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Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 by Various

V >> Various >> Lippincott\'s Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880




Meanwhile, the heirs of Mrs. James Grey had gained some sort of
information which led them to suspect that the returned girl was no
relation of their uncle John Grey, and in 1789 they brought a lawsuit
to recover their mother's half of the property. By this time endless
complications had arisen. Mrs. Williams was dead: her half of her first
husband's farm had been bequeathed to her second husband's kindred, and
was now in part held by them and in part had been bought by half a
dozen others. The supposed daughter, Mrs. Gillespie, had died, as had
her husband, and their share had passed to his relations. It had become
almost impossible for the most astute lawyers to find beginning, middle
or end to the claims which were set forth. Plenty of evidence was
collected to show that Mrs. Williams had substituted a stranger for her
own child, and the decision finally rested on this, and the property
was given up to the heirs of Mrs. James Grey. This did not happen,
however, until 1834, when few or none of the original litigants
remained.

The real little Jane Grey, so it was said, was brought up in a good
family who adopted her, and afterward married well and had children,
residing near Sir William Johnson's place in Central New York.--L.W.




THE MISERIES OF CAMPING OUT.


My dear cousin Laura: So you are thinking about camping out, and want
my opinion as to whether the spot we chose for our trout-fishing in
June is a suitable place for ladies to go? I should give a decided
negative. My brother takes his wife and his sister usually, although he
fortunately left them at home last time. I think they must have to
"make believe" a good deal to think it fun. I am certain that had they
been with us they would have been forced to exercise their largest
powers of imagination. We set out in fine weather, but entered the
woods in a driving snowstorm, and enjoyed a forty-six-mile drive over a
road that has, I must say this for it, not been known to be so bad for
years. We came back in a pelting rain. We made our camp in a snowstorm,
and the wood was wet and would not burn, and our tent was damp and
would not dry. We fished in a boat on the lake, swept by cold winds
until we were chilled to the bone and our hands were so stiff we could
not hold the rods. My brother had a "chill" the first night in camp. I
had indigestion from eating things fried in pork fat from the first
meal until I got a civilized repast at Frank's house in New York. I was
bounced sore. My nose was peeled by sun and cold. My lips were
decorated by three large cold-sores. My hands bled constantly from a
combination of chap and sunburn. I made up my mind if I ever got safely
out of those woods it would be several years at least before I could be
persuaded to enter them again. The scenery _is_ lovely, but one cannot
enjoy it. The fishing _is_ good, but it is hard work, and my own
opinion is that there is altogether "too much pork for a shilling" in
the whole business. Talk about being "ten miles from a lemon"! Try
forty-six miles from a lemon over a corduroy road. At first we had cold
weather, hence no black flies or mosquitos. When warm weather came on
again we had both of them, and our experience was that the snowstorm
was preferable. The black flies made the day unendurable, and the
mosquitos made the night as well as the day a wasting misery. We had
them everywhere--in the hut, in the tent, at the table, on the lake, in
the woods. No smudge or lotion discourages them; oil of tar is their
delight, camphor they revel in; buzzing, singing, biting continually
are their pastime. They are a galling curse--a nuisance which no words
can describe. A lady _might_ go through all this if she had perfect
health and the endurance under punishment of a prize-fighter. Your
party may travel all those weary miles and strike a fortunate week of
pleasant weather, but you may, and more likely will, have a week when
it will rain dismally straight through without stopping. We found, on
looking up the statistics, that in an average season out of every
twenty-two days eighteen will always be stormy, lowering and dismal.
No, don't camp out unless you can make up your mind beforehand to every
kind of discomfort and inconvenience to mar all that is beautiful and
all that is pleasing. I speak of course of the localities I have known
in my three several attempts. _They say_ it is different in other parts
of the region. But when you have plank roads and first-class hotels and
all the modern conveniences, I don't call that going into the woods and
camping out. The real thing is not very much fun except in the
retrospect, when you can thank your stars that you got out alive. For
the greater part it is a snare and a delusion. But if you still pine
for the forests and streams and the free out-of-door life, I don't wish
to discourage you, and you know I never give advice.

Your affectionate cousin, F.G.




UNREFORMED SPELLING.


