Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

I complied, and while the General was absent, engaged in carrying out some
hospitable suggestions for my refreshment, I examined the room. It was
large, and handsomely furnished. I looked into the bookcases: the shelves
were filled with works on War, from Caesar's Commentaries down to Louis
Napoleon on Rifled Cannon. In one corner stood a suit of armor; in another
a stand of firearms; between them a star of bayonets. On the mantelpiece I
perceived a model of a small field-piece in brass and oak, and, what
interested me more, a cigarbox. I raised the lid; the box was half full of
highly creditable-looking cigars. My soul expanded with the thought of a
probable offer of at least one.

"None of your Flor de Connecticuts," I thought, "from the Vuelta Abajo of
New-Windsor, but the genuine Simon Puros."

A second glance at the inside of the lid caused grave doubts to depress my
spirits. I beheld there, in place of the usual ill-executed lithograph with
its _fabricas_ and its _calles_, three small portraits. The middle one was
the General in full uniform; I recognized him easily; the other two were no
doubt his aides-de-camp;--all evidently photographs; they were so ugly. I
dropped the lid in disappointment, and turned to the side-table. On it lay
a handsome sword in an open box lined with silk. Over it hung, framed and
glazed, the speech of the committee appointed by his fellow-soldiers of the
county to present the sword to the General, together with the General's
"neat and appropriate" answer and acceptance.

I began to be a little astonished. I certainly did not expect anything of
this sort. Our old man called him General, to be sure; but General means
nothing, in the rural districts, but a certain amount of wealth and
respectability. It has taken the place of Squire. But here was I with a man
who took his title _au serieux_. What with the uniform, the cannon, and the
coachman, I began to feel like an ambassador to a potentate with a standing
army.

Here the General reappeared, bearing in his august hands a decanter and a
pitcher. After due refreshment, I produced my papers, made the necessary
explanations, and executed my commission so much to his satisfaction that
he invited me cordially to dine and spend the night, instead of taking the
evening-train down. I accepted, of course,--such chances seldom fell into
my way,--and was shown into a nice little bedroom, in which I was expected
to dress for dinner. Dress, indeed! I had on my best, and did not come to
stay. Novel-heroes manage to remain weeks without apparent luggage; but a
modern attorney's clerk, however moderate may be his toilette-tackle, finds
it inconvenient to be separated from it. However, I did what I
could,--washed my hands, settled the bow of my neck-tie, smoothed my hair
with my fingers, and thought, as I descended to the drawing-room, of the
travelling Frenchman, who, after a night spent in a diligence, wiped out
his eyes with his handkerchief, put on a paper false collar, and
exclaimed,--"_Me voici propre!_"

The General, in a fatigue-dress, presented me to Mrs. Van Bummel, a
good-looking woman of pleasant dimensions,--to Miss Bellona Van Bummel, who
evidently thought me beneath her notice,--and to the Reverend Moses Wether,
whose mild face, white cravat, and straight-cut collar proclaimed him. As I
came in, his Reverence attempted to slip meekly out, but was stopped
energetically by the General.

"How is this? Mr. Wether, you know you cannot leave, Sir."

"But, my dear General, I only dropped in for a few moments; and really I
have so much to do!"

"I am sorry, Sir," rejoined the General, sternly, "but you cannot be
excused. You accepted the position of Chaplain to the Regiment. You
neglected to attend the last two reviews. You were condemned by a Court
Martial, over which I presided, to twenty-four hours' arrest, which you
must now submit to."

"But, my dear General," feebly expostulated the man of prayer, "you know I
thought the nomination a mere pleasantry; I had no idea you were serious,
or I should never have listened to the proposition."

"Can't help that, Sir. You accepted the commission, you neglected your
duty, and you must take the consequences."

Just then, as the poor perplexed parson was about to make another attempt
for liberty, a side-door swung open; a well-built, comely servant-girl,
dressed like Jenny Lind in the "Fille du Regiment," appeared. Bringing the
back of her hand to her forehead, she said,--

"General, dinner is ready."

Van Bummel muttered something about "joining our mess," and led the way to
the banqueting-hall. I was too hungry to be particular about names, and did
ample justice to an excellent spread and well-selected tap,--carefully
avoiding eating with my knife or putting salt upon the table-cloth, which I
had often heard was never done by the aristocracy. As I kept my eyes upon
the others and imitated them to the best of my ability, I hope I did not
disgrace Nassau Street.

