Letter IX In Which Our Correspondent Temporarily Digresses From War Matters to Romantic Literature, and Introduces a Woman’s Novel
Washington, D.C., July —, 1861.
While the Grand Army is making its preparations for an advance upon the Southern Confederacy, my boy, and the celebrated fowl of our distracted country is getting ready his spurs, let me distract your attention for a moment to the subject of harrowing Romance as inflicted by the intellectual women of America.
To soothe and instruct me in my leisure and more ebrious moments, one of the ink-comparable women of America has sent me her new novel to read; and before I allow you to enjoy its green leaves, my boy, you must permit me to make a few remarks concerning the generality of such works.
Long and patient study of womanly works teaches me that woman’s genius, as displayed in gushing fiction, is a power of creating an unnatural and unmitigated ruffian for a hero, my boy, at whose shrine all created crinoline and immense delegations of inferior broadcloth are impelled to bow. Such a one was that old humbug, Rochester, the beloved of “Jane Eyre.” The character has been done-over scores of times since poor Charlotte Bronté gave her famous novel to the world, and is still “much used in respectable families.”
The great difficulty with the intellectual women of America is, that they will persist in attempting to delineate a phase of manly character which attracts them above all others, but which they do not comprehend. Woman entertains a natural fondness for that which she can not understand, and hence it is that we very seldom find her without a wildly-vague admiration of Emerson.
There is in this world, my boy, a noble type of manhood which unites dignified reserve with the most loyal integrity, relentless pride of manner with the kindest humility of heart, rigid indifference to the applause of the world with the finest regard for its honest respect, and carelessness of woman’s mere frivolous liking with the most profound and chivalrous reverence for her virtues and her love.
This is the type which, without comprehending it, the intellectual women of America are continually striving to depict in their novels; and a pretty mess they make of it, my boy,—a pretty mess they make of it.
Their “Rochester” hero is harder to understand than Hamlet, when he falls into the hands of our school-girl authoresses. He looms rakishly upon us, my boy, a horridly misanthropic wretch, despising the world with all the dreadful malignity of chronic dyspepsia, and displaying a degree of moral biliousness truly horrifying to members of the church. His behavior to the poor little heroine is a perpetual outrage. Alternately he caresses and snubs her. He never fails to make her read to him when he traps her in the library; and when she says, “Good night” to him he is too deep in a “fit of gloomy abstraction” to answer her civilly. If he calls her a “little fool,” her fondness for him becomes ecstatic: and at the first hint of his having murdered a noble brother and two beautiful sisters in early life, she is led to fear that her adoration of him will exceed the love she owes to her Maker!
This unprincipled ruffian may be separated from the virtuous little heroine for years, and be flirting consumedly with half a dozen crinolines when next she sees him; yet is he loved dearly by the virtuous little heroine all the time, and when last we hear of him, she is resting peacefully upon his vest-pattern.
What makes the inconsistency of the whole story still more apparent, is the intense and double-refined piety of the heroine, as contrasted with an utter stagnation of all morality in the breast of the ruffian. How the two can assimilate, I do not understand; and my misunderstanding is wofully augmented by the heroine’s frequent expressions of churchliness, and the ruffian’s equally frequent outbursts of waggish infidelity.
And now, my boy, let me transcribe for you the new novel, sent to me with such kind intent by one of the young and intellectual women of America. You will find much lusciousness of sentiment, my boy, in
HIGGINS.
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
BY GUSHALINA CRUSHIT.
PREFACE.
In writing the ensuing pages, I have been guided by no motives other than those which lead the mind, in its leisure hours, to scatter the germs of the beautiful. It may be urged that the character of my hero is unnatural; but I am sure there are many of my sex who will discover in Mr. Higgins a counter-part of the ideal of days when life still knew the odors of its first spring, and the soul of man seemed to the eye of innocence an elysium of virtue into which no gangrene of mere worldliness intruded. I have done.
CHAPTER I.
It was on the eve of a day in the happy month of June, that my great grandfather’s carriage, drawn by six hundred and twenty-two white horses, drew up under the tall palm trees before the gates of the venerable Higgins’ Lodge, and I was lifted almost fainting from the wearied vehicle. As my grandfather supported my trembling steps into the spacious hall of the lodge, I noticed that another figure had been added to our party. It was that of a man six feet high, and broad in proportion, whose majestic and spacious brow betokened realms of elysian thought and excrescent ideality. His pallid tresses hung in curls down his back, and an American flag floated from his Herculean shoulders. Fixed by a fascination only to be realized by those who have felt so, I cast my piercing glance at him, and my inmost soul knew all his sublimity. It was as though an angel’s wing had swept my temples, and left a glittering pinion there.
“Mr. Higgins,” said my grandfather, “here is your ward, Galushianna.”
For an instant silence prevailed.
Then Mr. Higgins said, in tones of exquisitely modulated thunder:
“What did you bring the d—d girl here for, you old cuss you?”
It was as when one sees a strain of music. I remembered the prayers of my dear departed mother when she sought to enlighten my speechless infancy with divine grace, and I felt that I loved this Higgins.
Such is life. We wander through the bowers of love without a thought of the morrow, while the dread vulture of predestination eats into our souls, and cries, wo! wo! Truly, earthly happiness is a mockery.
CHAPTER II.
Scarcely had I taken my seat in the library after my grandfather had left us, when Mr. Higgins ordered me to black his boots. This I proceeded to do with a haughty air, scarcely daring to hope, but wishing that he would conquer his freezing reserve, and speak to me again. For I was but a child, and my young heart yearned for sympathy.
Presently, Mr. Higgins turned his large gray eyes on me, and said:
“Ha!”