A little note has come to me which gives an entertaining glimpse of the
average ability of a class. "John Stubbs x his mark" is obviously
"low-watermark," but there are levels between that and high-school
possibilities which we cannot often measure. The note is written on
fair white paper and had a white envelope. The writer is American, the
wife of a fisherman, and about thirty years old, though the handwriting
is like that of the old ladies of our grandmothers' time. It is given
of course, in the full sense, _literatim_, and is offered for the
encouragement--or the despair--of the Spelling Reform Association. The
little touch of pathos makes one read with respect:


June the 2.
Dear Madam

Will you pleas to enclose the 100 dollars in an envelope, so that the
little boy wont loose it: the little dog was too years old the first of
May: and my babey too the 24 of April, they have always ben together
and he is verey intelegent indead and you can learn him eneything you
would wish to fealing asuared he will receve everey kindness you have
the best wishes of
Mrs. Hattie ----.

Perhaps it is well to add, the "100" means ten. The hero is a black
Skye, long-haired, plume-tailed and soft-eyed. What his views were upon
removal from the back alley of his youth to a well-appointed though by
no means luxurious home he never said, but his investigation was
comically thorough, winding up in dumb amaze at the discovery of
himself in a long mirror. His experience of feminine humanity being
limited to the variety that rolls its sleeves above its elbows and
comports itself accordingly, he bitterly resented good clothes,
transferred his affections to the housemaids, and only much coaxing and
much sugar could win his heart for his new mistress.

"The little boy" had dubbed him "Penny," which hardly suited his silken
attire and his little haughty, imperious ways; so, though the children
will still call him "Penny-wise" and "Four Farthings," the mistress
finds nothing less than "Pendennis" due to his dignity.--C.B.M.




OUR NEW VISITORS.


I should like to have Mr. Burroughs or some of our naturalists write
one of their pleasant papers and explain the mystery of the
wood-thrush's advent in our gardens and upon our lawns. Until a year
ago the wood-thrush was not one of the birds which ever raised its note
in our pleasure-grounds. We heard them in the woods, and looked at
them, when we intruded upon their privacy, with that sort of shyness
with which we watch strangers. We knew their "wood-notes wild," and
admired their plumage, but they did not inspire the same feeling as
their cousin the robin. But a year ago all at once here was the thrush.
Nobody could tell when he came, how he came or why he came. It seemed
an accident, for there was but one pair: it was as if through innocence
or ignorance, instead of building their nests in their old chosen
haunts, they had wandered away and lost themselves in the spacious
grounds of a gentleman's country-seat. They had no dismay, no doubts,
however: they took possession of the lawn with the utmost boldness.
They were rarely out of sight, hopping from morning until night about
the turf, flying from tree to tree with their impulsive movements, more
graceful than the robins. They were never silent, uttering perpetually
their mellow flute-like cry and singing their simple but ecstatic
melody.

That was last year; and this year, 1880, the thrushes are everywhere in
this Connecticut village by the Sound. Their orange-and-tawny backs
gleam in the sunshine from morning until night. There are numbers of
them. Their manners are very marked. They have quite the air of
conquerors. All the other birds yield them precedence, and they
positively domineer over the pugnacious little English sparrow, who is
content to keep in the background and watch his chance when
feeding-time comes.

And of all the curious things about them, what seems most inexplicable
is their tameness. They have no mistrust, but eye you with an
intelligent, knowing look while bringing their young to feed within
half a dozen feet of you. They perch on the croquet-arches in the midst
of a noisy game. They sing directly over your head with the utmost
spirit and vivacity, hardly ceasing all the forenoon, and again
bursting out toward evening and maintaining their song until every
other bird's lay is hushed in the twilight. White of Selborne would
have delighted in such a freak on the part of these pretty gay
strangers, who have left secluded swampy haunts, the deep dells where
the blackberries twine and the daisies and clover blossom, for our
close-cut lawns and elm- and willow-shaded nooks.--A.T.




LITERATURE OF THE DAY.


Alexander Pope. By Leslie Stephen. (English Men-of-Letters Series.) New
York: Harper & Brothers.

