Florence Coombe - "Jack of Both Sides"

J. Fenimore Cooper - "Recollections of Europe"

L. Zamenhof - "Fundamenta Krestomatio"

Francois Coppee - "Ten Tales"

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.

Confession

W >> W. Gilmore Simms >> Confession




This was a natural consequence of the long sophistication of my
feelings. I knew nothing of the world--of society. I had shared
in none of its trusts; I had only felt its exactions. Like some
country-boy, or country-girl, for the first time brought into the
great world, I surrendered myself wholly to the first gratified
impulse. I made no conditions, no qualifications. I set all my
hopes of heart upon a single cast of the die, and did not ask what
might be the consequences if the throw was unfortunate.

One of the good effects of a free communication of the young with
society is, to lessen the exacting nature of the affections. People
who live too much to themselves--in their own centre, and for their
own single objects--become fastidious to disease. They ask too
much from their neighbors. Willing to surrender their OWN affections
at a glance, they fancy the world wanting in sensibility when
they find that their readiness in this respect fails to produce a
corresponding readiness in others. This is the natural history of
that enthusiasm which is thrown back upon itself and is chilled
by denial. The complaint of coldness and selfishness against the
world is very common among very young or very inexperienced men.
The world gets a bad character, simply because it refuses to lavish
its affections along the highways--simply because it is cautious
in giving its trusts, and expects proofs of service and actual
sympathy rather than professions. Men like myself, of a warm,
impetuous nature, complain of the heartlessness of mankind. They
fancy themselves peculiarly the victims of an unkind destiny in
this respect; and finally cut their throats in a moment of frenzy,
or degenerate into a cynicism that delights in contradictions, in
sarcasms, in self-torture, and the bitterest hostility to their
neighbors.

Society itself is the only and best corrective of this unhappy
disposition. The first gift to the young, therefore, should be
the gift of society. By this word society, however, I do not mean
a set, a clique, a pitiable little circle. Let the sphere of movement
be sufficiently extended--as large as possible--that the means of
observation and thought may be sufficiently comprehensive, and no
influences from one man or one family shall be suffered to give the
bias to the immature mind and inexperienced judgment. In society
like this, the errors, prejudices, weaknesses, of one man, are
corrected by a totally opposite form of character in another. The
mind of the youth hesitates. Hesitation brings circumspection,
watchfulness; watchfulness, discrimination; discrimination, choice;
and a capacity to choose implies the attainment of a certain
degree of deliberateness and judgment with which the youth may be
permitted to go upon his way, supposed to be provided for in the
difficult respect of being able henceforward to take care of himself.

I had no society--knew nothing of society--saw it at a distance,
under suspicious circumstances, and was myself an object of
its suspicion. Its attractions were desirable to me, but seemed
unattainable. It required some sacrifices to obtain its entree,
and these sacrifices were the very ones which my independence would
not allow me to make. My independence was my treasure, duly valued
in proportion to the constant strife by which it was assailed. I
had that! THAT could not be taken from me. THAT kept me from sinking
into the slave the tool, the sycophant, perhaps the brute; THAT
prompted me to hard study in secret places; THAT strengthened my
heart, when, desolate and striving against necessity, I saw nothing
of the smiles of society, and felt nothing of the bounties of
life. Then came my final emancipation--my success--my triumph!
My independence was assailed no longer. My talents were no longer
doubted or denied. My reluctant neighbors sent in their adhesion.
My uncle forbore his sneers. Lastly, and now--Julia was mine!
My heart's desires were all gratified as completely as my mind's
ambition!

Was I happy? The inconsiderate mind will suppose this very
probable--will say, I should be. But evil seeds that are planted
in the young heart grow up with years--not so rapidly or openly as
to offend--and grow to be poisonous weeds with maturity. My feelings
were too devoted, too concentrative, too all-absorbing, to leave me
happy, even when they seemed gratified. The man who has but a single
jewel in the world, is very apt to labor under a constant apprehension
of its loss. He who knows but one object of attachment--whose
heart's devotion turns evermore but to one star of all the countless
thousands in the heavens--wo is he, if that star be shrouded from
his gaze in the sudden overflow of storms!--still more wo is he,
when that star withdraws, or seems to withdraw, its corresponding
gaze, or turns it elsewhere upon another worshipper! See you not
the danger which threatened me? See you not that, never having been
beloved before--never having loved but the one--I loved that one
with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength; and
required from that one the equal love of heart, soul, strength?
See you not that my love--linked with impatient mind, imperious
blood, impetuous enthusiasm, and suspicious fear--was a devotion
exacting as the grave--searching as fever--as jealous of the thing
whose worship it demands as God is said to be of ours?

