Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson - "The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays"

P.A. Sheehan - "My New Curate"

Joseph Hergesheimer - "Linda Condon"

W. S. B. Mathews - "A Popular History of the Art of Music"

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.

Henry Dunbar

M >> M. E. Braddon >> Henry Dunbar




He was a very cheerful young man, and perhaps that cheerfulness was the
greatest charm he possessed. He was a man in whom no force of fashion or
companionship would ever engender the peevish _blase_-ness so much
affected by modern youth. Did he dance? Of course he did, and he adored
dancing. Did he sing? Well, he did his best, and had a fine volume of
rich bass voice, that sounded remarkably well on the water, after a
dinner at the Star and Garter, in that dim dewy hour, when the willow
shadowed Thames is as a southern lake, and the slow dip of the oars is
in itself a kind of melody. Had he been much abroad? Yes, and he gloried
in the Continent; the dear old inconvenient inns, and the extortionate
landlords, and the insatiable commissionaires--he revelled in the
commissionaires; and the dear drowsy slow trains, with an absurd guard,
who talks an unintelligible _patois_, and the other man, who always
loses one's luggage! Delicious! And the dear little peasant-girls with
white caps, who are so divinely pretty when you see them in the distance
under a sunny meridian sky, and are so charming in coloured chalk upon
tinted paper, but such miracles of ugliness, comparatively speaking,
when you behold them at close quarters. And the dear jingling
diligences, with very little harness to speak of, but any quantity of
old rope; and the bad wines, and the dust, and the cathedrals, and the
beggars, and the trente-et-quarante tables, and in short everything. Sir
Philip Jocelyn spoke of the universe as a young husband talks of his
wife; and was never tired of her beauty or impatient of her faults.

The poor about Jocelyn's Rock idolized the young lord of the soil. The
poor like happy people, if there is nothing insolent in their happiness.
Philip was rich, and he distributed his wealth right royally: he was
happy, and he shared his happiness as freely as he shared his wealth. He
would divide a case of choice Manillas with a bedridden pensioner in the
Union, or carry a bottle of the Jocelyn Madeira--the celebrated Madeira
with the brown seal--in the pocket of his shooting-coat, to deliver it
into the horny hands of some hard-working mother who was burdened with a
sick child. He would sit for an hour together telling an agricultural
labourer of the queer farming he had seen abroad; and he had stood
godfather--by proxy--to half the yellow-headed urchins within ten miles'
radius of Jocelyn's Bock. No taint of vice or dissipation had ever
sullied the brightness of his pleasant life. No wretched country girl
had ever cursed his name before she cast herself into the sullen waters
of a lonely mill-stream. People loved him; and he deserved their love,
and was worthy of their respect. He had taken no high honours at Oxford;
but the sternest officials smiled when they spoke of him, and recalled
the boyish follies that were associated with his name; a sickly bedmaker
had been pensioned for life by him; and the tradesmen who had served him
testified to his merits as a prompt and liberal paymaster. I do not
think that in all his life Philip Jocelyn had ever directly or
indirectly caused a pang of pain or sorrow to any human being, unless it
was, indeed, to a churlish heir-at-law, who may have looked with a
somewhat evil eye upon the young man's vigorous and healthful aspect,
which gave little hope to his possible successor.

The heir-at-law would have gnashed his teeth in impotent rage had he
known the crisis which came to pass in the baronet's life a short time
after Mr. Dunbar's return from India; a crisis very common to youth, and
very lightly regarded by youth, but a solemn and a fearful crisis
notwithstanding.

The master of Jocelyn's Rock fell in love. All the poetry of his nature,
all the best feelings, the purest attributes of an imperfect character,
concentrated themselves into one passion, Sir Philip Jocelyn fell in
love. The arch magician waved his wand, and all the universe was
transformed into fairyland: a lovely Paradise, a modern Eden, radiant
with the reflected light that it received from the face of a woman. I
almost hesitate to tell this old, old story over again--this perpetual
story of love at first sight.

It is very beautiful, this sudden love, which is born of one glance at
the wonderful face that has been created to bewitch us; but I doubt if
it is not, after all, the baser form of the great passion. The love that
begins with esteem, that slowly grows out of our knowledge of the loved
one, is surely the purer and holier type of affection.

This love, whose gradual birth we rarely watch or recognize--this love,
that steals on us like the calm dawning of the eastern light, strikes to
a deeper root and grows into a grander tree than that fair sudden
growth, that marvellous far-shooting butterfly-blossoming orchid, called
love at first sight. The glorious exotic flower may be wanting, but the
strong root lies deeply hidden in the heart.