The interest of this series, which increases rather than diminishes--as
one might have feared would be the case--with each succeeding volume,
lies very much in the fact that the list of writers, almost as long and
varied as that of the subjects, is a representative one. It comprises
men who have won distinction in different departments--as novelists,
historians, scholars, scientific expounders--but who here meet in the
common field of biographical criticism and work together under the same
limitations and conditions. Hence their performances give us not so
much a measure of their individual powers as of the tone of thought and
intellectual depth of the class to which they belong. However diverse
their abilities and special fields of observation or research, their
general range of knowledge, methods of study and ideas of life are very
much the same. They are collectively "men of culture," as the writers
of Queen Anne's time were "wits," and it is the qualities associated
with that term, rather than any distinct gifts or characteristics, that
are here called into play. Mr. Trollope's _Thackeray_ was perhaps an
exception--a black spot on the otherwise immaculate whiteness. In a
different way the general effect would have been still more seriously
impaired if Mr. Ruskin's co-operation had been invited. The
outcroppings of a vulgar egotism might indicate a substratum necessary
to be taken into account, but it would have been a clear loss of labor
to follow the leadings of any eccentric vein. One might wonder at the
absence of Mr. Matthew Arnold, the high priest of culture; but we have
to remember that Mr. Arnold is solicitous to stand apart, that he holds
up ideals which he is careful to inform us are not those of his time,
and that he is fastidious in selecting a point of view where he cannot
be jostled, with perspectives to which no vision but his own can
accommodate itself. His culture may represent that of the future, but
certainly does not typify that of the present.

Mr. Leslie Stephen, on the contrary, might very well stand as a type of
his class both in its positive and negative qualities. He, more than
any of his confreres, is a product of culture. Unlike the greater
number of them, he has no special talent, or pet object of enthusiasm,
or erratic tendencies. He is a trained critic, and is "nothing if not
critical." His coolness is a real coolness, not the effect of any
"toning down" for the occasion, as we may suspect to have been the case
with Mr. Froude and Mr. Goldwin Smith. His knowledge is accurate, his
judgments are sound, his taste is seldom at fault, his style is
faultless and colorless, he never attempts what he is unable to do well
and without any appearance of strain. Though he may have given more
attention to the literature of the eighteenth century than to that of
any other period, one feels that he might safely have been entrusted
with the preparation of any volume of this series. It was probably from
a sense of fitness, not by mere chance, that he was selected to write
the initial volume, which pitched the key for those that were to
follow, and that so far he is the only writer who has been called upon
for a second contribution.

His task in the present instance has been much less easy and simple
than that which he before undertook. In the case of Johnson he had only
to select and condense from material so copious and authentic as left
no question of fact or problem of criticism unsettled. Pope's career,
on the other hand, after all the research that has been spent upon it,
is full of obscurities; his character, while it invites, seems to
evade, analysis; even his rank and exact position in literature cannot
be said to be conclusively determined. It is needless to say that Mr.
Stephen has been diligent and skilful in examining and summarizing
whatever facts relating to his subject have been brought to light by
recent or early investigation; that he weighs all the evidence with
strict impartiality, and, when it is insufficient, is content to
suspend judgment without resorting to conjecture; or that his views
both on points of conduct and literary questions, if not marked by any
striking originality, show clear and vigorous thinking and are stated
in a way that provokes no impatience or captious dissent. The interest
of the narrative is well sustained, and the general impression left by
it that of a report made by an expert on documents that needed to be
thoroughly sifted in order that the issues which had been raised might
be succinctly set forth and fully apprehended. Further than this Mr.
Stephen does not pretend to go. His report is preliminary, not final.
No matter previously left uncertain is here determined. Instead of an
added knowledge, we are only made more sensible of our former
ignorance. Pope's figure, far from coming more distinctly into view,
seems to have receded and grown more vague. Certain traits have perhaps
been made more noticeable than before, but those essential elements of
character which would define, explain, reconcile, and enable us to
conceive the combination as a unit, have eluded observation.