Mine was eminently a jealous heart! On this subject of jealousy, men
rarely judge correctly. They speak of Othello as jealous--Othello,
one of the least jealous of all human natures! Jealousy is a
quality that needs no cause. It makes its own cause. It will find
or make occasion for its exercise, in the most innocent circumstances.
The PROOFS that made Othello wretched and revengeful, were sufficient
to have deceived any jury under the sun. He had proofs. He had
a strong case to go upon. It would have influenced any judgment.
He did not seek or find these proofs for himself. He did not wish
to find them. He was slow to see them. His was not jealousy. His
error was that of pride and self-esteem. He was outraged in both.
His mistake was in being too prompt of action in a case which
admitted of deliberation. This was the error of a proud man, a
soldier, prompt to decide, prompt to act, and to punish if necessary.
But never was human character less marked by a jealous mood than
that of Othello. His great self-esteem was, of itself, a sufficient
security against jealousy. Mine might have been, had it not been
so terribly diseased by ill-training.






CHAPTER XVIII.

PRESENTIMENTS.





Without apprehending the extent of my own weakness, the forms that
it would take, or the tyrannies that it would inflict, I was still
not totally uninformed on the subject of my peculiar character;
and, fearing then rather that I might pain my wife by some of its
wanton demonstrations, than that she would ever furnish me with,
an occasion for them, I took an opportunity, a few evenings after
our marriage, to suggest to her the necessity of regarding my
outbreaks with an indulgent eye.

My heart had been singularly softened by the most touching
associations. We sat together in our piazza, beneath a flood of
the richest and balmiest moonlight, screened only from its silvery
blaze by interposing masses of the woodbine, mingled with shoots
of oleander, arbor-vitae, and other shrub-trees. The mild breath
of evening sufficed only to lift quiveringly their green leaves
and glowing blossoms, to stir the hair upon our cheeks, and give
to the atmosphere that wooing freshness which seems so necessary
a concomitant of the moonlight. The hand of Julia was in mine.
There were few words spoken between us; love has its own sufficing
language, and is content with that consciousness that all is right
which implores no other assurances. Julia had just risen from the
piano: we had both been touched with a deeper sense of the thousand
harmonies in nature, by listening to those of Rossini; and now,
gazing upon some transparent, fleecy, white clouds that were slowly
pressing forward in the path of the moonlight, as if in duteous
attendance upon some maiden queen, our mutual minds were busied
in framing pictures from the fine yet fantastic forms that glowed,
gathering on our gaze. I felt the hand of Julia trembling in my
own. Her head sank upon my shoulder; I felt a warm drop fall from
her eyes upon my hand, and exclaimed--

"Julia, you weep! wherefore do you weep, dear wife?"

"With joy, my husband! My heart is full of joy. I am so happy, I
can only weep. Ah! tears alone speak for the true happiness."

"Ah! would it last, Julia--would it last!"

"Oh, doubt not that it will last. Why should it not t What have we
to fear?"

Mine was a serious nature. I answered sadly, if not gloomily:--

"Because it is a joy of life that we feel, and it must share the
vicissitudes of life."

"True, true, but love is a joy of eternal life as well as of this."

There was a beautiful and consoling truth in this one little
sentence, which my self-absorption was too great, at the time, to
suffer me to see. Perhaps even she herself was not fully conscious
of the glorious and pregnant truth which lay at the bottom of what
she said. Love is, indeed, not merely a joy of eternal life: it is
THE joy of eternal life!--its particular joy--a dim shadow of which
we sometimes feel in this--pure, lasting, comparatively perfect,
the more it approaches, in its performances and its desires, the
divine essence, of which it is so poor a likeness. We should so
live, so love, as to make the one run into the other, even as a
small river runs down, through a customary channel, into the great
deeps of the sea. Death should be to the affections a mere channel
through which they pass into a natural, a necessary condition, where
their streams flow with more freedom, and over which, harmoniously
controlling, as powerful, the spirit of love broods ever with
"dovelike wings outspread." I answered, still gloomily, in the
customary world commonplaces:--

"We must expect the storm. It will not be moonlight always. We must
look for the cloud. Age, sickness, death!--ah! do these not follow
on our footsteps, ever unerring, certain always, but so often rapid?
Soon, how soon, they haunt us in the happiest moments--they meet
us at every corner! They never altogether leave us."