The man who loves at first sight generally falls in love with the violet
blue of a pair of tender eyes, the delicate outline of a Grecian nose.
The man who loves the woman he has known and watched, loves her because
he believes her to be the purest and truest of her sex.

To this last, love is faith. He cannot doubt the woman he adores: for he
adores her because he believes and has proved her to be above all doubt.
We may fairly conjecture that Othello's passion for the simple Venetian
damsel was love at first sight. He loved Desdemona because she was
pretty, and looked at him with sweet maidenly glances of pity when he
told those prosy stories of his--with full traveller's license, no
doubt--over Brabantio's mahogany.

The tawny-visaged general loved the old man's daughter because he
admired her, and not because he knew her; and so, by and bye, on the
strength of a few foul hints from a scoundrel, he is ready to believe
this gentle, pitiful girl the basest and most abandoned of women.

Hamlet would not so have acted had it been his fate to marry the woman
he loved. Depend upon it, the Danish prince had watched Ophelia closely,
and knew all the ins and outs of that young lady's temper, and had laid
conversational traps for her occasionally, I dare say, trying to entice
her into some bit of toadyism that should betray any latent taint of
falsehood inherited from poor time-serving Polonius. The Prince of
Denmark would have been rather a fidgety husband, perhaps, but he would
never have had recourse to a murderous bolster at the instigation of a
low-born knave.

Unhappily, some women are apt to prefer passionate, blustering Othello
to sentimental and metaphysical Hamlet. The foolish creatures are
carried away by noise and clamour, and most believe him who protests the
loudest.

Philip Jocelyn and Laura Dunbar met at that dinner-party which the
millionaire gave to his friends in celebration of his return. They met
again at the ball, where Laura waltzed with Philip; the young man had
learned to waltz upon the other side of the Alps, and Miss Dunbar
preferred him to any other of her partners. At the _fete champetre_ they
met again; and had their future lives revealed to them by a
theatrical-looking gipsy imported from London for the occasion, whose
arch prophecies brought lovely blushes into Laura's cheeks, and afforded
Philip an excellent opportunity for admiring the effect of dark-brown
eyelashes drooping over dark-blue eyes. They met again and again; now at
a steeple-chase, now at a dinner-party, where Laura appeared with some
friendly _chaperon_; and the baronet fell in love with the banker's
beautiful daughter.

He loved her truly and devotedly, after his own mad-headed fashion. He
was a true Jocelyn--impetuous, mad-headed daring; and from the time of
those festivities at Maudesley Abbey he only dreamed and thought of
Laura Dunbar. From that hour he haunted the neighbourhood of Maudesley
Abbey. There was a bridle-path through the park to a little village
called Lisford; and if that primitive Warwickshire village had been the
most attractive place upon this earth, Sir Philip could scarcely have
visited it oftener than he did.

Heaven knows what charm he found in the shady slumberous old street, the
low stone market-place, with rusty iron gates surmounted by the Jocelyn
escutcheon. The grass grew in the quiet quadrangle; the square
church-tower was half hidden by the sheltering ivy; the gabled
cottage-roofs were lop-sided with age. It was scarcely a place to offer
any very great attraction to the lord of Jocelyn Rock in all the glory
of his early man-hood; and yet Philip Jocelyn went there three times a
week upon an average, during the period that succeeded the ball and
morning concert at Maudesley Abbey.

The shortest way from Jocelyn's Bock to Lisford was by the high road,
but Philip Jocelyn did not care to go by the shortest way. He preferred
to take that pleasant bridle-path through Maudesley Park, that delicious
grassy arcade where the overarching branches of the old elms made a
shadowy twilight, only broken now and then by sudden patches of yellow
sunshine; where the feathery ferns trembled with every low whisper of
the autumn breeze: where there was a faint perfume of pine wood; where
every here and there, between the lower branches of the trees, there was
a blue glimmer of still water-pools, half-hidden under flat green leaves
of wild aquatic plants, where there was a solemn stillness that reminded
one of the holy quiet of a church, and where Sir Philip Jocelyn had
every chance of meeting with Laura Dunbar.

He met her there very often. Not alone, for Dora Macmahon was sometimes
with her, and the faithful Elizabeth Madden was always at hand to play
propriety, and to keep a sharp eye upon the interests of her young
mistress. But then it happened unfortunately that the faithful Elizabeth
was very stout, and rather asthmatic; and though Miss Dunbar could not
have had a more devoted duenna, she might certainly have had a more
active one. And it also happened that Miss Macmahon, having received
several practical illustrations of the old adage with regard to the
disadvantage of a party of three persons as compared to a party of two
persons, fell into the habit of carrying her books with her, and would
sit and read in some shady nook near the abbey, while Laura wandered
into the wilder regions of the park.

