Woman in the Nineteenth Century Part 15

AGLAURON AND LAURIE.

A DRIVE THROUGH THE COUNTRY NEAR BOSTON.

Aglauron and Laurie are two of the pleasantest men I know. Laurie combines, with the external advantages of a beautiful person and easy address, all the charm which quick perceptions and intelligent sympathy give to the intercourse of daily life. He has an extensive, though not a deep, knowledge of men and books,--his naturally fine taste has been more refined by observation, both at home and abroad, than is usual in this busy country; and, though not himself a thinker, he follows with care and delight the flights of a rapid and inventive mind. He is one of those rare persons who, without being servile or vacillating, present on no side any barrier to the free action of another mind. Yes, he is really an agreeable companion. I do not remember ever to have been wearied or chilled in his company.

Aglauron is a person of far greater depth and force than his friend and cousin, but by no means as agreeable. His mind is ardent and powerful, rather than brilliant and ready,--neither does he with ease adapt himself to the course of another. But, when he is once kindled, the blaze of light casts every object on which it falls into a bold relief, and gives every scene a l.u.s.tre unknown before. He is not, perhaps, strictly original in his thoughts; but the severe truth of his character, and the searching force of his attention, give the charm of originality to what he says. Accordingly, another cannot, by repet.i.tion, do it justice. I have never any doubt when I write down or tell what Laurie says, but Aglauron must write for himself.

Yet I almost always take notes of what has pa.s.sed, for the amus.e.m.e.nt of a distant friend, who is learning, amidst the western prairies, patience, and an appreciation of the poor benefits of our imperfectly civilized state. And those I took this day, seemed not unworthy of a more general circulation. The sparkle of talk, the free breeze that swelled its current, are always fled when you write it down; but there is a gentle flow, and truth to the moment, rarely attained in more elaborate compositions.

My two friends called to ask if I would drive with them into the country, and I gladly consented. It was a beautiful afternoon of the last week in May. Nature seemed most desirous to make up for the time she had lost, in an uncommonly cold and wet spring. The leaves were bursting from their sheaths with such rapidity that the trees seemed actually to greet you as you pa.s.sed along. The vestal choirs of snow-drops and violets were chanting their gentle hopes from every bank, the orchards were white with blossoms, and the birds singing in almost tumultuous glee.

We drove for some time in silence, perhaps fearful to disturb the universal song by less melodious accents, when Aglauron said:

"How entirely are we new-born today! How are all the post cold skies and hostile breezes vanished before this single breath of sweetness!

How consoling is the truth thus indicated!"

_Laurie_. It is indeed the dearest fact of our consciousness, that, in every moment of joy, pain is annihilated. There is no past, and the future is only the sunlight streaming into the far valley.

_Aglauron._ Yet it was the night that taught us to prize the day.

_Laurie._ Even so. And I, you know, object to none of the "dark masters."

_Aglauron_. Nor I,--because I am sure that whatever is, is good; and to find out the _why_ is all our employment here. But one feels so at home in such a day as this!

_Laurie._ As this, indeed! I never heard so many birds, nor saw so many flowers. Do you not like these yellow flowers?

_Aglauron._ They gleam upon the fields as if to express the bridal kiss of the sun. He seems most happy, if not most wealthy, when first he is wed to the earth.

_Laurie._ I believe I have some such feeling about these golden flowers. When I did not know what was the Asphodel, so celebrated by the poets, I thought it was a golden flower; yet this yellow is so ridiculed as vulgar.

_Aglauron_. It is because our vulgar luxury depreciates objects not fitted to adorn our dwellings. These yellow flowers will not bear being token out of their places and brought home to the centre-table.

But, when enamelling the ground, the cowslip, the king-cup,--nay, the marigold and dandelion even,--are resplendently beautiful.

_Laurie_. They are the poor man's gold. See that dark, unpointed house, with its lilac shrubbery. As it stands, undivided from the road to which the green bank slopes down from the door, is not the effect of that enamel of gold dandelions beautiful?

_Aglauron_. It seems as if a stream of peace had flowed from the door-step down to the very dust, in waves of light, to greet the pa.s.ser-by. That is, indeed, a quiet house. It looks as if somebody's grandfather lived there still.

_Laurie_. It is most refreshing to see the dark boards amid those houses of staring white. Strange that, in the extreme heat of summer, aching eyes don't teach the people better.

_Aglauron_. We are still, in fact, uncivilized, for all our knowledge of what is done "in foreign parts" cannot make us otherwise.

Civilization must be h.o.m.ogeneous,--must be a natural growth. This glistening white paint was long preferred because the most expensive; just as in the West, I understand, they paint houses red to make them resemble the hideous red brick. And the eye, thus spoiled by excitement, prefers red or white to the stone-color, or the browns, which would harmonize with other hues.

_Laurie_. I should think the eye could never be spoiled so far as to like these white palings. These bars of glare amid the foliage are unbearable.

_Myself_. What color should they be?

_Laurie_. An invisible green, as in all civilized parts of the globe. Then your eye would rest on the shrubbery undisturbed.

_Myself_. Your vaunted Italy has its palaces of white stucco and buildings of brick.

_Laurie_. Ay,--but the stucco is by the atmosphere soon mellowed into cream-color, the brick into rich brown.

_Myself_. I have heard a connoisseur admire our own red brick in the afternoon sun, above all other colors.