After this, he remained in a thoughtful reverie for two hours, and then turning to me, asked:
“Galushiana, what do you think of me?”
“I think,” replied I, carefully putting the blacking-brush in its place, “that your nature is naturally a noble one, but has been warped and shadowed by a misconceived impression of the great arcana of the universe. You permit the genuflexions of human sin to bias your mind in its estimate of the true economy of creation; thus blighting, as it were, the fructifying evidences of your own abstract being—”
I blushed, and feared I had gone too far.
“Very true,” responded Mr. Higgins, after a moment’s pause; “Schiller says nearly the same thing. It was a sense of man’s utter nothingness that led me to kill my grandmother, and poison the helpless offspring of my elder brother.”
Here Mr. Higgins held down his head and quivered with emotions, as the ocean quakes under the shrieking howl of the blast.
I felt my whole being convulsed, and could not endure the spectacle. I stole softly to the door, and stammered through my tears, “Good-night, Mr. Higgins, I will pray for you.”
He did not turn his noble head, but said, in firm tones: “Poor little beast, good night.”
I went to my room, but could not sleep. Shortly after half-past two o’clock I crawled noiselessly down to the library-door and looked in. Mr. Higgins still sat before the fire in the same thoughtful position. “Poor little beast!” I heard him murmur softly to himself—“poor little beast!”
CHAPTER III.
Let the reader transport himself to a small stone cottage on the Hudson, and he will behold me as I was at the age of twenty-one. I had reached that acme of woman’s career when common sense is to her as nothing, and the world with all its follies bursts upon her ravished ears with ten-fold succulence. My grandfather had been dead some fifty years, and I was even thinking of him, when the door opened, and Mr. Higgins entered. I felt my heart palpitate, and was about to quit the room, when he cast a searching glance at me, and said:
“Well, girl—are you as big a fool as ever?”
I hung my head, for the tell-tale blush would bloom.
“Come,” said Mr. Higgins, “don’t speak like a donkey. I’m no priestly confessor. Curse the priests! Curse the world! Curse everybody! Curse everything!” And he placed his feet upon the mantel-piece, and gazed meditatively into the fire.
I could hear the beatings of my own heart, and all the warmth of my nature went forth to meet this sublime embodiment of human majesty; yet I dared not speak.
After a short silence, Mr. Higgins took a chew of tobacco, and placing his hand on my shoulder, exclaimed:
“Why should I deceive you, girl? Last night I poisoned my only remaining sister because she would have wed a circus-keeper, and scarcely an hour ago I lost two millions at faro. Your priests would say this was wrong—hey?”
I stifled my sobs and said, as calmly as I could:
“Our Church looks at the motive, not the deed. If a high sense of honor compelled you to poison all your relatives and play faro, the sin was rather the effect of vice in others than in your own noble heart, and I doubt not you may be called innocent.”
He glanced into the fire a few hours, and then said:
“Go, Galushianna!—I would be alone! Go, innocent young scorpion.”
Oh, Higgins, Higgins, if I could have died for thee then, I don’t know but I should have done it!
CHAPTER IV.
Seventy-five years have rolled by since last I met the reader, and I am still a thoughtless girl. But oh, how changed! The raven of despair has flapped his hideous brood over the halls of my ancestors, and taken from them all that once made them beautiful. When I look back I can see nothing before me, and when I look forward I can see nothing behind me. Thus it is with life. We fancy that each hour is a butterfly made to play with, and all is gall and bitterness.
I was chastened by misfortune, and occupied a secluded cavern in the city of New Orleans, when my faithful old nurse entered my dressing-room, and burst into a fit of hysterical laughter.
“Sassafrina!” I exclaimed, half angrily.
“Please don’t be angry, miss,” responded the tired old creature; “but I knew it would come all right at last. I told you Sir Claude Higgins hadn’t married his youngest sister, but you wouldn’t believe me. Now he’s down stairs in the parlor waiting for you.”
And the attached domestic fell dead at my feet.
After hastily putting on a pair of clean stockings and reading a chapter in my mother’s family Bible, I left the room, murmuring to myself, “Be still, my throbbing heart, be still.”
CHAPTER V.
When I entered the parlor, Mr. Higgins sat gazing into the fire in an attitude of deep reflection, and did not note my entrance until I had touched him. His dishevelled hair hung from his massive temples in majestic discomposure, and an extinguished torch lay smouldering at his glorious feet.
O my soul’s idol! I can see thee now as I saw thee then, with the firelight glowing over thee, like a smile from the cerulean skies!
As I touched him, he awoke.
“Miserable girl!” he exclaimed, in those old familiar tones, drawing me towards him, while a delicious tremor shook my every nerve. “Wretched little serpent! And is it thus we meet? Poor idiot, you are but a woman, and I—alas! what am I? Two hours ago, I set fire to three churches, and crushed a sexton ’neath my iron heel. Do you not shrink? ’Tis well. Then hear me, viper, I lovest thee.”
Was it the music of a higher sphere that I smelt, or was I still in this world of folly and sin? And were all my toils, my cares, my heart-breathings, my hope-sobbings, my soul-writhings to end thus gloriously at last in the adoration of a being on whom I lavished all the spirit’s purest gloatings?
My bliss was more than I could endure. Tearing all the hair-pins from my hair and tying my pocket handkerchief about my heaving neck, I flung myself upon his steaming chest.
“My Higgins!”
“Your Higgins!!”
“OUR Higgins!!!”
The Blissful Finis.
The intellectual women of America draw it rather tempestuously when they try to reproduce gorgeous manhood; but they mean well, my boy,—they mean well.
Yours, in a brown study,
Orpheus C. Kerr.