The Linwoods Read online

  Meredith and Eliot Lee were soon acknowledged to be the gifted young men of their class. Though nearly equals in capacity, Eliot, being by far the most patient and assiduous, bore off the college honours. Meredith did not lack industry—certainly not ambition; but he had not the hardihood and self-discipline that it requires to forego an attractive pursuit for a dry study: and while Eliot, denying his natural tastes, toiled by the midnight lamp over the roughest academic course, he gracefully ran through the light and beaten path of belles-lettres.

  They were both social—Meredith rather gay in his disposition. Both had admirable tempers; Meredith’s was partly the result of early training in the goodly seemings of the world, Eliot’s the gift of Heaven, and therefore the more perfect. Eliot could not exist without self-respect. The applause of society was essential to Meredith. He certainly preferred a real to a merely apparent elevation; but experience could alone decide whether he were willing to pay its price—sustained effort, and generous sacrifice. Both were endowed with personal graces. Neither man nor woman, that ever we could learn, is indifferent to these.

  Before the young men had proceeded far in their collegiate career they were friends, if that holy relation may be predicated of those who are united by accidental circumstances. 29That they were on a confidential footing will be seen by the following conversation. Meredith was in his room, when, on hearing a tap at his door, he answered it by saying, “Come in, Eliot, my dear fellow. My good, or your evil genius, has brought you to me at the very moment when I am steeped to the lips in trouble.”

  “You in trouble! why—what is the matter?”

  “Diable! matter enough for song or sermon. ‘Not a trouble abroad but it lights o’ my shoulders’—First, here is a note from our reverend Præses. ‘Mr. Jasper Meredith, junior class—you are fined, by the proper authority, one pound ten, for going into Boston last Thursday night, to an assembly or ball, contrary to college laws—as this is the first offence of the kind reported against you, we have, though you have been guilty of a gross violation of known duty, been lenient in fixing the amount of your fine.’—Lenient, good Præses!—Take instead one pound ten ounces of my flesh. My purse is far leaner than my person, though that be rather of the Cassius order.—Now, Eliot, is not this a pretty bill for one night’s sorry amusement—one pound ten, besides the price of two ball tickets, and sundry confections.”

  “How, two ball tickets, Meredith?”

  “Why, I gave one to the tailor’s pretty sister, Sally Dunn.”

  “Sally Dunn!—Bravo, Meredith. Plebeian as you think my notions, I should hardly have escorted Sally Dunn to a ball.”

  “My service to you, Eliot!—do not fancy I have been enacting a scene fit for Hogarth’s idle apprentice. Were I so absurd, do you fancy these Boston patricians would admit a tailor’s sister within their taboed circle?—No—no, little Sally went with company of her own cloth, and trimmings to match (in her brother’s slang)—rosy milliners and journeyman tailors, to a ball got up by her compeers. I sent in to them lots of raisins and almonds, which served as a love-token for Sally and munching for her companions.”

  30“You have, indeed, paid dear for your whistle, Meredith.”

  “Dear! you have not heard half yet. Sir knight of the shears assailed me with a whining complaint of my ‘paying attention,’ as he called it, to his sister Sally, and I could only get off by the gravest assurances of my profound respect for the whole Dunn concern, followed up by an order for a new vest, that being the article the youth would least mar in the making, and here is his bill—two pounds two. This is to be added to my ball expenses, fine, &c., and all, as our learned professor would say, traced to the primum mobile, must be charged to pretty Sally Dunn. Oh woman! woman!—ever the cause of man’s folly, perplexity, misery, and destruction!”

  “You are getting pathetic, Meredith.”

  “My dear friend, there is nothing affects a man’s sensibilities like an empty purse—unless it be an empty stomach. You have not heard half my sorrows yet. Here is a bill, a yard long, from the livery-stable, and here another from Monsieur Paté et Confiture!”

  “And your term-bills?”

  “Oh! my term-bills I have forwarded, with the dignity of a Sir Charles Grandison, to my uncle. Now, Eliot,” he continued, disbursing a few half crowns and shillings on the table, and holding up his empty purse, and throwing into his face an expression of mock misery, “Now, Eliot, let us resolve ourselves into a committee of ways and means, and tell me by what financial legerdemain I can get affixed to these scrawls that happiest combination of words in the English language—that honeyed phrase, ‘received payment in full’—‘oh, gentle shepherd, tell me where?’”