The evening passed quickly and agreeably. I played chess with the reverend
prisoner. The man of war read steadily folio history of Marlborough's
campaigns, making occasional references to maps and plans. As the clock
struck nine, an explosion on the lawn made the windows rattle again. I
jumped to my feet, but, seeing that the rest of the company looked
surprised at my vivacity, I sat down, guessing that the six-pounder and the
coachman had something to do with it.

"Don't be alarmed, Sir," said the General, "it's only gun-fire. We retire
about this time."

I took the hint, requested to be shown to my room, undressed, jumped into a
camp bedstead, and tried to sleep. Impossible!--the novelty of my day's
experiences, the beauty of the night, (for the full moon was shining into
the windows,) or perhaps a cup of strong coffee I had swallowed without
milk after dinner because the others took it, kept me awake. Finding sleep
out of the question, I got up and dressed myself. My chamber was on the
ground-floor, and opened upon the lawn. I stepped quietly out into the hazy
moonlight, lighted a cigar, and walked towards the river. It was a
remarkably fine evening, certainly, but a very damp one. Heavy dew dripped
from the trees. I found, as my weed grew shorter, that my fondness for the
romantic in Nature waned, and slowly retraced my steps to the house,
muttering to myself some of Edgar Poe's ghostly lines:--

"I stand beneath the mystic moon;
An opiate vapor, dewey, dim
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain-top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley."

I was about entering, when a figure advanced suddenly from behind a pillar
of the veranda, holding a something in its hand which glittered in the
moonlight, and which rattled as it dropped from the perpendicular to the
horizontal, pointing at me.

"Who goes there?" said the apparition, in a hoarse voice. "Stand, and give
the countersign!"

I recognized the voice of the soldier-servant of the morning. There he was
again, that indefatigable coachman, doing duty as sentinel with a musket in
his hands. Not knowing what else to say, I replied,--

"It is I, a friend!"

My good grammar was thrown away upon the brute.

"The countersign," he repeated.

"Pooh, pooh!" said I, "I do not know anything about the countersign. I am
Mr. Shyster, who came up this morning, when you and the General were doing
light-artillery practice on the lawn. Please let me go to my room."

But the brute stood immovable. As I advanced, I heard him cock his musket.

"Good God!" thought I, "this is no joke, after all. This stupid stable-man
may have loaded his musket. What if it should go off? If I retreat, I must
camp out,--no joke at this season;--rheumatism and a loss of salary, to say
the least. This will never do."

And I screamed,--

"General! General Van Bummel!"

"Silence! or I'll march you to the guard-house," thundered the sentinel.

Luckily the General lay, like Irene, "with casement open to the skies." He
heard the noise. I recognized his martial tones. I hurriedly explained my
situation. He gave me the word; it was Eugene; countersign,
Marlborough. This satisfied the Coach-Cerberus, and I passed into bed
without further mishap.

The first sound I heard the next morning was the rat-tat-too of a
drum. "There goes that d----d coachman again," I said to myself, and turned
over for another nap; but a shrill bugle-call brought me to my seat.

Running to the window, I saw two men on horseback in dragoon equipments.
The horses were the artillery-nags of yesterday; the riders, the General
and his man-at-all-arms. Hurrying on my clothes, I got out of doors in time
to see them go at a gallop across the lawn, leap a low hedge at the end of
the grass-plot, and disappear in the orchard. Thither I followed fast to
see the sport. They reached the boundary-line of the Van-Bummel estate,
wheeled, and turned back on a trot. When the General espied me, he waved
his sabre and shouted, "Charge!" They galloped straight at me. I had barely
time to dodge behind an apple-tree, when they passed like a whirlwind over
the spot I had been standing on, and covered me with dirt from the heels of
their horses. I walked back to the house, very much annoyed, as men are apt
to be, when they think they have compromised their dignity a little by
dodging to escape danger from another's mischief or folly. At breakfast,
accordingly, I remonstrated with the chief; but he only laughed, and asked
me why I did not form a hollow square and let the front rank kneel and
fire.

"As soon as you have finished your coffee," he added, "I will take you into
the trenches, and there you will be out of danger."