This is, of course, a natural result of the gaps and contradictions in
the evidence, the lack especially of those minute details which are not
only necessary links, but often the most suggestive features, in a
record of facts or delineation of character. And if it be urged that a
deeper insight would have in some measure supplied this deficiency, the
answer can only be that we have no right to expect from any man the
exercise of powers which he does not possess or affect to
possess--powers which, in a case like this, would need to be of the
finest and rarest kind. We may, however, fairly regret that Mr. Stephen
has not availed himself of a resource that lay within his reach for
making the accessories of his picture more brilliant and effective,
with the possible incidental result of throwing a stronger light on the
principal figure. Whatever else may be debated about Pope, no one would
deny that he was pre-eminently the man of his time--not only its most
conspicuous figure, but the very embodiment of its ideals. He suited it
and it suited him. Hence the fulness and in a certain sense perfection
of his work, the fact that he has given his name to an epoch as well as
a school, and consequently the important place which he still retains
in the history of literature. Men who were certainly not his inferiors
in intellectual power lived in the same age, partook of its influence
and contributed to its achievements; but they were not so thoroughly at
home in it: their best qualities were stunted, rather than developed,
by its soil and atmosphere. Dryden, one may safely say, would have been
greater had he lived earlier, Fielding had he lived later. But one
cannot imagine Pope thriving in any other air or producing equal work
under different influences. The qualities most esteemed by his
contemporaries he possessed in a superlative degree; his limitations
were common to the society in which he moved, and neither he nor it was
conscious of them as such; consequently, what would have been
impediments to a different nature were to his means of free and
spontaneous action. And not only does he represent the ideas of his
age, but he depicted its types and manners. In this respect he is the
link between the comic dramatists and the novelists, between Congreve
and Fielding. The wits, the beaux, the fine ladies, the Grub Street
drudges of the reign of Anne, whatever be the fidelity or other merits
of the portraitures, are more familiar to us in the satires of Pope
than as reflected in any other mirror. For these reasons Pope is one of
the last men who can be studied to advantage from a single point of
view or in a detached position. We need to understand not only his
personal relations but his general affinities with the men and events
of his time--of that world, at least, of which he was the centre. True,
the period is better known to readers generally than almost any other.
But it is not a copious accumulation of facts or a labored
analysis--for which there would have been no space--that we miss in Mr.
Stephen's book, but such groupings and irradiating touches as might
have given us a vivid glimpse, if only a glimpse, of the whole field.
Yet in lamenting that this much is not given us we are perhaps making
the mistake before noticed, of demanding from a given source what it
could not supply. We are driven back, therefore, on the reflection how
much the slightest things in art depend on inspiration, on original
power--how immeasurable the distance is between the man of culture and
the man of genius.

Samuel Lover: A Biographical Sketch. With Selections from his Writings
and Correspondence. By Andrew James Symington. New York: Harper &
Brothers.

The memory of so genial and popular a writer as Lover ought to be kept
as green as possible, and Mr. Symington has done well to embody his
Loveriana in a short life of the Irish humorist. The new material
brought forth is slender, consisting simply of a few letters and ten
short poems, not of his best; but it was worth publishing, and Mr.
Symington has the advantage, in treating of Lover, of writing from
personal knowledge. He has rather slurred over the earlier part of
Lover's career, apparently from a fear of trespassing on the preserves
of a longer biography previously published; which is a pity, as his
sketch will have most interest for readers who come fresh to the
subject. Even those whose curiosity in regard to the writer has not
been stirred by reading his works may get a very good idea of them from
the selections printed here. The book is not a critical study: it
enters into no details or analysis of Lover's character. It is simply a
hurried outline of his life, interspersed with songs and stories which
go a good way to make up for the meagreness of personal anecdote, and
ending with some friendly letters and short notes written by Lover
during the last few years of his life and addressed to Mr. Symington.
Most of these letters were written in poor health from the Isle of
Wight or Jersey, to which places he was sent by the doctors. They are
not of the brilliant or gossipy order, but they are admirable in their
good colloquial English and cheerful, unaffected style. Lover was a man
of great activity of mind, combined with warm affections. His
life-story was not very romantic, but it was a wholesome and pleasant
one. When young he was deeply attached to an English girl, with whom,
though they were separated (Mr. Symington does not say from what
cause), he maintained through life a warm friendship. The young lady
married, and Lover consoled himself and was married twice, each time,
it appears, very happily. His letters contain many little domestic
allusions, reporting his own occupations and those of "the good little
wife" at their fireside in Kent or away at the shore, where they look
back with regret to their own country-house. Lover had a warm
attachment to home, the house as well as the inmates. "I cannot tell
you," he writes from the Isle of Wight, "how much I have been put off
my balance by my exile from my own house. For a time one is willing to
make, for health's sake, a sacrifice of domestic comfort and give up
the pleasant habits one can indulge in in one's own home; but to lead
for months and months a lodging-house life is very miserable: it
benumbs the best of our faculties; the edge of enjoyment is blunted.
Music is sweeter within the compass of your own walls; the book is
pleasanter taken from the familiar shelf of your own library; in one's
own studio the habit of happy occupation has made an atmosphere that
has a charm in it."

