Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 71, No. 436, February 1852

He paused, greatly agitated.

Harley was no less so. But as if by a sudden impulse, the soldier bent down his manly head and kissed the poet's brow; then he hastened to the gate, flung himself on his horse, and rode away.

CHAPTER XVII

Lord L'Estrange did not proceed at once to Riccabocca's house. He was under the influence of a remembrance too deep and too strong to yield easily to the lukewarm claim of friendship. He rode fast and far; and impossible it would be to define the feelings that passed through a mind so acutely sensitive, and so rootedly tenacious of all affections. When he once more, recalling his duty to the Italian, retraced his road to Norwood, the slow pace of his horse was significant of his own exhausted spirits; a deep dejection had succeeded to feverish excitement. "Vain task," he murmured, "to wean myself from the dead! Yet I am now betrothed to another; and she, with all her virtues, is not the one to – " He stopped short in generous self-rebuke. "Too late to think of that! Now, all that should remain to me is to insure the happiness of the life to which I have pledged my own. But – " He sighed as he so murmured. On reaching the vicinity of Riccabocca's house, he put up his horse at a little inn, and proceeded on foot across the heath-land towards the dull square building, which Leonard's description had sufficed to indicate as the exile's new home. It was long before any one answered his summons at the gate. Not till he had thrice rung did he hear a heavy step on the gravel walk within; then the wicket within the gate was partially drawn aside, a dark eye gleamed out, and a voice in imperfect English asked who was there.

"Lord L'Estrange; and if I am right as to the person I seek, that name will at once admit me."

The door flew open as did that of the mystic cavern at the sound of 'Open, Sesame;' and Giacomo, almost weeping with joyous emotion, exclaimed in Italian, "The good Lord! Holy San Giacomo! thou hast heard me at last! We are safe now." And dropping the blunderbuss with which he had taken the precaution to arm himself, he lifted Harley's hand to his lips, in the affectionate greeting familiar to his countrymen.

"And the Padrone?" asked Harley, as he entered the jealous precincts.

"Oh, he is just gone out; but he will not be long. You will wait for him?"

"Certainly. What lady is that I see at the far end of the garden?"

"Bless her, it is our Signorina. I will run and tell her that you are come."

"That I am come; but she cannot know me even by name."

"Ah, Excellency, can you think so? Many and many a time has she talked to me of you, and I have heard her pray to the holy Madonna to bless you, and in a voice so sweet – "

"Stay, I will present myself to her. Go into the house, and we will wait without for the Padrone. Nay, I need the air, my friend." Harley, as he said this, broke from Giacomo, and approached Violante.

The poor child, in her solitary walk in the obscurer parts of the dull garden, had escaped the eye of Giacomo when he had gone forth to answer the bell; and she, unconscious of the fears of which she was the object, had felt something of youthful curiosity at the summons at the gate, and the sight of a stranger in close and friendly conference with the unsocial Giacomo.

As Harley now neared her with that singular grace of movement which belonged to him, a thrill shot through her heart – she knew not why. She did not recognise his likeness to the sketch taken by her father, from his recollections of Harley's early youth. She did not guess who he was; and yet she felt herself colour, and, naturally fearless though she was, turned away with a vague alarm.

"Pardon my want of ceremony, Signorina," said Harley, in Italian; "but I am so old a friend of your father's, that I cannot feel as a stranger to yourself."

Then Violante lifted to him her dark eyes, so intelligent and so innocent – eyes full of surprise, but not displeased surprise. And Harley himself stood amazed, and almost abashed, by the rich and marvellous beauty that beamed upon him. "My father's friend," she said, hesitatingly, "and I never to have seen you!"

"Ah, Signorina," said Harley, (and something of its native humour, half arch, half sad, played round his lip,) "you are mistaken there; you have seen me before, and you received me much more kindly then – "

"Signor!" said Violante, more and more surprised, and with a yet richer colour on her cheeks.

Harley, who had now recovered from the first effect of her beauty, and who regarded her as men of his years and character are apt to regard ladies in their teens, as more child than woman, suffered himself to be amused by her perplexity; for it was in his nature, that the graver and more mournful he felt at heart, the more he sought to give play and whim to his spirits.

"Indeed, Signorina," said he demurely, "you insisted then on placing one of those fair hands in mine; the other (forgive me the fidelity of my recollections) was affectionately thrown around my neck."

"Signor!" again exclaimed Violante; but this time there was anger in her voice as well as surprise, and nothing could be more charming than her look of pride and resentment.