"Enough, dear husband. Dwell not upon these gloomy thoughts. Ah!
why should you--NOW?'

"I will not; but there are others, Julia."

"What others? Evils?"

"Sadder evils yet than these."

"Oh, no!--I hope not."

"Coldness of the once warm heart. The chill of affection in the
loved one. Estrangement--indifference!--ah, Julia!"

"Impossible, Edward! This can not, MUST not be, with us You do not
think that I could be cold to you; and you--ah! surely YOU will
never cease to love me?"

"Never, I trust, never!"

"No! you must not--SHALL not. Oh, Edward, let me die first before
such a fear should fill my breast. You I love, as none was loved
before. Without your love, I am nothing. If I can not hang upon
you, where can I hang?"

And she clung to me with a grasp as if life and death depended on
it, while her sobs, as from a full heart, were insuppressible in
spite of all her efforts.

"Fear nothing, dearest Julia: do you not believe that I love you?"

"Ah! if I did not, Edward--"

"It is with you always to make me love you. You are as completely
the mistress of my whole heart as if it had acknowledged no laws
but yours from the beginning."

"What am I to do, dear Edward?"

"Forbear--be indulgent--pity me and spare me!"

"What mean you, Edward?"

"That heart which is all and only yours, Julia, is yet, I am assured,
a wilful and an erring heart! I feel that it is strange, wayward,
sometimes unjust to others, frequently to itself. It is a cross-grained,
capricious heart; you will find its exactions irksome."

"Oh, I know it better. You wrong yourself."

"No! In the solemn sweetness of this hour, dear Julia--now, while all
things are sweet to our eyes, all things dear to our affections--I
feel a chill of doubt and apprehension come over me. I am so happy--so
unusually happy--that I can not feel sure that I am so--that my
happiness will continue long. I will try, on my own part, to do
nothing by which to risk its loss. But I feel that I am too wilful,
at times, to be strong in keeping a resolution which is so very
necessary to our mutual happiness. You must help--you must strengthen
me, Julia."

"Oh, yes! but how? I will do anything--be anything."

"I am capricious, wayward; at times, full of injustice. Love me
not less that I am so--that I sometimes show this waywardness to
you--that I sometimes do injustice to your love. Bear with me till
the dark mood passes from my heart. I have these moods, or have
had them, frequently. It may be--I trust it will be--that, blessed
with your love, and secure in its possession, there will be no room
in my heart for such ugly feelings. But I know not. They sometimes
take supreme possession of me. They seize upon me in all places.
They wrap my spirit as in a cloud. I sit apart. I scowl upon those
around me. I feel moved to say bitter things--to shoot darts in
defiance at every glance--to envenom every sentence which I speak.
These are cruel moods. I have striven vainly to shake them off.
They have grown up with my growth--have shared in whatever strength
I have; and, while they embitter my own thoughts and happiness, I
dread that they will fling their shadow upon yours!"

She replied with gayety, with playfulness, but there was an effort
in it.

"Oh, you make the matter worse than it is. I suppose all that
troubles you is the blues. But you will never have them again. When
I see them coming on I will sit by you and sing to you. We will
come out here and watch the evening; or you shall read to me, or we
will ramble in the garden--or--a thousand things which shall make
you forget that there was ever such a thing in the world as sorrow."

"Dear Julia--will you do this?"

"More--everything to make you happy." And she drew me closer in her
embrace, and her lips with a tremulous, almost convulsive sweetness,
were pressed upon my forehead; and clinging there, oh! how sweetly
did she weep!

"You will tire of my waywardness--of my exactions. Ah! I shall
force you from my side by my caprice."

"You can not, Edward, if you would," she replied, in mournful
accents like my own, "I have no remedy against you! I have nobody
now to whom to turn. Have _I_ not driven all from my side--all but
you?"

It was my task to soothe her now.

"Nay, Julia, be not you sorrowful. You must continue glad and blest,
that you may conquer my sullen moods, my dark presentiments. When
I tell you of the evils of my temper, I tell you of occasional
clouds only. Heaven forbid that they should give an enduring aspect
to our heavens!"

She responded fervently to my ejaculation. I continued:--

"I have only sought to prepare you for the management of my arbitrary
nature, to keep you from suffering too much, and sinking beneath
its exactions. You will bear with me patiently. Forgive me for
my evil hours. Wait till the storm has overblown; and find me your
own, then, as much as before; and let me feel that you are still
mine--that the tempest has not separated our little vessels."