I could not refuse. The trenches were at the bottom of the garden, near the
entrance-drive. I had seen them yesterday, and in my ignorance thought of
celery; now, I knew better. This morning, a tent was pitched a few yards
from a long low wall of sods; and between the tent and the sods there was a
small trench, about large enough to hold draining-tiles. Pointing to the
wall, the general said,--

"There is Sebastopol," (pronouncing it correctly, accent on the _to_,) "and
here," turning to the tent, "are my head-quarters. My sappers have just
established a mine under the Quarantine Battery. In a few moments I shall
blow it up, and storm the breach, if we make a practicable one."

Here the Protean coachman made his appearance with a leather apron and a
broad-axe. He signified that all was ready. A lucifer was rubbed upon a
stone, the train ignited, bang went the mine, and over went we all three,
prostrated by a shower of turf and mud. The mine had exploded backward, and
had annihilated the storming party. Fortunately, the General had economised
in powder. Gradually we picked ourselves up, considerably bewildered, but
not much hurt. Van Bummel attempted to explain; but I had had enough of
war's alarms, and yearned for the safety and peace of Nassau Street. So I
bade the warrior good-morning, and took the first down-train, _multa mecum
volvens_; "making a revolver of my mind," Van Bummel would have translated
it. I knew that our soil produced more soldiers even than France, the
fertile mother of red-legged heroes; but I did not expect, in the
Nineteenth Century and in the State of New York, to have beheld an avatar
of the God Mars.

* * * * *

THINE.

The tide will ebb at day's decline:
_Ich bin dein!_
Impatient for the open sea,
At anchor rocks the tossing ship,
The ship which only waits for thee;
Yet with no tremble of the lip
I say again, thy hand in mine,
_Ich bin dein!_

I shall not weep, or grieve, or pine.
_Ich bin dein!_
Go, lave once more thy restless hands
Afar within the azure sea,--
Traverse Arabia's scorching sands,--
Fly where no thought can follow thee,
O'er desert waste and billowy brine:
_Ich bin dein!_

Dream on the slopes of Apennine:
_Ich bin dein!_
Stand where the glaciers freeze and frown,
Where Alpine torrents flash and foam,
Or watch the loving sun go down
Behind the purple hills of Rome,
Leaving a twilight half divine:
_Ich bin dein!_

Thy steps may fall beside the Rhine:
_Ich bin dein!_
Slumber may kiss thy drooping lids
Amid the mazes of the Nile,
The shadow of the Pyramids
May cool thy feet,--yet all the while,
Though storms may beat, or stars may shine,
_Ich bin dein!_

Where smile the hills of Palestine,
_Ich bin dein!_
Where rise the mosques and minarets,--
Where every breath brings flowery balms,--
Where souls forget their dark regrets
Beneath the strange, mysterious palms,--
Where the banana builds her shrine,--
_Ich bin dein!_

Too many clusters break the vine:
_Ich bin dein!_
The tree whose strength and life outpour
In one exultant blossom-gush
Must flowerless be forevermore:
We walk _this_ way but once, friend;--hush!
Our feet have left no trodden line:
_Ich bin dein!_

Who heaps his goblet wastes his wine:
_Ich bin dein!_
The boat is moving from the land;--
I have no chiding and no tears;--
Now give me back my empty hand
To battle with the cruel years,--
Behold, the triumph shall be mine!
_Ich bin dein!_

* * * * *

THE REPRESENTATIVE ART.

No art is worth anything that does not embody an idea,--that is not
representative: otherwise, it is like a body without a soul, or the image
of some divinity that never had existence. Art needs, indeed, to be
individualized, to betray the characteristics of the artist, to be himself
infused into his work; but more than this, it needs to typify, to
illustrate the character of the age,--to be of a piece with other
expressions of the sentiment that animates other men at the time. It must
be one note in the concert, and that not discordant,--neither behind time
nor ahead of it,--neither in the wrong key nor the other mode: you don't
want Verdi in one of Beethoven's symphonies; you don't want Mozart in
Rossini's operas. No art ever has lived that was not the genuine product of
the era in which it appeared; no art ever can live that is not such a
product: it may, perchance, have a temporary or fictitious success, but it
can neither really and truly exert an influence at the moment of its
highest triumph, nor afterwards remain a power among men, unless it reflect
the spirit of the epoch, unless it show the very age and body of the time
his form and pressure.