Harley smiled again, but with so much kindly sweetness, that the anger vanished at once, or rather Violante felt angry with herself that she was no longer angry with him. But she had looked so beautiful in her anger, that Harley wished, perhaps, to see her angry again. So, composing his lips from their propitiatory smile he resumed, gravely —

"Your flatterers will tell you, Signorina, that you are much improved since then, but I liked you better as you were; not but what I hope to return some day what you then so generously pressed upon me."

"Pressed upon you! – I? Signor, you are under some strange mistake."

"Alas! no; but the female heart is so capricious and fickle! You pressed it upon me, I assure you. I own that I was not loath to accept it."

"Pressed it! Pressed what?"

"Your kiss, my child," said Harley; and then added, with a serious tenderness, "And I again say that I hope to return it some day – when I see you, by the side of father and of husband, in your native land – the fairest bride on whom the skies of Italy ever smiled! And now, pardon a hermit and a soldier for his rude jests, and give your hand, in token of that pardon, to – Harley L'Estrange."

Violante, who at the first words of this address had recoiled, with a vague belief that the stranger was out of his mind, sprang forward as it closed, and, in all the vivid enthusiasm of her nature, pressed the hand held out to her, with both her own. "Harley L'Estrange – the preserver of my father's life!" she cried; and her eyes were fixed on his with such evident gratitude and reverence, that Harley felt at once confused and delighted. She did not think at that instant of the hero of her dreams – she thought but of him who had saved her father. But, as his eyes sank before her own, and his head, uncovered, bowed over the hand he held, she recognised the likeness to the features on which she had so often gazed. The first bloom of youth was gone, but enough of youth still remained to soften the lapse of years, and to leave to manhood the attractions which charm the eye. Instinctively she withdrew her hands from his clasp, and, in her turn, looked down.

In this pause of embarrassment to both, Riccabocca let himself into the garden by his own latch-key, and, startled to see a man by the side of Violante, sprang forward with an abrupt and angry cry. Harley heard, and turned.

As if restored to courage and self-possession by the sense of her father's presence, Violante again took the hand of the visitor. "Father," she said simply, "it is he —he is come at last." And then, retiring a few steps, she contemplated them both; and her face was radiant with happiness – as if something, long silently missed and looked for, was as silently found, and life had no more a want, nor the heart a void.

A CANTER TO CALIFORNIA.[58 - A Ride over the Rocky Mountains to Oregon and California. By the Hon. Henry J. Coke. London: 1852.]

To be very sure of what he is about to say, and to say it in the fewest possible words, are golden rules which every young author should inscribe, in letters of the same metal, upon the most prominent panel of his study. Had the Hon. Henry Coke done this when he stepped out of his stirrup, on his return from his Ride to California, he would have spared himself the painful throes which appear to have attended the commencement of his literary labour – would have spared his readers, too, the triviality and platitudes which deface some of the earlier pages of his otherwise spirited narrative of a most adventurous expedition. We reckon it amongst the remarkable and hopeful signs of the times, that young men of family and fortune voluntarily abandon the luxurious ease of home for such breakneck and laborious expeditions as that whose record is before us. Whatever the faults of the nobles of Great Britain, effeminacy is certainly not of the number. May the day be far distant when this is otherwise, and when we cease to possess, in a bold and manly aristocracy, one important guarantee of our national greatness.

It is, indeed, from no featherbed journey or carpet-knight's tour that Mr Coke has recently returned. Take the map, reader, and trace his route. From England to Jamaica, Cuba, Charleston, New York and St Louis, the great and rising capital of the Western States. We omit the minor intermediate places at which he touched or paused. Thus far all was plain sailing and easy civilised travel. The rough work began when St Louis was left behind. Across the wide wastes of Missouri territory, through the inhospitable passes of the Rocky Mountains, the traveller passed on to Oregon city and Fort Vancouver, thence took ship to the Sandwich Islands, returned to San Francisco, visited the gold diggings, steamed to Acapulco, rode across Mexico, and came home to England after an absence of a year and a half, during which he had been half round the world and back again.

