“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.
“Ah, there is a terrible storm gathering! Those who have grown up together, lovingly interlacing their tender branches, must be torn asunder—some swept away by the current, others dispersed by the winds.”
“Dear Isabella,—The world seems turned upside down since I began this letter—war (war, what an appalling sound) has begun—blood has been spilt, and our dear, dear Eliot—but I must tell you first how it all was. Eliot and Jasper were out shooting some miles from Cambridge, when, on coming to the road, they perceived an unusual commotion—old men and young, and even boys, all armed, in wagons, on horseback, and on foot, were coming from all points, and all hurrying onward in one direction. On inquiring into the hurly-burly, they were told that Colonel Smith had marched to Concord to destroy the military stores there; and that our people were gathering from all quarters to oppose his return. Eliot immediately joined them, Jasper did not; but, dear Isabella, I that know you so well, know, whatever others may think, that tories may be true and noble. There was a fight at Lexington. Our brave men had the best of it. Eliot was the first to bring us the news. With a severe wound in his arm, he came ten miles that we need not be alarmed by any reports, knowing, as he told mother, that she was no Spartan mother, to be indifferent whether her son came home with his shield or on his shield.
41“Jasper has not been to Westbrook since the battle. My mind has been in such a state of alarm since, I cannot return to my ordinary pursuits. I was reading history with the children, and the English poets with mother, but I am quite broken up.
“I do not think this horrid war should separate those who have been friends; thank God, my dear Isabella, we of womankind are exempts—not called upon to take sides—our mission is to heal wounds, not to make them; to keep alive and tend with vestal fidelity the fires of charity and love. My kindest remembrance to Herbert. I hope he has renounced his whiggism; for if it must come to that, he had better fight on the wrong side (ignorantly) than break the third commandment. Write soon, dear Isabella, and let me know if this hurly-burly extends to New-York—dear, quiet New-York! In war and in peace, in all the chances and changes of this mortal life, your own
Bessie Lee.”
Miss Linwood to Bessie Lee.
“Exempts! my little spirit of peace—your vocation it may be, my pretty dove, to sit on your perch with an olive-branch in your bill, but not mine. Oh for the glorious days of the Clorindas, when a woman might put down her womanish thoughts, and with helmet and lance in rest do battle with the bravest! Why was the loyal spirit of my race my exclusive patrimony? Can his blood, who at his own cost raised a troop of horse for our martyr king, flow in Herbert’s veins? or his who followed the fortunes of the unhappy James? Is my father’s son a renegado—a rebel? Yes, Bessie—my blood burns in my cheeks while I write it. Herbert, the only male scion of the Linwoods—my brother—our pride—our hope has declared himself of the rebel party—‘Ichabod, Ichabod, the glory is departed, is written on our door-posts.’
“But to come down from my heroics; we are in a desperate condition—such a scene as I have just passed through! Judge 42Ellis was dining with us, Jasper Meredith was spoken of. ‘In the name of Heaven, Ellis,’ said my father, ‘why do you suffer your nephew to remain among the rebel crew in that infected region?’
“‘I do not find,’ replied the judge, glancing at Herbert, ‘that any region is free from infection.’
“‘True, true,’ said my father; ‘but the air of the Yankee states is saturated with it. I would not let an infant breathe it, lest rebellion should break out when he came to man’s estate.’ I am sorry to say it, dear Bessie; but my father traces Herbert’s delinquency to his sojourn at Westbrook. I saw a tempest was brewing, and thinking to make for a quiet harbour, I put in my oar, and repeated the story you told me in your last letter of our non-combatant, Mr. Jasper. The judge was charmed. ‘Ah, he’s a prudent fellow!’ he said; ‘he’ll not commit himself!’
“‘Not commit himself!’ exclaimed my father; ‘by Jupiter, if he belonged to me, he should commit himself. I would rather he should jump the wrong way than sit squat like a toad under a hedge, till he was sure which side it was most prudent to jump.’ You see, Bessie, my father’s words implied something like a commendation of Herbert. I ventured to look up—their eyes met—I saw a beam of pleasure flashing from them, and passing like an electric spark from one heart to another. Oh, why should this unholy quarrel tear asunder such true hearts!
“The judge’s pride was touched—he is a mean wretch. ‘Ah, my dear sir,’ he said, ‘it is very well for you, who can do it with impunity, to disregard prudential considerations; for instance, you remain true to the king, the royal power is maintained, and your property is protected. Your son—I suppose a case—your son joins the rebels, the country is revolutionized, and your property is secured as the reward of Mr. Herbert’s patriotism.’
“My father hardly heard him out. ‘Now, by the Lord that made me!’ he exclaimed, setting down the decanter with a force that broke it in a thousand pieces, ‘I would die of starvation before I would taste a crumb of bread that was the reward of rebellion.’