Beneath the shelter of the overarching elms, amidst the rustling of the
trembling ferns, Laura Dunbar and Philip Jocelyn met very often during
that bright autumnal weather. Their meetings were purely accidental of
course, as such meetings always are, but they were not the less pleasant
because of their uncertainty.

They were all the more pleasant, perhaps. There was that delicious fever
of suspense which kept both young eager hearts in a constant glow. There
were Laura's sudden blushes, which made her wonderful beauty doubly
wonderful. There was Philip Jocelyn's start of glad astonishment, and
the bright sparkle in his dark-brown eyes as he saw the slender, queenly
figure approaching him under the shadow of the trees. How beautiful she
looked, with the folds of her dress trailing over the dewy grass, and a
flickering halo of sunlight tremulous upon her diadem of golden hair!
Sometimes she wore a coquettish little hat, with a turned-up brim and a
peacock's plume; sometimes a broad-leaved hat of yellow straw, with
floating ribbon and a bunch of feathery grasses perched bewitchingly
upon the brim. She had the dog Pluto with her always, and generally a
volume of some new novel under her arm. I am ashamed to be obliged to
confess that this young heiress was very frivolous, and liked reading
novels better than improving her mind by the perusal of grave histories,
or by the study of the natural sciences. She spent day after day in
happy idleness--reading, sketching, playing, singing, talking, sometimes
gaily sometimes seriously, to her faithful old nurse, or to Dora, or to
Arthur Lovell, as the case might be. She had a thorough-bred horse that
had been given to her by her grandfather, but she very rarely rode him
beyond the grounds, for Dora Macmahon was no horsewoman, having been
brought up by a prim aunt of her dead mother's, who looked upon riding
as an unfeminine accomplishment; and Miss Dunbar had therefore no better
companion for her rides than a grey-haired old groom, who had ridden
behind Percival Dunbar for forty years or so.

Philip Jocelyn generally went to Lisford upon horseback; but when, as so
often happened, he met Miss Dunbar and her companion strolling amongst
the old elms, it was his habit to get off his horse, and to walk by
Laura's side, leading the animal by the bridle. Sometimes he found the
two young ladies sitting on camp-stools at the foot of one of the trees,
sketching effects of light and shadow in the deep glades around them. On
such occasions the baronet used to tie his horse to the lower branch of
an old elm, and taking his stand behind Miss Dunbar, would amuse himself
by giving her a lesson in perspective, with occasional hints to Miss
Macmahon, who, as the young man remarked, drew so much better than her
sister, that she really required very little assistance.

By-and-by this began to be an acknowledged thing. Special hours were
appointed for these artistic studies: and Philip Jocelyn ceased to go to
Lisford at all, contenting himself with passing almost every fine
morning under the elms at Maudesley. He found that he had a very
intelligent pupil in the banker's daughter: but I think, if Miss Dunbar
had been less intelligent, her instructor would have had patience with
her, and would have still found his best delight beneath the shadow of
those dear old elms.

What words can paint the equal pleasure of giving and receiving those
lessons, in the art which was loved alike by pupil and master; but which
was so small an element in the happiness of those woodland meetings?
What words can describe Laura's pleading face when she found that the
shadow of a ruined castle wouldn't agree with the castle itself, or that
a row of poplars in the distance insisted on taking that direction which
our transatlantic brothers call "slantindicular?" And then the cutting
of pencils, and crumbling of bread, and searching for mislaid scraps of
India-rubber, and mixing of water-colours, and adjusting of palettes on
the prettiest thumb in Christendom, or the planting a sheaf of brushes
in the dearest little hand that ever trembled when it met the tenderly
timid touch of an amateur drawing-master's fingers;--all these little
offices, so commonplace and wearisome when a hard-worked and poorly-paid
professor performs them for thirty or forty clamorous girls, on a
burning summer afternoon, in a great dust-flavoured schoolroom with bare
curtainless windows, were in this case more delicious than any words of
mine can tell.

But September and October are autumnal months; and their brightest
sunshine is, after all, only a deceptive radiance when compared to the
full glory of July. The weather grew too cold for the drawing-lessons
under the elms, and there could be no more appointments made between
Miss Dunbar and her enthusiastic instructor.

