Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December 1852

“And then if I were to tell you that I like the little wickedness, like to close hands with it, and master it.”

“Then I would tell you that you are downright vicious! But you don’t master it; you never can!”

“Yes; you ride with me when you have just been saying that you certainly will stay at home. I throw away your pen and hold you fast, when you have just been saying that you will write, that you care less for me than for your old pen. Don’t you remember it?”

“Yes.”

“So do I. I like to remember it, because, for some reason, it is better mastering you once, than any other woman that I know ten times.”

I turned the conversation by showing him the beautiful little brook that went leaping and tinkling amongst the rocks, and icicles, and fairy-like frost-work close by the road. One finds such little brooks at every turn among the hills here at Danville. He looked at the brook, calling it “beautiful!” He took my hand into his, and kept it until we reached home.

He must go home in a few days; he has stayed already twice as long as he intended when he came. I wonder how I can get along without him. I foresee that I shall want him as a child wants its mother.

I will write again soon after he goes. Heigho! says

    Your Loving Monde.

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CHAPTER VI

MONDE TO EDITH

    Danville, Jan. 20, 1852.

He went yesterday morning early; and since that time I go from one chair to another, or from one window to another, sighing, and with untold quantities of lead in my heart. I am disposed not to write, not to talk, or do any thing, but turn my eyes Boston-ward, and think of him.

But I shall not be so stupid! I shall put a little stiff barrier – my own flinty will, of course – between me and him, so that he shall be there at Boston, and I here, following diligently my duty. I shall lay this letter by, and finish my story for Mr. S – . Then I shall ask uncle to ride with me over to see Bessy’s feeble sister, Mrs. Thornton, who has a whole roomfull of little children to see to; and to whom an hour’s service, now and then, at making or mending, is a blessed godsend. Then I will take my sewing in, and sit a few hours with Paulina, whose neuralgia still afflicts her. I will stay and take supper with her; and if she is cross, as she is often of late, it shall not hurt me, since I will be good-natured.

In the long evening I will be here; I will snap corn, pass round apples; sit now at aunt’s feet, help her in her sewing-plans, and then at uncle’s, talking with him of Kossuth, Clay, Cass, and Webster.

When they go, if I am in wakeful mood, I will write here until I am in a drowsy one, and then go to my rest, humbly commending myself to God as his servant, his follower; not the servant, not the follower of any mortal idol whatever. Thus shall my soul be kept loyal unto itself and unto Him – and not the less loyal unto the good one who has chosen me.

    Ten o’clock, evening.

Uncle set us and our great basket, full of good things, down at the door of the Thorntons, and himself rode on to Hardwick, where he had business that must keep him until after dinner, as he believed. The pale mother was “glad and thankful to see us,” but a little flurried to have us find her children in such disorderly array; and her house, too – it is a bit of a house to hold ten people, and made of logs. But we took the children to us, gave them apples and doughnuts, and soon had Mrs. Thornton’s great work-basket between us. We finished off three little garments that were on the way, and put on ten patches here and there; Alice, aunt’s bright-eyed namesake, counted them. We cut off the long hair of the girl’s, and made the short hair of the boys shorter; and then, when they had all been washed and combed, saw that there is nowhere a prettier, brighter family of children. Aunt, meantime, was like a bee, dipping into this and into that; dragging roll after roll of pieces from her basket, whenever a patch was needed; and helping Mrs. Thornton warm up the pudding and the pies we had brought, and fry the sausages and broil the steak.

Mr. Thornton and his eldest boy came in from the woods just at the right moment – just as all the steaming dishes were ready to go to the table. Uncle, too, came in the right time; in fact there was never so lucky a day; every thing happened at the right time, and in the right way. There was never so good a dinner; or, at any rate, this was what we all said, smacking our lips a little, and holding out our plates for more.

“This will do us all a great deal of good,” said Mrs. Thornton, when we were putting on our things.

“And us, too, Mrs. Thornton!” said aunt; in a hearty way. “I havn’t had a pleasanter time for many a day. And I don’t believe Monde has.”

“No, aunt, I havn’t.”

And it was the truth, Edith. Happy as I have been with Alfred Cullen, I was as happy without him – just thinking of him now and then, as I sat there putting on patches, and doing with right good will whatever came into my way to do.

Let me tell you a little story, dear Edith, and then I am done. Two or three days ago, at about this time of the evening, there sat on this spot, a gentleman of fine features, of easy, manly bearing, and a lady. The lady was not beautiful. The best that could be said of her on the score of beauty, her sincere friend, Edith Manners, had said to her one day; “You are not so homely as you think, Miss Monde. You have beautiful hair, beautiful teeth – and I think a great deal of one’s having pretty teeth. Your form is excellent; and your ways have an abundance of grace and ease in them.”

This was all Edith Manners could say to her friend; and more than many others would have said, who knew her less familiarly; for she had, in truth, grace and ease in her manners only when she had grace and quietness in her soul; that it was sometimes said of her by those she would gladly have pleased, “I don’t fancy her; she has a hard manner.”