_Laurie_. There are some who delight too much in the stimulus of color to be judges of harmony of coloring. It is so, often, with the Italians. No color is too keen for the eye of the Neapolitan. He thinks, with little Riding-hood, there is no color like red. I have seen one of the most beautiful new palaces paved with tiles of a brilliant red. But this, too, is barbarism.

_Myself_. You are pleased to call it so, because you make the English your arbiters in point of taste; but I do not think they, on your own principle, are our proper models. With their ever-weeping skies, and seven-piled velvet of verdure, they are no rule for us, whose eyes are accustomed to the keen blue and brilliant clouds of our own realm, and who see the earth wholly green scarce two months in the year. No white is more glistening than our January snows; no house here hurts my eye more than the fields of white-weed will, a fortnight hence.

_Laurie._ True refinement of taste would bid the eye seek repose the more. But, even admitting what you say, there is no harmony. The architecture is borrowed from England; why not the rest?

_Aglauron._ But, my friend, surely these piazzas and pipe-stem pillars are all American.

_Laurie._ But the cottage to which they belong is English. The inhabitants, suffocating in small rooms, and beneath sloping roofs, because the house is too low to admit any circulation of air, are in need, we must admit, of the piazza, for elsewhere they must suffer all the torments of Mons. Chaubert in his first experience of the oven.

But I do not a.s.sail the piazzas, at any rate; they are most desirable, in these hot summers of ours, were they but in proportion with the house, and their pillars with one another. But I do object to houses which are desirable neither as summer nor winter residences here. The shingle palaces, celebrated by Irving's wit, were far more appropriate, for they, at least, gave free course to the winds of heaven, when the thermometer stood at ninety-five degrees in the shade.

_Aglauron._ Pity that American wit nipped in the bud those early attempts at an American architecture. Here in the East, alas! the case is become hopeless. But in the West the log-cabin still promises a proper basis.

_Laurie._ You laugh at me. But so it is. I am not so silly as to insist upon American architecture, American art, in the 4th of July style, merely for the gratification of national vanity. But a building, to be beautiful, should harmonize exactly with the uses to which it is to be put, and be an index to the climate and habits of the people. There is no objection to borrowing good thoughts from other nations, if we adopt the new style because we find it will serve our convenience, and not merely because it looks pretty outside.

_Aglauron._ I agree with you that here, as well as in manners and in literature, there is too ready access to the old stock, and, though I said it in jest, my hope is, in truth, the log-cabin. This the settler will enlarge, as his riches and his family increase; he will beautify as his character refines, and as his eye becomes accustomed to observe objects around him for their loveliness as well as for their utility. He will borrow from Nature the forms and coloring most in harmony with the scene in which his dwelling is placed. Might growth here be but slow enough! Might not a greediness for gain and show cheat men of all the real advantages of their experience!

(Here a carriage pa.s.sed.)

_Laurie._ Who is that beautiful lady to whom you bowed?

_Aglauron._ Beautiful do you think her? At this distance, and with the freshness which the open air gives to her complexion, she certainly does look so, and was so still, five years ago, when I knew her abroad. It is Mrs. V----.

_Laurie._ I remember with what interest you mentioned her in your letters. And you promised to tell me her true story.

_Aglauron._ I was much interested, then, both in her and her story, But, last winter, when I met her at the South, she had altered, and seemed so much less attractive than before, that the bright colors of the picture are well-nigh effaced.

_Laurie._ The pleasure of telling the story will revive them again. Let us fasten our horses and go into this little wood. There is a seat near the lake which is pretty enough to tell a story upon.

_Aglauron._ In all the idyls I ever read, they were told in caves, or beside a trickling fountain.

_Laurie._ That was in the last century. We will innovate. Let us begin that American originality we were talking about, and make the bank of a lake answer our purpose.

We dismounted accordingly, but, on reaching the spot, Aglauron at first insisted on lying on the gra.s.s, and gazing up at the clouds in a most uncitizen-like fashion, and it was some time before we could get the promised story. At last,--

I first saw Mrs. V---- at the opera in Vienna. Abroad, I scarcely cared for anything in comparison with music. In many respects the Old World disappointed my hopes; Society was, in essentials, no better, nor worse, than at home, and I too easily saw through the varnish of conventional refinement. Lions, seen near, were scarcely more interesting than tamer cattle, and much more annoying in their gambols and caprices. Parks and ornamental grounds pleased me less than the native forests and wide-rolling rivers of my own land. But in the Arts, and most of all in Music, I found all my wishes more than realized. I found the soul of man uttering itself with the swiftness, the freedom and the beauty, for which I had always pined. I easily conceived how foreigners, once acquainted with this diverse language, pa.s.s their lives without a wish for pleasure or employment beyond hearing the great works of the masters. It seemed to me that here was wealth to feed the thoughts for ages. This lady fixed my attention by the rapturous devotion with which she listened. I saw that she too had here found her proper home. Every shade of thought and feeling expressed in the music was mirrored in her beautiful countenance. Her rapture of attention, during some pa.s.sages, was enough of itself to make you hold your breath; and a sudden stroke of genius lit her face into a very heaven with its lightning. It seemed to me that in her I should find one who would truly sympathize with me, one who looked on the art not as a connoisseur, but a votary.

I took the speediest opportunity of being introduced to her at her own house by a common friend.

But what a difference! At home I scarcely knew her. Still she was beautiful; but the sweetness, the elevated expression, which the satisfaction of an hour had given her, were entirely fled. Her eye was restless, her cheek pale and thin, her whole expression perturbed and sorrowful. Every gesture spoke the sickliness of a spirit long an outcast from its natural home, bereft of happiness, and hopeless of good.