and it is now
smart and prosperous, although in those days it was dark and dingy enough.
No one knew whence Zachary had come, and he was one of the mysteries of a
place that deals, even now, in mysteries. He had arrived as a young man
with a basket over his back thirty years before Peter saw the light, when
Treliss was a little fishing village and Mr. Bannister, Junior, had not
cast his enterprising eye over The Man at Arms. Zachary had beads and
silks, and little silver images in his basket, and he had stayed there
in a little room over the shop, and things had prospered with him. The
inhabitants of the place had never trusted him, but they were always
interested. "Thiccy Zachary be a poor trade," they had said at first, "poor
trade" signifying anything or anybody not entirely approved of--but they
had hung about his shop, had bought his silks and little ornaments, and had
talked to him sometimes with eyes open and mouth agape at the things that
he could tell them. And then people had come from Truro and Pendragon and
even Bodmin and, finally, Exeter, because they had heard of the things
that he had for sale. No one knew where he found his treasures, for he was
always in his shop, smiling and amiable, but sometimes gentlemen would
come from London, and he had strange friends like Mr. Andreas Morelli,
concerning whose life a book has already been written. Zachary Tan's
shop became at last the word in Treliss for all that was strange and
unusual--the strongest link with London and other curious places. He had a
little back room behind his shop, where he would welcome his friends, give
them something to drink and talk about the world. He was always so friendly
that people thought that he must wish for things in return, but he never
asked for anything, nor did he speak about himself at all. As for his
portrait, he had a pale face, a big beak nose, very black hair that hung
over his forehead and was always untidy, a blue velvet jacket, black
trousers, green slippers, and small feet.

He also wore two rings and blew his long nose in silk handkerchiefs of
the most wonderful colours. All these things may seem of the slenderest
importance, but they are not insignificant if one considers their
effect upon Peter. Zachary was the most romantic figure that he had yet
encountered; to walk through the shop with its gold and its silver, its
dust and its jewels, into the dark little room beyond; to hear this
wonderful person talk, to meet men who lived in London, to listen by the
light of flickering candles and with one's eyes fixed upon portraits of
ladies dancing in the slenderest attire, this was indeed Life, and Life
such as The Bending Mule, Scaw House, and even Stephen's farm itself could
not offer.

Peter often wondered why Stephen and Zachary were friends, because they
seemed to have little enough in common, but Stephen was a silent man, who
liked all kinds of company, and Peter noticed that Zachary was always very
polite and obliging to Stephen.

Stephen was very silent going across the Common and down the high road
into the town, but Peter knew him too well by this time to interrupt his
thoughts. He was thinking perhaps about his accounts that would not come
right or about the fight and Burstead his enemy.

Everybody had their troubles that they thought about and every one had
their secrets, the things that they kept to themselves--even Aunt Jessie
and old Curtis the gardener--one must either be as clever as Zachary Tan
or as foolish as Dicky the Idiot to know very much about people. Zachary,
Peter had noticed, was one of the persons who always listened to everything
that Dicky had to say, and treated him with the greatest seriousness, even
when he seemed to be talking about the wildest things--and it was a great
many years after this that Peter discovered that it was only the wisest
people who knew how very important fools were. Zachary's shop was at the
very bottom of Poppero Street, the steep and cobbled street that goes
straight down to the little wooden jetty where the fishing boats lie, and
you could see the sea like a square handkerchief between the houses on
either side. Many of the houses in Poppero Street are built a little below
the level of the pathway, and you must go down steps to reach the door.
Zachary's shop was like this, and it had a green door with a bright
brass knocker. There were always many things jumbled together in the
window--candlesticks, china shepherds and shepherdesses, rings and
necklaces, cups and saucers, little brass figures, coins, snuff-boxes,
match-boxes, charms, and old blue china plates, and at the back a complete
suit of armour that had been there ever since Zachary had first opened his
shop.

Of course, inside there were a thousand and one things of the most exciting
kind, but Stephen, an enormous figure in the low-roofed shop, brushed past
the pale-faced youth whom Zachary now hired to assist with the customers
and passed into the dark room beyond, Peter close at his heels.

There were two silver candlesticks lighted on the mantelpiece, and there
were two more in the centre of the green baize table and round the fire
were seated four men. One of them Zachary himself, another was pleasant
little Mr. Bannister, host of The Man at Arms, another was old Frosted
Moses, sucking as usual at his great pipe, and the fourth was a stranger.

Zachary rose and came forward smiling. "Ah, Mr. Brant, delighted to
see you, I'm sure. Brought the boy with you? Excellent, excellent. Mr.
Bannister and Mr. Tathero (old Moses' society name) you know, of course;
this is Mr. Emilio Zanti, a friend of mine from London."

The stranger, who was an enormous fat man with a bald head and an eager
smile rose and shook hands with Stephen, he also shook hands with Peter as
though it had been the ambition of his life to meet that small and rather
defiant person.

He also embarrassed Peter very much by addressing him as though he were
grown up, and listening courteously to everything that he had to say. Peter
decided that he did not like him--but "a gentleman from London" was always
an exciting introduction. The boy was able very quickly to obliterate
himself by sitting down somewhere in a corner and remaining absolutely
silent and perhaps that was the reason that he was admitted to so many
elderly gatherings--he was never in the way. He slipped quickly into a
chair, hidden in the shadow of the wall, but close to the elbow of "the
gentleman from London," whose face he watched with the greatest curiosity.
Stephen was silent, and Frosted Moses very rarely said anything at all, so
that the conversation speedily became a dialogue between Zachary and the
foreign gentleman, with occasional appeals to Mr. Brant for his unbiassed
opinion. Peter's whole memory of the incident was vague and uncertain,
although in after years he often tried very hard to recall it all to
mind. He was excited by the mere atmosphere of the place, by the silver
candlesticks, the dancing ladies on the walls, Zachary's blue coat, and the
sense of all the wonderful things in the shop beyond. He had no instinct
that it was all important beyond the knowledge that it roused a great many
things in him that the rest of his life left untouched and anything to do
with "London," a city, as he knew from Tom Jones and David Copperfield, of
extraordinary excitement and adventure, was an event. He watched Mr. Emilio
Zanti closely, and he decided that his smile was not real, and that it must
be very unpleasant to have a bald head. He also noticed that he said things
in a funny way: like "ze beautiful country zat you 'ave 'ere with its sea
and its woods" and "I 'ave the greatest re-spect for ze Englishman"--also
his hands were very fat and he wore rings like Zachary.

Sometimes Peter fancied that his words meant a great deal more than they
seemed to mean. He laughed when there was really nothing to laugh at and
he tried to make Stephen talk, but Stephen was very silent. On the whole
the conversation was dull, Peter thought, and once he nodded and was very
nearly asleep, and fancied that the gentleman from London was spreading
like a balloon and filling all the room. There was no mention of London at
all.

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