  “Where deficits should always find supplies, Meredith, in a friend’s purse. I have just settled the account of my pedagogue labours for the last term, and as I have no extra bills to pay, I have extra means quite at your service.”

  31Meredith protested, and with truth, that nothing was farther from his intentions than drawing on his friend; and when Eliot persisted and counted out the amount which Meredith said would relieve his little embarrassments, he felt, and magnanimously expressed his admiration of those “working-day world virtues” (so he called them), industry and frugality, which secured to Eliot the tranquillity of independence, and the power of liberality. It is possible that, at another time, and in another humour, he might have led the laugh against the sort of barter trade—the selling one kind or degree of knowledge to procure another, by which a Yankee youth, who is willing to live like an anchorite or a philosopher in the midst of untasted pleasures, works his passage through college.

  Subsequent instances occurred of similar but temporary obligations on the part of Meredith. Temporary of course, for Meredith was too thoroughly imbued with the sentiments of a gentleman to extend a pecuniary obligation beyond the term of his necessity.

  33CHAPTER III.

  “Hear me profess sincerely—had I a dozen sons, each in

  my love alike, I had rather had eleven die nobly for their

  country, than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.”

  —SHAKESPEARE.

  The following extracts are from a letter from Bessie Lee to her friend Isabella Linwood.

  “Dearest Isabella,

  “You must love me, or you could not endure my stupid letters—you that can write so delightfully about nothing, and have so much to write about, while I can tell nothing but what I see, and I see so little! The outward world does not much interest me. It is what I feel that I think of and ponder over; but I know how you detest what you call sentimental letters, so I try to avoid all such subjects. Compared with you I am a child—two years at our age makes a great difference—I am really very childish for a girl almost fourteen, and yet, and yet, Isabella, I sometimes seem to myself to have gone so far beyond childhood, that I have almost forgotten that careless, light-hearted feeling I used to have. I do not think I ever was so light-hearted as some children, and yet I was not serious—at least, not in the right way. Many a time, before I was ten years old, I have sat up in my own little room till twelve o’clock Saturday night, reading, and then slept for an hour and a half through the whole sermon the next morning. I do believe it is the natural depravity 34of my heart. I never read over twice a piece of heathen poetry that moves me but I can repeat it—and yet, I never could get past ‘what is effectual calling?’ in the Westminster Catechism; and I always was in disgrace on Saturday, when parson Wilson came to the school to hear us recite it:—oh dear, the sight of his wig and three-cornered hat petrified me!”

  “Jasper Meredith is here, passing the vacation with Eliot. I was frightened to death when Eliot wrote us he was coming—we live in such a homely way—only one servant, and I remember well how he used to laugh at every thing he called à la bourgeoise. I felt this to be a foolish, vulgar pride, and did my best to suppress it; and since I have found there was no occasion for it, for Jasper seemed (I do not mean seemed, I think he
is much more sincere than he used to be) to miss nothing, and to be delighted with being here. I do not think he realizes that I am now three years older than I was in New-York, for he treats me with that sort of partiality—devotion you might almost call it—that he used to there, especially when you and he had had a falling out. He has been giving me some lessons in Italian. He says I have a wonderful talent for learning languages, but it is not so: you know what hobbling work I made with the French when you and I went to poor old Mademoiselle Amand—Jasper is quite a different teacher, and I never fancied French. He has been teaching me to ride, too—we have a nice little pony, and he has a beautiful horse—so that we have the most delightful gallops over the country every day. It is very odd, though I am such a desperate coward, I never feel the least timid when I am riding with Jasper—indeed, I do not think of it. Eliot rarely finds time to go with us—when he is at home from college he has so much to do for mother—dear Eliot, he is husband, father, brother, every thing to us.”

