International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 written by Various
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Various >> International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850
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8 INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY MISCELLANY
Of Literature, Art, and Science.
* * * * *
Vol. I. NEW YORK, JULY 15, 1850. No. 3.
* * * * *
GEORGE SAND, IN THE MEMOIRS OF CHATEAUBRIAND.
George Sand is about to publish a book called "Memoirs of my Life,"
which is looked for with great expectations by both the admirers of
her genius and the lovers of scandalous gossip. It is certain that if
she makes a clean breast of her adventures and experiences, the world
will have reason both for admiration and disgust over the confessions:
admiration for the generosity of her character--for she never did
a mean thing, and probably never had a mean thought--disgust at the
recklessness with which she has cast off the delicacy and modesty of
woman, and undermined the morality on which the holiest institutions
of society depend. The interest with which the French public look
forward to the book may be understood from the enormous price she
has received for it between $30,000 and $40,000. The _Credit_, a most
respectable daily journal of Paris, has purchased of the publisher,
for $12,000, the right of issuing the first six volumes in its
_feuilleton_, in advance of the regular publication, and will soon
commence them.
Chateaubriand, in one of the latest chapters of his Posthumous
Memoirs, speaks at some length of George Sand. The verdict of the most
illustrious French literary man of the age which has just closed,
upon this most remarkable writer of the age now passing, is every
way interesting, and we translate it for the _International_ from the
columns of _La Presse_, as follows:
Madame Sand possesses talents of the first order. Her descriptions are
true as those of Rousseau in his Reveries, and those of Bernardin
St. Pierre in his Studies. Her free style is stained by none of the
current faults of the day. Lelia, a book painful to read, and offering
only here and there one of the delicious scenes which may be found in
Indiana and Valentine, is nevertheless a master-work of its kind. Of
the nature of a debauch, it is yet without passion, though it produces
the disturbance of passion. The soul is wanting, but still it weighs
upon the heart. Depravity of maxims, insult to rectitude of life,
could not go farther; but over the abyss descends the talent of the
author. In the valley of Gomorrah the dew falls nightly upon the Dead
Sea.
The works of Madame Sand, those romances, the poetry of matter, are
born of the epoch. Notwithstanding her superiority, it is to be feared
that the author has narrowed the circle of her readers by the very
character of her writings. George Sand will never be a favorite with
persons of all ages. Of two men equal in genius, one of whom preaches
order and the other disorder, the first will attract the greater
number of hearers. The human race never give unanimous applause to
what wounds morality, on which repose the feeble and the just. We do
not willingly associate with all the recollections of our life those
books which caused us the first blush, and whose pages were not
those we learned by heart as we left the cradle: books which we have
read only in secret, which have never been our avowed and cherished
companions, and which were never mingled with either the candor of our
sentiments or the integrity of our innocence. Providence has confined
to very straight limits all success which has not its source in
goodness, and has given universal glory as an encouragement for
virtue.
I am aware that I reason here like a man whose narrow view does not
embrace the vast _humanitary_ horizon, like a retrograde attached to
a ridiculous system of morality, a morality already passing to decay,
and at the best good only for minds without intelligence, in the
infancy of society. There is close at hand the birth of a new gospel,
far above the common-places of this conventional wisdom, which hinders
the progress of the human race, and the restoration to dignity and
honor of this poor body, so calumniated by the soul. When women all
resort to the street--when to perform the marriage ceremony it will
be enough to open the window and call on God as witness, priest,
and wedding-guest--then all prudery will be destroyed; there will be
espousals everywhere, and we shall rise the same as the birds to the
grandeur of nature. My criticism on books of the sort of George Sand's
has then no value except in the vulgar order of things past, and
therefore I trust she will not be offended by it. The admiration I
profess for her ought to make her excuse these remarks, which have
their origin in the infelicity of my age. Once I should have been more
carried away by the Muses. Those daughters of heaven were in times
past my lovely mistresses, now they are only my ancient friends. At
evening they kept me company by the fireside, but they soon depart;
for I go to bed early, and then they hasten to take their places
around the hearth-stone of Madame Sand.
Without doubt Madame Sand will in this path prove her intellectual
omnipotence, but yet she will please less, because she will be less
original. She will fancy she augments her power by venturing into the
depths of these reveries, beneath which we deplorable common mortals
are buried, and she will be mistaken. In fact she is much superior
to this extravagance, this vagueness, this presumptuous balderdash.