Gifted with a rare variety of talents, Lover heartily enjoyed the
exercise of each, and found his chief pleasure in their development. He
worked incessantly at painting, writing or musical composition--worked
for love of the work, not from uneasy effort or outside pressure. In
this respect he presents a happy contrast to his fellow-countryman and
brother-humorist Charles Lever, whose biography, published some months
ago, left a painful impression on the mind in its view of a man of
genuine talent and attractive qualities living in a feverish way and
writing constantly against his inclination, too often below his powers.
As writers the two stand side by side. Lover had more versatility of
talent, taking him partly outside the field of literature. He made the
most of his powers: nothing which he has written gives the idea that he
might have done it better. He was a poet, which Lever was not, and had
an easy command of versification and language. His songs, while they
show no high poetic qualities, are excellent of their kind, and his
facility in turning an impromptu verse is shown in this scrap from the
book before us in praise of a friend and physician:

Whene'er your vitality
Is feeble in quality,
And you fear a fatality
May end the strife,
Then Dr. Joe Dickson
Is the man I would fix on
For putting new wicks on
The lamp of life.

In his stories Lover relied less on drollery of incident and indulged
more in play upon words than Lever, but the humor of both is
essentially of the same kind and drawn from the same source. Compared
with much of our American humor, it has a spontaneousness, and above
all a lovable quality, that ours lacks. The boy who has laughed over
_Lorrequer_ and _Handy Andy_ is apt to look back at them not merely
with amusement, but with a feeling of _camaraderie_ and even
tenderness. He has laughed with them as well as at them--has somehow
gained through the laughter a glimpse of the writer which inspires
liking and respect.

New England Bygones. By E.H. Arr. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

E.H. Arr has produced a very pleasant book by a simple effort of
memory. By letting the mind's eye travel back carefully and vigilantly
over the scenes of a youth passed in a rural part of New England, and
taking notes of its journey, she has made a graphic picture of life in
that corner of the country forty years ago. Not a few men and women who
were "raised" there have carried away, bit for bit, the same
reminiscences, so exactly does one New England landscape resemble
another, in details of foreground at least. The same description of
orchard, stone walls or old well will fit any farm in Maine or
Massachusetts, and fond recollection sniffs the same odor of sputtering
doughnuts through the kitchen-door, whether it carries one back to the
Green hills or the White. Recollections are alike, but impressions
differ, one class of minds retaining the sense of bareness and gloom
which is so continually insisted upon in some New England books, and
others, as in the book before us, dwelling lovingly upon the wholesome
flavor, pungent yet mellow, which gives New England country life a
distinctive charm unlike anything else either in this or the
mother-country. Even the Sunday is pleasant to look back upon to E.H.
Arr; which is probably one instance of the fact that retrospective
pleasure is sometimes totally disproportionate to present enjoyment.

The author is more successful in her treatment of landscape than of
figures. Her village people are shown too much under one aspect: she
possesses none of the humor which dares to take the most opposite
traits, the grotesque and the beautiful alike, and blend them in a
sound, artistic whole. Her characters are evidently drawn from life,
but we miss the many little touches which would make them alive. An
essay on "Old Trees" contains some of the best work in the book, with
its charming sketch of an old orchard, bringing to view the twisted
trees and even the irregularities of the ground, and to the palate a
sharp after-taste of yellowing apples picked up from tufts of matted
grass. After all, the New England of the writer's bygones does not
differ essentially from the New England of to-day, though a more vivid
study of life would perhaps have brought out more contrasts between the
two.

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