Well, they sat here, those two, in their easy-chairs, and rocked and talked, with their eyes steadily on each other’s face. He held her hand in his, and kissed the fingers ever and anon as he talked and listened. At length he folded her close to his heart, and, with his lips on hers, called her – his “beloved!”

The next morning, when they met here, on the spot so sacred and dear to them both now, he took her to him once more, and said, “When will my Monde be all my own?”

She, “pliant as a reed,” and with her arms clinging to him, answered, “Any time, dear Alfred – any time!” because, you see, she felt then, Edith, that she could not well live without him a day.

But it seems to have been demonstrated that she can – for he left her the following morning, after it had been agreed that they will both write immediately to her parents; that, their replies being propitious, he will accompany her to them in one month, and, in six months more, he will receive her at their hands; that, after two or three weeks spent there, he will bring her to his own home, to pass the rest of her happy life by his side.

And here ends my story. Only I must tell you how good uncle and aunt are. Aunt wept for joy, as if she would suffocate, when Alfred, standing close before me, with my hand in his, told her and uncle our resolves. Uncle, also, had moist eyes. He stood one moment near us, the next he walked the floor. I presume he thought of the dear Alice. I did; and longed that the blessings of her glorified spirit might be upon our union.

“You shall be as a daughter to me in all respects, Monde,” said uncle, speaking with difficulty. “I have loved you as if you were my daughter, ever since you came. Whatever you need to have done, I shall attend to – if you will come to me always, as though I were your father. And you will, Monde?”

I answered the imploring voice, the imploring eyes, by catching the hand extended to me in both my own, and covering it with grateful tears and kisses.

I have had letters from home within a few days. And mother wrote – “You will feel quite lost when you come. We’ve moved into a large and beautiful tenement on B. street, close by the Haydens, and fitted the front parlor all up new, taking the old parlor furniture for the sitting-room. I hope you’ll like these changes better than poor Kit does. Your father brought her over here in a basket, covered, that she might not see the way and be running back. But we missed her, and your father went over to see if he could find her at the old rooms, and there the poor creature was, prowling about the open cellar window, as lean and hungry-looking as a wolf. Your father worries half of his time about her, when he is in the house. I really think he wishes he had stayed there too. Now that it is becoming an old thing, I see that he is often tired of so much to do. He gets the best of business, I mean business that pays the best; but his responsibilities wear him, and he has trouble with some of his clients. When he has been working day and night for them, they are as likely as any way to think that he hasn’t done enough.

“I have my troubles, too. I ought to be ashamed to complain, I suppose, now we are doing so well, but when you come you will see, as I do, that there are vexations for those who have enough of every thing, as well as for the poor. Perhaps you will think, as your father and I are sometimes inclined to, that it isn’t worth while to look for much real, lasting happiness in this world, or for any benefit that hasn’t its tax.”

Yes, one sees how it is with my poor parents; poor in their adversity, poor now in their prosperity. They look to the outward conditions of their lot for a great good that shall be final; for a life serene and well-satisfied that shall make its way into them, from without; from the new friends, the fast-filling purse, the freshly adorned home. Would that they and all the world could know that every good, every real enjoyment of life, is born of God in the soul. There Love, the Divine Life, the Artist-Life, the Blessed Life, whatever we call it, has its genial, its beloved home. Ah, Heaven! to have this love within us, so that we must burst forth into singing; to have it beaming thence upon our friends, our home, upon the earth, crowning them all with glory and light! – this is to know how good God is, in that He made and endowed us specially for this kind of life. Only we have sought out many inventions; have picked up one thing and another on our right hand and on our left, calling the laborious, unseemly patch-work we have in this way made up, Life. That we must pay a tax grievous to be borne on this, is one of the merciful dispensations, for it brings us to look for that to come, which will come without price, which will surely come, if we will accept nothing else, if we will wait for it, and receive it like little children.

    Thine, dear,
    Monde Hedelquiver.

WELLINGTON

A MILITARY BIOGRAPHY

—

BY WILLIAM DOWE

—

Le tambour d’en Haut a bat le rappel.    Soult, Duke of Dalmatia.

There’s a lean fellow beats all conquerors.    Dekkar.

The last survivor of those celebrated chieftains who flashed their swords and waved their crests on the great battle-field of Europe in the Napoleonic war, has gone to his place. Half a pound of indigestible venison has done what the hostile bayonets and bullets of the French and the Mahrattas failed to do, in a military career of twenty years. Arthur, Duke of Wellington, born in the same year with the greater Corsican, outlived him over thirty years, and died at Walmer Castle, on the 14th of September last. He witnessed a great many of the most extraordinary doings of the last half century, and was, himself – a great portion of them —quorum pars magna fuit. He hurried on the current of events which led to the fall of the great Mongol throne of Tamerlane and Arungzebe; and his hand gave the last bloody stroke which overthrew that of Napoleon.