At the same time that a person endowed with a rare but too flexible
faculty, should be guarded against follies of the higher order, he
ought also to be warned that fantastic compositions, subjective or
intimate, painting (so runs the jargon) are restricted; that their
course is in youth; that its springs are drying up every instant, and
that after a number of productions the writer finishes with nothing
but weak repetitions.
Is it very likely that Madame Sand will always find the same charm
in what she now composes? Will not the merit and the enthusiasm of
twenty lose their value in her mind as the works of my first days are
depreciated in mine? There is nothing changeless except the labors of
the antique muse, and they are sustained by a nobility of manners, a
beauty of language, and a majesty of sentiments, which belong to the
entire human species. The fourth book of the Eneid remains forever
exposed to the admiration of men because it is suspended in heaven.
The ships bearing the founder of the Roman Empire,--Dido, the
foundress of Carthage, stabbing herself after having announced
Hannibal:
Exoriare aliquis nostius exossibus ulta.--
Love causing the rivality of Rome and Carthage to leap from the flame
of his torch, lighting with his own hand the funeral pile, whose
blaze the fugitive Eneas perceives upon the waves,--is altogether
another thing than the promenade of a dreamer in the woods, or the
disappearance of a libertine who drowns himself in the sea. Madame
Sand will, I trust, yet associate her talents with subjects as durable
as her genius.
Madame Sand can only be converted by the preaching of that missionary
with bald forehead and hoary beard, called Time. A voice less
austere meanwhile enchains the captive ear of the poet. In fact, I
am persuaded that the talent of Madame Sand has some of its roots in
corruption; in becoming modest she would become commonplace. It would
have been otherwise had she always remained in that sanctuary not
frequented by men; her power of love, restrained and concealed beneath
the virginal fillet, would have drawn from her heart those decent
melodies which belong at once to the woman and the angel. However that
may be, audacity of ideas and voluptuousness of manners form a spot
not before cleared up by a daughter of Adam, and which, submitted to
a woman's culture, has yielded a harvest of unknown flowers. Let us
permit Madame Sand to produce these perilous marvels till the approach
of winter; she will sing no more _when the North wind has come_.
Meanwhile, less improvident than the grasshopper, let her make
provision of glory for the time when there will be a famine of
pleasure. The mother of Musarion was wont to repeat to her child:
"Thou wilt not always be sixteen; will Choereas always remember his
oath, his tears and his caresses?"
For the rest, women have often been seduced, and as it were carried
off, by their own youth, but toward the days of autumn, restored
to the maternal hearth, they have added to their harps the grave
or plaintive chord on which either religion or unhappiness finds
expression. Old age is a traveler in the night time; the earth is
hidden from sight and he can see nothing but the heavens shining above
his head.
I have not seen Madame Sand dressed in men's clothes or wearing the
blouse and the iron-shod staff of the mountaineer. I have not seen her
drinking from the cup of bacchanals and smoking indolently reclining
on a sofa like a sultana,--natural or affected eccentricities which
for me could add nothing to her charms or her genius.
Is she more inspired when she causes a cloud of vapor to rise from
her mouth about her hair? Did Lelia escape from the head of her mother
through a burning mist, as Sin, according to Milton, proceeded from
the head of the glorious and guilty archangel amid a whirlpool of
smoke? I know not what passes in the sacred courts; but here below
Neamede, Phila, Lais, Gnathene, the witty Phryne, the despair of the
pencil of Apelles, and the chisel of Praxiteles, Leena, beloved of
Harmodias, the two sisters named Aphyes, because they were small and
had large eyes, Dorica, the fillet of whose locks and embalmed robe
were consecrated in the temple of Venus,--all these enchantresses knew
only the perfumes of Arabia. It is true that Madame Sand has on her
side the authority of the Odalisques and the young Mexicans who dance
with cigars between their lips.
What effect has Madame Sand had upon me, after the few gifted women,
and many charming women whom I have known--after those daughters of
the earth, who like Madame Sand said with Sappho: "Come, Mother of
Love, to our delicious banquets, fill our cups with the nectar of
roses?" As I have placed myself now in fiction and now in reality, the
author of Valentine has made on me two very different impressions.
As for fiction, I do not speak of it, for I ought no longer to
understand its language; as for reality, a man of grave age,
cherishing the notions of propriety, attaching as a Christian the
highest value to the timid virtue of woman. I know not how to express
my unhappiness at such a mass of rich endowments bestowed on the
prodigal and faithless hours which are spent and vanish.