All greatness consists in this: in being alive to what is going on around
one; in living actually; in giving voice to the thought of humanity; in
saying to one's fellows what they want to hear or need to hear at that
moment; in being the concretion, the result, of the influences of the
present world. In no other way can one affect the world than in responding
thus to its needs, in embodying thus its ideas. You will see, in looking to
history, that all great men have been a piece of their time; take them out
and set them elsewhere, they will not fit so well; they were made for their
day and generation. The literature which has left any mark, which has been
worthy of the name, has always mirrored what was doing around it; not
necessarily daguerreotyping the mere outside, but at least reflecting the
inside,--the thoughts, if not the actions of men,--their feelings and
sentiments, even if it treated of apparently far-off themes. You may
discuss the Greek republics in the spirit of the modern one; you may sing
idyls of King Arthur in the very mood of the nineteenth century. Art, too,
will be seen always to have felt this necessity, to have submitted to this
law. The great dramatists of Greece, like those of England, all flourished
in a single period, blossomed in one soil; the sculptures of antiquity
represented the classic spirit, and have never been equalled since, because
they were the legitimate product of that classic spirit. You cannot have
another Phidias till man again believes in Jupiter. The Gothic
architecture, how meanly is it imitated now! What cathedrals built in this
century rival those of Milan or Strasbourg or Notre Dame? Ah! there is no
such Catholicism to inspire the builders; the very men who reared them
would not be architects, if they lived to-day. And the Italian painters,
the Angelos and Raphaels and Da Vincis and Titians, who were geniuses of
such universal power that they builded and carved and went on embassies and
worked in mathematics only with less splendid success than they
painted,--they painted because the age demanded it; they painted as the age
demanded; they were religious, yet sensuous, like their nation; they felt
the influence of the Italian sun and soil. Their faith and their history
were compressed into The Last Judgment and the Cartoons; their passion as
well as their power may be recognized in The Last Supper and The Venus of
the Bath.

There is always a necessity for this expression of the character of the
age. This spirit of our age, this mixed materialistic and imaginative
spirit,--this that abroad prompts Russian and Italian wars, and at home
discovers California mines,--that realizes gorgeous dreams of hidden gold,
and Napoleonic ideas of almost universal sway,--that bridges Niagara, and
under-lays the sea with wire, and, forgetful of the Titan fate, essays to
penetrate the clouds,--this spirit, so practical that those who choose to
look on one side only of the shield can see only perjured monarchs
trampling on deceived or decaying peoples, and backwoodsmen hewing forests,
and begrimed laborers setting up telegraph-poles or working at
printing-presses,--this spirit also so full of imagination,--which has
produced an outburst of music (that most intangible and subtile and
imaginative of arts) such as the earth never heard before,--which is
developing in the splendid, showy life, in the reviving taste for pageantry
that some supposed extinct, in the hurried, crowded incidents that will
fill up the historic page that treats of the nineteenth century,--this
spirit is sure to get expression in art.

The American people, cosmopolitan, concrete, the union, the result rather
of a union of so many nationalities, ought surely to do its share towards
this expression. The American people surely represents the century,--has
much of its spirit: is full of unrest; is eminently practical, but
practical only in embodying poetical or lofty ideas; is demonstrative and
excitable; resembles the French much and in many things,--the French, who
are at the head of modern and European civilization,--who think and feel
deeply, but do not keep their feelings hidden. The Americans, too, like
expression: when they admire a Kossuth or a Jenny Lind, a patriot exile or
a foreign singer, all the world is sure to know of their admiration; when
they are delighted at some great achievement in science, like the laying of
an Atlantic Cable, they demonstrate their delight. They make their
successful generals Presidents; they give dinners to Morphy and banquets to
Cyrus Field. They are thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the
age. Therefore they are artistic.