Mr Coke started from St Louis with two companions: one an old college friend, whom he designates as Fred; the other "a British parson, whose strength and dimensions most justly entitled him to be called a pillar of the church." What the parson did in the prairies of the Far West does not clearly appear. He certainly did not go as a missionary, so far as we can ascertain from his friend's book, and indeed his habits and tendencies were evidently sporting and jovial rather than clerical, although we do catch him reading Sunday prayers to Mr Coke, when the latter had the chills, and lay wrapped up in wet blankets on the banks of Green River, with a boxful of Brandreth's pills in his stomach. We regret to believe that instances have been known of parsons employing their time far worse than in an adventurous ramble across the American continent. Mr Coke, nevertheless, thinks proper to veil his chaplain's identity under the heroic cognomen of Julius Cæsar, against which distinguished Roman, could he be recalled to life, we would unhesitatingly back the reverend gentleman to box a round, wrestle a fall, or handle a rifle, for any number of ponies the ancient's backers might be disposed to post. A stalwart priest and a powerful was Parson Julius, and is still, we trust, if nothing has happened to him since Mr Coke left him at the court of his majesty Tamehameha III., at Honolulu, on the eve of setting sail for the island of Owyhee. No better companion could be desired on a rough and perilous expedition; and although his careless friend manages to let his true name slip out before ending his volume, we will not allow that the slip affords grounds for regret, or that there is anything in his journey of which, as a clergyman, he need be ashamed.

Considerably over-provided with attendants, horses, mules, and, above all, with baggage, the three friends left St Louis. Their "following" comprised "four young Frenchmen of St Louis; Fils, a Canadian voyageur; a little four-foot-nothing Yankee, and Fred's valet-de-champs, familiarly called Jimmy." The journey was commenced on the 28th May 1850, per steamer, up the Missouri. On the morning of the 29th a disagreeable discovery was made. Fils, the guide, had disappeared. The scamp had levanted in the night; how, none could tell. Drowning was suggested; but as he had taken his baggage, and had forgotten to leave behind him the rifle and three months' advance of pay which he had received from his employers, the hypothesis was contemptuously scouted. Consoling themselves with the reflection that his desertion would have been far more prejudicial at a later period of their journey, the travellers continued their progress up the Missouri (for whose scenery Mr Coke can find no better comparison than the Cockney one of "Rosherville or Cremorne") to St Joseph, which the Yankees familiarise into St Joe. Here they were to exchange the deck for the saddle; and so impatient were they for the substitution that they actually felt "annoyed at being obliged to sleep another night on board the steamer." They had yet to learn the value of a coarse hammock in a close cabin. At last they made a fair start: —

"3d June.– After much bother about a guide, and loss of linch-pins, fitting of harness, kicking and jibbing of mules, &c., we left the Missouri, and camped five miles from the town. We pitched our tents in a beautiful spot, on the slope of a hill, surrounded by a large wood. A muddy little stream ran at the bottom. To this (with sleeves turned up and braces off, trying, I suppose, to look as much like grooms or dragoons as we were able) we each led our horses: no doubt we succeeded, for we felt perfectly satisfied with everything and everybody. The novelty put us all in excellent humour. The potatoes in the camp-kettle had a decidedly bivouacking appearance; and though the grass was wet, who, I should like to know, would have condescended to prefer a camp-stool? As to the pistols, and tomahawks, and rifles, it was evident that they might be wanted at a moment's notice, that it would have been absolutely dangerous not to have them all in perfect readiness. Besides, there was a chance of finding game in the wood. If the chance had been a hundred times as diminutive, we were in duty bound to try it."

Playing at travelling, like playing at soldiers, is all very well when the campaign is brief. The raw recruit or amateur campaigner plumes himself on a night passed upon straw in a barn. Give him a week's bivouacking in damp ploughed fields, and he sings small and feels rheumatic, and prefers the domestic nightcap to the warrior's laurel. Thus with Messrs Coke and Company. They were in a monstrous hurry to begin gipsying. What would they not have given, a week or two later, for a truckle bed and a tiled roof? The varnish of the picture, the anticipated romance, was soon rubbed off by the rough fingers of hardship and reality. What a start they made of it! Mr Coke is tolerably reserved on this head; but through his reserve it is not difficult to discern that, unless they had taken hair powder and a grand piano, they could hardly have encumbered themselves with more superfluities than those with which their mules and waggons were overloaded. Many who read these lines will remember the admirable and humorous account given by our lamented friend Ruxton, of the westward-bound caravan which fell in with Killbuck and La Bonté at the big granite block in Sweet Water Valley. Few, who have ever read, will have forgotten that characteristic sketch; – the dapper shooting-jackets, the fire-new rifles, the well-fitted boots and natty cravats, the Woodstock gloves and elaborate powder-horns, the preserved soup, hotch-potch, pickles, porter, brandy, coffee, sugar, of the amateur backwoodsmen who found the starving trappers dining on a grilled snake in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, and generously ministered to their necessities. With somewhat similar but still more extravagant provision did our jockey of Norfolk, Fred, and Julius Cæsar, go forth into the prairie. Less fortunate than Ruxton's Scotchman, they failed to retain or enjoy what they had dearly paid for. Sadly altered was their trim, piteous their plight, long, long before they reached the Rocky Mountains. Disasters soon arrived, with disgust and discord in their train. At their first halting place, five miles from St Joseph, a pouring rain, pattering on their tent, forbade sleep; a horse and mule, disgusted by the dirty weather and foretaste of rough work, broke loose and galloped back to the town. These recovered, and the new guide, successor to the faithless Fils, having joined, they again went ahead. We may cull from Mr Coke's pages a few of the impediments and annoyances encountered at this early period of the journey: —