* * * * *
MARIA BROOKS AND SOUTHEY.
It is well known that our countrywoman MARIA DEL OCCIDENTE was on
terms of familiar intimacy with the poet-laureate, whose admiration
of her genius is illustrated in several allusions to her in his works,
and particularly in that passage of "The Doctor" in which she is
described as "the most impassioned and imaginative of all poetesses."
Southey superintended the publication of "Zophiel," in London, and
afterward was a frequent correspondent of Mrs. Brooks, during her
residence in New York and in Cuba. Among the souvenirs of Mrs.
Brooke's grateful recollection of his kindness, are two or three short
poems commemorating her visits to Keswick, and the following song, put
into a lyrical form by her, from the blank verse of "Madoc."
PRINCE HOEL'S LAY OF LOVE.
I've harnessed thee, my faithful steed--
Now, by the ocean, prove thy speed,
While, as we pass, th' advancing spray
Shall kiss thy side of glossy gray;--
Oh! fairer than the ocean foam
Is that cold maid for whom we roam!
Her cheek is like the apple flower
Or summer heavens, at evening hour,
While, in her tender bashfulness,
She starts and files my love's excess,
Tho' dim my brow, beneath its mail,
As ocean when the sun is pale.
On, on! until my longing sight,
Can fix upon that dwelling white,
Beside a verdant bank that braves
The ocean's ever-sounding waves;--
There, all alone, she loves to sing,
Watching the silver sea-mew's wing.
In crowded halls, my spirit flies
To wait upon her; and wasting sighs
Consume my nights; where'er I turn
For her I pant, for her I burn,
Who, like some timid, graceful bird,
Shrinks from my glance and fears my word.
I faint; my glow of youth is gone;
Sleepless at night and sick at morn,
My strength departs; I droop, I fade,
Yet think upon that lonely maid,
And pity her, the while I pine
That she should spurn a love like mine
_This_, Madoc took the harp to play;
Cold in the earth Prince Hoel lay;
And Llaian listened, fain to speak
But wept as if her heart would break.
In this connection, writing of Southey, soon after intelligence was
received in this country of the decay of his intelligence, from her
coffee estate in Cuba, Mrs. Brooks says:
When a child of ten years old I could admire the poem "Madoc,"
such is the simplicity of its sentiments and the beauty of
its delineations. Looking it over, here, (amidst the woods and
canes of that island where repose the bones of Columbus,) the
song of Prince Hoel attached itself to my thoughts, and has
been (involuntarily) put into rhyme. This song may be found in
the first part of the poem mentioned. The lyric metre in which
it now appears must rather injure than improve the _belle
nature_ of the original. Still I wish it to be published, as
coming from my hand; because it gives me an opportunity of
expressing, in some degree, my unqualified admiration of its
composer. Well may he be called THE POET AND HISTORIAN OF THE
NEW WORLD. To justify this appellation, one has only to look
at Madoc and the History of Brazil. I have heard, from a
friend, of a rumor that Southey is ill; and, as it is feared,
irrecoverably.
This intelligence is unexpected as it is melancholy; for who had
better reason to look forward to a protracted existence upon earth,
than he who has written more than any other man except Voltaire--than
Robert Southey, perfectly proportioned in person, just in mind,
regular in his way of living, and benevolent in all his doings?
During that Spring which hallowed the last revolution in France, (that
of July, 1830,) I saw this bard of the lakes surrounded by his most
amiable and certainly beautiful family; one only individual of which,
his "Dark-eyed Birtha, timid as a dove," was then absent. I must
ever believe that a common reputation for beauty depends more on
circumstances than on any particular faultlessness in the person said
generally to be handsome.
Byron, in some one of the letters or conversations, written either
by or for him, says, or is said to say: "I saw Southey (naming the
time) at Lord Holland's, and would give Newstead for his head and
shoulders." This quotation is from memory, but, I trust, right in
sentiment, though it may not be perfectly so in words; but I have
seen little else concerning the physique either of him "Who framed of
Thalaba that wild and wondrous song," or of those to whom his blood is
transmitted. Still, at the time I have mentioned, it was impossible to
look unmoved upon so much perfection of color, sound and expression as
arrested my eyes at Keswick; in the tasteful and hospitable dwelling
of him who brought to earth that "Glendoveer," "one of the fairest
race of Heaven," (the heaven of India,) who averted the designs of
Arvalan, in that glowing and magnificent poem "The Curse of Kehama."