How amazed some will be at the proposition,--amazed that the age should be
called an artistic one,--amazed that Americans should be considered an
artistic nation! Yet art is only the expression in outward and visible form
of an inward and spiritual grace,--the sacrament of the imagination. Art is
an incarnation in colors or stone or music or words of some subtile essence
which requires the embodiment. We all have delicate fancies, lofty
imaginings, profound sentiments; the artist expresses them for us. If,
then, this age be one that requires expression for its ideas, that is
practical, that insists on accomplishing its designs, on creating its
children, on producing its results, it is an artistic age. For art works; a
poet is a maker, according to the Greeks: and all artists are poets; they
all produce; they all do; they all make. They do just what all the
practical men of this practical age are doing, what even the Gradgrinds are
doing: they embody ideas; they put thoughts into facts. A quiet,
contemplative age is not an artistic one; art has ever flourished in
stirring times: Grecian wars and Guelphic strife have been its fostering
influences. An artist is very far from being an idle dreamer; he works as
hard as the merchant or the mechanic,--works, too, physically as well as
mentally, with his hand as well as his head.

This is all statement: let us have some facts; let us embody our ideas. Do
you not call Meyerbeer, with his years of study and effort and application,
a worker? Do you not call Verdi, who has produced thirty operas, a worker?
Do you not imagine that Turner labored on his splendid pictures? Do you not
know how Crawford toiled and spun away his nerves and brain? Have you not
heard of the incessant and tremendous attention that for many months Church
bestowed on the canvas that of late attracted the admiration of English
critics and their Queen? Was Rachel idle? Have these artists not spent the
substance of themselves as truly as any of your politicians or your
soldiers or your traders? Can you not trace in them the same energy, the
same effort, the same determination as in Louis Napoleon, as in Zachary
Taylor, as in Stephen Girard? Are not they also representative?

And their works,--for by these shall ye know them,--do they reflect in
nothing this fitful, uneasy, yet splendid intensity of to-day? Can you not
read in the colors on Turner's canvas, can you not see in the rush of
Church's Niagara, can you not hear in the strains of the Traviata, can you
not perceive in the tones and looks of Ristori, just what you find in the
successful men in other spheres of life? Rothschild's fortune speaks no
more plainly than the Robert le Diable; George Sand's novels and Carlyle's
histories tell the same story as Kossuth's eloquence and Garibaldi's
deeds. The artists are as alive to-day as any in the the world. For, again
and again, art is not an outside thing; its professors, its lovers, are not
placed outside the world; they are in it and of it as absolutely as the
rest. You who think otherwise, remember that Verdi's name six months ago
was the watchword of the Italian revolutionists; remember that certain
operas are forbidden now to be played in Naples, lest they should arouse
the countrymen of Masaniello; remember, or learn, if you did not know, how
in New York, last June, all the singers in town offered their services for
a benefit to the Italian cause, and all the _habitues_, late though the
season was, crowded to their places to see an opera whose attractiveness
had been worn out and whose novelty was nearly gone. You who think that art
is an interest unworthy of men who live in the world, that it is a thing
apart, what say you to the French, the most actual, the most practical, the
most worldly of peoples, and yet the fondest of art in all its phases,--the
French, who remembered the statues in the Tuileries amid the massacres of
the First Revolution, and spared the architecture of antiquity when they
bombarded the city of the Caesars?

Consider, too, the growing love for art in practical America; remark the
crowds of newly rich who deck their houses with pictures and busts, even
though they cannot always appreciate them; remember that nearly every
prominent town in the country has its theatre; that the opera, the most
refined luxury of European civilization, considered for long an affectation
beyond every other, is relished here as decidedly as in Italy or France. In
New York, Boston, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, there are
buildings exclusively appropriated to this new form of art, this exotic,
expensive amusement. These opera-houses, too, illustrate most aptly the
progress of other arts. They are adorned with painting and gilding and
carving; they are as sumptuous in accommodation as the palaces of European
potentates; they are lighted with a brilliancy that Aladdin's garden never
rivalled; they are thronged, with crowds as gayly dressed as those that
fill the saloons of Parisian belles; and the singers and actors who
interpret the thoughts of mighty foreign masters are the same who delight
the Emperor of the French when he pays a visit to the Queen of Great
Britain and Ireland. Orchestras of many instruments discourse most eloquent
music, and involuted strains are criticized in learned style, in capitals
thousands of miles from the seashore. And there is no appreciation of art
in all this! there is no embodiment of the love of the age for material
magnificence, there is no poetry incarnated into form, in this combination
of splendors rivalling the opium-eater's visions! The Americans are a dull,
stupid people, immersed in business; art has no effect upon them; it is
despised among them; it can never prosper here!

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19