"Nothing could be more provoking than the behaviour of our teams; each animal seemed to vie with its yoke-mate in making itself disagreeable. They had no idea of attempting to pull together, and all exertions on our parts were discouraged by the most vehement kicks and plunges on theirs… The men were as incapable of driving as the mules were unwilling to be driven, and before we had travelled three miles the heaviest of our waggons was stuck fast… A doubt here arose as to which road we had better take, and I clearly perceived that our guide was deplorably ignorant of his calling, since in the very outset he was undecided as to which route we should pursue… 7th June.– Started at seven. Roads worse than ever. Heavy waggon, as usual, sticks in a rut, and is nearly upset. Discharge cargo, and find it hard work to carry heavy boxes up the hill… My black mare, Gipsy, has run away. Take Louis, the Canadian, and go after her. Find her tracks in a large wood, and hunt the whole day in every direction, but are at last obliged to give her up."

Incidents such as these, and others still more disagreeable, were of daily occurrence. Nothing could tame the wilfulness of the mules, or check the erratic propensities common to them and to the horses. The waggons, overladen, continually broke down. Indeed, so aggravating were most of the circumstances of the journey in this its early stage, and so few the compensating enjoyments, that we believe most persons in the place of Mr Coke and his friends would have turned back within the week, and desisted from an expedition which had been undertaken solely with a view to amusement and excitement. With extraordinary tenacity of purpose the three Englishmen persevered. Their followers proved terribly helpless, and they were indebted to an old Mormon, a Yorkshireman, whom they met upon the road, for the repairs of their frequently broken wheels. Here is the journal for the 12th June: —

"Blazard (the Mormon) repairs our wheels. We three go out hunting in different directions. See the tracks and skin of a deer, also fresh tracks of wolves. Put up a wild turkey – horse too frightened to allow me to fire at it. Killed a large snake marked like a rattlesnake, and shoot a grey squirrel and two wild ducks, right and left, with my rifle. When we came home we made a bargain with Blazard, letting him have the small waggon for fifteen dollars, on condition that he took 300 lb. weight for us as far as the mouth of the Platte. We talk of parting with four of our men, and packing the mules, when we get to Council Bluffs."

This project was soon put into execution. The district known as Council Bluffs lies on the Missouri, and takes its name from a meeting of Indian tribes held there some years ago. There the travellers camped, at about four miles from the river; and Mr Coke and Fred rode over to Trader's Point, crossed the Missouri, and called on Major Barrow, an Indian agent, who cashed them a bill, recommended them a half-breed servant, bought their remaining waggon and harness at an "alarming sacrifice;" bought of them also "forty pounds of powder, a hundred pounds of lead, quantities of odds and ends, and all the ginger beer"!!! They had previously sent back or sold several hundred pounds' weight of lead and provisions; so we get some idea of the scale on which the young gentlemen's stores had been laid in. By this time, Mr Coke says, "we begin to understand the mysteries of 'trading' a little better than formerly; but somehow or other a Yankee always takes us in, and that too in so successful a manner as to leave the impression that we have taken him in." Besides buying their goods a dead bargain, the Major – a remarkably smart man, who doubtless thought that greenhorns capable of taking ginger beer to the Rocky Mountains were fair game – attempted to make money out of them in another way.

"The day cleared, and as we could not start till the evening, the Major proposed to get up a race. He knew of a horse (his own) that could beat any in our 'crowd.' He had seen him run a good many times, and 'just knowed how he could shine.' Fifty dollars was the stake, and 'let him what won take the money.'"

Fred volunteered to ride a fast little grey of Mr Coke's. Three-quarters of a mile were measured on the prairie. The Major brought out his animal, greased its hoofs, washed its face, brushed its hair, mounted the half-breed upon it barebacked, and took his station at the winning-post. At first the half-breed made the running. Major and friends were cock-a-hoop; but the Englishman was a bit of a jockey.