The Herodotus of Brazil, himself, had seen, when I first saw him,
fifty-seven winters; but his once dark locks, though sprinkled with
snow, were still curling as if childhood had not passed; and looked
wild and thick as those of his own Thalaba. A "chevelure" like this,
with black eyes, aquiline features, and figure tall and slender,
without attenuation, assisted in presenting such an image as is seldom
viewed in reality; while the effect of the whole was enhanced by easy,
unpretending and affectionate manners.
The eldest daughter of this Minstrel of the Mountains was called
_Edith May_, (the name of May having been given because she was born
in the month of blossoms.) This lady (now Mrs. Warter,) was the bard
himself with a different sex and complexion. "Her features his, but
softened." Her gentle, graceful deportment was in perfect harmony with
flaxen hair tinted with gold; and the outline of her father's face
was embellished by the blue eyes and other delicate colors of her too
sensitive mother, (named, also, Edith,) who had been chosen for love
alone. The second daughter, Birtha, as I have said, was absent. The
third, Catherine, "between the woman and the child," had hazel eyes
and fine features, altogether with a delicate shape and complexion.
Cuthbert, the only son, was a boy of eleven or twelve, with an open,
expressive countenance.
I could not help remarking that in the names of each individual of
this pleasing group was heard that sound produced by the letter T
followed by its companion H, which is so difficult to the organs of
foreigners, but which, when tenderly pronounced, brings to mind
the down of a swan or the wing of a dove. Edith, Birtha, Catherine,
Cuthbert, Southey. If affection and innocence can insure felicity on
earth, the course of their lives must be smooth as waters where the
swan reposes; for certainly all their movements seemed innocent as
those of the dove.
The month of March was nearly half gone, when I reached Keswick,
by the road from Edinburgh; having passed, in my way, an old stone
building, pointed out to me as "Branksome Tower," known by the "Lay of
the Last Minstrel," who has sung the achievements of Scottish knights
and ladies. This village, at the foot of Skiddaw, though much visited
in the summer, has still all the wildness of nature. Daffodils were
in blossom when I walked there; and primroses, daisies and violets
opened, among the trees, upon every bank and grass plat, while the
mountains, clustering about Derwent Water, assumed such tints and
shades of purple and blue as are peculiar to a northern climate.
"Oh, man, thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear!"
All these pleasing images seemed to flit before me while putting into
rhyme the "Song of Prince Hoel,"--but before I could write it down,
tidings reached me of the illness, (perhaps incurable,) of him who
drew it from the oblivion of its native Welsh.
Death already has robbed me of so much, that I have become, as it
were, inured to grief, and accustomed, even in my least unhappy
moments to reflect on the incertitude of all earthly hopes and wishes.
I can now hear of losses with melancholy rather than with horror.
So much of the soul of Robert Southey has been dispersed about the
world that a translation to some other state of being, (now, before
time has given him any burthen to carry,) would be, perhaps, no
misfortune, except to those left to sorrow. Yet to know that so
benevolent a being is still existing, feeling, joying, and suffering,
on the sphere of our own mortality, awakens a feeling so nearly allied
to pleasure that all who can appreciate excellence must entreat of
Heaven the continuance upon earth of a contemporary of whom it may be
said:
"VIRTUE AND HE ARE ONE!"
* * * * *
MISS LESLIE'S LIFE OF JOHN FITCH.
It has been announced for years that Miss Leslie--the very clever but
not altogether amiable magazinist--was engaged upon a memoir of JOHN
FITCH, to whom, it has always seemed to us, was due much more than
to Fulton, the credit of inventing the steamboat. While Fitch was in
London, Miss Leslie's father was one of his warmest friends, and
the papers of her family enable her to give many particulars of his
history unknown to other biographers. When several years ago. R.W.
Griswold published his Sketches of the Life and Labors of John Fitch,
the late Noah Webster sent him the following interesting letter upon
the subject:
DEAR SIR:--In your sketch of John Fitch you justly remarked
that his biography is still a desideratum. The facts related
of him by Mr. St. John to Mr. Stone, and published in the _New
York Commercial Advertiser_, are new to me; and never before
had I heard of Mr. Fitch at _Sharon_, in Connecticut; but
I know Mr. St. John very well, and cannot discredit his
testimony any more than I can Mr. Stone's memory. The
substance of the account given of Mr. Fitch by the
indefatigable J.W. Barber, in his Connecticut Historical
Collections, is as follows: John Fitch was born in East
Windsor, in Connecticut, and apprenticed to Mr. Cheney, a
watch and clock-maker, of East Hartford, now Manchester, a
new town separated from East Hartford. He married, but did not
live happily with his wife, and he left her and went to New
Brunswick, in New Jersey, where he set up the business of
clock-making, engraving, and repairing muskets, before the
revolution. When New Jersey was invaded by the British troops,
Mr. Fitch removed into the interior of Pennsylvania, where he
employed his time in repairing arms for the army.