Arthur Wesley or Wellesley – for the name seems to have been elongated, as a matter of dignity, like that of Abram of old – was born at Dangan, in Ireland, on the first of May, 1769 – a fortnight before Bonaparte saw the light upon the sheet of Gobelin tapestry which represented “the tale of Troy divine.” His grandfather was Garret Wesley, an Irish gentleman of good family, made Baron of Mornington by George II., in 1747. The Wesley family has given the world another great man. It is stated that John Wesley, the preacher, belonged to it; a man whose evangelical renown is as immortal as that of the soldier. The earldom of Mornington was not a wealthy one; and, after the death of her husband, the countess – mother of the British Gracchi (for the Marquis Wellesley was also famous) – brought up her four children, of whom Arthur was the youngest, in very narrow circumstances.

At an early age the latter, not having benefited much from his education, said he would be a soldier, and was sent to Angiers in France, where he studied the science of military engineering, under the famous Pignerol, about the time Napoleon was doing the same at Brienne. Great elements of future storms were at that moment fomenting in the kingdom of France! At the age of eighteen, Arthur Wellesley having returned home, got his ensigncy. By purchase and quick promotion, he was lieutenant-colonel in his twenty-fourth year. The first campaign he engaged in was as disastrous as his last was fortunate. The enemy was the same. In 1794 he joined the army of the Duke of York, then striving to drive the French republicans out of the Netherlands. But his royal highness was driven out himself in 1795. The soft young bishop of Osnaburg was not the man to cope with the fiery generals of the Convention. Thus ended Arthur Wellesley’s first campaign.

The scene now changes to India. From a mere foothold and factory, on the shore, the English had in half a century won, thanks to Lord Clive, a vast extent of territory round the three Presidencies of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. A company of merchants had done all this – the East India Company – whose chartered monopoly existed up to 1814. At the close of the last century the empire of the Mongols had dwindled away, and the Mahrattas, a wild people who rose fifty years before, possessed a large portion of the appanage of the Great Mogul. This last was dozing out his life in the palace of his renowned ancestors at Delhi. His empire in falling had broken into pieces. The Mahrattas formed one of these, and another, was the kingdom of Mysore, made so famous by the usurpation and bravery of Hyder Alee and his son, the Sultaun Tippoo Saib.

In 1798 the Earl of Mornington went out to India as governor-general, and his brother, the colonel, accompanied him. Their earliest attention was given to Tippoo, who, from the table-land of Mysore made the Carnatic tremble at the name of his formidable cavalry. He was also in close connection with the French, and had given them repeated assurances that he would join his forces with theirs and annihilate the British power in India. Therefore, in March 1799, the Anglo-Indian army under General Harris, 37,000 strong, marched toward Tippoo, fully determined to put him out of the way. The advance was fiercely obstructed by the spahis of Mysore till, manœuvring and skirmishing repeatedly, the invading army had reached the walls of Tippoo’s capital, Seringapatam. Between the British camp and the city lay some ruined villages, an aqueduct and a grove of cocoas and bamboos, which were desperately defended, and taken with great difficulty and loss. After a month’s delay outside the city, the besiegers prepared to get into it, by storm, through a breach made in the wall. French troops and engineers in the pay of Tippoo made the siege of Seringapatam a formidable undertaking. But a forlorn hope, crossing a ditch under fire, scrambled into the breach, and, other troops following, Seringapatam was taken, resisting furiously. Tippoo had gone out early in the morning to the outer rampart, to look at the camp. While there, he was surprised to hear that the English were entering the breach. Calling for his carbine, he hurried with his guard to the place, and on the rampart met his soldiers running before the stormers. He bid them stop, with a loud voice, and ordered them to rush back again; at the same time he fired his carbine repeatedly on the English. But the fugitives went by, and left him with a small body of officers and attendants, still firing on the assaulters. At last he turned to fly from the rampart to the gate of the inner fort. Hurrying through this he saw the English within and received two balls in the breast. He fell from his horse, and was then dragged from the crowd and put upon a palanquin. The Europeans soon rushed in, and a soldier laying hold of the diamond-studded sword-belt worn by the sultaun, attempted to drag it off. A servant, as he was making his escape, turned and saw Tippoo make a sweep of his sword at the man and cut him on the knee, whereupon the latter put his piece to his shoulder and shot the sultaun dead through the temple. More carnage followed in this spot till at last the fort was won. When Tippoo’s palace and his sons were taken, the conquerors sought the chief himself; the cry went that he was dead; and that night, by torchlight, General Baird and his officers proceeded to search for the body in the gateway. About three hundred dead bodies were dragged away, and then the killedar of the palace recognized the half-stripped body of Tippoo. His splendid turban, jacket and sword-belt were gone. When dragged out, the body was so warm, and the open eyes looked so life-like, that Colonel Wellesley laid his hands on the heart and the wrist before he could believe it was a corpse. An officer present cut off from the right arm a talisman in fine flowered silk – inclosing an amulet of a silvery substance, and a piece of parchment with Persian and Arabic words. Napoleon also wore an amulet, said to be that of Charlemagne.