"They were now about three hundred yards from the post. Fred had never used the spur; he needed but to slack the reins – away dashed the little grey, gaining at every stride upon the old horse. It is our turn to cheer! The Major begins to think seriously of his fifty dollars, when, in an instant, the fate of the game is changed. The little grey stumbles; he has put his foot in a hole – he staggers, and with difficulty recovers himself. The big horse must win. Now for whip and spur! Neck and neck, in they come – and which has won the race? 'Well, sir!' said the Major, 'slick work wasn't it? what is your opinion?' I might have known by this deferential question what his opinion was; but, to tell the truth, I could not decide which horse was the winner, and so I said. He jumped at this favourable decision on my part, and 'calculated' forthwith that it was a dead heat. I learned afterwards that he had confessed we had won, and thought little of our 'smartness' for not finding it out. My little grey was thenceforth an object of general admiration; and the utilitarian minds of the Yankees could not understand why I was not travelling through the States with such a pony, and making my fortune by backing him against everything of its size."

Mr Coke is a good appreciator of the Yankees, and so lively and successful in his sketches of their national traits and peculiarities, that it is to be regretted he does not talk rather more about them. His stay at New York he passes over in a couple of pages.

"I am not ambitious," he says, "of circulating more American notes, nor do I care to follow in the footsteps of Mrs Trollope. Enough has been written to illustrate the singularities of second-rate American society. Good society is the same all the world over. General remarks I hold to be fair play. But to indulge in personalities is a poor return for hospitality; and those Americans who are most willing to be civil to foreigners, receive little enough encouragement to extend that civility, when, as is too often the case, those very foreigners afterwards attempt to amuse their friends on one side the Atlantic, at the expense of a breach of good faith to their friends on the other… I have a great respect for almost everything American. I do not mean to say that I have any affection for a thorough-bred Yankee, in our acceptation of the term; far from it. I think him the most offensive of all bipeds in the known world."

We English are perhaps too apt to judge a whole nation upon a few unfavourable specimens; also to attach exaggerated importance to trifling peculiarities. This latter tendency is fostered, in the case of America, by those relentless bookmakers, who, to point a chapter and raise a laugh, are ready, as Mr Coke justly remarks, to sacrifice a friend and caricature facts. In our opinion, Englishmen and Americans will like each other better when they see each other more. The free and easy manners of our Transatlantic cousins may be rather shocking to English reserve, but they, on the other hand, may justly take exception to the stiffness and formality, which, although less conspicuous than formerly, and daily diminishing, are still prominent features in our national character. In time we may hope to meet half way. The increase of intercourse with Europe will polish American asperities; and, either we are mistaken in our observations, or the facilities of passage between England and the Continent have already lessened that shyness, chilling reserve, and repellent noli me tangere manner, which have long made us ridiculous and unpopular in the eyes of our neighbours. American "gentlemen," in the emphatic sense of the word, are said to be very rare productions of the Union; yet Americans have qualities whose ripening and development may convert them, in no long time, into one of the most chivalrous and courteous of modern nations. Prominent amongst those qualities are the universal deference, consideration, and protection which they accord to women. "All Americans I have met," says Mr Coke, "were agreeable enough if humoured a little, and perfectly civil if civilly treated." Brutes and ruffians (like good society) are the same in all countries. At Sacramento, Mr Coke one day took up a newspaper to read an account of a Lynch execution which had taken place at four that morning.

"I was perusing the trial, when a ruffianly-looking individual interrupted me with, ''Say, stranger, let's have a look at that paper, will you?' 'When I have done with it,' said I, and continued reading. This answer would have satisfied most Christians endowed with any moderate degree of patience; but not so the ruffian. He bent himself over the back of my chair, put one hand on my shoulder, and with the other held the paper, so that he could read as well as I. 'Well, I guess you're readin' about Jim, aint you?' 'Who's Jim?' said I. 'Him as they hung this morning,' he answered, at the same time resuming his seat. 'Jim was a particlar friend of mine, and I helped to hang him.'"

The narrative that follows, and which is rather too lengthy to extract entire, is very graphic and striking – an excellent specimen of Life in California. Jim, it appeared, was a "Britisher," an ex-convict from the penal settlements, a terrible scamp and desperado. His offences were many, but murder was the crime he suffered for. Here is the horribly thrilling account of his execution, as given to Mr Coke by the "friend" who helped to Lynch him.