"I can't have my young lady ketch cold, Sir Philip, for all the
perspectives in the world," said the faithful Elizabeth. "I spoke to her
par about it only the other day; but, lor'! you may just as well speak
to a post as to Mr. Dunbar. If Miss Laura comes out in the park now, she
must wrap herself up warm, and walk fast, and not go getting the cold
shivers for the sake of drawing a parcel of stumps of trees and
such-like tomfoolery."

Mrs. Madden made this observation in rather an unpleasant tone of voice
one morning when the baronet pleaded for another drawing-lesson. The
truth of the matter was that Elizabeth Madden felt some slight pangs of
conscience with regard to her own part in this sudden friendship which
had arisen between Laura Dunbar and Philip Jocelyn. She felt that she
had been rather remiss in her duties as duenna, and was angry with
herself. But stronger than this feeling of self-reproach was her
indignation against Sir Philip.

Why did he not immediately make an offer of his hand to Laura Dunbar?

Mrs. Madden had expected the young man's proposal every day for the last
few weeks: every day she had been doomed to disappointment. And yet she
was perfectly convinced that Philip Jocelyn loved her young mistress.
The sharp eyes of the matron had fathomed the young man's sentiments
long before Laura Dunbar dared to whisper to herself that she was
beloved. Why, then, did he not propose? Who could be a more fitting
bride for the lord of Jocelyn's Rock than queenly Laura Dunbar, with her
splendid dower of wealth and beauty?

Full of these ambitious hopes, Elizabeth Madden had played her part of
duenna with such discretion as to give the young people plenty of
opportunity for sweet, half-whispered converse, for murmured
confidences, soft and low as the cooing of turtle-doves. But in all
these conversations no word hinting at an offer of marriage had dropped
from the lips of Philip Jocelyn.

He was so happy with Laura; so happy in those pleasant meetings under
the Maudesley elms, that no thought of anything so commonplace as a
stereotyped proposal of marriage had a place in his mind.

Did he love her? Of course he did: more dearly than he had ever before
loved any human creature; except that tender and gentle being, whose
image, vaguely beautiful, was so intermingled with the dreams and
realities of his childhood in that dim period in which it is difficult
to distinguish the shadows of the night from the events of the
day,--that pale and lovely creature whom he had but just learned to call
"mother," when she faded out of his life for ever.

It was only when the weather grew too cold for out-of-door drawing
lessons that Sir Philip began to think that it was time to contemplate
the very serious business of a proposal. He would have to speak to the
banker, and all that sort of thing, of course, the baronet thought, as
he sat by the fire in the oak-panelled breakfast-room at the Rock,
pulling his thick moustaches reflectively, and staring at the red embers
on the open hearth. The young man idolized Laura; but he did _not_
particularly affect the society of Henry Dunbar. The millionaire was
very courteous, very conciliating: but there was something in his stiff
politeness, his studied smile, his deliberate speech, something entirely
vague and indefinable, which had the same chilly effect upon Sir
Philip's friendliness, as a cold cellar has on delicate-flavoured port.
The subtle aroma vanished under that dismal influence.

"He's _her_ father, and I'd kneel down, like the little boys in the
streets, and clean his boots, if he wanted them cleaned, because he is
her father," thought the young man; "and yet, somehow or other, I can't
get on with him."

No! between the Anglo-Indian banker and Sir Philip Jocelyn there was no
sympathy. They had no tastes in common: or let me rather say, Henry
Dunbar revealed no taste in common with those of the young man whose
highest hope in life was to be his son-in-law. The frank-hearted young
country gentleman tried in vain to conciliate him, or to advance from
the cold out-work of ceremonious acquaintanceship into the inner
stronghold of friendly intercourse.

But when Sir Philip, after much hesitation and deliberation, presented
himself one morning in the banker's tapestried sitting-room, and
unburdened his heart to that gentleman--stopping every now and then to
stare at the maker's name imprinted upon the lining of his hat, as if
that name had been a magical symbol whence he drew certain auguries by
which he governed his speech--Mr. Dunbar was especially gracious. "Would
he honour Sir Philip by entrusting his daughter's happiness to his
keeping? would he bestow upon Sir Philip the inestimable blessing of
that dear hand? Why, of course he would, provided always that Laura
wished it. In such a matter as this Laura's decision should be supreme.
He never had contemplated interfering in his daughter's bestowal of her
affections: so long as they were not wasted upon an unworthy object. He
wished her to marry whom she pleased; provided that she married an
honest man."

Mr. Dunbar gave a weary kind of sigh as he said this; but the sigh was
habitual to him, and he apologized for and explained it sometimes by
reference to his liver, which was disordered by five-and-thirty years in
an Indian climate.