Mr. Fitch conceived the project of steam navigation in 1785,
as appears by his advertisement. He built his boat in 1787.
In my Diary I have myself noted that I visited the boat, lying
at the wharf in the Delaware, on the ninth day of February,
1787. The Governor and Council were so much gratified with
the success of the boat that they presented Mr. Fitch with a
superb flag. About that time, the company, aiding Mr. Fitch,
sent him to France, at the request of Mr. Vail, our consul at
L'Orient, who was one of the company. But this was when France
began to be agitated by the revolution, and nothing in favor
of Mr. Fitch was accomplished; he therefore returned. Mr. Vail
afterward _presented to Mr. Fulton for examination the papers
of Mr. Fitch_, containing his scheme of steam navigation.
After Mr. Fitch returned to this country, he addressed a
letter to Mr. Rittenhouse, in which he predicted that in time
the _Atlantic would be crossed by steam power_; he complained
of his poverty, and urged Mr. Rittenhouse to buy his land in
Kentucky, for raising funds to complete his scheme. But he
obtained no efficient aid. Disappointed in his efforts to
obtain funds, he resorted to indulgence in drink; he retired
to Pittsburgh, and finally ended his life by plunging into
the Alleghany. His books and papers he bequeathed to the
Philadelphia Library, with the injunction that they were to
remain closed for thirty years. At the end of that period,
the papers were opened, and found to contain a minute account
of his perplexities and disappointments. Thus chiefly the
narration of Mr. Barber, who refers for authority to the
American edition of the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. It may be
worth while for some gentleman to attempt to find these
papers. N. WEBSTER.
Rev. RUFUS W. GRISWOLD.
The papers to which Dr. Webster alludes in the above letter, have
been examined by Miss Leslie, and the curious details they contain
of Fitch's early life, his courtship, unfortunate marriage, captivity
among the Indians, experiments, &c. will be embraced in her work,
which will undoubtedly be one of the most interesting biographies of
this country.
* * * * *
The director of the Museum of Paris has opened a very interesting
gallery of American antiquities, from Yucatan, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia,
and other countries of the New World.
* * * * *
ILLUMINATED BOOKS.
Mr. Owen Jones, an English architect, and the author of a very
beautiful work on the Alhambra, has been enabled, by the curious
process of chromo-lithography, originally discovered by the Bavarian,
Alois Sennefelder, to popularize and multiply almost indefinitely
the delicate and highly-finished illuminations executed by the pious
monkish artists of the middle ages.
According to Felton, the manuscript illuminators "borrowed their title
from the illumination which a bright genius giveth to his work," and
they form the connecting link in the chain which unites the ancient
with the modern schools of painting. Their works, considered as a
subordinate branch of pictorial art, though frequently grotesque and
barbarous, are singularly characteristic of the epoch in which they
lived, whether we retrace the art to its Byzantine origin in the
earliest ages of Christianity, or follow it to its most complete
and harmonious development in the two centuries which preceded the
discovery of the printing press.
The primitive Christians were possessed with an unconquerable
repugnance to the introduction of images, and the first notice we have
of the use of pictures is in the censure of the Council of Illiberis,
300 years after the Christian era. Of these one of the earliest and
most curious specimens is the consecrated banner which animated the
victorious soldiers of Constantine. The Labarum was a long pike,
topped with a crown of gold, inclosing a monogram expressive of
the cross and the two initial letters of the name of Christ, and
intersected by a transverse beam, from which hung a silken vail
curiously inwrought with the images of the reigning monarch and his
children. A medal of the Emperor Constantius is said to be still
extant in which the mysterious symbol is accompanied with the
memorable words, "By this sign shalt thou conquer." The austere
simplicity of the Primitive Christians yielded at length to this
innovation of sacred splendor. Before the end of the sixth century the
use and even the worship of images, or pictorial representations of
sacred persons and subjects, was firmly established in the capital,
and those "made without hands" were propagated in the camps and cities
of the Eastern empire by monkish artists, whose flat delineations were
in the last degeneracy of taste.
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