"Will I not? Ah! do not fear for me, Edward. It is a happiness for
me to weep here--here, in your arms. When you are sad and moody,
I will come as now."

"What if I repulse you?"

"You will not--no, no!--you will not."

"But if I do I Suppose---"

"Ah! it is hard to suppose that. But I will not heed it. I will
come again."

"And again?"

"And again!"

"Then you will conquer, Julia. I feel that you will conquer! You
will drive out the devils. Surely, then, I shall be incorrigible
no longer."

Such was my conviction then. I little knew myself.






CHAPTER XIX.

DISTRUST.





I little knew myself! This knowledge of one's self is the
most important knowledge, which very few of us acquire. We seldom
look into our own hearts for other objects than those which will
administer to their petty vanities and passing triumphs. Could we
only look there sometimes for the truth! But we are blind--blind
all! In some respects I was one of the blindest!

I have given a brief glimpse of our honeymoon. Perhaps, as the
world goes, the picture is by no means an attractive one. Quiet
felicity forms but a small item in the sources of happiness,
now-a-days, among young couples. Mine was sufficiently quiet and
sufficiently humble. One would suppose that he who builds so lowly
should have no reason to apprehend the hurricane. Social ambition
was clearly no object with either of us. We sighed neither for
the glitter nor the regards of fashionable life. Neither upon
fine houses, jewels, or equipages, did we set our hearts. For the
pleasures of the table I had no passion, and never was young woman
so thoroughly regardless of display as Julia Clifford. To be let
alone--to be suffered to escape in our own way, unharming, unharmed,
through the dim avenues of life--was assuredly all that we asked
from man. Perhaps--I say it without cant--this, perhaps, was all
that we possibly asked from heaven. This was all that I asked, at
least, and this was much. It was asking what had never yet been
accorded to humanity. In the vain assumption of my heart I thought
that my demands were moderate.

Let no man console himself with the idea that his chances of
success are multiplied in degree with the insignificance, or seeming
insignificance, of his aims. Perhaps the very reverse of this is
the truth. He who seeks for many objects of enjoyment--whose tastes
are diversified--has probably the very best prospect that some of
them may be gratified. He is like the merchant whose ventures on
the sea are divided among many vessels. He may lose one or more,
yet preserve the main bulk of his fortune from the wreck. But he
who has only a single bark--one freightage, however costly--whose
whole estate is invested in the one venture--let him lose that, and
all is lost. It does not matter that his loss, speaking relatively,
is but little. Suppose his shipment, in general estimation, to be
of small value. The loss to him is so much the greater. It was the
dearer to him because of its insignificance, and being all that he
had; is quite as conclusive of his ruin, as would be the foundering
of every vessel which the rich merchant sent to sea.

I was one of these petty traders. I invested my whole capital
of the affections in one precious jewel. Did I lose it, or simply
fear its loss? Time must show. But, of a truth, I felt as the miser
feels with his hoarded treasure. While I watched its richness and
beauty, doubts and dread beset me. Was it safe? Everything depended
upon its security. Thieves might break in and steal. Enough, for
the present, to say, that much of my security, and of the security
of all who, like me, possess a dear treasure, depends upon our
convictions of security. He who apprehends loss, is already robbed.
The reality is scarcely worse than the hourly anticipation of it.

My friends naturally became the visitors of my family. Certain of
the late Mrs. Clifford's friends were also ours. Our circle was
sufficiently large for those who already knew how to distinguish
between the safe pleasures of a small set, and the horse-play and
heartless enjoyments of fashionable jams. Were we permitted in this
world to live only for ourselves, we should have been perfectly
gratified had this been even less. We should have been very well
content to have gone on from day to day without ever beholding the
shadow of a stranger upon our threshold.

This was not permitted, however. We had a round of congratulatory
visits. Among those who came, the first were the old, long-tried
friends to whom I owed so much--the Edgertons. No family could
have been more truly amiable than this; and William Edgerton was the
most amiable of the family. I have already said enough to persuade
the reader that he was a very worthy man. He was more. He was
a principled one. Not very highly endowed, perhaps, he was yet an
intelligent gentleman. None could be more modest in expression--none
less obtrusive in deportment--none more generous in service. The
defects in his character were organic--not moral. He had no vices--no
vulgarities. But his temperament was an inactive one. He was apt to
be sluggish, and when excited was nervous. He was not irritable,
but easily discomposed. His tastes were active at the expense of
his genius. With ability, he was yet unperforming. His standards
were morbidly fastidious. Fearing to fall below them, he desisted
until the moment of action was passed for ever; and the feeling of
his own weakness, in this respect, made him often sad, but to do
him justice, never querulous.