"I wish Laura to marry," he said; "I shall be glad when she has secured
the protection of a good husband."

Sir Phillip Jocelyn sprang up with his face all a-glow with rapture, and
would fain have seized the banker's hand in token of his gratitude; but
Henry Dunbar waved him off with an authoritative gesture.

"Good morning, Sir Philip," he said; "I am very poor company, and I
shall be glad to be alone with the _Times_. You young men don't
appreciate the _Times_. You want your newspapers filled with
prize-fighting and boat-racing, and the last gossip from 'the Corner.'
You'll find Miss Dunbar in the blue drawing-room. Speak to her as soon
as you please; and let me know the result of the interview."

It is not often that the heiress of a million or thereabouts is quite so
readily disposed of. Sir Philip Jocelyn walked on air as he quitted the
banker's apartments.

"Who ever would have thought that he was such a delicious old brick?" he
thought. "I expected any quantity of cold water; and instead of that, he
sends me straight to my darling with _carte blanche_ to go in and win,
if I can. If I can! Suppose Laura doesn't love me, after all. Suppose
she's only a beautiful coquette, who likes to see men go mad for love of
her. And yet I won't think that; I won't be down-hearted; I won't
believe she's anything but what she seems--an angel of purity and
truth."

But, spite of his belief in Laura's truth, the young baronet's courage
was very low when he went into the blue drawing-room, and found Miss
Dunbar seated in a deep embayed window, with the sunshine lighting up
her hair and gleaming amongst the folds of her violet silk dress. She
had been drawing; but her sketching apparatus lay idle on the little
table by her side, and one listless hand hung down upon her dress, with
a pencil held loosely between the slender fingers. She was looking
straight before her, out upon the sunlit lawn, all gorgeous with
flaunting autumn flowers; and there was something dreamy, not to say
pensive, in the attitude of her drooping head.

But she started presently at the sound of that manly footstep; the
pencil dropped from between her idle fingers, and she rose and turned
towards the intruder. The beautiful face was in shadow as she turned
away from the window; but no shadow could hide its sudden brightness,
the happy radiance which lit up that candid countenance, as Miss Dunbar
recognized her visitor.

The lover thought that one look more precious than Jocelyn's Rock, and a
baronetcy that dated from the days of England's first Stuarts--that one
glorious smile, which melted away in a moment, and gave place to bright
maidenly blushes, fresh and beautiful as the dewy heart of an
old-fashioned cabbage-rose gathered at sunrise.

That one smile was enough. Philip Jocelyn was no cox-comb, but he knew
all at once that he was beloved, and that very few words were needed. A
great many were said, nevertheless; and I do not think two happier
people ever sat side by side in the late autumn sunshine than those two,
who lingered in the deep embayed window till the sun was low in the rosy
western sky, and told Philip Jocelyn that his visit to Maudesley Abbey
had very much exceeded the limits of a morning call.

So Philip Jocelyn was accepted. Early the next morning he called again
upon Mr. Dunbar, and begged that an early date might be chosen for the
wedding. The banker assented willingly enough to the proposition.

"Let the marriage take place in the first week in November," he said. "I
am tired of living at Maudesley, and I want to get away to the
Continent. Of course I must remain here to be present at my daughter's
wedding."

Philip Jocelyn was only too glad to receive this permission to hurry the
day of the ceremonial. He went at once to Laura, and told her what Mr.
Dunbar had said. Mrs. Madden was indignant at this unceremonious manner
of arranging matters.

"Where's my young lady's _trussaw_ to be got at a moment's notice, I
should like to know? A deal you gentlemen know about such things. It's
no use talking, my lord, there ain't a dressmaker livin' as would
undertake the wedding-clothes for baronet's lady in little better than a
month."

But Mrs. Madden's objections were speedily overruled. To tell the truth,
the honest-hearted creature was very much pleased to find that her young
lady was going to be a baronet's wife, after all. She forgot all about
her old favourite, Arthur Lovell, and set herself to work to expedite
that most important matter of the wedding-garments. A man came down
express from Howell and James's to Maudesley Abbey, with a bundle of
patterns; and silks and velvets, gauzes and laces, and almost every
costly fabric that was made, were ordered for Miss Dunbar's equipment.
West-end dressmakers were communicated with. A French milliner, who
looked like a lady of fashion, arrived one morning at Maudesley Abbey,
and for a couple of hours poor Laura had to endure the slow agony of
"trying on," while Mrs. Madden and Dora Macmahon discussed all the
colours in the rainbow, and a great many new shades and combinations of
colour, invented by aspiring French chemists.

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