  35“I had not time, while Jasper and Eliot stayed, to finish my letter, and since they went away I have been so dull!—The house seems like a tomb. I go from room to room, but the spirit is not here. Master Hale, the schoolmaster, boards with us, and gives me lessons in some branches that Eliot thinks me deficient in; but ah me! where are the talents for acquisition that Jasper commended? Did you ever know, dear Isabella, what it was to have every thing affected by the departure of friends, as nature is by the absence of light—all fade into one dull uniform hue. When Eliot and Jasper were here, all was bright and interesting from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof—now!—ah me!

  “I am shocked to find how much I have written about myself. My best respects to your father and mother, and love to Herbert. Burn this worthless scrawl without fail, dear Isabella, and believe me ever most affectionately

  “Yours,

  “Bessie Lee.”

  Jasper Meredith to Herbert Linwood.

  “Dear Linwood,”

  “I have been enjoying a very pretty little episode in my college life, passing the vacation at Westbrook, with your old friends the Lees. A month in a dull little country town would once have seemed to me penance enough for my worst sin, but now it is heaven to get anywhere beyond the sound of college bells—beyond the reach of automaton tutors—periodical recitations—chapel prayers, and college rules.

  “I went to the Lees with the pious intention of quizzing your rustics to the top o’ my bent; but Herbert, my dear fellow, I’ll tell you a secret; when people respect themselves, and value things according to their real intrinsic worth, it gives a shock to 36our artificial and worldly estimates, and makes us feel as if we stood upon a wonderful uncertain foundation. These Lees are so strong in their simplicity—they would so disdain aping and imitating those that we (not they, be sure!) think above them—they are so sincere in all their ways—no awkward consciousness—no shame-facedness whatever about the homely details of their family affairs. By heavens, Herbert, I could not find a folly—a meanness—or even a ludicrous rusticity at which to aim my ridicule.

  “I begin to think—no, no, no, I do not—but, if there were many such families as these Lees in the world, an equality, independent of all extraneous circumstances (such as the politicians of this country are now ranting about), might subsist on the foundation of intellect and virtue.

  “After all, I see it is a mere illusion. Mrs. Lee’s rank, though in Westbrook she appears equal to any Roman matron, is purely local. Hallowed as she is in your boyish memory, Herbert, you must confess she would cut a sorry figure in a New-York drawing-room.

  “Eliot might pass current anywhere; but then he has had the advantage of Boston society, and an intimacy with—pardon my coxcombry—your humble servant. Bessie—sweet Bessie Lee, is a gem fit to be set in a coronet. Don’t be alarmed, Herbert, you are welcome to have the setting of her. There is metal, as you know, more attractive to me. Bessie is not much grown since she was in New-York—she is still low in stature, and so childish in her person, that I was sometimes in danger of treating her like a child—of forgetting that she had come within the charmed circle of proprieties. But, if she has still the freshness and immaturity of the unfolding rose-bud—the mystical charm of woman—the divinity stirring within her beams through her exquisite features. Such features! Phidias would have copied them in his immortal marble. How in the world should such a creature, all sentiment, refinement, imagination, spring up in practical, 37prosaic New-England! She is a wanderer from some other star. I am writing like a lover, and not as I should to a lover. But, on my honour, Herbert, I am no lover—of little Bessie I mean. I should as soon think of being enamoured of a rose, a lily, or a violet, an exquisite sonnet, or an abstraction.

  “It is an eternity since Isabella has written me a postscript—why is this? Farewell, Linwood.

  “Yours, &c.

  “P.S.—One word on politics—a subject I detest, and meddle with as little as possible. There must be an outbreak—there is no avoiding it. But there can be no doubt which party will finally prevail. The mother country has soldiers, money, every thing; ‘’tis odds beyond arithmetic.’ As one of my friends said at a dinner in Boston the other day, ‘the growling curs may bark for a while, but they will be whipped into submission, and wear their collars patiently for ever after.’ I trust, Herbert, you are already cured of what my uncle used to call the ‘boy-fever’—but if not, take my advice—be quiet, prudent, neutral. As long as we are called boys, we are not expected to be patriots, apostles, or martyrs. At this crisis your filial and fraternal duties require that you should suppress, if not renounce, the opinions you used to be so fond of blurting out on all occasions. I am no preacher—I have done—a word to the wise.

  “M——.”

  We resume the extracts from Bessie’s letters.