With a person so constituted, the delicate tastes and sensibilities
are like to be indulged in a very high degree. William Edgerton
loved music and all the quiet arts. Painting was his particular
delight. He himself sketched with great spirit. He had the happy
eye for the tout ensemble in a fine landscape. He knew exactly
how much to take in and what to leave out, in the delineation of a
lovely scene. This is a happy talent for discrimination which the
ordinary artist does not possess. It is the capacity which, in
the case of orators and poets, informs them of the precise moment
when they should stop. It is the happiest sort of judgment, since,
though the artist may be neither very excellent in drawing, nor
very felicitous in color, it enables him always to bestow a certain
propriety on his picture which compensates, to a certain degree,
for inferiority in other respects. To know how to grasp objects
with spirit, and bestow them with a due regard to mutual dependence,
is one of the most exquisite faculties of the landscape-painter.

William Edgerton, had he been forced by necessity to have made
the art of painting his profession would have made for himself a
reputation of no inferior kind. But amateur art, like amateur
literature, rarely produces any admirable fruits. Complete success
only attends the devotee to the muse. The worship must be exclusive
at her altar; the attendance constant and unremitting. There must
be no partial, no divided homage. She is a jealous mistress, like
all the rest. The lover of her charms, if he would secure her
smiles, must be a professor at her shrine. He can not come and go
at pleasure. She resents such impertinence by neglect. In plain
terms, the fine arts must be made a business by those who desire
their favor. Like law, divinity, physic, they constitute a profession
of their own; require the same diligent endeavor, close study,
fond pursuit! William Edgerton loved painting, but his business
was the law. He loved painting too much to love his profession. He
gave too much of his time to the law to be a successful painter--too
much time to painting to be a lawyer. He was nothing! At the bar he
never rose a step after the first day, when, together, we appeared
in our mutual maiden case; and contenting himself with the occasional
execution of a landscape, sketchy and bold, but without finish,
he remained in that nether-land of public consideration, unable to
grasp the certainties of either pursuit at which he nevertheless
was constantly striving; striving, however, with that qualified
degree of effort, which, if it never could secure the prize, never
could fatigue him much with the endeavor to do so.

He was perfectly delighted when he first saw some of the sketches
of my wife. He had none of that little jealousy which so frequently
impairs the temper and the worth of amateurs. He could admire
without prejudice, and praise without reserve. He praised them. He
evidently admired them. He sought every occasion to see them, and
omitted none in which to declare his opinion of their merits. This,
in the first pleasant season of my marriage--when the leaves were
yet green and fresh upon the tree of love--was grateful to my
feelings. I felt happy to discover that my judgment had not erred
in the selection of my wife. I stimulated her industry that I might
listen to my friend's eulogy. I suggested subjects for her pencil.
I fitted up an apartment especially as a studio for her use. I
bought her some fine studies, lay figures, heads in marble and
plaster; and lavished, in this way, the small surplus fund which
had heretofore accrued from my professional industry, and that
personal frugality with which it was accompanied.

William Edgerton was now for ever at our house. He brought his own
pictures for the inspection of my wife. He sometimes painted in her
studio. He devised rural and aquatic parties with sole reference
to landscape scenery and delineation; and indifferent to the law
always, he now abandoned himself almost entirely to those tastes
which seemed to have acquired of a sudden, the strangest and the
strongest impulse.

In this--at least for a considerable space of time--I saw nothing
very remarkable. I knew his tastes previously. I had seen how
little disposed he was to grapple earnestly with the duties of his
profession; and did not conceive it surprising, that, with family
resources sufficient to yield him pecuniary independence, he should
surrender himself up to the luxurious influence of tastes which were
equally lovely in themselves, and natural to the first desires of
his mind. But when for days he was missed from his office--when
the very hours of morning which are most religiously devoted by the
profession to its ostensible if not earnest pursuit, were yielded
up to the easel--and when, overlooking the boundaries which,
according to the conventional usage, made such a course improper,
he passed many of these mornings at my house, during my absence,
I began to entertain feelings of disquietude.

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