43“It was a frightful moment; but my father’s passion, you know, is like a whirlwind; one gust, and it is over; and mamma is like those short-stemmed flowers that lie on the earth; no wind moves her. So, though the judge was almost as much disconcerted as the decanter, it seemed all to have blown over, while mamma, as in case of any ordinary accident, was directing Jupe to remove the fragments, change the cloth, etc. But alas! the evil genius of our house triumphed; for even a bottle of our oldest Madeira, which is usually to my father like oil to the waves, failed to preserve tranquility. The glasses were filled, and my father, according to his usual custom, gave ‘the king—God bless him.’
“Now you must know, though he would not confess he made any sacrifice to prudence, he has for some weeks omitted to drink wine at all, on some pretext or other, such as he had a headache, or he had dined out the day before, or expected to the day after; and thus Herbert has escaped the test. But now the toast was given, and Herbert’s glass remained untouched, while he sat, not biting, but literally devouring his nails. I saw the judge cast a sinister look at him, and then a glance at my father. The storm was gathering on my father’s brow. ‘Herbert, my son,’ said mamma, ‘you will be too late for your appointment.’ Herbert moved his chair to rise, when my father called out, ‘Stop, sir—no slinking away under your mother’s shield—hear me—no man who refuses to drink that toast at my table shall eat of my bread or drink of my wine.’
“‘Then God forgive me—for I never will drink it—so help me Heaven!’
“Herbert left the room by one door—my father by another—mamma stayed calmly talking to that fixture of a judge, and I ran to my room, where, as soon as I had got through with a comfortable fit of crying, I sat down to write you (who are on the enemy’s side) an account of the matter. What will come of it, Heaven only knows!
44“But, my dear little gentle Bessie, I never think of you as having any thing to do with these turbulent matters; you are in the midst of fiery rebel spirits, but you are too pure, too good to enter into their counsels, and far too just for any self-originating prejudices, such as this horrible one that pervades the country, and fires New-England against the legitimate rights of the mother country over her wayward, ungrateful child. Don’t trouble your head about these squabbles, but cling to Master Hale, your poetry, and history: by-the-way, I laughed heartily that you, who have done duty—reading so virtuously all your life, should now come to the conclusion ‘that history is dry.’ I met with a note in Herodotus, the most picturesque of historians, the other day that charmed me. The writer of the note says there is no mention whatever of Cyrus in the Persian history. If history then is mere fiction, why may we not read romances of our own choosing? My instincts have not misguided me, after all.
“So, Miss Bessie, Jasper Meredith is in high favour with you, and the friend of your nonpareil brother. Jasper could always be irresistible when he chose, and he seems to have been ‘i’ the vein’ at Westbrook. With all our impressions (are they prejudices, Bessie?) against your Yankee land, we thought him excessively improved by his residence among you. Indeed, I think if he were never to get another letter from his worldly icicle mother, to live away from his time-serving uncle, and never receive another importation of London coxcombries, he would be what nature intended him—a paragon.
“I love your sisterly enthusiasm. As to my estimation of your brother being affected by the accidents of birth and fortune, indeed, you were not true to your friend when you intimated that. Certainly, the views you tell me he takes of my character are not particularly flattering, or even conciliating. However, I have my revenge—you paint him en beau—the portrait is too beautiful to be very like any man born and reared within the disenchanted limits of New-England. I am writing boldly, but no 45offence, dear Bessie; I do not know your brother, and I have—yes, out with it, with the exception of your precious little self—I have an antipathy to the New-Englanders—a disloyal race, and conceited, fancying themselves more knowing in all matters, high and low, especially government and religion, than the rest of the world—‘all-sufficient, self-sufficient, and insufficient.’
“Pardon me, gentle Bessie—I am just now at fever heat, and I could not like Gabriel if he were whig and rebel. Ah, Herbert!—but I loved him before I ever heard these detestable words; and once truly loving, especially if our hearts be knit together by nature, I think the faults of the subject do not diminish our affection, though they turn it from its natural sweet uses to suffering.”
“Dear Bessie,—A week—a stormy, miserable week has passed since I wrote the above, and it has ended in Herbert’s leaving us, and dishonouring his father’s name by taking a commission in the rebel service. Papa has of course had a horrible fit of the gout. He says he has for ever cast Herbert out of his affections. Ah! I am not skilled in metaphysics, but I know that we have no power whatever over our affections. Mamma takes it all patiently, and chiefly sorroweth for that Herbert has lost caste by joining the insurgents, whom she thinks little better than so many Jack Cades.
“For myself, I would have poured out my blood—every drop of it, to have kept him true to his king and country; but in my secret heart I glory in him that he has honestly and boldly clung to his opinions, to his own certain and infinite loss. I have no heart to write more.
“Yours truly,
“Isabella Linwood.
“P.S.—You may show the last paragraph (confidentially) to Jasper; but don’t let him know that I wished him to see it. I.L.”