  “Dear Isabella,—Never say another word to me of what you hinted in your last letter: indeed, I am too young; and besides, I never should feel easy or happy again with Jasper, if I admitted such a thought. I have had but one opinion since our visit to Effie; not that I believed in her—at least, not much; but I have always known who was first in his thoughts—heart—opinion; and besides, it would be folly in me, knowing his opinions about 38rank, &c. Mother thinks him very proud, and somewhat vain; and she begins not to be pleased with his frequent visits to Westbrook. She thinks—no, fears, or rather she imagines, that Jasper and I—no, that Jasper or I—no, that I—it is quite too foolish to write, Isabella—mother does not realize what a wide world there is between us. I might possibly, sometimes, think he loved (this last word was carefully effaced, and cared substituted) cared for me, if he did not know you.

  “How could Jasper tell you of Eliot’s prejudice against you? Jasper himself infused it, unwittingly, I am sure, by telling him that when with you, I lived but to do ‘your best pleasure,—were it to fly, to swim, or dive into the fire.’ Eliot fancies that you are proud and overbearing—I insist, dear Isabella, that such as you are born to rule such weak spirits as mine; but Eliot says he does not like absolutism in any form, and especially in woman’s. Ah, how differently he would feel if he were to see you—I am sure you would like him—I am not sure, even, that you would not have preferred him to Jasper, had he been born and bred in Jasper’s circumstances. He has more of some qualities that you particularly like, frankness and independence—and mother says (but then mother is not at all partial to Jasper) he has a thousand times more real sensibility—he does, perhaps, feel more for others. I should like to know which you would think the handsomest. Eliot is at least three inches the tallest; and, as Jasper once said, ‘cast in the heroic mould, with just enough, and not an ounce too much of mortality’—but then Jasper has such grace and symmetry—just what I fancy to be the beau-ideal of the arts. Jasper’s eyes are almost too black—too piercing; and yet they are softened by his long lashes, and his olive complexion, so expressive—like that fine old portrait in your drawing-room. His mouth, too, is beautiful—
it has such a defined, chiselled look—but then do you not think that his teeth being so delicately formed, and so very, very white, is rather a defect? I don’t know how to describe it, but there is rather 39an uncertain expression about his mouth. Eliot’s, particularly when he smiles, is truth and kindness itself—and his deep, deep blue eyes, expresses every thing by turns—I mean every thing that should come from a pure and lofty spirit—now tender and pitiful enough for me, and now superb and fiery enough for you—but what a silly, girlish letter I am writing—‘Out of the abundance of the heart,’ you know! I see nobody but Jasper and Eliot, and I think only of them.”

  We continue the extracts from Bessie’s letters. They were strictly feminine, even to their being dateless—we cannot, therefore, ascertain the precise period at which they were written, except by their occasional allusions to contemporaneous events.

  “Thanks, dear Isabella, for your delightful letter by Jasper—no longer Jasper, I assure you to his face, but Mr. Meredith—oh, I often wish the time back when I was a child, and might call him Jasper, and feel the freedom of a child. I wonder if I should dare to call you Belle now, or even Isabella? Jasper, since his last visit at home, tells me so much of your being ‘the mirror of fashion—the observed of all observers’ (these are his own words—drawing-room terms that were never heard in Westbrook but from his lips), that I feel a sort of fearful shrinking. It is not envy—I am too happy now to envy anybody in the wide world. Eliot is at home, and Jasper is passing a week here. Is it not strange they should be so intimate, when they differ so widely on political topics? I suppose it is because Jasper does not care much about the matter; but this indifference sometimes provokes Eliot. Jasper is very intimate with Pitcairn and Lord Percy; and Eliot thinks they have more influence with him than the honour and interest of his country. Oh, they talk it over for hours and hours, and end, as men always do with their arguments, just where they 40began. Jasper insists that as long as the quarrel can be made up it is much wisest to stand aloof, and not, ‘like mad boys, to rush foremost into the first fray;’ besides, he says he is tied by a promise to his uncle that he will have nothing to do with these agitating disputes till his education is finished. Mother says (she does not always judge Jasper kindly) that it is very easy and prudent to bind your hands with a promise when you do not choose to lift them.